Author Archive

So smart. Green senator Ludlam ‘welcomes’ Abbott to WA

Written By: lprent - Date published: 10:27 pm, March 6th, 2014 - 30 comments

One of the most effective political videos that I have seen from a country that is coming to specialise in them. I’m unsurprised that it went completely viral. It was a great description of all of the ways that Tony Abbott is beholden to the interests of those made insane by idiotic greed – and welcoming him to Western Australia. All expressed in a polite quiet voice enumerating exactly how much of a arsehole Abbott is. He even makes John Key look sort of rational – in a traditional junior partner kind of way

National’s ICT failures.

Written By: lprent - Date published: 10:55 pm, March 4th, 2014 - 23 comments

After having the past five and bit years with National’s negative policies about anything to do with new technologies, it is really nice to see some partially formed red-tinged morning ideas about how to encourage local usage of the net appearing on the sky’s horizon.  National’s ICT strategy seems to see how uselessly slow they can do everything and how much they can slow down the development of ICT in NZ.

Hyping doesn’t help the economy, work does

Written By: lprent - Date published: 8:45 am, February 26th, 2014 - 67 comments

Looking at all of the hype that sometimes goes around about the economy, you have to wonder if anyone ever reads actual economic indicators later on. We have a government now that operates as if claiming a target is all the work that they have to do. For instance look at the tax take. It is “unexpectedly” low and the “expected” government surplus is in jeopardy. That is because this government has been ignoring growing the actual economy for 5 years. Taxes and jobs come from growing businesses.

National’s Herald shows its true colours

Written By: lprent - Date published: 8:04 am, February 17th, 2014 - 113 comments

The NZ Herald starts cuddling up even closer to the National party. I guess they have definitely dropped that shallow facade of being the “Newspaper of Record”. Mind you, it isn’t a good look when Paula Bennett, the minister meant to take care of children, cuddles up with the heartless hypocrite who laughs at dead children. National really must be worried about this election.

A glorious waste of money for the titillation of perverts

Written By: lprent - Date published: 9:28 am, February 8th, 2014 - 70 comments

The fiasco of the wet dick and the perverts shuddered to a conclusion yesterday with the direct bill of around $250,000. Len Brown was strong-armed into paying $40,000 for the audit which turned up nothing much except that his wife brought a lot of hotel nights. Questions remain about who was responsible for the waste caused by the lack of scoping of the external audit. Looks like dirty politics at the ratepayers expense.

National – a party for wastrels

Written By: lprent - Date published: 1:08 pm, January 24th, 2014 - 13 comments

The Crown Financial Statements to the end of November 2013 show that the sale of Meridian and Air New Zealand added hundreds of millions of dollars to the cost of the asset sales programme. Combined with the cost of the Mighty River Power sale and ancillary costs such as the Rio Tinto payout, the total cost of the asset sales now stands at $440m. National just likes burning the money of the taxpayers for no productive purpose.

not a Party Party treat, Internet Party instead?

Written By: lprent - Date published: 4:35 pm, January 16th, 2014 - 57 comments

It looks like the ever expanding party party treat (aka KDC birthday) may be an electoral “treat” – it has been cancelled. Instead we are being promised a political party.

Confused? I’m not.

Snowden performed a public service

Written By: lprent - Date published: 10:16 am, January 4th, 2014 - 99 comments

The New York Times has an editorial stating that Edward Snowden should be regarded as a whistleblower who has done the public there and elsewhere a service by revealing the illegal extent of the NSA’s surveillance. What is most interesting in the extremely well linked editorial is that there is this curious hole in the US whistle blower laws that many including Barack Obama have said he could have used. They don’t cover contractors….

The Left Ulterior and other tendencies

Written By: lprent - Date published: 7:20 am, January 2nd, 2014 - 89 comments

Readers of this site are probably aware that I like reading science fiction. They’d also be aware that we run this site targeted at the general left labour movement of New Zealand. Of course many other people confuse this with the Labour party. In truth it can be distinguished as being more like the late great Iain M Bank’s view of his fictional Culture which he divided up into various Mind/ship behavioural segments. It kind of fits…
😈

Please! Kill bing

Written By: lprent - Date published: 12:59 pm, December 28th, 2013 - 34 comments

Matthew Yglesias at Slate is speculating that Microsoft may kill the bing search engine. His logic is compelling. As the person responsible for running the operations of this site, all I can say is to kill it. It isn’t like anyone uses bing anyway – in fact they appear to actively shut it down even on Internet Explorer. Most importantly for a system operator, you can only describe bing’s search spiders as net vermin (that appear to be modelled on spambots).

National has a big asset-sale problem

Written By: lprent - Date published: 4:36 pm, December 16th, 2013 - 128 comments

Look at how deeply unpopular National’s asset sales program is even in their own MP’s electorates. To illustrate the point that Matthew Hooten can’t read numbers, I’ve displayed it in turnout order. South Island and National held electorates generally turn out far more than Labour or Auckland urban electorates in postal votes. But most National held electorates especially provincial ones voted almost two to one against Nationals asset sales program.

Cameron Slater: So who pays who?

Written By: lprent - Date published: 4:19 pm, December 12th, 2013 - 203 comments

Looks like John Key’s communications boss Jason Ede has been busted supplying material for the most disgusting site in local politics – Whaleoil. It has long been suspected that he supplies material and possibly even writes for that site as part National’s dirty tricks team. Looks like we have some confirmation. So how much is the taxpayer paying for this public servant to blog and does he do it for his job? How much does Cameron Slater “demand” from the taxpayer to provide this service?

Last day to vote

Written By: lprent - Date published: 7:11 am, December 12th, 2013 - 43 comments

This is the last day that you can vote No in the referendum on asset sales. So dig that form out, mark it and send it. This referendum vote is a clear way to send a message that even a self-serving delusional National MP can understand. Being able to form a government is not a mandate to do whatever you feel like with our assets.

I think Judge Blackie got it right.

Written By: lprent - Date published: 7:56 am, December 3rd, 2013 - 77 comments

Cameron Slater simply isn’t a journalists arsewipe. For him to claim the legal privileges, protections and authority that the journalistic profession is just stupid. In the Blackie decision I think that the judge got it right, because one thing that the blogging community should not support is undeclared paid-for advertorial prosecution of individuals by blog operators. I suspect that is what the judge saw.

Public transport vs private transport. Don’t waste money on fasttracking motorways

Written By: lprent - Date published: 1:08 am, November 26th, 2013 - 99 comments

Ok, I know this image has a lot of issues. It is a 256 color animated gif. Dithered to hell. Bad colour balance, tilt and even a moving focus point. But it certainly makes its point about what kind of road space we’re paying for to inefficiently fill with cars? Have the idiots at NZTA and in this incompetent National government not read their own statistics? Roads aren’t filling up. Public transport does.