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Today’s Daily Blog Watch Round-Up of matters that have attracted the attention, assessments, and articulations of this country’s leading bloggers…

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NZ Left Blogosphere

We kick off with a blogpost on Frankly Speaking, Budget 2013: Child poverty, food in schools, and National’s response, where blogger Frank Macskasy has found an inconvenient fact relating to any Food-in-Schools programme that National might decide to implement. Should we be concerned?

Which ties in nicely with  Waitakere News, where Mickey Savage asks  So what happened to the Budget announcement of food in schools? Mickey suggests,

“There are two possibilities, either Key got rolled in Cabinet or National deferred an announcement so that the funding did not appear in the budget and National could announce it was on track to post a surplus in 2014-15.  Neither possibility reflects well on the Government.”

Fuck me, only Tories (and their spit-dribbling supporters) could play political football with hungry children.

On Whoar, Phillip Ure writes several blogs about tax avoidance  “..Apple accused of ‘highly questionable’ billion-dollar tax avoidance scheme..”. Funny how governments (of a right wing/quasi-nazi persuasion) demonise the unemployed, solo-mums (but curiously, not solo-dads or absentee dads), widows, debt-defaulting students as “bludgers” – but conveniently look the other way when it comes to corporates avoiding taxes. Wadup wit that?

On Tumeke, Tim Selwyn,  gives us a heads-up as to who  Mana will stand in the Ikaroa-Rawhiti  by-election. There is something reassuring about a First Past the Post election that is contested by several left-wing candidates – and there’s zero chance of a Right Wing candidate sneaking through a split left-wing vote…

Tim writes about Local customs – the curious matter of our exports being held up at Chinese ports. Tim points out,

“Chinese front companies using NZ, the melamine scandal… it comes down to dodgy Chinese pratices – not dodgy NZ practices.

I wouldn’t have posted on this formula milk issue if it weren’t for reports I’ve received that our fish products are getting a hard time going through the Hong Kong border into China and that as a result of this it has to be re-routed through Shanghai at great expense. The reasons given why our exports aren’t getting through in Hong Kong (but are getting through via Shanghai) are typically vague.”

Strange goings-on. There’s more to this than meets the eye…

Clare Curran blogs on Red Alert on National’s autocratic  The law (of NZ) according to Kafka. Clare is referring to the passing of several laws under “Urgency” (when there clearly is no reason for Urgency), and the extraordinary “removal (or redaction) of this important official advice from the publicly released Regulatory Impact Statement (or RIS)”.

This colmunist referred to this matter last night, in What Andrew Geddis Said (see below; Post of the Day), But Shorter and With More Swearing writes Keith Ng, on Public Address. Look at the image below,

Keith writes,

You’re looking at the Regulatory Impact Statement (RIS) for the Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill. Basically, the courts said that the Government had to pay family members who looked after people with disabilities (because not doing so was discriminatory), so the Government passed this law to say: “Yeah nah.”

The RIS isn’t just redacted for the public – it was redacted for MPs. *Parliament* voted on this, with all the relevant facts blacked out.

It’s mind-boggling and somewhat tragic that is is not front-page news on any of our daily newspapers. This country has fallen into a very, very deep sleep…

Puddlegum writes a series on The Political Scientist about  National Standards and Neanderthals – “They will know what is required …” – Part III. Worth a read to get some in-depth insight on this issue.

More from The Jackal on Natz discrimination against the  disabled. Whilst the msm steadfastly remains silent on the issue of the government legislating away the rights of disabled and their families, the blogosphere is focused fair and square on this autocratic law-making.

But then again, it’s obvious that the msm is either too lazy (or lacking in staff and resourcing) to follow up this story in any meaningful way, as Jackal points out with  Herald churnalism. In this piece, Jackal points out that Kerre Woodham/McIvor ,

“Somebody who writes for the NZ Herald should really get the facts straight and dig a little deeper into the story. [Woodham/]McIvor has simply relied on National’s propaganda to write her story and that’s not journalism, that’s churnalism.”

Check out QoT on Ideologically Impure. Her Random recommended reading offers a selection of interesting items to look at. Top of the list is the crazy, religious, god-bothering couple in Whangarei who are playing the “martyr card”. Why shouldn’t they be allowed to burn witches alive at the stake??? The Bible sez it’s ok, dammit!!!

