Search Results

  1. Key knows best about everything

    Written By:  Anthony R0bins -  Date published: 11:13 am, August 25th, 2012 -  26 comments
    Categories: Ethics, health, john key
    Tags: ,

    Key’s claim that illegal euthanasia is happening in NZ has sparked outraged denials from medical professionals. But Key, of course, is not backing down. Once he’s opened his mouth he knows that he knows best.

  2. Advice to Labour: Fair, inclusive, positive

    Written By:  Anthony R0bins -  Date published: 10:09 am, August 18th, 2012 -  69 comments
    Categories: activism, Deep stuff, labour, vision
    Tags:

    Hey Labour – here’s three words for you. Fair, inclusive, positive. You’ll win the next election, and the two after that.

  3. Collins’ Bennett problem

    Written By:  James Henderson -  Date published: 12:13 pm, August 16th, 2012 -  22 comments
    Categories: Judith Collins, law
    Tags: , ,

    I look forward to Trevor Mallard and Andrew Little calling Paula Bennett as a witness in their defamation suit with Judith Collins. Bennett openly admits doing what Collins has sued Mallard and Little for accusing her of doing: using ministerial powers to leak the private details of a political opponent. Bennett even says she’ll do it again. She obviously doesn’t see doing it as hurting her reputation.

  4. Frankly Speaking: “John Banks: condition deteriorating”

    Written By:  Guest post -  Date published: 3:05 pm, August 15th, 2012 -  18 comments
    Categories: act, conservative party, dpf, election 2014, electoral commission, electoral systems, greens, john banks, mana, maori party, MMP, national, nz first, political parties, Politics, united future
    Tags:

    Frank Macskasy over at Frankly Speaking writes some very long posts that are often full of interesting information. This one does a good analysis of the recommendations from the Electoral Commission and various party positions on it. On the way through he has a good swipe at John Banks, who it would be safe to say, he considers to be political cabbage.

  5. Interesting week

    Written By:  Anthony R0bins -  Date published: 12:46 pm, August 12th, 2012 -  163 comments
    Categories: david shearer, john key, leadership
    Tags:

    It has been an interesting week for the leaders of the two main parties – one I think that they would both rather forget.

  6. Labour, WTF? – a collection of posts

    Written By:  notices and features -  Date published: 9:18 am, August 9th, 2012 -  101 comments
    Categories: labour
    Tags:

    We’ve received a set of guest posts arising from the Stab In the Back comments that Duncan Garner reported on Tuesday and Su’a William Sio. We’ll compile the best here. As always, we exercise judgement in not publishing truly nutty stuff but there’s no editorial line, no endorsement of guest posts we publish – they just have to pass the test of being informative, lucid, and left.

  7. Education and poverty

    Written By:  Anthony R0bins -  Date published: 11:32 am, August 5th, 2012 -  45 comments
    Categories: class war, education, poverty
    Tags: , ,

    No one can fix the tail of educational underachievement without fixing poverty.

  8. The luxury of an ethical opposition

    Written By:  Anthony R0bins -  Date published: 11:05 am, August 2nd, 2012 -  38 comments
    Categories: Maori Issues, national, Privatisation, water
    Tags: , , , ,

    Although Key’s privatisation programme has hit plenty of problems with Maori water rights, his job is made a whole lot easier by the luxury of an ethical main opposition party.

  9. The Political Scientist: Underneath the ‘underclass’

    Written By:  notices and features -  Date published: 1:13 pm, July 31st, 2012 -  7 comments
    Categories: class war, Deep stuff, poverty
    Tags: ,

    Many of those who participate in the comments here at The Standard also run their own excellent blogs. We regularly feature No Right Turn and Imperator Fish Today we’re reposting (with permission) pieces from two other blogs that attracted some attention in Open mike recently. Here’s the second one, from The Political Scientist…

  10. Gay marriage

    Written By:  Anthony R0bins -  Date published: 9:17 am, July 28th, 2012 -  181 comments
    Categories: gay rights, human rights
    Tags: ,

    What possible reason is there to deny a couple marriage? With luck the only dissenting voices will be isolated extremists like Colin Craig.

  11. Rorts

    Written By:  Anthony R0bins -  Date published: 2:14 pm, July 23rd, 2012 -  59 comments
    Categories: capitalism, class war, Ethics, welfare
    Tags: , ,

    One law for the rich, another for the poor.

  12. Sunday Reading

    Written By:  Bunji -  Date published: 9:14 am, July 22nd, 2012 -  6 comments
    Categories: equality, International, interweb, sport
    Tags: , , ,

    My regular Sunday piece of interesting, longer, deeper stories I found during the week. It’s also a chance for you to share what you found this week too. Those stimulating links you wanted to share, but just didn’t fit in anywhere (no linkwhoring).  This week: The Olympics, some interesting science on inequality and performance pay, and what does history look like when it’s not the propaganda of the victor?

