Archive for September, 2012

Roofpainter II: Son of the bride of the monster roof painter

Written By: - Date published: 7:00 pm, September 30th, 2012 - 126 comments

David Shearer still doesn’t get why judging beneficiaries from across the road isn’t compatible with leading the Labour Party.  QoT perseveres in trying to explain it to him, using short words.

‘Children of the Poor’ 1934 – 2012: Social Security for the Future?

Written By: - Date published: 11:04 am, September 30th, 2012 - 176 comments

Split Enz once sang, “History Never Repeats”…  Or does it?  Destructive prejudices separating  ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor have been around a very long time. When the likes of Paula Bennett pander to such ill-informed vindictiveness with punitive social welfare reforms, they will damage large numbers of children – our future citizens.

Where are the resignations?

Written By: - Date published: 10:12 am, September 30th, 2012 - 87 comments

John Key refuses to accept any responsibility for what his spies get up to. The only point of democratic responsibility for our spies doesn’t monitor them and won’t take the blame for failing to do so. He won’t fire a corrupt, lying minister, either. The rot is spreading to the public service. There has been not one resignation, not a single one, due to the Dotcom debacle.

Sunday Reading

Written By: - Date published: 9:30 am, September 30th, 2012 - 17 comments

My regular Sunday piece of interesting, longer, deeper stories I found during the week. It’s also a chance for you to share what you found this week too. This week: Obama the Tory, fish, Planet Key and the UK’s hit political single.

Open mike 30/09/2012

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, September 30th, 2012 - 117 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…

Wake the f*ck up

Written By: - Date published: 1:32 pm, September 29th, 2012 - 14 comments

Brilliant call for arms for apathetic Democrat supporters.

Starring a foul-mouthed Samuel L Jackson.

Poverty Watch 5

Written By: - Date published: 10:20 am, September 29th, 2012 - 23 comments

Welcome to Poverty Watch, a weekly update on National’s lack of response to the urgent and growing issue of poverty in NZ. This week, right wingers whine about the focus on poverty, 3 News and Kidscan try to do something about it.

Neazor report proves inadequate cover for Key

Written By: - Date published: 9:23 am, September 29th, 2012 - 83 comments

Labour has written to Key calling for a much wider-ranging investigation into the Dotcom spying affair than Neazor’s narrow, tell-us-nothing-we-don’t-already-know report. They would have been better to go straight to the Auditor-General. The Greens have gone for the established illegality and called in the cops on the GCSB – cleverly citing the same offence Key claimed in the teapot tapes.

Why the Left still needs feminism

Written By: - Date published: 7:25 am, September 29th, 2012 - 280 comments

QoT has a shiny new author login and she’s not afraid to use it!  And Labour?  You definitely still need feminism.

Open mike 29/09/2012

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, September 29th, 2012 - 133 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…

Shearer Says

Written By: - Date published: 5:03 pm, September 28th, 2012 - 60 comments

David Shearer’s weekly e-newsletter, this week on privatisation, jobs, and Dotcom.
We’re happy to post similar newsletters from other opposition leaders – our email is on our contact page.

Weekend social 28/09/2012

Written By: - Date published: 2:00 pm, September 28th, 2012 - 33 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?

On the trailing edge: Brownlee on Rena

Written By: - Date published: 1:41 pm, September 28th, 2012 - 11 comments

I was reading an article looking at the aftermath of the Rena shipwreck in the Herald. In it I read some ridiculous statements by Gerry Brownlee that seemed (like so much from him) to come from the early part of the last century. It appears that he (and his minons in the M0T) haven’t quite caught up on rapid progress of the digital age in nautical circles. Hasn’t he heard about AIS? Or computers?

Joyce’s desperate shill for Bathurst mining

Written By: - Date published: 12:42 pm, September 28th, 2012 - 17 comments

Economic Development Minister Steven Joyce has launched a broadside against the environmental opponents of the privately owned Denniston mine project. To do this Stephan Joyce has tried to draw a bow linking those who wish to stop the opening of the Dennistion mine, with the closing of the Spring Creek mine.

The cost of doing nothing

Written By: - Date published: 11:00 am, September 28th, 2012 - 34 comments

Another report confirms the findings of the 2006 Stern Report. The future economic costs of doing nothing far outweigh the current costs of taking action on climate change. But National is taking us backwards…

Ombudsman: Government secrecy “highly dangerous”

Written By: - Date published: 7:17 am, September 28th, 2012 - 31 comments

The Chief Ombudsmen has attacked the government’s moves to keep official information secret, calling them “highly dangerous”. The ongoing GCSB and John Banks scandals show just how important it is to be able to hold the government – at all levels – to account.

