John Key's speech to the nation...*

(* or more accurately what I would love to hear him say)

"Our nation is in mourning, over two hundred of our family have been lost to us, over two hundred family members went to work or school last Tuesday full of the hope that comes with summer and the new year, over two hundred of them did not return.

We are hurting, our family is in pain, our nation needs help, help to drag itself up by the bootstraps, help to get going again, help to rediscover that Kiwi spirit of never giving up despite the overwhelming odds stacked against us, as always, that help must come from within.

It is because we are Kiwi and because we are used to those odds that I know we can overcome everything that nature has thrown at us, we will emerge stronger, wiser and greater than before, we will rebuild Christchurch and we will do so in a style that will honour the members of our family who will not be coming home to us.

Make no mistake, it will not be easy, it will mean we all have to make sacrifices, the reality is that we are in a fight, a fight to save our country and our way of life, over the last few days we have all heard or witnessed great acts of courage and bravery, men and women going back into crumbling buildings as they collapsed around them to save total strangers, still others paying the ultimate sacrifice in an attempt to rescue colleagues, those people demonstrate just a bit of what it is to be Kiwi, it is because of those people and because of their bravery that we simply cannot afford to let any more members of our family down.

So today ladies and gentlemen we begin the fightback, today we start on the long road back, today I ask every Kiwi to offer up the same level of courage and self sacrifice shown by so many of our family members in Christchurch over the last five days.

Simply put people we need to make some changes, our family needs help and we must not refuse them that help.

Some of what I am asking of you will not be easy, some of it may anger you, some of it will delay your hopes and plans for a short while, however, all of it is vital if we are to come out of this, I make a heartfelt plea to those directly affected, a plea to put aside your own self interests for the good of the nation as a whole, we will come back to you at a later date but at this point in time our nations resources are needed elsewhere.

In consultation with the cabinet I am announcing the following fiscal and tax changes, as of tomorrow there will be a temporary tax increase for all wage and salary earners, the recently announced 3.7% increase in all benefits is to be reversed, all of NZ's contributions to the UN will cease for the foreseeable future, the interest free student loan scheme will cease at midnight, all treaty claims will be placed on hold, all overseas and foreign aide will cease immediately, the Working for families package will be modified so that only the most needy receive it, all WFF tax credits will be cut by 50%.

The ETS fuel tax will be redirected to the Christchurch relief fund, this will continue for some years to come.
We will be utilising our nations resources fully, if this means gold mining in the Coromandel or open cast coal mining on the West coast then so be it.

There will be other changes over the next few days and I will announce them in due course, none of these changes have been made without a lot of thought and discussion, however none of these changes can be ignored, and, when faced with the huge task in front of us none of them have been hard to make.

The last announcement I want to make is this, I know I am asking a lot of you, I know that it will hurt each and every one of you and I know that some of you will not find it easy, however, never forget that we are all Kiwis and we are all there for each other, the choice you have to make is this, would you rather sit and watch members of your family suffer or would you want to chip in and help?. ......well in a few months time you can answer that question, we have an election at the end of the year and if you are not happy with the way I am leading things then so be it, but until then I am not prepared to see members of our family suffer through no fault of their own.

For the remainder of the year the Government I lead will be doing what is needed, doing what is right, no decision made by this government will have a political angle, if this costs the government the election then so be it, however I am not prepared to sit by and watch members of my family live in squalor or go without the necessities of life.

Together we can do this, I have amazing faith in my fellow Kiwis and I know that when faced with an obstacle as big as this then most of us will look up at it and say to ourselves "how can we knock that bastard off"

The impending tax hike.

I see that John Key has not yet ruled out increasing our tax's to pay for the Christchurch recovery, however, all indications are that is the way he is heading.
I could live with a temporary tax hike, I really could.....just as long as he spreads it out across all sectors of the community, and as long as he is prepared to tell some small special interest groups to go and get fucked.

He needs to tell the Greens that we ARE going to start mining in the Coromandel.
He needs to tell the climate change pricks that all of the ETS fuel tax is to be diverted to the Christchurch relief fund.
He needs to tell all beneficiaries (yes, even those on a pension) that their 3.7% increase is to be reversed.
He needs to tell all Maori tribes waiting on settlements that they will just have to wait a few more years, all settlements should be stopped right now.
He needs to cancel interest free student loans immediately.
He needs to cancel all funding of the arts immediately
He needs to contact BMW and tell them that he is not going to go ahead with the upgrade and if they get shitty about it then they can sue us and risk losing their entire market overnight because he will impose a 100% import duty on all BMW cars imported into NZ.
He needs to tell the UN to go and get fucked, NZ will not be sending any money to the UN for the foreseeable future.
He needs to tell all the parasitic pacific island nations that they will not be receiving one cent in funding for the foreseeable future.
He needs to slash working for families in half (ideally he should cancel the whole thing but that is not going to happen)
He needs to cancel every single overseas trip by our Parliamentarians unless that trip is trade related.
He needs to tell the NZRU and the IRB that we cannot afford to subsidise their piss up to the tune of 52 million any longer, either they wear the entire loss or the cup can be held somewhere else.

