Author Archive

Tax cuts and the wage gap

Written By: - Date published: 10:15 am, February 5th, 2008 - 64 comments

News that 28,000 New Zealanders left for Australia last year has Business NZ, the Chamber of Commerce and the National Party predictably calling for tax cuts as the solution to New Zealand’s wage gap with Australia. Of course, they know very well that tax cuts are not the answer. Workers in Australia currently earn 30% […]

Family Fist

Written By: - Date published: 5:45 pm, January 29th, 2008 - 57 comments

Mike Moreu from The Press is shaping up to be quite a fine cartoonist. Here’s his take on the Religious Right’s petition to restore the riding crop lady‘s right to beat her children. Meanwhile the folks over at Newzblog have done a great send-up of the increasingly incoherent Garth McVicar from Sensible Sentencing and the […]

Key speech: strategic blunder?

Written By: - Date published: 2:11 pm, January 29th, 2008 - 113 comments

So this is John Key’s ambition: throwing troubled teens in boot camp, beating up on beneficiaries and criminalising our children. I’ve only had a quick read through the speech in my lunch break so it’s possible I’ve got this wrong, but I get the distinct impression that Key has made a major strategic error here. […]

Romney humiliates self, white people everywhere

Written By: - Date published: 1:54 pm, January 27th, 2008 - 19 comments

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s not the first aspiring leader to try and present himself as ‘down with the bros’, but this is truly cringeworthy. Stephen Colbert asks the question everyone’s been wondering: More Stephen Colbert over at Comedy Central.

Apologies for Burqa Bob

Written By: - Date published: 7:03 pm, January 25th, 2008 - 109 comments

It would appear David Farrar is deeply concerned about the amount of traffic his mate Bill has been drumming up for The Standard this week, judging by his strange attack on our site this evening over a trifling error in our earlier post on Bob Clarkson. The article in question was a repost of an […]

Daily Show on financial news

Written By: - Date published: 3:00 pm, January 25th, 2008 - 14 comments

Jon Stewart had a good piece last night on why we shouldn’t just trust the economic and financial “experts”. People deserve better from the media than the dehumanising econo-speak about ‘soft labour markets’ and housing ‘corrections’ that dominates our Business pages, so it’s good to see Jon poking a bit of fun. Fox News also […]

Burqa Bob to stand in Tauranga

Written By: - Date published: 2:33 pm, January 25th, 2008 - 49 comments

After much speculation, National MP Bob Clarkson has finally announced he will be standing again in Tauranga, apparently to work on housing affordability issues. What a gift. For those who missed it last time, here’s Bob’s entire contribution to Parliament since August last year: (17 Oct 2007) Interjection : “Bureaucratic!” (10 Oct 2007) Interjection : […]

They just don’t learn

Written By: - Date published: 1:38 pm, January 22nd, 2008 - 109 comments

I see the Free Speech Coalition hasn’t learned anything from the ramshackle PR fiasco that was their launch and have posted up another billboard in Invercargill today, this time featuring Robert Mugabe and criticising the government’s ‘silencing’ of Mayor Shadbolt, who is ironically one of the least silent people in the country at the moment. […]

Desperation from the Herald

Written By: - Date published: 10:59 am, January 18th, 2008 - 31 comments

Yesterday’s supposed scandal over an email exhange between Michael Cullen and a National Party activist was an absurd piece of political activism from the Herald. Recently the paper has been running almost daily attack articles on the government, but this was surely scraping the bottom of the barrel. Nat activist John Middleton was painted as […]

EMA resorts to making stuff up

Written By: - Date published: 5:13 pm, January 17th, 2008 - 7 comments

The Employers and Manufacturers Association has a new employment survey out today that aims to portray personal grievances as “way out of hand” and add momentum to their ongoing campaign with the National Party to remove the right of workers to appeal against unfair dismissal during their first 90 days in a new job. But […]

