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Your PM at work for you

Written By: - Date published: 10:30 am, October 1st, 2011 - 19 comments

Another in what looks like becoming a regular series.

Nats warn of credit downgrade

Written By: - Date published: 7:39 am, October 1st, 2011 - 17 comments

The Nats have indulged in a long series of boastful posturings and dire warnings about the risks of a credit downgrade, many of them as recently as August 10th.  Now that they have suffered not one, but two separate credit downgrades, Mr Smile and Wave has some explaining to do.

Gap closes in latest Fairfax

Written By: - Date published: 9:01 am, September 28th, 2011 - 56 comments

The latest Fairfax poll has the Labour – National gap closing a bit.

Sleepover Bill in House tonight

Written By: - Date published: 4:10 pm, September 27th, 2011 - 48 comments

Covert surveillance should not be allowed retrospectively

Written By: - Date published: 3:00 pm, September 27th, 2011 - 55 comments

mickysavage at Waitakere News blog  has an analysis of the legal and unconstitutional implications of the Nationals dubious plan to override the courts with poor kneejerk legislation. It is rather disturbing as the action appears to have more to do with electioneering than actual legal need.

Partisan politics

Written By: - Date published: 7:12 am, September 26th, 2011 - 45 comments

John Key is ridiculously negative on seemingly any proposal raised by a perceived political opponent.  Which is a pity, because there are issues facing the country that need a bipartisan consensus.

NRT: A blank cheque

Written By: - Date published: 12:25 pm, September 24th, 2011 - 17 comments

No Right Turn points out the salient feature of National’s hysterical response to the Supreme Court’s decision on video surveillance. Reading the blank cheque that they are proposing indicates that the government has no understanding of what “the rule of law” means. It certainly does not include half-arsed measures like this.

Roaring out of recession

Written By: - Date published: 6:07 pm, September 22nd, 2011 - 30 comments

So here we are then.  “Roaring out of recession”.  Or – not.

National Policy?

Written By: - Date published: 9:14 am, September 20th, 2011 - 57 comments

John Pagani has an excellent piece on the lack of National substance in the lead-up to this election.

Like last election we’re seeing Labour say what they would do, presenting one alternative, as National fail to present theirs; relying on that nice man John Key’s image over any policy substance.

Your PM at work for you

Written By: - Date published: 7:35 am, September 20th, 2011 - 38 comments

Two news snippets yesterday seemed to me to capture the essence of John Key PM.  First, his response to recommendations about super, and second his prognostications on the Christchurch insurance market.

Slow follower

Written By: - Date published: 12:20 pm, September 16th, 2011 - 16 comments

When it comes to making any kind of effort to saving the planet from catastrophic climate change I guess being even a “fast follower” was just a little too ambitious for the Key government.

NRT – A permanent dictatorship in Canterbury?

Written By: - Date published: 11:07 am, September 15th, 2011 - 13 comments

NRT continues to provide excellent coverage on the governance of Canterbury.

Nats clueless on privatisation consequences

Written By: - Date published: 11:01 am, September 7th, 2011 - 17 comments

If electricity assets were part privatised, future governments couldn’t make the kind of reforms that National made earlier this year because of the need to consider private investors’ rights. Pretty simple, eh? Tell that to Hekia Parata. Bill English has his head in the sand on the effect of falling markets and can’t guarantee Kiwi ownership.

Diverse hypocrites

Written By: - Date published: 7:22 am, September 7th, 2011 - 69 comments

National is the party of middle aged white guys, but according to their chief spinster we shouldn’t care…

No renewables for National

Written By: - Date published: 6:39 pm, September 4th, 2011 - 36 comments

The right sure won’t be able to criticise Labour about a lack of renewal in their list after National’s release of their party list.  If you want an actual example of what a non-renewing list really looks like, I think we now have the definitive one. It looks a lot like their energy policy this week – lots of pious talk about renewables but really just mining the same old things that have been doing for generations.

Lest we forget

Written By: - Date published: 10:15 am, September 4th, 2011 - 42 comments

Nats’ economic policy billboard revealed

Written By: - Date published: 11:07 am, September 2nd, 2011 - 11 comments

Wrong government for the times

Written By: - Date published: 7:25 am, September 1st, 2011 - 44 comments

Fran O’Sullivan calls on the government to act on Christchurch.  Good luck with that.  This is not a government of action.  It is the wrong government for these challenging times.

