What happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object?
We may be about to find out.
A high-powered group of global oil and gas exploration companies, including Chevron and the Chinese national oil company, have converged on Wellington today for a targeted push to encourage new interest in the country’s under-explored frontier basins……
Facilitating discussion to “test drive” the NZPAM’s new competitive bid round process for awarding exploration rights is global oil industry strategic consultant Duncan Clarke, of Global Pacific & Partners, who also assisted in selecting attendees.
“From the New Zealand point of view, they are very open,” he told BusinessDesk. “They’re asking ‘what do we have to do to get you here?'”
To answer Duncan Clarke’s question:
We have to be prepared to prostrate ourselves before the oil giants.
We have to be prepared to kill.
We have to be prepared to sacrifice the environment.
We have to be prepared to curtail civil liberties.
We have to be prepared to impoverish the majority of the population so that a tiny minority of the local elite, can become the super rich sheiks of the South Pacific.
Look to Nigeria, look to Saudi Arabia, look to Bahrain, look to Iraq.
I would like to take this opportunity to tell Duncan Clarke and his clients, that New Zealand is the country that stopped the mighty US Navy in it’s tracks, and beware.
You do realise Pete that running a campaign to be elected as a representative in Dunedin requires more than just printing a few flyers and putting up some billboards?
Why dont you get yourself down there and see what it’s all about and then you can enlighten us all with a post and your opinion instead of those four lines of nothing.
i just went passed the campers in the octagon, its an utterly miserable day, wet, wind, freezing, & yep, they are all still there, they look comfortable & firm, im really proud of them.
I haven’t printed flyers and I haven’t put up any billboards yet. I’ll do a bit of that but I’m not running a traditional campaign. Expect some surprises.
I am getting myself down there, I have planned a visit at 5.15 today.
“Commitment” is traditional. You’ve heard of an open relationship? Pete has the world’s first open candidacy, where not even he knows whether he will vote for himself.
I’d say I’ve committed myself to a lot more than most here. I choose what I’ll comment on here – whatever I say I usually get attacked anyway so I select what suits me.
“I’ve always chosen on election day how to vote, and I don’t see why I should change that.”
So you don’t consider being the UF candidate sufficient reason to make up your mind before polling day? No wonder you can’t discuss policy;you can’t even commit to the party you represent!
I’m so looking forward to your hoardings, can I suggest something honest like this:
Hi, I’m Pete George and I’d like you to vote for United Future, because someone has to and I can’t be arsed.
You get criticised because your “commitment” usually revolves around a structure of “I strongly support the principle of X, but the [completely opposite] principle of Y needs to be taken into account, as well as the [completely irrelevent] principle of Z. We really need to discuss this more to try and find a common ground and realise that they are all shades of grey. Don’t hate me because I dare to unflinchingly defend the value of vague promises of compromise!”
Don’t get me wrong, such banalities might be good for a priest or a therapist, but the fact is that you chose to be a politician. Say WTF you are going to DO. This postmodern brand-is-all shite doesn’t play so well when times are tough, as the nats are beginning to find out, I suspect.
Case in point:
” I’ve always chosen on election day how to vote, and I don’t see why I should change that.
But you’d have to be very thick, or have a motive for promoting bullshit, not to figure it out.”
So on the one hand your mind is completely open and you haven’t yet made a decision – on the other hand it’s pretty obvious who you’ll vote for. Why not just dare to take a stand and say yes, come election time, you’ll actually vote for [shock, horror] yourself? And then take that new-found courage to your party so it can declare some policy specifics?
Sounds a bit like Groucho Marx. “Dear voter, I don’t want your vote because anyone who votes for me is too stupid for me to want to vote for me, myself included. Have a cigar instead.”
Trev – Your Sport Policy looks like another failure to think matters through.
Per the NZ Herald – Manoj Daji [Chief Executive – College Sport Auckland] gives a real-world view of your policy. He lists many reasons why it won’t work in the Super City of about 100,000 secondary students.
“With the sport spread across the week we are battling for venues and facilities. Having all sport on a given afternoon would not only cause major transportation issues for schools but also place extra pressure on limited facilities and reduce the ability to draw on community volunteers for coaching and officiating, whom we are are reliant on”
Well how is this for news. Key admits that the underclass is growing under his watch. And I thought he was going to fix the problem.
And at the same time that the underclass is growing the Herald reports that “the Government has slashed the number of food grants to needy families by 20 per cent, driving record numbers to seek food parcels from charities instead.”
The cause is said to be the change in policy to make people complete budgeting activities and show they have taken steps to increase their income or reduce their costs, before they can get more than two food grants a year. Obviously as far as the Government is concerned grinding policy is caused by a lack of budgeting skills not this Government’s actions.
I think budgeting advice and encouragement and incentives to improve ones situation are good – it’s easy to get in a poverty rut and to live inefficiently.
I don’t think benefits should be handed out indefinitely without question.
You’re being far to simplistic. It’s not an either or situation, it’s far more complex.
If Labour form a coalition after the election and we still have poverty in 2014 will they have failed?
Some poor people are responsible for their own poverty. Some are victims of circumstance. And most likely there’s a combination of both plus other factors.
Poverty is not due to Key failure. Government policies will have affected poverty levels, the extended economic downturn will have had a much greater effect, and previous government policies will also have had an effect.
So Greggy boy, there’s no simple political point scoring. If Labour’s third term had ended with zero poverty and a healthy economy, and then finances and food plummeted you might have a case. But it wasn’t like that so you don’t.
You see I recall clearly Key campaigning about the underclass and I thought then it was a glib PR job and that he would do nothing about it.
Then this morning it is not only confirmed but there is the added insult of a chance in policy to make things worse for the underclass, not better.
And I feel real anger about it.
But you show no anger either that you have been lied to or that the poor are getting hammered more. You seem to go away, construct a few words that you think represents a “middle point” and then post them.
And you keep on accusing me of “political point scoring” without irony when every comment you make is laiden with it. And you refuse to be drawn on anything specific.
So Pete baby what makes you angry? And what will you do to improve things?
BTW I am not sure why you refer to the third Labour Government and presume this is a display of ignorance. For your information there were about 20,000 unemployed at the time. The economy was in poor shape but only because of the first oil crisis that Labour had nothing to do with.
I don’t try and destroy threads, that’s a weird question. I contribute something different, if you don’t agree it doesn’t mean the thread has come to an end.
Your anger seems to be politically motivated. I don’t have that. I didn’t get angry at Labour (like many people did), and I don’t get angry about National.
Anger doesn’t help. Instead of getting angry I try to do something about things.
I have read your substandard contributions to this forum for a long time, and your contributions are almost always cynical and frivolous. You make a point of trying to make light of serious topics, much in the fashion of another right wing zealot, Paul Holmes on his risible Q&A programme.
I contribute something different
See above. That’s all you contribute.
Instead of getting angry I try to do something about things.
I’d have to agree you contribute something different, Pete. A complete lack of policy and no commitment to either yourself or your party must be a first in NZ politics for an aspiring candidate.
But all you do here is ask meaningless, distracting questions and at the end of the day, you are going to vote National anyway. My suspicion is that you post here because it’s the only political site that takes you even a little bit seriously. For a person ‘representing’ a party with one tenth of the Green’s support and one thirtieth of Labour’s, you do very well on the Standard. It’s just a shame that you get so much engagement here, but you still have nothing to say.
Should do what I do Ignore him totally don’t reply to any of his inane drivel. Because as we all know he strives to be the best he can be in UF, and that position being the chief comb holder!
I think social conscience advice and encouragement and incentives to improve everyone’s situation are good – it’s easy to get in a greed rut and to live elitely.
I don’t think bail-outs should be handed out indefinitely without question.
it’s easy to get in a greed rut and to live elitely.
And not just the rich and the poor.
It’s easy to get stuck in a consumerist rut and waste a lot of money. But if they stopped spending money on inneccesaries it would stuf the economy and people would lose jobs.
oh i get it now, In order to sustain an openly corrupt system we must ignore the actual day to day realities that the system presents us and mindlessly continue to sacrifice the future of our species, not to mention our planet. Nice one Pete.
Are you mind-buggeringly ignorant of the modern world or is it more that you possess a myopic view of the causality processes that lead to the social, fiscal and environmental poverty that you are so willing to lay at the feet of the poor ?
Cut benefits
Sell State Houses
Slash minimum wages
privatise health?
Because that is pretty much all the things that you have suggested.
People like you try to deny it, but the poverty has embedded itself in this country due to the 1991 budget and the Employment Contracts Act. In essence, they took money off workers and poor people, and destoryed the social wage.
My aim is to work at a community level to find solutions. It works bettter from the bottom up rather than Wellington down. One size fits all doesn’t work well, a local solutions to local problems is much better.
I was talking to a health related organisation last week, they are currently 62% government funded. They’d like more, but only up to a maximum of about 80% – they feel if they were fully funded they would be “owned” and would lose a lot of their flexibility and ability to innovate.
Trouble is, your beloved community health organisation wants the right to turn people away with only 80% funding. Our public health system has an obligation to treat people regardless of income. It can only do that with the top down one size fits all model you despise.
Your party will destory this universal health care system that is a taonga in this country.
You can actually fund any community organisation at 100% and still give them full freedom to function autonomously as suits their function within their community.
It all comes down to how you approach what a government actually does.
