If National wins ...

[fungus pudding]

Yes, indeed, it's good to see a fair opinion. As opposed to this particularly nasty and vitriolic piece by Fran O'Sullivan in the Herald on Saturday.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/n...ectid=11811602

Dig into this and you can see every possible argument that National will use against the new Labour line-up between now and the 2017 election. If they repeat this sort of garbage often enough, they'll hope some of it will stick.

But guess what? Neither Andrew Little or Jacinda Ardern have made any slipups, they have nothing to hide, they are both genuine and hardworking people, they are more interested in helping out average NZers with good policies, and building a better NZ.

The National Party that Fran O'Sullivan is hell-bent on supporting, has no such polite recent history. National's new idea to crack down on overseas owned corporate tax dodgers is unlikely to make much headway, meanwhile John Key would never release his tax records. He's almost certainly dodging tax to the letter of the law and using a tax haven, and how many other National MPs are doing the same? They have a cheek deciding on how real tax dollars are spent, when they behave personally like that.

Yes. What a nasty vitriolic woman Fran O'Sullivan must be. Fancy giving her opinion in an opinion piece. What next !

[macduffy]

Yes. What a nasty vitriolic woman Fran O'Sullivan must be. Fancy giving her opinion in an opinion piece. What next !

It seems the terms "nasty" and "vitriolic" have been redefined. Must be the work of that Alice's Red Queen!

[elZorro]

It seems the terms "nasty" and "vitriolic" have been redefined. Must be the work of that Alice's Red Queen!

Let's put it this way, she's almost always on the National side of the argument. Interesting WIKI link on anarchists in NZ:

Malcolm James aka Malcolm Gramophone was an anarchist and an eccentric. He changed his name to annoy his father. He had a child with Fran O’Sullivan, later an editor of the National Business Review, and named him God Gabriel Galaxy Gramophone. Gramophone drove a yellow ambulance called the Intrepid Traveller. He wrote the Counter-Culture Free Press and the Underground Brewers’ Bible and ran the Kropotkin Press. He mixed conservative and radical views supporting small business capitalism and opposed big-business monopolies, especially "beer barons".^[58]

Which might be a clue for an interest in smaller government.

[GTM 3442]

Let's put it this way, she's almost always on the National side of the argument.

Is that something that you see as being a problem?

Is that something that you see as being deserving of "consequences"?

[elZorro]

Is that something that you see as being a problem?

Is that something that you see as being deserving of "consequences"?

Fran O'Sullivan is so keen on putting forward her points of view that she started www.newzealandinc.com (a website that hasn't been worked on since November 2015), but if the opinion article we're discussing is a sample of her writing, it's not based on facts, but innuendo. She doesn't apply the same 'talents' to looking at National's ranks.

I would prefer to see opinion pieces backed up by facts, and for example we do see this from people like Mike Joy, Rod Oram and Shamubeel Eaqub, who go to the effort of researching their topics. Curiously enough, they also often find this government of ours wanting, in terms of policies to correct what they've observed.

Fran's articles are much more about attempting to derail Labour's run-up to the election, any way she can achieve that will be OK by her. Is she really any different from Whaleoil and many of the other right-wing efforts divulged in Dirty Politics?

[craic]

The Right don't need to derail the Labour train on its way to the election. The Labour driver is too short to see over the windscreen and the co-driver has never been on a train in her life before. The only ones who might have a go at driving a train are locked in the baggage compartment. And they have forgotten the coal.

[elZorro]

The Right don't need to derail the Labour train on its way to the election. The Labour driver is too short to see over the windscreen and the co-driver has never been on a train in her life before. The only ones who might have a go at driving a train are locked in the baggage compartment. And they have forgotten the coal.

Interesting metaphor, Craic. The Labour train is there because Labour thoughtfully bought back the railways, after the private sector big-noters had revaged the operation for cash and nearly scuttled crucial national infrastructure. This was just one obvious learning experience from Rogernomics that Labour sought to recover from in their last nine years in office. National is the current govt that has given up on the longstanding NZ workshop repairing the trains and rolling stock, they've indented gear from China instead of using local businesses and labour, and now they're going to make the electrification network redundant so that the entire fleet has to run on diesel. Just as we all start to understand that fossil fuel use should be avoided if at all possible. I presume all the electric trains will be discarded at that point, and not refitted.

So I for one, would be happy to see Labour back in control of the country, and I'm sure they'd do it well.

[craic]

Once upon a time, I had a probationer under my supervision who was a fitters mate in the railway workshops. He had been in trouble because he couldn't manage on his wages and broke a few laws. His weekly report to me was always in the early afternoon when he should have been working. His explanation was that they had little or no work on much of the time and in the summer they were often released to go for a swim or whatever. He told me that much of their time was spent fixing bicycles or mowers. I commented on his "brand new" blue boiler suit and he told me it was far from new but never got dirty. I suggested that he could solve his problems by working in one of two big local plants who often needed fitters mates and where 24 hour working meant plenty of overtime etc,. "why should I go there and work all sorts of hours when I can work here and get 40 hours pay for doing stuff all?" That is one of the reasons why the railways is no longer a stalwart branch of the Labour Party where a lucky group live well at the expense of the rest of us.

[westerly]

Once upon a time, I had a probationer under my supervision who was a fitters mate in the railway workshops. He had been in trouble because he couldn't manage on his wages and broke a few laws. His weekly report to me was always in the early afternoon when he should have been working. His explanation was that they had little or no work on much of the time and in the summer they were often released to go for a swim or whatever. He told me that much of their time was spent fixing bicycles or mowers. I commented on his "brand new" blue boiler suit and he told me it was far from new but never got dirty. I suggested that he could solve his problems by working in one of two big local plants who often needed fitters mates and where 24 hour working meant plenty of overtime etc,. "why should I go there and work all sorts of hours when I can work here and get 40 hours pay for doing stuff all?" That is one of the reasons why the railways is no longer a stalwart branch of the Labour Party where a lucky group live well at the expense of the rest of us.

All fairy stories start with once upon a time. That was a different era and as someone who spent time working for Govt. Departments you would be well aware of this
All of NZ ‘ s major infrastructure was built by tax payer funded Govt. Departments. Many were expected for political reasons to employ surplus staff so that the employment stats would look good.
Now days the figures are fiddled, work a paid hour a week, you are employed.
It was interesting to listen to Bill English explaining how a tweet of which he had no knowledge was deleted from his account again without his knowledge. His staff run his Twitter account?

westerly

[craic]

That was no fairy story. It was easiest to explain. I was right in amongst the orchestra every day - one thousand and one fiddles and many were getting as much or more than I was.