Im not sure that we as a nation have much choice. If our FM toned down the rhetoric and we got ourselves off the Russian list of unfriendly nations could we really expect to be able to buy cheap Russian oil? We would then face sanctions ourselves.
Can we nationalise our oil and gas reserves? Would this be enough? As things stand at present the only real immediate answer is to understand that the resources in your country are now absolutely a nations primary source for survival. Even the aluminium smelter should now be looked at as a national resource as aluminium prices rise.
The extraordinary thing is that the US still seems to think that money has some sort of intrinsic value divorced from reality. They really seem to think that a nation that is a net energy exporter can be brought to its knees by cutting it off from Swift. It didnt work for Iran. With Russia it will blow up in their face.
Steering a path through this will be very challenging. We have already seen with covid how difficult national unity for the public good is but also that we are one of the better nations at getting this right. It really is time to start looking at what we can do for ourselves and our immediate neighbours in the Pacific. If we can get actual physical help from larger nations we should be prepared to look at it on a case by case basis. We don't indulge in continual hand wringing about US wars of aggression every time we engage with them and should be prepared to do the same with Russia and China in any offers of help in especially energy infrastructure. If we want pumped hydro, we could talk to them about help, or Russia or Iran to upgrade a nationalised Marsden Point? Its definitely time to think outside the box. We will need all the help we can get.
"We don't indulge in continual hand wringing about US wars of aggression every time we engage with them and should be prepared to do the same with Russia and China in any offers of help in especially energy infrastructure."
We engage in voluminous hand wringing about US wars of aggression particularly when we are asked to join them. As we should.
"If we want pumped hydro, we could talk to them about help, or Russia or Iran to upgrade a nationalised Marsden Point?"
For pumped hydro I would turn to Australian and Irish examples that have been operational for a while.
I certainly agree that this is asking the right questions about our own energy resilience at the right time.
Hearing Luxon this morning saying the "ute tax" will go because there are no current electric alternatives in-market is just folly.
Smart companies should use this war to price shifting their whole fleets much faster.
Companies like rentals, construction and taxis who are less oil dependent are going to be sitting pretty while the rest in their combustion engines are screaming.
It’s a brutal mechanism but 91 Petrol is the climate change lever we all need.
It would be a climate change mechanism if we all had the luxury of being able to afford to move over to electric, work local or from home. But most don't so the more likely scenario is an uplift in social unrest. Even Germany has been unable to resist the primacy of fossil fuel energy, the lack of which will drive right wing nationalism. If we don't come up with an immediate answer to rising fuel costs while we work on future energy shifts then it is likely that social cohesion will break down. Russia understands this and it is part of their decision process on why now is a good time. They may not have all the bells and whistles but will have the social cohesion that abundent energy resources bring. How are we going to mitigate this or are the recent scenes in Wellington just a gentle rehersal on the future?
Yes it will be the corporate fleets, taxis, local government, and central government Departments that will be able to put in orders for electric vehicles – which in turn starts a proper secondary market for the majority of New Zealanders. We still haven't seen enough government procurement support for this.
It was in 2019 that nearly 3% of the entire population of New Zealand marched up and down the country seeking much stronger action for climate change.
In May this year the full plan is supposed to come out that shows how we will fulfill that promise.
So May would be a really good time for those who want more to start preparing the kind of creative protest that got the 2021 tractor protest so much airtime.
If we get a petrol spike to $4 the political pressure from consumers to do less will be hard to resist – and that is when the government will need its supporters the most.
Absolute environmental madness for government to invest in whole fleets of electric vehicles, with all the carbon used to create them, when there are hundreds of thousands of good quality, serviceable vehicles, ripe for conversion.
If the money is there for a fleet, it's more than there to get deals on batteries, engines and motors and train the people to do it. If you want trickle down to affect us poor people, get the tech and process sorted and cheap enough for the countries top 10 best selling models by testing on the rich pricks and let us have at it. Got to better than waiting for new electric fleets to age, decay, and be passed on to the little people.
If you want to be all radical and revolutionary, you could keep it all in house and make parts with home grown aluminium from Tiwai, and when were done and gas free, mothball it.
I didn't realise it but apparently NZ was importing approx 15% of fuel from Russia this was almost totally oil for refining – with the refinery scheduled to close in April I would imagine forward contracts for refined fuel would already be in place I believe in my ferreting around that I saw that of our imports of fuel from Russia only about 1% was refined product. I would anticipate that our forward contracts for refined fuel would have barely included any from Russia – NZ will certainly be paying a lot more for it's fuel due to the international market conditions but any NZ ban on Russian product I think would be mainly symbolic. Any thoughts Ad?
I don't know enough about New Zealand fuel importing to comment specifically.
I do see though that we are going through a spike that will last at least as long as the Yom Kippur War, which started off the Muldoon government seeking as much energy independence as possible.
I want to see the petrol price rise debated in Parliament as soon as possible, so that Dr Woods can start revealing more plans than simply her confidence in forward contracts out of Singapore. The Comm Comm already went through the fuel company books two years ago and made fuck-all difference.
Pretty weird to see the future rushing at us when we're clearly not ready.
Government revenue from fuel excise is around 2 billion per year at an appropriate point politically they could announce a halving of the excise to "assist the country in dealing with the disruption caused by worldwide issues" or doubtlessly some better constructed phrase to maximise the political benefit of their actions cost 1 billion per annum.
Why not eliminate all the excise? Leave yourself the option so that you actually have an option.
When National demands all excise is removed …"but roading still has to be paid for and it is important for an element of the user paying to remain. Of course this remains an exercisable option if the international oil market……"
When the trucking lobby demands a subsidy for diesel costs….. " unfortunately in New Zealand the general public has been subsidising the trucking industry already for many years as the heavy transport industry does not and has not paid their fair share of roading costs. We are announcing a commission to investigate the fairest structure of revenue collection for roading costs going forward….."
Perhaps a levy on all new and used imports with solely ICE power and apply that levy to subsidise new and used electric and hybrid vehicle imports.
Perhaps embracing Efeso Collins plan for free public transport in Auckland – reducing the congestion costs to the economy in Auckland and the reduction in costs for the less well off would likely make it a winner from the economic point of view.
The government is hopefully looking at ideas like these as well as better measures thought of by people well paid to develop them.
Ad at sparrow fart: “We’re now in an inflation v morality war”
Money trumps morality. That's capitalism.
Michael Hudson has written a sobering article on the economic consequences of recent events
Empires often follow the course of a Greek tragedy, bringing about precisely the fate that they sought to avoid. That certainly is the case with the American Empire as it dismantles itself in not-so-slow motion.
The basic assumption of economic and diplomatic forecasting is that every country will act in its own self-interest. Such reasoning is of no help in today’s world. Observers across the political spectrum are using phrases like “shooting themselves in their own foot” to describe U.S. diplomatic confrontation with Russia and allies alike.
There will be no transition, to many people are addicted to this life style.
I'm with those who say there will be a complete breakdown of the current system by 2030. We are fast running out of the ability to maintain this stupidity.
Well unsustainable policy from the government ie policy for biofuels was one of the main contributing factor in the food riots and arab spring.Here it was the underlying forcing beneath speculative bubbles and bursts.
“The Sustainable Biofuels Mandate will prevent around one million tonnes of emissions from cars, trucks, trains and ships over the next three years and up to 10 million tonnes by 2035 to help us meet our climate commitments.
Three weeks in and we're so short of nurses that we are now talking about having covid positive nurses back on wards, on the same day we're told that rest during infection is the best way to avoid long covid… doesnt make much sense does it, basically asking nurses to take an even bigger risk in sacrificing their long term health.
Perhaps we should be asking those unvaxxed nurses if they'd like to come back to work please…
Healthcare Workers Are 7 Times More Likely To Develop Severe COVID-19
Why Healthcare Workers Are at Higher Risk
It likely comes down to exposure, Richard Watkins, MD, an infectious disease physician and and associate professor of internal medicine at the Northeast Ohio Medical University, tells Verywell. Healthcare workers have “higher levels of viral exposure” and are “in close contact with infected patients,” he points out.
It certainly poses some questions about 'sense.' Just like making sense of unvaxxed nurses.
They'd be administering medication to patients and carrying out procedures with the air of, "Trust me, I know what I'm doing. Trust me, I know exactly what's in this, how it was arrived at, all about the company that made it, and how your body is going to respond to it."
