Last week Julia Gillard said "The Party with the greatest percentage of the two-party preferred vote should have first crack at forming the new government".Unlike many political candidates vying for the 20 elected ward councillor positions on the new Auckland Council, or, for a position on a local board there are no obvious political hacks in the CCO line-up.
The Runaways ca 1976, with Joan Jett on far right.
Kristen Stewart as Joan Jett, with Dakota Fanning as Cherie Currie.
Kristen Stewart as a characterless, simpering placeholder for the girls in the audience to put themselves next to the cute vampire.Sources close to the company last week tipped a deal with overseas investors that could require as much as $600 million in taxpayer-funded sweeteners and would result in losses of about $250 million.So, now that we've established that the true tax payer exposure is closer to $250 mil can we ask the Herald and any of it's idiot correspondents if they seriously believe the crap they write?
and the National/Act Government (you will note the deliberate omissions) in deciding to continue to exempt Police/Military/Firefighters Bars from the restrictions imposed by the Liquor Licensing Act. The 'one glove fits all' approach is hardly the recipe for good policy making.
Act was founded on the odious principle that human greed is the driving force of human progress and is to be celebrated as some sort of religion.
When Act's gurus, Roger Douglas and Ruth Richardson, were running the country they conned the people
It's fitting on Friday there were two policies Act claimed credit for. The first was convincing National to give all employers the unfettered right to sack new employees.
The second was Hide appointing unelected directors to run 70 per cent of Auckland's assets without consultation with the region's mayors, as he'd earlier promised.
Last night, Mr Hide said he had written to all Auckland mayors in May and June asking them to forward nominations to the agency setting up the Super City to be considered as directors. Mr Brown had not nominated anyone, he said.Mr Hide said he did not think it was appropriate to consult mayors on the provisional list for CCO directors, but, in most cases, the Government had left two or three appointments on each CCO to be made by the new Auckland Council after November 1.
Manukau Mayor and Super City mayoral contender Len Brown yesterday said the ministers' promise had, so far, failed to materialise.
That's the left for you. Their default position on every issue is to lie through their teeth. Brown failed to respond when consulted and then complains he wasn't consulted. Did he seriously think Rodney Hide would shuffle off to Manukau and say "Look here Len, here's the short list. Tell me which one you'd like and we'll appoint him.""Appointment without consultation is unacceptable. The CCOs will manage over 70 per cent of the assets owned by Auckland ratepayers.
"Aucklanders should have direct input into the composition of their boards. Given the failure to do so, no wonder people across the region are angry with the way the Super City has been set up," Mr Brown said.
Trying to predict the final seats tally in their Lower House is a bit like trying to predict which Labour MP here will be next to spit the dummy but ...."Yes we do and would you please please ring up management and tell them."
The Government's decision to extend 90-day new-employee trials to all businesses was made after a suggestion from the Act Party, and went against the recommendation of its own Minister of Labour, Kate Wilkinson.
Let me be very clear at the outset. I do not hold a candle for the now (dis)honorable Roger McClay.
Act MP Peter Tashkoff has announced he will contest party leader Rodney Hide for the seat of Epsom.
Apparently, a willingness to misuse the Police intelligence system on behalf of his criminal mates is just the kind of quality the Police value when looking for someone to head the Police College's investigation and intelligence school. Now, Archibald can pass on to new recruits his methods for handling intelligence information - hooray!In 2005, then Senior Sergeant Dave Archibald was reprimanded for accessing the computer system known as National Intelligence Application during the trial of former police officers Shipton, Bob Schollum and two Mt Maunganui residents.
Mr Archibald was looking for information that private investigator and former colleague John Birmingham hoped might help Shipton's defence.
...he topped what police described as a very impressive field of candidates...
Police say the deaths are not related to the recent killing of Scott Guy, who was shot dead in the driveway of his farm near Feilding in July.
There have been other sudden deaths connected with the North Island town in the past two months.
