“British lawmakers on have voted overwhelmingly in favour of a bill to legalize same-sex marriage championed by Prime Minister David Cameron,………..lawmakers voted 400 to 175” http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10863748
Wonder if this will happen so conclusively here or are we more conservative than UK?
Oh fuck. Is that really an email from David Shearer ‘personally’ – ie, they’ve gone to the bother of inserting christian names in the subject linen – wishing me a ‘Happy Waitangi Day’?
A sure footed Key sensing the nation’s mood over Waitangi, wipes the floor with Shearer.
Mr Key said previous Governments and others had tried to create a sense of “national participation” on the day.
“It would be good to see, but I’m not sure that we can or should try to force it. We are not by nature a nation of flag-wavers.”
Labour leader David Shearer has used the past two Waitangi Days to call for the day to be celebrated in a more positive way, using Australia Day as an example.
However, Mr Key said there was no other day on which the weight of history was felt quite so heavily.
“It is marked across an emotional spectrum that ranges from great passion among some of those gathered here, to indifference from those Kiwis whose sole interest in the day is encompassed by the weather forecast.”
No. But I imagine that on David Shearer’s woeful performance to date, a lot of people might. And a lot who would vote Labour will stay at home on the day.
Leadership is important, and Labour’s best leader is on the back bench replaced by some sort of politically inexperienced back room international conservative bureaucrat, who has been parachuted in, despite being completely lacking in charisma and with no obvious aptitude for the job.
Yes they will be voting Slippery for what he might,depending of course upon the NZ Supreme Court, put into their back pockets, Labour having failed to move them with a prior bid on providing cheap home ownership,
Oh well to sidestep such defeatism as you express you can always console yourself that the other Dave will get His chance after November 2014 if your scenario turns out to be correct, and score the odd ‘i told you’ so brownie point in the process,
How’s the formation of the Alternative Green die in the ditch Party going???…
How’s the formation of the Alternative Green die in the ditch Party going???…
bad12
Such a party only exists in your hopeful imagination. Unlike the real life Green Party, which with its “pragmatic” approach, of down playing climate change, will condemn many to die in a ditch – literally.
CW: fossil fuels allows us to greatly multiply out the carrying capacity of the Earth – temporarily. You cannot harvest and process as many tonnes of wheat in a day from a hectare by hand or with horses, as you can with diesel.
And if Slippery gets back into power, then there will be NO power companies (all sold off) , The conservation areas will be strip mined for coal, and our coastlines blighted with oil rigs. and they will keep on borrowing until we are like Ireland was, and then the vultures will come in and strip out anything of value IE: Kiwi Fund and the Cullen fund, and then there will be nothing left and the greedies will be happy and look on a job well done. Thats what we have to look forward to.
Now some mitigation and a lot of adaptation is what we need to get on with.
Colonial Viper
Oh really?
Though you didn’t answer the question it sounds to me what you are really advocating is that we die surrendering. Even though in my opinion we are only at somewhere between stage 2/ and stage 3/.
Over many threads you have always argued for doing nothing to fight climate change. And you are still at it.
And since I don’t see any indication of the this mitigation work starting now. I presume you mean to leave this up to future generations as well.
And do you think these 3 or 4 billion human beings you dismiss so casually, will just go off and die quietly. Leaving us here in lifeboat New Zealand to go about building dykes and storm shelters?
Advocate surrendering if you like. Personally I am with Naomi Klein.
A great idea from Aussie union leader Dave Oliver; transferable work benefits. The ACTU want workers to take leave and other entitlements with them when they change jobs. Nice reminder of what a plonker Tony Abbott is, too.
I no longer receive notifications of replies to posts I have commented on despite the fact that I tick the “please notify me” box. I rather liked this function. This started [not] happening over the last month or so.
I am on Safari 5.1.7 and wondering if there is something from my side that is causing this; a setting I can change? My email is gmail and same question goes for that; is there a setting I can change?
We run Firefox on a PC running Windows 7, I have a gmail address and have not been getting threads for quite sometime. I assumed it was because the service was no longer offered.
Yeah i am running Firefox on the same and i am HAPPY that the flood of emails hitting my inbox has stopped, i like to take the time to scroll down the whole posts to have a good look at where the conversations in any particular thread are heading,
“Opposition parties were split on whether scrutiny of Parliament should increase.
The Green Party supported the proposal to extend the OIA to parliamentary business, but the Labour Party did not.
Labour’s open government spokeswoman, Clare Curran, said her party instead supported proactive release of documents to a dedicated website.”
As far as I’m concerned, that’s another point for the Greens. I’ve always been of the opinion that our views on politics should start from the assumption that politicians are NOT to be trusted and so it only seems logical to me that the more transparent a government is, the better it is for the people.
The level of accountability a government is “burdened” with only becomes indeed a burden if transparency is extreme. People (and by “people”, I mean politicians) always say that too much transparency means a government can’t function properly but I’m yet to see a government that’s failed because of the public knowing “too much”. Correct me if I’m wrong bu isn’t it usually the opposite that applies?
When issues like that are raised, I always remember mom asking, at a parent-teacher reunion years ago, for details on what one of my teacher’s plan for the year was. Her reply was “trust me”. Yep, the Brazilian educational system is great.
Yep another point to the Green Party, as a well entrenched Party in the Parliament the Green Party has nothing it want’s hidden while it is an Opposition Party and even less it want’s hidden at any point that the Green Party is part of a Government,
Labour can only recoup the lost point IF the statement by Clare Curran means that ALL Government documentation is released within a reasonable time-frame to a dedicated web-site,
If the proposed release is to include ALL Government documents within a reasonable time-frame then that is one of the better ideas that have come out of Labour for quite some time,
I would expect such releases to include Cabinet notes from the pen of the Cabinet Secretary as well…
You will cause the previous Labour Prime Minister extreme palpitations if your proposal was actioned.
I understand that her papers were handed over to the National Archives with the provision that they were not to be released for 100 years. I’m not sure that that would be classed as a “reasonable time frame”.
Lolz, yeah the comment is from the school of wishful thinking, but, we would expect that such a web-site would have revelations only from the time of it’s start date and other stuff prior to that would still be the subject of official information act requests,
The problem of course being who would police such a web-site to ensure it actually contained all the information required of it…
“Labour’s open government spokeswoman, Clare Curran, said her party instead supported proactive release of documents to a dedicated website.””
Something that I support as well. I have found out a lot of interesting stuff from the OIA requests I have been placing over the past couple of months…
The Los Angeles Times is reporting the State of California is set to sue Standard and Poor’s for 4 billion dollars.
“California has filed suit against Wall Street’s biggest credit rating agency, Standard & Poor’s, charging the firm with violating the state’s False Claims Act by using “magic numbers” and “guesses” to inflate ratings that ultimately cost California public pension funds an estimated $1 billion.
The action was filed Tuesday in San Francisco Superior Court and came a day after federal prosecutors filed suit against the bond-rating agency, alleging that S&P gave top marks to troubled mortgage-backed securities that later failed, helping to trigger the financial crisis.”
The New York Times reports that the suit was filed because settlement negotiations fell apart:
“Settlement talks between S.& P. and the Justice Department broke down in the last two weeks after prosecutors sought a penalty in excess of $1 billion and insisted that the company admit wrongdoing, several people with knowledge of the talks said. That amount would wipe out the profits of McGraw-Hill for an entire year. S.& P. had proposed a settlement of around $100 million, the people said.
S.& P. also sought a deal that would allow it to neither admit nor deny guilt; the government pressed for an admission of guilt to at least one count of fraud, said the people. S.& P. told prosecutors it could not admit guilt without exposing itself to liability in a multitude of civil cases.”
Incredibly, earlier attempts to sue ratings agencies for garbage ratings – supplied to purveyors of garbage for breath-taking fees and then trumpeted by said garbage-purveyors as ‘confirmation of rock-solid security’ – failed when the agencies claimed the protection of the First Amendment: ie freedom of speech! However it appears to be different this time, as the DoJ is claiming that S&P falsely represented to investors that its ratings were objective, independent and uninfluenced by any conflicts of interest; ie it seems to believe it can prove S&P didn’t believe what it was saying:
Among the flies in the ointment, though, is the fact that this really deflects attention away from the real guilty parties – the banks who knowing issued the garbage – and even offers them a defence as if anyone would really believe they were also taken in by S&P et al’s green-lighting their own products.
Moreover S&P and the other Agencies are already badly tainted so even if this goes against them, just watch them quietly fold, to rise again in six-months under a new name and, er, ‘business model’ washed shiny new.
Also, the Administration and the Fed hold a serious grudge against S&P for downgrading US debt.
Edit. Also note that it’s been years since these crimes were committed – 2007 and before. Further why aren’t S&P’s paying clients, the big banks who asked for these securities to be rated, also being prosecuted.
“Further why aren’t S&P’s paying clients, the big banks who asked for these securities to be rated, also being prosecuted.” – Colonial Viper
Ahem. A cynic might respond that the banks knew perfectly well these securities were garbage, and that they were knowingly ‘bribing’ the agencies for false favourable ratings. If the banks took action against the ratings agencies it would be thief against thief, and all likely come out in the wash. Hence their silence.
What is more puzzling is why none of the very big trust and pension funds etc. in the US who lost out badly in the crash haven’t brought this action. As I wrote, previous attempts have been made but were lost because, essentially, the ratings agencies were able to claim that all they were promulgating was their opinion which is, of course, no better than anybody else’s and they couldn’t be held responsible for it.
What’s really interesting in this case is that the prosecution is going for the fact that the agency actually knew the rating was false – ie a deliberate fraud – rather than just a lazy and/or incompetent opinion.
There was far more deliberate fraud than this going on in the ratings agencies. Of course in a prosecution like this, the DoJ may simply choose to prosecute the best representative instances.
However, in this talk, Bill Black makes it very clear that executives all through these ratings agencies knew what was going on, but given that their jobs and their bonuses depended on keeping their clients happy…
Lol, yep, don’t think I would hold my breath over anything to do with big money interests re-addressing their iniquities entirely! Yet, surely the more they do this type of litigation (and its being reported in newspapers), the more chance there is of more people realizing what cons are going on…perhaps….perhaps?…and only then, when public awareness is sufficient, is there a chance that the cons will be put a stop to?
