Author Archive

On Gattung’s revisionist history of Telecom

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 10:57 am, March 5th, 2010 - 15 comments

Over at Scoop, Gordon Campbell takes Theresa Gattung to task for her revisionist history of Telecom in the Dominion Post this morning.

More than anything, her latest outburst reveals her clanging naivety and complete inability to take personal responsibility for her failures.

Nats kill another crim rehabilitation scheme

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 12:20 am, March 5th, 2010 - 16 comments

For just $2.4 million a year, the Prisoners’ Aid and Rehabilitation Society and its 500 volunteers help 25,000 inmates and ex-inmates with rehabilitation and readjustment each year. Their efforts help turn people away from crime. But the Nats cancelled the funding. All they believe in is putting the boot in harder even though it doesn’t stop crime.

Glorious school building opened by honourable leader

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 10:20 am, March 4th, 2010 - 62 comments

Beloved Leader of People’s Constitutional Monarchy of New Zealand, Honourable John Key, attended glorious opening of school building on Tuesday.
Several youths were overcome by the glory of Honourable Leader’s appearance as were several members of the press corps.

Tsunami shows importance of Radio NZ

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 12:18 pm, March 1st, 2010 - 26 comments

You know, I struggle to see how the government can justify cuts to Radio New Zealand’s funding after its outstanding coverage of the tsunami yesterday. While the other radio broadcasters were jammed up with bee pollen adverts and deer horn aphrodisiac jingles, RNZ had informative, up to the minute information from all over the country.

ACT’s ugly racist face exposed

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 11:51 pm, February 28th, 2010 - 57 comments

Former ACT Deputy Leader Muriel Newman has launched into a racist tirade that amounts to ‘bloody bludging Maoris’. Incredibly, Rodney Hide agrees, saying that Maori have a culture of dependency. To ACT, poverty isn’t the result of an unequal and unfair economic system, it’s a lifestyle choice. They say Maori are morally deficient and to blame for their poverty.

Unions call for secret ballots for lockouts

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 10:40 am, February 26th, 2010 - 46 comments

If National is going to legislate democratic procedures for unions taking industrial action, aren’t they bound by consistency to do the same for employers?

Requiring a secret ballot of shareholders before lockouts are allowed would be a good start.

Poll good news for MMP

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 4:39 pm, February 25th, 2010 - 4 comments

No Right Turn covers the latest UMR poll on MMP, which shows a good but by no means unassailable lead for MMP over less representative systems.

With the forces of reaction once again emerging to undermine our democracy we all need to get in behind the Campaign for MMP.

On the news value of questioning Ministers’ shares

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 2:58 pm, February 24th, 2010 - 39 comments

A certain National Party pollster is having a cry over the story I ran yesterday on Murray McCully’s shares in Widespread Portfolios.

The story got widespread media coverage because it raised legitimate questions that needed to be answered.

Two IR bills from the Right

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 6:58 pm, February 23rd, 2010 - 14 comments

Two industrial relations bills from the Right were pulled from the ballot today.

The first, Roger Douglas’ bill to restore youth rates, is just the usual ACT Party kick the poor stuff.

But Tau Henare’s bill on strike ballots is just plain stupid.

Get tough no solution

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 2:20 pm, February 23rd, 2010 - 7 comments

Crime is not, as Judith Collins seems to think, evil people doing evil things that can be repressed by ever greater state violence. Deterrence doesn’t work because crime, especially violent crime, is not a rational outcome of weighing costs and benefits. A crime policy that doesn’t reduce crime isn’t really a crime policy, it’s a con.

McCully caught in mining conflict

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 6:36 am, February 23rd, 2010 - 94 comments

The Government is driving ahead with its plans to open up our National Parks and other protected environments to mining. The Standard can now reveal that Murray McCully has shares in a company that stands to benefit directly from National’s mining policy.

10,000 stand against RNZ cuts

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 11:20 am, February 22nd, 2010 - 22 comments

Over 2,000 people a day are joining the Facebook group to save Radio New Zealand from National’s cuts, which would turn it into another crap commercial outlet. There are a lot of outraged people who voted for a ‘brighter future’ among those 10,000. The backlash is growing.

Watkins: govt adrift, icebergs ahead

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 12:55 pm, February 20th, 2010 - 13 comments

Tracey Watkins writes that National is pissing off important constituencies and Labour’s messages are resonating. Key promised the world to everyone, he has failed to do anything for anyone except the wealthy elite. And public opinion is turning.

A sign of the times

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 10:35 am, February 19th, 2010 - 10 comments

The Northern Action Group has, with the support of 80% of Northern Rodney District, been petitioning the Government to leave Northern Rodney out of its Supercity experiment. The Government, as throughout the Supercity process has completely ignored the wishes of the people. Symbolically, the Northern Action Group has put a broken campaign sign on Trade […]

Nats substitute tax cuts for economic plan

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 12:08 am, February 19th, 2010 - 21 comments

An interesting piece from One News. Bill English gave another underwhelming speech on National’s economic plan, which basically boiled down to ‘tax cuts!’. A young businesswoman in the audience told English she wanted a real plan. His response: ‘tax cuts’. But he could give no proof his tax cuts would improve the economy.

