john key
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Repeating the mistakes of others
Written By: - Date published: 7:07 am, April 29th, 2008 - 13 comments
Remember National’s policy of charging a $50 levy on everyone convicted of or, maybe, charged with (Key keeps on mixing up the terms) an offence? Remember all the obvious problems with it enforcement, administration cost, natural justice issues, the pitiful size of the sum that would be collected? Well, it turns out we missed one. […]
A broadband world
Written By: - Date published: 2:24 pm, April 23rd, 2008 - 6 comments
So John Key has announced that a National-led government would spend “up to” $1.5 billion on fibre optic cable to the home. Well that’s a good thing right? Even I can appreciate the importance of Kiwi homes and businesses getting access to high speed broadband (even if it is solely for the use of my children’s […]
I’ve got a solution, what’s the problem?
Written By: - Date published: 9:44 am, April 23rd, 2008 - 38 comments
The junior doctors’ strike is a difficult issue. On the one hand, these are highly valuable workers whom we can’t afford to lose overseas and they do work long hours in difficult conditions. On the other hand, the pay rise they want would cost $50 million and is well above what other medical professionals have […]
Note to John: get a new lawyer
Written By: - Date published: 10:59 am, April 21st, 2008 - 18 comments
John Key: ‘ my lawyer actually does those things clearly [he] had the wrong information.’ That’s how Slippery John explained why legal documents showed him living at different addresses at the same time. For election purposes he had claimed to be living at his $1.1 million home in Waimauku in his electorate, but on documents […]
Ralston sez: leave poor Johnny alone
Written By: - Date published: 5:45 pm, April 20th, 2008 - 61 comments
In the Herald today, Bill Ralston sticks up for poor John Key who has been the subject of personal political attacks recently. Like Key, Ralston wonders what is “the cost of the Government using countless bureaucrats to endlessly scour records in an attempt to discover inconsistencies in any utterance [Key has] made”. Ralston needs to […]
Hutchison chases the Green Fairy
Written By: - Date published: 2:59 pm, April 18th, 2008 - 18 comments
Earlier this week, John Key had a whinge about ‘personal’ political attacks on him. Particularly, he thought it was a waste of taxpayers’ money that some Labour MPs wrote and performed a version of The Gambler mocking him. The song was written in a pub on a Saturday night (Key thinks they should been reading […]
Business to Key: ‘You’re ruining everything’
Written By: - Date published: 11:50 am, April 18th, 2008 - 54 comments
Business is starting to get worried. This was meant to, finally, be the year that they got the Left out of government and started making New Zealand work for the business elite again. But there’s a problem: the man they chose for the job. Sure, Key’s got a cheeky grin but on real ‘prime minister […]
Flip-flopping at warp speed
Written By: - Date published: 3:13 pm, April 17th, 2008 - 31 comments
On Monday, I wrote ‘Stay tuned for National’s next assets policy, due out sometime next week.’ It seems I miscalculated. Here’s what Key had to say on asset sales today on newstalkzb: ‘I’m going to go into an election with a group of policies and those policies we will implement or not implement as the […]
Cost of benefit system plummeting
Written By: - Date published: 1:40 pm, April 17th, 2008 - 26 comments
Continuing our benefits theme, here’s a look at how much the benefit system costs you. The figures are the combined expenditure by the Government on the Unemployment, Sickness, Invalids’, and Domestic Purposes benefits per day per working age New Zealander, in 2007 dollars. Sources: MSD (1,2,3), StatsNZ (4,5) The portion of the working age population […]
Police confirm Brash email leak an inside job
Written By: - Date published: 10:42 am, April 16th, 2008 - 19 comments
