Author Archive

Why I will party vote for the Greens

Written By: - Date published: 2:24 pm, November 26th, 2012 - 169 comments

I’m tired of watching the Labour caucus screwing up the left’s chances of winning the treasury benches. I don’t really trust them to be competent to implement any new ideas if they control parliament. And most of their recent ideas are just warmed over ideas from the Greens. The caucus stupidity over the last week  has convinced me to eliminate the middle-man and leave the Labour whips to enjoy their busted trophy.

Reaction on the end of conference

Written By: - Date published: 11:52 pm, November 18th, 2012 - 40 comments

It was a good productive conference for Labour. The best reaction about David Shearer’s speech and the rank and files reactions to the conference that I observed was probably from Robert Winter, so I have quoted it here. Thanks to the NZLP’s council for letting me attend, and thanks to the working journalists for tolerating me.

Labour Conference 2012 policy remits

Written By: - Date published: 10:38 am, November 18th, 2012 - 27 comments

The policy remits this morning. There isn’t a lot of time. However they are prioritized

Pushing at an open door

Written By: - Date published: 10:17 pm, November 17th, 2012 - 61 comments

Back in the early 90’s the first party conference I went to was very nearly my last. Intransigent foes who used the mic to assault each other was my introduction to the Labour party ‘working’ with each other. Eventually I gave up viewing the remit floor as meaningless. But it now looks like this has all changed. It looks like the Labour party has an open door through which it is capable of doing something again.

Labour Conference 2012 remits

Written By: - Date published: 10:24 am, November 17th, 2012 - 81 comments

Especially for delegates (and me) to write comments on remits. Very fast so far. Robert Gallagher who is chairing the movement appears to be enjoying himself. A welcome sight.

A note to a media commentator

Written By: - Date published: 2:51 am, November 17th, 2012 - 53 comments

I finally got around to listening to Gavin Ellis making a complete dork of himself on Radio NZ talking about authors on this site being “manipulated”. Hah! Anyone trying to manipulate them is likely to wind up being made into a pretzel. I wouldn’t care to try it myself. So does Gavin Ellis = a bit of an idiot. Or more charitably, has he actually bothered to think about this issue?

Conference 2012 – Labour

Written By: - Date published: 1:54 pm, November 16th, 2012 - 149 comments

Well, I’m at the Labour conference – as media. Feels somewhat weird after many delegate years. I figure that The Standard needs to start sending someone along to the conferences. So I will ground-break at each of the major ones over the next year. The remit book looks like the main focus for this year. […]

Auckland housing market bubbling

Written By: - Date published: 2:40 pm, November 15th, 2012 - 34 comments

housing apartment

Like many other well-paid people in their 30’s.  Lyn is getting depressed watching a toehold Auckland property disappear out of her grasp. Of course the well rounded gits in Wellington will get ‘worried’ about this and want to make property available 50kms away. But spending an hour or two of your life driving each day is hardly useful to anyone apart from the land bankers, property developers and used car sales who seem to be of such importance to the National party.

Shuffle the caucus deck

Written By: - Date published: 12:06 pm, November 12th, 2012 - 95 comments

By all means, get rid of the unfortunate experiment that is the David Shearer leadership. But the problem is really with the NZLP’s parliamentary caucus who appear to have lost sight of what we want them to achieve. Until that problem is fixed the party will continue to shed people willing to exert effort supporting them.

Random thoughts on MMP

Written By: - Date published: 4:14 pm, November 6th, 2012 - 36 comments

Colin James has expressed my response to Judith Collin’s politicialising of the MMP review. “Elections do not belong to MPs. Elections belong to the people. MPs should be very wary of appropriating what belongs to others.”.  Self-interested bleating by Act and United Future doesn’t mean that National should go off and do another short-term hack of the good proposals as they did in after 1993. The recommendations are clear and an accurate reflection of public mood. Just implement them as they are.