Open mike 28/09/2012

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, September 28th, 2012 - 171 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 fails to guard the guardians

Written By: - Date published: 8:41 pm, September 27th, 2012 - 87 comments

Our government’s spies are overseen by two people – the Prime Minister and the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security. The former asked the latter to investigate he found out the GCSB had been illegally spying on two Kiwis. And, guess what, the report blamed underlings. It didn’t even investigate the question of oversight.

EPA seems fishy

Written By: - Date published: 5:28 pm, September 27th, 2012 - 7 comments

MrSmith has been following National’s new Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) hearing considering an application by New Zealand King Salmon for a plan change and resource consents so it can create nine new fish farms in areas of the Marlborough Sounds where aquaculture is prohibited. It seems fishy and at odds with the stated intent of the EPA.

Social Democratic Economy: Part 2

Written By: - Date published: 4:25 pm, September 27th, 2012 - 32 comments

Draco gives his long awaited second part on his views on a social democratic economy.

..the present socio-economic system that we use, namely Free Market Capitalism, is a failure. When thinking about the economy and how it works I realised I had to go back to basics as almost everything that’s taught about economics in the mainstream theories is bollocks – most of its assumptions aren’t even close to being realistic.

 

Austerity vs. stimulus

Written By: - Date published: 1:15 pm, September 27th, 2012 - 53 comments

The UK and USA make for interesting case studies in their differing responses to the global recession.  A pity that NZ followed the wrong leader.

Fabians: Social Democracy in Aotearoa

Written By: - Date published: 11:26 am, September 27th, 2012 - 10 comments

Next Monday evening in Auckland, Professor Peter Davis will present a seminar asking what does social democracy have to offer in addressing our current discontents (loss of sovereignty, emigration of some of our best and brightest, commodity-dependent standard of living, structural deficit, inability to retain our key assets, solidifying underclass)?

Key / Peters 2014

Written By: - Date published: 9:21 am, September 27th, 2012 - 50 comments

John “power at any cost” Key isn’t ruling out a deal with Peters in 2014. Peters isn’t ruling it out either. Deputy PM Peters anyone?

What does Key have to gain by lying?

Written By: - Date published: 8:52 am, September 27th, 2012 - 138 comments

John Key put on a display of incompetence in the House yesterday over the Dotcom spying affair. He claimed not to know a laundry list of basic facts that, if he didn’t know them before, he bloody well ought to have been briefed on by now. In some instances, his memory failed him over Dotcom. Yet he then showed he could recall exchange rates from 20 years ago. I think he’s lying. The alternative is too scary.

Open mike 27/09/2012

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, September 27th, 2012 - 126 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…

Implausible deniability

Written By: - Date published: 10:11 pm, September 26th, 2012 - 16 comments

There’s a lot of it about in right-wing parties at the moment. For John Key, John Banks and David Cameron it appears to be becoming the strategy of choice. It’s not working very well for any of them.

The Press on Standards

Written By: - Date published: 11:30 am, September 26th, 2012 - 34 comments

The Christchurch Press as part of Fairfax released National Standards data, but had a number of articles with a curiously sensible line on it: “…the standards’ main effects will be to impose on schools a crude, misleading and unhelpful form of accountability and to focus attention on learning targets that are inappropriate for many children.”

If it is broke, then fix it

Written By: - Date published: 11:29 am, September 26th, 2012 - 71 comments

Colin James writes good political analysis. His ODT article from yesterday resonates with me. It is time to look for a new economic model as we watch “..central banks – supposed to epitomise the straight and narrow – print money like 17th century monarchs.” as they recirculate the stupidities of the past like any National government.

Richard Heinburg Life After Growth Tour

Written By: - Date published: 11:15 am, September 26th, 2012 - 5 comments

Public Lecture on Sunday 30 September, 1pm-3pm, Auckland University Fisher & Paykel Auditorium, Owen G Glenn Building, University of Auckland Business School.

Many questions left unanswered in Banks affair

Written By: - Date published: 9:54 am, September 26th, 2012 - 43 comments

“Ignorance gets us nowhere”, it’s National’s new slogan and it certainly applied with Key’s feigned ignorance in answer to questions on Banks’ corruption last week. Key’s behaviour is jeopardising our reputation as a democracy that doesn’t tolerate corruption. And he’s got a lot of questions still to answer. Two particularly interesting angles are what exactly […]

“Work” and the false economy of Bennett’s welfare reforms

Written By: - Date published: 9:00 am, September 26th, 2012 - 102 comments

Bennett’s reforms aim to cut the costs of government spending on welfare.  But what this means is that more of the necessary caring and service work in NZ will be unpaid, or underpaid.  It doesn’t mean people will necessarily work harder or longer, and that they aren’t making a significant contribution to society and the economy.