Search Results

  1. Key’s mining plan a pay-back for Crosby/Textor?

    Written By:  Eddie -  Date published: 12:02 am, March 24th, 2010 -  43 comments
    Categories: crosby textor, john key, Politics
    Tags:

    John Key is pushing ahead with his mining plan despite the backlash and the poor economics for NZ. Why?
    Is it simply pay-back time for Key’s spin doctors in Crosby/Textor whose clients have significant mining interests? Either way Key must unveil the shroud of secrecy that surrounds his relationship with the company.

  2. Government loses control of House

    Written By:  Eddie -  Date published: 3:29 pm, March 23rd, 2010 -  51 comments
    Categories: Parliament, Politics
    Tags: ,

    At the end of question time today, Trevor Mallard asked for leave to have a debate without notice congratulating Joyce on getting his degree conferred 21 years after leaving uni. To everyone’s surprise, Gerry Brownlee failed to object. Brownlee is so mad [Update: video added].

  3. Mission accomplished

    Written By:  IrishBill -  Date published: 3:10 pm, March 23rd, 2010 -  5 comments
    Categories: workers' rights
    Tags: ,

    According to the NZIER Kiwi’s wages are set to drop.

    But given the government’s return to a old-fashioned, old-boys club brand of tory we shouldn’t be surprised.

  4. Key’s mining plan worse than Bush’s

    Written By:  Michael Foxglove -  Date published: 6:14 am, March 23rd, 2010 -  51 comments
    Categories: Conservation, Environment, Mining
    Tags: , ,

    John Key’s mining plan released yesterday is true madness. It sacrifices New Zealand’s natural heritage to make a buck for a few multi-national mining companies. The full list of changes make it clear: Key is mounting an attack on our conservation areas on a scale that even George W Bush couldn’t stomach.

  5. Gullible media

    Written By:  lprent -  Date published: 3:30 pm, March 20th, 2010 -  7 comments
    Categories: Media
    Tags:

    Last year a new TV show HungryBeast ran a check on how gullible the news media were. They generated a bogus institute, website, and a rather dodgy press release about a survey on how gullible different cities in aussie are. At least our media wouldn’t be taken in like the aussies.. right… please tell me that they aren’t that gullible?

  6. Hysteria in the government over mining

    Written By:  lprent -  Date published: 11:29 am, March 20th, 2010 -  3 comments
    Categories: john key, Mining, national/act government
    Tags: , ,

    The Herald has a editorial lambasting John Key about claiming this week that they were ‘hysterical’ writing about the plans to mine the conservation lands, and that there were no such plans. Later in the week, the government launched a probe to find out who leaked cabinet documents about mining the conservation lands. The irony of the two actions appears to have escaped John Key who appears more clueless than ever.

  7. Sadistics office backs National Standards

    Written By:  Demeter -  Date published: 3:55 pm, March 19th, 2010 -  19 comments
    Categories: education, Satire, youtube
    Tags: , ,

    New instalment from John Key impersonater “Plumedekiwi”, in which the PM gets his linguistic knickers in a twist over national standards….
    If you haven’t seen the other vids by Plumedekiwi, check him out here

  8. Nats favour Turia, screw Sharples

    Written By:  Marty G -  Date published: 10:42 am, March 19th, 2010 -  25 comments
    Categories: maori party
    Tags: , ,

    Seats on the supercity, 3 strikes, tertiary cuts, national standards, RWC TV, ETS, foreshore and seabed (soon enough). The list of issues that the Maori Party has been shafted by National on keeps growing. Yet Tariana Turia’s ill-defined ‘Whanua Ora’ policy, which looks like nothing so much as privisation by stealth, gets carte blanche. What’s going on here?

  9. Nats all at sea on whaling

    Written By:  Eddie -  Date published: 9:18 pm, March 18th, 2010 -  14 comments
    Categories: Conservation, john key, slippery
    Tags: , ,

    In Kaikoura, John Key said commercial whaling “might be acceptable if it was acceptable to others”. You gotta love the leadership there. But you’ve also got to question what kind of two-faced game the Nats are playing because in the House, Murray McCully said precisely the opposite – that the Government opposes commercial whaling.

  10. Classic Key clanger

    Written By:  Demeter -  Date published: 3:43 pm, March 18th, 2010 -  6 comments
    Categories: Conservation
    Tags: , ,

    In this article, in which a Kaikoura Whale Watch spokesman states the bloody obvious (that if New Zealand turns pro-whaling his industry will suffer), our harpoon-wielding Prime Minister displays his usual lemming tendancies, saying commercial whaling “might be acceptable if it was acceptable to others‘. Not only is this not really English, it’s also pathetic. […]

  11. Rumblings in Nats’ base

    Written By:  Eddie -  Date published: 10:30 am, March 18th, 2010 -  20 comments
    Categories: honeymoon, john key, national/act government, spin
    Tags:

    There’s a danger in being a government that does nothing except pay of its rich mates, and that’s losing faith with the conservative base. Garth George is the slightly mad, always irritable voice of this demographic, so it’s worth watching as his initial love for John Key wears off to be replaced by despair (and rising anger) at Key’s failure to deliver the brighter future he promised.

