Author Archive
Dragging myself to the party
Written By: - Date published: 7:52 pm, June 13th, 2009 - 7 comments
The by-election is over apart from finding out the result. So I’m dragging my tired and abused body to the party to find out the result. It was a long day and night. This is the second time I’ve been struck down with a cold, or in this case, some obnoxious common (not swine) flu […]
Mount Albert by-election
Written By: - Date published: 6:02 pm, June 12th, 2009 - 26 comments
Today all of the hoardings in Mount Albert go down. Tommorrow the many volunteers from all major and few minor parties will assemble to help get voters to go to the polling booths. For people in Mount Albert who are unsure if they can vote in that electorate because you just moved there. You can. […]
Richard Worth has resigned as MP
Written By: - Date published: 4:24 pm, June 12th, 2009 - 74 comments
Breaking news from Stuff / DomPost LATEST Richard Worth has resigned as an MP with immediate effect. Dr Worth, who entered Parliament in 1999, said he had gone for the good of the National Party. “Since I resigned as a Cabinet Minister earlier this month, I have been considering my personal options, and also the […]
Get a padded bicycle seat, save taxpayers money
Written By: - Date published: 2:30 pm, June 12th, 2009 - 7 comments
No Right Turn has been investigating John Key’s baby: Back in February, Prime Minister John Key came up with a bold and radical plan to end the recession and create jobs: a cycleway the length of New Zealand. As it became apparent that the plan was not a joke, and was in fact being taken […]
Watercare – minons of the dictator
Written By: - Date published: 12:00 pm, June 12th, 2009 - 9 comments
Rodney Hide, in his role of Minister for Local Government, has made himself the petty dictator of Auckland’s future. Therefore he is ultimately responsible in that role for a curious request through his minions. Phil Twyford reports at Red Alert.. Council water staff in Auckland have been given a case of the jitters after Councils […]
Crosby – Posturing with little substance
Written By: - Date published: 3:20 pm, June 9th, 2009 - 11 comments
Lynton Crosby of the political spinners Crosby/Textor, who ‘advised’ both John Key and Don Brash, has finally given up on trying to pursue a unwinnable defamation case against Nicky Hager and Radio NZ.The case appears to me to have been started largely as intimidation by the Crosby (and maybe the National party) to find out […]
3000th Post
Written By: - Date published: 5:41 pm, June 8th, 2009 - 17 comments
Well it is that time again. We just rolled over the 3000th post on the site. Number 2000 was in November last year, so it took 7 months – not bad considering that it took 6 months coming up to an election last time. The comments are sitting at 95,000. So we have done about […]
She was lying there with her inbox open and her cellphone pulled up
Written By: - Date published: 11:30 am, June 6th, 2009 - 128 comments
The Queen of Thorns at Ideologically Impure has a post with this wonder title about the type of victim bashing that the some of the right have indulged in this week. Notably tsmithfield from our comments page. Here are her answers – pretty good considering she had a cold. First bold: ‘If the victim didn’t […]
Happy Birthday lprent!
Written By: - Date published: 4:00 am, June 4th, 2009 - 20 comments
Happy 50th lprent! Now here’s someone Russel Norman could legitimately call grey 😉 But seriously, Lynn is a baby-boomer, one of those generation born with a golden spoon who enjoyed a free education while lumbering my generation with debt. A generation who are now further stealing from mine by refusing to pay for their own […]
I wish to complain…
Written By: - Date published: 10:42 pm, June 3rd, 2009 - 31 comments
It turns out that Phil Goff was aware of an allegation about Richard Worth weeks ago that may relate to the current investigation. Labour leader Phil Goff took an allegation of Richard Worth’s inappropriate behaviour towards a woman to Prime Minister John Key about a month ago, it emerged tonight. This was apparently not the […]
Submit!
