Why there is still no alternative

This famous "tina" phrase still applies, because the Labour opposition has failed to advocate one and its best brains don’t look like finding it any time soon.

I have checked the pre-budget offerings of its finance spokesman, David Cunliffe, and the left’s most prominent politician living in New Zealand – Bryan Gould, a former British Labour MP, whose occasional columns in the New Zealand Herald appear erudite but, unusually for someone analysing economic and business affairs, have nothing you can put your finger on as a solution.

He argues that the government’s failure “to move [the economy] forward” has meant “lost national income” of up to $20 billion in three years, but that Don Brash’s prescriptions “would make matters a good deal worse.”

His elevator pitch:

We need a Budget this week that faces the tough issues, that sets us on course to save and invest, to reduce our national indebtedness, and to improve the competitiveness of our productive sector - and to use the comparative strength of the Government's finances to help us achieve these goals.

And that’s it. Mr Cunliffe, at least, offers a few specifics:

• “irresponsible tax cuts” – these are the lower taxes to compensate all earners for the rise in GST last October;

• “protect important public services while asking all Kiwis to contribute their fair share to the cost” – instead of reducing state spending the government should increase taxes;

• “invest in savings to build up a domestic capital base” – it is surely an oxymoron to “invest” in savings unless it means a subsidy, which is just another way of the government taking your money and then giving it back – less the transaction cost;

• “Kiwis need more jobs with better pay” – as the public sector generally pays better than the private sector, this must mean having more people on government salaries; and

• “credible plan for debt reduction” – no details provided, which is not surprising as it would mean running a surplus instead of a $16 billion deficit.

Dissing DSK
The French political establishment is understandably agog that its most fancied socialist politician – and predatory womaniser – has been exposed in the world’s financial capital for sins he can commit at home without a murmur from the media.

Dominique Strauss-Kohn’s arrest and imprisonment on serious sexual assault charges has even stirred the introspective types who attend the Cannes Film Festival to watch TV news broadcasts instead of stars on the red carpet (see separate item below).

DSK, as he is universally known in the French media, has gone unexposed until now because of strict rules and conventions that have shielded politicians from the kind of public scrutiny that is normal in most western democracies.

John Lichfield, in a must-read backgrounder in The Independent, recounts how in 2007 the Brussels correspondent of Libération, Jean Quatremer, begged President Sarkozy to reconsider DSK’s appointment as managing director of the International Monetary Fund.

"The only real problem with Strauss-Kahn is his attitude to women," Mr Quatremer wrote. "He is too insistent...he often borders on harassment. The IMF is an international institution with Anglo-Saxon morals. One inappropriate gesture, one unfortunate comment, and there will be a media hue and cry."

IMF may gets its woman
The French attitude to the morality of public figures might be the biggest victim of the Strauss-Kahn affair but that doesn’t mean France will miss out on giving one its politicians a plum job. If $US3000-a-night hotel suites and first-class air travel are any indication, the scramble to keep this bauble will be intense.

While all kinds of non-European worthies have been mentioned, Reuters blogger Felix Salmon sees no reason to change long-standing convention (France has held the top job at the IMF for 26 of the past 33 years):

[French economics and trade minister] Christine Lagarde will become the first female managing director of the IMF. She has the political skills and the economic credentials to get the job, and Europe will feel much more comfortable with a European in the role over the next few turbulent years. The US won’t object, and the Asians will go along with the choice since they don’t really have a candidate of their own.

American commentators can hardly believe their luck and recall the towelling handed out to neo-conservative (and unmarried) Paul Wolfowitz for much less: he was merely accused of favouring a girlfriend for a promotion at the World Bank – an accusation for which he was later cleared but that didn’t get him his job back.

Meanwhile, DSK is still protesting his innocence and shows no sign of resigning just yet. [UPDATE: Late this afternoon (NZ time), Mr Strauss-Kahn sent a resignation letter to the IMF, at the same time saying, “I deny with the greatest possible firmness all of the allegations that have been made against me.”]

Rocking Palmer's panel
Reports that Turkey has threatened to pull out of Sir Geoffrey Palmer’s UN panel investigating Israel’s boarding of the Mavi Marmara have been denied by the foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu. The claim came from a report in the English-language Hürriyet Daily News, which said the pull-out threat was “over wording in a draft report that it sees as favouring the Israeli view.”

In an update, Today’s Zaman reports  Turkey is confident a “consensus” in the UN that Israeli did act illegally still holds. “It is out of the question, the UN has already displayed its stance last year [with the UN Human Rights Council report],” Mr Davutoğlu is reported to have said. The report adds,

Turkey, once a regional ally of the Jewish state, has scaled back its ties, demanding Israel apologise and pay damages for the May 31, 2010 raid, which caused an international outcry.

According to Israel’s Ha’aretz, Hürriyet said wording of a draft report “fell short of saying Israel violated international law when its naval commanders boarded the Turkish-sponsored Gaza-bound aid flotilla.”

Canning them at Cannes
The critics have been unimpressed by all but a small handful of competition films at Cannes. Instead, political scandal has captured most of the attention, according to The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw, who has been going for 13 years. He comments,

...the festival has always been a closed world. No one is interested in anything but the movies. I have never seen any delegate reading the newspapers, just the trade press published here in special festival editions. This year, that changed. There is one fascinating, appalling non-cinema subject that people have been talking about endlessly.

He goes on to give a politely favourable review of Alain Cavalier's Pater, which satirises the patriarchal system of political power, and power generally, in France. However, Bradshaw's colleague Agnès C Poirier is much harsher on a docudrama about the rise of President Sarkozy, La Conquête, which “promised all but delivers little, and sadly falls flat like a cold soufflé.” She gives it two out of five stars.

That seems to be the fate of most of the other much-touted Cannes offerings this year, including that of previous Palme d’Or winner Lars von Trier ("clunky"). Only three contenders so far, Lynne Ramsay’s We Need to Talk About Kevin, Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life and a French film about the silent movies of Hollywood in the 1920s, The Artist, have garnered over-the-top praise.