Much like you when you used your computer just now. Vast knowledge of computer science, physics, math, and micro-engineering. Or would you even turn it on – dilemma!
That post was unclear at best. I did ponder, after my ten minutes was up, if I'd interpreted it wrong.
I agree. Unvaxed nurses have no place in hospitals or any public facing role. But we all know the cliche by now, unprecedented times, aye.
We don't see it, but if you talk to public facing medical workers, it's really hard and has been for some time. Not just the increased work and work requirements, but the increase in crazy they're having to deal with. Putting unvaxed colleagues in that environment adds insult to injury.
If by crazy, you mean: othering, simplifying complex issues with pejoratives, deliberate misrepresenting of someone’s position then hell yes. Off the scale.
So rather than contribute to the discussion we have this non sequitur.
Why do you think it would be a good policy to employ unvaccinated nurses in front facing roles?
I agree. Unvaxed nurses have no place in hospitals or any public facing role. But we all know the cliche by now, unprecedented times, aye.
We don't see it, but if you talk to public facing medical workers, it's really hard and has been for some time. Not just the increased work and work requirements, but the increase in crazy they're having to deal with. Putting unvaxed colleagues in that environment adds insult to injury.
How are unvaccinated nurses supposed to function effectively and with the respect of their colleagues when they are not taking basic steps to protect themselves and others?
Crazy is all the ideas around for not having the vaccinations that are based on 'woo' and not medical reasons. I have absolutely no problem with people not having the vaccination if it is medically advised not to. Asking us to respect a decision based on
'doan wanna'
is a bit much.
Then there are the multitude of CTs that are advanced to 'rationalise/justify' a decision. Why do you defend these and tried to shift the opprobrium onto those who call them out? ie call them out by commonplace references, shorthand to the type of thinking behind them.
I am sure that if I had made up my mind not to have the vax for medical purposes or because I was troubled by the mRNA aspect there is no way in the world I would be allying myself with people whose reasons are because of 5G trackers, magnets, Aids or Covid giving especially if my concerns were related to the mRNA aspect. We have alternatives to this now.
You obviously did not read my reply to your previous posts about people being nasty, according to you. Plus another from me and one from Incognito
Until the vaccines were available, medical staff around the globe developed protocols to minimise infection.
We need to balance the success of such protocols against the need for medical personnel.
(Don't have either of those factors quantified, but I think that's the question that should be asked, and re-asked, as demand grows and available medical resources/personnel dwindle).
It's actually a pretty good analogy – any numpty can turn on a computer and work a desktop with a given margin for error, just like any numpty can change sheets or bandage a wound with a given margin for error.
But managing an ICU bed? Knowing when to call a doctor before all the alarms start going off? Administering drugs properly, recognising errors or drug interactions that dr and pharmacy might have missed? With someone who feels they can pick and choose which protocols they should follow because their own research overrules the specialist guidelines?
Yeah, that's like a computer progammer who thinks a b-tree is the only way to store data or insists on using deprecated library modules. Sooner or later it will end in tears.
i commented here a while ago that they should never have terminated nurses employment for not being vaxxed. I made some suggestions about how these nurses might be redeployed to non contact roles, freeing up other nurses to be on the front line.
I think the situation is so desperate for nurses now, the unvaxxed should be re-instated and have daily rapid anti gen testing before and even during shifts. Many of these nurses will be youngish and fit and probably won't get omicron badly, then will recover. Given nurses with covid are needed to continue to keep the hospitals functioning, what difference is it going to make having an unvaxxed nurse working?
I think the situation is so desperate for nurses now, the unvaxxed should be re-instated and have daily rapid anti gen testing before and even during shifts
RAT inaccuracy during the early days of infection heightens the risk of having having infectious staff working.
Hosted by the University of Auckland, it formed to coordinate experts with a grasp of the science of complexity, to provide insights into how it elucidates the interactions between ourselves and our world.
Here's an example of how it demonstrates relevance:
"All of the people who are part of [New Zealand's misinformation community] are now proposing and promoting a very pro-Kremlin content frame. The second-greatest signature when the protest was on – which is quite extraordinary really, when you think about it – apart from what was happening in front of the Beehive, was Ukraine."
Sanjana Hattotuwa, who monitors more than 100 Telegram channels and dozens of Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and Twitter accounts run by New Zealand's motley anti-vax movement on a daily basis for Te Pūnaha Matatini, told Newsroom the rapid emergence of Ukraine as a major narrative is like nothing he's seen before.
"RT News has distribution channels on Telegram, which are in the hundreds of thousands, and it has a global ecology that amplifies it to hundreds of thousands more," Hattotuwa said.
These intertwined disinformation and misinformation networks have also formed something of an ouroboros, with the Russian government now amplifying conspiracy theories from the QAnon and anti-vax fringe on its own official channels.
For example, a conspiracy theory which falsely posits Russia invaded Ukraine to take out US-run bioweapons labs developing the next pandemic pathogen is being embraced by Russia. On Monday, Russia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs tweeted that Russian forces had found evidence of a "military-biological programme" financed by the United States Department of Defense.
Ecology is the study of the relationships between living organisms, including humans, and their physical environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community, ecosystems, and biosphere level.
The word "ecology" ("Ökologie") was coined in 1866 by the German scientist Ernst Haeckel, and it became a rigorous science in the late 19th century.
So whereas economics provides a world-view based on money, ecology gives us a world-view based on how nature works. That's why politics and governance is based on economics. The political left & right have always agreed that money is more important than nature – which is why Green politics had to be neither left nor right.
Memes are catchy, and informational memes aren't necessarily more contagious than disinformational memes. Social media is an encompassing arena containing a multitude of component social ecosystems (networks) made vibrant via the interflow of infectious memes. As self-organising systems, these will learn to moderate the toxic effects of disinfo to ensure collective survival and health. Or they won't, and will either die or get warped by an uncontrolled infection.
So you can see how social media challenges us to transcend the habitual prioritisation of economics in our political focus, lest we get taken out by toxic invader memes. Just another form of pollution to worry about…
Of course they are. They've got their heads so far up their own asses their only means of taking in information is if it is diametrically opposed to common narrative.
It's all about leadership.
We have been lucky to have a government we can trust during the pandemic. In my opinion, more than anything else majority trust in the leadership of New Zealand's Left of Centre government has helped keep this country's death rate from covid-19 relatively low.
Those MIGs from Poland (all of Poland's MIGs) are going to get delivered to Ukraine. A couple of dozen or more. They gave them to US so US can deliver them thereby fudging the rules around NATO involvement?
I'm not sure Putin's going to see Poland as an innocent party here. But really, screw that guy.
The extended 60-kilometre parade of Russian armoured vehicles, tanks and towed artillery headed from the north on a path towards Kyiv has both alarmed and befuddled watchers of this expanding war. It's not just its sheer size. It's also because that for days, it has not appreciably been moving.
US officials attribute the apparent stall in part to logistical failures on the Russian side, including as a result of food and fuel shortages, that have slowed Moscow's advance through various parts of the country.
“Our assessment is that it's largely meant for resupply – but I can't rule out that there aren't combat vehicles,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said Monday. “We can't even say that it's all one convoy and not several.”
Still, the convoy's progress – or lack thereof – continues to capture popular fascination, thanks to a steady stream of satellite images and video recorded and disseminated by Maxar Technologies, a space technology and intelligence company.
The images have put the business of tracking Russian supply lines, normally the occupation of secretive government agencies, into the public sphere, making them staples of TV news broadcasts and inspiring armchair generals around the world to offer their advice on how to attack the column.
Stuck or stopped? And if stopped why stopped? First, a stopped convoy of this size shows the absolute dominance in the air and on the land of Russian forces. Second, a stopped convoy of this size demonstrates a possible destructive scenario while allowing those that want to leave to do so. The more people that leave the city, the more likely either surrender without fighting or at least fighting that lessens civilian casualties.
Transcript of that part of the interview where the Labour MP apparently says that the definition of ‘woman’ changes depending on which legislation you are referring to at the time 🤡
Currently watching documentary series available on Youtube: Dysphoria
‘Dysphoric’ is a four-part documentary series on the rise of Gender Identity Ideology, its effects on women and girls – especially in developing countries. Synopsis: In this dystopian world where misogyny is rampant, and womanhood is commodified, being female comes at a cost. Corporates capitalise on women's bodies blurring the lines of biological sex, and profiting from the emperically untested pseudo-science of queer theory. This gaslighting is aided by the complicity of media, academia, legal and the political world. It is no surprise that young girls are fleeing womanhood like a house on fire. The past decade has seen a steep rise in the number of young girls seeking to transition by undergoing life threatening, irreversible procedures. ‘Dysphoric’ is a four-part documentary series on the rise of Gender Identity Ideology, its effects on women and girls – especially in developing countries. The film explores gender transition, the permanent medical side-effects of hormones and surgeries, the propaganda by 'woke' corporations that glorifies thousands of stereotypical gender presentations coalesced as fashion, a surge in pronoun policing; language hijacking that calls women ‘menstruators’, and the many hurdles women face while trying to question this modern-day misogyny.
