Written By: - Date published: 8:00 am, February 14th, 2020 - 34 comments
The coronavirus outbreak that exploded three weeks ago in the central Chinese city of Wuhan has prompted the most severe Chinese government actions in three decades.
Written By: - Date published: 10:41 am, February 8th, 2020 - 20 comments
Mainstream media yet again aiding and abetting the character assassination of whistle blowers.
Written By: - Date published: 7:30 am, February 3rd, 2020 - 104 comments
It’s not often you find New Zealanders who give every single breath they have to the left and do it with resounding and even global success. Such a person was Mike Moore.
Written By: - Date published: 9:26 am, January 27th, 2020 - 15 comments
With China’s New Year arriving, and a terrible flu virus struggling to be contained within it at the same time, it’s time to reflect again on China’s future and impact for New Zealand.
Written By: - Date published: 11:23 am, December 12th, 2019 - 5 comments
Can the Conservatives get brexit done by January 31st as they are promising in the election? The short answer is no. The slogan is catchy, and taps into public sentiment. But it is also pure unadulterated bullshit. If the Conservatives do form the next government these words will haunt them, especially Boris Johnson.
Written By: - Date published: 11:18 am, December 12th, 2019 - 18 comments
Millions of people and an entire region of the UK left out of polling calculations….
Written By: - Date published: 12:14 pm, December 10th, 2019 - 18 comments
The NHS is well loved by the British public. It is seen as something which makes British society decent and civilised. That the NHS is now stretched and badly underfunded is seen as a national outrage. Fears of even further privatisation of the NHS due to a US trade deal has unsurprisingly made the NHS the number one election issue.
Written By: - Date published: 4:17 pm, October 1st, 2019 - 91 comments
October 1st is the National Day of the People’s Republic of China. They like to make it a big day, bigger than the United States’ July 4th. It’s called Golden Week because they all really holiday and reconnect across the country. They shop like lock forwards pack down. It’s massive. As the 70th event, it […]
Written By: - Date published: 9:15 am, September 29th, 2019 - 24 comments
Why New Zealand – and its government – need to engage much harder about Fonterra.
Written By: - Date published: 7:15 am, August 27th, 2019 - 47 comments
New Zealand’s poster boys for late stage capitalism’s dying throes are fools of the highest order.
Written By: - Date published: 7:38 am, August 19th, 2019 - 95 comments
Fonterra is dragging New Zealand down, faster and faster. What is this Government going to do?
Written By: - Date published: 8:22 am, June 16th, 2019 - 20 comments
Carrie Lam, the Chief Executive of Hong Kong, has permanently suspended the legislative proposal to enable extradition of Hong Kong people to among other places mainland China.
Written By: - Date published: 8:45 am, June 3rd, 2019 - 49 comments
With the United States – China trade war well underway, the sick chaos of Brexit is shrinking the U.K. economy and slowing much of Europe’s economy, and smaller economies such as that of Mexico in the crosshairs through further politically manufactured trade disputes, the second half of this year looks for New Zealand nowhere near as rosy as the first half.
Written By: - Date published: 9:38 pm, January 14th, 2019 - 120 comments
Winston Peters went to Washington last December to see US VP Mike Pence and invited the US to engage more in the South-West Pacific without informing Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Patrick Smellie described this apparent oversight as “deeply worrying.” Even more worrying is what Peters said when he was there.
Written By: - Date published: 10:22 pm, December 8th, 2018 - 62 comments
I like my Huawei phone. Apparently the US National Security Agency can’t break its encryption. That’s presumably the “security” issue why Spark is being blocked from using Huawei, and why Meng Wanzhou is held hostage in Canada at the behest of US neocons.
Written By: - Date published: 10:35 pm, November 20th, 2018 - 82 comments
China certainly has interfered in New Zealand politics, most notably by the offer of a free trade deal which delivered huge benefits to our economy. Party and government officials all stressed to us that they were grateful for New Zealand’s support for their accession to the World Trade Organisation, the rule-based trade body. The US and Australia in contrast want to build a military base on Manus Island north of Papua.
