Author Archive
The Smiths: Getting it Right
Written By: - Date published: 9:56 am, September 24th, 2010 - 11 comments
Lockwood and Nick did good work yesterday. So praise where praise is due: Keep it up boys.
Roads of National Party Significance Continue…
Written By: - Date published: 3:14 pm, September 22nd, 2010 - 52 comments
Transmission Gully: A road that makes no economic sense, that will now be forced through extra fast, with reduced consultation.
McCully’s Autocratic Cronyism
Written By: - Date published: 11:47 am, September 22nd, 2010 - 9 comments
McCully doesn’t believe in the tender process. Or accountability. Cronyism? Well, that’s a different story…
John Banks: Signs I’d like to see
Written By: - Date published: 7:29 am, September 22nd, 2010 - 33 comments
John Banks has gone big on billboards in his campaign for mayor. So I thought I’d show some that I’d like to see…
Depose Gerry the First!
Written By: - Date published: 1:03 pm, September 21st, 2010 - 12 comments
Jeremy Harris has created a facebook group calling for the End of the Reign of Gerry Brownlee.
Join quick before he bans it.
Digested Read – Spirit Level 2: Health
Written By: - Date published: 12:00 pm, September 18th, 2010 - 63 comments
The second of 6 in a series summarising the argument of The Spirit Level. This post examines how inequality affects mental and physical health.
A Busy Week In Politics
Written By: - Date published: 11:41 pm, September 17th, 2010 - 19 comments
It’s been a very big week this week, so I thought I’d do a round-up, just so we don’t forget some of the ‘lesser’ lights that may have been big news had we not had so much to go on…
Digested Read – Spirit Level 1: The Problem
Written By: - Date published: 12:00 pm, September 17th, 2010 - 43 comments
We bang on about The Spirit Level from time to time, and I promised a series summarising the book… well here it is. It’ll be six parts.
Key: No Surprises?
Written By: - Date published: 10:54 am, September 16th, 2010 - 22 comments
Under National & Act’s power-sharing agreement there is a ‘No Surprises’ clause. So Rodney Hide should have told John Key about David Garrett’s assault conviction and dead baby identity stealing, as well as his own drunk and disorderly conviction in 2008.
Did he?
Government To Screw Health Next
Written By: - Date published: 12:00 pm, September 15th, 2010 - 17 comments
Not content with destroying education to get at teachers, now National are after your health to get at doctors and nurses.
Ralston Attempts Hijack of Radio NZ SuperCity Debate
Written By: - Date published: 1:57 pm, September 13th, 2010 - 36 comments
In the lecture theatre that the Radio NZ SuperCity debate was held this morning Len Brown clearly and easily won – but how did it appear on radio?
Bill Ralston and his coterie did his best to even up the perceptions…
Time for an OIA
Written By: - Date published: 1:59 pm, September 8th, 2010 - 19 comments
I’m hoping that someone (a fellow Standard author perhaps?) puts in an OIA over the South Canterbury Finance bailout. And here’s what I’d like them to ask: – How many cabinet ministers excused themselves from the bailout decision due to a conflict of interest? – How many ministers and/or their extended families had investments in […]
You’re All Racists – Minister
Written By: - Date published: 8:11 am, September 3rd, 2010 - 34 comments
According to Maurice Williamson, we’re all racist. Our concern with foreign investment has nothing to do with the economy, we just hate the Chinese.
Newsflash: Nation not a Business
Written By: - Date published: 8:11 am, September 2nd, 2010 - 50 comments
National don’t understand macroeconomics. As such they are inflicting massive and unnecessary harm, with high unemployment and a long time until recovery.
Unions Succeed where National Fails
Written By: - Date published: 11:00 am, August 31st, 2010 - 13 comments
National’s big election promise in 2008 was to close the wage gap with Australia. They’re failing, as our wages fall behind theirs under National’s economic mismanagement and employer-centric policies.
But there are some who are doing better than others in the pay stakes:
Union members.
Search and Survey Our Loss of Human Rights
Written By: - Date published: 6:49 am, August 30th, 2010 - 38 comments
Strip searched by the dog-control officer, your home computer hacked by the Pork Board and the Commerce Commission putting 24-hour cameras in your bedroom. It’ll all be fine once the new Search and Surveillance Bill goes through. Oh, and you lose your right to silence. And the need for a warrant is reduced. And…
Sick Of It
Written By: - Date published: 11:57 am, August 27th, 2010 - 28 comments
The Employment Relations Act Amendment (2) is coming… Be prepared to fight.