The film amplifies the voices of detransitioners, clinicians, psychiatrists, sociologists, feminists, academics and concerned citizens.
‘Dysphoric’ was made over the course of a year during COVID lockdown, amid cancellations.
Satire in regards to this issue had a double radical masectomy, a hysterectomy, a vagina ectomy and now is waiting for an leg meat roll to be sewn onto their pubic bone so as no longer be the thing that men don't want to define, but believe any man can be.
I can't read that, it's locked, so I don't know the details of his argument. But why is it astonishing? Someone born female no longer wishes to be identified as such but hasn't had surgery. Continuing to call that person a woman is wrong, imo.
It's an issue because as a result of the ideology, women are now being called cervix havers, even when we don't want to be and when it harms us (think public health campaigns like cervical screening removing the word 'woman' from their material. Not all women know what a cervix is, or English is their second language, so this creates barriers for women who need clear communication around their bodies. It's fucked up to have to be even explaining this).
Trans women and trans men's needs can be met in various ways without dehumanising women (females). Only female bodied people have a cervix, the word we generally use to refer to those people is women. Not wanting to be called a woman is fine, wanting to change the language and concepts of a whole class of people so you can cope or feel included isn't when that class of people object on the basis of their own oppression and wellbeing.
The only way Starmer is right is if the word woman has no meaning. Hence 🤡 MP above.
yep and when that person then dies of cervical cancer because they pretended to be a man than that is just oops. to bad?
You can identify as humpty dumpty, but that does not make you a twin egg in striped trousers.
And the male who had his penis/scrotum inverted into something resembling a 'vulva' and who needs to daily dilate his 'vagina' hole in order to keep depth and keep the hole open – after all their male body wants to shut and heal that hole- does not have a cervix. At the end of the ‘vagina’ hole he has some penile left over tissue or some intestinal tissue. Non of that is a cervix, as that part of the female body has a very clear reason for being. Namely keeping the uterus sterile and being able to open up to let a baby be born.
That man would never die of cervical cancer, but he would still die of penile cancer if he were unlucky enough to get it.
But yes, it is so unkind to pretend that a women on T does not have a cervix, and if it kills them.
edit: https://inews.co.uk/news/long-reads/ian-duncan-deputy-speaker-house-lords-interview-brother-died-ovarian-cancer-1125221
this is actually a rather sad article, but his brother died not because the language is not correct, but because his brother deluded themselves into thinking that they changed ‘sex’ which sadly they did not. They changed the outside of their bodies, and that was that. A lot of surgery and a lot of T but still a women, and killed by a disease that only women have.
So to some extend you could say that kindness kills transpeople.
and it's worth pointing out the long and horrendous history women have of medical mistreatment via sexism and misogyny, we have bloody good reasons for not giving up our hard won rights or our right to name ourselves in the way that is necessary for us.
"Continuing to call that person a woman is wrong, imo."
Continuing to call that person a 'woman' is factually correct. If we wish to respect that persons wishes by calling them a 'woman' on a personal level, we can do so if we wish. But changing the meaning of a word that defines the reality for the vast majority of adult female humans actually demeans their identity.
I think the solution for public health campaigns is for trans people to politically organise and come up with an overarching term that will include TM, NB females, and any of the other identities, so then we can say "women and [new term] people need to get a cervical smear every three years" or whatever.
(There’s an unclarity here because if we say ‘trans people’ then you get a subset of trans women wanting cervical smears so they feel like a woman despite them not having a cervix (the affirmation need or demand). In some cases there is an medical access issue to sort out, and there’s also a colonisation issue to resolve societally, where some trans women’s wants are unreasonable eg having fake pregnancies and wanting to be part of ante-natal women’s groups)
The problem remains of how to engage with a class of people (trans men) around their female bodies when they have dysphoria to an extent that they cannot tolerate reference to female bodies. This is a separate issue that needs addressing, and shouldn't be used to remove women's language and concepts.
works real well, is explicit in its meaning and need not to be created.
We have accurate language to name things. We just have a group that wants to remove any meaning of he word women and associated functions with that, i.e. the word Mother.
This is a removal of rights from women, to all of their rights they won over the last centuries, down to he 'are they actual humans'.
women, trans men, non-binary, genderfluid, third gender, etc
I think three categories is too many for good public health messaging. It's also clunky. Given this is primarily and identity issue, coining a new term that makes it easy to include people with a gender identity makes sense to me, and keeps things simple.
Transmen and female non binary are sub categories of women.
Transwomen and male non binary are sub categories of men.
Everything else is porkies, and so far these porkies are killing trans/non binary people by witholding hte truth from them. Namely that they can not, ever – with todays medical advances – change their sex. That means transmen can get pregnant, can die of cervical, ovarian, uterine cancers, and transwomen can die of penile, testicular and prostate cancer. Cause in the end biology don't have any fucks to give about our need to be kind to the point of killing people thanks to lies.
It also means that children who grow up trans( puperty blockers, wrong sex hormones, castration, neo vag and leg/arm roll penis surgeries) have all the issues their sexed bodies have, minus the reproduction facilities, issues with arousal/orgasms etc. But it would not be kind to talk honestly about these issues.
As confronting as some might find what you state – I agree with it all.
To allow the words relating to biological sex to be appropriated so as to be meaningless is more than problematic, it is deliberate obfuscation and gaslighting.
Seemingly, 'small' concessions will often have large repercussions. This adoption of alternative language definitions has already shown itself to be one of those instances.
Sorry my first sentence should have read "Continuing to call that person a 'woman' is factually incorrect."
I am more than happy to call a man who identifies as a woman 'she' at a personal and voluntary level. But official recognition of that term is not only a delusion of biological reality, it is to demean biological women.
As you have pointed out, the problem is the ideological results that matter. The reaction to simple statements of fact by JKR is a case in point.
If I wanted to be identified as an idiot, and if I asked you to call me an idiot, then you would be welcome to. But equally, not being an idiot, calling me one would still be factually incorrect.
i commented here a while ago that they should never have terminated nurses employment for not being vaxxed. I made some suggestions about how these nurses might be redeployed to non contact roles, freeing up other nurses to be on the front line.
I think the situation is so desperate for nurses now, the unvaxxed should be re-instated and have daily rapid anti gen testing before and even during shifts. Many of these nurses will be youngish and fit and probably won't get omicron badly, then will recover. Given nurses with covid are needed to continue to keep the hospitals functioning, what difference is it going to make having an unvaxxed nurse working?
Anker, I have recently come out of hospital after elected surgery. I would have been horrified to learn there were unvaccinated nurses in the building. At a time when the country is still to reach its Omicron peak, it is not the time to ease up on current policies. There are other ways that hospitals can reduce the effect of nursing shortages. The obvious one which I expect most are adopting is to cease all elective and other non urgent medical surgeries. My surgery was delayed 15 months due to Covid but I fully accepted there was no alternative.
Once we are tracking back downward which is hopefully only some 2 or 3 weeks away, then it could be appropriate to reconsider employing unvaccinated people but not now.
I have relatives in the Defence Force that were working in the MIQ facilities.
The number of nurses at one such facility was 26, for an MIQ capacity of 50.
They spent all day there, occasionally performing a COVID test. Times that waste of medical resources by the 80 MIQ facilities and you should then reasonably be asking – Could this be handled more efficiently?
This government could have – and still could – do better at allocating medical resources.
Oh yes, the government was caught with its pants down. But of course the current situation has been many years in the making and, as others have pointed out, you can't train nurses overnight.
I think it can be said of most governments whatever their stripes… there is nothing like a full scale emergency to expose the inherent weakness of some government policies.
Firstly Anne, I am very glad you got your surgery and I hope it has gone well.
I have proposed that unvaxxed nurses could be re-deployed to non contact roles and that would involve working from home on secure tele health platforms.