Written By: - Date published: 11:37 am, September 19th, 2018 - 33 comments
In short, I think not.
Written By: - Date published: 9:35 am, September 13th, 2018 - 67 comments
Fonterra has just reported an after tax loss of $196 million for the 2018 year. It’s never had an annual loss in its history.
Written By: - Date published: 11:13 am, August 31st, 2018 - 37 comments
Lately the news has been all doom and gloom about business confidence. But what is the reality? And should we worry what an Australian Bank is telling us?
Written By: - Date published: 8:38 am, July 20th, 2018 - 41 comments
Occasional Standard reader Matthew Hooton has written a cogent column on industrial relations in which he realises and accepts that wages for ordinary workers are too low.
Written By: - Date published: 1:56 pm, July 9th, 2018 - 27 comments
The speed of the growing trade war between the United States and China will hit New Zealand. Our long term diplomatic arc, such that it is, was to follow a modernist impulse set after World War Two: that economic growth and democracy matched deep human impulses for freedom and prosperity together. China has never assented […]
Written By: - Date published: 6:07 pm, April 2nd, 2018 - 99 comments
In the second stage of a false flag attack, facts go out the window and the sole issue becomes “are you for us or against us.” Our media and National Party politicians are well into this stage in the Skripal affair. But as questions mount and skeptics proliferate from all sides, Jacinda Ardern and Winston Peters may well be wiser than media advisers by not following blindly the western herd. 26 countries is not the whole world. Update: Porton Down unable to establish Novichok of Russian origin.
Written By: - Date published: 6:05 am, March 25th, 2018 - 94 comments
“Article 17.4 says the government must ensure that SOEs like Air New Zealand act solely in accordance with commercial considerations, unless there is an explicit public service mandate for services that operate purely within the country. There is no such mandate for Air New Zealand.”
Written By: - Date published: 8:30 am, March 8th, 2018 - 82 comments
The TPP is due to be signed today. For those who aren’t done to death with hearing about it, why is it still bad, why hasn’t it met Labour’s bottom lines, and why are we even signing it?
Written By: - Date published: 6:17 am, March 8th, 2018 - 18 comments
As Labour picks up the pen to sign the TPPA, environmental critics argue that the new agreement has done nothing to allay fears of New Zealand being sued by corporations to prevent the government from taking action on climate change.
Written By: - Date published: 6:10 am, March 8th, 2018 - 10 comments
Protestors will gather outside Parliament at midday on Thursday 8 March to hear from a range of speakers in opposition to the TPPA signing ceremony in Chile
Written By: - Date published: 6:05 am, March 6th, 2018 - 44 comments
The message coming out is hold the line, sign the petition, regroup, and protest on Thurs the 8th, the day Labour puts our name to the agreement.
Written By: - Date published: 8:45 am, March 4th, 2018 - 82 comments
Does anyone want to take a punt on where the U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum will go?
Written By: - Date published: 6:04 am, March 1st, 2018 - 177 comments
“As Greens, what’s particularly chilling to us is that we know elsewhere in the world where ISDS clauses have been accessed to sue Governments, corporates have used them to stop environmental protection.” … “The Indonesian environmental Minister had to admit, ‘If we shut them down, they will need compensation and Indonesia can’t afford it.’ That is chilling.”
Written By: - Date published: 10:08 pm, February 20th, 2018 - 11 comments
The Lord Mayor of the City of London is visiting New Zealand. Its not Sadiq Khan, Charles Bowman is a PwC partner leading London’s financial centre lobby. He’s here to talk to business and regulators. He’ll no doubt be talking up more deregulation.
Written By: - Date published: 8:53 am, January 25th, 2018 - 137 comments
The positive aspects of the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans Pacific Partnership.
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