Posts by nzlemming
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Hard News: Limping Onwards, in reply to Lew Stoddart,
But more seriously, it’s a battleground seat. Dunne’s profile has been slipping, and he faces determined opposition from the Nats, Labour and Greens – Shanks, Chauvel and Gareth Hughes, the former two of which were both within a couple thousand votes of him in 2008
One thing you hear in the electorate is that "he's a good electorate MP" which baffles me, and baffles the speaker when I ask him or her exactly what he's done for the electorate. The man will turn up for the opening of an envelope in the community but he did fuck all actually for the community while I lived there. Best thing about moving up the coast was getting out of Dunne's fiefdom, even if it means Nathan Guy as MP.
-
Bill English said on RNZ this morning that he "had no masterplan" for down-sizing the Public Service, but he was going to do it anyway. Actually, I think he has no plan at all or, at least, no clue.
The Government's austerity approach sounds, once again, like the thinking of people who regard NZ as a business to be run efficiently ("NZ Inc")[*]. A country is not a business. There are too many variables and relationships that have to be managed in ways that may seem inefficient to the untrained eye, but are needed to maintain balance. That doesn't mean there aren't inefficiencies in the public sector that can't be fixed (just as there are in the private sector), but the Government seems determined to peel this apple with a battleaxe. Ganesh Nana was also on RNZ this morning pointing out the same things as Joseph Stiglitz that
any rebalancing of Government accounts should happen when there is strong economic growth and competition for resources.
Cutting spending risks tipping the economy into a very long period of depressed activity and hurting the books even more, he says.[*] To be fair, National is not the only Government with this failing. Labour had it as well in the Lange/Douglas years, less so in the Clark/Cullen era - it's the classic neo-classical line that very neatly avoids the need for real analysis of how an economy actually works as opposed to how your pet theory says it works.
-
Hard News: Really good, actually, in reply to Islander,
Thanks again Penguin-
Perhaps they found out he couldn't actually read or write. It would explain his complete lack of understanding of how the world really works...
-
Hard News: Libya, in reply to BenWilson,
Their ability to kill is astonishing.
Their willingness even more so.
-
Hard News: Limping Onwards, in reply to Lew Stoddart,
Yep, Waitakere Man bears as much resemblance to people in Waitakere as Roger Hall's grotesques did to actual public servants. Both of the latter groups have suffered and will continue to suffer from outrageous TV portrayals.
-
Hard News: Limping Onwards, in reply to Steve Barnes,
He went bankrupt (you can argue all you like about the reasons) and refused to hand over assets of the company to the liquidator. That’s not a technicality. But you go ahead and hero-worship the "lone entrepreneur” if you like, Steve.
-
Hard News: Limping Onwards, in reply to Steve Barnes,
The development of a modern two stroke diesel powered aircraft with a flight time exceeding 30 hours was a phenomenal challenge and these guys were on to it.
No doubt, but it seems that a) Trevor Rogers can't run a business and b) that he can't even fail to run a business honestly. I hope the judge continues to nail his mendacious arse to the wall.
-
Hard News: Chasing the Trans-Pacific Express, in reply to Kumara Republic,
Basically a clone of what was foisted on the Aussies with AUS-USA-FTA
Worse. Basically, everything they couldn't get in ACTA and then some. It would be a disaster for New Zealand and I'm having trouble seeing a way to divert our blinkered bureaucrats and politicians away from it - the idea of a "free trade agreement" is too firmly embedded in the collective psyche, even though that's actually the last thing the TPPA is.
-
Hard News: Really good, actually, in reply to Jackie Clark,
Seriously surprised the US let him in with that hanging over him, but.
-
Hard News: Limping Onwards, in reply to Jacqui Dunn,
I thought it was what the staff at the organization he was about to cull called him.
As far as I can tell, the first mention of the term was from Key, himself, in a North and South interview soon after he was first elected. He said they used to call him that, but I don't recall anyone confirming it. More likely, they called him after the gender-biased source of "twatcock"...