There may come a time when the choice is having covid and being treated with an unvaxxed nurse who has had a RATs test (20% chance of false negatives). Or not getting treatment. Of course if you are in hospital with Covid, then you already have it.
I am very puzzled as to whether people think that a vaxxed nurse who has tested positive but is symptomless or has very mild symptoms should be allowed to work versus an unvaxxed nurse with a RAT test who has tested negative.
I have proposed that unvaxxed nurses could be re-deployed to non contact roles and that would involve working from home on secure tele health platforms.
It would depend entirely on the reason why they are unvaxxed. If its because they are immunocompromised in some way then your idea is an excellent one. In fact it wouldn't surprise me if its happening in some locations already.
But if they are unvaxxed because they have disappeared down rabbit holes then it is a different story. By the very nature of their poor choice I would not want to see any nurse or doctor who has rejected Covid vaccinations on spurious or conspiratorial grounds being associated with a medical practice of any kind.
I know there are others with a different view, but I don’t believe there is any room for compromise on the matter of Covid vaccinations.
"Accurate, targeted counter-messaging from the global health community is important but insufficient, as is public pressure on social-media companies. The United Nations and the highest levels of governments must take direct, even confrontational, approaches with Russia, and move to dismantle anti-vaccine groups in the United States.
Efforts must expand into the realm of cyber security, law enforcement, public education and international relations. A high-level inter-agency task force reporting to the UN secretary-general could assess the full impact of anti-vaccine aggression, and propose tough, balanced measures. The task force should include experts who have tackled complex global threats such as terrorism, cyber attacks and nuclear armament, because anti-science is now approaching similar levels of peril. It is becoming increasingly clear that advancing immunization requires a counteroffensive."
Some really awesome high-calibre Māori reached out to me over summer.
– Chris Luxon
Just shooting off at the mouth like he did in the boardroom of Air NZ. Sad thing is this kind of phrasing will go down well with the political right because to them it shows his high aspiration for all Maori to be “high calibre”. This kind of unthinking corp-speak highlights Luxon’s inexperience.
Some comments:
"What the f**k is 'high calibre' Maori? Are you saying the rest are low calibre?" one person asked.
"Just another awkward or demeaning comment from Luxon. WTF are 'high-calibre Māori'? I suspect they are Māori people who have tertiary educations and own multiple houses," another said.
"What constitutes a high calibre Māori, Mr luxon we need the criteria now," someone else said.
Should have said people, and further down the article he tries to explain that's what he meant.
If that's what he meant then why not just say that?
It was a rookie error and a telling slip. Thankfully highlighted by social media and now media.
Probably what he actually meant was wealthy, successful National-voting Maori because to Chris, wealth, success and voting National go hand in hand. While poor, unsuccessful people vote Labour.
But they must have been very Big Guns being such High Calibre.
Mind you what more could one expect coming from an ex CEO of Air NZ where the whole culture and emphasis of the organisation (probably as a result of its ex CEO) is focused on bowing and scraping its "elite" customers.
Sorry Mutton but I can't agree. As a non-journalist, my first question to someone who said "high-calibre people" would be to ask him to describe what low-calibre people are like. Is he talking about early proto-hominids and have we just time-travelled into a 19th Century anthropology lecture?
But calibre, of course, is just one measure in the analogy. I, for example, would be more of a medium calibre low velocity pakeha with a progressive left-hand twist in my lands and grooves.. .
If you replace 'maori' with women, pacifica, people etc. would it cause a similar amount of angst ?
It would be exactly the same for me. Firstly, "awesome, high-calibre" is dickhead corporate language that means fuck all, and represents a clunky, transparent attempt to connect with 'average' people, who are incapable of thinking precisely and therefore beneath one; if he actually thinks it does mean something (which is not to be ruled out), then it's even worse, because it shows that he has trouble distinguishing between the content of his thoughts and the meaning of the words he is uttering. Secondly, regardless of the minority group he is referring to, it implicitly divides that minority group up into the worthy and the unworthy, and exudes the arrogant assumption that he is a fitting arbiter of which is which; it throws up the question as to whether he would even have bothered listening to their ideas if they hadn't met his worthiness criteria. That is the sort of call one can make on the fly if one is just a person on the street; less so if one is aspiring to govern a nation for all of its diverse people.
If he were talking about members of what he considered to be the dominant group in society, the connotations would be slightly different, but there's no real need to go into that here.
You have to actually read the whole article Mutton.
"On an annual basis, national price increases had slowed to 22.9 per cent in February, down from 26.8 per cent the month before."
So, contrary to the misleading framing of the statistics, house prices have gone up an incredible 22.9% from prices that were already mindlessly high a year ago.
There is a constant theme in the media to pretend that house prices are falling when the opposite is true which I don't understand-any theories out there?
What's starting to shock me is how this governments rhetoric has changed.
When asked about a problem this government used to say it would be looking into it and commited to fixing /changing the problem coming off as flexible and reactive if there was a crisis they would admit there was a crisis
Nowadays, the government gets defensive, point blank refuses to answer questions and gets into debates about the wording or definition of the problem and refuses to accept things are a problem. Instead of comiting to change or looking into something it usually lists why they can't do anything on x y z.
This is becoming an issue. They are becoming the can't, shan't , won't party.
Take for instance the cost of living crisis it's clear we're in one and have been in one for some time instead of saying yes it's a crisis because of global issues and we're going to try to address some of these in the budget to soften the blow the pm rejects the word crisis.
Or tax brackets. Tax brackets haven't been adjusted for 12 years, NZs tax system is broken and unfair and focuses far too much on sucking money out of the bottom, tax bracket creep is hurting people many min wage workers are wrongly about to be put in higher tax brackets, a reactive, flexible, energetic government would commit to adjusting tax brackets, it would be popular, instead the government rules out doing so with no argument. Too hard. Meanwhile the opposition commits to do doing so, keys govt would have blunted this by comiting to adjusting them Labour just scoffs. This is going to hurt them.
The government is coming off as tired and stuck in their ways and with some severely hard times coming up this winter problems on tax, housing,rents, fuel,food are falling on death ears it doesn't seem to care about a third term.
They could at the very least adjust tax brackets and drop gst to pre key levels of about 10% to line it up with Australias gst and to offset the 5% inflation.
I fear the govt is walking into its own winter if discontent. I'm not sure if it's arrogance or being captured by their ministries or just plane out of touch but there refusal to even admit problems or commit to simple changes is a big problem and they seem more like a fourth term govt than a govt in it's fifth year.
They desperately need a cabinet shake up and to start reading the room and getting back to a can do govt before the country sees them as out of touch and a govt of can't , shan't won't
I was thinking the same thing. The emerging denial is very john key – like. Jk always denied a housing crisis, inequality crisis and child poverty etc… Labour now starting to sound the same.
The authorities of the Republic of Poland, after consultations between the President and the Government, are ready to deploy – immediately and free of charge – all their MIG-29 jets to the Ramstein Air Base and place them at the disposal of the Government of the United States of America.
At the same time, Poland requests the United States to provide us with used aircraft with corresponding operational capabilities. Poland is ready to immediately establish the conditions of purchase of the planes.
The Polish Government also requests other NATO Allies – owners of MIG-29 jets – to act in the same vein.
They gotta have plausible deniability. Use an anonymous middleman is the usual way to finesse this situation. Poland gives planes to X while receiving replacements from Y (USA or agent). X gets planes to Ukraine AF.
Money talks so offer the deal to sympathetic govts for an enable fee. All you need is a team of trained-up pilots. If they are two-seaters, an experienced co-pilot could advise a trainee who is experienced with different planes.
. If they are two-seaters, an experienced co-pilot could advise a trainee who is experienced with different planes.
And spend a couple of hundred hours obtaining a type rating in an aircraft travelling at more than twice the speed of sound with an unrefuelled range of 3,000km or so. Nah.
Young guns rise to such challenges! Anyone serious about helping Ukraine will have to use lateral thinking to finesse the mental blocks erected by old guys controlling the various hierarchies. History shows us this is how such challenges usually get dealt with. Forget business as usual and the bureaucratic slowdowns it normally imposes…
Poland has good quality Mig 29's Ukraine has more than enough people experienced in flying those planes but they would have none experienced in flying US manufactured planes like the F16
So, JKR rightfully uses her institutionally and societally gifted power to talk the feminism she wants. I on the other hand am dropping IWD tweets in OM because I know that if I put up any of this as a post I will suffer social sanctions that unlike JKR I cannot afford, and today I don't have the spoons for it.