It is about fair and equitable sharing of resources. It is about respect.
It is about honesty. It is also about a long ago idea called trust.
These ideas may be foreign to you and your ilk as history only presents a ravenous hunger that has, for millenia, stripped the hearty flesh of humanity from the bones of our society. Replacing it with the tumours and festering sores that have evolved into the modern Industrial Military Corpocracy. And every single one of us are nothing but share-stock antibiotics for the beasts that own it all. If you want to believe otherwise Pete then you are choosing to ignore reality and are only discussing ideology. A practise that allows distraction to be deemed acheivemnet and never really contributes to the impetus required to construct real change.
For thousands of years the words of the common person has been an irritant that owners have had to silence. Your very apologies for their practises brand you an accomplise in their ongoing war against humanity.
They fundraise the rest to enable them to maintain some independence…
In other words, they waste time and money to get the money that they need. They could be fully government funded and still maintain independence so that’s just an excuse. Sure, they’d be accountable for that money but, then, they should be any way.
PG I raise funds for community organizations and its very hard raise any sort of money the sums required to fund a health system are humongous you idiot for instance $35million just to upgrade the A&E at Dunedin hospital I’d like to see you and your clowns even get to 1% funding. Unfettered Fairyland dreaming your just an idiot with nothing better to do than talk drivel no research based economics behind any of your diatribe .Free loading on the standard just like your boss free loading on the govt of the day!
No Pete, you arrest the crooks first. You control the potentiality of ongoing attacks. That is still the best and most direct way to help the victim. If a victim of a violent crime is secure in the knowledge that the attacker is behind bars they generally feel a bit more capable of facing the world and making the effort of rebuilding their life. But you will refuse to see the analogy. I pity the Occupy people that have to communicate with you during your very precisely scheduled visit. The only ray of sunshine that may break through your clouds of ignorance is the fact if the right person recognises you for what you are, your views will be demanded and put on record.
The “them bad, us good” religious type fervour is not going to work.
David Brooks (New York Times columnist), wrote last week, “It’s not about declaring war on some nefarious elite. It’s about changing behaviour from top to bottom.”
I see where Pete George gets that cast-iron smugness and complacency from—he not only reads the smooth but ridiculous cant of that smug and complacent zealot David Brooks, but he apparently takes him seriously!!!.
Those who have read Brooks will realize he is an American version of the notorious English poseur Nick Cohen or our own David Farrar, i.e., a shallow ideologue who writes well, but who is essentially anti-democratic, and not prepared to engage in debate seriously or respectfully. It’s a reflection on Pete George’s character and his moral seriousness (or lack thereof) that he quotes Brooks with evident approval.
Note how he solemnly insists that Brooks’s flim-flam is “worth pondering”.
MEMO PETE GEORGE:
We know you’re busy on that campaign trail, holding the leader’s comb, and so you won’t have time to do a lot of reading. So when you do find a spare hour or so, why don’t you pick up a BOOK by a serious writer (i.e., not by Nick Cohen or David Brooks or P.J. O’Rourke or Ian Wishart) but by a serious and intelligent thinker. Please. You owe it to yourself, as well as the denizens of this forum. It’s never too late to start.
PG it was united futures undermining of the greens that caused labour to cut a lot of climate change and environmental problems.The result is that UF have only .3% support but with the way you Rant on PG with your superiority complex you would think that you have something like 51% support you’ve probably been excluded from Kiwiblog because your blogs are so boring and contrived
We should start we the coalition borrowing and hoping aye a little Parental Guidance required before you leave home I predict an Unemployed Future for feather weight politicly naive idiot
I think pete wants to see hungry angry people prowling the streets and the police and the army hunting them down and killing them because they dont have a licence to live.
Pete will deny it, but randal’s grim futurist scenario is where it all ends when you have deserving and undeserving poor, high unemployement and people under pressure from all directions backed up by a surveillence state to ‘clampdown’ on resistance and fightbacks.
I know several farmers that would shoot ‘hungry angry people’ approaching their land rather than feed them. Societal breakdown is always closer than we think.
For Pete G
and others who refuse to see the trees because they are too busy clear cutting the forest.
One of these videos exposes the manipulative intent of the system you so tirelessly defend
the other is simply the reality of your greed is legal so let it happen ideology
they are both good TV, but one of them would never get near a TV broadcast
so with no policy no party and no commitment to anything but an irritating whine against poor people how exactly are you promoting change?
I may well be an idealist but i am not alone. I am one of the thousands and thousands of New Zealanders with practical game-changing ideas who have put in the effort to present real alternatives to complex problems. I did it as recently as last week.
You may recall the PM with his ‘put up or shut up’ call regarding plans for the Rena Oil. Unlike most people i did not write a couple of hundred words on the fact the PM said it, i just went to work and sent him an actual idea. I even went as far as to state I had no political motive in my sending it to him, which is true in this case. It was and is about the Oil and finding a real solution. I have no knowledge if he ever saw my idea, who knows. I sent it to every resource i could think of. From Governemnt sites to Party pages, even here and on FB.
The PM though said, on Monday’s Breakfast show, that despite his request for input, not a single person had come up with any ideas despite lots of talk about there being immediate solutions. I call bullshit and I say the same to you. Your platitudes of progressive action are weak kneed stammerings of someone at risk of losing a bar bet.
Thus we can be sure that the whole world, with the exception of those who are presently saved (the elect), are under the judgment of God, and will be annihilated together with the whole physical world on October 21, 2011, on the last day of the present five months period. On that day the true believers (the elect) will be raptured.
Elect???? don’t they mean Elite?? Well maybe it means the rich Elect will be raptured ie: taken off somewhere else(or like every other rapture in modern history usually means mass suicide.) And the annhilation?? well it would not be so bad if the present monetary system crashes.
Summary: The bottom line from the Iranian assassination caper = it’s already worked, further demonizing Iran’s image in the mind of the American public — maintaining support for the permanent war establishment of massive military/intel/homeland security spending and the slow erosion of our liberties. Of course it succeeded. Conducting information operations against America is the core competency of our defense apparatus.
Yesterday, the Prime Minister John Key announced that he was going to donate $50 million towards New Zealand’s growing debt crisis. Key said he’d decided to gift his fortune because of the help he had received from New Zealand as a child in the form of a state house, and it was “jush fair to gift sumtin back.”
Are there no depths the elite will plummet to in order to advantage their offspring? http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10759864
<blockquote>
A woman has admitted making calls claiming to be a sexual health worker in a bid to damage the reputation of a girl who was a rival to her daughter’s bid to study at two elite colleges.
The Queenstown 53-year-old appeared visibly shaken when she appeared on two charges in the Queenstown District Court yesterday.
Sergeant Ian Collin said the defendant applied to St Hilda’s Collegiate School and Columba College, both in Dunedin, in May for her daughter to be accepted next year.</blockquote>
Suffer little children for King John The Clueless of Charmalot has decreed that his beloved underclass shall grow and be hungry so the rich may have their tax cuts.
DOH! Missed Mr Savage’s earlier reference to this. Just couldn’t believe it when I read those stories one after the other. Hat tip New Zealand Fox News Herald for accident juxtaposition.
(NOTE TO SELF: Just because the trolls are being fed doesn’t mean you can ignore the leading comment.)
Back in July this year it was revealed that National creates jobs for their mates and pays them three times the going rate. When attempting to side step the issue, Earthquake Recovery Minister Gerry Brownlee started telling lies…
“”They are caught up in the same kind of mood as the other rating agencies where they ‘re putting any country with debt under the microscope. I see in the last few days they’ve just warned France or Italy or somebody,” he said.”
Seems like he’s suggesting it’s just teenage angst, or they got up on the wrong side of bed, or perhaps even PMS.
It also sounds like he doesn’t care any more. Hardly becoming the finance minister, I don’t think. At budget 2009 they were acting like the ratings agencies were their best mates and now they don’t want to know them or give them the time of day.
. . . “I see in the last few days they’ve just warned France or Italy or somebody,” he said . . .
France is in the softening up phase up for a review of its Aaa rating, while Italy has had its rating macheted down three notches to A2. WTF is Blinglish saying here?
Any more? He never cared at all. His sole job was to increase NZ’s borrowing so that him and his rich mates had a nice safe place to put their money collecting interest.
Nice column by Colin James in the ODT today. Talking about the delay in the government signing up to the bunker fuel damages convention:
“After Audit Office criticism of the Treasury’s costly mishandling of the guarantee to South Canterbury Finance, this failure of fiduciary duty to taxpayers looks bad. But even if Joyce had got a bill drafted the lax management of Parliament’s business would probably have left it low on the agenda like many other important bills.
Again, it is not a syndrome. But it does suggest the cabinet needs tighter management than Key’s devolved style. Which is more important: removing compulsory student unionism or doubling the fees for dodgy Greek shipping companies? “
“Again, it is not a syndrome. But it does suggest the cabinet needs tighter management than Key’s devolved style. Which is more important: removing compulsory student unionism or doubling the fees for dodgy Greek shipping companies?”
To be fair, it did take them a very very long time to get the SVM bill passed.
So much has happened that gives lie to the governments claim of being fiscally responsible:
A $2 billion dollar tax cut that wasn’t fiscally neutral
A $2 billion dollar cock-up with South Canterbury
$10 million marine insurance bungle.
