#theworkinggroup — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #theworkinggroup, aggregated by home.social.
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The Working Group No. 13
The Working Group is an original webcomic series by morphmaker about a dog named Lindy who goes job hunting.
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HowLitt, The Team Behind Creatives’ Political Zoom Calls, Sees New Enthusiasm Among Hollywood Democrats After Trump 2.0’s Turbulent Year
#News #Politics #DonaldTrump #DoriHoward #ElectionLine #MathewLittman #TheWorkingGrouphttps://deadline.com/2026/01/midterms-democrats-hollywood-zoom-call-1236664222/
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Until there was a discussion on Big Hairy News tonight, I'd never heard of "The Working Group" -- a 3 year podcast collaboration twixt Bomber Bradbury & Damien Grant.
Not two natural bedfellows.
Apparently Grant wanted to influence Bradbury's posts criticising Israel on other media, then threw his toys out of the cot. So the podcast has just died.
I have no time for either of them, but anything which makes Grant look like a fool is O'K with me.
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Here's Rimmer - architect of the Treaty Violation Bill and target of the largest protest gathering in our country's recorded history - complaining about Te Pāti Māori violating the "tikanga" of Parliament. Starting at about 11:00;
https://omny.fm/shows/the-working-group/the-final-show-of-the-year-guests-matthew-hooton-a
He's either playing 4 dimensional chess with tongue in cheek, or more likely, he's just an oblivious clownshow.
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Our Prime Minister, Mr Potato Head, is a classic example of hilariocracy. I don't know if he realises what a clown show he's putting on. But I suspect his party chose him precisely because he's such a clown.
As #SimonWilson of the Herald put it
"The value of what looks like ineptness is that is actually stops debate. He doesn't say anything sensible and therefore you don't have a debate about the ideas."
https://omny.fm/shows/the-working-group/2024-a-year-in-review-guests-simon-wilson-jordan-w
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"What does partnership look like? If David Seymour is wrong and if you're right and the Treaty is a partnership... how does that functionally work? How do we govern a sovereign country if Treaty is a partnership?"
#DamienGrant, 2024
https://omny.fm/shows/the-working-group/politics-and-rugby-a-good-mix-guests-gareth-hughes
Finally, ACT supporters are starting to ask the right questions. Obviously there are many possible answers and exploring them is where we need to focus the debate.
#podcasts #Rover #TheWorkingGroup #TeTiritiOWaitangi #TreatyPrinciplesBill
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"What does partnership look like? If David Seymour is wrong and if you're right and the Treaty is a partnership... how does that functionally work? How do we govern a sovereign country if Treaty is a partnership?"
#DamienGrant, 2024
https://omny.fm/shows/the-working-group/politics-and-rugby-a-good-mix-guests-gareth-hughes
Finally, ACT supporters are starting to ask the right questions. Obviously there are many possible answers and exploring them is where we need to focus the debate.
#podcasts #Rover #TheWorkingGroup #TeTiritiOWaitangi #TreatyPrinciplesBill
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"What does partnership look like? If David Seymour is wrong and if you're right and the Treaty is a partnership... how does that functionally work? How do we govern a sovereign country if Treaty is a partnership?"
#DamienGrant, 2024
https://omny.fm/shows/the-working-group/politics-and-rugby-a-good-mix-guests-gareth-hughes
Finally, ACT supporters are starting to ask the right questions. Obviously there are many possible answers and exploring them is where we need to focus the debate.
#podcasts #Rover #TheWorkingGroup #TeTiritiOWaitangi #TreatyPrinciplesBill
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"What does partnership look like? If David Seymour is wrong and if you're right and the Treaty is a partnership... how does that functionally work? How do we govern a sovereign country if Treaty is a partnership?"
#DamienGrant, 2024
https://omny.fm/shows/the-working-group/politics-and-rugby-a-good-mix-guests-gareth-hughes
Finally, ACT supporters are starting to ask the right questions. Obviously there are many possible answers and exploring them is where we need to focus the debate.
#podcasts #Rover #TheWorkingGroup #TeTiritiOWaitangi #TreatyPrinciplesBill
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"I disagree with the idea of a treaty."
