Resident Standard poster Eddy is, actively dissuading political parties and activists from giving any support to the wharfies, calling on the Greens and even Occupy Activists to join the Labour Party in turning their back on these workers.
Eddie refuses to admit that this dispute is about union busting, repeating the right wing narrative about this dispute, that it is all about wage demands. Eddie has a closed mind (and heart), when it comes to this dispute.
Compare this to the Greens, Denise Roche’s statement on this dispute. Roche prefers to keep an open mind, going right to the heart of the matter in questioning the management’s motives:
I wonder what the management’s real aims are, given that the company had previously drawn up a strategy to contract out the workforce
Denise Roche
Read Denise Roche full post on Frogblog
Compare Denise post to Eddie’s post against giving support to the wharfies.
Some have compared the Port of Auckland dispute to the 1890 waterfront dispute, 1913 general strike, and 1951 lockout. They want Labour and the Greens to get involved. Actually, this is no 1951 redux.
Eddie
Eddie justifies his call to withhold support from the wharfies, by minimising their struggle in comparison with past struggles.
Only 300 workers in one port are involved at present and there have been a few hours delays for a handful of ships on the 5 days of striking. Those disputes (in the past) were about workers trying to win fundamental gains: the right to form unions, the right to paid breaks, the right to a fair pay increase. They were about the fundamental balance of power between capital and labour.
Eddie
Eddie refuses to contemplate the idea that this dispute is also about principle, instead spreading the lie that this dispute is all about wage levels between competing companies, and ignoring the central issue of the dispute, management’s intention to contract out all the union jobs.
This dispute is about a business trying to cuts its wage bill so that it can undercut a competitor.
Eddie
Not once in his post does Eddie even mention the words “contracting out”.
If this is what Labour supporters like Eddie are openly admitting to in public, I can only imagine the hidden pressure the Labour Party is putting on the Greens, left activists and other unionists to distance themselves from the wharfies.
To the Green Party, Occupy Activists and all trade unionists in Aotearoa, Stay strong, resist the demand of the Labour Party to betray the wharfies by withholding your support. Instead do the opposite.
Eddies unspoken sub-text, that the wharfies struggle, “is about a business trying to cuts its wage bill”, Is that, if only the workers made more concessions, this dispute would be over and their jobs would be saved.
Eddie is either ignorant of the facts or being deliberately misleading.
Eddie has omitted the fact that MUNZ has made every concession the company have asked for.
The company is also offering workers a 10% wage increase, to workers to leave the union.
Eddie claimed, that unlike disputes of the past, the wharfies struggle is not about workers trying to win fundamental gains: the right to form unions, the right to paid breaks, the right to a fair pay increase. About the fundamental balance of power between capital and labour.
This is exactly what this struggle is about.
To consciously promote this lie, is to expose yourself as an active enemy of working people.
My hope is that someone in the Labour Party with some authority, will have the courage to speak up and distance the Labour Party from Eddie’s views.
I’m quite impressed by the pressure that is starting to build momentum, for Labour to “step up”. From party members, and the wider left.
I think the chances of Labour leadership giving the wharfies unequivocal support are about the same as those for me winning lotto. But hey – I have every confidence that I will win it one day.
btw Jenny – I appreciate your work here at The Standard.
Here, EDDIE thought it would have been excellent for Shearer to speak out on the following (in fact penning the words FOR Shearer), saying that it would “consolidate his (Shearer’s) brand”:
So perhaps EDDIE is pushing for Shearer not to get involved on the side of the union and PoA workers at this stage, because doing so wouldn’t fit ‘Shearer’s brand’. Whatever that is.
“We will protect the right of workers to negotiate for fair pay rises. We will continue to argue that workers are an asset, not a cost, to business, and they deserve fair pay. We do not agree that workers have to lift their productivity before wages can rise – increases have been outstripping wages for decades and the share of GDP that goes to workers here is much lower than in Australia”
Now, this paragraph has direct application to the PoA dispute.
So why would Shearer not say the exact words above while speaking about the PoA dispute not in specifics but in terms of Labour’s principles.
If Shearer did not want to get involved personally at this stage (and tactically there might be sense there), then why not allow one of his spokespeople to issue a press release about the dispute, supporting worker rights to good faith bargaining and standing firm against downgrading of their job security.
I feel these are questions worth asking.
PS does anyone ever talk about Gandhi’s “brand”? Martin Luther King’s “brand”? Michael Joseph Savage’s “brand”? Norman Kirk’s “brand”? I find this part of it fucking ridiculous.
‘PS does anyone ever talk about Gandhi’s “brand”? Martin Luther King’s “brand”? Michael Joseph Savage’s “brand”? Norman Kirk’s “brand”? I find this part of it fucking ridiculous.”
Modern drivel speak along the lines of the corporate credo, mission statement etc etc.
Every time I hear someone quoting them I’m reminded of a line I read in the UK years ago –
Oh dear. I sure hope my lotto outlook is brighter.
From Idiot Savant at ‘No Right Turn’:
Useless
So its come to this: after a week of silence on the Ports of Auckland dispute, the Labour Party has come out and confirmed that it is in fact a useless waste of space:
Yesterday Labour industrial relations spokeswoman Darien Fenton, who has been spotted on the picket line at the port, said her party was not taking sides in the dispute.
“We’ve been hoping that the parties will settle this, that they’ll find a way through this.”
Ms Fenton said Mr Shearer had been in regular touch with both sides, “and he’s in contact with me and we’re all discussing it regularly”.
“Our strong view at this point is it’s not helpful for politicians to get involved.”
Its not quite Walter Nash’s “neither for nor against”, but it amounts to the same thing. Faced with a test of its core values, Labour flunked, preferring to sit on the fence than speak up. And as a result, their party’s name is now an exercise in false advertising. What does Labour stand for now? It’s certainly not labour. Instead, all they offer is an alternative set of political managers, a different set of bums on seats. And this is supposed to inspire people to turn out and vote for them? The only thing it inspires me to do is look for a party that actually appears to believe in something.
But its not just a case of undermining their brand. Labour has just sent a clear message to its supporters that that support is a one-way street. You can support them, but they won’t support you. No self-respecting person should accept such a one-sided relationship.
according to that most right wing of right wing media outlets the dompost, the dispute is about lumbering the POAL with all the costs while the stevedoring is privatised.
that was yesterday for $1.60.
I must check the library to day to see if anything has changed.
Much of the net will soon be dark… many websites are being taken down in protest against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA), which are backed by big entertainment and media interests.
The 18th January 2012 marks the day when sites like Google (not a full blackout), Wikipedia, Reddit and BoingBoing will go black in protest. The blackout will be in effect for 24 hours, worldwide, beginning at 05:00 UTC.
The Jackal has ceased transmission in support of killing the bill. #SOPASTRIKE
SOPA has already been canned by the house. Senate is still going ahead with PIPA AFAIK but without the house passing it, it doesn’t really matter much. Also the executive (white house) issued a statement saying they were very cautious about it; I reckon if it came to it Obama probably would have pocket-veto’d it.
Hey Lanth – just as Obama said he had serious concerns about the NDAA and its detention without trial of US citizens on US soil clause, and that he might veto it?
Jenny tried that this morning. For anyone with post editing (at least), her post today showed up as complete black. She’d managed to put in a empty color box div that covered the whole post by default.
I haven’t been annoying the trolls for a while and thought today was an excellent day to do just that.
