It occurred to me as I asked who was going to register share interests around the office that the float had a lot of support. I questioned how they would feel about buy back / nationalization? Universal answer was they thought it could not happen.
After puzzling for a while I decided that what I was looking at was entrenched attitudes toward private property rights. These buggers thought them sacrosanct and would fight for them. I suspect their view of democracy does not include “democratic” methods of recovering assets. The next part of the fight has the potential to be very explosive, and I wonder how far the “left” will go to recover the assets? Or will they wimp out?
“I questioned how they would feel about buy back / nationalization? Universal answer was they thought it could not happen.”
That’s exactly why it needs to be on the table now.
Once kiwis get it into their heads that they have a god-given right to buy a piece of their neighbours power bill we’re fucked. An announcement, right now, that it has all been a stupid John Key money-trader fantasy that the next govt will put a stop to is the only reality check that will break the spell.
Nothing else Labour says or does has a shit’s show of cutting through. Nothing. And Labour don’t have anything else anyway.
If they aren’t going to announce this now, they may as well forget about opposing asset sales altogether. After all what’s the point of saying you’re against and doing absolutely nothing at all to try to stop them?
(Oh and if it seems like I’m singling out Labour that’s because without the largest party making a clear stand one way or the other the who question is effectively moot)
“Mr Shearer said, “We won’t rule it out but we won’t rule it in either.” Labour would not be able to make any commitment on it before an election.” http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=10870867
So I’d say thats a big NO then.
If by some fluke Labour manages to form a Govt. around them after the next election they will simply say “we are not going to do something we didn’t campaign on blah blah fucking mumble blah blah”
Shearer needs to grow a fucking spine
So Labour has stated it will make no firm commitments one way or another on post 2014 anti-asset sale action as part of its election year manifesto.
I read this as Shearer taking asset sales completely off the 2014 campaign table as a campaign issue. This is a frakking disaster. A buy back is now not even an issue for election debate.
And if you won’t commit one way or another on a buy back, you also can’t hold any useful debate around heavier regulation of the new privatised corporations. Because whats the use of talking about that when you apparently still might buy the assets back? Or not.
What a fucking lost compass-less political leader.
today’s principles are as showy and fake and wobbly as those impossibly high-heeled shoes that are in fashion for women who have been known to break a bone as they attempt to function in the normal way.
The mistake that everybody seems to make is the belief that there are different parties. There are not, only being taken to the cleaners less or more. One needs to understand that most politicians have too much to loose if they ever have to go back to the “real” labour party in the early eighties.
We need to take a different tack here, embrace commerce for some good stuff. Get solar panels on every roof, small windmills added and batteries to convert and store power. Heck, you could sell power to the companies this government want’s to sell. Wouldn’t that be a hoot. Technically it can be done.
Sure, I know what Shearer said (or didn’t say), but that’s not the point.
There seems to be a general assumption that Labour won’t buy them back. But Labour won’t say so.
Meanwhile, there’s going to be a referendum, and Labour will campaign for a good turnout and good result, and raise hopes and then … dash them. The media questions about future intentions are inevitable, and Labour need to have answers.
This is stupid politics, as No Right Turn eloquently posted today.
On the other thread Populuxe linked (thanks) to a Herald article last year, Cosgrove saying it would be “fiscally irresponsible” to commit to a buy-back. Ditto Norman for the Greens.
Today Shearer has muddied the waters (as usual). FFS, can’t he see that he’s giving National a free gift … Key: “We said BEFORE the election – manadate blah blah – but Labour won’t say until AFTER”.
Take a position we like or don’t like but take a fucking position, Shearer. Don’t go hardout on the referendum and then say “The people have Spoken … Key must listen! Will we listen? Whatever, maybe”.
Once kiwis get it into their heads that they have a god-given right to buy a piece of their neighbours power bill we’re fucked
How true which is why I referred to the people and their attitude toward property and their “perceived” rights. This transcends party politics as we know them (although they are a reflection). It is about the common good, its about the predatory nature of our individual psyches, its about the health of our society on a micro scale.
In short I don’t expect much of the politicians of the Left, less of the Right, they are “us”, and we are a deeply flawed bunch.
It occurred to me as I asked who was going to register share interests around the office that the float had a lot of support. I questioned how they would feel about buy back / nationalization? Universal answer was they thought it could not happen.
After puzzling for a while I decided that what I was looking at was entrenched attitudes toward private property rights. These buggers thought them sacrosanct and would fight for them. I suspect their view of democracy does not include “democratic” methods of recovering assets. The next part of the fight has the potential to be very explosive, and I wonder how far the “left” will go to recover the assets? Or will they wimp out?
Who is working for NZ, and who is working against NZ!
Labour will not say any such thing about buy back, as it just might win them then next election if they did, and when they inevitably renege on their words, it would be even more obvious whose interests the LP are working for/against.
Better to shut up, say nothing, appears to be the policy.
Think about all the election campaign money…. who knows, maybe some might not find the account when a clear statement is being given….. just thinking aloud….
The only one I’ve seen with a commitment to renationalise the assets, including some others sold previously, are the Alliance. Although I wouldn’t be surprised if Mana hadn’t also said so and I missed it.
It’s good that they’ve taken a position, but ultimately it’s only the Labour position that matters. No minor party’s “push” will mean squat on such a big issue without the full support of the largest governing party.
It’s not as simple as it might all sound Felix. Using the authority of the state to renationalise the power companies isn’t really an option available to Labour. An action like that has repercussions and the NZ economy is in such a fragile state that no-one knows where it would lead. We’re not Venezuela, we don’t have oil to keep the economy running.
Labour could promise to buy back the shares at market prices but that could just push the share prices up further, with people knowing their share trades were underwritten by the next Labour govt.
They may be better playing the capitalists at their own game & asset strip the new private companies. As majority shareholder they could for example sell the silver (the dams etc) to a new SOE and lease them back, ostensibly with a view to raising more capital of course. The new SOE could quietly end up owning all the good generation plants.
Nah there are plenty of ways to get the assets 100% back under government control.
An outright nationalisation will of course spook the free market animal spirits. But over a 5-10 year period, easy.
You start with adding a workers committee member to the Board of Directors, as well as one which is a Cabinet representative. Both with full voting rights.
I know it’s not necessarily simple and that’s precisely why I said details can come later.
What’s needed now is a just bold plain language statement that the assets will be returned to the public. Then we argue about how to do it until the election and steal the narrative, marginalising National from the public discourse as they have no way to join that conversation.
We’re not Venezuela. It s not about oil in Venezuela, it is about courage and vision to reject one model and build another. Venezuela are attempting this, our “leaders” wont because they represent todays model.
There is a lot of gas and hot air over here blaming Shearer and Labour for not “leading”. Its a total waste, these buggers belong to a broken paradigm. You can argue over the corpse for as long you like, it wont stop festering or do a Lazarus and miraculously lead you to Utopia.
My comment about Venezuela referred to the fact they had an oil industry that effectively permitted them to thumb their noses at the international markets. The US didn’t like what happened there but they still kept buying Venezuelan oil. Capitalists are at least pragmatists.
We don’t have that kind of luxury so renationalisation is a risky prospect that we may not be able to afford and I don’t think Labour should make promises they may not be able to keep. It’s politically risky as well making unequivocal promises this far out from an election.
I agree with Felix that Labour should at least make a stand on asset ownership & state control of strategic assets, IMO they don’t need to promise to buy back but they do need to give us some kind of solid position there.
Let’s be clear on why re-nationalisation strategies carry a significant risk. It’s the underlying consistent, ever-present threat of a capital and financial market strike against NZ.
Just so we’re clear that these powers are not our friends.
Really? A capital strike? I think the implications would run much further than just that. But lets be clear about one other thing – such a strike is entirely able to be dealt with by us. There would be some serious squishing and squashing but it is achievable.
We should also be clear about the damage “international capital” actually does in terms of sapping sovereignty and also in terms of dead weight cost of today’s “international capital”. It keeps our prosperity at a level consistently lower than what we can provide.
One other thing to be clear about is that an alternative to “international capital” is better (for reasons outlined before) and it is merely the transition to the new position, not the new position itself, that is the problem.
A capital strike is a fairly big deal and would involve things like collapsing the NZD and tripling the price of petrol, pharmaceuticals, imported parts, foods and other goods. NZD property prices would skyrocket as internationals found that they could buy a nice Auckland house for USD$200K.
Thousands of businesses would fall over as credit and lines of credit were withdrawn.
Could it be managed? Yes. But it would be a pretty sticky time.
Bloody Hell!
Now I see where the Green Party get their policy from.
Collapsing the NZD? Yes that’s policy.
Tripling the price of petrol? Yes that’s policy
Increasing the cost of imported parts, food and other goods. Sounds pretty familiar to me and fits in with making everything in New Zealand which they advocate.
Well, if all we do is continue to make cheap shit farm in NZ then what will happen is that poverty in NZ will continue to increase. So, that’s what National want as an increase in poverty means wages are going down.
BTW, by the end of this decade petrol will double or more anyway and so will pretty much all other imported goods along with it. Trying to stop that from happening by maintaining a high dollar is actually going to make it worse because we would start the shift to what is needed late.
I don’t think it that likely we’d suffer a retaliatory strike as such, we would after all be only be renationalising what we’d just sold so It’s not that big a deal in the scheme of things.
It’s our international investment position that would likely be of most concern. Whether we like it or not we presently need foreign investment and until we can get rid of that need we’re not really in a position to get too bolshie on the economic front.
This is the problem, from latest stats;
Exports of goods & services $62,232 billion
Imports of goods & services $60,448 billion
Dividends from foreign investments $5,419 billion
Dividends paid to foreign investors $15,906 billion
Current account deficit $9,032 billion
Currently we have to fund that deficit with more foreign investment be it borrowing or selling assets. If we didn’t fund it our currency wouldn’t just fall it would crash, we can’t carry a $9billion deficit.
This puzzles me. Purely from an economic point of view, all other repercussions aside, how could renationalising at cost possibly put NZ in a worse financial position than not selling? Either way, some essential services need to be funded from other sources.
“This puzzles me. Purely from an economic point of view, all other repercussions aside, how could renationalising at cost possibly put NZ in a worse financial position than not selling? Either way, some essential services need to be funded from other sources.”
renationalising <—— that word there
Over the years both Labour & the Nats have put this country more and more at the mercy of international investors. I don't like it any more than anyone else here but it's a fact we can't ignore. We don't have the control over our country that we used to have.
We've all seen how easy these investment wankers panic and stampede and the mention of 'nationalising' will get a reaction. You can count on that.
What would nationalising mean? Who knows, could get away with it scot-free but the most likely scenario is we'd see a flight of capital out of the country leading to a lowered credit rating, higher interest on Govt debt, higher mortages & all sorts of pleasant things we don't need at the moment.
We don’t have the control over our country that we used to have.
Yes we do but some people would like us to believe that we don’t.
higher interest on Govt debt
As the government can print money there shouldn’t be any interest on it or, in fact, any government debt. That’s the thing about being a sovereign nation that owns all the resources within it’s borders – you don’t need to borrow money from overseas to use those resources.
“If you want to return some balance of sovereignty, you’re going to have to give the capitalists and financiers some push back.
What do you suggest?”
What I think we need is to first get some reasonable control back, and then we can start getting rid of the weeds. You can bluff with a pair of twos but it’s much safer sitting on a few aces. To be honest I’m not sure NZ Inc even has a pair of twos, we aren’t in good shape.
Expanding Kiwibank is a good place to start pushing back. It needs more capital, can’t start squeezing the Aussie banks out without it. I’d even support share issues to Kiwi investors to raise the capital, wouldn’t be selling it would be increasing the capital base.
The TPPA worries me, giving away much more control there. I’d rather see Labour state that they’d pull out of that, might be able to prevent a signing by the Nats then.
…can’t start squeezing the Aussie banks out without it.
