Written By:
notices and features - Date published:
6:00 am, October 30th, 2011 - 54 comments
Categories: open mike -
Tags:
The server will be getting hardware changes this evening starting at 10pm NZDT.
The site will be off line for some hours.
SHAME on you Stuff/Sunday Star Times!
Headline article on Stuff website this morning:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/5876627/Race-for-votes-kicks-off
And the article is topped by a smiley picture of that nice smiley man Mr Key with smiley fans. Where’s the balance? Positive pictures of other party leaders? Of Goff? A mention of Key’s grim failed campaign opening speech? And no mention of Labour’s very highly commended and wel-made campaign opening vid.
The first couple of paragraphs (always the most influential part of news articles), just mentions a significant announcement by Key and his visit to Chistchurch yesterday.
So here we see just HOW balanced the MSM is.
Phil Goff leads from the bottom
Yes thats the title of the NZ Herald web article.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10762609
And they quote the “KEY POLL” (wtf, I wonder who paid for it) as saying that 26% of respondents put Goff down as their least preferred Prime Minister.
The MSM is owned by and operates solely for the benefit of the rich. Which means promoting NAct and pretty much making it seem that all other parties don’t exist.
As get-out-and-vote ads go, I quite like this one from Tunisia.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxWvgASA_Q4
I feel the same outrage when I am confronted with pictures of el Shonkey in the paper, but no matter how many pages I tear aside in disgust and anger there is no redeeming message that tells me that it is just a joke and that encourages democracy and informed participation to be found inside.
Boycott Quantas
Quantas locks out it’s workforce to crush international solidarity among it’s workforce.
Quantas has locked out all it’s unionised workers grounding all flights, both domestic and International.
Twenty-eight international flights and 36 domestic flights were in the air at the time of the announcement of the lockout. More than 7000 passengers affected. No advance warning had been given of this wild cat action by the company.
The Lockout tactic by Quantas is to enforce lower wages and poorer conditions onto international employees of the Airline over the objections of their Australian workers.
The msm has been deathly and uncharacteristically uncomplaing in reporting the hardships foistered on the traveling public by this industrial action by the company to enforce their demands to pay slave wages to non-Australian employees.
Just imagine the screams from the corporate media if the workforce had walked out grounding a total of 64 flights and stranding 7000 passengers without notice in wildcat industrial action like this.
All Australian airline workers are asking is that foreign workers employed by Quantas have the same employment protections as Australian Quantas employees.
This is an unselfish demand by the Australian employees of Quantas in the highest traditions of trade union solidarity.
They deserve our full support
The locked out Quantas employees deserve the support of all those who believe in fairness on both sides of the Tasman and around the world.
New Zealand unions must join in international solidarity against Quantas and deny all services to this company until the lockout is lifted and beyond that until Quantas agrees to pay it’s workforce fairly regardless of nationality.
The vicious Quantas lockout must be crushed international support in this struggle could make all the difference.
The Heralds best TV election broadcast poll has not changed in 24 hours. Hummm…me wonders.
Yeah they seemed to withdraw the vote button early Sat afternoon.
The vote button was up last night. From when I made my comment this morning to now there have been at least 1000 more votes…… Hang on it looks like the undecided went up 1%
Talking about corporate media reporting.
Just watched a news flash on TV1 at 9.00 on the Quantas lockout.
TV1 said that the lockout would be enforced until the unions signed a deal.
Careful avoidance of the “deal” that Quantas want to enforce with their lockout.
Quantas demand that they are trying to bludgeon their workforce into accepting is racist.
Why should workers be paid less due to their nationality?
They shouldn’t be. In fact I think a law that says that people employed in foreign countries by a domestic business to get the same legal status and thus the same conditions as local employees needs to be written.
Just imagine the headlines if Unions had announced an indefinite strike to enforce higher wages for Australian workers over foreigners.
I imagine that the headlines would read something like this.
“Racist”, “Greedy”, “Wreckers”, “Holding the country to ransom”
Yet this is what Quantas is demanding of the their workforce. The lockout is about bludgeoning Quantas’ workers into accepting discriminatory wages and conditions.
Read the sober, balanced coverage of the Qantas dispute in the SMH, The Age, and the Australian and recall the drivel of orchestrated propaganda that spewed from our media during the Hobbit dispute. Then weep.
I must be psychic because I probably already know what they Australian newspapers are saying…
Taking the side of Qantas I presume…
The Qantas lockout seems to be more about the management turning its customers against the unions than anything else.
Incliding a CEO who has just pocketed a 2 million dollar payrise might I had, and from where I am sitting wanting to cut the wages and conditions of the airlines workforce. That includes doing what Air NZ is doing here,and employing staff on lower wages thru subsidaries.
Airlines are doing this all over the world. Buying flash flying palaces with showers and cuddle class and then sending the bills to their workers.
The Qantas dispute should be seen as a warning by those planning on moving across the Tasman: Dont count on wages and conditions being high for long. If the airline wins this dispute, then it will give every other employer in Oz free reign to slash wages and conditions, and break the unions. And the government wont lift a finger to stop them.
I’m not sure what you would expect the Aussie Government to do, Millsy. Gillard is hanging on by her fingertips, relying on the support of conservative independents who can veto any legislative change she might want to make in order to intervene. The grounding of the planes is an attack on her leadership as well, and has already been used by Liberal state premiers overnight to attack her as indecisive, when she no ability under current law to interfere.
Big ups to one independent, though. Nick Xenophon is on the money.
Even Australians like me refuse to fly Qantas. Not because their fares are high, but because their service is crap. Blaming the unions for the crap standard of management and culture they have created is just pathetic. Thank goodness for Rob Fyfe.
