Search Results

  1. Newswipe

    Written By:  the sprout -  Date published: 8:00 am, February 20th, 2010 -  14 comments
    Categories: Media, political education
    Tags: ,

    If you’re not familiar with the manifold reasons why the news you get from corporate media is crap, here’s Charlie Brooker’s Newswipe. It’s funny, incisive and merciless.

    It’s also a very damning indictment of the modern Fourth Estate that explodes the myths around corporations acting as watchdogs on behalf of citizens against powerful anti-democratic interests.

  2. A rare opportunity

    Written By:  lprent -  Date published: 6:26 pm, February 19th, 2010 -  6 comments
    Categories: business
    Tags: ,

    It is not often that I compliment the authors that write for No Minister. However I have to compliment SageNZ for his prescient post about Huljich Wealth Management – “Huljich funds and stock pumping”.. I noticed the post while I was scanning their site with my usual level of mild distaste (it usually feels like […]

  3. Keynes and Hayek rap

    Written By:  all_your_base -  Date published: 3:52 pm, February 19th, 2010 -  20 comments
    Categories: humour, Media, youtube
    Tags: , ,

    In Fear the Boom and Bust, John Maynard Keynes and F. A. Hayek, two of the great economists of the 20th century go out for a night on the town and sing about why there’s a “boom and bust” cycle in modern economies and good reason to fear it.

  4. Pansy Wong bids for worst minister award

    Written By:  Marty G -  Date published: 11:22 am, February 19th, 2010 -  11 comments
    Categories: sexism, wages
    Tags: , , , , , , , ,

    When you’ve got a Finance Minister who can’t get stats right, a Social Welfare Minister who can’t define her flagship policy, and an Education Minister who can’t explain her flagship policy, it’s easy for an incompetent Women’s Affairs Minister to slip through.

  5. Key laughs off minimum wage earners

    Written By:  IrishBill -  Date published: 10:43 am, February 19th, 2010 -  15 comments
    Categories: john key, minimum wage, workers' rights
    Tags: , , ,

    John Key’s recent stint at the Big Gay Out wasn’t all target marketing and niche political branding. He also had a run in with living-wage campaigners who took him to task for his government’s poor response to minimum wage earners and asked if he could live on the minimum wage.

  6. Phil Goff trips up Sloppy Key

    Written By:  notices and features -  Date published: 9:19 am, February 19th, 2010 -  8 comments
    Categories: john key, Parliament, phil goff, youtube
    Tags:

    Click through to see Phil Goff take John Key down a peg. Sloppy home insulation. Sloppy, broken cycleway promises. Sloppy, unfilfulled Youth Guarantee. Sloppy & uncaring on unemployment. Sloppy abuse of the people of McGehan Close. A sloppy, do nothing PM.

  7. Nats substitute tax cuts for economic plan

    Written By:  Eddie -  Date published: 12:08 am, February 19th, 2010 -  21 comments
    Categories: Economy, gst, tax
    Tags: ,

    An interesting piece from One News. Bill English gave another underwhelming speech on National’s economic plan, which basically boiled down to ‘tax cuts!’. A young businesswoman in the audience told English she wanted a real plan. His response: ‘tax cuts’. But he could give no proof his tax cuts would improve the economy.

  8. Our innumerate finance minister & friends

    Written By:  Marty G -  Date published: 6:05 pm, February 16th, 2010 -  20 comments
    Categories: bill english, Economy, education, john banks
    Tags: , ,

    Bill English claimed in the House today that the economy only grew by 0.9% a year in Labour’s last three years in power. Unfortunately for him the problem was his maths, not Labour’s economic policy. English can’t get simple percentages right, can we trust him with the nation’s finances?

  9. The Economist – looking at risk

    Written By:  lprent -  Date published: 1:42 pm, February 14th, 2010 -  1 comment
    Categories: Economy
    Tags:

    The Economist has been looking at the failures in the financial markets at assessing risk. They have quite a lot of material available. But here are some audio visuals that are of interest.

    Note: These clips are all in iFrames which may not display/play where there are strong web controls.

