Three Strikes is nonsensical, evil, and stupid. It does nothing to actually deter offenders - who now have a perverse incentive to perform the worst possible form of the crime in question, since the system is now incapable of distinguishing between levels ...
Labour has centralised, but not nationalised (people need to learn the difference), and the underlying ethos of the Fourth Labour Government is as strong as ever - basically because this Government does not care about economics (in fact, every government ...
NZBORA needs to go. Of all the many evils of the Fourth Labour Government (why, you think it a coincidence that this nonsense descends from that regime?), it might be the most recently insidious.
Decreeing that a voting age of 18 (in place since 1974) is inconsistent with NZBORA (in place since 1990) in 2022 is a nakedly political act on the part of the judiciary here. It's a sign (along with the nonsense about vaccine mandates somehow breaching ...
I am neither conservative, nor anti-Maori, nor property owning, and I think this is an idiotic development on two levels. 1. I oppose lowering the voting age, on the basis that 16 year olds (in school, and living at home) are more vulnerable to external ...
But dancing on the grave of traditional industry with a glee that would make Thatcher blush, while lecturing unemployed factory workers on how racist, sexist, and homophobic they are... that is not a good look. Leave the culture stuff to the Greens, and ...
Fun fact. Westport votes like Dunedin (or did up until 2020). A Labour Party without the working class (skin colour doesn't matter) is not a Labour Party. It's the local branch of the US Democrats.
And yet it took two years into a Labour Government with an absolute majority. Five years into a Labour Government overall (and while Winston Peters is not keen on unions, would he really die in a ditch to block FPAs?). Wood is a hero, of course. But he ...
For myself, my irritation with the Labour Government has been centred on Chris Hipkins at Tertiary Education. It is not a matter of wanting socialist nirvana, but simply wanting Labour to undo the damage of the Key Government, and take us back to 2008, ...
Which part of the speech is historically contestable? None as far as I can see. Trotter is over-egging the pudding, but his underlying point is valid. The historical details of the speech are contestable. Not outright lies, but still showing evidence of ...
Kirk would not be a Labour candidate today for his social views, which were deeply conservative.
A truly wonderful development... though somewhat soured by the sense that Wood had to fight his own Government every step of the way on this. Why else would it have taken them so long?
FFS. Hamilton West is pure bellwether. It votes as the country votes (though I would note 2017 saw Sharma getting dragged in as a last-minute candidate, because of issues with Sue Moroney). National won it 2008-2017 because it won the nationwide vote four ...
Hamilton West is pure bellwether, and goes according to the country. It went National four times 2008-2017 because National won the nationwide vote four times in a row.
It wasn't a referendum on entering. Ted Heath had already done that by Act of Parliament. It was a referendum on staying, because Harold Wilson's 1974 Government was divided between Leaving and Staying.
Here's the funny thing: yes, Britain is in a mess. But it is in a mess because the Tories are incompetent. The public can vote them out at the next election. You can't vote out the European Commission. Indeed, the EU - so beloved of so many here - would ...
Stating that "Russian fascism merely replaced German fascism" rather overlooks the bullshit false equivalency inherent in that statement. We know what forty years of Soviet domination of Eastern Europe. Now imagine forty years of Nazi domination of Eastern...
Stalin was an anti-semitic shitbag. He let millions starve and freeze because he didn't care. But he didn't seek to use industrial capacity to exterminate Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, etc. Hitler did... and GeneralplanOst shows what he would have done if he...
Yes, the Soviets were morally rotten. But they saved the world from Hitler, and anything else - especially bullshit false equivalency - is tantamount to downplaying what the Nazis actually were. Generalplan Ost, and all that.
"Nationalisation" refers to bringing privately-owned assets into public ownership. The DHBs and polytechnics weren't private, so what Labour was doing there was Centralisation, not Nationalisation. It is quite an important distinction (the last genuine ...
I'd like to see some action on the tertiary education front, to reverse the damage of the Key Government. Specifically: Restoring universal membership to Students' Associations. Restoring postgraduate access to Student Allowances (actually Labour election ...
The Auckland lockdown was actually effective. It basically ensured that the only people left with the disease were the criminal gangs (had it not got into the gangs it would have been eliminated altogether). Alas, the Government folded like a wet paper bag...
I think Matariki is an excellent initiative. Not because of any culture-war considerations, but simply because the middle of winter needs something celebratory to spice it up, and this particular spice is something quintessentially New Zealand. We ...
That means, probably, see if they get a supermajority in the November mid-terms to roll over any opposition from the Presidency. Then see off the remaining opposition in the Supreme Court. That’s a very real extension to this current rollback. FFS. To ...
Supporting democracy if and only if it results in the outcome you favour is not in itself a particularly democratic sentiment. Honestly, rather than relying on the somewhat shaky legal reasoning of Roe, it would have been infinitely preferable for Carter ...
Its justice system has lost all pretense of being an independent arbiter of the law. You speak as if this was ever the case. The USA has always been Exhibit A for why judicial review of statutes is profoundly dangerous. It politicises the judiciary, and ...
A somewhat simple request... can we just restore the Helen Clark status quo, so far as tertiary education goes? Restoring post-grad access to student alliances, repealing the 7 EFTS limit on access to student loans (which doesn't save money anyway), and ...
Labour won 2017 by doing significantly better outside Auckland than inside Auckland.
"Pro-virus" is just a more honest label for "Let it Rip" and "End all restrictions immediately." In short, the majority of the NZ media.
Well, it is noticeable that the media never queries whether the Government moved too fast with reopening. Their particular criticism always came from a pro-virus direction.
The media always hated MIQ - it did, after all, represent everything they despised, in that it put saving lives over shallow convenience. As we now experience hundreds of deaths, the priority really should be asking why they were so obsessed with giving ...
Recent Comments