[Just to point out that putting a pile of links in a comment will mean the comment hits moderation and it’ll just sit there if no mods are around. Best avoided if possible] – Bill
You missed the Brazil drought that’s just coming to an end now….
Was listening to something about superdroughts and their predicted prevalence – prevalence expected to increase.
On the same piece there was something touched on that I’d heard of before to do with the jet stream. Essentially, with the arctic warming, the ‘atmosphere’ becomes thicker (higher), meaning the gradient between the poles and the equator lessens and the jet-stream then tends to ‘slow’ and meander more than flow.
As weather fronts are tucked in behind the traversing jet stream, and that traverse slows up, weather gets ‘stuck’, meaning more prolonged periods of the same weather. Not good.
Many of those countries are experiencing drought because they are fucking with the catchment and groundwater in order to make money. Humans have lived in very dry climates for a long long time, and they do so by working with nature not exploiting it.
I’m not saying climate change isn’t creating serious problems with regards to water. But those problems aren’t visible in the places where humans are fucking with the catchment and dealing with the human-made problems is a prerequisite to learning how to adapt to the CC ones (leaving aside they’re all human made).
If we look at Canterbury for instance, the droughts being talked about there are a direct result of deforestation, draining wetlands, overgrazing, rabbits, and more recently stealing water from the aquifers, and industrial dairying. All those things exist independently of climate change, and climate change is making them more impactful because instead of happening every 20 years they’re happening multiple years in a row (we can pretty much assume drought is a constant on the east coast of the SI now). If we stopped doing all that shit, climate change effects in Canterbury would look completely different, even with the issue of glacier retreat.
As it is, we can’t even begin to see how to respond to something as serious as glacier retreat and what it will mean, because we still think the problem is how are we going to keep irrigating dairy farms? Oh, yeah, let’s put in some big catchment dams, or pipe water over from the West Coast ffs. Meanwhile, we keep doing the same things that are creating the droughts in the first place.
Another way to understand this is to look at to what extent climate change is affecting intact native ecosystems. Hard to do in Canterbury, because they hardly have any left, and those that are there are isolated unit rather than being part of the support from wider catchment protection, but if the droughts were mainly due to CC we’d be seeing native forests dying.
The places I am most familiar with are NZ, the US and Australia. But I’m guessing that there are similar issues in less developped countries because they’re being forced to do things like cash crop, and/or they’re prevented from doing sustainable landcare because of war, poverty, colonisation etc. The point I am making is that we could also be putting effort into supporting those countries to return to traditional landcare systems, because that will give them the best chance. Needless to say alongside the West powering down and doing everything it can to prevent the shit storm from being any worse than it already is.
There are, no doubt, some traditional land care systems that have something to offer, but those traditional land care systems worked when applied to a set of climatic conditions we’re in the process of leaving behind. There are areas (I wouldn’t like to hazard a guess at the percentage) where all the cards are going to be off the table because of changed conditions.
What worked in Israel (say) won’t necessarily work in (say) California, because aside from rainfall or snow fall, there are the impacts or effects of topography and geology.
There are, no doubt, some traditional land care systems that have something to offer, but those traditional land care systems worked when applied to a set of climatic conditions we’re in the process of leaving behind. There are areas (I wouldn’t like to hazard a guess at the percentage) where all the cards are going to be off the table because of changed conditions.
Are you talking about the future? Because I’m responding to the idea that we are currently having all these droughts due to climate change. Of course CC, but hugely significant is the man-made aspects of those droughts, and big scarey stories about CC (read nature) causing drought are actually misleading. What we are experiencing now is because of our own stupidity in land management and economics.
As for the future, I don’t know what you mean by all cards off the table. Do you mean people won’t be able to live there? Have a look at the Jordan, which is the driest place on earth per head of population. People have lived there for a very long time.
What worked in Israel (say) won’t necessarily work in (say) California, because aside from rainfall or snow fall, there are the impacts or effects of topography and geology.
Of course. Sustainable land management designs around the local land base, which includes the geography, climate, people etc. That’s the point, we need to be taking our cues from nature not economics.
I didn’t say it was an intact eco system. I said it’s relatively intact.
I don’t think you’ll find any scientific study slating the 2005 drought back to local human activity. It was a consequence of remote human activity – climate change.
Are there water shortages caused by water mismanagement? Yes.
Would better water management avert water shortages? Not necessarily – and I mean that in terms of the here and now as well as the future. Climate driven drought events (such as the Amazon one) can render water management systems irrelevant. The western Amazon had no significant human pressure on its water table and tanked.
California can have all the water management it wants, but if/when the snow pack disappears (arguably, California is on the cusp of not having a snow pack now), so is the water that might otherwise have been managed.
It’s simply not true (carbon emissions aside) that “What we are experiencing now is because of our own stupidity in land management and economics.” I mean, there is that, but there is also climate change. And I can’t see how it’s misleading to say that climate change is causing drought…and yes, some of the effects of some of those droughts might have been mitigated with better water management regimes.
I don’t think you’ll find any scientific study slating the 2005 drought back to local human activity. It was a consequence of remote human activity – climate change.
Just as well I didn’t say that either. I think you are missing my point. I took the first hit from your google search and there was no way to tell what was going on. So when a news article claims that x about CC induced drought, we aren’t getting the full picture. Same with when media in NZ talk about the droughts in NZ being caused by weather events. Droughts in NZ for the most part of due to land management. That doesn’t preclude CC effects as well, but it means that native ecosystems are still resilient and so are many organic farms compared to conventional.
Would better water management avert water shortages? Not necessarily – and I mean that in terms of the here and now as well as the future. Climate driven drought events (such as the Amazon one) can render water management systems irrelevant. The western Amazon had no significant human pressure on its water table and tanked.
Ok, so let’s leave the Amazon out of it, let’s assume it is predominantly CC. Let’s look at the other ones. Texas, California, Canterbury. All those catchments have drought due to mismanagement and all of those will avert the worst of water shortages if they reverted to sustainable land management.
California can have all the water management it wants, but if/when the snow pack disappears (arguably, California is on the cusp of not having a snow pack now), so is the water that might otherwise have been managed.
Like I said, people have lived with far less water. We know how to do this. This isn’t to say that snow pack and glacier issues aren’t serious. It’s to say that there is a massive (as in all the difference in the world) difference between having reduced inflow into a catchment that is otherwise sound compared to one that is still being fucked over.
It’s simply not true (carbon emissions aside) that “What we are experiencing now is because of our own stupidity in land management and economics.” I mean, there is that, but there is also climate change. And I can’t see how it’s misleading to say that climate change is causing drought…and yes, some of the effects of some of those droughts might have been mitigated with better water management regimes.
Ok, let’s look really close to home, because this is easy to see and understand. When you deforest, the water table drops. The land dries out, and then the soil is less able to hold water in it. Intact systems hold a huge amount of water in the land itself, it’s not all in the glaciers or rivers or lakes. When you remove the land’s ability to hold water, you get drought. Yes rainfall is an issue too, and so is river flow, but the land drying out was already happening before the rainfall lowered. This is what I mean by farmer-induced drought. You can add CC on top of that, but the baseline is that the land is being made dry by us here on the ground.
Once that happens, it becomes very hard for a catchment to recover. In NZ overgrazing is an issue, sheep, cattle, rabbits were doing this long before diarying. On top of the dry land you now have no chance of natural systems of plant succession, which are the things that build soil fertility. And soil fertility is critical to holding water in the land. This is all cyclical. Now we have a lot of land in the SI that is like this and the only way you can farm it is to irrigate, or have very low stock levels that nevertheless continue the degradation.
Once you get to this point, you are dependent on artificial fertiliser and irrigation. The land is no longer fertile. This is why some CC and PO people freak out about us not being able to feed ourselves, because they perceive us as having no way of growing food without fossil fuels. It’s not true, but without fossil fuels you have to have intact ecosystems.
(all the catchments in NZ are recoverable btw, it’s not too late)
Then you have the water table itself. I don’t know what is happening in NZ, but we know that in the US they’ve taken so much out that rivers no longer reach the sea. So on top of all the things I’ve just described, the water table is disappearing too.
The phenomena you are talking about come after all of that. Glaciers, snow melt, rainfall will all recharge the aquifers or not due to CC. But if the land itself is already dried out and beyond recovery, then the lack of recharge becomes somewhat of a moot point. If we think that a river running dry is an issue because of low rainfall, and this matters because we can no longer irrigate the land to grow food for the supply chain, we are decades behind the ball. The water shortage started when the land itself could no longer hold water.
Back to Paul’s list. Dropping a big list of scarey we’re going to run out of water links is a strategy for scaring people into reducing emissions. I don’t think it’s our smartest move. People will change when they can see a way out. Regenerative agriculture is one of those key ways out. If we don’t see the underlying farmer-induced drought and change that as well, it probably won’t matter if the glaciers melt.
Let me put all this another way. We have two droughts going on, each as serious as the other.
We have two droughts going on, each as serious as the other.
The terminology’s the crux of the ‘talking past’ that’s going on I think.
I’d rephrase your comment as we have droughts and we also have avoidable water shortages caused by water mismanagement of one type or another.
As far as my thinking goes, drought is entirely weather or climate related.
Water shortages through mis-management aren’t drought or drought inducing…they just mean that not enough water is available from the land because (insert human fuck up option of your choice).
Good water management might mean that when a drought hits, its effects could be mitigated.
Bad water management might mean that not enough water is available regardless of whether drought conditions are prevalent or not.
edit. As for Pauls list. I have no idea about farming or water strategies in the places mentioned. But if the monsoons don’t come on time, or if there’s been no rain for months or years…then it doesn’t really matter what peasant farmers do or what water systems they have. And yes, I’m picking that many being hit are peasant farmers who work very much in tune with seasons and expected resources.
I think it depends on where you are talking about. Feeding New York city with traditional landcare, probably not possible. A village in India that was feeding itself up until the last 50 or hundred years when it was forced into cash cropping? yes they can probably feed themselves using what they have if the greedy people go out of the way. NZ is never going to go back to being hunter/gatherers, but we have a low enough population to use a hybrid of traditional and modern sustainable practice.
Permaculture, which is one of the foremost tools we have for sustainable land management, comes directly from traditional practices. It’s been adapted for the modern world and the Western mind, and put into a system that can be applied across many different places.
I think it depends on where you are talking about.
To some degree. NZ is probably capable of supporting our own population sustainably. But it’s a little bit iffy to say that India is. India isn’t just a small little village. It’s over a billion people with advanced cities and industry all existing in a limited physical space. The probability is that traditional farming won’t make them any more sustainable than what they are now.
+1 Weka,
I believe it could be quite practical to divert water from the Landsborough into Lake Ohau and thus supplement the existing Mackenzie Basin Hydro complex.
Of course it would cost money but once completed would supply water for years to come.
Interesting that we have had no problem drilling not one but two tunnels for the Manapouri scheme and most of that power is used to supply the Tiwai Point smelter.
The other means of utilising the West Coast rainfall is to develop a series of small remote controlled hydro stations from one end of the coast to the other. This is what happens in France, for example, a nation that has to depend on Nuclear Power for it;s main source but gains a very useful percentage of their energy from these small and often remote hydro stations. in the order of 25GW
France also understands that hydro sourced energy reserves can be saved by offering it at reduced rates in off peak times to domestic users, so that clothes washing and water heating are programmed for overnight not at peak times.
Curiously the generation of electricity in France is the responsibility of EDF yep that’s right Electricity of France and the distribution is by a subsidiary ERDF yep and again you are right it is a state organisation although there are a few small private suppliers.
Some Standardistas will be able to remember when the same was the case in New Zealand, NZED.
Too many links mate. I’ve been guilty of it myself while staring at a screen – but your argument is better served with something short, simple, and to the point .. backed up by a link to other sources, eg. deeperweb.com
Out of space on the 120GB root SSD drive. Explains why the comments weren’t saving and the posts weren’t posting yesterday morning and this morning. The hourly backups were running out of room overnight.
Shuffled some files off to the 8TB raid system. Root is now 75% full. I will have a look to see what kind of crap is accumulating there between the court dates dealing with the arseholes attacking the site.
I have a ‘live’ complaint to OMSA (Online Media Standards Authority) about recent posts made about me by Cameron Slater on his WhaleOil blog which are currently going through their ‘due process’.
I have been informed by OSMA that I should expect an outcome next week.
Lazy, yeah sure. Your happy to undermine Penny any way you can, and if your hard right mates stalk her, you are happy with that. What a nice guy you are.
Not really, I just found her extremely long winded posts boring as she’d virtually never come back and answer questions (from left posters I might add) and the way she treated this site like it was her own personal soapbox is just rude (I don’t tell admin how to run this site because its their site to do with as they please)
When are you going to do the simple math sums I’ve posted up for you to do Puckish ………….. my little golem clown.
2.2 billion dollars ( fraud by johns john on behalf Aussie banks )
divided by 22 million ( total welfare fraud ) = how many years .
Puckish wont answer though because a 2.2 billion dollar fraud against New Zealand by John Keys self appointed judge is a no no subject for round mouth Puck .
Stalking a woman on the internet who has embarrassed John Key ( northland election trouncing & well done Penny 🙂 ) is our creepy golem clown Puckish’s mission at the moment.
The clowns an embarrassment to himself …………… Wayne mapp thinks he’s great though, and uses veet to show his appreciation ……. plus Puck told him it makes him look ‘bigger’.
I made the mistake of reading your post reason. Please post reference to the “$2.2 billion fraud by Johns John?? and how this relates to John Key…by that I mean a real reference from a court or similar.
