Yesterday’s men supporting Alasdair Thompson

Just look at those who are supporting Alasdair Thompson:

Sir Roger Douglas:

Mr Thompson’s views were clearly offensive to many, but if that is grounds for dismissing him, we may as well become an Iran.

Karl du Fresne:

This was Hitler’s technique: to frighten opponents into submission with such an overwhelming show of force that no-one dared dissent. Mr Thompson was abandoned even by his spineless board of directors.

Garth George:

I have a great deal of sympathy for Mr Thompson and only contempt for those who contrived to have him sacked. … The hoo-ha over Mr Thompson’s remarks highlighted once more the blurring of genders that has happened over the last half-century; the proposition that men and women are the same.  That, of course, is utter nonsense.

Why can’t these knuckle-draggers just go away and leave the rest of us to move on?

Cancel my subscription to the resurrection

Roger Douglas back in Parliament!

Christine Rankin appointed to the Families Commission!

Don Brash to head the Productivity Commission!

How many more of the 1990s failed has-beens can they dredge up and resurrect? Maybe Jenny Shipley, to head a taskforce on welfare reform. Or Max Bradford, to shape our energy policy?

These are the people who stuffed it up in the first place because they were driven by an unsustainable ideology that is reliant on the flawed concept of unlimited economic growth and/or because they were in the pockets of the wealthy and didn’t care about the poor. Anyone for the “trickle down” effect?

Don, et al, can’t you understand that we live in a finite world determined by finite natural resources, and if we pretend to do otherwise, we are just loading debt onto the generations that follow us.

Marty G at The Standard gave us this wonderful graph this morning:

It was under the neo-liberal policies of the Labour and National led Governments in the late 80’s and early 90’s that we fell so far behind Australia economically. 17% behind in 1985, but up to 32% behind in 1993.

From which we have never recovered. And now they have the cheek to try to persuade us to go for Rogernomics/Ruthenasia Round 2.

Cancel my subscription to the neoliberal resurrection. I had a gutsful (as Norman Kirk famously said) last time round.

Swine flu, pig farming, and Sir Roger

I’m scared of the swine flu.

As someone who has compromised respiratory functions and an antibiotic allergy (and I am aware that antibiotics don’t kill viruses, such as that which causes swine flu, but they do cure consequent bacterial infections) swine flu could be a death sentence for me.

So who is to blame for putting my health and possibly my life at risk. Well, according to this article in The Guardian, which is one of the few MSM media outlets I have some respect for, it is the factory pig farmers:

North Carolina has the densest pig population in North America, with around twice as many swine mega-factories as any other state. In 1998, North Carolina’s pig population had hit ten million, up from two million just six years before. Yet the number of hog farms was decreasing, with more and more animals being crammed into fewer and fewer farms. Since the primary route of swine flu transmission is thought to be the same as human flu, the increased potential for the spread of disease in such conditions is clear.

More research is urgently needed to explore the potential link between industrialised animal farming, and the spread of disease. Some elements of the Mexican media are already pointing to the potential role of intensive pig farming in Mexico, which has grown substantially in recent years, with some giant operations raising tens of thousands of pigs at a time.

Guess it is the intensive pig farmers who have done this, including the hero of New Zealand’s right, Roger Douglas.

Guess what, Sir Roger, you can’t fight nature, no matter how much money you can make through trying, because it will always come back to bite you on the bum.

Roger the pig farmer

When the Mike King pig farm visit story broke, Sue Kedgley talked about getting a cross-party delegation of MPs together to go and inspect some of the country’s pig farms.

I’m not sure how she’s going recruiting MPs from other parties, but I’d bet good money that one particular MP won’t be on her delegation.

On September 14 1991 The New Zealand Herald reported that Sunshine Pig Farms Ltd, situated at Old Great South Road, Ramarama, near Drury in South Auckland had gone into receivership the previous day, but that the receiver would continue to trade. Managed by Roger Douglas Associates the property kept 5,000 pigs in stalls. The article goes on to report that earlier in the year the company was fined $5,000 in the Otahuhu District Court and ordered to pay $9,419.79 in costs for spilling 30,000 cubic metres of effluent into the Manukau Harbour and surrounding countryside. The spillage occurred when the largest of a series of oxidation ponds on the farm burst its embankment. When Sir Roger Douglas was questioned about his pig-farming enterprise he is reported as saying: “There is money in it.”

On March 4 1992 the Holmes Programme exposed the horrors of the sow stall in a programme which featured pig-farmer ex-Minister of Finance Roger Douglas, in which criticism was levelled at this former politician for his factory farming activities. Holmes reported that prior to screening the programme he was contacted by the Managing Director of the Pork Marketing Board, Dave Dobson, who reminded him what the Board spends advertising its products on television!

Roger Douglas in charge of a pig farm is like Richard Worth in charge of a beauty pageant – everything’s rooted about it!

MP property speculator of the year is…

The Register of MP’s pecuniary interest came out today.  And the clear winner has to be National Party MP Chris Tremain.

The Register reveals Tremain owns 19 different parcels of real estate.

I suspect that the financial arrangements mean he pays no tax on the capital gain on any of them, and never will.

Actually, looking through the register, most MPs own multiple properties, and are creaming it with what is essentially tax-free investment.  Which is why most MPs (other than the Green ones who are motivated by principle, rather than pecuniary interest) resist to the hilt a capital gains tax.

Another initial observation of the Register (I’ll look at it in more detail in coming days) is that Roger Douglas has two investments in companies running the gambling industry that rips off the poorest and most desperate in our society.

Not a good look for any MP, from where I’m sitting.

Rogered!

This is the headline that I really, really hope I don’t have to use again after the election.

But, looking at the latest Roy Morgan Poll, there is a possiblity of something very very nasty happening post election.

Look at the ACT poll rating. It is sufficent to make Roger Douglas an MP again. And it also means, on this poll, and several others, that the support of ACT will be essential to National leading a Government.

Which raises the question of whether National’s “no privatisation in the first term” promise is a bottom line.

What if Rodney & Roger put the hard word on the Nats? “Sell it all“, or at least some of it, or we won’t support you to form a Government?

National needs to come clean about this – is their “no privatisation” policy a bottom line, or will they trade it away and let Roger back into Cabinet if they need ACT to form a Government.

I would suggest that unless National clarifies this, all New Zealanders should be afraid – very afraid!