  13. End game in Syria?

    Written By:  Michael Valley -  Date published: 10:44 am, July 20th, 2012 -  190 comments
    Categories: war
    Tags:

    In the dictatorship game, you know that you’re in trouble when you’re shelling your own capital. That’s what Syria’s Assad has been reduced to as the rebellion rolls on. Initially, it appeared the fighting in Damascus could have been a repeat of Homs – drawing the rebels into a head to head fight and giving them a pasting. But, now, it looks different.

  14. ImperatorFish: Treasury Report To Prime Minister On Meteorite Activities

    Written By:  notices and features -  Date published: 2:41 pm, July 18th, 2012 -  4 comments
    Categories: treasury
    Tags:

    This report has been prepared for the purposes of verifying the Prime Minister’s statement on Tuesday 17 July 2012 that it was unlikely a meteorite would hit the earth that afternoon. Having comprehensively reviewed a number of economics journals that we agree with, we can find no evidence that a meteorite struck the Earth on the afternoon of Tuesday 17 July 2012.

  15. Nats blow $216m (so far) planning unneeded roads that won’t be built

    Written By:  James Henderson -  Date published: 10:05 am, July 16th, 2012 -  31 comments
    Categories: transport
    Tags: ,

    RNZ is reporting that National has spent $216m just on the investigation and design stage of its Roads of National Significance so far (and that’s only 5 of the 7 projects). Most of it on outside contractors Look, I get this kind of shit can be surprisingly expensive. But nearly quarter of a billion dollars just for investigation and design? With these projects involving a 260km of highways that’s nearly a million dollars per kilometre, a thousand dollars per metre, just on planning!

  16. Buyer beware

    Written By:  James Henderson -  Date published: 7:26 am, July 11th, 2012 -  70 comments
    Categories: energy, Maori Issues, privatisation, water
    Tags:

    Are you keen to buy shares in Mighty River Power with a dividend return of 4% pre-tax? You can beat that in the bank, and paying off debt is a far better use of money. But say you’re still keen. What about the threat of Mighty River losing water rights or having to pay for them – will you buy in with that unresolved? Only nutters would take Key’s offer with that up in the air.

  17. Darkhorse: The Reserve Bank Act; Or why we are broke

    Written By:  notices and features -  Date published: 9:20 am, July 9th, 2012 -  47 comments
    Categories: monetary policy
    Tags:

    Darkhorse writes amazingly insightful economic pieces on his ‘How Daft’ blog (the title gives you a clue as to what he thinks of the current state of affairs). The neoliberal experiment has been an abject failure by any rational measure. And there are alternatives. Darkhorse has given us permission to syndicate his posts, the originals are here.

  18. Positive Money & the Wizard of Oz

    Written By:  Bunji -  Date published: 1:58 pm, July 7th, 2012 -  13 comments
    Categories: monetary policy
    Tags: , , ,

    In our current system, we give men like Bob Diamond the immense power to create money. Need it be so? The Positive Money movement wishes to change that, and give that power back to Government. The first Labour Government used the power to create a better NZ – we could do that again.

  19. Choices, choices: waste at Pukekohe

    Written By:  James Henderson -  Date published: 7:05 am, July 6th, 2012 -  56 comments
    Categories: capitalism, sport
    Tags:

    You know how the Government is so skint, and absolutely much get back into surplus by 2014/15, that it has cut education at every level, cut conservation, cut home insulation, cut Kiwisaver, cut Working for Families .. etc etc. They even created a new super-ministry to cut costs. And what’s the first action of Mobie Dick? $2.2 million sunk into Aussie V8s.

  20. Sunday Reading

    Written By:  Bunji -  Date published: 10:31 am, July 1st, 2012 -  1 comment
    Categories: capitalism, interweb
    Tags: ,

    I’m going to try and put up a piece each Sunday of interesting, longer, deeper stories I found during the week. It’s also a chance for you to share what you found this week too. Those stimulating links you wanted to share, but just didn’t fit in anywhere (no linkwhoring).  This week: Feminism, capitalism & resource depletion.

  21. Bye bye Local Government 2

    Written By:  Ben Clark -  Date published: 10:32 am, June 26th, 2012 -  12 comments
    Categories: accountability, local government, Privatisation
    Tags:

    National’s Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill will do significant damage to local democracy as they seek to restrict councils to “core” services, put in fiscal constraints, put power into fewer hands and override local concerns with amalgamations. Overall the legislation is shoddy.  The Regulatory Impact Statement on the Government’s proposals from the Department of […]

  22. What’s in the TPPA?

    Written By:  Anthony R0bins -  Date published: 12:15 pm, June 24th, 2012 -  44 comments
    Categories: accountability, capitalism, democracy under attack, economy, International, trade
    Tags: , , , ,

    While we the public distract ourselves with trivia like car crushing, and focus on other important matters like asset sales, the TPPA which is quietly unfolding in the background is actually the most important ongoing political issue.  It has potentially disastrous implications for our sovereignty and our future.

