Gov­ern­ment says hydro lake lev­els not a cri­sis – New Zealand news on Stuff.co.nz

The gov­ern­ment is dreamin’ if they think there isn’t a mas­sive power cri­sis looming.

I for one won’t be turn­ing of any bloody thing. I am going to use as much power as pos­si­ble because the best thing for this coun­try is a black­out and then peo­ple will see what a bunch of inept bloody morons we have ruin­ing the country.

No doubt when the lights go out all we’ll hear from Clark is “Diddums!”

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

Berry­mans win 14-year court bat­tle – New Zealand, world, sport, busi­ness & enter­tain­ment news on Stuff.co.nz

It has taken 14 years but the Berry­mans have at last the got the result that should have been given 14 years ago.

The Judge has over turned the coro­ners rul­ing that they were respon­si­ble for the death of the bee­keeper and also over­turned the exon­er­a­tion of the Army in the faulty con­struc­tion of the bridge.

The Berry­mans have one more legal pro­ce­dure to get through and that is their seek­ing of $4.5 mil­lion dam­ages in a mis­fea­sance suit. They now stand a good chance of win­ning that given todays decision.

Tech­no­rati Tags: berry­man, army, bridge

Pop­u­lar­ity: unranked [?]

War against billion-dollar P trade being lost – King – 01 May 2008 – NZ Her­ald: New Zealand National news

Annette King has raised the white flag and started a retreat rem­i­nis­cent of French Armies over methamphetamine.

Her con­ces­sion that the author­i­ties are strug­gling to win the war against P comes in a new Cab­i­net paper set­ting out Gov­ern­ment poli­cies to tar­get organ­ised crime.

The Gov­ern­ment set up a joint agency approach to tack­ling P in 2003.

Mea­sures included reclas­si­fy­ing it as a Class A drug and cre­at­ing a Metham­phet­a­mine Action Group.

But , methamphetamine-related cases as a per­cent­age of all cases sent to the High Court have risen from 41 per cent in 2004 to 54 per cent in 2006.

If the senior cab­i­net min­is­ter respon­si­ble for law and order puts her hands up and and essen­tially con­cedes that they have lost the war on meth then if she had any decency she would resign forth­with. She won’t of course because decency and hon­our are two words that labour min­is­ters are unfami­lair with.

We need a gov­ern­ment that will stand up to drug deal­ers, if nec­es­sary with force. We need a cor­rec­tions pol­icy of time sentenced=time served and we need to sever the heads of the hydra of the gangs imme­di­ately and with lethal force.

The gang and drug prob­lem could be solved overnight if the gov­ern­ment really was com­mit­ted to rid­ding this coun­try of the scourge of meth. I hear the going rate for Serb assas­sins is only a measly $50k. Hire a 1000 of them and task them to co-ordinate an sin­gle night attack on all the gangs simul­ta­ne­ously start­ing at the top and kill all the lead­ers, round up the rest and chuck them in the Auck­land Islands to sur­vive on their wits, for, oh, 50 years. Prob­lem solved overnight.

You see the prob­lem is a strech of 10 years and get­ting out after only one third of your sen­tence is a lark for these guys. Cer­tain death or life on a des­o­late island isn’t a prospect many would want.

I reckon we need a tiered approach. Some­thing like pos­ses­sion gets 5 years, no parole, deal­ing gets 50 years, man­u­fac­ture gets death and organ­is­ing dis­tri­b­u­tion and money laun­der­ing death as well. That’ll sort it. After two years there’d be fuck all drug deal­ers on the streets, they’d either be in a box or in the slammer.

Pop­u­lar­ity: unranked [?]

CO-ED Mag­a­zine » Hot for Teacher: 18 Sex­i­est Sex Offenders

CO-ED mag­a­zine has a Hot for Teacher fea­ture with the 18 Sex­i­est Sex Offend­ers. Yes the photo is one of them.

It has to be said: female school teach­ers are the new male Catholic priests.

Sex­ual offenses com­mit­ted by female teach­ers is at its peak, much like the libidos of the accused. While male teach­ers are (right­fully) lam­basted for their sex­ual mis­con­duct, women seem to get off much eas­ier – lit­er­ally and fig­u­ra­tively. And why, you ask? The answer is sim­ple: older women seduc­ing younger men is part of our cul­ture, like it or not. Just ask Mrs. Robin­son, or Stifler’s Mom.

