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Thumbs down for Joyce’s ministerial domain

Written By: - Date published: 8:23 am, December 22nd, 2014 - 33 comments

A new report shows that Steven Joyce’s MBIE fiefdom is failing miserably.  Meanwhile the MBIE is under fire for the major cost blow out of the Sky City Casino deal – another deal with Joyce’s imprints all over it.

Local Bodies: “Government Given the Bums Up”

Written By: - Date published: 9:55 am, December 10th, 2014 - 5 comments

From the Local Bodies blog, 2 posts on the government’s “head in the sand” approach to climate change and the environment.  A critique of the government’s approach to business, mining and the environment & a report on the protest against the government’s head in the sand approach.

Dirty Politics and the health advocates

Written By: - Date published: 8:00 am, December 6th, 2014 - 59 comments

How is it that Katherine Rich can be the head of the Food and Grocery Council and look after the interests of suppliers yet at the same time be on the Health Promotion Agency and not have a conflict?

Exploited workers need union protection

Written By: - Date published: 11:20 am, December 1st, 2014 - 30 comments

Another example of a bad employer unfairly docking a worker’s pay. But this worker was a union member…

One law for the rich

Written By: - Date published: 9:10 am, November 20th, 2014 - 77 comments

And, as ever, one for the poor.

Social housing providers

Written By: - Date published: 9:08 am, November 12th, 2014 - 46 comments

Is Key planning to flog off state houses at half price to a liquor company?

Effects of privatised power

Written By: - Date published: 7:13 am, November 11th, 2014 - 120 comments

The entirely predictable effects of privatising much of our electricity generation capacity are arriving thick and fast.

Fifty year mortgages

Written By: - Date published: 9:22 am, November 9th, 2014 - 79 comments

Fifty year mortgages are here, and as usual the game is rigged against the ordinary buyer. Madness.

EEO Commissioner blasts employment law changes

Written By: - Date published: 7:33 am, November 1st, 2014 - 43 comments

Workers have lost the statutory right to meal breaks and smokos. Equal Employment Opportunities (EEO) Commissioner Jackie Blue – who happens to be an ex Nat MP – pulls no punches in setting out the consequences.

NRT: National lets Shell drill illegally

Written By: - Date published: 10:28 am, October 26th, 2014 - 14 comments

Illegal drilling in our “Exclusive Economic Zone” gets let off with a “warning”.

Hickey on the living wage

Written By: - Date published: 9:39 am, October 12th, 2014 - 22 comments

Excellent piece by Bernard Hickey in The Herald this morning.

The long reach of “5 Eyes”: re-post

Written By: - Date published: 11:52 am, October 6th, 2014 - 15 comments

With Chris Finlayson just announced as minister in charge of GCSB & SIS, I thought it appropriate to re-post something I published on The Standard back in July 2013: links 5 Eyes’ attorney generals, cyber-security, Dotcom, etc.

NZ Inc

Written By: - Date published: 10:31 am, September 14th, 2014 - 119 comments

David Cunliffe has announced his final big policy. It’s called NZ Inc and it’s a bloody smart move.

Dancing on the grave of Hollywood and the reformation of the music industry

Written By: - Date published: 7:57 pm, August 3rd, 2014 - 144 comments

During every revolution there will be winners and losers, change can mean pain for some, especially for the bloodsucking leaches & parasites, that have entrenched their positions, after years of mediocrity. Yes the death of Hollywood and current Music industry would cause financial pain for some, including some of the arguably overpaid actors and performers […]

ACT’s voodoo economics

Written By: - Date published: 6:18 pm, August 3rd, 2014 - 53 comments

ACT has announced its corporate tax policy and a cut in the rate from 0.28c to 0.125c in the dollar is promised. There is a slight problem. The figures do not add up.

Russel Norman: ‘smart, green’, innovation economy

Written By: - Date published: 1:47 pm, July 16th, 2014 - 34 comments

Russel Norman has announced a business-friendly policy for a “smart, green” focus on innovation.  A move towards a “Green New Deal”, working with the current system, and away from neoliberalism.  It won’t dismantle capitalism, but exists within a framework for a fairer NZ.

The real aims of National’s “Education” policy.

Written By: - Date published: 10:32 am, July 8th, 2014 - 149 comments

If the aims of National/ACT’s education policy were, genuinely, to to improve the learning, education and career choices for our children, including the ones that are failing at present, they would not be following policies which have signally failed to achieve any of these goals, anywhere else they have been tried.

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.

