This blog has now moved home, to http://joehendren.blogspot.com

Please update your bookmarks.

Blogspot offers a more customisable system, allowing me to integrate the blog into my website in a more seamless way. The blog receives many more visitors at its new home - it is now averaging around 15 hits a day/100 hits a week. :)

Scoop is reporting that beseigned cabinet minister John Tamahere has resigned from cabinet.  I am not surprised about the timing - the humongous focus on the American election means that it will be an opportune day ( Read more... )

I wrote an article for the Alliance Standard on the demise of the Northerner passenger rail service - its now been uploaded to the site.

Northerner Rail Service Axed: More Cuts Likely to Take Their TollThis week saw yet another cutback to passenger rail services with the announcement that the Northerner, the night service between Auckland and ( Read more... )

Many aspects of the media coverage of the latest kidnapping in Iraq trouble me. I believe the case of Margaret Hassan especially highlights the biases of western media, not to mention the self-interested reactions of western politicians ( Read more... )

Just read a report on the NZ Herald Online 'Iraq opens oil reserves to Western companies'Opening up Iraq's natural resources to widespread foreign investment completes the neo-liberal agenda of the US and its former viceroy Paul Bremer. In September 2003 Bremer imposed Order 39, a 'law' that rescinded nearly all of Iraq's legal and constitutional ( Read more... )

My other article on rail related issues in the August issue of 'Foriegn Control Watchdog' "From Toll to the Dole" is now online. It documents the heavy handed approach to industrial relations taken by Toll Holdings this year, despite only owning the-company-formerly-known-as-Tranz-Rail for a short time. It examines Toll's treatment of the crew of ( Read more... )

I have now uploaded my article 'Toll Rail: Secret Deals Close to Witching Hour Revealed" to the site.  It looks at the July agreement between the NZ Government and Toll Rail (an Australian transnational) that bought the rail network back into public ownership.

The article can be read here

This afternoon the UK Labour conference voted down a motion calling for an early withdrawal of British troops from Iraq.  Many are calling it a lucky escape for Tony Blair. (Guardian report)

While at first glance the result looks like a sound victory for Blair, with 86% of the conference voting against the 'rebel' amendment (14% for), Blair only ( Read more... )

Apologies for the lack of updates to this site recently - I have been traveling around Europe for the past six weeks. Its been a lot of fun, but I have found european internet cafes to be significantly more expensive than they used to be ( Read more... )

On Tuesday the Minister of Finance, Dr Michael Cullen announced proposed changes to NZ Foreign Investment law. I included most of the following analysis in a email to friends I sent out on Wednesday. My friend Murray included it verbatim in his press release on the changes and the Green party then asked Murray if they could include it in their ( Read more... )