joe90: In NZ the very rich seem to live in high walled secure houses, or in gated communities. By contrast my modest belongings which barely need protection are not a worry to me when I am out. Every time that I see John Key under protection even within the corridors of Parliament I feel no envy. Does it suggest a degree of paranoia as a PM or is it that of a rich man?
And it is remarkably (?) surprising that the tax take has reduced in NZ after the Bush-like tax cuts. Surprise, followed by a cut in spending on Education and Health and Welfare. The parallels are here in NZ too Joe.
What you find should be a wake-up call for New Zealanders as well. Sobering Joe.
If you mass to protest in a way that will seriously threaten the power structure, you will die in a hail of bullets.
That may be how it starts, and it will start, it’s not how it ends. As we’ve seen throughout history the rich cannot maintain their power once everyone else is pissed off enough.
Does he think only the super-rich are going to be attacked by armed thugs? The thugs probably get their training in their own neighbourhood first.
Um, this bit Rosy.
In short, the thugs who are robbing America of our Social Security and Medicare and product safety and education today will live in fear of even bigger thugs tomorrow.
Yes, I get the point – It’s just that the comeuppance will, as usual, hit the poor first. They’ll live in more fear than even now – Mexico is a good example – It’s the poor who are paying for the US war on drugs. But then, they’re meant to expect it. It’s the super-rich who will be shocked when it hits them hard.
The violence can be traced to a civil war between the state and leftist rebels, a three-decade struggle that, from 1960 to 1996, was the dirtiest of Latin America’s dirty wars. More than two hundred thousand people were killed or “disappeared.” According to a U.N.-sponsored commission, at least ninety per cent of the killings were carried out by the state’s military forces or by paramilitary death squads with names like Eye for an Eye.
And isn’t this Tamaulipas state where Fisher & Paykel relocated to (Reynosa)? It makes me absolutely livid – It seems like history repeating with a new part of Latin America tied up in the US push for control – albeit of drugs this time, rather than coups and civil wars, like Guatemala, Nicaragua, Chile etc, etc.
Radio New Zealand shows why publicly owned news gathers and presenters are so vital. It reports on Telecom’s recent $12 million fine. This morning (no link as yet) a very strong link is being drawn between Telecom’s predatory action a decade ago and the Government’s intention to prevent Commerce Commission oversight of Telecom for the next decade.
Bend over and prepare to be rogered New Zealand by your unfriendly formerly publicly owned but overseas controlled telco which should properly be called telecon …
Telecon plan to appeal the decision as well… Watch for more moves against our civil liberties and organisations that hold private companies to account. The National ministers are so in the pocket of big business, when one of them realizes that their is a conflict of interest and steps down from a portfolio, hardly anybody bats an eyebrow… Maybe there are a few people around with their eyes open though:
Have you read The Predator State by James Galbraith? It puts what NACT are doing in context and there’s no way that it’s for the best of the country. What it’s to do is transfer wealth and power away from the people and to the wealthy. It’s unfortunate that so many people wish to help them in their corruption and theft.
Mr Key and your mates in the Business Round Table and all parliamentarians, try to understand this simple fact. New Zealand’s assets are NOT YOURS to sell.
If we do not have the expertise to extract resources, then invite tenders for that expertise to do the job, and pay for those services but the ownership must remain New Zealand’s.
Joseph E Stigliz issues a warning that the “unrest”, born of inequality, we see in the Middle East could happen on the streets of America: Of the 1%, By the 1% and for the 1%
Americans have been watching protests against oppressive regimes that concentrate massive wealth in the hands of an elite few. Yet in our own democracy, 1 percent of the people take nearly a quarter of the nation’s income—an inequality even the wealthy will come to regret.
As we gaze out at the popular fervor in the streets, one question to ask ourselves is this: When will it come to America? In important ways, our own country has become like one of these distant, troubled places.
Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Minister Gerry Brownlee today announced the make-up of the independent review panel that will assess all legislative and regulatory changes under the new Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Act.
Dame Jenny Shipley being one of them, the people of CHCH will just love being told how there city should be rebuilt by this corrupt patronizing cow!
Yeah, she’ll do to them what she did to us in the 90’s.
Tell them it’s their fault. Tell them they are lazy and unproductive. And when they complain – tell them they are reacting out of the politics of envy.
If anyone is free today please go to the Labour Party Stop Asset Sales Facebook Page, its being overrun by the “tsunami of stupid” – all with plaquards from whale-oils blog. Beware they are stupid and angry, its kind of scarey..
Selfish bastards! Repeat selfish bastards! Required reading for anybody who does not want to sleep walk to defeat. http://bowalleyroad.blogspot.com/
Trotter emphatically makes the same statement that many of us lefties have: he does’nt care for the politics of the left. Damien was right and Labour were too collectively cowardly to get behind him versus factional groups. I am like Chris more than a little pissed that the efete liberal interest groups mean more to Labour than that of struggling Kiwis.
No, just frustrated Ianmac that Labour keeps drifting off track.
I don’t think they are Carol but they’re being flogged by the perception and both Trotter and O’Connor piss me off by fanning the flame. I want my party to work in the interests of workers and their families and in my case my family includes all of the above.
I’m a worker with a family and if a party doesn’t serve my interests then it’s not serving the interests of my family.
Agree, the only time Goff’s ratings improved were after the “sackings” of the homosexual Chris Carter and the “closet’ homosexual Darren Hughes. What does that tell you. That mainstream NZ is homophobic or is it because manistream Nz is fed up with the Rainbow faction, so powerful in the Labour Party?
What does that tell you. That mainstream NZ is homophobic or is it because manistream Nz is fed up with the Rainbow faction, so powerful in the Labour Party?
Are those two things meant to be mutually exclusive? Actually I’d rephrase the last part: perceived to be, or characterised as so powerful in the Labour Party?
Don’t agree on the analysis that Damien was right. Many of us emphatically want policians to support and promote the interests of those people stuggling on low incomes AND attacks on relatively marginal minorities. It’s not either/or. And exactly how is the current Labour Party putting gay interests etc above policies targetting economic inequalities at the moment? We should be working together. Such attacks just divide the left & REALLY are not helping at this time.
And exactly how is the current Labour Party putting gay interests etc
I don’t think they are Carol but they’re being flogged by the perception and both Trotter and O’Connor piss me off by fanning the flame. I want my party to work in the interests of workers and their families and in my case my family includes all of the above.
OK, joe90, then we’re in agreement. I do think that the focus should be on the interests of workers and their families and in my case my family includes all of the above.
and that attacking people who should be allies is not helpful. It’s buying into the right wing lines of attack and spin & letting them set the agenda. And going into panic mode in response to a shonky TV3 poll is not that helpful either. We know Labour is behind National in the polls. It’s time to focus on the essentials, and cut loose from the dominance of economically & socially destructive neo-liberal policies.
I reckon start at the start Carol, win back the people in the $30-$50K bracket who had a rush of blood to the head at the last election and thought they were tories.
As for identity politics, clueless gamed everybody with herceptin but sure, when you’ve got the numbers to advance an issue and, like a pub fight, never start something until you know that you can finish the job.
My belief is Carol is that Labour spent far too much political capital and headlines fighting for social liberalism, and not for policies that would help the bottom 50% of families and wage earners.
Social liberalism should have been done – while getting on with big progressive economic changes as the headlines.
Labour did not get the old message: its the economy, stupid.
(And making the property owners feel richer by driving up private debt levels and house prices to the sky doesn’t cut it)
Social liberalism should have been done – while getting on with big progressive economic changes as the headlines.
Yes, agreed that the economic issues should have been the major focus for a while. And I agree that dealing with them has now become even more urgent.
PS: I also think the neoliberal economic power and influence over the media at home and abroad, has also made it very hard for left wing parties in the west to follow their traditional agenda.
Can anyone point me to O’Conner speaking up for the poor and actually trying to promote economic leftie policy when he was in government?
Saying that it was the social liberals crowding out economic policy is just garbage. There is no reason that the party couldn’t walk and chew gum, and even if that was the case, there is no reason now to use illiberal rhetoric. Just get on with promoting the left wing econmics if that’s what you think would work.
Blaming it on social liberals, saying the party was taken over; is saying that left wing voters would rather have right wing economics than social liberalism. That might well be true, or it might not. But unless the economic left gets up on its hind legs and makes the positive case we can’t know.
It looks to me like Trotter et al spend far too much time crying and not enough time arguing their corner. It looks to me like they want to win votes from bigots via their bigotry rather than offering something that is more worthwhile to them than their bigotry.
The fact that they don’t seem to be able to articulate something more worthwhile without blaming social liberalism? that’s their problem right there.
Carol PB IanMac et al, I think I will go and sit with the “bigots” as you cheerfully label those working class Kiwis who went and voted for Key or did not vote at all. Your inability to see them as part of the left is precisely your electoral problem. I would suggest they are greater in number than your precious middle ground of social liberal chardonnnay socialists.
Bored, I was talking of an inclusive model, not an either/or one. I DO see working class people as part of the left, and people the left should be fighting for. Where have I eer said I don’t see them as part of the left? As far as I understand it, you are trying to exclude some other marginalised people from the left.
And I will challenge expressions of bigotry whereever I see it, on the left or the right.
Carol, I too will shout at bigotry from left or right. To marginalise any group is to exclude, which is precisely what Trotter (and myself) are saying. A core Labour voting block is being driven away because they percieve that their interests are not in alignment, and are placed behind that of sectoral interests. They dont care if you are a Martian, what they care about is that the Martian is one of them first and foremost. They also get mightily pissed off when the Martians then accuse them of bigotry.
Well, Bored, the problem with Labour seems to me, not that issues of social liberalism & policies against idenitity group marginalisation are squeezing out class issues, but that various marginalised groups are being used as a scapegoat for Labour’s limitations on class issues. The way forward seems to be indicated by PB in asking to positively state what you want Labour to support, rather than demonising groups within the left.