With all the charm of Slough

Written By: - Date published: 10:53 am, January 15th, 2008 - 62 comments

Paul from The Fundy Post has done a rather humorous review of John Key’s holiday home in Success Court, Omaha Beach, as featured in the Herald on Sunday. Suffice to say he’s not impressed: It is difficult to know where to begin. Here is a house (described somewhat disingenuously by the Herald as a “bach”) […]

New left-wing blog

Written By: - Date published: 4:36 pm, January 14th, 2008 - 22 comments

While I’ve been away some regular left-leaning commenters here at The Standard and elsewhere have banded together to start NewZblog, a new Kiwi blog that describes itself as “a fine blend of politics with a left twist”. So a big welcome aboard to Red Bus, Illuminatedtiger, Policy Parrot and James Sleep – you guys are […]

Roy Morgan poll

Written By: - Date published: 12:52 pm, December 21st, 2007 - 10 comments

Here’s the latest Roy Morgan poll. Nothing too unexpected, but interesting to see the Greens and NZ First both over the 5% threshold. I’m off to get drunk. Merry Xmas.

National disses minimum wage

Written By: - Date published: 2:01 pm, December 20th, 2007 - 128 comments

National’s comments on the minimum wage show a party that has no answers on how to close the wage gap with Australia. Just a day after the Government announced plans to increase the minimum wage to $12 next year – an increase of more than 70% since 1999 – John Key’s industrial relations spokesperson Kate […]

Dunne folds under pressure

Written By: - Date published: 5:01 pm, December 18th, 2007 - 26 comments

According to reports, Peter Dunne has withdrawn his support for the Electoral Finance Bill at the last minute. Newsroom says: Mr Dunne said over recent weeks it had become clear that many New Zealanders had deep unease about the bill and he had been contacted by hundreds of people. New Zealanders had gone beyond caring […]

Progress on new superunion

Written By: - Date published: 11:52 am, December 18th, 2007 - 33 comments

The NZ Herald reports the Service and Food Workers Union, the National Distribution Union and Unite have agreed in principle to merge into a new super-union. The new union will represent some of the lowest paid workers in the country such as cleaners, checkout operators, fast food workers and factory process workers, and encompasses three […]

Two drunk backbenchers

Written By: - Date published: 12:57 pm, December 14th, 2007 - 48 comments

A mate of mine had a rather interesting run-in last night with a couple of drunken Tory backbenchers. Here’s what happened: Last night I was at the Malthouse in Courtenay Place having a few beers with some mates when who should walk into the bar but a couple of National Party backbenchers. We struck up […]

National and the wage gap

Written By: - Date published: 2:24 pm, December 13th, 2007 - 74 comments

I see National’s complaining about the wage gap between New Zealand and Australia again. As usual they have no answers on what to do about it other than to blindly hope that tax cuts for the rich will lead to economic growth and somehow it’ll all trickle down into the ordinary worker’s pay packet. Ever […]

Classic Winston

Written By: - Date published: 3:07 pm, December 12th, 2007 - 101 comments

Winston Peters just stood up in the house. Everyone expected he was going to announce he’d paid back the $160k. Instead, he announced he’d donated the money to charity and written to Kevin Brady to tell him he was wrong. Whatever you think of the man, you’ve gotta admit he’s got style. UPDATE: According to […]

Republican AdStravanganza

Written By: - Date published: 12:28 pm, December 12th, 2007 - 10 comments

Talking Points Memo have put together a great compilation of Republican presidential candidates’ campaign ads stripped back to nothing but key lines. It’s certainly a time-saver to have all the bullshit taken out for you. Top marks go to Tom Tancredo for managing to come across as a deranged reactionary even amongst a field of […]

Petty politicking and the Xinyao tragedy

Written By: - Date published: 5:21 pm, December 10th, 2007 - 81 comments

Reuters reports that the death toll from China’s Xinyao mine tragedy has now surpassed the 100 mark after 50 rescue workers were sent in without training and never resurfaced. According to Chinese media the cause of the tragedy was the mine management’s failure to install a gas detection system and its storage of explosives in […]

John’s dead seal

Written By: - Date published: 2:40 pm, December 7th, 2007 - 128 comments

Um, why does John Key have a picture of a dead seal on his flickr page?

