There are more unemployed workers in this country now than at any point in the last 25 years. Economic growth has flatlined. Do you agree with RBNZ's projection?

RT @rcbregman: AMAZING result from a 10-year study: a one-time $1,000 cash transfer to households in rural Kenya cut infant mortality by 48….

Mercury will be highlighting their $1m profit and relatively high capex in FY25, BUT: .- they're still paying out a quarter of billion in dividends .- 2014-20 capex averaged $92m while dividends avg'd $229m. Late capacity additions = high prices + deindustrialisation.

Contact is the first gentailer to report FY25 results, showing a record pre-tax profit of $463m with a 13% PbT margin.

RT @volker_turk: Trade wars and arms races serve no one - certainly not people in low-income countries, who are often treated as collateral….

HOW IS GRANT STILL DOING THIS 🪄

Where is the NZTPU on the largest fall in real govt consumption since 1987? Great read from Toby Moore:

I will make my decision on whether I derecognise the state of Israel in September.

RT @We_OwnIt: Not a single new reservoir built in England for 30 years. ❌. 3 billion litres of water lost from leaking pipes every day. ❌….

UNLEASH THE ANIMAL SPIRITS

In 2020 Simon Bridges was spitting tacks about a "tsunami of debt" and the possibility the net core Crown debt might reach 50%. Now he's out of formal opposition, he thinks we've got stacks of fiscal space. Maybe it's all just an act?

How's that laser focus on the cost of living working out for us. ?

If repealing the offshore ban cannot retain our talented international petroleum lawyer class then our country is clearly broken for fossil energy and there's nothing shane jones can do about it.

RT @ThomasHaig: I started teaching high school English in 2005, a few years after NCEA came in. Then worked at PPTA from 2011-2019, trying….

Why doesn't govt use its majority shareholdings to influence the behaviour of the three largest firms in the market? It's not really allowed to. I argue that our current SOE settings are too inflexible to deal with the social and environmental challenges we face as a nation.

Govt remains the biggest gentailer shareholder, and is no doubt loving the billion it gets in dividends and tax receipts. That's especially helpful now, given high electricity prices are causing closures, layoffs and new income support recipients.

My latest, fresh from the paywall: when politicians try to sell you asset sales next election, remind them what happened last round: capital investment in the partially-privatised gentailers collapsed while dividends exploded.

Powerful piece on the logic of militarised neoliberalism in Mali by Mercy Nabwire Ouma

Remember the process here: The public got a week of consultation in late September. The oil industry then got a ten month window to grease the Minister. The policy outcome is that the Minister gets to choose who swallows the decommissioning liability.