Author Archive
Key slams teachers, medics. Puppies next in his sights
Written By: - Date published: 9:17 am, September 1st, 2010 - 10 comments
Key says that teachers are “disconnected from the real world” for wanting a pay rise that will barely beat inflation. This from the same guy who promised higher wages. The same guy chucked half a billion dollars this year alone on the taxpayer credit card for tax cuts for the rich. The only people disconnected from the real world are those who think skimping on education and health will take this country forward.
National’s ‘line calls’
Written By: - Date published: 7:38 am, September 1st, 2010 - 76 comments
Serious questions are being asked why South Canterbury Finance was allowed to join the extended retail deposit guarantee scheme in April given that its financial problems were well-known and its credit rating was downgraded just weeks later. Bill English says it was a ‘line call’, one that’s just cost us at least $600 million. It’s not the first ‘line call’ English has stuffed up.
A relentless focus on jobs
Written By: - Date published: 12:49 pm, August 31st, 2010 - 13 comments
The government is canning it’s already too-small and ill-directed Community Max programme. $40 million was a pathetic amount that created, at best, just 3,000 temporary jobs when quarter of a million Kiwis are jobless. And, due to lazy policy-making all the Key government probably ended up doing was subsidising jobs that would have been created anyway.
Anything too big to fail should be publicly owned
Written By: - Date published: 8:30 am, August 31st, 2010 - 96 comments
South Canterbury Finance is on the brink of collapse. The plan appears to be for the government to purchase the bad loans from the company at twice their book value, giving SCF the cash it needs to get back on its feet. That’s a dumb idea. The owners of SCF have taken huge profits in the good times, they can’t be allowed to pass their losses on to the rest of us now and continue as if nothing happened.
Failure by the numbers 2
Written By: - Date published: 7:19 am, August 30th, 2010 - 18 comments
Number of recorded offences in the 2008 calander year: 431,383
Number of recorded offences in the 2009 calander year: 451,405
Number of unsolved crimes in Judith Collin’s first year as minister: 235,787, up 5,000
Number of cars crushed: 0
Key slippery on crime
Written By: - Date published: 11:07 am, August 26th, 2010 - 22 comments
Yesterday, Key was boasting that his goverment had brought down robberies and burglaries in Manukau. But it’s just more numbers games. In reality, the crime rate in Counties Manukau rose 6.9% in 2009. That’s twice the already awful 3.5% nationwide increase. I’m not against the government saying it has brought down crime. I just wish that it was true.
ACT infighting continues
Written By: - Date published: 2:40 pm, August 25th, 2010 - 15 comments
The ACT Party’s in-fighting continues, with ACT member Peter Tashkoff announcing he will contest Rodney Hide for the party’s selection in Epsom. Someone pass the popcorn.
Ready for more of English’s dodgy numbers?
Written By: - Date published: 1:08 pm, August 25th, 2010 - 16 comments
Bill English is going to play more number games today to claim wages are rising. Actually they’re falling, they’re going to keep falling, and there are 100,000 extra jobless. We deserve a Finance Minister who does his job, not one occupying himself with statistical chicanery.
Pretty fly for a white guy
Written By: - Date published: 10:35 am, August 25th, 2010 - 57 comments
This morning we’ve been treated to the sight of the media celebrating one rich white guy (double murderer John Barlow) getting out of jail and another rich white guy (former National Minister Roger McClay) escape a prison sentence for stealing tens of thousands of dollars. You’ve got to love it.
Failure by the numbers
Written By: - Date published: 1:19 pm, August 24th, 2010 - 2 comments
Average number of people on the dole in the 21 months before Paula Bennett came to office – 22600
Average number of people on the dole in the 21 months since Paula Bennett came to office – 52200
Fiscal cost of extra people on the dole (welfare payments and lost tax) – approximately $1 billion
Money in this year’s budget for jobs initiatives – $31 million
Got your doctor’s note?
Written By: - Date published: 10:57 am, August 24th, 2010 - 21 comments
It was only at the protest on the weekend that I learned about the Nats’ plan to make us get sick notes if we take a day off work for ourselves or to look after a sick family member. This would be an insult to workers and a huge waste of medical resources from a government that has no understanding of efficient use of scarce resources and thinks that workers are all scumbags who need a good kicking.