If Key is prepared to do all that, to spread out the pain and to make it fair....then yes, I would support a temporary tax increase.

Lottery Money and commonsense

The last few days have been harrowing for all New Zealanders, both in NZ and around the world. I can't even imagine what it must be like for people who had to go through the earthquake and especially for those who lost family, friends and colleagues.

Efforts are already well in advanced stages to fundraise for this here in London. Several events are set in stone and we'll be sending as much as we can to NZ over the next month or so. My Facebook group, originally set up to advertise the Waitangi Pub Crawl is being used as a message board to get the details across to as many Kiwis as possible - I have over 3000 members on it and the feedback coming from it is immense.

The only silliness I have seen, apart from the fucktards who think it is funny to steal and loot from earthquake victims, and the jesus freaks who blame abortion and gay rights on the earthquake, are the people asking for this weekends Lotto prize to be forfeited and given to the relief fund. A noble cause but not when you read the comments from the people who think it's a good idea:

"Potential winners of this prize will never miss what they didn't have.... Residents of Christchurch however, know what it is to loose [sic] everything. Lotteries commission, it is the communities [sic] money hand it over."

"$15m is too much for anybody to have, hand it over"

This is mental. If I won the lottery nobody is going to take away a cent from me through force, guilt me into giving it away and most certainly tell me how I should spend it. It doesn't matter how I view charity or not - if I pay for a ticket I intend on having a chance to win. Silly buggers like this on Facebook is hardly useful and in a country small like NZ, I can imagine the poor person who does win in the weekend will want to stay anonymous and hidden away for fear of reprisal.

Sad.

read article here

Churchill, Giuliani and Key.

I am no fan of John Key's politics, to me he leans far too much to the left, however over the last three days we have seen John Key move from being a very competent PM into the rarest of things, a truly great leader..

In time of tragedy we see the real leaders emerge, given the scale of the disaster most men are happy to follow orders, most need to be pointed in the right direction and will get on with doing what is needed, this is how they cope, this is how they deal with enormity of the crisis, they submerge themselves in the task at hand and work through it that way.

But...somebody needs to lead, somebody needs to be the one to make the hard calls, somebody needs to be the one that stays calm and somebody needs to be the one who the others look toward for leadership and direction.

In the last three days John Key has been that man, a man that the entire nation can be proud of and a man that has risen above the petty politics of the some low rent left wing websites and demonstrated the very best of what it means to be born a Kiwi.

I may not agree with his politics but by god I am proud to call him my Prime Minister, to the great names of Churchill and Giuliani we can now add the name of John Key.

Mass Rejection is still better than being Bomber

Bomber is delighting in the news that a new "right wing" party has emerged on the political horizon this week. He reckons that "the right cannibalize itself pointlessly" and ACT and ex ACT members will fight each other publically.

It won't happen. This isn't the 'Great Right Hope' that many right wingers were hoping for - it isn't even registering on the radars of Nats or ACT members, I certainly haven't heard any whispers from anybody about this nor expect to either. There are plenty of splinter groups that have come from the bigger parties out there and while the media would love this to become an issue that will dog ACT in the November elections - I feel there will be only disappointment for this movement which is a pity as wasted votes lost on the right will only help the left cobble together something quite dreadful post 2011.

Of course the ACT Party is more than happy to welcome some of you back to its membership if you are serious about making a difference in the next Government :)

Bomber take note, you were rightly smashed by Comrade Chris Trotter about how awfully out of touch you are with the people you claim to represent. Smug pot shots at a party that may very well get 500 members is silly considering you are too chicken to put your money where your mouth is.

See links:

Reform Party - On Facebook

Online

Sir Roger puts the deserved boot into it

Red House....Blue House...

Imagine you ran your house like your Government does. If we did, this would be the shortest blog post ever.

In New Zealand our politicians have veered so far off track that they are mortgaging our futures. You could say that the futures trader we have as a PM right now is trading heavily on our futures without any true worry whether or not it will harm us in the future. Why should it? It isn’t with his money and he has stated (to his credit) that he isn’t a career politician.
Labour are no different. They inherited the economy at the beginning of the boom and spent it like an alcoholic in a bottle store. They believed that the state had the right to artificially grow the economy through increasing the size of the state – and this meant jobs that were hardly useful were in large supply. Just as well for many, who attend our universities in larger amounts every year without knowing why they are there for.

