TPPA could turn the clock back

30.11.2010/05.32

During the campaign trail, people tended to ask me if I was left or right. While I cheekily said, ‘Forward,’ many a time (and had at least one imitator), there’s something to be said for abandoning what are, effectively, nineteenth-century constructs. And unless you are DI Alex Drake in Ashes to Ashes, you need […]

Making free wiﬁ pay—at no cost to ratepayers

16.08.2010/01.45

With the ﬁrst billboard going up in town, I’ve been asked about whether my free wiﬁ programme will cost ratepayers. In a word, no. The wiﬁ programme will be supported by selling the space on the home page. Upkeep of such a service, and I am looking at several alternatives, is in the […]

Getting Wellington out of debt—by growing the right businesses

01.07.2010/22.42

In plain English, when a city is hundreds of millions of dollars in debt—depending on who you believe, the ﬁgure is between $200 million and $400 million—how do you get out of the hole? 1. You can sell the family jewels, and there’s water left. We tried this in the 1980s, and now so […]

Wellington needs free wiﬁ and jobs, not a council that goes nuts with spending

02.03.2010/12.23

Funny how a media article can inspire you to send out a release, especially when you’re a ratepayer and you wonder if our City Council of élites understands how hard it was for us to make that money. In today’s case, it was Lindsay Shelton’s Scoop Wellington op-ed about Wellington City Council going nuts with […]

How could the Chinese republic celebrate its centenary?

21.02.2010/03.54

Next year marks the centenary of the founding of the Chinese republic. We got rid of our rather hopeless Ching Dynasty, and ushered in Asia’s ﬁrst democracy. Both the Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China see 1911 as an important year, and Dr Sun Yat-sen as the founder of the nation […]

I do not stand for John Key’s defeatist talk

09.02.2010/06.01

I’ve heard it all before. In the 1980s, the New Zealand Government promised that, with the introduction of Goods and Services’ Tax (GST), people would be better off, because it would mean more money in our pockets. With the proposal to hike GST to 15 per cent under the current government, Prime Minister John […]

Google’s rethink on Red China: you can’t stop the Chinese people

13.01.2010/09.50

If I were Google, would I have entered Red China with the censored version of Google.cn, hiding things from the Chinese people for the sake of money? In February 2006, I blogged about this very issue and concluded, ‘No.’ Obeying the law is one thing. Providing the people with slanted views to prop up […]