SOE bonds: raiding the piggybank to pay for tax cuts for the rich
Written By: - Date published: 7:20 am, August 24th, 2010 - 8 comments
John Key and Bill English said they have neither requested nor seen official advice on privatisation. That is a lie. Even just the papers we’ve seen, let alone the eight Treasury says are still under consideration, show that privatisation is very much on the government’s agenda. They’re just trying to work out how to sneak it past us without a public backlash.
Thousands protest Nats’ attack on our work rights
Written By: - Date published: 5:27 pm, August 21st, 2010 - 26 comments
Thousands of Kiwis turned out to protest National’s new labour legislation, a unjustified, spiteful attack on our work rights, which is simply designed to lower labour costs. The CTU has announced a campaign leading to national day of action on Oct 20th. Kiwi workers won’t take this lying down. We are fighting back.
Pressured plonkers pull the plug on PEDA pingers
Written By: - Date published: 9:40 am, August 21st, 2010 - 10 comments
Quite suddenly, the government has pulled the plug on the contraversial $4.8 million in uncontested funding it awarded to the previously unknown Pacific Economic Development Agency in this year’s Budget.
It all stinks to high heaven.
English still busy fudging the numbers
Written By: - Date published: 11:23 am, August 20th, 2010 - 27 comments
Bill English thinks he has proven that wages grew just 3% under Labour and grew 15.5% under National in the 1990s. How’s he done it? By taking a ridiculous definition of wages and a very convenient timeframe. Bill, this is getting old. Your distortions are transparent and exposing you is too easy. How about, rather than fudging historic numbers, you get on with your job of building a better future?
Take him up on the offer, Phil
Written By: - Date published: 7:52 am, August 19th, 2010 - 28 comments
John Key said yesterday: “the gap with Australia is definitely closing … If [Phil Goff] wants to pop up for a coffee I will take him through the numbers, and I can take him through a few others.” I say go for it, Phil. I’m dying to see what numbers Key is talking about. Because the reality is that we are falling behind Australia on every measure, while Key just smiles and waves.
Key voters waking up, pity about the hangover they’ve given us
Written By: - Date published: 9:32 am, August 18th, 2010 - 81 comments
National is governing like National governs. Anyone could have foreseen this, there were plenty of clues, but its only now are people who switched to Key waking up to the fact that he’s just the grinning face on the same old beast. I wonder: if someone is smart enough to see that Key’s government is a failure now, how were they dumb enough to ever believe things would be different?
Bill English: making it up as he goes along
Written By: - Date published: 8:20 am, August 18th, 2010 - 28 comments
Parliament erupted in laughter yesterday as Bill English made up more ‘facts’ to attack Labour’s economic performance. Even if his accusations against Labour’s record were true, he doesn’t have any solutions himself. Indeed, the reason he is spending so much time trying to smear Labour’s record is he is desperate to make is own record look less appalling by comparison.
Dunne: 80% of families will pay for income splitting & get nothing
Written By: - Date published: 9:28 am, August 17th, 2010 - 41 comments
Peter Dunne admits that income splitting will be available to only 310,000 families. The other 1.3 million will get nothing and be left to pick up the bill. Even of the lucky 19%, only a fraction will get big tax cuts. Most will get squat but a few families with big disparities between the partners’ incomes win big. Key has voted himself $22K of tax cuts so far, this would be another $9K. Will he be tempted?
Compulsory super savings welcome but…
Written By: - Date published: 10:07 am, August 16th, 2010 - 18 comments
Odd to see in the Sunday-Star Times that the Government is looking at introducing compulsory superannuation savings. After all, this is the same government that gutted Kiwisaver and the Cullen Fund just a year ago. Hmm, have they seen the light? Somehow I doubt it. The Nats see compulsory super savings as a replacement for the universal superannuation we have now.
More tax cuts for the elite coming
Written By: - Date published: 10:13 am, August 14th, 2010 - 42 comments
The Government is set to announce income splitting. Effectively, it allows a taxpayer to assign part of their income for taxation purposes to their partner on a lower income, the transferred income will be taxed at a lower rate. This will benefit a select group: wealthy nuclear families, especially those with a stay at home parent. An unaffordable, unfair, unnecessary policy.