#DamienGrant, 10 Sept, 2024
Oops! Yet another over-excited propertarian saying the quiet part out loud. This is perhaps the most honest statement I've ever heard from an ACT supporter talking about Te Tiriti o Waitangi ; )
(1/?)
#podcasts #MediaWorks #TheWorkingGroup #TeTiritiOWaitangi #TreatyPrinciples
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"I disagree with the idea of a treaty."
#DamienGrant, 10 Sept, 2024
Oops! Yet another over-excited propertarian saying the quiet part out loud. This is perhaps the most honest statement I've ever heard from an ACT supporter talking about Te Tiriti o Waitangi ; )
(1/?)
#podcasts #MediaWorks #TheWorkingGroup #TeTiritiOWaitangi #TreatyPrinciples
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"I disagree with the idea of a treaty."
#DamienGrant, 10 Sept, 2024
Oops! Yet another over-excited propertarian saying the quiet part out loud. This is perhaps the most honest statement I've ever heard from an ACT supporter talking about Te Tiriti o Waitangi ; )
(1/?)
#podcasts #MediaWorks #TheWorkingGroup #TeTiritiOWaitangi #TreatyPrinciples
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"I disagree with the idea of a treaty."
#DamienGrant, 10 Sept, 2024
Oops! Yet another over-excited propertarian saying the quiet part out loud. This is perhaps the most honest statement I've ever heard from an ACT supporter talking about Te Tiriti o Waitangi ; )
(1/?)
#podcasts #MediaWorks #TheWorkingGroup #TeTiritiOWaitangi #TreatyPrinciples
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"[PM Christopher Luxon] cannot have this both ways. He cannot be the person who wants to lead as a statesman in this country, and at the same time, indulge the racism."
#SimonWilson, 2024
https://omny.fm/shows/the-working-group/luxon-blames-mmp-speed-limits-trump-vs-harris-gues
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"How many appointments do you have to miss before you lose your benefit."
DamienGrant, 2024
https://omny.fm/shows/the-working-group/ctu-unemployment-and-prosecution-guideline-backlas
As long as there's a staged process, any outcome is justified, no matter how horrific. Is that what you're saying?
How many ignorant, sociopathic public comments do you have to make before somebody takes away your microphone? Then buries you up to your neck in sand, next to an anthill, with jam all over your face.
#podcasts #TheWorkingGroup #SocialWelfare #BenefitCuts -
I'm starting to think we need to recruit Damien Grant as a candidate for the No Idea party.
He proposes replacing ACC with a system where individual workers sue bosses who maim or kill them. Creating whole new profits sources for insurance corporations and industrial law firms. While protecting the sacred right of employers to maim and kill their workers without any risk of criminal penalties.
Pure No Idea policy.
https://omny.fm/shows/the-working-group/ctu-unemployment-and-prosecution-guideline-backlas
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I'm starting to think we need to recruit Damien Grant as a candidate for the No Idea party.
He proposes replacing ACC with a system where individual workers sue bosses who maim or kill them. Creating whole new profits sources for insurance corporations and industrial law firms. While protecting the sacred right of employers to maim and kill their workers without any risk of criminal penalties.
Pure No Idea policy.
https://omny.fm/shows/the-working-group/ctu-unemployment-and-prosecution-guideline-backlas
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I'm starting to think we need to recruit Damien Grant as a candidate for the No Idea party.
He proposes replacing ACC with a system where individual workers sue bosses who maim or kill them. Creating whole new profits sources for insurance corporations and industrial law firms. While protecting the sacred right of employers to maim and kill their workers without any risk of criminal penalties.
Pure No Idea policy.
https://omny.fm/shows/the-working-group/ctu-unemployment-and-prosecution-guideline-backlas
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I'm starting to think we need to recruit Damien Grant as a candidate for the No Idea party.
He proposes replacing ACC with a system where individual workers sue bosses who maim or kill them. Creating whole new profits sources for insurance corporations and industrial law firms. While protecting the sacred right of employers to maim and kill their workers without any risk of criminal penalties.