Two people were killed in a mid-air plane crash in late July and Feilding soldier Tim O'Donnell was killed in Afghanistan earlier this month.
Update: The Herald chimes in with it's own feature story!!
Police are not naming the rural road where the bodies were found but at least six homes spoken to by nzherald.co.nz had not seen or heard anything out of the ordinary today.Consider the dynamic implications here. The Herald's intrepid team of sleuths has been choppered in at the first hint of trouble and they've interviewed six homes. (Maybe if they spoke to people instead of houses they might do better.)
Aboard the Centurion. Drivers seat is height-adjustable so you can drive with your head out of the hatch, for visibility. Apparently the periscopes on the hatches are so useless that drivers wouldn't close up unless absolutely forced to.
Inside the T-55's turret. F at the commander's periscope, gunner's eyepieces ahead of her, shot taken from loader's position across the gun breech.
OK, time to get off the can. The last 48 hours has seen a shift to the Liberals with one poll having the two party preferred vote at Labor 52% vs Liberals 48%; a second tied at 50% vs 50 % and a third at somewhere in between. All polling suggests that in the marginal seats the coalition is punching above its weight. 
Spent today in the (Liberal) marginal seat of Paterson. Started off badly with the Newcastle Herald running a poll that had Labor taking the seat on the two party preferred vote 51% to 49%. If the Libs cannot hold Paterson then it's all over rover. Calmed down just a tad when told the Herald was a Labor supporting rag.
Been here at Lake MacQuarie a couple of days now and on Thursday I will be in the Liberal marginal seat of Paterson looking at the Liberal Party campaign machine. Apart from that seat the area around Newcastle where I am is solid red Labor territory.Manukau Mayor Len Brown told the audience about his work with the Sir John Walker Field of Dreams organisation.
"Is sport important? It is a core service, with all due respect to Rodney Hide in local government."He said as Super City mayor, he would ensure that the Manukau policy of free pool use would be rolled out to the whole city. Mr Brown also promised free swimming lessons to children in years four and five at school.
So sport is a core service of local government, and schools, which are funded by central government, will now get ratepayer top-ups for free swimming lessons.
Why stop at swimming? How about free cycling lessons so kids can be safer when on their bikes. Then we could have free running lessons as a cardiovascular regime. In fact, we could have free athletic club membership; free sport club membership; free everything.
The only thing that won't be free under Brown will be society.
Harre, 44, was handpicked by transition agency boss Mark Ford for the role as "human resources and change manager". He knew her from his time as chief executive at Watercare, when she was on the Auckland Regional Services Trust that appointed him. Her critics will no doubt say she's getting out before the real hurt is felt - by those who have no jobs in the new council, those who have to swallow big drops in pay and conditions and those forced to travel to the other side of town to keep a job.I saw an opportunity to practise what I preach as a unionist and that is to harness the benefits of worker participation, union protection, constructive engagements with management and implementation of change - and I think that's what we've been able to achieve."
The Government is looking for efficiency gains and middle-management staff on individual contracts are the most vulnerable.
In a classic work of economic history, William Baumol wrote that policy couldn’t really affect the supply of entrepreneurship – the ambitious and able would always find a way to try and get ahead – but could affect the allocation – how they tried to get ahead. In Ancient Rome it was viewed as degrading for honourable men to get ahead by working in industry or commerce, but extracting money from what we would now understand as abusing a political position was acceptable. In the early Middle Ages warfare was the best way for the nobility to improve their economic fortunes.
