Tagged: lying liars

So Martyn Bradbury wrote a post about me

And I just want to clear a few things up, if only to establish with some finality that Martyn “Bomber” Bradbury shouldn’t be trusted as far as you can piss facing into an emerald Wellington gale.  Martyn’s post is here, or will be until he deletes it and pretends it never happened.

Martyn’s statement:

QoT left the blog with Nicole Skews

is a lie, and one which I have previously corrected him on .  Coley (which is what people call her when they’re not trying to silence her with the threat of workplace-related drama*) left The Daily Blog on 12 September.  Her side of the tale is here.

I, on the other hand, had stepped down from blogging there on 24 July, with the following email:

Hey man, my post for the week is now with you.

Unfortunately I’m going to have to step back from TDB.  As you’ve probably gathered, things in the meat-world have been pretty rocky for me this year and the past month has just taken all my spoons.
It’s been great though, I really like what you’re achieving and the line-up is awesome – so I know I won’t necessarily be missed *too* badly. 🙂

You’ll want to keep this in mind for a bit further down.  When in later email conversation I corrected him for claiming that my stepping down was due to Coley’s, he stated in an email of 20 September:

My mistake – I thought the 2 events were connected.

Next up.  Martyn’s statement:

QoT’s latest attack is to claim that our desire on TDB to have more female voices is somehow a conspiracy to hide my true intentions of allowing the patriarchy to rule while paying lip service to diversity. She claims the lack of posts by the female bloggers in October is proof of this while I think that is a terrible slap in the face to the women bloggers on this site.

is easily compared with my actual post here – which Martyn does not link to.  Please note:  the statistics are not for October.  They are for the entire running history of The Daily Blog, from February to October 2013, as noted on the post.  I do not accuse Martyn of “allowing the patriarchy to rule”; I say:

With those kind of numbers, you’ve got to ask exactly what is being served by getting more women’s names onto the TDB roster.  Is it women, or is it one guy’s liberal cred?

But Martyn claims that he’s actually the real feminist here:

QoT knows first hand from times she couldn’t get her blog through to us that there are many extra time issues for female bloggers to contend with. Family, work and study all impact on the time commitments people can commit to blogging, every blogger on this site has the ability to post whenever they want above the minimum commitments they agree to.

It’s a nice point, and a very valid one, and yeah, I’m not a perfect employee contributor.  But it struck me as odd that Martyn was suddenly so understanding of the pressures on women and how this might affect their ability to commit regular blog posts, because after I sent that email, back on 24 July, his response was far less accepting.

Martyn, 24 July:

WHOA – Hold up sister – QoT – mate, comrade – hold up.

I was out tonight at backbenchers and I had a couple of guys from out of town who had made the trip in special to watch it and they were raving about you and the impact you have made on their girlfriends in helping them find their voice.

QoT I do not want to lose you – how about this – how about we cut you down from weekly to fortnightly – would that help?

A day later, after I hadn’t responded – remembering that I’d explained life was a bit difficult at the moment.

So would fortnightly take the pressure off you?

Please note that is the entire text of the email.  I explained – very nicely** – that it wasn’t a goer.  He responded:

Doh – those personal things – bloody nuisance those.

I’ll back off for a month and then start gently prodding – you are simply too important a voice to allow quieting my dear QoT – there is genuinely a new generation of women reading your blogs and feeling real power from seeing a woman as staunch and powerful as you front footing it with anyone.

I know how passionate you are so know your personal trauma must be great to pause from blogging. Take time to heal comrade, I’ll hold your line in the fight.

And then a month later, with no further contact from me – and sure, I could have been more forthcoming, but Martyn could also have taking a fucking hint** – the boilerplate reminder emails began again.  And I didn’t want to pick a fight, because I feared that Martyn would be nasty in retaliation.  I think subsequent events bear this out.

But it does seem to suggest that he is not as open-minded about the pressures on women bloggers as he claims, and quite happy to apply it himself.

And finally, Martyn says:

The insinuation that Amanda Kennedy, Christine Rose, Dianne Khan, Jenny Michie, Julie Anne Genter, Julie Fairey, LadyMac, Laila Harre, Latifa Daud, Louisa Wall, Marama Davidson, Moana Mackey, Penny Hulse, Phoebe Fletcher, Professor Jane Kelsey, Rachael Goldsmith, Sue Bradford, Susan St John, Tali Williams and Melissa Ansell-Bridges are somehow puppets being played for deceptive means by myself, Chris Trotter, Selwyn Manning, Frank Macskasy and Wayne Hope is as ludicrous as it is offensive to those women.