Pure No Idea policy.
https://omny.fm/shows/the-working-group/ctu-unemployment-and-prosecution-guideline-backlas
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I never cease to be grudgingly impressed by the intellectual contortions Damien Grant manages to pull off - without pulling a muscle - in pursuit of a keeping his tongue firmly glued to David Seymour's figurative nether regions.
https://omny.fm/shows/the-working-group/mad-dog-prebs-winston-peters-and-this-weeks-bigges(1/2)
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I really wish Damian Grant would stop claiming that he made thousands on asset speculation during COVID because of the Labour government;
https://omny.fm/shows/the-working-group/polkinghorne-wellington-wfh-billion-dollar-tax-cut
The policy settings allowing money grubbing wankers to make huge pots of money out of owning things (often other people's homes) were actually put in place by the NatACT government, under John Key. Labour changed a lot of them, but the effect hadn't become noticeable until after COVID.
(1/?)
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"Do any of us honestly believe that this person did blackface [at the RSA] with any real understanding? I just don't get that vibe from the photo. The sparkly bedazzled jacket seems to suggest fashion crime more than hate crime."
#BomberBradbury, 2024
https://omny.fm/shows/the-working-group/latest-polling-treaty-principles-and-gun-bans-gues -
"We go into our political corners, but this is actually about real people."
#GregOConnor, 2024
https://omny.fm/shows/the-working-group/adrian-orr-power-prices-and-welfare-punishments-gu -
"Donald Trump was not a fiscal conservative. Biden was even more reckless than Trump, and Trump was reckless."
#DamianGrant, 2025
https://omny.fm/shows/the-working-group/market-meltdowns-national-party-conference-and-karWow. I'm trying to imagine see the world through this ideological tunnel vision. Through which one can see no significant difference between US economic policy and outcomes in 2016-2020 vs. 2020-2024. Truly baffling.
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"What you have is - like with everything else from the Indian railways to any government organisation everywhere - it's a massively funded government organisation that doesn't work."
#DamienGrant, 2024
https://omny.fm/shows/the-working-group/the-manufactured-crisis-in-health-the-economy-andThe mention of the Indian railways reminded me an excellent TV mini-series called The Railway Men: The Untold Story of Bhopal 1984.
(1/3)
#podcasts #TheWorkingGroup #PublicServices #railways #Bhopal #UnionCarbide
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"What you have is - like with everything else from the Indian railways to any government organisation everywhere - it's a massively funded government organisation that doesn't work."
#DamienGrant, 2024
https://omny.fm/shows/the-working-group/the-manufactured-crisis-in-health-the-economy-andThe mention of the Indian railways reminded me an excellent TV mini-series called The Railway Men: The Untold Story of Bhopal 1984.
(1/3)
#podcasts #TheWorkingGroup #PublicServices #railways #Bhopal #UnionCarbide
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"What you have is - like with everything else from the Indian railways to any government organisation everywhere - it's a massively funded government organisation that doesn't work."
#DamienGrant, 2024
https://omny.fm/shows/the-working-group/the-manufactured-crisis-in-health-the-economy-andThe mention of the Indian railways reminded me an excellent TV mini-series called The Railway Men: The Untold Story of Bhopal 1984.
(1/3)
#podcasts #TheWorkingGroup #PublicServices #railways #Bhopal #UnionCarbide
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"What you have is - like with everything else from the Indian railways to any government organisation everywhere - it's a massively funded government organisation that doesn't work."
#DamienGrant, 2024
https://omny.fm/shows/the-working-group/the-manufactured-crisis-in-health-the-economy-andThe mention of the Indian railways reminded me an excellent TV mini-series called The Railway Men: The Untold Story of Bhopal 1984.
(1/3)
#podcasts #TheWorkingGroup #PublicServices #railways #Bhopal #UnionCarbide
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"... what 40 years of this [neoliberal] experiment has taught us, is that if you try and lift growth through insecurity, you end up with all of the outcomes that we see today. And actually the thing we need to do is to rebuild economic security in this country."
#CraigRenney, 2024
https://omny.fm/shows/the-working-group/shane-reti-the-ocr-and-boot-camps-guests-michael-w -
If you only ever listen to one episode of the The Working Group podcast, it's got to be this one;
https://omny.fm/shows/the-working-group/the-trump-fiasco-nationals-welfare-policy-and-darl
Such a joy to hear Bomber, Ariana Williams and Simon Wilson clearly and passionately explaining to Damien Grant, exactly how his backwards, 19th century, neoliberal dogmas are contradicted by the social and economic reality of 21st century Aotearoa. One of them a Labour MP no less, and one a journalist at a corporate news medium.
