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notices and features - Date published:
6:00 am, October 29th, 2010 - 53 comments
Categories: open mike -
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It’s open for discussing topics of interest, making announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose.
Comment on whatever takes your fancy.
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Step right up to the mike…
The current rise of populism challenges the way we think about people’s relationship to the economy.We seem to be entering an era of populism, in which leadership in a democracy is based on preferences of the population which do not seem entirely rational nor serving their longer interests. ...
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Maori Party “kowtowing” to iwi elite?
An “iwi elite caste” system emerging with a right wing economic agenda showing no immediate trickle down benefits for Maori?
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/maori/news/article.cfm?c_id=252&objectid=10683273&ref=rss
Maori are NZ’s largest exporters of meat. That’s a lot of foreign currency.
How will an emerging right wing agenda sit with a possible Labour – Maori coalition?
Is this suddenly news. The Maori party are a good fit with National. Same born to rule exploitative attitudes. I am beginning to have more and more time for Hone.
Just waiting for Maori to wake up to the Maori Moneyocracy.
They will hopefully take less time than it takes for Pakeha to wake up NACT.
Re: suddenly news
Hardly.
However, it’s good to see the party’s principles being questioned
And it does bring into question any possible coalition deals. How will this emerging right-wing agenda sit with Labour’s new policy shift?
_ _ – – = = F O R S A L E = = = – – – _ _ _
A sovereign nation’s self-respect and democracy
WE HAVE THE SOLUTION – –ELIMINATE THEM
at just $US500 million per enactment, you can’t go past this deal
But wait, there’s more . . .
♪ ♫ . . . .the Beehive, the Beehive, where everyone gets a bargain . . . . ♫ ♪
You have made my day, I would encourage everybody to sing along today, so subtle, so catchy, so effective!
Exactly! Now that song will stay in my head all day ….not that I need reminding!
Have you been in business Blip? What was/is your trade? There is a term called ‘horse trading’. Sales just don’t happen. People ask for discounts for cash etc. Many considerations come into it.
I paid more for my second-hand car because I decided it was worth it but got an enhanced guarantee. That might not have been needed because of the Fair Trading Act. But it was the best deal going at the time. I had consulted the AA advice person to check car-make profile and general reliability, also got pre-sale scrutiny at a reliable garage. Seemed a goer, though not perfect. I wanted it, it would probably work out well. The price wasn’t too bad. I bought it. The car still goes well by the way.
Would you sleep with me for $US500 million?
Sure.
Would you sleep with me for five bucks?
What . . . who do you think you’re talking to?
Madam, we know what you are, at the moment we’re just haggling.
You know, last time I sold a car the potential buyer had the AA guys check it out. They picked up a couple of things wrong one of which was the oil. According to them it hadn’t been changed for at least 10,000km. The last oil change was less 5000km before. I know, I was the one who did it.
Mickey & McCully arrived in Vietnam last night
East Asian Summit’s delight
For a price and deals you taxpayers underwrite
Mickey & McCully are anyone’s tonight
♪ ♫ . . . .the Beehive, the Beehive, where everyone gets a bargain . . . . ♫ ♪
Fanks, BLiP.
Bank behaviour probed
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/4282403/Bank-behaviour-probed
Hopefully it’s deep enough to produce real changes in the banking ponzi scheme.
On Momentum.
Interesting that the media aren’t probing into the momentumgate scandal.Why aren’t the national party owners of momentum, Michelle Boag, Jenny Shipley and co -who recruited John Key and Steven Wilk being interviwed?
When. oh when will we get some proper journalists?
Mallard just held up in the House a print out of an image emailed to him over night from a Kiwi in Japan. It’s an image of the NZ flag with the UK Union flag removed from the top left hand corner and a Warner Brothers’ logo inserted in its place.
Pure genius.
I guess this finally settles the debate about whether or not we are a monarchy or a plutocracy.
That is quite telling. We are a client state of WB?
How about ….. welcome to neo-colonisation!
😐
Anybody got a photo of the NZ flag Trevor Mallard held up this morning in parliament with the Union Jack replaced by the Warner Bros logo?
http://blog.labour.org.nz/index.php/2010/10/29/a-young-kiwi-in-japan-sent-this/
Like this video as well
http://blog.labour.org.nz/index.php/2010/10/29/warners-guide-to-dealing-with-nz-government/
In the strange world of American politics recently we’ve seen Log cabin Republicans challenge Don’t ask don’t tell in court. The Judge orders it to abandoned immediately. The Obama administration who supposedly wants to repeal it and have just lost a vote on it is granted a stay on the injunction to prepare their one would have to say embarrassing argument against the injunction of a policy they supposedly want repealed.