That's fucked up. And this is why feminists call JKR a queen.
It's hard enough writing as feminist in this very blokey space, as an author and/or as a commenter, for a range of reasons to do with society and the culture of TS in particular. No Debate and the sex/gender war make it actually risky. Many women cannot even express an opinion using their real life names because of fear of real life sanctions.
We're losing ground. Women, and society. Half of the left doesn't know what we're talking about and the other half thing we're bigots for demanding that being female is an actual thing and that it matters. It's imperative we find ways to name what is happening.
Here's Suzanne Moore,
As a feminist, though, I would indeed like the world to be a better place for women – and by the world, I don’t mean north London or a campus in California; I mean Herat, Tigray, Guatemala. For all the arguments about equality for women amount to nothing if we lose an international perspective. Feminism is global, or it is simply an exercise in consumer power dressed up as politics. That is exactly what happened to Western feminism in the 1990s, when everything from brunching to boob jobs was “empowering”.
If International Women’s Day means anything, it means facing up to what is happening to women everywhere. We have gone backwards, not forwards. The pandemic is part of this, but not the only factor.
…
In short, without a continual fight, no headway is made. The biggest surprise to me, though, has been that the backlash against feminism has come not from the Right, but from the Left. The whole inflated debate around trans issues is so often not about the small number of people who are gender dysphoric, and need care and dignity; it is about the rights of women to keep what we already have. It has produced an avalanche of repulsive misogyny.
The new religion of gender identity (is it a soul, an essence, a made-up concept?) has meant a fundamental denial of women’s experience: menstruation, birth, breastfeeding, menopause. These are not feelings in ladies’ heads, but things that happen to real bodies. As does rape, objectification, FGM, as well as all the societal expectations women deal with on a daily basis.
Which is the point of all that exercise. Achieve 'equality' by dismantling it, calling for 'equity' and thus a fonterra board with 6 male and 6 transwomen or male non binaries or male gender fluids or any made up woo woo is suddenly not a 100% male board.
Have a womans team comprised of only transwomen. ! Equity!
Have transwomen dilute the women pool on women lists, jobs awards etc. And in the end, have these same trans identified males who appropriate womanhood make rules under which things who can no longer be named have to live.
I don't think many of the things who can no longer be named have thoughts about the practical implications, or for those in academia with government jobs maybe they believe that they will not be affected by the shit storm that is about to rain down on us.
The Ferengi Nation comes to mind. Womb rental and all.
Weka, I so endorse all you are saying………..I have been surprized how gender ideology has captured so many, especially the media, the public service, a raft of other organisations and The Labour and Green Parties.
Debate is shut down, people are called bigots and transphobes, lesbian woman tresspassed from Pride last year and had the police called to enforce the tresspass.
I spoke out recently on a group I am a member of FB page and had my post cancelled. I was drawing attention to the 25,000 detransitioners on Reddit. I know many in the group agree with me, but were too scared to speak up. One had previously spoken up and the gender ideologues rang their employee and they nearly lost their job……………..
We are close to a time where we will no longer be able to speak up without risking hate speech laws being used against us. This is the work of the left (whom I have always been aligned with)
An ideology empowered by leftists driven by pc is how I'd frame it (from my observer position). Viewing the situation with the lens of civil rights, the solution seems achievable via solidarity based on accurate identification of minority rights. Then traditional organising, using leverage & framing in a lobby group. Then, if necessary a class action.
Sharing aspirations is usually how such things originate – often combined with a common grievance based on perception of injustice. Then defining the common interest shared, then using that definition to construct a political action group. Keep membership rules simple, making it easy to join. Voluntary leadership by activists originates – then things get tricky (elections may be necessary at a critical threshold).
So best to focus on getting such a movement up & running. Success will be proportion to numbers joining in the origin phase. Recruitment based on networking, likemindedness. The pool is adult women, the pitch is non-partisan, so the only design challenge is framing. That must address the threat to civil rights. The learning curve will probably lie around what social factors insulate some women from seeing the problem. Incentives to shift their view have to be used in the framing.
Being uninvolved I offer this summary of technique due to a personal history of similar experiential situations & learning curves. Plus altruism.
Viewing the situation with the lens of civil rights, the solution seems achievable via solidarity based on accurate identification of minority rights.
I have a horrible feeling you are meaning natal women.
The minority is the transwomen community.
Many women would happily help them find a place, develop policies where they are no discriminated against that does not involve natal women having their rights and born identity sidelined.
Agree that was why I was curious as to who the people with minority rights were that Dennis mentioned. It surely could not be women as figures show that depending on when the count is taken we make up usually slightly more or very slightly less than 50% and in some age groups are the majority.
Agree that transwomen are transwomen, and are also men and transmen are transmen and are also women.
There is a lot of wool over eyes pulling and sleight of hand that brings to mind sayings of my youth 'I'm not as green as I am cabbage-looking, meaning, “I may look new to this, but I'm not.” and 'I did not come down in the last shower' used to indicate that someone is not foolish or gullible
When it is looked at simplyI wonder why more men are not coming out against this word twisting.
The concept that transwomenhood is a male rights agenda seems to explain this.
Scientists in the Netherlands therefore analyzed data on 31,118 patients who received red blood cell transfusions from 2005 to 2015. Most of the donors (88 percent) were male; 6 percent were women who had been pregnant at least once (regardless of outcome), and 6 percent were women who had not been, according to the national blood supply agency, Sanquin. The sex imbalance is because men are allowed to donate blood more often than women and because donations from women with an unknown pregnancy history were excluded from the analysis.
Recipients, ages 42 to 77, were followed for a median of 245 days. Within that time, 3,969, or 13 percent of recipients, died, Sanquin’s Rutger Middelburg and colleagues reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The risk of dying was about the same after getting blood from a man or a never-pregnant women, regardless of the recipient’s sex. But every unit of blood that a man got from a woman who had been pregnant raised his chance of dying 13 percent.
Far be it for a male to presume to answer that. All I can offer is suggestions! On that limited basis, my answer would hew to the simple formula of women who care enough to work together to solve the problem.
That said, I know it gets complicated. The formula of ready, willing and able is a good one to apply if those complaining about the situation default into assuming that they ought to solve it. Not all such people are willing. Some will be unable (due to personal circumstances such as prior commitments or disabilities). Some may want to help but are currently unready to do so.
So what tends to happen is a zeitgeist effect – all those who synch into the same collective space/time/attitude are the right ones!
Shifting from the generic to the particular, I wonder if it is appropriate to frame it as feminism with a number attached – to invoke the power of tradition. The new number defines progress as the agenda. So it becomes automatically progressive! This framing device works on a mutual recognition basis. Only viable if feminism as ideology is seen as non-toxic in essence by the majority of women, I suspect, and I can't comment on that issue…
thanks for clarifying, I wasn't quite sure what you meant.
There's an awesome grassroots feminist movement in the UK that we've not seen the like of in many a decade. Very heartening. It's arisen because of the impact on women's rights from gender ideology movements, and it's making good progress both in organising and in political gains. Some women have paid a hefty price with jobs, careers, abuse, and police attention.
In NZ there is that potential, but I don't know what the deal is with activism in NZ now. We all seem to be in a holding pattern of some sort (not just women).
Re naming, feminism is a good term on its own. Feminism has always had disagreement and different branches. For clarity currently we can talk about radical feminism, liberal feminism, 2nd and 3rd wave, gender critical feminism and so on.
If this wave is too amorphous to define as yet, then it will eventually crest. That means the time is ripe for those who seek to ride it. Doing so would be the best way to give it collective identity & form…
I must say this appealed to me…..Am I wrong to see it as a men's rights group?
The strategies, bulldozing through, sidelining those who disagree, wanting an end result that comes about by force of will rather than discussion, seem more like stereotypic male thinking.
I think that some of the most vociferous on this topic (irrespective of gender identity), are misogynists who have found a new publicly and politically sanctioned way to harass and harm women.
The failure to recognise and reprimand such actions harms both women and transgender people.
I am not sure why non misogynistic men are not coming out in support of women. Or is the loyalty of a man to a fellow man greater than their loyalty to fairness.
Mind you it is a brave man who will stand with women.
'A number of New Zealand’s leading male politicians, including John Hall, Robert Stout, Julius Vogel, William Fox and John Ballance, supported women’s suffrage'.
Why yes Virginia, that is exactly what they are. 🙂 And they enjoy every it every bit.
