Archive for February, 2012

Congrats on raising the minimum wage John

Written By: - Date published: 1:59 pm, February 8th, 2012 - 66 comments

Shame you couldn’t raise it to a living one though. The working poor will appreciate the extra $1000 per year coming this April, but it still won’t cover their bills…

Steven Joyce and the ‘can’ts’

Written By: - Date published: 9:57 am, February 8th, 2012 - 44 comments

Steven Joyce reckons that the ‘can’ts’ are holding us back. I agree, just look at these facts:

  • National can’t create growth
  • National can’t create jobs
  • National can’t grow wages
  • National can’t get people to live here
  • National can’t get debt under control
  • National can’t reduce poverty

A sustainable future

Written By: - Date published: 8:10 am, February 8th, 2012 - 19 comments

The UN High Level Panel on Global Sustainability has delivered a report about creating a future that’s sustainable economically, socially and environmentally. Our government and political parties should be looking at it and measuring themselves against it.

Open mike 08/02/2012

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, February 8th, 2012 - 84 comments

Open mike is your post. For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the link to Policy in the banner). Step right up to the mike…

Resignation-watch: Tariana Turia

Written By: - Date published: 8:17 pm, February 7th, 2012 - 129 comments

Tariana Turia is making hollow threats to leave the government but she might be pushed first. Winston Peters has wasted no time showing how opposition politics is done, using his first question time back to skewer Turia, exposing the massive rorting her Whanau Ora programme. Turia made a slush fund for her mates with our money. She has to go.

Time for an anti-asset sales coalition

Written By: - Date published: 1:50 pm, February 7th, 2012 - 128 comments

Mana, NZF, the Greens, and even the Maori Party, are suddenly grabbing the asset sales issue from Labour, just when it actually started to be a really valuable issue to lead on. Shearer should stop playing pundit on whether the Maori Party will go and how ‘unstable’ that makes the government. Instead, realise the broad base of opposition to asset sales and build a coalition to stop them.

Caption contest

Written By: - Date published: 9:22 am, February 7th, 2012 - 71 comments

Inequality: a big issue for our time

Written By: - Date published: 6:43 am, February 7th, 2012 - 218 comments

The Herald looks like it has an excellent series this week, on Auckland: A city divided by income. It’s an issue that has been waiting to be examined in the local context in more depth.  It’s been quite a big issue in the UK for a while, with The Spirit Level making an impact before […]

Open mike 07/02/2012

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, February 7th, 2012 - 52 comments

Open mike is your post. For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the link to Policy in the banner). Step right up to the mike…

Epsom government – unstable and unequal

Written By: - Date published: 10:17 pm, February 6th, 2012 - 21 comments

I’ve just watched John Key say on Sky Australia “We don’t need the Maori Party – we have the votes for stable government.” But without the Maori Party, all we’ve got is an Epsom government. It hangs by a thread on  the teacup meeting  between Parnell resident Key and Epsom candidate Banks. Key’s dogwhistle to Epsom voters is all that guarantees National’s  “mandate” for asset sales.

Not a bad idea

Written By: - Date published: 8:45 pm, February 6th, 2012 - 20 comments

David Shearer wants to move the New Year’s and Queen’s Birthday honours to Waitangi Day. I reckon that’s a goer. If honourees were advised ahead of time, they could attend a public ceremony at Waitangi, to add to all the other events. With thousands there, it would be a much more public celebration of their contributions to our society and bring a positive focus to the day.

Super sized problem

Written By: - Date published: 10:32 am, February 6th, 2012 - 38 comments

The superannuation problem isn’t going away. The Nats will be fuming that Treasury have just dropped in their laps again.

Key gets what he wants at Waitangi

Written By: - Date published: 6:24 am, February 6th, 2012 - 171 comments

While Key was away on his 4-week holiday in Hawaii, the world economy deteriorated, reports on the dire state of poverty in our country came out, and access to strategic resources became a pressing issue – both with our farmland being bought and Iran threatening to close off the globe’s oil supply. But Key was working on a plan – to stoke up racial dissent at home.

Open mike 06/02/2012

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, February 6th, 2012 - 60 comments

Open mike is your post. For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the link to Policy in the banner). Step right up to the mike…

Key runs from Waitangi

Written By: - Date published: 3:36 pm, February 5th, 2012 - 176 comments

National’s honeymoon with Maori is well and truly over, as Key beats a hasty retreat from Waitangi.

Fran O’Sullivan: a shill with diversions

Written By: - Date published: 2:02 pm, February 5th, 2012 - 216 comments

Fran O’Sullivan took objection to RedLogix criticizing her articles on Crafar farms. It helps our traffic, but really she should relook at the utter crap she has been writing before attacking the questioner. She talks about everything except why the OIO within their legislation limited framework should or should not have approved the sale. The more that I reread her work on this subject, the more I ask: what in the hell is she trying to hide?