Yes we can. Once we make it illegal for private banks to create money as they do ATM then they will start losing money and so the shareholders will be looking to sell and the government can buy them up for pennies on the dollar. Once we do that we add them to Kiwibank.
The TPPA worries me, giving away much more control there.
Yep. Again, we need the parties of the left to say that they will withdraw from it.
We’re not Venezuela, we don’t have oil to keep the economy running.
We have enough resources to keep the economy running. If we didn’t, the economy wouldn’t keep running. We really don’t need the capitalists no matter how much they think, and would like us to think, we do.
It’s good that they’ve taken a position, but ultimately it’s only the Labour position that matters.
That’s only true if Labour remains a major party. It may not. If fact, I think it’s heading for a dive as it becomes obvious that they won’t oppose NACT and are, in fact, partially on NACTs side.
The faster people start looking for a party that actually sticks to the principles that they believe in rather than hoping that the Old Party which used to believe in them will get back to its roots the better.
It’s actually a good start that this was even mentioned by Shearer, but such a low key politically non-committal statement should have been made made earlier on. Hmmm like the day Iwi lost their Supreme Court appeal. That would have got coverage.
Now that the ship has almost sailed it’s not likely to make a significant difference to the discourse.
Now, after the baby is named and almost due to be delivered, you’re finally deciding that you won’t rule out giving it away for adoption? A bit too little, a bit too late.
When I was overpaid by Novapay the letter they sent me stated that if they couldn’t get the money back from Kiwisaver and the IRD I would be expected to pay it back to them.
Re: David Shearer + Norman + Merteria reported as buying shares.
Actually this does seem to be a direct breach of privacy. What else happens to the details left on the site? Are they sold to private buyers so they can marketed to?
Since my details have been entered, I’d like to follow the trail of how John Key himself “discovered” that leaders of opposition parties were signed up.
on rnz this morning key said he got the information from an article where shearer was misquoted sometime ago saying that he would consider buying shares just to keep them in nz. so key knows shearer was misquoted, yet still used that as evidence for his scoop.
i said to a workmate “john key just cant help but lie can he?”,
& he said “i guess thats how he got to the top”
I agree with her comment about Russel Norman’s interview on DTB 9I said as much in the comment below that interview. But I also think he is more neolib than some other Green MPs, eg Turei.
Bradford said:
Labour under Shearer shows few signs of throwing off its legacy of capitulation to a free trade, free enterprise, mow-down-beneficiaries-on-the-way-through agenda, despite its sterling work in some of the socially liberal zones.
The Green Party, while retaining many great policies from its radical heritage – for how long I’m not sure – is equally committed to a ‘traditionally mixed market approach’ as Russel Norman makes clear in a recent interview here on The Daily Blog.
Neither Labour nor the Greens offer alternatives that take us beyond either a return to Keynesian regulation as a prop for stressed local capital or a National-lite neoliberal agenda. …
Whichever of these parties we may or may not support and whatever our activist priorities on the front line of various struggles, I reckon the time has come when we on the left in Aotearoa need to start seriously engaging with each other across old sectarian and other lines on some of the big questions.
I suspect we live in far more dangerous times than many of us on the left realise.
I think it would be better for my health if I wasn’t aware of this. Especially in this impotent hiatus that Sue speaks of so eloquently.
Will we ever be able to pull it together?
In the various “activist” things I’m involved in I’m always wondering if we are achieving anything meaningful, and if the activity itself might be being coopted into being a part of the problem, if there isn’t something more effective I could do.
Sue has beautifully encapsualted the problem, but the how-to is still very hazy, There is an abudance of ability in the left, and an awful lot of common ground. And yet…
*I’m responding here because I’m not sure about commenting at TDB. I’ve seen the operation (and complaints about it) and read the relevant ‘about’ information but it hasn’t inspired confidence so far. Apart from that, The Standard is the natural discussion forum and I like it here.
This is exactly the dilemma of “the left”, as society is now almost exclusively made up of private, independent-minded “individuals”, and they are driven by individualistically motivated, self focused, self-serving and not sufficiently “collectively” minded thinking and actions.
Only when it comes to some perceived undeniable needs, like health care, minimum guaranteed retirement income and emergency services by police, ambulances and fire services, do they see a need to stand up and fight for this.
Society has been smartly divided, collective spirit is not shown during usual day to day activities, and every person follows her and his agendas, forgetting that the sum of them all make up society, and that in reality we all need each other, in some ways or other ways.
The fabric of society has been destroyed, by the neo capitalist sell-out of everything not nailed firmly to the wall or ground, yes even what is “nailed” is now sold, and like rats on a sinking ship, every one is out there to save themselves, thinking if they buy into a few shares, then they have “their stake” in NZ society, and can by that ensure that assets and SOEs or now MOM companies are in NZ hands.
But that is screwed up thinking, as it is doing exactly what the Nats want. Hence I can only accept people pre-registering for the share sale to sabotage the process, that is for left minded people. Those that buy into the MOM companies are doing exactly what Key and gang have served us up, they are by deed justifying the privatisation, which is just the beginning of more to come.
So a truly left minded, national interest defending, collectively thinking person would bluntly refuse to buy the shares full stop. Anything is half hearted nonsense, and those buying into it are betraying their own cause!
The photo on this article is difficult to look at for me. The culling has begun and will continue and these cows, kept unnaturally and perpetually in milk, will get a bullet between their eyes – if they are lucky. The abuse of these animals is constant so that this country can make money. We fuck up the environment, over stock and try to grow cows where cows aren’t meant to grow and then when they outlive their ‘useful’ life they become petfood. I find the whole business from whoa to go sickening.
Agreed, and thats a bad taste photo for the Herald to display. I didn’t bother clicking on the ‘view more photos here’ link if the first was anything to go by. A simple description would be enough without the need for gratuitous style photos.
Disagree, fender. The photo will be for some what William Burroughs referred to as the “frozen moment when everyone sees what is at the end of the fork.” Burroughs wasn’t talking about food specifically, but the more consumers understand the reality of how meat gets to the supermarket, the better. Meat is murder and that photo illustrates the point perfectly.
I have to agree with you TRP. It’s understandable that some people may not want to understand how that steak actually gets on to their plate or how that sausage gets to Fido’s dog bowl. But ignorance and shielding people from moral discomfort is how bad situations propagate.
Yes it’s vital to display a photo of a guy pointing a rifle between the eyes of a cow just in case we forget where meat comes from, or in order to educate those who are unaware.
Horrible as that photo is, the poor creature is probably going through less suffering than it would if it ended up in an abattoir. I find it hypocritical that many get upset with this portrayal of an animal getting shot than the reality of the suffering they endure in their miserable lives. I also have little time for those bemoaning climate change when a huge cause of climate change is dairying. Give up your meat and dairy – better for you, the earth and the animals.
Cut the legs off a beef heifer that had gone down with mag deficiency once, while she was still warm, for the dogs; cut out the back-steaks as well…yet that was a wee while ago…and then there was the worrying dogs that were advocated to be released…
Increased claims from Key that he tried very hard to save NZers from the terrible flawed actions of Solid Energy over the last 18months or 2 years. This increase of comments further adds to my belief that Key/English/Ryall have a lot to answer for and are pre-empting any negative comments about the Ministers that Don Elder will make tomorrow.
Rather like the pre-empting around the Skytower report. Get your story out first and fixed in the public mind then watch what happens.
A new headline on the Herald website which wasn’t there this morning: Simon Power in correspondence to the Solid Energy board as recently as 2009 pressured the board to increase borrowing and dividend, seemingly with English’s knowledge ?
It’s those selfish a***holes that push their way into queues of traffic, thereby slowing down the patient ones further, that have contributed to me driving less. Also, various other reckless and selfish practices that involve pulling suddenly in front of me, rather than waiting a second or two, just make me feel driving is becoming an increasingly antisocial practice.
I prefer public transport when it’s available & not to slow.
And the way pedestrians are treated by a minority of drivers is pretty worrying too.
I do public transport or my wee scooter – it’s nippy enough to keep up with the cars so I don’t get them tailgating so much. The thing for me is to always remember that I’m usually the squishiest thing on the roads – even pedestrians and cyclists can do me harm at 50k. So a minority of all major groups get some free verbal advice on what they could do to improve their road survivability 🙂
yep – cyclists are too slow to be safe in Dunedin, or they ride on the footpath and endanger pedestrians. Scooter has free parking all day in the middle of town, and can keep up with the flow of traffic.
Um…. McF, it’s not the cyclists that are the problem, but the priority given to cars and the unsafe car drivers, and the lack of off-road cycleways. What stats/evidence do you have that cyclists riding on footpath cause dangers to pedestrians?
Evidence of a number of injury reports around my local campus for a start. Enough to cause a nominal ban on cycling (although it’s only enforced if the cyclist is being a dick, in my experience). Mostly because of narrow paths between garden areas and blind corners around buildings, as far as I can see.
Elderly or otherwise vulnerable pedestrians + cyclists going too fast with not enough care = some bad injuries.
I certainly agree that things like environmental design and human factors in vehicle operators are the major issue with preventing harm to cyclists, and a cyclist vs a tonne of metal will always be worse off.
But 100kg of meat sack going at 20kph (or much faster) is still enough to cause serious harm to other people.
OnKey-THE BIGGEST thing to come away from South America with? “support for a seat on the UN Security council (42% of the worlds’ Catholics live in S.A)
from the “tube”; an elderly community up Northland way is now “terrified of Police” after they roughed up an elderly lady…sigh.
From the wrappings; 20 Days of Water reserves remain for Wellington, Hutt and Porirua
Drought-situated Dairy stock being dried off two months early-“big drop in gross income”.
in HB, Agricultural Contractors cannot drill the ground as it is too hard.
Dom; “Fears Eurozone tensions could flare into war”””’; Greek and Italian resentment towards Germany (can’t find link, crap browser 🙁 )
Die Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht -Friederich von Schiller
DEAR PRISM, have joined a Transitions Towns project via the local Environment Centre; they also support an Organic Project, Community gardens, Lobbying, education in secondary schools, workshops, and, AND, are considering standing for Local Body elections on a collective ticket.
Permaculture Baybee, Permaculture!
back to Q.T.;
Russell Norman; from NIWA (been a long time comin’) “droughts are expected to become more frequent and intense.”
English concedes, yet “being CONDEMNED by conferences of NGOs of-shore is not going to influence govt policy.”
Parker; essentially, p/ p / p wage -gap between NZ and OZ has almost doubled as the “gap” is “closed”. Yep!
Go Annette!!!- HBDHB “modifications” (Ryall)= reduction to health care for the elderly. Go on Greypower, vote Nat again, go on, we dare ya…
NZFirst are just p*ssin’ in the wind re foreign ownership of land ‘though right about one thing; “the country is being flogged off”
ooh, N.Smith, (Dr Knot) is under pressure re the AK Unitary Plan (spinning around Carters’ original position, of all, oh wait, four months ago); essentially, no “greenfields relief likely before 2017.
from RNZ; AUTOMATE THIS : How algorithms came to rule YOUR world ;Christopher Steiner
e.g. “your call may be recorded to…” (to avoid lawsuits later?) not even! In fact, the recording “decides” what type of person you are by six categories; action, thoughtful, cheerful, dreamer, SLAVE,-and procede to connect you with the same type of “person as you appear to be = talking to “yourself”= “customer satisfaction”.
In NZ you ask? Initial uptake of technology was by Vodophone. Ha! if i wasn’t a christian, i might say “F*$k You all nicely”.
“The News of the Day in a Different Way”
Yet another episode of The Panel drowns in Laughter
The Panel, Radio New Zealand National, Wednesday 13 March 2013
Jim Mora, Susan Baldacci, May Chen, Gordon Brown
JIM MORA: Okay, it’s 3;45 p.m. and Susan Baladacci is here with What the Woooooorrrld’s Talking About. What have you got for us today?
SUSAN BALDACCI: Well, Iran is talking about suing the makers of Zero Dark Thirty.