Here is a new video detailing the different elements of the collapse of the three WTC buildings on 911.
Bombs in the basement and the lobby and three pyroclastic flows as hot as a vocano’s pyroclastic flow are some of the puzzling and unexplained issues addressed here.
You should totally use it in conversation. My boyfriend and I have. It’s fun to watch people’s slight double-take “did I really hear that right?” reactions before they just assume that actually you said his name properly.
How’s Richad Gage’s petition coming along? Has he reached critical mass yet? I mean he has been gathering signatures for a good number of years he surely must have close to 100,000 people. It can’t take that long to get support especially when you have the ‘truth’ behind you.
It’ll all come out at the upcoming Toronto conference, Gosman. That’s where the truth will finally be revealed and the guilty parties will be named.
No wait, they already had the Toronto conference and, er, nothing happened. It’s a conspiracy, I tells ya! The NWO engineered the truthers to spontaneously explode under the weight of their own prejudices by igniting the hot air they produce in a series of giant waffle makers that were smuggled into the hall disguised as aircraft.
Damn George W. Bush, the smartest, cleverest and most dangerous drunk and coke addled illuminati to ever walk the earth. Quick, pass the Koolaid, I feel the rapture coming on!
VOR doesn’t realise that these things take time. Unlike a nano-thermite charge which can cut through an inch of rebar as if it were butter left out on a summers day.
The above link is well worth a look imo. Bomber hosts David Cunliffe and ‘Back-Benchers’ presenter, Wallace Chapman, and they discuss their predictions for 2012. They all impress, in their different ways.
RIP Stratos. Still very pissed-off about Stratos and TV 7
Agree, freewiew is becoming a joke and Sky’s the winner under the nats….funny that.
Heartland going behind sky’s paywall is a typical example of taxpayer funded content lining their mates pockets. wonder where recycling rick will pop up next being a good old blueboy.
I watched that this morning, what a great panel. Cunliffe is an exceptionally cool cat. Love listening to him speak, his personality and his politics. Great mix of relaxed, authoritative, friendly and accessible. I think Labour have it right, if Shearer fails to fire, there’s a well oiled machine ready go…
I watch this wishing more than ever that David Cunliffe was leading our country right now. Or was it’s Finance Minister.
When you think of all the talent that has come out of bfM and craccum matured through our broadcasting system it is also sad that at the moment Wallace Chapman and Bomber can’t get a wider audience for their work. bFm still misses Chapman’s ads.
Only marginal bright spot is the talk of cooperation between Labour and the other opposition parties, that they would ‘hunt like a pack’. I mean this simply has to happen strategically when you look at the way the Nats have used ACT, Maori party and UF.
Wish Cunliffe had looked this relaxed on previous tv appearances, rather than tried to look finance ministerial. Joyce/Key always look relaxed- it gives them authority even when they are talking crap or spinning moonbeams.
However I draw the limit at fire and forget trolls. If people respond to critics with thought, even if they avoid the questions raised, then they are fulfilling the requirements of the site because they are engaging with people.
Think it through. It is a self-correcting problem. If they wind up with noone bothering to interact with them then their comments by definition become fire and forget (or in the worst cases they wind up talking to themselves) trolls. Then I’d act.
It is the responsibility of commentators to be relevant to the others here. Otherwise they’ll start losing their ability to comment…. evil eh? 😈
I don’t like how the rss feed only shows a snip-it of story, it used to show the whole think.
This means it takes me more time to read your posts and on somedays this will mean I wont read them at all.
Please please go back to the old system, your not loosing money over the difference and if you are are doing it for the vanity of page view then you know you could use feedburner to count how many people are reading your rss feed.
The triggering problem was with people reading just the initial RSS feed and responding to that because the client side RSS systems weren’t picking up the revisions. Posts often get a bit of editing just after publishing. I noticed several people doing it and it irritated me (Cactus Kate being the triggering example).
But as the sysop I have been very concerned about RSS for some time as well because the RSS feeds are now starting to rival the spambots for overseas data volumes (and a lot of those appear to be spambots).
Even the traffic for RSS feeds for identifiable people is increasing. Presumably because many people aren’t using aggregation systems like feedburner. I’m always concerned about data volumes especially overseas traffic because if I can keep those down then I can use smaller and cheaper servers.
To give you an idea of the problem. The main server is currently in NZ. It is convenient to keep in NZ because it massively improves performance for the 95+% of our readers who are in NZ. When I moved it back here I set it up with near realtime replication with a server in the US and routed all overseas traffic outside Oceania to it. The problem was as that we ramped up in posts and comments towards the election the replication traffic broke our overseas datacap.
The NZ server has free local traffic and a 60GB overseas traffic datacap that costs $3/GB over that cap. That is mostly because of the costing model for the Southern Cross cable which is horrendous for local servers. Replication was costing us hundreds of dollars per month. So I pulled all of the traffic to NZ and relegated the US server to a warm backup. However as we got closer to the election the overseas traffic kept increasing and shows little sign of dropping post-election. It is now starting to cost us over the cap.
There are a few humans using the overseas data for reading the sites. But mostly it is robots like RSS feeds, spambots and search engines. I’m happy to tolerate the search engines crawling the site (~20GB per month) and I can mostly use SEO tuning to minimize their impacts on our data. Spambots I tend to remove using .htaccess and other tools and their traffic has been reducing.
But the RSS feeds have been most of the the overseas traffic increase. Based on the posts that they picking up (comments have a different pattern) they’re crawling the whole site. So presume they’ve bots and I don’t think that there are too many humans using it.
So I can leave the RSS with full posts. But I’d have to move the server out of NZ to get around these poxy overseas data caps, thereby reducing the service for most of the readers. Or I can massively reduce the size of the RSS posts and piss a few people off – incidentally the people who cost us without helping to pay for the site.
Sorry – RSS is becoming a liability in NZ. If I can figure out a way of doing it, I’ll probably get around to putting full feeds on something like feedburner. But I can’t leave the RSS’s wide open.
Why not put the RSS feed on a cheaper USA server, speed isn’t really an issue for rss data.
Have to come to the site to read the story would cost you more as the amount of data on a web page vs RSS feed is much greater. 1mb vs 30kb … (public service ads + comments)
Having the RSS data there would not cost so much, if the cost is so much, then use a vpn service like astrill so you can send your data through a NZ vpn address (national data cost) to the USA for $5 a month (vpn cost).
I don’t see much spam on the standard and rss would not be the problem, the user signup would the problem there.
If you update a post from it’s original (rss copy) then have a note saying that it has been updated.
Please reconsider, as a Labour movement (not party) I thought it would be in the Standards ideology to make it as easy as possible to read your content and not make a task more labour intensive that it need be.
I would second the request for a return to full RSS feeds, if at all possible. I read blogs first on my smartphone and the ones that have full RSS feeds are so much easier to read via Google Reader.
For blogs that don’t have full RSS feeds (like Pundit and now The Standard), I generally only read every 2-3 days on my main PC. Even then I still use Google Reader, but it’s so much easier to read websites on a PC screen. (I still appreciate the mobile version of The Standard, but no real comparison to a RSS feed).
Why not put the RSS feed on a cheaper USA server, speed isn’t really an issue for rss data.
Have to come to the site to read the story would cost you more as the amount of data on a web page vs RSS feed is much greater. 1mb vs 30kb … (public service ads + comments)
I think you missed the point.