The US Government , as you mention, is bringing fraud charges against S & P.
This suit looks awfully like political payback for S & P dropping the US credit rating from its AAA value. Two other credit rating companies also gave the same ratings to the mortgage backed securities. They were Fitch and Moodys. The US Justice Department is NOT claiming fraud by them. It is interesting that they did not lower the US rating from its AAA level.
Just coincidence you think? Political revenge seems much more likely. It’s rather like the way that, under most Presidents, the IRS selectively audits the President’s political opponents.
As I was typing this CV has also published this view. Oh well I’ll leave mine here and not waste the typing
You’re on to it mate. Check this out. Multi-millionaire hedge fund owner Michael Burry, formerly of Scion Capital, makes similar points about how he was targeted by the Feds.
Burry is right. We have been through the first crash. Everyone seems to have forgotten what happened only 5 years ago. It was followed by a struggling rally which is not a rally at all when you discount it for inflation. The next crash is imminent, a financial perfect storm. It will make 2007-2009 look like a summer shower. There will be massive political upheavals. The question is whether NZ becomes more democratic or more dictatorial. That will be our real challenge.
Yes. The action in this case is based on a very few actual securities only S&P rated, so only S&P can be sued. Moreover the Feds are only involved because the institution that lost money was federally insured, so the State lost money.
According to the NYT:
“The government is taking a novel approach by accusing S.& P. of defrauding a federally insured institution and therefore injuring the taxpayer.
Among others, the compliant includes the demise of Wescorp, a federally insured credit union in Los Angeles that went bankrupt after investing in mortgage securities rated by S.& P. Wescorp is included as one example of the contended fraud, and as a way to bring the case in California. The suit was filed in Federal District Court for the Central District of California.”
However if this approach is successful watch the floodgates open.
Yes. The action in this case is based on a very few actual securities only S&P rated, so only S&P can be sued. Moreover the Feds are only involved because the institution that lost money was federally insured, so the State lost money.
I believe your reasoning falls down as the Federal Govt also lost a shedload of money in Freddie/Fannie and AIG due to securities fraudulently rated by many different ratings agencies.
Perhaps these may be other cases in the pipeline or some cases which may have already been settled out of court.
The GFC is notable for the very small number of top financial executives who have been jailed. Compare this to the S&L scandal in the 90’s where hundreds of executives were sent to jail.
“I believe your reasoning falls down as the Federal Govt also lost a shedload of money in Freddie/Fannie and AIG due to securities fraudulently rated by many different ratings agencies.” – Colonial Viper.
I was claim otherwise. As regards Fannie and Freddie these were Goverment Sponsored Enterprises before the Government had to to take them over in part because of their losses on these garbage securities, so leading with them might raise awkward questions about (the lack of) Government supervision when these things were purchased. (And the aforementioned cynic might also suggest that perhaps certain individuals at the Fed. knew more about what was going on with Government-backed bodies buying top-price garbage from the banks than they would want coming to light now.)
As regards AIG its HQ is in New York, and I think the DoJ has very good reason for wanting to try this out in California rather than NY Courts.
Taking the action they have is nice and ‘safe’, in that it’s nice and far from Washington involving low-level players who aren’t likey to have any dirty Washington laundry to hang out.
My pet cynic might also pipe up that the most likely outcome of this action is to force S&P back to the negotiating table to agree a nice quiet settlement in which no-one who matters gets hurt.
How did you even come up with the idea of making a film about economics? I ask the director Jacob Kornbluth. “I know! People would roll their eyes when I told them. They’d say it’s a terrible idea for a film.” On paper it is, indeed, a terrible idea. A 90-minute documentary on income inequality: or why the rich have got richer and the rest of us haven’t (I say “us” because although it’s focused on America, we’re snapping at their heels) and which traces a line back to the 1970s, when things stopped getting better for the vast majority of ordinary working people and started getting worse.
“It always sounded so dry,” says Kornbluth. “But then I’d tell people it’s An Inconvenient Truth for the economy and they’d go, Ah!”
The Ministry of Civil Defence & Emergency Management (MCDEM) has issued a Tsunami Potential Threat to New Zealand advisory for North Cape, Auckland West, East Cape, Gisborne, Auckland East, New Plymouth, Wellington.
The Potential Threat advisory will remain in effect until:
It is upgraded to a Tsunami Warning, or
A cancellation message is issued by MCDEM.
MCDEM and scientific advisors are in the process of assessing the situation to determine the severity of the threat to New Zealand. Updates will be issued at least hourly.
On an associated note, we’ve got to significantly build up NZ’s military and humanitarian capabilities to respond to these regional emergencies rapidly and thoroughly.
It is with sadness that i hear the news of the death of the construction company Mainzeal a player in the construction industry here in NZ for 40 years,
Placed into receivership today it is likely that this will result in the direct loss of another 400 jobs in the economy,
Also effected will be another 400 (at least), jobs as those contractors and sub-contractors who relied upon Mainzeal for work will now have none and are likely to be severely effected financially by the receivership of the company,
My second job as a youngster was as a labourer for Mainzeal putting the roof on the Waitangirua shopping mall…
Exactery! One thing that’s always amused me about the Nats and their ideology: They profess to be supporters of a free-market and champions of campetition, YET all the while shitting on small businesses, allowing take-overs and mergers and everything that results in the tendency towards monopolistic/duopolistic behaviour.
Thankfully now even the small business owner and the corner dairy are beginning to realise they’re full of shit.
I’m of the belief that monopolies (natural or otherwise – such as a rail network, or power grid, or telecommunications backbone, or water and gas reticuation) either need to be heavily regulated, OR better still – publicly owned.
I’m of the belief that monopolies (natural or otherwise – such as a rail network, or power grid, or telecommunications backbone, or water and gas reticuation) either need to be heavily regulated, OR better still – publicly owned.
Public ownership is the best option. The heavy regulation and the needed regulators makes the faux competition we end up with far more expensive.
Fletcher Building has been selected as the main contractor for the Christchurch rebuild, i don’t know if any of this main contractor stuff was put out to competitive tender,
Having such a rebuild and having Ozzy as a default option provides some hope of work for the employees of Mainzeal and even some of the subbie’s involved,
There is tho a world of dislocation involved in packing up and moving to Christchurch and many looking at the cost of doing this along with the cost of accommodation and wage structures will probably just leg it to Australia,
I worked for Mainzeal on a number of construction jobs round Wellington or for Mainzeal subbie’s, the Todd Motors build of the assembly plant was a eye opener for me as there must have been some form of labour agreement where X amount of labourers would be on the job, the boss would show up in the morning and direct me to bolt 16 bolts onto the hanging bases for the spray equipment and then disappear for the day,
That was my whole days work which was over in like half an hour,we labourers would amuse ourselves with little pastimes such as capturing any labourers from other subbies that happened to stray into our turf and if they had steel capped boots with the cap on the outside we would hold them down and weld their boots together,
Working for the steel subbie on Wellington’s St pats college taught me to never turn your back on a mobile crane as the boss had me hook up way too much steel on the chains and i just about wore the mobile crane jib on my nut as it tipped over,
Lolz, Haere Ra Mainzeal Construction it was nice knowing you…
I imagine they sleep quite easily – they’re not critical thinkers and with fuck all life experience – they’ve learned their ideology just as a parrot does. Polly wanna cracker…?
several I suspect. If I was so inclined to give the silly little munter an nano-eon of my time, no doubt it could be determined. I avoid even clicking on anything that has “kiwiblog’ because I wouldn’t want to provide him with the statistics he uses to justify himself
And people like Farrar try to spin the line “Is the manufacturing crisis manufactured?”
It is another example of Farrar,using incoherent statistics to a problem.Which is good reason for not listening or following the statistical analysis’s of any of the sockpuppets.
That’s allright! According to national party there are plenty more jobs out there!If there aren’t it must be Labours fault, or the Christchurch Earthquake,or the recession,or,or,or, oh anything that comes to mind.It certainly isn’t the fault of or courageous leader who apparently will “go down in history”(his words) for going to Waitangi year after year for some obscure reason.Escorted by how many DPS at big cost to the country!!!!!(I’m so brave) Anything to gazump David Shearers overnight stay at the Ratana Pa. Anyhow, if he is so courageous,how come he is the first to scuttle out of Parliament when he is caught out with many of his LIES!! Bart S Key. The man is tedious. AND he has a bad hairpiece.In the sunlight it is the same colour as maggie berrys dyed hair.
More job losses FFS.
Guess when the mining magnates arrive all “the people” will be ripe and ready to condemn any protests because they want jobs (which they won’t get anyway).
Nice and pliable. That’s how they want us. That’s how they are going to get us.
Cheers National, you really are the pits and thanks to all the people who voted for them for being so intensely gullible too.
Probably the effects of the last few years catching up with them, There was some crazy pricing going on when work was scarce. One project I know of was signed up completely tag free with no a ability to come back for time extensions due to weather. Basically madness when there are 1000’s of cubic meters of topsoil to be spread and hundreds of m2’s of concreting with a completion date in august. Coupled with a specification which forebode topsoil work in inclement weather.
I don’t know what was worked out in the end around penalties but I do know the project finished at least 2 months late and they were very late paying sub contractors. From what I was told they were holding the final payment from the principal as long as possible to claw back lost funds through interest. Made life bloody tough for a subs and suppliers of said subs…
At least there will be work to go into for most, although it will put downward pressure on wages with a bunch of skilled guys entering the job market and Fletchers are sharks…
Only problem is that there will be plenty of pain for sunnies as they will be the o es who suffer by being paid only a % of what is owed if at all, and any payment will be years away. Pity that I imagine that t he coy had been trading whilst insolvent that there will be little recourse form coy representatives, how often are managers/directors help accountable ? but may creditors suffer.
Just as we’ll the banks are well protected !!!
That activists should be careful because although Maori have legitimate grievances if marrys get too uppity white folk will lose the good will so watch out, shut up and don’t be so uppity.
