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notices and features - Date published:
6:00 pm, July 9th, 2015 - 22 comments
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The current rise of populism challenges the way we think about people’s relationship to the economy.We seem to be entering an era of populism, in which leadership in a democracy is based on preferences of the population which do not seem entirely rational nor serving their longer interests. ...
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Treasury recommended shutting down NZ’s rail network:
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/political/278359/close-down-rail,-advised-the-treasury
The. Treasury clearly under the control of extreme ideological neo-liberals.
Run it into the ground, ignore long term planning, and then point out it’s broken so it should then be sold up.
Business as usual.
As we speak Gisborne suffering from a lack of rail contact with the rest of NZ.
All roads blocked for trucks exporting goods.
Ken shirley would be pleased.
But my suspicion is that mainfreight or similar will buy up the lines/bits that they need to link distribution centres (they know the value of rail) and then let the rest be bought back by the government for the fucking cycleway.
Rapidly becoming a 3rd world country.
Blankets…
FFS Treasury, Peak Oil! (CC, resiliency, future proofing). Although to be fair, those are all the responsibility of the government itself.
Kiwi Rail would like to shut down Treasury, I’m sure. Clearly the trucking and road construction lobbyists are busy. Did Treasury cost in the billions being spent on upgrading the road network for the commercial benefit of the truckers, and the cross subsidy that is in their favour? Roads built only for cars would only cost a fraction of the cost of roads (and bridges) built for these Juggernauts. It’s clear from the growing number of new trucks on our roads that it’s very profitable for the corporates. Run down (or eliminate) the public capacity and welcome in the private sector. After all it is business as usual.
Yes. Each truck causes as much damage to a road as 8,000 cars do. We all subsidise that.
Dependable, regular access to affordable oil is over in roughly 20 years. We rip up our rail now, we will fuck this country permanently.
Looking up Treasury Annual Reports Financial Schedules and Debt Management Office I see for 2014 they show for Personnel Costs about $55 million and for ‘other’ operating expenses $33 million.
Kiwi Rail for 2014 was advanced $180 million and paid about $10 million annually to govt. NZ Transport agency – advanced $100 million and paid about $4 million to govt.
The blue-sky style of research by someone in Treasury on whether we should have a railway could have funded a scientific researcher in developing some new process etc. Reduce Treasury, which now must have an astronomical cost, to an audit office and scientists can have the extra, and do some R&D that will leave us on a better planet.
http://www.treasury.govt.nz/publications/abouttreasury/annualreport/13-14/
Interesting that on the day the paper dump occurs and Smith’s housing plans are shown to be shyte and news the Government is thinking of closing Kiwirail is released National comes up with a home insulation policy.
These guys are good …
Labour could learn from that.
Normally I’d post this tomorrow. But Clarke & Dawe aces it.
The Listener’s caption contest!
http://www.listener.co.nz/comps/caption-competition-july-18-2015/
That’s John Campbell over there !
“Shit, Little’s got real hair!
5000 children assaulted last year under my watch?
Better blame it on this guy.
Dita De Boni ‘s: It’s war … but don’t tell Tim Groser
The
ForceSarcasm is strong in this one.Dita De Boni: The one Herald opinion column I look forward to reading.
“A group of prominent legal experts, including the Cato Institute, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and the Institute for Justice have come out in support of Megaupload and Kim Dotcom. The groups urge the appeals court to undo the forfeiture of millions of dollars in assets, which they describe as a dangerous violation of due process rights.”
https://torrentfreak.com/prominent-legal-experts-rally-behind-megaupload-150709/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Torrentfreak+%28Torrentfreak%29