Category: Uncategorized

September ’14 – NZ blogs sitemeter ranking

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A quieter month despite the election but still in the top 40.
My thanks to readers and followers

Ken's avatarOpen Parachute

education-bloggers

PLEASE NOTE: Sitemeter is playing up again making it impossible to automatically get the stats for some blogs – those I list below. Maybe more bloggers will shift to StatCounter or other counter.

No stats could be found for these blogs:

Works in progressSportsfreak
Weakly Whirled NewsInfectious thoughts
Two Minutes SportScience Behind the Curtain
Wysiwygpurple’s BlogGrumpollie
Stats ChatLouis’ Outlook
Webweaver’s worldWest City Darts
Social Media and the 2014 General ElectionA conservative perspective
Love your workSave our schools NZ
Today is my birthdayThe Meaning of Trees
This Mum Rocks

There are now over 300 blogs on the list, although I am weeding out those which are no longer active or have removed public access to sitemeters. (Let me know if I weed out yours by mistake, or get your stats wrong).

Every month I get queries from people wanting their own blog included. I encourage and…

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The Labour leadership meltdown continues

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Democracy best works when we can contest ideas freely across the realm. How can we with the main opposition in such disarray. Come on Labour get it together for democracy’s sake if nothing else

jononatusch's avatarOccasionally Erudite Publications

Over the weekend, I road tripped it down to Wellington, where I had a beer with a pollster, briefly checked on what announcement Cunliffe had made mid-Saturday afternoon, and then proceeded to ignore politics. Fine wine and convivial company was far superior… But of course, although one can ignore politics, politics has a habit of keeping on happening.

So Cunliffe resigned. Or he announced that he will resign at the next caucus meeting, which is tomorrow. Although he still wants the job. He’s triggered a leadership ballot, hoping to avoid the death by a thousand cuts of waiting for his colleagues to destroy him, leak by insidious leak.

Unfortunately, there’s no timeframe yet on when the leadership ballot will occur. Will the party wait for its campaign review to be completed before the ballot? Cunliffe will be hoping not – it’s what he resigned in order to avoid. His opponents want a…

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An Anti-Feminist Walks Into a Bar: A Play in Five Acts

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Some humour – in five acts.
Made me smile as well as chuckle quietly

Automattic Special Projects's avatarWhatever

PROLOGUE

ACT I

ACT II

ACT III

ACT IV

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Inevitable Labour pontification post

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I remember a particular shunning of the blue collar worker (I believe it was called the Waitakere Man) prior to the campaign. The blue collar worker found in Wiri, Takanini, East Tamaki, the Airport and Penrose of which are all our big industrial estates and historically natural Labour strongholds. However, this seems no longer as the social conservative vote either went to NZ First or even National.

Labour have a lot to do to become an effective opposition for which our democracy so needs in order to contest ideas.

It will be interesting to see where things go but at the moment National are on a solid foundation for its fourth term

The deconstruction – what went down

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Jono sums it up and thus my thoughts up in a nutshell on what went right for National and what went oh so wrong for the Left Wing.
At the end of the day it all fell over for the Left last Monday with a certain Moment of Truth.

Well it was a Moment of Truth with National now on a very solid foundation for a fourth term as Key will stick with Centrist policies with some dabbling to the Left and Right along the way.

So National is looking for her Fourth Term and the Left are busy blaming everyone else and eating themselves. It also shows Twitter is a rather loud cold echo chamber to a large but not all extent as well.
For example my Tweeting services at a Council Committee is highly utilised as people and even the MSM follow it.

I will put a second post up on what this all means for Auckland Council shortly. However, eyes now turn to the 2016 Local Elections.

jononatusch's avatarOccasionally Erudite Publications

So, in the end it wasn’t even close. Unless the special votes are dramatically out of kilter with the votes counted on election night, National has the numbers to govern alone.

