Archive for May, 2012

Falling prison numbers

Written By: - Date published: 11:18 am, May 22nd, 2012 - 13 comments

It’s an interesting fact that the one area in which National is going against its traditional approach and moving towards what the experts advocate is prisons. And I think I know why. In education, health, welfare etc National’s ideological positions correspond with cutting spending. But ‘lock em up and throw away the key’ costs. When Bill English called prisons a “moral and fiscal failure” his emphasis was on “fiscal”.

10,000 posts

Written By: - Date published: 10:22 am, May 22nd, 2012 - 38 comments

1,376 days ago a handful of us, lead by Lynn, got together to set up The Standard. The was idea for a strong left-blog to counter the dominance of the Right in the blogosphere. I reckon we’ve succeeded. We’ve had 413,000 comments and over 13 million pageviews. We’ve had 40 authors over the 3.5 years – 3 of us are left from the start – and 528 guest posts. The community, and the readership, keeps on growing massively.

McCarten: Waging war on working class

Written By: - Date published: 9:09 am, May 22nd, 2012 - 11 comments

Matt McCarten’s latest column is a must read. There is something nasty going on…

Back to school for Parata

Written By: - Date published: 8:01 am, May 22nd, 2012 - 26 comments

Parata on The Nation: “what we’ve had is a five-fold increase in the number of teachers while we’ve only had a 2% increase in students”. There are 52,500 teachers. Is Parata really saying there were only 10,500 a decade ago? The minister needs remedial maths, methinks. This is the tragedy: our kids’ education being toyed with by nincompoops and dullards with a dumbarse ideological agenda.

Meatworkers win

Written By: - Date published: 7:21 am, May 22nd, 2012 - 38 comments

News in that Talley’s/AFFCO and the Meatworkers reached an agreement at 5am this morning. The workers will keep their wage and job security provisions and still be covered by a collective. The workers have displayed incredible strength with support from up and down the country. Next time, bosses will think twice before attacking their workers.

Open mike 22/05/2012

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, May 22nd, 2012 - 116 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…

A Tale of Two Networks

Written By: - Date published: 10:26 pm, May 21st, 2012 - 4 comments

Wellington’s electricity network was privatised 20 years ago. The water network wasn’t. Tomorrow evening (Tuesday) researchers Peter Harris, Dick Werry and Jim Turner will present their outcome comparison to a Fabian seminar at St John’s Church Hall in Wellington at 5:30pm. Water network costs rose by 17% over the period, electricity network costs by four times that amount. The reach of both networks is similar – the lesson is that the required return on appreciating assets from privatisation drives up the costs. All welcome to come and discuss. You can register here.

Spin v reality

Written By: - Date published: 6:45 pm, May 21st, 2012 - 13 comments

National have become a very adept PR machine. While not adept at running the country, they’ve become great at running statistics. John Key was pushing things a little too far with his lines that unemployment rising to 6.7% showed an improved economy and that Europe electing anti-austerity leaders showed their austerity policies were right, but […]

ImperatorFish: Good News On Asteroid Front Shows Government On Track

Written By: - Date published: 6:07 pm, May 21st, 2012 - 1 comment

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

A guest post from the Finance Minister.

Alternative Budget Competition

Written By: - Date published: 5:13 pm, May 21st, 2012 - 2 comments

Tomorrow night in Auckland  four University teams from Auckland, Victoria and Otago will present their visions and prescriptions for New Zealand’s economic future in an event which is
open to the public, and will be held from 5.30pm at the University of Auckland Business School. All are welcome to attend – it should be interesting.

Greens Budget Alternative

Written By: - Date published: 1:11 pm, May 21st, 2012 - 68 comments

The Greens launched their Budget alternative this morning. Titled “Smart Green Economics” it lived up to the billing.  Extra heft was provided by BERL economist Dr Ganesh Nana  paper arguing that the Government’s asset sales programme leaves the government accounts permanently worse off. It was also good to hear about opportunities and their alternatives. We’ve had enough of TINA.

The thinner blue line

Written By: - Date published: 11:16 am, May 21st, 2012 - 19 comments

National is going to cut 125 police staff. They’re not sworn officers but who’s going to pick up the work they were doing? Sworn cops, of course. Course, tying up cops with paperwork will help the crime stats drop. And with the navy so underfunded half its inshore patrol vessels are being mothballed I bet illegal fishing instances drop too. Funny that.

One more promise I couldn’t keep

Written By: - Date published: 9:13 am, May 21st, 2012 - 14 comments

Last Budget, National promised 36,000 jobs in the year to March 2012. We got 20,000. They promised 1.8% growth. We got 1.1%. They promised a $9.8 billion deficit. Now, it’s heading for over $12  billion. Ready for a repeat on Thursday?. English will say last year’s failures were all someone else’s fault. Key will grin and make some weak jokes, the beakbenches will hoot and holler. But will anyone outside National be smiling this time round?