South Park touched on the sub­ject in “Miss Teacher Bangs a Boy,” where Kyle’s lit­tle brother Ike has an affair with his Kinder­garten teacher. The cops in the episode have a field day with the case, exclaim­ing “nii­i­i­i­i­i­i­ice” after hear­ing about the teacher’s naughty secret. Their point, how­ever blurry, was well taken: every­body loves a sexed-up author­i­ta­tive fig­ure, within reason.

My point and solu­tion? Horny teach­ers should wait, ever so patiently, until their prey grad­u­ates. If you’re into kids, you der­serve to be locked up; if you’re into being the older lady for kicks, play your cards right, don’t break the law, and have at it like a jackrabbit.

Pop­u­lar­ity: unranked [?]

Tech­no­rati Tags: dear leader, did­dums, helen clark, 3am

Pop­u­lar­ity: unranked [?]

Kiwis think life get­ting tougher – sur­vey – New Zealand, world, sport, busi­ness & enter­tain­ment news on Stuff.co.nz

A recent Col­mar Brun­ton sur­vey has asked 1000 kiwis about life in NZ.

A clear major­ity, 64 per cent said life was get­ting harder and only 9 per­cent said that life was get­ting easier.

Per­haps an indi­ca­tion about how Labour is miss­ing out is that the most pes­simistic group was those aged 40–49. That group would be get­ting hit hard­est with mort­gage rises, food prices, school­ing fees and poor hospitals.

Even worse for Labour are the areas of concern.

94 per cent cited child abuse as the high­est con­cern.
91 per cent envi­ron­ment
86 per cent cost of liv­ing
84 per cent secu­rity of per­sonal infor­ma­tion
74 per cent hous­ing affordability

Clearly from the fig­ures we can see why peo­ple have had enough of nine years of Hard Labour. Noth­ing that mat­ters has improved under Labour in fact all of those have got­ten worse.

Tech­no­rati Tags: labour, life, sur­vey

Pop­u­lar­ity: unranked [?]

The prime of Helen Clark – New Zealand, world, sport, busi­ness & enter­tain­ment news on Stuff.co.nz

A friend of mine thought it strange that Hillary Clin­ton used Helen Clark for her joke of the week, so he con­tacted the Hillary Cam­paign H.Q. to find out where they got the joke from. He was very sur­prised with the reply he got.

One of Clin­tons Cam­paign staffers,( An intern) had cut & pasted this into a dossier on NZ, from a NZ web­site. They thought it amus­ing enough to keep.

Auck­land Labour MP Judith Tizard, not known for her diplo­macy, is cred­ited with once say­ing that fol­low­ing a nuclear holo­caust the only things left on the planet would be the cock­roaches and Helen Clark.

So there you have it Hillary Clin­ton used a joke about Helen Clark, dreamed up by none other than Judith Tizard!!! Oucheee!

Judith may be the next roach crunched under foot.

UPDATE: Con­fir­ma­tion that it was indeed Tizard that ini­ti­ated this lit­tle state­ment. Inci­den­tally it was Danyl Mclauch­lan in try­ing to prove a point against Wshart on Poneke’s post about Absolute Power that pro­vided confirmation….don’t you hate it when left­ies shoot off both their feet.

Here is the actual quote.

TOUGH? How tough is Helen Clark? Her long-time friend, Labour MP Judith Tizard, fairly bub­bles with mirth. “She’s so tough, I keep telling her that after the nuclear holo­caust, the only thing left will be the cock­roaches and Helen Clark.”

Tech­no­rati Tags: Judith Tizard, cock­roaches, Helen Clark

Pop­u­lar­ity: unranked [?]

John Arm­strong: Labour calls, but no one’s lis­ten­ing – Today’s Her­ald –DigiPoll sur­vey is grim read­ing for Labour for rea­sons other than the obvious.

It’s not just that it has slipped a fur­ther 5 per­cent­age points behind National. The party’s frus­tra­tion is that this has happened… [NZ Pol­i­tics]

In the army when drill instruc­tors are try­ing to make a point about how pathetic their charges are they yell at you, usu­ally 2 inches from your face “I can’t hear you!”, and that is exactly what the vot­ers are say­ing to Labour.

John Arm­strong, who I must say his photo bears no resem­blance to the grumpy old bas­tard who scowls down from the gallery every sit­ting day, is usu­ally a shill for the Labour party. not today he isn’t, though he does but try despite all the mount­ing bad news for gov­ern­ment more than 60% of the elec­torate wouldn’t vote for.