Key with a very calculated blow of the dog whistle almost said stuff that was really rascist and demeaning. It is as if he turned his IQ down and then said some stuff that would appeal to inhabitants of swinging vote suburbia.
It is hard to put Shearer’s response in context or detail what he was replying to but he did say “if you are going to say these sorts of things fair enough and we all feel that way. But do it down on the Marae, not as you are going to get on a plane and fly out of here”.
Shearer needs to do way better than that. When Key does some racist dog whistling Shearer should never, ever say that “we all feel that way”.
That’s unbelievable, Shearer, what a thing to say, you’re not speaking for me,i
think Key’s yapade was disgraceful and showed a lack of respect,the
same for the clown waiting to be our PM.
Smart politics from Key. Gower was right on TV3, having a go at Titewhai doesn’t cost National votes.
Plus, Key knows his opponent all too well. National will spend the next two years dog-whistling like that, confident that Shearer will say “Er, yes, but, I mean …:”, winning no votes from the right and pissing off plenty of his supporters.
(but remember, if we all agree not to say this is happening, it won’t happen, and Shearer will be great … /heavy sarc)
“Do you agree with Key that Maori activists make waitangi day difficult for everyone to enjoy it as a celebration like you said yesterday?” is different from “Do you agree with Key that maori should stop seeing themeslves as disadvantaged and making a fuss?” but both questions can summarise Key’s speech.
But, you know, it’s not like Gower would do Shearer over because he’s such a nice, honourable man, so let’s get our pitchforks etc.
Rob, if David Shearer relies on Gower playing nice, then he cannot possibly lead Labour in an election campaign.
It’s late and I can’t be bothered to teach Shearer Media 101 for the umpteenth time, but the essence of it is – be smart, be prepared. That means before the questions (knowing what to expect) and after (making sure the message gets out).
If Shearer didn’t like Gower’s unfair question then I would expect his team to have rebutted within minutes, in all available outlets, and if he didn’t know what Gower was going to ask him, and didn’t have a line ready, then he should not be anywhere near the leader’s job.
In 2014, if polls are to be believed, Labour could be the front runners for the first time since 2005, or even 2002. So the media are going to “do Shearer over” every day. Labour can either put their faith in Gower’s fairness (ha!) or their leader’s ability to cope with unfairness.
FFS, it’s not “pitchforks”. It’s asking for a bare minimum competence, a basic grasp of modern campaigning.
PS … and for the record (feel free to check), Shearer’s comments were queried by many on Twitter within seconds, because that’s what happens – people watch the news, and respond.
Reckoning here that part of Shearer’s problem is that he is a mediator. he instinctively phrases things in a way that expresses that he undertsands both points of view, which is an admirable trait in a human being, but it’s not one that a political party leader should indulge in. His job isn’t to mediate between political differences. He’s supposed to represent and fight; convince that his party’s way is right and the govts’ wrong.
It was Shearer-speak. Trying to cover all bases, and in the process, undermining his own soundbite (which was a fair one – telling Key to front up, not take potshots and scarper).
If he still can’t grasp that TV news only ever allows you to make one point, not to add parentheses and qualifiers and “other hands”, then his media training is wasted.
It reveals how local authorities are being bullied into serving up schools for forced academisation, just to keep the Minister sweet.
How they were made to sound like raving Communists.
How they were inspected and found to have good teachers and governance and be improving – then at the behest of Gove they were suddenly re-inspected and found to be failing in all areas.
It shows who is set to profit from the privitisation of schools.
The documentary is based upon the English experience but it should (yes, I haven’t watched it yet) have lessons for NZ in it as well.
That was pretty laughable, Slippery the Prime Minister whining about protestors stealing His lime-light, dunno what the Slippery one was venting His spleen over as there was little protest at all this year at Waitangi,
Probably got an ear-full in the private meeting with Iwi Leaders that is still resonating around His empty suitcase of intellectual rigor with the Maori Council also attending i can well imagine the discussion about water rights would have positively sizzled…
There is an article in stuff business section titled ‘ Ministry stone-walling on SkyCity-Labour.
Sorry can’t link.
National up to their old tricks,by the look of it.
Hi LPrent,
I hope you are having a really good relaxing break in good company somewhere beautiful.
When you are ready to return to the fray – there is something odd going on with the edit function. Tonight I managed to create two comments by editing one. I am dead tired, and am (more) prone to mess up when I am, but when I edited a post it created a duplicate. I definitely didn’t hit send twice.
Colonial Viper
You have done a lot of thinking on climate change and the way forward. What books, blogs do you find most effective to summarise the situation in a practical manner and advise on ways we can move to reduce our wastefulness of whatever and what we should be aiming for?
Now I have to admit that my focus is not so much on climate change per se, but on the massive energy and resource depletion facing our civilisation. That depletion is going to make how we deal with climate change much more difficult.
Also, reading up about this stuff can sometimes feel a little bit of a ‘downer’, but in actual fact there’s a pretty exciting world of innovation and community building coming up.
🙂 yep definitely. Max and Stacy, the dynamic duo. Have you discovered Zero Hedge? Also check out Richard D Wolff on youtube and his blog site for a good dose of democratic socialism.
I don’t get this, wtf is going on here – how can a company like mainzeal go down with all of the supposed building going or about to get going in chch. Although I spoke to a friend down there who said the pay is shit and he’s off to oz.
Mainzeal director Richard Yan said the company could no longer continue trading due to a “series of events that had adversely affected the company’s financial position”, combined with a general decline in commercial construction activity and lack of shareholder support.
You say it’s all right, sometime, we’ll get it done.
Well sometimes you just suck and I’ve got the fight to say.
You should never grab at something you couldn’t take.
You say you’re all right, sometime, you’ll get it done.
And sometimes you just say I’ve got to learn to wait.
Well you should never hit on something you can’t break.
What you gonna wash away?
How you gonna wash me way?
For no better reason than I’ve got no reason to fake.
I got a reason I got the will and the way.
No helps coming, no one’s running away.
Firing treason, ‘here with the freaks and the snakes.
What you gonna wash away?
How you gonna wash me way?
You say he’s all right, sometime, he’ll get it done.
Well sometime is just words far too easy to say.
You should never try on something if you can’t even fake.
You say it’s all right, sometime, you’ll get it done.
And sometimes you just say I’ve got to learn to heal.
Well you should never count on something you can’t steal.
What you gonna wash away?
How you gonna wash me way?
For no better reason than I’ve got no reason to fade.
I got a meaning, I got the will and the way.
New hope running, no one’s staking stakes.
Firing reason, ‘here with the freaks and the snakes.
What you gonna wash away?
How you gonna wash me way?
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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 ...
Hi,Today I mainly want to share some of your thoughts about the recent piece I wrote about success and failure, and the forces that seemingly guide our lives. But first, a quick bit of housekeeping: I am doing a Webworm popup in Los Angeles on Saturday May 11 at 2pm. ...
It is hard to see what Melissa Lee might have done to “save” the media. National went into the election with no public media policy and appears not to have developed one subsequently. Lee claimed that she had prepared a policy paper before the election but it had been decided ...
Open access notablesIce acceleration and rotation in the Greenland Ice Sheet interior in recent decades, Løkkegaard et al., Communications Earth & Environment:In the past two decades, mass loss from the Greenland ice sheet has accelerated, partly due to the speedup of glaciers. However, uncertainty in speed derived from satellite products ...
Buzz from the Beehive A statement from Children’s Minister Karen Chhour – yet to be posted on the Government’s official website – arrived in Point of Order’s email in-tray last night. It welcomes the High Court ruling on whether the Waitangi Tribunal can demand she appear before it. It does ...
Mr Bombastic:Ironically, the media the academic experts wanted is, in many ways, the media they got. In place of the tyrannical editors of yesteryear, advancing without fear or favour the interests of the ruling class; the New Zealand news media of today boasts a troop of enlightened journalists dedicated to ...
It's hard times try to make a livingYou wake up every morning in the unforgivingOut there somewhere in the cityThere's people living lives without mercy or pityI feel good, yeah I'm feeling fineI feel better then I have for the longest timeI think these pills have been good for meI ...
In 1974, the US Supreme Court issued its decision in United States v. Nixon, finding that the President was not a King, but was subject to the law and was required to turn over the evidence of his wrongdoing to the courts. It was a landmark decision for the rule ...
Every day now just seems to bring in more fresh meat for the grinder.In their relentlessly ideological drive to cut back on the “excessive bloat” (as they see it) of the previous Labour-led government, on the mountains of evidence accumulated in such a short period of time do not ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Megan Valére SosouMarket gardening site of the Itchèléré de Itagui agricultural cooperative in Dassa-Zoumè (Image credit: Megan Valère Sossou) For the residents of Dassa-Zoumè, a city in the West African country of Benin, choosing between drinking water and having enough ...
Buzz from the Beehive Melissa Lee – as may be discerned from the screenshot above – has not been demoted for doing something seriously wrong as Minister of ...
Morning in London Mother hugs beloved daughter outside the converted shoe factory in which she is living.Afternoon in London Travelling writer takes himself and his wrist down to A&E, just to be sure. Read more ...
Mike Grimshaw writes – The recent announcement of the University Advisory Group, chaired by Sir Peter Gluckman, makes very clear where the Government’s focus and priorities lie. The remit of the Advisory Group is that Group members will consider challenges and opportunities for improvement in the university sector including: ...
Eric Crampton writes – The Reserve Bank of New Zealand desperately wants to find reasons to have workstreams in climate change. It makes little sense. They’ve run another stress test on the banks looking to see if they could find a prudential regulation case. They couldn’t. They ...
Rob MacCullough writes – Pundits from the left and the right are arguing that National’s Fast Track Bill that is designed to speed up infrastructure decisions could end up becoming mired in a cesspool of corruption. Political commentator ...
Looking at the headlines this morning it’s hard to feel anything other than pessimistic about the future of humanity.Note that I’m not speaking about the future of mankind, but the survival of our humanity. The values that we believe in seem to be ebbing away, by the day.Perhaps every generation ...