It’s very nice to know that he can name all his remaining women bloggers.  But again, it begs a question: if all of these women find my statements offensive and ludicrous, why isn’t Martyn giving them a platform to say so?

The rest of Martyn’s post is a masterclass in sexist double standards and tone argument.  It shouldn’t need saying that the man who refers to me as “Queen of Scorns”, who coined the phrase “Emerald Stormtroopers”, and who categorised what is basically an argument over one comment on a blog as “completely fracturing the Auckland and Wellington left” is probably not the person who should be lamenting the horrors of blog-war.

Martyn is a liar.  If you are dealing with him, screencap everything.  This correspondence is now very much closed.

~
*In an earlier post, Martyn referred to her as “Nicole Skews of [her workplace]”.  This has, like so many things, been silently retconned.

**And let’s all think for a moment about how women are programmed to be nice in order to not antagonise men because they fear being attacked by them.  I don’t think it’s a stretch given the exact post I’m commenting on now.

Things I do/don’t care about

I don’t care :

Where Len Brown sticks his cock

I do care :

That our media seemingly were on the edge of their seats waiting for a just-credible-enough story to appear on W****O** so they could breathlessly report it.

That it took approximately three nanoseconds for our media to decide that what their coverage really needed was the most infantilising, racist lens possible.

That anyone with a good idea how these stories work knew from the word go that it will be Bevan Chuang who ultimately pays the price in terms of reputation – in five years Len Brown will be “the first Mayor of the Auckland supercity” and she’ll still be his “mistress” – and that Cameron “Wankstain” Slater and Stephen “Woman found dead” Cook absolutely knew this and didn’t care.

That a lot of people being sanctimonious about this story right now are cheating on their spouses, and we may never know – and it wouldn’t be any of our business anyway, but it certainly puts their criticism in a different light.

That plenty of liberal men seemingly were on the edge of their seats waiting for an excuse to use the phrase “honey trap” and feel fully justified in doing so because “well she was“.

That once again if you’re a shitheel rightwinger throwing mud you still get called a “journalist”.

From a prochoice position, changing our abortion laws DOES MATTER

First things first:  lump of coal to Stuff for publishing an article with an alarmist headline based on shitty research into abortion and mental health, which I’ve blogged about before.  (A tinier lump of coal labelled “old news, much?” will be delivered in five months’ time.)

But today’s post is not about that shitty research.  It’s about the comments of Dame Linda Holloway, chair of the Abortion Supervisory Committee, and apparently no fucking ally to pregnant people.

Dame Linda Holloway, the chairwoman of the committee, said any move towards liberalisation would be a “difficult political argument and from a pro choice position it doesn’t really matter”.

Doesn’t really matter?  It doesn’t really matter than pregnant people are treated like they’re incapable of making their own decisions, that they have to get permission like they’re schoolchildren on a field trip, that they may not have accessible services in their own area and have to travel, sometimes overnight, to get a very safe and very normal medical procedure done?

I don’t know how Dame Linda Holloway defines “a pro choice position” but it’s not one I’d sign up to.

“The chance of changing the abortion laws in New Zealand at this time are sub-zero. At the moment we have assured successive ministers of justice that we can operate under the law as it is.

It’s so fantastic that these two sentences are right next to each other.  Gee, do you think maybe the lack of political will to change our archaic, condescending abortions laws might have anything to do with those “assurances”?  Think you might be playing the smallest part in ensuring that pregnant New Zealanders are

“If we start opening the whole thing up to do new legislation my concern is that we might end up with something that is worse than what we have got. The chances of that are quite high.”

I guess I have to give this much:  Dame Linda Holloway, as chair of the ASC, is under constant attack from the likes of Right to Control Your Life.  So maybe this has given her the impression that the antichoice feeling in New Zealand is overwhelming.

I talk about abortion a lot, and my perspective is that while a lot of people think it’s icky and don’t want to talk about it, as soon as you say “did you know that abortion is still a crime in New Zealand?” much less “did you know pregnant people are still regularly travelling to Australia to get abortions?” they’re very much on board with updating our laws.  Sometimes you literally have to argue with people who insist we have abortion-on-demand – and articles like this one don’t really fucking help, so another lump of coal to Stuff for propagating bullshit myths which oppress pregnant people.  But once the facts are explained?  The majority of people still don’t really want to think about it, but they are, at a basic level, prochoice.

Holloway said she would prefer to “soldier on”.

