Written By:
Steve Pierson - Date published:
10:38 am, June 20th, 2008 - 6 comments
Categories: standard week -
Tags: standard week
Both major parties show-boated over getting tough on crime this week. The only difference being Labour actually had policy; National, just slogans. We generally steer away from covering ‘I’m tougher than you’ politics on The Standard. Instead, we focused on the fundamentals that matter to ordinary Kiwis, wages and rising costs. We also had a deeper look at what Key is actually promising when he says he’ll fund bigger tax cuts by cutting ‘waste’ and says he can cut inflation by lifting government productivity. Turns out he is making some pretty gargantuan promises that he would fail to deliver on. Here are our favourite posts of the week:
Hit and run
..lack of debate means the polly doing the hit and run can avoid the question ‘And what would you do about it?’ That’s a blessed thing indeed for a party that has no policy.. [more]
What went on at the ‘horn?
..[Key] was heard commenting on the attributes of caucus members, including those who were ‘mad’ (Nick Smith) ‘out of her depth’ (Judith Collins) and ‘a prick’ (Gerry Brownlee) [more]
Key’s slippery promises on waste
…National needs to deliver $20 a week on average more than Labour. That’s $3 billion a year…to cut that much, National would have to use a cleaver, not a scalpel…[more]
Act now to protect workers’ wages
Times are going to get harder for workers in the next few years…We need to keep workers’ incomes up… [more]
Facing up to Peak Oil
..We need to acknowledge that the supply of oil is peaking and serious effort needs to go into adapting our economy a world without cheap oil [more]
Creeping socialism in Australia
…Kevin Rudd’s Labor government has begun the roll-back of John Howard’s unpopular WorkChoices legislation [more]
If you want to receive this weekly post by email, just flick us an email at thestandardnz@gmail.com to go on the Standardista list. On becoming a Standardista, you will receive your Standardista cloth cap, ‘how-to’ guide for living a PC life, class consciousness, and Notional Party yo-yo that swings from the right to the centre and back again every three years.*
*you won’t actually get these things, except the class consciousness.
The current rise of populism challenges the way we think about people’s relationship to the economy.We seem to be entering an era of populism, in which leadership in a democracy is based on preferences of the population which do not seem entirely rational nor serving their longer interests. ...
The server will be getting hardware changes this evening starting at 10pm NZDT.
The site will be off line for some hours.
Yay! My week in the wilderness is up! Time to start link whoring to my new site…
[lprent: I already did some lw for you]
Damn! That cloth cap sounded so cool
Sod what’s your site I’ll come visit and harass you now and then if you want ?
Your new site, ‘sod. Would that be http://robinsod.wordpress.com/ I have heard so much about? Tell me more.
Good to have you back Sod
Well Billy, interesting you should ask about http://robinsod.wordpress.com/ as I have recently had a guest post by a fellow uncannily similar to your good self. In fact the door is open for anyone who may want to offer a guest post to http://robinsod.wordpress.com/ as I am a great believer in free speech (and too lazy to write my own posts)