Author Archive

Repeating our past mistakes

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 2:35 pm, December 23rd, 2009 - 19 comments

Since Marty’s away, no pretty graphs. There’s not much Christmas cheer in the new GDP numbers I’m afraid. The economy grew at just 0.2% in the September quarter (the forecast was 0.3%). That’s below the rate of population growth, so economic output per person continues to fall. GDP per capita is down 5%, $2000 a […]

Looking tough, wasting money

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 9:06 am, December 23rd, 2009 - 57 comments

So Paula Bennett wants to force people on the dole to reapply after a year. At best, it’s a waste of money by adding more bureaucracy. At worst, it will leave people who are already in poverty destitute for weeks. You can lose your dole already if you don’t meet the conditions. In particular, if […]

Bennett disappointed by witch-hunt results

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 11:23 am, December 22nd, 2009 - 23 comments

Earlier this year, Paula Bennett released the personal details of two women who get the DPB who had opposed her cancelling of a grant designed to get people off the benefit. As far as I’m aware, the Privacy Commissioner still hasn’t published her opinion on Bennett’s bully tactics but it looks like Bennett has got the […]

Oh yeah, SPEEDholes

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 7:29 am, December 22nd, 2009 - 7 comments

Could making the surface of cars rough be a cheap and esay way to boost fuel efficiency, thereby saving oil and helping tackle climate change? The idea comes from the dimples on golf-balls, which hold a thin layer of air to the ball, lessening turbulence and drag. And, amazingly, it appears to work: [the full segment on […]

Whanau Ora: privatisation by stealth

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 9:01 am, December 21st, 2009 - 23 comments

The government is beginning to explain more about its Whanau Ora plan, although it is still startlingly vague considering we’re talking a billion dollars of taxpayer dollars a year. The idea seems to be to get more money that is currently spent by social welfare departments passed on to private community groups, who will supposedly […]

Not welcome

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 2:50 pm, December 20th, 2009 - 6 comments

A Papakura local has sent us this story of the would-be Emperor of Auckland’s foray into Papakura. Wannabe Super City Mayor Goofs up in Papakura, and is told to hoof it. John Banks visited Papakura last week, to meet with Callum Penrose Mayor of Papakura. Penrose has been heading an effective rearguard campaign against the […]

Trial needed for national standards

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 10:37 am, December 18th, 2009 - 105 comments

Anne Tolley should have the sense to listen to the teachers, the principals and the eduction experts. She should trial her national standards in primary schools to get information on the outcomes before introducing them nationally. The teachers want national standards tested in a trial, like other education innovations are before they are introduced nationally. […]

For God’s sake, its the same name

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 9:11 am, December 18th, 2009 - 54 comments

In what has got to be the ultimate manifestation of this government’s inability to take a simple decision for fear of losing someones vote, Land Information Minister Maurice Williamson is set to announce that the city the rest of the country knows as Redneckville will now be known as Wanganui and Whanganui. It’s the same […]

The Dom Post’s op-ed pages

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 10:47 am, December 15th, 2009 - 34 comments

Reading the Dom Post’s editorial pages over my morning coffee today, I had one of those moments when you suddenly remember how insufferably, shamelessly right-wing our print media can be. Top left is an editorial attacking the teacher unions and confirming the newspaper’s support for the National Party’s education policies. The feature op-ed is the […]

Maori flag, so what?

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 9:34 am, December 15th, 2009 - 46 comments

I’m fine with a flag representing Maori flying on Waitangi Day. Some argue there are constitutional concerns with flying a flag representing Maori self-determination next to the New Zealand flag. They say it implies (as Pita Sharples seems to believe) two separate sovereign powers in this country, the Government of New Zealand and Maoridom (represented […]

Getting it right

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 10:25 am, December 14th, 2009 - 22 comments

Colin Espiner has a piece in the Dom Post today attributing Labour’s four point rise in the polls to Goff’s ‘Nationhood’ speech. He goes on, in what can’t help but be interpreted as a wee dig at The Standard: after 30 years in politics, it’s also possible [Goff] knows the electorate a bit better than […]

Experts: Power reforms wasteful, expensive

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 1:10 pm, December 11th, 2009 - 18 comments

Associate Professor Earl Bardsley, Waikato University: taking Tekapo A and B power stations from Meridian and giving them to Genesis means Meridian must now rely on a rival company, through some kind of protocol, to provide a significant amount of the water inflow to Lake Pukaki, which supplies Meridian’s line of Waitaki River power stations. […]

Against the atheist bus campaign

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 12:11 pm, December 11th, 2009 - 105 comments

I’m sorry, but I just can’t see the point of this atheist bus campaign. New Zealand is one of the most secular countries in the world. Religion here is seen as a private matter and apart from a few fringe idiots we don’t have a problem with political religion. Kiwis just don’t have the temperament […]

New Kiwi blog

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 4:30 pm, December 10th, 2009 - 9 comments

Sean Makes Crafts. A new blog by Morning Report host Sean Plunket, who writes about his passion for crafts. As some of you may know, recently my ’employers’ at Radio NZ decided that I would not be permitted to write a column in well-known Auckland based magazine. However, I’m not one to let the bastards […]

Easter trading defeated (again)

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 12:00 pm, December 10th, 2009 - 10 comments

A victory for New Zealand’s 270,000 retail workers and their families last night, with Parliament voting 62-59 to reject National MP Todd McClay’s Easter Sunday trading bill. This debate has never been about observing a religious holiday as the neoliberals try to paint it, it’s about recognising that there should be times during the year […]

Goff attacks govt on wages

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 11:20 am, December 10th, 2009 - 39 comments

Check out Phil Goff’s general debate speech yesterday on In The House, a handy new site paid for by the Office of the Clerk (can’t work out how to embed from it yet). The speech is excellent and it focuses where Labour should be focusing: National’s complete unwillingness and inability to do anything for hardworking […]

What is Whanau Ora?

