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Gordon Campbell - Latest News [Page 84]
Gordon Campbell on racism, and the Nisbet cartoons
Friday, 31 May 2013, 10:57 am | Gordon Campbell
Interesting how quickly the debate on Al Nisbet’s cartoons has shifted from the actual content – and the implications if, as claimed, Nisbet has said aloud what many other New Zealanders privately think – to the far more comfortable grounds ... More >>
Gordon Campbell on social experiments on education
Thursday, 30 May 2013, 10:46 am | Gordon Campbell
The school closures in Christchurch really are a perfect storm – the most stressed community in New Zealand is being led by the most accident prone Minister in the Key government, into a social experiment on its youngest and most vulnerable, in ... More >>
Gordon Campbell on the govt’s latest bout of hippie punching
Monday, 27 May 2013, 11:20 am | Gordon Campbell
On the weekend at one of those gatherings of the National party faithful that seem to occur every other week – as a party the Nats sure do know how to party – Prime Minister John Key unmasked the arch fiend who threatens the New Zealand that we know ... More >>
Campbell:failures of care for those with mental disabilities
Friday, 24 May 2013, 10:59 am | Gordon Campbell
Hard to imagine a more disturbing insight into the treatment of the vulnerable than the Health Ministry report on Te Roopu Taurima o Manukau. The Ministry has found that the country's only kaupapa Maori intellectual disability residential care provider ... More >>
Gordon Campbell: Govt tramples on rights of family carers
Tuesday, 21 May 2013, 11:17 am | Gordon Campbell
Don’t want to be unduly alarmist about this, but we seem to have an outlaw government on our hands – if by that we mean a government willing to suspend the ability of citizens to seek the courts’ protection if and when the government violates freedoms ... More >>
Gordon Campbell on the 2013 Budget
Friday, 17 May 2013, 10:33 am | Gordon Campbell
The Budget lockup retains a symbolic value these days, but little more than that. This is the government’s best annual opportunity to bury its usual screw-ups and regale the public with power-pointed examples of its vision, shrewd thrift and judicious ... More >>
Gordon Campbell on stonewalling about the GCSB, and MMP
Wednesday, 15 May 2013, 10:37 am | Gordon Campbell
This week has seen two examples of turkeys refusing to vote for an early Christmas – while busily denying the evident self interest involved. First, the GCSB is refusing to identify the 88 people it has illegally spied upon – as revealed in the Kitteridge ... More >>
Campbell: University essays for hire, and depression
Monday, 13 May 2013, 9:41 am | Gordon Campbell
Unfortunately, the buying and selling of ghost-written university essays has been part of academic culture for decades. In the mid 1980s for instance, to cite just one of many examples… the late, revered novelist David Foster Wallace used to earn ... More >>
Gordon Campbell: National owes gratitude to Aaron Gilmore
Friday, 10 May 2013, 9:40 am | Gordon Campbell
Comes the time, comes the man. Aaron Gilmore has become the poster child for everything that is loathsome about politicians and the political process. However, it might be time for a sense of proportion to creep into the Gilmore saga. More >>
Gordon Campbell on the Mighty River Power debacle
Thursday, 9 May 2013, 10:34 am | Gordon Campbell
Abuse directed at anyone opposed to what you’re wanting to do. Repeated mis-representations of what you said, and did. Not to mention the flat denials that there is a problem, when the evidence happens to contradict your version of events. More >>
Gordon Campbell on the GCSB’s enhanced role
Tuesday, 7 May 2013, 11:20 am | Gordon Campbell
Remember when the creeping power of Big Government was being manifested only in …the energy efficiency regulations for household appliances? Back in 2008, that seemed scary enough for the likes of David Farrar to sound the alarm in these aghast terms: ... More >>
Gordon Campbell on yesterday’s Anzac Day celebrations
Friday, 26 April 2013, 10:33 am | Gordon Campbell
Yesterday’s Anzac Day saw the usual strong turnout at dawn ceremonies, to mark an occasion that is already displacing Waitangi Day – if we can believe the newspaper polls – as the de facto day on which we celebrate our national identity. More >>
Gordon Campbell: lurching towards the centre on power prices
Tuesday, 23 April 2013, 9:33 am | Gordon Campbell
Anyone looking for legacy traces of the late Margaret Thatcher in New Zealand politics will have found them in the government’s scare tactics – “a lurch to the left” – being used to denigrate the Labour/Green plan to crack down on energy price profiteering. More >>
Gordon Campbell on the Labour/Greens plan to cut power bills
Monday, 22 April 2013, 10:34 am | Gordon Campbell
As sure as night follows day, you could bet some financial analyst would see the death of the free market in the plans unveiled last week by Labour and the Greens to put an end to price gouging within our electricity system. Take a bow, Craig Stent ... More >>
Gordon Campbell on the same-sex marriage vote, and Dotcom
Thursday, 18 April 2013, 10:54 am | Gordon Campbell
Since politics is so often about the perpetuation of privilege, we should all celebrate the times when Parliament gets something right. The passage of Louisa Wall’s same sex marriage Bill last night was one such occasion. More >>
Gordon Campbell on the GCSB's practice of spying on NZers
Wednesday, 10 April 2013, 10:07 am | Gordon Campbell
It is hard to decide what is the most alarming aspect of Prime Minister John Key’s plans to expand the role of Big Brother. Or, as Key describes it, his "proposals to significantly strengthen the oversight regime across the intelligence community." More >>
Gordon Campbell on Criminalising Protest, and Cathedrals
Tuesday, 9 April 2013, 10:35 am | Gordon Campbell
The Tauranga MP Simon Bridges – he’s also the Labour Minister and the Minister of Energy and Resources - is carving out quite a niche for himself, on the gratuitous side of Tory politics. First, we had his brushing aside of official advice to raise ... More >>
Gordon Campbell on John Key’s gaffe about North Korea
Monday, 8 April 2013, 9:58 am | Gordon Campbell
Just how Prime Minister John Key thought that invoking the “proud history” of our 1950s Korean War contribution would help to minimize the current tensions on the Korean peninsula is anyone’s guess. More >>
Gordon Campbell on Ian Fletcher, Jon Stewart and avian flu
Friday, 5 April 2013, 9:56 am | Gordon Campbell
At this point, the Ian Fletcher affair risks getting lost in the‘angels on pinheads’ detail that fascinates the Beltway, and bores the pants off everyone else. What remains clear is that Prime Minister John Key intervened and changed the selection process ... More >>
Gordon Campbell on the GCSB, and bird flu scares in Beijing
Thursday, 4 April 2013, 10:41 am | Gordon Campbell
In our political system, which has few checks and balances – a single chamber Parliament, no written Constitution, a weak Bill of Rights etc – a lot has to be taken on trust. For instance: there is a lack of any genuine oversight mechanisms on how the SIS ... More >>