$75, 000 to send McCully to Vannuatu
Can anyone add examples of fiscal mismanagement that are costing public servants jobs and government services to be cut?
The fiscal malfeasance being overseen by this John Key led National Ltd™ government is systemic, and it starts at the top of the bureaucratic jungle gym.
Brian Gaynor highlighted a serious macro-level issue which is throwing out all the government’s accounts and resulting in a belt-tightening cascade of reduced services as actual income falls so far below estimated income. By the time reality hits the chook house at Number 1 The Terrace, the government has gone ahead promising all sorts of wonderfulness only to find it has to scurry about last-minute with cap in hand while ordering government departments, again, to get the razors out. No chance for long-term strategic management when there’s an unexpected cash shortage every three months.
Treasury, “our leading government department” is responsible for this and is also in the shit for the way it has managed the Crown retail deposit guarantee scheme. Classic National Ltd™ – put economists in charge of running a country because, really, society is just like a business, don’t you see?
seeing as the Government and their supporters have pulled out the ‘global crisis is all because of household debt’ mantra, here is a picture saving us all a thousand words
( those with a keen eye will notice some of our PM’s handiwork amongst the detritus)
It’ll be in the archives somewhere, but someone posted that this is exactly what Key did tell a kid who asked what caused the financial crisis. Words to the effect of: ‘Your parents bought things they couldn’t afford’. Our glorious media didn’t find this suitably interesting to question him about – that it was all our fault according to Key.
Labour announces it’s employment policies today.
National try to deflect attention away from Labour with a Kiwisaver announcement that is vague, has no specifics, is not going to be detailed until after the election, and will only happen if they balance the books (fat chance of that happening!).
The political equivalent of vapourware.
And what did tv3 do tonight? They ran first up with the National’s sweet FA announcement.
I guess that’s what a $43 million soft loan gets ya.
William, National is the govt, and most punters expect them to be returned in a few weeks, hence this is most likely to beecome law. Labour on the other hand is quickly becoming a fringe party, struggling to get over 30% if the latest roy morgan is to be believed.
sweetD you have no political knowledge, National polled 23% only 10 years ago. Labour are doing fine in the left vote, National need to deliver to the swingers and they don’t have any ideas apart from smiles and waves, it all comes apart in the end. New Zealand will extend it’s socialist economy considerably in your lifetime in accordance with the swing back from private commercial incompetence.
Well no whimpy BB, actually, ya gotta pay attention to the November 26 poll, you know, where people get the big black marker pen out in the little cardboard booth.
September 26 – October 9, 2011. That’s the polling period, Bludge. A couple of weeks into the RWC through to a comfortable win over Argentina in the quarters. And before we knew Key’s Government had just helped coat the beaches of the BOP in oil. I hear the rugby finishes soon, btw.
I wonder what the Nats think amounts to corruption? Did anyone else notice that May Wang – a businesswoman with links to Jenny Shipley – is charged with corruption in Hong Kong? She was the lady who fronted the Chinese bid to buy the Crafar farms. Check out these links:
All I say is thank God for the Overseas Investment Commission! I wonder how she conducted her affairs around the Nats. What meetings did she have with the likes of Pansy Wong and Co?
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Mike Grimshaw writes – The recent announcement of the University Advisory Group, chaired by Sir Peter Gluckman, makes very clear where the Government’s focus and priorities lie. The remit of the Advisory Group is that Group members will consider challenges and opportunities for improvement in the university sector including: ...
Eric Crampton writes – The Reserve Bank of New Zealand desperately wants to find reasons to have workstreams in climate change. It makes little sense. They’ve run another stress test on the banks looking to see if they could find a prudential regulation case. They couldn’t. They ...
Rob MacCullough writes – Pundits from the left and the right are arguing that National’s Fast Track Bill that is designed to speed up infrastructure decisions could end up becoming mired in a cesspool of corruption. Political commentator ...
Looking at the headlines this morning it’s hard to feel anything other than pessimistic about the future of humanity.Note that I’m not speaking about the future of mankind, but the survival of our humanity. The values that we believe in seem to be ebbing away, by the day.Perhaps every generation ...
Swabbing mixed breed baby chicks to test for avian influenzaUh oh. Bird flu – often deadly to humans – is not only being transmitted from infected birds to dairy cows, but is now travelling between dairy cows. As of last Friday, Bloomberg News reports, there were 32 American dairy herds ...
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 ...
What is it with the mining industry? Its not enough for them to pillage the earth - they apparently can't even be bothered getting resource consent to do so: The proponent behind a major mine near the Clutha River had already been undertaking activity in the area without a ...
Photo # 1 I am a huge fan of Singapore’s approach to housing, as described here two years ago by copying and pasting from The ConversationWhat Singapore has that Australia does not is a public housing developer, the Housing Development Board, which puts new dwellings on public and reclaimed land, ...
Buzz from the Beehive Reactions to news of the government’s readiness to make urgent changes to “the resource management system” through a Bill to amend the Resource Management Act (RMA) suggest a balanced approach is being taken. The Taxpayers’ Union says the proposed changes don’t go far enough. Greenpeace says ...
I’m starting to wonder if Anna Burns-Francis might be the best political interviewer we’ve got. That might sound unlikely to you, it came as a bit of a surprise to me.Jack Tame can be excellent, but has some pretty average days. I like Rebecca Wright on Newshub, she asks good ...
Chris Trotter writes – Willie Jackson is said to be planning a “media summit” to discuss “the state of the media and how to protect Fourth Estate Journalism”. Not only does the Editor of The Daily Blog, Martyn Bradbury, think this is a good idea, but he has also ...
Graeme Edgeler writes – This morning [April 21], the Wellington High Court is hearing a judicial review brought by Hon. Karen Chhour, the Minister for Children, against a decision of the Waitangi Tribunal. This is unusual, judicial reviews are much more likely to brought against ministers, rather than ...
Both of Parliament’s watchdogs have now ripped into the Government’s Fast-track Approvals Bill. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāMy pick of the six newsey things to know from Aotearoa’s political economy and beyond on the morning of Tuesday, April 23 are:The Lead: The Auditor General,John Ryan, has joined the ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Sarah SpengemanPeople wait to board an electric bus in Pune, India. (Image credit: courtesy of ITDP) Public transportation riders in Pune, India, love the city’s new electric buses so much they will actually skip an older diesel bus that ...
The infrastructure industry yesterday issued a “hurry up” message to the Government, telling it to get cracking on developing a pipeline of infrastructure projects.The hiatus around the change of Government has seen some major projects cancelled and others delayed, and there is uncertainty about what will happen with the new ...
Hi,Over the weekend I revisited a podcast I really adore, Dead Eyes. It’s about a guy who got fired from Band of Brothers over two decades ago because Tom Hanks said he had “dead eyes”.If you don’t recall — 2001’s Band of Brothers was part of the emerging trend of ...
Buzz from the Beehive The 180 or so recipients of letters from the Government telling them how to submit infrastructure projects for “fast track” consideration includes some whose project applications previously have been rejected by the courts. News media were quick to feature these in their reports after RMA Reform Minister Chris ...
It would not be a desirable way to start your holiday by breaking your back, your head, or your wrist, but on our first hour in Singapore I gave it a try.We were chatting, last week, before we started a meeting of Hazel’s Enviro Trust, about the things that can ...
Calling all journalists, academics, planners, lawyers, political activists, environmentalists, and other members of the public who believe that the relationships between vested interests and politicians need to be scrutinised. We need to work together to make sure that the new Fast-Track Approvals Bill – currently being pushed through by the ...
Feel worried. Shane Jones and a couple of his Cabinet colleagues are about to be granted the power to override any and all objections to projects like dams, mines, roads etc even if: said projects will harm biodiversity, increase global warming and cause other environmental harms, and even if ...
Bryce Edwards writes- The ability of the private sector to quickly establish major new projects making use of the urban and natural environment is to be supercharged by the new National-led Government. Yesterday it introduced to Parliament one of its most significant reforms, the Fast Track Approvals Bill. ...
Michael Bassett writes – If you think there is a move afoot by the radical Maori fringe of New Zealand society to create a parallel system of government to the one that we elect at our triennial elections, you aren’t wrong. Over the last few days we have ...
Without a corresponding drop in interest rates, it’s doubtful any changes to the CCCFA will unleash a massive rush of home buyers. Photo: Lynn GrievesonTL;DR: The six things that stood out to me in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, poverty and climate on Monday, April 22 included:The Government making a ...
Sunday was a lazy day. I started watching Jack Tame on Q&A, the interviews are usually good for something to write about. Saying the things that the politicians won’t, but are quite possibly thinking. Things that are true and need to be extracted from between the lines.As you might know ...
In our Weekly Roundup last week we covered news from Auckland Transport that the WX1 Western Express is going to get an upgrade next year with double decker electric buses. As part of the announcement, AT also said “Since we introduced the WX1 Western Express last November we have seen ...
TL;DR: The six key events to watch in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the week to April 29 include:PM Christopher Luxon is scheduled to hold a post-Cabinet news conference at 4 pm today. Stats NZ releases its statutory report on Census 2023 tomorrow.Finance Minister Nicola Willis delivers a pre-Budget speech at ...
A listing of 29 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, April 14, 2024 thru Sat, April 20, 2024. Story of the week Our story of the week hinges on these words from the abstract of a fresh academic ...
