Category: Economic Issues
You've probably read about the five year old lemonade criminal of Tower Hamlets. She was selling lemonade outside her house on a sunny day, as children do, when four 'enforcement officers' charged her with trading without a licence and issued a £150 fine.
Fresh water is an election issue. The export of bottled water has become the focus of an emotional debate that is being relentlessly politicised and propagandised.
Calls to make freshwater rights an election issue have intensified. Critical to the discussion are whose rights are meant, how such rights are defined and what costs and benefits arise.
A new survey, released this week by the ABS Bank, found that one in five New Zealanders are strongly opposed to National’s plan to lift the retirement age from 65 to 67.
New Zealand has a retirement income framework that, compared with the rest of the developed world, is closest to our ideal. However, that’s a low bar to clear. We can make things much better but we must start with impeccable, deep data.
The 2017 election campaign has well and truly started with both the Green Party and New Zealand First launching major policies last weekend.
New Zealand First looks like the only stabilizing element in coalition governments that would otherwise fall under the extremist sway of either or both the Greens and the Maori Party.
The National Party’s desire to pander to the minor Maori Party led in March 2011, to the Marine and Coastal Area (MACA) Act. It gives major property and other rights to any Maori tribal group that can prove that it has “exclusively used and occupied an area of coast from 1840 to the present day”.
There is also the problem of drugs: Kiwis turn up to work refusing to be drug tested or failing to pass the drug tests. So much so, that I know of workplaces that have given up, sadly and reluctantly, on hiring Kiwis sent by Work and Income.
Standing up to bullies takes courage. That's true, be it in a school playground, workplace, or a home. Politics is no different. It takes courage to stand up to ideological bullies, especially those with roots in extremist doctrines that are well organised and have strong links to supportive media.
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