April 2008

Singing off-Key is doing little to boost Labour – Opinion: views on the news on Stuff.co.nz

Tracy Watkins all but writes of Labour in her column today.

Is it time to write Labour off? Maybe not yet – but only because, like Winston Peters, Helen Clark is not someone you write off lightly. And of course MMP applies the other handbrake. In fact, if it weren’t for MMP, and the vagaries it throws up, we might have written Labour off already.

But the news doesn’t get much grimmer for a government heading into the final leg of its third term – on the weekend’s poll results, National would govern alone.

Few would expect an 18-point lead to survive the churn of an election campaign – but Labour is rapidly running out of time to turn things around. And the portents aren’t good.

The polls are becoming self-fulfilling in that nobody likes to back a loser.

Importantly, they appear to be losing faith that a Labour government can turn that around. The view that National might be a safer pair of hands at the economic tiller is now shared by 46 per cent of voters. Just 33 per cent of voters trust Labour to manage the economy better.

In an election in which voters, for the first time in nearly a decade, will be deciding their vote against the backdrop of hard times, a loss of faith in Labour’s stewardship of the economy could prove decisive.

Translation: Labour are screwed. Tracy is the first journo to talk about an early election, something I have quite a bit of money riding on. Mike Williams, perhaps their single biggest stumbling block now has a message on his answerphone for media to stop calling him.

Nats query $2m rise in Govt ad spending – New Zealand, world, sport, business & entertainment news on Stuff.co.nz

Bill English has obtained figures that show government department spending on advertising has increased by $2 million in a month on month comparison between March 2007 and March 2008.

It isn’t working though so arguably the money has been wasted as Labour is bouncing in the polls like the proverbial dead cat.
Technorati Tags: rort

Don Brash: Abolish GST on food? No way – 30 Apr 2008 – Opinion, Editorial and reader comments from New Zealand and around the World – nzherald

Don Brash gives good sound reasons why abolishing GST on food should be resisted with all our strength.

1. Adds hugely to compliance costs imposed on business
2. GST is not a sales tax, only levied on goods and services when they are finally sold to consumers, instead it is a tax levied every time a product or service changes hands, and it is designed that way to reduce tax avoidance.
3. Inefficient way of helping those low-income families who most need help with their food bills in terms of the amount of government revenue foregone. “…most of the revenue which would be lost if GST on food were abolished, is paid by middle and high-income families. If the Government sees a need to help those families most adversely affected by rising food bills, then the best way of doing that is by reducing the income tax levied on low-income families…”
4. If GST is abolished on food, why not on other “essentials”, like children’s clothing, doctor’s bills, books, and the like?

Those are all bloody good reasons to not change it…they are exactly the same reasons as when the tax was first brought in.
Technorati Tags: tax, gst

Sideswipe: Wednesday – 30 Apr 2008 – Sideswipe – New Zealand Herald

Reinforcing the perception that Labour is an elitist women’s only club, a fundraiser organised by Labour candidate Kate Sutton and marketed through Facebook is to be a high tea and champagne affair at Alberton House this Sunday. The information says “all funds go to Labour Aucklands female candidates [sic]“. One centre-right blogger says: “High Tea and champagne at Alberton House, the colonial mansion built by an elite landed family. Very bourgeois.” Not exactly a pie and sauce do down at the local abattoir, is it? (Source: Conservator Occidentalis blog)

Ouch and Ana is usually a nice good Labour supporter.
Technorati Tags: Sideswipe, blogs

News cartoons – NZ Herald

Helen will be wishing she hadn’t blamed her misfortunes on a dead cartoonist and 90 years of tory hatred of Labour from the Herald.

Technorati Tags: cartoon, polls

Here is what may be a new feature, the Tuesday Night Tits and Guns Videos.

Technorati Tags: tits, boobs, guns

Manukau City Council – Mayor, Councillors and Community Board Members

Just when is the double dipper Cr Su’a William Sio going to resign from the council?

Technorati Tags: double dipping

Date set for review of DHB sacking – Hawke’s Bay – The Dominion Post

Cunliffe is so going to wish he never covered Annette Kings prodigious arse by sacking the Hawkes Bay District Health board.

Technorati Tags: Hawke’s Bay, health

Lecturer’s redundancy ‘unjustified’ – ERA – 29 Apr 2008 – NZ Herald: New Zealand National news

Auckland University and their employment practices are again in the firing line from the Employment Relations Authority this time for sacking a lecturer who specialises in Maori and Pacific Island art history.

The authority ruled that Vice-Chancellor Professor Stuart McCutcheon had failed to act in good faith towards lecturer Dr Rangihiroa Panoho when dismissing him on the basis of redundancy.

It ruled the redundancy was not justified and pointed out the university was in Auckland – the largest Polynesian city in the world.

The authority’s decision also said that Professor McCutcheon failed to act as a good employer and that Dr Panoho was treated neither fairly nor sensitively.

Worse the authority concluded that the witnesses for the Vice-Chancellor were “unhelpful, if not deliberately vague” recalling important matters.

This is the second time in as many months that the University has been slammed by the ERA.

Technorati Tags: university of auckland, employment

Spit the Dummy over This « Something should go here, maybe later.

Idiot/Savant (the savant part is silent) has been outed again as a rank hypocrite. He threw a fit and banned comments from his socialist diatribe after calling DPF, Jonathon Coleman (erroneously and Nick Smith misogynists for calling the most useless MP ever Judith Tizard a witch. It seems that some evidence has turned up that proves a) that I/S is a dick, b) a hypocrite, c) Judith Tizard, apart from being the most useless MP known to human kind is also a witch and does indeed have a broomstick.

Technorati Tags: witch, judith tizard, hypocrite