Freedom and security

Written By: - Date published: 9:22 am, August 25th, 2011 - 30 comments

The government is planning a crack down on “organised crime”.  What could possibly be wrong with that?

Nats talk to locals in [insert region here]

Written By: - Date published: 6:32 am, August 25th, 2011 - 42 comments

John Hartevelt ran a piece yesterday about National’s paint by numbers press releases. The problem here is not with National MPs and candidates using the same words to describe their policies or government spin. It’s when they claim, in identical words, to have had information from the public when that isn’t true, it’s just a cookie-cutter line and a lie.

Substance vs style

Written By: - Date published: 7:32 am, August 24th, 2011 - 75 comments

A couple of polls have now confirmed that on key issues voters prefer Labour policy over National.  When push comes to shove in November, will Kiwis vote for the style that they like, or the substance that they want?

Return to [insert region here]

Written By: - Date published: 11:11 am, August 23rd, 2011 - 7 comments

Jackie Blue, MP for [insert region here], accidentally unmasked National’s media practices when she published a blog post called “Generic Column – Lifting Education Standards” and forgot to add the ‘personal touch’. Now, the Dimpost has shown that the Nats are still using these [insert region here] columns to spread the party line.

Epic fail

Written By: - Date published: 7:01 am, August 16th, 2011 - 64 comments

Like most of us, Fran O’Sullivan was expecting so much more from the Nats at their conference…

Nats rebel on privatisation

Written By: - Date published: 5:17 pm, August 13th, 2011 - 27 comments

English is under attack at the Nat conference over asset sales. The neolibs vultures treat the state as a carcass to pick clean. But old school conservatives believe in investing the nation. And business types know you don’t get rich by selling profitable assets. English has no good excuses. All he can offer is expensive measures that make selling even more unprofitable.

Nats say: if you don’t like it, riot

Written By: - Date published: 10:19 am, August 11th, 2011 - 82 comments

National has brought out some of the biggest protests in decades. Petitions of tens of thousands have called on the government to raise the minimum wage, support Kiwi manufacturing through Kiwirail, and protect early childhood education. It’s core policy – asset sales – is opposed 2 to 1. The message from National: if you don’t like it, riot.

NRT: Brownlee’s excuse

Written By: - Date published: 11:23 am, August 10th, 2011 - 27 comments

I/S at NoRightTurn has John Key and Gerry Brownlee floundering to explain why Brownlee hired National Party crony Jenny Shipley and other members of the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Review Panel at double the normal rate. Brownlee’s excuses are weak and nonsensical. It’s not good enough.

Too many hungry kids

Written By: - Date published: 7:13 am, July 27th, 2011 - 180 comments

Making sure that children don’t go hungry is not the responsibility of charity, it is the responsibility of all of us, of society. It is the responsibility of government.  The National government is failing.

The Auckland Disease (var. North Shore)

Written By: - Date published: 8:42 am, July 26th, 2011 - 27 comments

There is a long and sordid relationship between National governments and developers. Just how many favours have National done for developers over the years? Are the so-called ‘Roads of National Significance’, especially the Holiday Highway, just a continuation of this practice? Is it any coincidence that Nicky Hager’s Hollow Men are all Shore Boys?

Who grows better? Labour or National?

Written By: - Date published: 12:05 pm, July 22nd, 2011 - 89 comments

Under the last Labour-led government the GDP per capita rose 15.6%. Under John Key’s National, it has fallen 1.9%. ‘Ah but Labour was just lucky and Key has just been unlucky’, say the righties. The data, however, shows conclusively which party has the best record on growth.

Yet more dodgy Nat numbers

Written By: - Date published: 6:56 pm, July 18th, 2011 - 61 comments

If you’re a blogosphere regular, you’ll have noticed that recently every monkey with a copy of the Fountainhead and a crush on John Key has been spouting the line that the top 10% of taxpayers pay 71% of net tax. Sounds incredible, eh? That’s because it’s not credible. It’s more cheap tricks from the Nats.

More dodgy Nat numbers

Written By: - Date published: 10:23 pm, July 17th, 2011 - 102 comments

The Nats can’t tell us how much their asset sales policy will cost in lost dividends and sales costs, yet they’ve magicked up some numbers with all kinds of dodgy assumptions that supposedly show Labour’s tax package doesn’t add up. Well, I suppose they would know something about borrowing for tax cuts but their attacks on Labour aren’t credible.

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