Author Archive

Why won’t Key sack his Minister?

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 10:02 pm, April 6th, 2009 - 23 comments

The Herald is now reporting that John Key won’t sack Richard Worth, despite new information coming to light that an associated company to WSD Global (in which Worth was director while a Minister) was investigated by the Serious Fraud Office: Mr Key said today he had spoken to Dr Worth on Saturday. “I believe he […]

The spun praising the spinner

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 9:58 am, April 4th, 2009 - 6 comments

Falling for a politician’s tricks – that’s gullibility Seeing those tricks for what they are – that’s nous Seeing them for what they are but falling for them anyway and praising the politician – what’s that? colin espiner 1 April – …the PM was overjoyed by the success of the Twitter story. It may have boomeranged, […]

How much is a lie worth?

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 6:00 pm, April 2nd, 2009 - 29 comments

Labour revealed in parliament today that Richard Worth has another secret shareholding that created conflict of interest when he carried out ministerial duties on his trip to India. After Key gave him the famous â€˜bollocking’ on Monday, Worth can have been under no illusion that there wasn’t a conflict of interest with these shares. He had repeated opportunities […]

Mana enhancement – fail

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 10:45 am, April 2nd, 2009 - 28 comments

To further enhance their mana Te Ururoa Flavell and Rahui Katene spent their questions in parliament yesterday asking patsies to National. ‘How will the government’s tax cuts benefit people on low incomes?’ they asked allowing Key and English to talk about the wonderful new $10 a week Independent Earners’ Rebate and claim Labour never cut […]

Key plays the April fool

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 5:17 pm, April 1st, 2009 - 30 comments

Someone’s set up a swag of fake Twitter accounts under the names of Labour MPs. Apparently Labour came across these on Monday at the latest and wrote to Twitter telling them the accounts were fake. But no-one, including his staff, told John Key the tweets were obvious forgeries. So he jumped up in Parliament today […]

What’s Labour got up its sleeve?

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 4:09 am, April 1st, 2009 - 20 comments

When you were perusing yesterday’s Hansard (don’t lie, you were) did you notice this question from Pete Hodgson to Richard Worth amongst the questions about his India shenanigans? Hon Pete Hodgson: Does the Minister still receive any form of income from Simpson Grierson; if not, when did he last receive any income from Simpson Grierson? […]

Worth’s story unravels

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 3:54 am, March 31st, 2009 - 57 comments

Despite getting a “bollocking” from John Key, Richard Worth last night denied that he had been acting as a minister when he went around India promoting flight training provided by a company he had shares in. Unfortunately for Worth, they have the internet in India too: Indian Express 28 Feb 2009 ‘My personal commitment to […]

Time for Fyfe to go

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 11:53 pm, March 30th, 2009 - 26 comments

It’s time for Bill English, as shareholding minister in Air New Zealand, to tell the AirNZ board that either they fire CEO Robert Fyfe or he will fire them. Yesterday, Fyfe directly attacked two government policies. First, he threatened to cancel flights if air traffic controllers take their meal breaks at the statutorily guaranteed times. […]

Ad questions

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 10:55 am, March 30th, 2009 - 19 comments

Does anyone know why DairyNZ, the seafood industry, and the forestry industry are running ad campaigns at the moment? They’re strange ad campaigns because they don’t try to get you to buy anything. (‘oh, yeah, fish! I forgot about fish’). The dairy industry isn’t trying to get more people now the boom has passed. All the ads have […]

Rehabilitated?

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 11:58 am, March 29th, 2009 - 9 comments

On Q+A this morning, Judith Collins couldn’t defend prisons for profit but she sounded quite reasonable when talking about the need for more rehabilitation. She even criticised Labour for longer sentences that are leading to overcrowding in the prisons. Good sentiments but, funny, it doesn’t sound like the Judith Collins we know. 19 July 2007 […]

Herald cartoonist bereft of ideas?

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 3:36 pm, March 28th, 2009 - 12 comments

Seeing some of Rod Emmerson’s cartoons in the Herald over 2009 thus far, you’d think we were into the Right’s nightmare of a fourth term Labour-led government. With Helen Clark’s new position at the U.N of course she’ll continue to be in the news. But on Thursday all Emmerson could offer us was an image […]

Take responsibility or take the blame

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 11:50 am, March 27th, 2009 - 11 comments

As Minister of Works responding to a disaster in his portfolio, Bob Semple famously said ‘I am responsible but not to blame’. That has become one of our political mores. If they are not personally at fault, ministers shouldn’t have to take the blame when things go wrong but they are responsible for dealing with the […]

Gulp

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 11:39 am, March 26th, 2009 - 35 comments

The Key/English odd couple continue to give us a sweet and sour mix of messages – one with rosy promises that the recession will be over any day and the other issuing dark threats that we can’t have a stimulus package only public service cuts. In the real world there is a real economic disaster going […]

Give the people what they want

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 8:46 am, March 26th, 2009 - 39 comments

Stephen Joyce keeps saying the reason he has slashed investment in public transport to build more roads is that he is giving the people what they want. He says most people get to work in a car, so people must want cars. What wonderful logic. Imagine if we hadn’t introduced public health-care or public education because, […]

CycleWatch

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 5:38 pm, March 24th, 2009 - 22 comments

Prime Minister John Key has promised a national cycleway to solve the country’s economic woes. I intend to keep you informed of exactly how the cycleway is progressing. Yes, never fear, Eddie will dig out all the dirty details: how far the cycleway’s progressed, how many jobs it’s created, and how much it’s cost. This […]

