Open mike 19/09/2010

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, September 19th, 2010 - 25 comments
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25 comments on “Open mike 19/09/2010 ”

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  1. Red Rosa 1
    19 September 2010 at 8:32 am

    Key-Hide!

    A new cowboy ballad, especially composed for the government.

    Those of a certain age will recall Frankie Laine’s immortal version of ‘Rawhide’.

    Movin’, movin’, movin, though they’re disapprovin’
    Keep those MPs movin’ – Key-Hide!
    Forget participatin’
    Big Jerry’s there a-waitin’
    Waiting for his big chance – Key-Hide!

    Rollin’, rollin’, rollin’
    Our pockets now are swollen
    But keep the big bucks rollin’ – Key-Hide!
    While Kiwi hopes are fadin’
    Expense accounts we’re raidin’
    Raiding till the end of the ride.

  2. Cnr Joe 2
    19 September 2010 at 8:48 am

    Bevan Hurley @ the granny – interviewing Frederick Forsyth about Garrett – priceless

    http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10674524

    • ak 2.1
      19 September 2010 at 11:45 am

      Good God

      The married father-of-two met the woman….. through nzdating……he tried to woo her with a McDonald’s dinner and a private viewing of the film Casablanca.

      Cheapskate adultery yet. I’m lovin it NACT. Priceless indeed.

  3. Wyndham 3
    19 September 2010 at 10:46 am

    Now is surely the time for Labour to raise merry hell about Key’s support for Hide over the Garrett affair. A well directed attack would have him on the ropes.

    The point should also be rammed home about Hide, now thoroughly discredited, being a minister in the Key government. Does the country as a whole, let alone Auckland, really want this individual as minister of local government?! ( I use the word ‘individual’ only with the greatest of restraint ).

  4. Rick 4
    19 September 2010 at 12:11 pm

    Hide is on record that he talked Garrett into standing. He cannot walk away unscathed.

  5. Herodotus 5
    19 September 2010 at 1:13 pm

    Still no comment by Labour as to the New version of F&S. Can someone out there wake up Sleeping Beauty aka the Labour Party.
    p.s. Also throw a right hook at invisible Phil for not supporting the Greens 6 changes to giving Jerry unlimate power in a small pond aka Canterbury.
    Note to Phil Sleepwaking to the 2011 election will NOT work.

  6. Draco T Bastard 6
    19 September 2010 at 1:26 pm

    Apology to Anderton
    Well, one journalist offering an apology is a start but wouldn’t have been better to check facts before jumping on the bandwagon? I mean, that is the job of a journalist after all.

  7. The Chairman 7
    19 September 2010 at 2:34 pm

    This is what we’re up against folk

    Michael Hudson – The natural history of debt and financialization

    Today, financial maneuvering and debt leverage play the role that military conquest did in times past.

    Its aim is still to control land, basic infrastructure and the economic surplus – and also to gain control of national savings, commercial banking and central bank policy.

    This financial conquest is achieved peacefully and even voluntarily rather than militarily.

    But the aim is the same: to make subject populations pay – as debtors and as dependent junior trade partners. Indebted “host economies” are in a similar position to that of defeated countries.

    They lose sovereignty over their own financial, economic and tax policy as their surplus is transferred abroad. Public infrastructure is sold to foreigners who buy on credit, on which they pay interest and fees that are expensed as tax-deductible, despite being paid to foreigners.

    The Washington Consensus applauds this pro-rentier policy. Its neoliberal ideology holds that the most efficient path to wealth is to shift economic planning out of the hands of government into those of the bankers and money managers in charge of privatizing and financializing the economy.

    Almost without anyone noticing, this view is replacing the classical law of nations based on the idea of sovereignty over debt and financial policy, tariff and tax policy.

    Ideology itself has become an economic weapon. Indebted governments have been told since 1980 to sell off their public infrastructure to foreign investors.

    Extractive “tollbooth” charges (a.k.a. economic rent) replace moderate or subsidized public user fees, making economies less competitive and painting them even more into a debt corner as the surplus is transferred abroad, largely tax-free.

    What the world is experiencing in the face of todays globalism is a crisis in the character of nationhood and economic sovereignty.

    Bankers in the North look upon any economic surplus – real estate rent, corporate cash flow or even the government’s taxing power or ability to sell off public enterprises – as a source of revenue to pay interest on debts.

    The result is a more debt-leveraged economy in every country.

    Foreign investment, bank lending, the privatization of public infrastructure and currency speculation is now managed from this bankers’-eye perspective.

    More here: http://tinyurl.com/289xgwr

    Michael Hudson is a former Wall Street economist and now a distinguished Research Professor at University of Missouri, Kansas City.

    • Draco T Bastard 7.1
      19 September 2010 at 3:22 pm

      Does Brazil really need inflows of foreign credit for domestic spending when it can create this at home? Foreign lending ends up in its central bank, which invests its reserves in US Treasury and Euro bonds that yield low returns and whose international value is likely to decline against the BRIC currencies. So accepting credit and buyout “capital inflows” from the North provides a “free lunch” for key-currency issuers of dollars and Euros, but does not help local economies much.

      We have all the resources (educated people, organic and non-organic) we need here to do everything we want to do. We do not need an inflow of foreign money.

  8. Draco T Bastard 8
    19 September 2010 at 2:52 pm

    Fears grow as feed imports keep rising

    Lachlan McKenzie, Federated Farmers dairy spokesman, said without palm kernel “we would have had tens of thousands of cows, either very skinny or dying of malnutrition”. </blockquote?
    And yet the logical thing to do, decrease the number of cows, isn't even thought of.

  9. Treetop 9
    19 September 2010 at 3:09 pm

    I really want to know the version that Garrett gave Hide about the passport. Dilemma for Garrett is that if Hide has misled the country Garrett knows he may not be believed if his version differs.