I don’t care about the cost of people reading the pages inside NZ. Local bandwidth is effectively ‘free’, ie part of the server base cost. But the RSS feed is currently open not only to NZ, but also to the rest of the world and that is where I have a problem. About 90% of the RSS post traffic is from outside the country, probably has nothing to do with human readers, and any overseas traffic has a cap on it beyond which we get charged an excess.
Now I could cut off the RSS for everything outside NZ, which would be easy to do and would get rid of the GB’s of overseas traffic that cause the issue. That would also cut off such overseas sources as feedburner and google reader.
I could have moved the whole server offshore and got around the ridiculous local overseas caps. But that would slow the site for the vast majority of users to satisfy a small minority who use RSS.
I could have done something tricky like a VPN, but bearing in mind the likelihood of violating terms of service with the subsequent demands on my time, I wasn’t really that interested in complicating my own life.
So I compromised and changed it to exactly what is seen when people go to the front page. That should drop the overseas traffic down far enough that we don’t wind up paying excesses for overseas traffic while still keeping the RSS feed open.
Please reconsider, as a Labour movement (not party) I thought it would be in the Standards ideology to make it as easy as possible to read your content and not make a task more labour intensive that it need be.
It is exactly as easy as it is for everyone else who reads on the site. You are wanting it to be easier.
After I get this code release for work done at the end of Feburary and I start having more free time, I’ll have a look at what else can be done. But in the meantime this solution gets rid of my current problem while limiting only a few readers.
I suspect that the ideal will be to restrict the full RSS feed to inside NZ and to a limited number of overseas aggregating servers like google reader, feedburner, and the like.
Would there be any issues if I data minded the page to build a full RSS feed?
BTW, I don’t think a VPN would break any terms, it would just tunnel traffic through a 2nd NZ service (local data) to the USA. The Astrill NZ service has no worries with data as they provide enough bandwidth for people outside NZ to view TVonDemand.
“Sure, employers can seek reasonable efficiencies, effective labour utilisation and a fair return on investment. The Ports are an important part of our transport infrastructure and they need to be operating as productively and efficiently as possible.
But good faith bargaining and working together to find common ground is the way to achieve this, not wholesale redundancies and contracting out.”
and most importantly which has not been said loudly enough by anyone:
“Three deaths at the Ports of Tauranga in the last 15 months should make us all question the safety of contracted out stevedoring firms who compete with each other for business.
No worker has died at the Ports of Auckland for 18 years.”
Will the POT be charged? Or are we seeing people as expendable like those at Foxxconn in China where they put nets on the sides of their buildings to prevent suicides? It’s a slippery slope and we are heading down not up.
EDIT: see that I/S isn’t buying it as too little too late, and an attempt to mouth words to placate supporters (like me) without actually doing anything or helping the union.
“Sure, employers can seek reasonable efficiencies, effective labour utilisation and a fair return on investment. The Ports are an important part of our transport infrastructure and they need to be operating as productively and efficiently as possible.
But good faith bargaining and working together to find common ground is the way to achieve this, not wholesale redundancies and contracting out.”
No mention of
1) The difference between assets owned for the public good and those for the maximum profit of private shareholders.
2) No analysis of the wider economic benefits of having a port, i.e. the assessment only deals with the port in isolation.
3) The externalisation of costs on to the community from the withdrawal of wages and dependable permanent employment.
4) The demands of the Auckland City Council for ever higher returns on investment without investigating whether the assumptions behind those demands are at all feasible.
The vitriolic racist comments by Michael Laws regarding the recent rape case involving overseas visitors is disturbing to say the least.
His continual use of “Feral Maori ” is insulting and foul . As far as I know there has be no mention of the race of the offender in this case . The regular ranting against Maori by Laws makes one wonder if he is becoming mentally unbalanced.
‘ makes one wonder if he is becoming mentally unbalanced.’ already has been for some time PP, pretty sure it’s why radio Live use him, shock jock = ratings amongst certain listener groups.
The fact he’s still on air shows both how p’weak our broadcasting rules are and how desperate Mediaworks are for exposure.
The vitriolic racist comments by Michael Laws regarding the recent rape case involving overseas visitors is disturbing to say the least.
His continual use of “Feral Maori ” is insulting and foul
I hadn’t heard these comments, but they seem typical of him… 🙁
Yes M. Laws is a racist prick.
I saw him on TV talking about Maori and violent crime and had to wonder why anybody would want the opinion of a fuckwit who talks about shooting newsroom staff.
hot off the MSN news.
Phil Twyford has stepped up to bat for the watersiders.
dont blow it Phil.
you know whats at stake.
and once you’re gone you cant come back.
when you’re out of the blue and into the black.
Oxy Morgan has flicked his Kiwi Saver business, no doubt pocketing a hansom sum in the proses
The oxymoron of Gareth Morgan is that he talks about climate change in one breath, then the next one he is promoting something that locks us into more climate change (for the bad) as the few awake people understand Kiwi Saver is based on continued economic growth. And for Russell Norman’s fictional 25 year old that growth must continue for the next 45 years.
Morgan also likes to fly around the world to go joyriding on his motor bike. His footprint must be the size of several small African villages ;).
“This (austerity) is akin to a doctor telling a patient suffering from pneumonia to go on a diet and get more exercise. While exercise is important, it assumes a healthy patient. If the patient is sick, he must build up his strength until he is physically capable of exercising again…
Balance sheet recessions, which occur when businesses and households rush to pay down debt in spite of zero interest rates, are a kind of pneumonia. The only way to treat them is for the government to become the borrower and spender of last resort with fiscal stimulus aimed at propping up aggregate demand.”
Is reality at some point going to catch up with the Right, now that their ideologies are truly being put to the test, and are failing?
“it would also be obtuse not to recognise that a private-sector and market failure is at the heart of the current crisis; or to reconsider the role that new forms of public ownership could play in a modern economy in the light of China’s experience…”
Other than Greece the Sovereign debt in Europe has escalated as a result of the recession which resulted from the GFC which was the result of Greenspan and his gaggle of Ayn Rand Theocrats believing the invisible hand was all that was needed and failed to see the sub-prime bubble and the CDS’s triggering and subsequent wipe out of Lehman Bros & AIG.. yada yada..
Your Free market caused this crisis Gosman, Greek debt isn’t a get out of jail free card for any but the least informed or the faithful.
Evidently C & T have found a new recruit who managed to slither his way onto the Back Benches panel and started spouting the ‘politics is boring/ hard to understand’ memes…..
Talk about blatent, its not fucking Shortland St buddy, though I hope for your sake you are being paid per word because your delivery has only served to convince me that the right is woefully short on talent.
As for Jorden whoever , now he’s an expert!!!? I thought one of the most important outcomes from winning the referendum was so that we never had to listen to/ look at that annoying prat again.
Wallace, I like your show, but you have got to do a better job of filtering out the lizards.
which part of gosman is the windup key and when is the spring going to break.
the whole thing is a failure of the so called free market.
where is there a free market?
show us all so we can be as enlightened as you!
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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 ...
Defence Minister Judith Collins today announced the upcoming Budget will include new funding of $571 million for Defence Force pay and projects. “Our servicemen and women do New Zealand proud throughout the world and this funding will help ensure we retain their services and expertise as we navigate an increasingly ...
New Zealand’s ability to cope with climate change will be strengthened as part of the Government’s focus to build resilience as we rebuild the economy, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. “An enduring and long-term approach is needed to provide New Zealanders and the economy with certainty as the climate ...