I think this demonising of some on the left is not helping the cause (or causes). Curiously, one of the reasons neo-liberalism has been so successful is that it has been able to attract a broad range of people under their umbrellla. It includes both social conservatives and social liberals. They tend not to tear themselves apart over it, at least not in public.
I gave up on voting Labour a while back as being too centrist, though I do think they have some good MPs and candidates in their ranks, and have some good policies (or atleast better than National). But if the left is going to succeeed in getting rid of the cancerous policies associated with neoliberalsm & neoconservatism, then the left needs to accept some differences, and work together on the crucial issues. It’s not going to help telling some on the left to ride in the back of the bus, while white men ride in the front.
According to critics like Trotter, the problem seems to be with Goff’s leadership (hardly someone who is virulently promoting gay, Maori & feminist agendas). The attacks on identity issues has been something that the right has beat up to try and undermine the left – divide and conquer. I don’t see it as helpful to be following their agenda. And as PB said:
Can anyone point me to O’Conner speaking up for the poor and actually trying to promote economic leftie policy when he was in government?
Meanwhile, we saw a very assertive interview with Cunliffe, yesterday, foregrounding the struggles of many relatively low income families, struggling to put food on their tables for their kids. There is no evidence that gays or self-serving unionists are dominating Labour policies, or positions on the labour list.
PB: Labour is not seen as the party of the working class and the under class. Consequently the working class and the under class are not rooting for Labour even though under this NACT Government they are larger than ever.
Neither, according to the polls, are many of the social liberals. However, in the final analysis this is not about blaming the social liberals for following their agenda.
Its about Labour losing its renown for being the champion of the working class and the underclass against all odds. And gaining instead renown for being the champion of civil unions, prostitution law reform, anti-smacking, foreshore and sea bed against all odds.
Thank you CV, precisely my position, summed up beautifully. For the record I have fully supported and endorsed social liberalism. I will not however give it primacy over the needs of the left.
Chur dude.
To me social liberalism even at its greatest extent risks sounding a hollow victory when your poor and old are eating cat food and your young and smart are leaving the country because there are no career prospects here.
Of course. Thats because they will favour the voting middle classes over the non-voting poor. Until we have compulsary voting in NZ, both major parties will betrying to bribe the middle.
Cannot wait for the “Neanderthal of Epsom” to pursue the PM over this one (the way he pursued Helen Clark in 2001) … Herald reports PM used airforce Iroquois to visit V8s
Of course, since the PM had the pressing important dinner engagement, he could have forgone the V8 photo op.
PM flies by helicopter at taxpayers expense so he won’t be late for dinner! Austerity strikes NZ.
Helen Clark was going to meet the Prime Minister of Australia,protocol dictated she not be late. If she’d used an Airforce helicopter the whine from Nat supporters would have been even louder and longer than it already was. And did you speak up when Key was travelling in an illegally speeding motorcade? He wanted a fucking shower!!!
LOLz people attacking a Labour PM who actually tried to fit lots of important shit into her schedule, as opposed to Key swanning around sports fixtures and photo ops.
Sean,
I was told be someone who attended the V8 race, that it took him 1 hour 40m to travel from Hamilton to Auckland on Sunday after the racing had finished.
Sean – actually the motorcade was not the issue here. It was Clark’s use of a military helicopter that the Neanderthal-perk-buster MP for Epsom was in a flap over in 2001. Just waiting for him to pursue the Prime Mincer over this recent issue.
It is ‘micro targeting’ voters, Shonkey got the attention of several thousand petrol heads “what a guy-he choppered in, wow! he’s one of us!” grunt, booya etc. Mission accomplished, any disapproval not important cause he scored.
Typically and quite conveniently, whoosh, Shonkey is nowhere to be found.
“Mr Key could not be contacted as he is in transit to Europe for political meetings and the wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton at Westminster Abbey on 29 April.”
*Cough* flying from one photo-op to another photo-op.
Listen, folks, this won’t be the first time nor the last time he can’t be contacted. This is the modus operandi of a man who has gone beyond having a stake in NZ.
The Kiwi Saver trusties must be shivering in their boots over the governments order to pay back some of the free money they have coned out of the sucked in working public.
Wonder if it will lead to yet more government payouts? opps forgot unlike SCF etc, Kiwi Saver savings are not government guaranteed, if one of these ponzi scams goes tits up it is bad luck suckers.
And least we forget it was Labour and the Greeds that bought you this scam.
Captcha – school … which is were ever KS saver needs to go to learn there is no free lunch
Robert Atack – You seem to have a toxic view of the world. Did you know this is bad for your health? And doesn’t add anything helpful to the cogitations of others who believe there is a better way of doing things if it can be unearthed? That does mean that commenters have to dig down into their brain for ideas not just whirl them from the surface like flying frisbees with a knee-jerk stance.
The world is way worse for my health than anything my little brain can come up with.
Believing there is a better way is like believing in the tooth fairy or that a politician is worth voting for.
The ‘better way’ went out the window years ago.
Wake up P, even Charles Manson understands we are so very fucked )
Adele
I found the below comment at the top of a comments page the other day, it seems appropriate after reading your personal attack
Please use the comments to demonstrate your own ignorance, unfamiliarity with empirical data, ability to repeat discredited memes, and lack of respect for scientific knowledge. Also, be sure to create straw men and argue against things I have neither said nor even implied. Any irrelevancies you can mention will also be appreciated. Lastly, kindly forgo all civility in your discourse . . . you are, after all, anonymous.
At least I have a name and am willing to stand by what I say.
My apologies for not responding sooner to your reply post. I have only just used the site search function to overview my posts – grammar could do with much improvement, although, I do write from an indigenous perspective which has a tendency to screw with western traditions.
I apologies to you sincerely and completely, I mis-used the language towards you – and did take it personal. Occasionally, it is warranted, but not in your case. I’ve read your blog and you fight the good fight – a fight that indigenous peoples practicing indigeneity would wholly applaud,
An indigenous view of science would say that science merely limits possibilities to the capacity of human thinking only. Which is why we are in this anthropogenic mess now. Science is largely responsible – aided and abetted by technology. It has provided the fuel to the human capacity to live selfishly – to live independently and unrelatedly to the natural world.
The dumb thing is, however, that it is not the natural world that suffers. Human beings are literally shitting in their own nest – and we’re supposed to have the intelligence.
Recently I was having a conversation with an old guy (with impressive credentials) and he marvelled at how mankind has progressed from eating their toe nails to landing on the moon – in a relatively short frame of time. Whereas, on reflection, I could only think we haven’t progressed at all.
Big deal that we have landed on the Moon – it simply means more whenua to shit on. We are polluting space as much as Earth. Indigenous peoples credit the natural world with an opinion, and I am fairly sure it will opine ‘good riddance’ once we have become extinct, or the gene pool has reduced to non-viability aka someone that votes National.
In the not to distant future we may very well be living back 200 years albeit with solar-powered internet. I am thinking how do I fit a horse in my backyard.
When I did that transcription from the Cunliffe interview yesterday, I typed it first onto a word document. When I cut & pasted it to the Standard comment box & submitted, it included all the WORD raw codes. I deleted them through editing, but it was a little cumbersome.
When I cut & pasted it to the Standard comment box & submitted, it included all the WORD raw codes.
Easy answer – don’t use MS Word. Either use a text editor (Notepad) or a word processor that doesn’t include unnecessary control codes (OpenOffice comes to mind).
Up to a point, opposition parliamentarians would track closely, i.e. the government proposes, the opposition oppose.
Up to a point, that is.
It would be a tactical call, on an issue to issue basis, for the opposition to propose alternatives. And it would be a strategic matter to decide when to systematically begin campaigning – hopefully neither too early, nor too late.
I suspect that horrible sensation you have is going to be about as good as it gets.
Remember how it’s suggested that Labour want to be ‘nice guys’ who seek compromise? So the response may well be a basic endorsement of the Nat’s proposals with a few suggestions of how they would implement the same basic broad agenda a little differently.
Who is this Labour party of which you speak? There used to be some folk who called themselves by that name but i haven’t seen them since the early eighties.
i did see a Moose the other day chasing a Moa, perhaps they could give us a map to the land of the Lost where these mythical creatures reside :]
Joe90 is pointing to the same threats in the first posts Item 1 today. Chilling stuff if the poor unite in USA. If the force of Govt in Libya flattens the “rebels”, imagine what the might of arms by the USA Govt against their “rebels” could do! They could even use cluster bombs against the people because they would be declared as terrorists.
Labour once claimed to be socialist, which would have involved using the resources of the state to improve the economy. These days, however, the economy is left to the private sector, which is then taxed to provide a “social dividend”. Both parties follow the same agenda. Apart from getting rid of National, do we have any reason for voting Labour?
Here is a bit of historical research that doesn’t the fit the nationalistic narrative of ANZAC Day and therefore won’t be done by anyone – How many of Massey’s Cossacks did the Turks kill off at Gallipoli?
It is an interesting question, because many of the volunteers who went off to fight in 1914-15 came from that particular class of little Britons who had also tasted service in Massey’s Cossacks. The views, letters and diaries of these 15,000 or so men who initially volunteered is all that is offered today as representative of what people in this country thought in 1914-15. The national myth is completely colonised by the words and utterances of a bunch of rather unpleasant reactionary and provincial imperialists.
Yet by 1916 conscription was needed and, dispite the considerable social pressure and incentives to do so (such as choice on what sort of unit you went to), less than a third of the available men in this country ever volunteered for service. Compulsion was required for rest. Could it be migrants from the slums of Glasgow were more sceptical of whose freedom they were defending than the golden sons of the rural squatocracy?
This question will of course not be addressed next Monday. Instead, we will get shrill and simplistic hyper-patriotism wrapped in a flag of maudlin and sentimental tripe.