  12. ‘Oh, oh’: sound of a minister floundering

    Written By:  Marty G -  Date published: 8:23 am, March 18th, 2010 -  30 comments
    Categories: education
    Tags: , , ,

    Which minister will be next to go? Rodney Hide or Anne Tolley? If competence was a condition of keeping their job, both would be long gone. But doing a good minister has never been a job requirement in John Key’s government. It comes down to which of them makes a spectacular mistake so serious that […]

  13. Glenn Beck’s theatre of the absurd

    Written By:  Eddie -  Date published: 4:53 pm, March 12th, 2010 -  35 comments
    Categories: International, Media
    Tags: , ,

    Check out this video of Fox News talk host Glenn Beck. It’s a compilation of his week-long series on how “America is burning to the ground”.

    I think he’s trying to argue that Barack Obama is plotting some sort of communist-inspired coup, but it’s hard to know what he’s on about between his confused rants about “THE MACHINE” and the paranoid blackboard scrawlings.

  14. Save Radio NZ dethrones Key

    Written By:  Marty G -  Date published: 9:38 am, March 12th, 2010 -  14 comments
    Categories: activism, humour, interweb, youtube
    Tags: , , , ,

    Who would have thought that a Facebook group advocating to keep Radio NZ funded and commercial-free would overtake Prime Minister John Key’s fan group for number of members? Well, yesterday at 9.30, just over three weeks since it was founded, the Save Radio New Zealand group reached 18,973 members, passing Key’s 18,972. That gives a […]

  15. Nats resort to plants to help Tolley

    Written By:  Guest post -  Date published: 11:54 pm, March 11th, 2010 -  57 comments
    Categories: education, scoundrels, spin
    Tags:

    Let’s face facts. Anne Tolley is a dangerous minister. She is undermining the education system at every turn and the damage will last lifetime. But is National doing the responsible thing and removing her from the portfolio? No. In fact, a guest poster reports they’re so desperate to help her out that they’ve got plants in her audiences to ask patsy questions.

  16. The end of the line

    Written By:  Marty G -  Date published: 10:00 am, March 8th, 2010 -  3 comments
    Categories: Conservation, Environment
    Tags:

    This month there are a series of showings of The End of the Line around New Zealand. This acclaimed documentary looks at how overfishing is destroying fish populations and ultimately endangering the industries and cultures that depend on them. This is a problem we can solve relatively simply.

  17. Armstrong and class interest

    Written By:  Marty G -  Date published: 10:56 am, March 6th, 2010 -  28 comments
    Categories: class war, gst, poverty, tax
    Tags:

    The poor don’t need tax cuts for the top 12% to to inspire them to want to get out of poverty. Poverty is inspiration enough. But thepoor cannot all become rich. To function capitalism needs poverty. There’s got to be lots of people doing the shitty, dangerous, hard jobs for cheap. And the wealth will always flow to the elite few who own capital or defend their interests.

  18. Obey the moderator

    Written By:  lprent -  Date published: 4:09 pm, March 4th, 2010 -  6 comments
    Categories: admin
    Tags:

    This is the shortened and lyrical version of the policy.

  19. Where are Hide & Key on Garrett comments?

    Written By:  Marty G -  Date published: 2:28 pm, March 4th, 2010 -  99 comments
    Categories: act, crime, maori party, national, rodney hide
    Tags:

    Colin Espiner reports that Rodney Hide has gone into his shell as outrage over David Garrett’s appalling sterilisation comments builds. Since Irish broke the story of Garrett’s comments yesterday, it has spread like wildfire through the blogosphere and the msm. And nowhere will you find a reaction from anyone in ACT or from their coalition partners.

  20. Stupid greedy voters – Brash

    Written By:  IrishBill -  Date published: 8:07 am, March 1st, 2010 -  50 comments
    Categories: class war
    Tags: ,

    With true tory arrogance at the ACT conference this weekend, Don Brash has described New Zealand voters as venal and stupid.
    Apparently New Zealand’s reluctance to destroy what is left of their society by implementing Brash’s discredited crazy old man economic voodoo is a sign of their stupidity.
    Apparently nobody in ACT disagreed with him. Go figure.