Jobseeker beneficiaries who have work obligations must now meet with MSD within two weeks of their benefit starting to determine their next step towards finding a job, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. “A key part of the coalition Government’s plan to have 50,000 fewer people on Jobseeker ...
A new standalone Social Investment Agency will power-up the social investment approach, driving positive change for our most vulnerable New Zealanders, Social Investment Minister Nicola Willis says. “Despite the Government currently investing more than $70 billion every year into social services, we are not seeing the outcomes we want for ...
Check against delivery Good morning. It is a pleasure to be with you to outline the Coalition Government’s approach to our first Budget. Thank you Mark Skelly, President of the Hutt Valley Chamber of Commerce, together with your Board and team, for hosting me. I’d like to acknowledge His Worship ...
Your Excellency Ambassador Meredith, Members of the Diplomatic Corps and Ambassadors from European Union Member States, Ministerial colleagues, Members of Parliament, and other distinguished guests, Thank you everyone for joining us. Ladies and gentlemen - In diplomacy, we often speak of ‘close’ and ‘long-standing’ relations. ...
The Therapeutic Products Act (TPA) will be repealed this year so that a better regime can be put in place to provide New Zealanders safe and timely access to medicines, medical devices and health products, Associate Health Minister Casey Costello announced today. “The medicines and products we are talking about ...
The Minister Responsible for RMA Reform, Chris Bishop, today released his decision on twenty recommendations referred to him by the Wellington City Council relating to its Intensification Planning Instrument, after the Council rejected those recommendations of the Independent Hearings Panel and made alternative recommendations. “Wellington notified its District Plan on ...
Rape Awareness Week (6-10 May) is an important opportunity to acknowledge the continued effort required by government and communities to ensure that all New Zealanders can live free from violence, say Ministers Karen Chhour and Louise Upston. “With 1 in 3 women and 1 in 8 men experiencing sexual violence ...
Associate Education Minister David Seymour has today announced that the Government will be delivering a more efficient Healthy School Lunches Programme, saving taxpayers approximately $107 million a year compared to how Labour funded it, by embracing innovation and commercial expertise. “We are delivering on our commitment to treat taxpayers’ money ...
New research on the impacts of extreme weather on coastal marine habitats in Tairāwhiti and Hawke’s Bay will help fishery managers plan for and respond to any future events, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. A report released today on research by Niwa on behalf of Fisheries New Zealand ...
Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Winston Peters will lead a broad political delegation on a five-stop Pacific tour next week to strengthen New Zealand’s engagement with the region. The delegation will visit Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, and Tuvalu. “New Zealand has deep and ...
There has been a material decline in gas production according to figures released today by the Gas Industry Co. Figures released by the Gas Industry Company show that there was a 12.5 per cent reduction in gas production during 2023, and a 27.8 per cent reduction in gas production in the ...
Defence Minister Judith Collins tonight announced the recipients of the Minister of Defence Awards of Excellence for Industry, saying they all contribute to New Zealanders’ security and wellbeing. “Congratulations to this year’s recipients, whose innovative products and services play a critical role in the delivery of New Zealand’s defence capabilities, ...
Welcome to you all - it is a pleasure to be here this evening.I would like to start by thanking Greg Lowe, Chair of the New Zealand Defence Industry Advisory Council, for co-hosting this reception with me. This evening is about recognising businesses from across New Zealand and overseas who in ...
It is a pleasure to be speaking to you as the Minister for Digitising Government. I would like to thank Akolade for the invitation to address this Summit, and to acknowledge the great effort you are making to grow New Zealand’s digital future. Today, we stand at the cusp of ...
New Zealand is urging both Israel and Hamas to agree to an immediate ceasefire to avoid the further humanitarian catastrophe that military action in Rafah would unleash, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “The immense suffering in Gaza cannot be allowed to worsen further. Both sides have a responsibility to ...
A new online data dashboard released today as part of the Government’s school attendance action plan makes more timely daily attendance data available to the public and parents, says Associate Education Minister David Seymour. The interactive dashboard will be updated once a week to show a national average of how ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced Rosemary Banks will be New Zealand’s next Ambassador to the United States of America. “Our relationship with the United States is crucial for New Zealand in strategic, security and economic terms,” Mr Peters says. “New Zealand and the United States have a ...
The Government is considering creating a new tier of minerals permitting that will make it easier for hobby miners to prospect for gold. “New Zealand was built on gold, it’s in our DNA. Our gold deposits, particularly in regions such as Otago and the West Coast have always attracted fortune-hunters. ...
Minister for Trade Todd McClay today announced that New Zealand and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) will commence negotiations on a free trade agreement (FTA). Minister McClay met with his counterpart UAE Trade Minister Dr Thani bin Ahmed Al Zeyoudi in Dubai, where they announced the launch of negotiations on a ...
New Zealand Sign Language Week is an excellent opportunity for all Kiwis to give the language a go, Disabilities Issues Minister Louise Upston says. This week (May 6 to 12) is New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) Week. The theme is “an Aotearoa where anyone can sign anywhere” and aims to ...
Six tertiary students have been selected to work on NASA projects in the US through a New Zealand Space Scholarship, Space Minister Judith Collins announced today. “This is a fantastic opportunity for these talented students. They will undertake internships at NASA’s Ames Research Center or its Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), where ...
New Zealanders will be safer because of a $1.9 billion investment in more frontline Corrections officers, more support for offenders to turn away from crime, and more prison capacity, Corrections Minister Mark Mitchell says. “Our Government said we would crack down on crime. We promised to restore law and order, ...
The OECD’s latest report on New Zealand reinforces the importance of bringing Government spending under control, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The OECD conducts country surveys every two years to review its members’ economic policies. The 2024 New Zealand survey was presented in Wellington today by OECD Chief Economist Clare Lombardelli. ...
The Government has delivered on its election promise to provide a financially sustainable model for Auckland under its Local Water Done Well plan. The plan, which has been unanimously endorsed by Auckland Council’s Governing Body, will see Aucklanders avoid the previously projected 25.8 per cent water rates increases while retaining ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters discussed the need for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, and enhanced cooperation in the Pacific with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock during her first official visit to New Zealand today. "New Zealand and Germany enjoy shared interests and values, including the rule of law, democracy, respect for the international system ...
The Minister Responsible for RMA Reform, Chris Bishop today released his decision on four recommendations referred to him by the Western Bay of Plenty District Council, opening the door to housing growth in the area. The Council’s Plan Change 92 allows more homes to be built in existing and new ...
Thank you, John McKinnon and the New Zealand China Council for the invitation to speak to you today. Thank you too, all members of the China Council. Your effort has played an essential role in helping to build, shape, and grow a balanced and resilient relationship between our two ...
The Government is modernising insurance law to better protect Kiwis and provide security in the event of a disaster, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly announced today. “These reforms are long overdue. New Zealand’s insurance law is complicated and dated, some of which is more than 100 years old. ...
The coalition Government is refreshing its approach to supporting pay equity claims as time-limited funding for the Pay Equity Taskforce comes to an end, Public Service Minister Nicola Willis says. “Three years ago, the then-government introduced changes to the Equal Pay Act to support pay equity bargaining. The changes were ...