And further how has Penny embarrassed anyone other than her self?
Chuck you made the mistake of making an idiotic post to me ……
John Shewan tried to screw New Zealand out of 2.2 billion dollars in a tax fraud he designed on behalf of the Aussie banks …..
“Westpac has lost its $918m tax battle with Inland Revenue.”
“Evidence in the seven-week case showed Westpac’s tax adviser, John Shewan (now chairman of PricewaterhouseCoopers), advised not paying a rate below 15 per cent but in the end the amount he advised was 6.5 per cent. ”
“The IRD introduced evidence in the Westpac case quoting PricewaterhouseCoopers chairman John Shewan advising the bank earlier this decade that it should try to declare a tax rate close to that of its competitors, and that actual tax paid should be at least 6 per cent, compared to the corporate tax rate of 30 per cent.”
So john john has been found guilty ( or his clients were ), in a court of law.
Which leads back to my question chuck ….. or is it chump?.
Johns john had an attempted theft of 2.2 Billion from New Zealand.
This one piece of rich white trash temporarily succeeded in his fraud against NZ.
So the question is …. Again:
2.2 billion theft by johns john versus 22 million Total benefit theft in the year 2010./
How many years of benefit fraud would it take to reach the total that John Shewan attempted to steal ??????.
John key shoulder tapped Shewan to be the judge of nationals tax haven rules/setup .
Is John Key going to shoulder tap Clint Rickards to investigate claims of sexual abuse by the police ….
Or mike sabin to look at low conviction rates for some crimes ….
No chucky ……………… there was a 2.2 Billion dollar FINE in a court of law with a High court judge and everything …………. you can call that la la land if you want …… but thats just you avoiding the issue and refusing to do the math sum I have set ….,,.
‘tax haven/ theft by the rich’ supporting trolls, like yourself, do not want the simple fact of how much the rich are stealing to become common knowledge.
I’ve distilled it down ‘Hooten’ style but unlike him I’m not peddling lies ……………. I’m showing a simple truth.
2.2 Billion attempted theft/fraud by Johns john ( Shewan )
22 million dollars total welfare fraud in 2010
How many years of welfare fraud to equal the amount Johns john attempted to steal//// ………… it’ all effects the governments ‘budget’ in exactly the same way ………… but on a vastly different scale.
And if you cant do maths, perhaps your opinion on whether a man behind such a HUGE theft from New Zealand Government revenue should be the judge on New Zealands tax haven legalization.
johns john attempted to steal a lot hip operations, cancer drugs, money from police budgets and all the other ‘socialist’ things our government spends our tax money on …………
The fact that when a court of law stopped this Shewan crime and made them pay, putting the budget into surplus that year is not la la land stuff either ……….
p.s I’d reply to chuck but that option does not show on the webpage I see, and which is why I’m replying to myself
Yesterday or the day before Penny Bright brought up the fact after making a complaint about Whale oil, goons from that web site had been stalking her. Puckish Rouges response was she had broken the law so she basically deserved it.
Penny was stalked and you acted superior, and when I pulled you up on it, you acted like a glib juvenile.
Now you’ are doing indignation. Man engage with real people. It’s never acceptable to be casual about violence to women. It’s never acceptable, just because we are on a different divide politically to be casual about stalking.
If I offended you, then good. Learn something from this.
“It seems that Cameron Slater has ‘sources’ who are, in my view, effectively stalking me, snooping around my property, taking photos and apparently then lying about what they are seeing.”
Thats what Penny wrote from the link, theres no proof of stalking at all but there is a lot of opinion stated as fact
If she feels she is being stalked then I’d suggest she go to the police and/or lawyer and get some legal advice
But her saying it doesn’t make it so, as I said before its a very bad thing to go around accusing people of something adam, it makes it harder for people to be believed when they do need to report something
You are a bag of (foul) wind PR (look up PR in health terms while you are at it). Winding people up is not a skill, just a sign you don’t have enough in your life.
Labour received almost $280,000 and the Green Party just over $400,000.
ACT took in just over $162,000 and New Zealand First almost $80,000.
The Maori Party received just over $28,000 and United Future did not get any donations last year.
The donations returns are for the 2015 calendar year.
The donations are miniscule to what the parties received during the 2014 election year. In that year, National received almost $4 million, Labour $940,000 and the Greens received $970,000.”
Labour took in nearly $280 000 and the Greens just over $400 000…no wonder labour are in the crapper, let me guess there’ll be calls for parliamentary funded campaigns to, you know level the playing fields
well, you know. Nothing better then money form the one that owns you and your ministers. 🙂
Quote:
” A Chinese-owned milk powder company reprimanded by Prime Minister John Key for using his photo without permission in its advertising in 2012 has donated $25,400 to the National Party.
Donation returns released yesterday show National’s total of $1.4 million included $25,338 in five separate donations from GMP Dairy, a Chinese-owned milk powder company based in Auckland.
In 2012, GMP Dairy subsidiary Cowala used a photo of Mr Key posing with its products in advertising in China after Mr Key opened its Auckland factory that year. That prompted Mr Key to write to the company to complain. A spokeswoman said it “implies the company’s product has an endorsement from the Prime Minister which it does not.”
At the time the company’s chief executive Karl Ye said the advert was created by one store and it had been asked to remove it. The 2012 incident has clearly been forgiven: National Ministers Steven Joyce and Bill English have both attended subsequent product launches for the company, as well as Party President Peter Goodfellow.
GMP Dairy also paid for National MPs Jami-Lee Ross and Stuart Smith to travel to China earlier this year.”
I think the people in charge of Labour should sit down a take a serious look at themselves and ask how it is that the Greens can raise a considerable amount of money more and what can Labour do to emulate it
But we are in that sort of debate. I call you a habitual liar, whose latest claim to infamy is to justify the stalking of women, and even in normal conversation can’t see they spin everything.
Always with the fake concern, and lets not forget the default pity party you fall into, when someone calls you on you spin and lies.
Oh and the not trying, just the repeating of sad lines over and over to make yourself feel good, that you support this countries most divisive government in history. Who’s mad lust for power, has meant they will use any weapon at their disposal to hold onto power. Which I must say you prove to me, and I’m sure many others, each and every day when you comment here.
I’ll say this for you, you have a very high opinion of yourself (which is good of course) but, like a lot of the left on here, you fall prey to hyperbole
“this countries most divisive government in history”
I’m sure the fourth Labour government (you remember Rogernomics and all that), the second National government (before my time but I’ve heard the Vietnam War brought out a few protestors) or how about the third National government (Springbok tour and all that) but no this government is the most divisive
I am wondering if the donations for the Greens includes their MP tithing. I believe they all pay 10% of their parliamentary salary to the party as a donation, and I don’t think Labour does that.
But perhaps Labour should, even if it were 5% that would make a big difference to the party coffers.
If that’s the case it appears to be working well for the Greens and it could be argued that as an MP you benefit greatly from the party (more so as a list mp) so paying the party some money isn’t a bad idea
Well ok I agree with you on that but I meant more that rather then pay for the office you’re holding you’re repaying what the party has done for you but I get your point
ISTR an impression that it was because the Greens saw the parliamentary paycheques and decided they should practise what they preached when it came to tax rates for those on higher incomes.
Maybe Labour should consider tithing. Get away from neoliberal “this is my money to do as I please salary as MP for the party’ and instead think I will chip in a donation per week to try to get my party over the line.
The Natz just give out tenders, contracts and awards for donations, which is why they got 1.4m. In most countries this is called corruption. Still waiting for the enquiry about 7.5m Scenic Hotels corporate welfare ‘aid’ after their $101,000 donation to the National party.
Labour has some sort of ethics on the donations and won’t take from Sky City and dodgy Chinese money. So maybe low donations also mean they are honest.
The Green Party are rather like New Zealand First. They have a compulsory levy on all the MPs. I say “rather like” because Winnie excludes himself from the rule. Got to pay for his fags and booze after all.
They will probably call it voluntary of course. I’m sure they call it a “donation”. If you don’t volunteer you go to position 73 on the list.
I’m actually surprised that it is legal. Most countries have laws that mean you can’t insist on people having to pay a levy in order to get a paid position in any Government organisation. Sounds very close to extortion doesn’t it?
What Labour do of course is smear anyone who donates to National.
Remember back in 2005 when an person who emigrated to New Zealand from India, and was at the time living in the tax haven of Monaco and hadn’t lived in New Zealand for about 40 years gave $500,000 to the Labour Party?
That was just peachy of course. They even gave him an award in the ONZ for his generosity.
was that the guy who expected to be able to bribe Labour, and when he didn’t get his monaco bauble then promised to spend 100mil for poor kids provided NZ elected national?
And a few years later the nats gave him a bigger ONZ award than Labour did lol
I believe the Monaco bauble attempt was after he paid Winnies legal expenses.
Expecting anything out of Winston after doing him a very expensive favour is dreaming.
Actually expecting gratitude out of any politician is just wishful thinking. Their attitude doesn’t include gratitude. It is only “What are you going to do for me today?”
Your own viewpoint seems to be rather jaundiced.
It was you, after all, who is claiming that Glenn’s gift to the Labour Party was offering a bribe. I think he really did think at the time that Clark was a good PM.
Very badly mistaken though, wasn’t he? Do you remember when he was at a function to celebrate his giving money to establish a Business School. Helen Clark was also present. If Glenn looked like getting anywhere near her so that she might have to greet him Trevor Mallard would intercept him and keep him away from her.
Poor Owen. As I say, he discovered that politicians have no lasting gratitude
Oh, sorry, I assumed that your “They even gave him an award in the ONZ for his generosity” was suggesting that the award was linked to his donation to the Labour party, hence terming it a “bribe”.
At least he got a better gong from national, in gratitude for the promise to pay 100million if national got elected.
Owen Glenn paid for Winston’s legal fees, in turn Winston was going to put in a good word with the Labour government of the day for the Monaco position.
However it all turned to custard when Winston held up his now famous “NO” sign and the resulting investigation.
Interesting side note…Winston used his “lawyer and trust account” so to keep a Chinese wall between the $100k from Glenn, and Winston ability to deny any knowledge of the “gift”.
“Most countries have laws that mean you can’t insist on people having to pay a levy in order to get a paid position in any Government organisation. ”
You don’t seem to have a very clear idea about what a political party is, and how they are governed, do you?
Parties have constitutions that set up their rules and regulations. if the constitution requires tithing, then if you don’t do it, you’re in breach and the disciplinary provisions kick in, which would almost certainly have an expulsion clause that can be used when necessary.
I’m sure they do, have rules that is.
As a matter of fact of course they could only kick an MP who refused to pay up out of their caucus (and the list next election). They certainly couldn’t kick them out of Parliament could they?
However the rules of a political party, in spite of what Cunliffe claimed about his secret trust to support his leadership campaign, cannot override the law of the land.
You can be an MP but it’ll cost you doesn’t have a good ring to it.
And yes I know that they all do it. Calling it a “donation” is just trying to cover it up.
“You can be an MP but it’ll cost you doesn’t have a good ring to it.”
No, it’s “if you want to be a member of this club, it’ll cost you”. Just like people pay memberships for all sorts of clubs.
The greens only levie the charge against people who have attained a certain position within their club (MP) – a position that itself comes with a pretty decent salary package, and also a hell of a lot of hard work.
” Just like people pay memberships for all sorts of clubs.”
As I said, they just word it so it sounds better.
You wouldn’t be the fund raiser for a political party would you?
You can certainly word these things in an innocent way.
Another predictably tedious response from the Permanent Resident troll. I take it Puke-ish, that you approve of Jamie-Lee’s latest endeavours. Wake up and smell the odour. Meantime, spare us your apologist nonsense.
Work it out for yourself – “Bribery – the offering, giving, receiving, or soliciting of any item of value to influence the actions of an official or other person in charge of a public or legal duty” Black’s Law Dictionary.
Labour need to work out if their ‘broad church’, non committal and convaluted policy approach is working. I personally want Labour to succeed but Kiwi’s need more than Nat Lite policy but a vision – like Savage to transform NZ.
In order to do that they must address 21 century challenges like globalism, neoliberalism, inequality and environmental degradation. Personally was heartened they had the UBI that showed they were prepared to think about new ideas and have put Cunliffe onto the panama papers, so maybe they are turning a corner.
But if Winston can do so well with only $80k in donations it means that money does not buy votes in this country for everyone, policy does and political astutness.
If we liken it to commerce then its obvious, from the amount of money coming in, that one party on the left is doing a better job of convincing people that its message is worth putting your hands into your pockets
and yeah money does help but its not the only thing, if it was Colin Craig would be in parliament (got close), Act would have more than one or two MPs and well the less said about KDC the better
But in regards to Labour and the Greens then Labour should be looking closely at what the Greens are doing (like that hasn’t been said on here in one way or another) and try to emulate them
Like staying on the same basic message, standing for something etc etc
Labour this, and Labour that, and half of the people commenting here are essentially only saying I wont give to Labour because (insert past grievance of the 80’s or something like tht ), and they won’t vote for Labour because (insert past grievance of the 80″s or something like that), and then they complain that a. not enough voters are voting for Labour and b. that they don’t rake in cash, but that they would vote for Labour or give to Labour if Labour would just do what they want them to do, never mind that they will never really do what you want them to do, cause purity and such.
Seriously, go find a party you can be happy with, and than at least you guys could stop whinging about all the things Labour does wrong.
