Hard News: The back of a bloody envelope
274 Responses
First ←Older Page 1 … 7 8 9 10 11 Newer→ Last
-
Just thinking - heh!
-
When jokes go bad.:[
Using Starwars as a vehicle to express the facist takeover of Canty and its water. -
Nick Smith seems to want to test/refine some of his new national water policy approach (addressed in the RIS) and cut off impending water conservation orders before they interfere with that.
Oh and also make sure farmers and irrigators get what they want without any of that nuisance of the RMA and Environment Court.
And going about it all in this government's usual ultra-undemocratic way. Bananarama territory alright.
-
Water & Fiji you say?
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/9/3/spin_the_bottle_expose_raises_alarming
-
Protest the sacking of Ecan - schedule:
There is a flying picket National Party MPs offices today, weds march 31st , a sign-on to a letter of protest will also be delivered to those offices .
Flying pickets will go from office to office,
in this order
11am Gerry Brownlee's office, 283 Greers Rd
12.15pm Nicky Wagner's office, 189 Montreal St
1:30pm David Carter's office, 1091 Ferry Rd
2.30pm Amy Adam's office, SH 1, Templeton -
Oh - and me and my banner made the paper. Tee hee.
Well done.
Does seem to me that the photographer picked a particularly cute section of the crowd :).
-
There's a marketing angle - cute folk hate mining, don't screw your chances :)
-
And going about it all in this government's usual ultra-undemocratic way. Bananarama territory alright.
I can see a Cochabamba-esque shitfight in the making...
-
Claire Browning spanks Gerry comprehensively at Pundit.
Set off against that gamble, we have non-controversial conservation values. The government is not further investigating the potential of Kahurangi and Aspiring National Parks, which will remain untouched in Schedule 4. These, I deduce, were considered too iconic. And yet, Fiordland is still in the gun. In fact, almost every tabulated item on pp 9-10 of your stocktake has high, very high, or iconic conservation values, including half a dozen UNESCO world heritage sites. I do not support any appropriation of such land for your purposes. Therefore, there’s no point expending several more millions of our dollars investigating it.
Kahurangi and Aspiring are the reasons the stocktake reeks of what you can get away with. Your fellow Cabinet members, I imagine, wanted to be able to point to compromise, to be seen to be reasonable, and centrist. But compromise, on Schedule 4, is not good enough. That Schedule was itself a compromise. It is only 13% of New Zealand. You can dig up 87% of the country if you want to, including most of the conservation estate.
-
Just thinking - that Fiji Water article was an eye-opener. Never heard of the product before...
-
No sales of state assets in the first term, they said.
And Key and English will run in '11 on having kept this promise- and promising moderate, sensible sales...
And yet: 70% of Auckland's council business will be run by unaccountable boards- and if even 10% of that ends up moving to private providers- it's a lot of money.
Canterbury's water- a 'public asset' - is to be allocated by government appointed commisioners. How much of that will they allocate to private interests?
Mineral wealth mostly belongs to the crown- the sort of minerals they're considering, under conservation land, that's unquestionable. Those minerals are to be sold to private interests (very cheaply, it would seem, if the Govt only gets 1-2% of their value).
What it looks like is National/Act ruthlessly, systematically, almost ambitiously moving wealth from local bodies/crown/public domain into private hands whereever they can get away with it- and still say "See! No asset sales!"
Even if it's business as usual, the last few months look kind've audacious. As if they can't believe the polls are still so good... can't quite stop various ministers jumping ahead, pushing things a little too fast, maybe even over-reaching a little.
Wait up guys. The asset sales are sposed to kick in the second term, after we've won that pesky world-cup thing and got the polls open while the punters are still too drunk or too hung-over to think straight! -
Video of Tuesday's anti-mining demo:
I bumped into a friend of mine today and had a most interesting conversation. She and I are very much not on the same page when it comes to voting preferences, and have had a few conversations in the past which have been somewhat uncomfortable because of this.
I mentioned I'd been to the demo on Tuesday and she told me she's extremely unhappy with National's stance on the mining issue. She'd read the SST poll report at the weekend and said she could almost be one of the 13% of National voters who wouldn't vote National if the election were held today. This is a BIG deal. She's always been very strongly National all the way.
And then she mentioned the ECan debacle and said she wasn't comfortable with that either - and even mentioned David Carter's conflict of interest and how unimpressed she was with that (so she's definitely paying attention) - and then she said she was fundamentally opposed to Paula Bennett's attacks on beneficiaries (her words).
