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The United Airlines fiasco

Written By: mickysavage - Date published: 2:05 pm, April 12th, 2017 - 29 comments

United Airlines in America has in the past few days provided a text book example of how a large corporation should not behave.

Motels are full of homeless so now what?

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 9:15 am, April 11th, 2017 - 83 comments

Ordinary people are priced out of home ownership and increasingly out of renting, the state-housing safety net has been deliberately run down, and now the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff is full. National leaps into action – by asking the Salvation Army for ideas…

Property porn vs. reality

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 8:46 am, April 10th, 2017 - 92 comments

Sick of the property porn on the Stuff and Herald websites? It was refreshing to read the truth for a change.

Welfare is making Kiwis lazy and unemployable

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 8:26 am, April 2nd, 2017 - 166 comments

This old chestnut is getting another outing on Stuff today.

The neoliberal revolution

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 1:31 pm, April 1st, 2017 - 31 comments

Thirty years old today – the longest April Fool’s joke in history?

Spinoff series – rent week

Written By: notices and features - Date published: 12:51 pm, March 27th, 2017 - 58 comments

While much of the coverage of the housing crisis focuses on buyers, the situation facing renters is just as bad. Last week The Spinoff ran an excellent series on renting in NZ: “It’s getting desperate out there”.

Reducing substance abuse – what actually works

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 8:25 am, March 18th, 2017 - 66 comments

If, instead of macho posturing (like the “War on P”), we wanted to actually tackle substance abuse, we would be looking at what actually works. Interesting case study in Iceland.

English flogging National’s one-trick pony

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 9:50 am, March 13th, 2017 - 73 comments

Never mind the record debt, the dropped contributions to the Cullen fund, the housing crisis, rising poverty, the deteriorating health system, the costs of quake rebuilds, the filthy water, the need to prepare for climate change – never mind all that, have an election bribe!

A tenant’s tale

Written By: Guest post - Date published: 8:11 am, March 12th, 2017 - 198 comments

“And when I saw that article in the NZ Herald this morning , in light of whats been happening to so many New Zealander family’s having to sleep in cars and the like over the past few years – I thought ”FUCK IT !!”… Im going to say something.”

Household debt

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 11:47 am, March 8th, 2017 - 93 comments

The IMF warns that our household debt is far too high, as desperate tenants start raiding the Kiwisaver accounts to pay the rent.

NRT: The banality of evil

Written By: notices and features - Date published: 2:48 pm, March 6th, 2017 - 3 comments

I/S at No Right Turn: “This is where National’s cuts and austerity have taken us: to a place where Corrections tortures and abuses people because it is the “cheapest” way of managing them.”

The social damage wrought by homes as commoditites

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 7:04 am, March 4th, 2017 - 82 comments

A recent UN report highlights the waste of treating homes as commodities. It should sound awfully familiar in the NZ context.

Homeless crisis hidden in plain sight

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 8:11 am, February 28th, 2017 - 10 comments

Bill blames the blowout in emergency housing grants on the “hidden homeless”. Hidden only from those who will not see. Hidden only from a government that deliberately chooses for political reasons not to collect the relevant data.

Housing crisis what housing crisis

Written By: mickysavage - Date published: 8:02 am, February 27th, 2017 - 52 comments

The Government’s estimate of the extent of the housing crisis has recently been shown to be totally out of touch and to add further pathos it is counting kiwi families urgently housed in motels in tourism statistics.

You can’t afford a house because of – plants!

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 7:03 am, February 27th, 2017 - 58 comments

I’m used to hearing some pretty pathetic excuses out of the National government. But this will really take some beating.

Where to now for the left?

Written By: mickysavage - Date published: 10:43 am, February 26th, 2017 - 115 comments

With the right in ascendancy throughout the Western World what does the left do to change this?

Auckland: Stop Niki’s Eviction!

Written By: notices and features - Date published: 8:00 am, February 15th, 2017 - 82 comments

Time to take action against the destruction of communities and privatisation of social housing.

Salvation Army report – NZ “Off the Track”

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 8:56 am, February 8th, 2017 - 61 comments

“The absence of any meaningful progress in reducing child poverty rates over the past decade—and the lack of interest by Government in using welfare and income support programmes to do so—points to wilful indifference toward the long-term personal and social impacts of this avoidable harm.”

The SOE sell down three years on

Written By: mickysavage - Date published: 8:30 am, February 7th, 2017 - 78 comments

Some time in the next 12 months it is likely that the forgone dividend payments and loss in share value from the Power Company shares and Air NZ share sale will be greater than the amount received, only three years after the sale.

Unemployment rate up

Written By: notices and features - Date published: 8:15 am, February 2nd, 2017 - 12 comments

Despite National’s fiddling the figures on the way unemployment is counted, the unemployment rate is on the rise again.

Punching Nazis, and practicing resistance

Written By: weka - Date published: 12:40 pm, January 27th, 2017 - 186 comments

Being human, Linda Tirado, and lessons for New Zealand.

Lifeboat NZ

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 11:14 am, January 25th, 2017 - 100 comments

How do we feel about NZ becoming a lifeboat for the super-rich to run out on the problems that they created?

Minimum wage increase doesn’t meet real costs (the CPI is broken)

Written By: Anthony R0bins - Date published: 7:02 am, January 25th, 2017 - 53 comments

Any increase in the minimum wage is better than nothing, but National’s increases have not kept pace with the real cost increases (notably housing) faced by low income earners. That is why we are seeing the rise of the working poor, and increases in homelessness and poverty.