    A minister outside of cabinet has the same powers as a minister inside cabinet. How serious is the PM about appointing a minister who has shown bad judgement? For Hide to have any integrity he needs to walk the talk and resign as leader.

    Colin Moyle resigned from parliament in February 1977, due to misleading the house and he was reelected at the 1981 general election, not sure if it was October or November. Colin Moyle was never charged with an offence. Misleading the house occurred due to a June 17 1975 incident involving a 21 year old probationary cop (who was given name suppression until 17 April 1978), this incident (June 75) was raised in the house on 4 November 1976 by Sir Robert Muldoon and Moyle gave the house another version. On 5 November 1976 the commissioner and deputy commissioner of police were summoned to parliament by the minister of police who was told to do so by Muldoon. Muldoon was denied the police file but he was told that Moyle gave a new version to the house of the June 75 incident on 5 November 76. In total there are four versions, however the details of the incident on 17 June 1975 have always remained the same. (I will post the four versions if requested).

    Moyle’s police file was sealed for 25 years and the full police evidence has not yet seen the light of day. Sir Alfred North (a retired President of the Court of Appeal of NZ) commenced an inquiry which concluded in December 1976 (duration less than a month).

    Moyle was not given the right to have legal representation, had he been given this right I beleive that all members of the police who knew of the incident would have been questioned, questioning may have determined who within the police leaked details of the incident. In September 1977 a group of Auckland lawyers stated that not interviewing every member of the police who had knowledge of the June 17 1975 incident, that this was disquieting.

    The Moyle scandal is a BIG skeleton in the NZ police cupboard.

  10. Anne 10
    19 September 2010 at 4:08 pm

    @Treetop
    The skeleton in the cupboard was partially revealed by Colin Moyle himself in an Herald article about 10 or 12 years ago.

    It seems that he was lured to a rather seedy part of Wellington by someone who rang his office late one evening claiming to have evidence of some sort of corruption inside the Defence Force. He arranged to meet Moyle and hand over the evidence. The person never turned up. Moyle had been the victim of a set up. My understanding is: he felt he coudn’t tell the truth at the time because he knew no-one would believe him. He was right. It would have been seen as just another attempt at a cover-up on his part.

    I believe it was true. At that time there was a handful of individuals who were indulging in all manner of political hoaxes . Many were by way of hoax phone-calls, but I know there were other more serious activities as well. The behaviour continued on and off for several years and even Muldoon became a victim a couple of years later. In the end I was targeted too – probably because of my association with one of the perpetrators. I strongly suspect the police knew their identities but they were never publicly revealed. By the time I discovered the truth (and that’s another story) it was too late to do anything about it. The evidence had long since disappeared so I felt I had no choice but to keep my counsel.

    • Treetop 10.1
      19 September 2010 at 4:56 pm

      Anne

      I find your post to be of interest. I expect that you to have thought a fair bit about the Colin Moyle affair in the last week. A lot of parallels with the Hide/Roy and now Hide/Garrett issues.

      I found out in April 1992 that in 1990 the police still had a file on Moyle, (I have this in writing), I assume this is different from the full police evidence Until a barrister is appointed by the government to amass the facts/truth, I will be denied justice. I have a considerable file.

      Because of your disclosure I will post the four reasons that Moyle gave for being in Harris Street 17 June 1975 so the younger ones will know. Moyle’s chronology for the encounter has never changed, but his reason for being there is still unknown.

      1) 17 June 1975 on record Moyle told Corner, “He was waiting for a friend to come out of the library.”
      2) 18 June 1975 on record Moyle told Kelly, “That he was meeting homosexuals in order to better equip himself for a debate in Parliament on the treatment of homosexuals.”
      3) 5 November 1976 on record Moyle told the House, “Late one evening in June or July last year I observed a man loitering suspiciously. He appeared dressed as I imagined in the manner of a cat burglar, and carried a small shoulder bag… I acted on impulse and slowed my car and observed him.”
      4) 10 November 1976 on record Moyle told Burnside and Walton, “He claimed that an unknown man he was to meet on the night of 17 June was to supply him with information regarding security leaks, which allegedly implicated Deputy Commissioner Walton and had nothing to do with homosexuality,”

  11. Anne 11
    19 September 2010 at 6:23 pm

    @ Treetop
    My knowledge and experiences were well and truly buried until this last week. You are right. There are some interesting parallels to the events of the past few weeks.

    Your last disclosure on 10 November 1976 has re-activated my memory. I think that’s right. It was security leaks (not corruption as such) but I understood it had something to do with the Defence Service.

    I think there have been a number of people whose reputations were wrongly sullied by that affair… and the follow-up activities. As already alluded to, Muldoon ended up falling for a hoax phone-call himself. I will give you a clue. The call took place on the night of the East Coast Bays By-election in 1980? Muldoon was in India at the time.

    An interesting side issue. One of the group responsible for these hoaxes was related to a high profile legal beagle in the 1970s and 80s. He acted as legal counsel for various govt. agencies during some very high profile court cases and govt. inquiries that took place in the 70s and 80s. I have no idea if he was aware of the truth, but I understand he was personally known to Muldoon.

  12. lprent 12
    19 September 2010 at 7:33 pm

    For those who saw There once was an island, Lyn and Briars documentary. It won best editing in the quantas craft awards, and was a finalist in two other categories.

    Missed out for best documentary. Pretty damn good.

  13. john 13
    19 September 2010 at 11:51 pm

    This is the Century of Contraction:We have reached the end of the growth paradigm refer this enlightening interview with Richard Heinberg
    http://www.postcarbon.org/audio/140416-can-civilization-survive-the-end-of/12881-economics

    Hard to believe!? not really when you consider the finite Planet we live on.

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