Written By: - Date published: 8:06 am, April 18th, 2019 - 232 comments
With the benefit of hindsight the decision not to proceed with a capital gains tax was almost inevitable.
Written By: - Date published: 8:43 am, March 22nd, 2019 - 128 comments
Now that I’ve had time to look through what has been implemented and what is proposed to happen with changes to gun laws and think about it. I’m almost satisfied. Since that so seldom happens that I suspect a gotcha, I’m now going to keep debugging until I am sure that it is actually as good as it looks.
Written By: - Date published: 5:35 am, March 21st, 2019 - 185 comments
Passing stringent gun controls is far from a knee-jerk reaction to the Christchurch massacre – our politicians of all stripes have procrastinated over this ever since the 1990 Aramoana massacre. We already have the 13 recommendations of the 2017 Law & Order committee that were rejected. Let us at the very least now accept those.
Written By: - Date published: 12:08 pm, March 20th, 2019 - 30 comments
Westland Dairy has done a deal to sell out to Yili industrial Group of Mongolia. This company is the third largest dairy company in New Zealand.
Written By: - Date published: 8:07 am, March 7th, 2019 - 111 comments
National has resorted to race baiting in its attempt to denigrate the Tax Working Group’s proposed capital gains tax.
Written By: - Date published: 11:56 am, February 16th, 2019 - 54 comments
It’s been a horror week for two leaders and a leader who will never be leader.
TRP casts a wary and weary eye over three political zombies whose time appears up.
And, oh, Jeremy Corbyn.
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: 9:41 pm, December 19th, 2018 - 37 comments
In Washington last week Winston Peters urged America to involve itself more in the Pacific, in a speech the Prime Minister was apparently unaware of. Referring to Africa, John Bolton outlined what that involvement would mean – American interests first and only. Dangerous with the neocons in charge of the playpen.
Written By: - Date published: 1:10 pm, December 15th, 2018 - 39 comments
Here’s your chance to vote in the Standard’s Politician of The Year awards. The SPOTY’s are recognised worldwide as the leading indicator of political success in NZ and have been awarded annually for over two hundred years.
Now it’s your turn to prick the Thorndon Bubble, dear reader. Who’s your Politician of the Year?
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: 8:35 am, December 7th, 2018 - 137 comments
National and ACT have alleged that a United Nations Pact supported by New Zealand in 2016 will take away sovereign rights even though the pact itself says that it is not legally binding.
Written By: - Date published: 9:33 pm, October 30th, 2018 - 86 comments
National had a spectacularly bad day today in Parliament.
Written By: - Date published: 8:32 am, October 1st, 2018 - 106 comments
New Zealand First at its conference on the weekend passed a remit to calling for immigrants and refugees to “respect New Zealand values” which are founded on Christianity.
Written By: - Date published: 9:52 am, September 22nd, 2018 - 140 comments
Winston Peters said in Parliament this week that he believes he knows who the leaker of Simon Bridges’ travel information is.
Written By: - Date published: 5:06 pm, September 19th, 2018 - 35 comments
News of the Coalition’s bad health appears to be something of a beat up.
Written By: - Date published: 2:36 pm, September 16th, 2018 - 130 comments
Text of Jacinda Ardern’s major speech delivered today.
Written By: - Date published: 8:46 pm, September 8th, 2018 - 29 comments
In Politik’s 7 September issue we are told that Western diplomats in Wellington are surprised that Winston Peters has not accused Russia of the Skripal poisoning or joined some other countries in taking reprisals. Editor Richard Harman quotes a source to tell us that the British in particular were “pissed” at Peters’ response. Well dearie me. I’m with Winston, a wise old owl.
Written By: - Date published: 12:49 pm, September 4th, 2018 - 30 comments
Winston has suggested that New Zealand First may not agree to an increase in the number of refugees New Zealand accepts. Even though the infrastructure needed for the increase is paid for.
Written By: - Date published: 8:07 pm, August 5th, 2018 - 94 comments
The 1 News/Colmar Brunton poll is out. The Government sails on serenely while Simon meets the people.
Written By: - Date published: 8:00 am, July 25th, 2018 - 76 comments
Simon Bridges, who is clearly struggling for relevance, has decided to try and improve his political position by bashing beneficiaries.
Written By: - Date published: 8:10 am, June 12th, 2018 - 78 comments
Winston Peters has commenced legal proceedings against Anne Tolley and Paula Bennett because of the leaking during last year’s election campaign of private information about a superannuation overpayment he received.
Written By: - Date published: 8:00 am, May 25th, 2018 - 53 comments
New Zealand has a low carbon energy future plan. What is the strategy to achieve this?
Written By: - Date published: 9:14 am, May 24th, 2018 - 21 comments
Is NZ’s fishing industry just a domestic version of the tobacco companies? And how much would that really matter?
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: 9:10 am, March 14th, 2018 - 164 comments
In his usual dignified way, Donald Trump announced that he was sacking Rex Tillerson, the American Secretary of State in a tweet. And so the round of musical chairs that marks the White House’s descent into even more incompetence continues. Meanwhile the farce of the Russian election proceeds in their background of state operated terrorism in the UK. But there is some light
Written By: - Date published: 9:12 pm, January 31st, 2018 - 20 comments
At a Union/NDP conference in March 2002 in Ottawa I saw wall-to-wall US TV attacking Iraq in my room. My caucus report that America was going to war was instinctive. Helen Clark stood up immediately and said that we wouldn’t be following. The US war dogs are barking again, this time over Korea. A recent […]
Written By: - Date published: 7:35 am, November 12th, 2017 - 84 comments
Herald lifestyle columnist has published two recent opinion pieces, the first wondering if Jacinda Ardern will be able to address the many and varied problems the country faces and the second suggesting that the Government is under the control of the extreme right. Can he please make up his mind.
Written By: - Date published: 11:19 am, November 8th, 2017 - 68 comments
Some aspects of the TPP no-one’s mentioning.
Written By: - Date published: 8:22 am, November 8th, 2017 - 113 comments
Winston Peters has launched a legal fishing expedition to identify who exactly breached privacy on his superannuation over payments. A problem that he shares with about 50 thousand other pensioners. Unlike them, his problem wasn’t trying to find money to repay it. It was that the breach was deliberately timed to be a classic dirty politics ploy, almost certainly by National, in the leadup to the recent election. I wish him good fishing.
Written By: - Date published: 8:03 am, October 24th, 2017 - 78 comments
Details about how the next Cabinet may be made up are emerging. Winston Peters may regain the position of Minister of Foreign Affairs as well as being Deputy Prime Minister.
Written By: - Date published: 8:58 am, October 20th, 2017 - 15 comments
NZ First chose to be inside Cabinet in a full coalition. I’d rather expected that they would choose to be in a confidence and supply agreement as they did with Labour back in 2005. That they decided to take the risk despite their previous experience with National is a stunning level of trust. But they work well with Labour.
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