Election bribes like interest free student loans and Welfare for Families not to mention election year disasters like renationalising the railway have lent to the Government accounts being near empty as the current bunch borrows as much as they can in order to maintain business as usual.

Is this the way you’d run your household?

Let’s put this into an everyday situation. The Red House and the Blue House on Everyday Street in New Zealand. The Blue House has maxed out their credit cards and even took out a few personal loans against their kid’s future income. The Red House is stealing milk from the Blue House and other neighbours as it hasn’t enough money (or milk) to feed the cleaners they hired illegally from the Islands, which are not needed as the house is too messy to clean.
An average family has to weigh up the consequences of spending on outgoings with the income that is coming in. They cannot afford to take on more debt. Wages are carefully spent according to the needs. If one item costs too much, a household has to decide whether or not to sacrifice another in order to buy it. Your Government is the exact opposite of this – if they want it they will buy it, no matter if it is inefficient or requires more money to maintain. Politicians from both sides have little regard to how spending should be reigned in and quality is being sacrificed for a lack of respect for the taxpayers who are paying for their deeds.

If you were forced to pay a portion of your wages to a local organisation that then spent it on buying property, food and alcohol and services that were provided at a lower rate elsewhere you’d want answers. Why do taxpayers shrug their shoulders when they hear our MPs are wasting their money? Why didn’t people rise up when they saw ACC was left in a shambles by Labour? Why aren’t people like Michael Cullen in prison for deliberately renationalising the rail when Labour had no chance of winning the last election?

At what point do our politicians stop thinking like a regular citizen before they get blinded by the billions that are collected by the Government?

Feminist Ukrainians won't come to NZ

There is a huge difference between winning a wife and this competition. The terms and conditions of the competition are very clear – and anybody who can read shouldn’t be jumping up and down about this being something even remotely close to slavery or winning anything or anybody.

I saw a documentary showing this exact “business” not too long ago. Anybody thinking it is an easy process is kidding themselves. Plus, would a semi attractive Ukrainian woman want to come all the way to NZ, who embrace the sorts of Socialism that broke away from all those years ago. Why come to a country that cannot shake off its statist mindset and an opposition full of socialists in the wings?

These women come to these dating events on their own free will and they attend to see if any men match what they want. They have all the power in this as it is just like a regular night at a club, except men are shepherded through like cattle for them to judge if they are remotely attractive enough to want to meet for a proper date.


The competition only allows you one visit to this dating event and a couple video calls to see if you can convince the woman (and her family) that it is a great opportunity for her to leave her career, family and country behind to two (and a bit) little islands where she’ll no doubt be very bored and homesick. Ukraine has huge oil reserves while the NZ Govt (and the greens) won't let us explore our huge oil stocks. The Ukraine also has a flat tax - so are light years ahead of our same old tired economic theories. Why go backwards?

All this silliness that some poor homeless poverty stricken girl is going to be snatched up and put in a crate to be a subservient wife in big rich New Zealand is delusional – and doesn’t have a clue about the women of Northern/Ex Soviet Bloc. These women are the ultimate feminists who understand the value of hard work – and how to take care of themselves, unlike the womynists in NZ who are just awful. If I was a Kiwi man wanting a Ukrainian wife you will need to have more than luck on your side, and if you do get one you would be extremely lucky and grateful.

Yes in case you want to know, the brunette is Olga Kurylenko and the blonde is Anastasia Bondarenko :-)

See also Kiwiblogs usual overanalysis (by the commenters) and political correct stupidity here

NZUSA on Diversity

Got sent this very timely gem by an anonymous reader.

NZUSA on Diversity

Saturday 26 November 2011. Let the countdown begin!

Good on the PM for announcing the election date. No longer are Kiwis at the whim of a PM who uses the date as a political tool to use over her (oops) opponents. Key has nailed it down and has now got on to running the country.

But he wasn’t finished. He also said he would not be going into a future coalition with a Winston Peters “led” New Zealand First party. Very cleverly worded! He also said he will run a campaign in Epsom – as he bloody well should!

Why give anybody a free run, even somebody as popular and hard working as Rodney Hide who would have been quite bemused if he only had to fight a campaign against Labour, the Greens and Peter Tashkoff who has gone remarkably silent since ACT told him to bugger off for being a twat :)

So with the election date being only 296 days away the hard work can now begin!

The Standard, the Labour funded blog think it is a bad idea. They say it is risky. They think Key should not wait so long after the rugby world cup. I wonder if that is Labour trying to hedge both bets – on us losing the cup or us winning and Key riding this goodwill into the summer.

I think it is a good idea. I won’t vote National, but Key isn’t stupid. He just needs to promise something that will mean he’ll stop borrowing, get rid of obstacles that are strangling growth and start selling some of our assets. Then I may very well come back to NZ…

See Kiwiblog for more details incl Farrars magnificent guess being 100% correct!