The case against light rail
The Government’s announcements that they are to accelerate the procurement process for light rail to the airport and to the NorthWest including Kumeu, had some pundits and young transport enthusiasts breathless with excitement.
Read More →Western Economic and Military Groupthink on Parade This Week
So while leaders from European superpowers, Five Eyes nations and the Commonwealth parade, in self-congratulatory back slapping and hand shaking in front of the cameras, they engage in lock step and group think, marching as one over firing missiles at Syria that are actually aimed at Russia, in a real battle for supremacy of the ‘There is No Alternative’ approach to economic management, monetary policy, growth, trade and the neo-liberal agenda.
Read More →MUST READ: Russian Spy Drama Symptom of and Distraction From Bigger Geopolitical Play
I prefer to live in a country that makes its international relations decisions based on firm, independent evidence rather than speculation. Let’s not forget the rush to war based on allegations of Weapons of Mass Destruction. It doesn’t have to be ‘you’re either with us or you’re against us’, it can be a case of wait and see – at least until Wednesday when the UN Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons releases its report into the incident.
Read More →What price is dolphin protection? Election donations? Conflicts of Interest?
In 2016, Stuart Nash proposed a ten-year moratorium on commercial fishing within waters 50m deep. He said the video monitoring programme needed to be rolled out more quickly, that the (National) government wasn’t doing enough. By 2017 after the formation of the Labour – New Zealand First coalition government, he has suggested doing away with electronic monitoring altogether and has proposed nothing credible or timely in its place.
Read More →Without even small environmental wins, justice is a distant dream
As the ‘left’ moves to the centre, I find myself on the further margins of the spectrum. Here I am, left of Labour and greener than the Greens, looking for everyday solutions as well as system level change to solve the problems of our era. I can’t see how incremental and conservative capitalist prescriptions can ever be the remedy for environmental collapse, economic inequality or social exclusion at their present scale.
Read More →Overseas banking villains suck New Zealanders’ wealth offshore
The ANZ is our biggest bank, with around one million Kiwi customers and 31.3% of the market. The ANZ lending business is worth about $72.35 billion, with net loans worth $117.24 billion. That reflects staggering wealth to have in the hands and at the mercy of overseas banks.
Read More →Primates, politics, the Princess and the PM
Despite the Prime Minister’s pregnancy, this government represents a modified status quo and change will be incremental and conservative (note the debate and votes on medicinal marijuana), and in many instances Labour will be more aligned with National than the Greens.
Read More →Don Brash’s attitudes a relic of colonialism
Don Brash also overlooked the historical and contemporary diversity, and complexity of New Zealand, saying ‘New Zealand values are British values’, and that a lot of socio-economic deprivation among Maori is because they ‘don’t speak English properly’.
Read More →Reflections on racial exclusion in an EziBuy catalogue
The absence of ethnically diverse women in fashion magazines as part of media bias, ‘defines the contours of society’, shapes our understanding of the world, how we see ourselves, how we are seen, and helps create ‘social identities and realities’. It’s a form of ‘racial framing’.
Read More →On calling out the excesses of capitalism
It’s true that capitalism has failed low income earners who live in poverty at one of the highest rates in the developed world, and indeed, all over the world. It’s failed the children who live in those low-income homes. It’s failed the homeless. But capitalism has also failed our rivers, our oceans, biodiversity, future generations and our atmosphere.
Read More →NZ companies complicit in culture of violence, intolerance and oppression
War is great for business. About $1.68 trillion worth of business globally as of 2015. Defence market reports say global tension and conflict will drive ongoing defence spending, “leading to global market opportunities for exporters”. Even here in NZ, our comparatively small defence budget is increasing, and NZ based military technology manufacturers are poised to […]
Read More →Theo Spierings: An Icon of Inequality
Mahatma Ghandi said the true measure of any society is its treatment of its most vulnerable members. Others say inequality is the measure of fairness in society. The massive levels of inequality in modern capitalist societies reflect badly by any measure. Egalitarian New Zealand is a myth.
Read More →Little chance of system change, but change in government is a good place to start
For those of us who also want a more fundamental change than just rearranging the parliamentary seating order, and minor changes by degrees, in some ways, hope competes with despair. I’d like to take a vote on neo-liberalism itself but it’s not even on the agenda.
Read More →National Party sacrifices human rights to politics
Bill English and Paula Bennett admitted the new powers would stretch human rights laws, but would only apply to serious criminals who had ‘fewer human rights than others’ anyway, clearly misunderstanding human rights. We should be wary when the Prime Minister and his Deputy are prepared to trade off these rights as a pawn in desperate election politics.
Read More →NZ’s huge criminal underclass created from political choice
Criminals aren’t born, they’re created. They’re created in response to a combination of factors such as socioeconomic status (poverty) and class (social marginalisation and exclusion), family dysfunction, illiteracy, unemployment, substance abuse and mental ill-health. And they’re created by punitive laws, ‘penal populism’ leading to policies ‘strong on law and order’, unconscious bias in the police force, and subsequent distortions in remand terms and conditions, sentencing and incarceration.
Read More →Labour’s prospects after its (latest) leadership change
Labour definitely couldn’t afford to poll any lower – without risking key senior MPs. So the departure of Andrew Little probably couldn’t damage the party any more than if he were to stay. Even though it’s extraordinary (but not unprecedented) for a leader to resign so close to an election, desperate times call for desperate measures.
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