“If I thought we could get a perfect world I would be all for it.”

Bully for you, person-who-doesn’t-have-to-raise-money-to-fly-to-Australia-for-an-abortion.  Perfection or nothing, that’s a fantastic way to approach things.  The staggering irony is that the antichoice movement, especially in the US but also here, have demonstrated the terrible effectiveness of not demanding perfection or nothing.  They (or at least, the moderately-douchey ones) don’t say “illegalise abortion, nothing else will do”.  They start with “oh, parents should be notified, you’d want to know if it was your child!” and “maybe you should have to wait a week to properly consider things” and “oh you really should have to have an ultrasound beforehand so you really understand what you’re doing.”

We probably can’t get free universally-accessible holistic-care abortions-for-all in one go.  But we can at least start by taking abortion out of the Crimes Act and removing the need to get Mummy and Daddy to sign your permission slip.

At the very fucking least, let’s stop making it easier for antichoicers to lie about the situation in NZ, could we?

Radio NZ: reputation jeopardised

[Radio New Zealand] said the way [Matthew Hooton] expressed his opinion was unacceptable, and fell well short of our standards for fairness and balance, so this week we also asked Radio New Zealand how can you be sure Matthew Hooton won’t make further politically-motivated claims in future, which might also jeopardise that even-handedness and political neutrality they value.

Well, Radio New Zealand replied that Matthew Hooton had raised a legitimate subject on Monday, in the context of Nine to Noon’s robust political debate, from the left and from the right, but its concern was the accusations of lying, which were addressed, they say, by Nine to Noon on Thursday morning’s apology and clarification.

Well Radio New Zealand also added, in live radio we can never give an absolute guarantee that comments won’t be made by contributors which might jeopardise our reputation for even-handedness and political neutrality, but we will continue, they say, to do all that we can to maintain that reputation.

From Mediawatch, 29 September 2013.
Segment starts at 9:23, quote from 16:51-17:47

You know what actually “jeopardises your reputation”, Radio NZ?

1.  Claiming that Matthew Hooton’s comments were raising a legitimate subject but that it was the accusations of lying which were the problem.  The subject he raised WAS the accusations of lying.  THAT’S ALL HE SAID.

2.  Crying about the dinnamic environment of live radio when you’ve already set a precedent for refusing to re-hire commentators who spew crap all over your microphones.

3.  Saying you’ll do “all that you can” to maintain your reputation while also [GO TO 2].

4.  Referring to anything which happens on Nine to Noon involving Matthew Hooton and Mike “I agree with Matthew” Williams as “robust political debate”.

(Oh, and obviously we now have a new bar for measuring one’s political gullibility:  when Matthew Hooton says “There’s a growing sense”, do you assume it’s only growing because he keeps mentioning it?  If so, congratulations:  you can grasp basic political strategy.  Moreso than Nine to Noon’s producers, apparently.)

Have National’s asset sales officially cost more than they’ll earn?

In a previous post at The Standard I did a wee bit of math and came to the conclusion that National has already made $5.26 billion worth of spending promises out of the Future Investment Fund, the not-actually-a-fund chunk of cash they plan to make from selling taxpayer-built infrastructure to their mates.

Things have developed.

First, there’s this post from James, noting that the sales process itself has already cost $124 million.  And this estimate from the Greens of the cost of the Government’s interest-free loans to Meridian investors.

And then there’s this acknowledgement from John Key that the original five-to-seven billion dollar estimate for the profits from the sales are pretty much shot to hell.

So now we’re left with:

  • Maybe $5 billion in income – only 2.1 billion of which has come in so far
  • $5.26 billion in promised spending
  • $124 million in process costs
  • $55 million in bribes to investors

Costs we’re still not including:

  • National’s promise to reduce our debt by $6 billion
  • Ongoing loss of profits to the Crown, as outlined in James’ post
  • The ongoing maintenance of all the projects they’re promising to fund – because shit needs to be staffed, maintained, cleaned and managed after you’ve built it or it’s a complete waste of time.

So at the most generous estimate?

We’re already in the hole for four hundred and thirty-nine million dollars.  Taking the promised spending and costs to date away from the actual funds received?

Three point three billion dollars in the red.

That’s the sound fiscal management of the National Party.

The “hard questions” of the antichoice movement

Another group has entered the abortion coliseum to throw down over their right to impose their personal morality on everyone with a uterus, and their motto is

Just Think – Hard Questions

It sounds fair enough: abortion’s a complex, polarising issue, after all.  So I figured hey, maybe I could help them with the hard questions about abortion.