Whaleoil and his toilet paper

Written By: - Date published: 5:05 pm, October 31st, 2012 - 205 comments

The New Zealand Truth has been going down the toilet for a long time. But they may have found their perfect editor. Cameron Slater aka “Whaleoil” has apparently been made editor of it. A bombastic bullyboy with fetish for inaccuracy is exactly the right fit for the role. And it gets a real deadbeat away from the taxpayers purse.

Browser wars: The battle for NZ

Written By: - Date published: 4:20 pm, October 23rd, 2012 - 40 comments

Please chant in unison. “I hate Internet Explorer”….

Well it looks like that opinion has finally penetrated from web developers out to the general public in NZ. IE is no longer the top browser here or worldwide.

It is a slow day suitable for a mindless topic 😈

Rant: Why reconnect to broadcast?

Written By: - Date published: 3:40 pm, October 21st, 2012 - 59 comments

We moved out of the rental back into my old apartment in a flurry of concrete dust from polishing concrete and cursing from fitting storage two months ago. But I still haven’t bothered with connecting up broadcast TV. Why would I want to bother? Broadcast TV is largely mindless and endlessly frustrating. These days there are better alternatives than video stores.

Tony Abbot: misogynist and hypocrite

Written By: - Date published: 7:17 am, October 10th, 2012 - 160 comments

It really was a pleasure last night watching the most obnoxious weasel in aussie politics, Tony Abbott, getting done over by a fired up Julia Gillard. She was pointing out that his sudden calls against sexism and misogyny could be better applied to himself. Then she spent glorious minutes detailing exactly why Tony Abbott was the last politician in Austrailia who could throw dirt using these charges.

TEDx

Written By: - Date published: 12:09 pm, October 5th, 2012 - 2 comments

We have some tickets for tomorrow for someone. You have to be in Auckland and you’ll have to pick them up from me.

Shane Jones: now pimping for Sealords

Written By: - Date published: 11:34 am, October 3rd, 2012 - 26 comments

As Shane Jones makes a complete dick of himself in public yet again in a traditional display of Labour party backbench egotism. I’m left shaking my head at the apparent complete inability of the Labour caucus to settle down to the task of being an effective opposition.

On the trailing edge: Brownlee on Rena

Written By: - Date published: 1:41 pm, September 28th, 2012 - 11 comments

I was reading an article looking at the aftermath of the Rena shipwreck in the Herald. In it I read some ridiculous statements by Gerry Brownlee that seemed (like so much from him) to come from the early part of the last century. It appears that he (and his minons in the M0T) haven’t quite caught up on rapid progress of the digital age in nautical circles. Hasn’t he heard about AIS? Or computers?

If it is broke, then fix it

Written By: - Date published: 11:29 am, September 26th, 2012 - 71 comments

Colin James writes good political analysis. His ODT article from yesterday resonates with me. It is time to look for a new economic model as we watch “..central banks – supposed to epitomise the straight and narrow – print money like 17th century monarchs.” as they recirculate the stupidities of the past like any National government.

Greenpeace – working for others.

Written By: - Date published: 3:02 pm, September 4th, 2012 - 13 comments

Greenpeace has a case in front of the Court of Appeal today.  It is going to be important for any number of small charities who do some advocacy work that may be considered to be ‘political’.

But Greenpeace deserves a resounding cheer for taking this case when it is far more important to other advocates from poverty groups to  churches to climate deniers than it is to themselves.

Climate models fail to accurately predict Arctic ice – deniers fail to notice

Written By: - Date published: 3:32 pm, August 26th, 2012 - 80 comments

Like many people I’m always bemused by the lack of logic that the climate change deniers (CCD’s) have in their extremely selective picking of things to get wound up about – especially about climate models. But when an actual  self-evident flaw shows up in the models, well they simply seem to miss it entirely. Like it is now evident that the climate models used to predict Arctic melting vastly underrate the speed at which it is happening. The consequences are going to be unpleasant for the north.

TED is coming to town

Written By: - Date published: 10:35 am, August 16th, 2012 - 2 comments

TEDx will be in Auckland in October. We can get a limited number of tickets to it for those who want go.

