T 1
To the simple minded everybody who looks differently from what observers are used to are freaks who and it is OK to stare at them, point at them, draw other’s attention to them, let their children make loud comments about them etc. So this fits within this reaction from those who have never understood that they fill just one niche in society. It’s just not men looking at women, or vice versa, there are those who scan their surroundings at all times with a judgmental glance looking for anomalies from their approved normality. Disabled people know well about this reaction.
And it could be regarded as a political matter. There was a saying that the personal is political. If the leaders and controllers of a country decide to control some reasonable personal behaviour, it becomes political. Smoking bans are political, and how they wide they are also, criminalising drugs is political, allowing hate speech and extended harrassment is political if it is sanctioned or ignored by authorities, bullying at school is a political matter, and the desire of authorities not to be responsible for upholding standards with reasonable tolerance for all is political.
We forfeit three-fourth of ourselves to be like other people.
-Schopenhauer
(now, regrettably, many of the admirable academy were virulent anti-semitics)
there are two sides to every euro
-Pan (the earlier renaissance man)
The safest general characterisation of the (Great) European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato (an unhelpful universalist as history records)
I was driving north with the SO last Saturday morning listening to Ms Hill talking to Mary Anne Franks about the troubling treatment of women on the WWW. The SO, who’s a particularly busy person with little time to piss around with the WWW, was appalled and doubly so when I cited the numerous instances I’ve seen of women being trolled on-line. Well worth the listen.
Everyone knows that when you have an under performing team the first place you look is to the leader of that team, But not Shearer he will just tinker according to his instructions.
But it’s not. Internal politiking is the determining factor.
So, as reflected in the bias of that stuff piece, promote those who are loyal to the deadwood faction – even though it’s an increasingly decayed irrelevance that has been rotting down since the 80’s. And cast doubts on those who espouse views in tune with core and traditional Social Democratic Labour Party values.
Shearer says, “I’m certainly looking at where we can improve”. Clearly he avoids the mirror! He and Key are alike in that they are Captains who cast blame for shipwrecks on the crew. I never thought I would find myself looking back on “the good old days of Goff”!
Robertson is a forceful speaker, Cunliffe combines skills in oratory with high intelligence. Oh, what does it take?
Just been watching Grant Robertson on TV3, don’t ask me what he was saying , because I was way too busy trying to work out who threw his clothes at him His tie is lined under his right eye. Now me I am a Jeans and Tea Shirt guy But if I have to wear a tie (do I own one Hmmm) at least I would make sure it’s straight, to say nothing about being on National Television. If you have to wear a suit and tie, at least make sure you don’t look like you just threw on the first thing that came to hand.
Labour is just looking more and more used, second hand, out of date.
That’s what you get when the same strategy and team that lead you to defeat in 08 and 11 are still calling the shots…quack quack. No Goff on the election billboards was a stupid move IMO as he rattled Johnny sparkles in the debates yet there was no image association on each labour billboard for some consistency.
Fresh thinking via new blood is required, DS doesn’t have to go but the messaging is woeful and media training is desperately needed to keep our shonky MSM from parroting the CT/NACT spin lines .
GR has his moments but media training teaches you it’s the bad ones that often outweigh all the good ones so you gotta be on your game and nail every chance.
Is anyone else a little uncomfortable that the host of Backbenchers is now seemingly pimping for a corporate’s greenwash TV campaign? I mean, that particular company still use palm oil in everything BUT their ‘most popular’ NZ product, right?
they talked about it on tv3s the nation.im personally appalled, & now hes on radiolive in the mornings…gotta pay them bills. cadburys is what hes advertising.
Cadbury’s switched back after the outcry and have never recovered their market position. It came at the same time as they moved some production to Australia and made block sizes smaller – perfect storm to stick in people’s memories. If they’d done each change 12 months apart it probably would have been fine.
Lanthanide
I read no chocolate company in NZ and was shocked . So I grabbed a wrapper of my recent peanut slab and ..it’s imported by Singapore: Lucas Foods (Asia) Pte Ltd. 160
Paya Lebar Road. Quite an appropriate address. So Le Bar has gone from NZ as all good things seem to do.
I guess the answer is to buy local from the premises where things are made and make sure that some of our money manages to go and stay into the pocket of a resident working here and paying tax here. Please look round for a local you can support. I try and break myself of the supermarket habit and go to the Green Grocer in Tasman Street, Nelson where you can buy biogro products.
We had a Buy New Zealand programme when Labour was in. How successful was that? How easily can it be started and does it need volunteer promoters in each town and suburb saying which products are made locally and selling their good points?
Actually I think you’ll find they only changed ‘Dairy Milk’ and continue to use palm oil in most of their other products.
” There remains some of our chocolate blocks – those containing inclusions, caramels, creams and/or wafers – where we are currently unable to make the product without the inclusion of a small quantity of palm oil. ”
(Source: Cadbury website)
Ok, but was that always the case? They may have been using palm oil in those products all along. I suspect also the direct reference to ‘inclusions’ etc is because the palm oil is in those parts, not the actual chocolate itself.
The outcry was because they replaced cocoa butter – one of the main ingredients in chocolate, with palm oil. The fact that they may still use palm oil in their products is rather immaterial to the point that they went back to using cocoa butter.
Failing the writing standards.
Now to all those worried parents out there who want to know if their children are meeting the writing standard, do you know what the question is?
For your information, there are several different genre.
Your children might be able to write a coherent “persuasive” piece but be crap at a narrative.
Are you expecting the schooling system to make your children best selling authors or be able to write letters to their MP. Truth is you probably don’t really care, as long as they can spell, punctuate, and order their thoughts.
Then the difficulty of choosing quality:
A. The cat sat on the mat. (Simple,clear, error free.)
B. The cat was so anry her tale twiched her eyes glowd like dagers (4 spelling errors, 3 full stops missing.)
C. The big black friendly cat sat on the colourful red fluffy mat. (error free.)
Now which is a pass for a 7 year old child? So many variables.
I met an Australian teacher a few years ago who was tasked with moderating Primary School Writing across Australia. She said that she was exhausted after 6 months because none of the teachers could agree with just what good writing was. Some teachers, she said, were so cross that they said that they would get the children to write in short sentences with no word longer than one syllable and thus could not be found to make any errors.
As opposed to their current efforts to get writers to choose just the right word for the writing depending on the designated audience, the right genre, and constantly stretching out for new challenges.
Stuff that.
BLASPHEMY. And it’s not “dead poets”, Draco, it’s a very specific dead poet, because what good is reading Aristophanes or Chaucer or Pope or Swift (and if you insist on Kiwi examples, Baxter) unless you’ve also been forced at gunpoint to write an essay on Romeo & Juliet?
(My examples are limited to certain periods of literature, I know, but guess what English lit papers I did at uni?)
No Lord of the Rings, Return of the King, all the jobs, all the academy awards, or indeed the whole revived film industry within The Hobbit. Just in case learning Scandinavian, Germanic, and Middle English were no economic use, mid-brow, lowbrow, or high. Buckle in you non-dead-poets-society people.
QoT, I was so forced, willingly. The highlight of my trip to Perth WA was to see Romeo and Juliet performed outdoors after a picnic tea on the grass, especially when Juliet came out onto the balcony and commented on the moon rising over the trees.
And it BLOODY WAS!
The Kookaburras in the first act, however, were a little whatever the geographical/auditory equivalent of anachronistic is.
I’m looking at thought and imagination showing in the sentence and like B. I believe that teachers and education professionals think that the Nat Standards will result in concentrating teaching on A. That would produce neat and tidy and limited thinkers. Just like what we have now (is that good grammar but do you still understand my meaning?) It seems that Nat Standards are actually tests for teachers and schools, not children. It certainly doesn’t support teachers in their difficult job, and doesn’t support children gain the type of education that we need in the fraught 21st century.
The education method then in fashion seemed to lack steps for new readers when my children were young. I was always keen to see them reading well, and I encouraged them to break down new big words into syllables and then tackle the whole thing rather than shrink from coping with large words as a whole in the teachers desire to encourage word recognition. My way helped and they read successfully, and can now read Nietzsche and understand it.
Giving the latest education medicine to all isn’t bound to get good results, first the medicine might be bad or fake, and second because we are dealing with individuals both wonderful and diverse. Only despotic Sauron specifies One Ring (or education method) for all.
Kiwirail has decided to mothball the Gisborne Napier line. The NZ Roading Transport agency is going to upgrade the road between the two cities so that that the bigger voluble of tucks resulting from the rail closure will have better roads to wreck. Sheer lunacy.
The Gisborne area needs to have good roads for access to and from the district, PLUS a railway to take the heavy lifting. They had just gained large containers and I understand were able to be transported over the narrow points on the line.
So Gisborne rail doesn’t pay by $2.4 million annnually. So why should the cost not be carried for a period because of being a remote area, (from the north-south main routes). How can the regions realise their full enterprise potential without guaranteed infrastructure and reliable transport extending into the future. Peak oil has come, fuel will get dearer and scarcer. Apparently these twerps in power can’t think beyond one or two electoral cycles.
They will disappear overnight and some scrap metal agent will melt it down and some hard up husband wilL put food on the table for his family. And Collins will rage about about how she is going to take a tough stance on rail,line thieves by crushing their cars into scrapmetal.
Apparently these twerps in power can’t think beyond one or two electoral cycles.
Actually, they can’t think beyond increasing profits for their backers which, in this case, would be the Roading Transport Lobby (or whatever it’s called).
The way energy driven economic decline is likely to work is not only the cost of petrol continue to edge up over time, but people’s incomes available to buy it will also be declining all the same while. Its a double whammy.
kjt
Don’t worry about that, we have found oil and gas deposits and be able to drill into the sea here and there. No worries mate.
The Rena hasn’t taught us anything about the cost and destruction of habitat, fauna and flora, and how we people would have to bear cost for cleaning up. The Rena is still costing us $20 million as well as the spending by the owners, and have they paid up everyone yet? and is that just what’s been spent already and is there enough for the other needed work??
Also the oil disaster in the Gulf, also the Exxon disaster where there were agreements about ready clean up units, officials meant to be checking, laws and careful politicians to ensure that all was well, all missing by the time it happened. The problem was that it took too long for the oil to spill from the start of piping it off – a generation. It seems that human beings ability to take care, be ready for disasters etc can’t last for say more than a couple of years beyond a decade.
Heartfelt promises today, written into law tomorrow, buried under further laws and matey relationships with baubles involved between supervisory bodies and corporates and what do you get!! Guess. It would happen here just the same, so some oil spills are inevitable. The only thing that might save us would be if the oil ran out quickly before the alert and keen instigators were overtaken by a bunch of hearty red neck contractors looking for the fastest way to do the littlest amount under their set price contracts.
jkey at Post Cabinet Press Conference on comments by Winnie P. regarding trip to lala land.”I am interested in jobs,not people who live in Fantasyland and want to Make Things Up” He should look in the mirror or do they not have them on Planet Key.Ha Ha Bonk.Laughed my head off at the irony!!!
Chester Borrows is against paper based use in the justice system. The changes he is proposing are swingeing. They would result in secret shady transactions that don’t get the publicity that is needed for exposing and proving malfeasance by the wealthy, and for the poor the same disgraceful, shoddy and burdensome approach from government to handle their requirements that we have seen in Housing NZ will further deny them to access to a fair justice system with even less legal aid and services.
Justice should be done, and seen to be done. Being called to account for apparent wrongdoing should be carried out in public with paper records that can’t be transmitted worldwide, or alternatively lost unless properly backed up and stored in a millisecond. There is a place for today’s computer technology but not to replace completely the human society services that we have developed.
The darker imaginings of films and books on possible future scenarios for society are being played out in reality. These shrivelled little personalities that have got into politics, and have got into many of the top bureaucrat jobs, have no thought and care for their fellow humans and what they are creating for them. It’s all just a game of chess to them. If you are clever enough you win, and for the Secretary of Education that apparently amounts to over half a million dollars (ANNUALLY).
That’s while charitable organisations like hospice and parent support have to work continuously
to get money and pay their workers possibly the minimum and the managers get only an extra 30% if they are lucky.
Key should do well in Hollywood, for who can put on better “acts”? Probably he will spend a lot of time at Disneyland with all the kids (sorry, forgot that he does not like kids).
A member of the board wrote a letter to the Minister and the minister’s staff don’t
double check that she will be letting a rapist into the country. Sorry, did I just
wake up in a country not being run by the law and order party???? Banks not
reading what he is signing??? Hide covering for child identity theft???
Key not knowing the richest man in his electorate???? Now a minister
charging a member of some board that they were misrepresenting themselves
as speaking for the whole board.
Sometimes, despite myself, I do things that could be injurous to my health, (increased blood pressure, headaches etc) such as reading, and even participating in the comments section on Stuff.co.nz. I know that some of you also listen to talkback every now and again, also putting yourselves at risk of decreased well being. Both these activities however can illustrate to us the cognitive psychology of posters and talk back callers at work and consequently behind the election of a National Govt, not only once but twice.
If you ever felt sometimes that you are surrounded by idiots and wanted more proof of this then check out the response to the article on Stuff yesterday about Daisy the GE cow (which you also discussed on Open Mike) There are many people who haven’t even bothered to read the article before posting their opinions.
Does Stuff really not allow comments to be read in chronological order???
Anyhoo, I liked this comment –
“Not sure what your point is C.Dub. I am the parent of a young child who is both diabetic and allergic to milk.
Without insulin she would die so I don’t give a damn where the stuff comes from. GE, E Coli. dead animals, fetid dingo kidneys, pffft. You do what you have to to keep your kid alive.
If she wants milk, we give her soy or rice milk. What’s the big deal? I guess there may be a market for GE modified hypoallergenic milk but it sure as hell isn’t in my household.
It reminds me of the story (possibly apocryphal) of the Americans spending millions developing a ballpoint pen that works in space while the Russians used pencils.”
Re Stuff comment section. There is usually a button to click for ‘read first’, ie in chronological order, otherwise the most recent comments appear first. You can’t reply to a reply of an original comment. I’ve had to reply to myself in order to respond to someone regarding the topic of labelling.
I guess what has disturbed me, not only about the ongoing GE ‘allergy free milk”project, which is alarming in itself, is that the majority of comments are pro GE but none of those comments have a sound basis to them. This is the opposite to say, the early to mid 90’s when a good chunk of the population was informed about GE and fervently anti gene technology in food (and I stress food, not medicine) and there was much protest. It was a really urgent and hot issue. It feels like we have now just given in and accepted what many to believe to be inevitable, in the NZ context in regard to production and marketing. Any safe guards we have in place now will will wiped by the TPPA.
So what has changed in the population? Why do we just roll over? Are we so accustomed to spin, (eg crosby textor stylez) both social and political, that we accept what we are told?
From vague memory, almost certainly apocryphal on the pencil story, weka (at least, the “lesson” you’re meant to take from it) – pencils can break, and no one wants pointy bits of graphite floating around in zero-g.
Hi David H. I normally try to avoid getting caught up in their comment section and rarely use the site these days (preferring http://www.scoop.co.nz) but when I do, I always regret it. I have lost faith in the average NZer, to be able to be a fair and resonable person, to think for themselves, to stand up, and to stand by one another in support. (In every aspect of life, not just on stuff comments) Every time I get embroiled in a comment thread I feel a little more of me dies. Its like a cloud of doom descends when I read those retarded comments. Its talkback online really.
What chocolate shop in P’ram by the way? Must have missed that, haven’t been to the hometown for ages.
Every time I get embroiled in a comment thread I feel a little more of me dies. Its like a cloud of doom descends when I read those retarded comments. Its talkback online really.
Hi Rosie, I know exactly what you mean. I like to think that the talkback MSM crowd does not really reflect society, and mostly it doesnt. They make up the “influential” part of it in many ways, and thats what I find hard to deal with at times.
The sad part is that if they could only see or understand that they are on the chopping block too, they would not carry on the way they do. I’ve said it before, the human experiment is destined to fail, because too many have absorbed the lies they have been told, and the life they have been sold.
Don’t let it rob you of energy though (stay away from the MSM), and keep the good stuff flowing through your life.
Heard. Cheers Muzza. You’re right. Hanging back from the msm can prevent downers and help one to stay focused and positive. However, one can’t avoid dealing with FWit ears- of -cloth -environment -destroying property developers, which has been a task attended to today and is ongoing and unresolved – which further blackened the ‘loss of faith in humanity” theme going on.
Might go get a bit zen like now……….Thanks for your wisdom.
The Chocolate Factory on the corner of State Hwy 1 heading north side and Raumati rd. MMmmm they even do tours with choccy thrown in lol.
I read the MSM maybe in hope that the comments section won’t be filled with vitriol against those that are poor and down on their luck or on the DPB. But no, I get disappointed as usual at least 10 times a day. I will link to this article I found this morning as the comments section had been closed and it was just a cess pit of hatred. I just went to get the link and the comments section has been erased all gone except for 4 Typical MSM Or maybe they got complaints. But you may have seen the story. http://www.stuff.co.nz/waikato-times/news/7757971/Hamilton-women-lead-protest
If certain quarters continue to insist the NZ Labour Party model itself on the British Labour Party approach, they should check out reaction to the UKLP’s conference – Ed Miliband’s speech, especially, and note that the Brits have changed tack:
Ed Miliband made it abundantly clear that Labour will get us off the miserable path dug by this government. His speech marks the long-awaited rebirth of a radical social democracy in this country. We can now start hoping once again. In particular, working-class people can feel that the party is back on their side.
He drew a line under most of the blunders and misconceptions of the new Labour years. His “one nation” is not the triangulated, all-things-to-all-people message associated with Tony Blair. Instead he targeted the banks and Murdoch without poking at working people’s unions. The country has been waiting to hear that from a political leader since 2008 at least.
Miliband’s promise is to restore our country to its people. Decent homes and services; fairness before favours for the rich and powerful; our NHS back where it belongs, in public hands – these will make us thrive again.
Labour must speak for the public against the rampage of private interests. Speak for the people whose talents are wasted and aspirations destroyed. Shake up our banks and take back our NHS. And yes, put the burden on those with the broadest shoulders. That is the agenda set out today.
A faint heart never won a fair election. Miiband has shown he’s more than ready to do battle in 2015. This is a shot in the arm for the labour movement.
Removal of universal care is an absolutely accurate descripton of what Labour are advocating. Which can only be replaced with user pays for some segments of the population. Something I’m very surprised to learn you’re favour of TRP.
She (Scottish Labour leader Johann Lamont) notes that £57m goes on free prescriptions but ignores the costs of about £30m which would be spent administering a system to charge about 20% of people for their prescriptions.
She is wrong to say that this is about rich people getting free medicine. Depending on a person’s condition even a wealthy banker would still get free prescriptions as the old system was both means-tested and clinically-driven.
Bill, if you make disingenious attacks, expect to get called on it. I’m going to take the side of the poor and the working class in Scotland, you’re free to go with Salmond’s tartan tories and his BFF Rupert Murdoch if you want.
So if you think my comment is disingenioous, call me on it! Or is the throwing around of way off the mark labels as good as it’s going to get? Those ‘tartan tories’ as you call them are far to the left of Labour and are the one’s (to offer just one example) who have made sure tertiary education has remained free. Which is a kind of good thing for poor and working class people, no?
The BBC piece titled “Scottish Labour’s Johann Lamont attacks SNP benefits policy”?
Yup. Read it. And where did it say that Labour wasn’t attacking the idea of universal benefits? I mean, did the last para or two completely sail right on over your head? She wants to scrap free presciptions and…
The Scottish MSP’s appearance at the Labour conference comes the day after a speech by the Labour First Minister of Wales, Carwyn Jones.
He said free prescriptions would remain a commitment for Labour at the next Welsh assembly election.
Mr Jones pledged the NHS would continue to be safe under his stewardship, “holding true to Nye Bevan’s vision after six decades”.
Clearly you don’t get it. You have chosen the side Rupert Murdoch prefers. That’s surprising coming from you, but you may completely and totally ignorant about Scottish politics. It certainly appeears so.
Scotland has been forced to swallow an economic dead rat. The SNP have decided that’s appropriate tucker for the poor, the Scottish Labour party want the rich to make the sacrifice. You have chosen to back the rich in order to make a sectarian attack on Labour. More fool you.
No TRP. I know a fair bit about what underpins Scottish politics. And just as I have opinions on the SD politics of NZ although I don’t subscribe to SD as a system of governance, so it is with Scottish politics. And facts are facts. The SNP has been consistently to the left of Labour on social policy. Scottish Labour is now contradicting Welsh and English (British) Labour on benefits.
But this ‘dead rat’ you speak of…what’s that? Universal benefits? If that’s what you’re referring to, I recommend you read Oxfam’s(?) recent report on the English care system (not free) that tallies up the cost to the economy (some billions) because people have to give up work to look after sick people and claim benefits in place of a wage.
Bill, Britain is broke, and Scotland as usual is getting the rough end of the pineapple. The SNP have moved to the right, Salmond in porticular is extremely pro-business, hence his backing from the Murdoch press. Salmond is prepared to deal to working Scots and the Scottish poor as long as he gets a referendum. Which he will lose, as the majority are convinced that remaining in the UK is the way forward (Andy Murray finally winning something at the Olympics probably helps). The SNP’s popular support has plummetted, because, in Government, they have not delivered for their voters.
That doesn’t mean Labour have the all the answers, but if the question is ‘who should pay for the economic crisis?’ the SNP haven’t got a clue.
And meanwhile you link to ‘The Telegraph’ for some very objective coverage of Scottish politics??? ffs TRP!
Go look at the SNP’s budget. It includes the basic policies people on ts want to see being adopted here by Labour or whoever. And that’s from a government that doesn’t control it’s own public purse.
£40 million through investment in affordable housing.
…increase the number of schools being built from 55 to 67 bringing forward £80 million investment
…£30m over the next three years will help home owners improve energy efficiency, cutting bills and tackling fuel poverty whilst along with investment in low carbon transport supporting our growth industries and helping to meet our climate change targets.
…a national employer recruitment initiative that will create up to 10,000 opportunities for small and medium-sized enterprises to recruit young people
…”We are also reaping the benefits of the public ownership of Scottish Water
Righto, I think we’re talking at cross purposes here. My beef with your original comment was that it was a cheap shot at Labour, and free of context. The Telegraph report is factual, no matter the source. It was just the first one up when I googled it, though I originally read the story in the Guardian or on the Beeb. I was trying to show you where Salmond thinks Scotland’s future lies; with bankers.
I’ve gotta dash, but I’ll be back later if you want to pick up. It’s been interesting. A feature of the next UK Government, which looks certain to be Labour led, is going to be how far it moves to genuine devolution, so relationships between the LP and the SNP are going to be crucial. On current UK polling, the SNP might hold the balance in the next Parliament. That’d give’em some serious bargaining power, aye?
Sorry Jokerman, this ones kinda big, but my thoughts ….
Kim Jong Un, a civilised man trying to bring peace too his region and is trying too address the loss.
Ahmadinejad, Likes the idea of addressing the loss in Tehrans’ region (No Offense, it’s what I read).
Europe, Like I keep telling John Key, we gotta regulate, and stop the embargo on Iran.
Warmongers in America….
They’ve been trying to do it fiscally, you gotta remember they’re everywhere.
The good civilised people that stand next too them are fighting tooth and nail too stop them.
Those good civilised people are doing it with open communication and due diligence.
They know more about NZ’s economy than John Key did …. a lot more.
They are also trying hard for us too get some more cashflow in the local economy.
Bloody good civilised people in my opinion, helping us save our country despite the incompetence of it’s elected leader, you have too love them for that.
Irans’ had the possibility of nuclear arms for 20+ years, those warmongers are moronic in their words and actions, It’s amazing too me that any civilised person on earth could take them seriously.
I’m sure those good civilised Americans I was describing above, our allies, view them in a similar light, with an appropriate amount of fear, they are crazy morons after all.
Education is the answer too right wing bigotry and violence in our communities, how do they/we educate those Warmongers about the dangers of their stupidity?
The embargoes on the Super Power Iran simply impoverish the starving poor of the world …. there will never be any other result, our friends and neighbours are out of work, because of oil inflation, engineered by those same warmongers, who hold a chart much like the armies did in the second world war, outlining the oil resources of the world.
Every country on the planet that has signed one of those documents in error, should rip them up and re-negotiate, make sure you tell America / China / Any other money lender before you do. But none of them want people too starve, that’s an obvious thing too me.
It’s our civilised duty too Govern the economies of our countries so no one will starve, that’s the goal.
Don’t let incompetent people destroy your economy again, make sure they are qualified.
Give them a Job Description, and make sure they stick too it.
What a sad and sorry business this Zion Wildlife Park has led to. The poor cat handler Dalu Mncube mauled to death by the tiger he was caring for, who Craig Busch knew had a false passport, had that held over him whenever he wanted some better standards of safety. He could have been saved from such a horrific end.
Apparently Mr Busch did not want him to sign a contract and said he would have him deported if he did, and Mrs Busch, Craig’s mother had said she would not carry on employing him if he didn’t sign. The two were fighting for control of the Park and Mr Busch made allegations of unsafe practices just before the death. But she said that Mr Busch had shifted the cats to a different enclosure which didn’t have safe measures for entry and disrupted the environment for the tiger that killed Mr Mncube. A month before the killing there had been an incident when a tiger bit another man on the leg. It has been alleged that Mrs Busch was delaying buying a tazer to have for emergencies, and the Buschs wouldn’t provide a reliable and trained backup person.
It sounds as if Mr Busch has a narcissistic personality disorder which I have been reading about in the Listener. http://www.listener.co.nz/current-affairs/its-all-about-me-the-rise-of-narcissism/
” Further, narcissists seem unable to be empathetic. They cannot see a situation from someone else’s perspective, but nor do they really try, since they mostly think only about themselves and how others see them.”
How do such people get the right to keep such dangerous animals and when granted the right not have constant serious overview? There had been a number of incidents that had not been reported by the Park to MAF.. These included a boy being bitten by a lion cub and requiring hospital care, a cheetah escaping in 2011, and a fence being blown down which led to a lion escaping.
The park was being operated by Craig Busch and then later his mother Patricia, when these incidents happened. zion lack of reports
Now the Park has been bought and being run since about Easter 2012 by new people who were employing Mr Busch. This doesn’t seem right when he could be said to have caused the death of one of his employees. Mr MnCube might have said that he would clean out the cat’s enclosure, but his preferred safety measures had been shifted by Mr Busch. So it seems he had a big responsibility that doesn’t seem to have been sheeted home. He has had his own television show and feels quite the star and now he’s poncing around playing the big man for tourists.
Hey LPRent, why the internal 500 error? a while back.
Do you encrypt your aliases?
Not that I care personally, but I reckon you should watch out for newbies.
Which brings up another point, which is …
Isn’t it terrorism when the GCSB spy on someone, what are they gonna do with the info?
And why the hell would they hack The Standard?
I doubt their machine will be running yet.
The site has a few too many posts. The Rss and SEO updates when a post is edited are cuing CPU outages. On my fix list… Now all I have to do is find time…
Do you know what a stack smash is LP?
Or did you crash the service ?
See below, they modify the tcpip packet to incorrectly report the size of the packet, allowing them to run past the boundry of the executable, they are looking for a running sh they can play in.
an error 500 is the only indicator cos it’s at the routing kernel level., and any port can be used it
I only know one man that can pull it off, and he’s done his homework.
He’s probably had access for a while, he can attack any port, and spam filters mean nothing.
He did this on purpose, coz he knows I know …. something to think about.
Give him a day and he’ll be back.
There is only one fix for this problem, talk to the OS people,
Get a triple checked IP routing kernel, it should be able to report a smash attempt in the logs.
It’s worth it, this attack is undefeatable without it.
CPU outages are another indcator by the way.
Chances are they’ve got your router as well.
I got one of those yesterday. Internal 500 error, was going to mention it, but have been battling this rotten flu and I forgot, also as it automatically reloaded the page from your end I really gave it no never mind and it’s not the first time I have seen it. I have also noticed that page refreshes are pretty slow too, and lately they have been getting pretty slow
Ah no, figure it through and think server operations. Whenever a edit is done on a post…
0. The post gets added/updated which effectively causes a wait for virtually all current read operations at the database as it is running on a non-transactional DB and there are several tables that store the posts data. They are part of most queries in a WordPress system. Most cached queries are invalidated and require regeneration when they are next asked.
1. frontpage gets changed – which requires that the cloudflare cache will have to fetch a new cache for the 30-90 people online on their next refresh (some will overlap on browsers). Typically this starts happening immediately.
2. A new robots.txt is generated for the whole site – takes 4.5 seconds and usually sucks up the whole of two cores
3. The search engine gets notified and typically picks up and indexes both the post and any new comments on other pages. This usually sucks up a core for a second.
4. Google, bing, baidu, yahoo, etc are notified and we immediately get a least 20 search engine systems (many of them pick up from multiple locations) in picking up the robots.txt, the edited post, and any posts that hav had recently added comments.
5. The hundreds of RSS feeds pop in, see a new post and suck it up over the next few minutes.
6. Probably a few more that I can’t remember right now…
But the nett effect is that apache and the database jam up with stacked waiting queries as the CPUs run at 90%. This typically takes about 5-10 seconds in the middle of the night. Then it drops back to the usual 10%. But during the day we have a lot more going on under normal loads. It will usually clear in 20-30 secs but it can take a few minutes if everything piles in at the same time. That will cause apache timeouts. The frequency of the latter is increasing…
The trick is to push some of these tasks (2-5) on to deferred cron to spread the load. Which requires customizing plugins very carefully because almost all of the existing ones operate on direct hooks. I haven’t had time to do it since the load started boosting towards the end of last year.
I used to work on 486s back in the 80s and early 90s. And I mostly work on single core ARM 9s running linux in my paid work at present (I seem to oscillate from server systems to embedded these days). They are like pretty fast 486’s. But they have problems stretching to the minimal amounts of data we are feeding in and out via serial and TCP whilst processing in maximum load tests for certification. That is with customized data structure optimized for the task and before we add my GUI on top and with only a couple of connections.
I rather think you are overrating the capacities of 486s with processing while doing comms. Single core systems just aren’t that good at doing multiple things at once.
Bud I used too write assembler comms switches on z80 processors running 1200 baud airline reservation systems. one page of solid text = 2048 bytes of data.
A time out is a 503 error not a 500.
And bud, Linux / Apache are the most stack smashable solutions on the market.
They have source code available to the world.
Your users have been compromised, not that they actually care, they’re not terrorists afterall.
hey bo.
they cant help themselves.
in their horrible little minds if they aren’t spying on you then you are spying on them!
and besides their is an unnamed battle group approaching our shores and eternal vigilance is the price of freedom and blah blah flipping blah.
and there is a drone watching YOU right now!
snd just because you are paranoid doesn’t mean that they are not out to get you!
howzatt?
Do you know what an internal server 500 means moron?
They just stack smashed The Standard
The fact they have recompiled the service probably saved them a breakin, it indicates a GP fault in the service.
(i.e didn’t find the sh)
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The Government is reforming financial services to improve access to home loans and other lending, and strengthen customer protections, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly and Housing Minister Chris Bishop announced today. “Our coalition Government is committed to rebuilding the economy and making life simpler by cutting red tape. We are ...
“China remains a strong commercial opportunity for Kiwi exporters as Chinese businesses and consumers continue to value our high-quality safe produce,” Trade and Agriculture Minister Todd McClay says. Mr McClay has returned to New Zealand following visits to Beijing, Harbin and Shanghai where he met ministers, governors and mayors and engaged in trade and agricultural events with the New ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has completed a successful trip to Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines, deepening relationships and capitalising on opportunities. Mr Luxon was accompanied by a business delegation and says the choice of countries represents the priority the New Zealand Government places on South East Asia, and our relationships in ...
New Zealand is demonstrating its commitment to reducing global greenhouse emissions, and supporting clean energy transition in South East Asia, through a contribution of NZ$41 million (US$25 million) in climate finance to the Asian Development Bank (ADB)-led Energy Transition Mechanism (ETM). Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Climate Change Minister Simon Watts announced ...
The Government is today releasing a list of organisations who received letters about the Fast-track applications process, says RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop. “Recently Ministers and agencies have received a series of OIA requests for a list of organisations to whom I wrote with information on applying to have a ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins today announced the appointment of Wellington Barrister David Jonathan Boldt as a Judge of the High Court, and the Honourable Justice Matthew Palmer as a Judge of the Court of Appeal. Justice Boldt graduated with an LLB from Victoria University of Wellington in 1990, and also holds ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford will lead the New Zealand delegation at the 2024 International Summit on the Teaching Profession (ISTP) held in Singapore. The delegation includes representatives from the Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) Te Wehengarua and the New Zealand Educational Institute (NZEI) Te Riu Roa. The summit is co-hosted ...
A stopbank upgrade project in Tairawhiti partly funded by the Government has increased flood resilience for around 7000ha of residential and horticultural land so far, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones today attended a dawn service in Gisborne to mark the end of the first stage of the ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters will represent the Government at Anzac Day commemorations on the Gallipoli Peninsula next week and engage with senior representatives of the Turkish government in Istanbul. “The Gallipoli campaign is a defining event in our history. It will be a privilege to share the occasion ...
Science, Innovation and Technology and Defence Minister Judith Collins will next week attend the OECD Science and Technology Ministerial conference in Paris and Anzac Day commemorations in Belgium. “Science, innovation and technology have a major role to play in rebuilding our economy and achieving better health, environmental and social outcomes ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon held a bilateral meeting today with the President of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The Prime Minister was accompanied by MP Paulo Garcia, the first Filipino to be elected to a legislature outside the Philippines. During today’s meeting, Prime Minister Luxon and President Marcos Jr discussed opportunities to ...
The Government has announced that $20 million in funding will be made available to Westport to fund much needed flood protection around the town. This measure will significantly improve the resilience of the community, says Local Government Minister Simeon Brown. “The Westport community has already been allocated almost $3 million ...
The Government is proud to support the first ever Repco Supercars Championship event in Taupō as up to 70,000 motorsport fans attend the Taupō International Motorsport Park this weekend, says Economic Development Minister Melissa Lee. “Anticipation for the ITM Taupō Super400 is huge, with tickets and accommodation selling out weeks ...
Local Government Minister Simeon Brown has announced an increase to the Rates Rebate Scheme, putting money back into the pockets of low-income homeowners. “The coalition Government is committed to bringing down the cost of living for New Zealanders. That includes targeted support for those Kiwis who are doing things tough, such ...
The Coalition Government is investing in a project to boost survival rates of New Zealand mussels and grow the industry, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones has announced. “This project seeks to increase the resilience of our mussels and significantly boost the sector’s productivity,” Mr Jones says. “The project - ...
Benefit figures released today underscore the importance of the Government’s plan to rebuild the economy and have 50,000 fewer people on Jobseeker Support, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. “Benefit numbers are still significantly higher than when National was last in government, when there was about 70,000 fewer ...
The Government’s commitment to doubling New Zealand’s renewable energy capacity is backed by new data showing that clean energy has helped the country reach its lowest annual gross emissions since 1999, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. New Zealand’s latest Greenhouse Gas Inventory (1990-2022) published today, shows gross emissions fell ...
The Government is bringing the earthquake-prone building review forward, with work to start immediately, and extending the deadline for remediations by four years, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “Our Government is focused on rebuilding the economy. A key part of our plan is to cut red tape that ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and his Thai counterpart, Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin, have today agreed that New Zealand and the Kingdom of Thailand will upgrade the bilateral relationship to a Strategic Partnership by 2026. “New Zealand and Thailand have a lot to offer each other. We have a strong mutual desire to build ...
RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop and Transport Minister Simeon Brown have today announced the Coalition Government’s intention to extend port coastal permits for a further 20 years, providing port operators with certainty to continue their operations. “The introduction of the Resource Management Act in 1991 required ports to obtain coastal ...
Today’s announcement that inflation is down to 4 per cent is encouraging news for Kiwis, but there is more work to be done - underlining the importance of the Government’s plan to get the economy back on track, acting Finance Minister Chris Bishop says. “Inflation is now at 4 per ...
Analysis by Dr Bryce Edwards, Democracy Project (https://democracyproject.nz)New Zealand Government’s Fast Track legislation. Many criticisms are being made of the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill, including by this writer. But as with everything in politics, every story has two sides, and both deserve attention. It’s important to understand what the Government ...
Tara Ward talks to presenter Naomi Toilalo about the new TV show that turns food waste into a three course feast. Naomi Toilalo is standing in the warehouse at Good Neighbour Tauranga, helping unpack the two-and-a-half tonnes of rejected food that will arrive at the community support hub that day. ...
Scout is our latest Dog of the Month. This feature was offered as a reward during our What’s Eating Aotearoa PledgeMe campaign. Thank you to Scout’s human, Avril, for her support. Dog name: Scout (named after the little girl in To Kill a Mockingbird – she inherited the independent spirit ...
Megan Alatini takes us through her life in TV, including ‘terrible’ daytime TV, the class of Carol Hirschfeld and her most embarrassing TrueBliss moment. When she responded to a vague newspaper ad asking “do you have what it takes to be a popstar?” 25 years ago, Megan Alatini never guessed ...
A new exhibition in Wellington showcases the faces behind your local goods and services. Back in 1977, when I was a fine arts student at the University of Canterbury, I took a series of photographs of Christchurch shopkeepers. The photos were for a calendar – a project for my end ...
Toomaj and his resistance to tyranny through his songs have become an icon for the youth of Iran, so his sentence has hit the nation hard. Toomaj Salehi is not the first artist to pay the price for standing with the people. ...
My cousin Dylan and I spotted these big eels under the bridge that summer. We watched them lounging under the dark weed, facing into the flow of water, their mouths frozen open. Dylan and I couldn’t stop thinking about those eels. The night we went down to the creek, we ...
Newsroom, home of satire. My long-running weekly satirical series The Secret Diary has moved to Newsroom and will appear every Saturday, with Victor Billot’s wildly popular satirical Odes continuing to appear every Sunday. Diaries, Odes – while serious political columnists toil at meaningful opinions and stroke their chins to an ...
Tara Ward unravels the many nuanced layers of a cartoon about talking dogs.This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. It’s not often an episode of a children’s cartoon has adults sobbing into their sleeves, but that’s exactly what happened this week when ...
Working as a doctor in developing countries to help communities achieve better health outcomes is nothing short of a life goal for Jessica Tater. The University of Otago medical student has her sights firmly set on joining the international humanitarian organisation Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) when she qualifies ...
There’s an island in the far reaches of Auckland’s territory, sitting off the tip of the Coromandel Peninsula, 30 minutes by air from the city or four hours on the slow boat. Aotea Great Barrier is off-grid, it has a population of fewer than a thousand people … and most ...
Asia Pacific Report An Australian author and advocate, Jim Aubrey, today led a national symbolic one minute’s silence to mark the “blood debt” owed to Papuan allies during the Second World War indigenous resistance against the invading Japanese forces. “A promise to most people is a promise,” Aubrey said in ...
Asia Pacific Report The Freedom Flotilla is ready to sail to Gaza, reports Kia Ora Gaza. All the required paperwork has been submitted to the port authority, and the cargo has been loaded and prepared for the humanitarian trip to the besieged enclave. However, organisers received word of an “administrative ...
Pacific Media Watch Palestine solidarity protesters today demonstrated at the Auckland headquarters of Television New Zealand, accusing the country’s major TV network of broadcasting “propaganda” backing Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. About 50 protesters targeted the main entrance to the TVNZ building near Sky Tower and also picketed a side ...
Opinion by Lynley Hood. Forty years on from my 1985 Fulbright Grant, my disquiet over the war in Gaza evoked some troubling questions. The answer to my first question – What is the primary purpose of the Fulbright Programme? – was on the Fulbright NZ website. It says: US Senator, ...
The ministers responsible for green-lighting major projects need to be open about potential conflicts of interest, says Transparency International. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anastasia Powell, Professor, Family and Sexual Violence, RMIT University It has been a particularly distressing start to the year. There is little that can ease the current grief of individuals, families and communities who have needlessly lost a loved one to men’s ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gregory Moore, Senior Research Associate, School of Ecosystem and Forest Sciences, The University of Melbourne Lichen, the first described example of symbiosis.AdeJ Artventure/Shutterstock Once known only to those studying biology, the word symbiosis is now widely used. Symbiosis is the intimate ...
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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Whiteford, Professor, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University The government’s Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee has just published its second report. It was set up by Treasurer Jim Chalmers and Minister for Social Services Amanda Rishworth in 2022 to provide: ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne The Queensland state election will be held in October. A YouGov poll for The Courier Mail, conducted April 9–17 from a sample ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amin Naeni, PhD candidate at Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University There’s been much talk in recent months about what a possible second Donald Trump presidency in the United States could mean for Europe, Russia’s war in Ukraine, the ...
A brief round-up of submissions on the controversial proposed law. This is an excerpt from our weekly environmental newsletter Future Proof. Sign up here. Last week, submissions on the controversial Fast-track Approvals Bill closed just hours after the government released a list of stakeholder organisations who were sent letters advising how they could ...
A poem from Robin Peace’s new collection Detritus of Empire: feather / grass / rock. Cereal giving I see a woman’s hands, see her curious hands break a stalk as she walks through the tall prairie, the savannah, the steppe, wherever it was. See her idly bite the grass that ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1 Hemingway’s Goblet by Dermot Ross (Mary Egan Publishing, $38)A handsomely produced (debossed cover, lovely ...
The Commissioner's decision validates the longstanding efforts of the local community and ensures that Awataha Marae will be managed to serve the needs of the local community, particularly for hosting tangihanga. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tristan Salles, Associate professor, University of Sydney Examples of Australian landscapes.Unsplash Seventy thousand years ago, the sea level was much lower than today. Australia, along with New Guinea and Tasmania, formed a connected landmass known as Sahul. Around this time – ...
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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Ryan, Teaching Fellow in Economics, University of Waikato GettyImagesfatido/Getty Images There is an ongoing global debate over whether the high inflation seen in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic can be lowered without a recession. New Zealand is not ...
The ‘Wicked Game’ heartthrob is in his late 60s now. That didn’t stop him putting on a lively, goofy and very sparkly show. Apart from ‘Wicked Game’, which graces a sultry playlist of mine simply called 💋, my last sustained Chris Isaak listening session took place when I was about ...
Analysis - Two ministers were stripped of portfolios in a warning to Cabinet, drama broke out at the Waitangi Tribunal, and the gang patch ban bill ran into opposition. ...
Tara Ward makes an impassioned plea for some vital pop culture merch. In April 1999, I became obsessed with a new reality television show called Popstars. Every Tuesday night, five strangers transformed into music royalty before my very eyes as Joe, Keri, Carly, Erika and Megan were chosen to form ...
PNG Post-Courier In the early hours of ANZAC Day, aerial photographs captured an impressive gathering of Australians and Papua New Guineans at Isurava in the Northern (Oro) Province. The solemn dawn service yesterday was held at a site steeped in history, where some of the fiercest battles of World War ...
The PSA is shocked that Oranga Tamariki has used the cost cutting drive to downgrade its commitment to Te Ao Māori and remove many specialist Māori roles. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Kemish, Adjunct Professor, School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry, The University of Queensland There can be no more powerful symbol of the relationship between Australia and Papua New Guinea than the prime ministers of these neighbouring countries walking together on the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sharon Robinson, Distinguished Professor and Deputy Director of ARC Securing Antarctica’s Environmental Future (SAEF), University of Wollongong, University of Wollongong Andrew Netherwood Over the last 25 years, the ozone hole which forming over Antarctica each spring has started to shrink. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Viktoria Kahui, Senior Lecturer in Environmental Economics, University of Otago Getty Images/Amy Toensing Biodiversity is declining at rates unprecedented in human history. This suggests the ways we currently use to manage our natural environment are failing. One emerging concept focuses on ...
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Wondering where to host your next BYO? Whether its a small gathering or a massive party, we’ve got some recommendations. I was first introduced to the concept of BYOs at Dunedin’s India Gardens, a legendary but sadly defunct establishment, which purveyed enormous quantities of mango chicken to Aotearoa’s drunkest future ...
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The sector says it’s hopeful her replacement Paul Goldsmith will be able to throw it a lifeline, after six months with a minister deemed missing in action, writes Catherine McGregor in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign ...
The government can't just rely on axing public sector jobs and has to do more to cut spending, says the chief economist at a free market think tank. ...
Rock The Vote NZ, known for its advocacy for minor party unity and its role within the Freedoms NZ Coalition during the 2023 General Election, celebrates this merger as a strategic enhancement of its operational strength and outreach. ...
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It’s not that long ago Eliza McCartney was seriously wondering if the Paris Olympics would be her pole vaulting swansong. After years of being hounded by injury after injury, the Rio Olympics bronze medallist was still confident she would compete at her second Olympics in Paris in July, unless something ...
FICTION 1 Take Two by Danielle Hawkins (Allen & Unwin, $36.99) There’s commercial fiction, like this book, and then there’s quality fiction, quality writers, quality literature; the forthcoming Auckland Writers Festival is full of quality, and ReadingRoom has two tickets to give away to the following events: Paul Lynch (Dublin ...
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You can’t have missed the Gallipoli story as the movies, documentaries, essays and books capture what it was like for New Zealand troops in their eight-month campaign on the Peninsula. But this Anzac Day the Auckland War Memorial Museum has published a book that sheds light on a little-known aspect of the ...
The Prime Minister has committed to resuming direct flights to Thailand. But it’s not a promise he will be able to deliver on anytime soon. The post Prime Minister jumps the gun in Thailand appeared first on Newsroom. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra In the free-for-all between the Australian government and Big Tech boss Elon Musk this week, the government had to be on a winner. Most people would have little sympathy with Musk’s vociferous opposition to ...
Asia Pacific Report Chief Mandla Mandela, a member of the National Assembly of South Africa and Nelson Mandela’s grandson, has joined the Freedom Flotilla in istanbul as the ships prepare to sail for Gaza, reports Kia Ora Gaza. Mandela is also the ambassador for the Global Campaign to Return to ...
Pacific Media Watch Journalists who report on environmental issues are encountering growing difficulties in many parts of the world, reports Reporters Without Borders. According to the tally kept by RSF, 200 journalists have been subjected to threats and physical violence, including murder, in the past 10 years because they were ...
Analysis by Dr Bryce Edwards, Democracy Project (https://democracyproject.nz)Political scientist, Dr Bryce Edwards. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has surprised everyone with his ruthlessness in sacking two of his ministers from their crucial portfolios. Removing ministers for poor performance after only five months in the job just doesn’t normally happen in ...
This isn’t political (society, internet culture and feminism might be relevant tags), but I thought it was interesting.. http://jezebel.com/5946643/reddit-users-attempt-to-shame-sikh-woman-get-righteously-schooled
T 1
To the simple minded everybody who looks differently from what observers are used to are freaks who and it is OK to stare at them, point at them, draw other’s attention to them, let their children make loud comments about them etc. So this fits within this reaction from those who have never understood that they fill just one niche in society. It’s just not men looking at women, or vice versa, there are those who scan their surroundings at all times with a judgmental glance looking for anomalies from their approved normality. Disabled people know well about this reaction.
And it could be regarded as a political matter. There was a saying that the personal is political. If the leaders and controllers of a country decide to control some reasonable personal behaviour, it becomes political. Smoking bans are political, and how they wide they are also, criminalising drugs is political, allowing hate speech and extended harrassment is political if it is sanctioned or ignored by authorities, bullying at school is a political matter, and the desire of authorities not to be responsible for upholding standards with reasonable tolerance for all is political.
Definitely political. The politics of:
what happens when women don’t conform to conventional notions of beauty
body autonomy
gender, body and confusion in parts of the general population
online social intercourse and “the seeping necrotic abscess that is Reddit”
modern media and the loss of personal privacy
ignorance of religion
We forfeit three-fourth of ourselves to be like other people.
-Schopenhauer
(now, regrettably, many of the admirable academy were virulent anti-semitics)
there are two sides to every euro
-Pan (the earlier renaissance man)
The safest general characterisation of the (Great) European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato (an unhelpful universalist as history records)
-Whitehead. paraphr.
Night
“…i read the news today..,Oh boy…”
I was driving north with the SO last Saturday morning listening to Ms Hill talking to Mary Anne Franks about the troubling treatment of women on the WWW. The SO, who’s a particularly busy person with little time to piss around with the WWW, was appalled and doubly so when I cited the numerous instances I’ve seen of women being trolled on-line. Well worth the listen.
Reddit? RIP IT UP
Everyone knows that when you have an under performing team the first place you look is to the leader of that team, But not Shearer he will just tinker according to his instructions.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/7749689/Shearer-hints-at-reshuffle-as-few-shine-in-front-row
Should read: Shearer hints at reshuffle as only one shines in front row.
And the performing one is not Shearer.
If performance is the prerequisite, then we can look forward to Cunliffe back in the Finance role.
As leader, don’t you mean!
But it’s not. Internal politiking is the determining factor.
So, as reflected in the bias of that stuff piece, promote those who are loyal to the deadwood faction – even though it’s an increasingly decayed irrelevance that has been rotting down since the 80’s. And cast doubts on those who espouse views in tune with core and traditional Social Democratic Labour Party values.
Shearer says, “I’m certainly looking at where we can improve”. Clearly he avoids the mirror! He and Key are alike in that they are Captains who cast blame for shipwrecks on the crew. I never thought I would find myself looking back on “the good old days of Goff”!
Robertson is a forceful speaker, Cunliffe combines skills in oratory with high intelligence. Oh, what does it take?
Just been watching Grant Robertson on TV3, don’t ask me what he was saying , because I was way too busy trying to work out who threw his clothes at him His tie is lined under his right eye. Now me I am a Jeans and Tea Shirt guy But if I have to wear a tie (do I own one Hmmm) at least I would make sure it’s straight, to say nothing about being on National Television. If you have to wear a suit and tie, at least make sure you don’t look like you just threw on the first thing that came to hand.
Labour is just looking more and more used, second hand, out of date.
That’s what you get when the same strategy and team that lead you to defeat in 08 and 11 are still calling the shots…quack quack. No Goff on the election billboards was a stupid move IMO as he rattled Johnny sparkles in the debates yet there was no image association on each labour billboard for some consistency.
Fresh thinking via new blood is required, DS doesn’t have to go but the messaging is woeful and media training is desperately needed to keep our shonky MSM from parroting the CT/NACT spin lines .
GR has his moments but media training teaches you it’s the bad ones that often outweigh all the good ones so you gotta be on your game and nail every chance.
Is anyone else a little uncomfortable that the host of Backbenchers is now seemingly pimping for a corporate’s greenwash TV campaign? I mean, that particular company still use palm oil in everything BUT their ‘most popular’ NZ product, right?
Evidently he doesn’t mind tarnishing his own brand.
Haven’t heard about this. What company uses palm oil extensively?
they talked about it on tv3s the nation.im personally appalled, & now hes on radiolive in the mornings…gotta pay them bills. cadburys is what hes advertising.
Had some cadbury last week after being on whittakers for years….what absolute shite it was, threw over half away.
Buy local people especially in this case as it’s a far superior product.
tc
Yeh Whitakers – peanut slab (with toasted peanuts) yumm.
Whitakers’ Peanut Butter is like my own personal brand of heroin.
Feminist thread: some jewels and nuggets in them thar hills ma’
No (chocolate) company in NZ.
Cadbury’s switched back after the outcry and have never recovered their market position. It came at the same time as they moved some production to Australia and made block sizes smaller – perfect storm to stick in people’s memories. If they’d done each change 12 months apart it probably would have been fine.
Lanthanide
I read no chocolate company in NZ and was shocked . So I grabbed a wrapper of my recent peanut slab and ..it’s imported by Singapore: Lucas Foods (Asia) Pte Ltd. 160
Paya Lebar Road. Quite an appropriate address. So Le Bar has gone from NZ as all good things seem to do.
I guess the answer is to buy local from the premises where things are made and make sure that some of our money manages to go and stay into the pocket of a resident working here and paying tax here. Please look round for a local you can support. I try and break myself of the supermarket habit and go to the Green Grocer in Tasman Street, Nelson where you can buy biogro products.
We had a Buy New Zealand programme when Labour was in. How successful was that? How easily can it be started and does it need volunteer promoters in each town and suburb saying which products are made locally and selling their good points?
The Chocolate Factory in Pram is good..
Obviously not a Whittaker’s peanut slab:
Actually I think you’ll find they only changed ‘Dairy Milk’ and continue to use palm oil in most of their other products.
” There remains some of our chocolate blocks – those containing inclusions, caramels, creams and/or wafers – where we are currently unable to make the product without the inclusion of a small quantity of palm oil. ”
(Source: Cadbury website)
Ok, but was that always the case? They may have been using palm oil in those products all along. I suspect also the direct reference to ‘inclusions’ etc is because the palm oil is in those parts, not the actual chocolate itself.
The outcry was because they replaced cocoa butter – one of the main ingredients in chocolate, with palm oil. The fact that they may still use palm oil in their products is rather immaterial to the point that they went back to using cocoa butter.
Failing the writing standards.
Now to all those worried parents out there who want to know if their children are meeting the writing standard, do you know what the question is?
For your information, there are several different genre.
Your children might be able to write a coherent “persuasive” piece but be crap at a narrative.
Are you expecting the schooling system to make your children best selling authors or be able to write letters to their MP. Truth is you probably don’t really care, as long as they can spell, punctuate, and order their thoughts.
Then the difficulty of choosing quality:
A. The cat sat on the mat. (Simple,clear, error free.)
B. The cat was so anry her tale twiched her eyes glowd like dagers (4 spelling errors, 3 full stops missing.)
C. The big black friendly cat sat on the colourful red fluffy mat. (error free.)
Now which is a pass for a 7 year old child? So many variables.
Exactly ianmac. Hence-
High error rate in National Standards marking | Stuff.co.nz
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/education/7761584/High-error-rate-in-National-Standards-marking
Surprise, Surprise!
>High error rate in National Standards marking
BUT by what judgement.
OK there was a lot of variation.
What was expected?
I recall Mallard trying to get Tolley to explain what some standards meant in parliament. She couldn’t.
Moderation!!!!
OH and how accurate were the ministry on roll numbers and number of building in ChCh schools.
I met an Australian teacher a few years ago who was tasked with moderating Primary School Writing across Australia. She said that she was exhausted after 6 months because none of the teachers could agree with just what good writing was. Some teachers, she said, were so cross that they said that they would get the children to write in short sentences with no word longer than one syllable and thus could not be found to make any errors.
As opposed to their current efforts to get writers to choose just the right word for the writing depending on the designated audience, the right genre, and constantly stretching out for new challenges.
Stuff that.
Notice how that article was all about the teachers being wrong.
I don’t believe this is a national standards issue. This is inherent in the NCEA or unit standards approach of modern education.
Apparantly you can pass English all the way through secondary school and never have to study Shakespeare, let alone pass a unit on it.
There’s more to English than dead poets.
[lprent: ummm I feel the same. However I KNOW that Lyn regards that statement as a flamewar starter for 10 points… Just saying.. ]
BLASPHEMY. And it’s not “dead poets”, Draco, it’s a very specific dead poet, because what good is reading Aristophanes or Chaucer or Pope or Swift (and if you insist on Kiwi examples, Baxter) unless you’ve also been forced at gunpoint to write an essay on Romeo & Juliet?
(My examples are limited to certain periods of literature, I know, but guess what English lit papers I did at uni?)
Shakespeare? Shakes-meh more like.
Absolutely QoT.
All these people who waffle about quoting dead theorists, deploying arcane glossaries in their posts, but turn their noses up at poetic thought.
Whereas you do both, and it’s a far more flexible manner of thinking.
Keep raising the standard QoT – these old plonkers need it.
Thanks Ad, though I’ll note that at varsity they always sucker you into Chaucer with The Miller’s Tale so it ain’t all high-minded stuff!
No Lord of the Rings, Return of the King, all the jobs, all the academy awards, or indeed the whole revived film industry within The Hobbit. Just in case learning Scandinavian, Germanic, and Middle English were no economic use, mid-brow, lowbrow, or high. Buckle in you non-dead-poets-society people.
QoT, I was so forced, willingly. The highlight of my trip to Perth WA was to see Romeo and Juliet performed outdoors after a picnic tea on the grass, especially when Juliet came out onto the balcony and commented on the moon rising over the trees.
And it BLOODY WAS!
The Kookaburras in the first act, however, were a little whatever the geographical/auditory equivalent of anachronistic is.
well tie me kangaroo down
A little less literary than your normal commentary, Jokerman!
Cant be bothered with all that thou thee doth crapeth.
Romeo and Juliet, Merchant of Venice and Othello were the ones inflicted on me…
Well what do you want it to be ?? ” Yo bro, Saw yo shit tover dy
Not really keen on that either…
I’m looking at thought and imagination showing in the sentence and like B. I believe that teachers and education professionals think that the Nat Standards will result in concentrating teaching on A. That would produce neat and tidy and limited thinkers. Just like what we have now (is that good grammar but do you still understand my meaning?) It seems that Nat Standards are actually tests for teachers and schools, not children. It certainly doesn’t support teachers in their difficult job, and doesn’t support children gain the type of education that we need in the fraught 21st century.
The education method then in fashion seemed to lack steps for new readers when my children were young. I was always keen to see them reading well, and I encouraged them to break down new big words into syllables and then tackle the whole thing rather than shrink from coping with large words as a whole in the teachers desire to encourage word recognition. My way helped and they read successfully, and can now read Nietzsche and understand it.
Giving the latest education medicine to all isn’t bound to get good results, first the medicine might be bad or fake, and second because we are dealing with individuals both wonderful and diverse. Only despotic Sauron specifies One Ring (or education method) for all.
Kiwirail has decided to mothball the Gisborne Napier line. The NZ Roading Transport agency is going to upgrade the road between the two cities so that that the bigger voluble of tucks resulting from the rail closure will have better roads to wreck. Sheer lunacy.
The Gisborne area needs to have good roads for access to and from the district, PLUS a railway to take the heavy lifting. They had just gained large containers and I understand were able to be transported over the narrow points on the line.
So Gisborne rail doesn’t pay by $2.4 million annnually. So why should the cost not be carried for a period because of being a remote area, (from the north-south main routes). How can the regions realise their full enterprise potential without guaranteed infrastructure and reliable transport extending into the future. Peak oil has come, fuel will get dearer and scarcer. Apparently these twerps in power can’t think beyond one or two electoral cycles.
What is likely to happen to the railway lines themselves? Will they be left in place?
They will disappear overnight and some scrap metal agent will melt it down and some hard up husband wilL put food on the table for his family. And Collins will rage about about how she is going to take a tough stance on rail,line thieves by crushing their cars into scrapmetal.
Actually, they can’t think beyond increasing profits for their backers which, in this case, would be the Roading Transport Lobby (or whatever it’s called).
And it’s probably going to cost more to upgrade the road than it would to fix the rail line.
Please shield the eyes of any children reading this:
Fuck Kiwirail, fuck Jim Quinn, fuck National, fuck Jerry Brownlee, fuck the government, and fuck those who voted National.
You may unshield their eyes now.
The decision to close the line was made by an anti rail National government, who believe that rail is obsolete and trucks are the future.
You may unshield their eyes now
Hmmmm. Just as well I didn’t then.
But I agree with the sentiment, especially the last sentence.
More lunacy which will bite us in the backside when imported oil is $10 a litre. If we can get any at all.
The way energy driven economic decline is likely to work is not only the cost of petrol continue to edge up over time, but people’s incomes available to buy it will also be declining all the same while. Its a double whammy.
kjt
Don’t worry about that, we have found oil and gas deposits and be able to drill into the sea here and there. No worries mate.
The Rena hasn’t taught us anything about the cost and destruction of habitat, fauna and flora, and how we people would have to bear cost for cleaning up. The Rena is still costing us $20 million as well as the spending by the owners, and have they paid up everyone yet? and is that just what’s been spent already and is there enough for the other needed work??
Also the oil disaster in the Gulf, also the Exxon disaster where there were agreements about ready clean up units, officials meant to be checking, laws and careful politicians to ensure that all was well, all missing by the time it happened. The problem was that it took too long for the oil to spill from the start of piping it off – a generation. It seems that human beings ability to take care, be ready for disasters etc can’t last for say more than a couple of years beyond a decade.
Heartfelt promises today, written into law tomorrow, buried under further laws and matey relationships with baubles involved between supervisory bodies and corporates and what do you get!! Guess. It would happen here just the same, so some oil spills are inevitable. The only thing that might save us would be if the oil ran out quickly before the alert and keen instigators were overtaken by a bunch of hearty red neck contractors looking for the fastest way to do the littlest amount under their set price contracts.
jkey at Post Cabinet Press Conference on comments by Winnie P. regarding trip to lala land.”I am interested in jobs,not people who live in Fantasyland and want to Make Things Up” He should look in the mirror or do they not have them on Planet Key.Ha Ha Bonk.Laughed my head off at the irony!!!
Chester Borrows is against paper based use in the justice system. The changes he is proposing are swingeing. They would result in secret shady transactions that don’t get the publicity that is needed for exposing and proving malfeasance by the wealthy, and for the poor the same disgraceful, shoddy and burdensome approach from government to handle their requirements that we have seen in Housing NZ will further deny them to access to a fair justice system with even less legal aid and services.
Justice should be done, and seen to be done. Being called to account for apparent wrongdoing should be carried out in public with paper records that can’t be transmitted worldwide, or alternatively lost unless properly backed up and stored in a millisecond. There is a place for today’s computer technology but not to replace completely the human society services that we have developed.
The darker imaginings of films and books on possible future scenarios for society are being played out in reality. These shrivelled little personalities that have got into politics, and have got into many of the top bureaucrat jobs, have no thought and care for their fellow humans and what they are creating for them. It’s all just a game of chess to them. If you are clever enough you win, and for the Secretary of Education that apparently amounts to over half a million dollars (ANNUALLY).
That’s while charitable organisations like hospice and parent support have to work continuously
to get money and pay their workers possibly the minimum and the managers get only an extra 30% if they are lucky.
Key should do well in Hollywood, for who can put on better “acts”? Probably he will spend a lot of time at Disneyland with all the kids (sorry, forgot that he does not like kids).
Maybe he should stay home and get Hekia to teach him to read.
Minister issues visa, minister revokes visa.
http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/mike-tyson-s-visa-revoked-minister-5113005/video?vid=5112237
‘Potential role model’ one day, barred the next. This story has everything! Love those boxing clips.
Ministerial footwork worth of a champ, though Wilkinson looks more like a flyweight.
Calamity Kate, the Iron Mike Lady.
A member of the board wrote a letter to the Minister and the minister’s staff don’t
double check that she will be letting a rapist into the country. Sorry, did I just
wake up in a country not being run by the law and order party???? Banks not
reading what he is signing??? Hide covering for child identity theft???
Key not knowing the richest man in his electorate???? Now a minister
charging a member of some board that they were misrepresenting themselves
as speaking for the whole board.
National imploding.
Revealed – Key WAS briefed about Dotcom – previously denied. He’s in deep.
(see Key thread)
Sometimes, despite myself, I do things that could be injurous to my health, (increased blood pressure, headaches etc) such as reading, and even participating in the comments section on Stuff.co.nz. I know that some of you also listen to talkback every now and again, also putting yourselves at risk of decreased well being. Both these activities however can illustrate to us the cognitive psychology of posters and talk back callers at work and consequently behind the election of a National Govt, not only once but twice.
If you ever felt sometimes that you are surrounded by idiots and wanted more proof of this then check out the response to the article on Stuff yesterday about Daisy the GE cow (which you also discussed on Open Mike) There are many people who haven’t even bothered to read the article before posting their opinions.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/farming/7757038/Strong-opposition-to-GE-milk
Does Stuff really not allow comments to be read in chronological order???
Anyhoo, I liked this comment –
“Not sure what your point is C.Dub. I am the parent of a young child who is both diabetic and allergic to milk.
Without insulin she would die so I don’t give a damn where the stuff comes from. GE, E Coli. dead animals, fetid dingo kidneys, pffft. You do what you have to to keep your kid alive.
If she wants milk, we give her soy or rice milk. What’s the big deal? I guess there may be a market for GE modified hypoallergenic milk but it sure as hell isn’t in my household.
It reminds me of the story (possibly apocryphal) of the Americans spending millions developing a ballpoint pen that works in space while the Russians used pencils.”
Hi Weka.Yes, I liked that comment too.
Re Stuff comment section. There is usually a button to click for ‘read first’, ie in chronological order, otherwise the most recent comments appear first. You can’t reply to a reply of an original comment. I’ve had to reply to myself in order to respond to someone regarding the topic of labelling.
I guess what has disturbed me, not only about the ongoing GE ‘allergy free milk”project, which is alarming in itself, is that the majority of comments are pro GE but none of those comments have a sound basis to them. This is the opposite to say, the early to mid 90’s when a good chunk of the population was informed about GE and fervently anti gene technology in food (and I stress food, not medicine) and there was much protest. It was a really urgent and hot issue. It feels like we have now just given in and accepted what many to believe to be inevitable, in the NZ context in regard to production and marketing. Any safe guards we have in place now will will wiped by the TPPA.
So what has changed in the population? Why do we just roll over? Are we so accustomed to spin, (eg crosby textor stylez) both social and political, that we accept what we are told?
Could also be astroturfing.
I don’t comment on news sites because the login is too laborious. I’d like to know how much that changes who posts in comments.
And so many people just don’t bother with the MSM now.
I think we’d have to look at some good research on public opinion in GE to now how people feel now.
From vague memory, almost certainly apocryphal on the pencil story, weka (at least, the “lesson” you’re meant to take from it) – pencils can break, and no one wants pointy bits of graphite floating around in zero-g.
It’s a wonder the Knee jerk didn’t break their own stupid necks.
This is one of the reasons I gave Stuff up, that and their silly redesign. And it’s a pity as it was a good site before the ‘downgrade’
Hi David H. I normally try to avoid getting caught up in their comment section and rarely use the site these days (preferring http://www.scoop.co.nz) but when I do, I always regret it. I have lost faith in the average NZer, to be able to be a fair and resonable person, to think for themselves, to stand up, and to stand by one another in support. (In every aspect of life, not just on stuff comments) Every time I get embroiled in a comment thread I feel a little more of me dies. Its like a cloud of doom descends when I read those retarded comments. Its talkback online really.
What chocolate shop in P’ram by the way? Must have missed that, haven’t been to the hometown for ages.
Hi Rosie, I know exactly what you mean. I like to think that the talkback MSM crowd does not really reflect society, and mostly it doesnt. They make up the “influential” part of it in many ways, and thats what I find hard to deal with at times.
The sad part is that if they could only see or understand that they are on the chopping block too, they would not carry on the way they do. I’ve said it before, the human experiment is destined to fail, because too many have absorbed the lies they have been told, and the life they have been sold.
Don’t let it rob you of energy though (stay away from the MSM), and keep the good stuff flowing through your life.
Heard. Cheers Muzza. You’re right. Hanging back from the msm can prevent downers and help one to stay focused and positive. However, one can’t avoid dealing with FWit ears- of -cloth -environment -destroying property developers, which has been a task attended to today and is ongoing and unresolved – which further blackened the ‘loss of faith in humanity” theme going on.
Might go get a bit zen like now……….Thanks for your wisdom.
The Chocolate Factory on the corner of State Hwy 1 heading north side and Raumati rd. MMmmm they even do tours with choccy thrown in lol.
I read the MSM maybe in hope that the comments section won’t be filled with vitriol against those that are poor and down on their luck or on the DPB. But no, I get disappointed as usual at least 10 times a day. I will link to this article I found this morning as the comments section had been closed and it was just a cess pit of hatred. I just went to get the link and the comments section has been erased all gone except for 4 Typical MSM Or maybe they got complaints. But you may have seen the story.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/waikato-times/news/7757971/Hamilton-women-lead-protest
What would genetic pollution look like? A cow
incapable of producing a necessary part of calf
milk in order to supply a human anti-allergy milk?
So has POAL been sold to the management yet?
.
Eight grand? Really – eight thousand dollars for an office partition? Because the office layout “just really didn’t work”? Oh, FFS!!!eleventyone!!!
Ever heard of false walls??? you wheel em in, and when you finished you wheel em out again cost ?? coupla hundy.
“Trade Minister Tim Groser has spent $8000 rebuilding an office wall that Social Development Minister Paula Bennett had taken down.”
Lol. Really, that is pretty funny, in a very dark sort of way. Then, more soberly, it says alot about NACT.
What is this about – and has it got anything to do with the whole Sky City thing earlier this year?
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/money/7762416/National-Party-president-among-restaurateurs-victims
Uh oh Back Bencher on fire again…can lightning strike twice in the same place?
Obviously god is pissed that our parliamentarians couldn’t take the hint the first time.
It’ll be Parliament Buildings next.
Remember remember,…
careful, you’ll have the GCSB on your case 🙂
If certain quarters continue to insist the NZ Labour Party model itself on the British Labour Party approach, they should check out reaction to the UKLP’s conference – Ed Miliband’s speech, especially, and note that the Brits have changed tack:
Ed Miliband made it abundantly clear that Labour will get us off the miserable path dug by this government. His speech marks the long-awaited rebirth of a radical social democracy in this country. We can now start hoping once again. In particular, working-class people can feel that the party is back on their side.
He drew a line under most of the blunders and misconceptions of the new Labour years. His “one nation” is not the triangulated, all-things-to-all-people message associated with Tony Blair. Instead he targeted the banks and Murdoch without poking at working people’s unions. The country has been waiting to hear that from a political leader since 2008 at least.
Miliband’s promise is to restore our country to its people. Decent homes and services; fairness before favours for the rich and powerful; our NHS back where it belongs, in public hands – these will make us thrive again.
Labour must speak for the public against the rampage of private interests. Speak for the people whose talents are wasted and aspirations destroyed. Shake up our banks and take back our NHS. And yes, put the burden on those with the broadest shoulders. That is the agenda set out today.
A faint heart never won a fair election. Miiband has shown he’s more than ready to do battle in 2015. This is a shot in the arm for the labour movement.
Thing is, north of the border Labour are seeking to scrap free universal care for old people, eye prescriptions and so on. But hey…
Bullshit, Bill. A more accurate description would be that Labour want to end the subsidies to the rich, something I’m surprised you do not favour.
Removal of universal care is an absolutely accurate descripton of what Labour are advocating. Which can only be replaced with user pays for some segments of the population. Something I’m very surprised to learn you’re favour of TRP.
http://www.heraldscotland.com/comment/letters/cost-of-universal-benefits-pales-into-insignificance-beside-trident.19037504
Bill, if you make disingenious attacks, expect to get called on it. I’m going to take the side of the poor and the working class in Scotland, you’re free to go with Salmond’s tartan tories and his BFF Rupert Murdoch if you want.
So if you think my comment is disingenioous, call me on it! Or is the throwing around of way off the mark labels as good as it’s going to get? Those ‘tartan tories’ as you call them are far to the left of Labour and are the one’s (to offer just one example) who have made sure tertiary education has remained free. Which is a kind of good thing for poor and working class people, no?
I did call you on it, Bill. And check the link above, it’ll tell you all you obviously don’t know.
The BBC piece titled “Scottish Labour’s Johann Lamont attacks SNP benefits policy”?
Yup. Read it. And where did it say that Labour wasn’t attacking the idea of universal benefits? I mean, did the last para or two completely sail right on over your head? She wants to scrap free presciptions and…
Clearly you don’t get it. You have chosen the side Rupert Murdoch prefers. That’s surprising coming from you, but you may completely and totally ignorant about Scottish politics. It certainly appeears so.
Scotland has been forced to swallow an economic dead rat. The SNP have decided that’s appropriate tucker for the poor, the Scottish Labour party want the rich to make the sacrifice. You have chosen to back the rich in order to make a sectarian attack on Labour. More fool you.
No TRP. I know a fair bit about what underpins Scottish politics. And just as I have opinions on the SD politics of NZ although I don’t subscribe to SD as a system of governance, so it is with Scottish politics. And facts are facts. The SNP has been consistently to the left of Labour on social policy. Scottish Labour is now contradicting Welsh and English (British) Labour on benefits.
But this ‘dead rat’ you speak of…what’s that? Universal benefits? If that’s what you’re referring to, I recommend you read Oxfam’s(?) recent report on the English care system (not free) that tallies up the cost to the economy (some billions) because people have to give up work to look after sick people and claim benefits in place of a wage.
Bill, Britain is broke, and Scotland as usual is getting the rough end of the pineapple. The SNP have moved to the right, Salmond in porticular is extremely pro-business, hence his backing from the Murdoch press. Salmond is prepared to deal to working Scots and the Scottish poor as long as he gets a referendum. Which he will lose, as the majority are convinced that remaining in the UK is the way forward (Andy Murray finally winning something at the Olympics probably helps). The SNP’s popular support has plummetted, because, in Government, they have not delivered for their voters.
That doesn’t mean Labour have the all the answers, but if the question is ‘who should pay for the economic crisis?’ the SNP haven’t got a clue.
Oops. Not Oxfam. Here are the links, including the source material
http://www.carersuk.org/newsroom/item/2617-care-in-crisis-more-than-53-billion-wiped-from-the-economy
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/healthandsocialcare/2012/04/25/dr-linda-pickard-public-expenditure-costs-of-carers-leaving-employment/
http://www.independent.co.uk/hei-fi/news/5bn-lost-a-year-by-carers-forced-to-give-up-work-8179691.html?origin=internalSearch
And meanwhile you link to ‘The Telegraph’ for some very objective coverage of Scottish politics??? ffs TRP!
Go look at the SNP’s budget. It includes the basic policies people on ts want to see being adopted here by Labour or whoever. And that’s from a government that doesn’t control it’s own public purse.
£40 million through investment in affordable housing.
…increase the number of schools being built from 55 to 67 bringing forward £80 million investment
…£30m over the next three years will help home owners improve energy efficiency, cutting bills and tackling fuel poverty whilst along with investment in low carbon transport supporting our growth industries and helping to meet our climate change targets.
…a national employer recruitment initiative that will create up to 10,000 opportunities for small and medium-sized enterprises to recruit young people
…”We are also reaping the benefits of the public ownership of Scottish Water
Righto, I think we’re talking at cross purposes here. My beef with your original comment was that it was a cheap shot at Labour, and free of context. The Telegraph report is factual, no matter the source. It was just the first one up when I googled it, though I originally read the story in the Guardian or on the Beeb. I was trying to show you where Salmond thinks Scotland’s future lies; with bankers.
I’ve gotta dash, but I’ll be back later if you want to pick up. It’s been interesting. A feature of the next UK Government, which looks certain to be Labour led, is going to be how far it moves to genuine devolution, so relationships between the LP and the SNP are going to be crucial. On current UK polling, the SNP might hold the balance in the next Parliament. That’d give’em some serious bargaining power, aye?
Hey good discussion. Thanks for carrying it on Bill and TRP.
North Korea
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/international/asia_pacific/view/20121001north_korea_spark_could_set_off_nuclear_war/?
Iran
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/02/iran-nukes-deterrence?
Ahmadinejad on Syria
http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/irans-ahmadinejad-says-syria-crisis-may-engulf-region?
Sorry Jokerman, this ones kinda big, but my thoughts ….
Kim Jong Un, a civilised man trying to bring peace too his region and is trying too address the loss.
Ahmadinejad, Likes the idea of addressing the loss in Tehrans’ region (No Offense, it’s what I read).
Europe, Like I keep telling John Key, we gotta regulate, and stop the embargo on Iran.
Warmongers in America….
They’ve been trying to do it fiscally, you gotta remember they’re everywhere.
The good civilised people that stand next too them are fighting tooth and nail too stop them.
Those good civilised people are doing it with open communication and due diligence.
They know more about NZ’s economy than John Key did …. a lot more.
They are also trying hard for us too get some more cashflow in the local economy.
Bloody good civilised people in my opinion, helping us save our country despite the incompetence of it’s elected leader, you have too love them for that.
Irans’ had the possibility of nuclear arms for 20+ years, those warmongers are moronic in their words and actions, It’s amazing too me that any civilised person on earth could take them seriously.
I’m sure those good civilised Americans I was describing above, our allies, view them in a similar light, with an appropriate amount of fear, they are crazy morons after all.
Education is the answer too right wing bigotry and violence in our communities, how do they/we educate those Warmongers about the dangers of their stupidity?
The embargoes on the Super Power Iran simply impoverish the starving poor of the world …. there will never be any other result, our friends and neighbours are out of work, because of oil inflation, engineered by those same warmongers, who hold a chart much like the armies did in the second world war, outlining the oil resources of the world.
Every country on the planet that has signed one of those documents in error, should rip them up and re-negotiate, make sure you tell America / China / Any other money lender before you do. But none of them want people too starve, that’s an obvious thing too me.
It’s our civilised duty too Govern the economies of our countries so no one will starve, that’s the goal.
Don’t let incompetent people destroy your economy again, make sure they are qualified.
Give them a Job Description, and make sure they stick too it.
Europe
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/comment/margareta-pagano/margareta-pagano-candid-truths-on-the-euro-crisis-from-a-man-who-knows-his-facts-8194691.html
What a sad and sorry business this Zion Wildlife Park has led to. The poor cat handler Dalu Mncube mauled to death by the tiger he was caring for, who Craig Busch knew had a false passport, had that held over him whenever he wanted some better standards of safety. He could have been saved from such a horrific end.
Apparently Mr Busch did not want him to sign a contract and said he would have him deported if he did, and Mrs Busch, Craig’s mother had said she would not carry on employing him if he didn’t sign. The two were fighting for control of the Park and Mr Busch made allegations of unsafe practices just before the death. But she said that Mr Busch had shifted the cats to a different enclosure which didn’t have safe measures for entry and disrupted the environment for the tiger that killed Mr Mncube. A month before the killing there had been an incident when a tiger bit another man on the leg. It has been alleged that Mrs Busch was delaying buying a tazer to have for emergencies, and the Buschs wouldn’t provide a reliable and trained backup person.
It sounds as if Mr Busch has a narcissistic personality disorder which I have been reading about in the Listener. http://www.listener.co.nz/current-affairs/its-all-about-me-the-rise-of-narcissism/
” Further, narcissists seem unable to be empathetic. They cannot see a situation from someone else’s perspective, but nor do they really try, since they mostly think only about themselves and how others see them.”
How do such people get the right to keep such dangerous animals and when granted the right not have constant serious overview? There had been a number of incidents that had not been reported by the Park to MAF..
These included a boy being bitten by a lion cub and requiring hospital care, a cheetah escaping in 2011, and a fence being blown down which led to a lion escaping.
The park was being operated by Craig Busch and then later his mother Patricia, when these incidents happened.
zion lack of reports
Now the Park has been bought and being run since about Easter 2012 by new people who were employing Mr Busch. This doesn’t seem right when he could be said to have caused the death of one of his employees. Mr MnCube might have said that he would clean out the cat’s enclosure, but his preferred safety measures had been shifted by Mr Busch. So it seems he had a big responsibility that doesn’t seem to have been sheeted home. He has had his own television show and feels quite the star and now he’s poncing around playing the big man for tourists.
Hey LPRent, why the internal 500 error? a while back.
Do you encrypt your aliases?
Not that I care personally, but I reckon you should watch out for newbies.
Which brings up another point, which is …
Isn’t it terrorism when the GCSB spy on someone, what are they gonna do with the info?
And why the hell would they hack The Standard?
I doubt their machine will be running yet.
The site has a few too many posts. The Rss and SEO updates when a post is edited are cuing CPU outages. On my fix list… Now all I have to do is find time…
And I have very good spam filters
Do you know what a stack smash is LP?
Or did you crash the service ?
See below, they modify the tcpip packet to incorrectly report the size of the packet, allowing them to run past the boundry of the executable, they are looking for a running sh they can play in.
an error 500 is the only indicator cos it’s at the routing kernel level., and any port can be used it
I only know one man that can pull it off, and he’s done his homework.
Been thinkin…
He’s probably had access for a while, he can attack any port, and spam filters mean nothing.
He did this on purpose, coz he knows I know …. something to think about.
Give him a day and he’ll be back.
There is only one fix for this problem, talk to the OS people,
Get a triple checked IP routing kernel, it should be able to report a smash attempt in the logs.
It’s worth it, this attack is undefeatable without it.
CPU outages are another indcator by the way.
Chances are they’ve got your router as well.
Bad gateway error 500? Been getting the odd one just very occasionally last month or two.
Someone saying howdy, they’d have to find your process or kill the whole server, first one I’ve seen.
ie …. …. . . … …… .. … …..d
I got one of those yesterday. Internal 500 error, was going to mention it, but have been battling this rotten flu and I forgot, also as it automatically reloaded the page from your end I really gave it no never mind and it’s not the first time I have seen it. I have also noticed that page refreshes are pretty slow too, and lately they have been getting pretty slow
There aint no way it’s the number of posts, a freakin 486 could handle that amount.
The response times for me are well within boundaries usually.
Ah no, figure it through and think server operations. Whenever a edit is done on a post…
0. The post gets added/updated which effectively causes a wait for virtually all current read operations at the database as it is running on a non-transactional DB and there are several tables that store the posts data. They are part of most queries in a WordPress system. Most cached queries are invalidated and require regeneration when they are next asked.
1. frontpage gets changed – which requires that the cloudflare cache will have to fetch a new cache for the 30-90 people online on their next refresh (some will overlap on browsers). Typically this starts happening immediately.
2. A new robots.txt is generated for the whole site – takes 4.5 seconds and usually sucks up the whole of two cores
3. The search engine gets notified and typically picks up and indexes both the post and any new comments on other pages. This usually sucks up a core for a second.
4. Google, bing, baidu, yahoo, etc are notified and we immediately get a least 20 search engine systems (many of them pick up from multiple locations) in picking up the robots.txt, the edited post, and any posts that hav had recently added comments.
5. The hundreds of RSS feeds pop in, see a new post and suck it up over the next few minutes.
6. Probably a few more that I can’t remember right now…
But the nett effect is that apache and the database jam up with stacked waiting queries as the CPUs run at 90%. This typically takes about 5-10 seconds in the middle of the night. Then it drops back to the usual 10%. But during the day we have a lot more going on under normal loads. It will usually clear in 20-30 secs but it can take a few minutes if everything piles in at the same time. That will cause apache timeouts. The frequency of the latter is increasing…
The trick is to push some of these tasks (2-5) on to deferred cron to spread the load. Which requires customizing plugins very carefully because almost all of the existing ones operate on direct hooks. I haven’t had time to do it since the load started boosting towards the end of last year.
I used to work on 486s back in the 80s and early 90s. And I mostly work on single core ARM 9s running linux in my paid work at present (I seem to oscillate from server systems to embedded these days). They are like pretty fast 486’s. But they have problems stretching to the minimal amounts of data we are feeding in and out via serial and TCP whilst processing in maximum load tests for certification. That is with customized data structure optimized for the task and before we add my GUI on top and with only a couple of connections.
I rather think you are overrating the capacities of 486s with processing while doing comms. Single core systems just aren’t that good at doing multiple things at once.
Fair enough LP just giving ya a heads up, but ignore it if ya want bud 🙂
How many zombie threads do you see on the server?
Do you even check?, they’ve probably got a permanent connection , check the age of the zombies, one of them will be days old.
Bud I used too write assembler comms switches on z80 processors running 1200 baud airline reservation systems. one page of solid text = 2048 bytes of data.
A time out is a 503 error not a 500.
And bud, Linux / Apache are the most stack smashable solutions on the market.
They have source code available to the world.
Your users have been compromised, not that they actually care, they’re not terrorists afterall.
And it’s not paranoia bud.
Yeah I’ve had a few over the last couple of days.
First one I’ve seen
It’s a rare error, and they have obviously been on the board for a while.
It means they know who u are, if u’ve been getting this error, someone wants you too know.
LP is too scared too admit it, and doesn’t have a clue about stack smashing.
You both should power cycle your routers by the way.
You’ll probably find the power button doesn’t work anymore, so unplug/replugin the power adapter.
hey bo.
they cant help themselves.
in their horrible little minds if they aren’t spying on you then you are spying on them!
and besides their is an unnamed battle group approaching our shores and eternal vigilance is the price of freedom and blah blah flipping blah.
and there is a drone watching YOU right now!
snd just because you are paranoid doesn’t mean that they are not out to get you!
howzatt?
Do you know what an internal server 500 means moron?
They just stack smashed The Standard
The fact they have recompiled the service probably saved them a breakin, it indicates a GP fault in the service.
(i.e didn’t find the sh)
Bloody Orphan
Why do you throw the word ‘moron’ round? It’s quite a strong word and should be saved for special and rare case.
sorry, I apologise, but they’ve been smashed
I wouldn’t say something like that without reason