  21. Free Market Failure

    Written By:  RedLogix -  Date published: 9:38 am, February 27th, 2010 -  56 comments
    Categories: business, capitalism, housing
    Tags:

    It’s time for the National Party to issue an abject apology to the nation… for the 1992 Building Regulations that directly led to the astounding public crisis we now face. Building and Construction Minister Maurice Williamson told the Weekend Herald the official $11 billion figure – which experts believe is half the true cost – […]

  22. Heatley story full of holes

    Written By:  Marty G -  Date published: 7:10 am, February 26th, 2010 -  84 comments
    Categories: national/act government, parliamentary spending, spin
    Tags: ,

    Ministers don’t resign for describing a trivial expense in a perfectly legitimate way. I’m thinking Phil Heatley really had a crisis of conscience over the credit card ‘misuse’ and wanted to resign but that would have put Gerry Brownlee in the gun too. So they invented the receipt excuse. What’s your theory?

  23. Save Radio NZ protest today

    Written By:  notices and features -  Date published: 3:02 pm, February 24th, 2010 -  19 comments
    Categories: activism, Media
    Tags: , ,

    The Save Radio New Zealand group on Facebook now has 13,600 members and today (the 25th) there will be an event at Parliament between 1 and 2. It won’t be your typical rowdy protest, instead the idea is to bring along your radio and something to eat and drink, and have a mass picnic on the lawn.

  24. Why not a Maori minimum wage too?

    Written By:  Zetetic -  Date published: 12:59 pm, February 24th, 2010 -  58 comments
    Categories: act, Satire, unemployment, wages, workers' rights
    Tags:

    The faulty logic behind Roger Douglas’ bill to cut the wages of young workers could just as easily be applied to any number of groups hit hard by the recession – Maori, students, men, dropouts, singles, people in Northland. What if we were to change a couple of key words in his bill?

  25. Trev nails Tolley, other Lab MPs fail

    Written By:  Marty G -  Date published: 11:00 am, February 24th, 2010 -  27 comments
    Categories: Economy, education, john key, Parliament, phil goff, tax
    Tags: , , , ,

    Success for Opposition frontbenchers largely consists of embarrassing their opposite number by forcing them to answer questions they would rather not. Labour showed both how to do that and how not to do it in the House yesterday.

  26. Nature worth more than minerals

    Written By:  notices and features -  Date published: 1:00 pm, February 23rd, 2010 -  4 comments
    Categories: Conservation, Media, Mining
    Tags:

    Linley Boniface: “To suggest that the world’s last few remaining areas of wilderness have no intrinsic worth, and should be judged only in terms of their ability to generate business opportunities, is a notion that is both repellent and outdated.”

  27. Dimming down night classes

    Written By:  all_your_base -  Date published: 10:00 am, February 23rd, 2010 -  4 comments
    Categories: education, Social issues
    Tags: , , ,

    The Post Primary Teachers’ Association have just launched a YouTube video protesting National’s hugely unpopular cuts to night classes.

    Click through to check it out.

  28. Abbott laughingstock for saying Aussie should copy Key

    Written By:  Marty G -  Date published: 8:42 pm, February 21st, 2010 -  27 comments
    Categories: australian politics, Economy
    Tags: ,

    The new Aussie Liberal leader, Tony Abbott, has been widely derided for saying Australia should ape National’s economic policies. “Abbott’s remark came the day that Australia’s unemployment rate fell from 5.5 to 5.3 per cent. The NZ rate? It’s 7.3 per cent.” We should copy their stimulus policy, not the other way round.

  29. TEDTalks 2010: Bill Gates on energy and climate change

    Written By:  notices and features -  Date published: 12:07 pm, February 21st, 2010 -  20 comments
    Categories: climate change, energy
    Tags: ,

    At TED2010, Bill Gates unveils his vision for the world’s energy future, describing the need for “miracles” to avoid planetary catastrophe and explaining why he’s backing a dramatically different type of nuclear reactor. The necessary goal? Zero carbon emissions globally by 2050.

  30. The mote and the beam

    Written By:  r0b -  Date published: 11:58 am, February 21st, 2010 -  16 comments
    Categories: climate change, Environment
    Tags: ,

    Climate change deniers spend a lot of time picking at motes – occasional errors in climate change science. Why is there so little attention to the beams – incorrect and dishonest denier claims and tactics?

  31. Watkins: govt adrift, icebergs ahead

    Written By:  Eddie -  Date published: 12:55 pm, February 20th, 2010 -  13 comments
    Categories: Media, national/act government
    Tags:

    Tracey Watkins writes that National is pissing off important constituencies and Labour’s messages are resonating. Key promised the world to everyone, he has failed to do anything for anyone except the wealthy elite. And public opinion is turning.

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