And QoT relates an interesting way that a transgendered woman deal with discrimination in Tennessee, US of A.

I luv it when people think outside-the-square!! Yee haw!

The Hand Mirror has Anthea blogging about Adult disabled children, and criticising  aspects of National’s policies  which leaves a lot to be desired.

Plenty to consider on Idiot Savant’s No Right Turn;

• Read why Charter schools = quack schools and why religious groups are lining up to take tax payer’s money to teach nutty things like Creationism. Really, do we want our kids learning that an invisible (and often vengeful) supernatural being created the universe in a week and humans walked with dinosaurs? How does that fit in with the modern world of the 21st century? And can I put in a bif to support the Flying Spaghetti Monster?

• Unsurprising – that’s Idiot Savant’s verdict on the Inspector-General’s findings on his investigation of the GCSB. I believe the appropriate term is; white-wash.

• Tax cheats don’t like criticism – and corporates in the UK are squealing like stuck pigs as their tax avoidance activities are being outted. More so, I guess, when a supposedly corporate-friendly Tory prime minister – David Cameron – does the outting. Tories… cannibalising each other! Hah!

Another great little Film Review: The Company You Keep  on Redline. It’s all about some recent history (1960s and 1970s) and the movie The Company You Keep – a turbulent time in the 20th century as the US carpet-bombed Indo-China. The reviewer, Daphne, gives her verdict,

“This is a film with integrity, about integrity.”

This writer will be seeing it. (Which is more than one can say about “Star Trek Into Darkness” – a space-going metaphor for America’s love affair with violence and how it’s used to resolve conflict. Or fuck it, just for the sake of it.)

As the country continues to look deep into it’s collective soul on the issue of child poverty, Chris Trotter on Bowalley Road asks  Child Poverty: The Manifestation Of Parental Sin? He opens with,

WHEN IT COMES to children, the attitudes of New Zealanders are contradictory and hard to fathom. On the one hand, we respond with genuine anguish to media accounts of infants fallen victim to adult violence. On the other, we sign monster petitions demanding the right to administer corporal punishment to our own children. If asked, we will agree emphatically that “the needs of the child must always come first”. But, when welfare agencies and anti-poverty campaigners attempt to do just that, we attack them for undermining parental responsibility.

 

It’s as if, in the mind of every Kiwi, a battle rages between the instinctive urge to protect and defend our species’ most vulnerable members; and an equally powerful conviction that our children, as extensions of ourselves, constitute a form of personal property – over whom the community and/or the state should exercise only a strictly limited authority.

Read the whole thing. It’s brilliantly written and quite an insight into the mind of a conservative New Zealander.

On The Pundit,  Claire Browning describes how the Nats are  Kicking the tyres from beneath New Zealand, in an orgy of law-making (para-phrasing Andrew Geddis). Clare describes how our democracy is being whittled away, bit by bit,

“Taken together with what follows, it’s indicative of a government economically desperate – also, drunk on power and growing in aggression and confidence. “

She gives three clear examples of legislation that will curtail our civil liberties and increase the power of the State. Of course, National’s heavy-breathing supporters will positively wet their pants/panties at the thought of all the “greenies” and “commies” being surveilled by those good folk at the GCSB. And SIS. And Police. And Pork Board.

But just wait till a decent, solid, Left Wing guvmint comes to power…

Let’s see what some of these National supporters have been doing…

Oh, what’s this…?

Sheep porn???

Righto, lads, buckle up!!! Time for a raid!

Nothing from The Standard tonight – the site is off-line. “Off-line”??? Hmmm… And so it begins…

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Blogpost of the Day

Marty on mars2earth posted a very interesting blogpost, saying I don’t tolerate race baiters. It’s a look at a question raised by known  racist, John Ansell, at a radio broadcast constitutional debate – and how that question was treated by a particular poster on The Standard.

This is an intelligent look at certain issues surrounding The Treaty – which is why those with a racist/anti-Treaty agenda tend to veer away from such rational discussion.

Read the full blogpost and consider the points raised. It’s actually more worthwhile than TV3’s recent offering on The Vote, Are We A Racist Nation?

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Thought for the Day

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~oo~