Written By: - Date published: 10:30 am, March 25th, 2013 - 21 comments
There is a summit on renewable energy in the Pacific happening in Auckland. McCully acknowledges climate change, the PM focuses on investment opportunities, the EU hopes for clean energy to aid poverty reduction. What’s best for Pacific island communities?
Written By: - Date published: 9:58 am, March 25th, 2013 - 120 comments
National, the party of beneficiary bashing that has lead a crusade against parents on the DBP, appears to have triggered a surge of new births to DPB parents.
Written By: - Date published: 8:52 am, March 25th, 2013 - 30 comments
Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, March 25th, 2013 - 127 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…
Written By: - Date published: 10:25 am, March 24th, 2013 - 27 comments
Today we again have the Herald’s resident ignoramus Damien Grant sounds off about something he knows nothing about. As usual just looking at numbers without understanding what they represent and leaps to wrong conclusions. For a start he tries to compare the $8000 Watercare charge for a new water supply connection with the much smaller […]
Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, March 24th, 2013 - 237 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…
Written By: - Date published: 6:00 pm, March 23rd, 2013 - 187 comments
Oh look, once again Family First’s rhetoric fails to match its reality.
Written By: - Date published: 5:26 pm, March 23rd, 2013 - 57 comments
The funeral was a very full house and hard. You may have even seen it on Campbell Live; The Herald gave it front page this morning. Now comes the hard part, surviving the aftermath, the years with a hole in your heart, the family with a missing part. We never really had a cycling culture […]
Written By: - Date published: 1:57 pm, March 23rd, 2013 - 7 comments
I/S at No Right Turn on youth rates…
Written By: - Date published: 11:21 am, March 23rd, 2013 - 17 comments
Three of the Herald’s political staff has a crack at trying to explain why National polled 48.5% in the latest Herald-Digipoll. Consensus seems to be that John Key’s an angel sent to earth to do very little but keep enough of the middle class happy enough who’ll never lose. May I humbly suggest an alternative theory – that the Herald-Digipoll is broken.
Written By: - Date published: 7:54 am, March 23rd, 2013 - 28 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, we start on the 2012 report from the Office of the Children’s Comissioner. NZ is a signatory to UN conventions that give children the right to adequate resources…
Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, March 23rd, 2013 - 62 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…
Written By: - Date published: 9:31 pm, March 22nd, 2013 - 82 comments
The poor tend to be understood as the rational inferiors of the well-off, to the extent that political arguments now largely revolve around their management rather than their representation.
Written By: - Date published: 2:00 pm, March 22nd, 2013 - 30 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?
Written By: - Date published: 11:38 am, March 22nd, 2013 - 89 comments
2.5% GDP growth last year. The Right’s jumping out of their skin at finally achieving the long-run average growth rate. But even on their good days, they’re doing it wrong: “The “consumer-centric” mix of growth was understandable, with low interest rates stimulating the housing market while a high dollar throttled exports, but it was the exact opposite of what was required”
Written By: - Date published: 10:30 am, March 22nd, 2013 - 47 comments
No Right Turn asked an interesting question yesterday about how the appointment of Susan Devoy was made.
..it is highly doubtful that Devoy meets that statutory criteria for the office she has been appointed to. The advice on her appointment should make very interesting reading…
Written By: - Date published: 9:07 am, March 22nd, 2013 - 150 comments
When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. The revenue portfolio looked like a big step down for Cunliffe but already he’s made a mark as the parliamentary voice of a business/union coalition against Dunne’s stealth taxes. The result: humiliating backdowns for Dunne, a stain that may threaten his hold on Ohariu, and Cunliffe and Labour on the side of the winners.
Written By: - Date published: 7:28 am, March 22nd, 2013 - 393 comments
Rather than add my two cents to the debate about whether she’s up to the job or not (she’s clearly not), I’d like to point out that this is essentially Judith Collins telling liberal New Zealand it can go f**k itself.
Given this fact, the question to ask isn’t so much why put such an unqualified person in such a sensitive position so much as why does Collins feel the need to yell “look at me” so loudly right now?
Written By: - Date published: 6:28 am, March 22nd, 2013 - 36 comments
The latest Herald Digipoll is mixed news for the left, but good news personally for David Shearer. Even John Armstrong is cautiously impressed…
Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, March 22nd, 2013 - 110 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…
Written By: - Date published: 1:19 pm, March 21st, 2013 - 12 comments
Government MPs vote down a request for an enquiry into Solid Energy.
Written By: - Date published: 12:24 pm, March 21st, 2013 - 36 comments
When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman? From the beginning all men by nature were created alike, and our bondage or servitude came in by the unjust oppression of naughty men. And therefore I exhort you to consider that now the time is come in which ye may (if ye will) cast off the yoke of bondage, and recover liberty.
Written By: - Date published: 10:57 am, March 21st, 2013 - 49 comments
The current Speaker in the House, David Carter, is a disaster. Yesterday he let the government get away with avoiding providing serious answers to important questions: a government ploy? Russel Norman has complained. Democracy needs the government to be held to account.
Written By: - Date published: 9:25 am, March 21st, 2013 - 19 comments
The extent of the GCSB cover-up in the Dotcom fiasco is now clear. Key is pleading ignorance, claiming that it was an “operational matter”. If Key isn’t briefed on “operational matters” then what possible oversight can he provide? In fact he was briefed on this “operational matter” – the only question is when…
Written By: - Date published: 7:15 am, March 21st, 2013 - 105 comments
There’s this almost puritan kind of myth that we’ve got so much international debt as punishment for our spendthrift ways. We ‘live beyond our means’, apparently. But it’s not true. If ‘our means’ is the money we make in exports, then most of the time, they exceed what we spend on imports. Yet, we run a $10 billion deficit as a country. Why? Because of the profit outflow.
Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, March 21st, 2013 - 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…
Written By: - Date published: 11:30 am, March 20th, 2013 - 46 comments
I “attended” a fascinating “town hall” meeting last week of artists from around the world in the Visual Special Effects sector. Ignited by the failure of the company Rhythm and Hues (despite recently completing most of the special effects for the film The Life of Pi and winning award recognition for the work), these workers […]
Written By: - Date published: 10:28 am, March 20th, 2013 - 48 comments
The Social Security (Benefit Categories and Work Focus) Amendment Bill second reading is first up on the provisional order paper for today. It is a further step in Paula Bennett & NAct’s vicious, punitive, bennie-bashing campaign. MPs are urged to vote against it!
Written By: - Date published: 10:12 am, March 20th, 2013 - 221 comments
Key hid his Tranzrail shares while asking questions about Tranzrail because he’s a sneaky, avaricious bastard.
Banks filed a false election return keeping his big money donors secret because he’s corrupt.
Shearer forgot to declare his UN Bank account because he’s a bit of a munter.
Time will tell which the public tolerates more.
Written By: - Date published: 9:48 am, March 20th, 2013 - 13 comments
The Nats are in trouble with their budget deficits and looking to raise money via increased taxes. But they are tinkering at the edges of the problem, and were quick to chuck Peter Dunne under the bus when the latest proposals didn’t fly.
Written By: - Date published: 8:52 am, March 20th, 2013 - 28 comments
The Roy Morgan polls continue their mad merry-go-round, and we bloggers continue to get too excited about it. The latest RM projects a win for Labour / Greens.
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