What about a situation where scans show that the baby will have a serious disability?

This is indeed a hard question, and raises a lot of concerns about how our society treats people with disabilities, and the value or lack of value we place on the lives of people with disabilities.  But at the end of the day, the pregnant person involved should be allowed to make a decision which is best for them and their family, and sometimes that’s going to be abortion, because they don’t feel capable of raising that child nor of giving that child up for adoption.

Without easy access to medical abortion, won’t some women want to seek the same result by other methods?

Yes.  And a lot of them will die.  Far more than will die due to abortion, which has a zero fatality rate in New Zealand and is many, many times less likely to kill you than pregnancy.

How about situations where a [person’s] health might be threatened by pregnancy?

They get to choose whether to continue the pregnancy.

What if a woman has no stable income and can’t drop out of uni or work to raise a child – isn’t pregnancy unfair for child and mother?

That’s a decision the pregnant person has to make.

Should a child be brought into the world if there is an abusive situation in her home?

That’s a decision the pregnant person has to make.

What about a situation where pregnancy results from sexual assault – isn’t abortion the best solution?

That’s a decision the pregnant person has to make.

Gosh.  I guess most of those questions weren’t so hard after all.

The real point is this:  Pro Life New Zealand want to use over-simplified, judgemental arguments to shame pregnant people into not having abortions.  Note the question about sexual assault, and “isn’t abortion the best solution” – as though prochoice activists are out there insisting that every pregnancy resulting from assault be aborted.  Note the first question is about disability – as though these religious extremists give a fuck about challenging society’s ableism once you’re out of the womb.

We’re PRO.  CHOICE.  If a person simply cannot cope with their pregnancy, we support their choice to have an abortion, safely and legally.  If a person feels they can cope with their pregnancy, we support their choice to continue the pregnancy and their right to be supported by society, especially if they or their child have special medical needs or if they’re raising a child alone.

Antichoicers do not support your choice, unless it is the choice they agree with.

Family First have to twist the truth because they are an extremist religious minority

It’s been nearly six months since our last visit to the alternate universe occupied by Family First-commissioned Curia polls.  Do you think they’ve learned not to be lying shitbags yets?

What the poll actually asked:

Do you agree with the statement,

“There was no need for Parliament to change the definition of marriage to allow same-sex couples to marry, as civil unions were sufficient for same sex couples.”

44% agreed, “half” disagreed.

What Family First thinks this means:

the country still remains deeply divided on the issue [of same-sex marriage]

… So that’s a “no” on the shitbag question.

What this poll actually means:

Some people thought civil unions for same-sex couples was legally equivalent to state-recognised marriages – a belief no doubt helped by organisations like Family First which consistently lie about the clear legal differences between marriage and civil unions – legal differences which they themselves mention in relation to their second question, “do you think children need to have a 50/50 penis-vagina split in their parents’ pants to be normal?”

What this poll also actually means:

David Farrar is an unethical douche who would, if he had any integrity as a pollster, either reject Family First’s questions or clearly state that he disagrees with their manipulation of the facts.

Next time on How Not to Poll With Curia And Family First:  

Overwhelming numbers of Kiwis think food is a good thing to have as part of your daily diet!  And when we replaced the phrase “definitions of marriage inaccurately described as Biblical” with “puppies” you may be surprised how many people agree with our bigoted point of view!

Why do antichoicers have to lie about parental notification?

[Trigger warning:  youth suicide]

In another of his copy-paste jobs (because he just won’t learn) Bob McCoskrie quotes the following:

Much to the dismay of ardent feminists, many states already have on the books so-called parental involvement laws, decrees which require a girl to notify a parent, guardian, or other approved adult or family member before she can obtain an abortion.

A new study by Joseph Sabia and Daniel Rees, researchers from San Diego State University and the University of Colorado, Denver, gives further evidence in support of such laws. States that have parental notification laws, they find, also see a drop in the suicide rate of girls ages 15 through 17.

What’s wrong with this “analysis”?

If your first guess was “anyone who uses the phrase “ardent feminist” isn’t exactly unbiased”, you get a foetus-shaped cookie covered in blood-sprinkles.

Now, here’s a link to the actual article, because Bob’s penis doesn’t deserve pageviews.  What jumps out at you from that?  Is it this bit at the end?

This article has been republished with permission from The Family in America, a publication of The Howard Center. The Howard Center is a MercatorNet partner site.

Have another foetus-shaped cookie with a red-licorice umbilical.

