Archive for February, 2012

“Largely symbolic”

Written By: - Date published: 5:26 pm, February 2nd, 2012 - 15 comments

According to TVNZ, the Prime Minister said section nine of the SOE legislation, referring to the Treaty of Waitangi,  was “largely symbolic” because it had not been enacted since it was drawn up in 1986. It wasn’t a felicitous phrase; he might well find Maoridom’s response is both symbolic and large, if not in the sense he meant.

Treasury advocates own disbandment

Written By: - Date published: 12:42 pm, February 2nd, 2012 - 100 comments

Treasury has blown the dust off its 1980s economics textbooks and offered the same old failed prescription. Their moronic suggestion to cut education spending to finance tax cuts can be dismissed out of hand. But their suggestion of core Crown spending cuts has some merit; I know where we can get $75m that’s being spent on useless advice and incompetent forecasting.

ImperatorFish: Shock As Labour Discovers David Farrar Is Not The PM

Written By: - Date published: 10:07 am, February 2nd, 2012 - 12 comments

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

Labour Party MPs are said to be red-faced, after discovering that prominent blogger David Farrar is not the Prime Minister of New Zealand.

Wanted: more news like this

Written By: - Date published: 9:44 am, February 2nd, 2012 - 16 comments

A remarkably nice worker/boss story from across the ditch: Australian Ken Grenda may have sold his bus company, but his staff of almost 2,000 are smiling. Mr Grenda gave cash bonuses totalling A$15m ($16m, £10m) from proceeds of the sale to employees of his 66-year-old Melbourne-based company. The bonuses, averaging A$8,500, were based on the length […]

Crafar vs Cameron

Written By: - Date published: 8:49 am, February 2nd, 2012 - 119 comments

Spot the difference: Mega-corporation with close ties to foreign dictatorship that has a policy of securing strategic resources buys swathes of New Zealand farmland after a bid by a company directly owned by the dictatorship was rejected. New Zealand public company to become the foreign company’s tenant. vs New resident in New Zealand buys farm.

Another rightie at the trough

Written By: - Date published: 7:10 am, February 2nd, 2012 - 36 comments

It’s tough getting a job in the Key economy. There’s 80,000 more people wanting work since Key came to office and 43,000 fewer jobs. Fortunately, there’s always a do-nothing government job going … if you know the right people. Eh, Catherine Isaac?  Sure she’s got no qualifications but the ACT leader-in-waiting needs an income.

Open mike 02/02/2012

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, February 2nd, 2012 - 89 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…

Marryatt would do job for $300K less

Written By: - Date published: 9:57 am, February 1st, 2012 - 6 comments

Embattled Christchurch City Council CEO Tony Marryatt was asked on Campbell Live last night if he is worth his $500K salary. He said it is the market rate (in fact, its 100K over the median) and he would do the job whether the pay “was 200K or a million”. Now, doesn’t that mean the market clearing price for his labour is $200K? The Council could do a lot with an extra $300K. When’s the pay cut coming?

Outage

Written By: - Date published: 9:56 am, February 1st, 2012 - 33 comments

There was some maintenance done on the main NZ server last night. All looked ok when I went to sleep at about 6am, but appears to have started having problems from about 8:30 onwards with intermittently waiting on some network resource. Problem looks external to my server and the server’s support staff are chasing it […]

Don’t dream it’s over

Written By: - Date published: 7:42 am, February 1st, 2012 - 76 comments

The Maori Party is threatening to leave the government over the asset sales legislation removing the companies’ Treaty obligations. Key knows their threat is hollow. He just got away for 3 years of insulting Maori and worsening Maori statistics. Why would Sharples and Turia take a pay cut and lose their limos for their last few months working before retirement?

Open mike 01.02.2012

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, February 1st, 2012 - 105 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…