Posts by Sacha
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Hard News: Some Lines for Labour, in reply to Gareth Ward,
read "our forecasts will be based on a significant uptick in tax revenue from higher wages and yet there'll still be a massive deficit"
It did sound rather familiar, yes. Yet many people will be cynically suckered into thinking its all about the earthquake unless the opposition and media pull their socks up and challenge English and Key every time they lie about it.
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Hard News: Some Lines for Labour, in reply to DexterX,
a Mana, Greens, Labour coalition
.. will require them talking amongst themselves. Any sign of more respectful relationships yet?
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Hard News: People Take Drugs, in reply to Rex Widerstrom,
I now have an overwhelming urge to drink to excess and vomit in his begonias.
capital
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More from the whatever John says file by Tracy Watkins:
Wages are tipped to rise strongly over the next two years, Prime Minister John Key says.
Speaking this afternoon ahead of Thursday's budget Mr Key said it would forecast strong wage and employment growth.
Mr Key would not say by how much wages were expected to rise but said Treasury was forecasting wage growth to outstrip inflation. That suggests growth of around 4 or 5 percent a year.
But he admitted Treasury had been overly optimistic in last year's forecasts and there was an element of "a finger in the air" with such forecasts.
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Hard News: The witless on the pitiless, in reply to linger,
"Maori" and "Pakeha"
Thank you for capitlaising both. The widespread tendency to apply a lower case to Pakeha has been interesting.
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Hard News: Doing battle alone, in reply to HORansome,
I stumbled across some of Perigo gushing nostalgically with Coddington about their japes with the Gibbs-funded local libertarian undermining of BBC world service radio. Shudder.
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Hard News: Some Lines for Labour, in reply to nzlemming,
"the Smiling Assassin"
His colleagues at Merrill Lynch called him that. One of them reminded me that most were the 'big swinging dick' alpha males of that industry hardly given to fear, so it's a noteworthy epithet. A related local manifestation would be the "Tranzrail eyes" incident.
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Race and Treaty relations seem likely to be made an issue again this year. It will be interesting to see what stance opposition politicians take and how the public's memory is doing. Tapu Misa reminds us of Brash's cynical whistling and the myth of the persecuted white majority (still playing in forums near you).
The Legend of the Persecuted White Guy, as American writer David Sirota noted in Salon.com last month, is the latest iteration of "the most resilient parable in American cultural mythology".
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Where does this "unquestioned-yet-unsubstantiated" trope come from? Sirota suggests that it's been fed in part by a backlash - white anxiety in the face of a changing world in which white dominance is no longer guaranteed - and in part by "naked political opportunism".
Symptoms of the same paranoia can be found here. Paul Henry wanting a governor-general who "looks and sounds like a New Zealander". Labour MP Damien O'Connor bitterly complaining about ordinary (white) blokes like him being left out in the cold by the apparent domination of the Labour Party by unionists and a "gaggle of gays".
And The Myth of Maori Privilege, which was put to such good use by Don Brash in 2004 after he wrested control of the National Party leadership from Bill English.
As Nicky Hager recounts in his book The Hollow Men, it was the cynical manipulation of that myth that catapulted Brash and National to the top of the polls in 2004.
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Hard News: Some Lines for Labour, in reply to Joshua Arbury,
catch up with Australia
I like the suggestion of catching up with a comparable economy (Denmark, I believe was mentioned) - somewhere that isn't a giant open-cast mine.
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Hard News: Some Lines for Labour, in reply to B Jones,
Sorry that sounded a bit blunt. I do my bit with evidence-based health policy already and the prospect of experimenting about this doesn't appeal. Has its place.