Life outside the blog

Written By: - Date published: 12:53 pm, July 18th, 2012 - 27 comments

Our authors do have to live outside of blogging, and because we’re pretty skilled in our various professions we don’t actually have that much time to blog. Which is why this site runs as a coop with limited recognition of the personalities that are so essential to our operation. But it is nice to point out when others recognize our authors in their professions – and I can have a stir at the same time….

Talley’s Group: Arsehole managers – bad faith and bullshit

Written By: - Date published: 10:56 am, May 17th, 2012 - 41 comments

Today there was the characteristic signature of a Talley’s Group company spin that I’ve observed over the last five years on this site with their worker relationships. They lie, prevaricate, and fracture the truth. They appear to be completely untrustworthy and incapable of good faith bargaining.  In my view they are the absolute arseholes of NZ managers and companies.

10,000+ at Auckland anti-MOM protest

Written By: - Date published: 3:14 pm, April 28th, 2012 - 87 comments

Lots of people… get down to Britomart.. Mind you Britomart is filling up rapidly. They need a few more megaphones by the look of the crowd. Penny Bright sucks at chants. 😈 Slowly moving off.  This is mining protest levels… A lot of people… Seriously slow. Walked 50 metres. Really good humoured and highly social. […]

Veolia Transport: where were the backup plans?

Written By: - Date published: 6:10 pm, April 26th, 2012 - 73 comments

I have and still do deal with quite a lot with systems in my day-job. But this…. I’m aghast at the self-evident stupidity. A power outage has shut down almost all train services across the Auckland region. The fault at KiwiRail’s National Train Control in Wellington, which controls Auckland signals and radio control, occurred about […]

400,000 comments (almost)

Written By: - Date published: 12:18 pm, April 19th, 2012 - 53 comments

By one standard we have now passed 400 thousand comments. But I’m not a bullshitter with numbers like Bill English or Whaleoil. By my standards, we haven’t quite hit it yet. We will in a couple of weeks. I’m starting to get a bit worried about how we’re going to handle the rapidly increasing rate that people are arguing with each other here…

Updates, upgrades, and polls

Written By: - Date published: 9:28 pm, April 5th, 2012 - 111 comments

A bit of maintenance work coming up over Easter, and a Morgan poll that covered last week. National show the effects of their mutual collective suicide attempts, and the Greens pick up the benefits. Labour are doing sweet bugger all. Starting to wonder if Labour MP’s are catching the dogpack socializing disease from National. I have an impress ion of mutual arse sniffing and bugger all work. I’m unimpressed with the dog imitations from either party.

We need “operation 9” to suppress the bookies

Written By: - Date published: 12:37 pm, March 30th, 2012 - 22 comments

Evidently the people at iPredict don’t like being called “bookies” or being described as “opening a contract” on someone. We are now being targeted by this shadowy organisation.

Perhaps it is time that the police exerted themselves as the entertainment for the media and started operation 9 against this subversive organisation

You know you’re in trouble when: The bookies open a contract on you

Written By: - Date published: 10:28 am, March 29th, 2012 - 163 comments

You know that bookies sense when there is blood in the water and they’ll create contracts. I don’t gamble but the interesting contracts today in my mind are “Judith Collins to cease being a Minister before 1 June 2012”, “An ACC official ….to be found to have leaked Boag email”, “Beehive staffer to be found to have leaked Boag email”, etc. And a politician is definitely in trouble in NZ when they start talking about defamation 🙂

Organisational review – Auckland

Written By: - Date published: 5:14 pm, March 12th, 2012 - 10 comments

Just a reminder that Auckland’s first organisational review meeting is tonight.

Please encourage as many Labour members as possible to come along and contribute to the discussion.

Why I think that Auckland is getting scammed

Written By: - Date published: 12:42 pm, March 12th, 2012 - 69 comments

It turns out that the report that provided the basis for a 12% return on equity at the Ports of Auckland is based not on something commissioned by them. Instead it comes from the previous employers of the current chairman at PoA, who have previously been interested in buying ports in NZ. And the comparisons used for the ROE are spurious.