Posts by George Darroch
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You're right, it makes no sense. We should clearly be imposing a border carbon tax on imports from polluter nations.
As the European Union, led by France, is considering.
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Just say "we put this question to the Minister, and s/he declined to answer".
We could even have someone dissect their evasion. "Rather than answer the question, the spokesperson brought up an irrelevant topic"
And after those short messages, time that would have been wasted watching the interviewee evade the question is replaced by cute footage of otters.
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I'm of the understanding that Comalco receives some of the cheapest electricity in the world. I might be wrong, I might be right - can anyone can confirm this?
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Staring at what could be a very narrow defeat, the Clinton campaign have declared themselves the winners. They know that it's too close to call, but they've done it anyway - this could be embarrassing.
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I don't always agree with their politics, but CounterPunch have a lot of interesting and well thought out perspectives that never make it to CNN or the NY Times. Take this article on his funding.
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I thought that if you closed Tiwai Point, supply would be constrained, the global cost of aluminium would be increased, and demand would be reduced. People would use other things to build cars and window frames.
Politically, however, the cost of shutting down Southland's largest single employer would be pretty high, and that's a risk this or any foreseeable Government is pretty unlikely to take. The political capital required to do something like that isn't there at the moment, and I don't see it happening for a long time yet.
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I would love to watch it, but I can't: a little notice comes up saying "This video is for New Zealand viewers only." I flipping well am a New Zealand viewer, dammit.
That, and the Youtube message "this video is not available in your country". I don't want a segregated internet, with content allocated by country. I want everything, here, now.
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The best way to ensure the poor can afford decent food is to make sure they have the money to pay for it. And of course, there are a number of ways to do so, some better than others, removal of GST being only one. The removal of tax on the first $5000 that the Greens have suggested for years is also worth considering.
According to a recent UNICEF report, best places to raise children in the OECD are those that directly target their needs, namely the Netherlands and Scandinavia. Perhaps we're moving slowly in this direction. But as CPAG have been saying for a long time, we're leaving a significant number of children behind.
The fact that Labour has done little (but not nothing) to increase direct targeted benefits probably has less to do with the "entrenched new right establishment" lurking under their beds in Wellington and more to do with the fact that beneficiaries aren't swing voters and increasing benefits isn't a popular policy with the middle class
Of course, the fact that ordinary middle-class people see themselves as apart from 'people who use benefits', rather than potential beneficiaries of these social services can be construed as evidence that the key messages of the 1990s were fairly successful.
If there was a bit more imagination in the political scene, and room to establish consensus, we might adopt the Danish model, which combines high levels of flexibility in the labour market (one in three Danes changed job in the last year) with high unemployment benefits, and subsidies which boost low wage jobs. Importantly, the middle-class are well accommodated. Somewhat like a WFF for welfare.
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a perhaps inappropriate, display of NZ nationalism in this country where Commonwealth forces fought for the Dutch in 1945.
The Indonesians are gracious people, and Australia's support for Indonesia's independence might nullify any antipathy to ANZAC Day somewhat.
Your observations on the oddness of the occasion are welcome. There's always something about seeing a culture transposed into a strange place, with minimal adjustments.
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Pfft. I was in an Australian town where the wine and liquor store was closed at 7pm on a Saturday night. Luckily we could salvage a decent bottle of Taylors from the pub.
The thousands of aggressive nationalistic Chinese students in Canberra last week were fairly disturbing - and that was without the assault and theft my "human rights for Tibet" banner holding friends received.