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

Tech­no­rati Tags: democ­rats, clin­ton

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Silent Run­ning » Blog Archive » Party Pill Mad­ness II

Jim Ander­ton has been sprung ille­gally sell­ing Party pills from his elec­torate office. Mean­while in other news;

Home | ACT on Cam­pus has estab­lished an online bid to sell party pills.

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Ludi­crously low fares – and pay not so hot either – 01 Apr 2008 – NZ Her­ald: New Zealand National news

Of course Air New Zealand can offer ludi­crously low air­fares, espe­cially when they pay their own staff ludi­crously low wages.

The worst aspect of this whole furore is the aban­don­ment of the work­ers by Labour and their client blogs. They are all strangely silent. I can imag­ine the screech­ing now if it was National that jus­ti­fied slave Labour on the basis of a free market.

Tech­no­rati Tags: air new zealand, slave labour

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Keep­ing Stock: Cap­tion Con­test for April Fools’ Day

Keep­ing Stock has an April Fool cap­tion con­test and he hs a pic­ture of the biggest fool known to man. Pass it on.

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

Won­ders never cease.

Today the folk at The Stan­dard have announced that they will reveal who they all are and admit to being funded by the Labour Party and EPMU.

Tane, de facto leader and Union activist said “In the inter­ests of trans­parency we at The Stan­dard will reveal our true iden­ti­ties. We sup­ported the Elec­toral Finance Act and so it would be the right thing to do to renounce our anonymity and where our fund­ing comes from.”

In other news the anony­mous blog­gers at Kiwiblog­blog have admit­ted that they have hard to rec­on­cile sex­ual fan­tasies about David P. Farrar.

Ick­ystinky said “It’s hard to admit, but I think it some sort of penis envy, I mean DPF always has sto­ries and pic­tures about hot chicks he has laid and I can’t even pull my mother”

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NZ First embarks on char­i­ta­ble giv­ing – New Zealand news on Stuff.co.nz

Despite his cute lit­tle April Fool’s Day stunt Win­ston Peters still owes the ever suf­fer­ing NZ tax­payer $158,000.

Win­ston should name the char­i­ties so ordi­nary Kiwi’s can black list them for accept­ing stolen cash. mean­while Audrey Young gives Win­ston First a flaying.

NZ Her­ald Blogs The right way for NZ First? No way

- Did New Zealand First hon­or­ably accept the find­ing of the Audi­tor Gen­eral the party had mis­spent $158,000 of tax­payer money on polit­i­cal adver­tis­ing three months before the 2005 elec­tion?
– Did New Zealand First respond morally like other par­ties and pledge to repay the money to Par­lia­men­tary Ser­vice, the body that funded its unlaw­ful ads?
– Has your party given any urgency to the mat­ter since the AG’s report in Octo­ber 2006?
– New Zealand First attempted to score a PR vic­tory by announc­ing it had given the Star­ship Foun­da­tion instead of back to the tax­payer, but did it work?
– Did the party have any idea before it gave the money away it would be embar­rassed by hav­ing the cheque returned to sender by the Star­ship Foun­da­tion Board chair­man last Decem­ber?
– Did the party take the chance to finally do the decent thing and repay the money to the tax­payer?
– Was it clear where the party’s $158,000 came from?
[ What was on the sign you held up when we asked if it had come from Owen Glenn?]
– Does the party see any­thing wrong with its lat­est deci­sion to pay the money to a vari­ety of char­i­ties in a bid to avoid atten­tion on just one char­ity?
– Does the party under­stand why this might be seen as New Zealand First cyn­i­cally using char­i­ties to laun­der money that morally belongs to the taxpayer?

Tech­no­rati Tags: Win­ston First, theft

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This was spot­ted on an Auck­land Motor­way by an obser­vant reader. The web­site he is direct­ing us to is www.iceagenow.com

Tech­no­rati Tags: global warm­ing, bull­shit

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Auck­land Blog: Fisk­ing City Vision’s presser on the Royal Commission

Cr. Aaron Bhat­na­gar fisks teh self serv­ing press release of soon to be com­pletely out of jobs CityVi­sion. It makes hilar­i­ous reading.