Structured literacy will change the way New Zealand children learn to read - improving achievement and setting students up for success, Education Minister Erica Stanford says. “Being able to read and write is a fundamental life skill that too many young people are missing out on. Recent data shows that ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay says Canada’s refusal to comply in full with a CPTPP trade dispute ruling in our favour over dairy trade is cynical and New Zealand has no intention of backing down. Mr McClay said he has asked for urgent legal advice in respect of our ‘next move’ ...
The rights of our children and young people will be enhanced by changes the coalition Government will make to strengthen oversight of the Oranga Tamariki system, including restoring a single Children’s Commissioner. “The Government is committed to delivering better public services that care for our most at-risk young people and ...
The Government is making it easier for minor changes to be made to a building consent so building a home is easier and more affordable, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “The coalition Government is focused on making it easier and cheaper to build homes so we can ...
New Zealand lost a true legend when internationally renowned disability advocate Sir Robert Martin (KNZM) passed away at his home in Whanganui last night, Disabilities Issues Minister Louise Upston says. “Our Government’s thoughts are with his wife Lynda, family and community, those he has worked with, the disability community in ...
Good evening – Before discussing the challenges and opportunities facing New Zealand’s foreign policy, we’d like to first acknowledge the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. You have contributed to debates about New Zealand foreign policy over a long period of time, and we thank you for hosting us. ...
From today, passengers travelling internationally from Auckland Airport will be able to keep laptops and liquids in their carry-on bags for security screening thanks to new technology, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Creating a more efficient and seamless travel experience is important for holidaymakers and businesses, enabling faster movement through ...
People with an interest in the health of Northland’s marine ecosystems are invited to a public meeting to discuss how to deal with kina barrens, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones will lead the discussion, which will take place on Friday, 10 May, at Awanui Hotel in ...
Pacific Media Watch Television New Zealand Pacific correspondent Barbara Dreaver has been made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to investigative journalism and Pacific communities in a ceremony at Government House, reports 1News. She has been the Pacific correspondent for 1News since 2002, breaking many ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Tuesday’s budget will respond to the deepening public agitation over Australia’s housing shortages by pouring new money into crisis accommodation for women and children, social housing and infrastructure. A specially-convened national cabinet late Friday ticked ...
By Kaneta Naimatu in Suva Journalists in the Pacific region play an important role as the “eyes and ears on the ground” when it comes to reporting the climate crisis, says the European Union’s Pacific Ambassador Barbara Plinkert. Speaking at The University of the South Pacific (USP) on World Press ...
Aldora Itunu is back in the Black Ferns squad after a three-year absence. The last of her 24 internationals was an underwhelming loss to France (7-29) in Castres to conclude the disastrous 2021 Northern Tour. The powerhouse prop won a Rugby World Cup in 2017 and thought she was done. ...
The fight to control major transport policy and projects in Auckland has burst into the open again, with councillors rejecting Mayor Wayne Brown’s latest attempt to steer things more under his influence. Councillors from the left and right broke ranks on the mayor’s bid to control Auckland Transport more directly ...
Exhausted by the general election campaign, horrified by the twilight zone of coalition negotiations, distracted by the silly season and waiting for the honeymoon to begin, Raw Politics has been in hibernation since October. From today, we’re back. Our weekly political video show and podcast returns for ...
By Patrick Decloitre, RNZ Pacific correspondent French Pacific desk Authorities in the small town of Boulouparis have commemorated Armistice Day on May 8 with a new memorial honouring New Zealand soldiers who were stationed in New Caledonia during World War II. The ceremony took place in the township on the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sara Dehm, Senior lecturer, international migration and refugee law, University of Technology Sydney The High Court unanimously ruled today that the Australian government can keep asylum seekers in immigration detention indefinitely in cases where they do not “voluntarily” cooperate with their own ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kim Munro, Lecturer, Creative Industries and Digital Media, University of South Australia Twenty-four hours after the release of Macklemore’s pro-Palestine protest song Hind’s Hall on social media on May 7, the video had already notched up over 24 million views. In ...
Failing to anticipate the complexity of the consenting system is being cited as the the current builder's shortcomings, an Infrastructure Commission review says. ...
350 Aotearoa is calling the Environment Select Committee’s decision to allow oral submissions from just 40% of individual, unique submitters who asked to speak to the committee ‘a disgraceful blight to democracy’. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Helal, Assistant Dean (Sustainability), The University of Melbourne Dubai skylineAleksandarPasaric/Pexels Since ancient times, people have built structures that reach for the skies – from the steep spires of medieval towers to the grand domes of ancient cathedrals and mosques. Today ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Edward Musole, PhD Law Student, University of New England Girts Ragelis/ShutterstockRecent trends show Australians are increasingly buying wearables such as smartwatches and fitness trackers. These electronics track our body movements or vital signs to provide data throughout the day, with ...
Papua New Guinea experienced a significant earthquake on 24 March in East Sepik and there has also been recent flooding there and in surrounding provinces. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Yousuf Mohammed, Dermatology researcher, The University of Queensland Maridav/Shutterstock You wake up, stagger to the bathroom and gaze into the mirror. No, you’re not imagining it. You’ve developed face wrinkles overnight. They’re sleep wrinkles. Sleep wrinkles are temporary. But as your ...
The Environment Select Committee has just announced that 60 percent of individuals who asked to speak at the hearings will not be heard. This equates to almost 700 people who made individual submissions and more than 1000 more who made a form submission. ...
The Royal New Zealand Ballet is performing Swan Lake around the country. What kind of dream does the ballet sell?Before going to see the Royal New Zealand Ballet perform Swan Lake, I had about as much familiarity with the plot of this ballet as could be expected from having ...
A new poem by Auckland poet Eamonn Tee. High Tide at Local Maxima It is only going to get worse. The streams will be narrow and fickle. The week will bend and buckle like a pot-bellied waist. You will make it to the weekend with one ...
The New Zealand entrepreneur behind beauty business Ethique is gearing up to launch a new eco-venture. This is an excerpt from our weekly environmental newsletter Future Proof. Sign up here. Our thirst for a tasty bevvy is insatiable, but it comes with a hefty plastic price for the planet: 580 billion ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1 James by Percival Everett (Mantle, $38) A retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from ...
By Kamna Kumar in Suva Pacific Islands Forum Secretary-General Henry Puna stressed the importance of media freedom and its link to the climate and environmental crisis at the 2024 World Press Freedom Day event organised by the University of the South Pacific’s journalism programme. Under the theme “A Planet for ...
Tara Ward previews a new local TV series offering alternative visions of motherhood. This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. A woman is clambering up the side of her two-story house, clinging desperately to a drainpipe. Nearby, her child is perched on the ...
Local Government New Zealand (LGNZ) is supportive of the cross-party approach to climate adaptation announced by the Minister of Climate Change today. ...
The Sustainable Business Council (SBC) and Climate Leaders Coalition (CLC) welcome today’s announcement from Government around a bipartisan inquiry into an enduring climate adaptation framework for New Zealand. ...
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Resident Standard poster Eddy is, actively dissuading political parties and activists from giving any support to the wharfies, calling on the Greens and even Occupy Activists to join the Labour Party in turning their back on these workers.
Eddie refuses to admit that this dispute is about union busting, repeating the right wing narrative about this dispute, that it is all about wage demands. Eddie has a closed mind (and heart), when it comes to this dispute.
“1951 it ain’t for now“, says Eddie.
Compare this to the Greens, Denise Roche’s statement on this dispute. Roche prefers to keep an open mind, going right to the heart of the matter in questioning the management’s motives:
Read Denise Roche full post on Frogblog
Compare Denise post to Eddie’s post against giving support to the wharfies.
