Glad you recognise you are behind the 8 ball. You are a little brighter than your posts indicate.
Printable View
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/pol...-waikeria-riot
Inexhaustible goodwill & money to be used by the ever useless token Maori leader in Cindy’s team of incompetents.
The $50B "COVID-19" fund all but depleted, largely on totally unrelated and out of control expenditure. Well done Robinson. From the Herald:
"As part of the 2020 Budget, the Government established a $50 billion Covid-19 Response and Recovery Fund (CRRF), billions of which was not allocated to particular initiatives to allow Cabinet to allocated spending as needs arose.
When Labour released its pre-election fiscal statement, it not only published an estimate of what New Zealand's debt levels would be if the fund was spent, it provided a second debt track showing what would happen if the remaining funds in the CRRF were not needed, implying that the funds were contingent on specific Covid related initiatives.
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Whangārei welcomes $2
Since then the funds have continued to be depleted, in some cases for spending with little clear link to the response to Covid-19.
By February, the Government said that the amount unspent had fallen to $10.2b which had been "set aside for any future health and economic response needed in the case of a further Covid-19 resurgence".
However, half of the remaining money was allocated to the housing acceleration package, a suite of measures announced by ministers in March aimed at improving housing affordability.
Documents released by Treasury show that initiatives to get funding included wallaby and wilding conifer control schemes, as well as funding for the Olympics, water safety, a play about the Covid response, and a "modern approach to night classes".
Opposition shadow treasurer Andrew Bayly said much of the spending in the fund had been wasteful and now Robertson was likely to have to borrow more in the event that there was a Covid-19 outbreak.
"In a traditional budgeting sense, everyone knows what the operational allowance is. What's he [Robertson] has done is he's just chosen to create this artificial fund, a conceptual fund, and every time he needs a bit of extra money, he's just dipped into it. And, unfortunately, he's dipped into it again and again and now there's only $5 billion left," Bayly said.
"What I'm worried about is, what happens going forward. If we do get Covid, we actually need this money spent on good projects that relate to Covid, but more importantly this was set aside for a health response.
"In the event that there is a lockdown, we need a truckload of money because we know how expensive it is.""
Double post
National wanted heeaps of tax cuts and business subsidies we didn't need which would have been worse.
Plus the opposition seem to like wasting money in terms of their allocated budget, MP perks etc.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/pol...-media-stories
A government of Pinocchio’s.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/300...ents-on-friday
Disasters - Cindy loves them. The more the better as far as this non delivering spinstress is concerned.
She has bugger all else to show for the last 3.5 years of being in government except a lot of excuses and passing the buck.
I didn't really want to continue with this on this thread, but didn't want to appear to duck the question.
For the context of the this discussion, BlackPeter aligned Communism with Marxism, which is quite logical given the history. He then defended Marx's and Lenin's position, while acknowledging later that Lenin had acted outside his principles. He also attacked my posts as sickening and stupid!
I'm not au fait with the inner workings of the Kibbutz system but from what I understand, it may be a non-Marxist form of Communism, but it acts at a very confined, local level, not State. Happy to better informed on that.
As for Fascism, the 20th Century shows us that the Left/Right divergence becomes circular at the extremes, and politically, there is not much to differentiate between Fascism and Communism. Perhaps the difference is more economics based. Remember Hitler's rise began with massive State spending on infrastructure, alongside his growing attacks on Jews and fierce Nationalism.
As for our current regime, Labour are showing worrying signs on many fronts. Their post-Modern Marxist allies the Greens, and many of their own party, live and breath Identity Politics. Labour has manipulated the Covid pandemic with relentless propaganda and massive spending from the Covid fund on projects that have nothing to do with it.
Two funding bribes to Mainstream media, part of which is funding what can only be called a propaganda campaign on Stuff promoting vaccination. on top of that, millions of dollars being spent on advertising on media websites.
The following chilling article about proposed "Hate Speech" laws shows it will be illegal for religious groups to hold and disseminate views that are contrary to "State values".
https://www.msn.com/en-nz/news/natio...?ocid=msedgntp
Ardern was also quoted this morning as considering making QR scanning compulsory.
So, yes, I believe Ardern's government are entering frightening territory, largely under the cloak of Covid fear induced propaganda.
If they were really proactive on Covid and re-opening the borders, they would have dedicated Covid hospitals/wards with hundreds of ICU beds and ventilators ready to go now. I would have had no problem with a billion being spent on that. Too simple a solution. They would rather impose more authoritarian measures which may never be reversed,
The BS & Spin gets bigger and bigger as the disaster gets smaller in impact.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/300...-daughter-neve
“She said Neve had heard about the tornado and wanted to give something to the affected families.” Really?
There's the kiwirail and provincial growth fund projects. Roads don't need to be repaved every six years if it reduces fright truck numbers.
Shows they need NZF in there to deliver better focus to the spending.
Well we are corona free and have a world leading economy.
Not great, not terrible.
Well. We hope to be corona free (cross all fingers you can), yes - but a world leading economy? ... you must be kidding, aren't you?
NZ's economy is not doing bad, considering the circumstances, however it is plagued by a lot of systemic problems which so far none of our governments cared to address. Our efficiency and productivity is well below OECD average and the outcomes of our education system dropped over the last 30 years or so from being nearly at the top of the league to being nearly at the bottom. Our economy will suffer under these outcomes, but it certainly will not lead - unless into the abyss.
Inept bunch our recent governments, no matter whether we talk the blue team, the red team or the black handbrake.
Jobless rate is rather low despite the MW rising by $1 per hr each year.
Though the oecd lays out some good areas for improvement:
https://www.oecd.org/economy/growth/...rowth-2021.pdf
A big part of the prob is the relying on cheap overseas labour , no need for businesses to be more productive.The model has to change, pay kiwis more and train them, up skill them, improve efficiencies, systems etc, havnt had to bother with cheap overseas labour.