Tech­no­rati Tags: CityVi­sion, Auck­land Issues

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Pill ban could increase booz­ing – Rotorua Daily Post – 2008-03-31 13:58:00.0 – localnews

Jim Anderton’s ban BZP cru­sade ably abet­ted by Miss Ban-DHMO Jacqui Dean appears to have spec­tac­u­larly back­fired and suf­fered from the law of unin­tended con­se­quences. Check out this telling state­ment from Reg Hen­nessy from the Hos­pi­tal­ity Asso­ci­a­tion of NZ.
Reg Hen­nessy, the Hos­pi­tal­ity Asso­ci­a­tion of New Zealand (HANZ) Bay of Plenty pres­i­dent, said he was behind the ban of party pills and hoped licensed premises would get more busi­ness out of for­mer pill takers.

“I don’t think our young peo­ple need any­thing else to stick down their throats to make them half loopy.

“Also there is no tax on them so noth­ing is going back to the Gov­ern­ment. At least with smokes and alco­hol it makes money to go towards fix­ing things fur­ther down the track.”

Mr Hen­nessy doubted many, if any, of his patrons at Hennessy’s Irish Bar used party pills as they were an older and more visitor-focussed crowd.

How­ever, he said night clubs and dance bars that attracted more young peo­ple might notice patrons drink­ing a lit­tle more.

“I would like to think so,” he said.

I won­der how Ander­ton feels now, being the flunky of the booze indus­try. Pass­ing a law that the HANZ hopes will make more peo­ple into drunks. As for his cyn­i­cal state­ment about young peo­ple not “need­ing any­thing else to stick down their throats”, pre­sum­ably he means except for alcohol.

If that isn’t a vested inter­est I don’t know what is. I think I will be scru­ti­niz­ing P the Pro­gres­sives Elec­toral return this year very closely.

Tech­no­rati Tags: vested inter­ests, booze, bzp

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Some strange shit going on up on the ice that isn’t sup­posed to be there.

Activists from the Humane Soci­ety of the United States and the Inter­na­tional Fund for Ani­mal Wel­fare have accused seal­ers of not killing the lit­tle fur­balls humanely.

hu·mane
adj.
1. Char­ac­ter­ized by kind­ness, mercy, or com­pas­sion: a humane judge.
2. Marked by an empha­sis on human­is­tic val­ues and con­cerns: a humane education.

Ok so which part of killing is humane, is it the club­bing part or the slic­ing their arter­ies under the flip­pers, I’m con­fused and so are the seal lovers. Pre­cisely how do you humanely kill any­thing even humans? Then we have this lit­tle inanity;

“We filmed as a sealer struck a seal with a hakapik before it slipped into the water. The sealer tried to pull the seal out by the hind flip­pers but it slipped under­wa­ter any­way. This wounded seal will most likely die underwater.”

If it had stayed on the ice it would have died just the same. Appar­ently it is bet­ter for the seal to die by hav­ing a pick belted through its brain than to drown by drown­ing. Where I come from dead is dead.

Now appar­ently the hunters are allowed to club 275,000 seals in a sea­son. Is any­one as per­plexed as me that that seems an awfully high num­ber for a sup­pos­edly endan­gered ani­mal. So far though the seals seem to be win­ning, only 15 have been got. Put that in persepec­tive when we have this comment;

“We’ve just filmed four seals being killed and not a sin­gle one was bled out before mov­ing it,” said Sheryl Fink, a hunt observer with IFAW.

Boy, she was lucky, since the start of the sea­son only 15 seals have been killed and they got to see four of them killed slowly, killed non­the­less, as I said before dead is dead, doesn’t mat­ter how it died.

But is there any kind­ness for the fam­i­lies of the three seal hunters killed and one miss­ing since the hunt began, even a whis­per, some words of con­do­lence, nope, not a one. Now that would be humane.