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"I'm a fan of small government and I don't think the government should be involved in running a railway because they're never going to do a good job."
#SeebyWoodhouse, 2024
https://omny.fm/shows/the-working-group/aratere-boot-camps-and-cancer-drugs-guests-seeby-w
The history blindness of this comment is incredible. Believing it requires forgetting a) the debacle that was Transrail and the reason the railways were bought back in the first place, and b) that the railways functioned just fine before they were privatised.
(1/3)
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Propertarians seldom do well in electoral politics because they will tell people who they are;
"They key word is "common". That's why I hate [the common good]. I believe in property rights."
#DamienGrant, 2024
https://omny.fm/shows/the-working-group/newshub-economic-data-and-joe-biden-guests-max-har
Would-be aristocrats, frustrated by democracy. It grinds my gears when people buy into their reputation laundering by calling them "libertarians". They are nothing of the kind.
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Propertarians seldom do well in electoral politics because they will tell people who they are;
"They key word is "common". That's why I hate [the common good]. I believe in property rights."
#DamienGrant, 2024
https://omny.fm/shows/the-working-group/newshub-economic-data-and-joe-biden-guests-max-har
Would-be aristocrats, frustrated by democracy. It grinds my gears when people buy into their reputation laundering by calling them "libertarians". They are nothing of the kind.
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Propertarians seldom do well in electoral politics because they will tell people who they are;
"They key word is "common". That's why I hate [the common good]. I believe in property rights."
#DamienGrant, 2024
https://omny.fm/shows/the-working-group/newshub-economic-data-and-joe-biden-guests-max-har
Would-be aristocrats, frustrated by democracy. It grinds my gears when people buy into their reputation laundering by calling them "libertarians". They are nothing of the kind.
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Propertarians seldom do well in electoral politics because they will tell people who they are;
"They key word is "common". That's why I hate [the common good]. I believe in property rights."
#DamienGrant, 2024
https://omny.fm/shows/the-working-group/newshub-economic-data-and-joe-biden-guests-max-har
Would-be aristocrats, frustrated by democracy. It grinds my gears when people buy into their reputation laundering by calling them "libertarians". They are nothing of the kind.
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Last week's edition of The Working Group;
https://omny.fm/shows/the-working-group/navigating-aotearoas-political-landscape-woke-food... reminded me of the 1990s National government slogan,"From welfare to wellbeing".
https://www.beehive.govt.nz/speech/welfare-well-being
Did nobody advising them point out that these two words mean *exactly* the same thing?!?
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If the left parties were the Starks at the Red Wedding, Chris Hipkins was Roose Bolton. The knife through Labour's heart in this election was his "captain's call" ruling out taxing wealth. Something the major of kiwis support, and the only way to get the government's books back into surplus *without* cutting funding to public services and infrastructure.
Looking forward to a new Labour leader who supports the left.
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"[People] want more hospitals, they want more roads, they want more schools... we just can't fund it ourselves. We're going to ultimately need foreign investment."
#SimonOConnor, National candidate, Tamaki
https://theworkinggroup.podbean.com/e/nz-taxpayers-union-and-working-group-election-debate-tamaki/
If we can't fund the cost of these things, how are we going to fund that *plus* the cost of giving foreign capitalists a return on their investment?
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Of all the candidates in all the election debates I've heard, ACT's Brooke van Velden is the one I find hardest to stomach.
In this electorate debate, she cries crocodile tears about a Tamaki resident who's had to *consider* cancelling swimming lessons. While other kiwis are choosing between paying rent and feeding their kids. Then...
"Since 2017, has anybody actually seen any more value for the extra money that's been spent by government?"
https://theworkinggroup.podbean.com/e/nz-taxpayers-union-and-working-group-election-debate-tamaki/
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Intriguing to see an up-and-coming ACT MP and a long-serving Nat MP debate each other;
"I don't think we have to have this obsession with wanting to cut New Zealanders' jobs. In fact, people are important. I don't care whether they're in the private, sector, the public sector, or a politician like myself, they're all people, and this obsession to just go and cut 15,000 jobs is not the way forward."
