Written By: Ben Clark - Date published: 9:51 am, September 29th, 2016 - 70 comments
Categories: same old national
Tags:
So Paula Bennett has been giving a lolly scramble to her National mates with the Rules Reduction Taskforce. Which is fine, because the Taskforce did great work in finding out that the 'loopy' rule of lolly scrambles being illegal wasn't in fact true. I'm …
Written By: Ben Clark - Date published: 8:22 am, September 28th, 2016 - 61 comments
Categories: making shit up, Media, polls
Tags:
While politicos were concentrating on Hills defeating The Donald in the first US debate*, Roy Morgan released their latest poll, showing Labour massively up and National down a chunk. It brings Roy Morgan into line with the latest Newshub poll, and …
It was already 2 ways before National tinkered with it (and indeed it's almost 3 ways, as "normal pay" has 2 calculations - but you can chose which of those 2 are appropriate). And if an employer chooses which of the 2 ways, they're often not going to ...
They would still owe you the money they should have paid you whenever you took holidays (and if they paid you out at the end, that might be wrong too).
It isn't simple, but the reason it isn't simple is to be fair to employees. Simplifying it totally screws workers (which National considered, but didn't want to make too many people angry with them, when they were mainly trying to make the 4th week of ...
Written By: Ben Clark - Date published: 6:51 am, September 26th, 2016 - 48 comments
Categories: Steven Joyce, useless, wages
Tags: holiday pay, holipay fiasco
Do you work irregular shifts (even only occasionally)? Overtime? Sometimes on Public Holidays? An estimated 1 in 3 employees have some level of inconsistent hours, and if you're one of them, then odds are you haven't been paid enough holiday pay by your…
The use of surnames to assess ethnicity (not foreignness - and making the difference is vital) actually has a high degree of accuracy. It's somewhat pointless to re-litigate, it wasn't presented in a way that didn't invoke age-old racist hostility as you ...
Yes, like I was involved in any way in this story EIE, and had any input into it. You're dangerously close to attacking an author, you may wish to check the policy section. *data isn't racist, only interpretation of it can be.
I'm a great admirer of Keith Ng's work, but his post on this I think greatly misrepresents Labour's argument and is statistically very flawed. 126,000 people aren't going to go out and buy a house every quarter, Chinese NZers aren't wealthier, etc. And ...
I completely disagree with your premise. Labour, Phil Goff and I would all agree that NZ residents/citizens should be treated equally and should NOT be mixed up with foreign investors. Whether it was ever possible to present their data of ethnically ...
Written By: Ben Clark - Date published: 10:51 am, September 22nd, 2016 - 198 comments
Categories: auckland supercity, local body elections, phil goff
Tags: chinese community, vic crone
Vic Crone is trying to make a story out of the fact that Phil Goff is against foreign ownership of our housing stock, but accepted $250,000 from the NZ Chinese community at a fundraiser. Does she not see a difference between NZ Chinese and foreigners? $150…
Written By: Ben Clark - Date published: 12:25 pm, September 20th, 2016 - 54 comments
Categories: capitalism, economy, monetary policy
Tags:
Paul Romer is an economist highly respected by his peers, and about to become the Chief Economist at the World Bank. He's also just published a paper rubbishing the last 3 decades of macroeconomics. Starting with "For more than three decades, …
Written By: Ben Clark - Date published: 2:37 pm, September 19th, 2016 - 15 comments
Categories: Conservation
Tags: fishing, kermadec sanctuary, maui's dolphin, suffrage day
The government didn't make much of a show of Conservation Week – which was probably for the best the Conservation stories coming out weren't exactly positive for it. The US potentially banning our fish from its market if we don't improve our protection of …
Written By: Ben Clark - Date published: 8:10 am, September 17th, 2016 - 21 comments
Categories: Conservation, sustainability, water
Tags: havelock north, pest free, wallabies
It's Conservation Week. Get outside, show the kids nature! Shame that 2/3rds of our rivers aren't swimmable. It's no wonder that water gets into places like Havelock North's drinking supply. Radio NZ have a good comment piece about the Anthropocene Age …
Written By: Ben Clark - Date published: 12:58 pm, September 16th, 2016 - 181 comments
Categories: Economy, im/migration, wages
Tags:
National is very proud of the latest GDP-growth figures (third highest in OECD!), but are they helping you? And are they what they appear? First up Bill English is open – they're not helping you, we're not getting much wage growth. And that's a lot …
Written By: Ben Clark - Date published: 7:05 am, September 16th, 2016 - 131 comments
Categories: welfare
Tags: AAAP
Auckland Action Against Poverty has launched a campaign to stop children being punished for the sins of their fathers. In this particular case it's where fathers of beneficiaries aren't known, so cannot be named for Work and Income to pursue them. One can …
Ok, have changed. Should have thought further rather than just grabbing one from file...