  23. ImperatorFish: Teacher Development and Smaller Class Sizes: We Can Have Both

    Written By:  notices and features -  Date published: 2:19 pm, June 18th, 2012 -  60 comments
    Categories: education, newspapers, schools, tertiary education
    Tags: ,

    Scott thoroughly fisks libertarian Damien Grant’s Herald on Sunday Column. And if teacher development is so important (as indeed it is) why have National cut it massively since they came to power, and are now dropping their budget plans to expand it. Money could be found from those tax cuts if they wanted…

  24. Sunday Reading

    Written By:  Bunji -  Date published: 10:17 am, June 17th, 2012 -  2 comments
    Categories: International, interweb, Media, uk politics
    Tags: , ,

    I’m going to try and put up a piece each Sunday of interesting, longer, deeper stories I found during the week. It’s also a chance for you to share what you found this week too. Those stimulating links you wanted to share, but just didn’t fit in anywhere (no linkwhoring). This week is quite an international edition: the situation in Tonga, China & the UK…

  25. How much will you pay for a assets ‘loyalty scheme’?

    Written By:  Eddie -  Date published: 8:45 am, June 15th, 2012 -  17 comments
    Categories: class war, privatisation
    Tags:

    Most Kiwis won’t be able to afford to pay to buy what we already own when National sells our assets. When they sold Contact, only 5% of us got shares. You know who will buy the shares. Not your working families. Not Key’s new army of the unemployed. It’ll be the people who won big from National’s tax cuts. Now, to add insult to injury, Key is looking at making you and me pay a bonus to these people.

  26. Cunliffe attacks Nats’ crony capitalism

    Written By:  James Henderson -  Date published: 12:25 pm, June 14th, 2012 -  79 comments
    Categories: capitalism, david cunliffe, national
    Tags:

    David Cunliffe went to the lion’s den yesterday with a speech telling a meeting of Kensington Swan’s receivership and liquidation lawyers that there would be a lot less work for them under Labour but saying “the Labour Party is not your enemy. Your enemy is inefficiency, corruption, and the wastage of both public and private wealth. Your enemy is a cosy corruption that helps a few friends of the government get very rich at the expense of the community.”

  27. Nats try and fail to inoculate Key from Budget mess

    Written By:  Eddie -  Date published: 11:10 am, June 10th, 2012 -  64 comments
    Categories: education, Hekia parata, john key, national
    Tags:

    The Prime Minister chairs Cabinet, which signs the Budget off policy by policy. A competent Prime Minister would be intimately familiar with the major policy changes. So, it was very interesting to see Audrey Young’s ‘insider’ piece on the education debacle yesterday. Chock full of tidbits supplied by Murray McCully. All the blame sleeted home to Bill English and Hekia Parata. Crucially, John Key barely mentioned.

  28. Lifestyle “choices”

    Written By:  Bunji -  Date published: 3:58 pm, June 6th, 2012 -  192 comments
    Categories: benefits, families
    Tags: ,

    Last year John Key said that the poor and those on benefits had made lifestyle choices.  If they budgeted properly, they’d be fine. Things aren’t fine, and they’re getting worse, which is why a 40-yr-old DPB Mum in Christchurch – facing an $80/week rent increase, because Key hasn’t done anything about Christchurch’s housing shortage – has had to resort to the lifestyle “choice” of prostitution.

  29. Protest in the smartphone age

    Written By:  Michael Valley -  Date published: 1:34 pm, June 2nd, 2012 -  31 comments
    Categories: activism, class war, education, internet, war
    Tags:

    There’s a lot of analogy between how a guerrilla movement succeeds against a superpower or a state in the era of mass communication and how protest movements can do the same. Unable to win head-on, losing becomes winning as long as the cameras are rolling. It’s about being seen as having a legitimate cause and just as importantly being seen as the victims of disproportionate force and abuse of power.

  30. Lessons from Greece

    Written By:  rocky -  Date published: 4:21 pm, June 1st, 2012 -  229 comments
    Categories: activism, police
    Tags:

    Update 6.45pm: One of lawyers acting for those arrested has just been told by police that everyone arrested will be released without charge in the next couple of hours. That excludes 4 people who have refused to cooperate, presumably by refusing to give their details to police.

    Update 9:09pm: John Darroch’s photos from today.

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