When there are thousands of people on a waiting list for a state house, should we be allowing people who have taken the hand up provided by the state, made something of themselves to occupy state houses permanently?

Yes, we should.

Should those houses remain state houses once the tenants are able to pay market rent/mortgage repayments?

No they shouldn’t.

We’re the Government to implement a programme whereby tenants who could afford to buy their home, either directly, or as a rent to buy scheme (without the fish hooks in private r2bs) then we should be giving them that opportunity. Thus giving the tenant the opportunity to become a homeowner.

If this was to be done it would allow the government to balance its social responsibility to provide welfare housing, while allowing it to release capital to be reinvested in higher priority housing areas.

What is lacking in Bill English’s…

This morning I read a lengthy piece of advertising for left wing blogs.

You can see this advertisement here.

The “article” in question poses as journalism and purports to be an analysis of the impact of left wing blogs on the election.

While there is an element of analysis, the article reads more as a “if you don’t agree with Martyn Bradbury on The Daily Blog then you are confusing the message, and are the reason we lost.” (Like it’s nothing to do with being completely politically inept?)

The piece begins with a look at the ideal post election scenario as this clown (Alleged Lefty Troll and Journalism Hack, Philip Matthews) would have liked to see it:

In a parallel universe, David Cunliffe is the prime minister of New Zealand presiding over a Labour-NZ First minority government in a happy arrangement with the Green Party. Internet Mana, backed by…

So life’s been rather frantically busy since my last post. A week and a half managed to flash by, filled with full Court days, interesting experiences with chainsaws, and visitations from Perth-based relatives. Sitting down at a keyboard to blog came a very distant second, third or possibly fourth in the ‘interesting things to do’ stakes.

Nonetheless, here’s a brief recap for those who were also avoiding the political world:

• Much humour was derived from Green MP Steffan Browning and his advocacy on behalf of homeopathy as a cure for Ebola. For quite some time, the Greens had managed to project a face of relative sanity (setting aside Russel Norman’s flirtation with quantitive easing), only to end up the butt of innumerable homeopathy-inspired jokes on Twitter. On the plus side, the party leadership shut Browning down swiftly. And Middle New Zealand doesn’t give a damn about political jokes on Twitter, so…