frogblog

It wasn’t that long ago in historical terms that Nicolaus Copernicus bucked the established western wisdom and asserted that the earth may in fact orbit the sun. He rightfully feared the retribution of the authorities and was careful to pay them tribute when he finally did publish shortly before his death. Although the evidence has […]

There is some good commentary about the Emissions Trading Scheme going on hold at Pundit:
Have we wasted the whole last decade debating climate change policy, if we need to go back and start from scratch with a select committee review of ETS? No party was happy with the scheme that was finally passed in September. […]

Well one sector of society had to draw the short straw and get an Act Minister in charge of their area of interest, and this time it was local governments.  But it seems that one mayor, the one in the Rodney District, is looking forward to working with Rodney Hide.
“I am sure the new Minister […]

Germany’s Green Party on Saturday elected Cem Oezdemir as one of its co-leaders, the first time one of Germany’s major parties has elevated a child of Turkish immigrants to such a high position.
The German Greens, probably the world’s oldest and largest Green Party (depending on whether you count the Values Party as part of New […]

John Key’s victory speech on youtube has been attracting a number of responses reminding him how important climate change is, including this one:

Proving that everything has its place in our ecosystem (except perhaps landmines) is this Tanzanian story of rats cleaning up after one of our worst human actions:
If you’re looking for evidence of human shortsightedness, you might start with landmines. Popular as an inexpensive tool of warfare, landmines now render land uninhabitable and unusable in […]

Luckily John Key has rushed through signing up his new government and announcing his cabinet just in time to go to the APEC leaders conference in Peru.  But that’s all probably just an excuse to visit to the world-renowned Peruvian guinea pig festival.  So cute dressed up their ickle costumes, and once he’s tired of […]

Maurice Williamson misses out on cabinet but wins our Photoshop Willie award. It seems mentioning roading tolls that don’t exist (?) repeatedly through the campaign means Key has put him on the road to the backbenches again.

Like Rasputin Peter Dunne, the eternal Minister of Revenue, is back once again.  This time his pretence of sitting in the middle while actually belonging to the right of National is even more exposed now that he is actually in a cooperation agreement with National.
In his agreement with National we can look forward to these […]

The most interesting part of the Maori Party’s agreement with National (pdf) is the clause on collective responsibility:
The Maori Party agree to be bound by collective responsibility in relation to their Ministerial portfolios and their Associate Minister responsibilities. When the Maori Party Ministers speak about issues within their portfolios and Associate Minister responsibilities, they will […]