The ability of the private sector to quickly establish major new projects making use of the urban and natural environment is to be supercharged by the new National-led Government. Yesterday it introduced to Parliament one of its most significant reforms, the Fast Track Approvals Bill. The Government says this will ...
This is a column to say thank you. So many of have been in touch since Mum died to say so many kind and thoughtful things. You’re wonderful, all of you. You’ve asked how we’re doing, how Dad’s doing. A little more realisation each day, of the irretrievable finality of ...
Identifying the engine type in your car is crucial for various reasons, including maintenance, repairs, and performance upgrades. Knowing the specific engine model allows you to access detailed technical information, locate compatible parts, and make informed decisions about modifications. This comprehensive guide will provide you with a step-by-step approach to ...
Introduction: The allure of racing is undeniable. The thrill of speed, the roar of engines, and the exhilaration of competition all contribute to the allure of this adrenaline-driven sport. For those who yearn to experience the pinnacle of racing, becoming a race car driver is the ultimate dream. However, the ...
Introduction Automobiles have become ubiquitous in modern society, serving as a primary mode of transportation and a symbol of economic growth and personal mobility. With countless vehicles traversing roads and highways worldwide, it begs the question: how many cars are there in the world? Determining the precise number is a ...
Maintaining a safe and reliable vehicle requires regular inspections. Whether it’s a routine maintenance checkup or a safety inspection, knowing how long the process will take can help you plan your day accordingly. This article delves into the factors that influence the duration of a car inspection and provides an ...
Mazda Motor Corporation, commonly known as Mazda, is a Japanese multinational automaker headquartered in Fuchu, Aki District, Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan. The company was founded in 1920 as the Toyo Cork Kogyo Co., Ltd., and began producing vehicles in 1931. Mazda is primarily known for its production of passenger cars, but ...
Your car battery is an essential component that provides power to start your engine, operate your electrical systems, and store energy. Over time, batteries can weaken and lose their ability to hold a charge, which can lead to starting problems, power failures, and other issues. Replacing your battery before it ...
In most states, you cannot register a car without a valid driver’s license. However, there are a few exceptions to this rule. Exceptions to the RuleIf you are under 18 years old: In some states, you can register a car in your name even if you do not ...
Mazda, a Japanese automotive manufacturer with a rich history of innovation and engineering excellence, has emerged as a formidable player in the global car market. Known for its reputation of producing high-quality, fuel-efficient, and driver-oriented vehicles, Mazda has consistently garnered praise from industry experts and consumers alike. In this article, ...
Struts are an essential part of a car’s suspension system. They are responsible for supporting the weight of the car and damping the oscillations of the springs. Struts are typically made of steel or aluminum and are filled with hydraulic fluid. How Do Struts Work? Struts work by transferring the ...
Car registration is a mandatory process that all vehicle owners must complete annually. This process involves registering your car with the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) and paying an associated fee. The registration process ensures that your vehicle is properly licensed and insured, and helps law enforcement and other authorities ...
Zoom is a video conferencing service that allows you to share your screen, webcam, and audio with other participants. In addition to sharing your own audio, you can also share the audio from your computer with other participants. This can be useful for playing music, sharing presentations with audio, or ...
Building your own computer can be a rewarding and cost-effective way to get a high-performance machine tailored to your specific needs. However, it also requires careful planning and execution, and one of the most important factors to consider is the time it will take. The exact time it takes to ...
Sleep mode is a power-saving state that allows your computer to quickly resume operation without having to boot up from scratch. This can be useful if you need to step away from your computer for a short period of time but don’t want to shut it down completely. There are ...
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. ...
The government's decision to reintroduce Three Strikes is a destructive and ineffective piece of law-making that will only exacerbate an inherently biased and racist criminal justice system, said Te Pāti Māori Justice Spokesperson, Tākuta Ferris, today. During the time Three Strikes was in place in Aotearoa, Māori and Pasifika received ...
Cuts to frontline hospital staff are not only a broken election promise, it shows the reckless tax cuts have well and truly hit the frontline of the health system, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
The Green Party has joined the call for public submissions on the fast-track legislation to be extended after the Ombudsman forced the Government to release the list of organisations invited to apply just hours before submissions close. ...
New Zealand’s good work at reducing climate emissions for three years in a row will be undone by the National government’s lack of ambition and scrapping programmes that were making a difference, Labour Party climate spokesperson Megan Woods said today. ...
More essential jobs could be on the chopping block, this time Ministry of Education staff on the school lunches team are set to find out whether they're in line to lose their jobs. ...
Te Pāti Māori is disgusted at the confirmation that hundreds are set to lose their jobs at Oranga Tamariki, and the disestablishment of the Treaty Response Unit. “This act of absolute carelessness and out of touch decision making is committing tamariki to state abuse.” Said Te Pāti Māori Oranga Tamariki ...
The Government is trying to bring in a law that will allow Ministers to cut corners and kill off native species, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said. ...
Cancelling urgently needed new Cook Strait ferries and hiking the cost of public transport for many Kiwis so that National can announce the prospect of another tunnel for Wellington is not making good choices, Labour Transport Spokesperson Tangi Utikere said. ...
A laundry list of additional costs for Tāmaki Makarau Auckland shows the Minister for the city is not delivering for the people who live there, says Labour Auckland Issues spokesperson Shanan Halbert. ...
Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi, and Mema Paremata mō Tāmaki-Makaurau, Takutai Tarsh Kemp, will travel to the Gold Coast to strengthen ties with Māori in Australia next week (15-21 April). The visit, in the lead-up to the 9th Australian National Kapa haka Festival, will be an opportunity for both ...
The Green Party has today launched a step-by-step guide to help New Zealanders make their voice heard on the Government’s democracy dodging and anti-environment fast track legislation. ...
The National Government’s proposed changes to the Residential Tenancies Act will mean tenants can be turfed from their homes by landlords with little notice, Labour housing spokesperson Kieran McAnulty said. ...
Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson is calling on all parties to support a common-sense change that’s great for the planet and great for consumers after her member’s bill was drawn from the ballot today. ...
A significant milestone has been reached in the fight to strike an anti-Pasifika and unfair law from the country’s books after Teanau Tuiono’s members’ bill passed its first reading. ...
New Zealand has today missed the opportunity to uphold the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment, says James Shaw after his member’s bill was voted down in its first reading. ...
Today’s advice from the Climate Change Commission paints a sobering reality of the challenge we face in combating climate change, especially in light of recent Government policy announcements. ...
Minister for Disability Issues Penny Simmonds appears to have delayed a report back to Cabinet on the progress New Zealand is making against international obligations for disabled New Zealanders. ...
Hundreds of New Zealand families affected by Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) will benefit from a new Government focus on prevention and treatment, says Health Minister Dr Shane Reti. “We know FASD is a leading cause of preventable intellectual and neurodevelopmental disability in New Zealand,” Dr Reti says. “Every day, ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones today attended the official opening of Kaikohe’s new $14.7 million sports complex. “The completion of the Kaikohe Multi Sports Complex is a fantastic achievement for the Far North,” Mr Jones says. “This facility not only fulfils a long-held dream for local athletes, but also creates ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters’ engagements in Türkiye this week underlined the importance of diplomacy to meet growing global challenges. “Returning to the Gallipoli Peninsula to represent New Zealand at Anzac commemorations was a sombre reminder of the critical importance of diplomacy for de-escalating conflicts and easing tensions,” Mr Peters ...
Ambassador Millar, Burgemeester, Vandepitte, Excellencies, military representatives, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen – good morning and welcome to this sacred Anzac Day dawn service. It is an honour to be here on behalf of the Government and people of New Zealand at Buttes New British Cemetery, Polygon Wood – a deeply ...
Distinguished guests - It is an honour to return once again to this site which, as the resting place for so many of our war-dead, has become a sacred place for generations of New Zealanders. Our presence here and at the other special spaces of Gallipoli is made ...
Mai ia tawhiti pamamao, te moana nui a Kiwa, kua tae whakaiti mai matou, ki to koutou papa whenua. No koutou te tapuwae, no matou te tapuwae, kua honoa pumautia. Ko nga toa kua hinga nei, o te Waipounamu, o te Ika a Maui, he okioki tahi me o ...
Paul Goldsmith will take on responsibility for the Media and Communications portfolio, while Louise Upston will pick up the Disability Issues portfolio, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announced today. “Our Government is relentlessly focused on getting New Zealand back on track. As issues change in prominence, I plan to adjust Ministerial ...
Recreational catch limits will be reduced in areas of Fiordland and the Chatham Islands to help keep those fisheries healthy and sustainable, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. The lower recreational daily catch limits for a range of finfish and shellfish species caught in the Fiordland Marine Area and ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has welcomed an important milestone in New Zealand’s hydrogen future, with the opening of the country’s first network of hydrogen refuelling stations in Wiri. “I want to congratulate the team at Hiringa Energy and its partners K one W one (K1W1), Mitsui & Co New Zealand ...
The coalition Government is delivering on its commitment to improve resource management laws and give greater certainty to consent applicants, with a Bill to amend the Resource Management Act (RMA) expected to be introduced to Parliament next month. RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop has today outlined the first RMA Amendment ...
Overseas models for regulating the oil and gas sector, including their decommissioning regimes, are being carefully scrutinised as a potential template for New Zealand’s own sector, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. The Coalition Government is focused on rebuilding investor confidence in New Zealand’s energy sector as it looks to strengthen ...
