I think BB is just having you on el Z, don't sweat it.
Just like you're having us on about speaking the truth :p
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BB never contributes to this thread, except to have a go at someone, irregularly. Usually me. NBT, if you can find somewhere that I have lied, please point it out and I'll apologise for it. Meanwhile let's see how the National MPs react to Andrew Little's pointed question of John Key.
http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/andr...-video-6175462
One or two of them looked nervous, Joyce looked overjoyed for some reason, and John Key was well prepared with an answer. Sort of - he didn't answer the implied question - was your office directly involved ? He deftly pointed out that according to the report, there was no collusion.
I have no doubt that both sides have items of dirt on each other that they keep in balance and generally away from the public, this could be what John Key was talking about, in a veiled way (It'll be an interesting three years, I can't wait). Andrew Little has a relatively new front bench, which would insulate him a bit more from this sort of tactic.
No empty promises, EZ. I am still waiting for your apology. Westerly distributed Labours lies, I proved him wrong and you accused me (not Westerly or Labour) of spinning the truth. Shame on you.
Just to refresh your memory (must be hard for somebody like you to keep track of all your spins ...): http://www.sharetrader.co.nz/showthr...l=1#post521081 and following ...
BP, I agreed with you in a post that Westerly had misquoted the press release, when he said there were more public servants now than in 2008, he should have added the qualifier, In Wellington. National has massaged the data to reduce the number of core public servants, and the overall number of public servants in NZ is slightly lower than it was in 2008. What would be unknown, is how much is being spent on external contractors in this area.
Black Peter
Number of Public Servants
2008 43569 FTE 45934 Total employees
2009 44672 “ 47052 “
2010 44554 “ 46822 “
2011 43595 “ 45807 “
2012 43345 “ 45444 “
2013 44500 “ 45546 “
2014 45280 “ 47120 “
(1) You cannot quote FTE figures for 2014 and total employee figures for 2008 and say numbers had not increased.
(2) The article quoted was not Labour propganda but a reporters summary of the report. with quotes from both National and Labour
No apology is necessary;)
westerly
Thanks for the updated information Westerly, I see what you mean now. There has been quite a big jump in the number of public servants in the last year, in terms of the numbers employed. 2012 was the only year when the number of FTEs was lower than in 2008. There are 1711 more FTEs employed in the public service now, than there were in 2008.
I heard some disturbing figures today, something like a 50% increase over 1990 greenhouse gas emissions levels is likely within 10 years in NZ. After that we presumably have to get it back down to below 1990 levels by 2050. You can't help wondering if some of the extra emissions are from burning gas at Fonterra factories, to make milk powder. But transport seems to be the major additional factor, and new ring roads and motorways spreading through the country are not going to slow that down in favour of rail.
http://www.transport.govt.nz/assets/...t-BIM-2014.pdf
Interesting ... and yes, it looks like I have to withdraw and apologize. Seems to be dangerous to compare numbers from different reports - and yes, your numbers seem to be consistent with the 2014 report (check as well the graph below). The number of public servants did indeed kept rising from 2008 to 2014 (though just very slowly), while their was a significant jump from 1999 to 2008 (easy to see in the graph which I copied from the latest HR report).
Attachment 6596
I guess what we've both overseen is that the public service department staff is anyway just a small subset of all public servants - if you look at the thick blue layers above - there is a much larger army of people out there living of our taxes (in total well beyond 200.000, and this does not even include the army of beneficiaries created by the Labour government). And again - the graph shows quite nicely that the big ramping up of these layers happened during Labour's reign.
However, what I don't get, Westerly: Now, that you managed to convince me that National kept wasting our tax payers money in line with the previous Labour government (even if they clearly reduced the annual increase), why is the Left complaining about each and every government department restructure? Are you saying - National should waste still more tax payer money by even keeping the government employees they really don't need and hire some more on top of it?
different topic, but same theme ... another achievement of our previous Labour government: ramping up private household debts (negative savings):
Attachment 6597
Interesting to see how Labour managed to create the perception that things improved during their reign - by applying policies which (obviously) discouraged private savings. Households got more and more indebted during Labours reign. Is this really a scenario we want to get back to?
Discl: graph lifted off NBR article using a public data source: http://www.rbnz.govt.nz/statistics/tables/m6
At last, some good arguments being posted by the neo-liberals and those on the right!
I wonder what the real cost to the taxpayer of each public sector job is, after factoring in that each employee pays tax back to the govt in numerous ways, and also boosts other businesses with their spending ability. Not to mention the fact that as a proportion of the population, it is natural to have a small annual rise in most employment areas of the public sector. Funnily enough, the economy of NZ grew very well during the Clark years, and strong budget surpluses were achieved. It's arguable that Labour showed NZ how to grow the pie, for everybody.
During those same years, I've calculated that the average dairy farmer made a capital gain in the region of over one million dollars, on paper at least. Those who owned property made proportional gains, or better, on average. The issue is not that it was bad for Joe Public to borrow money to buy such assets, but that in the longer term it would be good if they were more productive assets.
But every government has had trouble changing the behaviour of the public towards this area.
I think I know why the National Party doesn't have any real policies (they make stuff up as they go, and this recent election was a classic, in that their 'policy' was that they'd keep going down the same fiscally conservative track as in the previous term).
The National Party is equally as divided as any major party. There are neo-conservatives and neo-liberals amongst them, and I have it on good authority that they have never been able to sit down and find policies that both factions agree on. How have they been able to gain and hold onto power? They have used attack politics, and one of the major fronts has been the anti-PC brigade.
You see and hear these comments all through blog sites, in conversations in public and in the media. Something that is 'politically correct' is automatically 'bad'. In fact, such policies are socially correct, or progressive policies generally, they are perfectly normal, sensible policies when viewed accurately, without the 'PC' filter. Policies like no smoking in public buildings. All this anti-PC work started in the early 2000's, and not long after, C/T were hired by Richard Long for the National Party. Since this firm is strongly neo-liberal in its attitude, for a long time Don Brash was keen to keep it a secret that they had been hired. Even now the National Party doesn't shout the association from the rooftops, but they are running the same type of campaign strategy that they did from the start. The ideas have come from USA politics of course, where neo-liberalism has become a way of life. Even the Democrats are right of centre, according to NZ standards.
I have become convinced that to win in 2017, Labour need to understand how the National Party's strategy works, who is pulling the strings, and figure out how to attack their inane statements, each and every time they occur.