GORDON BROWN:[exploding with mirth] A ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
JIM MORA: Oh yes? Ha ha ha ha ha!
GORDON BROWN: Ho ho ho ho ho ho ho!
SUSAN BALDACCI:They say they were unfairly portrayed, and the movie was inaccurate.
GORDON BROWN: Ha ha ha ha ha ha!
JIM MORA: Imagine all the countries that could sue the United States about not portrayed fairly in Hollywood movies!
SUSAN BALDACCI: He he he he he!
MORA: I mean, ha ha ha ha ha, New Zealanders could complain that Lord of the Rings did not exactly portray our modern amenities!
BROWN: Ha ha ha ha ha!
BALDACCI: And the film Avatar did not portray the Nandor people very well!
BROWN: Ha ha ha ha ha!
MORA: Okay, what else? The Mayor of New York is taking on Big Soda and Big Soda is winning!
BALDACCI: Yes, but he’s going to come back at them again and he insists this is a serious health matter.
BROWN: Ha ha ha ha ha!
MORA: Are we happy about Big Government telling us how much sugar we can consume?
BROWN: Ha ha ha ha ha! It reminds me of Carless Days! Ha ha ha ha ha!
BALDACCI: It’s like excess speeding fines. I was ticketed recently for travelling at TWO kilometres per hour over the speed limit.
MORA:[sarcastic tone] Two KPH over the limit can be VERY dangerous!
BROWN: Ha ha ha ha ha!
MORA: Ha ha ha ha ha! Okay, what else have you got for us?
BALDACCI: This new Gwyneth Paltrow diet sounds completely crazy!
BROWN: Ha ha ha ha ha!
MORA: Our kids clamour for salad. Not!
BALDACCI: He he he he he!
BROWN: Ha ha ha ha ha!
Et cetera, ad infinitum, ad absurdum, ad nauseam….
A little later, during the formal introductions of his guests following the 4 o’clock news, Gordon Brown said that what he does now is write books—“when I’m not writing a column and getting myself into trouble. Ha ha ha ha ha!”
Brown, like Mora, seems incapable of saying anything without sniggering. Evidently he finds himself very funny. To add to the unlikeability factor, Brown sounds unnervingly like the Rt. Hon. David Carter.
In the “Soapbox” segment, Brown redeemed himself by actually saying something sensible about hospital visiting hours.
They think a fine for 2 km/h over the limit is ridiculous. OK, let’s say that’s a 50 km/h area, so the excess velocity is 4%. Now imagine a beneficiary on $20,000 pa claiming 4% more – $800. Two years prison? Ha ha ha ha.
The sense of entitlement that these guys feel to break the laws that they don’t think should apply to them is sickening. Ha ha ha ha.
MURRAY OLSEN: The sense of entitlement that these guys feel to break the laws that they don’t think should apply to them is sickening. Ha ha ha ha.
JIM MORA: Ha ha ha ha ha ha! That’s very good, Murray. Okay, what’s next?
SUSAN BALDACCI: A survey of 7,500 people has found that people who buy more than three pairs of sneakers a year are 61 percent more likely to have the qualities of a modern leader.
JIM MORA: Well this is from MIT, so it’s a reputable source.
SUSAN BALDACCI: The Manukau Institute of Technology, yes.
Yes, as a regular RNZ listener I do occasionally listen to Mora and his “guests”, but indeed, I can only digest small dosages, otherwise I get brain pain and worse.
But what is the alternative? Garner on Radio Live (after 3 pm). Garner is sooo over-rated, and the pseudo “current affairs” program 3rd degree shows it.
NZ media turns me off so often, so it is back to BBC World, for some real info that matters in the wider world.
Why do you hate World Have Your Say? Let me guess… Two words… rhymes with “table napkin”… I hear an irritating West Country accent… not it’s not Gareth from The Office… I see an R and an V…no, it’s an A… R.A. …. I hear that awful accent again… ROS ATKINS!!!!!
It’s probably already been covered (I haven’t trawled all of the above), but the first “journalist” to ask Him (i.e. He that is so confdint of ovawearmung success on the basis of a series of “mights and maybe’s”):
Mr Key, how did you know that David Shearer had registered to bur shares in MRP, AND how did you know so quickly…..
I won’t hold my breathe, but then (having tutored in MS) there were OH so MANY that hadn’t even heard of the 4th Estate, let alone enrolled for a purpose other than stardom.
(Incidently – worse still, there was a lecturer that thought this was all OK). Never mind – I suspect the 20 days of water left might cause worry.
yes, the “stars” on the nooz and the morning shews interest me; Nadine’s from hearabouts. oh well, lamentatations and all that, “purty” figures and expensive underclothes, i’m sure .(never went for the “beautiful people” meself )still, some girls from the ‘right” side of the tracks were attracted to a rough diamond…wotta ya gonna do? gotta oblige 🙂
Bill from Dipton appears to have been caught out for having put pressure on the States coal miner Solid Energy to take on loads more debt while knowing coal prices world-wide were tanking big-time…
Double dipstick also lauded the lignite brickette scheme and coal seam gas extraction in his own electorate now he has no knowledge of solid energies losses due to poor investments!
Bullshitting Blinglish!
I wouldn’t let that idiot run the corner diary and here He is running our country,(into the ground),
It appears that despite coal prices having dropped by a third by May 2009 the Government wrote to Solid Energy’s board urging them to take on more debt,
This Solid Energy did, moving from a debt loading of just 13 million dollars under the previous Labour Government to borrowing a massive 300 million dollars by 2011 despite the international price of coal having dropped by another third,
Bill and Slippery having not been able to balance the budget because of the hole left in the Governments revenue from taxation with the ‘tax switch’ then effectively TOOK 100 million dollars of this borrowed money from Solid Energy as dividends over the period 2009-2011,
That isn’t governance, it’s fucking borderline fraud on the part of this Slippery National Government which along with the knee-capping of Government rules around bio-fuels has nearly destroyed what was a well managed State owned company,
i have to wonder just what the debt loading of other Government owned businesses has been foisted on the likes of NZPost et al by this Slippery bunch of Shyster’s while in the back-ground Bill from Dipton has His hand out to tax these borrowings by up to a third…
3 News tonight 10 minutes in: Gower (unseen) asking Judith Collins about Bain compensation; the glowing minister betraying not an ounce of her usual Thatcher finishes responses and starts to move away – “Thanks Paddy…..” How cosy !
I notice he didn’t go on the rampage tonight about Power and English pressuring Solid Energy to hike borrowing to fund dividend, knowing coal returns decreasing. Like he did last night with the “gutless” talk re the Chinese immigrant approved by Jones.
Instead he chose to frame the whole Solid Energy question as simply a matter of throwing and ducking blame. Blah blah blah business as usual……..
What’s up with this prick Gower ? Backscratching with the powerful ?
3News=RadioWorks= 40 million dollar loan guarantee from this Slippery National Government= Gower,(the Alfred E. Nuemann of NZ television reporting), giving the National Government biased uncritical coverage while making up s**t about Labour and the Green Party’s to paint them in a bad light,
“The left’ should do it’self a big favor and start a public boycott of 3News,(or the whole channel), until such time as they get rid of that lying little twat…
And boycott ZB and hosts like Leighton Smith, Larry Williams and other jocks whose job it is to repeat the government’s line, while spewing hatred towards anyone who rejects the neo-liberal paradigm.
They won’t get rid of these guys; the news is corporately owned.
The solution is to find alternative ways to communicate with people, thereby bypassing the controlling filter of our corporate media. Winston Peters communicates directly to the elderly in halls and the young can be contacted through social media.
Only Campbell Live is doing its job at the moment.
At least there’s a balance to Gower on TV3. Campbell’s positioning himself and his team solidly as critics of the government. His clips of Paula Bennet over the last couple of nights saying how wonderful it is to see that 200 people who applied for 7 jobs at Carter Holt because it shows how keen people are to apply for jobs didn’t need any further comment. Viewers would’ve been shocked at how bizarrely out of touch and full of BS she is.
Listening to 8 a.m news this morning. Announcer mentions that the young Acts, Nats, labour , greens etc had banded together to support gay marriage.
So far so good, then on comes some young bloke J.A…….? who represents the young conservatives, Colin Craig’s mob I assume. Firstly he spends time whining that his young conservatives hadn’t been asked to join the discussion but they didn’t support it anyway and then goes on to say that the others are misrepresenting the views of all young New Zealanders. Rich coming from the flea on the back of the margin of error conservative dog.
However, his rant took up, I estimate around a third of the total time of the news broadcast.
How on earth did they get so much news time and a voice over prepared statement as well. Just who “influenced” that little lot and why.
Quick smart dismissal of the obviously serious issue of ministerial pressuring of Solid Energy while ministers project responsibility elsewhere is not “balance”. Neither is going feral and angrily saying “in my opinion……..blah blah blah…….gutless etc” re the Jones/Chinese immigrant matter.
That’s the arrogance of the little snot. The sending out as the true view of an “equilibrium” constructed according to his “opinion” or the random state of his guts of a day. “Patrick is not pleased…..” is juvenile.
Wish Campbell would give wee Mr Bean a slap once in a while. Learn him that the variousness of his anger, menancing the camera, news-thug manner, dismissiveness, sucking up (“Thanks Paddy” from Collins), and a demeanour and delivery otherwise strange, ain’t the way to go.
And even people who watch TV One are now switching over to TV3 for Campbell live rather than watch the Seven Sharp circus, so he’s nicely positioned to capture an audience looking for someone to dig into the murk surrounding this Government.
All your worldy concerns above are entirely valid but I want to say how disgusted I am to hear, on “Radio Tauranga” today, that I live at the 100th worst beach in New Zealand.
It cost a lot of money to get here from where I lived before and I wanted to beseech the New Zealand public to first visit the better ninety nine beaches before coming here to disturb me.
Karol – you have not missed much. Tonight there was one good story though, about a Maori chap, who was apparently convicted for murder with totally baseless, fabricated “evidence” over 20 years ago, so he seems to have spent 20 years in prison, while likely to have been innocent.
It was in connection to a high level rape and murder case.
Garner had to comment towards the end: “He was poor, brown and not that bright…”
I suppose he was meaning to express the injustice that was dished out on the guy, but the way he said it, it sounded arrogant and full of prejudice, coming from a “white” over-rated journo.
NZ 2013 means, there are stratospheres between certain social groups in this country now, which does not help to understand each other.
“National MP Tim Macindoe was the first to speak against the bill, saying that he had “difficulty in believing that God wants this change to be made”.”
Wonder what his god thinks about New Zealander’s having to rely on charity to feed themselves and their families?
Sit up on the front pew, sing and pray the loudest and step over the beggar on the way out of the church.
Tory nugget.
‘It has been said that figures rule the world. Maybe. I am quite sure that it is figures which show us whether it is being ruled well or badly.’ GoetheI was struck at a recent conference on equity for the elderly, how many presenters implicitly relied upon Statistics New Zealand. ...
Buzz from the BeehiveReporting on defence spending late last year, RNZ said the coalition government will have to make some tough calls this term to help the force address staff shortages and ageing infrastructure. “These are huge, huge amounts of government spending. It’s a significant proportion of the government’s ...
Peter Dunne writes – I am always wary when I hear that the Controller and Auditor-General has commented on or made recommendations to the government about an issue of public policy that does not relate strictly to public expenditure. According to the legislation, the role of the Controller ...
How Labour’s and National’s failure to move beyond neoliberalism has brought NZ to the brink of economic and cultural chaos Chris Trotter writes – TO START LOSING, so soon after you won, requires a special kind of political incompetence. At the heart of this Coalition ...
And why did the Crown not challenge the Tribunal’s jurisdiction? Gary Judd writes – Retired District Court Judge, David Harvey, has posted on his A Halflings View Substack an excellent summary of Justice Isacs’ judgment declining to uphold the witness summons issued by the Waitangi Tribunal ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Do you believe New Zealand runs its general elections fairly and competently? As a voter, can you be confident that the votes on your ballot will be counted towards the final result?As a political scientist, I’ve been asked these questions many times and ...
