Advertisment
Written By: Marty G - Date published: 9:12 am, March 11th, 2010 - 20 comments
While other countries have used their strong public sectors to steady the private sector and keep unemployment down during the economic downturn, our government is compounding unemployment by cutting the public sector, throwing people out of jobs and feeding worker insecurity.
Written By: Marty G - Date published: 6:14 pm, February 25th, 2010 - 44 comments
Today in the House David Cunliffe took Bill English on over his lies regarding Labour’s record on economic growth. Rather than admit that he had been using the wrong figures in an effort to make Labour’s record look worse, English compounded his sins by lying to the House.
Written By: Marty G - Date published: 11:00 am, February 24th, 2010 - 27 comments
Success for Opposition frontbenchers largely consists of embarrassing their opposite number by forcing them to answer questions they would rather not. Labour showed both how to do that and how not to do it in the House yesterday.
Written By: Marty G - Date published: 11:22 am, February 19th, 2010 - 11 comments
When you’ve got a Finance Minister who can’t get stats right, a Social Welfare Minister who can’t define her flagship policy, and an Education Minister who can’t explain her flagship policy, it’s easy for an incompetent Women’s Affairs Minister to slip through.
Written By: Eddie - Date published: 12:08 am, February 19th, 2010 - 21 comments
An interesting piece from One News. Bill English gave another underwhelming speech on National’s economic plan, which basically boiled down to ‘tax cuts!’. A young businesswoman in the audience told English she wanted a real plan. His response: ‘tax cuts’. But he could give no proof his tax cuts would improve the economy.
Written By: Eddie - Date published: 11:23 pm, February 17th, 2010 - 10 comments
It’s hard to decide which is worst: Do Nothing John Key flouncing around the country while thousands of Kiwis lose their jobs, the Joyce cabal pushing their hard-right economic agenda, or the rest of them who don’t have two brain cells to rub together.
Written By: Eddie - Date published: 4:42 pm, December 8th, 2009 - 18 comments
Ministers are given self-drive taxpayer-funded cars for official business in their electorates (in Wellington they have crown limos at their disposal for official business). Pretty logically, the cars were always based at the ministers’ primary place of residence because that’s where they would need it.
But that presented a problem for Bill ‘Double Dipton’ English. …
Written By: lprent - Date published: 2:15 pm, November 14th, 2009 - 74 comments
Whatever argument there is between the hierarchy of the Maori Party and Hone really doesn’t concern me. While I’m sure Kelvin Davis is watching with considerable interest, Hone was elected by the voters up north for being exactly who he is. This isn’t a political row with the over-powering stench of political hypocrisy like recent …
Written By: lprent - Date published: 9:15 am, November 12th, 2009 - 20 comments
Brian Fallow has a great post over at Granny Herald this morning. “Emitters on bludger’s end of deal” deals with the way that the NACT government has been loading costs onto future voters and taxpayers.
On superannuation:
By siphoning off and investing around another 1 per cent of GDP while the babyboomers are still in their peak …
Written By: Marty G - Date published: 3:22 pm, November 6th, 2009 - 38 comments
Documents that the government was forced to release under the Official Information Act reveal that Bill English exercised extensive control and sign-off over each stage of his million dollar political propaganda ad, funded by publicly-owned broadcaster TVNZ.
The documents (which, unfortunately, the media organisations have not seen fit to release to the public in full) show …
Written By: Marty G - Date published: 3:23 pm, November 4th, 2009 - 40 comments
Back in February, former currency speculator John Key and former Treasury adviser Bill English started talking about suspending contributions to the Cullen Fund, which was set up to help fund superannuation. ‘It’s losing so much money’, they wailed.
Some people pointed out that the markets were already recovering, that investments could now be bought at once …
Written By: Eddie - Date published: 9:28 am, September 23rd, 2009 - 11 comments
It seems the trend of rewarding company bosses with extravagant pay rises regardless of performance isn’t limited to Telecom’s $7 million man, Paul Reynolds.
The Dom Post reports the bosses of Contact and Skellerup have been given huge pay rises, despite both companies’ profits taking a dive in the last year.
Contact’s managing director David Baldwin made …
Written By: r0b - Date published: 6:21 am, September 22nd, 2009 - 14 comments
National are up to their old tricks again – bullying the media to try and shut down critical comment. This time the culprit is Bill English, lashing out* at those who are covering the story of his ongoing hypocrisy and greed:
Radio New Zealand’s political editor reports that Mr English rang journalists from TVNZ and …
Written By: r0b - Date published: 7:27 am, September 21st, 2009 - 13 comments
I’ve posted before on “mainstream” media editorials, their variable quality and the paradox (in this world of blogging) of their anonymity. Every now and then it means that even The Herald can come up with a scorcher. And the Saturday Editorial on Bill English is certainly that. Usually I would try to …
Written By: Eddie - Date published: 10:45 am, September 16th, 2009 - 14 comments
Last week I wrote:
We’re seeing a new pattern in work relations emerging. The big employers, emboldened by having their party in power and using the recession as an excuse, are attacking workers’ pay and conditions.