The age of recession sharpens class war
Written By: - Date published: 12:00 pm, August 13th, 2010 - 23 comments
So, it looks like we’re heading back into recession. We’re going to have to get used to the idea that we can’t depend on perpetual economic growth to deliver rising living standards to all. We could make nearly everyone wealthier with a fairer distribution of wealth but the opposite is happening. This is simply class war; a battle over shares of a diminishing prize. And we’re letting the rich win.
The new food crisis
Written By: - Date published: 9:57 am, August 13th, 2010 - 21 comments
Climate change, peak oil, resource exhaustion, and over-population are combing to cause a new food crisis. Grains supply half the calories we consume directly and feed much of our live-stock. The prices of those are skyrocketing because supply can’t match demand. Starting with Russia, major exporters are limiting the amount they send abroad to keep what they have for their own people.
Strong field emerges for Labour
Written By: - Date published: 11:46 am, August 12th, 2010 - 16 comments
Idle speculation about possible contenders to be the Labour candidate in a by-election seems to be the most important issue of the day. Labour has a good field to choose from it appears, while National will have to choose Parata or publicly slap her down. There are bigger isues at the moment but once the race is underway, it will be a microcosm of next year’s election.
The cycleway & the coming benefit cuts
Written By: - Date published: 9:24 am, August 12th, 2010 - 42 comments
Attacking beneficiaries won’t solve the real problems. There aren’t enough jobs, the recession is not really over. Rather than dealing with that, this government is carving off an ever large slice of our shrinking national wealth for their rich buddies. The poor and the jobless are turned into figures of public spite by a government of the rich which will cut to their meagre benefits will be pay for tax cuts for the rich.
Small-minded leadership hurts us all
Written By: - Date published: 9:56 am, August 11th, 2010 - 22 comments
So disappointing to see that the Auckland Regional Council didn’t even bother to respond to an offer by the designer of a personal rapid transport system to use his design to solve the woeful public transport from Auckland airport to the city. This kind of small mindedness is endemic throughout government, especially with the Nats in charge.
Laban to step down
Written By: - Date published: 7:01 am, August 11th, 2010 - 41 comments
Winnie has been a great MP for Mana and is a pillar of the Pacific community. Her focus on the electorate and community that put her in office is something that a lot of other MPs could learn from. There’ll be strong competition to be Labour’s candidate in the by-election. National’s will be Hekia Parata, who’s of the Melissa Lee school of campaigning. Should be fun.
Welfare working group tries to create a crisis
Written By: - Date published: 11:47 am, August 10th, 2010 - 43 comments
The benefit system is not unaffordable, the best way to lower its cost is to create jobs. But it is clear that is not on the Welfare Workings Group’s agenda. Their job is to paint beneficiaries as bludgers, the welfare system as broken and expensive. Their job is to pave the way for welfare cuts to pay for tax cuts that will leave the poorest Kiwi families more impoverished. They’ve made a good start.
Heatley’s crocodile tears on state housing
Written By: - Date published: 1:51 pm, August 9th, 2010 - 17 comments
Phil Heatley says he fears for the future of state housing. I can’t help but agree, but the problem is that it is Heatley and his government that are making the future of state housing so dire. They have cancelled investment in new state houses and declared the existing stock for sale. Now, Heatley has to cheek to say the charitable sector will have to step in where his government is failing.
A four year term?
Written By: - Date published: 12:09 pm, August 9th, 2010 - 46 comments
According to the Herald (which, helpfully, doesn’t provide any details) a new survey from the Business Council for Sustainable Development shows “strong support for extending the period between general elections.” Referenda in 1967 and 1990 strongly rejected a four-year term, has public opinion mysteriously shifted? Do you think four years is a good idea?
Unemployment rises to 6.8%
Written By: - Date published: 1:00 pm, August 5th, 2010 - 100 comments
Statistics NZ has just released the Household Labour Force Survey for June 2010 and it’s grim reading, with an astonishing increase in the unemployment rate from 6.0% to 6.8%.
Maori unemployment is now up to 16.4%, Pacific unemployment is at 14.1% and there’s been a 70% increase in long-term unemployment to 37,600.
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