Macklemore isn’t someone I’d usually think about. Sure I liked his big hit from a few years back, everybody did it was catchy and cool with some memorable lines. But if I was going to think of artists who might speak out on political matters or world events, he wouldn’t ...
Another week goes by in the Luxon government’s efforts to roll back the past 70 years of social progress. The school lunches programme is to be downgraded by $107 million, and women need bother their heads no longer about pay equity, let alone expect ACC to provide adequate sexual violence ...
Brrr, the first cold snap of the year. Hope you’re rugged up nice and warm. Here are some stories that caught our eye this week… This Week on Greater Auckland On Monday, we had a post from a new contributor, Connor Sharp, who dug into the public feedback ...
Almost all of the Wellington City Council’s recommended zoning changes to allow many more apartments and townhouses in its inner-suburbs have been approved.Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for subscribers features co-hosts and , along with regular guest on geopolitics, ...
Open access notablesA Global Increase in Nearshore Tropical Cyclone Intensification, Balaguru et al., Earth's Future:Tropical Cyclones (TCs) inflict substantial coastal damages, making it pertinent to understand changing storm characteristics in the important nearshore region. Past work examined several aspects of TCs relevant for impacts in coastal regions. However, ...
Do you believe New Zealand runs its general elections fairly and competently? As a voter, can you be confident that the votes on your ballot will be counted towards the final result? As a political scientist, I’ve been asked these questions many times and always answered “yes”, with very few ...
Thus far May has followed on from a quiet April in the blogging department, but in fairness, it has been another case of doing what I am supposed to be doing, namely writing original fiction. Plus reading. So don’t worry – I have been productive. But in order to reassure ...
Buzz from the Beehive A new government agency will open for business on July 1 – the Social Investment Agency. As a new standalone central agency effective from 1 July, it will lead the development of social investment across Government, helping ministers understand who they need to invest in, what ...
Bryce Edwards writes – “Follow the money” is the classic directive to journalists trying to understand where power and influence lie in society. In terms of uncovering who influences various New Zealand political parties and governments, it therefore pays to look at who is funding them. The ...
Alwyn Poole writes – After being elected to Parliament in 2008 the maiden speech of Hipkins was substantially around education policy. He was Labour’s spokesperson for education 2011 – 2017. He was Minister for Education from 2017 until February 2023. This is approximately 88% of the time Labour ...
Eric Crampton writes – A fashion industry group is lobbying for protections. They make the usual arguments and a newer one. None of it makes sense. An industry group says it pumped $7.8 billion into the economy last year – that’s 1.9 percent of New Zealand’s GDP. ...
In December 2006, Fiji's military leader Voreqe Bainimarama overthrew the elected government in a coup. He ruled Fiji for the next 16 years, first as dictator, then as "elected" Prime Minister. But now, he's finally been sent to jail where he belongs. Sadly, this isn't for his real crime of ...
Don't like National's corrupt Muldoonist "fast-track" law? Aotearoa's environmental NGO's - Greenpeace, Forest & Bird, WWF, Coromandel Watchdog, Coal Action Network Aotearoa, Kiwis Against Seabed Mining, and others - have announced a joint march against it in Auckland in June: When: 13:00, 8 June, 2024 Where: Aotea Square, Auckland You ...
Seymour describes sushi as too woke for school meals. There are no fish sushi meals recommended by the School Lunches programme. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / Getty ImagesTL;DR: The Government will swap out hot meals for packaged sandwiches to save $107 million on school lunches for poor kids. MSD has pulled ...
I don't mind stealin' bread from the mouths of decadenceBut I can't feed on the powerless when my cup's already overfilled, yeahBut it's on the table, the fire's cookin'And they're farmin' babies, while slaves are workin'The blood is on the table and the mouths are chokin'But I'm goin' hungry, yeahSome ...
The Ardern Government’s chickens came home to roost yesterday with the news that the country is short of natural gas. In 2018, Labour banned offshore petroleum exploration, and industry executives say that the attendant loss of confidence by the industry impacted overall investment in onshore gas fields. Energy Resources Minister ...
Hi,If you’ve been digging through the newly launched Webworm store (orders are being dispatched worldwide as I type!) you’ll have noticed the best model we had was Calvin.This is Calvin.Calvin.Calvin is 7, and is the son of my producer over on Flightless Bird, Rob — aka “Wobby Wob”. Rob also ...
This video includes conclusions of the creator climate scientist Dr. Adam Levy. It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any). Climate change is everywhere. And when something's everywhere it can feel like it's nowhere. So how do we get our heads ...
Its a law like gravity: whenever a right-wing government is elected, they start attacking democracy. And now, after talking to their Republican and Tory and Fidesz chums at the International Democracy Union forum in Wellington, National is doing it here, announcing plans to remove election-day enrolment. Or, to put it ...
Yesterday Winston Peters focussed his attention on the important matter at hand. Tweeting. Like the former, and quite possibly next, orange POTUS, from whom he takes much of his political strategy, Winston is an avid X’er.His message didn’t resemble an historic address this time. In fact it was more reminiscent ...
Buzz from the Beehive A significant decline in natural gas production has given Resources Minister Shane Jones an opportunity to reiterate his enthusiasm for the mining and burning of coal. For good measure, he has praised an announcement from Genesis Energy that it will resume importing coal. He and Energy ...
“Follow the money” is the classic directive to journalists trying to understand where power and influence lie in society. In terms of uncovering who influences various New Zealand political parties and governments, it therefore pays to look at who is funding them. The political parties are legally obliged to make ...
Rob MacCullough writes – Here is my subjective ranking on a “most-left” to “most-right” scale of most of our major NZ Universities, with some anecdotal (and at times amusing) evidence to back up the claim.Extreme Left Auckland University of TechnologyEvidenceThe ...
Eric Crampton writes – I hadn’t thought about this one until a helpful email showed up in my inbox.It’s pretty obvious that income tax thresholds should automatically index with inflation – whether to anchor the thresholds in percentiles of the income distribution, or to anchor against a real ...
Jacqui Van Der Kaay writes – Parliament’s speaker had no option but to refer Green MP Julie Anne Genter to the Privileges Committee for her behaviour in the House last Wednesday evening. The incident, in which she crossed the floor to wave a book and yell at National ...
Gary Judd writes – The Dean of the law school at the Auckland University of Technology is someone called Khylee Quince. I have been sent her social media posting in which she has, over the LawNews headline “Senior King’s Counsel files complaint about compulsory tikanga Maori studies for ...
Cleo Paskal writes – WASHINGTON, D.C.: ‘Many of us have received phone calls from [the opposing camp] telling them if they join the camp they will be given projects for their wards and $300,000 [around US$35,000] each’, says former Malaita Premier Daniel Suidani. The elections in Solomon Islands aren’t ...
With hindsight, it was inevitable that (a) Hamas would agree to the ceasefire deal brokered by Egypt and Qatar and that ( b) Israel would then immediately launch attacks on Rafah, regardless. We might have hoped the concessions made by Hamas would cause Israel to desist from slaughtering thousands more ...
Placards and mourners outside the Kilbirnie Mosque following the Christchurch terror attack: MSD has terminated the Kaiwhakaoranga service, which has been used by 415 families since the attacks. Photo: Lynn GrievesonTL;DR: The Government’s pledge to only cut ‘back office’ staff rather than ‘frontline’ services is on increasingly shaky ground, with ...
There’s been a few smaller public transport announcements over the last week or so that I thought I’d cover in a single post. Fareshare I’ve long called for Auckland Transport to offer a way to enable employer-subsidised public transport options. The need for this took on even more importance ...
Parliament’s speaker had no option but to refer Green MP Julie Anne Genter to the Privileges Committee for her behaviour in the House last Wednesday evening. The incident, in which she crossed the floor to wave a book and yell at National Minister Matt Doocey, reflects poorly on Genter and ...
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 ...
Who likes being sneered at? Nobody. Worse yet, when the sneerer has their facts all wrong, and might well be an idiot.The sneer in question is The adults are in charge now, and it is a sneer offered in retort to criticism of this new Government, no matter how well ...
When in government, Labour pushed to extend the Parliamentary term to four years, to reduce accountability and our ability to vote out a bad government. And now, they're trying to do it through the member's ballot, with a Four-Year Parliamentary Term Legislation Bill. The bill at least requires a referendum ...
A ballot for a single Member's Bill was held today, and the following bill was drawn: Public Works (Prohibition of Compulsory Acquisition of Māori Land) Amendment Bill (Hūhana Lyndon) The bill would prevent the government from stealing Māori land in breach of Te Tiriti o Waitangi. It ...
Simeon Brown, alongside Wayne Brown, is favouring a political figleaf now in exchange for loading up tens of millions in extra interest costs on Auckland ratepayers. Photo: Lynn GrievesonTL;DR: Ratings agency Standard & Poor’s is pushing back hard at suggestions from Local Government Minister Simeon Brown and Mayor Wayne Brown ...
Buzz from the Beehive One headline-grabber from the Beehive yesterday was the OECD’s advice that the government must bring the Budget deficit under control or face higher interest rates. Another was the announcement of a $1.9 billion “investment” in Corrections over the next four years. In the best interests of ...
Chris Trotter writes – Had Zheng He’s fleet sailed east, not west, in the early Fifteenth Century, how different our world would be. There is little reason to suppose that the sea-going junks of the Ming Dynasty, among the largest and most sophisticated sailing vessels ever constructed, would have failed ...
David Farrar writes – Two articles give a useful contrast in balance. Both seek to be neutral explainer articles. This one in the Herald on Social Investment covers the pros and cons nicely. It links to critical pieces and talks about aspects that failed and aspects that are more ...
The tikanga regulations will compel law students to be taught that a system which does not conform with the rule of law is nevertheless law which should be observed and applied…Gary Judd KC writes – I have made a complaint to Parliament’s Regulation ...
The future of Te Huia, the train between Hamilton and Auckland, has been getting a lot of attention recently as current funding for it is only in place till the end of June. The government initially agreed to a five year trial, through to April 2026, but that was subject ...
TL;DR: Hamas has just agreed to Israel’s ceasefire plan. Nelson hospital’s rebuild has been cut back to save money. The OECD suggests New Zealand break up network monopolies, including in electricity. PM Christopher Luxon’s news conference on a prison expansion announcement last night was his messiest yet.Here’s my top six ...
A homicide in Ponsonby, a manhunt with a killer on the run. The nation’s leader stands before a press conference reassuring a frightened nation that he’ll sort it out, he’ll keep them safe, he’ll build some new prison spaces.Sorry what? There’s a scary dude on the run with a gun ...
Hi,I know it’s been awhile since there’s been any Webworm merch — and today that all changes!Over the last four months, I’ve been working with New Zealand artist Jess Johnson to create a series of t-shirts, caps and stickers that are infused with Webworm DNA — and as of right ...
The OECD’s chief economist yesterday laid it on the line for the new Government: bring the deficit under control or face higher Reserve Bank interest rates for longer. And to bring the deficit under control, she meant not borrowing for tax cuts. But there was more. Without policy changes—introducing a ...
After a hiatus of over four months Selwyn Manning and I finally got it together to re-start the “A View from Afar” podcast series. We shall see how we go but aim to do 2 episodes per month if possible. … Continue reading → ...
In 2008, the UK Parliament passed the Climate Change Act 2008. The law established a system of targets, budgets, and plans, with inbuilt accountability mechanisms; the aim was to break the cycle of empty promises and replace it with actual progress towards emissions reduction. The law was passed with near-universal ...
Buzz from the Beehive Local Water Done Well – let’s be blunt – is a silly name, but the first big initiative to put it into practice has gone done well. This success is reflected in the headline on an RNZ report:District mayors welcome Auckland’s new water deal with ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate ConnectionsA farmworker cleans the solar panels of a solar water pump in the village of Jagadhri, Haryana Country, India. (Photo credit: Prashanth Vishwanathan/ IWMI) Decisions made in India over the next few years will play a key role in global ...