  10. Logorama

    Written By:  all_your_base -  Date published: 2:00 pm, February 12th, 2010 -  10 comments
    Categories: film, Media
    Tags:

    Update: Link’s dead but I found this trailer on youtube

  11. No help for the invisible

    Written By:  Marty G -  Date published: 12:10 pm, February 12th, 2010 -  5 comments
    Categories: jobs, unemployment
    Tags:

    Relating to what I wrote yesterday about the Right and much of the media being largely blind to the existence of those of us on low and middle incomes, here’s an interesting piece from the New York Times: The folks in the upper-income group are not suffering much, if at all, from the profound reversals […]

  12. Nats eyeing up youth minimum wage?

    Written By:  Eddie -  Date published: 4:29 pm, February 11th, 2010 -  38 comments
    Categories: national/act government, roger douglas, wages, workers' rights
    Tags: , , ,

    Over the last month or so National’s pollster David Farrar has been running a series of posts desperately trying to pin the spike in youth unemployment under National to Labour’s decision to abolish youth rates. I’d been wondering why the obsession with youth rates until I saw this exchange between Roger Douglas and Kate Wilkinson […]

  13. Nats need to follow Labour’s lead on GST

    Written By:  Marty G -  Date published: 12:43 pm, February 11th, 2010 -  9 comments
    Categories: labour, tax
    Tags:

    “Last GST hike had little impact, say tax experts” – Herald The article is about inflation but it is also true of growth. There is no evidence that increasing GST from 10% to 12.5% and cutting income taxes boosted growth. In fact, the country entered a long period of stagnation and recession. And why would […]

  14. Liar, liar, pants on fire

    Written By:  Eddie -  Date published: 1:09 pm, February 10th, 2010 -  75 comments
    Categories: election 2008, john key
    Tags:

    Apparently promises made before the election don’t count. GST was different then anyway.

  15. Ideology trumps science for the Right

    Written By:  Marty G -  Date published: 9:38 am, February 9th, 2010 -  63 comments
    Categories: capitalism, climate change, minimum wage, science
    Tags:

    Consider these results from opinion surveys of experts different areas of research, I won’t tell you the areas of research just yet: In one, 97% of actively publishing experts agree with a statement (I’ll give you the statement below) concerning their field. In the other field, 46.5% of experts fully agreed with the statement, 27.9% agreed […]

  16. Corporation to run for US Congress

    Written By:  all_your_base -  Date published: 12:36 pm, February 5th, 2010 -  8 comments
    Categories: humour, International, us politics
    Tags:

    Following the recent Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission to allow unlimited corporate funding of federal campaigns, Murray Hill Inc. today announced it was filing to run for U.S. Congress. Read the whole press release. Here’s their first campaign ad:

  17. That’s gotta hurt

    Written By:  notices and features -  Date published: 9:27 am, February 5th, 2010 -  7 comments
    Categories: ACC, Economy, sport
    Tags:

    The CTU is launching its “that’s gotta hurt” campaign against government cuts to ACC on the big screens at the Sevens today and the result is not what you’d expect from the normally rather earnest organisation. S

  18. Do little still do nothing

    Written By:  Eddie -  Date published: 10:27 am, February 3rd, 2010 -  32 comments
    Categories: education
    Tags:

    Welcome back, John Armstrong. In your piece today you wrote about John Key’s emergency efforts to cover for Anne Tolley’s disasterious handling of national standards: “It is effectively the first of what is likely to be a series of initiatives this year to bury the overstated claims that he has been a “do little” prime […]

  19. Police recruitment campaign steps up a gear

    Written By:  all_your_base -  Date published: 10:15 am, February 1st, 2010 -  18 comments
    Categories: police, youtube
    Tags: , ,

    It was probably well intentioned – and to be fair we don’t know the full facts yet – but on the face of it putting kids in police cars at a school fair then doing donuts and figure eights around the field looks like pretty poor judgement. On the other hand, I’m just a little […]

  20. The Great Giveaway

    Written By:  RedLogix -  Date published: 11:23 am, January 31st, 2010 -  83 comments
    Categories: uncategorized
    Tags:

    From where I’m sitting the Left will never be back in power, not because they will never win elections, but because the power game is over. The nation state as we know it is being slowly dismembered before our eyes, the leviathan of globalisation has one flank firmly grasped, while rapidly discohering communities of self-interest […]

  21. Charlie Brooker’s school of news production

    Written By:  all_your_base -  Date published: 12:13 pm, January 30th, 2010 -  5 comments
    Categories: Media
    Tags: , ,

    His formula appears to have been faithfully replicated here. Our only significant divergence is the recent inclusion of a live cross to the news site webmaster who gleefully fills us in on ‘what’s hot’ on their site right now – often a heady mix of celebrity gossip, violence, stupidity, tragedy and cuteness.