For a time in the 1970s, the left thought that John Rawls had succeeded in making acompelling case for egalitarianism when he proposed that we should think of ourselves in an ‘original position’ in which we have to agree on ethical principles of social organisation without knowing what position in society each of us will occupy.Rawls said a ‘just distribution’ is the one we would all accept while we were operatingbehind this ‘veil of ignorance.’ He was under no doubt that, in these conditions, we would agree to share resources equally.But no sooner had Rawls established this argument for equality than Robert Nozick offered an equally compelling refutation. He likened Rawls’s ‘original position’ to the situation of a group of students being asked to agree on the distribution of examination grades before starting their course.Nozick therefore proposed that we should gauge a just distribution simply by asking whether people have established a legitimate right to what they have.Philosophers like Rawls and Nozick have helped clarify our thinking about inequality, but they have clearly not resolved the ethical dilemma at the heart of the issue. In the end, we are still left wrestling with our own consciences. If we privilege the needy, we undermine the deserving. If we recognise just deserts, the needy gounheeded.From this perspective, what really matters is not equality of outcomes, butequality of opportunity.
In my initial post on the Australian election I indicated that on balance my head overruled my heart and called it for Labor as theirs to loose. The last few days has seen the Liberal momentum stall and Labor edge ahead in the two party preferred vote.Prime Minister Julia Gillard says she has no intention of pretending to believe in God to attract religiously-inclined voters.This is not an anti-Christian post. The issue is her standing up for her beliefs on a controversial issue. That's almost unheard of in politics today.Former prime minister Kevin Rudd was a regular at Canberra church services and Opposition Leader Tony Abbott is known as a devout Catholic.
In contrast, Ms Gillard says that while she greatly respects other people's religious views, she does not believe in God.
Ms Gillard has been quizzed on personal topics including her attitude to religion and her relationship with her partner during interviews this morning.
She says does not go through religious rituals for the sake of appearance.
"I am not going to pretend a faith I don't feel," she said.
"I am what I am and people will judge that.
"For people of faith, I think the greatest compliment I could pay to them is to respect their genuinely held beliefs and not to engage in some pretence about mine."
"I grew up in the Christian church, a Christian background. I won prizes for catechism, for being able to remember Bible verses. I am steeped in that tradition, but I've made decisions in my adult life about my own views.
Labour is defending information it published in pamphlets being distributed nation-wide which compare household costs with and without a 15 per cent GST.
The taxpayer-funded pamphlets, of which there are hundreds of thousands, zone in on the impacts the Government's policies are having on public services and the income and spending power of New Zealanders.
The pamphlets include a basic statistics column citing an example of a monthly power bill figure of $189.34, saying "plus National's 15 per cent GST" of $28.40 it will increase the bill to $217.74.
National Party and Tukituki electorate MP Craig Foss this morning said the comparison as "misleading" and an apology and retraction was needed from Labour.
With GST having already having been introduced by Labour - and increased to 12.5 per cent - years before National came to power, trying to pass the increase off as 15 per cent when it was in fact going up 2.5 per cent from October 1 was not on, he said.
"They totally misrepresent the fact that GST is switching from 12.5 to 15 (per cent)...the fact that the taxpayer is funding these pamphlets makes it worse and I think the Labour Party owes New Zealand an apology and should issue a correction", he told NZPA.
Few writers have impacted me as much as Tony Judt in his
recent book “Ill Fares the Land“.He notes the rise of the Third Way under Blair (and by another name under Clinton, and could we add locally Clark/Cullen?) as a triangulated response against the rise of right wing political hegemony.
He argues that with the end of those administrations the ideas of the Right once again hold sway. He asks what is worth saving of the social democratic project, and what is now to be done.
He concludes that nothing short of a strong and clear reclaiming of the values of quality, community and social democracy will equip the Left for the fight it must now win.
These problems, Judt writes, could find their resolution only in increased
national intervention. States would be called upon to redistribute
wealth and preserve the decaying social fabric of the societies they
governed. This conception of the role of the state is carried over – albeit
in slightly different form - into Judt's 2005 book, Postwar: A History of Europe
Since 1945.
Labour may have always had a real "intellectual" vacuum but really they've
always had a very strong, vicious, ideology
“You cannot bring prosperity by discouraging thrift.
You cannot help small men by tearing down big men.
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.
You cannot help the poor man by destroying the rich.
You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income.