Rest easy folks, the Seal­ers and the fish­eries depart­ment defend the hunt and are clearly get­ting advice from our gov­ern­ment because they say that the hunt is “sus­tain­able” and well-managed, and that it pro­vides income for iso­lated fish­ing com­mu­ni­ties dam­aged by the cod stock collapse.

Tech­no­rati Tags: seals

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Min­is­ter inter­fered with ACC, say Nats – New Zealand, world, sport, busi­ness & enter­tain­ment news on Stuff.co.nz

Social­ists must have had deprived child­hoods with no toys. We have the Finance Min­is­ter who never had a train­set and now wants to own a real big one and Ruth Dyson, who prob­a­bly got shoved around in the sand­pit, now med­dling in oper­a­tional issues at ACC.

They are like the prover­bial dis­obe­di­ent child who when told to keep their hands off the levers just has to play.

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How to make NZ a bet­ter coun­try – Sun­day Star-Times – Sun­day Star-Times

The Sun­day Star-times ran this arti­cle. There are some bril­liant comments.

BOB JONES, 68, prop­erty devel­oper, Wellington

Every­body would be bet­ter off if we had a Roger Douglas-style 15% flat tax. Every­one would be richer, and every­one would be hap­pier. It works. We’ve seen it in Slo­va­kia they were in des­per­ate straits, banged in a flat tax and the place is jump­ing. The lower the taxes, the richer the soci­ety and the more the gov­ern­ment gets. I’d love to see that.

Amen to that Bob.

Dr PETER DADY, 63, can­cer spe­cial­ist, Wellington

My wish would be for an out­break of com­mon sense in the admin­is­tra­tion of the health sys­tem in this bloody coun­try. A break in the relent­less grind­ing stu­pid­ity in the way the health sys­tem is run. A nuclear device on the Min­istry of Health would have too much fall­out for the good peo­ple of Welling­ton, but it would make me feel a lot bet­ter. I used to sit in the offices of the Can­cer Soci­ety, which over­look the Min­istry of Health, and imag­ine the effect of set­ting up a mor­tar or a heavy machine gun and tra­vers­ing through the health depart­ment. It made me so happy but I must not even think these things. It’s sad to see your life’s work dete­ri­o­rat­ing. I wish I could see some light at the end of the tun­nel but you see boy won­der Cun­liffe grand­stand­ing in mor­tal com­bat with Hawke’s Bay Health and you think ‘oh God, it just goes on and on’.

Well, what more can one say? A Health pro­fes­sional in despair despite bil­lions extra in Health funding.

BRIDGET SAUNDERS [no age], gos­sip colum­nist, Auckland

I would make it a cor­po­ral offence, pun­ish­able with a beat­ing and huge fines, to drop cig­a­rette butts in the street, or any­where at all. They poi­son the lit­tle piece of earth they fall into, and there are mil­lions of them going into the har­bour every year.

Brid­get the ever-green Gree­nie is becom­ing con­ser­v­a­tive as she nears 30.

RAYBON KAN [no age], come­dian, Auckland

A more expres­sive, less inhib­ited cul­ture … think Car­ni­val in Rio, every­where, all the time. And every­one stop ask­ing what it means to be a New Zealan­der. The ques­tion stul­ti­fies. If we can have all that done by Wednes­day, I’ll be happy.

Ray­bon as usual is com­pletely irrev­er­ent. Mean­while Nicky Hager is in la-la land.

NICKY HAGER, 49, writer, Wellington

Make hous­ing afford­abil­ity the top polit­i­cal pri­or­ity. Most younger New Zealan­ders can­not afford to own a home and rents are crip­pling. Leg­is­late strictly to con­trol house price infla­tion per­ma­nently and start a mas­sive pro­gramme of build­ing secure, long-term pub­lic hous­ing like mod­ern cities in Europe.

I love the next one. Fan­tas­tic atti­tude of striv­ing higher.

KEVIN BIGGAR, 39, ocean and polar adven­turer, Auckland

Steeper moun­tains, spongier rocks. Big­ger waves, softer water. Snowier win­ters and sun­nier summer.

