Byron Clark

Riot 111 was a Wellington based anarhco-punk band formed by two political activists during the era of the anti-Springbok tour protests. The band played once played on the back of a truck outside the Avalon Studies building in the Hutt Valley when 'Radio with Pictures' refused to play this song due in part to its "inference and recreation of police violence"

	Riot 111 - Writing On The Wall
	Found at bee mp3 search engine

For more about this local punk band from the early 80's see NZHistory.net and Wikipedia.

The world economy goes into a massive crisis, caused largely by the goings on in the finance sector. New Zealanders elect to power a government led by a former currency trader who made millions speculating on the New Zealand dollar.
Scientists tell us we must commit to a 40% reduction in climate changing emissions to stop the effects becoming irreversible. The government says we'll try a 10-15% reduction, and then opens up national parks and marine reserves for mining.
An OECD report comes out showing that New Zealand children are some of the most deprived in the developed world, and the big question the people ask is 'should it be ok to smack them?'

Makes you think...

Short answer? of course not, but this is a somewhat amusing video:




Of course, saying progressives favour capitalism could be disputed...

The government has made a deal with fast food giant McDonalds that will see young people receiving the unemployment benefit sent to jobs at McDonalds restaurants, and have their training subsidised by the taxpayer. Every beneficiary McDonald’s hires will get the company up to $16,000- the equivalent of about 8 months wages for a McDonalds worker.

Giving people low paying casualised jobs is not the solution to unemployment. This is not a scheme to help the unemployed, it is corporate welfare for a large corporation. As if paying minimum wage wasn't enough for them, McDonalds gets the state subsidising its wage bill, and WINZ acting as its HR department- McDonalds has an annual staff turn over rate of over 100% because of its low wages and horrendous working conditions.

Come to the picket, let the government know we want REAL JOBS, NOT McJobs and SOCIAL WELFARE NOT CORPORATE WELFARE
1pm, Wednesday (the 15th) outside WINZ High St, Christchurch Central

Organised by the Workers Rights Campaign.
Contact Byron byroncclark@gmail.com

Between full-time study, part-time work and whenever-I-find-the-time activism, I don't have a lot of time for reading, and even less time for blogging. With more hours in the week I would probably read a lot more and write reviews of most of the books I read. But with the pressures of time, best I'm going to do for the moment are these five condensed reviews of books I've read in the past year or so.

( mini-reviews )

"The establishment is trying to prevent control of knowledge and culture slipping from their grasp," - Pirate Party Chairman Rick Falkvinge

The Sweeden-based Pirate Party has won a seat in the European parliament. I probably wouldn't have voted for them if I was an EU citizen (expect I could a party more in line with my politics if I looked) but I imagine a Pirate Party MEP will be able to at least help the public debate over intellectual property, especially in an economic union that is mostly about trade.

Unite has put out a leaflet as part of the campaign for a living wage, it dispels some of the common myths around minimum wage, as well as providing other good reasons to support the campaign.

Interesting to note:

There is no correlation between wage increases and unemployment, in fact, wage increases may stimulate the economy.

There is no correlation between wage increases and inflation

Tags: minimum wage, mythbusting, unite

Of course, this is just satire and no TV network would ever sink so low as to exploit people loosing their jobs for reality television. or would they?

WARNING: this is not the Fox News we know and love, the reporter is pro-legalisation! I haven't been following the US drugs debate much but it looks like there could be some big cultural changes going on state side.

When there is an outbreak of flu half way round the world, where is the line between providing an important public service, and inciting unnecessary panic to get people to watch your news program? And when was that line crossed?

From Pacific Media Center