It never ceases to amuse me that some people really believe that the men of the right and the left are not driven by the exact same misogyny. It is just couched in different terms, but the end effect is the same.
Transgenderism/Trans ideology is misogyny. Pure and unadulterated.
Gender Non Conforming Men are not broken beings that need to be shoved into womens places, pretending to be women to the point where they get to dictate women how to women. And that is MRA in the nutshell. They are men.
You are putting words in my mouth that i don't say. I would like you to consider this for a moment.
Maybe it is not what i said that is the issue but how you interpretate it. I am not even considering William "lia' Thomas as a 'MRA', even tho he benefits greatly from the MRA that comes with TRA.
You can not seperate the MAN from Trans. Otherwise they would be women and then we would not have this issue to talk about.
Gender Non conforming men are not the fault of women and are not a problem for women. They should be an issue for Men and Men should be accomodating them in the male spaces, jobs, awards, and changing rooms. And in fact, i would venture a guess where Michael "lia' Thomas to be the 420 ranked swimmer in the Mens as an out and proud transwomen he would get way more support then he is getting now. But for some reason that is not what Michael "Lia" Thomas is doing. But i guess as someone ranked 420 – i.e. average – would not get to stand on a podium with the winning women ranked below him. And that is MRA in a nutshell. Maybe you need to consider that the two philosophies are intertwined and to some extend feed of each others.
Secondly, i don't consider the swimmer, or the surfer, or even Eddie Izzard a 'transwomen'. I consider them transvestites. Maybe already there we need to identify of whom we speak.
But i take your bigot, and i would add Terf, and Femnazi, and men hater, and i have no issues with that. In the end these words are meaningless and the actions for TRA's are standing on their own as do their words.
And just to re-enforce the idea once more, i do not speak about Transwomen per se, i speak about the movement, the political clout that movement has compared to say 'feminism' , the money behind it, big pharma, big surgery, and so on.
But again, i will wear that 'bigottry' t-shirt. It states that Women are adult human females.
You are putting words in my mouth that i don't say. I would like you to consider this for a moment.
I asked you a specific question,
sorry, are you saying that all trans women are MRAs?
You responded by saying,
Transgenderism/Trans ideology is misogyny. Pure and unadulterated.
Gender Non Conforming Men are not broken beings that need to be shoved into womens places, pretending to be women to the point where they get to dictate women how to women. And that is MRA in the nutshell. They are men.
I took that as you saying that you know what trans women are and you linked this again to MRAs, but you didn't actually answer my question directly, so I parsed it from your recent comments.
I see eventually you clarified that there is a difference between being trans, and trans ideology,
And just to re-enforce the idea once more, i do not speak about Transwomen per se, i speak about the movement, the political clout that movement has compared to say 'feminism' , the money behind it, big pharma, big surgery, and so on.
So my question and assumption served a purpose, of getting you to just say what you meant in relation to my query.
Honestly I didn't read the rest of your comment, because I was asking for a simple thing and as you know I get weary of the lectures at times.
no, trans women are not a men's rights group. Trans women are a group of gender non-conforming males, who just like every other group of people have varying needs and politics.
Gender identity activism (sometimes called trans rights activism) has strong parallels with MRAs. Lots of trans women aren't doing either of those two things. There are some that definitely are.
I also get the view of Magdalen Burns in Molly's link above that why is it that women have to take the big breath of acceptance and why is it that that he is 'widening the bandwidth for women'. He should be widening the bandwidth for men.
The reason i did not answer your question to your satisfaction is very simple.
I am not speaking of transwomen. I am speaking of the movement and only the movement. I can separate the two. So i am not going to answer your questions as your question is quite out of line and accusatory at best.
Its like with men and being a rapist. Not all man are rapists, but most rapists are men. There is quite a nuance in there. Ditto with Transwomen, Non binaries, genderfluid and any of the other 90+ made up 'genders' may not be themselves MRA's but they profit of the MRA tactics employed by TRAs that serve only to shut down women.
And frankly, you, Molly, Anker, Shangreah and others we have had more then one discussion on this subject and it seems that only you saw it fit to declare bigotry where there is none, implied or otherwise.
Transideology is at its heart deeply mysogynistic, starting with the idea that a women gives birth to a child 'with a wrong body'. Humans have one body, once that body is used up we die. We can modify that body with wrong sex hormones, puberty blockers, plastic surgery, fillers, silicon, make up, full body silicon suits, tattoos, implants and what not, but it is still the same body and it is still sexed exactly the same way it was on the day of it emerging from a womans vagina. Yet, here we ask women to make way for men into their spaces, jobs, awards, camps, changing rooms, sports on the ground of these men living in the 'wrong' body. Lol. And as the beautiful clip of the Sainted Magdalene Berns stated, that dude with a beard and horrible dressing sense is now a women and we have to affirm this dude as a women cause kindness and otherwise bigotry. IF that is not MRA tactics in action i must have a different definition of MRAs then you. And fwiw, that dude might not see it as that, but then he is the one that wants to be in places where women are in various stages of undress and he is the one that now has that right, and any women who is uncomfortable with him being in a changing room with her is a ‘terf’ ‘bigot’ ‘transphope’ ‘cissy’ and other assorted bs. The insults change the premise for them stays the same.
Understand that i generally don't go after people and pretend they are something, and if i were to do that, i would have absolutely no qualms and issue in naming the person and stating why i would do so. I am only discussing the movement, the philosophy the legal aspects and the rights that women are losing thanks to this movement that elevates men feels above the rights women earned through hard work, beatings, forced feedings, and ridicule. This may make you uncomfortable, maybe you even think i should be kinder, softer and more accommodating, but to that i only have a 'No, thank you' to give you. I rather be rude then a liar and someone who then must continuously affirm that lie. I personally can't be bothered with that. It would be too exhausting to be honest.
Sabine, while I agreed with weka above, I considered it a response to Shanreagh who seems to be exploring this topic more in recent days, and might not be aware of the distinction between the activism around the gender identity ideology, and the people who are living as transgender. That was only my take, could be wrong.
I understand your position, and agree with it as well.
It is the gender identity ideology that is problematic, and the refusal to put that belief system under the same scrutiny and objectivity that any other belief system would undergo.
The medical interventions promoted for children and young people, the removal of single sex spaces of all kinds (physical and otherwise), the distortion of language, the negative impact on women's sports, the indoctrination of institutions and services, the elimination of lesbians, and gays from their own movement, and the complete failure to ask for empirical evidence is a dangerous movement.
I know that is not the limit of the negative effects, but you get my drift.
Anyway, was cheered up by watching this week's The Mess We're In, in celebration of Women's International Day. If you are wanting something to watch, it's here:
All of us that have been talking about this for ages now are on the same page: it's the ideology and activism that is the problem.
It's really important that we don't lump all trans people in with that. For one thing, it will step over the line in terms of TS debate rules. We have trans people here, they have a right to be here. If people are going to be casual in their rhetoric about transness, and not clear, and they sound like bigots, then it's unfair on trans people, it creates an atmosphere that inhibits debate.
It will also be harder to then argue that feminists have any rights to not be exposed to such when debate women's rights.
For another, it's wrong and not fair.
We cannot expect to have our own arguments respected if we won't make an effort to separate out trans people from the problematic ideology.
weka, if you haven't done so. Watch the link posted above – my daughter and I enjoyed the whole hour, and the display of humour and understanding between the women. I hope you do as well.
I think there exists the same energy – for the most part – between female commentators on here. I hope I'm right about that.
(Edit: Thinking of writing a post about the damage of the medicalised response (and social transitioning) of children, based on the recent changes to that after evidential reviews in the Netherlands, Finland, Sweden and France. Having just watched the Dysphoria series on Youtube, its a timely conversation for NZ, that has an “affirmation health care” model.)
Yes, it was a nice 'beer' hour in good albeit physically distanced ways, excellent company and as far as i can crush on ladies, oh do i have a crush on Helen Joyce. To the Queen her Ladies!
I am not speaking of transwomen. I am speaking of the movement and only the movement. I can separate the two. So i am not going to answer your questions as your question is quite out of line and accusatory at best.
Sabine, this is literally what I was asking you to clarify. You've done that now, but it took far more work than was necessary imo. A simple clarification would have sufficed.
If you can't handle someone calling your position bigotry, then maybe take more care with how you express it. I'm not the only one who sometimes misunderstands what you say. I'm not saying be kind, I'm saying pay attention to who you are talking to and listen to what they are saying. My original question was incredibly clear and simple to answer. But you didn't.
