Guest and sponsored opinion pieces published on The Daily Blog, offering diverse perspectives within clear editorial guidelines.
Last week, two serious news events dominated our airwaves. The way these stories were disseminated tells us plenty about the way we, the New Zealand public, are fed propaganda.
Pike River was a failure of the unions to insist on health and safety conditions for the miners under both Labour and National Governments. The deregulation of industry was started by the 4th Labour Government under Lange. It was symptomatic that under Labour the unions fell into line with its policies and failed to put up a serious fight against the monetarist deregulation of the economy at the cost of many workers lives.
Congratulations to Labour’s Māori seat Members of Parliament who have asked to not be included on the parties list for this year’s election.
Young progressives, I’m sorry to tell you that you have lost a father figure this week. A father of your movement Chris Skytrotter was killed by an evil turncoat known as Darth Boomer.
There is no resource more precious and valuable to the people and its land than water, yet on almost every front our rivers and lakes are under attack. Farming continues to pollute our rivers for more milk powder and greedy overseas interests effectively steal our water free and make millions in profit from it.
In mid-March, a report commissioned by the UN Agency ESCWA (Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia) was released, that concluded unequivocally that Israel practises Apartheid policy. It saw official daylight for two days. The UN pulled the report and removed it from the UN website, after intense pressure from the US and Israel.
In theory, education is supposed to be the ‘great equaliser’ – this is an idea we often tell ourselves and others. For well-meaning liberals, the answer to a significant amount of the world’s problems lies in its citizens being better educated. Sociologists have amassed a great deal of evidence that demonstrates the power of social class in enabling or disabling children’s achievement potentials at school right off the bat.
Lot of talk this week that we need to raise the age of retirement to 67. The argument is that we can’t afford Superannuation at 65 for everyone so we should raise it to be ‘fair’. But who exactly is that being ‘fair’ to?
The most recent statistics I have been able to get that compare the reoffending rates of those granted parole with that of those who served their whole sentence relate to the period 1994-1999. Of those granted parole over that period, 15.5% reoffended and 84.5% didn’t. Of those who did not get parole 34.4% reoffended and 67.6% did not.
The move from the Maori Party to have Tainui King Tuheitia endorse their candidate Rahui Papa in the Hauraki-Waikato seat is one of the most selfish and saddest political strategies I have ever witnessed in Maori politics.