Go find a party that does what you want, if that party does not exist, join one that comes close, and fund that fucking party, or create your own party, fundraise for it and find members and voters for it.
The system is called MMP, Labour does not need to best fucking anyone, they need to be able to work with the other parties, and that would be the best thing we could hope for. People in Parliament that work together instead of that current rent a parliament crowd that literally is funded by China and any other country or corporation that would like to buy something of them.
“Go find a party that does what you want, if that party does not exist, join one that comes close, and fund that fucking party, or create your own party, fundraise for it and find members and voters for it.
The system is called MMP, Labour does not need to best fucking anyone, they need to be able to work with the other parties, and that would be the best thing we could hope for. People in Parliament that work together instead of that current rent a parliament crowd that literally is funded by China and any other country or corporation that would like to buy something of them.”
The latest brain wave from the Government to allow electric cars to clog up the busways doesn’t make sense. In Auckland the Northern Busway is very successful so it should be left alone. Why doesn’t the Government just half the cost of the Registration instead, or find another incentive for purchasers of electric cars. I was of the opinion that the Government ran the main transit routes and the council funded and built the local roads, what about all the bus lanes on these local roads, doesn’t the council have any say in this. The Northern Busway was a fantastic initiative to ease the gridlock for the Northern Motorway – why on earth now go and clog it up with cars – just doesn’t make sense to me. I am all for electric cars, the more we have the better but I just think this is an ingenious way to encourage the purchase of these cars.
more pissing away money to those that don’t need it.
a. who could afford an electric car tomorrow?
b. about 5% of the population?
but they would then get to use the buslane, not pay road user charges and so on and so on and so on.
while we increase fees for people that drive old cars – again, we must make up for the money that we just gave away to those that are in the needy 5 % highest income group. Cause they never have enough money for that Moet and Ferrari.
you have just totally rubbished the New Zealand Green Party policy.
You’re either purposefully misrepresenting what the Green Party said or you’re stupid.
“Offering access to bus lanes, and announcing a series of reviews, investigations and ‘coordinated activities’, isn’t going to move New Zealand to a low-carbon economy.
Seems fairly bloody obvious what was meant. So obvious even a stupid person would get it.
I hope he takes his case up with the Green acolytes in Wellington. They want to retain all the trolley buses and then replace all the other buses with electric ones.
Here (in Wellington) cyclists are allowed to use the bus lanes. He will obviously be opposed to this as the buses are quiet and will also bump off all the people on their bikes.
The trolley buses actually are dangerous. Pedestrians don’t hear them and are much more likely to step in front of one than they are to do it with a diesel bus. Any time you read about a pedestrian being hit by a bus in the city it turns out to be a trolley bus rather than a diesel.
Get rid of the trolley buses I say. Save the lives of pedestrians and cyclists.
I call on the “caring” Greens to push my campaign and get rid of the trolley bus dinosaurs.
That is the current proposal.
It is, however NOT what the Green Party want.
Have a look at what the Trekkie Hughes wants. https://home.greens.org.nz/takeaction/submissionguides/wellington-trolley-buses
Have a look at what is going to happen to the trolley buses. They are still going to be there. They are still going to be silent, and just a deadly.
They are just going to stop using overhead wires.
The trolley buses are dangerous because they are silent. The converted ones are going to be just as bad.
Perhaps you should visit Wellington. I live here.
I have on the other hand been knocked down twice by cyclists at Oriental Bay. They are also silent, and dangerous. They ride, often at high speed, on the footpath. It is legal there but not safe.
They come up behind you on the footpath, pass very close to the pedestrian and would never consider ringing, or even having, a bell to give a warning. Most Wellington cyclists are bloody idiots.
Well Sabine, since (if Pareto’s rule holds) about 5 or 10% of New Zealanders (the wealthiest) are responsible for about 50% of NZ emissions, I’d say give them the fucking cars. In the future they can whine about the show wondering whatever happened to their glorious me, me society.
Yes, nothing like giving one rich old git in a Prius the same access as a bus with 50 or 60 people in it to demonstrate your contempt for public transport.
Not sure that Prius qualify – we are talking Leaf and Tesla. You can buy a reasonable late model Prius for around $10,000. Ok that is way more than many people can afford for a car I know – but it is not in the $30,000+ range for an EV of similar age.
Prius while substantially reducing emissions for a similar sized car (around 4.4L/100km) is a hybrid. It runs a petrol engine at a low speed when needed to charge a much smaller battery than a pure EV.
I agree however with your sentiments wrt to bus lanes. The Govt needs to place far more emphasis on developing public transport providing better, more, and faster services so that cars become unnecessary and undesirable for the majority of personal travel. The current congested state of Aucklands roads is now a case in point. People are forced to use cars because the public transport is so poor, and expensive.
Why doesn’t the Government just half the cost of the Registration instead, or find another incentive for purchasers of electric cars.
Because they’re trying to stop people using buses and other public transport. There’s nowhere near as much profit to be made from people using public transport.
Its because they live in Wellington most of the year and haven’t a bloody clue how clogged up our motorways are here in Auckland – the buslanes help people to keep off the roads and the Gov. has to be as thick as bat s…. encouraging even more cars – Sabine is correct, how many people can afford electric cars anyway – we seriously need a good network of trains, light rail and buslanes – it will not be that many years before AK will be totally gridlocked and how will commerce bring in the tax dollars for the gov. then when it’s at a stand still – as I said thick as bat s….. and wilfully wrecking the environment for future generations to boot.
I wish the government would keep its sticky beak out of AK – the council is trying to encourage public transport and at least is trying to see ahead for the future – this gov. is absolutely bloody useless in everything it does.
Yeah Auckland is near gridlock now – I live in Thames after living in Auckland for 25 years. Last week I had to travel up to Auckland. It took as much time to travel from Pt Chev to Manakau along the southern motorway around 2pm as it did to travel the rest of the journey.
yeah Its pretty much gridlocked already – took an hour or more to travel from western springs to Manakau down the Southern Motorway the other day around 2pm! Bumper to bumper – stop start the whole way.
this gov. is absolutely bloody useless in everything it does.
No, this government is achieving what it set out to do which is more profits for rich people. This invariably costs everyone else more. In context of transport that’s more in cars, more in fuel, more road taxes, more death due to the increased pollution and more time due to the grid lock.
Thing is, that grid lock also increases profits for the rich because of more car and fuel sales. Cars are the perfect example of why the profit drive produces the worst possible outcomes for society.
What sort of a proficient, professional company/association/Government only works successfully for the 1% of people/clients – in the private sector every one practicing these sort of work efficiencies would go broke. I stand by my words, the Government are bloody useless. They are killing off the golden egg – Auckland which gives the largest tax take – companies will end up at a stand still and still this Government cannot see it. Ever see trucks trying to get through to the port or to go south/north on the motorways, they waste more time sitting in their cabs frustrated as hell. Useless, incompetent, visionless idiots, the whole lot of the cabinet.
What sort of a proficient, professional company/association/Government only works successfully for the 1% of people/clients – in the private sector every one practicing these sort of work efficiencies would go broke.
They do go broke and then their bought and paid for governments come along and bail them out.
They are killing off the golden egg
Yes but they don’t see it that way. All they see is rich people getting richer and thus the economy must be booming. They don’t see the poverty that they create nor the inefficiency as they give jobs to their mates that they then massively over pay.
It’s all about the profits and it causes massive inefficiency and over use of resources just so that a few people can have more money and power.
It’s not incompetence. They’re achieving what they want to achieve. Sure, it will eventually destroy the society and will kill a lot of people but a few people got richer and that’s all that matters to them.
The treatment of Willie was bloody disgraceful. If you are a social democrat a question for you – after watching this do you still think that privilege will give up an inch of power? Because the contempt I saw on display here for Maori, is the same contempt I see from this lot towards working stiffs, mums, the young, Pacific, and anyone else who is not a part of there club. And power folks is something privilege enjoy more than you realise.
The same conflict of interest exists when a person is director of two or more companies. Engaging in such conflicts of interest is simply corruption and we need to be getting rid of corruption and not supporting it.
And it’s not about being communist but about supporting ethical behaviour.
Robinson helicopters in NZ. How long have we heard reports about them not being used according to manufacturers instructions?
Decades? Now reports are official. The head of the firm is coming to NZ to see what our flyboys are doing to the reputation of his firm’s product. http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/303171/nz-used-choppers-raise-crash-questions
Of course nothing to worry about officially. We don’t need regulations and bothersome checks, they just get in the way of doing business. (Like having OIA investigations instead of fast tracking the purchase of tracts of our land, 10 farms in Northland for $42 million, Lachlan? station for $82 million?)
We are slaphappy about everything these days, preferring to paper over the cracks, fill them with silly putty, say that makes me uncomfortable to families of dead workers, deny compensation to the injured, and generally make people afraid of eating bananas in case someone slips on a skin. At the end of the day, problems can be smoothed away with money or derision, and then it’s back to BAU.
A Canterbury man who flew a drone over a forest fire has been found guilty of breaching new Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) rules surrounding drone operation.
A new study offers more confirmation that the so-called bailout packages the European Union (EU) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) delivered to Greece primarily served European banks rather than the Greek people.
Contrary to widely held beliefs,” ESMT states, of the €215.9 billion (roughly $246 billion), less than 5 percent went to the Greek fiscal budget. The other 95 percent of the funds “disbursed to Greece since the start of the financial crisis as loans from the bailout mechanism has been directed toward saving the European banks,” Ekathimerini reports.
All of the bailouts since the start of the GFC have been to protect the rich from their own actions. Quite simply, the worlds wealthy should have become destitute back in 2008. Instead, the poor were taxed to prop up their failures.
Those failures continue today and the poor are still propping them up.
And a bloody good thing too.
They have a lock up before these announcements, and the budget as well, so that the media outlets can get a pre-release look at what is going to be announced. The purpose is to allow them time to understand what is going on so that they can comment accurately on what is being announced. No communication with anyone outside is allowed. Mediaworks ignored it, posted a draft article back to the office and the people there happily disseminated it.
That could have been an enormously valuable piece of news as they had early knowledge of an unexpected cut in the OCR.
I would kick them out of the pre-budget lock up as well. Stuff them.
But their a private company and SStephen Joyce has shares in it.
Everything in the business side is always better than public broadcasting.
Weldon was in charge he was the best boss ever a creative mind he sacked all the high paid journalists and put check out operators day labourers into the newsroom alwhynger,
I thought you would be right up their with Glucina.
“SStephen Joyce has shares in it”.
That is completely false. Why do you feel the need to lie about things like this?
For your education, although I do not expect you to remember, here is a bit of history.
Stephen Joyce founded Radio Works.
Radio Works was bought out completely with the new owner taking over 72% in May 2000 and the remaining 28% in January 2001. I believe it was a hostile takeover.
He has had no financial interest since that date. Clear?
The group of companies now called MediaWorks has gone through various restructurings, changes of ownership and receiverships but none of them have had anything to do with him.
To repeat. Why do you feel the need to lie about him?
David Cameron is holding an anti-corruption summit in London next week, aimed at “step[ping] up global action to expose, punish and drive out corruption in all walks of life”. New Zealand’s representative to this summit? Apparently its Judith Collins:
Surely not. Judith Collins picked to be NZ’s rep at David Cameron’s anti-corruption summit in London on 12 May? #Oravida
— David Shearer (@DavidShearerMP) April 23, 2016
This would be the same Judith Collins dubbed the “Minister of Corruption” over her dodgy Oravida dealings. Is John Key taking the piss, or did he take the title literally as an endorsement rather than a disqualification? Or did they just view the summit as an opportunity for someone to get a free taxpayer-funded holiday to London, and it was Collins’ turn at the trough? Either way, its a perfect sign of just how little National cares about corruption, tax evasion and international money-laundering, and how unlikely we are to see any real progress on tax cheating from them.
Labour were first replaced as party of the left in Scotland by SNP.
Now they are being replaced as party of the unionist right by Tories.
— Irvine Welsh (@IrvineWelsh) May 6, 2016
Corbyn has nailed it here, talking about the media obsession (driven by Crosby Textor manipulation no doubt) with his leadership over the “grotesque inequality” we have to tolerate whilst the 1% continue to take from the rest of us, good man:
We are lucky enough someone out there has exposed the corruption in the “Panama Papers” and Key’s response is to spend more millions on trying to prevent exposure of corruption, calling it “cyber crime” ……WHAT? who are you trying to kid Mr.Key? you do realise Planet Key is only pretend don’t you? We live on the same planet, and you do not need such wealth at our expense.
Prime Minister John Key said donations to National should not prevent the party’s MPs from being engaged.
“It’s quite possible that an individual company that gives a donation is also the sort of situation where an MP goes and has some involvement, does something in a business or looks at something because of the varied nature of the varied trips that they do.
“But it doesn’t stop someone, you don’t have a conflict of interest by nature because of that.”
A situation that has the potential to undermine the impartiality of a person because of the possibility of a clash between the person’s self-interest and professional interest or public interest.
Accepting donations from a Company and then accepting their free air travel and accommodation to go and pimp for them over and above similar NZ products is not a conflict of interest as an MP for NZ???
A Mexican construction tycoon dubbed the ‘Duke of Influence’ joined a rush of foreign money into tax-free New Zealand trusts.
Juan Armando Hinojosa Cantu, who built his fortune from billions of dollars in Mexican government contracts, was investigated for lavish housing deals with Mexican political figures.
On July 1 last year, Cantu’s Miami lawyer said his client had “circa $US100 million” to put into three New Zealand trusts
Maltese investors who had been turned away from nine banks in the Caribbean, Miami and Panama eventually found a home for their money in New Zealand trusts.
