Bahahahaha! ”

“Mirror mirror on the wall who is the most corrupt of all?”

” If they owned Air New Zealand then the Shane Jones of this world would have a field day with picking which towns were serviced”

Seymour and Epsom, Seymour Charter Schools, how much was he afforded by National and Key.
Shane Jones is a saint compared to those rouges!

+1 WILD KATIPO,

although I think the rough justice, (if neoliberal thinking keeps controlling the government thinking in NZ) might just do a 1984, aka the workers are all out of a job on unemployment, while the company shareholders and 1% interests are bailed out.

Already seeing part of it, with big multinational names and networkers, being used to help with Covid-19 while local voices, local experts and local NZ businesses are drowned out and not part of local and central government usage.

Sad to say, many experts in NZ are not being utilised in many sectors to combat Covid-19, while the big names and networkers with their often not too competent expertise are used instead.

See it with Trump and Boris show as well. Our low density population may be the saviour that those countries don’t have, not good management.

+1 simonm

I appreciate your incredible input over the years for this country, Bryan, you’re up there with the likes of Chris Trotter and others for their searing insight, knowledge of history and the ability to translate that into a modern context and how that relates to current issues.

Asset sales and privatization …! By crikeys , when I look at the ongoing destruction caused by that treasonous political cabal back in the mid 1980’s and early 1990’s – including the Business Roundtable ( now calling itself the NZ Initiative ) – to this country and its people and the poverty out there in the community , all the lies, the deceptions and the trampling of our democracy, the false mandate they claimed they had… my hackles start to rise…

The mixed economy we had before that worked perfectly fine. We would have weathered the storms of change just like the Scandinavians have if we had persisted . The essential assets we had should never have been sold off under any spurious reasons given by those pirates. Former generations worked hard to build them to provide affordable utilitarian services , – only to have those sadistic neo liberal tapeworms justify flogging them off to fill their own already deep pockets .

Adding insult to injury , they then plied us with the lie that it would bring ‘competition’ and thus lower prices ( yeah right ! competition in a land that at that time had only 3.4 million people ! ), – then did nothing as these piratical foreigners bought the assets at a fire sale, never improved the infrastructure and then proceeded to ramp up prices !

Anyone remember Telecom and how that was finally , finally taken to task for price gouging?

I’m gonna stop. We all know the truth.

But the fact that those pirates used our democracy to enable their own self enrichment and have never been called to answer for it is the most galling aspect of all.

There is a macabre kind of rough justice coming because of this corona virus, – the toppling of certain grabastic moneyed empires being one of them. Too bad it took the vengeful forces of nature to do it rather than the forces of good conscience and honesty from human beings…

1) “Gerry is a big boy but was not responsible for the earthquake.”

A) Indeed he wasn’t. However he was responsible for organising the rebuild afterwards and it was a complete clusterfuck.

2) “The South Canterbury bail out was created by a fund started by Dr Micheal Cullen so had very little to do with Bill English as Labour would have had to pay if they had stayed in power.”

A) Bullshit. South Canterbury Finance was operating well outside the covenants required of companies to be covered government’s deposit guarantee scheme. The National government had absolutely no legal obligation to cover investors’ deposits. It was a political decision on their behalf to do so.

3) “Rio Tinto has been supported by both Labour and National . It supports about 800 jobs and earns the country millions in export dollars and it is the greenest aluminum in the World.”

A) Well that’s certainly the line pushed by NZAS’s PR department. There’s no reason NZ taxpayers should be subsidising those particular 800 jobs any more than they should any other jobs (post-Wuhan coronavirus excepted). The NZ Treasury strongly advised against paying Rio Tinto a $30 million subsidy because they said it amounted to a straight transfer of NZ taxpayers money into the pockets of Rio Tinto shareholders.

Gerry is a big boy but was not responsible for the earthquake . Which ever government was in power the country would have had to spend money to save Chch just as in the past Napier was rebuilt.Much of the money was from EQC which was set up for this situation.
The South Canterbury bail out was created by a fund started by Dr Micheal Cullen so had very little to do with Bill English as Labour would have had to pay if they had stayed in power.
Rio Tinto has been supported by both Labour and National . It supports about 800 jobs and earns the country millions in export dollars and it is the greenest aluminum in the World.

Repeat, in case you missed it the first time Trevor, Shane Jones has not personally given any PGF funding to any specific group of his particular, preferential choice. He is the spokesperson for the PGF, the Champion of the Provinces and the minister of Infrastructure, Forestry and Regional Economic Development.

I fail to see how you could come up with that theory. Before the Regional Growth Fund it was Steven Joyce and his Minstry for Business Innovation and everything else spending it up on National Party mates, doing suadi sheep bribes, running deception for the TPPA. So what if we are doing it for New Zealanders instead of foriengers?