Sometime in the 1980’s a television ad appeared on our screens for a non-alcoholic drink called Claytons which had the catch line “The drink your having when you’re not having a drink”.
It wasn’t long before Kiws began referring to a decision that didn’t change anything as a “Clayton’s decision”
I think the MIchael Cullen Tax Review is one of those. The Tax Review you’re having when you’re not having a Tax Review.
Here’s why.
The unfair kiwi way of life is under threat according to Simon Bridges who vowed to fight any tax reforms that make it fairer.
With screaming headlines and pundits claiming Winston Peters is dragging us into a conflicting foreign policy and examples of Chinese passive aggression turning up weekly what is actually happening here?
Fran is a member of the New Zealand China council and has all her fingers in the sour cream.
Ghodsee cites the work of a number of scholars of sexuality before she makes the argument that whatever terrible things were going on in East Germany before the wall came down – the Stasi, the food shortages, and all the brutality and deprivations of that totalitarian regime – East German women enjoyed better sex than West German women.
THE LABOUR-GREEN TECHNOCRATIC LEFT is clearly preparing to die in the very same ditch in which the Right hopes to bury the proposed Capital Gains Tax (CGT). This is unfortunate, since one of the more annoying, if unintended, consequences of such folly is likely to be the fall of the Coalition Government. Assuming, of course, that Winston Peters and NZ First are willing to die alongside their Labour and Green comrades. The sheer improbability of that happening is really the only ray of hope illuminating what is otherwise a pretty dreary situation.
The US government has done everything within its power to cause the Venezuelan economy to suffer a deep recession combined with high inflation as the price of oil fell. This began under US President Obama and have been intensified by Trump.
The GCSB’s and the government’s scaremongering about the danger of Huawei spying through 5G can be summed up in two words: gross hypocrisy.
Matthew Blomfield refused to allow the bully to win, the delusional fanatics who still visit Whaleoil have gone terribly quiet since this ruling. The full truth of Slater’s malignancy has been exposed but it says as much about us as a people as it does about Cameron.
You beat the negative populism that Trump creates with positive populism. Trump plays to the economic and identity insecurities of the working classes using hatred of the other and divisiveness, Bernie offers those very same voters the hope of universal health care and education, Bernie re-pledges the solemn promise of democracy that you can look into the face of your child and know they will get a better deal than you have.