Obama opposes gay marriage instead, like Labour here, he, without a hint of irony regarding the historical significance, takes a separate but equal position. Meawhile a gay judge in California overturns a ban on gay marriage, a judge who was originally nominated by Reagan, but whose nomination was opposed by the Democrats because of his “insensitivity” towards gays.
Then there is Proposition 19. A lot of “progressives” have come out in support of it. However the Obama administration, who appointed a drug warrior to head the DEA, has vowed to continue to enforce prohibition federally in California. At least Obama has the war mongering and corporatist part of being a “progressive” down.
Just to again highlight the inanity of the factionalism that pervades American politics (and politics in general see our own Labour-Natioal absurdities) Glenn Greenwald has a recent article: Obama finds support from the right
And Glenn Greenwald reminds us that the inequity in regards to gay rights which Obama opposes, whilst holding his illiberal “same but equal” position was enshrined in law by Bill Clinton in the form of DOMA and the Obama administration, once again despite Obama’s own ostensible opposition to it actually defended the constitutionality of it.
As if anyone really needed another reminder of the sheer absurdity of the messianic Obama presidency and the mindless factionalism in politics.
Another article today: Obama hope was all hype Although why anyone would have hope in a politician in the first place is beyond me.
An outstanding post by Maia at ‘The Hand Mirror’ about the Hobbit: A must-read for even those as Hobbit-weary as I am. Do watch the quick clip at the end if you can too.
http://thehandmirror.blogspot.com/
The $32 billion man
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10683211
In the herald this morning.
I wonder how many people are going to tell this distraught mother to ‘give her kid a good hiding’?
“Yeah. What that mum needs is a good belt round the ears, and the little monster needs a good thrashing! It worked for me and now I’m a good God-fearing right minded Citizen. Hey! Leave my computer alone you bastards! I didn’t download that stuff. Not mine! Some one else must have…… God help me!”
Too late. Should have started disciplining him earlier.
FIFY
And I disagree that it’s too late to teach him that discipline. It’ll be harder but not impossible.
Starts from outside and then becomes self discipline as a person matures.
Not that I’ve noticed. People who grow up with external discipline go into adulthood expecting external discipline. They’re the ones calling out for harsher punishment and longer jail terms.
No. I actually called for less use of prisons.
http://kjt-kt.blogspot.com/2010/08/on-reducing-crime.html
I’ve noticed that people who grow up expecting to be able to do what they like turn into spoilt and obnoxious adults without any respect for others..
That’s to be expected – they weren’t taught self-discipline nor were they taught to fear outside authority.
I see Trotter has got into Labour and Goff for their feable failure to come to the aid of workers rights etc in the whole St Peter / Warners rip off fiasco. Well done Chris, to Goff please just go!
Anybody else feel the same?
I think this was really a case of falling at the first fence for Goff/Labour although admittedly a very tough call.
The party conference presented Labour’s new direction as firmly wed to the union movement and the rights of workers and a stark contrast to the neo-liberal anti-worker positioning of NAct. To then allow, in the following week, a full scale assault on the whole of the union movement to go largely unchallenged was a big mistake. It made Labour look weak and insincere.
It would have taken guts to go up against the scared cow that was PJ but that is what true leadership is all about. As the dust settles around this whole fiasco there is much disquiet about the sell-out this government has enacted and the motivations of Peter Jackson and associates (read today’s Herald edititorial and letters section). Had Labour made loud noises very early on they would have provided a platform for this disquiet and have been seen as defenders of working people and our national sovereignity.
I take your points as well considered BUT if I was sitting on a Board of Directors (as I do) and had this type of scenario explained to me by incompetent management at every other meeting I would probably fire the CEO. Its a case of once is a mistake, twice unfortunate, three times unforgivable.
You’re kidding, right? Why on earth would Phil Goff want to climb aboard a sinking ship? If he’d said anything about the merits of the AE case, he’d be copping similar misinformed crap as has been thrown at Helen Kelly for the last two weeks and there would be every chance of a snap election next month where the main point of discussion wouldn’t be policy platforms on the economy, unemployment, health or education, it’d be be who loves hobbits more.
Sometimes the best thing to say is nothing at all. I wish Chris Trotter would take the hint, too.
King John seeks PR advice: Snap election for NZ? What campaign slogan to run? How about “A hobbit, a hobbit, my kingdom for a hobbit” ?
Your Reasonable Voice is right that Goff should not climb onto a sinking ship: his “crime” is that he (and whoever his staff are) never gave himself a chance to get in before the whole thing was sinking. Never there in time, never before the event, never in a safe position to be heard, never driving. Never there or heard, never never never to ever be PM.