This award should come as no surprise… Tony Hayward former President and CEO of BP is a complete asshole! Just look at his response to the fact that BP used a risky well-casing plan, did not conduct a test of the well’s cement job and did not use a “lockdown sleeve” device that “would have prevented the seal at the wellhead from being blown out,” all of which could have prevented the Deepwater Horizon disaster that continues to despoil the gulf of Mexico…
What could possibly go wrong. We have a management style that has made a virtue of doing more for less,” said Hayward. To increase BP’s profitability and share price, Browne had encouraged the departure of hundreds of BP’s skilled engineers. To save money, Browne believed BP should use subcontractors to drill for oil, maintain refineries, monitor corrosion in pipelines and supervise the construction of oil platforms. Investigations of the accidents blamed cost savings and the inadequate skills of BP’s own personnel for poor supervision of the subcontractors.
And that is the management style in NZ after 3 decades of neo-liberalism. Cut cut cut and then we wonder why our homes leak, our national telecommunications infrastructure is less than what it should be and the people who caused all the damage are the ones who are most well rewarded.
dtb – That’s not what we were promised in the 1980’s. Changes were needed we were told, there would be pain we were told, but there would be gain but we weren’t told by whom? While we waited for the gain in the normal way of rising wages and commerce we borrowed on our bright future. We been dun!
“Complete extraction of existing, hidden, and deleted phone data, including call history, text messages, contacts, images, and geotags,” a CelleBrite brochure explains regarding the device’s capabilities. “The Physical Analyzer allows visualization of both existing and deleted locations on Google Earth. In addition, location information from GPS devices and image geotags can be mapped on Google Maps.”
hey joe.
i know where you live and I know what you say and I know what you think so why would I get rid of the apparatus that allows me to keep tabs on YOU!
I so lurve how Paula Benefitformeandnotforyou wallows in politicking and deftly front-foots by pre-emptively screaming the other is politicking.
A great move from Tory 101.
So Mora’s Afternoons-party-political-broadcast-show with residential pundit, the Penguin tried again this afternoon. And the well informed Penguin spouted on giving us his “this-is-the-spin-you-are-to-use” line from above about family law excesses. Unfortunately for the Penguin, Law Professor Henaghan from Otago, politely discredited Farrar’s point and on that subject the Penguin added no further comment. Obviously because someone had rumbled that he didn’t know what he was talking about. Perhaps Mora’s panel would be better served by having experts on his show more often.
Then again, it’s irrelevant anyway, because as mentioned before, the listeners to the National Programme are not swayed, only riled, by what the panelists say.
Yeah he shut Farrar down pretty quick. The poison dwarf is so used to his audience of the ill-informed, the uneducated, and the wilfully ignorant sycophants that he doesn’t know what to do when his bullshit is shown up for what it is.
(on the radio he can’t log in under another name and hurl abuse at dissenters)
But yeah, the whole “panel of people who don’t know anything in particular” format is fucking retarded. It’s like a talkback station but the stupidest callers get to talk all afternoon.
Yes Deadly. Appalling that elderly folk are left out in the cold after laying down a plan and paid for security till they die. After paying insurance as part of the fees when they had bought a Kate Shepard unit, the earthquake wiped them out and they get minimal recompense. That’s bad.
But even worse is the way that three Ministers were approached for help, and each refused to reply/comment. Coleman, Carter and Brownlie(?) Not my problem they each said. Shame.
Last night I e-mailed TV3 to ask what happened to the Hide/Act Epson story that they were going to run. I received two replies. One from Pip Keane said that they ran out of Editorial time. Tomorrow instead. The second from John Campbell. Over run and had to cut said John and “We’ll run the story tomorrow.” he said. Today is tomorrow but no story. (I did ask in one word “political interference?” but John said “No such thing.” That just makes me more curious.
No political interference, but what about being politically interconnected?
I’ve recently given up watching Toryvision 3, TV3 … and also Toryvision New Zealand, TVNZ.
You should email them to say you patiently waited yesterday for tomorrow, but today is tomorrow, and you’re now anticipating yesterday’s tomorrow tomorrow.
But by tomorrow it will be yesterday-yesterday’s tomorrow and since everything is future or past, and there is no now I seem frozen in indecision just before and can’t manage the next moment. See?
There was a Pub in NZ that put a sign out that said Free BEER tomorrow!
The next day every one went to the bar and ordered their beers , were given their beers with the words “that’ll be 6 bucks thanks” but the sign said Free beer tomorrrow they complained. Yes thats true said the publican But as well know Tomorrow NEVER comes..
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Luxon speaks in Parliament yesterday about the Abuse in Care report. Photo: Hagen Hopkins/Getty ImagesTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:PM Christopher Luxon said yesterday in tabling the Abuse in Carereport in Parliament he wanted to ‘do the ...
About a decade ago I worked with a bloke called Steve. He was the grizzled veteran coder, a few years older than me, who knew where the bodies were buried - code wise. Despite his best efforts to be approachable and friendly he could be kind of gruff, through to ...
Some of the recent announcements from the government have reminded us of posts we’ve written in the past. Here’s one from early 2020. There were plenty of reactions to the government’s infrastructure announcement a few weeks ago which saw them fund a bunch of big roading projects. One of ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Thursday, July 25 are:News: Why Electric Kiwi is closing to new customers - and why it matters RNZ’s Susan EdmundsScoop: Government drops ...
Hi,I felt a small wet tongue snaking through one of the holes in my Crocs. It explored my big toe, darting down one side, then the other. “He’s looking for some toe cheese,” said the woman next to me, words that still haunt me to this day.Growing up in New ...
Yesterday I happily quoted the Prime Minister without fact-checking him and sure enough, it turns out his numbers were all to hell. It’s not four kg of Royal Commission report, it’s fourteen.My friend and one-time colleague-in-comms Hazel Phillips gently alerted me to my error almost as soon as I’d hit ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Thursday, July 25, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day were:The Abuse in Care Royal Commission of Inquirypublished its final report yesterday.PM Christopher Luxon and The Minister responsible for ...
The Official Information Act has always been a battle between requesters seeking information, and governments seeking to control it. Information is power, so Ministers and government agencies want to manage what is released and when, for their own convenience, and legality and democracy be damned. Their most recent tactic for ...
TL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:Transport and Energy Minister Simeon Brown is accelerating plans to spend at least $10 billion through Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) to extend State Highway One as a four-lane ‘Expressway’ from Warkworth to Whangarei ...
I live my life (woo-ooh-ooh)With no control in my destinyYea-yeah, yea-yeah (woo-ooh-ooh)I can bleed when I want to bleedSo come on, come on (woo-ooh-ooh)You can bleed when you want to bleedYea-yeah, come on (woo-ooh-ooh)Everybody bleed when they want to bleedCome on and bleedGovernments face tough challenges. Selling unpopular decisions to ...
Please note:To skip directly to the- parliamentary footage in the video, scroll to 1:21 To skip to audio please click on the headphone iconon the left hand side of the screenThis video / audio section is under development. ...
Given the crackdown on wasteful government spending, it behooves me to point to a high profile example of spending by the Luxon government that looks like a big, fat waste of time and money. I’m talking about the deployment of NZDF personnel to support the US-led coalition in the Red ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:40 am on Wednesday, July 24 are:Deep Dive: Chipping away at the housing crisis, including my comments RNZ/Newsroom’s The DetailNews: Government softens on asset sales, ...
As I reported about the city centre, Auckland’s rail network is also going through a difficult and disruptive period which is rapidly approaching a culmination, this will result in a significant upgrade to the whole network. Hallelujah. Also like the city centre this is an upgrade predicated on the City ...
Today, a 4 kilogram report will be delivered to Parliament. We know this is what the report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State and Faith-based Care weighs, because our Prime Minister told us so.Some reporter had blindsided him by asking a question about something done by ...
TL;DR: As of 7:00 am on Wednesday, July 24, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Beehive:Transport Minister Simeon Brownannounced plans to use PPPs to fund, build and run a four-lane expressway between Auckland ...
NewstalkZB host Mike Hosking, who can usually be relied on to give Prime Minister Christopher Luxon an easy run, did not do so yesterday when he interviewed him about the HealthNZ deficit. Luxon is trying to use a deficit reported last year by HealthNZ as yet another example of the ...
Back in January a StatsNZ employee gave a speech at Rātana on behalf of tangata whenua in which he insulted and criticised the government. The speech clearly violated the principle of a neutral public service, and StatsNZ started an investigation. Part of that was getting an external consultant to examine ...
Renting for life: Shared ownership initiatives are unlikely to slow the slide in home ownership by much. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:A Deloittereport for Westpac has projected Aotearoa’s home-ownership rate will ...
You're broken down and tiredOf living life on a merry go roundAnd you can't find the fighterBut I see it in you so we gonna walk it outAnd move mountainsWe gonna walk it outAnd move mountainsAnd I'll rise upI'll rise like the dayI'll rise upI'll rise unafraidI'll rise upAnd I'll ...
There’s been a change in Myers Park. Down the steps from St. Kevin’s Arcade, past the grassy slopes, the children’s playground, the benches and that goat statue, there has been a transformation. The underpass for Mayoral Drive has gone from a barren, grey, concrete tunnel, to a place that thrums ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections Global society may have finally slammed on the brakes for climate-warming pollution released by human fossil fuel combustion. According to the Carbon Monitor Project, the total global climate pollution released between February and May 2024 declined slightly from the amount released during the same ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Tuesday, July 23 are:Deep Dive: Penlink: where tolling rhetoric meets reality BusinessDesk-$$$’sOliver LewisScoop:Te Pūkenga plans for regional polytechs leak out ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Tuesday, July 23, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Health: Shane Reti announcedthe Board of Te Whatu Ora-Health New Zealand was being replaced with Commissioner Lester Levy ...
Health NZ warned the Government at the end of March that it was running over Budget. But the reasons it gave were very different to those offered by the Prime Minister yesterday. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon blamed the “botched merger” of the 20 District Health Boards (DHBs) to create Health ...
Long ReadKey Summary: Although National increased the health budget by $1.4 billion in May, they used an old funding model to project health system costs, and never bothered to update their pre-election numbers. They were told during the Health Select Committees earlier in the year their budget amount was deficient, ...