Swabbing mixed breed baby chicks to test for avian influenzaUh oh. Bird flu – often deadly to humans – is not only being transmitted from infected birds to dairy cows, but is now travelling between dairy cows. As of last Friday, Bloomberg News reports, there were 32 American dairy herds ...
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 ...
What is it with the mining industry? Its not enough for them to pillage the earth - they apparently can't even be bothered getting resource consent to do so: The proponent behind a major mine near the Clutha River had already been undertaking activity in the area without a ...
Photo # 1 I am a huge fan of Singapore’s approach to housing, as described here two years ago by copying and pasting from The ConversationWhat Singapore has that Australia does not is a public housing developer, the Housing Development Board, which puts new dwellings on public and reclaimed land, ...
Buzz from the Beehive Reactions to news of the government’s readiness to make urgent changes to “the resource management system” through a Bill to amend the Resource Management Act (RMA) suggest a balanced approach is being taken. The Taxpayers’ Union says the proposed changes don’t go far enough. Greenpeace says ...
I’m starting to wonder if Anna Burns-Francis might be the best political interviewer we’ve got. That might sound unlikely to you, it came as a bit of a surprise to me.Jack Tame can be excellent, but has some pretty average days. I like Rebecca Wright on Newshub, she asks good ...
Chris Trotter writes – Willie Jackson is said to be planning a “media summit” to discuss “the state of the media and how to protect Fourth Estate Journalism”. Not only does the Editor of The Daily Blog, Martyn Bradbury, think this is a good idea, but he has also ...
Graeme Edgeler writes – This morning [April 21], the Wellington High Court is hearing a judicial review brought by Hon. Karen Chhour, the Minister for Children, against a decision of the Waitangi Tribunal. This is unusual, judicial reviews are much more likely to brought against ministers, rather than ...
Both of Parliament’s watchdogs have now ripped into the Government’s Fast-track Approvals Bill. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāMy pick of the six newsey things to know from Aotearoa’s political economy and beyond on the morning of Tuesday, April 23 are:The Lead: The Auditor General,John Ryan, has joined the ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Sarah SpengemanPeople wait to board an electric bus in Pune, India. (Image credit: courtesy of ITDP) Public transportation riders in Pune, India, love the city’s new electric buses so much they will actually skip an older diesel bus that ...
The infrastructure industry yesterday issued a “hurry up” message to the Government, telling it to get cracking on developing a pipeline of infrastructure projects.The hiatus around the change of Government has seen some major projects cancelled and others delayed, and there is uncertainty about what will happen with the new ...
Hi,Over the weekend I revisited a podcast I really adore, Dead Eyes. It’s about a guy who got fired from Band of Brothers over two decades ago because Tom Hanks said he had “dead eyes”.If you don’t recall — 2001’s Band of Brothers was part of the emerging trend of ...
Buzz from the Beehive The 180 or so recipients of letters from the Government telling them how to submit infrastructure projects for “fast track” consideration includes some whose project applications previously have been rejected by the courts. News media were quick to feature these in their reports after RMA Reform Minister Chris ...
It would not be a desirable way to start your holiday by breaking your back, your head, or your wrist, but on our first hour in Singapore I gave it a try.We were chatting, last week, before we started a meeting of Hazel’s Enviro Trust, about the things that can ...
Calling all journalists, academics, planners, lawyers, political activists, environmentalists, and other members of the public who believe that the relationships between vested interests and politicians need to be scrutinised. We need to work together to make sure that the new Fast-Track Approvals Bill – currently being pushed through by the ...
Feel worried. Shane Jones and a couple of his Cabinet colleagues are about to be granted the power to override any and all objections to projects like dams, mines, roads etc even if: said projects will harm biodiversity, increase global warming and cause other environmental harms, and even if ...
Bryce Edwards writes- The ability of the private sector to quickly establish major new projects making use of the urban and natural environment is to be supercharged by the new National-led Government. Yesterday it introduced to Parliament one of its most significant reforms, the Fast Track Approvals Bill. ...
Michael Bassett writes – If you think there is a move afoot by the radical Maori fringe of New Zealand society to create a parallel system of government to the one that we elect at our triennial elections, you aren’t wrong. Over the last few days we have ...
Without a corresponding drop in interest rates, it’s doubtful any changes to the CCCFA will unleash a massive rush of home buyers. Photo: Lynn GrievesonTL;DR: The six things that stood out to me in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, poverty and climate on Monday, April 22 included:The Government making a ...
Sunday was a lazy day. I started watching Jack Tame on Q&A, the interviews are usually good for something to write about. Saying the things that the politicians won’t, but are quite possibly thinking. Things that are true and need to be extracted from between the lines.As you might know ...
In our Weekly Roundup last week we covered news from Auckland Transport that the WX1 Western Express is going to get an upgrade next year with double decker electric buses. As part of the announcement, AT also said “Since we introduced the WX1 Western Express last November we have seen ...
TL;DR: The six key events to watch in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the week to April 29 include:PM Christopher Luxon is scheduled to hold a post-Cabinet news conference at 4 pm today. Stats NZ releases its statutory report on Census 2023 tomorrow.Finance Minister Nicola Willis delivers a pre-Budget speech at ...
A listing of 29 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, April 14, 2024 thru Sat, April 20, 2024. Story of the week Our story of the week hinges on these words from the abstract of a fresh academic ...
The ability of the private sector to quickly establish major new projects making use of the urban and natural environment is to be supercharged by the new National-led Government. Yesterday it introduced to Parliament one of its most significant reforms, the Fast Track Approvals Bill. The Government says this will ...
This is a column to say thank you. So many of have been in touch since Mum died to say so many kind and thoughtful things. You’re wonderful, all of you. You’ve asked how we’re doing, how Dad’s doing. A little more realisation each day, of the irretrievable finality of ...
Identifying the engine type in your car is crucial for various reasons, including maintenance, repairs, and performance upgrades. Knowing the specific engine model allows you to access detailed technical information, locate compatible parts, and make informed decisions about modifications. This comprehensive guide will provide you with a step-by-step approach to ...
Introduction: The allure of racing is undeniable. The thrill of speed, the roar of engines, and the exhilaration of competition all contribute to the allure of this adrenaline-driven sport. For those who yearn to experience the pinnacle of racing, becoming a race car driver is the ultimate dream. However, the ...
Introduction Automobiles have become ubiquitous in modern society, serving as a primary mode of transportation and a symbol of economic growth and personal mobility. With countless vehicles traversing roads and highways worldwide, it begs the question: how many cars are there in the world? Determining the precise number is a ...
Maintaining a safe and reliable vehicle requires regular inspections. Whether it’s a routine maintenance checkup or a safety inspection, knowing how long the process will take can help you plan your day accordingly. This article delves into the factors that influence the duration of a car inspection and provides an ...
Mazda Motor Corporation, commonly known as Mazda, is a Japanese multinational automaker headquartered in Fuchu, Aki District, Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan. The company was founded in 1920 as the Toyo Cork Kogyo Co., Ltd., and began producing vehicles in 1931. Mazda is primarily known for its production of passenger cars, but ...
Your car battery is an essential component that provides power to start your engine, operate your electrical systems, and store energy. Over time, batteries can weaken and lose their ability to hold a charge, which can lead to starting problems, power failures, and other issues. Replacing your battery before it ...
In most states, you cannot register a car without a valid driver’s license. However, there are a few exceptions to this rule. Exceptions to the RuleIf you are under 18 years old: In some states, you can register a car in your name even if you do not ...
Mazda, a Japanese automotive manufacturer with a rich history of innovation and engineering excellence, has emerged as a formidable player in the global car market. Known for its reputation of producing high-quality, fuel-efficient, and driver-oriented vehicles, Mazda has consistently garnered praise from industry experts and consumers alike. In this article, ...
Struts are an essential part of a car’s suspension system. They are responsible for supporting the weight of the car and damping the oscillations of the springs. Struts are typically made of steel or aluminum and are filled with hydraulic fluid. How Do Struts Work? Struts work by transferring the ...
Car registration is a mandatory process that all vehicle owners must complete annually. This process involves registering your car with the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) and paying an associated fee. The registration process ensures that your vehicle is properly licensed and insured, and helps law enforcement and other authorities ...
Zoom is a video conferencing service that allows you to share your screen, webcam, and audio with other participants. In addition to sharing your own audio, you can also share the audio from your computer with other participants. This can be useful for playing music, sharing presentations with audio, or ...
Building your own computer can be a rewarding and cost-effective way to get a high-performance machine tailored to your specific needs. However, it also requires careful planning and execution, and one of the most important factors to consider is the time it will take. The exact time it takes to ...
Sleep mode is a power-saving state that allows your computer to quickly resume operation without having to boot up from scratch. This can be useful if you need to step away from your computer for a short period of time but don’t want to shut it down completely. There are ...
Introduction Computer-Assisted Translation (CAT) has revolutionized the field of translation by harnessing the power of technology to assist human translators in their work. This innovative approach combines specialized software with human expertise to improve the efficiency, accuracy, and consistency of translations. In this comprehensive article, we will delve into the ...
In today’s digital age, mobile devices have become an indispensable part of our daily lives. Among the vast array of portable computing options available, iPads and tablet computers stand out as two prominent contenders. While both offer similar functionalities, there are subtle yet significant differences between these two devices. This ...
A computer is an electronic device that can be programmed to carry out a set of instructions. The basic components of a computer are the processor, memory, storage, input devices, and output devices. The Processor The processor, also known as the central processing unit (CPU), is the brain of the ...
Voice Memos is a convenient app on your iPhone that allows you to quickly record and store audio snippets. These recordings can be useful for a variety of purposes, such as taking notes, capturing ideas, or recording interviews. While you can listen to your voice memos on your iPhone, you ...
Laptop screens are essential for interacting with our devices and accessing information. However, when lines appear on the screen, it can be frustrating and disrupt productivity. Understanding the underlying causes of these lines is crucial for finding effective solutions. Types of Screen Lines Horizontal lines: Also known as scan ...
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 ...
The Green Party has today launched a step-by-step guide to help New Zealanders make their voice heard on the Government’s democracy dodging and anti-environment fast track legislation. ...
