Posts by Tom Semmens
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Congratulations to PA in general and you in particular Russell, and of course I just have to mention that biggie.co.nz won best entertainment site of the year for the fifth year running, a huge achievement.
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From a Herald editorial, Sept, 2003:
and
Today's editorial:
I see a tee shirt coming on..."Amnesia: Making it easier for the right since I forget when"
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At the end of the day I would suspect that this end to the fifteen year sorry tale of rail in New Zealand - paid for by generations of taxpayers, looted by a decade and a half of crony capitalism - isn't going to be anything but an expensive investment for the government with little short to medium term return. But in an age of a looming liquid fuels crisis to leave such a key piece of strategic infratstructure to a private company happy to let the competition to its trucking arm slowly rust into oblivion would be an act of short sighted and blinkered stupidity by any government charged with assuring and insuring the nation's future.
The Herald online is today running three stories and an editorial that together are a carefully constructed attempt to paint the deal in worst possible light. Richard Prebble flew into a raging rant worthy of David Farrar's comments section on morning report this morning which alone was worth my $165 odd contribution to the 665 million, and along with the incandescent rage of the right wing blogsphere it all goes to shows just what a potent political symbol buying back rail is.
You've got to admire the politics behind all this. John Key's me too-ism is being used by Labour to keep pulling Key further and further towards their policy platform and straightjacket National into Labour lite. I see that Fran (and she would know, she is so far to the right) is today muttering darkly about the ideological chasm between John and Bill, and as already mentioned on PA Maurice looked like he had swallowed a huge rat at the broadband announcement. From what I hear (admittedly from ACToid's with insider mates in the Nats admin) the National caucus is now thoroughly split, with only the high poll ratings papering over the cracks. Also you keep hearing from different places these stories swirling about that John Key only has the job until the election, with Bill English poised to take the job. All This scuttlebutt is just that, because I would imagine such a story if provable would be known to someone like Fran O'Sullivan and would thus be splashed all over the front page of the Herald... Wouldn't it?
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Police report declares drugs out of control. More powers/resources needed to control it.
Lobby group pops up on Morning Report to confirm the sky is falling and they are unfunded.
Minister in charge gravely agrees it's a crisis and something must be done, but money is short.
It must be budget time.
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Talk to fans, and they want afternoon rugby in the winter months of June, July and August, a season that doesn't start while they are still at the beach, at least an attempt to reverse the decline in grassroots rugby and the centrepiece competition to be the Air New Zealand cup. Now putting aside the practicality of this wish list, what has been the NZRU response? To listen and try to square the circle? Not on your life. Instead I see it reported that Grahame Henry wants the All Blacks out of the Air NZ Cup. And what Grahame wants, he'll get. There is your problem right there.
Its like a relationship break up - people still want to rant about it, but the possibility of reconciliation grows fainter with every passing week.
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Reading this is an eye opener as how far to the right even the chardonnay socialists of P.A. are.
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I hope people can follow my argument above, I never have time to proof read.
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Whatever way you slice it, child poverty is not fixable by fiddling the edges of the tax system. Poverty for those on a benefit is due to the fact that benefits are to low to merely eat and be clothed adequately, let alone participate in civil - and digital - society. Child poverty is as high as it because Labour is unwilling to buy into the fight with the entrenched new right establishment that any attempt at reversing the benefit cuts of the 1990's would signal.
Labour has accepted the status quo and in doing so Labour accepted structural poverty as part of the New Zealand landscape. In the low wage economy the new right ideologues constructed in the 1990's there emerged the new (for New Zealand) phenomena of both the poor and the working poor. Labour has done its best, but only way within the confines of the ideological straightjacket of Ruthenasia it could any sort of program to low income New Zealanders was to accept the new Victorianism and divide the poor into deserving (the working poor) and the undeserving (beneficiaries). By doing this, Labour was able to deliver Working For Families. The fact that this policy is widely dispised by the right shows how much the debate is still framed by the new right.
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Oh well. At least Russell hasn't framed the whole debate as the "poverty industry" feathering its own bed, complete with the justification "Disparity is indeed the natural order of things". Pretty much confirming some people still believe in "The rich man in his castle; The poor man at his gate; GOD made them, high or lowly; And ordered their estate."
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I hope for their own sakes most of the people engaged in their pro-China demonstrations on the weekend are students here temporarily, because to my mind their demonstrations clearly renders them unfit for a whole raft of New Zeland jobs. How could the the civil service, the military or even private sector companies with economically sensitive functions employ anyone whose loyalty is first and foremost to a foreign country?