As a momentous, historic weekend in US politics unfolded, analysts and commentators grasped for precedents and comparisons to help explain the significance and power of the choice Joe Biden had made. The 46th president had swept the Democratic party’s primaries but just over 100 days from the election had chosen ...
TL;DR: I’m casting around for new ideas and ways of thinking about Aotearoa’s political economy to find a few solutions to our cascading and self-reinforcing housing, poverty and climate crises.Associate Professor runs an online masters degree in the economics of sustainability at Torrens University in Australia and is organising ...
The Finance and Expenditure Committee has reported back on National's Local Government (Water Services Preliminary Arrangements) Bill. The bill sets up water for privatisation, and was introduced under urgency, then rammed through select committee with no time even for local councils to make a proper submission. Naturally, national's select committee ...
Some years ago, I bought a book at Dunedin’s Regent Booksale for $1.50. As one does. Vandrad the Viking (1898), by J. Storer Clouston, is an obscure book these days – I cannot find a proper online review – but soon it was sitting on my shelf, gathering dust alongside ...
History is not on the side of the centre-left, when Democratic presidents fall behind in the polls and choose not to run for re-election. On both previous occasions in the past 75 years (Harry Truman in 1952, Lyndon Johnson in 1968) the Democrats proceeded to then lose the White House ...
This is a free articleCoverageThis morning, US President Joe Biden announced his withdrawal from the Presidential race. And that is genuinely newsworthy. Thanks for your service, President Biden, and all the best to you and yours.However, the media in New Zealand, particularly the 1News nightly bulletin, has been breathlessly covering ...
A homeless person’s camp beside a blocked-off slipped damage walkway in Freeman’s Bay: we are chasing our tail on our worsening and inter-related housing, poverty and climate crises. Photo: Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy ...
What has happened to it all?Crazy, some'd sayWhere is the life that I recognise?(Gone away)But I won't cry for yesterdayThere's an ordinary worldSomehow I have to findAnd as I try to make my wayTo the ordinary worldYesterday morning began as many others - what to write about today? I began ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Monday, July 22 are:Today’s Must Read: Father and son live in a tent, and have done for four years, in a million ...
TL;DR: As of 7:00 am on Monday, July 22, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:US President Joe Biden announced via X this morning he would not stand for a second term.Multinational professional services firm ...
A listing of 32 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, July 14, 2024 thru Sat, July 20, 2024. Story of the week As reflected by preponderance of coverage, our Story of the Week is Project 2025. Until now traveling ...
This weekend, a friend pointed out someone who said they’d like to read my posts, but didn’t want to pay. And my first reaction was sympathy.I’ve already told folks that if they can’t comfortably subscribe, and would like to read, I’d be happy to offer free subscriptions. I don’t want ...
National: The Party of ‘Law and Order’ IntroductionThis weekend, the Government formally kicked off one of their flagship policy programs: a military style boot camp that New Zealand has experimented with over the past 50 years. Cartoon credit: Guy BodyIt’s very popular with the National Party’s Law and Orderimage, ...
Day one of the solo leg of my long journey home begins with my favourite sound: footfalls in an empty street. 5.00 am and it’s already light and already too warm, almost.If I can make the train that leaves Budapest later this hour I could be in Belgrade by nightfall; ...
Do you remember Y2K, the threat that hung over humanity in the closing days of the twentieth century? Horror scenarios of planes falling from the sky, electronic payments failing and ATMs refusing to dispense cash. As for your VCR following instructions and recording your favourite show - forget about it.All ...
Climate Change Minister Simon Watts being questioned by The Kākā’s Bernard Hickey.TL;DR: My top six things to note around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the week to July 20 were:1. A strategy that fails Zero Carbon Act & Paris targetsThe National-ACT-NZ First Coalition Government finally unveiled ...
Summary:As New Zealand loses at least 12 leaders in the public service space of health, climate, and pharmaceuticals, this month alone, directly in response to the Government’s policies and budget choices, what lies ahead may be darker than it appears. Tui examines some of those departures and draws a long ...
The Minister of Housing’s ambition is to reduce markedly the ratio of house prices to household incomes. If his strategy works it would transform the housing market, dramatically changing the prospects of housing as an investment.Leaving aside the Minister’s metaphor of ‘flooding the market’ I do not see how the ...
As previously noted, my historical fantasy piece, set in the fifth-century Mediterranean, was accepted for a Pirate Horror anthology, only for the anthology to later fall through. But in a good bit of news, it turned out that the story could indeed be re-marketed as sword and sorcery. As of ...
An employee of tobacco company Philip Morris International demonstrates a heated tobacco device. Photo: Getty ImagesTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy on Friday, July 19 are:At a time when the Coalition Government is cutting spending on health, infrastructure, education, housing ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 8:30 am on Friday, July 19 are:Scoop: NZ First Minister Casey Costello orders 50% cut to excise tax on heated tobacco products. The minister has ...
Kia ora, it’s time for another Friday roundup, in which we pull together some of the links and stories that caught our eye this week. Feel free to add more in the comments! Our header image this week shows a foggy day in Auckland town, captured by Patrick Reynolds. ...
TL;DR : Here’s the top six items climate news for Aotearoa this week, as selected by Bernard Hickey and The Kākā’s climate correspondent Cathrine Dyer. A discussion recorded yesterday is in the video above and the audio of that sent onto the podcast feed.The Government released its draft Emissions Reduction ...
Save some money, get rich and old, bring it back to Tobacco Road.Bring that dynamite and a crane, blow it up, start all over again.Roll up. Roll up. Or tailor made, if you prefer...Whether you’re selling ciggies, digging for gold, catching dolphins in your nets, or encouraging folks to flutter ...
Waiting In The Wings:For truly, if Trump is America’s un-assassinated Caesar, then J.D. Vance is America’s Octavian, the Republic’s youthful undertaker – and its first Emperor.DONALD TRUMP’S SELECTION of James D. Vance as his running-mate bodes ill for the American republic. A fervent supporter of Viktor Orban, the “illiberal” prime ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Friday, July 19, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:The PSAannounced the Employment Relations Authority (ERA) had ruled in the PSA’s favour in its case against the Ministry ...
TL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers last night features co-hosts and talking with:The Kākā’s climate correspondent talking about the National-ACT-NZ First Government’s release of its first Emissions Reduction Plan;University of Otago Foreign Relations Professor and special guest Dr Karin von ...
Open access notablesImproving global temperature datasets to better account for non-uniform warming, Calvert, Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society:To better account for spatial non-uniform trends in warming, a new GITD [global instrumental temperature dataset] was created that used maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) to combine the land surface ...
A late change to charter school legislation will cheat educators out of fair pay and negotiating power proving charter schools are just a vehicle to make profit out of our education system. ...
In 2004 te iwi Māori rallied against the Crown’s attempt to confiscate our coastlines and moana with the Foreshore and Seabed Act. This led to the largest hīkoi of a generation and the birth of Te Pāti Māori. 20 years later, history is repeating itself. Today the government has announced ...
It has been five and a half years since the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care was established to investigate the abuse of children, young people, and vulnerable adults within state and faith-based institutions. Yesterday, the final report - Whanaketia through pain and trauma, from darkness to light ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to take action off the back of the International Court of Justice ruling on Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine. ...
On Friday the International Court of Justice reaffirmed what Palestinian’s have been telling us for decades: that the occupation and colonisation of Palestinian lands by Israel is illegal and must end immediately. They also called for reparations for Palestinian’s who have lived under Israeli occupation since it began in 1967. ...
Labour calls on the Government to act after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian Territories is illegal. ...
The 53.7 percent rise in benefit sanctions over the last year is more proof of this Government’s disdain for our communities most in need of support. ...
Aotearoa could be a country where every child grows up feeling safe, loved and with a sense of belonging in their whānau and community. But for some of our children, this is far from reality. Instead, they are trapped in a maze of intergenerational harm that they can’t escape on ...
Te Pāti Māori are calling for David Seymour to resign as Associate Health Minister in response to his call for Pharmac to ignore the Treaty of Waitangi. “This announcement is just another example of the government’s anti-Tiriti, anti-Māori agenda.” Said Co-leader and spokesperson for health, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. “Seymour thinks it ...
The soaring price of renting is driving the rise of inflation in this country - with latest figures from Stats NZ showing rents are up 4.8 per cent on average while annual inflation is at 3.3 per cent. ...
National’s Emissions Reduction Plan will take New Zealand further from the economy we need to ensure the next generation has a stable climate and secure livelihoods. ...
Following consultation with named parties and thorough consideration of privacy interests, the Green Party is in a position to release the Executive Summary of the final report from the independent investigation into Darleen Tana. ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon should be asking serious questions of his Minister for Resources Shane Jones now it’s been revealed he misled the public about a dinner with mining companies that he didn’t declare and said wasn’t pre-arranged. ...
Te Pāti Māori have submitted to the Justice Select Committee against the Sentencing (Reinstating Three Strikes) Amendment Bill. The bill will further entrench racism in our justice system and fails to focus on rehabilitation. “Reinstating Three Strikes will empower a systematically racist system and exacerbate the overrepresentation of Māori in ...
The Transport and Infrastructure Committee is set to make a determination on the Residential Tenancies Amendment (RTA) Bill in the coming weeks. “This legislation will give landlords the power to kick our whānau out onto the street for no reason” said Housing spokesperson, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “Their solution to the housing ...
“National’s campaign was about tackling crime and the best they can do is a two-year long Ministerial Advisory Group,” Labour justice spokesperson Duncan Webb said. ...
“There are more examples of charter schools failing their students than there are success stories. The coalition Government is driving to dismantle our public school system and instead promote a privatised, competitive structure that puts profits before kids,” Jan Tinetti said. ...
“This government is choosing to deliberately mislead and withhold information, keeping our people in the dark about this government’s agenda and the future of our mokopuna,” said co-leader and spokesperson for Health, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. The call comes after the demand from the Chief Ombudsman that Associate Minister of Health, Casey ...