Lindsay Mitchell writes – The Children’s Minister, Karen Chhour, intends to repeal Section 7AA from the Oranga Tamariki Act 1989 because it creates conflict between claimed Crown Treaty obligations and the child’s best interests. In her words, “Oranga Tamariki’s governing principles and its act should be colour ...
Geoffrey Miller writes – The gloves are off. That might seem to be the undertone of surprisingly tough talk from New Zealand’s foreign and trade ministers. Winston Peters, the foreign minister, may be facing legal action after making allegations about former Australian foreign minister Bob Carr on Radio New Zealand. ...
Brian Easton writes – This is about the time that the Treasury will be locking up its economic forecasts to be published in the 2024 Budget Economic and Fiscal Update (BEFU) on budget day, 30 May. I am not privy to what they will be (I will report on them ...
TL;DR:Winston Peters is reported to have won a budget increase for MFAT. David Seymour wanted his Ministry of Regulation to be three times bigger than the Productivity Commission. Simeon Brown is appointing a Crown Monitor to Watercare to protect the Claytons Crown Guarantee he had to give ratings agencies ...
The gloves are off. That might seem to be the undertone of surprisingly tough talk from New Zealand’s foreign and trade ministers. Winston Peters, the foreign minister, may be facing legal action after making allegations about former Australian foreign minister Bob Carr on Radio New Zealand. Carr had made highly ...
I could be a florist'Round the corner from Rye LaneI'll be giving daisies to craziesBut, baby, I'll wrap you up real safe Oh, I can give you flowers At the end of every dayFor the center of your table, a rainbowIn case you have people 'round to stay Depending on ...
TL;DR: The six key events to watch in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the week to May 12 include:PM Christopher Luxon is scheduled to hold a post-Cabinet news conference at 4 pm today. Finance Minister Nicola Willis will give a pre-budget speech on Thursday.Parliament sits from Question Time at 2pm on ...
The price of the foreign affairs “reset” is now becoming apparent, with Defence set to get a funding boost in the Budget. Finance Minister Nicola Willis has confirmed that it will be one of the few votes, apart from Health and Education and possibly Police, which will get an increase ...
A listing of 26 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, April 28, 2024 thru Sat, May 4, 2024. Story of the week "It’s straight out of Big Tobacco’s playbook. In fact, research by John Cook and his colleagues ...
Yesterday I received come lovely feedback following my Star Wars themed newsletter. A few people mentioned they’d enjoyed reading the personal part at the beginning.I often begin newsletters with some memories, or general thoughts, before commencing the main topic. This hopefully sets the mood and provides some context in which ...
April 30 was going to be the day we’d be calling Mum from London to wish her a happy birthday. Then it became the day we would be going to St. Paul's at Evensong to remember her. The aim of the cathedral builders was to find a way to make their ...
Rob MacCulloch writes – Can’t remember the last book by a Kiwi author you read? Think the NZ government should spend less on the arts in favor of helping the homeless? If so, as far as Newsroom is concerned, you probably deserve to be called a cultural ignoramus ...
Today New Zealand First will introduce a Member’s Bill that will protect women’s spaces. The ‘Fair Access to Bathrooms Bill’ will require, primarily in the interest and safety of women and girls, that all new non-domestic publicly accessible buildings provide separate, clearly demarcated, unisex and single sex bathrooms. This Bill ...
The Green Party is welcoming Climate Change Minister Simon Watts’ continuation of Hon. James Shaw’s cross-party work on climate adaptation, now in the form of a Finance and Expenditure Committee Inquiry. ...
The National Government plans to cut 390 jobs at ACC, including roles in the areas of prevention of sexual violence, road safety and workplace safety. ...
The Government has been caught in opposition to evidence once again as it looks to usher in tried, tested and failed work seminar obligations for job-seeking beneficiaries. ...
The Green Party is welcoming the announcement by the Minister Responsible for RMA Reform Chris Bishop to approve most of the Wellington City Council’s District Plan recommendations. ...
David Seymour has failed to get the sweeping cuts he wanted to the free and healthy school lunch programme, Labour education spokesperson Jan Tinetti said. ...
Hon Willie Jackson has been invited by the Oxford Union to debate the motion “This House Believes British Museums are not Very British’ on May 23rd. ...
Green Party MP Hūhana Lyndon says her Public Works (Prohibition of Compulsory Acquisition of Māori Land) Amendment Bill is an opportunity to right some past wrongs around the alienation of Māori land. ...
A senior, highly respected King’s Counsel with decades of experience in our law courts, Gary Judd KC, has filed a complaint about compulsory tikanga Māori studies for law students - highlighting the utter depths of absurdity this woke cultural madness has taken our society. The tikanga regulations will compel law ...
The Government needs to be clear with the people of the Nelson Marlborough region about the changes it is considering for the Nelson Hospital rebuild, Labour health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall said. ...
Ministers must front up about which projects it will push through under its Fast Track Approvals legislation, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
The Government is again adding to New Zealand’s growing unemployment, this time cutting jobs at the agencies responsible for urban development and growing much needed housing stock. ...
With Minister Karen Chhour indicating in the House today that she either doesn’t know or care about the frontline cuts she’s making to Oranga Tamariki, we risk seeing more and more of our children falling through the cracks. ...
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. ...
Today’s 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 it’s 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. “This 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. “The government has increased Pharmac funding but conceded it will only make minimal increases in access to medicine”, said Ayesha Verrall “This is far from the bold promises made to fund ...
This afternoon’s interim Waitangi Tribunal report must be taken seriously as it affects our most vulnerable children, Labour children’s spokesperson Willow-Jean Prime. ...
Te Pāti Māori 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 veterans’ support is out of step with our closest partners, and all parties in Parliament should work together to fix it, Labour veterans’ affairs spokesperson Greg O’Connor said. ...
Stripping two Ministers of their portfolios just six months into the job shows Christopher Luxon’s management style is lacking, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said. ...
Tonight’s court decision to overturn the summons of the Children’s Minister has enabled the Crown to continue making decisions about Māori without evidence, says Te Pāti Māori spokesperson for Children, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “The 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 year’s 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, Labour’s 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 country’s 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 Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill will give projects such as new coal mines a ‘get out of jail free’ card to wreak havoc on the environment, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
Introduction Good morning. It’s a great privilege to be here at the 2024 Infrastructure Symposium. I was extremely happy when the Prime Minister asked me to be his Minister for Infrastructure. It is one of the great barriers holding the New Zealand economy back from achieving its potential. Building high ...
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Cards on the table please.
Which parties will support renationalising the assets National sells?
Details can come later re how to best go about it, but we need to know now. Today.
It occurred to me as I asked who was going to register share interests around the office that the float had a lot of support. I questioned how they would feel about buy back / nationalization? Universal answer was they thought it could not happen.
After puzzling for a while I decided that what I was looking at was entrenched attitudes toward private property rights. These buggers thought them sacrosanct and would fight for them. I suspect their view of democracy does not include “democratic” methods of recovering assets. The next part of the fight has the potential to be very explosive, and I wonder how far the “left” will go to recover the assets? Or will they wimp out?
“I questioned how they would feel about buy back / nationalization? Universal answer was they thought it could not happen.”
That’s exactly why it needs to be on the table now.
Once kiwis get it into their heads that they have a god-given right to buy a piece of their neighbours power bill we’re fucked. An announcement, right now, that it has all been a stupid John Key money-trader fantasy that the next govt will put a stop to is the only reality check that will break the spell.
Nothing else Labour says or does has a shit’s show of cutting through. Nothing. And Labour don’t have anything else anyway.
If they aren’t going to announce this now, they may as well forget about opposing asset sales altogether. After all what’s the point of saying you’re against and doing absolutely nothing at all to try to stop them?
(Oh and if it seems like I’m singling out Labour that’s because without the largest party making a clear stand one way or the other the who question is effectively moot)
“Mr Shearer said, “We won’t rule it out but we won’t rule it in either.” Labour would not be able to make any commitment on it before an election.”
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=10870867
So I’d say thats a big NO then.
If by some fluke Labour manages to form a Govt. around them after the next election they will simply say “we are not going to do something we didn’t campaign on blah blah fucking mumble blah blah”
Shearer needs to grow a fucking spine
I see, thanks for the quote.
So Labour has stated it will make no firm commitments one way or another on post 2014 anti-asset sale action as part of its election year manifesto.
I read this as Shearer taking asset sales completely off the 2014 campaign table as a campaign issue. This is a frakking disaster. A buy back is now not even an issue for election debate.
And if you won’t commit one way or another on a buy back, you also can’t hold any useful debate around heavier regulation of the new privatised corporations. Because whats the use of talking about that when you apparently still might buy the assets back? Or not.
What a fucking lost compass-less political leader.
That’s been true of Labour for some time. They drunk the neo-liberal kool-aid and that was it – an end to any standing on principles.
today’s principles are as showy and fake and wobbly as those impossibly high-heeled shoes that are in fashion for women who have been known to break a bone as they attempt to function in the normal way.
The mistake that everybody seems to make is the belief that there are different parties. There are not, only being taken to the cleaners less or more. One needs to understand that most politicians have too much to loose if they ever have to go back to the “real” labour party in the early eighties.
We need to take a different tack here, embrace commerce for some good stuff. Get solar panels on every roof, small windmills added and batteries to convert and store power. Heck, you could sell power to the companies this government want’s to sell. Wouldn’t that be a hoot. Technically it can be done.
Their hacks have all been pretty adamant that it doesn’t make economic sense to do so.
You said that yesterday and I asked for a link.
Seriously, I do not know where Labour stands on this. That may be because I haven’t heard what they’ve said, or because … they haven’t said it.
Can anybody clarify? The leader can’t.
As clashman posted above: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=10870867
Shearer says no decision until after the election. Which means “no” for our purposes.
Sure, I know what Shearer said (or didn’t say), but that’s not the point.
There seems to be a general assumption that Labour won’t buy them back. But Labour won’t say so.
Meanwhile, there’s going to be a referendum, and Labour will campaign for a good turnout and good result, and raise hopes and then … dash them. The media questions about future intentions are inevitable, and Labour need to have answers.
This is stupid politics, as No Right Turn eloquently posted today.
Yep. It’s fucked.
But what I mean is that for our purposes the question is whether they’ll take a positive stand or not.
“Won’t say” = “not”.
On the other thread Populuxe linked (thanks) to a Herald article last year, Cosgrove saying it would be “fiscally irresponsible” to commit to a buy-back. Ditto Norman for the Greens.
Today Shearer has muddied the waters (as usual). FFS, can’t he see that he’s giving National a free gift … Key: “We said BEFORE the election – manadate blah blah – but Labour won’t say until AFTER”.
Take a position we like or don’t like but take a fucking position, Shearer. Don’t go hardout on the referendum and then say “The people have Spoken … Key must listen! Will we listen? Whatever, maybe”.
Idiocy cubed.
Take a position? But that means that you might be held to account for delivering on it!
And especially not power and broadcasting apparently
http://www.labour.org.nz/news/robert-walters-finance-breakfast-speech
Once kiwis get it into their heads that they have a god-given right to buy a piece of their neighbours power bill we’re fucked
How true which is why I referred to the people and their attitude toward property and their “perceived” rights. This transcends party politics as we know them (although they are a reflection). It is about the common good, its about the predatory nature of our individual psyches, its about the health of our society on a micro scale.
In short I don’t expect much of the politicians of the Left, less of the Right, they are “us”, and we are a deeply flawed bunch.
It occurred to me as I asked who was going to register share interests around the office that the float had a lot of support. I questioned how they would feel about buy back / nationalization? Universal answer was they thought it could not happen.
After puzzling for a while I decided that what I was looking at was entrenched attitudes toward private property rights. These buggers thought them sacrosanct and would fight for them. I suspect their view of democracy does not include “democratic” methods of recovering assets. The next part of the fight has the potential to be very explosive, and I wonder how far the “left” will go to recover the assets? Or will they wimp out?