Mr Key’s remarkable lack of ambition

Written By: - Date published: 7:01 am, May 21st, 2012 - 59 comments

Remember ‘ambitious for New Zealand’? Remember ‘brighter future’? National used to at least say they wanted to do something significant. At what point did all that get replaced with ‘surplus by 2014/15’? Key and National have $70 billion a year to play with to better this country, and the best thing they can come up with is making sure government operating revenue exceeds operating spending by about half a percent in three years time.

Open mike 21/05/2012

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, May 21st, 2012 - 92 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…

Toxic commentators 2

Written By: - Date published: 11:38 am, May 20th, 2012 - 26 comments

Like a polluter making money while passing on the costs of pollution to the rest of us, a media organisation can make money out of hatred while passing on the costs to society. Case in point – Paul Henry, who didn’t take long to revert to type in Australia.

Insult to injury

Written By: - Date published: 10:33 am, May 20th, 2012 - 37 comments

Not content with selling your assets off, National has put aside $120,000,000 of your money to tell you that you should like it.

And, just to add more salt to the wound, Bill English has described the cost as “low by market standards”.

Open mike 20/05/2012

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, May 20th, 2012 - 92 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…

Joyce’s latest brainfart

Written By: - Date published: 11:27 am, May 19th, 2012 - 45 comments

This week, Minister for Talking Big and Not Delivering, Steven Joyce, had his second opinion piece in the Herald of the year and, naturally, it bore no relation to the ‘vision’ in the previous one, or any of the 5 point strategies or 8 point action plans he has produced to date. Instead, it said ‘wouldn’t it be great if more international students came here?’. Problem is, his actions are driving them away.

Polls and elections

Written By: - Date published: 9:14 am, May 19th, 2012 - 21 comments

Another poll to add to current mix. Not a big shift, but in the right direction, and getting the right kinds of headline.  And here’s another headline that isn’t going to help the Nats – the wage gap with Australia is growing at the rate of $1 a month.

Open mike 19/05/2012

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, May 19th, 2012 - 144 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…

ImperatorFish: New Wiggles Line-up Announced

Written By: - Date published: 3:46 pm, May 18th, 2012 - 8 comments

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

Friday afternoon fun: Trevor Mallard becomes a Wiggle.

Weekend social 18/05/2012

Written By: - Date published: 2:00 pm, May 18th, 2012 - 15 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?

Dunne angry

Written By: - Date published: 1:39 pm, May 18th, 2012 - 106 comments

Underneath the ‘common-sense’ exterior, and all that hair, Peter Dunne is an angry man. He lashed out that those who pointed out he’s voting for asset sales he never told his electorate he would support. He screamed at losing TVNZ7 – Backbenches is his one chance to get on the telly. And he’s going feral on the Conservatives because they could usurp him.

NRT: Highways and fiscal responsibility

Written By: - Date published: 12:03 pm, May 18th, 2012 - 12 comments

The government is, softening us up for higher prescription charges, fewer teachers, and a further assault on beneficiaries. Meanwhile, they’re spending billions on “Roads of National Significance” that do not meet basic cost-benefit tests, to service a declining demand for road transport. The Greens are right: this is not “fiscally responsible”.

Austerity will increase inequality

Written By: - Date published: 10:12 am, May 18th, 2012 - 42 comments

Austerity is reducing the opportunities for social mobility, for reducing income inequality, for a fair society.  The increased class sizes, the removal of Adult and Community Education, the removal of Training Allowances, and many more things National are doing in the name of “austerity” are undermining our society.

Minister pleased with anemic economy

Written By: - Date published: 7:57 am, May 18th, 2012 - 38 comments

You have to take your hat off to National’s spin doctors, coming up with the plausible-sounding nonsense line that low interest rates mean affordable housing isn’t needed. But it led to this- Phil Heatley: “we’re pleased that we’re managing the economy such that interest rates are so low”. Ten minutes earlier, Tony Alexander: “lower interest rates reflect the weakness of the economic outlook”.

The wheel turns

Written By: - Date published: 6:33 am, May 18th, 2012 - 11 comments

Across the country, the number of party votes National received fell in 2011, except for in Christchurch. Given turn-out fell 10%, the fact more people voted National was a sobering moment for critics of how the rebuild is being handled. Or perhaps not. Now, 87% of Press readers think the government isn’t doing enough. National just got lucky with the timing of the election.

Open mike 18/05/2012

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, May 18th, 2012 - 205 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…

Poor people NIMBY

Written By: - Date published: 5:27 pm, May 17th, 2012 - 41 comments

John Key is doing his best to keep poor people from coming to his electorate. Whilst it’s not like he visits there often himself, he’s still aiming to keep poor people committing the “economic vandalism” of living in a nice suburb – where apparently only the rich should reside.

NRT: Will parliament hold its own to account?

Written By: - Date published: 2:18 pm, May 17th, 2012 - 22 comments

No Right Turn on the latest case of Banks failing to declare donations.  Banks has broken the rules.  The credibility of Parliament is at stake.