“Today’s climate announcement by Simon Watts makes clear the National Government is simply paying lip service to meeting its climate change targets,” Megan Woods said. ...
National is choosing to make life harder for workers by taking away the rights our communities have fought hard for. Here's how they’re taking workers backwards. ...
Australia, Canada and New Zealand today issued the following statement on the need for an urgent ceasefire in Gaza and the risk of expanded conflict between Hizballah and Israel. The situation in Gaza is catastrophic. The human suffering is unacceptable. It cannot continue. We remain unequivocal in our condemnation of ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins today reminded all State and faith-based institutions of their legal obligation to preserve records relevant to the safety and wellbeing of those in its care. “The Abuse in Care Inquiry’s report has found cases where records of the most vulnerable people in State and faith‑based institutions were ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says the Government’s online safety website for children and young people has reached one million page views. “It is great to see so many young people and their families accessing the site Keep It Real Online to learn how to stay safe online, and manage ...
Tēnā tātou katoa, Ngā mihi te rangi, ngā mihi te whenua, ngā mihi ki a koutou, kia ora mai koutou. Thank you for the opportunity to be here and the invitation to speak at this 50th anniversary conference. I acknowledge all those who have gone before us and paved the ...
New Zealand’s payroll providers have successfully prepared to ensure 3.5 million individuals will, from Wednesday next week, be able to keep more of what they earn each pay, says Finance Minister Nicola Willis and Revenue Minister Simon Watts. “The Government's tax policy changes are legally effective from Wednesday. Delivering this tax ...
An experimental vineyard which will help futureproof the wine sector has been opened in Blenheim by Associate Regional Development Minister Mark Patterson. The covered vineyard, based at the New Zealand Wine Centre – Te Pokapū Wāina o Aotearoa, enables controlled environmental conditions. “The research that will be produced at the Experimental ...
The Coalition Government has confirmed the indicative regional breakdown of North Island Weather Event (NIWE) funding for state highway recovery projects funded through Budget 2024, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Regions in the North Island suffered extensive and devastating damage from Cyclone Gabrielle and the 2023 Auckland Anniversary Floods, and ...
Indonesia’s Foreign Minister, Retno Marsudi, will visit New Zealand next week, Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced. “Indonesia is important to New Zealand’s security and economic interests and is our closest South East Asian neighbour,” says Mr Peters, who is currently in Laos to engage with South East Asian partners. ...
He aha te kai a te rangatira? He kōrero, he kōrero, he kōrero. The government has reaffirmed its commitment to supporting the aspirations of Ngāti Maniapoto, Minister for Māori Development Tama Potaka says. “My thanks to Te Nehenehenui Trust – Ngāti Maniapoto for bringing their important kōrero to a ministerial ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has thanked outgoing Chair of the Civil Aviation Authority, Janice Fredric, for her service to the board.“I have received Ms Fredric’s resignation from the role of Chair of the Civil Aviation Authority,” Mr Brown says.“On behalf of the Government, I want to thank Ms Fredric for ...
The Government is proposing legislation to overturn a Court of Appeal decision and amend the Marine and Coastal Area Act in order to restore Parliament’s test for Customary Marine Title, Treaty Negotiations Minister Paul Goldsmith says. “Section 58 required an applicant group to prove they have exclusively used and occupied ...
Regulation Minister David Seymour says that opposition parties have united in bad faith, opposing what they claim are ‘dangerous changes’ to the Early Childhood Education sector, despite no changes even being proposed yet. “Issues with affordability and availability of early childhood education, and the complexity of its regulation, has led ...
After receiving more than 740 submissions in the first 20 days, Regulation Minister David Seymour is asking the Ministry for Regulation to extend engagement on the early childhood education regulation review by an extra two weeks. “The level of interest has been very high, and from the conversations I’ve been ...
The Coalition Government is investing $802.9 million into the Wairarapa and Manawatū rail lines as part of a funding agreement with the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA), KiwiRail, and the Greater Wellington and Horizons Regional Councils to deliver more reliable services for commuters in the lower North Island, Transport Minister Simeon ...
Local Government Minister Simeon Brown has announced his intention to appoint a Crown Manager to both Hawke’s Bay Regional and Wairoa District Councils to speed up the delivery of flood protection work in Wairoa."Recent severe weather events in Wairoa this year, combined with damage from Cyclone Gabrielle in 2023 have ...
Mr Speaker, this is a day that many New Zealanders who were abused in State care never thought would come. It’s the day that this Parliament accepts, with deep sorrow and regret, the Report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care. At the heart of this report are the ...
For the first time, the Government is formally acknowledging some children and young people at Lake Alice Psychiatric Hospital experienced torture. The final report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State and Faith-based Care “Whanaketia – through pain and trauma, from darkness to light,” was tabled in Parliament ...
The Government has acknowledged the nearly 2,400 courageous survivors who shared their experiences during the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Historical Abuse in State and Faith-Based Care. The final report from the largest and most complex public inquiry ever held in New Zealand, the Royal Commission Inquiry “Whanaketia – through ...
With a week to go before hard-working New Zealanders see personal income tax relief for the first time in fourteen years, 513,000 people have used the Budget tax calculator to see how much they will benefit, says Finance Minister Nicola Willis. “Tax relief is long overdue. From next Wednesday, personal income ...
Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden says a bill that has passed its first reading will improve parental leave settings and give non-biological parents more flexibility as primary carer for their child. The Regulatory Systems Amendment Bill (No3), passed its first reading this morning. “It includes a change ...
Two Bills designed to improve regulation and make it easier to do business have passed their first reading in Parliament, says Economic Development Minister Melissa Lee. The Regulatory Systems (Economic Development) Amendment Bill and Regulatory Systems (Immigration and Workforce) Amendment Bill make key changes to legislation administered by the Ministry ...
New legislation paves the way for greater competition in sectors such as banking and electricity, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly says. “Competitive markets boost productivity, create employment opportunities and lift living standards. To support competition, we need good quality regulation but, unfortunately, a recent OECD report ranked New ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says lotteries for charitable purposes, such as those run by the Heart Foundation, Coastguard NZ, and local hospices, will soon be allowed to operate online permanently. “Under current laws, these fundraising lotteries are only allowed to operate online until October 2024, after which ...
The Coalition Government is accelerating work on the new four-lane expressway between Auckland and Whangārei as part of its Roads of National Significance programme, with an accelerated delivery model to deliver this project faster and more efficiently, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “For too long, the lack of resilient transport connections ...
Sir Don McKinnon will travel to Viet Nam this week as a Special Envoy of the Government, Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced. “It is important that the Government give due recognition to the significant contributions that General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong made to New Zealand-Viet Nam relations,” Mr ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says newly appointed Commissioner, Grant Illingworth KC, will help deliver the report for the first phase of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into COVID-19 Lessons, due on 28 November 2024. “I am pleased to announce that Mr Illingworth will commence his appointment as ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters travels to Laos this week to participate in a series of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)-led Ministerial meetings in Vientiane. “ASEAN plays an important role in supporting a peaceful, stable and prosperous Indo-Pacific,” Mr Peters says. “This will be our third visit to ...
Construction of a new mental health facility at Te Nikau Grey Hospital in Greymouth is today one step closer, Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey says. “This $27 million facility shows this Government is delivering on its promise to boost mental health care and improve front line services,” Mr Doocey says. ...
New Zealand is committing nearly $50 million to a package supporting sustainable Pacific fisheries development over the next four years, Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones announced today. “This support consisting of a range of initiatives demonstrates New Zealand’s commitment to assisting our Pacific partners ...
Associate Education Minister David Seymour says proposed changes to the Education and Training Amendment Bill will ensure charter schools have more flexibility to negotiate employment agreements and are equipped with the right teaching resources. “Cabinet has agreed to progress an amendment which means unions will not be able to initiate ...
In response to serious concerns around oversight, overspend and a significant deterioration in financial outlook, the Board of Health New Zealand will be replaced with a Commissioner, Health Minister Dr Shane Reti announced today. “The previous government’s botched health reforms have created significant financial challenges at Health NZ that, without ...
Minister for Space and Science, Innovation and Technology Judith Collins will travel to Adelaide tomorrow for space and science engagements, including speaking at the Australian Space Forum. While there she will also have meetings and visits with a focus on space, biotechnology and innovation. “New Zealand has a thriving space ...
Climate Change Minister Simon Watts will travel to China on Saturday to attend the Ministerial on Climate Action meeting held in Wuhan. “Attending the Ministerial on Climate Action is an opportunity to advocate for New Zealand climate priorities and engage with our key partners on climate action,” Mr Watts says. ...
Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones is travelling to the Solomon Islands tomorrow for meetings with his counterparts from around the Pacific supporting collective management of the region’s fisheries. The 23rd Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Committee and the 5th Regional Fisheries Ministers’ Meeting in Honiara from 23 to 26 July ...
The Government today launched the Military Style Academy Pilot at Te Au rere a te Tonga Youth Justice residence in Palmerston North, an important part of the Government’s plan to crackdown on youth crime and getting youth offenders back on track, Minister for Children, Karen Chhour said today. “On the ...
The Government has welcomed news the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) has begun work to replace nine priority bridges across the country to ensure our state highway network remains resilient, reliable, and efficient for road users, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says.“Increasing productivity and economic growth is a key priority for the ...
Acting Prime Minister David Seymour has been in contact throughout the evening with senior officials who have coordinated a whole of government response to the global IT outage and can provide an update. The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet has designated the National Emergency Management Agency as the ...
New Zealand and Japan will continue to step up their shared engagement with the Pacific, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “New Zealand and Japan have a strong, shared interest in a free, open and stable Pacific Islands region,” Mr Peters says. “We are pleased to be finding more ways ...
New developments in the heart of North Island forestry country will reinvigorate their communities and boost economic development, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones visited Kaingaroa and Kawerau in Bay of Plenty today to open a landmark community centre in the former and a new connecting road in ...
