bill english

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Blinglish’s boondoggle bridge

Written By: - Date published: 11:15 am, July 29th, 2014 - 34 comments

Rob Salmond at Polity has discovered that amongst the $212 million worth of road projects to be accelerated by the Government is a bridge that will speed up Bill English’s trip to his Queenstown home.  But officials have said that under current policy settings it is unlikely that the bridge will ever be built.

Is Bill English’s ‘big data’, Big Brother & privatisation of govt?

Written By: - Date published: 11:00 am, June 30th, 2014 - 135 comments

Bill English has stated that a third term Key government would majorly reform the government’s budgeting & spending.  It’s a major move towards privatisation of public services, & full spectrum digitally-enhanced monitoring of individuals’ lives: especially those of the already demonised and harassed single mothers on benefits.

Polity: The game is the game

Written By: - Date published: 9:24 am, June 20th, 2014 - 24 comments

Rob Salmond offers some advice to the National smear team. When you screw up and start contradicting each other’s stories, you look like a pack of low-rent numpties. And it reveals your tactics for all to see, which is what you were trying to avoid in the first place. Bill English and John Key should really communicate so they don’t trample over each others stories. And the  spectacle of Michael Woodhouse changing his mind within hours about when he first saw the letter, and what he did with it? Pure comedy

Arses and Elbows

Written By: - Date published: 1:21 pm, June 19th, 2014 - 123 comments

So, the Deputy Prime Minister insists that no-one from the ruling National Party knew of an eleven year old letter from Labour’s David Cunliffe asking Immigration about time frames for decision making. Meanwhile, the Prime Minister states he knew of the letter for some weeks. Scandalously, some ministers from the ruling National Party have sought […]

National tacks left with its fudge it budget

Written By: - Date published: 9:30 am, May 16th, 2014 - 174 comments

National must be worried about its prospects in this year’s election.  Because its budget did not have the normal hard right policies that we have come to expect of it and it is trying to lessen the attraction of some of Labour’s announced policies.

Polity: Budget 2014: Over-promise. Under-deliver.

Written By: - Date published: 3:18 pm, May 15th, 2014 - 40 comments

Earlier this week I predicted the Budget would be Labour-lite. I was right, but only in part. By far the biggest disappointment is in housing. The government signalled help for home buyers would be a highlight in the Budget. A few pathetic morsels isn’t a highlight. This will make next to no difference to the housing affordability crisis. First home buyers aren’t $3,500 short of a house. They are hundreds of thousands short, because there aren’t nearly enough homes.

National’s proposed public spending to GDP ratio – the election’s clear blue line

Written By: - Date published: 9:22 am, May 15th, 2014 - 72 comments

The real story of the coming election is what was revealed in Bill English’s reported pre-budget speech to the National Party’s Southern Region conference at the weekend. He signalled an intention to reduce the proportion of government spending to 26% of GDP over the next 6 to 7 years. The current level at 30% already places NZ in the lowest quartile of OECD countries, having fallen from 35% of GDP in 2008. Most developed nations spend a significantly higher proportion of GDP on government goods and services.

NRT: “A wish, a target, and a dream”

Written By: - Date published: 6:47 pm, May 12th, 2014 - 58 comments

No Right Turn shows that John Key has no real understanding of the economic and political history of this country. Probably because the last time another economic illiterate from National said that the prospect of reducing unemployment in NZ to below 6% was “a hoax”, John Key wasn’t here. He probably heard it from that illiterate, who once again is our minister of finance. Unemployment under Labour was as low as 3.3%

Tell the police, New Zealand has been robbed …

Written By: - Date published: 10:56 am, April 17th, 2014 - 72 comments

Genesis Energy’s shares have been sold at a price well below their value.  And despite considerable demand from local mum and dad investors one in four of the shares has been sold to overseas institutions.

