Author Archive

Happy International (Working) Women’s Day!

Written By: - Date published: 9:00 am, March 8th, 2014 - 28 comments

The official theme of International Women’s Day this year is “Inspiring Change”. It’s a little vague, a little aspirational, not too confrontational – fairly typical for this kind of awareness-raising exercise. But it is 2014, and it’s an election year, and the way we talk about women, and women’s work, does have the potential to […]

How to build better beggars

Written By: - Date published: 9:00 am, March 1st, 2014 - 35 comments

In the United States, the street beggars have great patter. Despite what South Park would have us believe, when you walk down the main street of a major city, you don’t get hordes of people shiftlessly shaking cups at you, asking for “change?” There are a few.  But far more often, there’s a story.  I […]

The politics of nastiness

Written By: - Date published: 8:45 am, February 11th, 2014 - 163 comments

Is this election year going to be the most vicious in recent history? There’s always a bit of argy-bargy in politics, and sometimes it’s personal.  Despite the best of intentions, it’s impossible for people’s families and backgrounds to never be part of the conversation, because often they themselves bring it up – whether it’s John […]

It’s past time for fair employment laws

Written By: - Date published: 1:53 pm, February 8th, 2014 - 35 comments

After David Cunliffe’s state of the nation speech at the end of January, the spotlight was, appropriately, on the big policy announcement he made: the Best Start package for Kiwi kids.  (It wasn’t the friendliest spotlight, unfortunately.) But there was a sentence at the end which hasn’t had a lot of pickup, and which could […]

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