Sadly this is the way it will remain. Still…tax deductable (Wellington Rape Crisis is a registered charity and they run a tight ship so books in order). Vote with your wallet, I say! Do you prefer a faceless government servant deciding which organisations get funding …… OR….. do you prefer to allocate funds yourself? Easy choice for me đ
I prefer that the government provides these essential services rather than relying on the good will of the rich which always results in there not being enough of the essential services.
Since around 2000, from being in opposition to being in government, the members of the current administration have gone up and down the country and chanted, from every which and where, the same meme, “Cut red tape this, cut red tape that! OSH this, OSH that. They are preventing progress! Let’s remove the obstacles to progress …! Get government out of the way! Reduce costs here, reduce costs there! The market must be given a chance to self regulate!”
Sadly, it would appear, it has needed a tragedy to stop Key and his cohorts in their tracks… and now they appear to be ducking for cover. Shame on them.
+1.
Slagging OSH went hand-in-hand with slagging Labour for being PC. Â Saying the term OSH in a sneering manner was a call-sign for tories. Â Â Many radio jocks and many business leaders contributed to a toxic attitude towards doing tasks/projects in a careful and considered way.Â
+1 yes well said Logi97 & KhandallaMan,
They frame their approach so that people are fooled into going along with them, “Oh that sounds good” and the purposes of any “red tape” go by the way-side. Good to make the connection. We can add “streamlining” to the list of words they use for that purpose too.
It would be nice to see some commentators reclaim the argument about the necessity and prudence of having ‘red tape’ for the benefit, protection and security of life and limb. This now is the time to start voicing this.
It would be just as good to see some commentators front-foot and strongly dismiss and damn accusations that ‘red tape’ is about being PC, nanny state, bureaucratic, costly, bad for business, bla bla bla neobla-ism.
It would be even better to see legally, morally and socially responsible business people and corporations – on the same side with workers, looking out for the interests of workers – speak out in defence of, and argue for, the need to have ‘red tape’.
The best standards and practices for workers are also best for employers, markets and businesses.
“It would be just as good to see some commentators front-foot and strongly dismiss and damn accusations that âred tapeâ is about being PC, nanny state, bureaucratic, costly, bad for business, bla bla bla neobla-ism.”
Â
Yes, that is a role for Labour. Â Unfortunately Labour abdicated that responsibility when the inner few decided that we should appeal to the light blues. Â When Phil Goff (ably advised by Shearer’s current advisors) apologied for Labour being perceived as “politically correct”‘Â Â he ceded the high ground to those who knocked OSH. Â
Labour has to get back to sticking it’s neck above the parapet on issues that effect workers, women, children, minorities and the defenceless. Â When it resorts to mimicking the themes of the powerful and the yob-mob it has lost its way. That happened when Labour apologised at the confence in Rotorua in Sept ’09.Â
 http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/2859508/Phil-Goff-apologises-for-Labours-mistakes
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But right wing political parties rarely (actually, never) take responsibility for their own actions.
It is fairly clear to everyone by now that the de-regulation of the mines inspectorates in the early â90s was a grave mistake. 29 graves, to be precise.
So for Heather Roy to try to shift the blame onto OSH, when legislative âreformsâ specifically stated that mines safety had devolved to individual companies, and was no longer the âprescriptiveâ responsibility of the State is more than a little disingenous â itâs downright dishonest and insulting to all New Zealanders.
Dunnokeyo reckons the word gay means weird. Leaving aside for a moment how insulting that definition is, lets look at the other definition he used to defend his homophobic outburst; the Oxford dictionary. Obviously Key never actually looked it up, because there’s no way he would agree with the example they give for the word’s use!
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4 informal, often offensive foolish, stupid, or unimpressive: he thinks the obsession with celebrity is totally gay
I think you’ll find what he’s doing there is lying, TRP.
Rhino pointed out this other lie last night too: Asked at his post-Cabinet press conference whether he was homophobic, Mr Key said: âNo, Iâm voting for gay marriage, Iâm hardly homophobic â I led the charge on it.â
It seems Key wants to take credit for having “led the charge on” marriage equality, in spite of the whole country knowing that he’s not Louisa Wall.
Not only does this blatant lie come hot on the heels of lying about which way he voted on the liquor purchase age, it’s also a disgraceful attempt at the traditional bigot’s fallback “but some of my best friends are (x)” defense.
Hopefully ‘traditional bigots’ will decide they don’t want to vote for the man who ‘led the charge’ on ‘weird’ marriage. Good news for the Conservative Party?
Batshit Key, the media whore and shameless, lying self-publicist, squeeked out about gay marriage, wanting to quickly gatecrash into the halo effect generated by Obama’s socially enlightened prior announcement.
Louisa Wall did the correct thing with the opportunity of a private member’s bill to follow through on the socially just thing to do.
Batshit Key now needs to be held account for what he said.
And as leader of a party of many Nasties, this is an opportunity for him to demonstrate true leadership by persuading each one of his party MPs* to exercise their individual conscience votes with their conscience for discriminated individuals.
*MPs – whether they are gay, stray or sway (or whether they are out or not)
Dunnokeyo denial plan (translated into coherent English):
I don’t think anything was said;
Something might have been said but I wasn’t responsible for it;
You can’t prove I said it;
I didn’t use those exact words;
Somebody overheard/secretly recorded the private conversation I had with 300 attendees over a PA system;
I was using the words according to the hitherto unknown definition I just made up now;
It was Opposite Day when I said that.Â
Okay I’m a groupie. GT on ‘Bat Bean Beam’ draws the connection between tools for managing blogs, news groups, and other social media, and drone warfare.
…The CIA will never run out of high-level targets. The internet will never run out of trolls. This is simply because should either of those categories be emptied, the database would fill them again with the people previously defined as mid-level targets, or a nuisance. The danger of terrorism or insurgency will never disappear in the same way that online social interactions will never become perfectly smooth. This is why the kill list and the kill file are not to be understood as temporary solutions but rather as permanent features, a way not just of dealing with concrete problems but of imagining and seeing the world…
I am really glad that The Standard makes minimal use of banning and the other more insidious silencing technologies such as like-dislike scales. I find it worrying that more and more in these kinds of these media, it is possible to almost never hear alternative views. Even whole subjects can disappear entirely, fresh perspectives, any uncomfortable voices, memories or thoughts, all are smoothed away before they can even impinge on anyone’s consciousness.
This at the same time as whanau and social groups are increasingly batoning down the hatchets against out-group members, and our communities are slipping into survival mode.
And note how even National had to institute a bunch of “red tape” in order to help secure the finance company sector and protect investors after SCF, Hanover, etc.
Yep, methinks the right wing religion of smaller regulation, freer markets, more private enterprise involvement etc etc has without doubt passed its time now.
The tide is now no longer drifting at the pleasant sandy high tide beach, it is now well on the way out exposing the mud flats and the detritus that had previously been covered by the tide.
What’s that saying about geting exposed by an outgoing tide? Well, that entire political philosophy is lying stinked up on the mud flats with no togs. Think Brownlee Key and English. End.
Whatâs that saying about geting exposed by an outgoing tide? Well, that entire political philosophy is lying stinked up on the mud flats with no togs. Think Brownlee Key and English. End.
What it shows is that the people who are actually directing NZs “sovereign parliament”, have managed, over decades to completely corrupt the systems that are needed for societies, and communities to function well.
What we are currently seeing is the latest outputs of that corruption!
Does the elderly lady have any connection to the successive governments she voted in during her life that created an environment that allowed her to fill her house full of things transported by trucks and feed herself with food transported by trucks? Did she vote for people who destroyed the railways, with the smugness of an armchair ideologue? Did the woman, at some point in her life, know she ran the risk or did it come as a complete surprise when she bought a retirement home on a busy highway route?
Are the public responsible for the actions of the masters they vote for and the ideas they arrange their lives around, or can they cast off their actions entirely onto any number of random ministers?
You raise a good point of debate – in that voters need to be engaged in what they are really voting for however your point omits the role of trust and the role of someone in government, with which that trust is reasonably based on also the role of “authority” and how people relate to that, in fact the very role of government in the first place.
A political party proposes a way forward, people trust that the consequences of such have been soundly thought out. If everyone has to double guess and think deeply on each proposal, then half the point of having representatives has been lost. i.e. not everyone wants to be thinking about these things in depth; that is why we elect people to do that for us.
Sadly, the time for relying on these people to be taking their role conscientiously is over and we can no longer afford to have such beliefs. This is the message that needs to get out to the general public, once more people start pressuring government to take their role seriously again, they might start doing their jobs properly and then perhaps we can start to trust them again.
blue leopard
I don’t notice much attempt at political discussion by others. There are some comments that come from deeply held prejudices and all events that are received and remembered in their minds are then shaped to fit those prejudices and reinforce them. I don’t think most people engage in the democratic process of critical thinking about means and ends which is our responsibility if we want to live in a democracy. I was just the same when I was younger, there was no role model of active thinker on politics in my life to follow. I think its the same for most. What to do about this?
I was just the same when I was younger, there was no role model of active thinker on politics in my life to follow. I think its the same for most. What to do about this?
The aim would be to engage just 100K new people to Left Wing politics. Aged 16 and up.
In such a scenario the Right would almost never win again (oohhh McFlock!).
lol
  Â
The old “if more people supported us, we’d be more popular” tautology.
   Â
The number of meetings I’ve been in where plans have been hatched to “engage with [segment or donor XXX]” is large. The number of successful socialist revolutions in NZ in that time period: 0.00000
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The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. And remember that only one dude could walk on water (ninja lore notwithstanding).Â
The number of meetings Iâve been in where plans have been hatched to âengage with [segment or donor XXX]â is large. The number of successful socialist revolutions in NZ in that time period: 0.00000
In that case perhaps the common factor for failure is you McFlock. With your outlook it’s not a surprise.
You’re mad McFlock. Why would you consider voting for the Alliance for instance if not to help them build a 100,000 strong voting base???
By the way, I said nothing about a “youth” organisation. Better keep your imagination in check mate. It seems you are reading a lot into what I write which is not there.
Leafletting lol your strategies really would be a failure.
Youâre mad McFlock. Why would you consider voting for the Alliance for instance if not to help them build a 100,000 strong voting base???
Because I agree with their policies. Which is an entirely separate issue to how successful they are, or I think they’ll be. Maybe if the Alliance get 1% lab/greens would recognise the demand and take a step to the left. Who knows?
    Â
Hey, I’d love it if the Alliance had a half-million strong voting base. But anyone can say “we will engage x-hundred thousand people”. Actually getting more than thirty is the challenge, and only comes from hard work: entertaining and persuasive speakers on the hustings, doorknocking, social media, and indeed walking around in the rain delivering thousand of leaflets. And no, social media does not remove that work.
   Â
Which takes us back to plaintive cries in meetings of a dozen folk, the mournful refrain “why don’t people vote for / support us?”Â
  Â
As for reading a lot into what you write, the problem is that in order to turn what you write into a coherent and realistic plan, lots and lots of holes need to be filled in.Â
I don’t think most people think, full stop. There is likely to be heard from many “When’s the next footy match”. In other words, so very much discussion centres upon trivia rather than upon the huge issues going on all around us.
@Prism,
Yes, I agree with your comments, and I have in the past got rather annoyed about people not engaging with politics (!), yet I realise this is unfair, and I have to remind myself that not everyone has the same interests, most are very busy and people do things in a variety of ways to help improve “the way things are”.
As to what to do about this. “ummm” is the first thing that comes to mind!
Then the standard criticism that arises of our media; information sources.
It is my experience (and from what I’ve read too) that when one meets up with a person with a real interest in political issues and critical thinking, this what sparks interest in another. This can be a real life person, and it can also be an article in a paper, or books and now, on the internet too. The issue being, the more people read banal propaganda, the more they switch off. This was my experience, a thought that politics was simply mediocre and compromised. Then coming across books that relayed intelligently presented “connected” arguments which made me realise that there really was a purpose behind all the banality that is presented to us.
I guess the best thing that any one person can do is share a passion for critical thinking when one has the opportunity to (sometimes this involves speaking out when there is pressure to remain silent) and I think that an optimism that things can change positively when there are enough people involved is also a very important thing to impart to people. All of this requires going against some of our cultural attitudes, which I believe are pretty anti politics, keep your head down, don’t complain…etc.