Demand for New Zealand trusts went into overdrive late last year with Mossack Fonseca staff in Panama urging New Zealand staff to “chase the money”.
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Tree sap can be a sticky, unsightly mess on your car’s exterior. It can be difficult to remove, but with the right techniques and products, you can restore your car to its former glory. Understanding Tree Sap Tree sap is a thick, viscous liquid produced by trees to seal wounds ...
The amount of paint needed to paint a car depends on a number of factors, including the size of the car, the number of coats you plan to apply, and the type of paint you are using. In general, you will need between 1 and 2 gallons of paint for ...
Jump-starting a car is a common task that can be performed even in adverse weather conditions like rain. However, safety precautions and proper techniques are crucial to avoid potential hazards. This comprehensive guide will provide detailed instructions on how to safely jump a car in the rain, ensuring both your ...
Graham Adams writes about the $55m media fund — When Patrick Gower was asked by Mike Hosking last week what he would say to the many Newstalk ZB callers who allege the Labour government bribed media with $55 million of taxpayers’ money via the Public Interest Journalism Fund — and ...
Note: this blog post has been put together over the course of the week I followed the happenings at the conference virtually. Should recordings of the Great Debates and possibly Union Symposia mentioned below, be released sometime after the conference ends, I'll include links to the ones I participated in. ...
The following was my submission made on the “Fast Track Approvals Bill”. This potential law will give three Ministers unchecked powers, un-paralled since the days of Robert Muldoon’s “Think Big” projects.The submission is written a bit tongue-in-cheek. But it’s irreverent because the FTAB is in itself not worthy of respect. ...
One Could Reduce Child Poverty At No Fiscal CostFollowing the Richardson/Shipley 1990 ‘redesign of the welfare state’ – which eliminated the universal Family Benefit and doubled the rate of child poverty – various income supplements for families have been added, the best known being ‘Working for Families’, introduced in 2005. ...
Buzz from the Beehive A few days ago, Point of Order suggested the media must be musing “on why Melissa is mute”. Our article reported that people working in the beleaguered media industry have cause to yearn for a minister as busy as Melissa Lee’s ministerial colleagues and we drew ...
1. What was The Curse of Jim Bolger?a. Winston Peters b. Soon after shaking his hand, world leaders would mysteriously lose office or shuffle off this mortal coilc. Could never shake off the Mother of All Budgetsd. Dandruff2. True or false? The Chairman of a Kiwi export business has asked the ...
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. ...
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. ...
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. ...
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. ...
The Government’s newly announced review of methane emissions reduction targets hints at its desire to delay Aotearoa New Zealand’s urgent transition to a climate safe future, the Green Party said. ...
The Government must commit to the Maitai School building project for students with high and complex needs, to ensure disabled students from the top of the South Island have somewhere to learn. ...
Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey and his Government colleagues have made a meal of their mental health commitments, showing how flimsy their efforts to champion the issue truly are, says Labour Mental Health spokesperson Ingrid Leary. ...
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 ...
Today’s announcement that inflation is down to 4 per cent is encouraging news for Kiwis, but there is more work to be done - underlining the importance of the Government’s plan to get the economy back on track, acting Finance Minister Chris Bishop says. “Inflation is now at 4 per ...
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 ...
Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones is streamlining high-level oceans management while maintaining a focus on supporting the sector’s role in the export-led recovery of the economy. “I am working to realise the untapped potential of our fishing and aquaculture sector. To achieve that we need to be smarter with ...
Associate Agriculture Minister Mark Patterson is speaking at the International Wool Textile Organisation Congress in Adelaide, promoting New Zealand wool, and outlining the coalition Government’s support for the revitalisation the sector. "New Zealand’s wool exports reached $400 million in the year to 30 June 2023, and the coalition Government ...
The Government is making legislative changes to make it easier for new early learning services to be established, and for existing services to operate, Associate Education Minister David Seymour says. The changes involve repealing the network approval provisions that apply when someone wants to establish a new early learning service, ...
Changes to the Resource Management Act will align consenting for coal mining to other forms of mining to reduce barriers that are holding back economic development, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. “The inconsistent treatment of coal mining compared with other extractive activities is burdensome red tape that fails to acknowledge ...
Trade, Agriculture and Forestry Minister Todd McClay has concluded productive discussions with ministerial counterparts in Beijing today, in support of the New Zealand-China trade and economic relationship. “My meeting with Commerce Minister Wang Wentao reaffirmed the complementary nature of the bilateral trade relationship, with our Free Trade Agreement at its ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon today paid tribute to Singapore’s outgoing Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. Meeting in Singapore today immediately before Prime Minister Lee announced he was stepping down, Prime Minister Luxon warmly acknowledged his counterpart’s almost twenty years as leader, and the enduring legacy he has left for Singapore and South East ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon held a bilateral meeting today with Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. While in Singapore as part of his visit to South East Asia this week, Prime Minister Luxon also met with Singapore President Tharman Shanmugaratnam and will meet with Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong. During today’s meeting, Prime Minister Luxon ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sam Whiting, Lecturer – Creative Industries, University of South Australia Shutterstock Everyone has a favourite band, or a favourite composer, or a favourite song. There is some music which speaks to you, deeply; and other music which might be the current ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Olli Hellmann, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Waikato Getty Images When New Zealanders commemorate Anzac Day on April 25, it’s not only to honour the soldiers who lost their lives in World War I and subsequent conflicts, but also ...
A leaked document shows the Canterbury/Waitaha arm of health agency Te Whatu Ora is scurrying to save $13.3 million by July. The “financial sustainability target”, which was “allocated” to Waitaha, is consistent with what’s happening in other districts, says Sarah Dalton, executive director of the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists. ...
A look at the state of the previous government’s affordable housing scheme, and what could come next.Remind me: What’s KiwiBuild again?First announced in 2012, KiwiBuild was a flagship policy of the Labour Party heading into both its 2014 and 2017 election campaigns. With Jacinda Ardern as prime minister, ...
Labour in opposition will be shocked to learn which party had six years in power but squandered any chance to make real change. Grant Robertson’s valedictory speech was a predictably entertaining trip down memory lane. The acid-tongued incoming Otago University chancellor administered a sick burn to the coalition government. He ...
Taiwan’s semiconductor industry is seen some as its ‘silicon shield’ against invasion – but how will overseas expansion affect that protection? The post The state of Taiwan’s silicon shield appeared first on Newsroom. ...
There’s relief for building owners bending under the weight of earthquake strengthening rules – and costs – that came into force seven years ago. Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk has announced a scheduled 2027 review of the earthquake-prone building regulations will now start this year. Owners will also get ...
Opinion: It has been announced that nine percent of roles at Oranga Tamariki will be disestablished, presumably to help fund the tax cuts promised by the coalition Government. I am reminded of the graphics used to illustrate pandemic events, where five thousand people are standing in a field and then ...
After more than two sleepless days, running through savage terrain, Greig Hamilton didn’t know if he was going to finish one of the most gruelling psychological assaults in sport. He was metres away from the finish line, a yellow gate made famous in a Netflix documentary; a race he’d dreamed ...
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The following interview with former Green Party MP Sue Kedgley came about because she features in the new memoir Hine Toa by activist Ngāhuia te Awekōtuku; the two knew each other at the University of Auckland in the early 70s, when they were both took on leadership roles in the ...
COMMENTARY:By Murray Horton New Zealand needs to get tough with Israel. It’s not as if we haven’t done so before. When NZ authorities busted a Mossad operation in Auckland 20 years ago, the government didn’t say: “Oh well, Israel has the right to defend itself.” No, it arrested, prosecuted, ...
NEWSMAKERS:By Vijay Narayan, news director of FijiVillage Blessed to be part of the University of Fiji (UniFiji) faculty to continue to teach and mentor those who want to join our noble profession, and to stand for truth and justice for the people of the country. I was privileged to ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Martin, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University Three weeks from now, some of us will be presented with a mountain of budget papers, and just about all of us will get to hear about them on radio, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dan Lowry, Ice Sheet & Climate Modeller, GNS Science Hugh Chittock/Antarctica New Zealand, CC BY-SA As the climate warms and Antarctica’s glaciers and ice sheets melt, the resulting rise in sea level has the potential to displace hundreds of millions of ...
The government's plan to reintroduce a three strikes regime is being strongly opposed by lawyers, who argue there is no evidence it reduces crime or helps people rehabilitate. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dan Jerker B. Svantesson, Professor specialising in Internet law, Bond University Do Australian courts have the right to decide what foreign citizens, located overseas, view online on a foreign-owned platform? Anyone inclined to answer “yes” to this question should perhaps also ask ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Giovanni E Ferreira, NHMRC Emerging Leader Research Fellow, Institute of Musculoskeletal Health, University of Sydney Last week in a post on X, owner of the platform Elon Musk recommended people look into disc replacement if they’re experiencing severe neck or back pain. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Hayward, Emeritus Professor of Public Policy, RMIT University anek.soowannaphoom/Shutterstock NSW Treasurer Daniel Mookhey caught the headlines yesterday, courtesy of a blistering speech condemning the latest GST carve-up. New South Wales, he claimed, would be A$11.9 billion worse off over the ...
While police are "broadly in favour", the government's proposed anti-gang laws are facing pushback from lawyers, rights groups and former gang members. ...
While police are "broadly in favour", the government's proposed anti-gang laws are facing pushback from lawyers, rights groups and former gang members. ...
By Miriam Zarriga in Port Moresby Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has arrived at Kokoda Station, Northern province, at the start of his state visit to Papua New Guinea. Both Albanese and Prime Minister James Marape will meet with the locals and the Northern Provincial government before they begin their ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Chris Wallace, Professor, School of Politics Economics & Society, Faculty of Business Government & Law, University of Canberra Shutterstock An important principle was invoked by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese last week in defence of the government’s Future Made in Australia industry ...
By Patrick Decloitre, RNZ Pacific correspondent French Pacific desk Security forces reinforcements were sent from France ahead of two rival marches in the capital Nouméa today, at the same time and only two streets away one from the other. One march, called by Union Calédonienne party (a component of the ...
A poll last August found that just 16% of New Zealanders oppose bringing back the ‘Three Strikes’ law. The nationwide poll of 1,000 New Zealanders was commissioned by Family First NZ and carried out by Curia Market Research. ...
The solo show from Ana Scotney is both sprawling and intimate, and a must-see, writes Mad Chapman. In the opening moments of Scattergun: After the Death of Rūaumoko, writer and performer Ana Scotney lays out the groundwork, literally. Silently moving around the square stage, Scotney is not so much dancing ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Burridge, Professor of Linguistics, Monash University Who makes the words? Why are trees called trees and why are shoes called shoes and who makes the names? – Elliot, age 5, Eltham, Victoria Good question Elliot! Let’s start with ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Duckett, Honorary Enterprise Professor, School of Population and Global Health, and Department of General Practice and Primary Care, The University of Melbourne at amRawpixel.com/Shutterstock Roles of health professionals are still unfortunately often stuck in the past. That is, before the ...
COMMENTARY:By Malcolm Evans Last week’s leaked New York Times staff directive, as to what words can and cannot be used to describe the carnage Israel is raining on Palestinians, is proof positive, since those reports are published verbatim here in New Zealand, that our understanding of the conflict is ...
In the case of New Zealand, the results confirm that there is no popular support for the vicious austerity program being imposed by the National Party-led government, which is backed in all fundamental respects by the opposition Labour Party. ...
The ‘Vampire’ singer has never visited our part of the world, but that might all be about to change. We assess the evidence.Olivia Rodrigo’s Guts World Tour is pulling in massive crowds as it whips around the US and Europe, even helping to catapult regular supporting act Chappell Roan ...
Testing of drinking water in rural Canterbury over the weekend by Greenpeace revealed that several public town supplies were reaching levels of nitrate above 5 mg/L - the threshold which a growing body of scientific evidence has linked to increased ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rohan Fisher, Information Technology for Development Researcher, Charles Darwin University It may come as a surprise to hear 2023 was Australia’s biggest bushfire season in more than a decade. Fires burned across an area eight times as big as the 2019–20 Black ...
Responding to the Government’s announcement of changes to resource management laws, Taxpayers’ Union Executive Director, Jordan Williams, said: “These changes are a step in the right direction in terms of removing ideological and unworkable ...
More than two years after the Human Rights Council called for the establishment of a national human rights commission, such a body has yet to be formed. ...
Comment:An emergency management system with wide variations in performance, significant capability gaps, funding shortfalls and above all a setup that is not meeting the needs of New Zealanders at times of crisis. The Government’s inquiry into the response to Cyclone Gabrielle and other severe weather events in the North ...
Welcome to the whirring wonders of one brain trying to align its actions with its beliefs within a system it thinks is evil. My brain has been spiralling in a woke conundrum ever since I found out a bookshop I’ve never been to was shutting down. Good Books, a bookshop ...
We repeat our call for criminal justice policy to be based on evidence, something the three strikes regime neglects to recognise – with no evidence that it either reduces crime or assists with rehabilitation. ...
By Koroi Hawkins, RNZ Pacific editor in Honiara With only four more seats in the 50-member Parliament yet to be officially declared, there is no outright winner in the Solomon Islands elections. As of Monday, the two largest blocs in the winner’s circle, independents and the incumbent Prime Minister Manasseh ...
Two/fiftyseven is a multi-purpose space hidden in the heart of Wellington that is paving a way for sustainable building and responsible landlording in Aotearoa and beyond.By 2060 the world is predicted to double its entire building stock, which equates to building an entire New York City every 34 days, ...