Police have closed their investigation into the theft of e-mails from former National Party leader Dr Don Brash and have announced that they have been unsuccessful in identifying those responsible for the thefts. Despite Brash’s ongoing insistence to the contrary, the police have said that they’ve been able to rule out the possibility than an […]
Nothing personal, John
Written By: - Date published: 10:18 am, April 16th, 2008 - 74 comments
John Key’s latest line is to whine that Labour and others (including this blog) are launching personal attacks on him, and would we please stop. Our attacks are not personal, they are political. National wants to be in control of the Government, control an operation with a budget of near $60 billion and quarter of […]
Nats’ school funding policy under attack
Written By: - Date published: 2:45 pm, April 15th, 2008 - 33 comments
Stuff reports that “Principals and teachers have savaged a National Party plan to increase funding for private schools, calling it a thinly disguised tax break for the rich.” New Zealand Secondary Principals’ Council chairman Arthur Graves called Key’s proposal to increase funding to private schools at the expense of the public system “a deliberate attempt […]
Key’s record on Te WÄnanga o Aotearoa
Written By: - Date published: 1:45 pm, April 15th, 2008 - 7 comments
The Herald is really doing its best to help out National. Today it proclaims ‘Key’s wananga visit undoes Brash legacy‘. That nice Mr Key has undone all the harm caused by that nasty old Dr Brash, we’re meant to believe. But check the record. It wasn’t Brash who led the attack on Te WÄnanga o […]
National’s interest rates record
Written By: - Date published: 7:00 am, April 15th, 2008 - 22 comments
National’s latest line is that interest rates have doubled under Labour, with the implication that National would magically lower inflation (while simultaneously pouring more money into the economy through lower surpluses) so rates would fall. But, as with so much National says, a quick look at the record reveals the lie. Average Mortgage Rate- Nat: 9.7%, […]
“I can’t even remember”
Written By: - Date published: 5:54 pm, April 13th, 2008 - 18 comments
A reader sent us this very good video of John Key’s repeated memory lapses over where he stood on the Springbok tour: The tour was the defining event of a generation, and it’s simply not plausible that a politically aware university student would not have had a position one way or the other. While I […]
To sell or not to sell
Written By: - Date published: 11:00 pm, April 12th, 2008 - 11 comments
At the Labour Party congress today, Helen Clark predicted that asset sales would be a key election issue and says the Government was right to veto the Auckland Airport share bid. “The National Party and ACT have made it plain where they stand – ‘sell it off’, they cry. This is a defining issue. In […]
Key’s plan for NZ to require lots of tug-boats
Written By: - Date published: 1:50 pm, April 9th, 2008 - 42 comments
From Key’s speech to the NZ Institute of Foreign Affairs on emulating the ‘Celtic Tiger’: “Thirty years ago, Ireland was a total basket case. Today, it has all of the trappings of a considerable economic success story, including the capacity to attract and retain smart, educated, enterprising people. three key policy initiatives which were critical […]
Finlay MacDonald: The Audacity of Hype
Written By: - Date published: 10:23 am, April 8th, 2008 - 14 comments
A reader wrote to us to say that they’d recently seen Finlay MacDonald speak at Otago University as part of the Distinguished Communicator Lecture Series for the Centre of Science Communication. The talk is now online: The Audacity of Hype: John Key and the new National Socialism. In case you hadn’t picked up on this […]
A dereliction of duty
Written By: - Date published: 3:20 pm, April 7th, 2008 - 39 comments
John Key’s failure to ask a parliamentary question last week exposes a crisis of confidence in National’s ranks. It is unprecedented for an Opposition leader to be in attendance in the House for a full sitting week, and to not once challenge the Government. This never happened when Helen Clark led Labour in Opposition from […]
What’s Eating Slippery John?