I don't think you are a bigot now that you have made it clear what you mean. It definitely wasn't clear from your first comment (which is why I asked) or your second.
Again, didn't read most of your comment because am sick of the patronising lectures, as if I don't already know all that stuff.
I tend to abstain from words such as bigotry or any insults to anyone generally specifically insults as generally that always says more about the one using these words then those against whom they are deployed. ,
I am sorry that you thought that my second or first comment was a lecture, i honestly believed that i had to make myself even clearer in my thoughts and words.
My problem is when you don't listen. I didn't need long posts of explanation, I already know what you think about trans ideology, and we are generally on the same page. All I needed was clarification on that one point. See my comment to Molly below for the reasons why. It matters how we talk about trans people here, in the same way it matters how men talk about women. Making it clear that it is the ideology that is being critiqued is a good way to do this 👍
I enjoy reading Suzanne Moore – kicked off the Guardian for.. continuing to be herself – a clear writer.
…The official theme is #breakthebias, which is as innocuous as it is futile. People – not women, because the word ‘women’ is now controversial – are asked to pose, hands crossed upwards, to share as a selfie on social media. This is supposed to be part of imagining a “gender-equal world”, one free of “bias, stereotypes and discrimination”.
…
It renders the term ‘woman’ somewhat pointless, as this is essentially self-ID. That’s a pose.
Still, what is a real woman? I have always been the wrong kind myself: too stroppy, too outspoken, too graceless. But now, though, I am strangely convinced that because I have female biology, I am an actual woman. (The gender rules of femininity that I have considered innately dumb my entire life make me neither a wannabe man, or non-binary, or anything special.)
As a feminist, though, I would indeed like the world to be a better place for women – and by the world, I don’t mean north London or a campus in California; I mean Herat, Tigray, Guatemala. For all the arguments about equality for women amount to nothing if we lose an international perspective. Feminism is global, or it is simply an exercise in consumer power dressed up as politics. That is exactly what happened to Western feminism in the 1990s, when everything from brunching to boob jobs was “empowering”.
…
Forgive me, then, if I do not celebrate International Women’s Day when so many political parties are kowtowing to this woman-hating religion. Forgive me if I think “non-binary” is just another way of creating a new binary, and saying “I am special” and you are not in my tribe. Forgive me if I think that, in so much of the virtue-signalling we will witness today, it will likely be that there is little “international” about any of this.
Sure, I will strike a pose and do the hand gesture – but it will not be a benign, flappy cross: it will be rude and unfeminine.
And it won’t be a pose. For being a woman means living in the real world, in female bodies.
The BBC has spoken to the defence ministries of Estonia, Sweden and Denmark, all of whom confirmed their weapons supplies had been tracked and successfully reached Ukraine in recent weeks.
Britain and America had provided weapons to Ukraine before the invasion began on 24 February, with the UK delivering 2,000 light anti-tank missiles (Nlaws). Most countries though only started to send weapons in response to the Russian invasion. In all, 14 nations have supplied arms. They include Sweden and Finland, both of which have a long history of neutrality and are not members of Nato. But both have sent thousands of anti-tank weapons to Ukraine.
Germany has supplied 1,000 anti-tank weapons and 500 Stinger missiles. The Baltic states have also delivered thousands of weapons including Stingers and Javelin missiles, one of the world's most effective anti-tank weapons with a range of 2.5km (1.5 miles). Ukraine says it has already successfully destroyed several Russian T-72 tanks.
Recent weapons deliveries also include tens of thousands of assault rifles and machine guns, anti-tank mines and hundreds of tonnes of ammunition, as well as body armour and helmets, and medical supplies.
Justin Bronk, a research fellow on airpower at the Royal United Services Institute, says there's been visual confirmation of at least 20 Russian aircraft shot down in Ukraine so far – both helicopters and jets. That's significantly fewer than claimed by Ukraine's ministry of defence, which says it has downed 48 Russian planes and 80 helicopters. Yet even the lower number shows Russia's struggled to gain supremacy in the skies.
Ukraine has suffered losses too. But UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace told the BBC that Russia had so far not been successful in destroying the country's air defences and air force. Before the war began, Ukraine's military aircraft were outnumbered at least three-to-one by those that had been amassed on the border by Russia.
So the imbalance may be gradually evening out. I couldn't find any update on the Ukraine army situation online.
. I couldn't find any update on the Ukraine army situation online.
Because Ukrainian operation security will be as tight as a drum while every tool the West has works to crack Russia's, and publicise every last detail.
Likewise a third of the Nat caucus is down with omicron. An accurate statistical match with the tunnellers, huh? Probably due to the function of boring that both share…
So censorship is the new normal. Funny how the whole legacy media is complaining about censorship in Russia, then are deathly quite whilst the tech companies shut down alternative news in the west. In particular anti-war voices, it's frightening.
If you have the time worth hearing the whole thing. I say hear as I just play like a podcast, and do other work.
The Opposition is getting better at following their themes eg adjusting tax brackets. (Which the Budget may be already getting ready to do that.
1.CHRISTOPHER LUXON to the Prime Minister: Does she stand by her statement, “The debate is not whether inflation has increased and is impacting people. The debate is what we should do about it”; if so, will she adjust the income tax brackets to account for the last four years of inflation?
Putin has offered Ukraine peace, for recognition of the annexation of Crimea and eastern Ukraine areas in Luhansk and Donetsk occupied since 2014 and declaring neutrality (not joining NATO).
The generous offer is indicative of Putin's real agenda.
The end of sanctions on Russia for the annexation of Crimea (and occupation in eastern Ukraine) – this only occurs when an independent and internationally recognised sovereign Ukraine consents.
Ukraine should, in my opinion agree, provided Russia takes over a proportion of the national debt of Ukraine equivalent to the land and resources transferred to Russia.
And also agree to neutrality, provided it retains an independent defence capability. And that it can still join the EU at or by the time the EU and Russia have an FTA. From this a positive Ukraine and Russian economic relationship, in which Russia and the EU would assist with Ukraine's reconstruction.
The increase of sanctions on Russia applied recently would have sharpened focus on the importance of a negotiated settlement.
While Putin would still be free to negotiate a reduced NATO presence in former WP nations, via a military build up threat of securing a land bridge to Kaliningrad via Lithuania – developing a co-operative relationship between the EU and Russia over Ukraine's economic revival would reduce the risk of NATO-Russian conflict
After Ukraine this is where the Russian military will exercise, and while they exercise Putin will seek guarantees of NATO withdrawal of forward capability in former WP nations.
This is why there needs to be a deal over Ukraine, rather than a sacrifice of Ukraine to revitalise NATO. The revitalised NATO they seek only comes from a new Cold War with a heavily sanctioned and bitter Russia.
This leaves the USA vulnerable to Chinese opportunism (annexation of Taiwan post 2025 – they are giving chip manufacturers time to relocate offshore to reduce the economic risk to the West, so make it more of a fait accompli).
The Russian military appears to be overcommitted in Ukraine.
At least to the point that the Belarusian military are throwing sickies rather than join them.
With the mass of their heavy equipment set to be abandoned in the coming rout, it will be Ukraine that decides where the borders lie, as Russian conventional forces are defanged and disgraced, and no economy exists to rebuild them for decades.
Putin must have thought he was the god of intelligence, turning the former US president, but as another US president noted, you can't fool all of the people all of the time.
I didn't realise all those planes that fly in and out of New Zealand airports were Air New Zealand planes in disguise.
I didn't realise that planes labelled as being owned by Qantas, Air China, Etihad Airways, EVA Air, Singapore Airlines, United and Jetstar were actually part of Air New Zealand.
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
I am not sure you really want to bring peoples attention to this. The link you provide is dated 20/01/2020. It talks about Air New Zealand putting up its fares when Jetstar stopped flying domestically.
The withdrawal was announced on 25 September 2019 and took effect in November 2019. Well Luxon resigned from Air NZ in June 2019 and left the company on 25 September that year. Hence the increase in fares being complained about took place after his successor took over. It wasn't Luxon's doing at all, was it? After all, would he really be setting the future policy for the airline on his last day in the office?
Legalistic pedant? I think not. I just like to see the truth being told.
You’re missing the point yet again. If you want to talk about Luxon and National’s shambolic financial analyses, then fine, comment under Micky’s Post all you like and give the other side a tough debate. If you want to talk about ANZ, use OM.
