Written By:
the sprout - Date published:
7:44 am, August 4th, 2009 - 48 comments
Categories: act, housing, national, national/act government -
Tags: bill english, hypocrisy, MPs accommodation rort, murray mccully, roger douglas
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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The one in the middle is not a professional bludger.
Incidentally, Blinglish looks like he’s got an invisble cock up his nostril which explains why, when it comes to providing an answer to Aotearoa’s economic woes, his reply is always “fuck knows”.
LOL.
How tidy the street man is.
Would that Sir DoubleDipton and Lord ‘I got my rights!’ Douglas were so tidy in their minds and logic, but no.
Their hypocritic self-justification, necessary delusion and arrogant mockery is a nasty leaky mess that a double edition of the New Zealand Herald wouldn’t manage to soak up.
How do these men sleep at night? We know where, but how?
One of them isn’t laughing.
Yep – there is hypocrisy in spades here. No doubt this will haunt both of their political careers from now on.
But let’s be clear here. Our side (that is, for me, the Labour Party) is pretty silent on this. Nothing on Red Alert, no-one on Morning Report again, no public statements, the Nats implying last week that there was an informal arrangement with Labour not to say anything . We know why. Even if Ms Clark was tougher on these things (the current informal commentary from the Labour Party via Mr Hughes), you can bet that things were not that different before the election. So we on the Labour Left should be careful about the accusation of hypocrisy, for it will come back to bite us. We should welcome a review, but demand that it be more general than just ministerial expenses, and we should mount a serious argument about why decent salaries and expenses are vital for a strong democracy. The latter is the key principle here, and one that the Right has got its teeth into.
Very good points Mr Winter.
I think there does need to be public disclosure of expenses of MPs and Ministers and going back a few years so the public get a view of how widespread it is. I think there is an argument for an independent public review for the best way forward on this, with the public being able to make submissions on it.
It was the Labour Government that approved the purchase of a suite of the BMW limos without any public consultation, and approved a $50 million upgrade of the governor general’s home. The Left should be very careful of accusations of profligacy, because those accusations will come back to bite them.
MPs do a difficult job. They should be fairly paid for their work. Ministers shouldn’t have to be separated from their families. There will always be some who scream that they should be paid much less. Many MPs and Ministers take a drop in income to enter parliament. Many of them don’t go into parliament for the money. But the rules should be clear and transparent.
Quite true Tim, although I didn’t hear Labour MPs righteously espousing the need for belt-tightening and sanctimoniously chiding supposedly unnecessary spending of tax-payer’s money when they were in Government.
You see Tim, regardless (or as John W Key would say, ‘irregardless’) of what Labour MPs claimed on Wellington accommodation while they were in office, it’s an issue of hypocrisy.
And as you well know, that’s what will cause this Government to bleed.
Sprout, perhaps the reason why Labour wasn’t calling for belt-tightening was that they were spending billions of dollars that the government didn’t have, promising to spend more without costing them, and denying that there was a recession looming that would see a $7 billion deficit on the books.
I might be possible to give an iota of consideration to your unfounded smear if it wasn’t for the fact that your beloved Bludger Bill actually Labour for its economic stewardship.
How many times have you been told now, Timothy?
“Spending millions the Government didn’t have”
I thought Cullen was supposed to be hoarding tax-payers’ money, and ‘wasting’ it on things like prefunding our superannuation scheme?
And as for apparently ‘hiding’ looming deficits, didn’t the PREFU, at the very least, indicate to National what the state of the books was – not that it stopped National from making election bribes about tax cuts it then had to flip-flop on.
Granted the rules seem to need tightening…but more misdirection here? I.e. whereas Roger Douglas gets his and his wife’s holidays paid for, and Bill English gets his mortgage paid (so, in other words, they have money inserted into their already bulging pockets), buying cars for ministers to use while ministers and doing-up the GG’s official residence don’t really fall into that category, do they?
Are the current ministers using their own cars? Has the GG been moved out of GH?
Why not give the pricks a pay rise equivalent, say, to the average expenses claim across the House and do away with the expenses all together?
here’s a list of some of the bigger spenders on swanky tax-payer rorted accommodation from g.blog
http://greenvoices.wordpress.com/2009/08/04/can-i-have-one-with-a-moat-please/
One would not begrudge the others if they did not show such indifference toward the struggles of those with nothing.
The tramp has stolen Michael Cullens $1500 hand made leather Oxfords, and his umbrella?
As in Michael, ‘Frequent Flyer all ways booked into seat 1a on Air NZ AKL/WGN’ Cullen.
But I wander in topic,
* I believe Bill English has the least receeding hairline of the four.
* McCulley looks the most like a “bi curious male seeks like minded couples” ad?
Do I win now?
the McCully line is quite funny, but you know Deciduous, in this game…
That is weak even for the standard.
Of course those on the left will blame the three men on the top for the suitation of the homeless person.
I notice you picked three white guys and a black homeless person, CLASSY!!!
Anyway lets play your game.
The three people on top made the right decisions and became successful.
The person on bottom made the wrong decisions.
That only works if they were presented with the same choices to make decisions on: presented with the same opportunities and had the same means to follow those opportunities.
