Last Straw

You can rest assured that when your grandchildren ask you what you did when you were warned of man-made climate change you voted into government a bunch of self-centred old men and financiers trying to squeeze every last dollar from their investments in outdated industries who then went to Copenhagen and committed New Zealand to [...]

Sirocco the Kakapo, a native parrot of New Zealand, gets frisky. An extract from Stephen Fry’s and Mark Carwardine’s new BBC documentary, Last Chance to See:

(via Frogblog)

When a government as deeply corrupt as the U.S. retains the label of democracy you really have to wonder if the word still has any meaning.
No Right Turn on how bribery—otherwise known in the U.S. as “campaign contributions”—has turned health care reforms into a fascist money-making venture for private insurance companies.
Bringing this into a New [...]

I’m in Aotearoa New Zealand for a couple of weeks and driving about provided me with the great privilege of catching up with the sea of enlightenment that is NZ talkback radio, in this case the lovely Leighton Smith. Flipping through the channels I just had to stop and listen to one of Smith’s callers complaining [...]

No Right Turn on the NZ National/ACT government’s opposition to a new bill that would make it a national criminal offence for any New Zealand political leader to “plan, prepare, initiate or execute an act of aggression” in violation of the UN Charter.
… when Wayne Mapp says he doesn’t want our foreign policy to be subject to [...]

No Right Turn on the NZ National/ACT government giving themselves a pay rise during a recession and refusing to justify it.
It’s much the same situation here in the UK. Politicians have a deep sense of entitlement and non-accountability when it comes to raising their income and expenses levels, but are quite happy to spend millions [...]

The Economist has an interesting story this week illustrating how sex offender laws in the U.S. have run amok and are not only making matters worse but are destroying the lives of many innocent people in the process.
Plonkers with ballots + self-serving polticians = perversion of justice.

Joe Karam, instrumental to David Bain’s not guilty verdict, after 13 years:
Karam [said] he joined the Bain case in 1996, when he “very naively believed all I would do was take my concerns to the authorities who would take over from there. Unbelievably, they didn’t – they thought I was the enemy.”
“What I’ve really been [...]

Boris Frankel in Melbourne’s The Age:
Here is some good news. Just as the Great Depression inspired significant social reforms, so the current “great world recession” is producing a spate of overdue reform proposals. Some of these proposals have emerged in Britain, one of the most unequal societies in the developed world. While Australia ranks as [...]

It’s part of the NZ National Party’s DNA to make democratically funded services appear inadequate, so that people lose faith in such services and turn to the private sector.
Once sold to the private sector for a pittance such services can then be used to make profits for their supporters and donors in the private sector.
It’s for [...]