Eddie justifies his call to withhold support from the wharfies, by minimising their struggle in comparison with past struggles.
Eddie refuses to contemplate the idea that this dispute is also about principle, instead spreading the lie that this dispute is all about wage levels between competing companies, and ignoring the central issue of the dispute, management’s intention to contract out all the union jobs.
Not once in his post does Eddie even mention the words “contracting out”.
If this is what Labour supporters like Eddie are openly admitting to in public, I can only imagine the hidden pressure the Labour Party is putting on the Greens, left activists and other unionists to distance themselves from the wharfies.
To the Green Party, Occupy Activists and all trade unionists in Aotearoa, Stay strong, resist the demand of the Labour Party to betray the wharfies by withholding your support. Instead do the opposite.
Kia Kaha
Solidarity forever.
You sure like to repeat Eddie’s name a lot, don’t you?
Eddies unspoken sub-text, that the wharfies struggle, “is about a business trying to cuts its wage bill”, Is that, if only the workers made more concessions, this dispute would be over and their jobs would be saved.
Eddie is either ignorant of the facts or being deliberately misleading.
Eddie has omitted the fact that MUNZ has made every concession the company have asked for.
The company is also offering workers a 10% wage increase, to workers to leave the union.
Eddie claimed, that unlike disputes of the past, the wharfies struggle is not about workers trying to win fundamental gains: the right to form unions, the right to paid breaks, the right to a fair pay increase. About the fundamental balance of power between capital and labour.
This is exactly what this struggle is about.
To consciously promote this lie, is to expose yourself as an active enemy of working people.
My hope is that someone in the Labour Party with some authority, will have the courage to speak up and distance the Labour Party from Eddie’s views.
I’m quite impressed by the pressure that is starting to build momentum, for Labour to “step up”. From party members, and the wider left.
I think the chances of Labour leadership giving the wharfies unequivocal support are about the same as those for me winning lotto. But hey – I have every confidence that I will win it one day.
btw Jenny – I appreciate your work here at The Standard.
+1 Ditto to both points
Here, EDDIE thought it would have been excellent for Shearer to speak out on the following (in fact penning the words FOR Shearer), saying that it would “consolidate his (Shearer’s) brand”:
http://thestandard.org.nz/shearers-address-in-reply/
So perhaps EDDIE is pushing for Shearer not to get involved on the side of the union and PoA workers at this stage, because doing so wouldn’t fit ‘Shearer’s brand’. Whatever that is.
Now, this paragraph has direct application to the PoA dispute.
So why would Shearer not say the exact words above while speaking about the PoA dispute not in specifics but in terms of Labour’s principles.
If Shearer did not want to get involved personally at this stage (and tactically there might be sense there), then why not allow one of his spokespeople to issue a press release about the dispute, supporting worker rights to good faith bargaining and standing firm against downgrading of their job security.
I feel these are questions worth asking.
PS does anyone ever talk about Gandhi’s “brand”? Martin Luther King’s “brand”? Michael Joseph Savage’s “brand”? Norman Kirk’s “brand”? I find this part of it fucking ridiculous.
‘PS does anyone ever talk about Gandhi’s “brand”? Martin Luther King’s “brand”? Michael Joseph Savage’s “brand”? Norman Kirk’s “brand”? I find this part of it fucking ridiculous.”
Modern drivel speak along the lines of the corporate credo, mission statement etc etc.
Every time I hear someone quoting them I’m reminded of a line I read in the UK years ago –
‘Punch, it’s a load of fucking old wank!’
Oh dear. I sure hope my lotto outlook is brighter.
From Idiot Savant at ‘No Right Turn’:
Useless
So its come to this: after a week of silence on the Ports of Auckland dispute, the Labour Party has come out and confirmed that it is in fact a useless waste of space:
Yesterday Labour industrial relations spokeswoman Darien Fenton, who has been spotted on the picket line at the port, said her party was not taking sides in the dispute.
“We’ve been hoping that the parties will settle this, that they’ll find a way through this.”
Ms Fenton said Mr Shearer had been in regular touch with both sides, “and he’s in contact with me and we’re all discussing it regularly”.
“Our strong view at this point is it’s not helpful for politicians to get involved.”
Its not quite Walter Nash’s “neither for nor against”, but it amounts to the same thing. Faced with a test of its core values, Labour flunked, preferring to sit on the fence than speak up. And as a result, their party’s name is now an exercise in false advertising. What does Labour stand for now? It’s certainly not labour. Instead, all they offer is an alternative set of political managers, a different set of bums on seats. And this is supposed to inspire people to turn out and vote for them? The only thing it inspires me to do is look for a party that actually appears to believe in something.
But its not just a case of undermining their brand. Labour has just sent a clear message to its supporters that that support is a one-way street. You can support them, but they won’t support you. No self-respecting person should accept such a one-sided relationship.
Posted by Idiot/Savant
according to that most right wing of right wing media outlets the dompost, the dispute is about lumbering the POAL with all the costs while the stevedoring is privatised.
that was yesterday for $1.60.
I must check the library to day to see if anything has changed.
Much of the net will soon be dark… many websites are being taken down in protest against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA), which are backed by big entertainment and media interests.
The 18th January 2012 marks the day when sites like Google (not a full blackout), Wikipedia, Reddit and BoingBoing will go black in protest. The blackout will be in effect for 24 hours, worldwide, beginning at 05:00 UTC.
The Jackal has ceased transmission in support of killing the bill. #SOPASTRIKE
SOPA has already been canned by the house. Senate is still going ahead with PIPA AFAIK but without the house passing it, it doesn’t really matter much. Also the executive (white house) issued a statement saying they were very cautious about it; I reckon if it came to it Obama probably would have pocket-veto’d it.
SOPA will be suspended until there’s a broader consensus among lawmakers about the legislation… it has not been canned.
Hey Lanth – just as Obama said he had serious concerns about the NDAA and its detention without trial of US citizens on US soil clause, and that he might veto it?
And then quietly just signed it?
Jenny tried that this morning. For anyone with post editing (at least), her post today showed up as complete black. She’d managed to put in a empty color box div that covered the whole post by default.
I must remember that technique….
I did wonder why that happened.
’twas Jenny Michie. She probably slipped and hit one of the controls on the edit bar for the post. I think I might remove that one.
Good grief. I am a complete technophobe. What can I say, except oops and thanks for rescuing me (again).
P.S. Have I invented something?
If I have, I can ensure you it was completely accidental.
Oops sorry, I meant Jenny Michie in her post.
I haven’t been annoying the trolls for a while and thought today was an excellent day to do just that.
Here is a new video detailing the different elements of the collapse of the three WTC buildings on 911.
Bombs in the basement and the lobby and three pyroclastic flows as hot as a vocano’s pyroclastic flow are some of the puzzling and unexplained issues addressed here.
Enjoy!
I’m pretty sure all the 9/11 hijackers were Iranian. Osama Bin Laden was also Iranian! The Iranians must pay!
And Ahmadinajad financed it all!!!
I always think of the phrase “I’m a dinner jacket” when I hear his name 🙂
You should totally use it in conversation. My boyfriend and I have. It’s fun to watch people’s slight double-take “did I really hear that right?” reactions before they just assume that actually you said his name properly.
We go with “I’m in a dinner jacket” though.
