Archive for October, 2008

• 

  Wellington’s unpopular new tunnel still going ahead - by frog

  
  
  
  Wellingtonista quickly summarises the protest this morning about the City Council’s plans to go on a massively expensive road building spree from Ngauranga to Wellington airport. The plans include a Basin Reserve flyover and further car tunnels under Mount Victoria and The Terrace (just as we enter a financial crisis, peak oil and the need [...] read more
  October 31, 2008 3:57 pm - 13 Comments
• 

  Kevin Hague’s growing support on the Coast - by frog

  
  
  
  Toad at g.blog follows up on my post yesterday about the Greens’ strong Nelson poll with news from the West Coast-Tasman electorate: Well, now the Nelson Mail have published a poll for the West Coast – Tasman electorate. And the Greens are polling even better there – 13.7% (including 27% in Golden Bay). The Greens’ [...] read more
  October 31, 2008 3:41 pm - 35 Comments
• 

  You’re free to pay - by frog

  
  
  
  Brian Rudman seems to have found a Labour Party candidate who agrees with Green policy All power to Viv Goldsmith, Labour’s candidate in East Coast Bays, for speaking out against the fiction that school fees are “donations”… Ms Goldsmith, a teacher herself, says she mails off her request for fees to the minister each time [...] read more
  October 31, 2008 1:33 pm - 13 Comments
• 

  The missing name from the SPCA’s list of shame - by frog

  
  
  
  Despite this gruesome reading from the SPCA: A number of the animals had been hurt by slug gun pellets and other projectiles, and there were signs that children were being allowed to use animals for target practice. Cases of neglect included an Auckland dog discovered on Christmas Eve after surviving without food or water for [...] read more
  October 31, 2008 8:25 am - 20 Comments
• 

  Jeanette launches ambush in Paraparaumu - by frog

  
  
  
  We had been getting stories from the provinces that National MPs were telling voters that they wanted to pull out of Kyoto or that they wanted to exempt farmers from agriculture.  So Jeanette decided to find out for herself what the story was by leaping out from a coffee bar as John Key passed by [...] read more
  October 30, 2008 5:03 pm - 65 Comments
• 

  Peak phosphate - by frog

  
  
  
  I followed the link to Farmgeek’s blog this afternoon and came across this fascinating post on phosphate asking if we have time to mitigate before we run out. It’s a month old now but incredibly important to our food security: Graphic from The Oil Drum NZ currently uses about a million tonnes of phosphate fertiliser [...] read more
  October 30, 2008 4:42 pm - 8 Comments
• 

  Ken Graham’s Green history - by frog

  
  
  
  Christchurch’s Ken Graham gets a good write up in this morning’s Herald as a potential new Green MP.  The article discusses his involvement in developing the intellectual framework behind New Zealand’s nuclear free policy in the 1980s: “I wrote an article that Carl Sagan picked up, basically saying it was a misperception that our nuclear [...] read more
  October 30, 2008 3:31 pm - 11 Comments
• 

  Nelson goes Green - by frog

  
  
  
  Spotted in Nelson this morning: Russel was also in Nelson this morning. Is that him under all that fur, taking a break from being the face of the campaign?  It looks like his satchel to the left of the photo, but I suspect he’s more likely in the caravan having a cuppa tea. Meanwhile the [...] read more
  October 30, 2008 3:27 pm - 8 Comments
• 

  Time for bigfoot to tread lightly - by frog

  
  
  
  Sadly the biggest news from WWF’s global footprint report was that a handful of other countries managed to perform even worse than New Zealand. United Arab Emirates, United States Of America, Kuwait and Australia were worthy opposition though for the title of least sustainable country with their superior commitment to consumption and oil burning. That [...] read more
  October 30, 2008 11:41 am - 9 Comments
• 

  Herald declares National to be the party of CEOs - by frog

  
  