Emergency Management and Recovery Minister Mark Mitchell has today released the Report of the Government Inquiry into the response to the North Island Severe Weather Events. “The report shows that New Zealand’s emergency management system is not fit-for-purpose and there are some significant gaps we need to address,” Mr Mitchell ...
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith is today travelling to Europe where he’ll update the United Nations Human Rights Council on the Government’s work to restore law and order. “Attending the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva provides us with an opportunity to present New Zealand’s human rights progress, priorities, and challenges, while ...
Associate Agriculture Minister, Mark Patterson, formally reopened the world’s largest wool processing facility today in Awatoto, Napier, following a $50 million rebuild and refurbishment project. “The reopening of this facility will significantly lift the economic opportunities available to New Zealand’s wool sector, which already accounts for 20 per cent of ...
Hon Andrew Bayly, Minister for Small Business and Manufacturing At the Southland Otago Regional Engineering Collective (SOREC) Summit, 18 April, Dunedin Ngā mihi nui, Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Ko Whanganui aho Good Afternoon and thank you for inviting me to open your summit today. I am delighted ...
The Government is delivering on its commitment to bring back the Three Strikes legislation, Associate Justice Minister Nicole McKee announced today. “Our Government is committed to restoring law and order and enforcing appropriate consequences on criminals. We are making it clear that repeat serious violent or sexual offending is not ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has today announced four new diplomatic appointments for New Zealand’s overseas missions. “Our diplomats have a vital role in maintaining and protecting New Zealand’s interests around the world,” Mr Peters says. “I am pleased to announce the appointment of these senior diplomats from the ...
New Zealand is contributing NZ$7 million to support communities affected by severe food insecurity and other urgent humanitarian needs in Ethiopia and Somalia, Foreign Minister Rt Hon Winston Peters announced today. “Over 21 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance across Ethiopia, with a further 6.9 million people ...
Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage Paul Goldsmith is congratulating Mataaho Collective for winning the Golden Lion for best participant in the main exhibition at the Venice Biennale. "Congratulations to the Mataaho Collective for winning one of the world's most prestigious art prizes at the Venice Biennale. “It is good ...
The Government is reforming financial services to improve access to home loans and other lending, and strengthen customer protections, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly and Housing Minister Chris Bishop announced today. “Our coalition Government is committed to rebuilding the economy and making life simpler by cutting red tape. We are ...
“China remains a strong commercial opportunity for Kiwi exporters as Chinese businesses and consumers continue to value our high-quality safe produce,” Trade and Agriculture Minister Todd McClay says. Mr McClay has returned to New Zealand following visits to Beijing, Harbin and Shanghai where he met ministers, governors and mayors and engaged in trade and agricultural events with the New ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has completed a successful trip to Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines, deepening relationships and capitalising on opportunities. Mr Luxon was accompanied by a business delegation and says the choice of countries represents the priority the New Zealand Government places on South East Asia, and our relationships in ...
New Zealand is demonstrating its commitment to reducing global greenhouse emissions, and supporting clean energy transition in South East Asia, through a contribution of NZ$41 million (US$25 million) in climate finance to the Asian Development Bank (ADB)-led Energy Transition Mechanism (ETM). Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Climate Change Minister Simon Watts announced ...
The Government is today releasing a list of organisations who received letters about the Fast-track applications process, says RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop. “Recently Ministers and agencies have received a series of OIA requests for a list of organisations to whom I wrote with information on applying to have a ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins today announced the appointment of Wellington Barrister David Jonathan Boldt as a Judge of the High Court, and the Honourable Justice Matthew Palmer as a Judge of the Court of Appeal. Justice Boldt graduated with an LLB from Victoria University of Wellington in 1990, and also holds ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford will lead the New Zealand delegation at the 2024 International Summit on the Teaching Profession (ISTP) held in Singapore. The delegation includes representatives from the Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) Te Wehengarua and the New Zealand Educational Institute (NZEI) Te Riu Roa. The summit is co-hosted ...
A stopbank upgrade project in Tairawhiti partly funded by the Government has increased flood resilience for around 7000ha of residential and horticultural land so far, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones today attended a dawn service in Gisborne to mark the end of the first stage of the ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters will represent the Government at Anzac Day commemorations on the Gallipoli Peninsula next week and engage with senior representatives of the Turkish government in Istanbul. “The Gallipoli campaign is a defining event in our history. It will be a privilege to share the occasion ...
Science, Innovation and Technology and Defence Minister Judith Collins will next week attend the OECD Science and Technology Ministerial conference in Paris and Anzac Day commemorations in Belgium. “Science, innovation and technology have a major role to play in rebuilding our economy and achieving better health, environmental and social outcomes ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon held a bilateral meeting today with the President of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The Prime Minister was accompanied by MP Paulo Garcia, the first Filipino to be elected to a legislature outside the Philippines. During today’s meeting, Prime Minister Luxon and President Marcos Jr discussed opportunities to ...
The Government has announced that $20 million in funding will be made available to Westport to fund much needed flood protection around the town. This measure will significantly improve the resilience of the community, says Local Government Minister Simeon Brown. “The Westport community has already been allocated almost $3 million ...
The Government is proud to support the first ever Repco Supercars Championship event in Taupō as up to 70,000 motorsport fans attend the Taupō International Motorsport Park this weekend, says Economic Development Minister Melissa Lee. “Anticipation for the ITM Taupō Super400 is huge, with tickets and accommodation selling out weeks ...
Local Government Minister Simeon Brown has announced an increase to the Rates Rebate Scheme, putting money back into the pockets of low-income homeowners. “The coalition Government is committed to bringing down the cost of living for New Zealanders. That includes targeted support for those Kiwis who are doing things tough, such ...
The Coalition Government is investing in a project to boost survival rates of New Zealand mussels and grow the industry, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones has announced. “This project seeks to increase the resilience of our mussels and significantly boost the sector’s productivity,” Mr Jones says. “The project - ...
Benefit figures released today underscore the importance of the Government’s plan to rebuild the economy and have 50,000 fewer people on Jobseeker Support, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. “Benefit numbers are still significantly higher than when National was last in government, when there was about 70,000 fewer ...
The Government’s commitment to doubling New Zealand’s renewable energy capacity is backed by new data showing that clean energy has helped the country reach its lowest annual gross emissions since 1999, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. New Zealand’s latest Greenhouse Gas Inventory (1990-2022) published today, shows gross emissions fell ...
The Government is bringing the earthquake-prone building review forward, with work to start immediately, and extending the deadline for remediations by four years, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “Our Government is focused on rebuilding the economy. A key part of our plan is to cut red tape that ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and his Thai counterpart, Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin, have today agreed that New Zealand and the Kingdom of Thailand will upgrade the bilateral relationship to a Strategic Partnership by 2026. “New Zealand and Thailand have a lot to offer each other. We have a strong mutual desire to build ...
RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop and Transport Minister Simeon Brown have today announced the Coalition Government’s intention to extend port coastal permits for a further 20 years, providing port operators with certainty to continue their operations. “The introduction of the Resource Management Act in 1991 required ports to obtain coastal ...
Today’s announcement that inflation is down to 4 per cent is encouraging news for Kiwis, but there is more work to be done - underlining the importance of the Government’s plan to get the economy back on track, acting Finance Minister Chris Bishop says. “Inflation is now at 4 per ...
Asia Pacific Report From France to Australia, university pro-Palestine protests in the United States have now spread to several countries with students pitching on-campus camps. And students at Columbia and other US universities remain defiant as campuses have witnessed the biggest protests since the anti-Vietnam war and anti-apartheid eras in ...
Analysis by Dr Bryce Edwards, Democracy Project (https://democracyproject.nz)New Zealand Government’s Fast Track legislation. Many criticisms are being made of the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill, including by this writer. But as with everything in politics, every story has two sides, and both deserve attention. It’s important to understand what the Government ...
Tara Ward talks to presenter Naomi Toilalo about the new TV show that turns food waste into a three course feast. Naomi Toilalo is standing in the warehouse at Good Neighbour Tauranga, helping unpack the two-and-a-half tonnes of rejected food that will arrive at the community support hub that day. ...
Scout is our latest Dog of the Month. This feature was offered as a reward during our What’s Eating Aotearoa PledgeMe campaign. Thank you to Scout’s human, Avril, for her support. Dog name: Scout (named after the little girl in To Kill a Mockingbird – she inherited the independent spirit ...
Megan Alatini takes us through her life in TV, including ‘terrible’ daytime TV, the class of Carol Hirschfeld and her most embarrassing TrueBliss moment. When she responded to a vague newspaper ad asking “do you have what it takes to be a popstar?” 25 years ago, Megan Alatini never guessed ...
A new exhibition in Wellington showcases the faces behind your local goods and services. Back in 1977, when I was a fine arts student at the University of Canterbury, I took a series of photographs of Christchurch shopkeepers. The photos were for a calendar – a project for my end ...
Toomaj and his resistance to tyranny through his songs have become an icon for the youth of Iran, so his sentence has hit the nation hard. Toomaj Salehi is not the first artist to pay the price for standing with the people. ...
Newsroom, home of satire. My long-running weekly satirical series The Secret Diary has moved to Newsroom and will appear every Saturday, with Victor Billot’s wildly popular satirical Odes continuing to appear every Sunday. Diaries, Odes – while serious political columnists toil at meaningful opinions and stroke their chins to an ...