Written By: Ben Clark - Date published: 2:45 pm, September 15th, 2016 - 113 comments
Categories: Conservation, Maori Issues, maori party, same old national, treaty settlements
Tags: kermadec sanctuary
The Maori Party are threatening to pull out of their confidence & supply agreement with National, as NRT has well-blogged in National's arrogance bites it in the arse. This would leave National with a Hair-thin majority in the House. The legislation in …
Written By: Ben Clark - Date published: 7:07 am, September 15th, 2016 - 82 comments
Categories: auckland supercity, local body elections, local government, phil goff
Tags: vic crone
Vic Crone said wha? Humans warming the Earth? That's contentious, Vic Crone says Take a look at cycles here on this lovely xkcd comic Vic. Vic's views very backward says top scientist, Dr James Renwick of Victoria Uni. Quite rightly so. I'm going to leave…
Written By: Ben Clark - Date published: 11:32 am, September 11th, 2016 - 25 comments
Categories: colin craig, national
Tags: court, eminem, jordan williams, music, suing
His palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy, there's vomit on his sweater already, mom's spaghetti… and Joyce hasn't even gone in to court to defend National from their theft of Eminem's music with his 'pretty legal' defence. https://www.youtube.com…
Written By: Ben Clark - Date published: 9:53 am, September 8th, 2016 - 4 comments
Categories: capitalism, equality, housing, monetary policy, uk politics
Tags:
A Tory think tank in Britain is proposing their government set up building 75,000 houses per year for the low-paid, with them paying a 'Living Rent'. A Living Rent would be no more than 1/3 the average low wage in the area. The UK have a less-well …
Written By: Ben Clark - Date published: 8:24 am, September 7th, 2016 - 10 comments
Categories: greens, housing, labour, maori party, national
Tags:
Despite the large number of people with terrible stories about homelessness to the Labour/Greens/Maori1 Homelessness Inquiry, this Government of Housing Inaction still thinks the problem should be ignored and the Inquiry 'not needed'. Some horrific stories…
Really good point about Morning Report piece. Should give them feedback about that... (also about wages vs cost of living in PI countries)
:D That's good...
True dat.
If key did it you would be jumping around saying how disgusting it is. Actually I wouldn't. I'd be pissed off that he was getting another easy good news story, and annoyed it wasn't the Left getting the attention... I thought John Key's car wash was ...
Written By: Ben Clark - Date published: 8:19 am, September 6th, 2016 - 197 comments
Categories: Economy, im/migration, john key, wages
Tags:
John Key let the mask slip yesterday – as he said that we needed immigrant labour even for unskilled work because of the work ethic and drug use of New Zealand workers. That's how he sees normal Kiwis, struggling to get ahead in his economy. Much like …
Written By: Ben Clark - Date published: 11:18 pm, September 5th, 2016 - 32 comments
Categories: Andrew Little
Tags: clickbait, nudity
Obviously listening to Danyl's need for positive gossip, we have a great top Herald clickbait story about Andrew Little's rugged naked body. Possibly not of his office's placement, it would appear the artist did the donkey work for him… Still in the …
Written By: Ben Clark - Date published: 8:10 am, August 30th, 2016 - 34 comments
Categories: housing, john key
Tags: auckland
John Key is defending his handling of Auckland's housing crisis on the grounds that Auckland's prices have only risen as much under him as they did under Labour. So the prices that he said were a crisis in 2007, have risen by as much again, and thus… no …
Written By: Ben Clark - Date published: 8:22 am, August 26th, 2016 - 59 comments
Categories: national
Tags: matt doocey, nuk korako, waste of time
You know National really have their finger on the pulse with their latest members bills. First was Nuk Korako showing why he's 50 on the list with a bill that seems to not actually affect anything. There don't seem to be any Airports that have local …
Roger that.
Recent Comments