President Adeang, fellow Ministers, honourable Diet Member Horii, Ambassadors, distinguished guests. Minasama, konnichiwa, and good afternoon, everyone. Distinguished guests, it’s a pleasure to be here with you today to talk about New Zealand’s foreign policy reset, the reasons for it, the values that underpin it, and how it ...
Last summer when Matairangi burned, Ginny and Tom stood at the window of their lounge, watching kākā shoot skyward from the burning trees. From the distance, they looked to Ginny like pages torn from books and thrown into a bonfire. It was Tom, voice tight, who told her it was ...
Opinion: The Canadian short story writer Alice Munro – winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013 – died in May at the age of 92. Her work was about “the damage people inflict on one another in the name of love”, Deborah Treisman wrote in the New Yorker. ...
This month marks two years since the most powerful telescope ever built sent its first pictures back to earth. From its lofty vantage point, beyond the moon in orbit around the sun, the James Webb Space Telescope was tuned to observe the first stars and galaxies being born soon after ...
Comment: After Climate Change Minister Simon Watts’ preview several weeks ago, I had some optimism about the Government’s emissions reduction plan. Now I’ve read the discussion document, that hope has been dashed. How can the Government propose a plan that wants to take New Zealand taxpayers’ hard-earned money, and spend ...
Christopher Luxon: hurdles The little man from National jumps hurdles in his sleep. He’s quite good at it in his dreams and even though the reality doesn’t quite match up you have to give him credit for getting up every morning and crashing into the very first hurdle of the ...
Comment: It was a good two hours into the conversation when Tyrone Marks raised the most basic of questions when I first spoke to him in 2017. “They didn’t explain the things they did to me. They never told me why. And they still haven’t. There’s no explanation for it. ...
Madeleine Chapman rounds out Death Week on The Spinoff with a final recommendation. You can read all of our Death Week coverage here. Nothing forces you to reflect on your life and relationships quite like proximity to death. For those whose nearest and dearest have died, there are reasonably obvious ...
Whitney Greene takes us through her life in television, including the TV character she’d like to plan a funeral for and her cow lung catastrophe on The Traitors NZ. “If the phone rings, I have to answer it,” Whitney Greene from The Traitors NZ warns as we begin our My ...
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Don’t envy the super rich…
The Nostradamus award goes to…
Secret memos..
Does he think only the super-rich are going to be attacked by armed thugs? The thugs probably get their training in their own neighbourhood first.
and, yes – just to confirm it was all about the oil.
joe90: In NZ the very rich seem to live in high walled secure houses, or in gated communities. By contrast my modest belongings which barely need protection are not a worry to me when I am out. Every time that I see John Key under protection even within the corridors of Parliament I feel no envy. Does it suggest a degree of paranoia as a PM or is it that of a rich man?
And it is remarkably (?) surprising that the tax take has reduced in NZ after the Bush-like tax cuts. Surprise, followed by a cut in spending on Education and Health and Welfare. The parallels are here in NZ too Joe.
What you find should be a wake-up call for New Zealanders as well. Sobering Joe.
Super rich link
That may be how it starts, and it will start, it’s not how it ends. As we’ve seen throughout history the rich cannot maintain their power once everyone else is pissed off enough.
Yes, I get the point – It’s just that the comeuppance will, as usual, hit the poor first. They’ll live in more fear than even now – Mexico is a good example – It’s the poor who are paying for the US war on drugs. But then, they’re meant to expect it. It’s the super-rich who will be shocked when it hits them hard.
Not just Mexicans losing their lives now Rosy and a cynic would say that the only way change will come is through more Americans losing their lives.
And this wee gem.
The violence can be traced to a civil war between the state and leftist rebels, a three-decade struggle that, from 1960 to 1996, was the dirtiest of Latin America’s dirty wars. More than two hundred thousand people were killed or “disappeared.” According to a U.N.-sponsored commission, at least ninety per cent of the killings were carried out by the state’s military forces or by paramilitary death squads with names like Eye for an Eye.
“Not just Mexicans losing their lives now”
And isn’t this Tamaulipas state where Fisher & Paykel relocated to (Reynosa)? It makes me absolutely livid – It seems like history repeating with a new part of Latin America tied up in the US push for control – albeit of drugs this time, rather than coups and civil wars, like Guatemala, Nicaragua, Chile etc, etc.
Radio New Zealand shows why publicly owned news gathers and presenters are so vital. It reports on Telecom’s recent $12 million fine. This morning (no link as yet) a very strong link is being drawn between Telecom’s predatory action a decade ago and the Government’s intention to prevent Commerce Commission oversight of Telecom for the next decade.
Bend over and prepare to be rogered New Zealand by your unfriendly formerly publicly owned but overseas controlled telco which should properly be called telecon …
Telecon plan to appeal the decision as well… Watch for more moves against our civil liberties and organisations that hold private companies to account. The National ministers are so in the pocket of big business, when one of them realizes that their is a conflict of interest and steps down from a portfolio, hardly anybody bats an eyebrow… Maybe there are a few people around with their eyes open though:
http://tumeke.blogspot.com/2011/04/national-are-dismantling-your-legal.html
Wake up New Zealand.
Have you read The Predator State by James Galbraith? It puts what NACT are doing in context and there’s no way that it’s for the best of the country. What it’s to do is transfer wealth and power away from the people and to the wealthy. It’s unfortunate that so many people wish to help them in their corruption and theft.
Mr Key and your mates in the Business Round Table and all parliamentarians, try to understand this simple fact. New Zealand’s assets are NOT YOURS to sell.
If we do not have the expertise to extract resources, then invite tenders for that expertise to do the job, and pay for those services but the ownership must remain New Zealand’s.
Exactly. Selling off our assets to make some foreign nationals richer is bad for us.
NZ for sale, sanctioned by the government.
Dear Key,
Our assets are not yours to sell
But when sold, they are yours to buy
Oh, the delightful market farces rules
for you
Joseph E Stigliz issues a warning that the “unrest”, born of inequality, we see in the Middle East could happen on the streets of America:
Of the 1%, By the 1% and for the 1%
Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Minister Gerry Brownlee today announced the make-up of the independent review panel that will assess all legislative and regulatory changes under the new Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Act.
Dame Jenny Shipley being one of them, the people of CHCH will just love being told how there city should be rebuilt by this corrupt patronizing cow!
Yeah, she’ll do to them what she did to us in the 90’s.
Tell them it’s their fault. Tell them they are lazy and unproductive. And when they complain – tell them they are reacting out of the politics of envy.
http://www.imperatorfish.com/2011/04/further-tales-of-duc-deglise-de-christ.html
Nothing more that I can add to what Scott wrote.
If anyone is free today please go to the Labour Party Stop Asset Sales Facebook Page, its being overrun by the “tsunami of stupid” – all with plaquards from whale-oils blog. Beware they are stupid and angry, its kind of scarey..
Selfish bastards! Repeat selfish bastards! Required reading for anybody who does not want to sleep walk to defeat.
http://bowalleyroad.blogspot.com/
Trotter emphatically makes the same statement that many of us lefties have: he does’nt care for the politics of the left. Damien was right and Labour were too collectively cowardly to get behind him versus factional groups. I am like Chris more than a little pissed that the efete liberal interest groups mean more to Labour than that of struggling Kiwis.
Me too B, Labour, a workers party formed by workers for workers.
joe. A bit surprised that you endorse bored? Read your comment three times. Were you being ironic?
No, just frustrated Ianmac that Labour keeps drifting off track.
I don’t think they are Carol but they’re being flogged by the perception and both Trotter and O’Connor piss me off by fanning the flame. I want my party to work in the interests of workers and their families and in my case my family includes all of the above.
I’m a worker with a family and if a party doesn’t serve my interests then it’s not serving the interests of my family.
Agree, the only time Goff’s ratings improved were after the “sackings” of the homosexual Chris Carter and the “closet’ homosexual Darren Hughes. What does that tell you. That mainstream NZ is homophobic or is it because manistream Nz is fed up with the Rainbow faction, so powerful in the Labour Party?
Are those two things meant to be mutually exclusive? Actually I’d rephrase the last part: perceived to be, or characterised as so powerful in the Labour Party?
Hey Sam, do you want homosexuality recriminalised?
Remember, consenting adults and all that…
No.
But consenting adults do it in private, only “drama queens” flaunt it openly.
Don’t agree on the analysis that Damien was right. Many of us emphatically want policians to support and promote the interests of those people stuggling on low incomes AND attacks on relatively marginal minorities. It’s not either/or. And exactly how is the current Labour Party putting gay interests etc above policies targetting economic inequalities at the moment? We should be working together. Such attacks just divide the left & REALLY are not helping at this time.
OK, joe90, then we’re in agreement. I do think that the focus should be on
the interests of workers and their families and in my case my family includes all of the above.
and that attacking people who should be allies is not helpful. It’s buying into the right wing lines of attack and spin & letting them set the agenda. And going into panic mode in response to a shonky TV3 poll is not that helpful either. We know Labour is behind National in the polls. It’s time to focus on the essentials, and cut loose from the dominance of economically & socially destructive neo-liberal policies.
I reckon start at the start Carol, win back the people in the $30-$50K bracket who had a rush of blood to the head at the last election and thought they were tories.
As for identity politics, clueless gamed everybody with herceptin but sure, when you’ve got the numbers to advance an issue and, like a pub fight, never start something until you know that you can finish the job.
My belief is Carol is that Labour spent far too much political capital and headlines fighting for social liberalism, and not for policies that would help the bottom 50% of families and wage earners.
Social liberalism should have been done – while getting on with big progressive economic changes as the headlines.
Labour did not get the old message: its the economy, stupid.
(And making the property owners feel richer by driving up private debt levels and house prices to the sky doesn’t cut it)
Social liberalism should have been done – while getting on with big progressive economic changes as the headlines.