Now, on the same day Talley and National-linked Open Country Cheese begins shutting out its workers and illegally using local cow …
Written By: Marty G - Date published: 1:17 pm, August 18th, 2009 - 52 comments
Here is Bill English in the cocktail tapes talking about Working for Families:
“the reality is if we had been the government, with the surpluses they had, we would have done something similar, like Working for Families… there’s a set of inevitable problems, it’s like physics… If you give people cash [that abates as income rises], …
Written By: Marty G - Date published: 12:00 pm, August 14th, 2009 - 33 comments
One of Bill English’s favourite lines is that New Zealand entered recession ahead of the rest of the world ‘due to Labour’s mismanagement of the economy’ and that’s why his government is unable to get off its arse now.
Pity that Agriculture Minister David Carter had to go and spoil the lie for him:
“Agriculture Minister David …
Written By: John A - Date published: 2:32 pm, August 6th, 2009 - 13 comments
According to the Speaker, Bill English MP’s “primary place of residence” is in Dipton because Bill has told him it is. But according to the Registrar of companies, Bill the shareholder of Resolution Farms‘ “full residential address” is in Wellington because Bill has told them it is.
The Companies Act requires shareholders to provide a full …
Written By: all_your_base - Date published: 7:07 pm, August 4th, 2009 - 54 comments
3News covers the story of National Ministers double-dipping at the taxpayers’ expense.
UPDATE: ‘BLiP’ has bestowed a new title on Bill English: “Sir Double Dipton”. Gold.
Written By: the sprout - Date published: 7:44 am, August 4th, 2009 - 48 comments
One of these things is not like the other…
One of these things is not quite the same.
Can you guess which one is not like the other…
Can you tell me before I finish the game?
Written By: Eddie - Date published: 1:50 pm, August 1st, 2009 - 161 comments
NZPA reports:
Taxpayers are contributing nearly $1000 a week to allow deputy prime minister Bill English to live in his own million-dollar Wellington home.
According to the title, the Karori home was bought by Mr English and his wife, Mary, for $800,000 in 2003. However, in March this year the title was transferred to Mrs English alone.
Mary …
Written By: Eddie - Date published: 11:34 am, July 8th, 2009 - 18 comments
A few weeks ago the NZPA reported that the Government had agreed to establish a taskforce to “work on ways to close the productivity gap between Australia and New Zealand”. The taskforce would be selected by ACT leader Rodney Hide and would be announced within the month. The story then sank without a trace.
So it …
Written By: Eddie - Date published: 11:54 am, June 21st, 2009 - 17 comments
Commenting on Key’s policy to force the Guardians of the Super Fund to invest 40% of funds in New Zealand, ACT’s Roger Douglas notices a pattern we’ve posted on here at The Standard before:
“This only enforces the emerging trend we have seen between Mr Key and Mr English. Mr Key announces a stupid idea – …
Written By: Eddie - Date published: 11:28 am, June 17th, 2009 - 27 comments
Noticed this comment in the Dom this morning [offline] about National’s decision to slash funding for night classes in the Budget:
Finance Minister Bill English said the Government would continue to fund some adult and community education programmes, but had higher priorities in the current recession.
Um, would that be giving $35 million to private schools? Or …
Written By: lprent - Date published: 5:17 pm, May 8th, 2009 - 18 comments
Jeanette Fitzsimmons has written a very good post from the Emissions Trading Scheme special select committee* about her views on the impact of farming on our Kyoto obligations. She commented on the Federated Farmers submission which essentially said that they thought farming should be excluded from paying anything. That really isn’t feasible in NZ because…
However, …
Written By: Guest post - Date published: 8:00 am, May 5th, 2009 - 47 comments
Bill English seems set to suspend the government’s contributions to the Cullen Fund.
Here’s a little-known fact, one that Bill English probably doesn’t want you to know: The Cullen Fund made money in March, the sharemarkets are rising and we’re making money on that. In fact, the Cullen Fund out-performed the market.
The markets might go down …
Written By: Guest post - Date published: 3:00 pm, April 15th, 2009 - 7 comments
Remember when John Key used to say “New Zealand has a growth problem, not a debt problem”? He doesn’t say that anymore, which is a pity because we do have a growth problem, not a debt problem, but the Government is acting like we’ve got a debt problem that needs to be tackled first.
Yes, our …
Written By: Eddie - Date published: 11:30 am, April 15th, 2009 - 8 comments
Last week, John Key was bouncing on a new cloud. The Australian Government had teamed up with banks to help stop homeowners defaulting on their mortgages. Key publicly mused that ‘his’ government could do the same here.
We said it was only a matter of time until English quietly killed the idea. Sure enough:
“The Government has …
Written By: Tane - Date published: 10:34 am, March 17th, 2009 - 60 comments
Before the election National promised that the public service would be capped, not cut. That promise was betrayed a long time ago, but what hasn’t been known up til now is the extent to which they are cutting it.
You’ll recall a month back Consumer Affairs Minister Heather Roy let slip that across-the-board cuts of …
Written By: Tane - Date published: 12:55 pm, March 14th, 2009 - 39 comments
Newstalk ZB reports:
The Prime Minister is keen to open the door to foreign investors.
In a speech to the Act Party conference today, John Key said a review of the Overseas Investment Act will be announced by Finance Minister Bill English next week.
The review aims to create an overseas investment screening regime that encourages investment into …
Comments