You cannot further brotherhood of men by inciting class hatred.
You cannot establish security on borrowed money.
You cannot build character and courage by taking away man's initiative and independence.
You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.”
If redistribution is the best that the intellectual leading light of Labour can come up with then they are truly, and rightly, screwed.
The inquiry will be conducted by the Army, but what frank & balanced discussion / evaluation are you after, for eight years we have been in this province dont you think that the PRT would have a better grip on what the lay of the land is & more importantly the best vehicle to suit that land?, please explain to me who in NZ has beside those people that have served there can possibly offer & frank & balance argument why they are safely tucked away back in Gods own?.
The Army made the call on the NZLAV, have you ever seen photos of the area we operate in, this is not Helmend where its flat our TAO is the same as the Southern Alps but with no infrastructure at all, most MSR are dirt tracks or in some cases river beds. Where the contact occured is goat / thar country that you see on country calendar.
Ah the Pinz yes the GS version is an outstanding vehicle but lets take a gloser look at the armoured LOV or as we call it LOV(A) - 2.5 ltr turbo diesel carrying a 5.5 ton armoured shell unloaded, now lets fit it out for a 28 day patrol, we must add ammo, food, water, spare fuel, assorted batteries for the radios, spare vehicle parts, medical equipment, soldiers gear, soldiers ammo & body armour plus 4 x soldiers & our LOV(A) is in the vicinity of 7 - 8 tons now tell me how that 2.5 ltr motor is going to cope climbing a dirt track that equvilent to climbing up Arthurs pass?.
Heart & Minds or COIN as it called now, "Who has done any REAL research on this" now let me see lets try 1RNZIR & 40 years of Low intensity conflict while based in South East Asia, deployed Malayan emergency, deployed during Confrontation with Indonesia, Conducted Combat Operations during Vietnam but applying lessons learnt during the Emergency & Confrontation, jump ahead, Kosovo & Kiwi 1 Coy same application of lessons being applied, 1998 V Coy then NZBATT 1 in East Timor applyed the same lessons & also had to relearn some of those lessons again, Solomon Islands, Tonga now what research have you done? eight years we have been in Bamiyan do you think that all we do is sit in Kiwi base & play touch, lesson 101 include all local government resources to win an insugent conflict starting with the local Governor first.
What vehicle combo would you like to see?, where we were attacked only one force can clear on hold this terrain and thats Light Infantry so the vehicle traffic can safety transit through, Iraqi lesson now being applied in Afganistan by the insurgents the bigger the Vehicle the bigger the bomb, (note Canada were losing 1 x LAV a week).
Myth busting 101, its not the locals who are attacking the PRT, these people are from another Province, they are mainly criminal elements mixed up with Talibs, they are smuggling contraband from one province to another, usually they only attack from there side of the provincial border & they know that the PRT can not follow them up, they have learnt from 16 rotations, they know our ROE forbid us from clearing them out or crossing over. So what is holding us back our mandate as laid down by Government these then lay out the ROE that the PRT must abide by, Our mandate is Nation Building & force protection not offensive combat ops you want a change in vehicles then the mandate must change first now what government in this country is going to have the balls to do that.
Lastly dont you think that after eights years we have got to know the locals & have won there trust, your say things as if we were thick, we know every leader, every clan & what they want which is peace & the right to live, there children to be educated to have safe drinking water, hospital care the basics which we take for granted. Its a criminal element / talib that is causing trouble in our TAO & there not a thing we can do about it until we catch them on our side of the border or our mandate is altered until then we will carry on.