Yes, agreed that the economic issues should have been the major focus for a while. And I agree that dealing with them has now become even more urgent.
PS: I also think the neoliberal economic power and influence over the media at home and abroad, has also made it very hard for left wing parties in the west to follow their traditional agenda.
Can anyone point me to O’Conner speaking up for the poor and actually trying to promote economic leftie policy when he was in government?
Saying that it was the social liberals crowding out economic policy is just garbage. There is no reason that the party couldn’t walk and chew gum, and even if that was the case, there is no reason now to use illiberal rhetoric. Just get on with promoting the left wing econmics if that’s what you think would work.
Blaming it on social liberals, saying the party was taken over; is saying that left wing voters would rather have right wing economics than social liberalism. That might well be true, or it might not. But unless the economic left gets up on its hind legs and makes the positive case we can’t know.
It looks to me like Trotter et al spend far too much time crying and not enough time arguing their corner. It looks to me like they want to win votes from bigots via their bigotry rather than offering something that is more worthwhile to them than their bigotry.
The fact that they don’t seem to be able to articulate something more worthwhile without blaming social liberalism? that’s their problem right there.
Well said, PB.
Carol PB IanMac et al, I think I will go and sit with the “bigots” as you cheerfully label those working class Kiwis who went and voted for Key or did not vote at all. Your inability to see them as part of the left is precisely your electoral problem. I would suggest they are greater in number than your precious middle ground of social liberal chardonnnay socialists.
Bored, I was talking of an inclusive model, not an either/or one. I DO see working class people as part of the left, and people the left should be fighting for. Where have I eer said I don’t see them as part of the left? As far as I understand it, you are trying to exclude some other marginalised people from the left.
And I will challenge expressions of bigotry whereever I see it, on the left or the right.
Carol, I too will shout at bigotry from left or right. To marginalise any group is to exclude, which is precisely what Trotter (and myself) are saying. A core Labour voting block is being driven away because they percieve that their interests are not in alignment, and are placed behind that of sectoral interests. They dont care if you are a Martian, what they care about is that the Martian is one of them first and foremost. They also get mightily pissed off when the Martians then accuse them of bigotry.
Well, Bored, the problem with Labour seems to me, not that issues of social liberalism & policies against idenitity group marginalisation are squeezing out class issues, but that various marginalised groups are being used as a scapegoat for Labour’s limitations on class issues. The way forward seems to be indicated by PB in asking to positively state what you want Labour to support, rather than demonising groups within the left.
I think this demonising of some on the left is not helping the cause (or causes). Curiously, one of the reasons neo-liberalism has been so successful is that it has been able to attract a broad range of people under their umbrellla. It includes both social conservatives and social liberals. They tend not to tear themselves apart over it, at least not in public.
I gave up on voting Labour a while back as being too centrist, though I do think they have some good MPs and candidates in their ranks, and have some good policies (or atleast better than National). But if the left is going to succeeed in getting rid of the cancerous policies associated with neoliberalsm & neoconservatism, then the left needs to accept some differences, and work together on the crucial issues. It’s not going to help telling some on the left to ride in the back of the bus, while white men ride in the front.
According to critics like Trotter, the problem seems to be with Goff’s leadership (hardly someone who is virulently promoting gay, Maori & feminist agendas). The attacks on identity issues has been something that the right has beat up to try and undermine the left – divide and conquer. I don’t see it as helpful to be following their agenda. And as PB said:
Can anyone point me to O’Conner speaking up for the poor and actually trying to promote economic leftie policy when he was in government?
Meanwhile, we saw a very assertive interview with Cunliffe, yesterday, foregrounding the struggles of many relatively low income families, struggling to put food on their tables for their kids. There is no evidence that gays or self-serving unionists are dominating Labour policies, or positions on the labour list.
PB: Labour is not seen as the party of the working class and the under class. Consequently the working class and the under class are not rooting for Labour even though under this NACT Government they are larger than ever.
Neither, according to the polls, are many of the social liberals. However, in the final analysis this is not about blaming the social liberals for following their agenda.
Its about Labour losing its renown for being the champion of the working class and the underclass against all odds. And gaining instead renown for being the champion of civil unions, prostitution law reform, anti-smacking, foreshore and sea bed against all odds.
Thank you CV, precisely my position, summed up beautifully. For the record I have fully supported and endorsed social liberalism. I will not however give it primacy over the needs of the left.
Chur dude.
To me social liberalism even at its greatest extent risks sounding a hollow victory when your poor and old are eating cat food and your young and smart are leaving the country because there are no career prospects here.
Of course. Thats because they will favour the voting middle classes over the non-voting poor. Until we have compulsary voting in NZ, both major parties will betrying to bribe the middle.
Cannot wait for the “Neanderthal of Epsom” to pursue the PM over this one (the way he pursued Helen Clark in 2001) …
Herald reports PM used airforce Iroquois to visit V8s
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10720511
Of course, since the PM had the pressing important dinner engagement, he could have forgone the V8 photo op.
PM flies by helicopter at taxpayers expense so he won’t be late for dinner! Austerity strikes NZ.
So, I can assume you were extremely pissed off when Helen Clark used an illegally travelling motorcade to get to a rugby game then?
By the way – there are reports that it took 3 hours to get to Huntly from Hamilton after the V8’s – so it was actually a good move on the PM.
Helen Clark was going to meet the Prime Minister of Australia,protocol dictated she not be late. If she’d used an Airforce helicopter the whine from Nat supporters would have been even louder and longer than it already was. And did you speak up when Key was travelling in an illegally speeding motorcade? He wanted a fucking shower!!!
Clark was meeting a Head of State, Key was going to dinner at a golf club
‘nuf said
Proof that Clark could no allocate her time properly.
LOLz people attacking a Labour PM who actually tried to fit lots of important shit into her schedule, as opposed to Key swanning around sports fixtures and photo ops.
Sean,
I was told be someone who attended the V8 race, that it took him 1 hour 40m to travel from Hamilton to Auckland on Sunday after the racing had finished.
Sean – actually the motorcade was not the issue here. It was Clark’s use of a military helicopter that the Neanderthal-perk-buster MP for Epsom was in a flap over in 2001. Just waiting for him to pursue the Prime Mincer over this recent issue.
Like travelling in a motorcade at 160kph to egt to the rugby?
It is ‘micro targeting’ voters, Shonkey got the attention of several thousand petrol heads “what a guy-he choppered in, wow! he’s one of us!” grunt, booya etc. Mission accomplished, any disapproval not important cause he scored.
Typically and quite conveniently, whoosh, Shonkey is nowhere to be found.
“Mr Key could not be contacted as he is in transit to Europe for political meetings and the wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton at Westminster Abbey on 29 April.”
*Cough* flying from one photo-op to another photo-op.
Listen, folks, this won’t be the first time nor the last time he can’t be contacted. This is the modus operandi of a man who has gone beyond having a stake in NZ.
The Kiwi Saver trusties must be shivering in their boots over the governments order to pay back some of the free money they have coned out of the sucked in working public.
Wonder if it will lead to yet more government payouts? opps forgot unlike SCF etc, Kiwi Saver savings are not government guaranteed, if one of these ponzi scams goes tits up it is bad luck suckers.
And least we forget it was Labour and the Greeds that bought you this scam.
Captcha – school … which is were ever KS saver needs to go to learn there is no free lunch
Robert Atack – You seem to have a toxic view of the world. Did you know this is bad for your health? And doesn’t add anything helpful to the cogitations of others who believe there is a better way of doing things if it can be unearthed? That does mean that commenters have to dig down into their brain for ideas not just whirl them from the surface like flying frisbees with a knee-jerk stance.
The world is way worse for my health than anything my little brain can come up with.
Believing there is a better way is like believing in the tooth fairy or that a politician is worth voting for.
The ‘better way’ went out the window years ago.
Wake up P, even Charles Manson understands we are so very fucked )
Teenaa koe, Rob
If the world had to depend on whatever issued forth from that little brain of yours, then yes, we are so very fucked.
Adele
I found the below comment at the top of a comments page the other day, it seems appropriate after reading your personal attack
Please use the comments to demonstrate your own ignorance, unfamiliarity with empirical data, ability to repeat discredited memes, and lack of respect for scientific knowledge. Also, be sure to create straw men and argue against things I have neither said nor even implied. Any irrelevancies you can mention will also be appreciated. Lastly, kindly forgo all civility in your discourse . . . you are, after all, anonymous.
At least I have a name and am willing to stand by what I say.
http://oilcrash.com/articles/struggle.htm
Teenaa koe, Rob Atack
My apologies for not responding sooner to your reply post. I have only just used the site search function to overview my posts – grammar could do with much improvement, although, I do write from an indigenous perspective which has a tendency to screw with western traditions.
I apologies to you sincerely and completely, I mis-used the language towards you – and did take it personal. Occasionally, it is warranted, but not in your case. I’ve read your blog and you fight the good fight – a fight that indigenous peoples practicing indigeneity would wholly applaud,
An indigenous view of science would say that science merely limits possibilities to the capacity of human thinking only. Which is why we are in this anthropogenic mess now. Science is largely responsible – aided and abetted by technology. It has provided the fuel to the human capacity to live selfishly – to live independently and unrelatedly to the natural world.
The dumb thing is, however, that it is not the natural world that suffers. Human beings are literally shitting in their own nest – and we’re supposed to have the intelligence.
Recently I was having a conversation with an old guy (with impressive credentials) and he marvelled at how mankind has progressed from eating their toe nails to landing on the moon – in a relatively short frame of time. Whereas, on reflection, I could only think we haven’t progressed at all.
Big deal that we have landed on the Moon – it simply means more whenua to shit on. We are polluting space as much as Earth. Indigenous peoples credit the natural world with an opinion, and I am fairly sure it will opine ‘good riddance’ once we have become extinct, or the gene pool has reduced to non-viability aka someone that votes National.
In the not to distant future we may very well be living back 200 years albeit with solar-powered internet. I am thinking how do I fit a horse in my backyard.
