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Key vows to scrap bail law changes – National leader John Key says if elected to gov­ern­ment he will repeal changes to the Bail Act in 2007 that he says have put the pub­lic at risk.
Mr Key wrapped up his caucus’s plan­ning retreat with a return to a tra­di­tional pol­icy… [NZ Pol­i­tics]

National has vowed to scrap Labour’s cost sav­ing changes to bail laws. This is good but doesn’t go far enough.

National should be call­ing for “Time Sen­tenced = Time Served” and the removal of con­cur­rent sentencing. 

A good start though, per­haps Rod­ney could pick up the bits tha National left off. 

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

IRD staff con­tinue pry­ing into tax­pay­ers files – 01 Feb 2008 – NZ Her­ald: New Zealand National news

8 staff were sacked in the first nine months of last year as Peter Dunne reveal that the IRD still has unwanted nosy park­ers snoop­ing out­side of their brief. Not only that a fur­ther 4 were warned for in-appropriate access.

looks lke another gov­ern­ment depart­ment in seri­ous need of a shake up.

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Tele­com to face court over broad­band claims – 01 Feb 2008 – NZ Her­ald: New Zealand Busi­ness and Per­sonal Finance News

A clas­sic case of the mar­ket­ing hype out-performing the technology.

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Min­is­ter ‘in denial’ over crime rate – National’s law and order spokesman, Simon Power, says Annette King is in denial over the spate of crime that has seen 10 homi­cides in a month.
Speak­ing at the National Party’s three-day cau­cus retreat in Rotorua, he responded to… [NZ Pol­i­tics]

I still can’t believe that Annette King blamed the “blip” in mur­ders on the moon and the sun. It is wrong on so many levels 

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

New Zealand car­toons by Gar­rick Tremain, Tom Scott, Mur­ray Webb, Chi­cane and Jim Hub­bard on Stuff.co.nz

The Car­toon­ists at Stuff are on fire today.

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New Zealand car­toons by Gar­rick Tremain, Tom Scott and Mur­ray Webb on Stuff.co.nz

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Bird Nest for sale – TradeMe.co.nz – New Zealand

Even a used Birds nest. The ques­tions and answers are as usual where the fun lies.

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Please, please, please don’t go to the Sev­ens. Have brunch with Judith, lunch with Mike at Te Atatu, but please do noteven be any­where near the Caketin, Welling­ton or even a Rugby game anywhere.

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I know that trades peo­ple like to adver­tise their busi­nesses on their vehi­cles. They do this for a num­ber of rea­sons, tax deductibil­ity, adver­tis­ing etc.

Some though should really think through the full impli­ca­tions of the tar­get mar­kets. This image is one I took this morn­ing while I was wait­ing for my Doctor’s appoint­ment in Mead­ow­lands. For those who don’t know Auck­land, Mead­ow­lands is in actu­al­ity “Lit­tle China”. Lit­tle China is sand­wiched between How­ick and Botany so there are plenty plus Euro­pean customers.

Now don’t get me (W)rong, this guy is prob­a­bly a first class arti­san, but putting his name on the van and busi­ness wasn’t the cor­rect mar­ket­ing call. Nev­er­the­less if you need any tiling and don’t know any des­per­ate Thai immi­grants then please give this guy a call and prove me (W)Rong. Oh and BTW the Indian behind is superb and I eat there as often as I can…it is my sec­ond favourite restau­rant in Lit­tle China after Ken Yakitori.

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Nats odds on to win elec­tion – book­maker – The National Party has been installed as firm favourite to win this year’s gen­eral elec­tion by Aus­tralian book­maker Cen­tre­bet.
Cen­tre­bet today released odds for the elec­tion, with National pay­ing A$1.47 ($1.69) for vic­tory, against… [NZ Pol­i­tics]

When the book­ies are against you as well as Rus­sell Brown and Chris Trot­ter then you are screwed. You may as well give up.