Written By: - Date published: 8:24 pm, April 4th, 2008 - 23 comments
Slippery John and his mates seemed pretty down in the dumps in the House this week. I know that no one, but a few political junkies, watch the House but a political party’s performance there is a good indicator for their mood. And, frankly, the Nats and their leader were not in a good one. […]
John Key’s DVD: Take 2
Written By: - Date published: 10:27 am, April 4th, 2008 - 20 comments
Our sources tell us National is set to follow-up to last year’s DVD ‘John Key: Vacuous for New Zealand’ with its sequel ‘John Key: I won’t bite, promise’. ‘Vacuous’ was withdrawn after The Standard and Kiwiblogblog revealed that Key had illegally used Coldplay’s ‘Clocks‘ as the theme tune. National and Coldplay’s record label are reported […]
Didn’t take long
Written By: - Date published: 10:25 am, April 4th, 2008 - 7 comments
A reader just sent us this – REM meets John Key. (Hat-tip: PJ)
“Frankly, it’s a market”
Written By: - Date published: 3:33 pm, April 3rd, 2008 - 9 comments
That’s what Key said when asked about his plan to increase GP fees. A reader reckons Key’s planning to apply the same market logic to crime: Great cartoon. No wonder National’s Law and order Spokesperson, Simon Power, is distancing himself from Key’s policy.
Poor Poor John
Written By: - Date published: 8:15 pm, April 2nd, 2008 - 43 comments
Tracy Watkins tells us in today’s Dom-Post that John Key may have taken a beating in the stock market lately. He wouldn’t say how much he lost, but did admit, ‘I’m worth less than I was.’ And, I’ll bet some in his Caucus would agree. Anyway, Tracy tells us that Poor John came to New […]
Power disavows $50 offender penalty
Written By: - Date published: 4:30 pm, April 2nd, 2008 - 17 comments
Duncan Garner kept Copperfield diners entertained yesterday by teasing Simon Power about the implications of National’s $50 conviction levy. We’re told that in response Power threw his hands into the air and exclaimed loudly that the policy wasn’t “his”. What an odd thing for the National Party spokesperson on law and order to say. It […]
Key takes back seat on Labour’s big day
Written By: - Date published: 2:52 pm, April 1st, 2008 - 23 comments
Perhaps he’s still getting into the swing of things after his Aussie holiday or perhaps he just doesn’t want to take on Cullen – either way, it’s a little odd that John Key doesn’t have any oral questions in the House today. On a day when Labour’s openly celebrating a number of policy rollouts it’s […]
“The Panel” on John Key
Written By: - Date published: 12:40 pm, March 26th, 2008 - 14 comments
Looks like people are starting to notice that the emperor has no clothes. powered by ODEO (Hat-tip: BB)
The 50 cent tax cut
Written By: - Date published: 9:33 am, March 26th, 2008 - 16 comments
This morning on Breakfast, John Key repeated his line that capping the size of the core public service (that includes planning staff for health, prison guards, and the human rights commission) at current levels would ‘save $500 million over three years that could be used for more ‘frontline’ staff and tax-cuts’. Leaving aside that it’s not […]
Pressure building for Nats on R&D
Written By: - Date published: 4:30 pm, March 25th, 2008 - 2 comments
Lest you think we are totally urban focused one of our readers sent us this recent editorial in the Rural News. In it they offer some positive comments around the recent R&D announcement from the government and ponder on National’s inability to offer up any policy: Rural News: “There has been a recurring theme resonating […]
It’s your fault I keep saying contradictory things
Written By: - Date published: 9:30 am, March 25th, 2008 - 9 comments
Regular readers will remember that one of John Key’s excuses for he ‘we would love to see wages drop‘ quote was that the reporter had misquoted him. Now, Key has once again shown a disturbing trait of attributing his own mistakes to others. When asked about the possibility of moving National’s tax cut programme forward […]
John’s quick act sets up another flip
Written By: - Date published: 1:24 pm, March 21st, 2008 - 19 comments
Two days ago we ran a piece called ‘If I were ACT’s campaign strategist‘ which suggested ‘ACT needs to lay claim to the true right, without going so extreme that National has to disown them, by articulating a series of classic right-wing policies including: tax cuts, spending cuts, asset sales, and deregulation’. I didn’t realise […]
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