Three strikes and you’re garrotted

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 12:10 pm, March 23rd, 2009 - 16 comments

The Toad’s ‘interview’ with ACT’s David Garrett is so good we had to steal it. Like all good parody, it’s easy to believe it could be real. An interview with ACT Party Law and Order spokesperson David Garrotte Toad: David, for many people, you first came to public attention when you appeared drunk on Eye […]

And then I go and spoil it all by saying something stupid…

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 3:30 pm, March 22nd, 2009 - 3 comments

Q+A was quite good. Guyon Espiner was well researched and focused on the contrast between what Key says and what he does. Maybe Guyon has finally started caring now it’s him and his workmates who are in the firing line. Getting rid of that amateur Rawdon Christie and putting in a vastly experienced interviewer in […]

Where would you get that idea?

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 9:55 am, March 22nd, 2009 - 19 comments

John Armstrong March 21 2009 – “So the National Government is variously inching, shifting, drifting, veering or lurching to the right, depending on where you stand on the political spectrum. Surprise, surprise… John Key may have portrayed himself as a moderate pragmatist in Opposition – indeed he is still doing exactly that as Prime Minister […]

Four wheels good, two wheels bad

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 10:08 am, March 20th, 2009 - 34 comments

The Government is taking nearly half a billion dollars out of public transport, cycling, walking, road maintance, and traffic policing to pay for more state highways. Transport Minister Steven Joyce’s reasoning for this – ‘86% of people go to work by car’. Doesn’t he get that people have to go by car because there aren’t […]

Third party returns

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 1:06 pm, March 19th, 2009 - 10 comments

The Electoral Commission has released the third party spending returns for the 2008 election campaign and it looks like for all National and ACT’s fears that the $120,000 third party cap would stop groups from being able to express themselves, only the Council of Trade Unions came close with a spend of around $100k. Other […]

Ambitious for New Zealand

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 10:37 am, March 18th, 2009 - 21 comments

John Key in the NBR*: There is more chance in this decade than the last one of New Zealand moving up the OECD league table because other countries are moving backwards. So, it’s OK if we’re getting poorer because other countries are getting poorer even faster. Not so ambitious for New Zealand after all I […]

Espiner on National’s use of the crisis

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 7:03 pm, March 16th, 2009 - 29 comments

Sadly, I couldn’t find Colin Espiner’s excellent piece in The Press today online. It’s good. Colin’s thoughtful observations derail the government’s PR spin about That Nice Man Mr Key and his commonsense centrist approach. He wonders whether the National government is taking advantage of the economic crisis to push through hard-right reforms Kiwis didn’t vote […]

Stewart vs Cramer

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 10:29 am, March 15th, 2009 - 10 comments

Earlier this week, I posted on the feud that erupted when the Daily Show criticised CNBC and the business media. Last night, CNBC’s Cramer came on the Daily Show. The results were funny and informative about how the financial crisis was allowed to develop. “We’re both snakeoil salesmen to some extent but we label it […]

Doubleplusungood II

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 2:59 pm, March 13th, 2009 - 8 comments

A leak reveals more words banned by National/ACT : strategy blueprint engagement socialisation collaboration co-ordination We’re destroying words – scores of them, hundreds of them, every day. We’re cutting the language down to the bone.

Daily show vs CNBC

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 3:32 pm, March 12th, 2009 - 17 comments

Last week, Jon Stewart poked fun at the media who cheer-led the housing and stockmarket bubbles and are now blaming the people who took on subprime mortgages for the financial crisis. They bit back with hilarious results. Jon is interviewing Cramer today, it will screen Friday night here on C4.

What they’re hiding

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 6:24 am, March 11th, 2009 - 41 comments

Interesting to see that the new ACC board chairman, John Judge, is an alumnus/affiliate member of the Business Roundtable. That’s the same Business Roundtable that has consistently said that: “the introduction of a state monopoly, no-fault accident compensation scheme in New Zealand had been a huge mistake” and argued “for the introduction of choice and […]

Doubleplusungood

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 3:51 pm, March 10th, 2009 - 9 comments

Sources tell us that National/ACT government (Nactgov) has ordered more words to be removed from official documents. We already knew they had banned social justice, public health, social change, organised efforts of society, advocacy, and inequality. Now, we have more to add to the list. – stakeholders – framework – sustainablity It’s the new PC, […]

The Take

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 9:21 am, March 8th, 2009 - 23 comments

Following my post yesterday about the EPMU’s film on the recession, Socialist Aotearoa has alerted me to the fact The Take is now available on Google Video. In suburban Buenos Aires, thirty unemployed auto-parts workers walk into their idle factory, roll out sleeping mats, and refuse to leave. All they want is to re-start the […]

Explaining the recession

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 5:06 pm, March 6th, 2009 - 41 comments

The EPMU have released a short film on youtube explaining the recession and their response to it. It features Brian Easton, Gareth Morgan, Pete Conway and EPMU Secretary Andrew Little. It’s sobering viewing.

Govt set to deny low-paid workers basic rights

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 1:30 pm, March 4th, 2009 - 24 comments

The National government couldn’t hold off democracy forever, so today we are graced with the first members’ day of the new term. And if we had a pro-worker majority in the House, today would be day of celebration. Labour MP Darien Fenton’s Minimum Wage and Remuneration Bill is up, which would go towards ensuring all […]