Written By: - Date published: 12:17 am, June 3rd, 2009 - 1 comment
Over at No Right Turn, Idiot/Savant writes:- The Auckland Governance Committee has called for submissions on the Local Government (Auckland Council) Bill. Two copies, by Friday, 26 June 2009, to: Auckland Governance Committee Secretariat Parliament Buildings Wellington The bill contains the details of the government’s Auckland Supercity, including its plans for at-large election, no Maori […]
Granny Herald – getting more irrelevant
Written By: - Date published: 9:00 pm, May 26th, 2009 - 24 comments
This morning’s NZ Herald was interesting. I picked it up while waiting for the bus, rather than reading it on the iPhone in the mobile edition as I usually do. It has fewer ads. I realized yet again that the NZ Herald editorial staff do not live in the same city as I do. Yesterdays […]
NACT: Going backwards for politics
Written By: - Date published: 7:10 pm, May 20th, 2009 - 33 comments
The Fast Forward Fund was axed by the NACT government in Feburary. This was a fund that was to be invested and the proceeds and capital drawn down over 10-15 years to invest in agriculture. The funds would be distributed with equal contributions from agricultural businesses. Farming provides well over a third of our overseas […]
Simon Power needs to do some research
Written By: - Date published: 9:30 am, May 19th, 2009 - 15 comments
Simon Power talking on Q+A on Sunday showed a abysmal ignorance about how matters operate in his own portfolio. He blamed lawyers and juries for slowing the court system down. My experience in courts says that he is wrong – it is usually the police slowing things down. The lawyers agree here. He is correct […]
NACT prefer to have a filibuster
Written By: - Date published: 5:11 pm, May 16th, 2009 - 39 comments
The ongoing filibuster is highlighting the intransigent nature of the NACT government. NACT ministers are getting annoyed by having to remain at the house to push through their legislation. However there is a perfectly reasonable offer on the table – but they’d prefer to have the filibuster maintained rather than get the holes fixed in […]
Outage
Written By: - Date published: 5:09 pm, May 16th, 2009 - 2 comments
There was an annoying outage in the site earlier for a few hours. The hosting site was investigating a performance issue on the server unrelated to The Standard, and took the Apache server offline for script generated HTML. Thanks to all those who txt’ed, e-mailed, and skype’d to let me know of the problem. I […]
Ratepayers to fork out lots for super-city
Written By: - Date published: 5:17 pm, May 15th, 2009 - 2 comments
In the absence of any numbers about transition costs from Rodney or NACT on the super-city, Phil Twyford over at Red Alert has gotten Dr Rhema Vaithianathan to crunch the available numbers. Ratepayers are going to get whacked with a bill for up to $750 just for the transition costs, and that’s 30% higher than […]
Has anyone asked them what they think now?
Written By: - Date published: 12:46 pm, May 15th, 2009 - 7 comments
Moana Mackey has been looking at old Hansards in a post on Red Alert. The topic was the Local Government Act changes in 2002. It is a revealing look at the change of attitude by National MP’s on the process of consultation for local government changes. A couple of examples: Phil Heatley: I was disturbed […]
On filibustering and public political meetings
Written By: - Date published: 9:15 am, May 15th, 2009 - 52 comments
Labour is filibustering in the house on the Auckland super-city enabling legislation. The would-be dictator of Auckland’s future for the next year and a half, says Mr Hide says the amendments are a waste of time, as the Government has the numbers to defeat them. Correct for this particular battle. However it is the war […]
CCD Myths – East Antarctica
Written By: - Date published: 6:00 pm, May 11th, 2009 - 20 comments
In east Antarctica, the sea ice sheets have been larger recently. Predictably this has been seized on by the scientifically simple-minded climate change deniers (CCD’s) as evidence that climate change models are incorrect. This is despite it being predicted very closely by the same climate models well before it happened. I remember it being pointed […]
Thinking about a referendum on MMP
Written By: - Date published: 5:54 pm, May 10th, 2009 - 21 comments