My cousin Dylan and I spotted these big eels under the bridge that summer. We watched them lounging under the dark weed, facing into the flow of water, their mouths frozen open. Dylan and I couldn’t stop thinking about those eels. The night we went down to the creek, we ...
Tara Ward unravels the many nuanced layers of a cartoon about talking dogs.This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. It’s not often an episode of a children’s cartoon has adults sobbing into their sleeves, but that’s exactly what happened this week when ...
Working as a doctor in developing countries to help communities achieve better health outcomes is nothing short of a life goal for Jessica Tater. The University of Otago medical student has her sights firmly set on joining the international humanitarian organisation Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) when she qualifies ...
There’s an island in the far reaches of Auckland’s territory, sitting off the tip of the Coromandel Peninsula, 30 minutes by air from the city or four hours on the slow boat. Aotea Great Barrier is off-grid, it has a population of fewer than a thousand people … and most ...
Asia Pacific Report An Australian author and advocate, Jim Aubrey, today led a national symbolic one minute’s silence to mark the “blood debt” owed to Papuan allies during the Second World War indigenous resistance against the invading Japanese forces. “A promise to most people is a promise,” Aubrey said in ...
Asia Pacific Report The Freedom Flotilla is ready to sail to Gaza, reports Kia Ora Gaza. All the required paperwork has been submitted to the port authority, and the cargo has been loaded and prepared for the humanitarian trip to the besieged enclave. However, organisers received word of an “administrative ...
Pacific Media Watch Palestine solidarity protesters today demonstrated at the Auckland headquarters of Television New Zealand, accusing the country’s major TV network of broadcasting “propaganda” backing Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. About 50 protesters targeted the main entrance to the TVNZ building near Sky Tower and also picketed a side ...
Opinion by Lynley Hood. Forty years on from my 1985 Fulbright Grant, my disquiet over the war in Gaza evoked some troubling questions. The answer to my first question – What is the primary purpose of the Fulbright Programme? – was on the Fulbright NZ website. It says: US Senator, ...
The ministers responsible for green-lighting major projects need to be open about potential conflicts of interest, says Transparency International. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anastasia Powell, Professor, Family and Sexual Violence, RMIT University It has been a particularly distressing start to the year. There is little that can ease the current grief of individuals, families and communities who have needlessly lost a loved one to men’s ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gregory Moore, Senior Research Associate, School of Ecosystem and Forest Sciences, The University of Melbourne Lichen, the first described example of symbiosis.AdeJ Artventure/Shutterstock Once known only to those studying biology, the word symbiosis is now widely used. Symbiosis is the intimate ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kim Hemsley, Head, Childhood Dementia Research Group, Flinders Health and Medical Research Institute, College of Medicine and Public Health, Flinders University Olena Ivanova/Shutterstock “Childhood” and “dementia” are two words we wish we didn’t have to use together. But sadly, around 1,400 ...
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http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/5803533/Lethal-asbestos-found-in-rubble
Now have a look in the harbour.
What happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object?
We may be about to find out.
To answer Duncan Clarke’s question:
We have to be prepared to prostrate ourselves before the oil giants.
We have to be prepared to kill.
We have to be prepared to sacrifice the environment.
We have to be prepared to curtail civil liberties.
We have to be prepared to impoverish the majority of the population so that a tiny minority of the local elite, can become the super rich sheiks of the South Pacific.
Look to Nigeria, look to Saudi Arabia, look to Bahrain, look to Iraq.
I would like to take this opportunity to tell Duncan Clarke and his clients, that New Zealand is the country that stopped the mighty US Navy in it’s tracks, and beware.
NZ Herald
The mayor has given his approval, for a while. Ocupation Octagon continues.
The occupation has made a has made a bold statement, but what is it, how long will it stay and what does it really hope to achieve?
It’s a knarly day here in Dunedin, not great camping weather.
You do realise Pete that running a campaign to be elected as a representative in Dunedin requires more than just printing a few flyers and putting up some billboards?
Why dont you get yourself down there and see what it’s all about and then you can enlighten us all with a post and your opinion instead of those four lines of nothing.
i just went passed the campers in the octagon, its an utterly miserable day, wet, wind, freezing, & yep, they are all still there, they look comfortable & firm, im really proud of them.
I haven’t printed flyers and I haven’t put up any billboards yet. I’ll do a bit of that but I’m not running a traditional campaign. Expect some surprises.
I am getting myself down there, I have planned a visit at 5.15 today.
“I’ll do a bit of that but I’m not running a traditional campaign.”
Remember he’s not voting for himself or UF.
🙂 It’s non-traditional to string stupid comments like that along.
Actually it’s just a pretty salient example of your unwillingness to actually commit to anything concrete.
“Commitment” is traditional. You’ve heard of an open relationship? Pete has the world’s first open candidacy, where not even he knows whether he will vote for himself.
I’d say I’ve committed myself to a lot more than most here. I choose what I’ll comment on here – whatever I say I usually get attacked anyway so I select what suits me.
McFlock, I’ve always chosen on election day how to vote, and I don’t see why I should change that.
But you’d have to be very thick, or have a motive for promoting bullshit, not to figure it out.
I wonder who Paul Goldsmith and his electorate team will vote for.
“I’ve always chosen on election day how to vote, and I don’t see why I should change that.”
So you don’t consider being the UF candidate sufficient reason to make up your mind before polling day? No wonder you can’t discuss policy;you can’t even commit to the party you represent!
I’m so looking forward to your hoardings, can I suggest something honest like this:
Hi, I’m Pete George and I’d like you to vote for United Future, because someone has to and I can’t be arsed.
Or:
Pete George, Don’t Vote for Me, Vote for Meh.
PG will be to busy talking sweet nothings on our blog site to run a campaign
You get criticised because your “commitment” usually revolves around a structure of “I strongly support the principle of X, but the [completely opposite] principle of Y needs to be taken into account, as well as the [completely irrelevent] principle of Z. We really need to discuss this more to try and find a common ground and realise that they are all shades of grey. Don’t hate me because I dare to unflinchingly defend the value of vague promises of compromise!”
Don’t get me wrong, such banalities might be good for a priest or a therapist, but the fact is that you chose to be a politician. Say WTF you are going to DO. This postmodern brand-is-all shite doesn’t play so well when times are tough, as the nats are beginning to find out, I suspect.
Case in point:
” I’ve always chosen on election day how to vote, and I don’t see why I should change that.
But you’d have to be very thick, or have a motive for promoting bullshit, not to figure it out.”
So on the one hand your mind is completely open and you haven’t yet made a decision – on the other hand it’s pretty obvious who you’ll vote for. Why not just dare to take a stand and say yes, come election time, you’ll actually vote for [shock, horror] yourself? And then take that new-found courage to your party so it can declare some policy specifics?
Sounds a bit like Groucho Marx. “Dear voter, I don’t want your vote because anyone who votes for me is too stupid for me to want to vote for me, myself included. Have a cigar instead.”
Trev – Your Sport Policy looks like another failure to think matters through.
Per the NZ Herald – Manoj Daji [Chief Executive – College Sport Auckland] gives a real-world view of your policy. He lists many reasons why it won’t work in the Super City of about 100,000 secondary students.
“With the sport spread across the week we are battling for venues and facilities. Having all sport on a given afternoon would not only cause major transportation issues for schools but also place extra pressure on limited facilities and reduce the ability to draw on community volunteers for coaching and officiating, whom we are are reliant on”
Looks like another one of your half-baked ideas.
Well how is this for news. Key admits that the underclass is growing under his watch. And I thought he was going to fix the problem.
And at the same time that the underclass is growing the Herald reports that “the Government has slashed the number of food grants to needy families by 20 per cent, driving record numbers to seek food parcels from charities instead.”
The cause is said to be the change in policy to make people complete budgeting activities and show they have taken steps to increase their income or reduce their costs, before they can get more than two food grants a year. Obviously as far as the Government is concerned grinding policy is caused by a lack of budgeting skills not this Government’s actions.
I think budgeting advice and encouragement and incentives to improve ones situation are good – it’s easy to get in a poverty rut and to live inefficiently.
I don’t think benefits should be handed out indefinitely without question.
So Petey boy is poverty the poor’s fault? Or has Key failed?
You’re being far to simplistic. It’s not an either or situation, it’s far more complex.
If Labour form a coalition after the election and we still have poverty in 2014 will they have failed?
Some poor people are responsible for their own poverty. Some are victims of circumstance. And most likely there’s a combination of both plus other factors.
Poverty is not due to Key failure. Government policies will have affected poverty levels, the extended economic downturn will have had a much greater effect, and previous government policies will also have had an effect.
So Greggy boy, there’s no simple political point scoring. If Labour’s third term had ended with zero poverty and a healthy economy, and then finances and food plummeted you might have a case. But it wasn’t like that so you don’t.
Pete serious question.
Are you trying to destroy this thread?
You see I recall clearly Key campaigning about the underclass and I thought then it was a glib PR job and that he would do nothing about it.
Then this morning it is not only confirmed but there is the added insult of a chance in policy to make things worse for the underclass, not better.
And I feel real anger about it.
But you show no anger either that you have been lied to or that the poor are getting hammered more. You seem to go away, construct a few words that you think represents a “middle point” and then post them.