The lunitic Right fringe of the ACT Party will breathe a sigh of relief to know the The Veteran will be absent from the end of this week through until 25 August. I am in Australia as a guest of the Liberal Party looking at campaign tactics. I will be concentrating on the Liberal marginal seat of Paterson (NSW) held by the Hon Bob Baldwin, Shadow Minister of Defence Science and Personnel. Last election the two Party preferred vote was Liberal 51.5% (-5%) vs Labor 48.5% (+5%). Paterson is a rural seat north of Newcastle. The redistribution is thought to favour Labor.Rightly or wrongly, natural libertarians are firmly convinced that no one else can know their best interests more than they do. They insist on remaining in charge of their own destinies and bristle whenever other people seem intent on taking charge of their lives. Because natural libertarians respect their own independence, they respect the independence of others. They do not aspire to control other people’s lives, but when other people aspire to control theirs, they will resist tooth and nail. The natural libertarian will behave this way not because of an ideology, but because of his or her distinctive attitude towards life
The following extracts are from a pair of decent articles about how Chinese rule is changing. Understanding that China is heading along the path of an all powerful, albeit meritocratic, state clothing itself in Confucian ideals makes me deeply uncomfortable. I am certainly in favour of competent and moral politicians but believe that the best state is accountable to its citizens through balances to its power. Whether that be a strong constitution or a democracy ready to throw the bums out. The failed IPCC and ensuing climate hyperbole has shown how a steady stream of intelligent scientists have been willing to sacrifice scepticism and honesty for the benefit of their careers and sticking to the accepted mainstream. The Sanlu debacle posted by Adolf highlights how a state will do what looks best rather than what is right.
Communism has lost the capacity to inspire the Chinese, and there is growing recognition that its replacement needs to be grounded at least partly in China’s own traditions. As the dominant political tradition in China, Confucianism is the obvious alternative.
The party has yet to re-label itself the Chinese Confucian Party, but it has moved closer to an official embrace of Confucianism. The 2008 Olympics highlighted Confucian themes, quoting The Analects of Confucius at the opening ceremonies and playing down any references to China’s experiment with communism. Cadres at the newly built Communist Party school in Shanghai proudly tell visitors that the main building is modeled on a Confucian scholar’s desk. Abroad, the government has been symbolically promoting Confucianism via branches of the Confucius Institute, a Chinese-language and cultural center similar to the Alliance Française.
Of course, there is resistance as well. Elderly cadres, still influenced by Maoist antipathy to tradition, condemn efforts to promote ideologies outside a rigid Marxist framework. But the younger cadres in their 40s and 50s tend to support such efforts, and time is on their side. It’s easy to forget that the 76-million-strong Chinese Communist Party is a large and diverse organization. The party itself is becoming more meritocratic—it now encourages high-performing students to join—and the increased emphasis on educated cadres is likely to generate more sympathy for Confucian values.
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the key value for realizing global political ideals is meritocracy, meaning equality of opportunity in education and government, with positions of leadership being distributed to the most virtuous and qualified members of the community.
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Drawing on extensive empirical research, Bryan Caplan’s book The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies shows that voters are often irrational, and he suggests tests of voter competence as a remedy.
I also referenced this earlier article about Chinese presentation of itself. Ignore the laughable reference to Obama inventing smart power for America.
The Chinese government began to take the idea of “smart power” seriously years before the Obama administration made it an official premise of U.S. foreign policy. Unlike the American variety, however, Chinese “smart power” diplomacy does not shift investment from the projection of military power to foreign aid and public diplomacy, but deploys both of these at once—strategically, aggressively, and with increasing sophistication. As China has moved to extend its military influence from Asia, where it has dominated in a regional way, to parts of Africa, India, the Middle East, and beyond, it has also worked to convince the world that peaceful development is at the heart of its foreign policy.
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The Chinese leadership has pledged an eye-popping $6.8 billion for this endeavor. By comparison, the United States currently spends about $750 million annually on international broadcasting; similar U.K. funding for the BBC World Service runs about $400 million.
I worked hard to be visible, respectful and enquiring towards the ref.
China’s public diplomacy strategy has also relied more and more on digital technology. The Chinese central government employs at least two hundred and eighty thousand people to troll the Internet and insert material to make the government look good. Many more work as Internet volunteers—from retired officials to college students in the Communist Youth League who aspire to become party members.