The National Government’s proposed changes to the Residential Tenancies Act will mean tenants can be turfed from their homes by landlords with little notice, Labour housing spokesperson Kieran McAnulty said. ...
Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson is calling on all parties to support a common-sense change that’s great for the planet and great for consumers after her member’s bill was drawn from the ballot today. ...
A significant milestone has been reached in the fight to strike an anti-Pasifika and unfair law from the country’s books after Teanau Tuiono’s members’ bill passed its first reading. ...
New Zealand has today missed the opportunity to uphold the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment, says James Shaw after his member’s bill was voted down in its first reading. ...
Today’s advice from the Climate Change Commission paints a sobering reality of the challenge we face in combating climate change, especially in light of recent Government policy announcements. ...
Minister for Disability Issues Penny Simmonds appears to have delayed a report back to Cabinet on the progress New Zealand is making against international obligations for disabled New Zealanders. ...
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 ...
New Zealand is contributing NZ$7 million to support communities affected by severe food insecurity and other urgent humanitarian needs in Ethiopia and Somalia, Foreign Minister Rt Hon Winston Peters announced today. “Over 21 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance across Ethiopia, with a further 6.9 million people ...
Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage Paul Goldsmith is congratulating Mataaho Collective for winning the Golden Lion for best participant in the main exhibition at the Venice Biennale. "Congratulations to the Mataaho Collective for winning one of the world's most prestigious art prizes at the Venice Biennale. “It is good ...
The Government is reforming financial services to improve access to home loans and other lending, and strengthen customer protections, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly and Housing Minister Chris Bishop announced today. “Our coalition Government is committed to rebuilding the economy and making life simpler by cutting red tape. We are ...
“China remains a strong commercial opportunity for Kiwi exporters as Chinese businesses and consumers continue to value our high-quality safe produce,” Trade and Agriculture Minister Todd McClay says. Mr McClay has returned to New Zealand following visits to Beijing, Harbin and Shanghai where he met ministers, governors and mayors and engaged in trade and agricultural events with the New ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has completed a successful trip to Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines, deepening relationships and capitalising on opportunities. Mr Luxon was accompanied by a business delegation and says the choice of countries represents the priority the New Zealand Government places on South East Asia, and our relationships in ...
New Zealand is demonstrating its commitment to reducing global greenhouse emissions, and supporting clean energy transition in South East Asia, through a contribution of NZ$41 million (US$25 million) in climate finance to the Asian Development Bank (ADB)-led Energy Transition Mechanism (ETM). Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Climate Change Minister Simon Watts announced ...
The Government is today releasing a list of organisations who received letters about the Fast-track applications process, says RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop. “Recently Ministers and agencies have received a series of OIA requests for a list of organisations to whom I wrote with information on applying to have a ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins today announced the appointment of Wellington Barrister David Jonathan Boldt as a Judge of the High Court, and the Honourable Justice Matthew Palmer as a Judge of the Court of Appeal. Justice Boldt graduated with an LLB from Victoria University of Wellington in 1990, and also holds ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford will lead the New Zealand delegation at the 2024 International Summit on the Teaching Profession (ISTP) held in Singapore. The delegation includes representatives from the Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) Te Wehengarua and the New Zealand Educational Institute (NZEI) Te Riu Roa. The summit is co-hosted ...
A stopbank upgrade project in Tairawhiti partly funded by the Government has increased flood resilience for around 7000ha of residential and horticultural land so far, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones today attended a dawn service in Gisborne to mark the end of the first stage of the ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters will represent the Government at Anzac Day commemorations on the Gallipoli Peninsula next week and engage with senior representatives of the Turkish government in Istanbul. “The Gallipoli campaign is a defining event in our history. It will be a privilege to share the occasion ...
Science, Innovation and Technology and Defence Minister Judith Collins will next week attend the OECD Science and Technology Ministerial conference in Paris and Anzac Day commemorations in Belgium. “Science, innovation and technology have a major role to play in rebuilding our economy and achieving better health, environmental and social outcomes ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon held a bilateral meeting today with the President of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The Prime Minister was accompanied by MP Paulo Garcia, the first Filipino to be elected to a legislature outside the Philippines. During today’s meeting, Prime Minister Luxon and President Marcos Jr discussed opportunities to ...
The Government has announced that $20 million in funding will be made available to Westport to fund much needed flood protection around the town. This measure will significantly improve the resilience of the community, says Local Government Minister Simeon Brown. “The Westport community has already been allocated almost $3 million ...
The Government is proud to support the first ever Repco Supercars Championship event in Taupō as up to 70,000 motorsport fans attend the Taupō International Motorsport Park this weekend, says Economic Development Minister Melissa Lee. “Anticipation for the ITM Taupō Super400 is huge, with tickets and accommodation selling out weeks ...
Local Government Minister Simeon Brown has announced an increase to the Rates Rebate Scheme, putting money back into the pockets of low-income homeowners. “The coalition Government is committed to bringing down the cost of living for New Zealanders. That includes targeted support for those Kiwis who are doing things tough, such ...
The Coalition Government is investing in a project to boost survival rates of New Zealand mussels and grow the industry, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones has announced. “This project seeks to increase the resilience of our mussels and significantly boost the sector’s productivity,” Mr Jones says. “The project - ...
Benefit figures released today underscore the importance of the Government’s plan to rebuild the economy and have 50,000 fewer people on Jobseeker Support, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. “Benefit numbers are still significantly higher than when National was last in government, when there was about 70,000 fewer ...
The Government’s commitment to doubling New Zealand’s renewable energy capacity is backed by new data showing that clean energy has helped the country reach its lowest annual gross emissions since 1999, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. New Zealand’s latest Greenhouse Gas Inventory (1990-2022) published today, shows gross emissions fell ...
The Government is bringing the earthquake-prone building review forward, with work to start immediately, and extending the deadline for remediations by four years, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “Our Government is focused on rebuilding the economy. A key part of our plan is to cut red tape that ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and his Thai counterpart, Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin, have today agreed that New Zealand and the Kingdom of Thailand will upgrade the bilateral relationship to a Strategic Partnership by 2026. “New Zealand and Thailand have a lot to offer each other. We have a strong mutual desire to build ...
RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop and Transport Minister Simeon Brown have today announced the Coalition Government’s intention to extend port coastal permits for a further 20 years, providing port operators with certainty to continue their operations. “The introduction of the Resource Management Act in 1991 required ports to obtain coastal ...
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Refreshed health guidance released today will help parents and schools make informed decisions about whether their child needs to be in school, addressing one of the key issues affecting school attendance, says Associate Education Minister David Seymour. In recent years, consistently across all school terms, short-term illness or medical reasons ...
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Toomaj and his resistance to tyranny through his songs have become an icon for the youth of Iran, so his sentence has hit the nation hard. Toomaj Salehi is not the first artist to pay the price for standing with the people. ...
My cousin Dylan and I spotted these big eels under the bridge that summer. We watched them lounging under the dark weed, facing into the flow of water, their mouths frozen open. Dylan and I couldn’t stop thinking about those eels. The night we went down to the creek, we ...
Newsroom, home of satire. My long-running weekly satirical series The Secret Diary has moved to Newsroom and will appear every Saturday, with Victor Billot’s wildly popular satirical Odes continuing to appear every Sunday. Diaries, Odes – while serious political columnists toil at meaningful opinions and stroke their chins to an ...
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Working as a doctor in developing countries to help communities achieve better health outcomes is nothing short of a life goal for Jessica Tater. The University of Otago medical student has her sights firmly set on joining the international humanitarian organisation Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) when she qualifies ...
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The Commissioner's decision validates the longstanding efforts of the local community and ensures that Awataha Marae will be managed to serve the needs of the local community, particularly for hosting tangihanga. ...
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Loading…(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){var ql=document.querySelectorAll('A[quiz],DIV[quiz],A[data-quiz],DIV[data-quiz]'); if(ql){if(ql.length){for(var k=0;k<ql.length;k++){ql[k].id='quiz-embed-'+k;ql[k].href="javascript:var i=document.getElementById('quiz-embed-"+k+"');try{qz.startQuiz(i)}catch(e){i.start=1;i.style.cursor='wait';i.style.opacity='0.5'};void(0);"}}};i['QP']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){(i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)})(window,document,'script','https://take.quiz-maker.com/3012/CDN/quiz-embed-v1.js','qp'); Got a good quiz question?Send Newsroom your questions. The post Newsroom daily quiz, Friday 26 April appeared first on Newsroom. ...
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Only one of these provides good advice
For the uninitiated and those looking for good advice see: reddit
“British lawmakers on have voted overwhelmingly in favour of a bill to legalize same-sex marriage championed by Prime Minister David Cameron,………..lawmakers voted 400 to 175”
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10863748
Wonder if this will happen so conclusively here or are we more conservative than UK?
Oh fuck. Is that really an email from David Shearer ‘personally’ – ie, they’ve gone to the bother of inserting christian names in the subject linen – wishing me a ‘Happy Waitangi Day’?
Yes it is.
Got one too, and one for my beloved as well.
General mailout.
Well Bill, you got to be glad to see the improvement in IT capability, right? Yeah I got the email(s) from Shearer as well.
Didn’t this “Happy Waitangi Day” idea pop up last year with Shearer as well?
Does it have a ‘reply to’ function?
😈
CW, to pass on your congratulations for winning the confidence of caucus I’m sure.
A sure footed Key sensing the nation’s mood over Waitangi, wipes the floor with Shearer.
Yeah Key and his PR team still do their job well. Of that there is no doubt.
I dread the day there is ever a head to head leaders debate. Unfortunately, going on current performance it most likely will result in a Key walkover.
Jenny, are you planning on voting for Slippery at the next election then???…
No. But I imagine that on David Shearer’s woeful performance to date, a lot of people might. And a lot who would vote Labour will stay at home on the day.
Leadership is important, and Labour’s best leader is on the back bench replaced by some sort of politically inexperienced back room international conservative bureaucrat, who has been parachuted in, despite being completely lacking in charisma and with no obvious aptitude for the job.
