Word is traffic policing in NZ is about to be neutered and in some parts virtually cease to exist apart from token gestures largely leaving road users to their own devices all because a huge amount of funding has been taken from the police budget, in what amounts to a budgetary shell game. It seems unbelievable but its happening.

The cut in the budget is substantial, much more than previously suggested and National is sitting very, very quietly on this.

So Bill English says he will raise the amount of police officers by nearly a thousand but at the same time oversee a huge but clandestine budget cut via funding arrangements between different government departments. Is this to direct the blame away from the government? Because we all know the Nat’s secrecy and paranoia means they micro manage everything so they must know what is going on!

Confusing, ironic, you bet! But this is EXACTLY how National work. It’s all a mirage, as will be these so called tax cuts.

They can’t afford them and they know it, so they lie.

See below for supportive conservative reports;

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/80801226/Government-denies-police-underfunding-to-blame-for-spike-in-road-toll

or (and there is plenty of others)

https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/traffic-incidents-rise-but-number-road-police-drops.

http://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2016/04/govt-argues-with-police-over-26m.html

yes Frank the tories talk social cohesion but their polices or lack of policies are actually detrimental to achieving social cohesion more likely to create divisiveness and an every man for himself attitude (individualism) which we have been seeing more and more over the last 8-9 years under the tories poor leadership

https://producaoindustrialblog.wordpress.com/

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-02-22/msnbc-anchor-admits-our-job-control-exactly-what-people-think

The interest paid on the original bond is created out of thin air via the issuing of another government bond.

It things start to get really bad, the central bank of the same country buys the government bond. Thus, the bank of Japan buys the bonds issues by the government of Japan, and everyone declare the bond auction a success. By the same token, if the share index starts to fall, the central bank injects fake money into the market to prop up the index.

The shift to purely abstract money held as digits in computer systems eliminates to cost of printing bits of ‘paper’ with squiggly lines and calling them valuable, and eliminates the cost of melting cheap alloys and stamping ‘magic’ symbols on them as replacement for metals with real value, like silver and gold.

It’s ALL a game of smoke and mirrors.

And the game of smoke and mirrors can be kept going as long as there are primary resources available that can be turned into waste and as long as there is an energy supply (especially liquid fuel) to keep doing so. That is why collapse is inevitable, and why collapse is extremely likely to occur over the next few years, and is CERTAIN to occur in the period 2020 to 2030.

Since the politicians have ZERO interest in telling the truth about anything (their job is to operate NZ Inc. as a short-term business for the overseas owners), they will continue to drive the country towards the point of complete environmental and energetic collapse. And enrich themselves and their mates in the short term whilst doing so, of course.

Road systems provide more profit for global corporations than rail systems do.

There have to be peculiar circumstances for a government to support a rail system against the wishes of global corporations, and those circumstances are rare, e.g. the requirement to move billion of tonnes of coal or iron ore etc.

Find a large deposit of coal that can be mined via opencast methods (or mountain-top removal, or find a large deposit of a valuable mineral that can be exported to China. Then you will get a rail system super-fast (but not one for passengers, of course).

Otherwise forget it. Not only are you fighting corrupt politicians who are more than happy to sabotage their own progeny’s futures, you are fighting international banks and corporations whose business models demand that the future be sacrificed to maintain present arrangements just a little longer.

“It’s quite different to the late ’90s when the msm presented a connected narrative to the public. That resulted in the election of a Labour/ Alliance government – on a platform of raising taxes, no less!

At the time, sufficient numbers of voters understood that tax cuts = slashed services. “Ain’t no such thing as a free lunch” , to quote our American scuzzies.”

That is so…but the question is why? I know the media are facing financial pressures they weren’t back then but it appears an intentional act to not examine the effect of policy…is it an editorial edict? a lack of journalist understanding? pressure from income sources? …or perhaps a combination of all three?…or something else entirely?….whatever the cause, journalism as its practiced of late must be a most unfulfilling occupation.

it is difficult to understand how such a state of affairs could continue essentially unchallenged for approaching 9 years (I don’t recall such media reluctance during the Clark years)

This country is the author of it’s own misfortunes and nowhere in the Scandinavian nations would citizens continually vote in such a stupid fashion.

A woman threw a Joyce puppet at Joyce already. Trouble is, rubber doesn’t burn very well.