  22. Thanks Jeanette

    Written By:  r0b -  Date published: 8:45 am, January 29th, 2010 -  14 comments
    Categories: greens
    Tags:

    So Jeanette Fitzsimons is, as expected, resigning from Parliament. After 13 years her last day will be February 11th. Parliament will miss her energy, her honesty, her sanity, and her clear strong voice on Green issues. It is a huge loss, but no one deserves a long and happy retirement more than Jeanette. Frogblog has […]

  23. Te-henua-e-noho. There once was an island.

    Written By:  lprent -  Date published: 12:15 pm, January 27th, 2010 -  29 comments
    Categories: climate change, film
    Tags:

    Today my partner Lyn Collie will be at the world premiere at Festival International du Film Documentaire Oceanien in Tahiti of the documentary that she has been producing part-time all the time I’ve known her. My congratulations to both her, the director Briar March, and the many other people who have worked on this documentary since they started working on it in 2006 for getting it out and being seen.

  24. Campbell and Hooton on do nothing Key

    Written By:  Marty G -  Date published: 9:19 am, January 26th, 2010 -  23 comments
    Categories: john key, national/act government, unemployment
    Tags:

    I can’t work out how to embed audio alone, so here’s a YouTube of Andrew Campbell and Matthew Hooton on the Key Government. Both agree that this government has done little and doesn’t appear to have a plan. Campbell sums up Key’s record: “The NDU yesterday issued a challenge to the Government to do a […]

  25. 33% nonsense

    Written By:  Marty G -  Date published: 9:00 am, January 22nd, 2010 -  13 comments
    Categories: dpf, tax
    Tags:

    David Farrar has one of his dodgy maths posts, where he argues that getting rid of the 33% rate is necessary because typical New Zealanders are paying it: “You see [not] only should people not be paying a 38% rate, most FT workers shouldn’t even be paying the 33% rate.” Quite why 33% is such a […]

  26. The rise and fall of TV journalism

    Written By:  IrishBill -  Date published: 6:59 pm, January 19th, 2010 -  11 comments
    Categories: Media
    Tags:

    Not sure I agree with it all but the rise and fall of the TV journalist is an interesting micro-documentary:

  27. Kiwis back fairer minimum wage

    Written By:  Eddie -  Date published: 11:35 am, January 18th, 2010 -  132 comments
    Categories: employment, minimum wage, workers' rights
    Tags:

    Traditionally, the minimum wage was set at around 60-67% of the average wage. During the Muldoon era and the 1990s, National let the minimum wage stagnate, with inflation eating away at its value. It declined to as low as 34% of the average wage under Muldoon and 41% under Bolger. Both the 4th and 5th Labour […]

  28. Coddington: exposing secret agendas = bad, attacking sex victims = meh

    Written By:  Eddie -  Date published: 3:17 pm, January 17th, 2010 -  29 comments
    Categories: activism, spin
    Tags: ,

    Deborah Coddington, former ACT MP and author of the filthy racist article “Asian Angst: Is it time to send some back?” that killed North & South’s reputation, waffles on about ‘snitches’ in her Herald on Sunday article. Coddington says snitching – informing the public or the authorities when someone is doing something bad or illegal in secret […]

  29. Bigot gets a bashing

    Written By:  Zetetic -  Date published: 10:39 am, January 17th, 2010 -  70 comments
    Categories: Media, scoundrels
    Tags:

    MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow covers the outragous comments by rightwing Christian fundamentalist Pat Robertson on the Haitian earthquake. Great to see this bigot confronted. Need more Maddows in journalism. [First time I’ve embedded from MSNBC. It’s awesome. They let you clip their video just for the parts you want. Fantastic innovation.]

  30. Key on holiday

    Written By:  IrishBill -  Date published: 1:59 pm, January 16th, 2010 -  8 comments
    Categories: workers' rights
    Tags:

    After all of the kerfuffle about Key’s long holidays I figure there’s not much for me to say about it but it’s worth remembering what his plans for the fourth week of annual leave were just before it came into effect: It’s not the man’s unusually long time off the job that irks me so […]

  31. Bhatnagar to knock out Hide?

    Written By:  Sam Cash -  Date published: 12:46 pm, January 16th, 2010 -  22 comments
    Categories: auckland supercity, C&R, local body elections, supercity
    Tags: , , ,

    There is a story in today’s Herald noting that current C&R Hobson councillor Aaron Bhatnagar is not going to stand for the new super-council. He is taking on the running of Banks’ faltering mayoral campaign and has been offered a job in the new mayoral office should they turn around Len Brown’s momentum. But the […]

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