Yes they will be voting Slippery for what he might,depending of course upon the NZ Supreme Court, put into their back pockets, Labour having failed to move them with a prior bid on providing cheap home ownership,
Oh well to sidestep such defeatism as you express you can always console yourself that the other Dave will get His chance after November 2014 if your scenario turns out to be correct, and score the odd ‘i told you’ so brownie point in the process,
How’s the formation of the Alternative Green die in the ditch Party going???…
Such a party only exists in your hopeful imagination. Unlike the real life Green Party, which with its “pragmatic” approach, of down playing climate change, will condemn many to die in a ditch – literally.
The long term sustainable population of this planet is under 2B, at a rough estimate. We’ve overshot that by 5B already, and climbing.
Regardless of what the pollies do – which I am betting is closer to nothing than something – we are going to lose a lot of people eventually.
I have a question for you CV.
At which stage of the struggle against climate change do you think we are at now?
Where does the 2B figure come from CV?
CW: fossil fuels allows us to greatly multiply out the carrying capacity of the Earth – temporarily. You cannot harvest and process as many tonnes of wheat in a day from a hectare by hand or with horses, as you can with diesel.
Check out these links
http://www.holon.se/folke/kurs/logexp/carrying.shtml
http://canada.theoildrum.com/node/2516
In 100 hundred years I’m fairly confident that the world’s population will be closer to 2B than 10B.
The human race lost this one 5-10 years ago. Now some mitigation and a lot of adaptation is what we need to get on with.
And if Slippery gets back into power, then there will be NO power companies (all sold off) , The conservation areas will be strip mined for coal, and our coastlines blighted with oil rigs. and they will keep on borrowing until we are like Ireland was, and then the vultures will come in and strip out anything of value IE: Kiwi Fund and the Cullen fund, and then there will be nothing left and the greedies will be happy and look on a job well done. Thats what we have to look forward to.
Oh really?
Though you didn’t answer the question it sounds to me what you are really advocating is that we die surrendering. Even though in my opinion we are only at somewhere between stage 2/ and stage 3/.
Over many threads you have always argued for doing nothing to fight climate change. And you are still at it.
And since I don’t see any indication of the this mitigation work starting now. I presume you mean to leave this up to future generations as well.
And do you think these 3 or 4 billion human beings you dismiss so casually, will just go off and die quietly. Leaving us here in lifeboat New Zealand to go about building dykes and storm shelters?
Advocate surrendering if you like. Personally I am with Naomi Klein.
“I’d Rather Fight Like Hell”
Arguing against your suggestions of bailing out the Titanic with a tin cup is actually very easy to do.
Good on ya. Hope that works out well for you. I read she’s great company.
Good ole Claire!!!
A great idea from Aussie union leader Dave Oliver; transferable work benefits. The ACTU want workers to take leave and other entitlements with them when they change jobs. Nice reminder of what a plonker Tony Abbott is, too.
http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/political-news/union-fight-on-work-rights-20130205-2dwn7.html
bad day for KP
Socially corrosive…wah wah wah
@ lprent
I no longer receive notifications of replies to posts I have commented on despite the fact that I tick the “please notify me” box. I rather liked this function. This started [not] happening over the last month or so.
I am on Safari 5.1.7 and wondering if there is something from my side that is causing this; a setting I can change? My email is gmail and same question goes for that; is there a setting I can change?
I run Firefox on a Mac and the same thing has happened.
We run Firefox on a PC running Windows 7, I have a gmail address and have not been getting threads for quite sometime. I assumed it was because the service was no longer offered.
Yeah i am running Firefox on the same and i am HAPPY that the flood of emails hitting my inbox has stopped, i like to take the time to scroll down the whole posts to have a good look at where the conversations in any particular thread are heading,
lol, I sometimes found it annoying too! Yet overall I ended up reading more comments when they arrived via email!
“Self-interest drives OIA review”
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=10863710
“Opposition parties were split on whether scrutiny of Parliament should increase.
The Green Party supported the proposal to extend the OIA to parliamentary business, but the Labour Party did not.
Labour’s open government spokeswoman, Clare Curran, said her party instead supported proactive release of documents to a dedicated website.”
As far as I’m concerned, that’s another point for the Greens. I’ve always been of the opinion that our views on politics should start from the assumption that politicians are NOT to be trusted and so it only seems logical to me that the more transparent a government is, the better it is for the people.
The level of accountability a government is “burdened” with only becomes indeed a burden if transparency is extreme. People (and by “people”, I mean politicians) always say that too much transparency means a government can’t function properly but I’m yet to see a government that’s failed because of the public knowing “too much”. Correct me if I’m wrong bu isn’t it usually the opposite that applies?
When issues like that are raised, I always remember mom asking, at a parent-teacher reunion years ago, for details on what one of my teacher’s plan for the year was. Her reply was “trust me”. Yep, the Brazilian educational system is great.
Yep another point to the Green Party, as a well entrenched Party in the Parliament the Green Party has nothing it want’s hidden while it is an Opposition Party and even less it want’s hidden at any point that the Green Party is part of a Government,
Labour can only recoup the lost point IF the statement by Clare Curran means that ALL Government documentation is released within a reasonable time-frame to a dedicated web-site,
If the proposed release is to include ALL Government documents within a reasonable time-frame then that is one of the better ideas that have come out of Labour for quite some time,
I would expect such releases to include Cabinet notes from the pen of the Cabinet Secretary as well…
You will cause the previous Labour Prime Minister extreme palpitations if your proposal was actioned.
I understand that her papers were handed over to the National Archives with the provision that they were not to be released for 100 years. I’m not sure that that would be classed as a “reasonable time frame”.
Lolz, yeah the comment is from the school of wishful thinking, but, we would expect that such a web-site would have revelations only from the time of it’s start date and other stuff prior to that would still be the subject of official information act requests,
The problem of course being who would police such a web-site to ensure it actually contained all the information required of it…
I’d settle for the release of the names of those “high ranking Labour MPs” who did the character assassination on Cunliffe when he was in Europe.
Or maybe Claire Curren could “officially inform” us who inspired her to try to drive Colonial Viper out of the LP.
Keep truckin’ Greens. You are only 14 MPs but you’re the only real opposition party we’ve got.
Can i ask you,are you a member, of the Labour Party that is…
Well said AmaKiwi
+1
“Labour’s open government spokeswoman, Clare Curran, said her party instead supported proactive release of documents to a dedicated website.””
Something that I support as well. I have found out a lot of interesting stuff from the OIA requests I have been placing over the past couple of months…
The Los Angeles Times is reporting the State of California is set to sue Standard and Poor’s for 4 billion dollars.
“California has filed suit against Wall Street’s biggest credit rating agency, Standard & Poor’s, charging the firm with violating the state’s False Claims Act by using “magic numbers” and “guesses” to inflate ratings that ultimately cost California public pension funds an estimated $1 billion.
The action was filed Tuesday in San Francisco Superior Court and came a day after federal prosecutors filed suit against the bond-rating agency, alleging that S&P gave top marks to troubled mortgage-backed securities that later failed, helping to trigger the financial crisis.”
@ScottGN
That sounds like a promising move. Cheers for the info.
Don’t hold your breath.
The New York Times reports that the suit was filed because settlement negotiations fell apart:
“Settlement talks between S.& P. and the Justice Department broke down in the last two weeks after prosecutors sought a penalty in excess of $1 billion and insisted that the company admit wrongdoing, several people with knowledge of the talks said. That amount would wipe out the profits of McGraw-Hill for an entire year. S.& P. had proposed a settlement of around $100 million, the people said.
S.& P. also sought a deal that would allow it to neither admit nor deny guilt; the government pressed for an admission of guilt to at least one count of fraud, said the people. S.& P. told prosecutors it could not admit guilt without exposing itself to liability in a multitude of civil cases.”
Incredibly, earlier attempts to sue ratings agencies for garbage ratings – supplied to purveyors of garbage for breath-taking fees and then trumpeted by said garbage-purveyors as ‘confirmation of rock-solid security’ – failed when the agencies claimed the protection of the First Amendment: ie freedom of speech! However it appears to be different this time, as the DoJ is claiming that S&P falsely represented to investors that its ratings were objective, independent and uninfluenced by any conflicts of interest; ie it seems to believe it can prove S&P didn’t believe what it was saying:
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-02-05/s-and-p-won-t-employ-first-amendment-defense-in-u-dot-s-dot-ratings-lawsuit
Among the flies in the ointment, though, is the fact that this really deflects attention away from the real guilty parties – the banks who knowing issued the garbage – and even offers them a defence as if anyone would really believe they were also taken in by S&P et al’s green-lighting their own products.
Moreover S&P and the other Agencies are already badly tainted so even if this goes against them, just watch them quietly fold, to rise again in six-months under a new name and, er, ‘business model’ washed shiny new.
Also, the Administration and the Fed hold a serious grudge against S&P for downgrading US debt.
Edit. Also note that it’s been years since these crimes were committed – 2007 and before. Further why aren’t S&P’s paying clients, the big banks who asked for these securities to be rated, also being prosecuted.
“Further why aren’t S&P’s paying clients, the big banks who asked for these securities to be rated, also being prosecuted.” – Colonial Viper
Ahem. A cynic might respond that the banks knew perfectly well these securities were garbage, and that they were knowingly ‘bribing’ the agencies for false favourable ratings. If the banks took action against the ratings agencies it would be thief against thief, and all likely come out in the wash. Hence their silence.
What is more puzzling is why none of the very big trust and pension funds etc. in the US who lost out badly in the crash haven’t brought this action. As I wrote, previous attempts have been made but were lost because, essentially, the ratings agencies were able to claim that all they were promulgating was their opinion which is, of course, no better than anybody else’s and they couldn’t be held responsible for it.
What’s really interesting in this case is that the prosecution is going for the fact that the agency actually knew the rating was false – ie a deliberate fraud – rather than just a lazy and/or incompetent opinion.
There was far more deliberate fraud than this going on in the ratings agencies. Of course in a prosecution like this, the DoJ may simply choose to prosecute the best representative instances.