Brett “I don’t see race” Dale manages to spot the slightly darker hue on the skin of a man in a small photo on a webpage, something everyone else missed.
You know you want more from where that came from Sprout.
The McCully joke I mean, not more bi curious action and all that en-tails, ugh!
Perhaps we could have a cross party match-a-thon?
Kinda like ebony & ivory, only in very poor taste?
McCully & ?
Winnie & ?
Phil & ?
Brett Dale @ 9.11, Its the white snouts that make the decisions that affect the other guys selection of choices, they make the rules, they redistribute (or hoard) the wealth, they tend the safety net
Blinglish is the only one whose body language totally betrays him:
It looks like someone is holding a small, invisible turd under his nose.
It’s almost like he can smell his own ethical bankruptcy.
Yeah the one on the bottom is a bum.
Yeah, that honky racism is the answer Conor
In my opinion all the parties seem to be rorting the system one way or another and I look forward to more disclosure and ultimately a changing of the rules. Yes National are exposed doing it here and I don’t believe they are justified. Likewise I don’t believe Labour have clean hands on this, nor Jim Anderton and his ‘progressive party’ rorting the system when he’s clearly part of Labour, NZ First (well Winston anyway) stank of it, the Greens have their ‘Super Fund’ housing rort, Roger Douglas enjoys 90% airfare discounts, Helen sends her limo to pick up whats-his-face to take him to the airport, I bet the Maori party have got their snouts in it too.
Time to change the rules to make it so no-one from any party gets lavish benefits. Time to retrospectively change them too so we can stop all the ex-MP entitlements such as Douglas used for his travel, scrap ex-PM’s limo’s (wtf does Helen get a limo from NZ taxpayers for?) – make it level, across the board.
And take the number of MP’s down to 99 while we’re at it.
And we should sell Government house and get rid of the GG. What a ludicrous waste of money
One of them is a poor homeless loser who needs to get a job and stop bludging.
The other three are respected politicians.
CONORJOE:
But lots of people make it out of the poverty cycle?
Surly your not blaming douglas for the person at the bottom of the picture, suitation, what is the persons background?
Do you have evidence that it was douglas’s fault that this person is homeless?
The very first change should be, any rents obtained from a property owned by any MP in Wellington and which no longer houses family members, and who is getting taxpayer support to live in another property in Wellington, should be paid back to the taxpayer.
Simple.
The “top” 3 are all Sirs or about to be Sirs. The bottom one is honest and shines his own shoes so he wins.
3 of the men are Kiwis, one is an American?
That image has a copyright attached to it, couldn’t you find any Kiwi homeless?
not sure why you think it’s American, it’s not
found here
So it’s a New Zealander then?
So the person in the bottom photo isnt even a kiwi, or the photo is not from newzealand?
Black person, Brett. Get it right.
it’s neither.
guess that must be conclusive proof that there are no homeless in NZ
It’s also proof that all foreigners ARE homeless, of course.
quite felix, quite
Sorry, I’m confused now.
The point of this post is that English, Douglas and McCully are responsible for this black man ( I’d say Asian myself, he’s got his shoes off, very SE Asian ), in an unnamed country being homeless?
I’d have to say I find that a bit of a stretch.
wtf? as if that montage is saying those three men are personally responsible for somebody’s homelessness! that would indeed be a stretch.
the point, dear singlurian, because clearly you do need such things spelt out for you, is that these men have no problem with taking funding from the needy in order to feather their own, already quite cosy nests, while at the same time santimoniously wanking about profligate government expediture and the need for everyone [else] to tighten their belts.
clear enough for you now? do you get that? not too much of a stretch this time?
The difference is that the guy asleep, snores and therefore only makes “snuffling noises whilst asleep
Whilst…..
The one on the bottom lost his home and job ,The three snouts don’ t give a damn as long as they are raking it in at his expence.
is that these men have no problem with taking funding from the needy in order to feather their own…..
OK, I’m still having a problem with this.
Excuse my ignorance, I’m just trying to understand. Not a lot of education, you see. I’m not thick but the clear logic sometimes eludes me tempararily.
I’m sure you’re being too modest about your education if you can trace a random image from the internet and use it to dogwhistle an argument about copyright into a post about the political hypocrisy.
Obviously my comment above has been messed with by Irish. I find it very sad that he/she feels the need to do this as it shows either a) immaturity and a inability to deal with complex feelings, which assuming Irish has reached adulthood does not bode well for later life. or b) a complete loss of emotional control under pressure, which again does not bode well.
Its pretty funny when you guys are putting up posts about people changing quotes to have Irish change my quote and then completely delete the comment I made asking him not to do that.
My initial comment pointed out that the sprout had stolen a copyrighted image to use as the graphic for this post. I thought The Standard cared about copyright as I seem to remember you guys making a huge noise about some Chris Martin song.
As I said to Irish last night -there are plenty of other blogs out there which I am happy to go and read all he had to do is say so, instead he deleted that comment because????? who knows.
Anyway, bye Standard you’re still the big bunch of losers you’ve always been.
cheers
sing sing
I didn’t touch your comment as, apart from deleting troll comments, it’s policy not to do so for obvious reasons. If I had why would remark on the part of it that had been deleted? But it does seem to have changed which is very odd. Did you edit it yourself?
Very weird you are
bye