I really do think that there needs to be an information source in print or on TV that imparts information on this level and I am unclear as to why this hasn’t occurred yet. Perhaps a bit to do with what Nicky Hagar’s Bruce Jesson Speech touched on, left-wing people have been disempowered?
Think a lot of things would improve if we simply removed all protections from “legal persons” aka corporations and give them protections on a case by case basis depending upon how much of a public service they were providing, this would effectively remind people of the reasons the protections were devised for corporations in the first place.
Time to institute charges of corporate manslaughter and corporate grevious bodily harm which can be laid against directors and executive management.
And shareholders too.
If you want to make money off other peoples labour you should at least make sure everything possible is done to ensure their safety.
Shareholders should know how slack the governance and management of the companies they invest in is but deliberately decide to ignore it unless the dividends fall.
It would be amazing how corporate behaviour would change if people through the whole ownership/governance/management chain were held accountable for their actions.
Because people with more cash than they need would only give it to enterprises where their liability was limited to the amount of cash they put in.
Limited liability companies distance the owners from the consequences of their actions.
If you could end up supporting the family of a man killed by poor safety measures in a mine you partly owned you would think very hard before investing and you would insist on good safety.
Can’t comment on the specifics of blame you’d like to attribute, but bear in mind that Unions were designed to be transitional devices, not static everlasting organisations. If Unions in NZ crossed the line that they were theoretically designed to cross, we’d have our long awaited revolution. The reality is that they presently contribute to keeping our population well fed and protected, but to do that they need to be collaborating with the thing they supposedly must overthrow. National or Labour, more or less regulation? Deaths, or a series of occasional serious injury? Work, or poverty and revolution? Which is better and what is the question we’re all avoiding?
“I read some where that the Miners union knew the mine wasnât safe.”
Yes, I heard of someone who chose not to work in that mine because of this knowledge
“How come they didnât kick up more of a stink, isnât that their job?”
This is the hidden “cost” of low employment, poor working conditions and low pay as well as a basic trust in employer’s concern over the welfare of their staff.
Although people “knew” the mine was unsafe, or suspected as much, there would be a basic “trust” that it “would be alright”, a person might consider that they were being paranoid and that their boss ultimately wouldn’t risk their workers lives.
This line of reasoning would be all the more likely when there are few jobs around and many poorly paid ones. i.e. the other option is to what? not work and not be able to keep your family in good health? Knowing the unemployment benefit is a trap, a person who quit their job wouldn’t be entitled to an unemployment benefit anyway and such an option isn’t even considered an option for a lot of people, due to both/either their value system &/or the fact that they have a family to support and welfare isn’t sufficient for that.
Isn’t that the advantage about Unions, strength in numbers, nobody would have to quit.
Everyone downs tools for a week unless the safety concerns get sorted.
Many of the workers were contractors who the Commission said did not have the required training to carry out the tasks management gave them. Contractors are not usually associated with Unions, so it’s doubtful any strike would have been effective. The Union workers would have simply been replaced by contractors, with much applause from Brownlee and Wilkinson.
It’s good that you’re advocating for more Union powers to ensure workplace safety BM… Perhaps Slater, Farrar and the rest of the Union bashing sycophants might like to hear about your ideas?
Blind Monetarist some miners just up and left but in New Zealand the right wing have hobbled unions one of the first pieces of legislation by your shonkey led govt was to stop unions free access to the work place 2008 followed by Kate wilkinsons shelving of the recommendations of the labour parties report on mining safety 2009 preceded by Mad max bradfords sacking of mine inspectors 1998 preceeded by bill birchs gutting of mine safety rules 1992 that had been built up over the previous century.
Not trying to shift the blame their Bob.
The Labour party was born on the coast out of concern for mine safety and workers rights!
BM, the report I read was that miners, not the unions so much, new that it was unsafe. Kudos to ABC Aussie for comprehensive public service broadcasting coverage:
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The interesting thing we learnt during the Royal Commission was that miners were in fact complicit in this [ignoring methane level reports], in a certain way, because there were reports that they were putting plastic bags over the methane sensors.
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Now, it was given in evidence to the commission that this was because they felt under pressure, that management was wanting them to meet production targets.
BM
You’re like those guys in the comedy routine acting out simple-minded types spotting cars on a motorway, ooh look there’s another one. You question, someone answers, and it just flows right past you without entering your brain, and you repeat the question later on with the same result. I think you are an example of the snowfall effect that I put forward in Open Mike I think on 6/11.
The poor old miners got caught in a moral hazard that existed for miners in Emile Zola’s time. They want to make a living, have housing, and every time they delay production for safety reasons they hurt the company, it’s profitability and their jobs. In Zola’s time their safety was their own responsibility and I understand they had to shore up the passages and support the ceiling themselves.
It seems strange to me vto, that the millions of dollars needed to fix leaky homes is not clearly sheeted home to the National deregulation in the 90s. You would think that along with Mining deregulation the people would be very angry. I am.
Prime Minister John Key says he is serious when he needs to be but has to joke around sometimes.
Is she part of the parliamentary gallery? Does she not regularly see how Key does his stand-up routine in order to deflect serious questions in Question Time? Why is she not reporting that, rather than just uncritically reporting what Key says?
What is the selection criteria is to be “any reporter or editor”, responsible for the media balackouts which exist, to provide the cover stories and misdirection, to blatant lies that are sold via the MSM.
When one starts to think about those who are “selected to report the news”, one can reasonably deduce that those people are as easily “swayed”, as those chosen to be the options NZ gets to vote for!
”I dare you to show me one example where I haven’t discharged my responsibility seriously, professionally and appropriately,” he told TV3’s Firstline. (Sorry,had to cut and paste) Guess who in DomPost?
Yesterday I noted a discussion of interest rate and currency swaps that I heard on Jim Mora on Radionz. I put live links in my comment. It was new stuff to me, the financial instruments or derivatives (D) market is not my everyday experience and I would say not to the ordinary citizen.
I just listened again and there are some points that we should know. First between them Auckland and Dunedin City Councils lost $200 million last year resulting from these Ds. Then we should know that the Ds are contingent liabilities which have floating rates and there is no knowing how the rates will change year to year. It may be $1 billion that they lose next year (and that is a debt on top of the principal still owing).
I don’t know if they are the same as hedge funds, but the point was made as with hedge funds, that the seller of the D has a conflict of interest as it wants to win and you to lose, (so it will want to tip the scales against you). One thinks of the Melbourne Cup – the TAB have better rules and standards. Apparently our chief national earners, Fonterra and farming interests, are involved in these derivatives and that gives a cold feeling down the spine.
There is something called a Dual currency interest rate swap. This involves two different currencies and when one is NZ, which is very volatile and may fall, then the repayments go up, a particularly risky tricky thing to be in.
In Europe there has been legal proceedings brought against mis-selling by banks of derivatives (mis-selling another neo-lib euphemism) and a Milan bank had returned millions of dollars, might have been $1 billion not sure.
It can be difficult to find what has been done with this public money because of the old excuse “It’s commercially sensitive”. We may think we have the right to know what our officials are doing in our name, but no, ‘It’s trust us we know more than you, and we know what we are doing”. That sounds dodgy, but how can we force the issue under the present regime??
First between them Auckland and Dunedin City Councils lost $200 million last year resulting from these Ds. Then we should know that the Ds are contingent liabilities
technical note – a contingent liability is a potential sum owing, the size and nature of which depends on some future event or measure.
With interest rate D’s, there is a vast amount of uncertainty and lack of control around what this might be, year to year. As prism notes, the investment banks on the other side of the trade often PROFIT when their clients LOSE.
It’s a level of risk which no public organisation should involve itself in unless it really knows how to use D’s as tools to reduce risk and uncertainty.
Many municipal authorities in the US have gone bankrupt due to these kinds of “investments”.
No probs mate, you were very close to getting it right. Your monthly power bill could be considered a contingent liability which depends on how much power you use – will your next invoice be $300 or will it be $600?
At least in that case you have significant influence over the end result. With an interest rate swap you are at the mercy of market fraud and banker fine print scams.
I was thinking of that general competence thing for councils. At one time they couldn’t get high-flown ideas of risk-taking in exotic financial transactions – they were too tightly controlled. It seems as a citizen who isn’t snuggling up for juicy tenders and projects to councils, that the general competence should be abandoned and a slightly more lenient than the previous control should be the new norm.
Also, one of the skills that a CEO is now being paid for is no doubt the ability to handle a large budget and be able to do this financial horse-trading. So if councils had less money, which they had to parcel out in a rational way, there would be less need to do their double book-keeping. The Jim Mora Radionz item I listened to said that the borrowings and interest rate swaps were not always shown in the appropriate part of the balance sheet and there wasn’t a signal of their likely cost long-term.
And I think that employing contractors is almost double-bookeeping. Government and businesses can fudge their expenditure on human resources. Contractors are paid out of one pot, and staff and wages out of another. Staff and wages will appear to be kept at a low rate yet the real need of the organisation is met by high-paid hourly contractors. A wasteful and often mendacious system.
This Local Bodies explanation piece on council general competence and processes is very straightforward and a good example of providing clear information. http://insider.thomsonreuters.co.nz/2012/03/local-government-law-nz/ 2. Financial management strategies
Commencing in 1996, with abolition of the former Local Authorities Loans Board, local authorities have had greater powers to undertake works and to fund the works through different fiscal policies and determinations. The ability of local authorities to borrow money, or to undertake rating, has been substantially liberalised. The introduction of differential rating, and annual charges, has been modernised, and the ability to impose targeted rates has been extended. Again, to provide direction and restraint, the law requires councils to develop strategies for funding and borrowing, and to provide for implementation through the long-term plan and annual plan, and to make an annual report. These obligations are subject to overview by the Auditor-General.
Everyone saw this news, and polling on October 5 showed a sharp increase in the number of people who knew that unemployment was down. But here’s the interesting thing: among liberals and independents, the number getting the answer right stayed higher over the next several days. Apparently the news sunk in. But among conservatives, the number getting the answer right started to decline immediately. Within three days, as the chart below shows, they were answering the question exactly the same as they had before the unemployment report came out.
We see the same things here with the RWNJs continual re-writing of history when the facts conflict with what the RWNJs believe.
Yes how about calling it the snowfall effect? The brains of RWNJs get stirred up by new and unwelcome stats which register for a brief moment in time, but similar to the little globes with snow and bits of glitter in them which swirl around after a shaking, soon everything settles back to the same configuration as before.
Great imagery there Prism.
I expect there are more RWNJ who believe in a god and in a heaven as they are more likely to exist in faith rather than science or factual evidence. It is god’s will you know.
ianmac
Well when you’re on the top of the heap perhaps you feel closer to god. Then you could almost be convinced that he/she is on your side and it’s all the wonderful way that god willed it to be.
Each constituent lie is an instance pointing to a larger, elaborately constructed âtruth,â the one central to the right-wing appeal for generations: that liberalism is a species of madnessâan esoteric cult of out-of-touch, Europe-besotted ivory tower elitesâand conservatism is the creed of regular Americans and vouchsafes the eternal prosperity, security, and moral excellence of Godâs chosen nation, which was doing just fine before Bolsheviks started gumming up the works.
briefly listened to RNZ last night; an interveiw with a co-author of a recent popular publication on the findings of “political science” research into the benefits the introduction of democracy had provided to newly democratic nation states in our life-times. The interviewer was very dry and sceptical of the authors conclusions (very american) and the author just dribbled a whole lot of waffle imo.
It seemed, the advances in rule of law, social justice etc, in African countries for example, were comparitively short-lived.
Some one commented recently concerning the population attritions we are likely to see in Africa in the coming decades.
Oh I thought I’d just bat back the idea of ‘union corruption’ with the idea that yes, unions have to evolve and tighten up their organisations – at the same time as making them far stronger and more effective.
NZ’s systemic corruption is on levels which people can’t even begin to fathom, so they blow it off as “poor politics”, or right/left or other ideology!
Given that the perceptions of many of those organisations are significantly affected by the media (which “won” hands down), much lolz.
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I’m surprised the Australian police are only at 16%, given their record.Â
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It’s a survey of people’s perceptions not the reality. What a surpirse that a lot of people have a negative view of unions Wonder how they got thatidea?Â
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Yet the respondents views of individual politicians as not being corrupt, contradict the strong belief that poltiicians are corrupt. It’s all in the mind.