Popstars wasn’t just a reality television revolution, it was also a huge moment for Y2K fashion.It’s 25 years since girl group TrueBliss was formed on New Zealand national television, breaking new ground for both the reality television industry and the shiny clothing industry. With the first episode on NZ ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christopher Pepping, Associate Professor in Clinical Psychology, Griffith University Marvin / Shutterstock Are all single people insecure? When we think about people who have been single for a long time, we may assume it’s because single people have insecurities that make ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By William Geary, Lecturer in Quantitative Ecology & Biodiversity Conservation, The University of Melbourne Trismegist san, Shutterstock Landscapes that have escaped fire for decades or centuries tend to harbour vital structures for wildlife, such as tree hollows and large logs. But these ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rebecca Gladstone-Gallagher, Lecturer in Marine Science, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau Shutterstock/S Curtis Why are we crossing ecological boundaries that affect Earth’s fundamental life-supporting capacity? Is it because we don’t have enough information about how ecosystems respond to change? Or ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matthew Crocker, PhD Student in Economics, Deakin University Here’s something for the board of the Reserve Bank of Australia to ponder as it meets next month to set interest rates. It has pushed up rates on 13 occasions since it began its ...
As part of our series exploring how New Zealanders live and our relationship with money, a charity director outlines how she’s saving for retirement and buying secondhand. Want to be part of The Cost of Being? Fill out the questionnaire here.Gender: Female Age: 45 Ethnicity: Pākehā Role: Charity director, mum of ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sophie Yates, Research Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University Many Australians with disability feel on the edge of a precipice right now. Recommendations from the disability royal commission and the NDIS review were released late last year. Now a ...
It’s been called a failed experiment and a judicial straightjacket but the government says the revised three strikes law will be a more workable regime, writes Anna Rawhiti-Connell in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here. Three ...
New Zealand’s Palestinian community and Palestinian Youth Aotearoa are voicing alarm and disappointment with the lack of factual rigour present during the Israeli Ambassador’s appearance as a guest on TVNZ’s Q+A With Jack Tame Sunday (21/04). ...
Both ACT leader David Seymour, who played a key role in drawing up the assisted dying law, and hospice leaders say it's time the legislation was changed. ...
Public submissions on proposed gang control laws are being heard today. Rising gang membership has been cited as rationale for a crackdown – but what do we actually know about how many people belong to gangs in New Zealand?What’s all this then?A rise in the number of gang ...
Climate activists are setting their sights on an unpopular target, and hoping to bring lots of the public with them. It’s hard to miss the Majestic Princess: the enormous cruise ship, docked at Auckland’s Prince’s Wharf, looms over the nearby buildings. The ship, which can fit nearly 6,000 people, ...
Opinion: We’ve kicked the tyres on the perception NZ’s economy is in a parlous state compared to Australia. We take a quick tour of relative trends in GDP, housing markets, labour markets, trade, the fiscal situation, and the outlooks for inflation and interest rates. We find the cyclical positions of ...
Opinion: Making sure developers, local and central government, and landowners are all on the same page makes sense The post A new kind of city deal appeared first on Newsroom. ...
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The following korero between Ngāhuia te Awekōtuku, author of the newly published memoir Hine Toa, one of the year’s most important books, and Dale Husband from e-tangata, was first published in October. It traverses her involvement with the activist group Ngā Tamatoa at Auckland University in the early 1970s, her ...
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http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/political/303158/mps-were-'salespeople'-for-dairy-co-labour
Blurred lines.
Focus on JLR is advised, he is a script monkey easily caught out so how about it opposition ?
A concert in Palmyra ..
https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/russian-orchestra-holds-concert-liberated-palmyra/
Obama calls for democratic reforms in Saudi Arabia
https://southfront.org/obama-demands-democratic-reforms-for-saudi-arabia/
The planet’s climate has changed.
When will the corporate media in New Zealand explain the weather by saying the words climate change?
As well as the droughts in India and Cambodia,
There is drought in Vietnam
http://www.businessinsider.com.au/vietnam-drought-economic-slowdown-2016-4?r=US&IR=T
and Thailand
http://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2016-04-11/forget-the-drought-thailands-national-water-fight-is-on
and Ethiopia
http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2016/may/02/ethiopia-famine-drought-land-restoration
and Malawi and Zimbabwe
http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2016/apr/21/drought-southern-africa-heavy-toll-students-fainting-malawi-zimbabwe
and Venezuela
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/04/22/475250605/venezuela-announces-daily-4-hour-power-cuts-amid-drought
and North Korea
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-27/north-korea-s-food-supply-imperiled-by-water-shortages-un-says
and Zambia
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/13/world/africa/zambia-drought-climate-change-economy.html?_r=0
and Haiti
http://thinkprogress.org/world/2016/04/15/3769857/haiti-farmers/
and Canada
http://www.calgarysun.com/2016/04/23/alberta-farmers-pray-for-rain-as-dry-conditions-stoke-drought-fears
and the U.S.
http://theprowersjournal.com/2016/04/april-2016-colorado-drought-update-from-cwcb/
and Indonesia
http://www.indonesia-investments.com/news/todays-headlines/indonesian-research-firm-2016-palm-oil-output-curbed-by-drought-haze/item6737
and Micronesia
https://www.google.co.nz/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=drought+2016&tbm=nws&start=100
and Australia
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-04-01/farming-death-row-south-australia's-forgotten-drought/7309470
[Just to point out that putting a pile of links in a comment will mean the comment hits moderation and it’ll just sit there if no mods are around. Best avoided if possible] – Bill
You missed the Brazil drought that’s just coming to an end now….
Was listening to something about superdroughts and their predicted prevalence – prevalence expected to increase.
On the same piece there was something touched on that I’d heard of before to do with the jet stream. Essentially, with the arctic warming, the ‘atmosphere’ becomes thicker (higher), meaning the gradient between the poles and the equator lessens and the jet-stream then tends to ‘slow’ and meander more than flow.
As weather fronts are tucked in behind the traversing jet stream, and that traverse slows up, weather gets ‘stuck’, meaning more prolonged periods of the same weather. Not good.
Many of those countries are experiencing drought because they are fucking with the catchment and groundwater in order to make money. Humans have lived in very dry climates for a long long time, and they do so by working with nature not exploiting it.
I’m not saying climate change isn’t creating serious problems with regards to water. But those problems aren’t visible in the places where humans are fucking with the catchment and dealing with the human-made problems is a prerequisite to learning how to adapt to the CC ones (leaving aside they’re all human made).
If we look at Canterbury for instance, the droughts being talked about there are a direct result of deforestation, draining wetlands, overgrazing, rabbits, and more recently stealing water from the aquifers, and industrial dairying. All those things exist independently of climate change, and climate change is making them more impactful because instead of happening every 20 years they’re happening multiple years in a row (we can pretty much assume drought is a constant on the east coast of the SI now). If we stopped doing all that shit, climate change effects in Canterbury would look completely different, even with the issue of glacier retreat.
As it is, we can’t even begin to see how to respond to something as serious as glacier retreat and what it will mean, because we still think the problem is how are we going to keep irrigating dairy farms? Oh, yeah, let’s put in some big catchment dams, or pipe water over from the West Coast ffs. Meanwhile, we keep doing the same things that are creating the droughts in the first place.
Another way to understand this is to look at to what extent climate change is affecting intact native ecosystems. Hard to do in Canterbury, because they hardly have any left, and those that are there are isolated unit rather than being part of the support from wider catchment protection, but if the droughts were mainly due to CC we’d be seeing native forests dying.
The places I am most familiar with are NZ, the US and Australia. But I’m guessing that there are similar issues in less developped countries because they’re being forced to do things like cash crop, and/or they’re prevented from doing sustainable landcare because of war, poverty, colonisation etc. The point I am making is that we could also be putting effort into supporting those countries to return to traditional landcare systems, because that will give them the best chance. Needless to say alongside the West powering down and doing everything it can to prevent the shit storm from being any worse than it already is.
chasing… 😉
I don’t disagree with what you’re saying, but here’s an example with regards, more or less, intact native eco-systems – the Amazon. It’s fucked.
https://www.google.co.nz/webhp?hl=en#hl=en&q=amazon+drought+2016
There are, no doubt, some traditional land care systems that have something to offer, but those traditional land care systems worked when applied to a set of climatic conditions we’re in the process of leaving behind. There are areas (I wouldn’t like to hazard a guess at the percentage) where all the cards are going to be off the table because of changed conditions.
What worked in Israel (say) won’t necessarily work in (say) California, because aside from rainfall or snow fall, there are the impacts or effects of topography and geology.
There are significant parts of the Amazon that have been modified. I took the first hit from your link and saw this photo. Not an intact ecosystem.
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/10/25/01/2DBD291E00000578-3288144-image-a-54_1445731932027.jpg
There are, no doubt, some traditional land care systems that have something to offer, but those traditional land care systems worked when applied to a set of climatic conditions we’re in the process of leaving behind. There are areas (I wouldn’t like to hazard a guess at the percentage) where all the cards are going to be off the table because of changed conditions.
Are you talking about the future? Because I’m responding to the idea that we are currently having all these droughts due to climate change. Of course CC, but hugely significant is the man-made aspects of those droughts, and big scarey stories about CC (read nature) causing drought are actually misleading. What we are experiencing now is because of our own stupidity in land management and economics.
As for the future, I don’t know what you mean by all cards off the table. Do you mean people won’t be able to live there? Have a look at the Jordan, which is the driest place on earth per head of population. People have lived there for a very long time.
What worked in Israel (say) won’t necessarily work in (say) California, because aside from rainfall or snow fall, there are the impacts or effects of topography and geology.
Of course. Sustainable land management designs around the local land base, which includes the geography, climate, people etc. That’s the point, we need to be taking our cues from nature not economics.
I didn’t say it was an intact eco system. I said it’s relatively intact.
I don’t think you’ll find any scientific study slating the 2005 drought back to local human activity. It was a consequence of remote human activity – climate change.
Are there water shortages caused by water mismanagement? Yes.
Would better water management avert water shortages? Not necessarily – and I mean that in terms of the here and now as well as the future. Climate driven drought events (such as the Amazon one) can render water management systems irrelevant. The western Amazon had no significant human pressure on its water table and tanked.
California can have all the water management it wants, but if/when the snow pack disappears (arguably, California is on the cusp of not having a snow pack now), so is the water that might otherwise have been managed.
It’s simply not true (carbon emissions aside) that “What we are experiencing now is because of our own stupidity in land management and economics.” I mean, there is that, but there is also climate change. And I can’t see how it’s misleading to say that climate change is causing drought…and yes, some of the effects of some of those droughts might have been mitigated with better water management regimes.
I don’t think you’ll find any scientific study slating the 2005 drought back to local human activity. It was a consequence of remote human activity – climate change.
Just as well I didn’t say that either. I think you are missing my point. I took the first hit from your google search and there was no way to tell what was going on. So when a news article claims that x about CC induced drought, we aren’t getting the full picture. Same with when media in NZ talk about the droughts in NZ being caused by weather events. Droughts in NZ for the most part of due to land management. That doesn’t preclude CC effects as well, but it means that native ecosystems are still resilient and so are many organic farms compared to conventional.
Would better water management avert water shortages? Not necessarily – and I mean that in terms of the here and now as well as the future. Climate driven drought events (such as the Amazon one) can render water management systems irrelevant. The western Amazon had no significant human pressure on its water table and tanked.
Ok, so let’s leave the Amazon out of it, let’s assume it is predominantly CC. Let’s look at the other ones. Texas, California, Canterbury. All those catchments have drought due to mismanagement and all of those will avert the worst of water shortages if they reverted to sustainable land management.
California can have all the water management it wants, but if/when the snow pack disappears (arguably, California is on the cusp of not having a snow pack now), so is the water that might otherwise have been managed.
Like I said, people have lived with far less water. We know how to do this. This isn’t to say that snow pack and glacier issues aren’t serious. It’s to say that there is a massive (as in all the difference in the world) difference between having reduced inflow into a catchment that is otherwise sound compared to one that is still being fucked over.
It’s simply not true (carbon emissions aside) that “What we are experiencing now is because of our own stupidity in land management and economics.” I mean, there is that, but there is also climate change. And I can’t see how it’s misleading to say that climate change is causing drought…and yes, some of the effects of some of those droughts might have been mitigated with better water management regimes.
Ok, let’s look really close to home, because this is easy to see and understand. When you deforest, the water table drops. The land dries out, and then the soil is less able to hold water in it. Intact systems hold a huge amount of water in the land itself, it’s not all in the glaciers or rivers or lakes. When you remove the land’s ability to hold water, you get drought. Yes rainfall is an issue too, and so is river flow, but the land drying out was already happening before the rainfall lowered. This is what I mean by farmer-induced drought. You can add CC on top of that, but the baseline is that the land is being made dry by us here on the ground.
Once that happens, it becomes very hard for a catchment to recover. In NZ overgrazing is an issue, sheep, cattle, rabbits were doing this long before diarying. On top of the dry land you now have no chance of natural systems of plant succession, which are the things that build soil fertility. And soil fertility is critical to holding water in the land. This is all cyclical. Now we have a lot of land in the SI that is like this and the only way you can farm it is to irrigate, or have very low stock levels that nevertheless continue the degradation.
Once you get to this point, you are dependent on artificial fertiliser and irrigation. The land is no longer fertile. This is why some CC and PO people freak out about us not being able to feed ourselves, because they perceive us as having no way of growing food without fossil fuels. It’s not true, but without fossil fuels you have to have intact ecosystems.
