She makes some valid points, particularly: "As tired as we are of listening to and looking at Nick Smith, Gerry Brownlee and Steven Joyce, they're still a preferable option to the ideas vacuum on the other side." Labour is bereft of new ideas, and if one ...
Written By: Ben Clark - Date published: 9:38 am, December 7th, 2016 - 18 comments
Categories: housing
Tags: auckland
While National's caucus focuses on itself, as backbenchers enjoy their one shot at relevance, the country's big problems continue. Auckland's housing supply continues to lag behind demand. National's answer – Special Housing Areas – aren't going to …
Written By: Ben Clark - Date published: 4:55 pm, December 6th, 2016 - 56 comments
Categories: john key
Tags:
I was tempted to just have an empty post, but John has of course had his achievements. There are the 3 election wins, and enduring popularity, that was only now starting to decline (only 36%!). But what he's done with that popularity, that mandate, for the…
"Actually, they’re not. They’re well defined and costed." Or this: Future of Work: A flop. Ask the bloke on the street what it means for the future of work, and odds are they will not have a clue what you talking about. Local workers: Impose a tax on ...
Do you seriously believe that National is influencing opinion writers, and has somehow mobilised a bunch of "rightwing trolls" to show up on TS? What is it exactly that Labour is doing? Every policy announcement is a flop, ill-conceived or quickly ...
certainly those things are needed too. (Although teacher aids may not be the best bang for buck in education, but won't sidetrack...) Bill English talks 'social investment', but ends up building prisons. We do need to focus on mental health / social ...
Written By: Ben Clark - Date published: 7:25 am, December 2nd, 2016 - 21 comments
Categories: Judith Collins, labour, police
Tags:
So it turns out Judith Collins is letting organised criminals off the hook as she insists the Police make burglary a priority. If you're the minister, and notice the police aren't managing to cope in one area after successive funding freezes, you can: a) …
Written By: Ben Clark - Date published: 2:00 pm, November 30th, 2016 - 34 comments
Categories: child abuse, child welfare, human rights
Tags: anne tolley, state care
Kim Hill had an astounding and outstanding interview with Anne Tolley this morning on RNZ. The 7.30 news was delayed 12 minutes as Tolley evaded the fact that thousands of children were abused by the state in the 50s and 60s, and she refused to hold an …
Written By: Ben Clark - Date published: 3:56 pm, November 24th, 2016 - 6 comments
Categories: health and safety
Tags:
It was disappointing to see Michael Woodhouse's complacency for the government at one worker each week dying on the job. That can't be acceptable. The new health & safety laws are a big improvement, and are making a difference in NZ businesses. It took a …
You cannot contract yourself or anyone out of the H&S Act.
Written By: Ben Clark - Date published: 10:07 am, November 23rd, 2016 - 17 comments
Categories: business, capitalism, Economy, economy, journalism, making shit up
Tags: stock market
This is just something that gets my goat, and there was a particularly egregious example on the RNZ Business News this morning. Apparently Wall St was going 'gangbusters', and the reason they came up with for that was 'Wall St' liking Donald Trump's …
2 things: 1/ while I stood in 2011 for Labour in the North Shore, I'm not sure whether being a local party member makes me "part of the machine". 2/ you've misinterpreted what I've written anyway. I personally make no claim to be proper 'working class', ...
Written By: Ben Clark - Date published: 8:05 am, November 12th, 2016 - 116 comments
Categories: Politics, us politics
Tags: lessons
What can we learn from the election of Donald J Drumpf? Not a huge amount. And would the lessons be completely different with just a small adjustment in a few states? I guess one thing is: Don't neglect your base. That's where your vote is coming from, …
Written By: Ben Clark - Date published: 7:40 am, November 11th, 2016 - 82 comments
Categories: us politics
Tags:
Woe is us with President Trump. How could the pollsters get it so wrong? How could people prefer a racist sex-pest to someone so qualified? The Democrats’ supposed “blue wall” … has crumbled. Indeed, with Hillary Clinton’s defeat, Democrats may have …
Written By: Ben Clark - Date published: 8:52 am, November 9th, 2016 - 21 comments
Categories: Gerry Brownlee
Tags: airport, gate-gate
Somehow Brownlee's got away with it. Felix Marwick did good work on his OIA, to find out that Gerry Brownlee's account of events didn't stack up. Oddly only Rodney Hide is calling him out for it. He forced his way through (entry was "not freely given"), …
Labour has lodged a formal complaint with TVNZ over its coverage of their youth work scheme, with Twyford engaged in a Twitter tit-for-tat with Vance and Trevett. How retarded can they get? Why would Labour want to draw more attention to a policy that is ...