The most interesting thing for me (in addition to the fact that she's so uncomfortable with so many of National's policies at the moment - which is huge in itself) is the wording she used when she brought up each new issue. She kept on saying "I don't trust so-and-so on this issue". Very interesting. Trust would seem to me to be kinda vital in any party/voter relationship. If they're losing their supporters' trust, that would seem to me to be a potential problem for National. Trust is a hard thing to win back once you've lost it.
She doesn't know who to vote for now... Amazing!
I'm hoping she's representative of a large swathe of National voters - and also hoping she still feels the same way in 18 months' time.
And also - a perfectly-timed April Fool's Day post from Danyl at The Dim-Post - Government to dig up conservation areas
-
Three words - bait and switch.
-
Islander @ there is a doco on the privatisation of water & the strike back of those dispossessed (Peru I think) . Same thing as The Take - Argintinas taking over the closed factories by the workers. Some may see this as Communism, but it has a subtle difference as being locally run by particapatory democracy, not a central council and so it is more correctly described as anachist IMO.
To be fair to National, none of these assests are national. It is a regional privatisation.
Wealth assets are pretty evenly distributed between National and Local Govts.
Just Local Govts have limits and our National (State) Govt has no constitution by which to be restrained. -
Well I guess that when they've dug up all the gold, watered all their cattle and used the remaining rivers to flush away the cow poo we will have to the drink bottled water.
-
I feel sorry for Gerry, he waited nine long years to wear his new tee shirt that says "I'm With Stupid" and he doesn't know which way to turn.
-
She kept on saying "I don't trust so-and-so on this issue". Very interesting. Trust would seem to me to be kinda vital in any party/voter relationship. If they're losing their supporters' trust, that would seem to me to be a potential problem for National. Trust is a hard thing to win back once you've lost it.
Danyl says pretty much the same thing:
Claire Browning at Pundit makes the most articulate critique of the government’s mining strategy I’ve read so far. My position has shifted over the last two weeks. I was sceptical but ready to consider the merits of mines on a case by case basis, but Brownlee has acted in such incredibly bad faith that we simply can’t consider separate cases because we can’t trust a single thing the government tells us on the subject.
-
Thought I might have a go at resurrecting this thread to bring news about submissions made so far to the govt's Schedule 4 stocktake discussion paper.
I was at the Mining/No Mining debate in town this evening - much raucous heckling and fun being had by all - except perhaps those speaking in favour of mining (I don't think they had much fun).
Anyway, Metiria Turei said that so far, not counting today, 14,000 submissions to the discussion paper have been received.
Holy shit! That's a HECK of a lot of submissions!
I asked her afterwards how many submissions the govt normally receives on a specific issue, and she said generally around 1,000 was considered average. She said, as a comparison, that there were around 2,000 submissions relating to the Foreshore & Seabed, which was considered a large number at the time.
Submissions close at 5pm on May 4 (this coming Tuesday), so you still have time to make one, assuming you haven't already.
There are detailed submission guides and also quick submission tools online at Greenpeace, The Green Party and Forest & Bird - or you can go to the MED website and do it there instead.
It'll be interesting to see how many more they get over the weekend....
Oh - and if you're in Auckland on Saturday, don't forget the anti-mining protest - Don't undermine New Zealand! - starts at 11am, Lower Queen Street. Wish I could be there!
-
...and in breaking news this morning, it's been announced that a three-week extension has been added to the public submission period:
Today Energy and Resources Minister Resources Gerry Brownlee said ministers had agreed that in "the interests of fairness" the submission period should be extended while the Government completed the stakeholder engagement process.
"Cabinet agreed hui would be held with iwi significantly affected by the Government's proposals. These meetings will be held in early May. It is important that iwi have an opportunity to provide written submissions after the hui, so we have decided to extend the dates for all submissions to 26 May," Mr Brownlee said.
-
And, here, perhaps a timely reminder of when drilling goes
wrong. -
The Auckland March Against Mining is HUGE.
Latest reports put the number at 50,000. Woah. Awesome. Wish I was there.
Live twitter and photo stream here - Don't Undermine New Zealand
Live video here - Qik.com
-
The Auckland March Against Mining is HUGE.
Did you spot the image of marchers along Q St right outside the Surf shop. I thought BIllabong across the front was a great protest all in itself :)
So pleased Auckland has come out to tell this Government where to get off. Now we just need the same for this Council business. -
Absolutely Sofie - I'm so impressed at how many people turned out. Go Auckland! The reports before the march said that the organisers were hoping for 10,000, so 50,000 is stunning.
-
so 50,000 is stunning.
Yep, ARE YA STUNNED YET GERRY BROWNLEE? :)
Post your response…
This topic is closed.