(all the catchments in NZ are recoverable btw, it’s not too late)
Then you have the water table itself. I don’t know what is happening in NZ, but we know that in the US they’ve taken so much out that rivers no longer reach the sea. So on top of all the things I’ve just described, the water table is disappearing too.
The phenomena you are talking about come after all of that. Glaciers, snow melt, rainfall will all recharge the aquifers or not due to CC. But if the land itself is already dried out and beyond recovery, then the lack of recharge becomes somewhat of a moot point. If we think that a river running dry is an issue because of low rainfall, and this matters because we can no longer irrigate the land to grow food for the supply chain, we are decades behind the ball. The water shortage started when the land itself could no longer hold water.
Back to Paul’s list. Dropping a big list of scarey we’re going to run out of water links is a strategy for scaring people into reducing emissions. I don’t think it’s our smartest move. People will change when they can see a way out. Regenerative agriculture is one of those key ways out. If we don’t see the underlying farmer-induced drought and change that as well, it probably won’t matter if the glaciers melt.
Let me put all this another way. We have two droughts going on, each as serious as the other.
We have two droughts going on, each as serious as the other.
The terminology’s the crux of the ‘talking past’ that’s going on I think.
I’d rephrase your comment as we have droughts and we also have avoidable water shortages caused by water mismanagement of one type or another.
As far as my thinking goes, drought is entirely weather or climate related.
Water shortages through mis-management aren’t drought or drought inducing…they just mean that not enough water is available from the land because (insert human fuck up option of your choice).
Good water management might mean that when a drought hits, its effects could be mitigated.
Bad water management might mean that not enough water is available regardless of whether drought conditions are prevalent or not.
edit. As for Pauls list. I have no idea about farming or water strategies in the places mentioned. But if the monsoons don’t come on time, or if there’s been no rain for months or years…then it doesn’t really matter what peasant farmers do or what water systems they have. And yes, I’m picking that many being hit are peasant farmers who work very much in tune with seasons and expected resources.
+1
Except for this bit:
Traditional land care systems aren’t actually sustainable with the level of population that we have today.
I think it depends on where you are talking about. Feeding New York city with traditional landcare, probably not possible. A village in India that was feeding itself up until the last 50 or hundred years when it was forced into cash cropping? yes they can probably feed themselves using what they have if the greedy people go out of the way. NZ is never going to go back to being hunter/gatherers, but we have a low enough population to use a hybrid of traditional and modern sustainable practice.
Permaculture, which is one of the foremost tools we have for sustainable land management, comes directly from traditional practices. It’s been adapted for the modern world and the Western mind, and put into a system that can be applied across many different places.
To some degree. NZ is probably capable of supporting our own population sustainably. But it’s a little bit iffy to say that India is. India isn’t just a small little village. It’s over a billion people with advanced cities and industry all existing in a limited physical space. The probability is that traditional farming won’t make them any more sustainable than what they are now.
+1 Weka,
I believe it could be quite practical to divert water from the Landsborough into Lake Ohau and thus supplement the existing Mackenzie Basin Hydro complex.
Of course it would cost money but once completed would supply water for years to come.
Interesting that we have had no problem drilling not one but two tunnels for the Manapouri scheme and most of that power is used to supply the Tiwai Point smelter.
The other means of utilising the West Coast rainfall is to develop a series of small remote controlled hydro stations from one end of the coast to the other. This is what happens in France, for example, a nation that has to depend on Nuclear Power for it;s main source but gains a very useful percentage of their energy from these small and often remote hydro stations. in the order of 25GW
France also understands that hydro sourced energy reserves can be saved by offering it at reduced rates in off peak times to domestic users, so that clothes washing and water heating are programmed for overnight not at peak times.
Curiously the generation of electricity in France is the responsibility of EDF yep that’s right Electricity of France and the distribution is by a subsidiary ERDF yep and again you are right it is a state organisation although there are a few small private suppliers.
Some Standardistas will be able to remember when the same was the case in New Zealand, NZED.
Too many links mate. I’ve been guilty of it myself while staring at a screen – but your argument is better served with something short, simple, and to the point .. backed up by a link to other sources, eg. deeperweb.com
@Paul – no wonder tourism’s up. you can buy 25 years waters rights for $500 p/a here if you have the right connections…
Out of space on the 120GB root SSD drive. Explains why the comments weren’t saving and the posts weren’t posting yesterday morning and this morning. The hourly backups were running out of room overnight.
Shuffled some files off to the 8TB raid system. Root is now 75% full. I will have a look to see what kind of crap is accumulating there between the court dates dealing with the arseholes attacking the site.
Commiserations. My / is 78% full but it has nowhere near your load and keeps trucking on regardless .. for the moment. Are you using LVM ?
Nope. These partitions are OLD. They just keep getting shifted to new hardware
Good Job and good luck Lynn.
Thanks Lynn, always much appreciated.
When are the court dates Lyn? Us pensioners would love the show!
Usually under name suppression, so details in public get very limited.
It’s what you neeeeed
Ok, fine, so probably not need 😈
Genius from Toby Manhire….because, I don’t know about you guys, I could do with a laugh.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11634239
“Toby Manhire: Dancing with the Cops and other reality TV ideas
The Koru Hour, or Nobody Puts Johnny in the Corner
Rare, Medium and Weldon
New Zealand’s Next Top Fraudster
Squeal of Fortune
Dancing with the Cops”
Go on…have a giggle…
I have a ‘live’ complaint to OMSA (Online Media Standards Authority) about recent posts made about me by Cameron Slater on his WhaleOil blog which are currently going through their ‘due process’.
I have been informed by OSMA that I should expect an outcome next week.
Penny Bright
2016 Auckland Mayoral candidate.
When/if it goes against you will you post the details here?
Wow, just wow – the stalking does not stop with you does it Puckish Rouge.
I freely admit that I have never stalked Penny Bright however if you’re going to post on here then I feel its an open invitation for questions
But you supported those that did.
You can do better then that, that was just plain lazy. Try again please.
Lazy, yeah sure. Your happy to undermine Penny any way you can, and if your hard right mates stalk her, you are happy with that. What a nice guy you are.
Not really, I just found her extremely long winded posts boring as she’d virtually never come back and answer questions (from left posters I might add) and the way she treated this site like it was her own personal soapbox is just rude (I don’t tell admin how to run this site because its their site to do with as they please)
You have a scroll mouse. Do what most of us do, scroll past. She has been pulled up a few times by Iprent and other
You have a scroll mouse. Do what most of us do to the likes of International Rescue or Alwyn, scroll past.
She has been pulled up a few times by Iprent and other moderators. And has changed how she posts, which is way more readable.
You should have stomped on the stalking though, we can agree on that?
I’m not a stalker, I’ve never stalked anyone so I have no idea what you’re on about.
When are you going to do the simple math sums I’ve posted up for you to do Puckish ………….. my little golem clown.
2.2 billion dollars ( fraud by johns john on behalf Aussie banks )
divided by 22 million ( total welfare fraud ) = how many years .
Puckish wont answer though because a 2.2 billion dollar fraud against New Zealand by John Keys self appointed judge is a no no subject for round mouth Puck .
Stalking a woman on the internet who has embarrassed John Key ( northland election trouncing & well done Penny 🙂 ) is our creepy golem clown Puckish’s mission at the moment.
The clowns an embarrassment to himself …………… Wayne mapp thinks he’s great though, and uses veet to show his appreciation ……. plus Puck told him it makes him look ‘bigger’.
I made the mistake of reading your post reason. Please post reference to the “$2.2 billion fraud by Johns John?? and how this relates to John Key…by that I mean a real reference from a court or similar.
And further how has Penny embarrassed anyone other than her self?
Chuck you made the mistake of making an idiotic post to me ……
John Shewan tried to screw New Zealand out of 2.2 billion dollars in a tax fraud he designed on behalf of the Aussie banks …..
“Westpac has lost its $918m tax battle with Inland Revenue.”
“Evidence in the seven-week case showed Westpac’s tax adviser, John Shewan (now chairman of PricewaterhouseCoopers), advised not paying a rate below 15 per cent but in the end the amount he advised was 6.5 per cent. ”
“The IRD introduced evidence in the Westpac case quoting PricewaterhouseCoopers chairman John Shewan advising the bank earlier this decade that it should try to declare a tax rate close to that of its competitors, and that actual tax paid should be at least 6 per cent, compared to the corporate tax rate of 30 per cent.”
So john john has been found guilty ( or his clients were ), in a court of law.
Which leads back to my question chuck ….. or is it chump?.
Johns john had an attempted theft of 2.2 Billion from New Zealand.
This one piece of rich white trash temporarily succeeded in his fraud against NZ.
So the question is …. Again:
2.2 billion theft by johns john versus 22 million Total benefit theft in the year 2010./
How many years of benefit fraud would it take to reach the total that John Shewan attempted to steal ??????.
John key shoulder tapped Shewan to be the judge of nationals tax haven rules/setup .
Is John Key going to shoulder tap Clint Rickards to investigate claims of sexual abuse by the police ….
Or mike sabin to look at low conviction rates for some crimes ….
Because thats the standards I’m seeing.
Glad to explain for you 🙂
You had me confused by the Johns John reference…but I can now see your humor in it.
Basically, reason, you have gone off on some la la land tangent.
The words you have used “fraud” “steal” “theft” imply this was a criminal investigation / court case. Nothing can be further from the truth.
No chucky ……………… there was a 2.2 Billion dollar FINE in a court of law with a High court judge and everything …………. you can call that la la land if you want …… but thats just you avoiding the issue and refusing to do the math sum I have set ….,,.
‘tax haven/ theft by the rich’ supporting trolls, like yourself, do not want the simple fact of how much the rich are stealing to become common knowledge.
I’ve distilled it down ‘Hooten’ style but unlike him I’m not peddling lies ……………. I’m showing a simple truth.
2.2 Billion attempted theft/fraud by Johns john ( Shewan )
22 million dollars total welfare fraud in 2010
How many years of welfare fraud to equal the amount Johns john attempted to steal//// ………… it’ all effects the governments ‘budget’ in exactly the same way ………… but on a vastly different scale.
And if you cant do maths, perhaps your opinion on whether a man behind such a HUGE theft from New Zealand Government revenue should be the judge on New Zealands tax haven legalization.
johns john attempted to steal a lot hip operations, cancer drugs, money from police budgets and all the other ‘socialist’ things our government spends our tax money on …………
The fact that when a court of law stopped this Shewan crime and made them pay, putting the budget into surplus that year is not la la land stuff either ……….
p.s I’d reply to chuck but that option does not show on the webpage I see, and which is why I’m replying to myself
“But you supported those that did.”
Can you please explain? Stalking is a serious accusation.
Don’t bother wasting your time, he either won’t explain or he’ll go off on a tangent and then claim some sort of victory
Poor Puckish can’t even remember when he is being a sexist git.
Yesterday or the day before Penny Bright brought up the fact after making a complaint about Whale oil, goons from that web site had been stalking her. Puckish Rouges response was she had broken the law so she basically deserved it.
Leaving that aside, what exactly have done to be labelled a stalker? Ask a question and post a youtube clip that she was on…
Have a look at this and see if you learn anything:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AB7IDw3PNI
And still you won’t say stalking women is evil and wrong. It gets worse, you won’t even condemn your stalker mates.
Instead you carry on with the personal attacks on me. What a winner you are.
Theres a lot things I think are evil and wrong but I don’t proclaim it because I don’t need to (stalking is bad m’kay)
However something I also find evil and wrong is falsely accusing someone
Penny was stalked and you acted superior, and when I pulled you up on it, you acted like a glib juvenile.
Now you’ are doing indignation. Man engage with real people. It’s never acceptable to be casual about violence to women. It’s never acceptable, just because we are on a different divide politically to be casual about stalking.
If I offended you, then good. Learn something from this.
“It seems that Cameron Slater has ‘sources’ who are, in my view, effectively stalking me, snooping around my property, taking photos and apparently then lying about what they are seeing.”
Thats what Penny wrote from the link, theres no proof of stalking at all but there is a lot of opinion stated as fact
If she feels she is being stalked then I’d suggest she go to the police and/or lawyer and get some legal advice
But her saying it doesn’t make it so, as I said before its a very bad thing to go around accusing people of something adam, it makes it harder for people to be believed when they do need to report something
That’s nice dear 🙂
It feels pointless with you sometimes, every time I think you may not be a complete cretin, you prove me wrong.
You are a bag of (foul) wind PR (look up PR in health terms while you are at it). Winding people up is not a skill, just a sign you don’t have enough in your life.
Thanks Adam, do you have a link?
Here http://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-04052016/#comment-1168100
The Case Against Hilary Clinton
http://us6.campaign-archive2.com/?u=ffdc278104b5964bb04b4251e&id=fc585d4fe3&e=f36be083ee
This left wing comedian is a bit of a laugh
https://youtu.be/nv2W3LaGfDA?t=1h7m26s
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/political/303137/national-on-top-for-party-donations
“National on top for party donations
Labour received almost $280,000 and the Green Party just over $400,000.
ACT took in just over $162,000 and New Zealand First almost $80,000.
The Maori Party received just over $28,000 and United Future did not get any donations last year.
The donations returns are for the 2015 calendar year.
The donations are miniscule to what the parties received during the 2014 election year. In that year, National received almost $4 million, Labour $940,000 and the Greens received $970,000.”