Now both Rus­sell and Chris Trot­ter have talked up Phil Goff. The putsch can’t be far off.

Watch out helen, the book­ies won’t take any bets and the left­ists are mass­ing behind Phil Goff. 

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FREE MARKET FAIRY TALES: Liber­ian Infantry Tac­tics Review – Reposted
Free Mar­ket Fairy Tales has help­fully out­lined cur­rent infantry tac­tics being used in Liberia.

Yes, that is a life jacket he is wear­ing, last time I checked they didn’t stop bul­lets that well….of course he won’t now drown in a pool of his blood.

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10 dead – but it’s a ‘blip’ – 31 Jan 2008 – NZ Her­ald: New Zealand National news

Phew! I was get­ting wor­ried about the state of crime down in South Auck­land but luck­ily it was only a blip. We know it is a blip because our Min­is­ter of Police and our police and crim­i­nol­o­gists say it and even an old fool from Christchurch says so.

OF course the killings are but the tip of the ice­berg – What police sta­tis­tics do show is that inci­dents of vio­lent crime shot up by 350 from Jan­u­ary 2006 to the fol­low­ing Jan­u­ary – from 4398 to 4748.

Annette King basi­cally blames it all on Global Warm­ing and the Full Moon!!!!!!…well sort of;

Well fuck me with a broom­stick, its all the full moon’s fault and because it is a lit­tle warm.

The Police Min­is­ter should resign forth­with for that idi­otic state­ment alone, but not before going to each of the 10 fam­i­lies who have lost some­one and apol­o­gise to them that her gov­ern­ment think that it is only a blip that they are dead.

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Mike Moore: Repeal elec­toral act … that’s progress – 31 Jan 2008 – Pol­i­tics: New Zealand Polit­i­cal News, Analy­sis and Com­ment – NZ Herald

Mike Moore gives us a brief his­tory of the Labour move­ment and in the process high­lights just where they have gone off the rails. Unusu­ally for him it isn’t just a col­lec­tion of waf­fle and sound bites.

• There were many Australian-born min­is­ters in the first NZ Labour Cab­i­net – dis­senters, trade union­ists, who were hounded out of Australia.
• Chris­tian­ity played a huge role in the beliefs of early Labour, we owed more to Method­ism than to Marx. Branches of my union, the Print­ers Union, were called ‘chapels’
• Our first Labour Prime Min­is­ter, Sav­age, was a strong Catholic; Nash, a lay preacher; Nord­meyer a Pres­by­ter­ian Min­is­ter; Kirk a young Sal­va­tion Army mem­ber; and Lange, ini­tially a devout Methodist. Labour’s rela­tion­ship with the Ratana Church was the key to hold­ing power in Maoridom for generations.
• Paddy Webb, later a min­is­ter, was stripped of his par­lia­men­tary seat and lost his civil rights for 10 years because of his oppo­si­tion to con­scrip­tion dur­ing World War I.
• Tim Arm­strong, Bob Sem­ple and Peter Fraser were jailed for sedi­tious behav­iour. Wal­ter Nash was fined for import­ing sedi­tious mate­r­ial. That’s two future Labour Prime Min­is­ters with crim­i­nal convictions.
• One cur­rent min­is­ter was ejected phys­i­cally from the par­lia­men­tary gallery for protest­ing against the exten­sion of the pow­ers of the Secu­rity Intel­li­gence Service.

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It looks like that despite the fawn­ing, slurp­ing, toad­y­ing, slob­ber­ing and crawl­ing Clark’s focus groups screwed the pooch.

There must also be a seri­ous dis-connect in the con­tact details for one bunch of dis­cred­ited and dis­owned lick­spit­tles who clearly either didn’t receive the talk­ing points from the ninth floor or posted a delib­er­ately anti post to try and hide their clear, obvi­ous and proven links to the Labour heirarchy.

Mean­while the rest of coun­try is saying“John, we like the cut of your jib“

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