Labour 1, National 2 aet

National has made another step towards becoming part of mainstream New Zealand by adopting Labour's policy for interest-free student loans.
This will mean the thousands of people who have a student loan can vote for a change in government knowing they aren't going to get fucked over by their loan in the future.
So why are National trying to bury it with 'dead rat' spin at a junket in Rotovegas?

Later this year Labour will have no shame when it comes to trumpeting their newly found love of personal tax cuts even though they are ideologically opposed to it.
If National's reasoning is because "we lost the last election" then why not just adopt all of Labour's policies and invite Our Great Leader Helen to take over a grand coalition and become PM for Life, and Honest John can go back to buying ghastly houses.

This policy will win National far more votes than that 'boot camp' garbage, all we voters ask is a little bit of (fake) sincerity when selling it, be happy about it!, it's your damn policy, you can always blame Brash/English,/Shipley/Richardson for the past.

CommunoFascism a GoGo

This blog has now achieved official political hermaphrodite status.



According the Labour Party's unofficial blog the Standard, we are of the right-wing persuasion, or as we like to call it - 'fascists', but now the ultimate arbitrator of NZ-blog political alignments, National's dpf has deemed us to be on the 'left' or rather, 'communists'.

Being listed as political opposites of National.co.nz & Labour.com can only mean one thing, we are the NZ Blog-Clique's Peter Dunne.

Clark 1, Key 0.

The 2008 election wrestling season is underway after Honest John Key and Our Great Leader Helen gave 'state of the nation' speeches on successive days, and result is John Key and National still don't look ready to govern.

'Boot Camps' (although that's not how Key described them in his speech) is a tired old idea that is more suitable as the centerpiece of Winston First's election campaign than that of a potential governing party.
In Germany, a teenager was sent to an outsourced 'boot camp' in Siberia as it was a far cheaper option, perhaps Key could work out a deal with a struggling Pacific Island economy to run 'boot camps' there, in a similar way to which John Howard used Nauru to imprison asylum seekers.

Giving a 'discount' or 'voucher' for tertiary education to school drop-outs is a little insulting to the majority of students who work through the secondary school system and then face massive fees at the tertiary level. It gives the perception of being rewarded for bad behavior. The proposed system also seems easily open to corruption and unaccountability despite Key's assurances otherwise.

Labour's proposal on the other hand seems far more inclusive and perhaps even 'ambitious', rather than being an ambulance at the bottom of a cliff, an integrated apprenticeship system can engage the students before they get frustrated and drop out of the system, and of course it will help a large number of trade students, the vast majority of whom are not 'trouble-makers' and would not benefit under National's policy.

Which is the actual better policy for New Zealand means little compared to the reaction of the general public and the influence it has on the election, but I think Key's policy needed a bit more oomph to keep it in the minds of the average voter, perhaps packaging it with a populist issue like raising the drinking age to 20 would have worked better.

The funny thing is even if National wins the election, they'll end up implementing this Labour policy on apprenticeships in some form anyway.

States of the Nationses

John Key is due to deliver his "Orewa" State of the Nation speech today, shortly afterwards America's Greatest President GW Bush will deliver his, one would hope, final State of the Union address.
Now if you're John Key do you really want to invite a comparison with GW Bush?

Key is rumoured to be speaking about the massive problem of there only being 8400 under 18 year-olds not in work, education or training, apparently the problem with early school-leavers was a lack of incentive, so now with the offer of 'subsided' tertiary education, which they would otherwise have to pay 'full-price' for at age 18, they have more reason to get out of our schools early and help National raise our local school's NCEA achievement levels.

Apart from this tiny fragment of policy, one would hope there will be something interesting or at the very least inflammatory in today's Key speech, however from what we have seen so far, the pre-election campaign of "Mr. Ambitious" appears to be anything but.

Great moments in APN sub-editing #745

Though to be fair, when you're as old and crotchety as Granny Herald, everybody seems like a teenager.

McDonald's Kaitaia scores PR own-goal

McDonald's Kaitaia have won a gagging order against a former employee ordering him shut down his blog that discussed issues at his workplace.

Two offending posts were removed from the blog and the former employee is to "refrain from making any written statements or posting any information on digital media about McDonald's, or any of its staff", because there could be nothing more harmful to a large corporation than a badly written ramble by a former low-level employee.

However the offending blog posts were archived on technorati and have been reproduced on a blogger site here - McDonalds Kaitaia Blog
So congratulations McDonalds Kaitaia you have now ensured that more people will read the "offensive material" than ever would have otherwise and in the process damaged your reputation more than your former employee's misspelt words ever could have.

A Murder on Facebook

I hate Facebook, I really do, however it seems to be becoming the default opt-in electronic surveillance system for the 20+ demographic. There are some privacy restrictions, however many people are either too vain or naive to understand that anyone in their "Network" (i.e the entire country) can look at their personal details.

The young Otago university graduate who was murdered by her former boyfriend two days ago had a 'open' facebook account, and the print media has not hesitated to browse her personal photo albums there to find suitably poignant pictures for their stories.

From the news reports about the 10 year age difference between the psycho ex-boyfriend and his victim and the personal photos on the victim's facebook page, we can deduce the probable identity of the murderer despite there being an interim name suppression order, although this was probably just for the benefit of the killer's employer who are quickly removing any trace of him from the internet.

The victim's facebook profile now remains permanently open on the internet for everyone to see, the genuine optimism of her young life frozen in time, along with the unfortunate choice of superpoke made a couple of months earlier by her eventual killer.
If anything can be learned from the aftermath of this horrible event, it's that people need to check the privacy setting on their facebook profiles to ensure they are not publicly accessible

If you come to an unforeseen ending do you really want any and everybody looking through everything you've ever posted on that site, and some jackasses publishing your personal photographs in a newspaper or linking to your personal details from their lame blog?

Only in Amer..... Canada?

P addict successfully sues dealer for drug overdose