Hear hear, Felixviper.
Felix, the question you’re asking amounts to…
Who is working for NZ, and who is working against NZ!
Labour will not say any such thing about buy back, as it just might win them then next election if they did, and when they inevitably renege on their words, it would be even more obvious whose interests the LP are working for/against.
Better to shut up, say nothing, appears to be the policy.
Think about all the election campaign money…. who knows, maybe some might not find the account when a clear statement is being given….. just thinking aloud….
FV you are on a roll my man.
The only one I’ve seen with a commitment to renationalise the assets, including some others sold previously, are the Alliance. Although I wouldn’t be surprised if Mana hadn’t also said so and I missed it.
Why aren’t we calling it Infrastructure?
Infrastructure is necessary for the functioning of society.
Assets are something that can be flogged off.
Good point and infrastructure is a natural monopoly which everyone understands.
Winston Peters has announced that NZ First would push for re-purchase. It won’t however be enough to encourage me to vote for them.
It’s good that they’ve taken a position, but ultimately it’s only the Labour position that matters. No minor party’s “push” will mean squat on such a big issue without the full support of the largest governing party.
It’s not as simple as it might all sound Felix. Using the authority of the state to renationalise the power companies isn’t really an option available to Labour. An action like that has repercussions and the NZ economy is in such a fragile state that no-one knows where it would lead. We’re not Venezuela, we don’t have oil to keep the economy running.
Labour could promise to buy back the shares at market prices but that could just push the share prices up further, with people knowing their share trades were underwritten by the next Labour govt.
They may be better playing the capitalists at their own game & asset strip the new private companies. As majority shareholder they could for example sell the silver (the dams etc) to a new SOE and lease them back, ostensibly with a view to raising more capital of course. The new SOE could quietly end up owning all the good generation plants.
Nah there are plenty of ways to get the assets 100% back under government control.
An outright nationalisation will of course spook the free market animal spirits. But over a 5-10 year period, easy.
You start with adding a workers committee member to the Board of Directors, as well as one which is a Cabinet representative. Both with full voting rights.
All moot without a statement of intent. We’re discussing it in the shadows because Shearer is afraid to turn the lights on.
Also the threat of renationalisation would certainly make the shares less palatable to overseas buyers
But if they announced in advance that they intended buying them back they could claim a “mandate”.
I know it’s not necessarily simple and that’s precisely why I said details can come later.
What’s needed now is a just bold plain language statement that the assets will be returned to the public. Then we argue about how to do it until the election and steal the narrative, marginalising National from the public discourse as they have no way to join that conversation.
But anyway, we now have Shearer’s statement and it’s not good news. For anyone who isn’t fluent in bullshit, he’s saying no.
We’re not Venezuela. It s not about oil in Venezuela, it is about courage and vision to reject one model and build another. Venezuela are attempting this, our “leaders” wont because they represent todays model.
There is a lot of gas and hot air over here blaming Shearer and Labour for not “leading”. Its a total waste, these buggers belong to a broken paradigm. You can argue over the corpse for as long you like, it wont stop festering or do a Lazarus and miraculously lead you to Utopia.
“It s not about oil in Venezuela,…”
My comment about Venezuela referred to the fact they had an oil industry that effectively permitted them to thumb their noses at the international markets. The US didn’t like what happened there but they still kept buying Venezuelan oil. Capitalists are at least pragmatists.
We don’t have that kind of luxury so renationalisation is a risky prospect that we may not be able to afford and I don’t think Labour should make promises they may not be able to keep. It’s politically risky as well making unequivocal promises this far out from an election.
I agree with Felix that Labour should at least make a stand on asset ownership & state control of strategic assets, IMO they don’t need to promise to buy back but they do need to give us some kind of solid position there.
Let’s be clear on why re-nationalisation strategies carry a significant risk. It’s the underlying consistent, ever-present threat of a capital and financial market strike against NZ.
Just so we’re clear that these powers are not our friends.
Really? A capital strike? I think the implications would run much further than just that. But lets be clear about one other thing – such a strike is entirely able to be dealt with by us. There would be some serious squishing and squashing but it is achievable.
We should also be clear about the damage “international capital” actually does in terms of sapping sovereignty and also in terms of dead weight cost of today’s “international capital”. It keeps our prosperity at a level consistently lower than what we can provide.
One other thing to be clear about is that an alternative to “international capital” is better (for reasons outlined before) and it is merely the transition to the new position, not the new position itself, that is the problem.
A capital strike is a fairly big deal and would involve things like collapsing the NZD and tripling the price of petrol, pharmaceuticals, imported parts, foods and other goods. NZD property prices would skyrocket as internationals found that they could buy a nice Auckland house for USD$200K.
Thousands of businesses would fall over as credit and lines of credit were withdrawn.
Could it be managed? Yes. But it would be a pretty sticky time.
Except that they wouldn’t. One of the things that needs to be done is to ban foreign ownership of NZ land.
Bloody Hell!
Now I see where the Green Party get their policy from.
Collapsing the NZD? Yes that’s policy.
Tripling the price of petrol? Yes that’s policy
Increasing the cost of imported parts, food and other goods. Sounds pretty familiar to me and fits in with making everything in New Zealand which they advocate.
Well, if all we do is continue to
make cheap shitfarm in NZ then what will happen is that poverty in NZ will continue to increase. So, that’s what National want as an increase in poverty means wages are going down.BTW, by the end of this decade petrol will double or more anyway and so will pretty much all other imported goods along with it. Trying to stop that from happening by maintaining a high dollar is actually going to make it worse because we would start the shift to what is needed late.
Such as the attack on the NZ dollar in 1987 by Andrew Krieger, and (allegedly) aided and abbetted by John Key?
Basically yes, and also experienced previously by other countries as the actions of “bond vigilantes” and CDS speculation.
I don’t think it that likely we’d suffer a retaliatory strike as such, we would after all be only be renationalising what we’d just sold so It’s not that big a deal in the scheme of things.
It’s our international investment position that would likely be of most concern. Whether we like it or not we presently need foreign investment and until we can get rid of that need we’re not really in a position to get too bolshie on the economic front.
This is the problem, from latest stats;
Exports of goods & services $62,232 billion
Imports of goods & services $60,448 billion
Dividends from foreign investments $5,419 billion
Dividends paid to foreign investors $15,906 billion
Current account deficit $9,032 billion
Currently we have to fund that deficit with more foreign investment be it borrowing or selling assets. If we didn’t fund it our currency wouldn’t just fall it would crash, we can’t carry a $9billion deficit.
This puzzles me. Purely from an economic point of view, all other repercussions aside, how could renationalising at cost possibly put NZ in a worse financial position than not selling? Either way, some essential services need to be funded from other sources.
We have this adaptable mechanism called taxation…
“This puzzles me. Purely from an economic point of view, all other repercussions aside, how could renationalising at cost possibly put NZ in a worse financial position than not selling? Either way, some essential services need to be funded from other sources.”
renationalising <—— that word there
Over the years both Labour & the Nats have put this country more and more at the mercy of international investors. I don't like it any more than anyone else here but it's a fact we can't ignore. We don't have the control over our country that we used to have.
We've all seen how easy these investment wankers panic and stampede and the mention of 'nationalising' will get a reaction. You can count on that.
What would nationalising mean? Who knows, could get away with it scot-free but the most likely scenario is we'd see a flight of capital out of the country leading to a lowered credit rating, higher interest on Govt debt, higher mortages & all sorts of pleasant things we don't need at the moment.
If you want to return some balance of sovereignty, you’re going to have to give the capitalists and financiers some push back.
What do you suggest?
Yes we do but some people would like us to believe that we don’t.
As the government can print money there shouldn’t be any interest on it or, in fact, any government debt. That’s the thing about being a sovereign nation that owns all the resources within it’s borders – you don’t need to borrow money from overseas to use those resources.
“If you want to return some balance of sovereignty, you’re going to have to give the capitalists and financiers some push back.
What do you suggest?”
What I think we need is to first get some reasonable control back, and then we can start getting rid of the weeds. You can bluff with a pair of twos but it’s much safer sitting on a few aces. To be honest I’m not sure NZ Inc even has a pair of twos, we aren’t in good shape.
Expanding Kiwibank is a good place to start pushing back. It needs more capital, can’t start squeezing the Aussie banks out without it. I’d even support share issues to Kiwi investors to raise the capital, wouldn’t be selling it would be increasing the capital base.
The TPPA worries me, giving away much more control there. I’d rather see Labour state that they’d pull out of that, might be able to prevent a signing by the Nats then.
Yes we can. Once we make it illegal for private banks to create money as they do ATM then they will start losing money and so the shareholders will be looking to sell and the government can buy them up for pennies on the dollar. Once we do that we add them to Kiwibank.
Yep. Again, we need the parties of the left to say that they will withdraw from it.
So, the currency crashes. Not really an issue – just means that there would be more demand for NZ produced goods both internal and external.
Wait. More foreign investment is what is killing us.
Dividends paid every year to those foreign investors on things that they’ve bought from us is what is screwing us.
Stopping that is priority no 1 if you want the current account and balance of payments to sorted in the long term.
By “things” I mean Contact, Telecom, F&P, BNZ, etc
The list goes on, billions of dollars a year extracted out from us.
Yep!
+1
Bloody well said.
Except they didn’t really, they just moved the authoritarianism and corruption from column A to column B.
We have enough resources to keep the economy running. If we didn’t, the economy wouldn’t keep running. We really don’t need the capitalists no matter how much they think, and would like us to think, we do.
That’s only true if Labour remains a major party. It may not. If fact, I think it’s heading for a dive as it becomes obvious that they won’t oppose NACT and are, in fact, partially on NACTs side.
True that.
Still, right now they’re the largest opposition party so they’re the ones the public has to look to for cues and clues.
My suggestion: Stop looking to Labour to lead as it’s obvious that they won’t. The only solution is to look for another party.
Yes I agree. But the tipping point is a wee way off yet.
The faster people start looking for a party that actually sticks to the principles that they believe in rather than hoping that the Old Party which used to believe in them will get back to its roots the better.
Yes. But so far they’re not doing that in vast numbers.
That’s assuming that a solution can be found within the existing civil system.
Well, we can always wait round for a bloody revolution but I’m more inclined to peaceful options.
Labour leader David Shearer is quoted in today’s online Herald as saying He wont rule out buying the shares back…
And I might try not to run over any old ladies today but it’s not exactly a comforting level of commitment, innit?
It’s actually a good start that this was even mentioned by Shearer, but such a low key politically non-committal statement should have been made made earlier on. Hmmm like the day Iwi lost their Supreme Court appeal. That would have got coverage.
Now that the ship has almost sailed it’s not likely to make a significant difference to the discourse.
Now, after the baby is named and almost due to be delivered, you’re finally deciding that you won’t rule out giving it away for adoption? A bit too little, a bit too late.
Novopay chases teacher for $22
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10870896
Bizzare
She was overpaid a net $1840 and she paid that back
The $22 was paid to the union.
Does this also mean that Novapay will claim back from the teacher any money paid to the IRD, Kiwisaver etc?
When I was overpaid by Novapay the letter they sent me stated that if they couldn’t get the money back from Kiwisaver and the IRD I would be expected to pay it back to them.
i.e. they go after the party least likely to have lawyers on call.
I’m glad they sent you that letter. Hope you’ve framed it.
It means they’ve fucked themselves when it comes to court. Another class action may be brewing if they continue to be dumb about it.
Have you passed that info on?
Re: David Shearer + Norman + Merteria reported as buying shares.
Actually this does seem to be a direct breach of privacy. What else happens to the details left on the site? Are they sold to private buyers so they can marketed to?
Since my details have been entered, I’d like to follow the trail of how John Key himself “discovered” that leaders of opposition parties were signed up.
What is it with National party members? Do they have NO RESPECT AT ALL for Privacy laws?