But also, be prepared to slip in an Amendment to the Amendment…
Welfare Working Group Survey
Written By: - Date published: 7:35 am, August 26th, 2010 - 67 comments
National know the first rule of government: never have an enquiry unless you know what it will say. The latest “Working Group” is the one on Welfare. Paula Rebstock’s team include a couple of medical professionals who specialise in brain injuries, a couple of private sector providers of welfare-to-work programs with a vested interest in […]
Income splitting – all bad?
Written By: - Date published: 11:41 am, August 25th, 2010 - 26 comments
Can income splitting be made to work? Funding people to stay at home with children isn’t such a bad idea…
Sir Peter and his DonKey
Written By: - Date published: 9:09 am, August 20th, 2010 - 13 comments
Sir Peter Gluckman wants more investment in early childhood. $1 invested in young children now gives $13 in adulthood, but his day-trader DonKey’s short-termism sees only cuts and short-change for our greatest resource.
An Authoritarian Act
Written By: - Date published: 2:52 pm, August 18th, 2010 - 14 comments
So Rodney can’t keep 4 other people on side. The liberal and authoritarian split in Act has had its blood-letting and the authoritarians have won. Where will the neo-liberal idealogues go? And how will Epsom react to this change in philosophy in a year’s time?
Pakistan: Donate Now
Written By: - Date published: 7:31 am, August 18th, 2010 - 4 comments
The UN says the number of people suffering from the massive floods in Pakistan — an estimated 20 million — could exceed the combined total of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the 2010 Haiti earthquake and the 2005 Kashmir earthquake. But where there was massive generosity in response to those tragedies, in the past week […]
Incarceration Insanity
Written By: - Date published: 1:07 pm, August 15th, 2010 - 42 comments
Prison doesn’t work. It keeps people off the streets, but, as psychiatrist James Gilligan says:
The most effective way to turn a non-violent person into a violent one is to send him to prison.1
Britain’s Sickness Benefit Injustice
Written By: - Date published: 12:03 pm, August 14th, 2010 - 21 comments
Britain’s turfing 75% of people off their long-term sickness benefit on an arbitrary test. Let’s hope the Welfare Working Group doesn’t get ideas.
Today’s Inequality Report
Written By: - Date published: 3:36 pm, August 12th, 2010 - 3 comments
A quick vid from The Equality Trust
I’m So Dizzy
Written By: - Date published: 8:00 am, August 9th, 2010 - 44 comments
The rate at which National have been spinning of late is giving me nausea. It can’t be long until they get to the Hitch-Hiker’s Guide scenario of declaring black to be white and getting run over on the nearest zebra crossing.
Rethinking Growth
Written By: - Date published: 7:31 am, August 8th, 2010 - 82 comments
For the last several decades the over-riding mantra across western governments has been that what is important above all else is economic growth. Now is the time to question whether it should still be our main aim and guiding light.
National Drunk at the Wheel
Written By: - Date published: 7:00 am, August 4th, 2010 - 32 comments
So National are to kick lowering the legal blood-alcohol level into the long grass by having 2 years of “research”. This whilst telling us that the government spends too much on policy advice. Whilst that’s generally rubbish – and Blinglish’s suggestion that they can just google other governments’ research laughable – here is one case […]
Vince’s Latest Cable
Written By: - Date published: 12:25 pm, July 17th, 2010 - 13 comments
Over in the UK, Vince Cable, the former LibDem Deputy leader who predicted the Great Recession and the need to break up and regulate the banks, is now responsible for business and tertiary education. In the tertiary sector he has a radical new idea for funding.
The Failure of Neo-Liberalism
Written By: - Date published: 8:18 am, July 6th, 2010 - 49 comments
Neo-Liberalism is a failure; not just in human terms, but by its own measures. Since the concepts of neo-liberalism were taken up by Roger & Ruth 26 years ago neo-liberalism has driven down wages as a share of GDP, massively increased inequality and stripped workers rights.
Bulk Funding by any other name…
Written By: - Date published: 8:34 am, July 5th, 2010 - 56 comments
Roger Douglas has a private members bill to introduce bulk funding. It (hopefully) shouldn’t get through – National are unlikely to support it as they’ve already introduced by the back door.
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