Archive for February, 2010
Friday, February 26th, 2010
Image from nznationalparty's photostream - On board the NUShip Perth
Normally when there is a personal cloud over a Minister, they would stand down and/or be removed from their responsibilities by the PM. That is, until (a) the matter was cleared up, or (b) in more serious cases, they had paid ...
Posted in Articles | 7 Comments »
Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010
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Reportedly, Ronald Reagan’s aides would go into in panic mode whenever the avuncular President started to ad lib a few additional points of clarification. The aim may have been candour, but the remarks tended to give a terrifying glimpse into the abyss behind the mask. Something similar ...
Posted in Articles | 11 Comments »
Thursday, February 18th, 2010
Normally, Trevor Mallard is not renowned for his subtlety, yet his stealth attack on Education Minister yesterday in the House was a stone classic. First, there was a feint with the generalized question, then an innocuous sounding follow up – did she actually know how inter-school moderation of literacy worked ...
Posted in Articles | 4 Comments »
Monday, February 15th, 2010
Early next month, Iraq is due to hold an election. One of the ironic outcomes of the US/UK led invasion in March 2003 has been to put into power a bloc of Shia religious parties long dependent on support from Iran, the star player in George Bush’s ‘axis of ...
Posted in Articles | No Comments »
Friday, February 12th, 2010
Would scrapping the depreciation rules on rental residential property really deliver the $1.6 billion promised? That $1.6 billion sits on one side of the ledger and - when added to the $2 billion in revenue likely to be raised by hiking GST to 15% - is meant to bankroll ...
Posted in Articles | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, February 10th, 2010
Compensate is such a slippery word. If you set out to make the elite squad in team A immensely better off with money taken from Teams B and C, and you also say those two bottom teams will (somehow) be left no worse off – is that really a compensation? ...
Posted in Articles | 14 Comments »
Monday, February 8th, 2010
Perhaps we can all quietly sign a pact to forego comparing a free trade deal with the US to the quest for the Holy Grail. This ‘free trade as Holy Grail’ notion is a cliché that will not die, because the media loves it so much. This morning, RNZ’s Katherine ...
Posted in Articles | 5 Comments »
Friday, February 5th, 2010
Well, we’re now seeing some of the fruits of small government, and having government butt out of our lives. Unemployment rose to 7.3 % during the last three months of 2009, the highest rate in ten years. Some 168,000 New Zealanders are now out of work, and the message to ...
Posted in Articles | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010
Well, it hasn’t taken long for John Key to bring the old scare word ‘unions’ – into the dispute over national standards. Yesirree, this flap is all just about unions protecting their patch. Here we have a situation where Education Minister Anne Tolley has proven herself as incapable of managing ...
Posted in Articles | 8 Comments »
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