Coleman bites off more than he can chew

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 5:34 pm, February 18th, 2010 - 80 comments

The backlash to National’s attack on Radio NZ is beginning, and it looks like Jonathan Coleman may have bitten off more than he can chew.

Take the Save Radio New Zealand group on Facebook. In less than 24 hours it has 1700 2800 3500 supporters, with 10 more joining every minute.

Whanau Ora defined-ish

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 10:31 am, February 18th, 2010 - 18 comments

BLiP gives the best definition of the Key Government’s billion dollar Whanau Ora plan to date: â€œWhanau Ora = privatisation of social services.â€

Yeah, it does. But I’m still struggling to understand what social services. Will Whanau Ora providers be running hospitals and clinics? Will they be running schools? Will they be making dole and super payments?

Labour pins clueless Nat ministers

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 11:23 pm, February 17th, 2010 - 13 comments

It’s hard to decide which is worst: Do Nothing John Key flouncing around the country while thousands of Kiwis lose their jobs, the Joyce cabal pushing their hard-right economic agenda, or the rest of them who don’t have two brain cells to rub together.

Guyon tires of Key’s empty grin

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 9:14 am, February 17th, 2010 - 32 comments

Guyon Espiner isn’t exactly what you would call a critic of John Key’s government, so when he has a blog post titled “John Key’s sloppiness as costly as it is charming” you know things are bad.

Espiner spears PM puffery

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 12:00 pm, February 16th, 2010 - 10 comments

Colin Espiner: “Is that uranium I can smell on John Key’s breath? Or too much garlic in the lamb rack the prime minister cooked for his wife on Valantines Day? Go on, laugh. But both seem to be legitimate topics of journalistic interest today”

Copying Iceland & Ireland bad idea for NZ

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 10:30 am, February 16th, 2010 - 53 comments

You know how the world has been through the worst financial crisis in decades? You know how countries like Ireland and Iceland who had made themselves into financial hubs via tax breaks for banks are now deep in the crap with burgeoning debt and unemployment? Why don’t we do what they did?

Conservation park ‘trimmed’ to suit mining interests

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 7:00 am, February 15th, 2010 - 40 comments

The Standard has been sent copies of documents ⁽¹^,²^,³^,⁴⁾ released under the Official Information Act which show that one of National’s first acts in government was to trim a Conservation Park at the request of a mining company, ignoring local concerns and official advice, to let the company dig up the land for coal.

John remembers his underclass, briefly

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 10:59 am, February 12th, 2010 - 15 comments

The other day I wrote: I reckon we probably will see a passing reference to the â€˜underclass’ for appearance’s sake [in John Key’s statement to Parliament] but I’m just as sure that his government will continue to fail the most vulnerable members of our society. Well whatdaya know? There it is: I have said it […]

Nats eyeing up youth minimum wage?

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 4:29 pm, February 11th, 2010 - 38 comments

Over the last month or so National’s pollster David Farrar has been running a series of posts desperately trying to pin the spike in youth unemployment under National to Labour’s decision to abolish youth rates. I’d been wondering why the obsession with youth rates until I saw this exchange between Roger Douglas and Kate Wilkinson […]

Trouble brewing for govt on GST

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 9:07 am, February 11th, 2010 - 3 comments

“An unscientific poll yesterday of 846 readers asking whether they would be happy to pay more GST if it meant they paid less income tax found 46.9 per cent in favour, 43.9 per cent opposed and about 8 per cent undecided.” – Stuff “Unscientific poll” I take to mean one of their online polls, and […]

No plan to get Kiwis into work

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 3:02 pm, February 10th, 2010 - 64 comments

Number of jobless Kiwis = 276,000 Number of jobs plans from Key Government = 0 Key can make all the vague references to faster growth and better economic performance that he likes but while the potential and skill of over a quarter of a million Kiwis is being wasted it will never happen. Getting people […]

Liar, liar, pants on fire

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 1:09 pm, February 10th, 2010 - 75 comments

Apparently promises made before the election don’t count. GST was different then anyway.

Great expectations

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 7:28 am, February 9th, 2010 - 19 comments

“This is his most important speech since he entered Parliament in 2002.” That’s Duncan Garner on Key’s speech today. Other political commentators have been emphasising its importance too: John Armstrong: “What has so far been a comparatively easy ride for Key now starts to get much bumpier. The time has come to do the difficult […]

When was the last time Key mentioned the ‘underclass’?

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 10:00 am, February 8th, 2010 - 9 comments

I was thinking the other day about John Key’s underclass speech. It was always pure gimmickry, as was the whole exploitation of Aroha. But how long would he keep up the facade once the PR value had worn off?

Unemployment? Blame someone else – Key

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 7:35 am, February 5th, 2010 - 53 comments

A panicked, chaotic series of excuses poured forth from John Key’s mouth yesterday as he attempted to shift the blame for the shocking unemployment numbers on to someone, anyone, else: “He told reporters it was important to note the economy was not losing jobs, it was a case of not creating new ones fast enough.” […]

Tolley keeps empty schools open

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 10:33 am, February 4th, 2010 - 17 comments

Well, there can’t be any doubt now, Anne Tolley is this government’s worst minister. A failure that stands out among failures. She had an Auckland university pay to take her on a chopper ride because she didn’t understand what was meant by getting a “helicopter view of the sector”. She complained to her advisors about […]