But there has been no pay­off in the polls. Some­times a mood shift in the elec­torate can take time to reg­is­ter in the polls. Labour will be pray­ing that this is the case. But that is really clutch­ing at straws.

The electorate’s mood gives every appear­ance of hav­ing solid­i­fied. Not only have vot­ers taken the phone off the hook, in Labour’s case, they have buried it deep in the bot­tom drawer.

And not only in Labour’s case. NZ First’s wav­ing of the flag of eco­nomic nation­al­ism com­bined with an inju­di­cious bit of Asian-bashing has done noth­ing to lift its stocks.

Arm­strong then con­tin­ues the the journo line that wily old Win­ston will ride again despite the fact that his xeno­pho­bia mes­sage is no longer being heeded. largely because the yel­low peril he has talked about in every elec­tion year since 1996 has never occurred. Kiwi’s are quite happy thank you very much with their new Asian neigh­bours and so the xeno­pho­bia calls do not res­onate. hav­ing wasted three para­graphs telling us noth­ing new about Win­ston he is forced to return to the Labour Party and again he has bad news to deliver.

Now when your biggest shill in the media is telling you that your “Slip­pery” tag for John Key isn’t work­ing for you, instead it is work­ing in favour of John Key then you know that your sin­gle tac­tic for the elec­tion has just been destroyed. Peo­ple are just not buy­ing the “Slip­pery” tag.

Labour are screwed because they have tried every­thing to dis-credit John Key and it isn’t work­ing, as a party that has based their entire elec­tion year strat­egy on den­i­gra­tion they must surely now be try­ing fran­ti­cally to come up wit some­thing positive.

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

Pres­sure on Labour as Nats pull away – National has reopened a wide lead over Labour in the Her­ald DigiPoll sur­vey, increas­ing pres­sure on the Gov­ern­ment to pro­duce a strong Bud­get to change its fortunes.

Labour is keen to avoid expec­ta­tions run­ning away on it on… [NZ Pol­i­tics]

Yep the TV3 poll was def­i­nitely rogue. The one hope that Labour and its client-blogs were cling­ing to has evap­o­rated today with the lat­est Her­ald Digipoll which show National and John Key pulling away from the gov­ern­ment and Clark.

To make mat­ters worse for “Measly Michael” the poll shows that tax cuts and the econ­omy are two biggest issues for vot­ers and worse still for “Measly Michael” it is Labour vot­ers who mostly want tax cuts.

Here are the numbers;

National 52.1% up 2.2%
Labour 37.2% down 2.1%
Greens 5.2% hang­ing on by the skin of their flu­o­ride free teeth
Win­ston First is a dead duck at last on 1.5%

No fig­ures for the rest which tells you something.

Pre­ferred PM

John Key 48%
Helen Clark 45.3%

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

PM says Wai­hopai spy base attack ’sense­less’ – 30 Apr 2008 – NZ Her­ald: New Zealand National news

Some fools decided to attack Wai­hopai and deflate the dome struc­ture of one of the satel­lite dishes.

I’m pretty sure that comes under the def­i­n­i­tion of ter­ror­ism using vio­lence or destruc­tion of prop­erty for polit­i­cal means.

Also Keith Locke is dream­ing by sug­gest­ing that the Greens “would be call­ing for a pub­lic debate and infor­ma­tion on the cost and the pur­pose of the Wai­hopai base if it was part of the next gov­ern­ment”. A posi­tion increas­ing look­ing like being unnec­es­sary as it is likely that The Greens will either be tum­bled out of par­lia­ment all together or in oppo­si­tion for the forsee­able future.

They really have only them­selves to blame by being the prover­bial whore to Labour’s john and achiev­ing pre­cisely noth­ing despite nine years of prop­ping up the most cor­rupt and venal gov­ern­ment since Muldoon.

Tech­no­rati Tags: wai­hopai

Pop­u­lar­ity: unranked [?]

Singing off-Key is doing lit­tle to boost Labour – Opin­ion: views on the news on Stuff.co.nz

Tracy Watkins all but writes of Labour in her col­umn today.

Is it time to write Labour off? Maybe not yet – but only because, like Win­ston Peters, Helen Clark is not some­one you write off lightly. And of course MMP applies the other hand­brake. In fact, if it weren’t for MMP, and the vagaries it throws up, we might have writ­ten Labour off already.

