Search Results

  1. Skinheads in Suits

    Written By:  Guest post -  Date published: 2:03 pm, April 14th, 2011 -  53 comments
    Categories: economy, making shit up, Media, Politics, radio
    Tags: , , ,

    ChrisH has been goaded to write this post by a couple of Jim Mora panels last week, which created a stronger than usual temptation to throw the radio out the window. Here he writes a scholarly polemic castigating the implied or explicit assumptions of the people involved in these panels.

  2. A hell of a speech

    Written By:  notices and features -  Date published: 10:40 am, March 22nd, 2011 -  74 comments
    Categories: election 2011, nz first
    Tags: , , , ,

    “The worldwide recession is not your fault… You are being softened up for cuts in social spending… It’s easy to see the people this government is looking after. If you are a bank boss on $5.6million, helping cause a recession, you get an extra five thousand a week. If you are on the minimum wage – you get an extra 25 cents an hour.”

  3. Cometh the Hour

    Written By:  Guest post -  Date published: 9:19 pm, March 7th, 2011 -  53 comments
    Categories: Deep stuff, disaster, heritage, history, housing, sustainability
    Tags: ,

    ChrisH submitted this incredibly knowledgeable and well-researched post on the rebuilding of Christchurch a few days ago. The announcement that large parts now lower-lying eastern suburbs will be abandoned lends more strength to his call for a visionary urban plan for the new, more resilient Christchurch. And Phil Goff has the history to present it.

  4. No-fly zone for Libya

    Written By:  Eddie -  Date published: 1:00 pm, March 1st, 2011 -  43 comments
    Categories: International
    Tags: , , ,

    NATO leaders are discussing a no-fly zone over Libya to prevent the crumbling Gaddafi regime bombing and strafing protesters. Gaddafi’s loyalists are tied up keeping Tripoli under control, and the opposition is preparing to send in troops. Meanwhile, the big question elsewhere in the Arab world is what will happen on Saudi Arabia’s March 11, ‘Day of Rage’?

  5. Seismic events in Christchurch, food & fuel

    Written By:  Guest post -  Date published: 10:37 am, February 28th, 2011 -  20 comments
    Categories: disaster, energy, food
    Tags: , ,

    Concurrently Christchurch’s second big quake, the effects of two other shocks are beginning to ripple through our country. Food prices are putting basics out of reach and this week will see another big petrol price hike. All three of these shocks will require us to pool our resources and redirect them to rebuilding resiliently.

  6. Welcome to the new normal

    Written By:  Marty G -  Date published: 11:43 pm, February 14th, 2011 -  53 comments
    Categories: climate change, energy, food, International
    Tags: , , ,

    Look at the international media these days and what do we see? Oil prices rising due to peak oil. Extreme weather events due to climate change. Rising food prices due to peak oil increasing production costs, climate change destroying crops and resource depletion. And, in the most exposed countries, governments falling in revolution.

  7. In Defence of the Nanny State

    Written By:  Bunji -  Date published: 3:41 pm, February 8th, 2011 -  63 comments
    Categories: Social issues
    Tags:

    I get frustrated with the right claiming “Nanny State” on everything (except when it’s them banning cell-phones when driving etc).  So it was with interest I read famous philosopher Alain de Botton’s piece on the BBC yesterday: In defence of the nanny state.

  8. Economic reform for sustainability

    Written By:  Guest post -  Date published: 9:00 am, January 30th, 2011 -  50 comments
    Categories: Economy
    Tags:

    Continual growth in the use of resources is not possible. Society and the economy has to be structured to allow a steady state economy where resource use is within sustainable limits.

  9. English spins on GST with no traction

    Written By:  Marty G -  Date published: 10:49 am, September 28th, 2010 -  40 comments
    Categories: bill english, Economy, spin
    Tags:

    It’s worth having a look at Bill English’s performance on Q+A the other day. What’s telling, to my mind, is that English can’t present a real vision or even any spin-free information. Why not? Because his tax swindle is about taking from us and giving to the elite, and he can’t just come and say that.

  10. For the economic record

    Written By:  r0b -  Date published: 6:03 am, August 3rd, 2010 -  130 comments
    Categories: economy, employment, john key, labour, national
    Tags: , ,

    John Key trotted out a huge lie in Parliament last week: “It took 9 years for Labour to make a complete and utter mess of the economy; it might take a bit longer than that for us to sort it out”. Let’s compare National and Labour’s economic records shall we.

