Some stuff to read

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 pm, May 25th, 2009 - 10 comments
Categories: blogs - Tags: , , , ,

A few good posts today that are worth a look if you missed them:

Chris Trotter reckons the police and the media are grossly underestimating the turnout at today’s hikoi.

If we assume lower Queen Street to be roughly a kilometre in length and about 30 metres wide we get an area of 30,000 square metres. Now, if every protester is assumed to occupy just one square metre of space as he or she moves up Queen Street that’s a maximum of 30,000 protesters, or, allowing for the odd gap, a minimum of 20,000.

Russel Norman has an excellent analysis of who’s driving the undemocratic Super City project and why in a guest post over at Public Address.

There is something awry in the state of Auckland – The Growth Machine is being constrained. That great Machine is feeling restricted. And those select few who make a whole lot of money from the Growth Machine – the property developers, the motorway builders, the corporate investors – are unhappy, very unhappy..

Colin Espiner wonders whether anyone else is feeling unnerved about rating agency Standard and Poors poring over the Budget before we’ve had a look.

The Government has admitted that English has had discussions with the ratings agencies… it also admitted that English would give a presentation to Standard and Poor’s about the content of the Budget, along with people from the Treasury.

Now, I do have a slight problem with that. Why are Treasury and English telling a London-based ratings agency what is in the Budget before we know – and before his own caucus knows?

And No Right Turn posts on the neoliberal myth that labour ‘flexibility’ (that’s code for taking rights away from workers and giving more power to employers) reduces unemployment.

In a flexible labour market, when times are tough, you can just sack people – so unemployment goes up. But where workers are protected by e.g. redundancy pay, sacking people can cost more money than would be saved, so unemployment is lower in a recession than in a flexible market.

Happy readin’.

10 comments on “Some stuff to read ”

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  1. mike 1
    25 May 2009 at 7:33 pm

    ” maximum of 30,000 protesters, or, allowing for the odd gap, a minimum of 20,000″

    Good old Trotski – just when you thought he’d retired he reminds us why he should.
    The mans cheese slid off his cracker long ago

  2. Sweetd 2
    25 May 2009 at 7:37 pm

    Oh dear..

    Message 16 on Colin Espiner blog

    “colin espiner #16 05:28 pm May 25 2009
    Brett, no-one outside of Auckland cares about the hikoi. I have yet to meet anyone in Wellington who gives a darn either. It’s not big political news at all – it’s simply good pictures, which will be all over the telly tonight. In terms of what’s more important, the Budget is far more important than a bunch of rent-a-mob protesters who are essentially arguing for anti-democratic appointments of Maori on the super-council. …”

    • Wayne 2.1
      25 May 2009 at 7:41 pm

      “Oh dear”, says Sweetd, “a centre-right political commentator isn’t a fan of the anti-supercity protests. I must inform the readers of The Standard immediately.”

      • logie97 2.1.1
        25 May 2009 at 9:18 pm

        …perhaps a bit off topic, but did anyone hear Mike Hoskins interview with PM Honest John this morning on ZB? Key said he raised the topic of European and US subsidies for agriculture during his famous 15 minute phone call with the president. Hoskin asked what his mate Obama’s response was. John appeared stumped and couldn’t come up with an answer and tried to move the interview on. It seemed that perhaps John might have been making that bit up.

  3. Kevin Welsh 3
    25 May 2009 at 9:28 pm

    Maybe he’s been getting memory advice from gc?

  4. Rex Widerstrom 4
    25 May 2009 at 9:47 pm

    Well here’s an entirely off-the-top-of-my-head answer to Espiner’s rhetorical question.

    If the figures you’re about to announce are so bad… so utterly, awfully, stomach-turningly bad… and you knew that your proposed solutions amounted to pretty much crossing your fingers and hoping… and that upon the release of said figures your credit rating would be at risk of a serious downgrade, you’d call in the raters for a bit of soothing spin so as to try and avoid such eventuality, which would have the effect of adding to a few noughts to the interest on any borrowings…

    E&OE, as they say.

    • Pascal's bookie 4.1
      25 May 2009 at 9:56 pm

      Shit, maybe he should just tell the bloody raters that if we borrow enough money, with no way at all of paying it back, then it somehow converts itself into magic voodoo beans instead of debt, and the raters will give us AAA+.

      If they are not prepared to give us solid gold ratings for no doc liar loans, then they are biased as all hell and the governement should fine their arses till it hurts.

  5. Brett Dale 5
    25 May 2009 at 11:32 pm

    30000? LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    How about some overhead shots of the crowd?

  6. Irascible 6
    26 May 2009 at 12:56 am

    Does this mean that English is doing the usual Businessman’s takeover tactic to begin selling off the family silver – threatening to call in the receivers before selling the stock short?
    This could mean that the money speculators (John Boy Key’s mates) will be flexing their claws over their calculators in the hope they can profit from the rumours and connivance about the state of the NZ economy that are the foundation of a National-ACT policy.
    A classic – never mind the investments made by a previous fiscally responsible Government let’s hock off anything we can so our clients can make an unwarranted and unearned profit.

  7. Swampy 7
    27 May 2009 at 9:50 pm

    Russell Norman just happens to be the leader of a very small political party who is standing as a candidate in a by-election being held in Auckland at the moment. His blog is quite predictable for being extremely divisive and polarising.

    I would advise the people of Mt Albert to think twice about electing a candidate who is fast shaping up to be the Winston Peters of the Left. Norman is a loud mouth who seems to have forgotten that 90% of New Zealanders didn’t vote for his fringe brand of politics last election and that the reason all those thing he rails against can be considered is that National and Act have a Parliamentary majority which they obtained fairly and squarely at the election only some six months ago. Now that IS democracy!

    Norman sadly or stupidly depending on your POV has firmly identified himself as a rabble rouser. I was sorely tempted to call him a Nazi but I see he has already breached Godwin’s law in his Public Address article, good idea mate, just show how extreme you really are with nonsense like that.