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And they’ve been doing those surveys for the last 30 years – roughly coincides with neoliberalism and the rise of tabloid and highly commercialised journalism. This does support research that indicates such journalism leads to cynicism about politics.
Having said that, Australian unions (and politicians very closely aligned to major unions) have had some serious shockers in the last couple of years. And the AWU scandal is crippling Gillard.
In the last week – has anyone been getting those server failure messages that were so common?
I haven’t had one since the start of last week after I’d fixed a number of things that were locking up the database and a separate set that were preventing the full use of cloudflare.
Cunliffe says it’s a dark day for hi-tech manufacturing – Fisher and Paykel sold, Rakon outsourcing jobs to Asia. And a Labour government would do more to keep such businesses and work in NZ, he says.
This is what you get when a relatively small number of shareholders and institutional investors, all of whom are already plenty wealthy, decide that maximising their return on capital is more important than anything else eg keeping jobs in NZ.
Well, capitalism hasn’t been around for 5000 years…guess it depends how you define it. I see it as taking hold after the time of Adam Smith and Ricardo.
Debt based money with a top down hierarchical structure which resulted in a few people owning nearly everything and the collapse of the economy was recorded in Sumer 5000 years ago. Which brings up that old saying: If it looks like a duck and quacks like duck, chances are, it’s a duck.
Can I make a suggestion for your summer reading list DTB, Karl Polanyi – The Great transformation. If your into your history and political economy its makes for a great read, should be around in ebook form on Gutenberg or something.
“Not until 1834 was a competitive labor market established in England; hence, industrial capitalism as a social system cannot be said to have existed before that date. Yet almost immediately the self-protection of society set in: factory laws and social legislation, and a political and industrial working class movement sprang into being. It was in this attempt to stave off the entirely new dangers of the market mechanism that protective action conflicted fatally with the self-regulation of the system. It is no exaggeration to say that the social history of the nineteenth century was determined by the logic of the market system proper after it was released by the Poor Law Reform Act of 1834.”
We are also considering an accelerated depreciation allowance to support investment in new technology.
State owned factories run by the workers as a cooperative with the production then done under contract/license. Run R&D through the universities to keep the factories up to date. Much better idea.
You can’t have the state owning the factories, the workers or their local communities have to own the factories. With state owned enterprises, the first thing a Tory Govt will do is sell the bloody things off. Need to observe and learn their patterns of behaviour.
âŠthe workers or their local communities have to own the factories.
And what else do you think the state is?
With state owned enterprises, the first thing a Tory Govt will do is sell the bloody things off.
So we change government rules so that they can’t. It’s part and parcel of making them accountable to the people of NZ in such a way so that they do what the people of NZ want them to do and not what their major backers want.
Well, I’m all for democracy and having it so that it must go to referendum. If they try to get rid of the referendum, as the arseholes did with Auckland, then they are immediately in breach of the law and are automatically found as treasonous.
Put in the right laws, make sure everyone knows what those laws are and what they’re there to do and we can limit the government which is what we really need to do.
Does anyone recall the government saying that they were going to support KidsCan “feeding the lower decile” children?
Just as we thought would happen, they have managed to get Campbell Live off their backs
but can anyone report an improvement in the diets of the needy school children…? Nah, hasn’t happened, I bet. Or has it?
New Zealand now has the fourth most depressed construction sector in the world behind China, Qatar and Hong Kong. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 8:46am on Thursday, May 2:The Lead: ...
Hi,I am just going to state something very obvious: American police are fucking crazy.That was a photo gracing the New York Times this morning, showing New York City police “entering Columbia University last night after receiving a request from the school.”Apparently in America, protesting the deaths of tens of thousands ...
Winston Petersâ much anticipated foreign policy speech last night was a work of two halves. Much of it was a standard âboilerplateâ Foreign Ministry overview of the state of the world. There was some hardening up of rhetoric with talk of âbenignâ becoming âmalignâ and old truths giving way to ...
Graham Adams assesses the fallout of the Cass Review â The press release last Thursday from the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls didnât make the mainstream news in New Zealand but it really should have. The startling title of Reem Alsalemâs statement â âImplementation of âCass ...
This open-for-business, under-new-management cliché-pockmarked government of Christopher Luxon is not the thing of beauty he imagines it to be. It is not the powerful expression of the will of the people that he asserts it to be. It is not a soaring eagle, it is a malodorous vulture. This newest poll should make ...
The latest labour market statistics, showing a rise in unemployment. There are now 134,000 unemployed - 14,000 more than when the National government took office. Which is I guess what happens when the Reserve Bank causes a recession in an effort to Keep Wages Low. The previous government saw a ...
Three opinion polls have been released in the last two days, all showing that the new government is failing to hold their popular support. The usual honeymoon experienced during the first year of a first term government is entirely absent. The political mood is still gloomy and discontented, mainly due ...
National's Finance Minister once met a poor person.A scornful interview with National's finance guru who knows next to nothing about economics or people.There might have been something a bit familiar if that was the headline I’d gone with today. It would of course have been in tribute to the article ...
Rob MacCulloch writes – Throughout the pandemic, the new Vice-Chancellor-of-Otago-University-on-$629,000 per annum-Can-you-believe-it-and-Former-Finance-Minister Grant Robertson repeated the mantra over and over that he saved “lives and livelihoods”.As we update how this claim is faring over the course of time, the facts are increasingly speaking differently. NZ ...
Chris Trotter writes – ITâS A COMMONPLACEÂ of political speeches, especially those delivered in acknowledgement of electoral victory: âWeâll govern for all New Zealanders.â On the face of it, the pledge is a strange one. Why would any political leader govern in ways that advantaged the huge ...
 Bryce Edwards writes – The list of former National Party Ministers being given plum and important roles got longer this week with the appointment of former Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett as the chair of Pharmac. The Christopher Luxon-led Government has now made key appointments to Bill ...
TL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 10:06am on Wednesday, May 1:The Lead: Business confidence fell across the board in April, falling in some areas to levels last seen during the lockdowns because of a collapse in ...
Over the past 36 hours, Christopher Luxon has been dong his best to portray the centre-rightâs plummeting poll numbers as a mark of virtue. Allegedly, the negative verdicts are the result of hard economic times, and of a government bravely set out on a perilous rescue mission from which not ...
Auckland Transport have started rolling out new HOP card readers around the network and over the next three months, all of them on buses, at train stations and ferry wharves will be replaced. The change itself is not that remarkable, with the new readers looking similar to what is already ...
Completed reads for April: The Difference Engine, by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling Carnival of Saints, by George Herman The Snow Spider, by Jenny Nimmo Emlyn’s Moon, by Jenny Nimmo The Chestnut Soldier, by Jenny Nimmo Death Comes As the End, by Agatha Christie Lord of the Flies, by ...
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a ...
Have a story to share about St Paul’s, but today just picturesPopular novels written at this desk by a young man who managed to bootstrap himself out of father’s imprisonment and his own young life in a workhouse Read more ...
The list of former National Party Ministers being given plum and important roles got longer this week with the appointment of former Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett as the chair of Pharmac. The Christopher Luxon-led Government has now made key appointments to Bill English, Simon Bridges, Steven Joyce, Roger Sowry, ...
Newsroom has a story today about National's (fortunately failed) effort to disestablish the newly-created Inspector-General of Defence. The creation of this agency was the key recommendation of the Inquiry into Operation Burnham, and a vital means of restoring credibility and social licence to an agency which had been caught lying ...
Holding On To The Present:The moment a political movement arises that attacks the whole idea of social progress, and announces its intention to wind back the hands of Historyâs clock, then democracy, along with its unwritten rules, is in mortal danger.ITâS A COMMONPLACE of political speeches, especially those delivered in ...
Stuck In The Middle With You:As Christopher Luxon feels the hot breath of Actâs and NZ Firstâs extremists on the back of his neck and, as he reckons with the damage their policies are already inflicting upon a country heâs described as âfragileâ, is there not some merit in reaching out ...
The unpopular coalition government is currently rushing to repeal section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act. The clause is Oranga Tamariki's Treaty clause, and was inserted after its systematic stealing of MÄori children became a public scandal and resulted in physical resistance to further abductions. The clause created clear obligations ...
Buzz  from the Beehive The governmentâs official website â which Point of Order monitors daily â not for the first time has nothing much to say today about political happenings that are grabbing media headlines. It makes no mention of the latest 1News-Verian poll, for example. This shows National down ...
It Takes A Train To Cry:Surely, there is nothing lonelier in all this world than the long wail of a distant steam locomotive on a cold Winterâs night.AS A CHILD, I would lie awake in my grandfatherâs house and listen to the traffic. The big wooden house was only a ...
Packing A Punch: The election of the present government, including in its ranks politicians dedicated to reasserting the rights of the legislature in shaping and determining the future of MÄori and Pakeha in New Zealand, should have alerted the judiciary â including its anomalous appendage, the Waitangi Tribunal â that its ...
Dead Woman Walking: New Zealandâs media industry had been moving steadily towards disaster for all the years Melissa Lee had been Nationalâs media and communications policy spokesperson, and yet, when the crisis finally broke, on her watch, she had nothing intelligent to offer. Christopher Luxon is a patient man - but heâs not ...
Chris Trotter writes –Â New Zealand politics is remarkably easy-going: dangerously so, one might even say. With the notable exception of John Keyâs flat ruling-out of the NZ First Party in 2008, all parties capable of clearing MMPâs five-percent threshold, or winning one or more electorate seats, tend ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Polling shows that Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau has the lowest approval rating of any mayor in the country. Siting at -12 per cent, the proportion of constituents who disapprove of her performance outweighs those who give her the thumbs up. This negative rating is ...
Luxon will no doubt put a brave face on it, but there is no escaping the pressure this latest poll will put on him and the government. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political ...
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler In the wake of any unusual weather event, someone inevitably asks, “Did climate change cause this?” In the most literal sense, that answer is almost always no. Climate change is never the sole cause of hurricanes, heat waves, droughts, or ...
Something odd happened yesterday, and I’d love to know if there’s more to it. If there was something which preempted what happened, or if it was simply a throwaway line in response to a journalist.Yesterday David Seymour was asked at a press conference what the process would be if the ...
Hi,From time to time, I want to bring Webworm into the real world. We did it last year with the Jurassic Park event in New Zealand — which was a lot of fun!And so on Saturday May 11th, in Los Angeles, I am hosting a lil’ Webworm pop-up! I’ve been ...
Education Minister Erica Standford yesterday unveiled a fundamental reform of the way our school pupils are taught. She would not exactly say so, but she is all but dismantling the so-called “inquiry” “feel good” method of teaching, which has ruled in our classrooms since a major review of the New ...
Exactly where are we seriously going with this government and its policies? That is, apart from following what may as well be a Truss-Lite approach on the purported economic “plan“, and Victorian-era regression when it comes to social policy.Oh it’ll work this time of course, we’re basically assured, “the ...
Hey Uncle Dave, When the Poms joined the EEC, I wasn't one of those defeatists who said, Well, that’s it for the dairy job. And I was right, eh? The Chinese can’t get enough of our milk powder and eventually, the Poms came to their senses and backed up the ute ...
Polling shows that Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau has the lowest approval rating of any mayor in the country. Siting at -12 per cent, the proportion of constituents who disapprove of her performance outweighs those who give her the thumbs up. This negative rating is higher than for any other mayor ...
Buzz from the Beehive Pharmac has been given a financial transfusion and a new chair to oversee its spending in the pharmaceutical business. Associate Health Minister David Seymour described the funding for Pharmac as âits largest ever budget of $6.294 billion over four years, fixing a $1.774 billion fiscal cliffâ. ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Many criticisms are being made of the Governmentâs Fast Track Approvals Bill, including by this writer. But as with everything in politics, every story has two sides, and both deserve attention. Itâs important to understand what the Government is trying to achieve and its ...
TL;DR: Here’s my top 10 ‘pick ‘n’ mix of links to news, analysis and opinion articles as of 10:10am on Monday, April 29:Scoop: The children's ward at Rotorua Hospital will be missing a third of its beds as winter hits because Te Whatu Ora halted an upgrade partway through to ...
span class=”dropcap”>As hideous as David Seymour can be, it is worth keeping in mind occasionally that there are even worse political figures (and regimes) out there. Iran for instance, is about to execute the countryâs leading hip hop musician Toomaj Salehi, for writing and performing raps that âcorruptâ the nationâs ...