  11. Dangerously lax attitude to spills in NZ

    Written By:  Marty G -  Date published: 11:19 am, June 14th, 2010 -  19 comments
    Categories: Economy, Environment
    Tags: ,

    The Deep Horizon oil spill drags on and on and the estimates of the daily leak keep growing. The oil industry has proven itself incapable of plugging an oil well leak in deep water. Yet the government is pushing ahead with deep sea drilling a disturbingly dismissive attitude towards what is happening in the Gulf of Mexico and could happen here.

  12. NZ should follow Norway’s example on oil

    Written By:  Marty G -  Date published: 2:00 pm, November 19th, 2009 -  25 comments
    Categories: economy, national/act government
    Tags:

    National has released its petroleum strategy. It appears they plan to further lower our already low royalties to encourage foreign oil companies to come here, dig up our finite our reserves as fast as they can and make off with huge profits. Just about the dumbest attitude you can have to irreplaceable natural resources like […]

  13. Rest-breaks under attack

    Written By:  Eddie -  Date published: 9:47 pm, September 3rd, 2009 -  18 comments
    Categories: national/act government, workers' rights
    Tags:

    In 1908, the miners at Blackball took a famous strike over the right to take rest breaks at work. For most of the rest of the century this was enshrined in law and in our culture as a basic right of all working New Zealanders. That is, of course, until the National Government of the […]

  14. “Science”

    Written By:  Guest post -  Date published: 1:30 pm, September 1st, 2009 -  51 comments
    Categories: act, climate change, humour, science
    Tags:

    ACT Party Press Release 1/4/2010: ACT has now identified the number one threat to personal freedom, to unbounded economic growth and to vast wealth for all who deserve it. It is “science”. “Science” creates nothing but trouble. “Science” causes climate change. The essence of the matter is that New Zealanders are being asked to cut […]

  15. None so blind

    Written By:  Marty G -  Date published: 12:01 pm, July 17th, 2009 -  19 comments
    Categories: economy
    Tags:

    I read Reserve Bank Governor Alan Bollard’s speech on Tuesday with great interest. It’s an informative, if very mainstream review of the recession thus far and the outlook. He points out “The international financial crisis actually played little role in the early part of New Zealand’s economic recession. Rather, it was drought, falling house prices […]

  16. You’ve got to know to ask the questions that matter

    Written By:  Steve Pierson -  Date published: 2:51 pm, February 16th, 2009 -  41 comments
    Categories: economy, Media
    Tags:

    When I heard Shell is looking at selling its service stations in NZ and its shares in Fulton Hogan, my initial thought was that the Government should look at buying – to keep profits in NZ, to help ensure competition in the market as Kiwibank has for banking, and so there is a publicly-owned network […]

  17. How peak oil can devastate the rest of the economy

    Written By:  Steve Pierson -  Date published: 1:15 pm, January 14th, 2009 -  24 comments
    Categories: economy, Environment
    Tags:

    We all know the story of the sub-prime crisis that had developed into the credit crisis  – a flood of credit saw mortgage lenders lending to anyone, including people who couldn’t really afford the repayments. To get these potentially bad loans off their books, the banks pooled them together into new, unregulated instruments and sold […]

  18. Great expectations

    Written By:  Steve Pierson -  Date published: 1:54 pm, October 1st, 2008 -  25 comments
    Categories: election 2008, john key, national, slippery, tax
    Tags:

    John Key is being pretty evasive on his tax cut plan. He won’t say whether the famous ‘$50 a week for the average worker’ (note that’s not every worker, your income has to be $47K plus) is additional to Labour’s cuts, the first round of which came into effect today. Given the evasiveness, it’s safe to […]

  19. Sacked

    Written By:  Tane -  Date published: 4:13 pm, July 7th, 2008 -  103 comments
    Categories: national, same old national, workers' rights
    Tags:

    In perhaps the most unsurprising announcement of the year, National has let slip it’s going to maintain its 90 day no rights policy, which basically means your boss can sack you for whatever reason he likes within the first 90 days of your employment. Don’t be fooled by the spin there’s already a provision for […]