Two worlds: banksters; NZ child poverty

Written By: - Date published: 7:41 am, June 15th, 2014 - 253 comments

Al Jazeera outlines the dubious ethics of Goldman Sachs and the oligarchy it supports.  They don’t give a shit about the lives they damage, or the resulting increases in inequality. The Nation interviews call for increasing public pressure on politicians to tackle NZ’s appalling child poverty.

The neoliberal power game: cities for sale

Written By: - Date published: 7:24 am, May 4th, 2014 - 27 comments

An NZ Herald article about Mai Chen’s book on Auckland Council, supports big power, big money, big competition, and economic activities focused on anything but the production of material needs and wants.  It ignores the struggling precariat living with housing, income, transport and energy poverty.

Corrosive, anti-democratic power of big money

Written By: - Date published: 9:23 am, May 2nd, 2014 - 86 comments

Too many MPs in the NAct government, & some journalists, fail to understand that the negative impacts of the infiltration into politics of the worst ethos of big business & big money: croynism, networks of power & influence, self-serving, buddy-supporting actions, & deceptive manipulations of public relations.

Thanks for the Piss, Collins.

Written By: - Date published: 11:41 am, April 26th, 2014 - 108 comments

Karol has already mentioned this in her post from this morning. But in the interests of splitting milk from alcohol…

Patricia Grace takes on RONS

Written By: - Date published: 9:29 am, April 1st, 2014 - 48 comments

The Kapiti Expressway is one of the National government’s RONS projects:  it makes no sense economically.  It is destructive to the environment and the local communities. The NZTA is attempting to run roughshod over ancestral lands, including that of writer, Patricia Grace.  She is taking a stand.

Domestic violence is a work issue

Written By: - Date published: 8:30 am, April 1st, 2014 - 88 comments

We can now put a dollar figure – a conservative, probably-underestimated figure – on the cost of domestic violence to New Zealand business. That’s due to a report commissed by the Public Service Association, released yesterday in conjunction with a Member’s Bill from Green MP Jan Logie which will change our law to protect victims […]

Corporates for TPP

Written By: - Date published: 9:00 am, March 22nd, 2014 - 47 comments

Big (US) Pharma has been the leading lobbyist that has shaped the TPP, followed by corporates in the following industries; Hollywood, automobile, textiles, dairy. This makes the TPP a major threat to the interests and well-being of Kiwis. Good reasons to take part in next Saturday’s Day Of Action (29 March 1pm) across NZ.

Taiwan

Written By: - Date published: 11:28 am, March 19th, 2014 - 9 comments

Taiwanese legislature occupied. Could be news…

Beltway blues: serving the public interest?

Written By: - Date published: 12:00 pm, March 10th, 2014 - 32 comments

Gower’s one-dimensional, distorted, gotcha reporting, highlights the failings of TV3 news & The Nation.  Corin Dann and Qu &A are less one-dimensional, but speak within the B-Hive-Media Loop, that  speaks for the comfortable middle & Business classes, & manufactured a “problem” week for Cunliffe.

NZ Herald watch – history repeats

Written By: - Date published: 10:50 am, February 7th, 2014 - 146 comments

The NZ Herald has a long history of opposing Maori resistance and supporting colonisation. It has always been right wing with a strong commercial focus & MO.  Yesterday it censored news of Waitangi Day protests.  Today an editorial spins in slippery style, for the Govt’s failing PowerCo sales.

Gambling harm: “commercially sensitive”

Written By: - Date published: 5:40 pm, November 5th, 2013 - 23 comments

Are we to expect that next time a cigarette company wants to withhold the evidence that smoking will take 11 years off the life of every second smoker, they just need to do a dodgy deal with National to build a convention centre with added ciggie sale points right? Or the booze barons could build a convention centre / mega-bar and no papers will be allowed out on alcohol harm either presumably? At what point do the best interests of New Zealanders get to trump the best interests of foreign corporates?

Doing what works

Written By: - Date published: 9:21 am, November 4th, 2013 - 88 comments

One of Steven Joyce’s favourite refrains is that Labour is trying to take us back to the 1970s. You know, those dark days when unemployment was near non-existent, wages were high, growth was strong despite external shocks, we had nearly no foreign debt, profits stayed here, were we one of the richest and most egalitarian countries. He’s not far wrong.

National: the party the insurance companies bought

Written By: - Date published: 6:47 am, November 4th, 2013 - 72 comments

National and the Insurance Council are in lock-step in their opposition to KiwiAssure. That’s no coincidence, the two are very closely linked. We know that the Insurance Council’s head was Bill English’s Chief Advisor. But the links go deeper. The insurers gave National a million dollars for its ACC privatisation policy in 2005, they colluded to keep the details secret.

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