#SimonOConnor, National candidate, Tamaki
https://theworkinggroup.podbean.com/e/nz-taxpayers-union-and-working-group-election-debate-tamaki/ -
Towards the end of the Auckland Central electorate debate, I heard the National candidate, Mahesh Muralidhar, say something neoliberals normally don't admit in public;
"... over the last 6 years... there's been a strategic shift of power... [from] businesses into government... What... our future government is going to do, is we're going to make a strategic shift of power back from government, back to... businesses..."
https://theworkinggroup.podbean.com/e/nz-taxpayers-union-and-working-group-election-debate-auckland-central/ -
Pundits seriously describing Tuesday night's televised debate been the Labour and National leaders as...
"a wonderful debate between two centre-left politicians"
... have to be looking at political reality through a pretty distorted ideological lens. It would be stretching the truth to call them "centre-right".
This academic assessment positions both National *and* Labour policy in 2023 in the economic hard right:
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Holy-christ-on-a-stick. #Listening to the Northland candidates debate is like being one of the few people at the dance party who aren't tripping balls:
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I generally enjoy listening to The Working Group, and I've been pretty impressed so far with the election debates they're co-hosting with the Taxpayers Union. Especially the Ilam debate, and the contrast between the candidates who blithely parroted talking points, and those who spoke in detail on policy areas they're passionate about.
But I gave up on last Tuesday's inter-party debate about 15mins in;
https://theworkinggroup.podbean.com/e/nz-taxpayers-union-and-working-group-election-debate-auckland/
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"... if that's the only resource you've got - especially in Papua New Ginea, there's not a lot there - so if you've got oil, and gas, and coal, for godsake take it out of the ground and get the country going."
#LaurieTurnbull, #NZFirst candidate for Napier
https://theworkinggroup.podbean.com/e/nz-taxpayers-union-and-working-group-election-debates-napier/ -
"... you want a second harbour crossing, you want light rail... you are not going to get that through the tax revenue, it's going to need private capital to do it."
#DamienGrant, 2013
https://theworkinggroup.podbean.com/e/the-working-group-with-shane-te-pou-maria-slade-and-damien-grant/So... are you proposing to have our public infrastructure partially owned by these private capitalists? Or to pay back their private capital over time (plus a generous return on their investment, of course)?
(1/2)
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"... you want a second harbour crossing, you want light rail... you are not going to get that through the tax revenue, it's going to need private capital to do it."
#DamienGrant, 2013
https://theworkinggroup.podbean.com/e/the-working-group-with-shane-te-pou-maria-slade-and-damien-grant/So... are you proposing to have our public infrastructure partially owned by these private capitalists? Or to pay back their private capital over time (plus a generous return on their investment, of course)?
(1/2)
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"... you want a second harbour crossing, you want light rail... you are not going to get that through the tax revenue, it's going to need private capital to do it."
#DamienGrant, 2013
https://theworkinggroup.podbean.com/e/the-working-group-with-shane-te-pou-maria-slade-and-damien-grant/So... are you proposing to have our public infrastructure partially owned by these private capitalists? Or to pay back their private capital over time (plus a generous return on their investment, of course)?
(1/2)
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"... you want a second harbour crossing, you want light rail... you are not going to get that through the tax revenue, it's going to need private capital to do it."
#DamienGrant, 2013
https://theworkinggroup.podbean.com/e/the-working-group-with-shane-te-pou-maria-slade-and-damien-grant/So... are you proposing to have our public infrastructure partially owned by these private capitalists? Or to pay back their private capital over time (plus a generous return on their investment, of course)?
(1/2)
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"Shouldn't there be some inquiry into how the telecommunications giants are privately suppressing opinions they don't like or agree with on social media networks? Because you are supposed to send my message from Point A to Point B. You are not supposed to tell me what those messages say, I decide what my voice says, not 2 Degrees, not Spark, and not bloody Vodafone."
#BomberBradbury, 2023
https://theworkinggroup.podbean.com/e/the-working-group-with-winston-peters-simon-wilson-and-damien-grant/