What's behind the rush to change our passport laws?
Back in February, I wrote this about the legal basis for refusing to grant passports to/revoking passports from those individuals who felt the call to take up armed struggle in groups using terrorist...
View ArticleI quite like beer, the rugby no so much
Phil Quin put a post up yesterday chiding Grant Robertson for what he sees as an overly cautious approach to political messaging and urging him to be more warlike in his phraseology because New...
View ArticleWhere is the Middle?
When Labour decides who will be the next leader, it is of interest to all of us involved in politics. After all the person chosen could be New Zealand's next Prime Minister. So the debate on the nature...
View ArticleGot a mystery? Just ask John!
Tuesday, November 24, 2009John Key has learned the identity of the entertainer guilty of an indecency charge through the grapevine of people circumventing the suppression order.read more
View ArticleThe problem with our economy is too many tea breaks?
Last week, evidence was again made plain of a shocking, unacceptable safety record in ports and forests. The Government responded by passing a new law to remove the right to a tea break.read more
View ArticleOn War, restraint & Trojan horses
It is any Prime Minister's toughest decision: whether or not to ask young men to fight and perhaps die in foreign fields. While no western country has sent combat troops into battle against Islamic...
View ArticleA new climate target – no more can kicking
If you use the language of the Prime Minister's favourite past-time to describe his political style, you'd say he's got a great short game. Short-term, or at least term-to-term, he's proven himself a...
View ArticleI'm not ALWAYS wrong ...
I'm presently acting as a "parent helper" at school camp in the backblocks outside of Cromwell, so my capacity to comment on recent events is limited (to put it mildly). So I'll simply reproduce this...
View ArticleJohn Key: The buck doesn't stop with me
President Harry Truman famously had a piece of walnut wood on his desk in the oval office that read, "The buck stops here", and when the president referred to it in speeches it was to say that he had...
View ArticleShe was practiced at the art of deception
[A note to readers - the following account is a purely subjective reimagination of history.read more
View ArticleU-turn ahead? Or just a foreign buyer snarl up?
As Winston Peters might put it, it seems like an 'I told you so' moment. Having spent many months ridiculing the idea of a foreign buyers register, reports yesterday suggested government officials have...
View ArticleTone it down, John: Sydney seige words seem self-serving
Clunk. That's the sound of John Key mishandling his comments over the Sydney seige.The hostage drama in central Sydney ended early this morning with three dead, including the hostage-taker. It's a...
View ArticleAn economic comedy in four acts
Scene IBill English bounces out of his Beehive bed with a surplus of energy, yet feeling rather lacklustre can only pour himself a glass of milk and drag himself to the balcony looking out over central...
View ArticleQuotes of the year, Pundit style
Massey University today reported its 'quote of the year' for 2014 is an outburst from blogger Cameron Slater. Except it's a dumb choice.read more
View ArticleTilting at Helensvilles' windmills
I see, via Stuff, that Arthur Taylor's electoral petition seeking to overturn John Key's return from the Helensville electorate has commenced in the High Court. Let me go on record as saying that it...
View ArticleState of the Nation I - Andrew Little
It couldn't have been much more different, really. Andrew Little's state of the nation speech was conspicuously different from David Cunliffe's effort one year and one day ago.I know, I know, it was...
View ArticleState of the Nation II - John Key
The thing about being in government is that you get to actually do things. While Oppositions position, pose and chip away, as Andrew Little did this morning, John Key got to talk about, y'know, an...
View ArticleTheme of the Traitor and the Hero
I don't know if he ever got around to actually writing it, but somewhere there is a Borges story about a story that when read brings into being the very story that is the story that has just been...
View ArticleHow Shallow is Intellectual Life in New Zealand?
Sean Plunket’s intemperate attack on Eleanor Catton is a reminder of just how superficial is tolerance of dissent in New Zealand. I leave others to defend the exact interchange – Danyl McLauchlan was...
View ArticleWhy does one symbol matter, but another does not?
While John Key has obviously decided that a change to the New Zealand flag is worth burning political capital on, he's not interested in altering anything more fundamental. Here's what the Herald...
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