However, in this talk, Bill Black makes it very clear that executives all through these ratings agencies knew what was going on, but given that their jobs and their bonuses depended on keeping their clients happy…
http://vimeo.com/10239575
Lol, yep, don’t think I would hold my breath over anything to do with big money interests re-addressing their iniquities entirely! Yet, surely the more they do this type of litigation (and its being reported in newspapers), the more chance there is of more people realizing what cons are going on…perhaps….perhaps?…and only then, when public awareness is sufficient, is there a chance that the cons will be put a stop to?
The US Government , as you mention, is bringing fraud charges against S & P.
This suit looks awfully like political payback for S & P dropping the US credit rating from its AAA value. Two other credit rating companies also gave the same ratings to the mortgage backed securities. They were Fitch and Moodys. The US Justice Department is NOT claiming fraud by them. It is interesting that they did not lower the US rating from its AAA level.
Just coincidence you think? Political revenge seems much more likely. It’s rather like the way that, under most Presidents, the IRS selectively audits the President’s political opponents.
As I was typing this CV has also published this view. Oh well I’ll leave mine here and not waste the typing
You’re on to it mate. Check this out. Multi-millionaire hedge fund owner Michael Burry, formerly of Scion Capital, makes similar points about how he was targeted by the Feds.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CLhqjOzoyE
Colonial Viper, excellent link.
Burry is right. We have been through the first crash. Everyone seems to have forgotten what happened only 5 years ago. It was followed by a struggling rally which is not a rally at all when you discount it for inflation. The next crash is imminent, a financial perfect storm. It will make 2007-2009 look like a summer shower. There will be massive political upheavals. The question is whether NZ becomes more democratic or more dictatorial. That will be our real challenge.
“Just coincidence you think?” – alwyn.
Yes. The action in this case is based on a very few actual securities only S&P rated, so only S&P can be sued. Moreover the Feds are only involved because the institution that lost money was federally insured, so the State lost money.
According to the NYT:
“The government is taking a novel approach by accusing S.& P. of defrauding a federally insured institution and therefore injuring the taxpayer.
Among others, the compliant includes the demise of Wescorp, a federally insured credit union in Los Angeles that went bankrupt after investing in mortgage securities rated by S.& P. Wescorp is included as one example of the contended fraud, and as a way to bring the case in California. The suit was filed in Federal District Court for the Central District of California.”
However if this approach is successful watch the floodgates open.
I believe your reasoning falls down as the Federal Govt also lost a shedload of money in Freddie/Fannie and AIG due to securities fraudulently rated by many different ratings agencies.
Perhaps these may be other cases in the pipeline or some cases which may have already been settled out of court.
The GFC is notable for the very small number of top financial executives who have been jailed. Compare this to the S&L scandal in the 90’s where hundreds of executives were sent to jail.
“I believe your reasoning falls down as the Federal Govt also lost a shedload of money in Freddie/Fannie and AIG due to securities fraudulently rated by many different ratings agencies.” – Colonial Viper.
I was claim otherwise. As regards Fannie and Freddie these were Goverment Sponsored Enterprises before the Government had to to take them over in part because of their losses on these garbage securities, so leading with them might raise awkward questions about (the lack of) Government supervision when these things were purchased. (And the aforementioned cynic might also suggest that perhaps certain individuals at the Fed. knew more about what was going on with Government-backed bodies buying top-price garbage from the banks than they would want coming to light now.)
As regards AIG its HQ is in New York, and I think the DoJ has very good reason for wanting to try this out in California rather than NY Courts.
Taking the action they have is nice and ‘safe’, in that it’s nice and far from Washington involving low-level players who aren’t likey to have any dirty Washington laundry to hang out.
My pet cynic might also pipe up that the most likely outcome of this action is to force S&P back to the negotiating table to agree a nice quiet settlement in which no-one who matters gets hurt.
Inequality for All – another Inconvenient Truth?
Sounds like a documentary to watch out for.
Tsunami Waring
That earthquake was damn shallow as well – a mere 5km and 8 magnitude.
The Ministry of Civil Defence & Emergency Management (MCDEM) has issued a Tsunami Potential Threat to New Zealand advisory for North Cape, Auckland West, East Cape, Gisborne, Auckland East, New Plymouth, Wellington.
The Potential Threat advisory will remain in effect until:
It is upgraded to a Tsunami Warning, or
A cancellation message is issued by MCDEM.
MCDEM and scientific advisors are in the process of assessing the situation to determine the severity of the threat to New Zealand. Updates will be issued at least hourly.
MCDEM
Hopefully we can get help to the Pacific in fairly short order.
On an associated note, we’ve got to significantly build up NZ’s military and humanitarian capabilities to respond to these regional emergencies rapidly and thoroughly.
It is with sadness that i hear the news of the death of the construction company Mainzeal a player in the construction industry here in NZ for 40 years,
Placed into receivership today it is likely that this will result in the direct loss of another 400 jobs in the economy,
Also effected will be another 400 (at least), jobs as those contractors and sub-contractors who relied upon Mainzeal for work will now have none and are likely to be severely effected financially by the receivership of the company,
My second job as a youngster was as a labourer for Mainzeal putting the roof on the Waitangirua shopping mall…
With an entire city to rebuild, how the hell can a construction company go into receivership?
This is an economy of winners and losers. In this case, a very few big winners, and also some big losers.
Exactery! One thing that’s always amused me about the Nats and their ideology: They profess to be supporters of a free-market and champions of campetition, YET all the while shitting on small businesses, allowing take-overs and mergers and everything that results in the tendency towards monopolistic/duopolistic behaviour.
Thankfully now even the small business owner and the corner dairy are beginning to realise they’re full of shit.
I’m of the belief that monopolies (natural or otherwise – such as a rail network, or power grid, or telecommunications backbone, or water and gas reticuation) either need to be heavily regulated, OR better still – publicly owned.
BTW (as they say in the connected world) Hopefully at the moment, people realise Fletchers and Fulton Hogan are those currently in favour.
Public ownership is the best option. The heavy regulation and the needed regulators makes the faux competition we end up with far more expensive.
I know, it’s almost as if they’re…..lying!
Fletcher Building has been selected as the main contractor for the Christchurch rebuild, i don’t know if any of this main contractor stuff was put out to competitive tender,
Having such a rebuild and having Ozzy as a default option provides some hope of work for the employees of Mainzeal and even some of the subbie’s involved,
There is tho a world of dislocation involved in packing up and moving to Christchurch and many looking at the cost of doing this along with the cost of accommodation and wage structures will probably just leg it to Australia,
I worked for Mainzeal on a number of construction jobs round Wellington or for Mainzeal subbie’s, the Todd Motors build of the assembly plant was a eye opener for me as there must have been some form of labour agreement where X amount of labourers would be on the job, the boss would show up in the morning and direct me to bolt 16 bolts onto the hanging bases for the spray equipment and then disappear for the day,
That was my whole days work which was over in like half an hour,we labourers would amuse ourselves with little pastimes such as capturing any labourers from other subbies that happened to stray into our turf and if they had steel capped boots with the cap on the outside we would hold them down and weld their boots together,
Working for the steel subbie on Wellington’s St pats college taught me to never turn your back on a mobile crane as the boss had me hook up way too much steel on the chains and i just about wore the mobile crane jib on my nut as it tipped over,
Lolz, Haere Ra Mainzeal Construction it was nice knowing you…
@Tiresias 11.1
+1
And those contractors and sub-contractors are unsecured creditors so they won’t be getting the money for the work that they’ve done.
And people like Farrar try to spin the line “Is the manufacturing crisis manufactured?”
How do people like him sleep at night?
Unbelievable.
I imagine they sleep quite easily – they’re not critical thinkers and with fuck all life experience – they’ve learned their ideology just as a parrot does. Polly wanna cracker…?
Who is Farrar’s paymaster?
several I suspect. If I was so inclined to give the silly little munter an nano-eon of my time, no doubt it could be determined. I avoid even clicking on anything that has “kiwiblog’ because I wouldn’t want to provide him with the statistics he uses to justify himself
And people like Farrar try to spin the line “Is the manufacturing crisis manufactured?”
It is another example of Farrar,using incoherent statistics to a problem.Which is good reason for not listening or following the statistical analysis’s of any of the sockpuppets.
That’s allright! According to national party there are plenty more jobs out there!If there aren’t it must be Labours fault, or the Christchurch Earthquake,or the recession,or,or,or, oh anything that comes to mind.It certainly isn’t the fault of or courageous leader who apparently will “go down in history”(his words) for going to Waitangi year after year for some obscure reason.Escorted by how many DPS at big cost to the country!!!!!(I’m so brave) Anything to gazump David Shearers overnight stay at the Ratana Pa. Anyhow, if he is so courageous,how come he is the first to scuttle out of Parliament when he is caught out with many of his LIES!! Bart S Key. The man is tedious. AND he has a bad hairpiece.In the sunlight it is the same colour as maggie berrys dyed hair.
More job losses FFS.
Guess when the mining magnates arrive all “the people” will be ripe and ready to condemn any protests because they want jobs (which they won’t get anyway).
Nice and pliable. That’s how they want us. That’s how they are going to get us.
Cheers National, you really are the pits and thanks to all the people who voted for them for being so intensely gullible too.
Probably the effects of the last few years catching up with them, There was some crazy pricing going on when work was scarce. One project I know of was signed up completely tag free with no a ability to come back for time extensions due to weather. Basically madness when there are 1000’s of cubic meters of topsoil to be spread and hundreds of m2’s of concreting with a completion date in august. Coupled with a specification which forebode topsoil work in inclement weather.
I don’t know what was worked out in the end around penalties but I do know the project finished at least 2 months late and they were very late paying sub contractors. From what I was told they were holding the final payment from the principal as long as possible to claw back lost funds through interest. Made life bloody tough for a subs and suppliers of said subs…
At least there will be work to go into for most, although it will put downward pressure on wages with a bunch of skilled guys entering the job market and Fletchers are sharks…
Only problem is that there will be plenty of pain for sunnies as they will be the o es who suffer by being paid only a % of what is owed if at all, and any payment will be years away. Pity that I imagine that t he coy had been trading whilst insolvent that there will be little recourse form coy representatives, how often are managers/directors help accountable ? but may creditors suffer.
