Know one thing, if you let the green taliban have any say in anything it will cost you much, much more in the long run. Their solutions for everything require huge subsidies, reductions in service and/or both, and certainly increased costs for everyone.

Electricity prices in Britain may be almost double those in Germany within three years due largely to the impact of a new tax aimed at supporting renewable power generation, a report by bank Credit Suisse has claimed.

The bank’s analysis showed wholesale prices, which form the backbone of energy bills, would top those in Germany by 85pc in 2016-17 and would be higher in general for the next seven to 10 years.

The bank blamed the roughly fivefold rise in the government’s new tax on carbon-dioxide emitting power generation over the next seven years, while also pointing to Britain’s lack of infrastructure to import power from the European mainland.

Prices in the two countries had tracked one another for years, but they diverged last year as Germany spurred a boom in renewable energy generation by pouring billions into subsidising the green sector.  Read more »

TV3′s Pedro Gower has run a clip of Phil Goff’s offensive behaviour at Select Committee:

However, Pedro goes on to say that he can’t recall the F word being used at Select Committee before and it’s ‘uncharted’ territory.  Read more »

Moira Coatesworth has been hopeless as a fundraiser, and all these by-elections are getting expensive.

Her one solution is to tax caucus members more, and sources inside the Labour caucus are saying this is not going down well and Moira needs to start raising more money or leave, rather than taxing them more.  Read more »

The DomPost editorial suggests that teachers, or more accurately the teacher unions are part of the problem not the solution regarding national standards.

The time has come for teacher unions to accept that national standards in reading, writing and mathematics are here to stay.

Parents clearly want plain-English reports about how their children are progressing in the three most important building blocks for a sound education, and the policy has been overwhelmingly endorsed at the last two elections.

It is therefore in teachers’ interests to work with the Ministry of Education to ensure a sound system of assessment and data collection. Sadly, the signs this week are that teacher unions and representatives will continue cutting off their noses to spite their faces.  Read more »

Not quite this cold yet, but good grief, that’s a cold snap we’re having…

via Imgur

If you read the NZ Herald you would think that Pierre van Heerden, the head of Sanitarium, is some sort of master spy….or perhaps the secret head of the GCSB.

In not one, but two articles about spying and the GCSB they feature an image taken at the launch of the Food in Schools programme.

The first is from Brian Rudman, who obviously didn’t enjoy his trip to the theatre on the weekend since he has written about this and not a review.

Does the NZ Herald thinks Pierre van Heerden is a spy?

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Not kidding, that is the claim anyway in The Sun from a Labour politician….that he has fathered an alien baby…is it called Russel?

He wants us to believe he isn’t mad…but what are you to believe?

I mean he is a Labour politician and a socialist…so clearly mad…the alien stuff could well be true but the madness was proven before all that malarky came out.

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It’s 10:30, we have kicked the crap out of the green taliban all morning, time for a short interlude…let’s kick some teachers.

Or more precisely, let’s read what the Editorial of the Rotorua Daily Post has to say about the education system.

Despite my chosen profession, I’ve never been a perfect speller and there are still words the electronic spell checker reminds me I am yet to master.

In saying that, spelling things correctly is important to me, not only as a journalist, but in my personal life as well.

A Canterbury University study has found New Zealand teachers are not putting their understanding of how to teach spelling into practice in the classroom.

Some put it down to a full curriculum or large class sizes, others say they were not given the adequate skills to teach spelling at their university or teacher’s college.   Read more »

Kim Dotcom, watched on by his PR minder David Fisher, sheds a tear after NZ trustworthy stakes released

I wonder if David Fisher, Shayne Currie and the other mongs at the Herald are regretting turning their newspaper into a Kim Dotcom PR rag?

They should because despite their best PR efforts Kim Dotcom ranks very lowly indeed with Kiwis in trustworthy stakes…coming in at 98 out of a 100.  Read more »

This is surely the gayest ute ever…even gayer than Fossy’s gay ute.

I can imagine Farrar test driving this next.

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