Inequalities of the 10 percenters

Written By: - Date published: 9:29 am, April 12th, 2014 - 28 comments

All inequality measures are not equal.  The GINI Coefficient is widely used but it doesn’t show the impact of vast increases in inequality between the richest and poorest Kiwis; it doesn’t show increasing experiences of hardship: it can mask vast inequalities in wealth & asset ownership.

LB: Bill’s Busted Budget and Tim’s Exploding Emissions

Written By: - Date published: 4:28 pm, April 9th, 2014 - 13 comments

Local bodies points out a couple more of the National government’s sad-sacks. For some strange (but obvious) reason a warmish market for milk powder doesn’t do much for NZ apart from destroying our environment. English’s taxcuts for his wealthy mates have destroyed the fiscal base of the government and done nothing to cause any investment in the productive and employable parts of our economy. Tim Groser has also made an artform of making NZ worse off.

Winning song urges Key to leave politics

Written By: - Date published: 10:30 am, April 7th, 2014 - 7 comments

Tracy Whatshite, Cadet Reporter, attended the “Bellies” (held at Bellamy’s) and found out who the winners were in this year’s competition for the Best Political Song of 2014. She spoke with the judge Frankie Stevens.

“Competition was particularly intense this year and the top entries included some old favourites, but also some surprizing new comers,” he said.

Polity: Buy low, sell high. Except National.

Written By: - Date published: 1:06 pm, March 24th, 2014 - 27 comments

Rob at Polity points out National’s intensely unstrategic view about investments and asset sales. In a down market where all the indications said “buy,” National sold our assets for a pittance, and refused to invest in the Super Fund. The Super Fund has been making returns of 21%, far exceeding the Crown’s cost of borrowing. And National will only start investing in the Super Fund when equities are expensive again.  It is almost as if they wanted to waste taxpayers funds eh?

LocalBodies: National Slumps in Polls As Ministers Struggle

Written By: - Date published: 9:19 am, March 24th, 2014 - 22 comments

There is danger of reading too much into polls months out from an election. Commentators were claiming that National was too strong to lose the next election based on a rogue poll. Few looked at multiple polls, accounted for the margin of error nor the trends over past months. The last fortnight has seen a National with the latest Roy Morgan Poll plummeting from the Colmar Brunton result of 51% to 45.5%. And it is based on a lack of ministerial performance…

The Genesis share float – or is that share sink?

Written By: - Date published: 10:03 am, March 14th, 2014 - 24 comments

The Government is continuing with the Genesis share float.  Shares with an anticipated yield of 15% are being sold to pay off debt on which interest at 5% is being charged.  What sort of economic lunacy is this?

Bent Bill

Written By: - Date published: 11:42 pm, February 27th, 2014 - 57 comments

What do you call someone who knowingly relies on false information to defend his case?

Bill English.

The Genesis share float has problems

Written By: - Date published: 8:21 am, February 27th, 2014 - 17 comments

The Government has effectively conceded that the Genesis share float will not meet expectations and is softening New Zealand up to the prospect that only 30% of the shares may be sold. It makes you wonder why they are still going a head with the sale.

Tale of two Irelands

Written By: - Date published: 9:41 am, February 20th, 2014 - 42 comments

Tracey recounts the rise and fall of the `financial genius` John Key’s pet financial hub for NZ to emulate the paragon economies that tried it. Like Ireland – the home of the jobless and deserted housing projects.

Fortunately he was somehow prevented from stuffing NZ in this way. However he did put in some legislation of dubious value to allow NZ to be used as a haven for hot money fleeing taxes…

Polity: English lies on impact of tax switch

Written By: - Date published: 9:22 am, January 15th, 2014 - 15 comments

Rob Salmond at Polity has been having a look at Bill English’s “neutral” tax change in 2010…

Bill English recently heralded his tax switch as making net tax more progressive. He lied. It actually made net tax at least $500 million more regressive.

Herald poll has Labour at 40% because of asset sales

Written By: - Date published: 9:09 am, December 15th, 2013 - 138 comments

A Herald poll this morning has Labour on 40% with many expressing concern with the asset sales programme.  And John Key displays a disturbing lack of numeracy literacy.

