Seasoned Greetings

Click On Cartoon For A Larger Image Here is my Truth cartoon showing the editor Cameron Slater at the wheel with many of the contributors in recent issues. The paper has published in NZ for over 100 years and still has the reputation as the paper with loose cannons pot-shoting anything that moves.

Merry Christmas Folks

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKDP596hcs4

Crusher Collins Drops Justice Binnies Recommendations

The less than honorable Judith Collins has stalled the process of giving David Baines compensation - still, Justice Binnie left with a tidy $400,000, which makes one wonder if that would have been better spent assisting David Baines to reconstruct his life.

Gun Mad America

I think this cartoon says it all

Any Day's Fine

Ex TV1 weatherman Brendan Horan has certainly copped a huge amount of media attention since he was booted out of NZ First by Winston Peters for misbehaving in his personal life. Those issues have yet to be fully established yet and I think Brendan deserves a break, at least until it is conclusively proven that he is not what he says he is. What do you think?

WINZ Solution To Benefit Reduction

A free ticket to Oz? Click on cartoon to enlarge

Tamihere Gets Back Into The Fold

John Tamihere joins The Labour Party once again. Hopefully he will help rebuild it into the shape it used to be. Published in Truth paper 5/12/2012.Click on image to enlarge

Here At Last

My current take of the completion of first of three Hobbit Movies. Published in Truth Click on cartoon for a larger image.

Labour's Leadership Woes

This one improves with enlarging so click on it to get clearer details.

The continuing leadership contest between David Shearer and David Cunliff has overshadowed the recent Labour Conference. This is my take on the situation. The dogbox one appeared in Truth (a well known Kiwi newspaper)

Click on the cartoon to enlarge it.

Government Commissioners Rip Off Kaipara Ratepayers

Click On cartoon To Enlarge. After ratepayers deposed Mayor Tiller and his inept Council, they were forced by the Government to pay incredibly high fees for Commissioners to sort out the mess. These fees are obscene and show us just how out of touch the Government is with average incomes in the Kaipara District and allowing these rates of pay for glorified civil servants - these fees are far too high and too many for the job.

Human Cloning Gets Closer

Click On Cartoon To Enlarge Being a male in our society these days is not easy. Sharing power and the workplace with women certainly has its advantages, but quite a few men are still struggling to adjust to modern society and its expectations. This can be most clearly seen in our schools today and might be one of the reasons why males appear to be slipping back academically in comparison to their female classmates. For thousands of years men had a very clear picture of where they stood in the pecking order. They were top dogs. For some, modifying ‘what comes naturally’ can sometimes deal a heavy blow to their self esteem. No wonder there is so much unrest in Middle Eastern countries where hordes of bearded men are raging against their culture becoming infected with western ideas. Advances in biotechnology must also seem quite threatening to these angry and anxious men. A recent headline in the news is sure to have them worried. It has been reported that Takehiko Ogama, in a Japanese laboratory, has successfully created synthetic sperm. He has artificially inseminated eggs from female mice with synthetic sperm and the offspring continued to have healthy young of their own – which has never been done before. So, does this mean that it is ‘all over Rover’ and in the near future society will not need men for procreation? It seems so and women too might be redundant as well, because it appears other Japanese laboratories have recently created viable stem cells and embryos from skin tissue. Fortunately, there will no need just yet for fuming Mullahs and rampant feminists to send suicide bombers to Japans laboratories and put an end to these experiments. These medical advances will be mainly used to fight diseases, organ damage and correct genetic problems. Human cloning is still a long way off. Mind you, a trio of Nobel Prize winners this year have been honoured for advances in genetic manipulation and this will surely accelerate the dawning of something quite new in the way we reproduce all living things – including ourselves. In my opinion, this should not be feared. Instead, we should prepare for it by making sure it is carried out ethically and minimizing the wider impact on natural processes.

From Red Carpet To Red Card

Was Immigration Minister Kate Wilkinson right to allow and then withdraw Mike Tyson's entry Visa? Is there no way a high profile man can redeem himself these days? Is there no way we can forgive him and his kind? Plenty do get forgiven in NZ so why not Tyson? He has done his time. Click On Cartoon To Enlarge

Punch Key Amnesia

Key will find it hard to wriggle out of this one, but he will do - despite looking foolish for awhile. Ever since Kim Dotcom parachuted onto our shores clutching millions of ill gotten dollars, we have witnessed an unbelievable amount of monkey business with donations to John Bank's election fund - and now political bumbling in our Governments efforts to appease the USA's attempts to punish Internet piracy. There is the making of a musical farce here with Kim's own music as the score. It would be free on Mega Upload of course - altho' he would have to pay me to listen to it. Click On Cartoon Too Enlarge

Selling Us Short

Click On Cartoon To Enlarge

Caught In The Act?

