Few things are certain in politics. With spin and counter-spin, it’s often difficult for the passive observer to make sense of the cut and thrust of political discourse played out in local and national mainstream media and online. However, there is one thing you can count on. When a politician goes negative, when he starts [...]

The post National – Building A Factless Future appeared first on Recess Monkey.

Right-wing parties around the world have struggled to shed their image of being a predominantly rich, mostly white, and mainly male clique who were born to rule, but not the National Party in New Zealand. Not until now at least.

National spent the best part of the 2000s working to rid themselves of [...]

The post Born To Rule appeared first on Recess Monkey.

A bishop, a gay man and bevy of lawyers walked into a court room … It could be the start of a joke, but no one was laughing when a Human Rights Commission hearing began today with the Anglican Bishop of Auckland accused of breaking the law by refusing to allow Geno Sisneros to enter into the selection [...]

The post The Church and Human Rights – an awkward love story appeared first on Recess Monkey.

At the beginning of this week, making plans in my head as I sometimes do (not often enough), I had decided that I needed to write a blog post. I had been a bit slack of late. One thing or another had taken what spare time I had, but this week I knew that John [...]

The post In Memory of A Star appeared first on Recess Monkey.

A core principle of neoliberalism is the primacy of the market – the prelapsarian place where all people are capable of making their lives better, but only if they take responsibility for themselves and put in the effort. Neoliberal policy is based on this tenant, extracting these market philosophies and functions and applying them to [...]

The post In the Name of the Market: Neoliberalism, New Zealand’s Electricity Sector, and NZPower appeared first on Recess Monkey.

At the risk of coming across as a sympathiser for one of the most archaic and horrendously racist MPs, an MP who was one of the most fervent supporters of Ruth Richardson’s particularly cruel brand of neoliberalism, one whose achievement list during his 25-plus year parliamentary career is practically barren, and whose lack of [...]

The post Williamson isn’t entirely wrong on 3D printers appeared first on Recess Monkey.

I doubt that in 50 years time, people will be able to recall where they were when they heard that Thatcher had died, perhaps what will be more memorable will be the contrasts in reaction to the news of her death.

Let me be clear, Thatcher was the UK PM for most of my childhood; [...]

The post Ashes to Ashes, Rust to Rust – The Iron Lady Is No More! appeared first on Recess Monkey.

A couple of days ago Eddie posted at The Standard on the ‘three factions in Labour’s current caucus’. Notwithstanding the fact that the entire post was fanciful drivel concocted by an anonymous blogger who clearly has delusions of being “in the loop” (although I suspect their role would be [...]

The post With ‘Friends’ Like Eddie, Who Needs WhaleOil? appeared first on Recess Monkey.

Way back in December 2011, during the Labour leadership contest, the dreaded specter of “re-nationalization” was raised (towards the end of the transcript).

For those who missed it, the theory goes like this:

National sell off up to 49% of well performing, dividend paying state assets to Ma and Pa foreign investors!

The post Power to the People – What next for Labour and Asset Sales? appeared first on Recess Monkey.

The future of the iconic educational institution School Journal, a staple of reading programmes in our country for 105 years, is in doubt.

A message from the Wellington Children’s Book Association (via CQAE) is reporting that Learning Media, the State-Owned Enterprise that produces educational resources, publications – including the [...]

The post The demise of an icon? [U] appeared first on Recess Monkey.

National Standards is poor education policy. It’s been said nearly everywhere else: measurement is not learning, it doesn’t take into account the starting position, it’s a crude measure of ‘value added’ or progress, it’s ‘ropey’, as the Prime Minister said, and therefore it creates winners and losers, labelling some children failures, demotivating and excluding them [...]

The post Education: A Narrative of Anxiety appeared first on Recess Monkey.

It is with pleasure that we introduce Sam Durbin to the Recess Monkey blogging team.

Sam will be blogging from Auckland, hence we amended our description to an NZ based, rather than a Hawke’s Bay based blog (and frankly, if it doesn’t rain here in The Bay soon, we’ll all shrivel up and Sam will be our [...]

The post New Kid on the Blog appeared first on Recess Monkey.

Today sees the presentation to Parliament of the petition to force a Citizen Initiated Referendum on asset sales. Understandably, the majority of the left see this as a step forward in retaining common ownership of profitable infrastructure, while some on the right see this as an irritating distraction that they would like to [...]

The post Lies, Dam Lies, and Dodgy Statistics appeared first on Recess Monkey.

Not surprisingly, just 12 hours after I published The Politics of Race, I came across the following video on the internet.

Whilst the comments are within the context of the US civil rights movement, it doesn’t take much to see the parallels between what Louis C.K says about the history of oppression of African-Americans, and New Zealand’s history of [...]

The post The Politics of Race (continued) appeared first on Recess Monkey.

New Zealand’s equivalent to the Tea Party in the US, the New Zealand Centre for Political Research, has just sent out it’s latest newsletter. I’ll admit that I am signed up to this electronic epistle, if for no other reason than the fact that it’s arrival in my email on a Tuesday [...]

The post The Politics of Race appeared first on Recess Monkey.