Yesterday marked 10 years since the first electric train carried passengers in Auckland so it’s a good time to look back at it and the impact it has had. A brief history The first proposals for rail electrification in Auckland came in the 1920’s alongside the plans for earlier ...
Right now, in Aotearoa-NZ, our ‘animal spirits’ are darkening towards a winter of discontent, thanks at least partly to a chorus of negative comments and actions from the Government Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on ...
You make people evil to punish the paststuck inside a sequel with a rotating castThe following photos haven’t been generated with AI, or modified in any way. They are flesh and blood, human beings. On the left is Galatea Young, a young mum, and her daughter Fiadh who has Angelman ...
April has been a quiet month at A Phuulish Fellow. I have had an exceptionally good reading month, and a decently productive writing month – for original fiction, anyway – but not much has caught my eye that suggested a blog article. It has been vaguely frustrating, to be honest. ...
A listing of 31 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, April 21, 2024 thru Sat, April 27, 2024. Story of the week Anthropogenic climate change may be the ultimate shaggy dog story— but with a twist, because here ...
Hi,I spent about a year on Webworm reporting on an abusive megachurch called Arise, and it made me want to stab my eyes out with a fork.I don’t regret that reporting in 2022 and 2023 — I am proud of it — but it made me angry.Over three main stories ...
The new Victoria University Vice-Chancellor decided to have a forum at the university about free speech and academic freedom as it is obviously a topical issue, and the Government is looking at legislating some carrots or sticks for universities to uphold their obligations under the Education and Training Act. They ...
Do you remember when Melania Trump got caught out using a speech that sounded awfully like one Michelle Obama had given? Uncannily so.Well it turns out that Abraham Lincoln is to Winston Peters as Michelle was to Melania. With the ANZAC speech Uncle Winston gave at Gallipoli having much in ...
She was born 25 years ago today in North Shore hospital. Her eyes were closed tightly shut, her mouth was silently moving. The whole theatre was all quiet intensity as they marked her a 2 on the APGAR test. A one-minute eternity later, she was an 8. The universe was ...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. This fact brief was written by Sue Bin Park in collaboration with members from our Skeptical Science team. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline. Is Antarctica gaining land ice? ...
Images of US students (and others) protesting and setting up tent cities on US university campuses have been broadcast world wide and clearly demonstrate the growing rifts in US society caused by US policy toward Israel and Israel’s prosecution of … Continue reading → ...
Barrie Saunders writes – Dear Paul As the new Minister of Media and Communications, you will be inundated with heaps of free advice and special pleading, all in the national interest of course. For what it’s worth here is my assessment: Traditional broadcasting free to air content through ...
Many criticisms are being made of the Governmentâs Fast Track Approvals Bill, including by this writer. But as with everything in politics, every story has two sides, and both deserve attention. Itâs important to understand what the Government is trying to achieve and its arguments for such a bold reform. ...
Peter Dunne writes –Â The great nineteenth British Prime Minister, William Gladstone, once observed that âthe first essential for a Prime Minister is to be a good butcher.â When a later British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, sacked a third of his Cabinet in July 1962, in what became ...
Ele Ludemann writes – New Zealanders had the OECDâs second highest tax increase last year: New Zealanders faced the second-biggest tax raises in the developed world last year, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) says. The intergovernmental agency said the average change in personal income tax ...
We all know something’s not right with our elections. The spread of misinformation, people being targeted with soundbites and emotional triggers that ignore the facts, even the truth, and influence their votes.The use of technology to produce deep fakes. How can you tell if something is real or not? Can ...
This video includes conclusions of the creator climate scientist Dr. Simon Clark. It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any). This year you will be lied to! Simon Clark helps prebunk some misleading statements you'll hear about climate. The video includes ...
It is all very well cutting the backrooms of public agencies but it may compromise the frontlines. One of the frustrations of the Productivity Commissionâs 2017 review of universities is that while it observed that their non-academic staff were increasing faster than their academic staff, it did not bother to ...
Buzz from the Beehive Two speeches delivered by Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters at Anzac Day ceremonies in Turkey are the only new posts on the governmentâs official website since the PM announced his Cabinet shake-up. In one of the speeches, Peters stated the obvious:Â we live in a troubled ...
1. Which of these would you not expect to read in The Waikato Invader?a. Luxon is here to do business, don’t you worry about thatb. Mr KPI expects results, and you better believe itc. This decisive man of action is getting me all hot and excitedd. Melissa Lee is how ...
…it has a restricted jurisdiction which must not be abused: it is not an inquisition  NOTE – this article was published before the High Court ruled that Karen Chhour does not have to appear before the Waitangi Tribunal Gary Judd writes – The High Court ...
Lindsay Mitchell writes – One of reasons Oranga Tamariki exists is to prevent child neglect. But could the organisation itself be guilty of the same?Oranga Tamarikiâs statistics show a decrease in the number and age of children in care. âThere are less children ...
David Farrar writes: Graeme Edgeler wrote in 2017: In the first five years after three strikes came into effect 5248 offenders received a âfirst strikeâ (that is, a âstage-1 convictionâ under the three strikes sentencing regime), and 68 offenders received a âsecond strikeâ. In the five years prior to ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has surprised everyone with his ruthlessness in sacking two of his ministers from their crucial portfolios. Removing ministers for poor performance after only five months in the job just doesnât normally happen in politics. Thatâs refreshing and will be extremely ...
TL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the two days to 6:06am on Thursday, April 25:Politics: PM Christopher Luxon has set up a dual standard for ministerial competence by demoting two National Cabinet ministers while leaving also-struggling ...
Hi,Today I mainly want to share some of your thoughts about the recent piece I wrote about success and failure, and the forces that seemingly guide our lives. But first, a quick bit of housekeeping: I am doing a Webworm popup in Los Angeles on Saturday May 11 at 2pm. ...
It is hard to see what Melissa Lee might have done to âsaveâ the media. National went into the election with no public media policy and appears not to have developed one subsequently. Lee claimed that she had prepared a policy paper before the election but it had been decided ...
Open access notablesIce acceleration and rotation in the Greenland Ice Sheet interior in recent decades, Løkkegaard et al., Communications Earth & Environment:In the past two decades, mass loss from the Greenland ice sheet has accelerated, partly due to the speedup of glaciers. However, uncertainty in speed derived from satellite products ...
Buzz from the Beehive A statement from Children’s Minister Karen Chhour – yet to be posted on the Governmentâs official website – arrived in Point of Orderâs email in-tray last night. It welcomes the High Court ruling on whether the Waitangi Tribunal can demand she appear before it. It does ...
Mr Bombastic:Ironically, the media the academic experts wanted is, in many ways, the media they got. In place of the tyrannical editors of yesteryear, advancing without fear or favour the interests of the ruling class; the New Zealand news media of today boasts a troop of enlightened journalists dedicated to ...
It's hard times try to make a livingYou wake up every morning in the unforgivingOut there somewhere in the cityThere's people living lives without mercy or pityI feel good, yeah I'm feeling fineI feel better then I have for the longest timeI think these pills have been good for meI ...
In 1974, the US Supreme Court issued its decision in United States v. Nixon, finding that the President was not a King, but was subject to the law and was required to turn over the evidence of his wrongdoing to the courts. It was a landmark decision for the rule ...
The Labour Party is saddened to learn of the death of Sir Robert Martin, a globally renowned disability advocate who led the way for disability rights both in New Zealand and internationally. ...
Labour is calling for the Government to urgently rethink its coalition commitment to restart live animal exports, Labour animal welfare spokesperson Rachel Boyack said. Â ...
Todayâs Financial Stability Report has once again highlighted that poverty and deep inequality are political choices - and this Government is choosing to make them worse. ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to do more for our households in most need as unemployment rises and the cost of living crisis endures. ...
Unemployment is on the rise and itâs only going to get worse under this Government, Labour finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds said. Stats NZ figures show the unemployment rate grew to 4.3 percent in the March quarter from 4 percent in the December quarter. âThis is the second rise in unemployment ...
The New Zealand Labour Party welcomes the entering into force of the European Union and New Zealand free trade agreement. This agreement opens the door for a huge increase in trade opportunities with a market of 450 million people who are high value discerning consumers of New Zealand goods and ...
The National-led Government continues its fiscal jiggery pokery with its Pharmac announcement today, Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall says. âThe government has increased Pharmac funding but conceded it will only make minimal increases in access to medicineâ, said Ayesha Verrall âThis is far from the bold promises made to fund ...
This afternoonâs interim Waitangi Tribunal report must be taken seriously as it affects our most vulnerable children, Labour childrenâs spokesperson Willow-Jean Prime. ...
Te PÄti MÄori are demanding the New Zealand Government support an international independent investigation into mass graves that have been uncovered at two hospitals on the Gaza strip, following weeks of assault by Israeli troops. Among the 392 bodies that have been recovered, are children and elderly civilians. Many of ...
Our two-tiered system for veteransâ support is out of step with our closest partners, and all parties in Parliament should work together to fix it, Labour veteransâ affairs spokesperson Greg OâConnor said. ...
Stripping two Ministers of their portfolios just six months into the job shows Christopher Luxonâs management style is lacking, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said. ...
Tonightâs court decision to overturn the summons of the Childrenâs Minister has enabled the Crown to continue making decisions about MÄori without evidence, says Te PÄti MÄori spokesperson for Children, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. âThe judicial system has this evening told the nation that this government can do whatever they want when ...
It appears Nicola Willis is about to pull the rug out from under the feet of local communities still dealing with the aftermath of last yearâs severe weather, and local councils relying on funding to build back from these disasters. ...
The Government is making short-sighted changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that will take away environmental protection in favour of short-term profits, Labourâs environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
Labour welcomes the release of the report into the North Island weather events and looks forward to working with the Government to ensure that New Zealand is as prepared as it can be for the next natural disaster. ...
The Labour Party has called for the New Zealand Government to recognise Palestine, as a material step towards progressing the two-State solution needed to achieve a lasting peace in the region. ...
Some of our countryâs most important work, stopping the sexual exploitation of children and violent extremism could go along with staff on the frontline at ports and airports. ...
The Governmentâs Fast Track Approvals Bill will give projects such as new coal mines a âget out of jail freeâ card to wreak havoc on the environment, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The government's decision to reintroduce Three Strikes is a destructive and ineffective piece of law-making that will only exacerbate an inherently biased and racist criminal justice system, said Te PÄti MÄori Justice Spokesperson, TÄkuta Ferris, today. During the time Three Strikes was in place in Aotearoa, MÄori and Pasifika received ...
Cuts to frontline hospital staff are not only a broken election promise, it shows the reckless tax cuts have well and truly hit the frontline of the health system, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
The Green Party has joined the call for public submissions on the fast-track legislation to be extended after the Ombudsman forced the Government to release the list of organisations invited to apply just hours before submissions close. ...
New Zealandâs good work at reducing climate emissions for three years in a row will be undone by the National governmentâs lack of ambition and scrapping programmes that were making a difference, Labour Party climate spokesperson Megan Woods said today. ...
More essential jobs could be on the chopping block, this time Ministry of Education staff on the school lunches team are set to find out whether they're in line to lose their jobs. ...
Te PÄti MÄori is disgusted at the confirmation that hundreds are set to lose their jobs at Oranga Tamariki, and the disestablishment of the Treaty Response Unit. âThis act of absolute carelessness and out of touch decision making is committing tamariki to state abuse.â Said Te PÄti MÄori Oranga Tamariki ...
The Government is trying to bring in a law that will allow Ministers to cut corners and kill off native species, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said. ...
Cancelling urgently needed new Cook Strait ferries and hiking the cost of public transport for many Kiwis so that National can announce the prospect of another tunnel for Wellington is not making good choices, Labour Transport Spokesperson Tangi Utikere said. ...
A laundry list of additional costs for TÄmaki Makarau Auckland shows the Minister for the city is not delivering for the people who live there, says Labour Auckland Issues spokesperson Shanan Halbert. ...