But the news doesn’t get much grim­mer for a gov­ern­ment head­ing into the final leg of its third term – on the weekend’s poll results, National would gov­ern alone.

Few would expect an 18-point lead to sur­vive the churn of an elec­tion cam­paign – but Labour is rapidly run­ning out of time to turn things around. And the por­tents aren’t good.

The polls are becom­ing self-fulfilling in that nobody likes to back a loser.

Impor­tantly, they appear to be los­ing faith that a Labour gov­ern­ment can turn that around. The view that National might be a safer pair of hands at the eco­nomic tiller is now shared by 46 per cent of vot­ers. Just 33 per cent of vot­ers trust Labour to man­age the econ­omy better.

In an elec­tion in which vot­ers, for the first time in nearly a decade, will be decid­ing their vote against the back­drop of hard times, a loss of faith in Labour’s stew­ard­ship of the econ­omy could prove decisive.

Trans­la­tion: Labour are screwed. Tracy is the first journo to talk about an early elec­tion, some­thing I have quite a bit of money rid­ing on. Mike Williams, per­haps their sin­gle biggest stum­bling block now has a mes­sage on his answer­phone for media to stop call­ing him.

Pop­u­lar­ity: unranked [?]

Nats query $2m rise in Govt ad spend­ing – New Zealand, world, sport, busi­ness & enter­tain­ment news on Stuff.co.nz

Bill Eng­lish has obtained fig­ures that show gov­ern­ment depart­ment spend­ing on adver­tis­ing has increased by $2 mil­lion in a month on month com­par­i­son between March 2007 and March 2008.

It isn’t work­ing though so arguably the money has been wasted as Labour is bounc­ing in the polls like the prover­bial dead cat.
Tech­no­rati Tags: rort

Pop­u­lar­ity: unranked [?]

Don Brash: Abol­ish GST on food? No way – 30 Apr 2008 – Opin­ion, Edi­to­r­ial and reader com­ments from New Zealand and around the World – nzherald

Don Brash gives good sound rea­sons why abol­ish­ing GST on food should be resisted with all our strength.

1. Adds hugely to com­pli­ance costs imposed on busi­ness
2. GST is not a sales tax, only levied on goods and ser­vices when they are finally sold to con­sumers, instead it is a tax levied every time a prod­uct or ser­vice changes hands, and it is designed that way to reduce tax avoid­ance.
3. Inef­fi­cient way of help­ing those low-income fam­i­lies who most need help with their food bills in terms of the amount of gov­ern­ment rev­enue fore­gone. “…most of the rev­enue which would be lost if GST on food were abol­ished, is paid by mid­dle and high-income fam­i­lies. If the Gov­ern­ment sees a need to help those fam­i­lies most adversely affected by ris­ing food bills, then the best way of doing that is by reduc­ing the income tax levied on low-income fam­i­lies…”
4. If GST is abol­ished on food, why not on other “essen­tials”, like children’s cloth­ing, doctor’s bills, books, and the like?

Those are all bloody good rea­sons to not change it…they are exactly the same rea­sons as when the tax was first brought in.
Tech­no­rati Tags: tax, gst

Pop­u­lar­ity: unranked [?]

Side­swipe: Wednes­day – 30 Apr 2008 – Side­swipe – New Zealand Herald

Rein­forc­ing the per­cep­tion that Labour is an elit­ist women’s only club, a fundraiser organ­ised by Labour can­di­date Kate Sut­ton and mar­keted through Face­book is to be a high tea and cham­pagne affair at Alber­ton House this Sun­day. The infor­ma­tion says “all funds go to Labour Auck­lands female can­di­dates [sic]“. One centre-right blog­ger says: “High Tea and cham­pagne at Alber­ton House, the colo­nial man­sion built by an elite landed fam­ily. Very bour­geois.” Not exactly a pie and sauce do down at the local abat­toir, is it? (Source: Con­ser­va­tor Occi­den­talis blog)

Ouch and Ana is usu­ally a nice good Labour sup­porter.
Tech­no­rati Tags: Side­swipe, blogs

Pop­u­lar­ity: unranked [?]

News car­toons – NZ Herald

Helen will be wish­ing she hadn’t blamed her mis­for­tunes on a dead car­toon­ist and 90 years of tory hatred of Labour from the Herald.

Tech­no­rati Tags: car­toon, polls

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]