Labour took in nearly $280 000 and the Greens just over $400 000…no wonder labour are in the crapper, let me guess there’ll be calls for parliamentary funded campaigns to, you know level the playing fields
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=11633960
well, you know. Nothing better then money form the one that owns you and your ministers. 🙂
Quote:
” A Chinese-owned milk powder company reprimanded by Prime Minister John Key for using his photo without permission in its advertising in 2012 has donated $25,400 to the National Party.
Donation returns released yesterday show National’s total of $1.4 million included $25,338 in five separate donations from GMP Dairy, a Chinese-owned milk powder company based in Auckland.
In 2012, GMP Dairy subsidiary Cowala used a photo of Mr Key posing with its products in advertising in China after Mr Key opened its Auckland factory that year. That prompted Mr Key to write to the company to complain. A spokeswoman said it “implies the company’s product has an endorsement from the Prime Minister which it does not.”
At the time the company’s chief executive Karl Ye said the advert was created by one store and it had been asked to remove it. The 2012 incident has clearly been forgiven: National Ministers Steven Joyce and Bill English have both attended subsequent product launches for the company, as well as Party President Peter Goodfellow.
GMP Dairy also paid for National MPs Jami-Lee Ross and Stuart Smith to travel to China earlier this year.”
or as the old saying goes…… who’s your Daddy?
I think the people in charge of Labour should sit down a take a serious look at themselves and ask how it is that the Greens can raise a considerable amount of money more and what can Labour do to emulate it
You are scared, you went straight for concern trolling.
I’m scared because National took in 1.4 million and the next largest party took in 280 000, behind the Greens?
I’m sure there’s some sort of logic to your reasoning but I can’t work it out
Scared much, straight for the ad hominem.
But we are in that sort of debate. I call you a habitual liar, whose latest claim to infamy is to justify the stalking of women, and even in normal conversation can’t see they spin everything.
Always with the fake concern, and lets not forget the default pity party you fall into, when someone calls you on you spin and lies.
Oh and the not trying, just the repeating of sad lines over and over to make yourself feel good, that you support this countries most divisive government in history. Who’s mad lust for power, has meant they will use any weapon at their disposal to hold onto power. Which I must say you prove to me, and I’m sure many others, each and every day when you comment here.
I’ll say this for you, you have a very high opinion of yourself (which is good of course) but, like a lot of the left on here, you fall prey to hyperbole
“this countries most divisive government in history”
I’m sure the fourth Labour government (you remember Rogernomics and all that), the second National government (before my time but I’ve heard the Vietnam War brought out a few protestors) or how about the third National government (Springbok tour and all that) but no this government is the most divisive
Thanks for proving my point.
Anyway to hold on to power, with any spin possible.
Your point being that you’re melodramatic or your point being you say I’m scared but you never actually say what I’m scared of?
Poor Puckish, spinning so hard.
Do me a favour adam, save this thread so you can repost it after the 2017 election
I am wondering if the donations for the Greens includes their MP tithing. I believe they all pay 10% of their parliamentary salary to the party as a donation, and I don’t think Labour does that.
But perhaps Labour should, even if it were 5% that would make a big difference to the party coffers.
If that’s the case it appears to be working well for the Greens and it could be argued that as an MP you benefit greatly from the party (more so as a list mp) so paying the party some money isn’t a bad idea
lol
somehow I’m not sure that the Greens do it because they believe in user-pays for public office.
Well ok I agree with you on that but I meant more that rather then pay for the office you’re holding you’re repaying what the party has done for you but I get your point
ISTR an impression that it was because the Greens saw the parliamentary paycheques and decided they should practise what they preached when it came to tax rates for those on higher incomes.
Correct.
Maybe Labour should consider tithing. Get away from neoliberal “this is my money to do as I please salary as MP for the party’ and instead think I will chip in a donation per week to try to get my party over the line.
The Natz just give out tenders, contracts and awards for donations, which is why they got 1.4m. In most countries this is called corruption. Still waiting for the enquiry about 7.5m Scenic Hotels corporate welfare ‘aid’ after their $101,000 donation to the National party.
Labour has some sort of ethics on the donations and won’t take from Sky City and dodgy Chinese money. So maybe low donations also mean they are honest.
Labour has some sort of ethics on the donations and won’t take from Sky City and dodgy Chinese money.
– Probably has more to do with the Labour party sh**ing on them from a great height recently
So maybe low donations also mean they are honest
– Now that genuinely did make me snort out loud 🙂
The Green Party are rather like New Zealand First. They have a compulsory levy on all the MPs. I say “rather like” because Winnie excludes himself from the rule. Got to pay for his fags and booze after all.
They will probably call it voluntary of course. I’m sure they call it a “donation”. If you don’t volunteer you go to position 73 on the list.
I’m actually surprised that it is legal. Most countries have laws that mean you can’t insist on people having to pay a levy in order to get a paid position in any Government organisation. Sounds very close to extortion doesn’t it?
What Labour do of course is smear anyone who donates to National.
Remember back in 2005 when an person who emigrated to New Zealand from India, and was at the time living in the tax haven of Monaco and hadn’t lived in New Zealand for about 40 years gave $500,000 to the Labour Party?
That was just peachy of course. They even gave him an award in the ONZ for his generosity.
was that the guy who expected to be able to bribe Labour, and when he didn’t get his monaco bauble then promised to spend 100mil for poor kids provided NZ elected national?
And a few years later the nats gave him a bigger ONZ award than Labour did lol
I believe the Monaco bauble attempt was after he paid Winnies legal expenses.
Expecting anything out of Winston after doing him a very expensive favour is dreaming.
Actually expecting gratitude out of any politician is just wishful thinking. Their attitude doesn’t include gratitude. It is only “What are you going to do for me today?”
It must be depressing to have your opinion of humanity.
And, indeed, to have a moral compass that seems to equate “bribing someone” with “earning their gratitude”.
Your own viewpoint seems to be rather jaundiced.
It was you, after all, who is claiming that Glenn’s gift to the Labour Party was offering a bribe. I think he really did think at the time that Clark was a good PM.
Very badly mistaken though, wasn’t he? Do you remember when he was at a function to celebrate his giving money to establish a Business School. Helen Clark was also present. If Glenn looked like getting anywhere near her so that she might have to greet him Trevor Mallard would intercept him and keep him away from her.
Poor Owen. As I say, he discovered that politicians have no lasting gratitude
Oh, sorry, I assumed that your “They even gave him an award in the ONZ for his generosity” was suggesting that the award was linked to his donation to the Labour party, hence terming it a “bribe”.
At least he got a better gong from national, in gratitude for the promise to pay 100million if national got elected.
Owen Glenn paid for Winston’s legal fees, in turn Winston was going to put in a good word with the Labour government of the day for the Monaco position.
However it all turned to custard when Winston held up his now famous “NO” sign and the resulting investigation.
Interesting side note…Winston used his “lawyer and trust account” so to keep a Chinese wall between the $100k from Glenn, and Winston ability to deny any knowledge of the “gift”.
“Most countries have laws that mean you can’t insist on people having to pay a levy in order to get a paid position in any Government organisation. ”
You don’t seem to have a very clear idea about what a political party is, and how they are governed, do you?
Parties have constitutions that set up their rules and regulations. if the constitution requires tithing, then if you don’t do it, you’re in breach and the disciplinary provisions kick in, which would almost certainly have an expulsion clause that can be used when necessary.
I’m sure they do, have rules that is.
As a matter of fact of course they could only kick an MP who refused to pay up out of their caucus (and the list next election). They certainly couldn’t kick them out of Parliament could they?
However the rules of a political party, in spite of what Cunliffe claimed about his secret trust to support his leadership campaign, cannot override the law of the land.
You can be an MP but it’ll cost you doesn’t have a good ring to it.
And yes I know that they all do it. Calling it a “donation” is just trying to cover it up.
“You can be an MP but it’ll cost you doesn’t have a good ring to it.”
No, it’s “if you want to be a member of this club, it’ll cost you”. Just like people pay memberships for all sorts of clubs.
The greens only levie the charge against people who have attained a certain position within their club (MP) – a position that itself comes with a pretty decent salary package, and also a hell of a lot of hard work.
” Just like people pay memberships for all sorts of clubs.”
As I said, they just word it so it sounds better.
You wouldn’t be the fund raiser for a political party would you?
You can certainly word these things in an innocent way.
Another predictably tedious response from the Permanent Resident troll. I take it Puke-ish, that you approve of Jamie-Lee’s latest endeavours. Wake up and smell the odour. Meantime, spare us your apologist nonsense.
Have they broken any laws? If they have slam them if they haven’t then its not important
Work it out for yourself – “Bribery – the offering, giving, receiving, or soliciting of any item of value to influence the actions of an official or other person in charge of a public or legal duty” Black’s Law Dictionary.
Should be pretty easy to bring a case against them, its not like there hasn’t been precedent before
Really?
You don’t care what anyone does, as long as it doesn’t break any laws?
More or less, I mean not going to go into a case by case scenario of every possible incident that could happen
For once i agree with you there Punkish Rogue.
What the F?
Labour need to work out if their ‘broad church’, non committal and convaluted policy approach is working. I personally want Labour to succeed but Kiwi’s need more than Nat Lite policy but a vision – like Savage to transform NZ.
In order to do that they must address 21 century challenges like globalism, neoliberalism, inequality and environmental degradation. Personally was heartened they had the UBI that showed they were prepared to think about new ideas and have put Cunliffe onto the panama papers, so maybe they are turning a corner.
But if Winston can do so well with only $80k in donations it means that money does not buy votes in this country for everyone, policy does and political astutness.
If we liken it to commerce then its obvious, from the amount of money coming in, that one party on the left is doing a better job of convincing people that its message is worth putting your hands into your pockets
and yeah money does help but its not the only thing, if it was Colin Craig would be in parliament (got close), Act would have more than one or two MPs and well the less said about KDC the better
But in regards to Labour and the Greens then Labour should be looking closely at what the Greens are doing (like that hasn’t been said on here in one way or another) and try to emulate them
Like staying on the same basic message, standing for something etc etc
fuck it really this is getting tedious.
Labour this, and Labour that, and half of the people commenting here are essentially only saying I wont give to Labour because (insert past grievance of the 80’s or something like tht ), and they won’t vote for Labour because (insert past grievance of the 80″s or something like that), and then they complain that a. not enough voters are voting for Labour and b. that they don’t rake in cash, but that they would vote for Labour or give to Labour if Labour would just do what they want them to do, never mind that they will never really do what you want them to do, cause purity and such.
Seriously, go find a party you can be happy with, and than at least you guys could stop whinging about all the things Labour does wrong.
Go find a party that does what you want, if that party does not exist, join one that comes close, and fund that fucking party, or create your own party, fundraise for it and find members and voters for it.
The system is called MMP, Labour does not need to best fucking anyone, they need to be able to work with the other parties, and that would be the best thing we could hope for. People in Parliament that work together instead of that current rent a parliament crowd that literally is funded by China and any other country or corporation that would like to buy something of them.
Yeah mf ers what she said.
Beautiful, thankyou Sabine:
“Go find a party that does what you want, if that party does not exist, join one that comes close, and fund that fucking party, or create your own party, fundraise for it and find members and voters for it.
The system is called MMP, Labour does not need to best fucking anyone, they need to be able to work with the other parties, and that would be the best thing we could hope for. People in Parliament that work together instead of that current rent a parliament crowd that literally is funded by China and any other country or corporation that would like to buy something of them.”
Labour need to entice back Mike Williams to fill the donation coffers again.
The latest brain wave from the Government to allow electric cars to clog up the busways doesn’t make sense. In Auckland the Northern Busway is very successful so it should be left alone. Why doesn’t the Government just half the cost of the Registration instead, or find another incentive for purchasers of electric cars. I was of the opinion that the Government ran the main transit routes and the council funded and built the local roads, what about all the bus lanes on these local roads, doesn’t the council have any say in this. The Northern Busway was a fantastic initiative to ease the gridlock for the Northern Motorway – why on earth now go and clog it up with cars – just doesn’t make sense to me. I am all for electric cars, the more we have the better but I just think this is an ingenious way to encourage the purchase of these cars.
more pissing away money to those that don’t need it.
a. who could afford an electric car tomorrow?
b. about 5% of the population?
but they would then get to use the buslane, not pay road user charges and so on and so on and so on.
while we increase fees for people that drive old cars – again, we must make up for the money that we just gave away to those that are in the needy 5 % highest income group. Cause they never have enough money for that Moet and Ferrari.
Don’t you feel special now?
But Sabine, you have just totally rubbished the New Zealand Green Party policy.
The only thing that is not being offered by the Government is a subsidy on electric cars, and a promise that the Government buy lots and lots of them.
https://www.greens.org.nz/news/press-release/govt-keeps-handbrake-electric-vehicles
The Greens were also proposing to provide taxpayer funded charging stations.
And to give electric vehicles free use of the roads.
https://www.greens.org.nz/policy/smarter-economy/business-tax-breaks-clean-transport-options
Lovely big subsidies.
You’re either purposefully misrepresenting what the Green Party said or you’re stupid.
Seems fairly bloody obvious what was meant. So obvious even a stupid person would get it.
I see someone from a pressure group “Generation Zero” is attacking the Government for possibly allowing electric vehicles into the bus lanes.
His argument is that they are quiet, cyclists won’t realise they are there and the cyclists will therefore get killed
http://www.newshub.co.nz/politics/electric-cars-in-bus-lanes-silent-killers-2016050608#axzz47qvHZyGS
I hope he takes his case up with the Green acolytes in Wellington. They want to retain all the trolley buses and then replace all the other buses with electric ones.
