Archive for March, 2010
Monday, March 29th, 2010
So Iyad Allawi’s secular Sunni coalition has won the most seats in the Iraqi elections. While the mainstream media from the New York Times to the Dominion-Post has been calling this a stunning upset, the outcome was quite predictable. My Scoop column on February 15 for instance predicted the split ...
Posted in Articles | 8 Comments »
Thursday, March 25th, 2010
I know Peter Jackson is a busy guy, but where oh where is his review of the New Zealand Film Commission? There was no hard and fast deadline for this document but… just before Christmas, the office of Arts Minister Chris Finlayson was jauntily saying that it expected to ...
Posted in Articles | 6 Comments »
Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010
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Well, we learned yesterday that Forest and Bird leaks had been right all along, and that the government is indeed planning to take 7,058 hectares of land currently under Schedule 4 protection (because it had been judged to be crucial to the conservation estate) and to hand ...
Posted in Articles | Comments Off on On the Government’s Greenlight to the Mining Industry
Thursday, March 18th, 2010
2008 Image: Ploughshares Penetrate Waihopai Base Deflate Dome
The acquittal of the Waihopai Three for their attack on the Waihopai spy base is as welcome as it is surprising. To succeed in court, one would have thought they would need to have proved a direct connection between the base near Blenheim ...
Posted in Articles | 7 Comments »
Tuesday, March 16th, 2010
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At yesterday’s Post cabinet press conference [video], Prime Minister John Key repeated the government’s current defensive position on the proposal to extend mining within our national parks. He claimed there had been a ‘hysterical’ reaction in the media to Forest and Bird’s recent revelations about the likely sites ...
Posted in Articles | 6 Comments »
Thursday, March 11th, 2010
As the Facebook critics of the Wellywood sign have pointed out, it is pretty hard to see the logic of promoting the creativity of the New Zealand film industry via a copy of someone else’s creativity. It is especially dumb when the item in question has been trademarked, and when ...
Posted in Articles | 8 Comments »
Tuesday, March 9th, 2010
An appropriate newsflash yesterday for International Women’s Day. After analyzing Inland Revenue data, the Women’s Ministry has found that women almost immediately begin to be paid less than men who have the same tertiary education qualifications. That gender pay gap starts at 6% on average after the first year in ...
Posted in Articles | 6 Comments »
Friday, March 5th, 2010
One hates to kick someone when they’re down – but when it is former Telecom CEO Theresa Gattung and she is peddling a book in which she professes herself to be shocked (shocked!) by the size of the remuneration packages currently being paid at Telecom, the urge is irresistible. Gattung, ...
Posted in Articles | 7 Comments »
Thursday, March 4th, 2010
David Garrett’s bizarre suggestion that people who abuse children should be given a $5,000 incentive to get themselves sterilized is so crass that one hardly knows where to begin. Yes, some people probably shouldn’t be parents. Some people shouldn’t have license to do a lot of things in society, but ...
Posted in Articles | 9 Comments »
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