Forget road tolls – Auckland needs free public transport
Instead of road tolls which punish low-income workers who live the farthest from their jobs, Auckland City should be looking at free public transport
Setting the Agenda
Political analysis and commentary shaping the progressive debate in Aotearoa New Zealand, focused on power, policy, and accountability.
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Posturing and selective commitment
At 1:30am, 9 June 2016, three Palestinian fishermen in two small boats came to the end of an exhausting 13-hour fishing trip. As they began their return to port an Israeli Navy gunboat approached, hurling abuse from a loudhailer before opening fire on them and wounding a fisherman, Rajab Khaled Abu Riela. The warship then rammed one of the fishing boats.
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Four Limericks – As Britain Takes Her Leave
1. William, with a conqueror’s grin, Told the English: “It looks like you’re ‘In’!” But, after one thousand years, It’s…
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Marg Jones: the matriarch of good causes
Marg Jones never seemed old. Well in to her 90s she could be seen on all the big protests, or running a street or festival stall for the Soil and Health Association. She was always chirpy, her mood matched by bright and often rather outrageous outfits using the best op-shop materials.
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Getting On Top Of Things: The National Party’s Strategy Of Class Defence
Social democracy and egalitarianism are joined at the hip, and the longer they persist the easier it gets for working-class people to say “Fuck you!” – and walk away. Capitalism can survive many things: riots, strikes, economic depressions, even wars: but it cannot survive that.
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Is it time for some Community Communism in Aotearoa?
The outlawing of Zero Hours Contracts in Aotearoa this April was big news for the Left and union movement abroad, with the result that Unite union activists were invited to speak at conferences and parliaments in Ireland, Britain and the USA last month.
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Where were you when we needed you?
As unions struggled to organise workers over the last 25 years governments de-regulated the labour market or sat back and watched organised labour fall apart. The art of civil society is to organise for the common good whereas the art of politicians is to compromise, for their own good.
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“Hate To Say Ron Told You So” – On Key’s Recent Flip-Flop About Kiwi Troops In Iraq
Regardless of what and whether you feel about New Zealand military involvement in Iraq. Irrespective of whether you think putting Kiwi boots on the ground in Iraq makes us a target; or if you think that training up Iraqi forces somehow makes us safer here at home … the Government has lied, distorted, spun, manipulated and mislead its own people a score of times over this particular issue. There’s just simply no way around it.
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Bright ideas are good, but not good enough – Lifewise
…these efforts only seem like solutions because they temporarily fix a visible symptom of homelessness. None of them can make a problem as complex as homelessness go away. Most countries in the Western world have struggled with it since the ’80s; thirty years is too long to not have a solution in sight.
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Hone Harawira’s Attempted Re-Entry: Is It Credible? And What Does It Mean For The Left In 2017
First, *can* Harawira pull it off; and second … what are the likely effects going to be if he does, in fact, win Te Tai Tokerau once again.
The answers – particularly to the second question – may be surprising.