Just as we’ll the banks are well protected !!!
Did I hear Shearer on 3 News saying “we all agree……” re Key’s Waitangi comments about activists ?
Would that surprise you?
After all, people like Key. If Shearer just agrees with what Key says then obviously people will like him too.
That’s how popularity works, right?
In the walnut sized minds of a few MPs and staffers yes. But to the rest of us no …
What exactly did Shearer agree with Key about?
That activists should be careful because although Maori have legitimate grievances if marrys get too uppity white folk will lose the good will so watch out, shut up and don’t be so uppity.
Please, please say that is not a verbatim quote …
Not verbatim.
Oh, thank God for that. 😯
I just saw it. The video is at http://www.3news.co.nz/John-Key-says-Waitangi-protesters-short-sighted/tabid/370/articleID/285785/Default.aspx
Key with a very calculated blow of the dog whistle almost said stuff that was really rascist and demeaning. It is as if he turned his IQ down and then said some stuff that would appeal to inhabitants of swinging vote suburbia.
It is hard to put Shearer’s response in context or detail what he was replying to but he did say “if you are going to say these sorts of things fair enough and we all feel that way. But do it down on the Marae, not as you are going to get on a plane and fly out of here”.
Shearer needs to do way better than that. When Key does some racist dog whistling Shearer should never, ever say that “we all feel that way”.
That’s unbelievable, Shearer, what a thing to say, you’re not speaking for me,i
think Key’s yapade was disgraceful and showed a lack of respect,the
same for the clown waiting to be our PM.
I’m not even going to bother at this stage MS. Talk about gifting the Maori seats to Mana on a plate.
Smart politics from Key. Gower was right on TV3, having a go at Titewhai doesn’t cost National votes.
Plus, Key knows his opponent all too well. National will spend the next two years dog-whistling like that, confident that Shearer will say “Er, yes, but, I mean …:”, winning no votes from the right and pissing off plenty of his supporters.
(but remember, if we all agree not to say this is happening, it won’t happen, and Shearer will be great … /heavy sarc)
a kick from the right, a kick from the left – nah same team just different legs.
Does anyone know what Gower actually asked him?
“Do you agree with Key that Maori activists make waitangi day difficult for everyone to enjoy it as a celebration like you said yesterday?” is different from “Do you agree with Key that maori should stop seeing themeslves as disadvantaged and making a fuss?” but both questions can summarise Key’s speech.
But, you know, it’s not like Gower would do Shearer over because he’s such a nice, honourable man, so let’s get our pitchforks etc.
Rob, if David Shearer relies on Gower playing nice, then he cannot possibly lead Labour in an election campaign.
It’s late and I can’t be bothered to teach Shearer Media 101 for the umpteenth time, but the essence of it is – be smart, be prepared. That means before the questions (knowing what to expect) and after (making sure the message gets out).
If Shearer didn’t like Gower’s unfair question then I would expect his team to have rebutted within minutes, in all available outlets, and if he didn’t know what Gower was going to ask him, and didn’t have a line ready, then he should not be anywhere near the leader’s job.
In 2014, if polls are to be believed, Labour could be the front runners for the first time since 2005, or even 2002. So the media are going to “do Shearer over” every day. Labour can either put their faith in Gower’s fairness (ha!) or their leader’s ability to cope with unfairness.
FFS, it’s not “pitchforks”. It’s asking for a bare minimum competence, a basic grasp of modern campaigning.
PS … and for the record (feel free to check), Shearer’s comments were queried by many on Twitter within seconds, because that’s what happens – people watch the news, and respond.
Whereas Labour respond late, or not at all.
Exactly Gobsmacked.
Reckoning here that part of Shearer’s problem is that he is a mediator. he instinctively phrases things in a way that expresses that he undertsands both points of view, which is an admirable trait in a human being, but it’s not one that a political party leader should indulge in. His job isn’t to mediate between political differences. He’s supposed to represent and fight; convince that his party’s way is right and the govts’ wrong.
That dog whistle never leaves his lips! He’s not David Shearer, he’s David Shepherd.
You did North, and so did I. Ye gods, what is he going to say next.
It was Shearer-speak. Trying to cover all bases, and in the process, undermining his own soundbite (which was a fair one – telling Key to front up, not take potshots and scarper).
If he still can’t grasp that TV news only ever allows you to make one point, not to add parentheses and qualifiers and “other hands”, then his media training is wasted.
Aye, if he did not say “fair enough and we all feel that way” the statement would have been fine.
Sadly I’m finding it harder and harder to believe that he isn’t just saying what he really thinks.
If you’ve got a spare hour you may find this worth watching:
The Parents, The Politician and The Moneymakers – A warning for NZ schools
The documentary is based upon the English experience but it should (yes, I haven’t watched it yet) have lessons for NZ in it as well.
it’s rather jaw-dropping isn’t it, the way the school is bullied. I was shocked, and I’m not easily shocked.
That was pretty laughable, Slippery the Prime Minister whining about protestors stealing His lime-light, dunno what the Slippery one was venting His spleen over as there was little protest at all this year at Waitangi,
Probably got an ear-full in the private meeting with Iwi Leaders that is still resonating around His empty suitcase of intellectual rigor with the Maori Council also attending i can well imagine the discussion about water rights would have positively sizzled…
@ bad12
Key WANTED protests. Protests would have given him real headlines: “PM to protestors: Fuck off you lazy sods . . . “
There is an article in stuff business section titled ‘ Ministry stone-walling on SkyCity-Labour.
Sorry can’t link.
National up to their old tricks,by the look of it.
You can do an ordinary cut and paste job VV.
Open article in normal way.
Right click on stuff address/article heading… at top left of screen.
Left click on ‘copy’.
Arrow back and re-open The Standard…
Right click in your comment box.
Left click on ‘paste’.
And this is what you should get:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/farming/8265860/Ministry-stone-walling-on-SkyCity-Labour
Note: it doesn’t go blue until you submit comment.
\Small pdf.
http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/sections/news/020413_DOJ_White_Paper.pdf
Hi, thanks Anne, I’m still working on it,it manages to vanish on me,when i arrow
to the standard box, sigh,i’ll keep working at it. 🙂
Hi LPrent,
I hope you are having a really good relaxing break in good company somewhere beautiful.
When you are ready to return to the fray – there is something odd going on with the edit function. Tonight I managed to create two comments by editing one. I am dead tired, and am (more) prone to mess up when I am, but when I edited a post it created a duplicate. I definitely didn’t hit send twice.
Ta
Colonial Viper
You have done a lot of thinking on climate change and the way forward. What books, blogs do you find most effective to summarise the situation in a practical manner and advise on ways we can move to reduce our wastefulness of whatever and what we should be aiming for?
Hey mate, despite these links being a little US-centric:
Try a couple of the books by John Michael Greer. The Long Descent and the Eco-technic Future are good to start with. You can order his books here
http://redroom.com/member/john-michael-greer
And for free, check out his blog here
http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.co.nz/
What he writes is fascinating but what his commentators leave is equally astonishing at times.
Dmitry Orlov is excellent for helping breakdown particular cultural outlooks on the trouble we find ourselves in:
http://fora.tv/2009/02/13/Dmitry_Orlov_Social_Collapse_Best_Practices
Now I have to admit that my focus is not so much on climate change per se, but on the massive energy and resource depletion facing our civilisation. That depletion is going to make how we deal with climate change much more difficult.
Also, reading up about this stuff can sometimes feel a little bit of a ‘downer’, but in actual fact there’s a pretty exciting world of innovation and community building coming up.
Re: the archdruid blog – if you find it interesting enough, start reading his posts from a few years back right through to the current day.
Do you watch The Keiser Report, CV? If not, have a gander, it’s hilarious and informative but possibly panders to the gold bug angle a bit.
🙂 yep definitely. Max and Stacy, the dynamic duo. Have you discovered Zero Hedge? Also check out Richard D Wolff on youtube and his blog site for a good dose of democratic socialism.
Cheers, I’ve had a wee look at Zero Hedge but I must look into it further. Haven’t heard of Wolff though, Ill check it out. Here’s a nice link I found the other day (which I haven’t explored yet):
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joshua-m-brown/best-financial-journalists_b_1605584.html
I feel a bit safer talking about this weirdo banking stuff now that TFC is on a weeks ban 😉
I don’t get this, wtf is going on here – how can a company like mainzeal go down with all of the supposed building going or about to get going in chch. Although I spoke to a friend down there who said the pay is shit and he’s off to oz.
Contracts and buying power concentrate in Fletchers; then probably some management mistakes and wrong assumptions at Mainzeal.
We’ve created an economy of winners and losers, and money becoming more and more concentrated.
International problems. Christchurch operation will be worth a relatives fortune.
Purges, I shit them.
Just wrote this tonight. Here with the freaks and the snakes. “lol:
https://soundcloud.com/theal1en/getting-it-done
You say it’s all right, sometime, we’ll get it done.
Well sometimes you just suck and I’ve got the fight to say.
You should never grab at something you couldn’t take.
You say you’re all right, sometime, you’ll get it done.
And sometimes you just say I’ve got to learn to wait.
Well you should never hit on something you can’t break.
What you gonna wash away?
How you gonna wash me way?
For no better reason than I’ve got no reason to fake.
I got a reason I got the will and the way.
No helps coming, no one’s running away.
Firing treason, ‘here with the freaks and the snakes.
What you gonna wash away?
How you gonna wash me way?
You say he’s all right, sometime, he’ll get it done.
Well sometime is just words far too easy to say.
You should never try on something if you can’t even fake.
You say it’s all right, sometime, you’ll get it done.
And sometimes you just say I’ve got to learn to heal.
Well you should never count on something you can’t steal.
What you gonna wash away?
How you gonna wash me way?
For no better reason than I’ve got no reason to fade.
I got a meaning, I got the will and the way.
New hope running, no one’s staking stakes.
Firing reason, ‘here with the freaks and the snakes.
What you gonna wash away?
How you gonna wash me way?