And you keep on accusing me of “political point scoring” without irony when every comment you make is laiden with it. And you refuse to be drawn on anything specific.
So Pete baby what makes you angry? And what will you do to improve things?
BTW I am not sure why you refer to the third Labour Government and presume this is a display of ignorance. For your information there were about 20,000 unemployed at the time. The economy was in poor shape but only because of the first oil crisis that Labour had nothing to do with.
I don’t try and destroy threads, that’s a weird question. I contribute something different, if you don’t agree it doesn’t mean the thread has come to an end.
Your anger seems to be politically motivated. I don’t have that. I didn’t get angry at Labour (like many people did), and I don’t get angry about National.
Anger doesn’t help. Instead of getting angry I try to do something about things.
I don’t try and destroy threads…
I have read your substandard contributions to this forum for a long time, and your contributions are almost always cynical and frivolous. You make a point of trying to make light of serious topics, much in the fashion of another right wing zealot, Paul Holmes on his risible Q&A programme.
I contribute something different
See above. That’s all you contribute.
Instead of getting angry I try to do something about things.
Arrant nonsense.
I’d have to agree you contribute something different, Pete. A complete lack of policy and no commitment to either yourself or your party must be a first in NZ politics for an aspiring candidate.
But all you do here is ask meaningless, distracting questions and at the end of the day, you are going to vote National anyway. My suspicion is that you post here because it’s the only political site that takes you even a little bit seriously. For a person ‘representing’ a party with one tenth of the Green’s support and one thirtieth of Labour’s, you do very well on the Standard. It’s just a shame that you get so much engagement here, but you still have nothing to say.
I think he’s probably not persuading anyone to vote UF, though. I guess we can thank him for that.
Should do what I do Ignore him totally don’t reply to any of his inane drivel. Because as we all know he strives to be the best he can be in UF, and that position being the chief comb holder!
Anger does help mate.
It focusses and energises.
Its also what TPTB are most afraid of. People shaking of their complacency and becoming angry at what is happening to them.
No you don’t, you contribute nothing at all. All you ever say is that we need to have a discussion about it but won’t actually join the discussion.
look at it another way Pete G
I think social conscience advice and encouragement and incentives to improve everyone’s situation are good – it’s easy to get in a greed rut and to live elitely.
I don’t think bail-outs should be handed out indefinitely without question.
it’s easy to get in a greed rut and to live elitely.
And not just the rich and the poor.
It’s easy to get stuck in a consumerist rut and waste a lot of money. But if they stopped spending money on inneccesaries it would stuf the economy and people would lose jobs.
Our world is far from simple.
oh i get it now, In order to sustain an openly corrupt system we must ignore the actual day to day realities that the system presents us and mindlessly continue to sacrifice the future of our species, not to mention our planet. Nice one Pete.
Are you mind-buggeringly ignorant of the modern world or is it more that you possess a myopic view of the causality processes that lead to the social, fiscal and environmental poverty that you are so willing to lay at the feet of the poor ?
Budgeting is all well and good, but at the end of the day, you cannot get blood out of a stone.
Tell me, are you comfortable with a level of homelessness and poverty in this country?
No.
And I’m also not comfortable with Labour’s lack of readiness to do anything worthwhile about it.
What would you do Squirrel-boy?
Cut benefits
Sell State Houses
Slash minimum wages
privatise health?
Because that is pretty much all the things that you have suggested.
People like you try to deny it, but the poverty has embedded itself in this country due to the 1991 budget and the Employment Contracts Act. In essence, they took money off workers and poor people, and destoryed the social wage.
I haven’t suggested any of those things.
My aim is to work at a community level to find solutions. It works bettter from the bottom up rather than Wellington down. One size fits all doesn’t work well, a local solutions to local problems is much better.
I was talking to a health related organisation last week, they are currently 62% government funded. They’d like more, but only up to a maximum of about 80% – they feel if they were fully funded they would be “owned” and would lose a lot of their flexibility and ability to innovate.
Trouble is, your beloved community health organisation wants the right to turn people away with only 80% funding. Our public health system has an obligation to treat people regardless of income. It can only do that with the top down one size fits all model you despise.
Your party will destory this universal health care system that is a taonga in this country.
Nonsense. They fundraise the rest to enable them to maintain some independence – and they don’t turn people away.
Community common sense can be far more effective than party political power.
news flash for PeteG
You can actually fund any community organisation at 100% and still give them full freedom to function autonomously as suits their function within their community.
It all comes down to how you approach what a government actually does.
It is about fair and equitable sharing of resources. It is about respect.
It is about honesty. It is also about a long ago idea called trust.
These ideas may be foreign to you and your ilk as history only presents a ravenous hunger that has, for millenia, stripped the hearty flesh of humanity from the bones of our society. Replacing it with the tumours and festering sores that have evolved into the modern Industrial Military Corpocracy. And every single one of us are nothing but share-stock antibiotics for the beasts that own it all. If you want to believe otherwise Pete then you are choosing to ignore reality and are only discussing ideology. A practise that allows distraction to be deemed acheivemnet and never really contributes to the impetus required to construct real change.
For thousands of years the words of the common person has been an irritant that owners have had to silence. Your very apologies for their practises brand you an accomplise in their ongoing war against humanity.
I’m not apologising for anyone, I’m not sure why you keep blaming me for some illdefined malady.
Now you have done Idealism 101 why don’t you try Reality 101.
In other words, they waste time and money to get the money that they need. They could be fully government funded and still maintain independence so that’s just an excuse. Sure, they’d be accountable for that money but, then, they should be any way.
PG I raise funds for community organizations and its very hard raise any sort of money the sums required to fund a health system are humongous you idiot for instance $35million just to upgrade the A&E at Dunedin hospital I’d like to see you and your clowns even get to 1% funding. Unfettered Fairyland dreaming your just an idiot with nothing better to do than talk drivel no research based economics behind any of your diatribe .Free loading on the standard just like your boss free loading on the govt of the day!
No Pete, you arrest the crooks first. You control the potentiality of ongoing attacks. That is still the best and most direct way to help the victim. If a victim of a violent crime is secure in the knowledge that the attacker is behind bars they generally feel a bit more capable of facing the world and making the effort of rebuilding their life. But you will refuse to see the analogy. I pity the Occupy people that have to communicate with you during your very precisely scheduled visit. The only ray of sunshine that may break through your clouds of ignorance is the fact if the right person recognises you for what you are, your views will be demanded and put on record.
The “them bad, us good” religious type fervour is not going to work.
David Brooks (New York Times columnist), wrote last week, “It’s not about declaring war on some nefarious elite. It’s about changing behaviour from top to bottom.”
It’s worth pondering that.
ponder this PeteG
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlaJPDUZ-wk
I see where Pete George gets that cast-iron smugness and complacency from—he not only reads the smooth but ridiculous cant of that smug and complacent zealot David Brooks, but he apparently takes him seriously!!!.
Those who have read Brooks will realize he is an American version of the notorious English poseur Nick Cohen or our own David Farrar, i.e., a shallow ideologue who writes well, but who is essentially anti-democratic, and not prepared to engage in debate seriously or respectfully. It’s a reflection on Pete George’s character and his moral seriousness (or lack thereof) that he quotes Brooks with evident approval.
Note how he solemnly insists that Brooks’s flim-flam is “worth pondering”.
MEMO PETE GEORGE:
We know you’re busy on that campaign trail, holding the leader’s comb, and so you won’t have time to do a lot of reading. So when you do find a spare hour or so, why don’t you pick up a BOOK by a serious writer (i.e., not by Nick Cohen or David Brooks or P.J. O’Rourke or Ian Wishart) but by a serious and intelligent thinker. Please. You owe it to yourself, as well as the denizens of this forum. It’s never too late to start.
PG what utter bullshit just more boring political rhetoric from a johny come lately
PG it was united futures undermining of the greens that caused labour to cut a lot of climate change and environmental problems.The result is that UF have only .3% support but with the way you Rant on PG with your superiority complex you would think that you have something like 51% support you’ve probably been excluded from Kiwiblog because your blogs are so boring and contrived
We should start we the coalition borrowing and hoping aye a little Parental Guidance required before you leave home I predict an Unemployed Future for feather weight politicly naive idiot
I think pete wants to see hungry angry people prowling the streets and the police and the army hunting them down and killing them because they dont have a licence to live.
Pete will deny it, but randal’s grim futurist scenario is where it all ends when you have deserving and undeserving poor, high unemployement and people under pressure from all directions backed up by a surveillence state to ‘clampdown’ on resistance and fightbacks.
I know several farmers that would shoot ‘hungry angry people’ approaching their land rather than feed them. Societal breakdown is always closer than we think.
The British counter-intelligence agency MI5 has a saying: “Society is only ever four meals away from anarchy”.
For Pete G
and others who refuse to see the trees because they are too busy clear cutting the forest.
One of these videos exposes the manipulative intent of the system you so tirelessly defend
the other is simply the reality of your greed is legal so let it happen ideology
they are both good TV, but one of them would never get near a TV broadcast
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pql2ETgegR4&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6svA6Qvq1U&feature=player_embedded
I’m not tirelessly defending any system, I’m working to initiate change.
Soon I will be an activist politician, or failing that a political activist.
so with no policy no party and no commitment to anything but an irritating whine against poor people how exactly are you promoting change?