National filibustering EFB

Written By: - Date published: 12:54 pm, December 6th, 2007 - 42 comments

So it’s official: National is filibustering the Electoral Finance Bill. This really is childish, and it’s directly at odds with what Bill English was telling the public on Morning Report on Tuesday. These were his exact words: “How long the debate takes will be largely up to the government. We don’t intend to filibuster…” It’s […]

Personal responsibility

Written By: - Date published: 11:36 am, December 6th, 2007 - 35 comments

It seems John Key’s lack of judgment isn’t restricted to matters of policy. Twice in the last few days he’s made nasty digs at senior Labour MPs’ personal lives – something National has previously been very sensitive about – and when challenged his response has been to try and duck responsibility. It began on Tuesday […]

Candidate match game

Written By: - Date published: 8:00 am, December 6th, 2007 - 8 comments

This is very cool. USA Today’s put together a candidate match game to help voters work out which US presidential hopefuls best share their views on the key issues. Here’s how it works: Polls suggest Americans are concerned primarily with a few key issues in the 2008 presidential election. USA TODAY researched candidate positions on […]

Anti-EFB crusader calls for armed revolution

Written By: - Date published: 3:28 pm, December 4th, 2007 - 290 comments

If you thought the Nazi flags and ‘Heil Helen’ signs at Saturday’s march against the Electoral Finance Bill were distasteful, take a look at what far-right political punter and anti-EFB crusader Lindsay Perigo’s been up to. According to Molesworth and Featherston: Attacking the Electoral Finance Bill Mr Perigo recently called for, apparently, armed revolution: “…the […]

Key DVD canned over Clocks fiasco

Written By: - Date published: 2:46 pm, December 3rd, 2007 - 95 comments

Just spotted on Scoop: A scheduled gathering of the media in Auckland this afternoon to meet National Party leader John Key to view his DVD ‘Ambitious for New Zealand’ has been cancelled reportedly owing to copyright concerns. Meanwhile, hectic preparations are underway to give a makeover to the DVD for National leader John Key to […]

Fox Attacks: Iran

Written By: - Date published: 11:51 pm, November 29th, 2007 - 61 comments

This looks interesting. Fox Attacks: Iran is a new short film from Robert Greenwald, director of the excellent Outfoxed. The film focuses on the parallels between Fox’s drumbeat for war with Iraq and what’s being said now about Iran. It’s also a plea to other networks not to fall in behind Fox like they did […]

Clocking up the royalties

Written By: - Date published: 5:32 pm, November 29th, 2007 - 190 comments

John Key’s new DVD doesn’t tell us much about what National would do in Government, but as we’ve noted before, his choice of Coldplay’s “Clocks” as the theme tune is more revealing than he may have intended. Here are some of the lyrics: Lights go out and I can’t be saved Tides that I tried […]

John Key and January 1

Written By: - Date published: 3:31 pm, November 27th, 2007 - 11 comments

John Key’s just admitted the election campaign has already begun, adding further weight to the argument that electoral law needs updating to reflect the increased length of modern campaigns. Here he is on Newstalk ZB today talking about his ‘heartland tour’ around New Zealand, where he’ll be dishing out thousands of flashy DVDs promoting himself […]

Ambition doesn’t cut it

Written By: - Date published: 11:06 am, November 27th, 2007 - 32 comments

Wow, so that’s John Key’s announcement: he’s ambitious. I know I said he’d be short on substance, but maybe that was giving him too much credit. I also couldn’t help noticing Key’s production crew used some footage from his ill-fated expedition to the Porirua Markets. For those who don’t think they can stomach the stage-managed […]