Not hate Richard, not even close. Trust that doesn't take the soar out of your soul.
Retracted - you are obviously unhinged, and I'll leave it at that.
Just in time for the Labour conference: During October support for National rose by 6.5% to 48% now clearly ahead of a potential Labour/ Greens alliance 38% (down 7.5%) after Prime Minister John Key travelled extensively overseas – including an address to ...
Written By: Ben Clark - Date published: 8:24 am, October 28th, 2016 - 6 comments
Categories: education
Tags: tax cuts or
The government is proud of their surplus, which at 0.7% of GDP isn’t quite as dramatic as the 9% of GDP deficit they had in 2011. But as soon as we have a surplus, National starts salivating over tax cuts. Continuing where I left off, here’s some other …
I don't speak for Labour, I don't know what's under consideration. I guess that they'd argue that $60/week/child was a significant increase in benefits? I mainly mentioned announced policies as alternatives to have costs by them - there's lots of different...
Written By: Ben Clark - Date published: 8:52 am, October 25th, 2016 - 128 comments
Categories: poverty
Tags: tax cuts or
The government is proud of their surplus, which at 0.7% of GDP isn’t quite as dramatic as the 9% of GDP deficit they had in 2011. But as soon as we have a surplus, National starts salivating over tax cuts. Continuing where I left off, here's some other …
Written By: Ben Clark - Date published: 8:36 am, October 21st, 2016 - 21 comments
Categories: housing
Tags: tax cuts or
The government is proud of their surplus, which at 0.7% of GDP isn’t quite as dramatic as the 9% of GDP deficit they had in 2011. But as soon as we have a surplus, National starts salivating over tax cuts. But may I continue on where I left off on other …
Written By: Ben Clark - Date published: 1:57 pm, October 18th, 2016 - 6 comments
Categories: housing, same old national
Tags:
Treasury papers just released show National's Housing Infrastructure Fund to be everything you expected it to be: a quickly cobbled together headline. For National's party conference they needed to come up with a big sounding number so that they could …
Written By: Ben Clark - Date published: 8:16 am, October 18th, 2016 - 135 comments
Categories: economy, health
Tags: tax cuts or
The government is proud of their surplus, which at 0.7% of GDP isn't quite as dramatic as the 9% of GDP deficit they had in 2011. But as soon as we have a surplus, National starts salivating over tax cuts. Not sensible things like investing in the Cullen …
Written By: Ben Clark - Date published: 1:35 pm, October 17th, 2016 - 6 comments
Categories: Hekia parata, schools
Tags: COOLs
In August Hekia Parata announced her new COOL solution, that distinctly isn't what it says on the tin. While research shows that peer-to-peer learning is amongst the most effective, and parents are working on reducing class sizes to increase teacher …
Written By: Ben Clark - Date published: 12:16 pm, October 17th, 2016 - 61 comments
Categories: paula bennett, same old national
Tags:
You can only piss the journos off for so long… National ministers have a habit of not wanting to turn up to the 'hard' questions, but Paula Bennett has been severely caught out by RNZ: Back in August RNZ's Insight programme spent two weeks chasing Social…
Written By: Ben Clark - Date published: 2:06 pm, October 3rd, 2016 - 5 comments
Categories: housing, local body elections, phil goff
Tags:
The story seems to be cast as Goff proposing a 15% tax on foreign buyers (the Vancouver model), when in fact he'd prefer foreign buyers only being able to invest in new housing (the Australian model), but at any rate he's for action. As he pointed out to …
Written By: Ben Clark - Date published: 9:47 am, October 3rd, 2016 - 104 comments
Categories: john key, poverty, radio
Tags:
Amazing lead story on RNZ – Easier to count rodents than kids in poverty, suggests Key. There are a number of good measures, any one of which would do, but the new Children's Commissioner just wants to get past that debate and get onto doing stuff to …
Written By: Ben Clark - Date published: 4:47 pm, October 2nd, 2016 - 21 comments
Categories: us politics, youtube
Tags: john oliver
John Oliver excellent as always – this time on the difference in scandal quality between Clinton & Trump. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1Lfd1aB9YI
Written By: Ben Clark - Date published: 10:31 am, September 29th, 2016 - 24 comments
Categories: Media, Politics, republic
Tags: dame patsy reddy
Yesterday we got a new effective Head of State. The Queen is of course still the nominal Head of State, so no change for 63 years there, but the actual person doing the duties was sworn in. Dame Patsy Reddy took over the role, and will over the next 5 …
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