But who is “The Howard Center”?  If the URL of “profam.org” doesn’t give enough of a hint, here’s what they say about themselves:

Introducing The World Congress of Families

We affirm that the natural human family is established by the Creator and essential to good society.

…

The “Natural” Family and Society

The natural family is the fundamental social unit, inscribed in human nature, and centered on the voluntary union of a man and a woman in the lifelong covenant of marriage. The natural family is defined by marriage, procreation and, in some cultures, adoption. Free, secure and stable families that welcome children are necessary for healthy society. The society that abandons the natural family as the norm is destined for chaos and suffering.

Oh!  They’re extremist Christians!  Who would have thought?

And the actual study they’re citing?  Why, that’s here.  It’s okay, Bob, we already knew that the concept of linking to primary sources so people can make up their own minds is alien to you.

I am no stats nerd, and I welcome any who are to provide their own commentary on the math.  But here’s the thing:

Poisson estimates indicate that the adoption of a parental involvement law is associated with an 11%–21% decrease in the number of 15- through 17-year-old females who commit suicide. … we conclude that these estimates likely reflect a causal relationship, but note that its magnitude appears to be modest: for an average-sized state, an 11% decrease in the number of 15- through 17-year-old females who commit suicide translates into 0.79 fewer suicides per year, while a 21% decrease translates into 1.50 fewer suicides per year; ordinary least squares estimates confirm that only a small portion of the within-state variation in suicides among U.S. minors can be attributed to parental involvement laws.

Sure, the fundies have a good point when they say that every teen suicide prevented is a good thing (presuming it’s prevented because the teen in question chooses not to, and not because they’re locked in a basement by controlling parents).  But we’re still talking about one less suicide a year.  Not exactly a slam-dunk of a finding, that.

And without wanting to disparage the entire science of statistics, it still bugs me to see these kind of numbers with no context.  We just don’t know why there’s a causal connection – though the study has a suggestion:

This pattern of results suggests that the adoption of a parental involvement law results in an immediate reduction in suicides, but that after the first year its impact wanes. This may be because the enactment of the laws typically comes amidst press coverage alerting minors and their parents to the new law, but dissipates as public attention to the law diminishes

Right, so for a blip in time, teenagers are more leery of sex, or feel more able to insist on contraception, because the idea of having to tell their parents they’re knocked up is front of mind.  After that … yeah, nah.  Doesn’t seem like much of a compelling case for the religious lobby’s assertion that

it seems reasonable to suggest that if parental notification laws do indeed act as a deterrent upon risky sexual behaviors, such laws save many more girls from severe psychological distress, even if that distress does not end ultimately in the ending of life.

Um, just a thought:  maybe wait until you’ve got an actual study linking parental notification laws with “risky” sexual behaviours before you start jumping to conclusions.

And finally:

Levine … found that the adoption of a parental involvement law was associated with a 15%–20% reduction in the abortion rate of 15- through 17-year-olds, and a 4%–9% reduction in their pregnancy rate.

Which means that one seemingly incontrovertible effect of parental notification laws is more teenagers having babies.  Choice.

So there we go.  Bob McCoskrie is still stealing other people’s content with paltry attribution and no value-add commentary, and can’t even be honest enough to present the real findings of the study or acknowledge his sources are religiously biased.

~

Bonus fail, from the article McCoskrie thieved:

“Under the law,” reports the Chicago Tribune, “a parent or a guardian would have to be notified at least 48 hours before an abortion was performed on a minor except in cases of a medical emergency, sexual abuse, neglect or physical abuse.”

Um, Chicago Tribune?  If a minor’s pregnant, it’s a case of sexual abuse.  That’s the point of having a legal definition of “minor”, douchebags.

~

In the interests of even-handedness, here’s a disclaimer:  I’m prochoice as all fuck.  You might have gathered.

How do anti-abortion groups get more grotesque?

… by co-opting the language of anti-trafficking groups, of course!

Family Life International – the group which runs John Paul II Centres in Auckland, Wellington and soon Dunedin – has announced it will be bringing Abby Johnson to NZ as part of their “40 Days of Life” campaign.  (Yes, 40 days as in Lent.  Because the antichoice movement is overwhelmingly an extremist religious movement.)

Abby Johnson is now a professional antichoice activist.  She previously directed a Planned Parenthood clinic, despite apparently not understanding what an abortion is, because according to her, she was asked to assist in one after eight years working there and seeing it happen on the ultrasound made her realise how terrible it all was.

Pity no one can find any record of that abortion ever taking place.

