Political analysis and commentary shaping the progressive debate in Aotearoa New Zealand, focused on power, policy, and accountability.
Yes, I know, the decision not to increase benefits yet is terrible. It does condemn many households to a further miserable existence in povertyland. And it is wrong. But I am celebrating today. Because thousands of single parent families, whose only ‘crime’ was to refuse to name the father of their child/ren, will no longer be subject to a punitive and disgusting sanction of $28 per week.
The Israel Institute of New Zealand (IINZ) website carries a video message from National MP Alfred Ngaro, dated 23 December 2018, with the title National MP Alfred Ngaro on Israel and 2334. The same video can also be seen on YouTube – but under the heading New Zealand MP Alfred Ngaro – a staunch Zionist. The IINZ introduction to the video says: “National Party List MP, Hon Alfred Ngaro . . . recorded this video in which he declares his personal commitment to Israel while reminding his viewers of New Zealand’s historic support for the Jewish nation”. In his less than five-minute delivery, Ngaro states repeatedly: “I am a Zionist”.
I KEEP REJUVENATING my fellow travellers. Looking through their grey hair and sagging flesh for the younger men and women they used to be – back in the 1960s and 70s. I do the same, now, in psychic self-defence, whenever I stand in front of a mirror. Cruising the Ionian and Adriatic Seas with a boatload of baby-boomers will do that to you.
J Day is an annual celebration, festival and protest in support of cannabis law reform, held every year since 1992. This year J Day is on Star Wars Day – May the Fourth!
So we have a legal product, that the pro-tax advocates insist must pay a fine of around $60 a week or $3000 a year for their “filthy” habit. I can see the middle-class do-gooders sneer as they support higher and higher taxes on the poor and brown and obviously stupid people who continue to smoke.
None of Labour’s arguments to explain their failure to deliver a Capital Gains Tax stack up.
A Solomon Islands academic says the only body that can find a legitimate solution to his country’s current crisis is the National Parliament, reports Rosalie Nongebatu in the wake of this week’s riots in Honiara.
RUBBISH AND CHURCHES. Grandeur and decay. Italy is an old place – and it shows. Rome, a world city, is full of skips and wheelie-bins overflowing with uncollected trash. Romans pass by these eyesores without so much as a second glance. It’s not desirable, they seem to say, but it’s the best we can do. Refuse collection, like so much else in Italy, is a racket. Somebody is making a lot of money out of Rome’s rubbish – but far too few people are being paid to collect it. And so, as is customary in the Eternal City, things pile up.
“Sack the Board if you think they’ve done poorly, but don’t shift the blame to them, or any other DHB, for chronic systemic problems the public health system has been facing for many years.”
In my role as the Easter bunny, I was in Christchurch Men’s and Women’s prisons (not at quite the same time) giving out Easter Eggs over the weekend.