🙂
How’s Richad Gage’s petition coming along? Has he reached critical mass yet? I mean he has been gathering signatures for a good number of years he surely must have close to 100,000 people. It can’t take that long to get support especially when you have the ‘truth’ behind you.
It’ll all come out at the upcoming Toronto conference, Gosman. That’s where the truth will finally be revealed and the guilty parties will be named.
No wait, they already had the Toronto conference and, er, nothing happened. It’s a conspiracy, I tells ya! The NWO engineered the truthers to spontaneously explode under the weight of their own prejudices by igniting the hot air they produce in a series of giant waffle makers that were smuggled into the hall disguised as aircraft.
Damn George W. Bush, the smartest, cleverest and most dangerous drunk and coke addled illuminati to ever walk the earth. Quick, pass the Koolaid, I feel the rapture coming on!
I’m impressed VoR.
I’m also quite interested in finding out more about this Toronto conference. No really I am.
So Travellerev what was the deal with that? Was it meant to be some sort of life changing event or just more much ado about nothing?
Don’t drink the Koolaid, VOR
VOR doesn’t realise that these things take time. Unlike a nano-thermite charge which can cut through an inch of rebar as if it were butter left out on a summers day.
http://www.tumeke.blogspot.com/
The above link is well worth a look imo. Bomber hosts David Cunliffe and ‘Back-Benchers’ presenter, Wallace Chapman, and they discuss their predictions for 2012. They all impress, in their different ways.
RIP Stratos. Still very pissed-off about Stratos and TV 7
Agree, freewiew is becoming a joke and Sky’s the winner under the nats….funny that.
Heartland going behind sky’s paywall is a typical example of taxpayer funded content lining their mates pockets. wonder where recycling rick will pop up next being a good old blueboy.
I watched that this morning, what a great panel. Cunliffe is an exceptionally cool cat. Love listening to him speak, his personality and his politics. Great mix of relaxed, authoritative, friendly and accessible. I think Labour have it right, if Shearer fails to fire, there’s a well oiled machine ready go…
Agree about others being ready to go, not so sure about a well oiled machine…..with rusty relics like Mallard still around the neck.
This is depressing watching.
I watch this wishing more than ever that David Cunliffe was leading our country right now. Or was it’s Finance Minister.
When you think of all the talent that has come out of bfM and craccum matured through our broadcasting system it is also sad that at the moment Wallace Chapman and Bomber can’t get a wider audience for their work. bFm still misses Chapman’s ads.
wait- really really depressing.
Only marginal bright spot is the talk of cooperation between Labour and the other opposition parties, that they would ‘hunt like a pack’. I mean this simply has to happen strategically when you look at the way the Nats have used ACT, Maori party and UF.
Wish Cunliffe had looked this relaxed on previous tv appearances, rather than tried to look finance ministerial. Joyce/Key always look relaxed- it gives them authority even when they are talking crap or spinning moonbeams.
lprent please do something about the geek on here who keeps talking about the other posters but never addressing the issues.
Which one? There are several…
However I draw the limit at fire and forget trolls. If people respond to critics with thought, even if they avoid the questions raised, then they are fulfilling the requirements of the site because they are engaging with people.
Think it through. It is a self-correcting problem. If they wind up with noone bothering to interact with them then their comments by definition become fire and forget (or in the worst cases they wind up talking to themselves) trolls. Then I’d act.
It is the responsibility of commentators to be relevant to the others here. Otherwise they’ll start losing their ability to comment…. evil eh? 😈
I don’t like how the rss feed only shows a snip-it of story, it used to show the whole think.
This means it takes me more time to read your posts and on somedays this will mean I wont read them at all.
Please please go back to the old system, your not loosing money over the difference and if you are are doing it for the vanity of page view then you know you could use feedburner to count how many people are reading your rss feed.
Thanks
The triggering problem was with people reading just the initial RSS feed and responding to that because the client side RSS systems weren’t picking up the revisions. Posts often get a bit of editing just after publishing. I noticed several people doing it and it irritated me (Cactus Kate being the triggering example).
But as the sysop I have been very concerned about RSS for some time as well because the RSS feeds are now starting to rival the spambots for overseas data volumes (and a lot of those appear to be spambots).
Even the traffic for RSS feeds for identifiable people is increasing. Presumably because many people aren’t using aggregation systems like feedburner. I’m always concerned about data volumes especially overseas traffic because if I can keep those down then I can use smaller and cheaper servers.
To give you an idea of the problem. The main server is currently in NZ. It is convenient to keep in NZ because it massively improves performance for the 95+% of our readers who are in NZ. When I moved it back here I set it up with near realtime replication with a server in the US and routed all overseas traffic outside Oceania to it. The problem was as that we ramped up in posts and comments towards the election the replication traffic broke our overseas datacap.
The NZ server has free local traffic and a 60GB overseas traffic datacap that costs $3/GB over that cap. That is mostly because of the costing model for the Southern Cross cable which is horrendous for local servers. Replication was costing us hundreds of dollars per month. So I pulled all of the traffic to NZ and relegated the US server to a warm backup. However as we got closer to the election the overseas traffic kept increasing and shows little sign of dropping post-election. It is now starting to cost us over the cap.
There are a few humans using the overseas data for reading the sites. But mostly it is robots like RSS feeds, spambots and search engines. I’m happy to tolerate the search engines crawling the site (~20GB per month) and I can mostly use SEO tuning to minimize their impacts on our data. Spambots I tend to remove using .htaccess and other tools and their traffic has been reducing.
But the RSS feeds have been most of the the overseas traffic increase. Based on the posts that they picking up (comments have a different pattern) they’re crawling the whole site. So presume they’ve bots and I don’t think that there are too many humans using it.
So I can leave the RSS with full posts. But I’d have to move the server out of NZ to get around these poxy overseas data caps, thereby reducing the service for most of the readers. Or I can massively reduce the size of the RSS posts and piss a few people off – incidentally the people who cost us without helping to pay for the site.
Sorry – RSS is becoming a liability in NZ. If I can figure out a way of doing it, I’ll probably get around to putting full feeds on something like feedburner. But I can’t leave the RSS’s wide open.
Interestingly the prices for international data have gone down by 44%, “coincidentally” at the same time a new trans-tasman cable plan was announced.
So hopefully data will become cheaper in the next few months.
Why not put the RSS feed on a cheaper USA server, speed isn’t really an issue for rss data.
Have to come to the site to read the story would cost you more as the amount of data on a web page vs RSS feed is much greater. 1mb vs 30kb … (public service ads + comments)
Having the RSS data there would not cost so much, if the cost is so much, then use a vpn service like astrill so you can send your data through a NZ vpn address (national data cost) to the USA for $5 a month (vpn cost).
I don’t see much spam on the standard and rss would not be the problem, the user signup would the problem there.
If you update a post from it’s original (rss copy) then have a note saying that it has been updated.
Please reconsider, as a Labour movement (not party) I thought it would be in the Standards ideology to make it as easy as possible to read your content and not make a task more labour intensive that it need be.
I would second the request for a return to full RSS feeds, if at all possible. I read blogs first on my smartphone and the ones that have full RSS feeds are so much easier to read via Google Reader.
For blogs that don’t have full RSS feeds (like Pundit and now The Standard), I generally only read every 2-3 days on my main PC. Even then I still use Google Reader, but it’s so much easier to read websites on a PC screen. (I still appreciate the mobile version of The Standard, but no real comparison to a RSS feed).
http://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-18012012/#comment-427898
The problem for me is that we can’t keep bleeding overseas bandwidth and the associated high costs for the few humans that read the channel.
