Tagged: Porcupine Farm
Possibly the stupidest thing our deputy prime minister has said
Labour and Greens hurt share float, says English (Audrey Young, Herald, 24/10/2013)
Finance Minister Bill English conceded that the Government would like to have had more New Zealand investors than the 62,000 and a higher share price than $1.50.
But he blamed in no small part Labour and Greens’ energy policy, accusing them of scaring off mum and dad investors from Mighty River Power and Meridian because of their policy to control wholesale power prices.
“They set out to sabotage lower income New Zealanders doing it. Unfortunately they’ve had some effect.”
So Bill English (yes, that’s the deputy prime minister, not your ignorant workmate) thinks poor NZers can afford to buy shares, and the only reason they aren’t buying shares in what we used to own together is that Labour and the Greens “sabotaged” their investment plans by “scaring them off.”
The most obvious explanation is that he’s trying to contort the embarrassing failure of the asset sales into being somehow the opposition’s fault.
A more worrying possibility is that he actually believes what he’s saying. This is, after all, the man who wrote off child poverty as merely “relative.”
70% of National supporters don’t know anyone who’s unemployed, so what are the odds the National deputy leader knows any “low income New Zealanders”?
As Robert McAfee Brown put it: “who we listen to determines what we hear; where we stand determines what we see.”
(Re. the title: I’m happy to be corrected)
Wheat, chaff, sheep, goats (resources, votes)

Here’s how I’m voting this time, and – more likely to be useful for you – the resources I used to make my decisions.
Resources
- It’s Our City’s suggestions about who to root for and who to root out. If you read nothing else, read this.
- Generation Zero ratings on 5 environmental issues
- Gap Filler’s candidate questionnaire (To be honest I didn’t read much of this. Too long!)
- Other bloggers’ thoughts (James Dann, Puddleglum, Steven Cowan, Sam Johnson)
- Answers to questions on vote.co.nz
- Who voted for Marryatt’s pay-rise (see my previous blog)
- Party/group affiliation (see my previous blog)
- Their spiels in the voting book
- Individual research into the individual candidates (this takes the most time. My previous blog comments on a few I’ve taken interest in)
My votes
Mayor (pick one or none)
Lianne Dalziel
Councillors – Fendalton-Waimari ward (pick up to 2)
Raf Manji
Faimeh Burke
Community Board members – Fendalton-Waimari ward (pick up to 5)
Faimeh Burke
Sally Buck
Ahi Allen
Canterbury District Health Board members (rank as many/few as you like, up to 26) (Updated 9/10/2013)
7 are elected but your votes are almost guaranteed to be transferred further down your list, so it’s worth ranking at least 12 if you can bring yourself to do so. I’ve ranked 25 to give my votes the maximum chance of contributing to anyone but Keown (see below).
- Paul McMahon (preventive health, mentions health inequalities, highlights wider causes of (un)health, community development/youth health experience, supports living wage for all, supports free public dental care in theory, part of the Anabaptist network, People’s Choice)
- Heather Symes (health practitioner, focus on vulnerable people, sympathetic to public dental care, supports living wage for all health workers and lower CEO salaries, signed Nurses Organisation pledge, People’s Choice)
- Oscar Alpers (focus on vulnerable people, public health not health insurance, People’s Choice)
- Adrian Te Patu (health practitioner, community/public health experience)
- George Abraham (health scientist, campaigning on free public dental care, wants to look after ‘less privileged’)
- Jo Kane
- David Morrell
- Anna Crighton
- Chris Mene
- Sally Buck
- Steve Wakefield
- Alison Franklin
- Drucilla Kingi-Patterson
- Andrew McCombie
- Wendy Gilchrist
- Tim Howe
- John Noordanus
- Margaret McGowan
- Andrew Dickerson
- Beth Kempen
- Murray Clarke
- Keith Nelson
- David Rowland
- Robin Kilworth
- Tubby Hansen
Unranked: Aaron Keown (Only attended one two full Health Board meetings in 2012 but still picked up a cool $26,000 for his troubles. Tries to go where the populist wind blows, but occasionally reveals his true colours as an ACT member and Marryattophile who called quake victims whiners.)
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Disclaimer: Fine, I admit it. I linked to the Bryce Edwards post 78% for ego reasons. He mentions me!