My son went to Oz in 2009 and again last week, and armed with his advice, I had long since decided I won’t fly Qantas!
Check out this SST article bashing licencing trusts
Apparently people are willing to destory a community owned organisation which is democratically elected so they can buy cheaper booze at a supermarket.
That is what the supermarket owners will be pushing for actually, not the regular punters, in a bid to push their volumes and margins up.
BTW that link didnt come through?
Here it is
I didn’t get that sense from the article. I got the impression that it was questioning the conflicting interests of one person who had directorships in the multiple organisations that were involved.
Watched the nats launch……amateur and key looked positively ghostly with some crap lighting and the profile isn’t flash and as for the hand rubbing……oi vey never buy retail my son, game on.
Oakland Police Brutality
A young 24 year old man named Scott Olsen, was seriously injured by a police projectile during a protest in Oakland last Tuesday evening…
And he wasnt just any young man, he was a talented computer network engineer AND decorated Marine veteran. Veterans groups around Oakland are VERY pissed off with the police there at the moment.
This woman from Oakland writes an inspiring account of her awakening due to the police butality.
http://www.theawl.com/2011/10/the-livestream-ended-how-i-got-off-my-computer-and-into-the-streets-at-occupy-oakland
Jenny
QANTAS = Queensland and Northern Territory Air Services
I was told by a staffer at Melbourne Airport many years ago that it really stood for Queer And Nasty, Try Another Service. Doesn’t seem so funny now.
A good interview with Steven Keen.
Like this guest post on Keens blog. It clearly points out why the economic paradigm we slave under doesn’t work.
thx guys
Three women that were part of a group protesting the Nat launch today, got into the venue, and briefly interrupted Key’s speech, chanting stop the war on the poor
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/5877791/Asset-sales-for-Future-Investment-Fund
So National’s policy launch has happened and they are going to sell assets and put the proceeds into a fund to fund new assets.
Projects will have to stack up, presumably in financial terms.
As a first consideration for the fund can I suggest that it invests in an absolutely vital piece of infrastructure that provides a very good return and will become strategically more and more important as we run out of oil.
Yes ladies and gentlemen National should consider investing in power companies.
Of course they could always decide to keep what we have and avoid the sale and purchase costs.
Love it. 😀
Carol, Stuff say 1000 yet Radio NZ says 200? Who’s right? If it is the smaller number Stuff is deliberately lying. Must be catching.
RNZ says about 700. Not that much difference, but a bit of an inflation by Stuff.
Stuff stated 1000 TWICE in the one article, desperate.
N.Z. Herald says N.Z. First Also had about 700 at their launch could be interesting.
Operation 8 on Maori Television at 8:30 tonight. Watch it.
The 10 minute outage was due to a operating system upgrade requiring a reboot. It should have only taken the system out for a minute or two. But it decided to take a lot longer than it did on the test of the backup systems (now I have some logs to read to find out why). I was hovering over the DNS to reroute it to the backup when it returned again.
We shouldn’t require any more maintenance until after the election.
5% drop in support for National in the latest 3news/reid research poll. And this was all before the nation got to see Key’s opening address!
National 52.3
Labour 30.2
Greens 9.4
United Future doubled, (or maybe even tripled!) their support to a solid 0.0%.
Wow, National just dropped 10% of their supporters.
The rot has just started to set in, in earnest.
Question: will there be enough time in the next 4 weeks for the rot to spread and sink their little blue neoliberal ship of capitalism 🙂
Key was an idiot to delay elections so late until after the RWC. He’s going to wish that he’d picked a mid August date.
‘Question: will there be enough time in the next 4 weeks for the rot to spread and sink their little blue neoliberal ship of capitalism 🙂 ‘
I hope so CV – had the Labour candidate drop by my house tonight to thank me for letting Labour have space in my yard and he thinks that if Labour can get to 36% plus 12% for the Greens this would have National sweating it. A righty friend was so impressed with his action that she’s giving him her electorate vote – just gotta convince her on the party vote now. Btw good on you for donating money to the cause – wish I could but I’ll be collecting Labour voters on the 26th who may find it difficult to get to polling booths so with any luck victory will be his and the left’s overall.
‘Key was an idiot’
So glad, so glad : )
Oh, and he reads the Standard.
🙂
PS Greens will never hit 12%, this time. Perhaps 9.x% if they perform very strongly.
Labour needs at least 39% to have a real chance of leading the Government. Anything under that and it gets increasingly unlikely very quickly.
I just got surveyed by UMR today, lots of questions about Labour and Rena and the blimmin’ Rugby World Cup as well as the vote question. Needless to say I was very uncomplementary about National. Will be interesting to see the results of that one.
“Greens will never hit 12%, this time. Perhaps 9% if they perform very strongly.”
Agreed. The Greens tend to end up (at the election) a point or two down on their average poll rating for the month or so before the election. Would not surprise me if they ended somewhere between 8 and 9 %. I’d be surprised if they took more than 10.
Only a third of those polled thought John Boy did a good job on the Rena grounding and his approval rating has clearly dropped as a result. Good summary from Garner, especially noting that only a few more points closer and Key will struggle to muster the numbers.
Gotta lay waste to ACT. Dunne gone too. And the Mp down to 2 MPs at most.
RE: the 3news poll: A hiccup ain’t a trend, but it sure is funny 🙂
Be sure that key probably has some photo-ops lined up which will be dutifully promulgated by the town criers. Although if their start is anything to go by, they’ll probably screw it up.
Well, it looks like
the capitalistsEngland is getting upset about all the ships being pirated.Yep, armed merchantmen with license to kill.
Bring back letters of marque and reprisal!