I don’t have time until March at the earliest (I’m moving house in march after I finish my current project) to look for a better fix.
Catching up (been a tad busy).
I think you missed the point.
I don’t care about the cost of people reading the pages inside NZ. Local bandwidth is effectively ‘free’, ie part of the server base cost. But the RSS feed is currently open not only to NZ, but also to the rest of the world and that is where I have a problem. About 90% of the RSS post traffic is from outside the country, probably has nothing to do with human readers, and any overseas traffic has a cap on it beyond which we get charged an excess.
Now I could cut off the RSS for everything outside NZ, which would be easy to do and would get rid of the GB’s of overseas traffic that cause the issue. That would also cut off such overseas sources as feedburner and google reader.
I could have moved the whole server offshore and got around the ridiculous local overseas caps. But that would slow the site for the vast majority of users to satisfy a small minority who use RSS.
I could have done something tricky like a VPN, but bearing in mind the likelihood of violating terms of service with the subsequent demands on my time, I wasn’t really that interested in complicating my own life.
So I compromised and changed it to exactly what is seen when people go to the front page. That should drop the overseas traffic down far enough that we don’t wind up paying excesses for overseas traffic while still keeping the RSS feed open.
It is exactly as easy as it is for everyone else who reads on the site. You are wanting it to be easier.
After I get this code release for work done at the end of Feburary and I start having more free time, I’ll have a look at what else can be done. But in the meantime this solution gets rid of my current problem while limiting only a few readers.
I suspect that the ideal will be to restrict the full RSS feed to inside NZ and to a limited number of overseas aggregating servers like google reader, feedburner, and the like.
Would there be any issues if I data minded the page to build a full RSS feed?
BTW, I don’t think a VPN would break any terms, it would just tunnel traffic through a 2nd NZ service (local data) to the USA. The Astrill NZ service has no worries with data as they provide enough bandwidth for people outside NZ to view TVonDemand.
No problem. There are some traps for scanners, but their params are pretty wide to handle the search engine spiders and the national library.
I don’t see much spam on the standard and rss would not be the problem, the user signup would the problem there.
There should be none. However that doesn’t mean that the buggers down’t spend a lot of effort trying to get in.
Darien Fenton on Labour and the POA dispute:
“Sure, employers can seek reasonable efficiencies, effective labour utilisation and a fair return on investment. The Ports are an important part of our transport infrastructure and they need to be operating as productively and efficiently as possible.
But good faith bargaining and working together to find common ground is the way to achieve this, not wholesale redundancies and contracting out.”
and most importantly which has not been said loudly enough by anyone:
“Three deaths at the Ports of Tauranga in the last 15 months should make us all question the safety of contracted out stevedoring firms who compete with each other for business.
No worker has died at the Ports of Auckland for 18 years.”
Will the POT be charged? Or are we seeing people as expendable like those at Foxxconn in China where they put nets on the sides of their buildings to prevent suicides? It’s a slippery slope and we are heading down not up.
EDIT: see that I/S isn’t buying it as too little too late, and an attempt to mouth words to placate supporters (like me) without actually doing anything or helping the union.
No mention of
1) The difference between assets owned for the public good and those for the maximum profit of private shareholders.
2) No analysis of the wider economic benefits of having a port, i.e. the assessment only deals with the port in isolation.
3) The externalisation of costs on to the community from the withdrawal of wages and dependable permanent employment.
4) The demands of the Auckland City Council for ever higher returns on investment without investigating whether the assumptions behind those demands are at all feasible.
The vitriolic racist comments by Michael Laws regarding the recent rape case involving overseas visitors is disturbing to say the least.
His continual use of “Feral Maori ” is insulting and foul . As far as I know there has be no mention of the race of the offender in this case . The regular ranting against Maori by Laws makes one wonder if he is becoming mentally unbalanced.
‘ makes one wonder if he is becoming mentally unbalanced.’ already has been for some time PP, pretty sure it’s why radio Live use him, shock jock = ratings amongst certain listener groups.
The fact he’s still on air shows both how p’weak our broadcasting rules are and how desperate Mediaworks are for exposure.
I hadn’t heard these comments, but they seem typical of him… 🙁
Yes M. Laws is a racist prick.
I saw him on TV talking about Maori and violent crime and had to wonder why anybody would want the opinion of a fuckwit who talks about shooting newsroom staff.
hot off the MSN news.
Phil Twyford has stepped up to bat for the watersiders.
dont blow it Phil.
you know whats at stake.
and once you’re gone you cant come back.
when you’re out of the blue and into the black.
Oxy Morgan has flicked his Kiwi Saver business, no doubt pocketing a hansom sum in the proses
The oxymoron of Gareth Morgan is that he talks about climate change in one breath, then the next one he is promoting something that locks us into more climate change (for the bad) as the few awake people understand Kiwi Saver is based on continued economic growth. And for Russell Norman’s fictional 25 year old that growth must continue for the next 45 years.
Morgan also likes to fly around the world to go joyriding on his motor bike. His footprint must be the size of several small African villages ;).
yeah, and he let slater and hooton and farrar run riot over maori and jw’s when he owned trademe.
he’s pretty slimy.
For Gosman
“This (austerity) is akin to a doctor telling a patient suffering from pneumonia to go on a diet and get more exercise. While exercise is important, it assumes a healthy patient. If the patient is sick, he must build up his strength until he is physically capable of exercising again…
Balance sheet recessions, which occur when businesses and households rush to pay down debt in spite of zero interest rates, are a kind of pneumonia. The only way to treat them is for the government to become the borrower and spender of last resort with fiscal stimulus aimed at propping up aggregate demand.”
http://pragcap.com/deficits-are-good-during-a-balance-sheet-recession?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
Is reality at some point going to catch up with the Right, now that their ideologies are truly being put to the test, and are failing?
“it would also be obtuse not to recognise that a private-sector and market failure is at the heart of the current crisis; or to reconsider the role that new forms of public ownership could play in a modern economy in the light of China’s experience…”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jan/17/china-success-challenges-america-britain
Which part of the sovereign debt crisis in Europe is indicative of the failure of the free market?
Other than Greece the Sovereign debt in Europe has escalated as a result of the recession which resulted from the GFC which was the result of Greenspan and his gaggle of Ayn Rand Theocrats believing the invisible hand was all that was needed and failed to see the sub-prime bubble and the CDS’s triggering and subsequent wipe out of Lehman Bros & AIG.. yada yada..
Your Free market caused this crisis Gosman, Greek debt isn’t a get out of jail free card for any but the least informed or the faithful.
Evidently C & T have found a new recruit who managed to slither his way onto the Back Benches panel and started spouting the ‘politics is boring/ hard to understand’ memes…..
Talk about blatent, its not fucking Shortland St buddy, though I hope for your sake you are being paid per word because your delivery has only served to convince me that the right is woefully short on talent.
As for Jorden whoever , now he’s an expert!!!? I thought one of the most important outcomes from winning the referendum was so that we never had to listen to/ look at that annoying prat again.
Wallace, I like your show, but you have got to do a better job of filtering out the lizards.
which part of gosman is the windup key and when is the spring going to break.
the whole thing is a failure of the so called free market.
where is there a free market?
show us all so we can be as enlightened as you!