  
  I was going to comment on the Herald’s latest foray into unusually invalid polls (this time polling ‘the mood of the boardroom’) but it seems that 08wire has beaten me to it much more succinctly: What a tremendously unbiased sample the Herald has chosen for their survey about our political leaders. I’ll look forward to [...] read more
  October 30, 2008 10:45 am - 4 Comments
• 

  IEA´s unnaproved draft oil report - by frog

  
  
  
  For those who follow the oil game, the IEA´s announcement last May that their complete review of the world oil supply situation wouldn´t come out until the week after the US Presidential election came as no surprise. The last thing that any American administration would want to do is spook the markets just prior to [...] read more
  October 30, 2008 10:31 am - 17 Comments
• 

  Greenpeace converts Key’s Helensville office to industrial dairy - by frog

  
  
  
  Oh bless! Greenpeace carried out a “dairy conversion” on National Party leader John Key’s electorate office early this morning to highlight the issue of deforestation for intensive dairying. Intensive dairying is one of New Zealand’s biggest contributors to climate change. Photo credit: Greenpeace read more
  October 30, 2008 10:23 am - 22 Comments
• 

  When political attacks go bad - by frog

  
  
  
  As I suggested yesterday negative campaigning is all a matter of degree.  Every party and politician does it to some extent in order to differentiate themselves from others.  But that doesn’t mean that it should become a prevalent or widespread practice, and where possible it is better if negative campaigning can focus on specific policies [...] read more
  October 30, 2008 9:59 am - 7 Comments
• 

  100% reliant on our natural environment - by frog

  
  
  
  Watch this ad from Tourism New Zealand for a moment: Pretty eh? So how is it that neither Labour nor National seems to be able to see the role that a clean environment plays to our tourism business. “When tourists see that our rivers are so polluted it’s dangerous to swim in them, they are [...] read more
  October 29, 2008 5:07 pm - 37 Comments
• 

  Accountancy and accountability - by frog

  
  
  
  Did everyone enjoy the brief interlude in the election campaign where we got to talk about issues other than Winston Peters and his unusual accountancy systems?  (Maybe Jim Bolger was on to something when he made him treasurer, given his ability to run a party on no declared donations.) Interestingly Winston’s $80,000 donation from the [...] read more
  October 29, 2008 3:49 pm - 7 Comments
• 

  My favourite billboard for the day so far - by frog

  
  
  
  Grr!  The National-Labour jibba jabba stops here: read more
  October 29, 2008 3:47 pm - 1 Comment
• 

  The biggest party with the biggest misconception - by frog

  
  
  
  Brian Rudman sets National straight today on its misconception that being the biggest party automatically gives it a moral mandate to govern, even if more people voted for it not to be in government: The sniping about MMP is a smokescreen for the critics’ inability to adjust to the new rules. They’re talking horse racing [...] read more
  October 29, 2008 2:25 pm - 15 Comments
• 

  Bankers ride VWs to the top of the hill (and down again) - by frog

  
  
  
  Financial market can do some good things but occasionally they get themselves in a right tizz and that leaves the rest of us spinning.  Yesterday Volkswagon had such a huge price spike – its shares surged 150 percent on Monday and 93 percent on Tuesday or over €150 billion – that it briefly became the [...] read more
  October 29, 2008 1:20 pm - 2 Comments
• 

  Greenpeace’s activism reminds us about the big issue - by frog

  
  
  
  Greenpeace activists have this morning temporarily halted a massive conversion of forest land to dairy farming in Tokoroa, locking on to forest logging equipment and using rotary hoes to plough 5m-high letters reading ‘climate crime’ into fresh pasture. The call for a halt to forest conversion for intensive dairy in light of the worsening global [...] read more
  October 29, 2008 12:46 pm - 28 Comments
• 

  Attack ads - by frog

  
  
  
  The increasing emergence of US style attack campaigning in recent years (John and John, Taxathon etc) is disappointing. Mr Carson, who came up with Labour’s “Keep it Kiwi” and “This one’s about trust” campaigns, says the key to advertising a political party is to pit yourself against your opposition. In the commercial world, you want [...] read more
  October 29, 2008 11:54 am - 4 Comments