Hickey on playing by the rules

Written By: - Date published: 8:49 am, February 5th, 2012 - 130 comments

While the rest of the world is moving away from the ‘hands off’ monetary policy that became fashionable in the 80s, our government insists on playing by the outmoded neoliberal ‘rules’ of a clean float. Well, what happens when everyone else ‘cheats’ by printing free money to drive their currencies lower and we sit on our hands? We lose our assets and our exporters.

Open mike 05/02/2012

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, February 5th, 2012 - 87 comments

Open mike is your post. For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the link to Policy in the banner). Step right up to the mike…

More columns from O’Sullivan, please

Written By: - Date published: 11:07 am, February 4th, 2012 - 133 comments

Every time some rightwing ideologue calls 80% of New Zealanders racist or xenophobic because we don’t want to lose control of our future and sell our strategic assets to fall into the hands of a foreign dictatorship that is going around the world buying up key resources to secure their own supply chains at the cost of our sovereignty, and reminds us that National is letting this happen, I smile. Keep it up, Fran.

MoT reveals massive budget shortfall from peak oil

Written By: - Date published: 7:33 am, February 4th, 2012 - 36 comments

Almost missed among all the blacked out paragraphs of the Transport Briefing to the Incoming Minister are 2 interesting graphs. While not explicitly mentioning peak oil, the graph of the National Land Transport Fund shows a massive shortfall in revenue in a ‘high oil price, low growth’ scenario. The other shows how low-quality National’s highway spending is.

Open mike 04/02/2012

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, February 4th, 2012 - 33 comments

Open mike is your post. For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the link to Policy in the banner). Step right up to the mike…

Truly touching

Written By: - Date published: 11:57 pm, February 3rd, 2012 - 11 comments

After the horrifying attack on a 5-year old tourist in Turangi in December, Kiwis showed their compassion, and their shame, by donating over $62,000 to the family. Now, the family has said they don’t blame the community and have used some of the donations to fund children’s play equipment in Turangi and medical equipment for the children’s wing of Waikato hospital.

TEU: Treasury’s attack on ordinary Kiwis

Written By: - Date published: 4:05 pm, February 3rd, 2012 - 117 comments

Public education is the cornerstone of a good country and a buoyant economy. And New Zealanders have long enjoyed the benefits that come to them individually, to their families, their communities, their country, and the economy from having access to quality public education. But all this now seems under attack from a small group of Treasury officials.

Citizens on the Internet

Written By: - Date published: 3:34 pm, February 3rd, 2012 - 5 comments

ImperatorFish: Call Me, John

Written By: - Date published: 2:50 pm, February 3rd, 2012 - 41 comments

Scott at Imperator Fish has kindly given us permission to syndicate posts from his blog – the original of this post is here

Catherine Isaac “loves education”, and spent six years on a school board of trustees; Scott is a big fan of education and spent several years in various schools – he fancies an “working” group job setting up Charter Schools too…

Weekend social 03/02/2012

Written By: - Date published: 2:00 pm, February 3rd, 2012 - 27 comments

Weekend social is for non political chat. What’s on for the weekend, gigs, film or book reviews, sports, or whatever. No politics, no aggro, why can’t we all just get along?

NRT: Climate change: Cross-purposes

Written By: - Date published: 12:15 pm, February 3rd, 2012 - 48 comments

No Right Turn has a look at two of the incoming minister briefings impacting on climate change. They are incoherent and it is clear that neither ministry talks to the other. If it wasn’t affecting a important long term issue, it’d be as funny as a Yes Minister episode. But since it does, it just highlights the growing incoherence of this incompetent government and their increasing politicization of the civil service.

An unrelenting focus on jobs

Written By: - Date published: 9:45 am, February 3rd, 2012 - 9 comments

For your eyes only

Written By: - Date published: 8:30 am, February 3rd, 2012 - 17 comments

The Briefings to Incoming Ministers, which government departments produce after each election, give the public (via the media) an insight into on coming challenges in portfolios, elaborate on how election promises will be converted into real policies, and – most importantly – reveal things the government is planning that weren’t election policies. So, it’s disturbing that the Nats are censoring them.

POAL sleaze

Written By: - Date published: 7:26 am, February 3rd, 2012 - 80 comments

I’ve heard that POAL has private detectives following union officials around and taking photos.

I’d imagine that’s where “scoops” like this are coming from.

Open mike 03/02/2012

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, February 3rd, 2012 - 131 comments

Open mike is your post. For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the link to Policy in the banner). Step right up to the mike…

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