Three years ago the stars of four men who had responsibility for the care of our son – and a lot of other people – were in the ascendency: ‘Dr’ Nigel Murray the well-fed DHB CEO; Bob Simcock the laid-back DHB Board Chair; Chai Chuah the bean-counting Health Ministry boss; and ‘Dr’ Jonathan Coleman the ‘all care, no responsibility’ Health Minister.
Corrections is dealing with the muster crisis by double bunking in cells that were not designed to hold more than one prisoner. They have not done this to date because they had legal advice and know that putting two prisoners in cell so small they barely have room for one is a recipe for disaster and may very well contravene section 23 (5) of the Bill of Rights Act which mandates prisoners be treated humanely and with respect for their dignity.
We take a look at the promises from the Labour party when campaigning and on taking office – what will these really deliver for working people? As we argued in previous issues of Class Struggle, Labour forming a Coalition with openly capitalist parties means it cannot claim anymore to be a party that represents workers.
Three years ago Unite wrote to all our big employers telling them that they had been miscalculating annual leave payments to their employees for years and they needed to fix it.
Facebook has been in our NZ media news recently. But there is another issue human rights activists have with Facebook. That is, Facebook’s cooperation with Israel’s suppression of Palestinians’ right to communicate.
Zionism is a self-absorbed, racist anachronism. The ideology’s proponents have never been honest and the attempt to engender a ‘negotiated’ settlement has resulted in nothing but inevitable failure and decades of extreme suffering for Zionism’s victims.
POPULISM VERSUS RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT. The Regions versus Metropolitan New Zealand. NZ First versus Labour. Shane Jones versus Grant Robertson. “Oh yes, Ladies and gentlemen, there’s Trouble: Trouble with a capital ‘T’; and it’s brewing right here in Political City!”
Obama won decisively on the basis of a fervent campaign driven by his supporters believing he would bring real change. Obama’s two terms did nothing of the sort. He bailed out the banks, increased weapon production and delivered 10 times more drone strikes than his predecessor George Bush.
Why else would they push out a simple, dependable system and replace it with a complex one fraught with issues of privacy, a creepy whiff of the state knowing more about you than it should, and having to increase state expenditure on funding systems, by tracking every child every year on a wide range of indicators? (Sorry about the long sentence).
Coleman was an ineffectual beige fart on a beige wallpaper in a beige house owned by beige people.