Here (in Wellington) cyclists are allowed to use the bus lanes. He will obviously be opposed to this as the buses are quiet and will also bump off all the people on their bikes.
The trolley buses actually are dangerous. Pedestrians don’t hear them and are much more likely to step in front of one than they are to do it with a diesel bus. Any time you read about a pedestrian being hit by a bus in the city it turns out to be a trolley bus rather than a diesel.
Get rid of the trolley buses I say. Save the lives of pedestrians and cyclists.
I call on the “caring” Greens to push my campaign and get rid of the trolley bus dinosaurs.
Alwhynger your out of Date.
The trolley buses are to be retired replaced with electric buses hopefully you will be visiting Wellington soon.
That is the current proposal.
It is, however NOT what the Green Party want.
Have a look at what the Trekkie Hughes wants.
https://home.greens.org.nz/takeaction/submissionguides/wellington-trolley-buses
Have a look at what is going to happen to the trolley buses. They are still going to be there. They are still going to be silent, and just a deadly.
They are just going to stop using overhead wires.
The trolley buses are dangerous because they are silent. The converted ones are going to be just as bad.
Perhaps you should visit Wellington. I live here.
Been run down often Alwyn?
No, but I know someone who was. Survived luckily.
I have on the other hand been knocked down twice by cyclists at Oriental Bay. They are also silent, and dangerous. They ride, often at high speed, on the footpath. It is legal there but not safe.
They come up behind you on the footpath, pass very close to the pedestrian and would never consider ringing, or even having, a bell to give a warning. Most Wellington cyclists are bloody idiots.
In Tokyo the electric cars I have seen/heard have a ‘rattle’ built in so you can hear them
The cyclists in Tokyo ride on the footpath, and they have and use a bell and also are considerate.
Well Sabine, since (if Pareto’s rule holds) about 5 or 10% of New Zealanders (the wealthiest) are responsible for about 50% of NZ emissions, I’d say give them the fucking cars. In the future they can whine about the show wondering whatever happened to their glorious me, me society.
Yes, nothing like giving one rich old git in a Prius the same access as a bus with 50 or 60 people in it to demonstrate your contempt for public transport.
Not sure that Prius qualify – we are talking Leaf and Tesla. You can buy a reasonable late model Prius for around $10,000. Ok that is way more than many people can afford for a car I know – but it is not in the $30,000+ range for an EV of similar age.
Prius while substantially reducing emissions for a similar sized car (around 4.4L/100km) is a hybrid. It runs a petrol engine at a low speed when needed to charge a much smaller battery than a pure EV.
I agree however with your sentiments wrt to bus lanes. The Govt needs to place far more emphasis on developing public transport providing better, more, and faster services so that cars become unnecessary and undesirable for the majority of personal travel. The current congested state of Aucklands roads is now a case in point. People are forced to use cars because the public transport is so poor, and expensive.
Because they’re trying to stop people using buses and other public transport. There’s nowhere near as much profit to be made from people using public transport.
Its because they live in Wellington most of the year and haven’t a bloody clue how clogged up our motorways are here in Auckland – the buslanes help people to keep off the roads and the Gov. has to be as thick as bat s…. encouraging even more cars – Sabine is correct, how many people can afford electric cars anyway – we seriously need a good network of trains, light rail and buslanes – it will not be that many years before AK will be totally gridlocked and how will commerce bring in the tax dollars for the gov. then when it’s at a stand still – as I said thick as bat s….. and wilfully wrecking the environment for future generations to boot.
I wish the government would keep its sticky beak out of AK – the council is trying to encourage public transport and at least is trying to see ahead for the future – this gov. is absolutely bloody useless in everything it does.
Yeah Auckland is near gridlock now – I live in Thames after living in Auckland for 25 years. Last week I had to travel up to Auckland. It took as much time to travel from Pt Chev to Manakau along the southern motorway around 2pm as it did to travel the rest of the journey.
yeah Its pretty much gridlocked already – took an hour or more to travel from western springs to Manakau down the Southern Motorway the other day around 2pm! Bumper to bumper – stop start the whole way.
No, this government is achieving what it set out to do which is more profits for rich people. This invariably costs everyone else more. In context of transport that’s more in cars, more in fuel, more road taxes, more death due to the increased pollution and more time due to the grid lock.
Thing is, that grid lock also increases profits for the rich because of more car and fuel sales. Cars are the perfect example of why the profit drive produces the worst possible outcomes for society.
What sort of a proficient, professional company/association/Government only works successfully for the 1% of people/clients – in the private sector every one practicing these sort of work efficiencies would go broke. I stand by my words, the Government are bloody useless. They are killing off the golden egg – Auckland which gives the largest tax take – companies will end up at a stand still and still this Government cannot see it. Ever see trucks trying to get through to the port or to go south/north on the motorways, they waste more time sitting in their cabs frustrated as hell. Useless, incompetent, visionless idiots, the whole lot of the cabinet.
They do go broke and then their bought and paid for governments come along and bail them out.
Yes but they don’t see it that way. All they see is rich people getting richer and thus the economy must be booming. They don’t see the poverty that they create nor the inefficiency as they give jobs to their mates that they then massively over pay.
It’s all about the profits and it causes massive inefficiency and over use of resources just so that a few people can have more money and power.
It’s not incompetence. They’re achieving what they want to achieve. Sure, it will eventually destroy the society and will kill a lot of people but a few people got richer and that’s all that matters to them.
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/e1/0c/a6/e10ca6d5961489a16252a0f2561cecdb.jpg
The treatment of Willie was bloody disgraceful. If you are a social democrat a question for you – after watching this do you still think that privilege will give up an inch of power? Because the contempt I saw on display here for Maori, is the same contempt I see from this lot towards working stiffs, mums, the young, Pacific, and anyone else who is not a part of there club. And power folks is something privilege enjoy more than you realise.
http://thedailyblog.co.nz/2016/05/06/waatea-5th-estate-who-owns-the-water/#comment-335742
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11634218
– Well heres something I’m sure we can all agree is long overdue
Yep, I’d probably agree with that decision. When are they going to apply it to company directors?
No need to, private companies can make their own decisions because we, fortunately, do not live in a communist country
The same conflict of interest exists when a person is director of two or more companies. Engaging in such conflicts of interest is simply corruption and we need to be getting rid of corruption and not supporting it.
And it’s not about being communist but about supporting ethical behaviour.
Be honest Draco you’d prefer to see NZ become a communist country
WTF has that got to do with the discussion of the ongoing corruption of our business community?
Robinson helicopters in NZ. How long have we heard reports about them not being used according to manufacturers instructions?
Decades? Now reports are official. The head of the firm is coming to NZ to see what our flyboys are doing to the reputation of his firm’s product.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/303171/nz-used-choppers-raise-crash-questions
Of course nothing to worry about officially. We don’t need regulations and bothersome checks, they just get in the way of doing business. (Like having OIA investigations instead of fast tracking the purchase of tracts of our land, 10 farms in Northland for $42 million, Lachlan? station for $82 million?)
We are slaphappy about everything these days, preferring to paper over the cracks, fill them with silly putty, say that makes me uncomfortable to families of dead workers, deny compensation to the injured, and generally make people afraid of eating bananas in case someone slips on a skin. At the end of the day, problems can be smoothed away with money or derision, and then it’s back to BAU.
Well, not everything. Beneficiaries are obviously all criminals and need to be made to pay.
/sarc
It is time we got back to the old slogan “Make love, not war.”
If having extra marital affairs was the worst thing that anyone did, life wouldn’t be so saddening. And with luck, no-one wiould be dead at the end.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/regional/303179/priest-stood-down-over-25-year-old-affairs
I had to shake my head at this stupidity…
And the traditional churches wonder why their attendances are declining.
http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/witness/2015/06/guantanamo-child-omar-khadr-150531111517474.html
13 years in the US American Gulag.
C’mon all yer senators and wanna be’s
let’s make US America Great Again.
A Canterbury man who flew a drone over a forest fire has been found guilty of breaching new Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) rules surrounding drone operation.
Good.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/regional/303198/man-found-guilty-on-drone-charges
Looks like John Key may have to chose between Whitney and Obama!!! 🙂
http://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/may/06/panama-papers-us-launches-crackdown-on-international-tax-evasion
He’ll side with the tax dodgers while making noises about clamping down on tax dodging.
And, of course, Obama hasn’t said anything about clamping down on internal tax evasion.
The Bailouts Were for the Banks: Study Confirms Rescue Loans Didn’t Serve Greeks
All of the bailouts since the start of the GFC have been to protect the rich from their own actions. Quite simply, the worlds wealthy should have become destitute back in 2008. Instead, the poor were taxed to prop up their failures.
Those failures continue today and the poor are still propping them up.
Crikey, Mediaworks being punished ??? or I am just being reactionary now?http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/303203/reserve-bank-bans-mediaworks-from-press-conferences
And a bloody good thing too.
They have a lock up before these announcements, and the budget as well, so that the media outlets can get a pre-release look at what is going to be announced. The purpose is to allow them time to understand what is going on so that they can comment accurately on what is being announced. No communication with anyone outside is allowed. Mediaworks ignored it, posted a draft article back to the office and the people there happily disseminated it.
That could have been an enormously valuable piece of news as they had early knowledge of an unexpected cut in the OCR.
I would kick them out of the pre-budget lock up as well. Stuff them.
But their a private company and SStephen Joyce has shares in it.
Everything in the business side is always better than public broadcasting.
Weldon was in charge he was the best boss ever a creative mind he sacked all the high paid journalists and put check out operators day labourers into the newsroom alwhynger,
I thought you would be right up their with Glucina.
“SStephen Joyce has shares in it”.
That is completely false. Why do you feel the need to lie about things like this?
For your education, although I do not expect you to remember, here is a bit of history.
Stephen Joyce founded Radio Works.
Radio Works was bought out completely with the new owner taking over 72% in May 2000 and the remaining 28% in January 2001. I believe it was a hostile takeover.
He has had no financial interest since that date. Clear?
The group of companies now called MediaWorks has gone through various restructurings, changes of ownership and receiverships but none of them have had anything to do with him.
To repeat. Why do you feel the need to lie about him?
From No right turn… What a joke!
A poor choice
David Cameron is holding an anti-corruption summit in London next week, aimed at “step[ping] up global action to expose, punish and drive out corruption in all walks of life”. New Zealand’s representative to this summit? Apparently its Judith Collins:
Surely not. Judith Collins picked to be NZ’s rep at David Cameron’s anti-corruption summit in London on 12 May? #Oravida
— David Shearer (@DavidShearerMP) April 23, 2016
This would be the same Judith Collins dubbed the “Minister of Corruption” over her dodgy Oravida dealings. Is John Key taking the piss, or did he take the title literally as an endorsement rather than a disqualification? Or did they just view the summit as an opportunity for someone to get a free taxpayer-funded holiday to London, and it was Collins’ turn at the trough? Either way, its a perfect sign of just how little National cares about corruption, tax evasion and international money-laundering, and how unlikely we are to see any real progress on tax cheating from them.
I think Irvine Welsh has kiind of nailed it.
4:01am
Labour were first replaced as party of the left in Scotland by SNP.
Now they are being replaced as party of the unionist right by Tories.
— Irvine Welsh (@IrvineWelsh) May 6, 2016
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/14474674.Live__Scottish_election_2016/
At the time of posting this, Labour have held one seat in Scotland and lost 4. (They’ll pick up more from the list seats)
The Tories have won two, which is double what they had.
Less than 1% separates Labour and the Tories with just under half of the vote in – 22.1 and 22.8% (if I’m reading things right).
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/ng-interactive/2016/may/05/uk-election-results-tracker-2016
Corbyn has nailed it here, talking about the media obsession (driven by Crosby Textor manipulation no doubt) with his leadership over the “grotesque inequality” we have to tolerate whilst the 1% continue to take from the rest of us, good man:
https://www.google.co.nz/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjuzsz8usTMAhUDoZQKHdOqATYQqQIIGzAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fpolitics%2Fvideo%2F2016%2Fmay%2F03%2Fjeremy-corbyn-media-are-obsessed-with-my-leadership-video&usg=AFQjCNFkt6g_PlBOm6UBOIKfE9wXzDnpsw&sig2=2d1cQ_LmHAUNIhcrd2Hbcw
We are lucky enough someone out there has exposed the corruption in the “Panama Papers” and Key’s response is to spend more millions on trying to prevent exposure of corruption, calling it “cyber crime” ……WHAT? who are you trying to kid Mr.Key? you do realise Planet Key is only pretend don’t you? We live on the same planet, and you do not need such wealth at our expense.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/auckland/79700027/auckland-beggars-breach-bylaws-up-to-900-times-a-month
So that’s 900 times some shopkeeper decides they don’t like the look of someone outside their shop?
FFS!
He wouldn’t know what a conflict of interest was if he fell over it!
Accepting donations from a Company and then accepting their free air travel and accommodation to go and pimp for them over and above similar NZ products is not a conflict of interest as an MP for NZ???
Whitney letter shows up in Panama Papers http://www.afr.com/news/politics/world/the-panama-papers-behind-mossack-fonsecas-secret-new-zealand-deals-20160506-gonstp
Looks like this shit is real now:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/79714914/the-panama-papers-new-zealand-link-revealed
Veteran cartoonist fired for pro-farmer, anti-Big Ag piece
https://www.rt.com/viral/341805-monsanto-veteran-cartoonist-fired/