Te PÄti MÄori co-leader Rawiri Waititi, and Mema Paremata mĆ TÄmaki-Makaurau, Takutai Tarsh Kemp, will travel to the Gold Coast to strengthen ties with MÄori in Australia next week (15-21 April). The visit, in the lead-up to the 9th Australian National Kapa haka Festival, will be an opportunity for both ...
The Green Party has today launched a step-by-step guide to help New Zealanders make their voice heard on the Governmentâs democracy dodging and anti-environment fast track legislation. ...
The Government is making it easier for minor changes to be made to a building consent so building a home is easier and more affordable, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says.    âThe coalition Government is focused on making it easier and cheaper to build homes so we can ...
New Zealand lost a true legend when internationally renowned disability advocate Sir Robert Martin (KNZM) passed away at his home in Whanganui last night, Disabilities Issues Minister Louise Upston says. âOur Governmentâs thoughts are with his wife Lynda, family and community, those he has worked with, the disability community in ...
Good evening â  Before discussing the challenges and opportunities facing New Zealandâs foreign policy, weâd like to first acknowledge the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. You have contributed to debates about New Zealand foreign policy over a long period of time, and we thank you for hosting us. ...
From today, passengers travelling internationally from Auckland Airport will be able to keep laptops and liquids in their carry-on bags for security screening thanks to new technology, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. âCreating a more efficient and seamless travel experience is important for holidaymakers and businesses, enabling faster movement through ...
People with an interest in the health of Northlandâs marine ecosystems are invited to a public meeting to discuss how to deal with kina barrens, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones will lead the discussion, which will take place on Friday, 10 May, at Awanui Hotel in ...
Kiwi exporters are $100 million better off today with the NZ EU FTA entering into force says Trade Minister Todd McClay. âThis is all part of our plan to grow the economy. New Zealand's prosperity depends on international trade, making up 60 per cent of the countryâs total economic activity. ...
There are heartening signs that the extractive sector is once again becoming an attractive prospect for investors and a source of economic prosperity for New Zealand, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. âThe beginnings of a resurgence in extractive industries are apparent in media reports of the sector in the past ...
The return of the historic Ć-RÄkau battle site to the descendants of those who fought there moved one step closer today with the first reading of Te Pire mĆ Ć-RÄkau, Te Pae o Maumahara / The Ć-RÄkau Remembrance Bill. The Bill will entrust the 9.7-hectare battle site, five kilometres west ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has announced 25 new high-speed EV charging hubs along key routes between major urban centres and outlined the Governmentâs plan to supercharge New Zealandâs EV infrastructure. The hubs will each have several chargers and be capable of charging at least four â and up to 10 ...
The coalition Government will not proceed with the previous Governmentâs plans to regulate residential property managers, Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. âI have written to the Chairperson of the Social Services and Community Committee to inform him that the Government does not intend to support the Residential Property Managers Bill ...
The Government has announced an independent review into the disability support system funded by the Ministry of Disabled People â Whaikaha. Disability Issues Minister Louise Upston says the review will look at what can be done to strengthen the long-term sustainability of Disability Support Services to provide disabled people and ...
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith has attended the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva and outlined the Governmentâs plan to restore law and order. âSpeaking to the United Nations Human Rights Council provided us with an opportunity to present New Zealandâs human rights progress, priorities, and challenges, while responding to issues and ...
The Government and Rotorua Lakes Council are committed to working closely together to end the use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua. Associate Minister of Housing (Social Housing) Tama Potaka says the Government remains committed to ending the long-term use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua by the ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay heads overseas today for high-level trade talks in the Gulf region, and a key OECD meeting in Paris. Mr McClay will travel to Riyadh to meet with counterparts from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). âNew Zealandâs goods and services exports to the Gulf region ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford has outlined six education priorities to deliver a world-leading education system that sets Kiwi kids up for future success. âIâm putting ambition, achievement and outcomes at the heart of our education system. I want every child to be inspired and engaged in their learning so they ...
The new NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) App is a secure âone stop shopâ to provide the services drivers need, Transport Minister Simeon Brown and Digitising Government Minister Judith Collins say. âThe NZTA App will enable an easier way for Kiwis to pay for Vehicle Registration and Road User Charges (RUC). ...
WhÄnau with tamariki growing up in emergency housing motels will be prioritised for social housing starting this week, says Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka. âGiving these whÄnau a better opportunity to build healthy stable lives for themselves and future generations is an essential part of the Governmentâs goal of reducing ...
Racing Minister Winston Peters has paid tribute to an icon of the industry with the recent passing of Dave OâSullivan (OBE). âOur sympathies are with the OâSullivan family with the sad news of Dave OâSullivanâs recent passing,â Mr Peters says. âHis contribution to racing, initially as a jockey and then ...
Assalaamu alaikum, greetings to you all. Eid Mubarak, everyone! I want to extend my warmest wishes to you and everyone celebrating this joyous occasion. It is a pleasure to be here. I have enjoyed Eid celebrations at Parliament before, but this is my first time joining you as the Minister ...
Associate Health Minister David Seymour has announced Pharmacâs largest ever budget of $6.294 billion over four years, fixing a $1.774 billion fiscal cliff.  âAccess to medicines is a crucial part of many Kiwisâ lives. Weâve committed to a budget allocation of $1.774 billion over four years so Kiwis are ...
Hon Paula Bennett has been appointed as member and chair of the Pharmac board, Associate Health Minister David Seymour announced today. "Pharmac is a critical part of New Zealand's health system and plays a significant role in ensuring that Kiwis have the best possible access to medicines,â says Mr Seymour. ...
Hundreds of New Zealand families affected by Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) will benefit from a new Government focus on prevention and treatment, says Health Minister Dr Shane Reti. âWe know FASD is a leading cause of preventable intellectual and neurodevelopmental disability in New Zealand,â Dr Reti says. âEvery day, ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones today attended the official opening of Kaikoheâs new $14.7 million sports complex. âThe completion of the Kaikohe Multi Sports Complex is a fantastic achievement for the Far North,â Mr Jones says. âThis facility not only fulfils a long-held dream for local athletes, but also creates ...
Foreign Minister Winston Petersâ engagements in TĂŒrkiye this week underlined the importance of diplomacy to meet growing global challenges.  âReturning to the Gallipoli Peninsula to represent New Zealand at Anzac commemorations was a sombre reminder of the critical importance of diplomacy for de-escalating conflicts and easing tensions,â Mr Peters ...
Ambassador Millar, Burgemeester, Vandepitte, Excellencies, military representatives, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen â good morning and welcome to this sacred Anzac Day dawn service. It is an honour to be here on behalf of the Government and people of New Zealand at Buttes New British Cemetery, Polygon Wood â a deeply ...
Distinguished guests - Â It is an honour to return once again to this site which, as the resting place for so many of our war-dead, has become a sacred place for generations of New Zealanders. Â Our presence here and at the other special spaces of Gallipoli is made ...
Mai ia tawhiti pamamao, te moana nui a Kiwa, kua tae whakaiti mai matou, ki to koutou papa whenua. No koutou te tapuwae, no matou te tapuwae, kua honoa pumautia. Â Ko nga toa kua hinga nei, o te Waipounamu, o te Ika a Maui, he okioki tahi me o ...
Paul Goldsmith will take on responsibility for the Media and Communications portfolio, while Louise Upston will pick up the Disability Issues portfolio, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announced today. âOur Government is relentlessly focused on getting New Zealand back on track. As issues change in prominence, I plan to adjust Ministerial ...
Recreational catch limits will be reduced in areas of Fiordland and the Chatham Islands to help keep those fisheries healthy and sustainable, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. The lower recreational daily catch limits for a range of finfish and shellfish species caught in the Fiordland Marine Area and ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has welcomed an important milestone in New Zealandâs hydrogen future, with the opening of the countryâs first network of hydrogen refuelling stations in Wiri. âI want to congratulate the team at Hiringa Energy and its partners K one W one (K1W1), Mitsui & Co New Zealand ...
The coalition Government is delivering on its commitment to improve resource management laws and give greater certainty to consent applicants, with a Bill to amend the Resource Management Act (RMA) expected to be introduced to Parliament next month. RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop has today outlined the first RMA Amendment ...
Overseas models for regulating the oil and gas sector, including their decommissioning regimes, are being carefully scrutinised as a potential template for New Zealandâs own sector, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. The Coalition Government is focused on rebuilding investor confidence in New Zealandâs energy sector as it looks to strengthen ...
Emergency Management and Recovery Minister Mark Mitchell has today released the Report of the Government Inquiry into the response to the North Island Severe Weather Events. âThe report shows that New Zealandâs emergency management system is not fit-for-purpose and there are some significant gaps we need to address,â Mr Mitchell ...
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith is today travelling to Europe where heâll update the United Nations Human Rights Council on the Governmentâs work to restore law and order. âAttending the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva provides us with an opportunity to present New Zealandâs human rights progress, priorities, and challenges, while ...
Associate Agriculture Minister, Mark Patterson, formally reopened the worldâs largest wool processing facility today in Awatoto, Napier, following a $50 million rebuild and refurbishment project. âThe reopening of this facility will significantly lift the economic opportunities available to New Zealandâs wool sector, which already accounts for 20 per cent of ...
Hon Andrew Bayly, Minister for Small Business and Manufacturing At the Southland Otago Regional Engineering Collective (SOREC) Summit, 18 April, Dunedin  NgÄ mihi nui, Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Ko Whanganui aho  Good Afternoon and thank you for inviting me to open your summit today.  I am delighted ...
The Government is delivering on its commitment to bring back the Three Strikes legislation, Associate Justice Minister Nicole McKee announced today. âOur Government is committed to restoring law and order and enforcing appropriate consequences on criminals. We are making it clear that repeat serious violent or sexual offending is not ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has today announced four new diplomatic appointments for New Zealandâs overseas missions.  âOur diplomats have a vital role in maintaining and protecting New Zealandâs interests around the world,â Mr Peters says.  âI am pleased to announce the appointment of these senior diplomats from the ...
New Zealand is contributing NZ$7 million to support communities affected by severe food insecurity and other urgent humanitarian needs in Ethiopia and Somalia, Foreign Minister Rt Hon Winston Peters announced today. Â âOver 21 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance across Ethiopia, with a further 6.9 million people ...
Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage Paul Goldsmith is congratulating Mataaho Collective for winning the Golden Lion for best participant in the main exhibition at the Venice Biennale. "Congratulations to the Mataaho Collective for winning one of the world's most prestigious art prizes at the Venice Biennale. âIt is good ...
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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jessica Balanzategui, Senior Lecturer in Media, RMIT University ABC âBluey maniaâ shows no sign of abating. Blueyâs season finale, The Sign, was the most viewed ABC program of all time on iView. A âhiddenâ follow-up episode, aptly named The Surprise, created ...
Labour market figures came in softer than the Reserve Bank had forecast, but they wonât be enough to move the needle on interest rates, writes Catherine McGregor in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoffâs morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here. Unemployment ...
The campaign will engage the community and encourage submissions on the bill to the New Zealand government by the closing submission deadline of Friday 31st of May 2024 4pm. ...
The paper raises concerns about declining trust in New Zealand's political institutions and democratic processes, and the role that the overuse of Parliamentary urgency plays in that. ...
The Urban Habitat Collective was an attempt to built an innovative new form of apartment building in Wellington. Hereâs why it failed, and why the idea could still work, writes co-founder Bronwen Newton. When we started the Urban Habitat Collective in November 2018, we thought we were starting a revolution, ...
Two decades ago this week, a controversial law that attempted to define ownership of the foreshore and seabed prompted a formidable display of outrage and kĆtahitanga as 15,000 marched to parliament. Jamie Tahana looks back.âHÄ«koi, hÄ«koi,â they chanted by the thousands as the biggest MÄori march in a generation ...
A Labour Party Member’s Bill aims to plug a culpability gap between manslaughter and health and safety breaches The post New push for corporate killing laws appeared first on Newsroom. ...
Terence OâBrien had the rare and no doubt undesired distinction of rising to one of the most exalted positions in New Zealand diplomacy, then being unceremoniously recalled to Wellington without explanation just when his career was at its zenith. What is perhaps more surprising is that he appears to have ...
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Why has New Zealand slipped from third to 12th on Quality of Death Indexes over the past decade or so? Hospice New Zealand Chief Executive Wayne Naylor has a list of reasons. “We don’t have a current national strategy â the Government hasn’t renewed our 2001 strategy, so we don’t ...
