‘Tens of thousands rally in Madrid demanding end to austerity
Inspired by events in Greece, support grows for Podemos and its call for a new political order.’
In the Swedish study, they’re differentiating between milk, and fermented products like cheese and yoghurt.
“Further analysis showed a positive association between milk intake and biomarkers of oxidative stress and inflammation.
In contrast, a high intake of fermented milk products with a low lactose content (including yoghurt and cheese) was associated with reduced rates of mortality and fracture, particularly in women.”
I would posit two things here. One is that modern diets are high in refined sugars and so eating another high sugar food like milk is probably overloading people into earlier deaths from things like Syndrome X (via insulin resistance). This is true for big populations that have been studied like the US. I don’t know what the usual diets are like in Sweden.
The other is that traditional diets all over the world have prioritised fermented milk over unfermented. They also drink milk raw. These are crucial differences.
That article you link to has a pretty misleading and narrow visioned public health control approach to raw milk, so I wouldn’t take anything it says too seriously. It also fails to point out that the Swedish researchers say there is a correlation but no proven causation between milk consumption and early death, and completely ignores that the findings for fermented dairy were the opposite. This is typical of much superficial health reporting, and it’s also grossly negligent IMO. You need to go to professional medical and health journalists if you want to understand the research and what it means.
The Asian thing is a different story, because most people in east Asian countries are not genetically adapted to eating milk (although I’m curious about the cross overs between India/Tibet/Nepal etc and East Asia and where dairy stops being a traditional staple). The low fracture rate can also be attributed to other things in the diet rather than absence of milk.
Moderation is thr mantra.
Cheese yes cheese has been shown to be the most Dangerous food when it comes to strokes.
Those with a high consumption of cheese are the most likely to die of strokes.
High in fat and very high in salt!
are the reasons.
With our government about to hack into state housing, we will soon be in the state London is in.
‘Thousands gather in London to protest against lack of affordable housing
The March for Homes brings together campaigners, tenants and trade unionists to demand building of council homes and curbing of private rents.’
The self-serving vitriol of these wrong white clowns drowns out the most interesting implications of what Catton was really talking about. The fundamental problem here is that New Zealand doesn’t invest enough in growing strong and stable institutions to nurture and develop its next generation of leaders, thinkers and creators.
Never thought I’d recommend a Rodney Hide column but this is interesting reading.
“Little spoke of reducing inequality. Good. And even here he was interesting: he says the spin-off of reducing inequality is better growth. That, too, would be better for business and farmers.
Jobs and growth are his focus. And small business. That sets him apart from Key who, in his deals with Warner Bros, SkyCity and Rio Tinto, is tied to the big end of town.”
Yes I missed Normans comments? Look I support the greens I have voted for them once it’s the tarring us all as ecological destroyer s that I will attack at every chance.
Just yesterday weka said something about farmers pouring shit into the rivers and that is a lie on the odd occasion a farmer gets caught literally doing that the book gets thrown at them and rightly so.
I let it pass and I shouldn’t have.
I have no doubt that that over stocking, use of urea and over irrigation is degrading rivers but as for pouring shit into the river, not happening and if any knows were it is they should report it.
I have no doubt that that over stocking, use of urea and over irrigationpouring shit into rivers is degrading rivers but as for pouring shit into the river, not happening and if any knows were it is they should report it.
FTFY
It’s not just that farmers are pouring shit into the rivers but that we have far too much land as farms. We need to decrease the amount of farms to be enough to feed us and that’s it.
I don’t live in a town or city but rain is good so I get mine downstream from the clouds.
I would never say there are no good farmers – hell I know a few – but the bad ruin it for everyone – the good farmers have to tidy up their sandpit (farmers) rather than just hold their hands up pleading ignorance – they derive their profit from the commons and i think they are responsible to the commons too. And the same for cityfolk.
I’ve suggested to 3 bosses and two neighbours in the sheep n beef industry that they had a few creeks that would be easy to fence off it didn’t achieve much .
It’s going to take laws to make a change unfortunately.
I didn’t say farmers pour shit into rivers. I said NZers think it’s ok to pour shit into rivers. And I think it was obvious from the conversation that I didn’t mean this literally, but that we allow our rivers to be polluted by farming, mostly dairy farming. That’s not actually in dispute. Do you need a link?
I think you will also find that I’m one of the ones that’s been arguing recently for not lumping all farmers into one evil group and that it’s better to name the ones that are causing problems.
As for the GP, I suggest that you stop reading the spin via the media and go directly to the GP and see what they have to say about farming. They’re actually very supportive and progressive. You can look at their policy, which you may or may not agree with, but it’s not anti-farmer. You probably remember that Jeanette Fitzsimons was a farmer before during and after she was an MP and co-leader of the GP, and I see a lot of her influence in GP attitudes.
Yes, I know what you were referring to and I know what I said. I’ve just given you a detailed explanation of that. Did you even read it? How about you respond to my points?
edit, and just to make it really fucking clear, here’s what I said,
but these people are just getting on with doing the right thing by the land while NZ still thinks it’s acceptable to clear native ecosystems and pour cow shit into the water.
That’s not a statement about farmers, it’s a statement about NZers. As I explained.
Yeah, I don’t get it. Do you mean the greenies will be angry that Labour mentioned farmers? Bit subtle for me I’m afraid.
btw, I don’t think Little was talking about farming in his speech. He was talking about Fonterra, and the context was business productivity and worker rights. He did mention something about payouts but again, it was in the context of how the unions and Fonterra worked together.
I think it’s important to read as a warning that Little still intends to let business run the show. The planet cannot afford growth any more. We have to discover how to live without it.
When Rodney Hide likes something, I worry even more. It’s quite possible they can see Key is on a downward slope and are grooming a right wing successor. Little already caved on squirrel powers. What is he going to give away without a fight next?
FJK and FAL.
I disagree with your interpretation, I think Hide is just doing what all the other rightwingers have done in the wake of the state of the nation.
Farrar and Hooton instantly jumped on the talk about small business to say “oh, but if you really cared about small business you’d scrap the policy to abolish 90-day trials!”
Now Hide is trying to goad Labour into doing something stupid by “praising” Little as a non-leftwing leader. Look at the way he wilfully quotes “it’s important to create wealth before you can share it” then re-writes it one sentence later as “it’s important to create wealth before you can spend it.” It’s the same old rightwing claptrap about Labour being a terrifying tax-and-spend party. He’s dogwhistling to the right on one hand and trying to unsettle the left with the other.
Hard case that Rodney Hide believes the best way to find out what politicians are about is to listen to what they say – see opening line of the article.
By his own example that’s hardly good advice. Remember ThePerkBuster of yore ?
Again and again and again he said he was a straight-up, rort-hating type of guy.
Many people listened and believed that he was indeed what he said. Then it turns out that all along he was as bad a free-loading rorter, trougher, junketer, hypocrite as anyone. So no, listening doesn’t inform, particularly in respect of the Right.
The rest of his article – faint praise he can invoke later on to claim objectivity and balance. He remains an extreme right wing fantasist who’ll engage DP at will. Not to be trusted. Especially not on the score of what he says.
I never read Roddy’s columns why would I he is a non event politically and a certified failure.
Try NOT reading them a save your bloodpressure.
His last task of any note was throwing the carefully studied and thought out
plan for Auckland City into the rubbish bin and coming up with his version in a matter of months. Enough said.
And there’s more from NZH where they report on a 3 News/Reid Research poll and asks Has Key met his match?
A 3 News Reid-Research poll has revealed 55 per cent of voters think Little is potentially a better match for Prime Minister John Key than his Labour Party leader predecessors.
3 News political editor Patrick Gower said the poll result was a huge boost for Little.
“It means more than half of voters think he can do a better job than Phil Goff, David Shearer or David Cunliffe,” Gower said.
“And the fact that it’s over half shows it’s well and truly beyond the people who vote for Labour normally and into centre voters and probably some National voters as well.”
It’s too soon to tell, and Labour’s recovery will take more than Little to step up a few notches, but this poll result looks promising for Little’s prospects.
Little said the poll result was “nice” but he wouldn’t be taking any false hope from it.
“Things like this kind of go up and down. You’re in favour and you’re out of favour … it’s nice to have the kind of start that I’ve had. But we’ve got a long way to go yet and a lot of work to do so I’m focused on that.”
Little sounds realistic about where he’s at now.
So this is promising for Little but more important for Labour will be the party poll result, which will be revealed on 3 New tonight at 6 pm.
Pretty shifty there Petey. After yesterday’s all out troling, a pretty much unanimous cry from participants to stop, including being being told off by a moderator, you’ve picked a topic that all the lefties here might agree with and will want to talk about despite it meaning having you in the conversation.
It would be nice to think you learnt something yesterday, but I think the thread showed that the community had learnt something instead.
I think you have a lot of bridges to mend before you can expect to take part here in any genuine way.
Are you really thick? You could either:
1. Ignore the comment
2. Comment on the content
3. Start a new thread on the topic
4. Make it all about your petty crusade.
How about these idiot pollsters actually run polls on topic’s that people care about. Who gives a toss about dead beat former Labour leaders like Goff, Shearer, and too a lesser extent DC.
How about polling the U turn on further asset sales, given John Key wearing his National leaders hat categorically stated ‘no more asset sales’ during the last election campaign.
The Aussies in Queensland just threw the Tories out for the sheer mention of asset sales.
Did you vote for National to further sell public assets?
A public march protesting selling off state housing should be on the cards. Might see what can be arranged for up at Waitangi. Bit of a focus on asset sales might make the Nats visit that little bit more unpleasant.
Petty George.
Your Wikipedia stats don’t match up to stats nz or treasury numbers.
Quite often wikipedia is historically inaccurate as it is a popularity contest.
And often Right wing spuriously funded insitutes Spam Wikipedia to alter historical facts!
Yeeha! Good news from Queensland. The toxic little imitation of a man, Campbell Bjelke-Newman, has gone. Now I’m hoping for a reconstituted Crime and Misconduct Commission to put a few of the corrupt inbreds in prison.
That and reversing newmans gutting of the party donations legislation Anna Bligh rolled out so they could do as has been done here.
Unlike here Newman couldn’t own the MSM and had the bad luck / karma of getting on the wrong side of Alan jones over a mine in his home area. Jonesy paid out on him big time.
That and the perception that Campbell comes across as an arrogant bullying establishment twat.
Jones works in NSW. The LNP does pretty much run the Queensland media. The Courier Mail, Brisbane’s only daily, is a piece of Murdoch trash. It makes Whalespew look balanced.
Jones was raised in Acland, west of Brisbane where a coal mine expansion isn’t everyone’s cup of tea.
Yes he works in Sydney, most of the top shock jocks do but they treasure their Aussie battler image, good for the ratings etc and Newman went up against that.
That’s such a great write up Shane, thanks. Her story covers so many important points, esp about the failures of legal meds and the problems when medical staff get stuck in their prejudices about pain syndromes. Very good to hear the success too, and the details on how she figured out what to do.
btw, your blog is looking good. Nice layout, uncluttered, easy to read and access, all of which is important for people in pain. The only thing I’d suggest is changing the header texts to a dark colour as the white is hard to read.
Hang on, did you just say that I’m having a go at you by commenting positively to someone else when you’re not even in the conversation??
I’ve not serially sneered at your efforts/postings on dak. I’ve said I can’t read your comments because you insist on posting illiterately. Apart from you being pro-cannabis, I don’t actually know much about your position.
You’ve done this before phil, confused my critiques of your position on veganism with my non-critiques of your views on cannabis. I suggest from now on you link to show what you are talking about, otherwise I’ll just be telling you to fuck right off.
funny you’re making plenty of comments like you actually do give a fuck – you know, often the trailblazer doesn’t get the recognition they covert but that doesn’t mean the contribution wasn’t valuable
I know your supportive Phil, my POV is from the middle using rational arguments, I haven’t read your work, but If you are a sufferer yourself, you may not be looking at things from the other side of the fence? this post was to appeal to Tory concerns of cost etc, one less person a sickness benny, but there are many more like her.
Get over yourself, FFS. There was no passive aggression in weka’s comment. There was in your one about PG’s clothing. You should just be happy that someone is pushing something that you agree with. Try it.
bummer. WordPress went more towards paid in recent years. You used to be able to get themes with lots of control for free. The theme you are using is very nice otherwise though.
Jesus phil, if you’re trying to convince us that you really don’t care about weka paying someone else positive attention you’re going about it all wrong.
Last time phil did this, in the Spring, it was the claim that while he was on his ban I’d “pumped out yr (un-cited/footnoted) prohibitionist/anti-pot bullshit while i wasn’t here”.
I tried to point out that wasn’t true and eventually posted this comment, which is a search engine result for the time period in question, of weka +cannabis. The results show that I am pro-use and pro-decriminalisation (which I am).
What I didn’t say in that thread was that while phil was on his ban I posted some critical comments about vegan diets when they are presented as the one true way for all humans (I would link but the search still doesn’t go back past 35 pages. 35 pages of phil’s comments only takes us back to the end of Dec).
I think phil has gotten confused between his two pet projects and is now set in his head that I am anti-pot. I’m not even anti-vegan except where it’s presented as the one true way or as a quick fix for CC/the environment.
Phil, I haven’t said I can’t read your comments, I’ve said they are difficult for me to read so I don’t usually bother. Please don’t distort what I say. It’s starting to look like you are making up another lie about me.
Now, unless you can link to back up your assertions about me, I’m just going to keep linking back to this comment and the link above to demonstrated what you are more than happy to tell lies about someone even when you’ve been proven wrong (twice).
Categorising weka’s response as “fawning” because she gives a few simple compliments on a new blogger’s work is a sad little tactic.
You have outright lied about weka’s past behaviour and comments in order to fabricate a “pattern” to justify your harassment.
I’m also in the club of people who, 95% of the time, scroll past anything you say because it’s rarely worth the effort of interpretation. But when I see you having a personal go at someone just because they liked someone else’s work and didn’t kiss your ass sufficiently to your liking, I make the effort.
Question:
Does NZ still have some sort of press club – as in 4th Estate?
Back in the 70’s there used to be a primitive sort of thing in Hobson Street where various journalists went to get pissed as newts – even then nothing like the Australian Press Club that provides a venue where journalists and jonolists can have politicians give speeches and call them to account.
Henry, hoskings, Sabin, Simpson, young, hide etc as one subset of them with public declarations of support for national and or family connections before we start on the ones who play the impartial commenter role.
All that and DP thrown in for good measure, relentlessness and effective is what it has grown into while the sheeple graze on gazing at their house values thinking all is well in my world.
as I imagined then. One where they all go to get pissed and feed off each others egos. Where is it? The TVNZ caf, or Backbenches, or Mermaid’s possibly? Or maybe Barry and Heather’s basement?
“Shoot him in the back of the head.”
The BBC’s comedy crisis is now more than just a sick joke.
Since it was effectively spavined following its brief deviation into the reporting of facts that exposed government crimes in 2003 [1], the BBC has turned into nothing much more than the propaganda arm of the British government. In the rare event that a dissident, no matter how brilliant and respected, appears on a show like HARDtalk, he or she is almost inevitably hectored and ceaselessly interrupted, [2] in stark contrast to the virtually open forum accorded the continual stream of paid government, corporate and military spokespeople who appear.
The BBC has moved to censor, curb and/or ban its own “unacceptable” and critical voices too: clever and thoughtful talents like Frankie Boyle are systematically excluded from its increasingly anodyne comedy panel shows. Even the hilarious—and nonpolitical—Jack Dee was recently in danger of being censored by the mediocracy in charge of the modern BBC, [3] while crude, racist, unfunny but government-friendly louts like Jeremy Clarkson are indulged repeatedly. [4]
And now the BBC, which has given the world such immortal comedy-writing teams as Galton and Simpson, Croft and Perry, Esmonde and Larbey, Jay and Lynn, Clement and La Frenais, Curtis and Atkinson—to name only a few at random from a stratosphere of brilliance—has commissioned a team of “comedy” writers to make light of the British government’s persecution of the dissident journalist Julian Assange. I say “make light of” advisedly, because in case anyone harboured any lingering hope that the BBC might extend even a hint of fair treatment to Cabinet Enemy No. 1, consider this grim fact: the writer of this new “comedy” once called for the police to publicly shoot the Wikileaks founder in the head.
The Corporation’s comedy crisis, which was already painfully obvious, is now an unmitigated embarrassment. We are now accepting from the BBC the kind of anti-dissident ridicule that spewed out of Moscow in the 1930s and ’40s, and out of Peking in the 1960s and 70s. I would not be surprised at all to see some vicious moron like A.A. Gill appear on a special broadcast some time soon and start ranting from his prepared script: “It is our aim to expose and criticize the ways in which the political swindler Julian Assange made use of reactionary trends and reactionary schools of thought to attack the proletariat, so that we can fight more effectively against such swindlers.”
And they say the AMERICANS have no sense of irony…
Fury over BBC writer’s ‘kill Assange’ tweet Chortle, 30 January 2015
The writer of the BBC’s new comedy inspired by Julian Assange once called for the police to publicly shoot the Wikileaks founder in the head.
Supporters of Assange say tweets Thom Phipps posted about him were ‘shocking’ and ‘dangerous’ – and make him unfit to write about the issue. BBC Four’s new three-part sitcom Asylum is inspired by the controversial figure’s enforced stay in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. He took refuge there in June 2012 to escape extradition to Sweden on sexual assault charges, which he fears will pave the way for him to be sent to the US to face an espionage trial.
Two months after Assange was given political asylum, Phipps posted: ‘If the met [police] want to regain my trust they should drag Assange out the embassy + shoot him in the back of th head in the middle of traf square.’ Phipps now says: ‘It was something I tweeted over two years ago and it was clearly a joke.’
However, backers of Assange took the issue more seriously, and have complained to the BBC over its ‘shameful’ decision to employ Phipps. One of them, Emmy Butlin, said Phipps ‘advocated for the public extrajudicial assassination’ of the Wikileaks founder and queried why the corporation would ’employ someone with extreme views’ to write the comedy.
She is also angry that the show is to air as part of the BBC’s Taking Liberties season to mark the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta, saying: ‘Mr Phipps has called for Mr Assange’s assassination, going against the most fundamental principals.’
On her blog she also highlighted another tweet Phipps made in 2012, saying: ‘its cool to imagine assange as a spartacus figure cuz that means he’s going to be forcibly nailed to a piece of wood at one point.’
Another blog, Domestic Empire, complained that the ‘writer chosen to write Assange-inspired comedy advocates murder over democratic free speech’.
Butlin complained to the Corporation saying: ‘I find it offensive that Mr Phipps who has publicly incited violence and propagated the murder of Mr Assange, has been employed by the BBC’ and calling for action…..
Sorry, weka. My words are the first four paragraphs, and then I cite the article from Chortle. Maybe I should just give the link in future after my preamble.
Most people on ts are using either blockquote or italics to quote, or if it’s very short, “double quotes”. It’s a kind of informal house style. Not saying you have to use these, you may find another way, but it’s that same thing of making comments accessible and respecting the readers enough to make it clear what you are saying, and what is something else’s words (that’s respect for the other writers too).
Short but crucial reading for anyone wanting to understand more about the role of women in Islam in the US context. I think there are also things here for the West to learn about the value of gender specific spaces, and how culture affects that.
David Seymour is reported as saying “The worst thing I could do is to prejudge it if there isn’t anything perverse,”
So he was saying perversion is the point at which they can be prejudged, which might be unwelcome news by any who have been falsely accused of a crime.
This battleground between indigenous people and projects designed to maintain the extravagant western lifestyles is HOT and will continue to heat up.
The LA Times indicates, we are at a “Flashpoint” between competing value-systems. Bodies have been exhumed, and geoglyphs destroyed, in an area that is a long-term indigenous settlement.
“Who Are My People?” depicts how the world’s energy firms like Solar Millennium, have met their match in a small group of Native American elders, in the hottest desert on the planet.
The film takes us behind the scenes of two of the largest solar projects in the world,
“fast tracked” by US renewable energy policies.
It’s why the whole green tech as saviour thing is just wrong, because it keeps us in the same belief systems, value systems and behaviours as what got us in this mess in the first place. It won’t solve CC, and even if it did we would still fuck up all the other things that are consequences of humans ruling the world.
Am I missing something or is John Roughan actually saying something quite on to it here?
Basic benefits have been increasing with the cost of living as measured by the consumer prices index, which was generous in the 1970s when wages could never quite catch galloping inflation.
Since the reforms of the 80s, New Zealand has enjoyed low inflation and economic growth that has enabled wages to rise more than prices, increasing the national living standard.
Boston and Chapple make a good case for increasing benefits by the rate of average wage rises.
It is strange that Labour did not make this change 10 or more years ago when it had budget surpluses, National should do now. Ideally, it would backdate the increases as far as surpluses might permit, giving benefits quite a boost in the next few years.
I find this:
“Since the reforms of the 80s, New Zealand has enjoyed low inflation and economic growth that has enabled wages to rise more than prices, increasing the national living standard.”
Hard to square with this:
“child … poverty rate in recent years has been around 25%; this is almost twice the rate experienced during the 1980s, which averaged about 13%” (Perry 2012, 124)
How so? Isn’t that the discrepancy between beneficiaries and wager earners, with child poverty being weighted into the beneficiary group? I would expect the increase in standard of living just means some people are doing way better and others are doing worse ie they’re not using a very subtle measuring tool.
I imagine he is technically correct, and the average standard of living has increased.
Real shame that during that time the percentage of children in poverty has nearly doubled.
Might be worth seeing if the median standard of living has increased.
Well he is of the class that has done very well out of the 80s reforms, so I expect he is blind, probable willfully blind, to the numbers of people that haven’t done well.
I don’t know how they measure standard of living. Hopefully a boffin will post.
The child poverty increased with the Richardson black budget which slashed beneficiary rates – and these have never been increased back to the level they were at during the 1980s.
“So far, the biggest hurdle has been the environmental concerns.”
Wrong!
By far, the biggest hurdle has been concerns about climate change.
The Keystone XL requires an appraisal by the U.S. Department of State (DOS) and approval by both Congress and the President.
So far, the biggest hurdle has been the environmental concerns.
Most of them have been dealt with in a preliminary DOS finding (the full report has yet to be released) and with the recent verdict by Nebraska that the pipeline poses no environmental threat.
DR. KENT MOORS Oil and energy investor
As students prepare to return to their studies in a few weeks, many will be wondering how on earth they will be able to afford it, and survive getting a mortgage of student debt many years before the can dream of owning a home. Let’s remember that when we help the next generation to fulfil its potential, we help our whole country to be the best it can be. Labour will do a ground-up review of student loans and allowances when next in office.
David Cunliffe on Facebook.
I for one hope that means scrapping the student loan scheme is on the table.
It’s time NZ started following international best practice, by making education free, rather than continuing to unthinkingly follow failed ideology. This applies to other policies too.
Be nice to see Labour wake up from its market fundamentalist stupor.
I wonder if they are going to announce Gerry Brownlee comes out in support of his mini me national list MP to seek the party nomination to contest the candidacy and become the next Northland MP. This comes after he failed to beat Shane Reti for the Whangarei candidacy. Brownlee is rumoured to be heading to Waitangi in an attempt to secure the nod for his mini me from party members.
Apparently Gerrys errant boy has contacted the head chef at the Copthorpe hotel Waitangi and will be forwarding Gerrys dietary requests, including his favorite pork pie recipe.
The whole 200kg pig is spit roasted and then pastry wrapped and glazed. The newbie MP’s get briefed not to get too close to Brownlee whilst eating his pork pie. Appears Gerry is well known for lashing out at the trough, guess you just have to look at Nic Smiths scarred face as proof.
That’s not actually true.
It’s just that few people are so obsessed with whinging that they push that particular barrow at the slightest (and yes, it was very slight) excuse.
Depends on the audience.
I thought it was pretty reasonable.
And (sadly) one of the few times I could both understand and agree with ure, the thread gets zonked by someone who can’t just feel happy about recognising the success of others without turning it into a whinge-fest.
Just watched TV3 news & Gower was showing his bias & arse licking towards Key & was blatantly putting the knife into Andrew Little, while reporting on the latest poll. Every time I see Gower or hear his voice it makes me want to puke.
I wondered how long it would take Gower to put the knife in to Andrew Little.
Looks like Dirty Politics part 2 has begun
National would have drawn its gains from the Cons and NZF. Labour would have made its gains from the Greens, NZF and IMP. Internet-Mana is pretty much dead (although I wouldn’t rule out Harawira making a successful run in 2017).
NZF is the big loser in this poll. As Little continues to build his profile, he should start pulling some soft National supporters too as the year progresses.
I also think international trends will play into 2017. We ‘re looking at a single-term LNP government in Australia and in the UK Labour are enjoying a narrow lead (with the further spoiler of UKIP likely to split the Tory vote in this year’s election). Our electoral outlook may synch up with the rest of the Anglosphere.
Yes the Tories have wreacked havoc in the UK, Cameron and his cronies will be sent packing as will idiot Abbott in OZ.
Which makes things a lot easier here. Little is smart enough to either get the Left leaders out here or get on a plane and go on a visit to strengthen relationships. Key should get the cold shoulder from them.
New Zealander’s are sheep and if the slogan ‘time for a change’ is repeated often enough they will duly oblige by voting the Nats out. The odds are Key will hand over the leadership once the worm really turns. Sabin’s hurried exit is the start of a bad year for Key and it will get worst I’m picking.
I just hope you are right.
I am worried the government will press ahead with the TPP, charter schools, destroying the RMA, and privatising health and housing further.
Key is desperate to comply with instructions from America to get the TPPA signed and our fate sealed, the EMA is all part and parcel. The Maori-Tory party should ethically cross the house as the TPPA & RMA reforms will lead to bad outcomes for Maori in particular.
Anyway the last anti TPPA rallies were well attended, I can see huge crowds at the next round.
If only our opposition politicians dealt with our media the way Greece’s New Finance Minister handles a Newsnight Interview.
Greece’s new finance minister Yanis Varoufakis interviewed on 30 January 2015 on BBC’s Newsnight.
“As a fan of the BBC, I must say I was appalled by the depths of inaccuracy in the reporting underpinning this interview (not to mention the presenter’s considerable rudeness).Still, and despite the cold wind on that balcony, it was fun!” – Yanis Varoufakis
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Inspirational: The Family of Man is a glorious hymn to human equality, but, more than that, it is a clarion call to human freedom. Because equality, unleavened by liberty, is a broken piano, an unstrung harp; upon which the songs of fraternity will never be played.“Somebody must have been telling lies about ...
Tax Lawyer Barbara Edmonds vs Emperor Justinian I- Nolo Contendere: False historical explanations of pivotal events are very far from being inconsequential.WHEN BARBARA EDMONDS made reference to the Roman Empire, my ears pricked up. It is, lamentably, very rare to hear a politician admit to any kind of familiarity ...
It’s been a tumultuous time in politics in recent months, as the new National-led Government has driven through its “First 100 Day programme”. During this period there’s been a handful of opinion polls, which overall just show a minimal amount of flux in public support for the various parties in ...
Buzz from the Beehive Housing Minister Chris Bishop delivered news – packed with the ingredients to enflame political passions – worthy of supplanting Winston Peters in headline writers’ priorities. He popped up at the post-Cabinet press conference to promise a crackdown on unruly and antisocial state housing tenants. His ...
Ele Ludemann writes – The Reserve Bank is advertising for a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion advisor. The Bank has one mandate – to keep inflation between one and three percent. It has failed in that and is only slowly getting inflation back down to the upper limit. Will it ...
Last week former National Party leader Simon Bridges was appointed by the Government as the new chair of the New Zealand Transport Agency Waka Kotahi (NZTA). You can read about the appointment in Thomas Coughlan’s article, Simon Bridges to become chair of NZ Transport Agency Waka KotahiThe fact that a ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Last week former National Party leader Simon Bridges was appointed by the Government as the new chair of the New Zealand Transport Agency Waka Kotahi (NZTA). You can read about the appointment in Thomas Coughlan’s article, Simon Bridges to become chair of NZ Transport Agency ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read: Gavin Jacobson talks to Thomas Piketty 10 years on from Capital in the 21st CenturyThe SalvoLocal scoop: Green MP’s business being investigated over migrant exploitation claims StuffSteve KilgallonLocal deep-dive: The commercial contractors making money from School ...
It’s a home - but Kāinga Ora tenants accused of “abusing the privilege” may lose it. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The Government announced a crackdown on Kāinga Ora tenants who were unruly and/or behind on their rent, with Housing Minister Chris Bishop saying a place in a state ...
This is a guest post by Connor Sharp of Surface Light Rail Light rail in Auckland: A way forward sooner than you think With the coup de grâce of Auckland Light Rail (ALR) earlier this year, and the shift of the government’s priorities to roads, roads, and more roads, it ...
Note: As a paid-up Webworm member, I’ve recorded this Webworm as a mini-podcast for you as well. Some of you said you liked this option - so I aim to provide it when I get a chance to record! Read more ...
TL;DR: In my ‘six-stack’ of substacks at 6.06pm on Monday, March 18:IKEA is accused of planting big forests in New Zealand to green-wash; REDD-MonitorA City for People takes a well-deserved victory lap over Wellington’s pro-YIMBY District Plan votes; A City for PeopleSteven Anastasiou takes a close look at the sticky ...
Buzz from the Beehive Here’s hoping for a lively post-cabinet press conference when the PM and – perhaps – some of his ministers tell us what was discussed at their meeting today. Until then, Point of Order has precious little Beehive news to report after its latest monitoring of the ...
David Farrar writes – We now have almost all 2023 data in, which has allowed me to update my annual table of how labour went against its promises. This is basically their final report card. The promiseThe result Build 100,000 affordable homes over 10 ...
I’m a bit worried that I’ve started a previous newsletter with the words “just when you think they couldn’t get any worse…” Seems lately that I could begin pretty much every issue with that opening. Such is the nature of our coalition government that they seem to be outdoing each ...
Geoffrey Miller writes – Timing is everything. And from China’s perspective, this week’s visit by its foreign minister to New Zealand could be coming at just the right moment. The visit by Wang Yi to Wellington will be his first since 2017. Anniversaries are important to Beijing. ...
Depictions of Islam in Western popular culture have rarely been positive, even before 9/11. Five years on from the mosque shootings, this is one of the cultural headwinds that the Muslim community has to battle against. Whatever messages of tolerance and inclusion are offered in daylight, much of our culture ...
Last week Transport Minster Simeon Brown and Mayor Wayne Brown opened the new Auckland Rail Operations Centre. The new train control centre will see teams from KiwiRail, Auckland Transport and Auckland One Rail working more closely together to improve train services across the city. The Auckland Rail Operations Centre in ...
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: Retiring former Labour Finance Minister Grant Robertson said in an exit interview with Q+A yesterday the Government can and should sustain more debt to invest in infrastructure for future generations. Elsewhere in the news in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 6:36am: Read more ...
Timing is everything. And from China’s perspective, this week’s visit by its foreign minister to New Zealand could be coming at just the right moment. The visit by Wang Yi to Wellington will be his first since 2017. Anniversaries are important to Beijing. It is more than just a happy ...
TL;DR: The key events to watch in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the week to March 18 include:China’s Foreign Minister visiting Wellington today;A post-cabinet news conference this afternoon; the resumption of Parliament on Tuesday for two weeks before Easter;retiring former Labour Finance Minister Grant Robertson gives his valedictory speech in Parliament; ...
New Zealand First Leader Winston Peters’s state-of-the-nation speech on Sunday was really a state-of-Winston-First speech. He barely mentioned any of the Government’s key policies and could not even wholly endorse its signature income tax cuts. Instead, he rehearsed all of his complaints about the Ardern Government, including an extraordinary claim ...
A listing of 35 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 10, 2024 thru Sat, March 16, 2024. Story of the week This week we'll give you a little glimpse into how we collect links to share and ...
A listing of 35 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 10, 2024 thru Sat, March 16, 2024. Story of the week This week we'll give you a little glimpse into how we collect links to share and ...
“I’ve been internalising a really complicated situation in my head.”When they kept telling us we should wait until we get to know him, were they taking the piss? Was it a case of, if you think this is bad, wait till you get to know the real Christopher, after the ...
Happy fourth anniversary, Pandemic That Upended Bloody Everything. I have been observing it by enjoying my second bout of COVID. It’s 5.30 on Sunday morning and only now are lights turning back on for me.Allow me to copy and paste what I told reader Sara yesterday:Depleted, fogged and crappy. Resting, ...
Happy fourth anniversary, Pandemic That Upended Bloody Everything. I have been observing it by enjoying my second bout of COVID. It’s 5.30 on Sunday morning and only now are lights turning back on for me.Allow me to copy and paste what I told reader Sara yesterday:Depleted, fogged and crappy. Resting, ...
Happy fourth anniversary, Pandemic That Upended Bloody Everything. I have been observing it by enjoying my second bout of COVID. It’s 5.30 on Sunday morning and only now are lights turning back on for me.Allow me to copy and paste what I told reader Sara yesterday:Depleted, fogged and crappy. Resting, ...
.“$10 and a target that bleeds” - Bleeding Targets for Under $10!.Thanks for reading Frankly Speaking ! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.This government appears hell-bent on either scrapping life-saving legislation or reintroducing things that - frustrated critics insist - will be dangerous and likely ...
“It hardly strikes me as fair to criticise a government for doing exactly what it said it was going to do. For actually keeping its promises.”THUNDER WAS PLAYING TAG with lightning flashes amongst the distant peaks. Its rolling cadences interrupted by the here-I-come-here-I-go Doppler effect of the occasional passing car. ...
Subversive & Disruptive Technologies: Just as happened with that other great regulator of the masses, the Medieval Church, the advent of a new and hard-to-control technology – the Internet – is weakening the ties that bind. Then, and now, those who enjoy a monopoly on the dissemination of lies, cannot and will ...
Been Here Before: To find the precedents for what this Coalition Government is proposing, it is necessary to return to the “glory days” of Muldoonism.THE COALITION GOVERNMENT has celebrated its first 100 days in office by checking-off the last of its listed commitments. It remains, however, an angry government. It ...
Bob Edlin writes – And what is the world watching today…? The email newsletter from Associated Press which landed in our mailbox early this morning advised: In the news today: The father of a school shooter has been found guilty of involuntary manslaughter; prosecutors in Trump’s hush-money case ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Is another Green MP on their way out? And are the Greens severely tarnished by another integrity scandal? For the second time in three months, the Green Party has secretly suspended an MP over integrity issues. Mystery is surrounding the party’s decision to ...
For the last few years, the Green Party has been the party that has managed to avoid the plague of multiple scandals that have beleaguered other political parties. It appears that their luck has run out with a second scandal which, unfortunately for them, coincided with Golraz Ghahraman, the focus ...
TL;DR: The six newsey things that stood out to me as of 6:46am on Saturday, March 16.Andy Foster has accidentally allowed a Labour/Green amendment to cut road user chargers for plug-in hybrid vehicles, which the Government might accept; NZ HeraldThomas CoughlanSimeon Brown has rejected a plea from Westport ...
What seemed a booming success a couple of years ago has collapsed into fraud convictions.I looked at the crash of FTX (short for ‘Futures Exchange’) in November 2022 to see whether it would impact on the financial system as a whole. Fortunately there was barely a ripple, probably because it ...
Anybody following the situation in Ukraine and Russia would probably have been amused by a recent Tweet on X NATO seems to be putting in an awful lot of effort to influence what is, at least according to them, a sham election in an autocracy.When do the Ukrainians go to ...
TL;DR:Shaun Baker on Wynyard Quarter's transformation. Magdalene Taylor on the problem with smart phones. How private equity are now all over reinsurance. Dylan Cleaver on rugby and CTE. Emily Atkin on ‘Big Meat’ looking like ‘Big Oil’.Bernard’s six-stack of substacks at 6pm on March 15Photo by Jeppe Hove Jensen ...
Buzz from the Beehive Finance Minister Nicola Willis had plenty to say when addressing the Auckland Business Chamber on the economic growth that (she tells us) is flagging more than we thought. But the government intends to put new life into it: We want our country to be a ...
The Transport and Infrastructure Committee has reported back on the Road User Charges (Light Electric RUC Vehicles) Amendment Bill, basicly rubberstamping it. While there was widespread support among submitters for the principle that EV and PHEV drivers should pay their fair share for the roads, they also overwhelmingly disagreed with ...
Peter Dunne writes – This week’s government bailout – the fifth in the last eighteen months – of the financially troubled Ruapehu Alpine Lifts company would have pleased many in the central North Island ski industry. The government’s stated rationale for the $7 million funding was that it ...
See if you can spot the difference. An Iranian born female MP from a progressive party is accused of serial shoplifting. Her name is leaked to the media, which goes into a pack frenzy even before the Police launch an … Continue reading → ...
Ele Ludemann writes – The government is omitting general Treaty references from legislation : The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last Government in a bid to get greater coherence in the public service on Treaty ...
What was that judge thinking?Peter Williams writes – That Golriz Ghahraman and District Court Judge Maria Pecotic were once lawyer colleagues is incontrovertible. There is published evidence that they took at least one case to the Court of Appeal together. There was a report on ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read:Climate Scorpion – the sting is in the tail. Introducing planetary solvency. A paper via the University of Exeter’s Institute and Faculty of Actuaries.Local scoop:Kāinga Ora starts pulling out of its Auckland projects and selling land RNZ ...
Wellington’s massively upzoned District Plan adds the opportunity for tens of thousands of new homes not just in the central city (such as these Webb St new builds) but also close to the CBD and public transport links. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: Wellington gave itself the chance of ...
It’s Friday and we’re halfway through March Madness. Here’s some of the things that caught our attention this week. This Week in Greater Auckland On Monday Matt asked how we can get better event trains and an option for grade separating Morningside Dr. On Tuesday Matt looked into ...
Something you might not know about me is that I’m quite a stubborn person. No, really. I don’t much care for criticism I think’s unfair or that I disagree with. Few of us do I suppose.Back when I was a drinker I’d sometimes respond defensively, even angrily. There are things ...
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The five things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about via The Kākā and elsewhere for paying subscribers in the last week included:PM Christopher Luxon said the reversal of interest deductibility for landlords was done to help renters, who ...
It was not so much the Labour Party but really the Chris Hipkins party yesterday at Labour’s caucus retreat in Martinborough. The former Prime Minister was more or less consistent on wealth tax, which he was at best equivocal about, and social insurance, which he was not willing to revisit. ...
Buzz from the BeehiveThe text reproduced above appears on a page which records all the media statements and speeches posted on the government’s official website by Melissa Lee as Minister of Media and Communications and/or by Jenny Marcroft, her Parliamentary Under-secretary. It can be quickly analysed ...
For forty years, Robert Muldoon has been a dirty word in our politics. His style of government was so repulsive and authoritarian that the backlash to it helped set and entrench our constitutional norms. His pig-headedness over forcing through Think Big eventually gave us the RMA, with its participation and ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Is the new government reducing tax on rental properties to benefit landlords or to cut the cost of rents? That’s the big question this week, after Associate Finance Minister David Seymour announced on Sunday that the Government would be reversing the Labour Government’s removal ...
Saudi Arabia is rarely far from the international spotlight. The war in Gaza has brought new scrutiny to Saudi plans to normalise relations with Israel, while the fifth anniversary of the controversial killing of Jamal Khashoggi was marked shortly before the war began on October 7. And as the home ...
Questions need to be asked on both sides of the worldPeter Williams writes – The NRL Judiciary hands down an eight week suspension to Sydney Roosters forward Spencer Leniu , an Auckland-born Samoan, after he calls Ezra Mam, Sydney-orn but of Aboriginal and Torres Strait ...
Ele Ludemann writes – Contrary to what many headlines and news stories are saying, residential landlords are not getting a tax break. The government is simply restoring to them the tax deductibility of interest they had until the previous government removed it. There is no logical reason ...
I can't remember when it was goodMoments of happiness in bloomMaybe I just misunderstoodAll of the love we left behindWatching our flashbacks intertwineMemories I will never findIn spite of whatever you becomeForget that reckless thing turned onI think our lives have just begunI think our lives have just begunDoes anyone ...
Michael Bassett writes – At first reading, a front-page story in the New Zealand Herald on 13 March was bizarre. A group of severely intellectually limited teenagers, with little understanding of the law, have been pleading to the Justice Select Committee not to pass a bill dealing with ram ...
How much political capital is Christopher Luxon willing to burn through in order to deliver his $2.9 billion gift to landlords? Evidently, Luxon is: (a) unable to cost the policy accurately. As Anna Burns-Francis pointed out to him on Breakfast TV, the original ”rock solid” $2.1 billion cost he was ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read:Jonathon Porritt calling bullshit in his own blog post on mainstream climate science as ‘The New Denialism’.Local scoop:The Wellington City Council’s list of proposed changes to the IHP recommendations to be debated later today was leaked this ...
TL;DR:Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said yesterday tenants should be grateful for the reinstatement of interest deductibility because landlords would pass on their lower tax costs in the form of lower rents. That would be true if landlords were regulated monopolies such as Transpower or Auckland Airport1, but they’re not, ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Tom Toro Tom Toro is a cartoonist and author. He has published over 200 cartoons in The New Yorker since 2010. His cartoons appear in Playboy, the Paris Review, the New York Times, American Bystander, and elsewhere. Related: What 10 EV lovers ...
The business section of the NZ Herald is full of opinion. Among the more opinionated of all is the ex-Minister of Transport, ex-Minister of Railways, ex MP for Auckland Central (1975-93, Labour), Wellington Central (1996-99, ACT, then list-2005), ex-leader of the ACT Party, uncle to actor Antonia, the veritable granddaddy ...
Hi,Just quickly — I’m blown away by the stories you’ve shared with me over the last week since I put out the ‘Gary’ podcast, where I told you about the time my friend’s flatmate killed the neighbour.And you keep telling me stories — in the comments section, and in my ...
The first season of Rings of Power was not awful. It was thoroughly underwhelming, yes, and left a lingering sense of disappointment, but it was more expensive mediocrity than catastrophe. I wrote at length about the series as it came out (see the Review section of the blog, and go ...
Buzz from the Beehive Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden told Auckland Business Chamber members they were the first audience to hear her priorities as a minister in a government committed to cutting red tape and regulations. She brandished her liberalising credentials, saying Flexible labour markets are the ...
Chris Trotter writes – TO UNDERSTAND WHY NEWSHUB FAILED, it is necessary to understand how TVNZ changed. Up until 1989, the state broadcaster had been funded by a broadcasting licence fee, collected from every citizen in possession of a television set, supplemented by a relatively modest (compared ...
Bob Edlin writes – The Māori Party has been busy issuing a mix of warnings and threats as its expresses its opposition to interest deductibility for landlords and the plans of seabed miners. It remains to be seen whether they follow the example of indigenous litigants in Australia, ...
Every year, in the Budget, Parliament forks out money to government agencies to do certain things. And every year, as part of the annual review cycle, those agencies are meant to report on whether they have done the things Parliament gave them that money for. Agencies which consistently fail to ...
The Government has accepted Labour’s change to the Road User Charge (RUC) discount for hybrid vehicles, meaning there will still be some incentive for people to buy greener vehicles. ...
Kicking the most vulnerable people out of state housing and pushing them towards homelessness will result in a proliferation of poverty and trauma across our most vulnerable communities. ...
Te Pāti Māori co-leader and MP for Waiariki, Rawiri Waititi has penned a letter asking MPs to support his members bill to remove GST from all food. The bill is expected to go through its first reading in parliament this Wednesday. “I’m calling on all political parties to support my ...
This year is about getting real with Kiwis and discussing the tough issues, as the National Government exacerbates inequality and divides New Zealand, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said ...
The Government adding Significant Natural Areas (SNAs) to its already roaring environmental policy bonfire is an assault on the future of wildlife that makes Aotearoa unique. ...
After 12 years of fighting to protect our moana we are finding ourselves back at square one and back at court. Today, the Environmental Protection Agency is sitting in Hawera to reconsider an application from Trans-Tasman Resources to dig up 50 million tonnes of the seabed in South Taranaki. This ...
Minister Shane Jones’ decision to step away from a seabed mining project is evidence of the murky waters surrounding the Government’s fast-track legislation. ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The Coalition Government’s miscalculation saga continues as it has forgotten an eyewatering $90 million gap in its interest deductibility cost figures, say Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds and Revenue Spokesperson Deborah Russell. ...
He Pou a Rangi Climate Change Commission has today released advice that says if the Government doesn’t act now New Zealand is at risk of not meeting its climate goals. ...
The Coalition Government has today confirmed it is abandoning first home buyers who are struggling to get ahead, says Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds. ...
The New Zealand public voted for a change in direction at the 2023 general election and that is exactly what this coalition government has been delivering in its first 100 days. There was an immediate focus on the economy, easing the cost of living, cracking down on law and order ...
The Government has left the health system as an afterthought, announcing half-baked targets at the last minute of their 100-day plan, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
Kiwis are still waiting for their promised cost of living support after 100 days of a National Government that is taking us backwards, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The National Government has spent its first 100 days stopping, cutting and reversing. They have scrapped stuff for stuff for the sake of it, without putting up any solutions of their own – and it’s hardworking New Zealanders who will pay for it. ...
100 days of National taking NZ backwardsThe National Government has spent its first 100 days stopping, cutting and reversing. They have scrapped stuff for stuff for the sake of it, without putting up any solutions of their own – and it’s hardworking New Zealanders who will pay for it. ...
The Government must commit to funding free and healthy school lunches, as thousands of people sign the petition to keep them, education spokesperson Jan Tinetti says. ...
If the Government was serious about moving families into public housing, they would build more houses so there is actually somewhere for people to go. ...
The free and healthy school lunches programme feeds our kids, helps them to learn, and saves families money – but it is at risk under this Government, education spokesperson Jan Tinetti said. ...
The Government’s proposed changes to Firearms Prohibition Orders (FPO) add almost nothing new and are merely an attempt to distract from its plans to loosen gun laws, police spokesperson Ginny Andersen and justice spokesperson Dr Duncan Webb said. ...
The great Victorian era English politician Lord Macauley stood in the British House of Parliament and said, "The gallery in which the reporters sit has become a fourth estate of the realm".He understood and outlined even way back then, the significant role and influence media have in a democracy. ...
The government’s attack on Māori health this week is committing tangata-whenua to a premature death, says Te Pāti Māori. “The government have begun their onslaught on Māori health with the abolishment of the Māori Health Authority and smokefree laws in the same day” said health spokesperson and co-leader, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. ...
"The Government is moving quickly to realise an additional $46 million in tariff savings in the EU market this season for Kiwi exporters,” Minister for Trade and Agriculture, Todd McClay says. Parliament is set, this week, to complete the final legislative processes required to bring the New Zealand – European ...
New Zealand’s social workers are qualified, experienced, and more representative of the communities they serve, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. “I want to acknowledge and applaud New Zealand’s social workers for the hard work they do, providing invaluable support for our most vulnerable. “To coincide with World ...
Cabinet has agreed to a reduced road user charge (RUC) rate for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. Owners of PHEVs will be eligible for a reduced rate of $38 per 1,000km once all light electric vehicles (EVs) move into the RUC system from 1 April. ...
Minister of Agriculture and Trade, Todd McClay, says that today’s opening of Riverland Foods manufacturing plant in Christchurch is a great example of how trade access to overseas markets creates jobs in New Zealand. Speaking at the official opening of this state-of-the-art pet food factory the Minister noted that exports ...
Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Wellington today. “It was a pleasure to host Foreign Minister Wang Yi during his first official visit to New Zealand since 2017. Our discussions were wide-ranging and enabled engagement on many facets of New Zealand’s relationship with China, including trade, ...
Kāinga Ora – Homes & Communities has been instructed to end the Sustaining Tenancies Framework and take stronger measures against persistent antisocial behaviour by tenants, says Housing Minister Chris Bishop. “Earlier today Finance Minister Nicola Willis and I sent an interim Letter of Expectations to the Board of Kāinga Ora. ...
Tēna koutou katoa. Greetings everyone. Thank you to the Auckland Chamber of Commerce and the Honourable Simon Bridges for hosting this address today. I acknowledge the business leaders in this room, the leaders and governors, the employers, the entrepreneurs, the investors, and the wealth creators. The coalition Government shares your ...
Minister Winston Peters completed the final leg of his visit to South and South East Asia in Singapore today, where he focused on enhancing one of New Zealand’s indispensable strategic partnerships. “Singapore is our most important defence partner in South East Asia, our fourth-largest trading partner and a ...
Minister of Internal Affairs and Workplace Relations and Safety, Hon. Brooke van Velden, will travel to the Republic of Korea to represent New Zealand at the Third Summit for Democracy on 18 March. The summit, hosted by the Republic of Korea, was first convened by the United States in 2021, ...
ICNZ Speech 7 March 2024, Auckland Acknowledgements and opening Mōrena, ngā mihi nui. Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Nor Whanganui aho. Good morning, it’s a privilege to be here to open the ICNZ annual conference, thank you to Mark for the Mihi Whakatau My thanks to Tim Grafton for inviting me ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Lead Coordination Minister Judith Collins have expressed their deepest sympathy on the five-year anniversary of the Christchurch terror attacks. “March 15, 2019, was a day when families, communities and the country came together both in sorrow and solidarity,” Mr Luxon says. “Today we pay our respects to the 51 shuhada ...
Speech for Financial Advice NZ Conference 5 March 2024 Acknowledgements and opening Morena, Nga Mihi Nui. Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Nor Whanganui aho. Thanks Nate for your Mihi Whakatau Good morning. It’s a pleasure to formally open your conference this morning. What a lovely day in Wellington, What a great ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters held discussions in Jakarta today about the future of relations between New Zealand and South East Asia’s most populous country. “We are in Jakarta so early in our new government’s term to reflect the huge importance we place on our relationship with Indonesia and South ...
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters has announced that the Foreign Minister of China, Wang Yi, will visit New Zealand next week. “We look forward to re-engaging with Foreign Minister Wang Yi and discussing the full breadth of the bilateral relationship, which is one of New Zealand’s ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has today opened the new Auckland Rail Operations Centre, which will bring together KiwiRail, Auckland Transport, and Auckland One Rail to improve service reliability for Aucklanders. “The recent train disruptions in Auckland have highlighted how important it is KiwiRail and Auckland’s rail agencies work together to ...
The Government is proud to support the 10th edition of Crankworx Rotorua as the Crankworx World Tour returns to Rotorua from 16-24 March 2024, says Minister for Economic Development Melissa Lee. “Over the past 10 years as Crankworx Rotorua has grown, so too have the economic and social benefits that ...
Legislation implementing coalition Government tax commitments and addressing long-standing tax anomalies will be progressed in Parliament next week, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The legislation is contained in an Amendment Paper to the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023–24, Multinational Tax, and Remedial Matters) Bill issued today. “The Amendment Paper represents ...
Associate Environment Minister Andrew Hoggard has today announced that the Government has agreed to suspend the requirement for councils to comply with the Significant Natural Areas (SNA) provisions of the National Policy Statement for Indigenous Biodiversity for three years, while it replaces the Resource Management Act (RMA).“As it stands, SNAs ...
Agriculture Minister Todd McClay has classified the drought conditions in the Marlborough, Tasman, and Nelson districts as a medium-scale adverse event, acknowledging the challenging conditions facing farmers and growers in the district. “Parts of Marlborough, Tasman, and Nelson districts are in the grip of an intense dry spell. I know ...
The Government is helping farmers eradicate the significant impact of facial eczema (FE) in pastoral animals, Agriculture Minister Todd McClay announced. “A $20 million partnership jointly funded by Beef + Lamb NZ, the Government, and the primary sector will save farmers an estimated NZD$332 million per year, and aims to ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has completed a successful visit to India, saying it was an important step in taking the relationship between the two countries to the next level. “We have laid a strong foundation for the Coalition Government’s priority of enhancing New Zealand-India relations to generate significant future benefit for both countries,” says Mr Peters, ...
Cabinet has agreed to provide $7 million to ensure the 2024 ski season can go ahead on the Whakapapa ski field in the central North Island but has told the operator Ruapehu Alpine Lifts it is the last financial support it will receive from taxpayers. Cabinet also agreed to provide ...
Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says the launch of a new mobile breast screening unit in Counties Manukau reinforces the coalition Government’s commitment to drive better cancer services for all New Zealanders. Speaking at the launch of the new mobile clinic, Dr Reti says it’s a great example of taking ...
Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says the launch of a new mobile breast screening unit in Counties Manukau reinforces the coalition Government’s commitment to drive better cancer services for all New Zealanders. Speaking at the launch of the new mobile clinic, Dr Reti says it’s a great example of taking ...
Unlocking economic growth and land for housing are critical elements of the Government’s plan for our transport network, and planned upgrades to State Highway 29 (SH29) near Tauriko will deliver strongly on those priorities, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “The SH29 upgrades near Tauriko will improve safety at the intersections ...
Unlocking economic growth and land for housing are critical elements of the Government’s plan for our transport network, and planned upgrades to State Highway 29 (SH29) near Tauriko will deliver strongly on those priorities, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “The SH29 upgrades near Tauriko will improve safety at the intersections ...
Lower fruit and vegetable prices are welcome news for New Zealanders who have been doing it tough at the supermarket, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. Stats NZ reported today the price of fruit and vegetables has dropped 9.3 percent in the 12 months to February 2024. “Lower fruit and vege ...
Tēnā koutou katoa and greetings to you all. Chair, I am honoured to address the sixty-eighth session of the Commission on the Status of Women. I acknowledge the many crises impacting the rights of women and girls. Heightened global tensions, war, climate related and humanitarian disasters, and price inflation all ...
Tēnā koutou katoa and greetings to you all. Chair, I am honoured to address the 68th session of the Commission on the Status of Women. I acknowledge the many crises impacting the rights of women and girls. Heightened global tensions, war, climate related and humanitarian disasters, and price inflation all ...
The coalition Government is supporting farmers to enhance land management practices by investing $3.3 million in locally led catchment groups, Agriculture Minister Todd McClay announced. “Farmers and growers deliver significant prosperity for New Zealand and it’s vital their ongoing efforts to improve land management practices and water quality are supported,” ...
Good evening everyone and thank you for that lovely introduction. Thank you also to the Honourable Simon Bridges for the invitation to address your members. Since being sworn in, this coalition Government has hit the ground running with our 100-day plan, delivering the changes that New Zealanders expect of us. ...
Recommendations from the Climate Change Commission for New Zealand on the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) auction and unit limit settings for the next five years have been tabled in Parliament, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. “The Commission provides advice on the ETS annually. This is the third time the ...
The coalition Government is beginning its fight to lower building costs and reduce red tape by exempting minor building work from paying the building levy, says Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk. “Currently, any building project worth $20,444 including GST or more is subject to the building levy which is ...
Proposed changes to tax legislation to prevent the over-taxation of low-earning trusts are welcome, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The changes have been recommended by Parliament’s Finance and Expenditure Committee following consideration of submissions on the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023–24, Multinational Tax, and Remedial Matters) Bill. “One of the ...
Assalaamu alaikum. السَّلَام عليكم In light of the holy month of Ramadan, I want to extend my warmest wishes to our Muslim community in New Zealand. Ramadan is a time for spiritual reflection, renewed devotion, perseverance, generosity, and forgiveness. It’s a time to strengthen our bonds and appreciate the diversity ...
Former Transport Minister and CEO of the Auckland Business Chamber Hon Simon Bridges has been appointed as the new Board Chair of the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) for a three-year term, Transport Minister Simeon Brown announced today. “Simon brings extensive experience and knowledge in transport policy and governance to the role. He will ...
Good morning all, it is a pleasure to be here as Minister of Science, Innovation and Technology. It is fantastic to see how connected and collaborative the life science and biotechnology industry is here in New Zealand. I would like to thank BioTechNZ and NZTech for the invitation to address ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says he is looking forward to the day when three key water projects in Northland are up and running, unlocking the full potential of land in the region. Mr Jones attended a community event at the site of the Otawere reservoir near Kerikeri on Friday. ...
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Sport and Recreation Minister Chris Bishop will travel to Switzerland today to attend an Executive Committee meeting and Symposium of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). Mr Bishop will then travel on to London where he will attend a series of meetings in his capacity as Infrastructure Minister. “New Zealanders believe ...
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Analysis by Dr Bryce Edwards – Democracy Project (https://democracyproject.nz)Political scientist, Dr Bryce Edwards. It’s been a tumultuous time in politics in recent months, as the new National-led Government has driven through its “First 100 Day programme”. During this period there’s been a handful of opinion polls, which overall just ...
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Uber has argued it does not have as much control over drivers as the unions suggest, and wants a judgment ruling that drivers are employees and not contractors set aside and sent back to the Employment Court. The 2022 ruling followed a three-week hearing in which four drivers sought to ...
What can and can’t be purchased by disabled people or their carers has been slashed in an effort by the Ministry of Disabled People Whaikaha to save money. The purchasing guidelines, a set of rules that sets out what can be purchased using the various streams of Government disability funding, ...
The Treasury has published today a new Analytical Note by Tod Wright and Hien Nguyen, Fiscal incidence in New Zealand: The effects of taxes and benefits on household incomes in tax year 2018/19 . Analyses of the distributional impact of taxation and government ...
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A coalition of public transport and climate organisations, united as ‘Transport for All’, is actively opposing the government’s transport proposals. The draft Government Policy Statement (GPS) includes plans for higher fares for public transport, ...
Greater Wellington is inviting feedback on proposed changes to its Revenue and Financing Policy. The Revenue and Financing Policy covers the Council’s various sources of funding, and how the cost of services is shared across the region. This includes ...
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The band has asked their record label to issue a cease and desist to stop the NZ First leader using their 1997 hit to support his ‘misguided political views’. “I get knocked down, but I get up again,” blared through the speakers on Sunday as Winston Peters took the stage ...
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Brannavan Gnanalingam reviews the debut novel by Saraid de Silva.One of the most baffling things for children who move to a new country is what their parents’ (or grandparents’) lives were like prior to moving – for kids in particular, they’re too busy trying to fit in in their ...
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Comment: There has been a striking contrast in trans-Tasman interest about Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi’s visit to New Zealand and Australia. While the Australian press has been full of articles about the visit – including his curious decision to meet with former prime minister and China booster Paul Keating ...
After years of pressuring banks and other institutions to stop investing in fossil fuels, climate campaigners are making some progress. So how does divestment work?For years, climate activists have been pushing banks and other big institutions to divest from fossil fuels. New research from climate advocacy group 350 Aotearoa ...
For Boba, Ethan and Ashley, K-pop is a place to belong, a way to express themselves, and a bridge to connect with others. The three young Polynesians are part of a K-pop fan community in Tāmaki Makaurau. It’s one of many that have sprung up worldwide as K-pop has gone ...
For Boba, Ethan and Ashley, K-pop is a place to belong, a way to express themselves, and a bridge to connect with others. This one-off documentary presents three intimate portraits of young Polynesians who are pulled into a Korean cultural phenomenon. K-POLYS is directed by Litia Tuiburelevu, Produced by Hex ...
There’s ample evidence demonstrating free school lunch programmes provide wide benefits across schools, households and communities according to public health researchers. ACT Minister David Seymour wants to reduce the spending on Aotearoa New Zealand’s ...
By Wata Shaw in Suva Fiji is facing an exodus of Fijians as many are leaving for overseas seeking employment and education and others are migrating, says Opposition MP Viliame Naupoto. Speaking in Parliament, he said: “His Excellency’s speech (Ratu Wiliame Katonivere) comes after a little over one year of ...
The Taxpayers’ Union is welcoming comments from Christopher Luxon this morning recommitting to ‘no new taxes’ as part of Budget 2024. “Mr Luxon’s refusal at the Post-Cabinet press conference yesterday to repeat the ‘no new taxes’ promise ...
SAFE is urgently calling on the Environment Committee to reject the Government’s Fast-Track Approvals Bill, and is urging New Zealanders to rally behind the call. The proposed Bill, currently under consideration with the Environment select committee, ...
Teammates who spend all their time picking fights with spectators are only helpful for the other team, writes Madeleine Chapman. Anyone who has ever played a team sport competitively, particularly as a child and particularly, for some reason, basketball, will know that there’s a lot of politics involved. While there ...
The long-running Wellington music festival is too focused on the Jim Beam-ness and not enough on the Homegrown-ness.There is something about Homegrown that’s difficult to place. A barely perceptible-ness. Like feeling a ghost is watching you from the corner of the room but when you look, there’s nothing there. ...
The latest Ipsos New Zealand Issues Monitor reveals that fewer New Zealanders believe crime / law and order is one of the top issues facing our country. In 2018, Ipsos New Zealand started tracking the key issues facing New Zealand. In this wave ...
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Bob’s relationship with certain members of Lincoln’s academic staff continued to deteriorate in the 1990s. Others supported him publicly, though articles such as Roland Clark’s 1993 piece in Growing Today cannot have pleased the university management. Clark wrote that Bob was selling onions from the Biological Husbandry Unit to a ...
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Evicting more people from state housing is ignorant to the consequences of poverty, the Greens say, but the Housing Minister says it's a privilege that can be taken away if abused. ...
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People in Britain are hearing about greedy, bully boy and culture less government.
Eleanor Catton has shone a light on its crassness.
Good on her.
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jan/30/eleanor-catton-blasts-critics-jingoistic-national-tantrum
And a good article explains how Key and Plunket have proved the point Catton was making.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=11394725
Europe in revolt.
‘Tens of thousands rally in Madrid demanding end to austerity
Inspired by events in Greece, support grows for Podemos and its call for a new political order.’
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/31/podemos-spain-austerity-rally-madrid-syriza
(gratified to see my milk-health-concerns seeping thru into the mainstream/corporate-media.)
“..Milk does the body good? – A look at science..
..RECENT QUESTIONS:
Some scientists have begun to question previous statements about milk’s benefits.
For example – some researchers have noted low fracture rates in Asian countries where little milk is consumed-
– and questioned whether there is enough evidence to support the federal milk consumption recommendations.
What’s more – some studies have linked milk to risk of ovarian and prostate cancers–
– though many scientists believe more research is needed before drawing conclusions about milk as a cause.
THE SWEDISH STUDY
Last year a Swedish study published in a British medical journal –
– found women who drank three or more glasses a day died at a nearly twice the rate of those who drank less than one glass a day.
Broken bones were more common in women who were heavy milk drinkers – too..”
(cont..)
http://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/well-good/teach-me/65631672/milk-does-the-body-good-a-look-at-science
In the Swedish study, they’re differentiating between milk, and fermented products like cheese and yoghurt.
“Further analysis showed a positive association between milk intake and biomarkers of oxidative stress and inflammation.
In contrast, a high intake of fermented milk products with a low lactose content (including yoghurt and cheese) was associated with reduced rates of mortality and fracture, particularly in women.”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/10/141028214051.htm
I would posit two things here. One is that modern diets are high in refined sugars and so eating another high sugar food like milk is probably overloading people into earlier deaths from things like Syndrome X (via insulin resistance). This is true for big populations that have been studied like the US. I don’t know what the usual diets are like in Sweden.
The other is that traditional diets all over the world have prioritised fermented milk over unfermented. They also drink milk raw. These are crucial differences.
That article you link to has a pretty misleading and narrow visioned public health control approach to raw milk, so I wouldn’t take anything it says too seriously. It also fails to point out that the Swedish researchers say there is a correlation but no proven causation between milk consumption and early death, and completely ignores that the findings for fermented dairy were the opposite. This is typical of much superficial health reporting, and it’s also grossly negligent IMO. You need to go to professional medical and health journalists if you want to understand the research and what it means.
The Asian thing is a different story, because most people in east Asian countries are not genetically adapted to eating milk (although I’m curious about the cross overs between India/Tibet/Nepal etc and East Asia and where dairy stops being a traditional staple). The low fracture rate can also be attributed to other things in the diet rather than absence of milk.
Moderation is thr mantra.
Cheese yes cheese has been shown to be the most Dangerous food when it comes to strokes.
Those with a high consumption of cheese are the most likely to die of strokes.
High in fat and very high in salt!
are the reasons.
With our government about to hack into state housing, we will soon be in the state London is in.
‘Thousands gather in London to protest against lack of affordable housing
The March for Homes brings together campaigners, tenants and trade unionists to demand building of council homes and curbing of private rents.’
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/jan/31/hundreds-gather-london-march-for-homes-protest-city-hall-affordable-housing
Here’s the guts of it by Paul Little –
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=11394725
Bears repeating my earlier comment on “Eleanor Catton responds” –
“Deep inside Plunket squirms with embarrassment because he KNOWS he’s been OWNED by Eleanor Catton. Deliciously it’s all his own work.”
Is this a genuine John Key “muppet” or what ?
yeah..i don’t often link to little..but i did to that one…
Whereas Heather du Plessis-Allan can muster only catty passive-aggression to dampen Catton’s essential message. And in the process highlights it.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=11394709
Ever seen Ms Heather giggly-mouthed cavorting on TVOne trying to be satellite to Key acolyte Hosking ?
Obscene it is. Another Cafe Society twit consumed by ‘self’ is Ms Heather.
du-plessy-allen is a shocker..
..she has proved that over and over again..
Land of the Wrong White Clowns
Never thought I’d recommend a Rodney Hide column but this is interesting reading.
“Little spoke of reducing inequality. Good. And even here he was interesting: he says the spin-off of reducing inequality is better growth. That, too, would be better for business and farmers.
Jobs and growth are his focus. And small business. That sets him apart from Key who, in his deals with Warner Bros, SkyCity and Rio Tinto, is tied to the big end of town.”
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=11394722
What !! a labour leader who mentioned farmers ‘well I never’
Angry greenys In 321…
short-listed for silly-comment-of-the-day..?
..and so early in the day..!
..and did you miss the serial blowing of reassuring-kisses from norman to the cow-folk..?
Cool to use a dog trial term ” I hope I’m still on the board at the end of the day “
Yes I missed Normans comments? Look I support the greens I have voted for them once it’s the tarring us all as ecological destroyer s that I will attack at every chance.
Just yesterday weka said something about farmers pouring shit into the rivers and that is a lie on the odd occasion a farmer gets caught literally doing that the book gets thrown at them and rightly so.
I let it pass and I shouldn’t have.
Before dismissing it as an occasional event, you should watch the documentary River Dog
In short, it’s about a number of farmers in a region who regularly graze their cattle on a stretch of river and the lack of action by the authorities.
[Link fixed – MS]
so..waghorn..
..if the farmers aren’t doing it…
..who is making most of our rivers unswimmable/polluted..?
..the tooth-fairy..?
I have no doubt that that over stocking, use of urea and over irrigation is degrading rivers but as for pouring shit into the river, not happening and if any knows were it is they should report it.
r u not just fussing over a mostly irrelevant point..?
..the facts r..the rivers r fucked..farmers did it..
..any questions..?
FTFY
It’s not just that farmers are pouring shit into the rivers but that we have far too much land as farms. We need to decrease the amount of farms to be enough to feed us and that’s it.
I’ll say it again – let farmers get their drinking and house water from the river below their farms. If they want to drink shit water they can.
As long as all you’r water comes from below you’re town/city that’s fine
I don’t live in a town or city but rain is good so I get mine downstream from the clouds.
I would never say there are no good farmers – hell I know a few – but the bad ruin it for everyone – the good farmers have to tidy up their sandpit (farmers) rather than just hold their hands up pleading ignorance – they derive their profit from the commons and i think they are responsible to the commons too. And the same for cityfolk.
I’ve suggested to 3 bosses and two neighbours in the sheep n beef industry that they had a few creeks that would be easy to fence off it didn’t achieve much .
It’s going to take laws to make a change unfortunately.
It’s a pity shame doesn’t work.
I didn’t say farmers pour shit into rivers. I said NZers think it’s ok to pour shit into rivers. And I think it was obvious from the conversation that I didn’t mean this literally, but that we allow our rivers to be polluted by farming, mostly dairy farming. That’s not actually in dispute. Do you need a link?
I think you will also find that I’m one of the ones that’s been arguing recently for not lumping all farmers into one evil group and that it’s better to name the ones that are causing problems.
As for the GP, I suggest that you stop reading the spin via the media and go directly to the GP and see what they have to say about farming. They’re actually very supportive and progressive. You can look at their policy, which you may or may not agree with, but it’s not anti-farmer. You probably remember that Jeanette Fitzsimons was a farmer before during and after she was an MP and co-leader of the GP, and I see a lot of her influence in GP attitudes.
http://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-30012015/#comment-960150 This link would say other wise re cow shit and water
Yes, I know what you were referring to and I know what I said. I’ve just given you a detailed explanation of that. Did you even read it? How about you respond to my points?
edit, and just to make it really fucking clear, here’s what I said,
That’s not a statement about farmers, it’s a statement about NZers. As I explained.
then of course there are the green party bbq’s..
..where they show their support for the ‘industry’..
..in the most sincere/practical of ways..
“What !! a labour leader who mentioned farmers ‘well I never’
Angry greenys In 321…”
What does that mean?
Its very rear that labour appears to think about the rural sector IMO.
The next bit was a we poke/joke
Yeah, I don’t get it. Do you mean the greenies will be angry that Labour mentioned farmers? Bit subtle for me I’m afraid.
btw, I don’t think Little was talking about farming in his speech. He was talking about Fonterra, and the context was business productivity and worker rights. He did mention something about payouts but again, it was in the context of how the unions and Fonterra worked together.
i think that he was expecting u to come and grumble/grump at him..
..ready..?..3..2..1..
I think it’s important to read as a warning that Little still intends to let business run the show. The planet cannot afford growth any more. We have to discover how to live without it.
When Rodney Hide likes something, I worry even more. It’s quite possible they can see Key is on a downward slope and are grooming a right wing successor. Little already caved on squirrel powers. What is he going to give away without a fight next?
FJK and FAL.
I disagree with your interpretation, I think Hide is just doing what all the other rightwingers have done in the wake of the state of the nation.
Farrar and Hooton instantly jumped on the talk about small business to say “oh, but if you really cared about small business you’d scrap the policy to abolish 90-day trials!”
Now Hide is trying to goad Labour into doing something stupid by “praising” Little as a non-leftwing leader. Look at the way he wilfully quotes “it’s important to create wealth before you can share it” then re-writes it one sentence later as “it’s important to create wealth before you can spend it.” It’s the same old rightwing claptrap about Labour being a terrifying tax-and-spend party. He’s dogwhistling to the right on one hand and trying to unsettle the left with the other.
+1 So many whistles, it might be a dog trial.
He also pushed the divide between Labour and the crazy Greens who can’t be trusted.
Fairly typical Hyde, hard to see it as anything other than PR for NACT.
+1 Stephanie
Hard case that Rodney Hide believes the best way to find out what politicians are about is to listen to what they say – see opening line of the article.
By his own example that’s hardly good advice. Remember ThePerkBuster of yore ?
Again and again and again he said he was a straight-up, rort-hating type of guy.
Many people listened and believed that he was indeed what he said. Then it turns out that all along he was as bad a free-loading rorter, trougher, junketer, hypocrite as anyone. So no, listening doesn’t inform, particularly in respect of the Right.
The rest of his article – faint praise he can invoke later on to claim objectivity and balance. He remains an extreme right wing fantasist who’ll engage DP at will. Not to be trusted. Especially not on the score of what he says.
I never read Roddy’s columns why would I he is a non event politically and a certified failure.
Try NOT reading them a save your bloodpressure.
His last task of any note was throwing the carefully studied and thought out
plan for Auckland City into the rubbish bin and coming up with his version in a matter of months. Enough said.
Just another Herald hack.
And there’s more from NZH where they report on a 3 News/Reid Research poll and asks Has Key met his match?
It’s too soon to tell, and Labour’s recovery will take more than Little to step up a few notches, but this poll result looks promising for Little’s prospects.
Little sounds realistic about where he’s at now.
So this is promising for Little but more important for Labour will be the party poll result, which will be revealed on 3 New tonight at 6 pm.
Pretty shifty there Petey. After yesterday’s all out troling, a pretty much unanimous cry from participants to stop, including being being told off by a moderator, you’ve picked a topic that all the lefties here might agree with and will want to talk about despite it meaning having you in the conversation.
It would be nice to think you learnt something yesterday, but I think the thread showed that the community had learnt something instead.
I think you have a lot of bridges to mend before you can expect to take part here in any genuine way.
He’s out to get the nasty we hobbits he is they ruins it for him
Are you really thick? You could either:
1. Ignore the comment
2. Comment on the content
3. Start a new thread on the topic
4. Make it all about your petty crusade.
Chelsea 1, Manchester city 1.
Discuss
United Win 3-1
Liverpool 2-0
Five points clear with nine to go, I’m cautiously optimistic.
See?
🙄
more a ‘petey’-crusade..?
🙄
How about these idiot pollsters actually run polls on topic’s that people care about. Who gives a toss about dead beat former Labour leaders like Goff, Shearer, and too a lesser extent DC.
How about polling the U turn on further asset sales, given John Key wearing his National leaders hat categorically stated ‘no more asset sales’ during the last election campaign.
The Aussies in Queensland just threw the Tories out for the sheer mention of asset sales.
Did you vote for National to further sell public assets?
A public march protesting selling off state housing should be on the cards. Might see what can be arranged for up at Waitangi. Bit of a focus on asset sales might make the Nats visit that little bit more unpleasant.
Agreed.
A pointless poll to encourage people to talk about pointless subjects.
Petty George.
Your Wikipedia stats don’t match up to stats nz or treasury numbers.
Quite often wikipedia is historically inaccurate as it is a popularity contest.
And often Right wing spuriously funded insitutes Spam Wikipedia to alter historical facts!
All this does is clearly display the dismal level of political reporting in New Zealand.
The article tells me absolutely nothing of any import.
I want the 20 seconds of my life I wasted reading the article back!!
Yeeha! Good news from Queensland. The toxic little imitation of a man, Campbell Bjelke-Newman, has gone. Now I’m hoping for a reconstituted Crime and Misconduct Commission to put a few of the corrupt inbreds in prison.
that is an astonishing turn-around..
..i think labour were down to about 7-9 mp’s after the last election..
..where they were whupped for promising not to sell-assets..
..and then selling assets..
..(much like key is doing here with state houses..and whatever upcoming/still-secret nasty-surprises he has lined up..)
..labour have again promised not to sell-assets..
..and they will likely keep their word this time..
That and reversing newmans gutting of the party donations legislation Anna Bligh rolled out so they could do as has been done here.
Unlike here Newman couldn’t own the MSM and had the bad luck / karma of getting on the wrong side of Alan jones over a mine in his home area. Jonesy paid out on him big time.
That and the perception that Campbell comes across as an arrogant bullying establishment twat.
Jones works in NSW. The LNP does pretty much run the Queensland media. The Courier Mail, Brisbane’s only daily, is a piece of Murdoch trash. It makes Whalespew look balanced.
Jones was raised in Acland, west of Brisbane where a coal mine expansion isn’t everyone’s cup of tea.
Yes he works in Sydney, most of the top shock jocks do but they treasure their Aussie battler image, good for the ratings etc and Newman went up against that.
A return to work thanks to the pain relief effects of Cannabis, here in NZ, cost savings abound.
http://yournz.org/2015/01/31/medicinal-cannabis-and-the-return-to-work/
Alternate address
https://mmj4chronicpain.wordpress.com/2015/02/01/medicinal-cannabis-and-the-return-to-work/
as you are a running-dog/fellow-traveller with the beige-one..
..r u able to confirm 4 us the beige safari-jacket/perma-press polyester-trousers/ elastic-sided ‘loafers’ rumours..?
That’s such a great write up Shane, thanks. Her story covers so many important points, esp about the failures of legal meds and the problems when medical staff get stuck in their prejudices about pain syndromes. Very good to hear the success too, and the details on how she figured out what to do.
btw, your blog is looking good. Nice layout, uncluttered, easy to read and access, all of which is important for people in pain. The only thing I’d suggest is changing the header texts to a dark colour as the white is hard to read.
heh..!..and there is some more of that passive-aggression..g.p.-style..
.’cos..y’see..that weka has done nothing but serially-sneer at my efforts/postings in support of medical-cannabis..
..and then you come along..and she falls over herself in her fawning…
..v.funny..!
..and so so obvious..it sticks out like a vegan at a green party bbq…
Hang on, did you just say that I’m having a go at you by commenting positively to someone else when you’re not even in the conversation??
I’ve not serially sneered at your efforts/postings on dak. I’ve said I can’t read your comments because you insist on posting illiterately. Apart from you being pro-cannabis, I don’t actually know much about your position.
You’ve done this before phil, confused my critiques of your position on veganism with my non-critiques of your views on cannabis. I suggest from now on you link to show what you are talking about, otherwise I’ll just be telling you to fuck right off.
oh..!..i must have missed yr fawning-support for all the med-pot pieces i have posted..
..my bad..!
Did you read what Weka said, Phil? Make any attempt to understand it?
did you miss my point..?..(selective-fawning..)
..(the ‘point’ that still stands..)
“..Make any attempt to understand it?..”
Like Weka, I find your comments unreadable.
However, in this case, I think the spectacle of a grown man whining that someone else is getting attention is a little…Petty, to say the least.
that’s ‘petey’..
..and no..’whine’-free..i am laughing @ the inconsistancies/blatant-biases/passive-aggression of the weka..
..i really couldn’t give a fuck..otherwise..
..and that wd also go for yr also being ‘unable to read’..
..go and stand in the corner..next to her…
..share yr ignorance..
😆
Keep telling yourself that Phil.
yr..right..!..
..i really just want weka/you to love me..!
..i lie awake at nite – tossing and turning..(that’s ‘toss’ in its’ rolling-over meaning..but not always..)
..sob..!
..heh..!
..you’ll get comedian-of-the-day – if yr not careful..
“.i really couldn’t give a fuck”
funny you’re making plenty of comments like you actually do give a fuck – you know, often the trailblazer doesn’t get the recognition they covert but that doesn’t mean the contribution wasn’t valuable
interesting/amusing typo..
..and arguing for med-pot in the 60’s might have been ‘trailblazing’..
..hardly now..
..and i am pointing out a knowledge-asset to a (welcomed) new campaigner in that cause..
..who seem to believe i have done ten yrs of bong-reviews..
..and that his ‘rational’-arguments will be like a tsunami in a desert..(more than a whiff of hubris there/in that..)
..and when general-polling shows 87% of new zealanders favour ending prohibition..
..is he targeting that recalcitrant 13% of right/left-wingers/non-thinkers..?
..to my mind the arguments have been made/won..
..it is the politicians who are the problem..
..not the proving/arguing of the ‘rational’ evidence..
no typo 🙂
but seriously – what’s the point?
ahh I see you added the point – seems a bit more to it than that but whatever
phil,
I DON’T READ YOUR POSTS ON YOUR BLOG, OR 95% OF YOUR COMMENTS ON TS.
Grow the fuck up.
shouting won’t help weka..u know that…
(what was that ‘boom!’-sound..?
..was that the sound of an exploding weka..?..)
“..I’ve said I can’t read your comment..”
..yet..u seem to be able to..
..does someone translate 4 u..?
ok, fine. You’re in full out trole mode, happy to treat you as such.
translator present then..?
I know your supportive Phil, my POV is from the middle using rational arguments, I haven’t read your work, but If you are a sufferer yourself, you may not be looking at things from the other side of the fence? this post was to appeal to Tory concerns of cost etc, one less person a sickness benny, but there are many more like her.
yes..that is one of many facets i cover/have covered..
..I don’t just do bong-reviews..in fact i have never done a bong-review..
..what i have done is cached ten yrs worth of material/evidence in support of that cause..
..maybe you need to read not so much /’my work’..
..but the small mountain of evidence from others..
..that i have collected/collated/cached..
http://whoar.co.nz/?s=medical+marijuana+cannabis
(and i don’t wanna go all sub-editor on you..
..but i wd tweak the end of yr intro..
(in my ‘teaser’ i inserted another word..did the edit for you..)
(and we are all ‘sufferers’..it’s the human-condition..)
thanks, will keep that as a bookmark to go through, thanks for the repost. (I assume it was you)
thanks, will keep that as a bookmark to go through, thanks for the repost. (I assume it was you)
Get over yourself, FFS. There was no passive aggression in weka’s comment. There was in your one about PG’s clothing. You should just be happy that someone is pushing something that you agree with. Try it.
yeah I know, unpaid one wont let me change the color, 🙁
that’s a bit harsh on petey..!
..does he insist on pastels..?
No, on the alternative site of my own, using the free wordpress schemes, the white text header doesnt go so well on on the light green leaves.
whoar..!..yes..i did know what u meant..
..r u aware of the rightwing s.o.h-byepass syndrome..?
..do you recognise the symptoms..?
SOH byepass, stop speaking in riddles! out with it! 🙂
sense-of-humour.
bummer. WordPress went more towards paid in recent years. You used to be able to get themes with lots of control for free. The theme you are using is very nice otherwise though.
‘should i break out the doilies..?..cup of tea..?..’
How about a nice cold cup of sour grapes? 😆
..sounds good..i like the bitter/tart..
Jesus phil, if you’re trying to convince us that you really don’t care about weka paying someone else positive attention you’re going about it all wrong.
r u seriously saying u cannot see the incongruities i highlighted..?
..the sneer/fawn-contrast..(and weka suddenly finding an inner pot-warrior..?..whoar..!..colour me pot-surprised..!)
..i actually find it filed under ‘funny’..
..along with being ‘unable to read comments’..but seeming able to do so..
..when it is so desired..
..no amusing-pattern available there 4 u..?
..nothing of any note..?
Unreadable prose
Or unread erudition
Meh I scroll along
Last time phil did this, in the Spring, it was the claim that while he was on his ban I’d “pumped out yr (un-cited/footnoted) prohibitionist/anti-pot bullshit while i wasn’t here”.
I tried to point out that wasn’t true and eventually posted this comment, which is a search engine result for the time period in question, of weka +cannabis. The results show that I am pro-use and pro-decriminalisation (which I am).
http://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-24112014/#comment-930382
What I didn’t say in that thread was that while phil was on his ban I posted some critical comments about vegan diets when they are presented as the one true way for all humans (I would link but the search still doesn’t go back past 35 pages. 35 pages of phil’s comments only takes us back to the end of Dec).
I think phil has gotten confused between his two pet projects and is now set in his head that I am anti-pot. I’m not even anti-vegan except where it’s presented as the one true way or as a quick fix for CC/the environment.
Phil, I haven’t said I can’t read your comments, I’ve said they are difficult for me to read so I don’t usually bother. Please don’t distort what I say. It’s starting to look like you are making up another lie about me.
Now, unless you can link to back up your assertions about me, I’m just going to keep linking back to this comment and the link above to demonstrated what you are more than happy to tell lies about someone even when you’ve been proven wrong (twice).
“..35 pages of phil’s comments only takes us back to the end of Dec)…”
bloody hell..!
Categorising weka’s response as “fawning” because she gives a few simple compliments on a new blogger’s work is a sad little tactic.
You have outright lied about weka’s past behaviour and comments in order to fabricate a “pattern” to justify your harassment.
I’m also in the club of people who, 95% of the time, scroll past anything you say because it’s rarely worth the effort of interpretation. But when I see you having a personal go at someone just because they liked someone else’s work and didn’t kiss your ass sufficiently to your liking, I make the effort.
power-imbalance kicks in again…eh..?
..and stills my tongue..
..i wd like to draw this exchange to a close..
Ah, so we should all read what you want, discuss what you want, and cease discussion when you want.
Who are you, Louis XIV? 🙄
“power-imbalance kicks in again…eh..?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKNxeF4KMsY
um..!..no..
..more a fear of banning..
..what about ‘power imbalance’ do u not understand..?
..you really do have the intelligence of a broom-handle..
..don’t you..?
“..more a fear of banning..”
Which buys your silence, which makes you a coward, which proves me right, which trumps your faux intellectualism.
Question:
Does NZ still have some sort of press club – as in 4th Estate?
Back in the 70’s there used to be a primitive sort of thing in Hobson Street where various journalists went to get pissed as newts – even then nothing like the Australian Press Club that provides a venue where journalists and jonolists can have politicians give speeches and call them to account.
Oh there’s a club alright, but not as you’ve described it.
A long list of media hacks in club national too.
Henry, hoskings, Sabin, Simpson, young, hide etc as one subset of them with public declarations of support for national and or family connections before we start on the ones who play the impartial commenter role.
All that and DP thrown in for good measure, relentlessness and effective is what it has grown into while the sheeple graze on gazing at their house values thinking all is well in my world.
as I imagined then. One where they all go to get pissed and feed off each others egos. Where is it? The TVNZ caf, or Backbenches, or Mermaid’s possibly? Or maybe Barry and Heather’s basement?
They rotate venues think it’s Hoskings or Smiths, correction it’s a BBQ on the back lawn at Garner and boyfriend Gowers place.
“Shoot him in the back of the head.”
The BBC’s comedy crisis is now more than just a sick joke.
Since it was effectively spavined following its brief deviation into the reporting of facts that exposed government crimes in 2003 [1], the BBC has turned into nothing much more than the propaganda arm of the British government. In the rare event that a dissident, no matter how brilliant and respected, appears on a show like HARDtalk, he or she is almost inevitably hectored and ceaselessly interrupted, [2] in stark contrast to the virtually open forum accorded the continual stream of paid government, corporate and military spokespeople who appear.
The BBC has moved to censor, curb and/or ban its own “unacceptable” and critical voices too: clever and thoughtful talents like Frankie Boyle are systematically excluded from its increasingly anodyne comedy panel shows. Even the hilarious—and nonpolitical—Jack Dee was recently in danger of being censored by the mediocracy in charge of the modern BBC, [3] while crude, racist, unfunny but government-friendly louts like Jeremy Clarkson are indulged repeatedly. [4]
And now the BBC, which has given the world such immortal comedy-writing teams as Galton and Simpson, Croft and Perry, Esmonde and Larbey, Jay and Lynn, Clement and La Frenais, Curtis and Atkinson—to name only a few at random from a stratosphere of brilliance—has commissioned a team of “comedy” writers to make light of the British government’s persecution of the dissident journalist Julian Assange. I say “make light of” advisedly, because in case anyone harboured any lingering hope that the BBC might extend even a hint of fair treatment to Cabinet Enemy No. 1, consider this grim fact: the writer of this new “comedy” once called for the police to publicly shoot the Wikileaks founder in the head.
The Corporation’s comedy crisis, which was already painfully obvious, is now an unmitigated embarrassment. We are now accepting from the BBC the kind of anti-dissident ridicule that spewed out of Moscow in the 1930s and ’40s, and out of Peking in the 1960s and 70s. I would not be surprised at all to see some vicious moron like A.A. Gill appear on a special broadcast some time soon and start ranting from his prepared script: “It is our aim to expose and criticize the ways in which the political swindler Julian Assange made use of reactionary trends and reactionary schools of thought to attack the proletariat, so that we can fight more effectively against such swindlers.”
And they say the AMERICANS have no sense of irony…
Fury over BBC writer’s ‘kill Assange’ tweet
Chortle, 30 January 2015
The writer of the BBC’s new comedy inspired by Julian Assange once called for the police to publicly shoot the Wikileaks founder in the head.
Supporters of Assange say tweets Thom Phipps posted about him were ‘shocking’ and ‘dangerous’ – and make him unfit to write about the issue. BBC Four’s new three-part sitcom Asylum is inspired by the controversial figure’s enforced stay in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. He took refuge there in June 2012 to escape extradition to Sweden on sexual assault charges, which he fears will pave the way for him to be sent to the US to face an espionage trial.
Two months after Assange was given political asylum, Phipps posted: ‘If the met [police] want to regain my trust they should drag Assange out the embassy + shoot him in the back of th head in the middle of traf square.’ Phipps now says: ‘It was something I tweeted over two years ago and it was clearly a joke.’
However, backers of Assange took the issue more seriously, and have complained to the BBC over its ‘shameful’ decision to employ Phipps. One of them, Emmy Butlin, said Phipps ‘advocated for the public extrajudicial assassination’ of the Wikileaks founder and queried why the corporation would ’employ someone with extreme views’ to write the comedy.
She is also angry that the show is to air as part of the BBC’s Taking Liberties season to mark the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta, saying: ‘Mr Phipps has called for Mr Assange’s assassination, going against the most fundamental principals.’
On her blog she also highlighted another tweet Phipps made in 2012, saying: ‘its cool to imagine assange as a spartacus figure cuz that means he’s going to be forcibly nailed to a piece of wood at one point.’
Another blog, Domestic Empire, complained that the ‘writer chosen to write Assange-inspired comedy advocates murder over democratic free speech’.
Butlin complained to the Corporation saying: ‘I find it offensive that Mr Phipps who has publicly incited violence and propagated the murder of Mr Assange, has been employed by the BBC’ and calling for action…..
Read more….
http://www.chortle.co.uk/news/2015/01/30/21744/fury_over_bbc_writers_kill_assange_tweet
[1] http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2004/07/butl-j16.html
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B00qgKnz-uU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNAKWF1uQ08
[3] http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2014/jun/20/jack-dee-threatens-to-leave-im-sorry-i-havent-a-clue
[4] http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/lostinshowbiz/2011/sep/15/day-the-festival-dream-died
Morrisey, I can’t tell if those are your words or someone elses. Didn’t we have this conversation?
Sorry, weka. My words are the first four paragraphs, and then I cite the article from Chortle. Maybe I should just give the link in future after my preamble.
You obviously know how to use html tags. Is there some reason you won’t use blockquotes? Or italics?
Actually, I don’t know how to do the blockquotes technique. I don’t use italics except for emphasis and titles.
What do you have to mark up to get blockquotes?
Instead of bold /bold write blockquote /blockquote
http://thestandard.org.nz/faq/#simple_tags
Most people on ts are using either blockquote or italics to quote, or if it’s very short, “double quotes”. It’s a kind of informal house style. Not saying you have to use these, you may find another way, but it’s that same thing of making comments accessible and respecting the readers enough to make it clear what you are saying, and what is something else’s words (that’s respect for the other writers too).
Thanks very much! You’re a big help.
Cool. I just had to edit that because it kept reverting my examples to html, so hope it’s clearer now.
Interesting to see the way Frankie Boyle’s been given the cold shoulder over the last couple of years.
He is especially impressive and thoughtful in the following interview, in spite of the irritating interviewer….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MRz9RPlsDQ
Short but crucial reading for anyone wanting to understand more about the role of women in Islam in the US context. I think there are also things here for the West to learn about the value of gender specific spaces, and how culture affects that.
http://touch.latimes.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-82686764/
National Party values on display again.
Yep. According to David Seymour, it seems perversion is the point at which a teacher becomes unsuitable.
Any other dodgy behaviour?
In fine ACT tradition, no worries.
David Seymour is reported as saying “The worst thing I could do is to prejudge it if there isn’t anything perverse,”
So he was saying perversion is the point at which they can be prejudged, which might be unwelcome news by any who have been falsely accused of a crime.
good laugh for a Sun morning.
http://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/richard-dawkins-reads-hate-mail-fans
Is weka the most bat shit crazy contributor on this site
Discussion
[r0b: I will let this comment through, but I strongly suggest not feeding the troll]
no..
..t.s. has the likes of wayne-the-warmonger..and missry-guts…
..u also step up sometimes..eh..?
..with yr ‘batshit-crazy’ rightwing ideas..
..eh..?
Nope, the most bat shit crazy contributor is Draco “lets smash comets and dwarf planets into Mars to make it more habitable” T Bastard.
It’d make a good movie, but I’m afraid science fiction ain’t gonna save this civilisation.
weka os one the most sane, actually I can’t think of anyone here I’d call ‘bat shit crazy’.
Worst tr0ll: Gosman, srylands
Worst waste of time: Pete George
Worst writing style / most pointless arguments: Phil Ure
Agreed fully, except fisiani gets a special commendation for being the closest to being a trousered ape.
How can you be sure that he wears trousers while commenting on The Standard?
i always thought he had fins and a fish tail
Not even close. Have a look at a couple of comments from one contributor:
“Global warming was made up by the Masons, was it not.”
“Proud to be a bigot, […] call me a bigot, I don’t care.”
yeah..that’s pretty ‘woof!..woof!’..
Not by a long shot. I’d say you’d be a better candidate for that title.
Murdoch on the differences between Norman’s resignation and Sabin’s (also GP leadership and National).
https://twitter.com/domesticanimal/status/561632145433559042
Past and Present
http://thebilzerianreport.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/past-present.gif
This battleground between indigenous people and projects designed to maintain the extravagant western lifestyles is HOT and will continue to heat up.
http://whoaremypeople.com/
What price progress? Who pays that price?
This.
It’s why the whole green tech as saviour thing is just wrong, because it keeps us in the same belief systems, value systems and behaviours as what got us in this mess in the first place. It won’t solve CC, and even if it did we would still fuck up all the other things that are consequences of humans ruling the world.
Am I missing something or is John Roughan actually saying something quite on to it here?
http://m.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=11394288
see first comment in yesterdays’ o.m..
I find this:
“Since the reforms of the 80s, New Zealand has enjoyed low inflation and economic growth that has enabled wages to rise more than prices, increasing the national living standard.”
Hard to square with this:
“child … poverty rate in recent years has been around 25%; this is almost twice the rate experienced during the 1980s, which averaged about 13%” (Perry 2012, 124)
How so? Isn’t that the discrepancy between beneficiaries and wager earners, with child poverty being weighted into the beneficiary group? I would expect the increase in standard of living just means some people are doing way better and others are doing worse ie they’re not using a very subtle measuring tool.
I imagine he is technically correct, and the average standard of living has increased.
Real shame that during that time the percentage of children in poverty has nearly doubled.
Might be worth seeing if the median standard of living has increased.
Well he is of the class that has done very well out of the 80s reforms, so I expect he is blind, probable willfully blind, to the numbers of people that haven’t done well.
I don’t know how they measure standard of living. Hopefully a boffin will post.
The child poverty increased with the Richardson black budget which slashed beneficiary rates – and these have never been increased back to the level they were at during the 1980s.
Let’s all ignore climate change.
“Why the Keystone XL Will Be Built”
by DR. KENT MOORS | published January 30th, 2015
“So far, the biggest hurdle has been the environmental concerns.”
Wrong!
By far, the biggest hurdle has been concerns about climate change.
Why climate change is not an environmental issue
lol
Plot idea: 97% of the world’s scientists contrive an environmental crisis, but are exposed by a plucky band of billionaires & oil companies.
https://twitter.com/scottwesterfeld/status/446805144781348865
Fonterra lurching from crisis to farce and all points in between.
sounds sticky.
David Cunliffe on Facebook.
I for one hope that means scrapping the student loan scheme is on the table.
It’s time NZ started following international best practice, by making education free, rather than continuing to unthinkingly follow failed ideology. This applies to other policies too.
Be nice to see Labour wake up from its market fundamentalist stupor.
TV3 poll out tonight. Oh well. Never mind.
I wonder if they are going to announce Gerry Brownlee comes out in support of his mini me national list MP to seek the party nomination to contest the candidacy and become the next Northland MP. This comes after he failed to beat Shane Reti for the Whangarei candidacy. Brownlee is rumoured to be heading to Waitangi in an attempt to secure the nod for his mini me from party members.
Apparently Gerrys errant boy has contacted the head chef at the Copthorpe hotel Waitangi and will be forwarding Gerrys dietary requests, including his favorite pork pie recipe.
is that the one where he gets served the whole pig on a platter..?
..with some pastry on the sides..?
Close Phil.
The whole 200kg pig is spit roasted and then pastry wrapped and glazed. The newbie MP’s get briefed not to get too close to Brownlee whilst eating his pork pie. Appears Gerry is well known for lashing out at the trough, guess you just have to look at Nic Smiths scarred face as proof.
does anyone know how long nic smith has been a gurner..?
..it is one of the highlights of commentating on q-time..
..smith somewhere in shot..
..gurning his little head off..
Rumor has it Gerry prefers whale blubber.
what is it with the young people of today..?
..that lorde..and that ko…
..are they trying to make the rest of us feel inadequate..?
..or something..?
Girls to we’ll have to left our game us blokes.
Kiwi boys are doing much worse in school and university numbers these days, not that anyone cares enough to take affirmative action.
well, that went downhill quickly.
From young people are awesome to the men’s rights brigade in three short comments.
Like I said, few people give a shit.
That’s not actually true.
It’s just that few people are so obsessed with whinging that they push that particular barrow at the slightest (and yes, it was very slight) excuse.
Shit I was having a joke didn’t work obviously.
Depends on the audience.
I thought it was pretty reasonable.
And (sadly) one of the few times I could both understand and agree with ure, the thread gets zonked by someone who can’t just feel happy about recognising the success of others without turning it into a whinge-fest.
that battle is well lost..
..tho’ lord did have little-the-ditty-maker..
..and ko did have that bloke-coach for all of those development yrs..
Just watched TV3 news & Gower was showing his bias & arse licking towards Key & was blatantly putting the knife into Andrew Little, while reporting on the latest poll. Every time I see Gower or hear his voice it makes me want to puke.
I wondered how long it would take Gower to put the knife in to Andrew Little.
Looks like Dirty Politics part 2 has begun
Do you remember the poll numbers?
I think it was 49% national & 28% labour.
– National 49.8% (up 2,8)
– Labour 29.1% (up 4.0)
– Greens 9.3% (down 1,4)
– NZ First 6.9% (down 1.9)
– Conservatives 2.7% (down 1.3)
– Maori Party 1.3% (no change)
– Internet Mana 0.6% (down 0.8)
– ACT 0.4% (down 0.3)
– United Future 0% (down 0.2)
More details: http://yournz.org/2015/02/01/3-news-poll-first-for-2015/
NAT – 49.8% –
LAB – 29.1 –
GRN – 9.3
NZf – 6.9
CON 2.7
MAO- 1.3%
INT-MANA 0.6
ACT – 0.4%
UF – 0
National really high and Labour cannabilising the Left
It will be interesting to see if you’re still crowing here in 2016
Awwww, Fisi, Fisi, Fisi, why must we go through this charade every single time ?
Reality:
Labour cannibalising the Left, National cannibalising the Right.
National would have drawn its gains from the Cons and NZF. Labour would have made its gains from the Greens, NZF and IMP. Internet-Mana is pretty much dead (although I wouldn’t rule out Harawira making a successful run in 2017).
NZF is the big loser in this poll. As Little continues to build his profile, he should start pulling some soft National supporters too as the year progresses.
I also think international trends will play into 2017. We ‘re looking at a single-term LNP government in Australia and in the UK Labour are enjoying a narrow lead (with the further spoiler of UKIP likely to split the Tory vote in this year’s election). Our electoral outlook may synch up with the rest of the Anglosphere.
Yes the Tories have wreacked havoc in the UK, Cameron and his cronies will be sent packing as will idiot Abbott in OZ.
Which makes things a lot easier here. Little is smart enough to either get the Left leaders out here or get on a plane and go on a visit to strengthen relationships. Key should get the cold shoulder from them.
New Zealander’s are sheep and if the slogan ‘time for a change’ is repeated often enough they will duly oblige by voting the Nats out. The odds are Key will hand over the leadership once the worm really turns. Sabin’s hurried exit is the start of a bad year for Key and it will get worst I’m picking.
I just hope you are right.
I am worried the government will press ahead with the TPP, charter schools, destroying the RMA, and privatising health and housing further.
Key is desperate to comply with instructions from America to get the TPPA signed and our fate sealed, the EMA is all part and parcel. The Maori-Tory party should ethically cross the house as the TPPA & RMA reforms will lead to bad outcomes for Maori in particular.
Anyway the last anti TPPA rallies were well attended, I can see huge crowds at the next round.
fisi..never mind a silly poll..
..isn’t it exciting what has happened in greece..?
..and is about to also happen in spaim/portugal/scotland..and likely ireland..
..in the fairly near future..
..the destruction of the neo-lib paradigm..?..(i do so like writing those words..)
..isn’t it exciting..?
..and given yr political-analysis skills..
..how much contagion d’ya reckon will have seeped down here by ’17..?
..and how about that labour in that queensland..eh..?
..from 7 mp’s to ruling..now that is a landslide on steroids..
..are you at all fretting about these outbreaks of lefty-looniness all over the place..?
..if u aren’t..u r seriously in denial..eh..?
..and for us..happier days soon..eh..?
Every second typing messages to fisi and his ilk is a second of your life wasted.
nah..!..he is just a foil..
..a blank sheet upon which to write..
Abbot s called a emergency cabinet meeting wonder if he’s going to quit.
Cheers fellas.
If only our opposition politicians dealt with our media the way Greece’s New Finance Minister handles a Newsnight Interview.
Greece’s new finance minister Yanis Varoufakis interviewed on 30 January 2015 on BBC’s Newsnight.
“As a fan of the BBC, I must say I was appalled by the depths of inaccuracy in the reporting underpinning this interview (not to mention the presenter’s considerable rudeness).Still, and despite the cold wind on that balcony, it was fun!” – Yanis Varoufakis
Full interview here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiIO4YciewU