Now it’s sinking in….our own PM appears to have gleefully broken the law and breached the privacy of David Shearer for political gain.
on rnz this morning key said he got the information from an article where shearer was misquoted sometime ago saying that he would consider buying shares just to keep them in nz. so key knows shearer was misquoted, yet still used that as evidence for his scoop.
i said to a workmate “john key just cant help but lie can he?”,
& he said “i guess thats how he got to the top”
In polite circles it’s called ‘truth modification’, Slippery the Prime Minister is an expert at it…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9Fqp_BTusw.
This video of Ahoribuzz slagging Key et al to the tune of Hey Joe well worth a look. Good to share on Facebook too.
Excellent post by Sue Bradford on the Daily Blog – calling the left out for not severing the links with the “free market” ethos.
I agree with her comment about Russel Norman’s interview on DTB 9I said as much in the comment below that interview. But I also think he is more neolib than some other Green MPs, eg Turei.
Bradford said:
A must-read.
Thank you Sue.*
I suspect we live in far more dangerous times than many of us on the left realise.
I think it would be better for my health if I wasn’t aware of this. Especially in this impotent hiatus that Sue speaks of so eloquently.
Will we ever be able to pull it together?
In the various “activist” things I’m involved in I’m always wondering if we are achieving anything meaningful, and if the activity itself might be being coopted into being a part of the problem, if there isn’t something more effective I could do.
Sue has beautifully encapsualted the problem, but the how-to is still very hazy, There is an abudance of ability in the left, and an awful lot of common ground. And yet…
*I’m responding here because I’m not sure about commenting at TDB. I’ve seen the operation (and complaints about it) and read the relevant ‘about’ information but it hasn’t inspired confidence so far. Apart from that, The Standard is the natural discussion forum and I like it here.
@ felixviper and others above:
This is exactly the dilemma of “the left”, as society is now almost exclusively made up of private, independent-minded “individuals”, and they are driven by individualistically motivated, self focused, self-serving and not sufficiently “collectively” minded thinking and actions.
Only when it comes to some perceived undeniable needs, like health care, minimum guaranteed retirement income and emergency services by police, ambulances and fire services, do they see a need to stand up and fight for this.
Society has been smartly divided, collective spirit is not shown during usual day to day activities, and every person follows her and his agendas, forgetting that the sum of them all make up society, and that in reality we all need each other, in some ways or other ways.
The fabric of society has been destroyed, by the neo capitalist sell-out of everything not nailed firmly to the wall or ground, yes even what is “nailed” is now sold, and like rats on a sinking ship, every one is out there to save themselves, thinking if they buy into a few shares, then they have “their stake” in NZ society, and can by that ensure that assets and SOEs or now MOM companies are in NZ hands.
But that is screwed up thinking, as it is doing exactly what the Nats want. Hence I can only accept people pre-registering for the share sale to sabotage the process, that is for left minded people. Those that buy into the MOM companies are doing exactly what Key and gang have served us up, they are by deed justifying the privatisation, which is just the beginning of more to come.
So a truly left minded, national interest defending, collectively thinking person would bluntly refuse to buy the shares full stop. Anything is half hearted nonsense, and those buying into it are betraying their own cause!
The photo on this article is difficult to look at for me. The culling has begun and will continue and these cows, kept unnaturally and perpetually in milk, will get a bullet between their eyes – if they are lucky. The abuse of these animals is constant so that this country can make money. We fuck up the environment, over stock and try to grow cows where cows aren’t meant to grow and then when they outlive their ‘useful’ life they become petfood. I find the whole business from whoa to go sickening.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10870888
I’m not arguing that they shouldn’t be put out of their misery, I’m arguing that they should not be in misery in the first place.
100% with you Marty, on every single point. Thank you for posting your thoughts.
Agreed, and thats a bad taste photo for the Herald to display. I didn’t bother clicking on the ‘view more photos here’ link if the first was anything to go by. A simple description would be enough without the need for gratuitous style photos.
Disagree, fender. The photo will be for some what William Burroughs referred to as the “frozen moment when everyone sees what is at the end of the fork.” Burroughs wasn’t talking about food specifically, but the more consumers understand the reality of how meat gets to the supermarket, the better. Meat is murder and that photo illustrates the point perfectly.
I have to agree with you TRP. It’s understandable that some people may not want to understand how that steak actually gets on to their plate or how that sausage gets to Fido’s dog bowl. But ignorance and shielding people from moral discomfort is how bad situations propagate.
Yes it’s vital to display a photo of a guy pointing a rifle between the eyes of a cow just in case we forget where meat comes from, or in order to educate those who are unaware.
Yeah fuck – a bit visceral. My young niece and nephew would be somewhat disturbed by that.
Horrible as that photo is, the poor creature is probably going through less suffering than it would if it ended up in an abattoir. I find it hypocritical that many get upset with this portrayal of an animal getting shot than the reality of the suffering they endure in their miserable lives. I also have little time for those bemoaning climate change when a huge cause of climate change is dairying. Give up your meat and dairy – better for you, the earth and the animals.
Cut the legs off a beef heifer that had gone down with mag deficiency once, while she was still warm, for the dogs; cut out the back-steaks as well…yet that was a wee while ago…and then there was the worrying dogs that were advocated to be released…
Increased claims from Key that he tried very hard to save NZers from the terrible flawed actions of Solid Energy over the last 18months or 2 years. This increase of comments further adds to my belief that Key/English/Ryall have a lot to answer for and are pre-empting any negative comments about the Ministers that Don Elder will make tomorrow.
Rather like the pre-empting around the Skytower report. Get your story out first and fixed in the public mind then watch what happens.
They are very good political managers, the Nats.
A new headline on the Herald website which wasn’t there this morning: Simon Power in correspondence to the Solid Energy board as recently as 2009 pressured the board to increase borrowing and dividend, seemingly with English’s knowledge ?
To pay for tax cuts to the wealthy ?
Why are Auckland drivers such complete assholes?
More traffic cops needed as a consequence of our motorway madness.
It’s those selfish a***holes that push their way into queues of traffic, thereby slowing down the patient ones further, that have contributed to me driving less. Also, various other reckless and selfish practices that involve pulling suddenly in front of me, rather than waiting a second or two, just make me feel driving is becoming an increasingly antisocial practice.
I prefer public transport when it’s available & not to slow.
And the way pedestrians are treated by a minority of drivers is pretty worrying too.
I do public transport or my wee scooter – it’s nippy enough to keep up with the cars so I don’t get them tailgating so much. The thing for me is to always remember that I’m usually the squishiest thing on the roads – even pedestrians and cyclists can do me harm at 50k. So a minority of all major groups get some free verbal advice on what they could do to improve their road survivability 🙂
I love the freedom of me cycle 🙂 even more liberating than the Big “scooters” were (and no tickets, well…)
Jealous! I must get my motorbike license. Commuting over the Harbour Bridge is a daily torture, but I’m too disorganised to catch an early bus 😛
All I have to say about cycling is – “Auckland drivers”. I prefer walking, it is safer.
yep – cyclists are too slow to be safe in Dunedin, or they ride on the footpath and endanger pedestrians. Scooter has free parking all day in the middle of town, and can keep up with the flow of traffic.
Um…. McF, it’s not the cyclists that are the problem, but the priority given to cars and the unsafe car drivers, and the lack of off-road cycleways. What stats/evidence do you have that cyclists riding on footpath cause dangers to pedestrians?
Evidence of a number of injury reports around my local campus for a start. Enough to cause a nominal ban on cycling (although it’s only enforced if the cyclist is being a dick, in my experience). Mostly because of narrow paths between garden areas and blind corners around buildings, as far as I can see.
Elderly or otherwise vulnerable pedestrians + cyclists going too fast with not enough care = some bad injuries.
I certainly agree that things like environmental design and human factors in vehicle operators are the major issue with preventing harm to cyclists, and a cyclist vs a tonne of metal will always be worse off.
But 100kg of meat sack going at 20kph (or much faster) is still enough to cause serious harm to other people.
wots ya Doctorate in master
I ain’t no academic, I works for a living 🙂
very bright person, nonetheless, have taught me a thing or two 🙂 (which i appreciate)
cheers
I find your approach to life interesting, too 🙂
OnKey-THE BIGGEST thing to come away from South America with? “support for a seat on the UN Security council (42% of the worlds’ Catholics live in S.A)
from the “tube”; an elderly community up Northland way is now “terrified of Police” after they roughed up an elderly lady…sigh.
From the wrappings; 20 Days of Water reserves remain for Wellington, Hutt and Porirua
Drought-situated Dairy stock being dried off two months early-“big drop in gross income”.
in HB, Agricultural Contractors cannot drill the ground as it is too hard.
Dom; “Fears Eurozone tensions could flare into war”””’; Greek and Italian resentment towards Germany (can’t find link, crap browser 🙁 )
Die Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht -Friederich von Schiller
(Are we being Rewired?)
http://www.mpdailyfix.com/your-brain-on-technology-rewired-and-addicted/
DEAR PRISM, have joined a Transitions Towns project via the local Environment Centre; they also support an Organic Project, Community gardens, Lobbying, education in secondary schools, workshops, and, AND, are considering standing for Local Body elections on a collective ticket.
Permaculture Baybee, Permaculture!
Smoke scare on Prime Minister’s flight
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10870955
SO it is true
Liar Liar ……
LOLZ, pants on fire…
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/political/130334/labour-threatens-solid-energy-contempt-case
A leaked clandestine recording of Bradley Manning explaining his reaction to the collateral murder video and how he leaked it to the world.
https://pressfreedomfoundation.org/blog/2013/03/fpf-publishes-leaked-audio-of-bradley-mannings-statement
http://youtu.be/6L79wWAFUqg
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/01/bradley-manning-wikileaks-statement-full-text
(careful, links to disturbing images)
“Multi-tasking” may not be your friend;
The Shallows; What the Internet is doing to (your) brians. Nicholas Carr.
http://books.google.co.nz/books/about/The_Shallows_What_the_Internet_Is_Doing.html?id=1KayoVl3OTMC&redir_esc=y
back to Q.T.;
Russell Norman; from NIWA (been a long time comin’) “droughts are expected to become more frequent and intense.”
English concedes, yet “being CONDEMNED by conferences of NGOs of-shore is not going to influence govt policy.”
Parker; essentially, p/ p / p wage -gap between NZ and OZ has almost doubled as the “gap” is “closed”. Yep!
Go Annette!!!- HBDHB “modifications” (Ryall)= reduction to health care for the elderly. Go on Greypower, vote Nat again, go on, we dare ya…
NZFirst are just p*ssin’ in the wind re foreign ownership of land ‘though right about one thing; “the country is being flogged off”
ooh, N.Smith, (Dr Knot) is under pressure re the AK Unitary Plan (spinning around Carters’ original position, of all, oh wait, four months ago); essentially, no “greenfields relief likely before 2017.
from RNZ; AUTOMATE THIS : How algorithms came to rule YOUR world ;Christopher Steiner
e.g. “your call may be recorded to…” (to avoid lawsuits later?) not even! In fact, the recording “decides” what type of person you are by six categories; action, thoughtful, cheerful, dreamer, SLAVE,-and procede to connect you with the same type of “person as you appear to be = talking to “yourself”= “customer satisfaction”.
In NZ you ask? Initial uptake of technology was by Vodophone. Ha! if i wasn’t a christian, i might say “F*$k You all nicely”.
Edit: “brains” (to joe)
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13542772-automate-this
“The News of the Day in a Different Way”
Yet another episode of The Panel drowns in Laughter
The Panel, Radio New Zealand National, Wednesday 13 March 2013
Jim Mora, Susan Baldacci, May Chen, Gordon Brown
JIM MORA: Okay, it’s 3;45 p.m. and Susan Baladacci is here with What the Woooooorrrld’s Talking About. What have you got for us today?
SUSAN BALDACCI: Well, Iran is talking about suing the makers of Zero Dark Thirty.
