Last Straw

I see the National Party are kick­ing their little ideo­lo­gic­ally driven pro­ject of plun­der­ing NZ into a higher gear.
This time it’s the privat­isa­tion of ACC and pris­ons.
Thanks again to those who voted National (out of a “mood for change”).

While the rest of the world attempt to stim­u­late their eco­nom­ies with gov­ern­ment spend­ing, the ideo­lo­gic­ally ham­strung National/ACT gov­ern­ment of New Zea­l­and is arbit­rar­ily slash­ing depart­mental budgets by 10%.1
No Right Turn:
And it looks like the slash and burn has already begun, with con­firm­a­tion that the gov­ern­ment is plan­ning to slash 500 to 1000 people from the Ministry […]

Some­how copy­right hold­ers have man­aged to roy­ally trump all other interests in get­ting an unbe­liev­ably crap copy­right law through Par­lia­ment; giv­ing New Zea­l­and the most dra­conian copy­right law in the world, which allows people and organ­isa­tions to be dis­con­nec­ted from the inter­net simply on the basis of accus­a­tions of “copy­right infringe­ment.” No courts involved. “Guilt […]

Free-market ideo­logy is dead, and none too soon:
The pat­tern is clear: gov­ern­ments that respond to a crisis cre­ated by free-market ideo­logy with an accel­er­a­tion of that same dis­cred­ited agenda will not sur­vive to tell the tale.
I just hope the same can be said for New Zealand.

Just a quick word of thanks to all those National and ACT voters out there in NZ, espe­cially those who were in a “mood for change,” because now you’ve got it. A gov­ern­ment of rad­ical right-wingers, many proven untrust­worthy in the 80s and 90s, ready to turn New Zea­l­and upside down and shake.
Almost everything I said […]

This is the first in a new series track­ing people who find the whole demo­cracy thing incon­veni­ent1 and would rather those pesky cit­izens just shut the $%!@ up so they can get on with trans­fer­ring the world’s wealth from the hands of the many into the hands of those who are actu­ally entitled to it, […]

Oh New Zea­l­and, what have you done? Roger Douglas on elec­tion night fan­tas­ising about the man­date he thinks he has:
We have to make some changes and there’s going to be a lot of hurt for a lot of people.
What a cheek, com­ing from the scoun­drel who lied his way into gov­ern­ment in the eighties, unleash­ing an […]

In a rep­res­ent­at­ive demo­cracy it’s not democracy’s pur­pose to pro­duce good gov­ern­ment but to pro­duce rep­res­ent­at­ive gov­ern­ment. While I don’t expect much in the way of demo­cracy from rep­res­ent­at­ive demo­cracy1 enough New Zeal­anders voted against their interests on Sat­urday to elect into gov­ern­ment a mul­ti­mil­lion­aire mer­chant banker Prime Min­is­ter and his self-interested fat cat accom­plices, includ­ing some of those […]

I thought I couldn’t vote because I haven’t lived in New Zea­l­and for over three years but I was hav­ing a poke around elections.org.nz and, as a cit­izen, I don’t have to have lived in New Zea­l­and in the past three years but just have passed through.
Can’t believe I nearly missed the chance to vote: you can download […]

There are a myriad of reas­ons I hope you don’t vote National this Sat­urday, such as their record on selling off the coun­try or their keen­ness to send Kiwi kids off to get killed in illegal wars to curry favour, but if there’s just one reason it’s this: our demo­cracy.
National wants to take away one […]