How much time and space do we owe the right wing here? Yesterday was another day when I look through Open Mike and just skip past all the sections occupied by by "James" or "BM" or Sryland" or a half dozen others. Previously I would have read through the ...
In some smaller towns it's very easy to see who pulls the strings. Go to Wanaka and the name Allan Dippie crop up quite quickly. He and Bob Robertson - who has since died - where they are/were the major property developers there and had a special status ...
Possibly a case of outing yourself before somebody else does.
Speaking Te Reo is a subversive act. The dominant culture cannot understand the language (and maybe the sentiment.). Part of Don Brash's trouble with speaking Maori is that it excludes him from the conversation and allows for a non neoliberal economic ...
Okay, we have finally got to the stage that the SC has ruled that It was unlawful for WorkSafe to withdraw its prosecution of Pike River mine boss Peter Whittall, in exchange for payments to the victims' families. The current Government has the opportunity...
Tvnz has been commercially hamstrung since the late 1990's. All its attempts to generate alternate revenue streams and participate in a modern media environment have been hamstrung by the government. The philosophy was that a government entity couldn't ...
Breaking news. NZ trade negotiators announce TPP1. "We have committed so much time and effort to the TPP set of negotiations that we couldn't walk away from the concept." When asked about who has committed to the TPP1, it took a while, and a group ...
The bullet the PM missed was having to be the party who led the unwinding of the TPP11 negotiations. It better for her and this Government to be seen as tough but fair on the proposed Agreement, and then let someone else pop the ballon. Satisfies everybody...
Tiny weak countries only survive if they don't create too many problems for bigger states. Rules only exist for small players. Large players will rewrite the rules, and or take the ball and go home, and or beat the snot out of you. Last year NZ's GDP was ...
Don't hold your breath with biogas from cow effluent. Cows are really good at extracting energy from grass so their effluent isn't that good in creating methane when compared to pigs or chickens or us. Richest material for biogas is the carcasses left from...
Theories containing the concepts of Comparative Advantage essentially assume instantaneous reallocation from one resource country/area/industry/company to another without too much lag. Unfortunately it doesn't quite roll that way. Just look back to the ...
Spoken as a Law Commissioner. Just looking back at Parihaka and the actions of the Judiciary to accommodate political outcomes.
Enron collapsed in 2001. Ten years on US prosecutions were still being litigated. Other cases of well heeled defendants pushing cases out are easy to find with a Google search.
Jennens v Jennens is not a situation that should be encouraged: 117 years of litigation before a draw was declared (due to insufficient funds.) NZ's big investment in this case is in the political relationship with US. Having a new Government does create ...
Thinking about lost causes, what's happening with the the prosecution of Kim Dotcom? We have had: ~ Search warrants found to be defective and then reinterpreted to be constructive. ~ The GSCB shown to have acted unlawfully by spying on him. ~ illegal ...
Build a ditch. Build a ditch. Build a ditch.
One of my in laws, who runs a Southland sheep farm, surprised me over the weekend. They commented that they hadn't seen much from the Key and English Governments and that having a Labour led Government was not that bad a thing. While not voting for any of ...
Most policy leads come "politically motivated wonks," it's just that the wonks are their wonks. Taking a lead from a political blog is quite different from using a political blog to be the major/only source of policy ideas. As an aside, what is it you find...
Thanks for the lead. I see that you and Weka have pushed this in the past. Are you aware if Claire Curren picked this approach up from here?
Have discussions or posts on The Standard influenced political parties? Some posts and discussions have had a lot of thought and effort gone into them, but also are flavoured with originality and appear to be worthy of further investigation. (Others not ...
OAB, please remember that through the OIA it has been revealed that McCully's much relied upon legal advice has been found not to exist. Therefore statements made by various National Cabinet Ministers that the legal advice was the basis for giving $11m to ...
Ever since last year when the Saudi's started to package its oil interests for sale I have been waiting for cracks to appear in the Saudi political elite. IMO it had the hallmarks of being a "take the money and run" scenario where some of the current Royal...
There are a number of arguments that are being conflated. Firstly, the accuracy of Yang's statements in his application for residency visa show a degree of flexibility that borders on being duplicitous. The first question is if Yang was to have included ...
The last cost beneither analysis undertaken for TPPA when the National Government inked it's acceptance was a result that by 2030 the benefit of zero was within the model's margin of error. Removing the USA from the participating parties sees a massive ...
Select Committees provide oversight and review of government expenditure and performance, they also take proposed legislation and work to improve it through having public submissions (and trying to tweak it to be more inline with their political party's ...
Picking up people for things incidental to main inquiry will make lots of people squirm. It means that their entire life is open for review. Scary shit that one. There is bound to all sorts of things hidden in that swamp.
Yes, I have read the claims from David Parker that the changes that can be made to the TPP11 may be limited. We have the key elements that need to be addressed to make the document attractive to NZ. Things like: • Removal investor state dispute resolution ...
I especially liked Bill English's reasoning that Dr Jian Yang couldn't be a spy, or involved in spying, because he was a NZ citizen, and also a "satisfactory" MP. (On RNZ morning report.) Further, Bill English would not say why Jian Yang was removed from ...
In North Otago/South Canterbury there is a substantial amount of water flowing underground. Holes that are dug for power poles (and the like) are regularly going down 2 or 3 meters into the alluvial gravels on the plains. Nowadays you will often see a ...
I waiting for the international incident that will be manufactured to take the heat of Trump and Congress. Maybe a small Marine boat with 3 or 4 crew will become disabled and found/rescued/imprisoned by the Chinese/Iranians/North Koreans. Where is the Gulf...
Typo - Gristle
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