Is this the format that is now permanent for this site?
I’ve found that by writing the full post and then adding links, quotes etc avoids the oddball text and the weird creeping format thing.
When I did that transcription from the Cunliffe interview yesterday, I typed it first onto a word document. When I cut & pasted it to the Standard comment box & submitted, it included all the WORD raw codes. I deleted them through editing, but it was a little cumbersome.
Easy answer – don’t use MS Word. Either use a text editor (Notepad) or a word processor that doesn’t include unnecessary control codes (OpenOffice comes to mind).
Thanks, DTB. That’s helpful.
Just had this horrible sensation that perhaps Labour are waiting for National to set the agenda for the election campaign so they can respond to it.
Please say it isn’t so.
Labour have gone out aggressively on the No Asset Sales campaign, which is causing reactive attacks from righties.
Up to a point, opposition parliamentarians would track closely, i.e. the government proposes, the opposition oppose.
Up to a point, that is.
It would be a tactical call, on an issue to issue basis, for the opposition to propose alternatives. And it would be a strategic matter to decide when to systematically begin campaigning – hopefully neither too early, nor too late.
I suspect that horrible sensation you have is going to be about as good as it gets.
Remember how it’s suggested that Labour want to be ‘nice guys’ who seek compromise? So the response may well be a basic endorsement of the Nat’s proposals with a few suggestions of how they would implement the same basic broad agenda a little differently.
Who is this Labour party of which you speak? There used to be some folk who called themselves by that name but i haven’t seen them since the early eighties.
i did see a Moose the other day chasing a Moa, perhaps they could give us a map to the land of the Lost where these mythical creatures reside :]
capcha: amuse
Numbness? Anaesthesia perhaps? Just a dull aching pain where a feeling of enthusiasm once existed?
I submit the following is a must-read:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/blocking_the_gates_to_the_temples_of_finance_20110418
Yes it’s the US today, but if it isn’t stopped there it will be here soon enough.
(Yes I know it is now, but it’s still cautious and a little bit timid. Once there’s nothing left to fear…..)
Joe90 is pointing to the same threats in the first posts Item 1 today. Chilling stuff if the poor unite in USA. If the force of Govt in Libya flattens the “rebels”, imagine what the might of arms by the USA Govt against their “rebels” could do! They could even use cluster bombs against the people because they would be declared as terrorists.
@ Name (required) Wow! I love this man on the basis of this one article! How is that for telling it like it is!
Labour once claimed to be socialist, which would have involved using the resources of the state to improve the economy. These days, however, the economy is left to the private sector, which is then taxed to provide a “social dividend”. Both parties follow the same agenda. Apart from getting rid of National, do we have any reason for voting Labour?
One reason is that’s it’s currently the most likely way to get the Greens onto the govt benches.
Yes, Greens need a strong Labour Party. I vote Green Party + Cunliffe for electorate.
Here is a bit of historical research that doesn’t the fit the nationalistic narrative of ANZAC Day and therefore won’t be done by anyone – How many of Massey’s Cossacks did the Turks kill off at Gallipoli?
It is an interesting question, because many of the volunteers who went off to fight in 1914-15 came from that particular class of little Britons who had also tasted service in Massey’s Cossacks. The views, letters and diaries of these 15,000 or so men who initially volunteered is all that is offered today as representative of what people in this country thought in 1914-15. The national myth is completely colonised by the words and utterances of a bunch of rather unpleasant reactionary and provincial imperialists.
Yet by 1916 conscription was needed and, dispite the considerable social pressure and incentives to do so (such as choice on what sort of unit you went to), less than a third of the available men in this country ever volunteered for service. Compulsion was required for rest. Could it be migrants from the slums of Glasgow were more sceptical of whose freedom they were defending than the golden sons of the rural squatocracy?
This question will of course not be addressed next Monday. Instead, we will get shrill and simplistic hyper-patriotism wrapped in a flag of maudlin and sentimental tripe.
Asshole of the Week Award
http://thejackalman.blogspot.com/2011/04/asshole-of-week-award_20.html
This award should come as no surprise… Tony Hayward former President and CEO of BP is a complete asshole! Just look at his response to the fact that BP used a risky well-casing plan, did not conduct a test of the well’s cement job and did not use a “lockdown sleeve” device that “would have prevented the seal at the wellhead from being blown out,” all of which could have prevented the Deepwater Horizon disaster that continues to despoil the gulf of Mexico…
Well he did replace an arsehole Todd.
What could possibly go wrong.
We have a management style that has made a virtue of doing more for less,” said Hayward. To increase BP’s profitability and share price, Browne had encouraged the departure of hundreds of BP’s skilled engineers. To save money, Browne believed BP should use subcontractors to drill for oil, maintain refineries, monitor corrosion in pipelines and supervise the construction of oil platforms. Investigations of the accidents blamed cost savings and the inadequate skills of BP’s own personnel for poor supervision of the subcontractors.
And that is the management style in NZ after 3 decades of neo-liberalism. Cut cut cut and then we wonder why our homes leak, our national telecommunications infrastructure is less than what it should be and the people who caused all the damage are the ones who are most well rewarded.
dtb – That’s not what we were promised in the 1980’s. Changes were needed we were told, there would be pain we were told, but there would be gain but we weren’t told by whom? While we waited for the gain in the normal way of rising wages and commerce we borrowed on our bright future. We been dun!
When will crusher introduce these.
“Complete extraction of existing, hidden, and deleted phone data, including call history, text messages, contacts, images, and geotags,” a CelleBrite brochure explains regarding the device’s capabilities. “The Physical Analyzer allows visualization of both existing and deleted locations on Google Earth. In addition, location information from GPS devices and image geotags can be mapped on Google Maps.”
More:
That means that there’s a built in back door to the encryption used on the phones. Bet that wasn’t touted as a feature on the shiny sales brochure.
hey joe.
i know where you live and I know what you say and I know what you think so why would I get rid of the apparatus that allows me to keep tabs on YOU!
Surely Mr Goff can take whoever he wants to attend these meetings. It is not a good look for any government to behave in this manner
http://www.stuff.co.nz/taranaki-daily-news/news/4907844/Little-angry-at-snub
I so lurve how Paula Benefitformeandnotforyou wallows in politicking and deftly front-foots by pre-emptively screaming the other is politicking.
A great move from Tory 101.
Isn’t this the same kind of bleating the Nats were doing last week with the Palmy MP? No politics, please, it’s election year.
Yup, typical of National MPs.
Remember when mega-genius Misfire Lee shot out at Phil Goff for playing politics at the memorial for Christchurch earthquake victims? And, typically, that backfired.
http://www.3news.co.nz/Melissa-Lee-makes-memorial-tie-gaffe/tabid/370/articleID/203015/Default.aspx
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA1104/S00421/crete-veterans-to-be-honoured-at-parliament.htm
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/4904472/Govt-relents-on-grants-for-Crete-veterans
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/4874411/Veterans-seek-aid-to-join-Crete-celebrations
the dots continue to join themselves,
the timeline is a bit of a giveaway tho’
So Mora’s Afternoons-party-political-broadcast-show with residential pundit, the Penguin tried again this afternoon. And the well informed Penguin spouted on giving us his “this-is-the-spin-you-are-to-use” line from above about family law excesses. Unfortunately for the Penguin, Law Professor Henaghan from Otago, politely discredited Farrar’s point and on that subject the Penguin added no further comment. Obviously because someone had rumbled that he didn’t know what he was talking about. Perhaps Mora’s panel would be better served by having experts on his show more often.
Then again, it’s irrelevant anyway, because as mentioned before, the listeners to the National Programme are not swayed, only riled, by what the panelists say.
Yeah he shut Farrar down pretty quick. The poison dwarf is so used to his audience of the ill-informed, the uneducated, and the wilfully ignorant sycophants that he doesn’t know what to do when his bullshit is shown up for what it is.
(on the radio he can’t log in under another name and hurl abuse at dissenters)
But yeah, the whole “panel of people who don’t know anything in particular” format is fucking retarded. It’s like a talkback station but the stupidest callers get to talk all afternoon.
Here ya go .. from 3’39” at
http://podcast.radionz.co.nz/aft/aft-20110420-1608-The_Panel_with_Penny_Ashton_and_David_Farrar_part_1-048.mp3
Anyone watching Campbell live about the Kate Shepard retiree’s . Not too nice on the NAT politicians on it.
Yes Deadly. Appalling that elderly folk are left out in the cold after laying down a plan and paid for security till they die. After paying insurance as part of the fees when they had bought a Kate Shepard unit, the earthquake wiped them out and they get minimal recompense. That’s bad.
But even worse is the way that three Ministers were approached for help, and each refused to reply/comment. Coleman, Carter and Brownlie(?) Not my problem they each said. Shame.
Last night I e-mailed TV3 to ask what happened to the Hide/Act Epson story that they were going to run. I received two replies. One from Pip Keane said that they ran out of Editorial time. Tomorrow instead. The second from John Campbell. Over run and had to cut said John and “We’ll run the story tomorrow.” he said. Today is tomorrow but no story. (I did ask in one word “political interference?” but John said “No such thing.” That just makes me more curious.
No political interference, but what about being politically interconnected?
I’ve recently given up watching Toryvision 3, TV3 … and also Toryvision New Zealand, TVNZ.
You should email them to say you patiently waited yesterday for tomorrow, but today is tomorrow, and you’re now anticipating yesterday’s tomorrow tomorrow.
But by tomorrow it will be yesterday-yesterday’s tomorrow and since everything is future or past, and there is no now I seem frozen in indecision just before and can’t manage the next moment. See?
There was a Pub in NZ that put a sign out that said Free BEER tomorrow!
The next day every one went to the bar and ordered their beers , were given their beers with the words “that’ll be 6 bucks thanks” but the sign said Free beer tomorrrow they complained. Yes thats true said the publican But as well know Tomorrow NEVER comes..
A little wisdom lol
A little bit of deadly Irish methinks.