Barry Cole­man for Pres­i­dent for Life I think based on his won­der­ful comment.

BARRY COLMAN, 60, pub­lish­ing mul­ti­mil­lion­aire, Auckland

Rein­tro­duce the death penalty for any­one caught guilty of neg­a­tive think­ing, because that’s the biggest risk to New Zealand. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy you’ve got peo­ple talk­ing the coun­try down, talk­ing prospects down, where in fact we live in a very lucky coun­try and our prospects are extremely bright. We’ve got noth­ing to be neg­a­tive about, and these peo­ple should be put in the square and hung.

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This is well worth lis­ten­ing to – it’s how they play pol­i­tics in Zim­babwe – no doubt Helen will have NZ embassy staff doing the same thing later this year on her behalf.

Zimbabwe.mp3

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Clues dropped about ‘X-Files’ sequel – New Zealand’s source for enter­tain­ment news, gos­sip & music, movie & book reviews on Stuff.co.nz

It is ten years since the last X-files movie and now there is a sequel due out on July 25.

Can’t wait, I was a big fan of the X-Files when the show was on.

Tech­no­rati Tags: X-Files, TV

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Edi­to­r­ial: Church call to go back 17 years – 31 Mar 2008 – Pol­i­tics: New Zealand Polit­i­cal News, Analy­sis and Com­ment includ­ing 2008 elec­tion cov­er­age – NZ Herald

The Her­ald edi­to­r­ial calls out the Churches for the utter hypocrisy of their call to reverse the ben­e­fit cuts of 1991 and draws atten­tion to their deaf­en­ing silence since the Hikoi of Hope.

Now the col­lec­tive social con­science of the Angli­can, Bap­tist, Catholic, Methodist, Pres­by­ter­ian and Sal­va­tion Army lead­er­ship will be mobilised in a “call to action” for the restora­tion of ben­e­fit rates that were cut in 1991.

That would be ludi­crous. Much has changed in the past 17 years, not least the level of unem­ploy­ment in an econ­omy that has enjoyed con­stant growth for the past decade. What point, other than a polit­i­cal one, would be served by restor­ing any facet of the econ­omy to a posi­tion it was in 17 years ago? And why now? The church lead­ers surely have not been wait­ing nine years for the Labour-led Gov­ern­ments to heed the hikoi staged in National’s last term. It is hard to escape the sus­pi­cion they have recov­ered their energy this year in antic­i­pa­tion of National’s return.

Exactly. I won­der per­haps if Labour will be threat­en­ing these Churches with the same threats they applied against The Exclu­sive Brethren. I doubt they will. The heads of these churches are con­stant in one thing only and that is the toad­y­ing and lick­spit­tle fawn­ing towards the Labour Party.

The churches have been silent on these social issues for too long, and now they have been silent on their pre­ferred polit­i­cal solu­tions for too long – the dura­tion of Labour’s pol­icy lead­er­ship. Their return to the fray at this stage can be taken only as an attempt to keep Labour in power and, should that fail, to pre­pare for a renewed cam­paign against a National government.

Indeed, where were the churches on Civil Union’s, legal­i­sa­tion of pros­ti­tu­tion and the anti-smacking bill, where has been their out­rage as an ever increas­ing num­ber of chil­dren are bat­tered to death. Com­plete and total silence from the main­stream churches. Is it any won­der that not one of the mem­bers of this for­merly illus­tri­ous group are increas­ing their flock, in fact they seem to be doing their darn­d­est to reduce the flock to nothing.

One must always bear in mind the huge asset base that the Angli­can, Catholic and Pres­by­ter­ian churches have that they derive income from and do not pay even one cent in tax. I can cer­tainly remem­ber the Angli­can Church whin­ing in the past about State House rentals as they were mer­rily ratch­et­ing up the leases in St Johns and Mead­ow­bank. Main­stream churches gen­er­ally make me sick with their hypocrisy.

Tech­no­rati Tags: church, activism, wel­fare, nz

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