GORDON BROWN: [exploding with mirth] A ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
JIM MORA: Oh yes? Ha ha ha ha ha!
GORDON BROWN: Ho ho ho ho ho ho ho!
SUSAN BALDACCI:They say they were unfairly portrayed, and the movie was inaccurate.
GORDON BROWN: Ha ha ha ha ha ha!
JIM MORA: Imagine all the countries that could sue the United States about not portrayed fairly in Hollywood movies!
SUSAN BALDACCI: He he he he he!
MORA: I mean, ha ha ha ha ha, New Zealanders could complain that Lord of the Rings did not exactly portray our modern amenities!
BROWN: Ha ha ha ha ha!
BALDACCI: And the film Avatar did not portray the Nandor people very well!
BROWN: Ha ha ha ha ha!
MORA: Okay, what else? The Mayor of New York is taking on Big Soda and Big Soda is winning!
BALDACCI: Yes, but he’s going to come back at them again and he insists this is a serious health matter.
BROWN: Ha ha ha ha ha!
MORA: Are we happy about Big Government telling us how much sugar we can consume?
BROWN: Ha ha ha ha ha! It reminds me of Carless Days! Ha ha ha ha ha!
BALDACCI: It’s like excess speeding fines. I was ticketed recently for travelling at TWO kilometres per hour over the speed limit.
MORA: [sarcastic tone] Two KPH over the limit can be VERY dangerous!
BROWN: Ha ha ha ha ha!
MORA: Ha ha ha ha ha! Okay, what else have you got for us?
BALDACCI: This new Gwyneth Paltrow diet sounds completely crazy!
BROWN: Ha ha ha ha ha!
MORA: Our kids clamour for salad. Not!
BALDACCI: He he he he he!
BROWN: Ha ha ha ha ha!
Et cetera, ad infinitum, ad absurdum, ad nauseam….
A little later, during the formal introductions of his guests following the 4 o’clock news, Gordon Brown said that what he does now is write books—“when I’m not writing a column and getting myself into trouble. Ha ha ha ha ha!”
Brown, like Mora, seems incapable of saying anything without sniggering. Evidently he finds himself very funny. To add to the unlikeability factor, Brown sounds unnervingly like the Rt. Hon. David Carter.
In the “Soapbox” segment, Brown redeemed himself by actually saying something sensible about hospital visiting hours.
They think a fine for 2 km/h over the limit is ridiculous. OK, let’s say that’s a 50 km/h area, so the excess velocity is 4%. Now imagine a beneficiary on $20,000 pa claiming 4% more – $800. Two years prison? Ha ha ha ha.
The sense of entitlement that these guys feel to break the laws that they don’t think should apply to them is sickening. Ha ha ha ha.
MURRAY OLSEN: The sense of entitlement that these guys feel to break the laws that they don’t think should apply to them is sickening. Ha ha ha ha.
JIM MORA: Ha ha ha ha ha ha! That’s very good, Murray. Okay, what’s next?
SUSAN BALDACCI: A survey of 7,500 people has found that people who buy more than three pairs of sneakers a year are 61 percent more likely to have the qualities of a modern leader.
JIM MORA: Well this is from MIT, so it’s a reputable source.
SUSAN BALDACCI: The Manukau Institute of Technology, yes.
GORDON BROWN: Ho ho ho ho ho ho ho!
The panel panning out mentally, I suppose.
Yes, as a regular RNZ listener I do occasionally listen to Mora and his “guests”, but indeed, I can only digest small dosages, otherwise I get brain pain and worse.
But what is the alternative? Garner on Radio Live (after 3 pm). Garner is sooo over-rated, and the pseudo “current affairs” program 3rd degree shows it.
NZ media turns me off so often, so it is back to BBC World, for some real info that matters in the wider world.
As bad as Mora and co. often are, the BBC is not really much better. It pains me greatly to have to say that.
Still, re-runs of Hancock and The Navy Lark are a good reason to keep loving it.
Morrissey: I mean BBC World by the way!
The lad himself! I’m starting to warm to you, Mozza. My pet hate on the beeb is World Have a Spray. A trully awful listening experience.
Why do you hate World Have Your Say? Let me guess… Two words… rhymes with “table napkin”… I hear an irritating West Country accent… not it’s not Gareth from The Office… I see an R and an V…no, it’s an A… R.A. …. I hear that awful accent again… ROS ATKINS!!!!!
It’s probably already been covered (I haven’t trawled all of the above), but the first “journalist” to ask Him (i.e. He that is so confdint of ovawearmung success on the basis of a series of “mights and maybe’s”):
Mr Key, how did you know that David Shearer had registered to bur shares in MRP, AND how did you know so quickly…..
I won’t hold my breathe, but then (having tutored in MS) there were OH so MANY that hadn’t even heard of the 4th Estate, let alone enrolled for a purpose other than stardom.
(Incidently – worse still, there was a lecturer that thought this was all OK). Never mind – I suspect the 20 days of water left might cause worry.
yes, the “stars” on the nooz and the morning shews interest me; Nadine’s from hearabouts. oh well, lamentatations and all that, “purty” figures and expensive underclothes, i’m sure .(never went for the “beautiful people” meself )still, some girls from the ‘right” side of the tracks were attracted to a rough diamond…wotta ya gonna do? gotta oblige 🙂
It’s the gentlemanly thing to do, after all.
http://www.stuff.co.nz-ministers pressure solid energy
Bill from Dipton appears to have been caught out for having put pressure on the States coal miner Solid Energy to take on loads more debt while knowing coal prices world-wide were tanking big-time…
Double dipstick also lauded the lignite brickette scheme and coal seam gas extraction in his own electorate now he has no knowledge of solid energies losses due to poor investments!
Bullshitting Blinglish!
I wouldn’t let that idiot run the corner diary and here He is running our country,(into the ground),
It appears that despite coal prices having dropped by a third by May 2009 the Government wrote to Solid Energy’s board urging them to take on more debt,
This Solid Energy did, moving from a debt loading of just 13 million dollars under the previous Labour Government to borrowing a massive 300 million dollars by 2011 despite the international price of coal having dropped by another third,
Bill and Slippery having not been able to balance the budget because of the hole left in the Governments revenue from taxation with the ‘tax switch’ then effectively TOOK 100 million dollars of this borrowed money from Solid Energy as dividends over the period 2009-2011,
That isn’t governance, it’s fucking borderline fraud on the part of this Slippery National Government which along with the knee-capping of Government rules around bio-fuels has nearly destroyed what was a well managed State owned company,
i have to wonder just what the debt loading of other Government owned businesses has been foisted on the likes of NZPost et al by this Slippery bunch of Shyster’s while in the back-ground Bill from Dipton has His hand out to tax these borrowings by up to a third…
+10
3 News tonight 10 minutes in: Gower (unseen) asking Judith Collins about Bain compensation; the glowing minister betraying not an ounce of her usual Thatcher finishes responses and starts to move away – “Thanks Paddy…..” How cosy !
I notice he didn’t go on the rampage tonight about Power and English pressuring Solid Energy to hike borrowing to fund dividend, knowing coal returns decreasing. Like he did last night with the “gutless” talk re the Chinese immigrant approved by Jones.
Instead he chose to frame the whole Solid Energy question as simply a matter of throwing and ducking blame. Blah blah blah business as usual……..
What’s up with this prick Gower ? Backscratching with the powerful ?
3News=RadioWorks= 40 million dollar loan guarantee from this Slippery National Government= Gower,(the Alfred E. Nuemann of NZ television reporting), giving the National Government biased uncritical coverage while making up s**t about Labour and the Green Party’s to paint them in a bad light,
“The left’ should do it’self a big favor and start a public boycott of 3News,(or the whole channel), until such time as they get rid of that lying little twat…
And boycott ZB and hosts like Leighton Smith, Larry Williams and other jocks whose job it is to repeat the government’s line, while spewing hatred towards anyone who rejects the neo-liberal paradigm.
They won’t get rid of these guys; the news is corporately owned.
The solution is to find alternative ways to communicate with people, thereby bypassing the controlling filter of our corporate media. Winston Peters communicates directly to the elderly in halls and the young can be contacted through social media.
Only Campbell Live is doing its job at the moment.
At least there’s a balance to Gower on TV3. Campbell’s positioning himself and his team solidly as critics of the government. His clips of Paula Bennet over the last couple of nights saying how wonderful it is to see that 200 people who applied for 7 jobs at Carter Holt because it shows how keen people are to apply for jobs didn’t need any further comment. Viewers would’ve been shocked at how bizarrely out of touch and full of BS she is.
Listening to 8 a.m news this morning. Announcer mentions that the young Acts, Nats, labour , greens etc had banded together to support gay marriage.
So far so good, then on comes some young bloke J.A…….? who represents the young conservatives, Colin Craig’s mob I assume. Firstly he spends time whining that his young conservatives hadn’t been asked to join the discussion but they didn’t support it anyway and then goes on to say that the others are misrepresenting the views of all young New Zealanders. Rich coming from the flea on the back of the margin of error conservative dog.
However, his rant took up, I estimate around a third of the total time of the news broadcast.
How on earth did they get so much news time and a voice over prepared statement as well. Just who “influenced” that little lot and why.
What “balance” do we see with Gower ?
Quick smart dismissal of the obviously serious issue of ministerial pressuring of Solid Energy while ministers project responsibility elsewhere is not “balance”. Neither is going feral and angrily saying “in my opinion……..blah blah blah…….gutless etc” re the Jones/Chinese immigrant matter.
That’s the arrogance of the little snot. The sending out as the true view of an “equilibrium” constructed according to his “opinion” or the random state of his guts of a day. “Patrick is not pleased…..” is juvenile.
Wish Campbell would give wee Mr Bean a slap once in a while. Learn him that the variousness of his anger, menancing the camera, news-thug manner, dismissiveness, sucking up (“Thanks Paddy” from Collins), and a demeanour and delivery otherwise strange, ain’t the way to go.
And even people who watch TV One are now switching over to TV3 for Campbell live rather than watch the Seven Sharp circus, so he’s nicely positioned to capture an audience looking for someone to dig into the murk surrounding this Government.
All your worldy concerns above are entirely valid but I want to say how disgusted I am to hear, on “Radio Tauranga” today, that I live at the 100th worst beach in New Zealand.
It cost a lot of money to get here from where I lived before and I wanted to beseech the New Zealand public to first visit the better ninety nine beaches before coming here to disturb me.
Cute that Guyon and Duncan spent so much time fronting 3rd Degree tonight while holding hands. Perhaps they were reassuring each other.
I haven’t been able to get up the energy to watch 3rd Degree fronted by those two.
Karol – you have not missed much. Tonight there was one good story though, about a Maori chap, who was apparently convicted for murder with totally baseless, fabricated “evidence” over 20 years ago, so he seems to have spent 20 years in prison, while likely to have been innocent.
It was in connection to a high level rape and murder case.
Garner had to comment towards the end: “He was poor, brown and not that bright…”
I suppose he was meaning to express the injustice that was dished out on the guy, but the way he said it, it sounded arrogant and full of prejudice, coming from a “white” over-rated journo.
NZ 2013 means, there are stratospheres between certain social groups in this country now, which does not help to understand each other.
Xtasy…….re the guy the subject of 3rd Degree have a look at 16 on “The right’s fear of democracy”. Mistaken posting to there rather than here.
Garner’s clanger – “and not that bright……” – hit me too as you will see in the last paragraph.
The Herald:
“National MP Tim Macindoe was the first to speak against the bill, saying that he had “difficulty in believing that God wants this change to be made”.”
Wonder what his god thinks about New Zealander’s having to rely on charity to feed themselves and their families?
Sit up on the front pew, sing and pray the loudest and step over the beggar on the way out of the church.
Tory nugget.
The meek shall inherit the earth… But they’ll have to nationalise it first.
Wonder what God thinks of asset sales and all the other failing governance.
Did he say who his God is….is it Key.
Does this Wacindoe fella communicate with black and white smoke signals by any chance…