Archive for June, 2014
Friday, June 27th, 2014
The latest 3 News poll results has the combined Labour/Green bloc struggling at exactly 40%, still almost ten points behind National’s tally. (The poll recorded a 2.2% drop in Labour’s support to 27.3% and a similar-sized rise for the Greens to 12.7%, as centre-left voters appeared to shuttle between the ...
Posted in Articles | 4 Comments »
Tuesday, June 24th, 2014
Yes, the jailing of the three Al Jazeera journalists is an outrage and the judicial process that convicted them was a farce. Reportedly the “evidence” produced by the prosecution that Australian journalist Peter Greste and his Al Jazeera colleagues had spread false news and aided the Muslim Brotherhood included a ...
Posted in Articles | 2 Comments »
Monday, June 23rd, 2014
The dancing-at-a-distance relationship between National and Colin Craig’s Conservative Party has just entered a new phase with the announcement that Craig will be contesting the East Coast Bays seat held by Foreign Minister Murray McCully. For National, this arrangement will preserve the fiction for as long as possible that National ...
Posted in Articles | 3 Comments »
Thursday, June 19th, 2014
Who knew that David Cunliffe’s speech to last year’s Labour Party conference was not a new beginning, but the last gasp of the credible phase of his leadership? In itself, his 2003 letter to the Immigration Service was innocuous. Yet only a Jesuit could make the fine distinction that Labour ...
Posted in Articles | 22 Comments »
Wednesday, June 18th, 2014
Labour’s compulsory Kiwisaver plan is its latest love letter to Winston Peters. First came the empty railing against immigration, now the idea of compulsory savings for everyone except those on very low incomes. Back in 1997, New Zealand First inspired a postal referendum on the issue of compulsory retirement savings, ...
Posted in Articles | 4 Comments »
Monday, June 16th, 2014
Incredibly, the ISIS Sunni rebels who are currently butchering their way through northern Iraq are being financed by Saudi Arabia – supposedly a Western ally – and their advance is being halted by Shia militia who have been armed and trained by the West’s supposed enemy, Iran. Consistently, the West ...
Posted in Articles | 3 Comments »
Thursday, June 12th, 2014
Back when they were trying to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration conjured up an entirely fictitious link between al-Qaeda and the Iraq of Saddam Hussein. Well, the Americans are now seeing that fantasy come true. The forces of al-Qaeda are over-running northern Iraq for real. In ...
Posted in Articles | 20 Comments »
Friday, June 6th, 2014
So John Banks has been found guilty of knowingly signing off a fraudulent electoral return. It is an offence that carries a penalty – two years in jail or a $10,000 fine – that should indicate the will of Parliament that such offences be treated very seriously indeed. At the ...
Posted in Articles | 24 Comments »
Wednesday, June 4th, 2014
A footnote to begin with, to do with the big story about the carbon tax policy unveiled on the weekend by the Greens. If you want to know where the Greens got the idea…it was almost certainly from the province of British Columbia in Canada, that enacted such a policy ...
Posted in Articles | 7 Comments »
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