G 😀 F F for 2 😀 1 1
(thx Spud)
Phil Goff did the sensible thing. He waited for the story to play out, and the facts to emerge before he climbed on board. I agree with you TVoR. I get the feeling that sometimes Chris Trotter wades in before thinking through the consequences properly. So easy to criticise with the benefit of hindsight.
Phil could have waded in much earlier to help the unions get airtime for the points they were desperately, but essentially failing to make, without going into the specifics of the dispute between SPADA/AE/Jackson/Warner e.g.
The fact that people expected to perform as employees should have employee protections. The fact that successful film making countries like Australia, Canada, US, UK and Ireland have heavily unionised film workforces and as our industry develops we should fall into line with best practice. The fact that asking for a meeting to discuss issues is really a simple demand for any good employer to meet. And the fact that NZ workers deserve certainty on minimum terms and conditions of work and that minimum working conditions must be sacrosanct.
Okay CV take your point. Goff could have waded in a bit sooner – like 4 or 5 days. On the other hand, for all we know someone from the union movement (won’t name names because I don’t know) told him to stay out of it until after Key’s meeting with WB. After all, it wasn’t until that point that some of the murk surrounding this affair started to clear.
No argument with your second para, but I maintain that Goff was best advised to stay schtumm. The ERA is still, for the time being, Labour’s law. He’d have been hit with ‘you had nine years to fix this, blah, blah blah’. It was obvious pretty early on that it was not a winner and I’d have to think his advisers would have said leave it to the CTU to sort it out. Which they did, actually, but based on the assumption that the rules of good faith behaviour applied outside of the ERA. Apparently Warners and Jackson knew better.
If Goff had said a word, Key would have had his second term sown up.
I waver on this issue, but timing is important, and it’s hard to know what the short & long term impact would have been, with the hysteria & the anti-union line taken by the press. It could have solidified attitudes and slowed down the responses against Key’s selling of our soul’s to Warners.
Mallard said something about this in the House today, but I’m not totally clear of what sort of (non) comments and when he was referring to. I also don’t remember his exact wording. It was during (near the begiining of?) the last stage of the discussion about the change of employment law, just after the bill had finished the committee stage and was returned to the whole parliament.
Mallard said he had told other Labour MPs to stay silent on the issue. His explanation had something to do with it being an international issue, and when the government is still dealing with such issues, the rest of parliament should present some sort of unity and not provide opposition. i’m also not sure why he would be dishing out that sort of advice & not Goff.
Maybe someone has a record of what he actuallly said?
@ Carol
I’ve followed the arguments for and against whether Goff should have spoken sooner but, on balance, I think TVoR has got it in a nutshell. If Goff had spoken before the WB meeting, he would have been on a hiding to nothing. The media would have misrepresented what he said, and given the emotive hysteria surrounding this debate he would have been a goner. Much better to stay quiet until the MSM (and others) started to figure the truth out for themselves. It’s happening albeit slowly. A good example is today’s NZ Herald editorial.
I forgot to add… it’s something we’re never going to know for sure. 😉
yes, I guess. Though I just thought Mallard’s comment added an extra dimension to the discussion. The other thing is that it’s not just a question of when a party leader (or any MP) should take a stand, but how it’s done.
I see that Mallard’s visual aid of the WB version of the NZ flag, made it to both TV One & TV3 news. That is something people will remember, and it has a clear point/message.
Spookily, the weekly roundup email just popped into my inbox from Phil Goff and it includes this:
THE HOBBIT DISPUTE COSTS NZ DEARLY
The resolution of The Hobbit dispute is good news.
The original threat of a boycott, resolved and gone before Warner Bros arrived, was nevertheless the pretext for demanding more money, but the Government hadn’t anticipated it. National hadn’t maintained the relationship and was faced with crisis management and no preparation. John Key simply gave in to the demands.
His panicked response has cost New Zealand taxpayers more than it should with the Government handing over an extra $33m in subsidies on top of the $60m already promised to the movie giant.
It’s crystal clear now that money was the main motivation behind Warner Bros’ threat to move The Hobbit film to another country.
But the Government also caved in to demands from the film company that changes be made to our employment laws. These changes were essentially rammed through at the behest of a foreign-owned, multi-billion dollar movie giant without any chance for kiwis to comment on whether it was necessary. That is a move that sets a very dangerous precedent.
We have been used as pawns in a game that’s all about profit for Warner Bros not what is best for New Zealand.
Never ever in time, never ever before the event and able to make an impression in a timely manner, always after the event when the horse has bolted, always a spook, invisible and unheard…..
Private prisons writing their own laws.
That’s because prison companies like this one had a plan — a new business model to lock up illegal immigrants. And the plan became Arizona’s immigration law
In relation: Public sector unions making the system work for them:
Yeah baby.
http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=11974168
How Rove is working that Supreme court decision that corporations are people too: