Just heard on the 6am news there’s a push for privately managed isolation facilities.
OMG, are we impervious to lessons from Victoria? Do we really want a clusterfuck like Melbourne here?
The government may not be perfect in its management of quarantine, but if a problem arises they can throw money at it. A private firm will inevitably cut corners to make more profit.
Keep capitalism far away from our boarder protection management – please!
Yep, the richies want to be in charge / making profit while the rest of us take all the risks and get "jobs jobs jobs" (at minimum wage, zero-hours, no security and be grateful for it you miserable peasants)
So they want to bring in their rich mates supposedly to fix the economy? Well after 30 odd years of this stuff the bulk of the population could barely fund themselves for a 4 week stay at home – so as far as I am concerned its a failed idea and they can get stuffed. Just like private quarantine is a failed idea.
Why does the news media give so much time to just 20 people – when they are like this one.Deplatform them. Why on earth did he get one of the quarantine spaces after not bothering to be here for 2 decades.
Among them was Pooj Prenna, who recently returned to New Zealand with his family, after 20 years overseas.
And why does Helen Clark continue to want to be associated with these people. She's starting to look like Tony Blair- can't some one have a word with her.
And Prenna after 20 years out of the country and not bothering he comes back and gets an invitation to the forum and starts to tell the rest of us what to do. Well lets tax him on his worldwide interests. (appears to be a silicon valley capitalist)
Why does the news media give so much time to just 20 people
Because they're rich.
And why does Helen Clark continue to want to be associated with these people.
She may have been principled when she opposed the purchase of the Airforce strike fighters but since then she's been in government where had to collude with business to get anything done. Basically, she's drunk the cool-aid that its business that does things and not government.
Yeah I get the rich bit – but there's more of us than them and we are the one's that are gunna vote. And since the rich have done little for the masses these last 30 years we certainly aren't going to be much poorer if we ignore them now or preferably charge them some real high taxes.
And ignore them we should.
Actually the taxes should be the push back. All reporters should ask these over entitled bods if they are willing to stump up more in taxes.
And as I say regardless of how much kool aid Helen has drunk she needs to stop making the life of the current labour party more difficult. She is being used by these righties as cover for the hard right agenda behind their views.
So Key and co would like to make money out of isolation and quarantine? (Never waste a crisis..Right!!)
Where is their billion dollars each insurance against failure?(No insurance against a pandemic usually, and we don't want Private collection of Profits and Public paying for failures)
Which hospitals will be used if and when they let the virus in? Private?/Public???
Would they charge people to use their hospitals?
Whose country do they plan to poach Doctors and Nurses from?
Where will they obtain their testing kits PPE and general staff?
Yeah, agree with that 100%. I have never ever heard so much fucking winging by the right since this virus thing has started. The so-called rugged everybody stands on their own two feet, no such thing as a free lunch no passengers in this world etc etc etc right are there for assistance and handouts until you want to fucking vomit. Every time I hear the news there is some other right-wing prat winging how hard done by they are, and how MUCH better they can do it, or what a stuff up this administration has caused.
The next catch cry is going to be Private Enterprise can do everything SOOOOOO much better than governments and controlling the quarantine is just another one of them. Well if this administration buckles and allows private enterprise to run it. there have to be some strict ground rules. For starters, if any person breaks out of a privately run quarantine, the company running the isolation is instantly fined $100 000 to cover the cost of the police having to apprehend the offender and also creating the risk of spreading the virus in the community.
No private quarantine would be one election platform I'd really like. I'd be furious if they buckled – this is an opportunity to do things so much better for all the rest of us.If there had to be a punishment then I'd have the personal guarantees of all this crowd – any breach they get slung out off the country.
I'd like to think the government is testing public opinion regularly.
I consider $100,000 a very low and therefore "unsuitable fine", because the private company would include this into the costs running the operation.
How about every "business leader", including ex-PM Helen Clark, John Key, that wants to open the borders or a private organisation running the quarantine for economical gains put their bodies where their big mouth is (see newspaper, radio TV etc.)… for each "escape" at least one year prison for the glorious business leaders in case of non-infection, increased to at least five years in case of causing community transmission?
Would be interesting to see how many would still promoting it.
Covid 19 coronavirus: Travellers would not escape quarantine under National, Judith Collins says
…
People would not be escaping quarantine and managed isolation if National was in charge, leader Judith Collins says.
Collins said on Newstalk ZB this morning she had "zero tolerance" for coronavirus, and that Covid-19 "simply would not be allowed in" under her party's watch.
I guess they have snipers shooting escapees? Or National party members patrolling around the facilities.
Oh, and the virus definitely doesn't care about Judith Collins.
You know the only reason Collins wants to spend up large on Wellingtons roads was because of the traffic congestion which made her late for a hair appointment.
Time for some of these peeps to get with the plot.
Actually, I'm quite happy for them to not get the plot and the longer the better. That way they continue to prove that they're last centuries problems just trying to hang on to being relevant and, most importantly, not a solution to today's issues.
Very good idea satty, but I prefer my idea otherwise it will cost us money keeping the parasites in prison unless part of their sentence is that they pay for their own jail time. Good idea though.
…. and put all the returning kiwis in Jucy vans to free up the best hotels for wealthy tourists and students – and the spokesperson for this idea is the Jucy owner.
That actually isn't a bad idea Matiri. We don't want to let prejudice about business blind us to where they can be directly useful in times of crisis like this.
Privately run managed isolation… you mean like quarantining people in private hotels and paying them to manage the day to day issues? Huh, we should have thought of that sooner. /sarcasm
Of course not. She wants a mixture of containers and tents on Sommes Island run jointly by SERCO and MSD and to be able to shoot those who get too sick then bury them in the harbour. One of the most clear-thinking, strategic and pragmatic leaders we’ve ever had.
So the people behind this are the Alpe’s, that’s Jucy. They are most likely in the crap right now.
Key was prompting this a few days ago, wearing which hat, ANZ chair, or his personal interest.
A few questions need to be asked about what’s going on here, and who’s interests are being prompted. It’s looking like a select few before the wider New Zealand
It’s looking like a select few before the wider New Zealand
It is. To manage the population the capitalists need to manage what information that the population is getting and that's the job for the privately owned MSM.
"Why don't we let in rich Americans who want to build a house in New Zealand? Who cares? They're in Mangawhai or somewhere, they are going to create thousands of jobs.
"Why do we care if someone who lives in New York wants to spend $10 million building a house in Auckland, using NZ craftsmen and NZ tradespeople?"
Why do we care if rich Americans put even more pressure on our recourses using scarce tradespeople to build houses that will likely sit empty? Good god John Key is so stupid! It’s no wonder the housing problem became a crisis under his watch. The man is so blinded by his own self-interest that he simply cannot see the bigger picture."
John Key is so full of it. Why would they create thousands of jobs?
I think you'll find that by "houses" Key means "castles" and by "jobs" he means "serfdom". All that mountainous Central Otago landscape isn't going to plough and plant itself with wheat now is it ? — @brettroberts
Someone went to the trouble of actually working out the numbers that Key and pals couldn’t be bothered with. Guess what, it doesn’t add up
OMG, are we impervious to lessons from Victoria? Do we really want a clusterfuck like Melbourne here?
The capitalists want in of the money that the government is spending and, considering that it is a necessary service, they'll be able to low bid to get the job and then ramp up the expenses to make a higher profit.
Think this needs to be viewed in the context of NZs primary economic strategy which exists across parties (and may explain the involvement of the likes of Key and Clark, strange bedfellows indeed)…..growth via population.
Watching Weka scramble around on the Standard trying to beg left wing voters to vote Greens is glorious isn’t it? It’s like Green activists spend 3 years alienating the electorate and then realise months before the election that their woke middle class identity politics virtue signalling hasn’t won them any friends. Surprise, surprise.
Unfair to blame Weka for the Greens seeming woke. Censoring an 80 year old feminist because the alphabet soup tribe claimed she hurt their feelings was a collective idiocy, for which they are still evading moral responsibility. Given enough rope, the Green leftists used it to hang themselves, using the old rationale `if we don't hang together, we'll hang separately. Their belief system did them in – can't blame individuals.
If Labour don’t win an outright majority, the Green negotiating team will need to prioritise the policy they want passed in the first 100 days so they can show voters meaningful change and don’t end up in the same position of barely getting over 5% they are in now. That would require the kind of strategic forward thinking the Greens haven’t managed to show over the last 3 years.
This notion of Bomber’s that any group of leftists are innately capable of strategic thinking seems suspiciously like blind faith. I haven't seen leftists in Aotearoa do it ever, and I've been watching them since the late 1960s.
Fuck Bomber, I'm ex Mana ex Māori Party ex Alliance voting Greens (I did last election too). People like him, Tau Henare, NZ1st & the rabid RWs fearmongering over the Greens just strengthens my resolve.
Me too! And I hope that the Labour part of the coalition is nudged along by some of the Greens policies, in an 'aiming for the moon but might it hit a star' way as part of a consensus….but always the direction is forward.
All Parties in NZ have to be poked with a stick to stick to their supposed goal of doing the best for NZ. I've voted Greens for yonks and mixed with good people, but many tend to be loving of the environment, and looking at people as if they have invaded Eden.
The problem with such lefties is the tendency to spout high-minded stuff about green matters, and follow the latest thought on how to be, but all having different ideas about how those thoughts should be infused in real-life practices. More discussion needed to be done about how, and how practically to reach the established and tabled goals, and just how many ethical barriers should be included or put aside as being too precious. It may be that there is a more pragmatic and robust side to the Greens with Shaw, I hope so.
Bomber is a jackass. So removed from any relevancy he used to have back in the late 1990's and early 2000's as to become more a sideshow than anything serious
A pre moderated blog that lets misogynist comments through from idiots who aren't allowed to post here anymore. Not a great claim to fame for a left leaning blog.
And despite all that really important stuff from a wide range of writers, the true worth of the site is laid bare by what’s permitted under the topics in the comments.
it may surprise you that many blogs are written for readers not commenters. I don't like the commenting policy there either, but plenty of people don't like TS' policy 😉
It doesn't surprise me, why would it? I know the purpose of blogs/media/social pretentiousness etc, yet I still think the moderators allowing posts through underneath topics, like calling you "a bitch", for example, doesn't leave TDB with much left wing credibility, unless you think those readers you're talking about don't view the comments, or it doesn't matter if they do.
If I authored topics there, I'd be pretty vocal about what the moderators are happy to pass under Bradbury's posts. I'd be wondering if they really had a left wing core underneath the important stuff if they let shit like that pass. Maybe some of them will write something and show some lefty credentials.
Next time someone uses the bitch word here I'll be all over it, but I'm not sure if most people don't read the comments, and definitely not convinced that would be enough of an excuse to permit that sort of crap anyway.
Regardless, an interesting editorial position from someone running one of the leading left wing blogs in NZ.
No I was talking about the relevance he used to have which has diminished considerably. But whatever – I don't have enough skin in this game to carry on
I think you might put it more like this John S, that Bomber keeps looking and thinking and remembering that we have come right through the 20th century and mucked it up. He has had to change from what was thought relevant then. Perhaps it is you who are trailing behind in a cloud of exhaust and nostalgia. There is no blame on you if you are as many of us have that problem. But it has to be overcome, so keep those cogs whirring.
The transie crowd then went ahead and cancelled Jill because their feelings got hurt
As a gay man I have no time for the transie crowd calling me tranphobic because I don't see transmen as men. They're not. And for them to try and force me to see them as men, is outright homophobic.
I'm gay because that's what nature decreed. I have no sexual attraction to women. It's very much 100% toward men. A man has a penis. Transmen do not. They may have an imitation penis but at the end of the day, they are still biologically female. All the testosterone pills in the world will not change that fundamental fact of science.
To have transmen decry me as transphobic because I have no sexual attraction to them makes them homophobic by denying my reality. Transmen (and transwomen) are not men or women and shouldn't be so quick to lambast homosexuals because we have no sexual attraction toward them. That's homophobic and denies our biochemical response. I have met transmen, and there's an innate reaction to them and recognition that they're actually female, and not truly male. Pheromones make all the difference.
Trans people can feel who they are, but their current MO of criticising homosexuals as transphobic because we are same sex attracted, is why there is such antipathy in a large section of the gay community towards trans activists. It does appear that the worst activists are straight men who would never themselves, sleep with a transwoman because again, heterosexuality has an element of sexual attraction. A straight man can't have a family with a transwoman unless it's an adopted family. I've never had a definitive answer from any straight male activist as to whether they would sleep with a transwomen, yet some of them have said they would sleep with a transman which just goes to show that if there's a vagina, and not a penis, a straight man really is sexually attracted to the female genitalia, rather than male.
The argument is far more nuanced than the simplistic "transwomen are women" or "transmen are men" argument that is constantly peddled. Of course you can't really have a good discussion about it and explain your viewpoint without activists generally leaping straight to "you're transphobic" rather than appreciate that it's far more complex than they appreciate.
I have a transexual aunty, and I also have transgender friends. I have no problem with them. I do have a problem with activists ignoring the fact that homosexuality is "same sex" and not "same gender" attraction, by and large.
that's a really good explanation of that side of it thanks.
I'll add that the terms 'woman' and 'man' get used differently by different people. Here you clearly use them to mean biological sex. Sometimes people use the terms to mean gender/roles rather than bio sex.
(yep, that's a whole can of worms, just wanted to bring it into the discussion because it's such a sticking point and point of people talking past each other).
The two separate meanings present a massive impediment to public debate. Unfortunately the debating tactic of claiming that, the alternate positions use of the terms imposes unacceptable context on the discussion, is common.
Frequently this extends as far a claiming a biological (scientific) understanding is anti-trans (or in other contexts sexist, racist etc…).
But the only likely outcome when this happens is both sides will talk past each other because their terms are mutually incompatible. Usually this just insulates the two arguments from each other rather than leading to allowing a challenge to either sides positions.
In order to understand how this came about it may be important to consider that post-modern philosophical underpinnings of many of these radical ideas reject both logic and a scientific understanding of the world and instead begin by claiming reality is constructed by some form of widely shared beliefs (also called a social construct). Were this true then it does follow that somebody could/can change sex by imagining it to be so and convincing sufficient others to believe it so.
My observation is that both sides of the war have weaponised semantics, as you say they each use the words their own way when speaking to each other* and as well as making useful communication possible it creates a lot of aggro.
I understand why each side has done that, and the issues are actually complex beneath the semantics, but it's hard to see how any progress can be made while this continues (and I think it will).
*as well as to everyone else, so people coming to the debate fresh end up completely confused. Also, society has historically used the term gender and sex interchangeably so much that now there is a new meaning for gender we don't even have consistent language in law now.
There are some significant problems with the trans movement, that aggressive trans activists (TRAs) tend to gloss over, outlined thoughtfully by J K Rowling.
Yeah, I like the clarity of your analysis too James. I came across this recently:
Third gender, or third sex, is a concept in which individuals are categorized, either by themselves or by society, as neither man nor woman. It is also a social category present in societies that recognize three or more genders. The term third is usually understood to mean "other"; some anthropologists and sociologists have described fourth, fifth, and "some" genders. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_gender
Quite an eye-opener for me, it was. I had no idea of the deep context documented by professional researchers.
Clearly there's a realistic basis for public policy around urinals: addition of a third option to the traditional binary. Existence of the biological third option defeats the habitual binary when identified in so many diverse cultural contexts & throughout history.
while it makes sense that most straight men won't be bothered, there's a clear conflict between some trans activist politics and women's sex-based rights. My suggestion at this point is, if you are new to this debate, to take a step back and be willing to be on a steep learning curve around gender, sex, and the TA/gender critical feminist war. It's complex, and the clusterfuck of the debate is nothing like I have seen anywhere else in 40+ years of politics. If you are not new, then you already know what I am talking about and your question is a set up.
So early in the morning! Can you keep your edge right till election time? Please – it sharpens the conversation. What sif you don’t like cauliflower, broccoli is very very good for you and greener.
Sewing the seeds of discontent the left uniting is a very unusual occurence .It seems the right have been afflicted badly by the aberration more recently airing their Dirty linen(politics) in public.
Given enough rope, the Green ideological leftists idiots used it to hang themselves, using the old rationale `if we don’t hang together, we’ll hang separately. Their belief system did them in – can’t blame individuals.
With my little adaptation in the quote, that is a good description of my views on Bomber and his ilk with their lack of toleration for ideas outside of their MAD silos. Same for those massive numbers of factional warriors in their little in groups on the right or religions or even amongst scientific and academic communities or in whole industries.
Since the 1970s I’ve watched with awe at the ability of a lot of ideologues of many ilks to dance on the head of a pin to gain their own position whereby they can denounce the ideas of others – when I can’t tell the difference between the denounced and the denouncer.
Then there are a pile of people who don’t indulge in point scoring games and who manage to cooperate despite their differences. In politics these tend to form larger political parties. In businesses they form corporations.
The ideological divide that I always see isn’t between left and right, green and free-market, religious (including atheists) and agnostic. But it between the those who can cooperate for the common good and those who find that beneath them.
This notion of Bomber’s that any group of leftists are innately capable of strategic thinking seems suspiciously like blind faith. I haven’t seen leftists in Aotearoa do it ever, and I’ve been watching them since the late 1960s.
Same for any group outside of traditional bureaucrats (who do seem to want to run on rails for decades – but seldom get the chance). For instance, businesses rarely maintain a strategic direction for more than about 3 years unless they are largely controlled by a single person. Infrastructure development and military tend to be better over longer strategic directions, but that is largely because of the length of their purchasing cycles.
The myth of strategic direction by a group is almost an axiom inside any MBA course. You’ll see cost shaving measures happening over longer periods of time – because they provide a continuing economic return. But you seldom see a genuine strategic direction last more than a few years when it isn’t caused by a underlying technology shift. For instance the JIT inventory strategies in the 1980s arising from better computer systems and better distribution links. Of the off-shoring of manufacturing as freight and air links and comms systems improved world wide.Or any number of other management fads that have been shored up by a change in the underlying tech.
But if you look closely at any organisation that is made up of groups of people, what you’ll see is a series of strategies competing, and a awful lot of creative story telling to explain the continuity in quite large shifts in strategic direction over very numbers of years. What you won’t see very often in any coherent strategic directions lasting for a decade or more.
I’d have to say that the Greens and before that Values have been remarkably consistent by comparison. Of course in NZ they have never really had access to sufficient power to start having to protect it. It’d be interesting to see what they’d do with it. Maybe this time
Yes, that's true, your generalised point about ideology & group coherence in relation to social context that is in perennial flux. Consistency and strategy based on it worked better when the pace of change was slower. That pace shift between '60s & '70s made much strategic thinking irrelevant – except at the geopolitical level, where stasis ruled.
The ideological divide that I always see isn’t between left and right, green and free-market, religious (including atheists) and agnostic. But it between the those who can cooperate for the common good and those who find that beneath them.
Because holism transcends binary divides. Focus on common ground is holist by nature – few adopt it as praxis. Focus on the common good inspired us in the early years of the Greens economic policy development. I recall Jeanette Fitzsimons advising us to read this:
For the Common Good: Redirecting the Economy toward Community, the Environment, and a Substainable Future, H.E. Daly and J.B. Cobb, Jr. 1990.
What Bomber forgets is that aside from silly distractions the Greens are the only party that take the future of NZ seriously, in context of the calamities that are coming. COVID is just the opening act.
Yeah but the question of alien life seems irrelevant to the story about our collapsing ecosystem (I don’t think there are any aliens out there, personally. Musk, Branson, Bezos are going to space and shitting on the Earth)
Everyone is dead and space is terra nullius? Or they learned their lesson and are hiding out in the trees again (metaphorically speaking), minding their own business.
seriously if we are waiting for a party to finally, finally do something other then sign meaning less paper (cause yeah, they are still signing on paper – hopefully recycled) then we are truly doomed.
the change will come when people understand that they have to change.
Sadly the Green Party is no more future orientated then any other Party. They live from election to election and hopefully a paycheck.
Anyone who consideres electric cars a greener option then standard cars cause 'fossil fuel' consumption, while pretending that the mining for lithium is NOT fossil fuel mining is neither green nor the answer to a better life.
So really you want change? Change yourself first, your community next and when the change is so far gone that they various beige suits hanging on the government tit can't refuse to acknowledge that change in the population anymore they will come to the party and not a day early.
But the most ineffective Party pretty much anywhere on this planet has been the Green Party.
referencing Dennis' point above about strategy, it's not possible for any party to do what you want, because most NZers won't vote for such a party. The Greens tread the fine line between what is needed and what is possible. That people like you and Bradbury continue to slag off the Greens is a failure of imagination on your part, which prevents seeing the strategy and most likely who the Greens actually are. Pfft, as if you're the only person that knows that EVs won't save the day and as if people in the GP don't understand cradle to grave. The Green Party cut their teeth on this stuff before you were even thinking about politics, and it's bizarre what prejudices people let blind them to the way out of our current dilemmas.
Yes, personal and then community change is absolutely necessary, but we don't have time to rely on that alone (and again, where is the strategy? It's not like people having been saying what you just said my whole life, it's not enough). The people in parliament are individuals who live in communities too, and many of them want real change.
Lithium production doesn't have to be fossil fuel dependent. That it mostly is at the moment is simply because it's cheaper that way, for now. But there's a bunch of alternative methods to getting the lithium, such as building a geothermal power station and extracting the lithium from the superheated groundwater going through the power station.
Understand its in the process of being scaled up for commercial production. If successful, I assume it could be deployed at other geothermal power stations.
Back in the late 90s/early noughties there was also Pacific Lithium's attempt to extract lithium from seawater here. But I was never sure whether that really was a good faith attempt to build a genuine productive business or just Robin Johannink grifting investors.
if the most ineffective party pretty much anywhere on this planet (hyperbole much?) are the greens, why is so much of what they have been banging on about, now mainstream thinking?I would say, in the BIG picture, the greens have been remarkably successful.
that's quite funny given Bradbury has spent more than three years running round slagging off the Greens, and actively undermining them, every chance he gets.
I'm not a GP activist, but people can call me a green activist. My preference would be that we had MANA and the Mp still in parliament, and others, and then I'd have more to write about.
I'd still be about the strategy though and will argue this with anyone that cares to: if actual lw policy matters, then the Greens have a significantly more lw policy platform than any other major party in this election. Hence the urge to vote for them. My personal political position is probably better described as deep green politics, and the GP are the best chance of us ever getting there.
But in the meantime, fucking climate change blows every other argument and stupid bullshit leftwing bitch fest out of the water.
My personal political position is probably better described as deep green politics, and the GP are the best chance of us ever getting there.
Exactly. I differ from you only on the political positioning required to get there – but I have had to drift with the times on that point recently. National's obduracy withstood the attempt by their progressives to steer their ship more cleverly, so the toxic culture within will defeat consensus politics for a while yet.
What is still missing is economic policy based on the commons. Both the left and right refuse to even think about that, yet it is the essential component for sustainable economics. Permaculture teaches design-based thinking, so I keep expecting it to emerge there. To provide that new design requires invention, so back in the '80s I conceived a synthesis of equity and enterprise as the conceptual basis for progress. Yet even permaculturalists haven't realised that yet. Too imaginal…
As written, as you quoted. Can't see how anyone could simplify further. But if you were fishing for framing to help explain it, I didn't get that far.
Green policy formulation in the first couple of years involved compiling elements deemed essential (UBI & true-cost accounting, for instance, pollution & natural resource taxes plus others). Members suggested & discussed in person when the working group met, policy drafts got amended subsequently by JF & posted to members for further comment. Then the Alliance hit & the process was shelved.
Since I was advocating something radical that hadn't been done before, I don't blame any of the others for being averse to integrating principles from the political left & right. Transcending binary belief systems is never easy.
I tend to view it from a human rights perspective as well as the economic view. Economics is all about efficiency of operations, costs & benefits quantised. When you transcend it via noticing that values are more qualities than quantities, and those drive behaviour more powerfully, then it becomes a question of how stuff gets shared.
By stuff, I mean mostly money & power, of course! So if society incorporates a conceptual framework empowering equity, people get a more equal share as of right. The convergence of legal provision on the principle is usually the structural problem: govts pretend to honour the principle while minimising the amount of provision. You know that.
Democracy allows them to get away with it. If they were bound by a charter of rights that included the provision, and their employment as MPs contracted them to legislate accordingly, public perception of the validity of wealth-sharing would be raised accordingly. People would see their entitlement to wealth-sharing as a human right.
Now the status quo does simulate this situation, since our government endorsed the UN covenant that specifies the several rights to sharing in the economy. Have you read those sections? In theory, our govt is bound to deliver. In practice, the delivery is ever arguable in extent.
So I advise strengthening the left hand side of the synthesis (equity) to reduce the gap between pretence & reality. As for the rhs (enterprise), I've always advised supplementing bau with collective endeavour. Traditional co-ops are a useful model but the operational lack seems to be around education and training: nobody provides! So generations keep passing the opportunity by out of ignorance. Remember Mondragon originated in 1956, yet the model has failed to replicate globally.
How could a working model of successful synthesis of both equity and enterprise fail to replicate? Mass psychology. Leftists promoting working together as an ideal instead of doing it in real life. Centrists being too lazy to think about it. Rightists being too scared to change.
In recent decades I've trended to the view that the paradigm shift required in politics can only get triggered by mass desperation. As we've seen recently, the inertial effect of complacency is even able to withstand a pandemic!
slagging off the Greens, and actively undermining them
Yes, I've noticed that too – I got 'silenced' from his blog for pointing out same. I can't work out what his agenda around that is supposed to be. He's built a small but vociferous army of absolute Green haters; not for anything policy-related, just due to dumb gotcha stuff he hears in the MSM.
I'm guessing some of it is because of his antipathy towards identity politics, which no doubt is in part due to the shit thrown at him by parts of the left over some of his behaviour.
Might be a bad cultural fit issue with the Greens too. He's not the only one that can't get over that.
Brain, perhaps. Since I wrote in support of it as a strategic initiative at the time. However you may recall that the Green movement originated as holistic (non-binary), and I became part of it that year (1968) on that basis, and it became overtly politic with a slogan expressly stating that it was neither right nor left in the early '80s.
Consequently the MoU was a centrist/leftist collaboration. I do understand that anyone in the leftist bubble will be unable to see it as such, of course. Bubble inevitably warp inhabitants away from reality.
So I ought to acknowledge that it was genuine evidence of leftists doing strategic thinking, eh? While simultaneously pointing out that it was a twin-tribe thingy.
"I do understand that anyone in the leftist bubble will be unable to see it as such, of course." Genuinely don’t understand why you would choose to believe that – simply having fun tilting at leftist windmills?
Sometimes absolutist reckons and wind-ups are written with such dismissive authority that gullibile readers might mistake them for facts – IMHO, of course.
One featured a progressive black Dem vs establishment black Dem battle:
Cori Bush, a progressive activist and veteran of the racial justice protest movement, defeated 20-year incumbent Missouri Rep. William Lacy Clay in a Democratic primary on Tuesday, a stunning victory for the party's insurgent left. The US House seat, based in St. Louis, has been held by Clay and his father, former Rep. William Clay Sr., one of the founders of the Congressional Black Caucus, since 1969.
Bush, who challenged Clay in 2018 and lost, was the first candidate launched by Justice Democrats, the progressive group dedicated to toppling moderate Democratic congressional incumbents. "We've been called radicals, terrorists, we've been dismissed as an impossible fringe movement — that's what they called us," Bush said in her victory speech. "But now, we are a multiracial, multiethnic, multigenerational, mass movement united in demanding change, in demanding accountability, in demanding that our police, our government, our country recognize that Black lives do, indeed, matter."
Bush's second attempt to unseat Clay, who won in 2018 with 57% of the primary vote, was backed Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Sunrise Movement, a youth-led group that champions the Green New Deal, and other leftist and progressive leaders, including Jamaal Bowman, who ousted Rep. Eliot Engel in New York during the state's June primary.
"Not me, US," Bush tweeted overnight, after her win was confirmed, echoing Sanders' campaign slogan in 2016 and 2020.
Bulldozer Gerry. Made the Christchurch quakes worse by demolishing everything with no regard for heritage and people's valuable stuff (literal fortunes) in the red zone. Stuffed up the rebuild. Has no regard for airport security.
sometime in the next year, we will all stare into the financial abyss. At that point, we will be well beyond the scope of the previous recession, and we will have either exhausted the remedies that spared the system last time or found that they won’t work this time around. What then?
I was part of the group that structured and sold CDOs and CLOs at Morgan Stanley in the 1990s. The two securities are remarkably alike. Like a CDO, a CLO has multiple layers, which are sold separately. The bottom layer is the riskiest, the top the safest. If just a few of the loans in a CLO default, the bottom layer will suffer a loss and the other layers will remain safe. If the defaults increase, the bottom layer will lose even more, and the pain will start to work its way up the layers.
Readers who are financially literate ought to read the detailed analysis – I'll just copy the sections other readers can comprehend, to illuminate the scenario.
The financial sector isn’t like other sectors. If it fails, fundamental aspects of modern life could fail with it. We could lose the ability to get loans to buy a house or a car, or to pay for college. Without reliable credit, many Americans might struggle to pay for their daily needs.
It is a distasteful fact that the present situation is so dire in part because the banks fell right back into bad behavior after the last crash—taking too many risks, hiding debt in complex instruments and off-balance-sheet entities, and generally exploiting loopholes in laws intended to rein in their greed. Sparing them for a second time this century will be that much harder.
Gabby I am reading Lindsey Davis and her character Falco who is a spy for the leaders, wealthy of Rome and he has to dodge all sorts including people who pop out with knives, like you who pop up to snipe. In the game that my sons spends time on-line, the spy is the one who jumps you from nowhere. It keeps him on his toes so to speak.
They've all been doing it since Reagan came in and said "Government is the problem". Wall St has been rolling back the New Deal and taking over the US government for decades now. A sham of democracy.
"Why don't we let in rich Americans who want to build a house in New Zealand? Who cares? They're in Mangawhai or somewhere, they are going to create thousands of jobs. Why do we care if someone who lives in New York wants to spend $10 million building a house in Auckland, using NZ craftsmen and NZ tradespeople?"
Golfing and tourism resorts built by two American billionaires, including the Tara Iti golf course near Mangawhai, received almost $1 million in wage subsidies between them during the Covid-19 lockdown.
Forget Roger Douglas, Prebs & co, subsidies are socialism at work! It's left/right win/win all over the place! He's reacting to this
The coronavirus pandemic sent the US economy plunging by a record-shattering 32.9 per cent annual rate last quarter
And he's alerting us to a collective gymnastics conundrum, via bad grammar:
Key said central government and the business community needed to be able to rapidly change course as information becomes available, even if such moves were disconcerting. "There is no elegant way of dismount a galloping horse."
Interesting he said Mangawhai. Cos of course he’s a member of the country’s most exclusive golf course there, Tara iti. Which is the cornerstone of a big really pricey real estate development that an American developer is doing.
The UK – It sounds like The Treasury is treating people as pawns again and the Government is playing russian roulette. Britain is heading for an unemployment crisis of Biblical proportions by the end of the year unless the Treasury's policy is torn up very soon. Businesses will start ‘shedding’ jobs rapidly in September as the furlough scheme dials down to 70pc of wages. It will reach a grim crescendo when support stops altogether at the end of October, long before the economy is in any fit state to absorb the army of unemployed.
“It is one of the biggest policy mistakes in modern British history,” said Nobel laureate Chris Pissarides from the London School of Economics.
What should governments be doing. What should the officials be doing, how should they cope with the changing ideas of governments. I may have put this up but it is worth repeating.
Lebanon's cabinet declared a two-week state of emergency in the capital city and handed control of security in the capital to the military following a massive explosion in Beirut that killed at least 135 people and injured 5,000 others.
The explosion on Tuesday sent shockwaves across the city, causing widespread damage as far as the outskirts of Beirut.
Officials said they expect the death toll to rise further as emergency workers dig through the rubble to search for survivors.
Beirut's city governor Marwan Abboud said up to 300,000 people have lost their homes and authorities are working on providing them with food, water and shelter.
Lebanon is in such a bad 'state' that its government can't look after the country properly. Instead they are like the National Party, looking after themselves and their friends, looking for personal advantage instead of managing the country for all the people doing the stodgy, practical things.
Who wants to be first in the world with edgy risky new measures – first being lauded for going naked into the neolib world – Grace Mullane virtually did that, now she is dead. We are vulnerable in our way.
We need to be aware of our vulnerability and keep looking after each other and the country tenaciously. No-one else will do it, we have to do it for ourselves.
There's just a huge crater where the warehouse full of ammonium nitrate once stood. The explosion registered as a M3.3 earthquake. Somewhere around 5% the power of the Hiroshima bomb.
Somewhere around 5% the power of the Hiroshima bomb.
So, approximately 750 ton of TNT equivalent. Really, Little Boy wasn't all that powerful as far as nukes go and you can't really compare the damage of an air-burst nuke to that done by a conventional ground explosion either.
Yeah, I get really irritated when people make senseless comparisons.
Leaving Brexit was an example of totally inadequate simple-majority law unsatisfactory for matters that change the system of the country. It was far different than an election that was part of the system. That decision has left the UK in a political hole it will never climb out of. Tried and true lefties say ' the people voted for it', for lies! They didn't have a clue what perversion of a political ploy they were falling for.
Houses for Ordinary people are The True Real resolve of Kiwis – not Rugby.
The persons who care for New Zealanders are not the Banks. For they exist night and day to squeeze every bit of fiscal Life out of the pockets of ordinary families and persons. Banks are Shylocks in new shirts. Ask Shakespeare.
They have even removed hundreds and thousands of NZeders out of once owned homes, and sold them off into the sweet arms of Landlords.
Landlords, as you know, demand monstrously cruel Rents and laugh at the poor they entrap.
The Wealthy people glutton on, receiving every perk the poor receive. Incredible crazy Gluttony !
The Excessive Land shall be demanded. The required Housing must be built and maintained. The Wealthy have had their fun. Haven't they ?
Else, New Zealand will be the world's laughing stock. Slaves.
All these economic decisions are rational given the market conditions set up by *government* of every stripe since Roger Douglas and his merry band of reverse robin hoods came along in their trojan horse and shafted ordinary kiwis
Unfortunately most of the world has got pulled into the freemarket neolib system and the housing problem is widespread. What to do without pulling the whole house of cards down on our heads? Perhaps we will be like Lebanon.
Or like the UK out of the EU and with huge loans still to repay – however we should remember that they ended up with a huge amount to pay to the USA after WW2 – through their lend-lease agreement etc. It made sense to join the European Common Market after that. Now they have decided to leave and pal up with the individualistic USA, a co-operative world is too common for those moguls, and the UK wants to plunder other pastures no doubt.
I think this may use up my quota of stupid questions for the month, but what happens if say ACT, NZ1 and the Greens all fall just below 5% and none of them win an electorate seat? And at the same time both Labour and National fall below 50% for the party vote?
How does this work in terms of forming a govt? Does Labour have to form a coalition with National?
In that scenario the party votes for those under 5% would be distributed proportionately.
If in the unlikely event Labour got 47% and National 45% Labour would be the government with National nipping at their heels. It would take just one or maybe two by-elections to fall from Labour to National to have a change of government.
If both parties ended up even, then we'd have a hung Parliament after redistribution and face another election.
OT: isn't it amazing that NZ only had one by-election this term when Jonathan Coleman left. Usually there's about 3 or more.
Which is why the Greens policy is preferential voting for both electorates and parties. Helps make sure that the parties that people actually prefer are elected.
Then whichever of Nats or Labour got the most votes gets to form the government. They will divvy up the 120 seats in relative proportion to their party vote. Say it was Labour 48% and Nat 44%, then Labour would get 63 seats (48% vote share*120 seats/92% total qualified non-wasted vote) and the Nats 57 seats (or maybe 62 and 58 depending on how the Sainte Lague formula works it out).
Not a silly question methinks. Could happen, so worth considering. I believe a national unity govt would be the framing deployed. They could also call it neoliberals disunited, eh? Would make fun political posturing a cultural norm until deckchair-arranging began to pall for all, whereupon the attraction of another election (mid-term) would suck their Titanic into an ocean vortex…
I know it deserves a full post in itself, but well done to this government and in particular Ministers Parker and O'Connor for the passage of the gazetting of the National POlicy Statement on Freshwater, National Environmental Standards for Freshwater, regulations on stock exclusion, and regulations on measurement and reporting on lakes and rivers;
The regulations that go into force reasonably quickly from this include:
• Requiring councils to give effect to Te Mana o Te Wai by prioritising the health and wellbeing of our waterways
• Halting further loss of natural wetlands and streams
• Setting higher health standards at swimming spots
• Putting controls on high-risk farm practices such as winter grazing and feedlots
• Setting stricter controls on nitrogen pollution and new bottom lines on other measures of waterway health
• Requiring urban waterways to be cleaned up and new protections for urban streams
• Preserving and restoring the connectivity of New Zealand fish species’ habitats
• Requiring mandatory and enforceable farm environment plans
• Making real-time measuring and reporting of data on water use mandatory.
They've also made special provision for vegetable growing areas which are critical for national supply, such as Pukekohe and the Horowhenua. The acid needs to go on Auckland Horizons councils to clean up these areas, even with the apparent carve-outs.
Looking forward to regional councils actually putting resource into enforcement and prosecution to get the turnaround we need.
I have mentioned that before lockdown and yes, my fear has proven correct. The majority of new unemployment cases are women.
But hey 'shovel' ready jobs are being offered. Billions being poured in shovel ready. 🙂
And women running small businesses to create an income for themselves in a society that gives few fucks of job creation for women can apply for a 'government loan' (fully refundable) or go to Winz for some much needed bullshittery in order to get nothing, cause they may share the home with a bloke aka the 'mealticket'.
I seriously hope that long term Labour will do better then that, but then Labour needs poor people, and poor women are always good to squeeze some more votes about. Right, cause 'we fight for women', and their children. One denied benefit at a time.
Without wanting to sound cynical, is there any actual breakdown analysis on this figure?
What sort of jobs we are talking about etc?
Would imagine the first people that lost their jobs were part timers that are more likely to be female (kids and things) and in hospitality (which basically shut down and is screwed) which is also more likely to be female.
Hospitality jobs, Front of house, waitresses, room maids, house keepers. Retail – all of them and more going due to self ordering and self check outs. All that retail usually also comes with office staff – production staff etc and a lot of those are also women.
So not sure what you are nitpicking about.
But yes, lets ignore the fact thatof 11.000 thousand that went on the dole 10.000 are women. And i would assume that the employment opportunities commissionar got the numbers from Winz.
Also from here a list of companies that shed jobs – Air NZ on top of the list, i would assume that a lot of the ground staff is female, a lot of the on plane staff are female.
Paying care giving jobs a decent wage would likely transfer some into that industry although I know it's not for all.
Getting over stereotypes.
Giving them some priority for courses on driving trucks and ag machinery. When ever I see agricultural areas complaining about lack of labour I think – offer part time hours and get some women trained who are well embedded in the community. Problem solved for the next decade
A lot are hospo I think. So very good argument for not extending any of the under 30 work/travel visa’s as they expire .as a lot of that work is hospo or seasonal.
i totally agree, all these women in their retail, hospitality, air NZ, cruise ship jobs etc should just move somewhere rural, be thaught how to drive a tractor and run a milking machine and all is sorted.
Yeah, right Tui.
10.000 out of 11.000 newly unemployed are women. Or did you miss that with you quick fix of bashing unde 26 year old fruit picking tourists. Mind, these women can get themselv a little camper van, bid farewell to hubby and children and just go fruit picking and sleeping in a dorm. Right? Even better, if they are single mums they can just go fruitpicking and their kids can too, right?
Good fucking grief.
This is why women in this country are among the poorest. Because there are too many that simply don't give a shit about how others do so as long as it affects not them.
Never mind that the Government has yet to actually do anything for women so far. Oh but they won't, right kinder gentler bullshit.
Err I wasn't suggesting anything like fruit picking actually and I am certainly not bashing women. I wanted to be sure that women are considered and taken onto the good number of courses being run at the moment ( and there are apparently airline pilots on some ) that lead to some of the better paid rural jobs – some of which are contracting ( driving grape pickers for example). A lot of these don't require moving to the back blocks but maybe to secondary towns like Nelson, Blenheim, Hastings Palmerston North. – or some of them may even want assistance to get HT licences to drive trucks- which generally seems to be better paid than care giving – funny that. Then there are all the trades courses – generally more women are taking these up – but we do want to make sure that any barriers are dealt with.
So no the "put the kids in the camper van and go somewhere" was not part of my thinking simply an assumption on your part so please don't sledge me about it.
Likewise hospo. Yes I have registered that we are talking about women and yes a large number of jobs seem to be from this industry and the numbers are also I assume locals eligible for welfare. But overall of out total hospo jobs pre covid a very large number (well over 2/3rds seem to be filled with those on short term visa's including the short term travel/work visa's.) There seems to be no reason to grant extensions on these visa's despite petitions and that would not have happened to any great extent pre covid so why do we not try to have locals filling our local hospo jobs? Nothing snide about that .
Do women overall need more support – right across the economy that would be a yes.
Behind a viral photo of a crowded hallway at a high school in Georgia, a potentially dire situation is brewing. Students, teachers, and parents fear the Paulding County school’s rushed reopening plans may be spiraling out of control just two days after students — who said they were told they could face expulsion for remaining home — returned to class despite reports of positive coronavirus cases among students and staff.
North Paulding High School, about an hour outside Atlanta, reopened Monday despite an outbreak among members of its high school football team, many of whom, a Facebook video shows, worked out together in a crowded indoor gym last week as part of a weightlifting fundraiser.
Does anyone know if it's legit for a sitting, albeit leaving MP such as Paula Bennett to be moonlighting for a full week of morning talkback shows on Newshub's Magic Radio especially during election cycle They're already dedicated 24/7 to trying to get the National Party into govt but what part of this and the discussions can be separated from campaign advertising $$?
ha! Huruhuru also means pubic hair. Look Waghorn, rule of thumb, if you're unsure whether naming something from someone elses culture is appropriation or not, maybe don't do it, who needs the headache.
I never write Winston Peters off. I remember the political idiots from National, Act, and the dipshit side of the left doing that in 1999, 2008, 2011, and today.
What those wishful politically dumb numpties forget is three things. He has a constituency for his brand of politic, those people are exactly the right kind of paranoid to ignore pollsters asking them who they’d vote for, and they all vote.
That is why the NZF vote on election days is always higher than virtually all of the polls by a few percent. While the greens is usually lower (lots of non voters there).
About the only thing that might mitigate that long term trend this time is Shane Jones. I am so glad he isn’t Labour any more. He is a real undisciplined pain to have around any political party.
Good probability. He has actually delivered the goodies – unlike the bridges that Bridges promised in a past by-election.
The issue would be if he could figure out how to retain the seat in subsequent elections. Electorate work is a long tedious detailed process of getting down with the distressed in an electorate. It doesn’t lend itself to the big-noting and meaningless rhetoric that Shane Jones is so well known for.
Yes, National's failure to screw over the NZ public as they wished in this case. As they couldn't say that they use personal attacks against Labour/Greens.
Jacinda always speaks in very clear language without ambiguity as she did again today. No umms or ers. Love her or hate her you wont misunderstand her.
Collins seems to jumble her sentences so that the meaning is ambiguous. And Collins spent most of her time today sneering and belittling. (As did Brownlee.)
Grant Robinson is still wedded to the delusional neoclassical/liberal school of economics. Most of Labour are and that is why they can't do the transformation that we need.
Yup, once the MMT lens is understood, it opens up a whole lot of progressive policy choices. These policies under a neoliberal view point are very difficult to justify.
Their billboards read, "Back your Future". With the greatest respect to the NZF voting demographic, their future will mostly have been planned and locked in some time ago.
Last election their billboards read, "Had Enough?"
The New Zealand Herald reports – Stats NZ has offered a voluntary redundancy scheme to all of its workers as a way to give staff some control over their “future” amidst widespread job losses in the public sector. In an update to staff this morning, seen by the Herald, Statistics New Zealand ...
David Farrar writes – The Herald reports: TVNZ says it is dealing with about 50 formal complaints over its coverage of the latest 1News-Verian political poll, with some viewers – as well as the Prime Minister and a former senior Labour MP – critical of the tone of the 6pm report. ...
Muriel Newman writes – When Meridian Energy was seeking resource consents for a West Coast hydro dam proposal in 2010, local Maori “strenuously” objected, claiming their mana was inextricably linked to ‘their’ river and could be damaged. After receiving a financial payment from the company, however, the Ngai Tahu ...
Alwyn Poole writes – “An SEP,’ he said, ‘is something that we can’t see, or don’t see, or our brain doesn’t let us see, because we think that it’s somebody else’s problem. That’s what SEP means. Somebody Else’s Problem. The brain just edits it out, it’s like a ...
Our trust in our political institutions is fast eroding, according to a Maxim Institute discussion paper, Shaky Foundations: Why our democracy needs trust. The paper – released today – raises concerns about declining trust in New Zealand’s political institutions and democratic processes, and the role that the overuse of Parliamentary urgency ...
This article was prepared for publication yesterday. More ministerial announcements have been posted on the government’s official website since it was written. We will report on these later today …. Buzz from the BeehiveThere we were, thinking the environment is in trouble, when along came Jones. Shane Jones. ...
New Zealand now has the fourth most depressed construction sector in the world behind China, Qatar and Hong Kong. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 8:46am on Thursday, May 2:The Lead: ...
Hi,I am just going to state something very obvious: American police are fucking crazy.That was a photo gracing the New York Times this morning, showing New York City police “entering Columbia University last night after receiving a request from the school.”Apparently in America, protesting the deaths of tens of thousands ...
Winston Peters’ much anticipated foreign policy speech last night was a work of two halves. Much of it was a standard “boilerplate” Foreign Ministry overview of the state of the world. There was some hardening up of rhetoric with talk of “benign” becoming “malign” and old truths giving way to ...
Graham Adams assesses the fallout of the Cass Review — The press release last Thursday from the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls didn’t make the mainstream news in New Zealand but it really should have. The startling title of Reem Alsalem’s statement — “Implementation of ‘Cass ...
This open-for-business, under-new-management cliché-pockmarked government of Christopher Luxon is not the thing of beauty he imagines it to be. It is not the powerful expression of the will of the people that he asserts it to be. It is not a soaring eagle, it is a malodorous vulture. This newest poll should make ...
The latest labour market statistics, showing a rise in unemployment. There are now 134,000 unemployed - 14,000 more than when the National government took office. Which is I guess what happens when the Reserve Bank causes a recession in an effort to Keep Wages Low. The previous government saw a ...
Three opinion polls have been released in the last two days, all showing that the new government is failing to hold their popular support. The usual honeymoon experienced during the first year of a first term government is entirely absent. The political mood is still gloomy and discontented, mainly due ...
National's Finance Minister once met a poor person.A scornful interview with National's finance guru who knows next to nothing about economics or people.There might have been something a bit familiar if that was the headline I’d gone with today. It would of course have been in tribute to the article ...
Rob MacCulloch writes – Throughout the pandemic, the new Vice-Chancellor-of-Otago-University-on-$629,000 per annum-Can-you-believe-it-and-Former-Finance-Minister Grant Robertson repeated the mantra over and over that he saved “lives and livelihoods”.As we update how this claim is faring over the course of time, the facts are increasingly speaking differently. NZ ...
Chris Trotter writes – IT’S A COMMONPLACE of political speeches, especially those delivered in acknowledgement of electoral victory: “We’ll govern for all New Zealanders.” On the face of it, the pledge is a strange one. Why would any political leader govern in ways that advantaged the huge ...
Bryce Edwards writes – The list of former National Party Ministers being given plum and important roles got longer this week with the appointment of former Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett as the chair of Pharmac. The Christopher Luxon-led Government has now made key appointments to Bill ...
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Auckland Transport have started rolling out new HOP card readers around the network and over the next three months, all of them on buses, at train stations and ferry wharves will be replaced. The change itself is not that remarkable, with the new readers looking similar to what is already ...
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On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a ...
Have a story to share about St Paul’s, but today just picturesPopular novels written at this desk by a young man who managed to bootstrap himself out of father’s imprisonment and his own young life in a workhouse Read more ...
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The unpopular coalition government is currently rushing to repeal section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act. The clause is Oranga Tamariki's Treaty clause, and was inserted after its systematic stealing of Māori children became a public scandal and resulted in physical resistance to further abductions. The clause created clear obligations ...
Buzz from the Beehive The government’s official website – which Point of Order monitors daily – not for the first time has nothing much to say today about political happenings that are grabbing media headlines. It makes no mention of the latest 1News-Verian poll, for example. This shows National down ...
It Takes A Train To Cry:Surely, there is nothing lonelier in all this world than the long wail of a distant steam locomotive on a cold Winter’s night.AS A CHILD, I would lie awake in my grandfather’s house and listen to the traffic. The big wooden house was only a ...
Packing A Punch: The election of the present government, including in its ranks politicians dedicated to reasserting the rights of the legislature in shaping and determining the future of Māori and Pakeha in New Zealand, should have alerted the judiciary – including its anomalous appendage, the Waitangi Tribunal – that its ...
Dead Woman Walking: New Zealand’s media industry had been moving steadily towards disaster for all the years Melissa Lee had been National’s media and communications policy spokesperson, and yet, when the crisis finally broke, on her watch, she had nothing intelligent to offer. Christopher Luxon is a patient man - but he’s not ...
Chris Trotter writes – New Zealand politics is remarkably easy-going: dangerously so, one might even say. With the notable exception of John Key’s flat ruling-out of the NZ First Party in 2008, all parties capable of clearing MMP’s five-percent threshold, or winning one or more electorate seats, tend ...
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Luxon will no doubt put a brave face on it, but there is no escaping the pressure this latest poll will put on him and the government. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political ...
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler In the wake of any unusual weather event, someone inevitably asks, “Did climate change cause this?” In the most literal sense, that answer is almost always no. Climate change is never the sole cause of hurricanes, heat waves, droughts, or ...
Something odd happened yesterday, and I’d love to know if there’s more to it. If there was something which preempted what happened, or if it was simply a throwaway line in response to a journalist.Yesterday David Seymour was asked at a press conference what the process would be if the ...
Hi,From time to time, I want to bring Webworm into the real world. We did it last year with the Jurassic Park event in New Zealand — which was a lot of fun!And so on Saturday May 11th, in Los Angeles, I am hosting a lil’ Webworm pop-up! I’ve been ...
Education Minister Erica Standford yesterday unveiled a fundamental reform of the way our school pupils are taught. She would not exactly say so, but she is all but dismantling the so-called “inquiry” “feel good” method of teaching, which has ruled in our classrooms since a major review of the New ...
Exactly where are we seriously going with this government and its policies? That is, apart from following what may as well be a Truss-Lite approach on the purported economic “plan“, and Victorian-era regression when it comes to social policy.Oh it’ll work this time of course, we’re basically assured, “the ...
Hey Uncle Dave, When the Poms joined the EEC, I wasn't one of those defeatists who said, Well, that’s it for the dairy job. And I was right, eh? The Chinese can’t get enough of our milk powder and eventually, the Poms came to their senses and backed up the ute ...
Polling shows that Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau has the lowest approval rating of any mayor in the country. Siting at -12 per cent, the proportion of constituents who disapprove of her performance outweighs those who give her the thumbs up. This negative rating is higher than for any other mayor ...
Buzz from the Beehive Pharmac has been given a financial transfusion and a new chair to oversee its spending in the pharmaceutical business. Associate Health Minister David Seymour described the funding for Pharmac as “its largest ever budget of $6.294 billion over four years, fixing a $1.774 billion fiscal cliff”. ...
Bryce Edwards writes – 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 is trying to achieve and its ...
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span class=”dropcap”>As hideous as David Seymour can be, it is worth keeping in mind occasionally that there are even worse political figures (and regimes) out there. Iran for instance, is about to execute the country’s leading hip hop musician Toomaj Salehi, for writing and performing raps that “corrupt” the nation’s ...
Yesterday marked 10 years since the first electric train carried passengers in Auckland so it’s a good time to look back at it and the impact it has had. A brief history The first proposals for rail electrification in Auckland came in the 1920’s alongside the plans for earlier ...
Right now, in Aotearoa-NZ, our ‘animal spirits’ are darkening towards a winter of discontent, thanks at least partly to a chorus of negative comments and actions from the Government Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on ...
You make people evil to punish the paststuck inside a sequel with a rotating castThe following photos haven’t been generated with AI, or modified in any way. They are flesh and blood, human beings. On the left is Galatea Young, a young mum, and her daughter Fiadh who has Angelman ...
April has been a quiet month at A Phuulish Fellow. I have had an exceptionally good reading month, and a decently productive writing month – for original fiction, anyway – but not much has caught my eye that suggested a blog article. It has been vaguely frustrating, to be honest. ...
A listing of 31 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, April 21, 2024 thru Sat, April 27, 2024. Story of the week Anthropogenic climate change may be the ultimate shaggy dog story— but with a twist, because here ...
Hi,I spent about a year on Webworm reporting on an abusive megachurch called Arise, and it made me want to stab my eyes out with a fork.I don’t regret that reporting in 2022 and 2023 — I am proud of it — but it made me angry.Over three main stories ...
The new Victoria University Vice-Chancellor decided to have a forum at the university about free speech and academic freedom as it is obviously a topical issue, and the Government is looking at legislating some carrots or sticks for universities to uphold their obligations under the Education and Training Act. They ...
Do you remember when Melania Trump got caught out using a speech that sounded awfully like one Michelle Obama had given? Uncannily so.Well it turns out that Abraham Lincoln is to Winston Peters as Michelle was to Melania. With the ANZAC speech Uncle Winston gave at Gallipoli having much in ...
She was born 25 years ago today in North Shore hospital. Her eyes were closed tightly shut, her mouth was silently moving. The whole theatre was all quiet intensity as they marked her a 2 on the APGAR test. A one-minute eternity later, she was an 8. The universe was ...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. This fact brief was written by Sue Bin Park in collaboration with members from our Skeptical Science team. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline. Is Antarctica gaining land ice? ...
Images of US students (and others) protesting and setting up tent cities on US university campuses have been broadcast world wide and clearly demonstrate the growing rifts in US society caused by US policy toward Israel and Israel’s prosecution of … Continue reading → ...
Barrie Saunders writes – Dear Paul As the new Minister of Media and Communications, you will be inundated with heaps of free advice and special pleading, all in the national interest of course. For what it’s worth here is my assessment: Traditional broadcasting free to air content through ...
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 is trying to achieve and its arguments for such a bold reform. ...
Peter Dunne writes – The great nineteenth British Prime Minister, William Gladstone, once observed that “the first essential for a Prime Minister is to be a good butcher.” When a later British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, sacked a third of his Cabinet in July 1962, in what became ...
Ele Ludemann writes – New Zealanders had the OECD’s second highest tax increase last year: New Zealanders faced the second-biggest tax raises in the developed world last year, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) says. The intergovernmental agency said the average change in personal income tax ...
We all know something’s not right with our elections. The spread of misinformation, people being targeted with soundbites and emotional triggers that ignore the facts, even the truth, and influence their votes.The use of technology to produce deep fakes. How can you tell if something is real or not? Can ...
This video includes conclusions of the creator climate scientist Dr. Simon Clark. It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any). This year you will be lied to! Simon Clark helps prebunk some misleading statements you'll hear about climate. The video includes ...
It is all very well cutting the backrooms of public agencies but it may compromise the frontlines. One of the frustrations of the Productivity Commission’s 2017 review of universities is that while it observed that their non-academic staff were increasing faster than their academic staff, it did not bother to ...
Buzz from the Beehive Two speeches delivered by Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters at Anzac Day ceremonies in Turkey are the only new posts on the government’s official website since the PM announced his Cabinet shake-up. In one of the speeches, Peters stated the obvious: we live in a troubled ...
1. Which of these would you not expect to read in The Waikato Invader?a. Luxon is here to do business, don’t you worry about thatb. Mr KPI expects results, and you better believe itc. This decisive man of action is getting me all hot and excitedd. Melissa Lee is how ...
…it has a restricted jurisdiction which must not be abused: it is not an inquisitionNOTE – this article was published before the High Court ruled that Karen Chhour does not have to appear before the Waitangi Tribunal Gary Judd writes – The High Court ...
Lindsay Mitchell writes – One of reasons Oranga Tamariki exists is to prevent child neglect. But could the organisation itself be guilty of the same?Oranga Tamariki’s statistics show a decrease in the number and age of children in care. “There are less children ...
David Farrar writes: Graeme Edgeler wrote in 2017: In the first five years after three strikes came into effect 5248 offenders received a ‘first strike’ (that is, a “stage-1 conviction” under the three strikes sentencing regime), and 68 offenders received a ‘second strike’. In the five years prior to ...
Bryce Edwards writes – 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 politics. That’s refreshing and will be extremely ...
TL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the two days to 6:06am on Thursday, April 25:Politics: PM Christopher Luxon has set up a dual standard for ministerial competence by demoting two National Cabinet ministers while leaving also-struggling ...
The Labour Party is saddened to learn of the death of Sir Robert Martin, a globally renowned disability advocate who led the way for disability rights both in New Zealand and internationally. ...
Labour is calling for the Government to urgently rethink its coalition commitment to restart live animal exports, Labour animal welfare spokesperson Rachel Boyack said. ...
Today’s Financial Stability Report has once again highlighted that poverty and deep inequality are political choices - and this Government is choosing to make them worse. ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to do more for our households in most need as unemployment rises and the cost of living crisis endures. ...
Unemployment is on the rise and it’s only going to get worse under this Government, Labour finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds said. Stats NZ figures show the unemployment rate grew to 4.3 percent in the March quarter from 4 percent in the December quarter. “This is the second rise in unemployment ...
The New Zealand Labour Party welcomes the entering into force of the European Union and New Zealand free trade agreement. This agreement opens the door for a huge increase in trade opportunities with a market of 450 million people who are high value discerning consumers of New Zealand goods and ...
The National-led Government continues its fiscal jiggery pokery with its Pharmac announcement today, Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall says. “The government has increased Pharmac funding but conceded it will only make minimal increases in access to medicine”, said Ayesha Verrall “This is far from the bold promises made to fund ...
This afternoon’s interim Waitangi Tribunal report must be taken seriously as it affects our most vulnerable children, Labour children’s spokesperson Willow-Jean Prime. ...
Te Pāti Māori are demanding the New Zealand Government support an international independent investigation into mass graves that have been uncovered at two hospitals on the Gaza strip, following weeks of assault by Israeli troops. Among the 392 bodies that have been recovered, are children and elderly civilians. Many of ...
Our two-tiered system for veterans’ support is out of step with our closest partners, and all parties in Parliament should work together to fix it, Labour veterans’ affairs spokesperson Greg O’Connor said. ...
Stripping two Ministers of their portfolios just six months into the job shows Christopher Luxon’s management style is lacking, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said. ...
Tonight’s court decision to overturn the summons of the Children’s Minister has enabled the Crown to continue making decisions about Māori without evidence, says Te Pāti Māori spokesperson for Children, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “The judicial system has this evening told the nation that this government can do whatever they want when ...
It appears Nicola Willis is about to pull the rug out from under the feet of local communities still dealing with the aftermath of last year’s severe weather, and local councils relying on funding to build back from these disasters. ...
The Government is making short-sighted changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that will take away environmental protection in favour of short-term profits, Labour’s environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
Labour welcomes the release of the report into the North Island weather events and looks forward to working with the Government to ensure that New Zealand is as prepared as it can be for the next natural disaster. ...
The Labour Party has called for the New Zealand Government to recognise Palestine, as a material step towards progressing the two-State solution needed to achieve a lasting peace in the region. ...
Some of our country’s most important work, stopping the sexual exploitation of children and violent extremism could go along with staff on the frontline at ports and airports. ...
The Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill will give projects such as new coal mines a ‘get out of jail free’ card to wreak havoc on the environment, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The government's decision to reintroduce Three Strikes is a destructive and ineffective piece of law-making that will only exacerbate an inherently biased and racist criminal justice system, said Te Pāti Māori Justice Spokesperson, Tākuta Ferris, today. During the time Three Strikes was in place in Aotearoa, Māori and Pasifika received ...
Cuts to frontline hospital staff are not only a broken election promise, it shows the reckless tax cuts have well and truly hit the frontline of the health system, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
The Green Party has joined the call for public submissions on the fast-track legislation to be extended after the Ombudsman forced the Government to release the list of organisations invited to apply just hours before submissions close. ...
New Zealand’s good work at reducing climate emissions for three years in a row will be undone by the National government’s lack of ambition and scrapping programmes that were making a difference, Labour Party climate spokesperson Megan Woods said today. ...
More essential jobs could be on the chopping block, this time Ministry of Education staff on the school lunches team are set to find out whether they're in line to lose their jobs. ...
Te Pāti Māori is disgusted at the confirmation that hundreds are set to lose their jobs at Oranga Tamariki, and the disestablishment of the Treaty Response Unit. “This act of absolute carelessness and out of touch decision making is committing tamariki to state abuse.” Said Te Pāti Māori Oranga Tamariki ...
The Government is trying to bring in a law that will allow Ministers to cut corners and kill off native species, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said. ...
Cancelling urgently needed new Cook Strait ferries and hiking the cost of public transport for many Kiwis so that National can announce the prospect of another tunnel for Wellington is not making good choices, Labour Transport Spokesperson Tangi Utikere said. ...
A laundry list of additional costs for Tāmaki Makarau Auckland shows the Minister for the city is not delivering for the people who live there, says Labour Auckland Issues spokesperson Shanan Halbert. ...
Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi, and Mema Paremata mō Tāmaki-Makaurau, Takutai Tarsh Kemp, will travel to the Gold Coast to strengthen ties with Māori in Australia next week (15-21 April). The visit, in the lead-up to the 9th Australian National Kapa haka Festival, will be an opportunity for both ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay says Canada’s refusal to comply in full with a CPTPP trade dispute ruling in our favour over dairy trade is cynical and New Zealand has no intention of backing down. Mr McClay said he has asked for urgent legal advice in respect of our ‘next move’ ...
The rights of our children and young people will be enhanced by changes the coalition Government will make to strengthen oversight of the Oranga Tamariki system, including restoring a single Children’s Commissioner. “The Government is committed to delivering better public services that care for our most at-risk young people and ...
The Government is making it easier for minor changes to be made to a building consent so building a home is easier and more affordable, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “The coalition Government is focused on making it easier and cheaper to build homes so we can ...
New Zealand lost a true legend when internationally renowned disability advocate Sir Robert Martin (KNZM) passed away at his home in Whanganui last night, Disabilities Issues Minister Louise Upston says. “Our Government’s thoughts are with his wife Lynda, family and community, those he has worked with, the disability community in ...
Good evening – Before discussing the challenges and opportunities facing New Zealand’s foreign policy, we’d like to first acknowledge the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. You have contributed to debates about New Zealand foreign policy over a long period of time, and we thank you for hosting us. ...
From today, passengers travelling internationally from Auckland Airport will be able to keep laptops and liquids in their carry-on bags for security screening thanks to new technology, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Creating a more efficient and seamless travel experience is important for holidaymakers and businesses, enabling faster movement through ...
People with an interest in the health of Northland’s marine ecosystems are invited to a public meeting to discuss how to deal with kina barrens, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones will lead the discussion, which will take place on Friday, 10 May, at Awanui Hotel in ...
Kiwi exporters are $100 million better off today with the NZ EU FTA entering into force says Trade Minister Todd McClay. “This is all part of our plan to grow the economy. New Zealand's prosperity depends on international trade, making up 60 per cent of the country’s total economic activity. ...
There are heartening signs that the extractive sector is once again becoming an attractive prospect for investors and a source of economic prosperity for New Zealand, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. “The beginnings of a resurgence in extractive industries are apparent in media reports of the sector in the past ...
The return of the historic Ō-Rākau battle site to the descendants of those who fought there moved one step closer today with the first reading of Te Pire mō Ō-Rākau, Te Pae o Maumahara / The Ō-Rākau Remembrance Bill. The Bill will entrust the 9.7-hectare battle site, five kilometres west ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has announced 25 new high-speed EV charging hubs along key routes between major urban centres and outlined the Government’s plan to supercharge New Zealand’s EV infrastructure. The hubs will each have several chargers and be capable of charging at least four – and up to 10 ...
The coalition Government will not proceed with the previous Government’s plans to regulate residential property managers, Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. “I have written to the Chairperson of the Social Services and Community Committee to inform him that the Government does not intend to support the Residential Property Managers Bill ...
The Government has announced an independent review into the disability support system funded by the Ministry of Disabled People – Whaikaha. Disability Issues Minister Louise Upston says the review will look at what can be done to strengthen the long-term sustainability of Disability Support Services to provide disabled people and ...
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith has attended the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva and outlined the Government’s plan to restore law and order. “Speaking to the United Nations Human Rights Council provided us with an opportunity to present New Zealand’s human rights progress, priorities, and challenges, while responding to issues and ...
The Government and Rotorua Lakes Council are committed to working closely together to end the use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua. Associate Minister of Housing (Social Housing) Tama Potaka says the Government remains committed to ending the long-term use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua by the ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay heads overseas today for high-level trade talks in the Gulf region, and a key OECD meeting in Paris. Mr McClay will travel to Riyadh to meet with counterparts from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). “New Zealand’s goods and services exports to the Gulf region ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford has outlined six education priorities to deliver a world-leading education system that sets Kiwi kids up for future success. “I’m putting ambition, achievement and outcomes at the heart of our education system. I want every child to be inspired and engaged in their learning so they ...
The new NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) App is a secure ‘one stop shop’ to provide the services drivers need, Transport Minister Simeon Brown and Digitising Government Minister Judith Collins say. “The NZTA App will enable an easier way for Kiwis to pay for Vehicle Registration and Road User Charges (RUC). ...
Whānau with tamariki growing up in emergency housing motels will be prioritised for social housing starting this week, says Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka. “Giving these whānau a better opportunity to build healthy stable lives for themselves and future generations is an essential part of the Government’s goal of reducing ...
Racing Minister Winston Peters has paid tribute to an icon of the industry with the recent passing of Dave O’Sullivan (OBE). “Our sympathies are with the O’Sullivan family with the sad news of Dave O’Sullivan’s recent passing,” Mr Peters says. “His contribution to racing, initially as a jockey and then ...
Assalaamu alaikum, greetings to you all. Eid Mubarak, everyone! I want to extend my warmest wishes to you and everyone celebrating this joyous occasion. It is a pleasure to be here. I have enjoyed Eid celebrations at Parliament before, but this is my first time joining you as the Minister ...
Associate Health Minister David Seymour has announced Pharmac’s largest ever budget of $6.294 billion over four years, fixing a $1.774 billion fiscal cliff. “Access to medicines is a crucial part of many Kiwis’ lives. We’ve committed to a budget allocation of $1.774 billion over four years so Kiwis are ...
Hon Paula Bennett has been appointed as member and chair of the Pharmac board, Associate Health Minister David Seymour announced today. "Pharmac is a critical part of New Zealand's health system and plays a significant role in ensuring that Kiwis have the best possible access to medicines,” says Mr Seymour. ...
Hundreds of New Zealand families affected by Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) will benefit from a new Government focus on prevention and treatment, says Health Minister Dr Shane Reti. “We know FASD is a leading cause of preventable intellectual and neurodevelopmental disability in New Zealand,” Dr Reti says. “Every day, ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones today attended the official opening of Kaikohe’s new $14.7 million sports complex. “The completion of the Kaikohe Multi Sports Complex is a fantastic achievement for the Far North,” Mr Jones says. “This facility not only fulfils a long-held dream for local athletes, but also creates ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters’ engagements in Türkiye this week underlined the importance of diplomacy to meet growing global challenges. “Returning to the Gallipoli Peninsula to represent New Zealand at Anzac commemorations was a sombre reminder of the critical importance of diplomacy for de-escalating conflicts and easing tensions,” Mr Peters ...
Ambassador Millar, Burgemeester, Vandepitte, Excellencies, military representatives, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen – good morning and welcome to this sacred Anzac Day dawn service. It is an honour to be here on behalf of the Government and people of New Zealand at Buttes New British Cemetery, Polygon Wood – a deeply ...
Distinguished guests - It is an honour to return once again to this site which, as the resting place for so many of our war-dead, has become a sacred place for generations of New Zealanders. Our presence here and at the other special spaces of Gallipoli is made ...
Mai ia tawhiti pamamao, te moana nui a Kiwa, kua tae whakaiti mai matou, ki to koutou papa whenua. No koutou te tapuwae, no matou te tapuwae, kua honoa pumautia. Ko nga toa kua hinga nei, o te Waipounamu, o te Ika a Maui, he okioki tahi me o ...
Paul Goldsmith will take on responsibility for the Media and Communications portfolio, while Louise Upston will pick up the Disability Issues portfolio, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announced today. “Our Government is relentlessly focused on getting New Zealand back on track. As issues change in prominence, I plan to adjust Ministerial ...
Recreational catch limits will be reduced in areas of Fiordland and the Chatham Islands to help keep those fisheries healthy and sustainable, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. The lower recreational daily catch limits for a range of finfish and shellfish species caught in the Fiordland Marine Area and ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has welcomed an important milestone in New Zealand’s hydrogen future, with the opening of the country’s first network of hydrogen refuelling stations in Wiri. “I want to congratulate the team at Hiringa Energy and its partners K one W one (K1W1), Mitsui & Co New Zealand ...
The coalition Government is delivering on its commitment to improve resource management laws and give greater certainty to consent applicants, with a Bill to amend the Resource Management Act (RMA) expected to be introduced to Parliament next month. RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop has today outlined the first RMA Amendment ...
Overseas models for regulating the oil and gas sector, including their decommissioning regimes, are being carefully scrutinised as a potential template for New Zealand’s own sector, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. The Coalition Government is focused on rebuilding investor confidence in New Zealand’s energy sector as it looks to strengthen ...
Emergency Management and Recovery Minister Mark Mitchell has today released the Report of the Government Inquiry into the response to the North Island Severe Weather Events. “The report shows that New Zealand’s emergency management system is not fit-for-purpose and there are some significant gaps we need to address,” Mr Mitchell ...
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith is today travelling to Europe where he’ll update the United Nations Human Rights Council on the Government’s work to restore law and order. “Attending the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva provides us with an opportunity to present New Zealand’s human rights progress, priorities, and challenges, while ...
Associate Agriculture Minister, Mark Patterson, formally reopened the world’s largest wool processing facility today in Awatoto, Napier, following a $50 million rebuild and refurbishment project. “The reopening of this facility will significantly lift the economic opportunities available to New Zealand’s wool sector, which already accounts for 20 per cent of ...
Hon Andrew Bayly, Minister for Small Business and Manufacturing At the Southland Otago Regional Engineering Collective (SOREC) Summit, 18 April, Dunedin Ngā mihi nui, Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Ko Whanganui aho Good Afternoon and thank you for inviting me to open your summit today. I am delighted ...
The Government is delivering on its commitment to bring back the Three Strikes legislation, Associate Justice Minister Nicole McKee announced today. “Our Government is committed to restoring law and order and enforcing appropriate consequences on criminals. We are making it clear that repeat serious violent or sexual offending is not ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has today announced four new diplomatic appointments for New Zealand’s overseas missions. “Our diplomats have a vital role in maintaining and protecting New Zealand’s interests around the world,” Mr Peters says. “I am pleased to announce the appointment of these senior diplomats from the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Karleen Gribble, Adjunct Associate Professor, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Western Sydney University richardernestyap/Shutterstock Parents are often advised to burp their babies after feeding them. Some people think burping after feeding is important to reduce or prevent discomfort crying, or to ...
Workers at a major ASB contact centre in Auckland have voted to take strike action and withdraw their labour following disappointing pay negotiations with the employer and an "offer" to workers that would leave them worse off than the previous year. ...
The Labour Party is demanding Peters be stood down, saying "he's embarrassed the country" with a "totally unacceptable" attack on a prominent AUKUS critic. ...
The Inter-Parliamentary Alliance, whose members were victims of a China-backed cyber attack, is discussing forming a standing committee to deal with foreign influence. ...
The PSA is concerned that the voluntary redundancies being offered to staff by Stats NZ will impact on the agency’s ability to deliver on its core functions. ...
Results ranged from surprisingly yum to soul-destroying. I love cooking. The kitchen is a hearth of culinary creation, of sensory delights, of gastronomic poetry. I also can’t afford anything nice. Why does a pack of instant noodles and some milk cost ten bucks? I love you, Aotearoa, but I miss ...
By Koroi Hawkins, RNZ Pacific editor Police in Solomon Islands are on high alert ahead of the election of the prime minister today. The two candidates for the top job are former foreign affairs minister Jeremiah Manele at the head of the Coalition for National Unity and Transformation, which is ...
He’s fine but it feels like I’m losing a friend and it’s making me bitter. How do I say ‘enough is enough’? Want Hera’s help? Email your problem to helpme@thespinoff.co.nzHey Hera,I’ve recently moved in with a girlfriend, her partner Steve, and his friend. We all live in a lovely little house. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nick Chartres, Senior Research Fellow, Faculty of Medicine & Health, University of Sydney shutterstockAhmet Misirligul/Shutterstock You go to the gym, eat healthy and walk as much as possible. You wash your hands and get vaccinated. You control your health. This is ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jacqueline Hendriks, Research Fellow and Lecturer, Curtin University Children and young people may be seeing news headlines about men murdering women or footage of people rallying to call for action. Perhaps they or their friends have even gone to the protests. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jessica Balanzategui, Senior Lecturer in Media, RMIT University ABC “Bluey mania” shows no sign of abating. Bluey’s season finale, The Sign, was the most viewed ABC program of all time on iView. A “hidden” follow-up episode, aptly named The Surprise, created ...
Labour market figures came in softer than the Reserve Bank had forecast, but they won’t be enough to move the needle on interest rates, 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 up here. Unemployment ...
The campaign will engage the community and encourage submissions on the bill to the New Zealand government by the closing submission deadline of Friday 31st of May 2024 4pm. ...
The paper raises concerns about declining trust in New Zealand's political institutions and democratic processes, and the role that the overuse of Parliamentary urgency plays in that. ...
The Urban Habitat Collective was an attempt to built an innovative new form of apartment building in Wellington. Here’s why it failed, and why the idea could still work, writes co-founder Bronwen Newton. When we started the Urban Habitat Collective in November 2018, we thought we were starting a revolution, ...
Two decades ago this week, a controversial law that attempted to define ownership of the foreshore and seabed prompted a formidable display of outrage and kōtahitanga as 15,000 marched to parliament. Jamie Tahana looks back.‘Hīkoi, hīkoi,” they chanted by the thousands as the biggest Māori march in a generation ...
Terence O’Brien had the rare and no doubt undesired distinction of rising to one of the most exalted positions in New Zealand diplomacy, then being unceremoniously recalled to Wellington without explanation just when his career was at its zenith. What is perhaps more surprising is that he appears to have ...
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Why has New Zealand slipped from third to 12th on Quality of Death Indexes over the past decade or so? Hospice New Zealand Chief Executive Wayne Naylor has a list of reasons. “We don’t have a current national strategy – the Government hasn’t renewed our 2001 strategy, so we don’t ...
While women’s sport is exploding in Aotearoa and around the world, you still don’t hear a lot of talk about athletes and their periods, RED-S, breastfeeding and visible panty-lines. SASS (Suze and Sez Sports)Talk isn’t afraid to have that kōrero.LockerRoom founder Suzanne McFadden and Olympian broadcaster Sarah ...
On an unusually hot night in January 2019, a little boy’s lifeless body was found face up in a small town’s sewage oxidation pond. To the police, it was an open and shut case: three-year-old Lachlan Jones had run away from his home in the Southland town of Gore, climbed ...
A Labour Party Member’s Bill aims to plug a culpability gap between manslaughter and health and safety breaches The post New push for corporate killing laws appeared first on Newsroom. ...
Rongotai MP Julie Anne Genter has apologised in Parliament after National accused her of intimidating and attacking one of its ministers in the House. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra The Prime Minister and state and territory leaders met on Wednesday as the national cabinet to discuss a crisis gripping Australia – the horrific number of women murdered this year. The killings have shocked ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Radhika Raghav, Teaching Fellow, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Otago Netflix Indian director Sanjay Leela Bhansali is known for his big-budget Bollywood production, featuring grand sets, star casts, meticulously choreographed dance sequences and lavish costumes, jewellery and furnishings. ...
Sir Robert devoted his life to disability rights after living in institutions in his younger years, says Kaihautū Tika Hauātanga | Disability Rights Commissioner Prudence Walker. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anastasia Powell, Professor, Family and Sexual Violence, RMIT University Violence against women is not a women’s problem to solve, it is a whole of society problem to solve; and men in particular have to take responsibility. Those were the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jessica Allen, Senior Lecturer in Chemical and Renewable Energy Engineering, University of Newcastle Snapshot freddy/ShutterstockPlans to revive an old coal-fired power station using bioenergy are being considered in the Hunter region of New South Wales. Similar plans for the station ...
Responding to the long-awaited release of judges’ special allowances, including free air travel and hotels for spouses, generous sabbaticals, and access to limousines, Taxpayers’ Union spokesman Alex Murphy said: “In what world does your employer ...
Analysis - The United States has unveiled plans to boost the weapons trade with Australia and the UK, on the same day that Winston Peters is expected to sketch NZ's position on AUKUS. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrea Carson, Professor of Political Communication, Department of Politics, Media and Philosophy, La Trobe University Since Australia’s First Nations Voice to Parliament referendum in October 2023, diverse commentaries have sought to explain why it failed. But what does an analysis of media ...
Lawyers representing two iwi as well as the Māori Women’s Welfare League on Wednesday asked the Court of Appeal to overturn last week’s High Court decision on the Waitangi Tribunal’s decision to summons Children’s Minister Karen Chhour. The Tribunal is currently investigating the Government’s decision to repeal section 7AA of ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra The Albanese government will introduce legislation to ban deepfake pornography and provide more funding for the eSafety Commission to pilot age-assurance technologies. The contribution of internet sites to gender-based violence was one major issue ...
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Just heard on the 6am news there’s a push for privately managed isolation facilities.
OMG, are we impervious to lessons from Victoria? Do we really want a clusterfuck like Melbourne here?
The government may not be perfect in its management of quarantine, but if a problem arises they can throw money at it. A private firm will inevitably cut corners to make more profit.
Keep capitalism far away from our boarder protection management – please!
SERCO – they've got form!
We need a quarantine island so people can't escape
Dunedin has an island literally named "quarantine island". Most harbours with islands plonked quarantine facilities on one of them.
It was one of those things that was routine before antibiotics and vaccines.
Yep, the richies want to be in charge / making profit while the rest of us take all the risks and get "jobs jobs jobs" (at minimum wage, zero-hours, no security and be grateful for it you miserable peasants)
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/422856/covid-19-business-leaders-push-for-privately-run-managed-isolation
So they want to bring in their rich mates supposedly to fix the economy? Well after 30 odd years of this stuff the bulk of the population could barely fund themselves for a 4 week stay at home – so as far as I am concerned its a failed idea and they can get stuffed. Just like private quarantine is a failed idea.
Why does the news media give so much time to just 20 people – when they are like this one.Deplatform them. Why on earth did he get one of the quarantine spaces after not bothering to be here for 2 decades.
Among them was Pooj Prenna, who recently returned to New Zealand with his family, after 20 years overseas.
And why does Helen Clark continue to want to be associated with these people. She's starting to look like Tony Blair- can't some one have a word with her.
And Prenna after 20 years out of the country and not bothering he comes back and gets an invitation to the forum and starts to tell the rest of us what to do. Well lets tax him on his worldwide interests. (appears to be a silicon valley capitalist)
Because they're rich.
She may have been principled when she opposed the purchase of the Airforce strike fighters but since then she's been in government where had to collude with business to get anything done. Basically, she's drunk the cool-aid that its business that does things and not government.
Yeah I get the rich bit – but there's more of us than them and we are the one's that are gunna vote. And since the rich have done little for the masses these last 30 years we certainly aren't going to be much poorer if we ignore them now or preferably charge them some real high taxes.
And ignore them we should.
Actually the taxes should be the push back. All reporters should ask these over entitled bods if they are willing to stump up more in taxes.
And as I say regardless of how much kool aid Helen has drunk she needs to stop making the life of the current labour party more difficult. She is being used by these righties as cover for the hard right agenda behind their views.
So Key and co would like to make money out of isolation and quarantine? (Never waste a crisis..Right!!)
Where is their billion dollars each insurance against failure?(No insurance against a pandemic usually, and we don't want Private collection of Profits and Public paying for failures)
Which hospitals will be used if and when they let the virus in? Private?/Public???
Would they charge people to use their hospitals?
Whose country do they plan to poach Doctors and Nurses from?
Where will they obtain their testing kits PPE and general staff?
We see you John Key.. You go plank.
Never waste a crises, there's profits to be had with no downside. Risk is all on us !
Yeah, agree with that 100%. I have never ever heard so much fucking winging by the right since this virus thing has started. The so-called rugged everybody stands on their own two feet, no such thing as a free lunch no passengers in this world etc etc etc right are there for assistance and handouts until you want to fucking vomit. Every time I hear the news there is some other right-wing prat winging how hard done by they are, and how MUCH better they can do it, or what a stuff up this administration has caused.
The next catch cry is going to be Private Enterprise can do everything SOOOOOO much better than governments and controlling the quarantine is just another one of them. Well if this administration buckles and allows private enterprise to run it. there have to be some strict ground rules. For starters, if any person breaks out of a privately run quarantine, the company running the isolation is instantly fined $100 000 to cover the cost of the police having to apprehend the offender and also creating the risk of spreading the virus in the community.
No private quarantine would be one election platform I'd really like. I'd be furious if they buckled – this is an opportunity to do things so much better for all the rest of us.If there had to be a punishment then I'd have the personal guarantees of all this crowd – any breach they get slung out off the country.
I'd like to think the government is testing public opinion regularly.
+100%
I consider $100,000 a very low and therefore "unsuitable fine", because the private company would include this into the costs running the operation.
How about every "business leader", including ex-PM Helen Clark, John Key, that wants to open the borders or a private organisation running the quarantine for economical gains put their bodies where their big mouth is (see newspaper, radio TV etc.)… for each "escape" at least one year prison for the glorious business leaders in case of non-infection, increased to at least five years in case of causing community transmission?
Would be interesting to see how many would still promoting it.
Just saw this article (NZ Herald):
I guess they have snipers shooting escapees? Or National party members patrolling around the facilities.
Oh, and the virus definitely doesn't care about Judith Collins.
Geez Nobody escapes when judith is in charge!!
Remember when she was in charge of prisons.
Thing is, as soon as someone did escape, Collins would be spouting excuses left, right and centre for the private enterprise that did a worse job.
Is she going to chain them to the walls?
Before or after turning central wellington into a motorway?
There's a quiet revolution going on out here. Time for some of these peeps to get with the plot.
You know the only reason Collins wants to spend up large on Wellingtons roads was because of the traffic congestion which made her late for a hair appointment.
she gets her hair done????…man they need to be fired.
Actually, I'm quite happy for them to not get the plot and the longer the better. That way they continue to prove that they're last centuries problems just trying to hang on to being relevant and, most importantly, not a solution to today's issues.
Answer to satty @1.3.1.2
Very good idea satty, but I prefer my idea otherwise it will cost us money keeping the parasites in prison unless part of their sentence is that they pay for their own jail time. Good idea though.
So right 1000%
…. and put all the returning kiwis in Jucy vans to free up the best hotels for wealthy tourists and students – and the spokesperson for this idea is the Jucy owner.
[Fixed error in user name]
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That actually isn't a bad idea Matiri. We don't want to let prejudice about business blind us to where they can be directly useful in times of crisis like this.
It's a terrible idea.
MPs, insulated from the failures of neoliberalism by comfortable remuneration, are able to imagine it is something other than an abject failure.
Privately run managed isolation… you mean like quarantining people in private hotels and paying them to manage the day to day issues? Huh, we should have thought of that sooner. /sarcasm
(from @yortw)
Has Helen offered her rentals as isolation facilities?
Why don't you ask her?
Would she tell me?
Of course not. She wants a mixture of containers and tents on Sommes Island run jointly by SERCO and MSD and to be able to shoot those who get too sick then bury them in the harbour. One of the most clear-thinking, strategic and pragmatic leaders we’ve ever had.
Right o…..
So the people behind this are the Alpe’s, that’s Jucy. They are most likely in the crap right now.
Key was prompting this a few days ago, wearing which hat, ANZ chair, or his personal interest.
A few questions need to be asked about what’s going on here, and who’s interests are being prompted. It’s looking like a select few before the wider New Zealand
It is. To manage the population the capitalists need to manage what information that the population is getting and that's the job for the privately owned MSM.
"
Why do we care if rich Americans put even more pressure on our recourses using scarce tradespeople to build houses that will likely sit empty? Good god John Key is so stupid! It’s no wonder the housing problem became a crisis under his watch. The man is so blinded by his own self-interest that he simply cannot see the bigger picture."
http://thejackalman.blogspot.com/2020/08/key-is-fool.html
John Key is so full of it. Why would they create thousands of jobs?
I think you'll find that by "houses" Key means "castles" and by "jobs" he means "serfdom". All that mountainous Central Otago landscape isn't going to plough and plant itself with wheat now is it ? — @brettroberts
Someone went to the trouble of actually working out the numbers that Key and pals couldn’t be bothered with. Guess what, it doesn’t add up
https://twitter.com/clintvsmith/status/1291132437460742144?s=21
The capitalists want in of the money that the government is spending and, considering that it is a necessary service, they'll be able to low bid to get the job and then ramp up the expenses to make a higher profit.
Vulture capitalists always have an eye for a bargain. An old person falling over is an opportunity to nick their wallet while they are distracted.
An economy on the rocks means it’s time to
stealprivatise assets at fire sale pricesHow do you get share in Serco, how much each? Or Black hawk done or whatever predator is around when people get shut away for a time.
Roblogic sees things so clearly that it must be through the eyes of a child. Better get sunglasses for protection robl…
“I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.“ Mt 10:16
Think this needs to be viewed in the context of NZs primary economic strategy which exists across parties (and may explain the involvement of the likes of Key and Clark, strange bedfellows indeed)…..growth via population.
He's being provocative, but does pose an interesting question: "what sort of Green Party does a Labour majority Government want?"
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2020/08/05/what-green-party-does-a-labour-majority-government-want/
Unfair to blame Weka for the Greens seeming woke. Censoring an 80 year old feminist because the alphabet soup tribe claimed she hurt their feelings was a collective idiocy, for which they are still evading moral responsibility. Given enough rope, the Green leftists used it to hang themselves, using the old rationale `if we don't hang together, we'll hang separately. Their belief system did them in – can't blame individuals.
This notion of Bomber’s that any group of leftists are innately capable of strategic thinking seems suspiciously like blind faith. I haven't seen leftists in Aotearoa do it ever, and I've been watching them since the late 1960s.
Fuck Bomber, I'm ex Mana ex Māori Party ex Alliance voting Greens (I did last election too). People like him, Tau Henare, NZ1st & the rabid RWs fearmongering over the Greens just strengthens my resolve.
Right there with you on that. (although I've always voted Green the sentiment is the same).
I'll be giving my party vote to the Greens this election because I want them to be part of the government. Red and Green like Christmas
Me too! And I hope that the Labour part of the coalition is nudged along by some of the Greens policies, in an 'aiming for the moon but might it hit a star' way as part of a consensus….but always the direction is forward.
All Parties in NZ have to be poked with a stick to stick to their supposed goal of doing the best for NZ. I've voted Greens for yonks and mixed with good people, but many tend to be loving of the environment, and looking at people as if they have invaded Eden.
The problem with such lefties is the tendency to spout high-minded stuff about green matters, and follow the latest thought on how to be, but all having different ideas about how those thoughts should be infused in real-life practices. More discussion needed to be done about how, and how practically to reach the established and tabled goals, and just how many ethical barriers should be included or put aside as being too precious. It may be that there is a more pragmatic and robust side to the Greens with Shaw, I hope so.
Bomber is a jackass. So removed from any relevancy he used to have back in the late 1990's and early 2000's as to become more a sideshow than anything serious
He runs one of the two largest left wing blogs in NZ.
A pre moderated blog that lets misogynist comments through from idiots who aren't allowed to post here anymore. Not a great claim to fame for a left leaning blog.
they have a wide range of writers, some of whom are covering really important stuff.
And despite all that really important stuff from a wide range of writers, the true worth of the site is laid bare by what’s permitted under the topics in the comments.
it may surprise you that many blogs are written for readers not commenters. I don't like the commenting policy there either, but plenty of people don't like TS' policy 😉
It doesn't surprise me, why would it? I know the purpose of blogs/media/social pretentiousness etc, yet I still think the moderators allowing posts through underneath topics, like calling you "a bitch", for example, doesn't leave TDB with much left wing credibility, unless you think those readers you're talking about don't view the comments, or it doesn't matter if they do.
If I authored topics there, I'd be pretty vocal about what the moderators are happy to pass under Bradbury's posts. I'd be wondering if they really had a left wing core underneath the important stuff if they let shit like that pass. Maybe some of them will write something and show some lefty credentials.
most readers don't read the comments.
I have zero interesting in a slanging match with TDB. Plenty of problems on TS around issues for women btw, if you want to dig into that.
Next time someone uses the bitch word here I'll be all over it, but I'm not sure if most people don't read the comments, and definitely not convinced that would be enough of an excuse to permit that sort of crap anyway.
Regardless, an interesting editorial position from someone running one of the leading left wing blogs in NZ.
Yeah he used to have TV shows, be on panels etc etc.
Now he just runs an echo chamber of a blog.
… and hangs out with Damien Grant.
what are TDB’s reader stats like?
No idea
so you just want to slag him off? Whatever you don't like about him, it doesn't make sense to say TDB has no validity or relevance.
No, I am talking about his relative relevance.
yes, you said he is irrelevant, and I pointed out that he runs one of the largest lw blogs in NZ.
No I was talking about the relevance he used to have which has diminished considerably. But whatever – I don't have enough skin in this game to carry on
I think you might put it more like this John S, that Bomber keeps looking and thinking and remembering that we have come right through the 20th century and mucked it up. He has had to change from what was thought relevant then. Perhaps it is you who are trailing behind in a cloud of exhaust and nostalgia. There is no blame on you if you are as many of us have that problem. But it has to be overcome, so keep those cogs whirring.
More mischief making from a media flogging their narrative.
My how fearful some are of the potential for significant change.
Who’s the “80 year old feminist” and who “censored” her? Who makes up this BS?
Jill Abigail wrote this
The transie crowd then went ahead and cancelled Jill because their feelings got hurt
As a gay man I have no time for the transie crowd calling me tranphobic because I don't see transmen as men. They're not. And for them to try and force me to see them as men, is outright homophobic.
http://www.google.com/amp/s/lesbian-rights-nz.org/2019/09/02/the-feminist-article-the-green-party-has-banned/amp/
Do you care that much if someone wants to be called "man" "woman" or whatever? As a straight man I couldn't care less what people want to be called.
That's likely why your viewpoint differs to mine.
I'm gay because that's what nature decreed. I have no sexual attraction to women. It's very much 100% toward men. A man has a penis. Transmen do not. They may have an imitation penis but at the end of the day, they are still biologically female. All the testosterone pills in the world will not change that fundamental fact of science.
To have transmen decry me as transphobic because I have no sexual attraction to them makes them homophobic by denying my reality. Transmen (and transwomen) are not men or women and shouldn't be so quick to lambast homosexuals because we have no sexual attraction toward them. That's homophobic and denies our biochemical response. I have met transmen, and there's an innate reaction to them and recognition that they're actually female, and not truly male. Pheromones make all the difference.
Trans people can feel who they are, but their current MO of criticising homosexuals as transphobic because we are same sex attracted, is why there is such antipathy in a large section of the gay community towards trans activists. It does appear that the worst activists are straight men who would never themselves, sleep with a transwoman because again, heterosexuality has an element of sexual attraction. A straight man can't have a family with a transwoman unless it's an adopted family. I've never had a definitive answer from any straight male activist as to whether they would sleep with a transwomen, yet some of them have said they would sleep with a transman which just goes to show that if there's a vagina, and not a penis, a straight man really is sexually attracted to the female genitalia, rather than male.
The argument is far more nuanced than the simplistic "transwomen are women" or "transmen are men" argument that is constantly peddled. Of course you can't really have a good discussion about it and explain your viewpoint without activists generally leaping straight to "you're transphobic" rather than appreciate that it's far more complex than they appreciate.
I have a transexual aunty, and I also have transgender friends. I have no problem with them. I do have a problem with activists ignoring the fact that homosexuality is "same sex" and not "same gender" attraction, by and large.
that's a really good explanation of that side of it thanks.
I'll add that the terms 'woman' and 'man' get used differently by different people. Here you clearly use them to mean biological sex. Sometimes people use the terms to mean gender/roles rather than bio sex.
(yep, that's a whole can of worms, just wanted to bring it into the discussion because it's such a sticking point and point of people talking past each other).
The two separate meanings present a massive impediment to public debate. Unfortunately the debating tactic of claiming that, the alternate positions use of the terms imposes unacceptable context on the discussion, is common.
Frequently this extends as far a claiming a biological (scientific) understanding is anti-trans (or in other contexts sexist, racist etc…).
But the only likely outcome when this happens is both sides will talk past each other because their terms are mutually incompatible. Usually this just insulates the two arguments from each other rather than leading to allowing a challenge to either sides positions.
In order to understand how this came about it may be important to consider that post-modern philosophical underpinnings of many of these radical ideas reject both logic and a scientific understanding of the world and instead begin by claiming reality is constructed by some form of widely shared beliefs (also called a social construct). Were this true then it does follow that somebody could/can change sex by imagining it to be so and convincing sufficient others to believe it so.
My observation is that both sides of the war have weaponised semantics, as you say they each use the words their own way when speaking to each other* and as well as making useful communication possible it creates a lot of aggro.
I understand why each side has done that, and the issues are actually complex beneath the semantics, but it's hard to see how any progress can be made while this continues (and I think it will).
*as well as to everyone else, so people coming to the debate fresh end up completely confused. Also, society has historically used the term gender and sex interchangeably so much that now there is a new meaning for gender we don't even have consistent language in law now.
There are some significant problems with the trans movement, that aggressive trans activists (TRAs) tend to gloss over, outlined thoughtfully by J K Rowling.
That is thoughtful… and very disturbing.
Yeah, I like the clarity of your analysis too James. I came across this recently:
Quite an eye-opener for me, it was. I had no idea of the deep context documented by professional researchers.
Clearly there's a realistic basis for public policy around urinals: addition of a third option to the traditional binary. Existence of the biological third option defeats the habitual binary when identified in so many diverse cultural contexts & throughout history.
I have a gay son, and relate so much to what you had to say. Thanks.
while it makes sense that most straight men won't be bothered, there's a clear conflict between some trans activist politics and women's sex-based rights. My suggestion at this point is, if you are new to this debate, to take a step back and be willing to be on a steep learning curve around gender, sex, and the TA/gender critical feminist war. It's complex, and the clusterfuck of the debate is nothing like I have seen anywhere else in 40+ years of politics. If you are not new, then you already know what I am talking about and your question is a set up.
Thanks. Thats the first time I heard about the story of the GP from a reasonable source.
“What is the difference between leftists and cannibals? “Cannibals don’t eat their friends.”
Attributed to Lyndon Johnson
Greens eat greens.
Those salad days are in the past.
life is but a melon, cauliflower
So early in the morning! Can you keep your edge right till election time? Please – it sharpens the conversation. What sif you don’t like cauliflower, broccoli is very very good for you and greener.
"vegetable rights and peace!"
— Neil, the Young Ones
I won’t dare telling you how to suck egg because I’d end eating humble pie.
Sewing the seeds of discontent the left uniting is a very unusual occurence .It seems the right have been afflicted badly by the aberration more recently airing their Dirty linen(politics) in public.
With my little adaptation in the quote, that is a good description of my views on Bomber and his ilk with their lack of toleration for ideas outside of their MAD silos. Same for those massive numbers of factional warriors in their little in groups on the right or religions or even amongst scientific and academic communities or in whole industries.
Since the 1970s I’ve watched with awe at the ability of a lot of ideologues of many ilks to dance on the head of a pin to gain their own position whereby they can denounce the ideas of others – when I can’t tell the difference between the denounced and the denouncer.
Then there are a pile of people who don’t indulge in point scoring games and who manage to cooperate despite their differences. In politics these tend to form larger political parties. In businesses they form corporations.
The ideological divide that I always see isn’t between left and right, green and free-market, religious (including atheists) and agnostic. But it between the those who can cooperate for the common good and those who find that beneath them.
Same for any group outside of traditional bureaucrats (who do seem to want to run on rails for decades – but seldom get the chance). For instance, businesses rarely maintain a strategic direction for more than about 3 years unless they are largely controlled by a single person. Infrastructure development and military tend to be better over longer strategic directions, but that is largely because of the length of their purchasing cycles.
The myth of strategic direction by a group is almost an axiom inside any MBA course. You’ll see cost shaving measures happening over longer periods of time – because they provide a continuing economic return. But you seldom see a genuine strategic direction last more than a few years when it isn’t caused by a underlying technology shift. For instance the JIT inventory strategies in the 1980s arising from better computer systems and better distribution links. Of the off-shoring of manufacturing as freight and air links and comms systems improved world wide.Or any number of other management fads that have been shored up by a change in the underlying tech.
But if you look closely at any organisation that is made up of groups of people, what you’ll see is a series of strategies competing, and a awful lot of creative story telling to explain the continuity in quite large shifts in strategic direction over very numbers of years. What you won’t see very often in any coherent strategic directions lasting for a decade or more.
I’d have to say that the Greens and before that Values have been remarkably consistent by comparison. Of course in NZ they have never really had access to sufficient power to start having to protect it. It’d be interesting to see what they’d do with it. Maybe this time
Then there are a pile of people who don’t indulge in point scoring games and who manage to cooperate despite their differences.
Probably most of what I've typed here in the past five years or more, has an underlying motivation that could be summarised in that one sentence.
Effective political operators are not about 'winning or losing', but on achieving useful gains that everyone can live with.
QFT
When I see either of those terms, a red flag goes up immediately. Same with “right” and “wrong”.
Yes, that's true, your generalised point about ideology & group coherence in relation to social context that is in perennial flux. Consistency and strategy based on it worked better when the pace of change was slower. That pace shift between '60s & '70s made much strategic thinking irrelevant – except at the geopolitical level, where stasis ruled.
The ideological divide that I always see isn’t between left and right, green and free-market, religious (including atheists) and agnostic. But it between the those who can cooperate for the common good and those who find that beneath them.
Because holism transcends binary divides. Focus on common ground is holist by nature – few adopt it as praxis. Focus on the common good inspired us in the early years of the Greens economic policy development. I recall Jeanette Fitzsimons advising us to read this:
For the Common Good: Redirecting the Economy toward Community, the Environment, and a Substainable Future, H.E. Daly and J.B. Cobb, Jr. 1990.
The notion is ancient & eternal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_good
Professor Reich brought it up to date a couple of years ago. I haven't watched this talk he gave: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNLOdRMgaDY
but here's the book… https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/564303/the-common-good-by-robert-b-reich/
What Bomber forgets is that aside from silly distractions the Greens are the only party that take the future of NZ seriously, in context of the calamities that are coming. COVID is just the opening act.
https://twitter.com/hyperbolicTom/status/1289331671578243072?s=20
Did you read the bit about Fermi's Paradox, roblogic?
Yeah but the question of alien life seems irrelevant to the story about our collapsing ecosystem (I don’t think there are any aliens out there, personally. Musk, Branson, Bezos are going to space and shitting on the Earth)
Everyone is dead and space is terra nullius? Or they learned their lesson and are hiding out in the trees again (metaphorically speaking), minding their own business.
yep. It's the old left, who have tagged the environment on to their politics but still don't really get it.
seriously if we are waiting for a party to finally, finally do something other then sign meaning less paper (cause yeah, they are still signing on paper – hopefully recycled) then we are truly doomed.
the change will come when people understand that they have to change.
Sadly the Green Party is no more future orientated then any other Party. They live from election to election and hopefully a paycheck.
Anyone who consideres electric cars a greener option then standard cars cause 'fossil fuel' consumption, while pretending that the mining for lithium is NOT fossil fuel mining is neither green nor the answer to a better life.
So really you want change? Change yourself first, your community next and when the change is so far gone that they various beige suits hanging on the government tit can't refuse to acknowledge that change in the population anymore they will come to the party and not a day early.
But the most ineffective Party pretty much anywhere on this planet has been the Green Party.
It isn't easy being Green.
https://youtu.be/rRZ-IxZ46ng
referencing Dennis' point above about strategy, it's not possible for any party to do what you want, because most NZers won't vote for such a party. The Greens tread the fine line between what is needed and what is possible. That people like you and Bradbury continue to slag off the Greens is a failure of imagination on your part, which prevents seeing the strategy and most likely who the Greens actually are. Pfft, as if you're the only person that knows that EVs won't save the day and as if people in the GP don't understand cradle to grave. The Green Party cut their teeth on this stuff before you were even thinking about politics, and it's bizarre what prejudices people let blind them to the way out of our current dilemmas.
Yes, personal and then community change is absolutely necessary, but we don't have time to rely on that alone (and again, where is the strategy? It's not like people having been saying what you just said my whole life, it's not enough). The people in parliament are individuals who live in communities too, and many of them want real change.
no substantial change will happen until shit hits the fan…..
best we keep preparing then.
Lithium production doesn't have to be fossil fuel dependent. That it mostly is at the moment is simply because it's cheaper that way, for now. But there's a bunch of alternative methods to getting the lithium, such as building a geothermal power station and extracting the lithium from the superheated groundwater going through the power station.
https://cleantechnica.com/2020/08/04/vulcan-is-a-step-closer-to-net-zero-carbon-lithium-production/
Li from geothermal fluid is being done in the lab in NZ (in conjunction with silica extraction at Ohaaki).
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/117664525/taup-company-successfully-extracts-lithium-from-geothermal-fluid
Understand its in the process of being scaled up for commercial production. If successful, I assume it could be deployed at other geothermal power stations.
Back in the late 90s/early noughties there was also Pacific Lithium's attempt to extract lithium from seawater here. But I was never sure whether that really was a good faith attempt to build a genuine productive business or just Robin Johannink grifting investors.
if the most ineffective party pretty much anywhere on this planet (hyperbole much?) are the greens, why is so much of what they have been banging on about, now mainstream thinking?I would say, in the BIG picture, the greens have been remarkably successful.
that's quite funny given Bradbury has spent more than three years running round slagging off the Greens, and actively undermining them, every chance he gets.
I'm not a GP activist, but people can call me a green activist. My preference would be that we had MANA and the Mp still in parliament, and others, and then I'd have more to write about.
I'd still be about the strategy though and will argue this with anyone that cares to: if actual lw policy matters, then the Greens have a significantly more lw policy platform than any other major party in this election. Hence the urge to vote for them. My personal political position is probably better described as deep green politics, and the GP are the best chance of us ever getting there.
But in the meantime, fucking climate change blows every other argument and stupid bullshit leftwing bitch fest out of the water.
Oh really?
Yep I'm gonna party vote green even tho the id politics stuff is annoying. Their policies are proper left and they take CC seriously.
(unfortunately I'm in epsom & also have to swallow a dead rat (goldsmith) this election to try and get rid of ACT)
My personal political position is probably better described as deep green politics, and the GP are the best chance of us ever getting there.
Exactly. I differ from you only on the political positioning required to get there – but I have had to drift with the times on that point recently. National's obduracy withstood the attempt by their progressives to steer their ship more cleverly, so the toxic culture within will defeat consensus politics for a while yet.
What is still missing is economic policy based on the commons. Both the left and right refuse to even think about that, yet it is the essential component for sustainable economics. Permaculture teaches design-based thinking, so I keep expecting it to emerge there. To provide that new design requires invention, so back in the '80s I conceived a synthesis of equity and enterprise as the conceptual basis for progress. Yet even permaculturalists haven't realised that yet. Too imaginal…
What was the simplest way you worked out to describe it?
As written, as you quoted. Can't see how anyone could simplify further. But if you were fishing for framing to help explain it, I didn't get that far.
Green policy formulation in the first couple of years involved compiling elements deemed essential (UBI & true-cost accounting, for instance, pollution & natural resource taxes plus others). Members suggested & discussed in person when the working group met, policy drafts got amended subsequently by JF & posted to members for further comment. Then the Alliance hit & the process was shelved.
Since I was advocating something radical that hadn't been done before, I don't blame any of the others for being averse to integrating principles from the political left & right. Transcending binary belief systems is never easy.
Smaller words might help.
"economic policy based on the commons."
Can you please talk about that a bit more?
Guillotines?
I tend to view it from a human rights perspective as well as the economic view. Economics is all about efficiency of operations, costs & benefits quantised. When you transcend it via noticing that values are more qualities than quantities, and those drive behaviour more powerfully, then it becomes a question of how stuff gets shared.
By stuff, I mean mostly money & power, of course! So if society incorporates a conceptual framework empowering equity, people get a more equal share as of right. The convergence of legal provision on the principle is usually the structural problem: govts pretend to honour the principle while minimising the amount of provision. You know that.
Democracy allows them to get away with it. If they were bound by a charter of rights that included the provision, and their employment as MPs contracted them to legislate accordingly, public perception of the validity of wealth-sharing would be raised accordingly. People would see their entitlement to wealth-sharing as a human right.
Now the status quo does simulate this situation, since our government endorsed the UN covenant that specifies the several rights to sharing in the economy. Have you read those sections? In theory, our govt is bound to deliver. In practice, the delivery is ever arguable in extent.
So I advise strengthening the left hand side of the synthesis (equity) to reduce the gap between pretence & reality. As for the rhs (enterprise), I've always advised supplementing bau with collective endeavour. Traditional co-ops are a useful model but the operational lack seems to be around education and training: nobody provides! So generations keep passing the opportunity by out of ignorance. Remember Mondragon originated in 1956, yet the model has failed to replicate globally.
How could a working model of successful synthesis of both equity and enterprise fail to replicate? Mass psychology. Leftists promoting working together as an ideal instead of doing it in real life. Centrists being too lazy to think about it. Rightists being too scared to change.
In recent decades I've trended to the view that the paradigm shift required in politics can only get triggered by mass desperation. As we've seen recently, the inertial effect of complacency is even able to withstand a pandemic!
Yes, I've noticed that too – I got 'silenced' from his blog for pointing out same. I can't work out what his agenda around that is supposed to be. He's built a small but vociferous army of absolute Green haters; not for anything policy-related, just due to dumb gotcha stuff he hears in the MSM.
I'm guessing some of it is because of his antipathy towards identity politics, which no doubt is in part due to the shit thrown at him by parts of the left over some of his behaviour.
Might be a bad cultural fit issue with the Greens too. He's not the only one that can't get over that.
NZ examples of leftist strategic thinking exist, e.g. the 2016 Labour/Green MoU. Is it your eyesight or your brain that’s letting you down?
Brain, perhaps. Since I wrote in support of it as a strategic initiative at the time. However you may recall that the Green movement originated as holistic (non-binary), and I became part of it that year (1968) on that basis, and it became overtly politic with a slogan expressly stating that it was neither right nor left in the early '80s.
Consequently the MoU was a centrist/leftist collaboration. I do understand that anyone in the leftist bubble will be unable to see it as such, of course. Bubble inevitably warp inhabitants away from reality.
So I ought to acknowledge that it was genuine evidence of leftists doing strategic thinking, eh? While simultaneously pointing out that it was a twin-tribe thingy.
Sometimes absolutist reckons and wind-ups are written with such dismissive authority that gullibile readers might mistake them for facts – IMHO, of course.
CNN has a review of several primaries here: https://edition.cnn.com/2020/08/05/politics/primary-results-takeaways-august-4/index.html
One featured a progressive black Dem vs establishment black Dem battle:
Good, the Clays sound like the yanker version of monarchy.
Thats a huge win.
I remember her taking on Clay in the doco Knock Down The House.
Perseverance paid off.
I see a Newshub headline on my device this morning. Looks like National's put its policy out : something about Collins saying Ardern is 'weak.'
I don’t think that Collins attacking Ardern directly is going to be much of a vote winner. It will just be to get the base worked up.
Collins "Ardern is weak, the successful Covid response is because of Bloomfield"
Brownlee "Bloomfield is scaremongering, what does he know that he isn't telling us!!!"
Key "Open the borders"
Clarke "Privatise quarantine"
Hosking "Don't get tested, freedom!!!"
Bomber "Greens are scary"
etc…
What he is telling us Gerry is that he knows what you fuckers are capable of.
What Gerry is also saying is "aren't you guys lucky I'm nowhere near the controls of power", indeed we are Gerry, and very thankful.
Bulldozer Gerry. Made the Christchurch quakes worse by demolishing everything with no regard for heritage and people's valuable stuff (literal fortunes) in the red zone. Stuffed up the rebuild. Has no regard for airport security.
https://twitter.com/TryRadicalism/status/1290746244805976064?s=20
A capitalist examines the prospects of system crash: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/07/coronavirus-banks-collapse/612247/
Readers who are financially literate ought to read the detailed analysis – I'll just copy the sections other readers can comprehend, to illuminate the scenario.
Incomprehensible, especially the last two sections.
Playing dumb, eh? Yet clever enough to have postponed it until the danger of being selected as a Labour list candidate is safely past. 😏
It’s official, you’re talking gibberish. No wonder I cannot parse 84.3 ± 0.9% (95% CI) of your comments.
That's not a flash suit you're wearing, those tailors put one over on you.
Gabby I am reading Lindsey Davis and her character Falco who is a spy for the leaders, wealthy of Rome and he has to dodge all sorts including people who pop out with knives, like you who pop up to snipe. In the game that my sons spends time on-line, the spy is the one who jumps you from nowhere. It keeps him on his toes so to speak.
Still, we shouldn't criticise the private sector for proposing campervans as acceptable accommodation.
Trump rolled back all the laws enacted by the Obama admin.
So ponzi schemes , huge bonuses for bankers etc all the worst banking practices have been allowed to flourish to levels much worse than the GFC.
They've all been doing it since Reagan came in and said "Government is the problem". Wall St has been rolling back the New Deal and taking over the US government for decades now. A sham of democracy.
Dark knight gives Nats economic policy: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=12354064
Forget Roger Douglas, Prebs & co, subsidies are socialism at work! It's left/right win/win all over the place! He's reacting to this
And he's alerting us to a collective gymnastics conundrum, via bad grammar:
Key should fuck off to Hawaii, easier to suck up to rich Americans over there.
https://twitter.com/alans_world/status/1291071252791046144?s=20
Interesting he said Mangawhai. Cos of course he’s a member of the country’s most exclusive golf course there, Tara iti. Which is the cornerstone of a big really pricey real estate development that an American developer is doing.
Covid-19 is upsetting all and WTF – politicians are starting to resign in droves as it's not worth the money, too much stress, just too hard./sarc?
It is quite alarming, Sweden has had a stable level of Covid-19 cases, but to no avail economically. The last quarter was down 8.9% as their trading partners aren't up to trading. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2020/08/05/sweden-suffers-record-plunge-despite-lighter-lockdown/
The UK – It sounds like The Treasury is treating people as pawns again and the Government is playing russian roulette.
Britain is heading for an unemployment crisis of Biblical proportions by the end of the year unless the Treasury's policy is torn up very soon.
Businesses will start ‘shedding’ jobs rapidly in September as the furlough scheme dials down to 70pc of wages. It will reach a grim crescendo when support stops altogether at the end of October, long before the economy is in any fit state to absorb the army of unemployed.
“It is one of the biggest policy mistakes in modern British history,” said Nobel laureate Chris Pissarides from the London School of Economics.
Only half of the 9.6 million furlough jobs have so far come back. There must be a high risk that premature fiscal tightening will abort the recovery and lead to bitter social conflict, spelling the political death of this Government.…
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2020/08/05/economic-consequences-mr-sunak/
Yet – https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/05/bbc-spends-38-million-call-centres-staff-chase-over-75s-licence/
What should governments be doing. What should the officials be doing, how should they cope with the changing ideas of governments. I may have put this up but it is worth repeating.
*fuck*
https://twitter.com/cnni/status/1291033723471663104
Lebanon's cabinet declared a two-week state of emergency in the capital city and handed control of security in the capital to the military following a massive explosion in Beirut that killed at least 135 people and injured 5,000 others.
The explosion on Tuesday sent shockwaves across the city, causing widespread damage as far as the outskirts of Beirut.
Officials said they expect the death toll to rise further as emergency workers dig through the rubble to search for survivors.
Beirut's city governor Marwan Abboud said up to 300,000 people have lost their homes and authorities are working on providing them with food, water and shelter.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/08/lebanon-eyes-state-emergency-deadly-beirut-blast-live-200804234925493.html
I hope Jacinda urgently demands a review of the fertiliser stockpiles around NZ.
We tend to put fertiliser works out of town because they have a habit of blowing up. This isn’t the first one to go up, with similar consequences
The Oklahoma city bomber was horribly effective with just 3 tons of the stuff. Beirut had 2,700 tons.
This one was a ship in port, 581 fatalities when 2000 tonne went up.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_City_disaster
This one was a fert plant a few year ago, fortunately out of town but a good bang Still killed 15 on site
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Fertilizer_Company_explosion
Lebanon is in such a bad 'state' that its government can't look after the country properly. Instead they are like the National Party, looking after themselves and their friends, looking for personal advantage instead of managing the country for all the people doing the stodgy, practical things.
Nov.2019 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-lebanon-protests-causes-explainer/explainer-why-is-lebanon-in-an-economic-and-political-mess-idUSKBN1XG260
Skyscrapers towering over the city landscape. I wonder who owns those? https://www.focus-economics.com/countries/lebanon
15/7 More money is not the answer to Lebanon's troubles : Any financial aid to Lebanon should be tied to a material commitment by its elites to undertake long-needed reforms. https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/money-answer-lebanon-troubles-200714113658835.html
3/8 Beware of the looming chaos in the Middle East : The region in 2020 is in much worse shape than in 2010. https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/beware-looming-chaos-middle-east-200803042230463.html
And we have the USA setting us up – rocket launching aiming at where?
Unmanned AI driven aircraft developed by USA Boston interests – why here? https://nelsonweekly.co.nz/2020/08/no-pilots-no-problem/
https://newzealand.ai/insights/a-new-partnership-will-create-a-strong-ai-community-in-nelson
https://newzealand.ai/
Who wants to be first in the world with edgy risky new measures – first being lauded for going naked into the neolib world – Grace Mullane virtually did that, now she is dead. We are vulnerable in our way.
We need to be aware of our vulnerability and keep looking after each other and the country tenaciously. No-one else will do it, we have to do it for ourselves.
A little stirring music from Pete Seeger and Woodie Guthrie with banjos!
that demolished grain silo held 85% of the countries stock pile. It is going to be a hard winter for the Lebanese.
the levels of disability resulting from that are mindblowing too.
There's just a huge crater where the warehouse full of ammonium nitrate once stood. The explosion registered as a M3.3 earthquake. Somewhere around 5% the power of the Hiroshima bomb.
2700 tonnes of ammonium nitrate in ONE place..
Frigging hell. Good thing that the explosion itself would have disrupted the explosion going full on.
What were they thinking? That is just daft piling all of that in a warehouse.
We stored that smelting byproduct in a flood-prone area by the Mataura River.
Probably find the ammonium nitrate in the warehouse was "temporary" when they confiscated it, but never got the funding to move or dispose of it…
Yeah – there is never anything as permanent as a temporary solution.
So, approximately 750 ton of TNT equivalent. Really, Little Boy wasn't all that powerful as far as nukes go and you can't really compare the damage of an air-burst nuke to that done by a conventional ground explosion either.
Yeah, I get really irritated when people make senseless comparisons.
Brexit in a nutshell.
https://twitter.com/MPIainDS/status/1290292769089626114
https://twitter.com/TheNewEuropean/status/1290971014487322624
Q. What was the winning margin of that indicative, not conclusive, vote on Brexit?
A. Leave 17,410,742 – 51.89% Remain 16,141,241 – 48.11% Turnout of registered voters 72.21%
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Results_of_the_2016_United_Kingdom_European_Union_membership_referendum
Leaving Brexit was an example of totally inadequate simple-majority law unsatisfactory for matters that change the system of the country. It was far different than an election that was part of the system. That decision has left the UK in a political hole it will never climb out of. Tried and true lefties say ' the people voted for it', for lies! They didn't have a clue what perversion of a political ploy they were falling for.
It needed a 55% or 60% super majority, or there should have been a confirmatory referendum once people had more information on the outcome.
The Liberal Democrats fucked it up big time by attacking Corbyn rather than joining with him in his stance.
Cameron was a fool to commission the referendum…but a genius compared with Boris.
Brexiters continually went on about 17 million people wanted the outcome without saying once that 16 million didn't.
Houses for Ordinary people are The True Real resolve of Kiwis – not Rugby.
The persons who care for New Zealanders are not the Banks. For they exist night and day to squeeze every bit of fiscal Life out of the pockets of ordinary families and persons. Banks are Shylocks in new shirts. Ask Shakespeare.
They have even removed hundreds and thousands of NZeders out of once owned homes, and sold them off into the sweet arms of Landlords.
Landlords, as you know, demand monstrously cruel Rents and laugh at the poor they entrap.
The Wealthy people glutton on, receiving every perk the poor receive. Incredible crazy Gluttony !
The Excessive Land shall be demanded. The required Housing must be built and maintained. The Wealthy have had their fun. Haven't they ?
Else, New Zealand will be the world's laughing stock. Slaves.
All these economic decisions are rational given the market conditions set up by *government* of every stripe since Roger Douglas and his merry band of reverse robin hoods came along in their trojan horse and shafted ordinary kiwis
Unfortunately most of the world has got pulled into the freemarket neolib system and the housing problem is widespread. What to do without pulling the whole house of cards down on our heads? Perhaps we will be like Lebanon.
Or like the UK out of the EU and with huge loans still to repay – however we should remember that they ended up with a huge amount to pay to the USA after WW2 – through their lend-lease agreement etc. It made sense to join the European Common Market after that. Now they have decided to leave and pal up with the individualistic USA, a co-operative world is too common for those moguls, and the UK wants to plunder other pastures no doubt.
Speaking of Banks
I am listening to John Bank's covering for the normal dude on talk back this morning.
I'd forgotten what a patronising prat he is
It' all that wax in his ears.
I think this may use up my quota of stupid questions for the month, but what happens if say ACT, NZ1 and the Greens all fall just below 5% and none of them win an electorate seat? And at the same time both Labour and National fall below 50% for the party vote?
How does this work in terms of forming a govt? Does Labour have to form a coalition with National?
I must be missing something here.
In that scenario the party votes for those under 5% would be distributed proportionately.
If in the unlikely event Labour got 47% and National 45% Labour would be the government with National nipping at their heels. It would take just one or maybe two by-elections to fall from Labour to National to have a change of government.
If both parties ended up even, then we'd have a hung Parliament after redistribution and face another election.
OT: isn't it amazing that NZ only had one by-election this term when Jonathan Coleman left. Usually there's about 3 or more.
Forgive my ignorance and it is pure lack of knowledge of history, but have we ever had a hung election in NZ?
No.
But 2020 has told us that all bets are off.
Although given how diabolical National are, it's unlikely to happen this year.
Pretty fair assessment Lol
Which is why the Greens policy is preferential voting for both electorates and parties. Helps make sure that the parties that people actually prefer are elected.
Then whichever of Nats or Labour got the most votes gets to form the government. They will divvy up the 120 seats in relative proportion to their party vote. Say it was Labour 48% and Nat 44%, then Labour would get 63 seats (48% vote share*120 seats/92% total qualified non-wasted vote) and the Nats 57 seats (or maybe 62 and 58 depending on how the Sainte Lague formula works it out).
https://www.electionresults.govt.nz/electionresults_2017/statistics/sainte-lague-formula.html
Not a silly question methinks. Could happen, so worth considering. I believe a national unity govt would be the framing deployed. They could also call it neoliberals disunited, eh? Would make fun political posturing a cultural norm until deckchair-arranging began to pall for all, whereupon the attraction of another election (mid-term) would suck their Titanic into an ocean vortex…
I know it deserves a full post in itself, but well done to this government and in particular Ministers Parker and O'Connor for the passage of the gazetting of the National POlicy Statement on Freshwater, National Environmental Standards for Freshwater, regulations on stock exclusion, and regulations on measurement and reporting on lakes and rivers;
https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA2008/S00045/new-rules-in-place-to-restore-healthy-rivers.htm
The regulations that go into force reasonably quickly from this include:
• Requiring councils to give effect to Te Mana o Te Wai by prioritising the health and wellbeing of our waterways
• Halting further loss of natural wetlands and streams
• Setting higher health standards at swimming spots
• Putting controls on high-risk farm practices such as winter grazing and feedlots
• Setting stricter controls on nitrogen pollution and new bottom lines on other measures of waterway health
• Requiring urban waterways to be cleaned up and new protections for urban streams
• Preserving and restoring the connectivity of New Zealand fish species’ habitats
• Requiring mandatory and enforceable farm environment plans
• Making real-time measuring and reporting of data on water use mandatory.
They've also made special provision for vegetable growing areas which are critical for national supply, such as Pukekohe and the Horowhenua. The acid needs to go on Auckland Horizons councils to clean up these areas, even with the apparent carve-outs.
Looking forward to regional councils actually putting resource into enforcement and prosecution to get the turnaround we need.
I too feel elated whenever politicians facilitate "the passage of the gazetting of" things.
The gazetting, in particular, always gets my heart rate up.
Done with half a day of Parliamentary time to celebrate it.
Cheers.
I have mentioned that before lockdown and yes, my fear has proven correct. The majority of new unemployment cases are women.
But hey 'shovel' ready jobs are being offered. Billions being poured in shovel ready. 🙂
And women running small businesses to create an income for themselves in a society that gives few fucks of job creation for women can apply for a 'government loan' (fully refundable) or go to Winz for some much needed bullshittery in order to get nothing, cause they may share the home with a bloke aka the 'mealticket'.
I seriously hope that long term Labour will do better then that, but then Labour needs poor people, and poor women are always good to squeeze some more votes about. Right, cause 'we fight for women', and their children. One denied benefit at a time.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/2018758209/covid-19-attention-must-be-paid-to-jobs-for-women-during-recovery-employment-opportunities-commissioner
Without wanting to sound cynical, is there any actual breakdown analysis on this figure?
What sort of jobs we are talking about etc?
Would imagine the first people that lost their jobs were part timers that are more likely to be female (kids and things) and in hospitality (which basically shut down and is screwed) which is also more likely to be female.
Hospitality jobs, Front of house, waitresses, room maids, house keepers. Retail – all of them and more going due to self ordering and self check outs. All that retail usually also comes with office staff – production staff etc and a lot of those are also women.
So not sure what you are nitpicking about.
But yes, lets ignore the fact thatof 11.000 thousand that went on the dole 10.000 are women. And i would assume that the employment opportunities commissionar got the numbers from Winz.
Also from here a list of companies that shed jobs – Air NZ on top of the list, i would assume that a lot of the ground staff is female, a lot of the on plane staff are female.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=12336053
from here a few numbers which industry has shed how many jobs and talking about the second wave of unemployment
https://www.careers.govt.nz/job-hunting/whats-happening-in-the-job-market/covid-19-and-the-labour-market/#:~:text=In%20New%20Zealand%20many%20workers,businesses%20lost%20about%2024%2C000%20employees.
the spin off also has something to say about that
https://thespinoff.co.nz/business/05-08-2020/why-the-hell-has-new-zealands-unemployment-rate-just-gone-down/
re – under utiliastion rate….lol
shovel ready. Yeah, sure . Tui!
Paying care giving jobs a decent wage would likely transfer some into that industry although I know it's not for all.
Getting over stereotypes.
Giving them some priority for courses on driving trucks and ag machinery. When ever I see agricultural areas complaining about lack of labour I think – offer part time hours and get some women trained who are well embedded in the community. Problem solved for the next decade
A lot are hospo I think. So very good argument for not extending any of the under 30 work/travel visa’s as they expire .as a lot of that work is hospo or seasonal.
i totally agree, all these women in their retail, hospitality, air NZ, cruise ship jobs etc should just move somewhere rural, be thaught how to drive a tractor and run a milking machine and all is sorted.
Yeah, right Tui.
10.000 out of 11.000 newly unemployed are women. Or did you miss that with you quick fix of bashing unde 26 year old fruit picking tourists. Mind, these women can get themselv a little camper van, bid farewell to hubby and children and just go fruit picking and sleeping in a dorm. Right? Even better, if they are single mums they can just go fruitpicking and their kids can too, right?
Good fucking grief.
This is why women in this country are among the poorest. Because there are too many that simply don't give a shit about how others do so as long as it affects not them.
Never mind that the Government has yet to actually do anything for women so far. Oh but they won't, right kinder gentler bullshit.
Err I wasn't suggesting anything like fruit picking actually and I am certainly not bashing women. I wanted to be sure that women are considered and taken onto the good number of courses being run at the moment ( and there are apparently airline pilots on some ) that lead to some of the better paid rural jobs – some of which are contracting ( driving grape pickers for example). A lot of these don't require moving to the back blocks but maybe to secondary towns like Nelson, Blenheim, Hastings Palmerston North. – or some of them may even want assistance to get HT licences to drive trucks- which generally seems to be better paid than care giving – funny that. Then there are all the trades courses – generally more women are taking these up – but we do want to make sure that any barriers are dealt with.
So no the "put the kids in the camper van and go somewhere" was not part of my thinking simply an assumption on your part so please don't sledge me about it.
Likewise hospo. Yes I have registered that we are talking about women and yes a large number of jobs seem to be from this industry and the numbers are also I assume locals eligible for welfare. But overall of out total hospo jobs pre covid a very large number (well over 2/3rds seem to be filled with those on short term visa's including the short term travel/work visa's.) There seems to be no reason to grant extensions on these visa's despite petitions and that would not have happened to any great extent pre covid so why do we not try to have locals filling our local hospo jobs? Nothing snide about that .
Do women overall need more support – right across the economy that would be a yes.
Undoing everything The Black Guy did.
https://twitter.com/NGrossman81/status/1291104766240661507
can you feel the economic anxiety of the white male working class of the US?
did you hear about her fucking emails and her lack of stamina?
oh well, to bad.
Poor people's lives are less important that rich guys profit. After all, its easy to replace the poor person killed to continue raking in the profit.
Today is the 75th Anniversary of the nuclear devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Our species is unsurpassed at self-destruction.
https://twitter.com/TheSpinoffTV/status/1291101672232673282?s=20
And stupidity.
https://twitter.com/CNN/status/1291163858950918152
https://twitter.com/Freeyourmindkid/status/1290626349426671617
Behind a viral photo of a crowded hallway at a high school in Georgia, a potentially dire situation is brewing. Students, teachers, and parents fear the Paulding County school’s rushed reopening plans may be spiraling out of control just two days after students — who said they were told they could face expulsion for remaining home — returned to class despite reports of positive coronavirus cases among students and staff.
North Paulding High School, about an hour outside Atlanta, reopened Monday despite an outbreak among members of its high school football team, many of whom, a Facebook video shows, worked out together in a crowded indoor gym last week as part of a weightlifting fundraiser.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/mollyhensleyclancy/georgia-school-reopening-photo-paulding-county
Does anyone know if it's legit for a sitting, albeit leaving MP such as Paula Bennett to be moonlighting for a full week of morning talkback shows on Newshub's Magic Radio especially during election cycle They're already dedicated 24/7 to trying to get the National Party into govt but what part of this and the discussions can be separated from campaign advertising $$?
https://i.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/122353535/threats-abuse-for-huruhuru-shop-owners-over-hairy-te-reo-meaning
I thought we wanted te reo in every day usage.
This is the second article in a fortnight were shop owners are getting shit for using it .
The other one was a restaurant in Auckland..if I recall rightly
ha! Huruhuru also means pubic hair. Look Waghorn, rule of thumb, if you're unsure whether naming something from someone elses culture is appropriation or not, maybe don't do it, who needs the headache.
So bullies get to set the rules , righto!!
Did we just see Winston's last ever speech in parliament?
I am guessing yes
I never write Winston Peters off. I remember the political idiots from National, Act, and the dipshit side of the left doing that in 1999, 2008, 2011, and today.
What those wishful politically dumb numpties forget is three things. He has a constituency for his brand of politic, those people are exactly the right kind of paranoid to ignore pollsters asking them who they’d vote for, and they all vote.
That is why the NZF vote on election days is always higher than virtually all of the polls by a few percent. While the greens is usually lower (lots of non voters there).
About the only thing that might mitigate that long term trend this time is Shane Jones. I am so glad he isn’t Labour any more. He is a real undisciplined pain to have around any political party.
I think Shane Jones will win the Northland seat.
Good probability. He has actually delivered the goodies – unlike the bridges that Bridges promised in a past by-election.
The issue would be if he could figure out how to retain the seat in subsequent elections. Electorate work is a long tedious detailed process of getting down with the distressed in an electorate. It doesn’t lend itself to the big-noting and meaningless rhetoric that Shane Jones is so well known for.
A gracious, eloquent Adjournment debate speech by the Prime Minister, followed by one full of personal attacks by the Leader of the Opposition.
The contrast between the two speeches should be a marker for our approach to voting on election day.
The opposition aren't supposed to point out a govts failings before an election now?
I take it you missed Labours speeches in the house before the last election?
There's a difference between pointing out political disappointments and personal attacks.
"political disappointments"
Is this the term for failure now Lol
Yes, National's failure to screw over the NZ public as they wished in this case. As they couldn't say that they use personal attacks against Labour/Greens.
Jacinda always speaks in very clear language without ambiguity as she did again today. No umms or ers. Love her or hate her you wont misunderstand her.
https://ondemand.parliament.nz/parliament-tv-on-demand/?itemId=215321
Collins seems to jumble her sentences so that the meaning is ambiguous. And Collins spent most of her time today sneering and belittling. (As did Brownlee.)
https://ondemand.parliament.nz/parliament-tv-on-demand/?itemId=215322
More MMT talk starting to appear in the news
https://www.interest.co.nz/news/106385/grant-robertson-remains-committed-reducing-government-debt-long-term-saying-modern
It's a shame Grant Robertson has dismissed it so quickly.
Grant Robinson is still wedded to the delusional neoclassical/liberal school of economics. Most of Labour are and that is why they can't do the transformation that we need.
Yup, once the MMT lens is understood, it opens up a whole lot of progressive policy choices. These policies under a neoliberal view point are very difficult to justify.
You'll probably find this interesting.
Thanks for sharing, will have a listen when I get some time.
James Shaw with a couple of zingers in his last speech in the house this term.
"There's Labour: 'Let's keep moving.' New Zealand First: 'Let's not.'
“You can almost see the ads can’t you?” said Shaw. “New Zealand First: You can stop progress.
“Act are making a bold play for the assault rifle vote, with: ‘The Act Party – more deadly than serious.’
“And National have settled on a new leader with a new slogan: ‘Why vote for the lesser evil?'”
Their billboards read, "Back your Future". With the greatest respect to the NZF voting demographic, their future will mostly have been planned and locked in some time ago.
Last election their billboards read, "Had Enough?"
Winston, I think we have.
If Grace Mullane's murderer loses his appeal, can his sentence be adjusted, due to his utter lack of remorse?
+100
Well said.