Larry Mitchell is campaigning to expose the creative accounting that Councils are using to hide the real extent of their debt. Apparently Councils are using their reserve and contingency funds as sources for internal borrowing and not openly declaring it with the total debt each year. Debt is debt and if what Larry says is true then it is time Councils came clean with with the real figures instead of funding projects and fudging the book-keeping to pay for them. Click on Cartoon To Enlarge.

Punch Rules Polls

Click Cartoon To Enlarge. This cartoon of mine has been reworked several times and the more I see John Key in his second term of power, the more he reminds me of the pugnacious character Punch. In fact so much so, I think he deserves a blog of his own, so I have created one which just might morph into a cartoon strip later on. You will be able to see it at http://punchlines2.blogspot.co.nz - A Keynzian Take On Politics. Key Punch will need some changes so keep an eye out for him at his own own blog. One thing that will never change will be his perpetual grin - regardless how difficult the situation has become.

Sad News

Click on cartoon to enlarge

Key Aura Dims

WDC Votes To Fund Hundertwasser Art Museum

Mineral Minefield

Aerial surveys are revealing Northland's mineral riches.

Hooked On Debt

Mayor Cutforth's Supporters?

Selling Out

Rates Rant

The Numbers Game

When Nightmares Might Be True

French Dressing

Gambling Our Future Away

Great Expectations

Lest We Forget

Crime or Heroism?

Play Misty For Me

The Burdens Of Office Get Heavier

Madam Miserable

Click on Cartoon for a bigger picture

Raising the Minimum Wage 50 cents is another act of blind indifference to the real hardship being faced by working people - many of whom are struggling to live on two and more jobs just to keep their families housed and fed. The social consequences are only too obvious when you read the papers. Alas, it will get worse and will take a generation to correct it.

The minimum wage should at least be $20 per hour with time and a half for after hours and double time on Sundays and public holidays - with the youth rate at $12. At the same time, professional services would need to be capped at present levels for 3 years to hold back inflation (this would of course be offset by increased workload resulting in more overall income from better paid workers). Oh yes, there are many who would say that this would bankrupt the nation and greatly increase unemployment. Not so. It would push people to automate menial tasks and use labour efficiently. Polytechs would need to enlarge their intake of trainee technicians to man and maintain the machines.

Low minimum wages merely impoverish workers and increase social and financial inequality. They also entrench bad and wasteful behaviour from employers - plus fill the prisons and mental health wards with frustrated and disappointed people who should not be there.

Wheel Of Fortune

Click Cartoon for a bigger picture

If you want to make things or grow produce commercially in NZ, one of the biggest difficulties you have to deal with is the way our government chooses to use a floating exchange rate to help regulate our economy. I wonder whose bright idea it was to use our unstable dollar in this way and deliver Kiwi business profitability into the hands of fund managers who handle the savings of Chinese banks, Japanese housewives and Belgian dentists etc.

To get a take on what is happening overseas, just imagine how you would have to cope if the NZ internal economy operated like the global economy - where districts (or provinces) had their own exchange rate that was changed daily by professional gamblers in the Sky City Casino. To further complicate matters, some districts would also set their exchange rates to ensure a continual economic advantage over other districts.

If you traveled around NZ, imagine how frustrating it would be trying to work out the going rates every day so you could control your spending and income expectations in localities only a few hours from your front door. I think it would be incredibly complicated, inefficient and unfair.

Obviously, in our domestic economy, we need a single exchange rate for commerce to run efficiently along with one main language, commercial and social laws etc. Perhaps there is a solution here to help the World's economic woes by eventually having one world currency and the same commercial standards. Fair trading agreements would also need to be negotiated to establish a real level playing field – in the same way The EEC takes in new members perhaps.

A logical place for us to start would be to get an exchange rate parity and a real free and fair trade deal with Australia; then (in steps), negotiate the same sort of arrangement with the U.S.A., Canada, Europe, Japan and the rest of the World. If a shared exchange rate value became established between countries, as it does within our domestic economy, then international trade would surely be fairer and give us a more accurate picture of the real cost of transport, raw materials, goods and services etc.

This concept might help stem the wealth transfer taking place from the West to Asia and allow wealth to be generated within each country influenced by its own natural advantages – instead of currency manipulation. It might also help environmentally by exposing the real cost of transport and energy.

Initially, in New Zealand the value of exports sent to traditional markets might fall. However quotas and tariffs would probably be less justifiable and should lead to greater market access. That would assist the potential to create improved economies of scale and so reduce costs. Spending power within New Zealand would probably increase as well and so many input costs would decline.

Relying on manipulated or floating exchange rates to determine business profitability has created serious trade imbalances between nations. In my opinion, it has also contributed to the debt crisis because nations were tempted to correct massive trade distortions by borrowing.

I heard President Obama on the radio saying that his government will strive to lift his country out of the recession by reforming the finance sector and promoting ‘Fair and Free Trade”. With our much smaller economy we could succeed years before he does and show the world that it can be done.