P.M. reveals general knowledge

At a recent summit junket convened by the government in an effort to discover how to deliver the ball from a rolling maul John Key was introduced to a noted psychiatrist who was advising the politicians about psychosomatic illnesses in communities hit by collapsing banks and the efects of money speculation.
Key took the opportunity to ask how the psychiatrist could detect mental deficiency in someone who otherwise appeared normal and in control of a situation.
The good Doctor said, "You ask a simple question that everyone should be able to answer. If he hesitates, that puts you on the right track. I'd ask, "Captain Cook made three voyagesaround the world and died during one of them. Which one?"
Key thought deeply for sometime and finally responded with a nervous laugh, "I'm a banker at heart. You wouldn't have an easier question would you. I must confess I don't know much about history."

National's Perpetual Talk the Talk but not Walk the walk fests

This press release from Mangere M.P. Su'a Sio deserves wider circulation than the local press will give it. His commentary is relevant especially for those whose real work provides the foundation for the economy.

Communities want job security and income protection.

I have been critical of the government’s job summit as being a mere talkfest, that government wasn’t moving quick enough while the plight of our economy continues to grow, that Government was excluding ordinary communities from the summit, and that the very communities that will suffer the greatest from a depression would not have a voice in the summit. Then as I watched the television coverage of the event, I have to admit; the Government looked good. Admittedly, the television coverage of the event was carefully orchestrated and clinically scripted suggesting duplicitous behaviour for the sake of politics.

Nevertheless, the most innovative idea I picked up from the news coverage is the 9 day working fortnight with one day for education and this should be explored. The initial concerns by ordinary families on this idea will be who will pay workers for the days they give up? If no one pays us, how will we meet our daily living expenses if we are forced to give up what would normally be a paid working day? If our incomes are reduced by one day will our fixed daily expenses such as rent, power, water, sewage, and phone lines be reduced as well?

To add further concerns to troubled minds, the inability of the Government to come clean on what it intends to do with the Super Fund is cause for considerable distress amongst our senior citizens. Many Grey Power members remember well the Government that reduced superannuation to 60% of the average wage in the 1990s.

Then on Sunday the Government’s ‘fire at will 90 day’ law will come into force on the premise that it will boost employment opportunities with small to medium sized businesses. In reality however, National is telling employers they can hire people for up to three months and then get rid of them without any hassles. All this law will do is remove worker’s rights to take personal grievances for reasons of unjustified dismissal and will leave workers open to being taken advantage of, and abused by unscrupulous employers. This is another cause for more worry by ordinary communities.

Notwithstanding, the real test now is how Government will give confidence to its citizens that it will meet the needs of all families, especially vulnerable communities throughout New Zealand.

In Mangere, families aren’t just concerned about job security, we are also concerned about income protection, and how the needs of our families will be sustained now and into future years.

Botany MP Caught OUT??

How much credibilty does Pansy Have?
The answer: NONE.
Earlier in November,Pansy Wong assured the Principal of Howick College that the much vaunted "National Standards" testing had gone even before lunchtime. It appears that Ms Wong was somewhat economical with the truth or else she, as a cabinet minister, was considerably out of the policy loop, which doesn't say a lot about her influence, or that she was following the party mantra of simply tailoring her response to the Principal to suit the political circumstance.

Whichever way it was it appears that she deliberately misled a large group of her constituents following the Howick College Senior Honours Ceremony as Mr Slippery has announced the decision to ram through the "National Standards" testing inside the first 100 days.

Either Pansy comes clean and publically apologises to the Principal, staff and parents of Howick College for deliberately misleading them or she admits that she is an ineffective and purely token member of the cabinet and remains silent on the issue.

Perhaps, more honorably, she should speak and voteagainst a piece of legislation she obviously disagrees with. Now, wouldn't THAT be a change?

Cabinet Appointees -stable or not ? a Key question.

The National cabinet has been appointed in the manner befitting an autocrat. Key has appointed a group of courtiers who, in the manner of the Fairy Tale Emporer, will, on seeing his new clothes, inform him that they are a perfect fit even though all other observers can recognise the imperfections, the fakery and appeal to vanity that is the reality of those clothes. The new cabinet will soon find that their appeal, as acolytes, will soon fade both for Key and the real politic in the electorates as , very soon, the repeated blanishments of empty praise pall for both the appointer and the wider audience.
In an earlier blog I pointed out that Key had been, folowing the advice of Crosby-Textor, dressing himself in clothing borrowed from greater men in preparation for the election campaign and that the imagery behind these borrowed vestments would be exploited for the duration of the campaign and the first symbolic 100 days of power.
After this Key would initially keep wearing the clothes but, like the Anderson's emporer, slowly cast them aside until someone (Maurice Williamson perhaps?) cries ot that "There are no real clothes being worn" and the demands for Key and the party he represents dress in the manner to which they are accustomed.
At present Key has surrounded himself with those, like him, who wear the election campaign image. Their tenure and security will remain until the demand from the Party's traditional constituency to return to their philosophic basics reveals his fundamental insincerity and philosophic shallowness.
Cracks in te artifical gloss on this cabinet are already apparent for those, unlike the Herald reporters, look in depth at the blogs and research sources.
Here, for instance is Paula Bennett, Minister for Social Welfare, on the National Party during her student days:

"Newly elected National Party MP of Waitakere has been found out about her past days as a National Party bagger. Using her pseudonym Paula Poo she lambasted the National Party for cutting Education and increasing student fees , these comments made when Paula was President of the Massey University Student Association;

"Fees suck and fee increases just piss me off. Damn the Nat's who bring cuts to our education system, make us pay for them out of student loans that will take many people decades to pay off. In my own case, I will probably still be paying off my student loan when my daughter gets to university age; her future looks promising!"
When urging her fellow university students to make their vote count she said ... "don't vote for f**k wits."
Reconciling these views of her favoured political party with her present reality will take a lot of doing ... unless, of course, she is locked into the groove of praising new clothes.

Another crack in Key's reality comes from Pansy Wong who informed the Principal of Howick College, after he had made a speech to the school prize giving ceremony calling for the policy to be abandoned, that the much trumpeted testing against "national" standards had been swept from the table even before the lunchtime bell had been rung despite her local colleague and cabinet minister (outside the room) Maurice Williamson telling the Eastern Courier that the policy still stood.

There has been a glimmer of analysis of the wisdom of Key's appointments appearing in the media, especially over the relationship with Rodney "Rheinfeld" Hide and his role as "Minister" of Local Government for it is in this area that the real agenda that lies beneath the "emporer's"new clothes will be revealed.

Once "Rheinfeld" Hide begins to cry "Master! Master! Help me!" to Nosferatu Douglas and John Key begins the return to the National Party's roots the electorate will see the dismantling of the image... watch out for slash & burn attacks on Kiwisaver, on welfare, the Cullen Fund and other areas of social expenditure with the excuse of " dire economic times" and the "international credit crisis" have forced the Government to back down on so many of the implied policies offered during the election campaign ... we will see how apposite Paula Bennett's earlier advice to the readers of her blog were.

Journalism & Blogosphere.. laziness or investigation?

Over recent months I've been intrigued, wondering where the journalists employed by our national media find their stories. The tertiary courses and the journalism textbooks discuss the process of building contacts, talking with and to community leaders and interest groups so that, armed with a "black book" of contacts the journalist can establish the backgrounds and the bases for the stories that are passed on to him or her or, by dint of individual enquiry, can be substantiated and probed with some degree of depth.
However, that text book and journalism course idea is a myth, an ideal from the past, for the reality of our present is, according to a young journalist informant, that the news room journalist is a passive actor in the news gathering process. Today the young journalist is told to, and instructed in the process of, explore the chat rooms of Trade Me and the snippets from a small, quite limited, recommended list of blogs.
The limited range of blogs recommended to my informant did not inspire confidence in the investigative powers of the journalists or the policies of the papers concerned for the sites were all heavily slanted towards the right-wing blogs and the "celebrity sex life speculation" snippet blogs.
One would assume that the editorial policy of the media is to concentrate on the celebrity scandal, the weird and idle gossip then such "news" gathering is acceptable but if one wants more from the media then a diet of Trade Me chat and the salacious "snidery" of the Farrar-Slater blogs one would expect our journalists and media to be far more proactive and responsible.

Fruitcake, John Key and his flip-flops - welcome to the N.Z. summer

In an earlier blog I argued that Key and Rodney (Rheinfeld) Hide would engage in trade offs that would give ACT the impression it had power in this national led government of self interested selfish parties but that son splits would occur and Rodney would do a Winston and throw the baubles of office out of the cot.
It was, therefore,no surprise when the National Party advertising pamphlet, The Herald, published Brian Rudman's critique of the marriage of ACT & National and the flip-flops on climate change it required.
Perhaps the baubles will be tossed earlier than the 18 months I argued would be the length of time this government would take before disintegration begins.

Where are our cartoonists?

The paucity of biting comment in NZ cartooning may be attributed to the editorial policy of the NZ Herald and its craven support of the National Party.
Here is the Guardian's cartoonist's commentary about tax cuts policy wars. Biting isn't it? I don't recall anything as powerful as this in the NZ press pages.
We might have had a different reaction to the great tax cut bribe wars in NZ.