The worse-case scenario now for National is that they lose a seat to the Greens, meaning that National would need one of either ACT or United Future to pass legislation. It’s not such a terrible worst-case for the Nats – both ACT and United Future are entirely dependent on National for their continued survival; they wouldn’t be giving National too much stick. Besides, as Graeme Edgeler writes at Public Address, if the special votes are distributed in the same proportions as in 2011, there’ll be no change to the makeup of Parliament.

So how has National managed to defy the laws of electoral gravity, while Labour plumbs new depths, and the minor parties are all left licking their…

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The Mayor’s Proposal for the 2015-2025 Auckland Council Long Term Plan and Lowering Development Contributions

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Interesting perspective from Local Board member Vernon.
This situation basically comes down to the National led Government passing through an amendment to the Local Government Act that restricts what development contributions can be used for. That is it can not be used as widely to help provide social/community infrastructure as prior to the amendment.

Rates, Road, Rubbish. The catch cry of the National conservatives and its conservative supporters who in all honesty do lack fundamental understanding on how a City works and evolves. It is more than just the physical infrastructure they constantly bang on about. You have the social infrastructure as well which is just as important for a City to function.
While alternatives for funding can be sorted for Greenfield areas (see: https://voakl.net/2014/09/19/what-if-we-go-full-throttle/ ) Brownfield areas (take note Orakei) will face either steeper general rate increases or even Targeted Rates levied (I wonder how Orakei Local Board would find being levied with a Targeted Rate for their Meadowbank Community Centre they are trying to bring forward on the funding table) . So National and its supporters might have just shot themselves in the foot.

Vernon Tava's avatarVernon Tava

It has been a sobering few weeks for Waitematā Local Board as we discuss the implications of the Mayor’s proposal for the Long Term Plan 2015-2025 (LTP). The LTP is Council’s budget for the next ten years and it is being shaped primarily to keep the average rates rise to between 2.5% and 3.5% for the next three years while paying for the City Rail Link. At the same time, Council will be attempting to eliminate the differential between residential and business rates. This will require major cuts to Council spending.

The ‘theme’ that will be most hard hit is ‘Parks, Community and Lifestyle’ (PC&L). This includes Parks and Recreation and Community Development and Culture (CDaC) which includes libraries. The proposed budget reduction to the capital programme in this theme is a massive 39% for the next 5 years. This goes beyond a temporary reduction in spending; it will cost jobs and as a result…

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Poll of Polls update – 18 September 2014

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Second to last poll of polls from the Occasionally Erudite blog site (one more coming up later today). Weighing this alongside Kiwi Blog’s average weighting system (http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2014/09/the_2014_election_polls.html ) we can see a settling down with the final polls. Although that said National are continuing to slip with NZ First continuing to gain. This gives the possible situation that either NZF or the Maori Party will hold the balance of power and we could very well see either a Centre Right or Left Government all things depending.

My vote was cast on Tuesday and the recent events from then would have not changed my voting stance. Needless to say watching my home electorate of Papakura will be interesting to see how much damage Judith Collins has received in the end. We shall all know Sunday morning.

MEANWHILE GET OUT AND VOTE

jononatusch's avatarOccasionally Erudite Publications

We’ve had the final pre-election One News Colmar Brunton poll tonight, so it’s the second to last Poll of Polls update before the election, with the Herald Digipoll and Fairfax Ipsos polls due out tomorrow (although you can already find the Digipoll results if you look on Wikipedia – that’s what happens when you release the percentage changes and expect that no one will do the maths…).

National drop 1% to 45%, leaving them well and truly in danger zone territory. Labour remains static on 25%, while the Greens fall 2% to 12%.

NZ First comfortably waltz back into Parliament with 8% (up 1%), as opposed to the Conservatives, who may have gone up by 0.4%, but still remain below the 5% threshold on 4.4%.

For the remaining minor parties, the Maori Party doubles its vote from 0.8% to 1.6%, Internet Mana is on 1.8% (up 0.4%), ACT is on 0.6% (down 0.6%)…

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