I may well be an idealist but i am not alone. I am one of the thousands and thousands of New Zealanders with practical game-changing ideas who have put in the effort to present real alternatives to complex problems. I did it as recently as last week.
You may recall the PM with his ‘put up or shut up’ call regarding plans for the Rena Oil. Unlike most people i did not write a couple of hundred words on the fact the PM said it, i just went to work and sent him an actual idea. I even went as far as to state I had no political motive in my sending it to him, which is true in this case. It was and is about the Oil and finding a real solution. I have no knowledge if he ever saw my idea, who knows. I sent it to every resource i could think of. From Governemnt sites to Party pages, even here and on FB.
The PM though said, on Monday’s Breakfast show, that despite his request for input, not a single person had come up with any ideas despite lots of talk about there being immediate solutions. I call bullshit and I say the same to you. Your platitudes of progressive action are weak kneed stammerings of someone at risk of losing a bar bet.
Those pesky predictions:
…
Looks like the ABs will miss out on the RWC again – oh, well.
Edit: I know, that prediction was last year (hopefully).
Elect???? don’t they mean Elite?? Well maybe it means the rich Elect will be raptured ie: taken off somewhere else(or like every other rapture in modern history usually means mass suicide.) And the annhilation?? well it would not be so bad if the present monetary system crashes.
The Iranian assassination caper, a complete success.
Summary: The bottom line from the Iranian assassination caper = it’s already worked, further demonizing Iran’s image in the mind of the American public — maintaining support for the permanent war establishment of massive military/intel/homeland security spending and the slow erosion of our liberties. Of course it succeeded. Conducting information operations against America is the core competency of our defense apparatus.
The Value of Values: Soft Power Under Obama.
John Key to Donate Fortune
Yesterday, the Prime Minister John Key announced that he was going to donate $50 million towards New Zealand’s growing debt crisis. Key said he’d decided to gift his fortune because of the help he had received from New Zealand as a child in the form of a state house, and it was “jush fair to gift sumtin back.”
Heh, why stop there, his ‘bach’ could be gifted to local Hawaiians whose stolen land it is sitting on.
Today PLONKEY opened a wineries tour!
amd SLICKEY checked out some penguins!
Double DIP becomes Triple DIP
Are there no depths the elite will plummet to in order to advantage their offspring?
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10759864
<blockquote>
A woman has admitted making calls claiming to be a sexual health worker in a bid to damage the reputation of a girl who was a rival to her daughter’s bid to study at two elite colleges.
The Queenstown 53-year-old appeared visibly shaken when she appeared on two charges in the Queenstown District Court yesterday.
Sergeant Ian Collin said the defendant applied to St Hilda’s Collegiate School and Columba College, both in Dunedin, in May for her daughter to be accepted next year.</blockquote>
Contrast and compare:
* – [John Key] said the Government had also done the best it could , in difficult times, to insulate people from the recession.
* – The Government has slashed the number of food grants to needy families by 20 per cent, driving record numbers to seek food parcels from charities instead.
Suffer little children for King John The Clueless of Charmalot has decreed that his beloved underclass shall grow and be hungry so the rich may have their tax cuts.
DOH! Missed Mr Savage’s earlier reference to this. Just couldn’t believe it when I read those stories one after the other. Hat tip New Zealand Fox News Herald for
accidentjuxtaposition.(NOTE TO SELF: Just because the trolls are being fed doesn’t mean you can ignore the leading comment.)
National’s Election Hoarding’s 5
Back in July this year it was revealed that National creates jobs for their mates and pays them three times the going rate. When attempting to side step the issue, Earthquake Recovery Minister Gerry Brownlee started telling lies…
Oh damn Double Dipton could become a Triple Dipton. And this aint no lottery.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/5808378/Fears-of-third-NZ-credit-downgrade
“”They are caught up in the same kind of mood as the other rating agencies where they ‘re putting any country with debt under the microscope. I see in the last few days they’ve just warned France or Italy or somebody,” he said.”
Seems like he’s suggesting it’s just teenage angst, or they got up on the wrong side of bed, or perhaps even PMS.
It also sounds like he doesn’t care any more. Hardly becoming the finance minister, I don’t think. At budget 2009 they were acting like the ratings agencies were their best mates and now they don’t want to know them or give them the time of day.
France is in the softening up phase up for a review of its Aaa rating, while Italy has had its rating macheted down three notches to A2. WTF is Blinglish saying here?
He’s a bit unsure of his facts and doesn’t want to embarrass himself. He got the information from Key who read it in any email.
Any more? He never cared at all. His sole job was to increase NZ’s borrowing so that him and his rich mates had a nice safe place to put their money collecting interest.
Nice column by Colin James in the ODT today. Talking about the delay in the government signing up to the bunker fuel damages convention:
“After Audit Office criticism of the Treasury’s costly mishandling of the guarantee to South Canterbury Finance, this failure of fiduciary duty to taxpayers looks bad. But even if Joyce had got a bill drafted the lax management of Parliament’s business would probably have left it low on the agenda like many other important bills.
Again, it is not a syndrome. But it does suggest the cabinet needs tighter management than Key’s devolved style. Which is more important: removing compulsory student unionism or doubling the fees for dodgy Greek shipping companies? “
“Again, it is not a syndrome. But it does suggest the cabinet needs tighter management than Key’s devolved style. Which is more important: removing compulsory student unionism or doubling the fees for dodgy Greek shipping companies?”
To be fair, it did take them a very very long time to get the SVM bill passed.
“…the cabinet needs tighter management than Key’s devolved style.”
What employer would tolerate an employee ignoring their work so they could swan around the world chasing photo-op?
The Business Round Table
Quantum Levitation?. Yup.
So much has happened that gives lie to the governments claim of being fiscally responsible:
A $2 billion dollar tax cut that wasn’t fiscally neutral
A $2 billion dollar cock-up with South Canterbury
$10 million marine insurance bungle.
$75, 000 to send McCully to Vannuatu
Can anyone add examples of fiscal mismanagement that are costing public servants jobs and government services to be cut?
The fiscal malfeasance being overseen by this John Key led National Ltd™ government is systemic, and it starts at the top of the bureaucratic jungle gym.
Brian Gaynor highlighted a serious macro-level issue which is throwing out all the government’s accounts and resulting in a belt-tightening cascade of reduced services as actual income falls so far below estimated income. By the time reality hits the chook house at Number 1 The Terrace, the government has gone ahead promising all sorts of wonderfulness only to find it has to scurry about last-minute with cap in hand while ordering government departments, again, to get the razors out. No chance for long-term strategic management when there’s an unexpected cash shortage every three months.
Treasury, “our leading government department” is responsible for this and is also in the shit for the way it has managed the Crown retail deposit guarantee scheme. Classic National Ltd™ – put economists in charge of running a country because, really, society is just like a business, don’t you see?
And it doesn’t help that the “economists” wouldn’t know an economy if they tripped over one.
seeing as the Government and their supporters have pulled out the ‘global crisis is all because of household debt’ mantra, here is a picture saving us all a thousand words
( those with a keen eye will notice some of our PM’s handiwork amongst the detritus)
It’ll be in the archives somewhere, but someone posted that this is exactly what Key did tell a kid who asked what caused the financial crisis. Words to the effect of: ‘Your parents bought things they couldn’t afford’. Our glorious media didn’t find this suitably interesting to question him about – that it was all our fault according to Key.
Slowly sinking in . . . . . . the consequences of theory slowly being undermined by the real world.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-hansen-clarke/congress-is-obsessed-with_b_912494.html
Labour announces it’s employment policies today.
National try to deflect attention away from Labour with a Kiwisaver announcement that is vague, has no specifics, is not going to be detailed until after the election, and will only happen if they balance the books (fat chance of that happening!).
The political equivalent of vapourware.
And what did tv3 do tonight? They ran first up with the National’s sweet FA announcement.
I guess that’s what a $43 million soft loan gets ya.
William, National is the govt, and most punters expect them to be returned in a few weeks, hence this is most likely to beecome law. Labour on the other hand is quickly becoming a fringe party, struggling to get over 30% if the latest roy morgan is to be believed.
sweetD you have no political knowledge, National polled 23% only 10 years ago. Labour are doing fine in the left vote, National need to deliver to the swingers and they don’t have any ideas apart from smiles and waves, it all comes apart in the end. New Zealand will extend it’s socialist economy considerably in your lifetime in accordance with the swing back from private commercial incompetence.
Gotta love that Roy Morgan aye.
59.5%
Well no whimpy BB, actually, ya gotta pay attention to the November 26 poll, you know, where people get the big black marker pen out in the little cardboard booth.
September 26 – October 9, 2011. That’s the polling period, Bludge. A couple of weeks into the RWC through to a comfortable win over Argentina in the quarters. And before we knew Key’s Government had just helped coat the beaches of the BOP in oil. I hear the rugby finishes soon, btw.
I wonder what the Nats think amounts to corruption? Did anyone else notice that May Wang – a businesswoman with links to Jenny Shipley – is charged with corruption in Hong Kong? She was the lady who fronted the Chinese bid to buy the Crafar farms. Check out these links:
– http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10759961
– http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10662262
All I say is thank God for the Overseas Investment Commission! I wonder how she conducted her affairs around the Nats. What meetings did she have with the likes of Pansy Wong and Co?