There is an interesting paper by Mai Chen in NZ Lawyer Online about the pros and cons of the referendum on MMP that National has promised by 2011 – “Is the MMP referendum likely to result in electoral reform?” The current position is that MMP has managed to operate effectively in the NZ environment. Both […]
Garrote them for shagging sheep
Written By: - Date published: 9:41 am, May 10th, 2009 - 39 comments
The strange Sensible Sentencing Trust three-strikes bill put up by ACT’s David Garrett aka ‘Garrote‘ has some strange implications. Scott at Imperator Fish points out this one. Even if lawmakers could accept the principle that after three serious offences you’re a goner, getting them to agree on what those offences should be would be next […]
NACT policy – like pistons in a Vespa
Written By: - Date published: 5:17 pm, May 8th, 2009 - 18 comments
Jeanette Fitzsimmons has written a very good post from the Emissions Trading Scheme special select committee* about her views on the impact of farming on our Kyoto obligations. She commented on the Federated Farmers submission which essentially said that they thought farming should be excluded from paying anything. That really isn’t feasible in NZ because… […]
Oh dear – Hyde the costs
Written By: - Date published: 9:40 pm, May 7th, 2009 - 71 comments
How embarrassing. Rodney Hide has been forced to admit that he has no idea of the costs of his super-city proposal. Phil Twyford with the aid of the speaker cornered him into an admission that he’d been bullshitting. The Minister has been caught out trying to mislead Aucklanders about whether the Government has done those […]
Fringe candidates: The spammer from the city of hot-air.
Written By: - Date published: 4:04 am, May 7th, 2009 - 10 comments
Ok I give up, the craziest Mt Albert candidate isn’t John Boscawen urging National to declare support for an above-ground motorway in Waterview. That has to be a real vote winner for both Act and National in the electorate – yeah right! On the other-hand how far will National go to support Act? What is […]
How Hyde is wasting my taxes on an uncosted project
Written By: - Date published: 5:09 pm, May 6th, 2009 - 20 comments
It appears that the propaganda campaign from Rodney Hide to push his proposal of the super-city has cost $533,000 in PR costs in the last 4 weeks. Phil Twyford (Labour’s Auckland issues spokesperson) comment is that:- It’s outrageous that the Government is prepared to spend an average of $133,000 a week on a publicity blitz, […]
Lobby group wants motorways to drive over locals
Written By: - Date published: 5:58 am, May 6th, 2009 - 48 comments
Owen McShane’s lobby group the Centre for Resource Management Studies has a set of questions up about the Waterview Tunnel option of SH20. Essentially they argue for ramming an above ground motorway through the Waterview houses and green belt for the benefit of the motorists, and that the pesky locals should be ignored. One of […]
Mt Albert candidate selected
Written By: - Date published: 3:48 pm, May 3rd, 2009 - 93 comments
David Shearer has been selected as the candidate for Labour. Congratulations to all of the candidates [updated: The vodem was a bit slow. So I’ve now updated the post with links to the byelection campaign site after I got home.]
Book review of the insane
Written By: - Date published: 12:37 pm, May 3rd, 2009 - 51 comments
Robinsod is no longer here to do the book reviews of Wishart‘s latest insights into the world of the paranoid. As he said before pronouncing his severe disappointment with Wishart in his last book.. I had high hopes for Absolute Power, I really did. If Faulkner taught us anything with The Sound and the Fury […]
The interesting selection
Written By: - Date published: 5:56 pm, May 2nd, 2009 - 27 comments
The National selection in Mount Albert will be going down to the wire with the inevitable split between the locals and the regional/national organisations going to show on their monday selection. Patrick Gower had a good piece in the Herald yesterday – National torn over Mt Albert. The National Party is embroiled in a backroom […]
Imagine.
Written By: - Date published: 2:30 pm, April 28th, 2009 - 6 comments
Inspired by a forwarded e-mail about Obama’s speech to the NAS with this line in it Imagine Key committing to invest 3% of GDP in R&D Obama 27th April 2009 at the National Academy of Science I am here today to set this goal: we will devote more than three percent of our GDP to […]
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