Key and English – best of friends.

Written By: - Date published: 3:30 pm, November 25th, 2013 - 34 comments

In a surprising development, John Key has taken to bringing “a friend” with him to serious media interviews. Key was accompanied by Bill English. Key justified the new approach stating that their unique “chemistry was obvious to all in parliament” and he wanted the public to know, just how well they got on. When questioned whether this was relevant and important in the lives of ordinary Kiwis he said “…frankly its one of the key platforms we will be contesting the 2014 election on”.

Air New Zealand sale starts tomorrow

Written By: - Date published: 4:40 pm, November 17th, 2013 - 294 comments

The Government has announced that the sell down of Air New Zealand shares will occur over the next two days.

Like nats leaving a sinking ship …

Written By: - Date published: 8:49 am, November 8th, 2013 - 48 comments

So far seven National MPs have announced they will not stand in next year’s general election and more announcements are rumoured to be in the pipeline.  Is the writing on the wall for this Government and will it become the first two term National Government in history?

Serious question: Treasury?

Written By: - Date published: 7:46 am, October 31st, 2013 - 86 comments

Why is Treasury providing the government with advice on spinning and disguising widespread changes to Education? In this way, NZ’s democracy is undermined, and changes are continually made that benefit the few and make life more difficult for the many. Government MO or renegade Treasury?

Outsourcing poverty: Paula Bennett’s shame

Written By: - Date published: 8:30 am, October 29th, 2013 - 51 comments

A charity is taking on the funding of the essential work on monitoring poverty, in the face of Paula Bennett, Bill English and John Key et al failing to do their job: a return to Dickensian & Edwardian times.

Government in trouble over Meridian Float

Written By: - Date published: 8:33 pm, October 23rd, 2013 - 34 comments

The Government has announced the results of the Meridian Share float and the results are all bad.  The country will receive up to $1.1 billion less than the shares were worth in 2011 and overseas entities will own 13% of the shares.  Remind me why we are selling the shares ?

Fight you bastards fight

Written By: - Date published: 9:26 am, October 23rd, 2013 - 49 comments

At least one MP if not the whole of National’s caucus knew that the news concerning Len Brown and Bevan Chuang would break soon eight days before it did.  Slater’s and Palino’s claims are becoming more and more difficult to believe.  And in a comment yesterday Bad12 sums up why this is such bad news for National.

Have National’s asset sales officially cost more than they’ll earn?

Written By: - Date published: 7:00 pm, September 22nd, 2013 - 51 comments

In a previous post at The Standard I did a wee bit of math and came to the conclusion that National has already made $5.26 billion worth of spending promises out of the Future Investment Fund, the not-actually-a-fund chunk of cash they plan to make from selling taxpayer-built infrastructure to their mates. Things have developed. […]

This is/is not democracy

Written By: - Date published: 1:05 pm, August 12th, 2013 - 106 comments

The Nats’ PR-managed conference stifled democratic debate & bright ideas, and diverted from significant issues.  Armstrong attempts to talk it up, while exposing Key’s win-at-all-costs ruthlessness. Meanwhile: speakers announced for democratic meeting to Kill the GCSB Bill [Updated – Hagar also speaking]. [Update: Gordon Campbell – ‘Nanny National‘]

Is the Government bailing out Solid Energy using the Future Investment Fund or not?

Written By: - Date published: 2:15 pm, July 8th, 2013 - 18 comments

john key sucking it upThe Government is planning to spend up to $100 million from the sale of one SOE, Mighty River Power, to prop up another SOE, Solid Energy.  And the Prime Minister thinks one day that it definitely isn’t and the next day it may but it probably won’t and it is all too complex.  Confused?

Post Key leadership struggle goes mainstream

Written By: - Date published: 10:25 am, July 2nd, 2013 - 67 comments

The simmering leadership struggle in the National party doesn’t get a lot of attention in the mainstream media, but here’s an exception. Judith Collins will not be pleased.