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On an unusually hot night in January 2019, a little boyâs lifeless body was found face up in a small townâs sewage oxidation pond. To the police, it was an open and shut case: three-year-old Lachlan Jones had run away from his home in the Southland town of Gore, climbed ...
Rongotai MP Julie Anne Genter has apologised in Parliament after National accused her of intimidating and attacking one of its ministers in the House. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra The Prime Minister and state and territory leaders met on Wednesday as the national cabinet to discuss a crisis gripping Australia â the horrific number of women murdered this year. The killings have shocked ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Radhika Raghav, Teaching Fellow, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Otago Netflix Indian director Sanjay Leela Bhansali is known for his big-budget Bollywood production, featuring grand sets, star casts, meticulously choreographed dance sequences and lavish costumes, jewellery and furnishings. ...
Sir Robert devoted his life to disability rights after living in institutions in his younger years, says KaihautĆ« Tika HauÄtanga | Disability Rights Commissioner Prudence Walker. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anastasia Powell, Professor, Family and Sexual Violence, RMIT University Violence against women is not a womenâs problem to solve, it is a whole of society problem to solve; and men in particular have to take responsibility. Those were the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jessica Allen, Senior Lecturer in Chemical and Renewable Energy Engineering, University of Newcastle Snapshot freddy/ShutterstockPlans to revive an old coal-fired power station using bioenergy are being considered in the Hunter region of New South Wales. Similar plans for the station ...
Responding to the long-awaited release of judgesâ special allowances, including free air travel and hotels for spouses, generous sabbaticals, and access to limousines, Taxpayersâ Union spokesman Alex Murphy said: âIn what world does your employer ...
Analysis - The United States has unveiled plans to boost the weapons trade with Australia and the UK, on the same day that Winston Peters is expected to sketch NZ's position on AUKUS. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrea Carson, Professor of Political Communication, Department of Politics, Media and Philosophy, La Trobe University Since Australiaâs First Nations Voice to Parliament referendum in October 2023, diverse commentaries have sought to explain why it failed. But what does an analysis of media ...
Lawyers representing two iwi as well as the MÄori Women’s Welfare League on Wednesday asked the Court of Appeal to overturn last week’s High Court decision on the Waitangi Tribunal’s decision to summons Children’s Minister Karen Chhour. The Tribunal is currently investigating the Governmentâs decision to repeal section 7AA of ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra The Albanese government will introduce legislation to ban deepfake pornography and provide more funding for the eSafety Commission to pilot age-assurance technologies. The contribution of internet sites to gender-based violence was one major issue ...
Average ordinary time hourly earnings, as measured by the Quarterly Employment Survey (QES), increased 5.2 percent in the year to the March 2024 quarter, according to figures released by Stats NZ today. Annual wage cost inflation, as measured by the ...
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As of the March 2024 quarter, we can now look back on 20 years of data related to youth not in employment, education, or training (NEET), as collected by the Household Labour Force Survey (HLFS), according to figures released by Stats NZ today. "The ...
Thousands of workers attended public events in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch today to celebrate International Workersâ Day (May Day), but union representatives are urging caution and vigilance over the Governmentâs blatantly "anti-worker" ...
The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 4.3 percent in the March 2024 quarter, compared with 4.0 percent in the previous quarter, according to figures released by Stats NZ today. ...
The PSA is warning the Government that the sensitive information of New Zealanders held by various agencies will fall into the wrong hands if the latest round of proposed cuts goes ahead. ...
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NZCTU Economist Craig Renney said new data released by Statistics New Zealand shows the need for Government to act now, with unemployment rising from 3.4% to 4.3%. ...
The outpouring of anger over Maiki Shermanâs hyperbolic presentation of this weekâs ânightmareâ poll is itself an overreaction, argues Stewart Sowman-Lund. Politicians love nothing more than to pretend they donât care about polls. This week, deputy prime minister Winston Peters said he didnât give a âratâs derriereâ about a TVNZ ...
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Kudos to whomever made the $50K donation to Wellington Rape Crisis : )
You’re a star!
Excellent!
Excellent indeed! At the same time we note that private donations are compensating for government negligence and the government counts on this.
Sadly this is the way it will remain. Still…tax deductable (Wellington Rape Crisis is a registered charity and they run a tight ship so books in order). Vote with your wallet, I say! Do you prefer a faceless government servant deciding which organisations get funding …… OR….. do you prefer to allocate funds yourself? Easy choice for me đ
I prefer that the government provides these essential services rather than relying on the good will of the rich which always results in there not being enough of the essential services.
Yes, I do agree with Dr T and DTB that these services should be paid for and provided by the government.
Since around 2000, from being in opposition to being in government, the members of the current administration have gone up and down the country and chanted, from every which and where, the same meme, “Cut red tape this, cut red tape that! OSH this, OSH that. They are preventing progress! Let’s remove the obstacles to progress …! Get government out of the way! Reduce costs here, reduce costs there! The market must be given a chance to self regulate!”
Sadly, it would appear, it has needed a tragedy to stop Key and his cohorts in their tracks… and now they appear to be ducking for cover. Shame on them.
+1.
Slagging OSH went hand-in-hand with slagging Labour for being PC. Â Saying the term OSH in a sneering manner was a call-sign for tories. Â Â Many radio jocks and many business leaders contributed to a toxic attitude towards doing tasks/projects in a careful and considered way.Â
+1 yes well said Logi97 & KhandallaMan,
They frame their approach so that people are fooled into going along with them, “Oh that sounds good” and the purposes of any “red tape” go by the way-side. Good to make the connection. We can add “streamlining” to the list of words they use for that purpose too.
It would be nice to see some commentators reclaim the argument about the necessity and prudence of having ‘red tape’ for the benefit, protection and security of life and limb. This now is the time to start voicing this.
It would be just as good to see some commentators front-foot and strongly dismiss and damn accusations that ‘red tape’ is about being PC, nanny state, bureaucratic, costly, bad for business, bla bla bla neobla-ism.
It would be even better to see legally, morally and socially responsible business people and corporations – on the same side with workers, looking out for the interests of workers – speak out in defence of, and argue for, the need to have ‘red tape’.
The best standards and practices for workers are also best for employers, markets and businesses.
+1 Jim Nald
“It would be just as good to see some commentators front-foot and strongly dismiss and damn accusations that âred tapeâ is about being PC, nanny state, bureaucratic, costly, bad for business, bla bla bla neobla-ism.”
Â
Yes, that is a role for Labour. Â Unfortunately Labour abdicated that responsibility when the inner few decided that we should appeal to the light blues. Â When Phil Goff (ably advised by Shearer’s current advisors) apologied for Labour being perceived as “politically correct”‘Â Â he ceded the high ground to those who knocked OSH. Â
Labour has to get back to sticking it’s neck above the parapet on issues that effect workers, women, children, minorities and the defenceless. Â When it resorts to mimicking the themes of the powerful and the yob-mob it has lost its way. That happened when Labour apologised at the confence in Rotorua in Sept ’09.Â
Â
++1 Jim Nald, thoroughly agree
KM and BL
Could we also replace the words ‘radio jocks’ with ‘radio dicks’? Its seems more accurate.
That reminds me of this post:
Dunnokeyo reckons the word gay means weird. Leaving aside for a moment how insulting that definition is, lets look at the other definition he used to defend his homophobic outburst; the Oxford dictionary. Obviously Key never actually looked it up, because there’s no way he would agree with the example they give for the word’s use!
Â
I think you’ll find what he’s doing there is lying, TRP.
Rhino pointed out this other lie last night too:
Asked at his post-Cabinet press conference whether he was homophobic, Mr Key said: âNo, Iâm voting for gay marriage, Iâm hardly homophobic â I led the charge on it.â
It seems Key wants to take credit for having “led the charge on” marriage equality, in spite of the whole country knowing that he’s not Louisa Wall.
Not only does this blatant lie come hot on the heels of lying about which way he voted on the liquor purchase age, it’s also a disgraceful attempt at the traditional bigot’s fallback “but some of my best friends are (x)” defense.
Hopefully ‘traditional bigots’ will decide they don’t want to vote for the man who ‘led the charge’ on ‘weird’ marriage. Good news for the Conservative Party?
Batshit Key, the media whore and shameless, lying self-publicist, squeeked out about gay marriage, wanting to quickly gatecrash into the halo effect generated by Obama’s socially enlightened prior announcement.
Louisa Wall did the correct thing with the opportunity of a private member’s bill to follow through on the socially just thing to do.
Batshit Key now needs to be held account for what he said.
And as leader of a party of many Nasties, this is an opportunity for him to demonstrate true leadership by persuading each one of his party MPs* to exercise their individual conscience votes with their conscience for discriminated individuals.
*MPs – whether they are gay, stray or sway (or whether they are out or not)
As best I can recall, in the first instance Key did not support gay marriage.
I concur Dr Terry. Without bothering to Google check, Key is simply indulging in another brainfade…
The irony of course is that those who Key “represents”, are in fact far beyond “weird”, so perhaps this is JK being somewhat lucid.
Why are you bothering yourself over use of the word, when you can’t get your head around the real problems!
Yes its inappropriate, however its par for the course, its a non-event!
I think any event so to speak where the PM shows the world what a complete idiot he is should be highlighted.
John Key homophobe
The ignorant PM dug himself even deeper into the batshit yesterday when he said; “gay just means weird”…
Here’s an idea, let’s call a bigot a bigot.
Dunnokeyo denial plan (translated into coherent English):
I don’t think anything was said;
Something might have been said but I wasn’t responsible for it;
You can’t prove I said it;
I didn’t use those exact words;
Somebody overheard/secretly recorded the private conversation I had with 300 attendees over a PA system;
I was using the words according to the hitherto unknown definition I just made up now;
It was Opposite Day when I said that.Â
Just listening to Melbourne Cup pre race reportage on commercial radio, could have sworn it was Paddy Gower talking (bollocks) about the US elections.
Its going to go down to the wire…
Close race…
Favourite to win…
The race that stops a Nation….
On TV 3 this morning more Planet Key Speak re Beckham.
Dunnokeyo notes a “hearsay” report of something he said in private (???).
“But did you say it ?” presses the TV 3 person in response to this hint of denial.
“I’m not going to ‘characterise’ that…….” replies Dunnokeyo.
Planet Key for “Truth…truth…truth…what the fuck is that ?”
Never mind…yet a further example of prime minister as a devious, cynical bullshitter. Public consciousness of shit mountain continues to build.
And Stuffs take on Key is just Horseshit.
The Heralds is just Last coupla Days Bullshit Re Heated
And the Blame game has started.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=10845396
What is it with Key ?? He should have exploded in the biggest pile of shit ever.
David H
Yesterday! In a shower of sparks that also made a loud raspberry sound followed by a short percussion.
Accrding to a tweet reported in a front page Guardian piece “John Key is quickly becoming to New Zealand what Borat was to Kazakhstan.”
About sums it up.
[fixed link – r0b]
Thanks for that Bill
đ
That page is now gone!!!!
http://bat-bean-beam.blogspot.co.nz/
Okay I’m a groupie. GT on ‘Bat Bean Beam’ draws the connection between tools for managing blogs, news groups, and other social media, and drone warfare.
…The CIA will never run out of high-level targets. The internet will never run out of trolls. This is simply because should either of those categories be emptied, the database would fill them again with the people previously defined as mid-level targets, or a nuisance. The danger of terrorism or insurgency will never disappear in the same way that online social interactions will never become perfectly smooth. This is why the kill list and the kill file are not to be understood as temporary solutions but rather as permanent features, a way not just of dealing with concrete problems but of imagining and seeing the world…
I am really glad that The Standard makes minimal use of banning and the other more insidious silencing technologies such as like-dislike scales. I find it worrying that more and more in these kinds of these media, it is possible to almost never hear alternative views. Even whole subjects can disappear entirely, fresh perspectives, any uncomfortable voices, memories or thoughts, all are smoothed away before they can even impinge on anyone’s consciousness.
This at the same time as whanau and social groups are increasingly batoning down the hatchets against out-group members, and our communities are slipping into survival mode.
Actual Link
.
Cut the “red tape” meme has led to, among others, these deaths at Pike River and tens of thousands of leaking homes.
