NZ's best political satire is on Twitter

It sadly lacks, I'm unsure whether a small country lacks comic genius, or whether there is some cringe among those in broadcasting to give it a fair go (and to be fair I don't watch NZ TV for a fairly obvious reason), but the best political satire I am finding now is on Twitter.

If you're not following

Trevor Mallard
Parekura Horomia
David Cunliffe (no this one doesn't deserve the silent "T") and
Clayton Cosgrove

you are missing out. It's the main reason I log onto Twitter, and now I found

Shane Jones
Maryan Street

and there are more.

UPDATE: Oops Darren Hughes is real, it's not that funny. Any more MP satirical Twitters?

Wanaka's National Front school?

Seriously, is Mt. Aspiring College the least worldly most naive high school in the country? Or a secret hot bed of neo-Nazi knuckle draggers?

Wanaka is such a beautiful location, does it just mean people there don't read, watch TV or read history?

Does it mean the school curriculum is so utterly devoid of history that so many of the staff and students are just plain ignorant?

Someone better find out - I bet the semi-evolved grunts in the National Front will be getting their tiny penises (they are 90% "men") all excited about how they need to have their conference in Wanaka as a result of this story.

Life in Wanaka is clearly far too mundane because the Southland Times reports

"many students have already got their costumes organised after depleting all the stocks of white coveralls from Wanaka's Mitre 10 hardware store. Manager Mark Watson said he had no idea the $7.98 clothing item had been so popular when contacted last night, but after a quick check of his database confirmed he had only large sizes of the boilersuit-type clothing left."

Only the slim to average sized stupid and racist students are going. Although one report does suggest a bit of mischief making:

"Last year they went on sale two weeks earlier and this year it was only a few days before. They were hiding them until the last minute. "Those kids are not as dumb as the principal is making out."" says "angry mother".

Bloody hell! Parents of Wanaka. Airfares to Australia are NOT expensive, probably cheaper than to Auckland if you scoot to Queenstown. Take your kids at least to Aussie (well Sydney and/or Melbourne anyway) at least twice before they are 13.

Buy them books.

Show them where the news channels on Sky are.

and most of all, show them images of white supremacists in their natural environment (above).

(Credit to Stuff for the image)

The G20's declaration against you

The full text of the declaration is here.

Despite some nice words about markets and recovery, there isn't a lot to cheer about, unless you think it could have been worse.

A lot more money for the IMF to lend to governments which overreached themselves. Rewarding the profligate wasters and overspenders.

A commitment to sustaining the fiscal child abuse that pours a fortune of borrowed money into unproductive activity under the guise of stimulus.

Creating a Financial Stability Board to punish countries that grow "recklessly".

Punishing countries that offer taxpayers protection from the thieving claws of the likes of the US IRS and the legalised thieves of other national tax mafias. Public finances are important, your finances are not important.

A limp wristed pledge to not increase trade protectionism for the next 20 months. Given Barack Obama already had a hand in increasingly US farm subsidies, it's hardly surprising. A statement on progressing the Doha round, a bare minimum really.

So for all the cheshire cat grins of Gordon "Britain always is in deficit under me" Brown and Barack "no more pork, except my pork laden budget" Obama, this summit was a wet blanket. It has done next to nothing, done little to avoid future harm, and has shown an inadequate regard for how the global economy is dependent upon producers not governments.

Well at least protestors should remain disappointed.

Standard distorts G20 protests

It reports tens of thousands protested, yet the BBC reports there were only 5,000. (The post on the Standard links to BBC News but clearly doesn't read it).

It ignores the direct attacks on Police which I saw live on TV, refusing to take sides of course. It ignores the rampant vandalism of the RBS branch in the city for being the reason why the Police contained the protestors.

See I watched the coverage on BBC News and Sky News channels for most of the day yesterday. The Standard is getting its news secondhand. Funny how it writes about inaccuracy when it writes such shoddy nonsense as this.

What I fear about One Auckland

At Not PC Owen McShane characterises the proposal for a single megacity for Auckland as fascist.

Now, while this risks derision by the mere use of the word fascist, it is worth noting only the differences between TRUE fascism and what is being described for Auckland.

Yes, you will be able to leave Auckland, you will be able to criticise the megacity with the same free speech rights as now, you wont face more censorship, you wont be conscripted into an army to invade Ethiopia.

However, you will face more co-ordinated attacks on your private property rights, you might face the megacity regulating your business, or even competing with you. The megacity will have a substantial budget for propaganda publicity, and with one grand plan you'll know what is expected of you, your land use decisions and your property in the future. You are likely to face ever growing demands for money from your pocket, through rates. A megacity after all can increase rates by a small amount and get so much from it. Besides, few of you objected with relatively large ARC rates increases, so that can continue right?

A megacity will dilute your influence. By this I don't mean that there should be more democracy. That will simply mean those with the greatest lobbying strength (either by numbers or money) will use a megacity to regulate, tax and subsidise as they see fit. The left fears this ends up being business, the right fears it ends up being leftwing activist groups - both are right - Auckland does not need governance by lobbyist.

However, what will happen is just that. Loud lobbyists will work full time to lobby a megacity, and a megacity will have an army of planners out to ensure land use, transport use, energy use and indeed almost all aspects of day to day life are monitored and regulated if they can be legally empowered to do so.

In fact, I expect one of the first things a megacity will ask for is a review of local authority regulatory powers and tax raising powers, which were not substantially changed in the 2002 Local Government Act. The megacity will complain it isn't sufficiently empowered (to have power over you), or can't make you pay enough for it to do what it want otherwise known as raise revenue.

Auckland is over governed as it is.

The Royal Commission on Auckland report should be treated as follows by the government:

- Thank you, very interesting;
- Raises some important issues about current problems with local government in Auckland;
- Royal Commission operated under a mandate determined by the previous government so did not address some fundamental issues about the role of local government that this government has;
- We believe there are more fundamental issues to the performance of Auckland based on local authorities going far beyond certain core principles that should limit want councils do;
- As such we will be undertaking a more fundamental review of local government across the country, and will take into account Auckland as part of that review;
- (Thanks for the doorstop, the Royal Commission on Social Policy documents were getting a bit yellow).

Time to consider what the hell local government ought to be doing.

Time for those who say "not very much" to make their voices heard loud and clear, before the Nat/Act/Maori/Dunne government takes what Labour has done on local government (give it an almost unlimited mandate), and make it much much worse.

Otherwise, Rodney Hide's position as Minister of Local Government will have been for nothing.