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 7:00 am, December 10th, 2009 - 16 comments

Family Commissioner Jan Pryor says she can’t give a definition of Whanau Ora, Tariana Turia’s pet programme that Pryor’s Commission will be helping to run. What a bunch of utter crap. Saying that she can’t give a definition because she is “a middle class white woman” is totally unacceptable. This isn’t some academic activity, we’re […]

Driven to corruption

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 1:00 pm, December 9th, 2009 - 43 comments

It turns out I understated the latest National ministers’ rort. Not only were the rules changed to allow ministers to have their taxpayer-funded self-drive cars in Wellington while pretending their primary residence was elsewhere so they could claim the taxpayer-funded out of town accommodation allowance, they already had the cars in Wellington before the rule was changed. […]

Key aids English’s latest rort

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 4:42 pm, December 8th, 2009 - 18 comments

Ministers are given self-drive taxpayer-funded cars for official business in their electorates (in Wellington they have crown limos at their disposal for official business). Pretty logically, the cars were always based at the ministers’ primary place of residence because that’s where they would need it. But that presented a problem for Bill ‘Double Dipton’ English. […]

Silly stories

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 10:12 am, December 8th, 2009 - 44 comments

Helmetless Hone: Keen to continue the Hone Harawira saga, One News reported that complaints had been laid over Harawira not wearing a helmet when he rode the motorcycle of a visiting anti-violence campaigner on Parliament’s forecourt. I hope the Police have better things to do than investigate an MP for taking a 50m spin on […]

Caption contest

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 4:00 pm, December 7th, 2009 - 26 comments

Exclusive: New evidence shows Lee lied about NZ on Air funding

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 2:27 pm, December 6th, 2009 - 53 comments

Newly uncovered correspondence between Melissa Lee and NZ on Air shows that she and her leader, John Key, seriously misled the media, the house and the public over the issue of her company’s misappropriation of $80,000 of NZ on Air funds. Documents obtained by The Standard show Lee’s claim to media that she had no […]

Govt tries to silence dissent

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 9:32 am, December 5th, 2009 - 32 comments

The Government, stung by criticism of its inept education policies, is trying to silence teachers. Their plan is to make teachers, principals, and Board of Trustee members subject to the public service code of conduct. The, which currently applies only to people in the core public service (the ones the Right calls bureaucrats) bars people […]

Goff: Scrap the 2025 Taskforce

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 5:26 pm, December 3rd, 2009 - 25 comments

We all know the 2025 Taskforce is a farce and a waste of taxpayers’ money. The Government has disowned it, the critics have panned it. Even Garth George has come out calling for its first report to be recycled into toilet paper. It genuinely appears to serve no function but to subsidise the wacky right-wing […]

Hone back but Maori Party divisions laid bare

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 3:33 pm, December 3rd, 2009 - 8 comments

So Hone Harawira has been readmitted into the fold of the Maori Party. It’s hard to see how excluding him from Parliament until the end of the year is a punishment, given that he has repeatedly said he detests the place (and who can blame him?). It seems more like political convenience for the Maori […]

Greens release Green New Deal pt 2

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 10:57 am, December 3rd, 2009 - 20 comments

Anyone who thinks that our economic troubles are over because the economy grew 0.1% is delusional. And no-one seriously believes that we don’t have to act quickly to stop the rising levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. A Green New Deal is as necessary now as ever. The Greens have come out with the […]

Need an exemption from the law? Just ask a corrupt Nat

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 7:32 pm, December 2nd, 2009 - 57 comments

Doug Schmuck owns and runs a boatyard in Opua in the Bay of Islands. The boatyard borders a public reserve. Schmuck wants to use that land as a slipway and other uses related to his business. In fact, he is already using the land and has already constructed at least one building that partially sites on the reserve […]

Jon Stewart’s Glenn Beck parody

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 4:33 pm, December 2nd, 2009 - 2 comments

Caught this on The Nation. Brilliant. Jon Stewart has done it again, and this time he even brought out his acting chops. In what will probably become a historic Glenn Beck impression, Stewart uses Beck’s recent appendicitis operation to concoct a conspiracy theory of his own. Using a chalkboard, glasses, and a game of Operation […]

President punches kid in face

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 5:15 pm, December 1st, 2009 - 9 comments

The Associated Press reports: Romania’s government has collapsed and its economy is in shambles but its presidential campaign has been dominated in recent days by a video that appears to show the president striking a 10-year-old boy in the face. Well, he’s got the pro-smacking vote I guess… [In the interests of fairness I should […]

Public rage at govt policies and lies

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 11:43 pm, November 30th, 2009 - 21 comments

On Nightline just now there was coverage of a meeting held by Nick Smith in St Heliers. Two interesting things: 1) there was an astounding level of anger, even vitriol, against him and the government over the ETS (from both sides of that argument), over the shabby backhander for selected iwi to buy Maori Party […]

Nats’ backers tire of do-nothing Key

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 12:31 pm, November 28th, 2009 - 44 comments

Reading Fran O’Sullivan is always interesting because she provides an insight into the thinking of the business elite who fund National, and who expect it to govern for them. A lot of her article today is devoted to calling for radical reforms that obviously aren’t politically viable for Key to do, but one paragraph in particular stood […]