The recent proposal to do similar regulation-cutting to the heavy trucking industry ……….. would anyone like to predict the outcome of such a proposal?
And note how even National had to institute a bunch of “red tape” in order to help secure the finance company sector and protect investors after SCF, Hanover, etc.
Yep, methinks the right wing religion of smaller regulation, freer markets, more private enterprise involvement etc etc has without doubt passed its time now.
The tide is now no longer drifting at the pleasant sandy high tide beach, it is now well on the way out exposing the mud flats and the detritus that had previously been covered by the tide.
What’s that saying about geting exposed by an outgoing tide? Well, that entire political philosophy is lying stinked up on the mud flats with no togs. Think Brownlee Key and English. End.
What it shows is that the people who are actually directing NZs “sovereign parliament”, have managed, over decades to completely corrupt the systems that are needed for societies, and communities to function well.
What we are currently seeing is the latest outputs of that corruption!
umm… profits unfettered by beastly considerations such as health and safety for a few
and higher likelihood of injury and death for many more….
Or it could be described like this …… 45 tonne unregistered truck crushes elderly lady.
yes, I think your description has more impact
đ
Does the elderly lady have any connection to the successive governments she voted in during her life that created an environment that allowed her to fill her house full of things transported by trucks and feed herself with food transported by trucks? Did she vote for people who destroyed the railways, with the smugness of an armchair ideologue? Did the woman, at some point in her life, know she ran the risk or did it come as a complete surprise when she bought a retirement home on a busy highway route?
Are the public responsible for the actions of the masters they vote for and the ideas they arrange their lives around, or can they cast off their actions entirely onto any number of random ministers?
You raise a good point of debate – in that voters need to be engaged in what they are really voting for however your point omits the role of trust and the role of someone in government, with which that trust is reasonably based on also the role of “authority” and how people relate to that, in fact the very role of government in the first place.
A political party proposes a way forward, people trust that the consequences of such have been soundly thought out. If everyone has to double guess and think deeply on each proposal, then half the point of having representatives has been lost. i.e. not everyone wants to be thinking about these things in depth; that is why we elect people to do that for us.
Sadly, the time for relying on these people to be taking their role conscientiously is over and we can no longer afford to have such beliefs. This is the message that needs to get out to the general public, once more people start pressuring government to take their role seriously again, they might start doing their jobs properly and then perhaps we can start to trust them again.
blue leopard
I don’t notice much attempt at political discussion by others. There are some comments that come from deeply held prejudices and all events that are received and remembered in their minds are then shaped to fit those prejudices and reinforce them. I don’t think most people engage in the democratic process of critical thinking about means and ends which is our responsibility if we want to live in a democracy. I was just the same when I was younger, there was no role model of active thinker on politics in my life to follow. I think its the same for most. What to do about this?
The aim would be to engage just 100K new people to Left Wing politics. Aged 16 and up.
In such a scenario the Right would almost never win again (oohhh McFlock!).
lol
  Â
The old “if more people supported us, we’d be more popular” tautology.
   Â
The number of meetings I’ve been in where plans have been hatched to “engage with [segment or donor XXX]” is large. The number of successful socialist revolutions in NZ in that time period: 0.00000
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The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. And remember that only one dude could walk on water (ninja lore notwithstanding).Â
In that case perhaps the common factor for failure is you McFlock. With your outlook it’s not a surprise.
lol
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Well, let me know how your 100k-strong youth organisation goes. I’ll be looking out for them leafleting at the next election…
You’re mad McFlock. Why would you consider voting for the Alliance for instance if not to help them build a 100,000 strong voting base???
By the way, I said nothing about a “youth” organisation. Better keep your imagination in check mate. It seems you are reading a lot into what I write which is not there.
Leafletting lol your strategies really would be a failure.
Because I agree with their policies. Which is an entirely separate issue to how successful they are, or I think they’ll be. Maybe if the Alliance get 1% lab/greens would recognise the demand and take a step to the left. Who knows?
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Hey, I’d love it if the Alliance had a half-million strong voting base. But anyone can say “we will engage x-hundred thousand people”. Actually getting more than thirty is the challenge, and only comes from hard work: entertaining and persuasive speakers on the hustings, doorknocking, social media, and indeed walking around in the rain delivering thousand of leaflets. And no, social media does not remove that work.
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Which takes us back to plaintive cries in meetings of a dozen folk, the mournful refrain “why don’t people vote for / support us?”Â
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As for reading a lot into what you write, the problem is that in order to turn what you write into a coherent and realistic plan, lots and lots of holes need to be filled in.Â
If you want to walk on water you got to get out of the boat.
spread that left wing thought
đ
I don’t think most people think, full stop. There is likely to be heard from many “When’s the next footy match”. In other words, so very much discussion centres upon trivia rather than upon the huge issues going on all around us.
@Prism,
Yes, I agree with your comments, and I have in the past got rather annoyed about people not engaging with politics (!), yet I realise this is unfair, and I have to remind myself that not everyone has the same interests, most are very busy and people do things in a variety of ways to help improve “the way things are”.
As to what to do about this. “ummm” is the first thing that comes to mind!
Then the standard criticism that arises of our media; information sources.
It is my experience (and from what I’ve read too) that when one meets up with a person with a real interest in political issues and critical thinking, this what sparks interest in another. This can be a real life person, and it can also be an article in a paper, or books and now, on the internet too. The issue being, the more people read banal propaganda, the more they switch off. This was my experience, a thought that politics was simply mediocre and compromised. Then coming across books that relayed intelligently presented “connected” arguments which made me realise that there really was a purpose behind all the banality that is presented to us.
I guess the best thing that any one person can do is share a passion for critical thinking when one has the opportunity to (sometimes this involves speaking out when there is pressure to remain silent) and I think that an optimism that things can change positively when there are enough people involved is also a very important thing to impart to people. All of this requires going against some of our cultural attitudes, which I believe are pretty anti politics, keep your head down, don’t complain…etc.
I really do think that there needs to be an information source in print or on TV that imparts information on this level and I am unclear as to why this hasn’t occurred yet. Perhaps a bit to do with what Nicky Hagar’s Bruce Jesson Speech touched on, left-wing people have been disempowered?
Time to institute charges of corporate manslaughter and corporate grevious bodily harm which can be laid against directors and executive management.
Think a lot of things would improve if we simply removed all protections from “legal persons” aka corporations and give them protections on a case by case basis depending upon how much of a public service they were providing, this would effectively remind people of the reasons the protections were devised for corporations in the first place.
And shareholders too.
If you want to make money off other peoples labour you should at least make sure everything possible is done to ensure their safety.
Shareholders should know how slack the governance and management of the companies they invest in is but deliberately decide to ignore it unless the dividends fall.
It would be amazing how corporate behaviour would change if people through the whole ownership/governance/management chain were held accountable for their actions.
CV, Why not the owners, the shareholders ?
Because people with more cash than they need would only give it to enterprises where their liability was limited to the amount of cash they put in.
Limited liability companies distance the owners from the consequences of their actions.
If you could end up supporting the family of a man killed by poor safety measures in a mine you partly owned you would think very hard before investing and you would insist on good safety.
Because the Board of Directors have existing statutory responsibilities for governance and direction of executive management.
You have to remember that for widely held firms, the “owners” may be a hundred thousand people with KiwiSaver accounts.
Whereas the ten people in the Board Room have far more day to day and week to week power and influence over the company.
I read some where that the Miners union knew the mine wasn’t safe.
How come they didn’t kick up more of a stink, isn’t that their job?
You read somewhere the turgid stench that flies out your own arse BM? Yeah! We already knew that.
Can’t comment on the specifics of blame you’d like to attribute, but bear in mind that Unions were designed to be transitional devices, not static everlasting organisations. If Unions in NZ crossed the line that they were theoretically designed to cross, we’d have our long awaited revolution. The reality is that they presently contribute to keeping our population well fed and protected, but to do that they need to be collaborating with the thing they supposedly must overthrow. National or Labour, more or less regulation? Deaths, or a series of occasional serious injury? Work, or poverty and revolution? Which is better and what is the question we’re all avoiding?
Yeah basically. For the unions to truly succeed they would have to accept that their role would be much less needed.
@BM
“I read some where that the Miners union knew the mine wasnât safe.”
Yes, I heard of someone who chose not to work in that mine because of this knowledge
“How come they didnât kick up more of a stink, isnât that their job?”
This is the hidden “cost” of low employment, poor working conditions and low pay as well as a basic trust in employer’s concern over the welfare of their staff.
Although people “knew” the mine was unsafe, or suspected as much, there would be a basic “trust” that it “would be alright”, a person might consider that they were being paranoid and that their boss ultimately wouldn’t risk their workers lives.
This line of reasoning would be all the more likely when there are few jobs around and many poorly paid ones. i.e. the other option is to what? not work and not be able to keep your family in good health? Knowing the unemployment benefit is a trap, a person who quit their job wouldn’t be entitled to an unemployment benefit anyway and such an option isn’t even considered an option for a lot of people, due to both/either their value system &/or the fact that they have a family to support and welfare isn’t sufficient for that.
Isn’t that the advantage about Unions, strength in numbers, nobody would have to quit.
Everyone downs tools for a week unless the safety concerns get sorted.
Many of the workers were contractors who the Commission said did not have the required training to carry out the tasks management gave them. Contractors are not usually associated with Unions, so it’s doubtful any strike would have been effective. The Union workers would have simply been replaced by contractors, with much applause from Brownlee and Wilkinson.
It’s good that you’re advocating for more Union powers to ensure workplace safety BM… Perhaps Slater, Farrar and the rest of the Union bashing sycophants might like to hear about your ideas?
Blind Monetarist some miners just up and left but in New Zealand the right wing have hobbled unions one of the first pieces of legislation by your shonkey led govt was to stop unions free access to the work place 2008 followed by Kate wilkinsons shelving of the recommendations of the labour parties report on mining safety 2009 preceded by Mad max bradfords sacking of mine inspectors 1998 preceeded by bill birchs gutting of mine safety rules 1992 that had been built up over the previous century.
Not trying to shift the blame their Bob.
The Labour party was born on the coast out of concern for mine safety and workers rights!
BM, the report I read was that miners, not the unions so much, new that it was unsafe. Kudos to ABC Aussie for comprehensive public service broadcasting coverage:
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Wouldn’t surprise me if Pike River ran a blacklist. If you were an employee or contractor who caused too much trouble, you were never hired again.
I thought the worker were being paid bonuses to meet targets?
BM
You’re like those guys in the comedy routine acting out simple-minded types spotting cars on a motorway, ooh look there’s another one. You question, someone answers, and it just flows right past you without entering your brain, and you repeat the question later on with the same result. I think you are an example of the snowfall effect that I put forward in Open Mike I think on 6/11.
The poor old miners got caught in a moral hazard that existed for miners in Emile Zola’s time. They want to make a living, have housing, and every time they delay production for safety reasons they hurt the company, it’s profitability and their jobs. In Zola’s time their safety was their own responsibility and I understand they had to shore up the passages and support the ceiling themselves.
Read about it and learn – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germinal_(novel)
It seems strange to me vto, that the millions of dollars needed to fix leaky homes is not clearly sheeted home to the National deregulation in the 90s. You would think that along with Mining deregulation the people would be very angry. I am.
Who was the minister responsible? Lockwood Smith comes to mind.
Bill Birch and then MAD Max Bradford
Kate Chapman reports:
Is she part of the parliamentary gallery? Does she not regularly see how Key does his stand-up routine in order to deflect serious questions in Question Time? Why is she not reporting that, rather than just uncritically reporting what Key says?
Karol – The question is:
What is the selection criteria is to be “any reporter or editor”, responsible for the media balackouts which exist, to provide the cover stories and misdirection, to blatant lies that are sold via the MSM.
When one starts to think about those who are “selected to report the news”, one can reasonably deduce that those people are as easily “swayed”, as those chosen to be the options NZ gets to vote for!
NZ inc – Rotten to the core!
Did you know that you can make up to $1200 per week? [spam deleted – r0b]
Is that you Rodney Hide?
You probably need an HIV test to go along with your job application…
”I dare you to show me one example where I haven’t discharged my responsibility seriously, professionally and appropriately,” he told TV3’s Firstline. (Sorry,had to cut and paste) Guess who in DomPost?