So Abby Johnson wrote a book and founded an organisation called “And Then There Were None”.  Don’t worry, despite the fairly obvious assumption you may make, it’s not actually a group openly advocating for the murder of healthcare workers.

Instead, ATTWN treats healthcare workers who perform abortions like they’re victims of sex-trafficking – right down to not giving a fuck about what they actually want or choose.  The language is actually pretty … gross.

Our goal is to provide financial, emotional, spiritual and legal support to anyone wishing to leave the abortion industry.

Because obviously The Abortion Industry is a terrifying labyrinthine creature, and no one can just, you know, hand in their resignation and get a job somewhere else. 

Sidewalk counselors will be trained then periodically stationed at abortion clinics to reach out to clinic workers in a calm and inviting manner in order to establish direct personal lines of communication.

Because the antichoice movement’s “sidewalk counselors” are always so calm and inviting when they’re badgering pregnant people, waving gory faked propaganda in their faces, and killing doctors.

Any person seeking help from ATTWN will be assured, without reservation, that no personal information will be disclosed.

And I’m sure that if the antichoice movement has already disclosed all your personal information in order to intimidate you, they will offer a full apology.

Elsewhere, Johnson states:

NO ONE GROWS UP WANTING TO HAVE AN ABORTION.

Yeah, and no one grows up wanting to have open heart surgery, Abby.  Therefore we should ban open heart surgery.

NO ONE GROWS UP WANTING TO WORK AT AN ABORTION CLINIC.

Suffice it to say I know a few counterfactuals to this, self included.

~

And while we’re on the topic of FLI’s “40 Days of Life” and antichoice bullying, here’s some suggested reading from the UK:

“We are very supportive of people’s right to protest, but what we saw in Bedford Square was beyond the pale,” says Clare Murphy of BPAS. “They hang around by the door and encircle women.” And 40 Days for Life’s use of cameras is particularly disturbing. According to the organisation’s leader Robert Colquhoun, photographic equipment is only used to protect the protesters, who he says have been threatened previously. But BPAS reports that the cameras have been turned on patients, in a tactic that amounts to harassment. Yesterday, 40 Days for Life tweeted to celebrate its first “turnaround”, but it’s hard to imagine that any woman who has been repulsed by such intrusive actions is making a positive choice to be a mother.

Let’s not buy the bullshit.  The antichoice movement has one goal: stopping abortions.  And they will do and say whatever it takes to achieve this.  And if healthcare workers and pregnant people die in the process, they do not care.

National Party economics: make $2 billion, spend 5

Today, R0b asked a question that many people have been posing:  just how many times does the National Government think it can spend the “profits” it’s “made” by selling off viable money-making New Zealand assets?

So I had a wee dig.  Bear in mind, I’m not an economist; I’m just a citizen trying to find out where her money’s being spent.

On the other hand, I help run a household, so apparently this makes me just as qualified as the next person to determine whether the Nats are good economic managers.

Let’s start with the income.  2012 Treasury forecasts suggested a price of $6 billion for selling off 49% of Mighty River Power, Meridian, Genesis Energy and Solid Energy, and part of the publicly-owned chunk of Air New Zealand.

The proceeds of these sales go towards the “Future Investment Fund” – which isn’t really a fund, more a guideline.

Now that’s just a Treasury forecast, so put what faith in that that you wish.

What we have in hand is $1.7 billion from the sale of Mighty River Power.  (And this was at the low end of the initial $1.6-1.9b estimate of its value, so let’s add that fact to any niggles we feel about Treasury’s forecasts while we’re at it.)

Somewhere along the line this has become $2.1 billion added to the Future Investment Fund.

Now, to the spending.

National has committed from the Future Investment Fund:

Phew, that’s a mighty list of stuff!

A mighty list of stuff costing $5.26 billion dollars.  Out of $6 billion dollars we don’t even have yet.

And that’s ignoring the Government’s earlier statements about reducing our debt by $6 billion.  That’s ignoring the fact that the Future Investment Fund only funds capital expenditure, not operating expenditure.

That’s ignoring the millions in the cost of consultants and advertising already spent trying to hike up the price of Mighty River Power.

If we were a household, we’d be sticking a fancy new fridge on hire purchase while promising to put the Xbox on Trademe some time next month, honest, I reckon it’ll pull in $600, and doing nothing about the credit card debt we racked up taking the lads out for Friday night Jagerbombs.  Oh, and that new fridge?  Uses three times as much electricity, but we haven’t put aside any extra cash for the power bill.

Does this look like good economic management to you?