Yesterday I noted a discussion of interest rate and currency swaps that I heard on Jim Mora on Radionz. I put live links in my comment. It was new stuff to me, the financial instruments or derivatives (D) market is not my everyday experience and I would say not to the ordinary citizen.
http://dunedinstadium.wordpress.com/2012/11/05/afternoons-with-jim-mora-the-panel-today-dcc-interest-rate-swaps/
also
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/7903907/Banks-plundering-society-globally
I just listened again and there are some points that we should know. First between them Auckland and Dunedin City Councils lost $200 million last year resulting from these Ds. Then we should know that the Ds are contingent liabilities which have floating rates and there is no knowing how the rates will change year to year. It may be $1 billion that they lose next year (and that is a debt on top of the principal still owing).
I don’t know if they are the same as hedge funds, but the point was made as with hedge funds, that the seller of the D has a conflict of interest as it wants to win and you to lose, (so it will want to tip the scales against you). One thinks of the Melbourne Cup – the TAB have better rules and standards. Apparently our chief national earners, Fonterra and farming interests, are involved in these derivatives and that gives a cold feeling down the spine.
There is something called a Dual currency interest rate swap. This involves two different currencies and when one is NZ, which is very volatile and may fall, then the repayments go up, a particularly risky tricky thing to be in.
In Europe there has been legal proceedings brought against mis-selling by banks of derivatives (mis-selling another neo-lib euphemism) and a Milan bank had returned millions of dollars, might have been $1 billion not sure.
It can be difficult to find what has been done with this public money because of the old excuse “It’s commercially sensitive”. We may think we have the right to know what our officials are doing in our name, but no, ‘It’s trust us we know more than you, and we know what we are doing”. That sounds dodgy, but how can we force the issue under the present regime??
So after the GFC, these City Councils and their investment banking mates decided to get in on the game themselves.
STUPID
technical note – a contingent liability is a potential sum owing, the size and nature of which depends on some future event or measure.
With interest rate D’s, there is a vast amount of uncertainty and lack of control around what this might be, year to year. As prism notes, the investment banks on the other side of the trade often PROFIT when their clients LOSE.
It’s a level of risk which no public organisation should involve itself in unless it really knows how to use D’s as tools to reduce risk and uncertainty.
Many municipal authorities in the US have gone bankrupt due to these kinds of “investments”.
CV
Thanks for putting right my understandings of contingencies et al. I don’t want to pass on my ignorance of these matters to others.
No probs mate, you were very close to getting it right. Your monthly power bill could be considered a contingent liability which depends on how much power you use – will your next invoice be $300 or will it be $600?
At least in that case you have significant influence over the end result. With an interest rate swap you are at the mercy of market fraud and banker fine print scams.
I was thinking of that general competence thing for councils. At one time they couldn’t get high-flown ideas of risk-taking in exotic financial transactions – they were too tightly controlled. It seems as a citizen who isn’t snuggling up for juicy tenders and projects to councils, that the general competence should be abandoned and a slightly more lenient than the previous control should be the new norm.
Also, one of the skills that a CEO is now being paid for is no doubt the ability to handle a large budget and be able to do this financial horse-trading. So if councils had less money, which they had to parcel out in a rational way, there would be less need to do their double book-keeping. The Jim Mora Radionz item I listened to said that the borrowings and interest rate swaps were not always shown in the appropriate part of the balance sheet and there wasn’t a signal of their likely cost long-term.
And I think that employing contractors is almost double-bookeeping. Government and businesses can fudge their expenditure on human resources. Contractors are paid out of one pot, and staff and wages out of another. Staff and wages will appear to be kept at a low rate yet the real need of the organisation is met by high-paid hourly contractors. A wasteful and often mendacious system.
This Local Bodies explanation piece on council general competence and processes is very straightforward and a good example of providing clear information.
http://insider.thomsonreuters.co.nz/2012/03/local-government-law-nz/
2. Financial management strategies
Commencing in 1996, with abolition of the former Local Authorities Loans Board, local authorities have had greater powers to undertake works and to fund the works through different fiscal policies and determinations. The ability of local authorities to borrow money, or to undertake rating, has been substantially liberalised. The introduction of differential rating, and annual charges, has been modernised, and the ability to impose targeted rates has been extended. Again, to provide direction and restraint, the law requires councils to develop strategies for funding and borrowing, and to provide for implementation through the long-term plan and annual plan, and to make an annual report. These obligations are subject to overview by the Auditor-General.
Good work Prism..
Does it say who is responsible for making the “investments” at either council, or who provided the advise to do so?
Still, the quicker the councils can get themselves into debt the quicker the assets can be stolen.
The new owners of the assets, will be the same gang who also will have swallowed up the “investments”.
Like a win win for them, but a huge loss for everyone else.
The Power of the Right-Wing Echo Chamber
We see the same things here with the RWNJs continual re-writing of history when the facts conflict with what the RWNJs believe.
Yes how about calling it the snowfall effect? The brains of RWNJs get stirred up by new and unwelcome stats which register for a brief moment in time, but similar to the little globes with snow and bits of glitter in them which swirl around after a shaking, soon everything settles back to the same configuration as before.
Great imagery there Prism.
I expect there are more RWNJ who believe in a god and in a heaven as they are more likely to exist in faith rather than science or factual evidence. It is god’s will you know.
ianmac
Well when you’re on the top of the heap perhaps you feel closer to god. Then you could almost be convinced that he/she is on your side and it’s all the wonderful way that god willed it to be.
Bless you my son.
More on RWNJ liars and their lies.
http://www.thebaffler.com/past/the_long_con/print
Each constituent lie is an instance pointing to a larger, elaborately constructed âtruth,â the one central to the right-wing appeal for generations: that liberalism is a species of madnessâan esoteric cult of out-of-touch, Europe-besotted ivory tower elitesâand conservatism is the creed of regular Americans and vouchsafes the eternal prosperity, security, and moral excellence of Godâs chosen nation, which was doing just fine before Bolsheviks started gumming up the works.
briefly listened to RNZ last night; an interveiw with a co-author of a recent popular publication on the findings of “political science” research into the benefits the introduction of democracy had provided to newly democratic nation states in our life-times. The interviewer was very dry and sceptical of the authors conclusions (very american) and the author just dribbled a whole lot of waffle imo.
It seemed, the advances in rule of law, social justice etc, in African countries for example, were comparitively short-lived.
Some one commented recently concerning the population attritions we are likely to see in Africa in the coming decades.
very sad.
Like Columbia we should drop the voting age to 16.
More representative balance.
+1
Just read that Rakon are taking sum jobs overseas due to the high dollar. As the Nat election billboard said:
“wave goodbye to Kiwi jobs, as well as your loved ones”
http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/political-news/media-unions-political-parties-corrupt-20121105-28u3w.html
Wonder how similar this would be in NZ?
Its crucial that we enhance and strengthen workers organisations in NZ to offset the power of the media and of moneyed capitalists.
Not sure how that relates but thanks for your input
Oh I thought I’d just bat back the idea of ‘union corruption’ with the idea that yes, unions have to evolve and tighten up their organisations – at the same time as making them far stronger and more effective.
NZ’s systemic corruption is on levels which people can’t even begin to fathom, so they blow it off as “poor politics”, or right/left or other ideology!
Its not!
Agreed Viper, thats one thing that is needed!
Given that the perceptions of many of those organisations are significantly affected by the media (which “won” hands down), much lolz.
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I’m surprised the Australian police are only at 16%, given their record.Â
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No one prepared to speak out in case they are arrested
It seems like a fairly wishy washy poll with no possibility of drawing conclusions.
It’s a survey of people’s perceptions not the reality. What a surpirse that a lot of people have a negative view of unions Wonder how they got thatidea?Â
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Yet the respondents views of individual politicians as not being corrupt, contradict the strong belief that poltiicians are corrupt. It’s all in the mind.
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And they’ve been doing those surveys for the last 30 years – roughly coincides with neoliberalism and the rise of tabloid and highly commercialised journalism. This does support research that indicates such journalism leads to cynicism about politics.
Having said that, Australian unions (and politicians very closely aligned to major unions) have had some serious shockers in the last couple of years. And the AWU scandal is crippling Gillard.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/investigations/silence-kept-the-fraud-happening/story-fn6tcxar-1226510180413
Roy Morgan says bugger off Chalupa, we like earning decent wages and having good working conditions. That’s why we like unions.
In the last week – has anyone been getting those server failure messages that were so common?
I haven’t had one since the start of last week after I’d fixed a number of things that were locking up the database and a separate set that were preventing the full use of cloudflare.
It’s been pretty good for me for several days now.
Great.
All good here too.
Darn – just got one. Looks like a CPU spike when update was added to the US election post…..
More work to do on Edits. My comment went in OK – just failed to load the updated screen.
Heh I got one maybe two hours ago…first for ages though. And it was only one.
Cunliffe says it’s a dark day for hi-tech manufacturing – Fisher and Paykel sold, Rakon outsourcing jobs to Asia. And a Labour government would do more to keep such businesses and work in NZ, he says.
This is what you get when a relatively small number of shareholders and institutional investors, all of whom are already plenty wealthy, decide that maximising their return on capital is more important than anything else eg keeping jobs in NZ.
Our economic system is broken.
Capitalism has been broken for 5000 years. We just don’t seem to be getting the message.
Well, capitalism hasn’t been around for 5000 years…guess it depends how you define it. I see it as taking hold after the time of Adam Smith and Ricardo.
Debt based money with a top down hierarchical structure which resulted in a few people owning nearly everything and the collapse of the economy was recorded in Sumer 5000 years ago. Which brings up that old saying: If it looks like a duck and quacks like duck, chances are, it’s a duck.
Feudalism.
There is, essentially, no difference.
Can I make a suggestion for your summer reading list DTB, Karl Polanyi – The Great transformation. If your into your history and political economy its makes for a great read, should be around in ebook form on Gutenberg or something.
“Not until 1834 was a competitive labor market established in England; hence, industrial capitalism as a social system cannot be said to have existed before that date. Yet almost immediately the self-protection of society set in: factory laws and social legislation, and a political and industrial working class movement sprang into being. It was in this attempt to stave off the entirely new dangers of the market mechanism that protective action conflicted fatally with the self-regulation of the system. It is no exaggeration to say that the social history of the nineteenth century was determined by the logic of the market system proper after it was released by the Poor Law Reform Act of 1834.”
http://www.uncharted.org/frownland/books/Polanyi/POLANYI%20KARL%20-%20The%20Great%20Transformation%20-%20v.1.0.html
State owned factories run by the workers as a cooperative with the production then done under contract/license. Run R&D through the universities to keep the factories up to date. Much better idea.
You can’t have the state owning the factories, the workers or their local communities have to own the factories. With state owned enterprises, the first thing a Tory Govt will do is sell the bloody things off. Need to observe and learn their patterns of behaviour.
And what else do you think the state is?
So we change government rules so that they can’t. It’s part and parcel of making them accountable to the people of NZ in such a way so that they do what the people of NZ want them to do and not what their major backers want.
OK to clarify, when you say “the state”, do you mean the Crown?
The Tories will simply repeal or amend those rules and then sell off the assets. Like we see them doing now.
No, the community.
Which is why we make it so that they can’t and if they try it we book them for treason and hang the bastards.
Leaving the system as it is now with government having all power and no responsibility isn’t an option.
How do you do this? You can’t charge someone for treason if they’ve legalised the process of selling publicly owned assets.
Well, I’m all for democracy and having it so that it must go to referendum. If they try to get rid of the referendum, as the arseholes did with Auckland, then they are immediately in breach of the law and are automatically found as treasonous.
Put in the right laws, make sure everyone knows what those laws are and what they’re there to do and we can limit the government which is what we really need to do.
This from your sister Blog.
http://weeklystandard.com/blogs/why-romney-will-win_660391.html
That’s as much a sister to The Standard as Kim Kardashian is my sister.
And I should care much about the US presidential circus, because?
The way you wrote your question answers your question, Karol.
Dug take the spade out of your head!
Does anyone recall the government saying that they were going to support KidsCan “feeding the lower decile” children?
Just as we thought would happen, they have managed to get Campbell Live off their backs
but can anyone report an improvement in the diets of the needy school children…? Nah, hasn’t happened, I bet. Or has it?
Just wondering.