You were out by 8 days with the link date; you may value “the truth”, but you obviously don’t value accuracy in and of your statements.
Quite right. It was 28/02/2020. I notice you don't question the rest of my comment though. Pity the fare rises were after his time in the chair isn't it?
No need to respond any further to your diversions – I just like to keep convos more or less on track. Others may want to waste their time, if they so wish – they may even get something useful out of your comments, but I doubt it.
Will this end up being the scandal of the century?
"regular use of ivermectin as a prophylactic agent was associated with significantly reduced COVID-19 infection, hospitalization, and mortality rates," based on an observational study of 159,561 residents ages 18 and over in Itajaí, Brazil.
'After adjusting for variables, the authors said, they found a 67% reduction in hospitalization rate and a 70% reduction in mortality rate for ivermectin users.'
"Conclusion: In this large PSM study, regular use of ivermectin as a prophylactic agent was associated with significantly reduced COVID-19 infection, hospitalization, and mortality rates."
Even if ivermectin comes out of the wash as being as effective as its premature proponents have claimed for however long, so what? A decision based on insufficient evidence is still a gamble, even if one happens to win.
A gamble was taken by us all in the greatest real-time human experiment! I'm vaccinated. And I'm very concerned we were all duped by the least trusted company in the least trusted industry in modern times, with government/societal 'aid'.
@McFlock its maybe time to confront all the lies your told to believe are fact. I know its not easy as it will shake your version of an 'augmented' reality we've all bought in too.
Serious question: what actual clinical trials has ivermectin gone through compared to the pfizer vaccine regarding efficacy against covid?
This study is promising, shame it took them a year to process and publish their results. It has more participants, but was not blind. Intereference of other treatments was not documented. Absence of adverse events seems to have been assumed rather than actually examined.
Committing oneself to a course of action before sufficient evidence is in might have a desired result, but it doesn't win at science. It could just as easily be an error.
I'm very concerned that absolute morons have undermined effective public health measures to the point that NZ seems to have decided to accept several deaths a day just so some cafe owner can bitch that not enough people are walking through the door.
Stick your augmented reality in your rear usb port, your CPU is throwing a critical runtime error.
I'm not sure what you think your links demonstrate, but they just go to show that what you regard as "experimental" has been more thoroughly studied against covid than ivermectin. And seems to have better results.
You enjoyed the cancel joke… It's all the rage at present, I knew you'd love it
"has been more thoroughly studied against covid than ivermectin". Really? Please do provide the ‘evidence’, because it seems to be blurred more and more for ‘some reason or another’.
Both the Oxford trial on efficacy and 'real world' study from Brazil looking at effectiveness, have no value at all. May rock the boat of augmented reality we're all clinging to too much?
If you take that from my comments, especially the one that was a simple list of questions about the links already provided, then expecting you to understand even your own links is an exercise in futility.
Or you didn't actually take that from my comments, but these are the lengths you'll go to in order to avoid addressing simple questions to which you might not like the answers.
"pointed out potential conflicts of interest with the study’s authors. They noted that although the preprint version of the study mentions that two of its authors received money from a pharmaceutical company that manufactures ivermectin, the published version leaves that detail out.'
In Brazil even before covid , Ivermectin was a commonly prescribed anti parasite drug and what portion the citys inhabitants were already using the drug and of course covid vaccines were also used – which the authors say was still the best protection
But of course for the facebook epidemiologists its of no concern why no real experts will take much notice of the other evidence
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Energy Minister Simeon Brown has welcomed an important milestone in New Zealand’s hydrogen future, with the opening of the country’s first network of hydrogen refuelling stations in Wiri. “I want to congratulate the team at Hiringa Energy and its partners K one W one (K1W1), Mitsui & Co New Zealand ...
The coalition Government is delivering on its commitment to improve resource management laws and give greater certainty to consent applicants, with a Bill to amend the Resource Management Act (RMA) expected to be introduced to Parliament next month. RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop has today outlined the first RMA Amendment ...
Overseas models for regulating the oil and gas sector, including their decommissioning regimes, are being carefully scrutinised as a potential template for New Zealand’s own sector, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. The Coalition Government is focused on rebuilding investor confidence in New Zealand’s energy sector as it looks to strengthen ...
Emergency Management and Recovery Minister Mark Mitchell has today released the Report of the Government Inquiry into the response to the North Island Severe Weather Events. “The report shows that New Zealand’s emergency management system is not fit-for-purpose and there are some significant gaps we need to address,” Mr Mitchell ...
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith is today travelling to Europe where he’ll update the United Nations Human Rights Council on the Government’s work to restore law and order. “Attending the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva provides us with an opportunity to present New Zealand’s human rights progress, priorities, and challenges, while ...
Associate Agriculture Minister, Mark Patterson, formally reopened the world’s largest wool processing facility today in Awatoto, Napier, following a $50 million rebuild and refurbishment project. “The reopening of this facility will significantly lift the economic opportunities available to New Zealand’s wool sector, which already accounts for 20 per cent of ...
Hon Andrew Bayly, Minister for Small Business and Manufacturing At the Southland Otago Regional Engineering Collective (SOREC) Summit, 18 April, Dunedin Ngā mihi nui, Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Ko Whanganui aho Good Afternoon and thank you for inviting me to open your summit today. I am delighted ...
The Government is delivering on its commitment to bring back the Three Strikes legislation, Associate Justice Minister Nicole McKee announced today. “Our Government is committed to restoring law and order and enforcing appropriate consequences on criminals. We are making it clear that repeat serious violent or sexual offending is not ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has today announced four new diplomatic appointments for New Zealand’s overseas missions. “Our diplomats have a vital role in maintaining and protecting New Zealand’s interests around the world,” Mr Peters says. “I am pleased to announce the appointment of these senior diplomats from the ...
New Zealand is contributing NZ$7 million to support communities affected by severe food insecurity and other urgent humanitarian needs in Ethiopia and Somalia, Foreign Minister Rt Hon Winston Peters announced today. “Over 21 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance across Ethiopia, with a further 6.9 million people ...
Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage Paul Goldsmith is congratulating Mataaho Collective for winning the Golden Lion for best participant in the main exhibition at the Venice Biennale. "Congratulations to the Mataaho Collective for winning one of the world's most prestigious art prizes at the Venice Biennale. “It is good ...
The Government is reforming financial services to improve access to home loans and other lending, and strengthen customer protections, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly and Housing Minister Chris Bishop announced today. “Our coalition Government is committed to rebuilding the economy and making life simpler by cutting red tape. We are ...
“China remains a strong commercial opportunity for Kiwi exporters as Chinese businesses and consumers continue to value our high-quality safe produce,” Trade and Agriculture Minister Todd McClay says. Mr McClay has returned to New Zealand following visits to Beijing, Harbin and Shanghai where he met ministers, governors and mayors and engaged in trade and agricultural events with the New ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has completed a successful trip to Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines, deepening relationships and capitalising on opportunities. Mr Luxon was accompanied by a business delegation and says the choice of countries represents the priority the New Zealand Government places on South East Asia, and our relationships in ...
New Zealand is demonstrating its commitment to reducing global greenhouse emissions, and supporting clean energy transition in South East Asia, through a contribution of NZ$41 million (US$25 million) in climate finance to the Asian Development Bank (ADB)-led Energy Transition Mechanism (ETM). Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Climate Change Minister Simon Watts announced ...
The Government is today releasing a list of organisations who received letters about the Fast-track applications process, says RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop. “Recently Ministers and agencies have received a series of OIA requests for a list of organisations to whom I wrote with information on applying to have a ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins today announced the appointment of Wellington Barrister David Jonathan Boldt as a Judge of the High Court, and the Honourable Justice Matthew Palmer as a Judge of the Court of Appeal. Justice Boldt graduated with an LLB from Victoria University of Wellington in 1990, and also holds ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford will lead the New Zealand delegation at the 2024 International Summit on the Teaching Profession (ISTP) held in Singapore. The delegation includes representatives from the Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) Te Wehengarua and the New Zealand Educational Institute (NZEI) Te Riu Roa. The summit is co-hosted ...
A stopbank upgrade project in Tairawhiti partly funded by the Government has increased flood resilience for around 7000ha of residential and horticultural land so far, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones today attended a dawn service in Gisborne to mark the end of the first stage of the ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters will represent the Government at Anzac Day commemorations on the Gallipoli Peninsula next week and engage with senior representatives of the Turkish government in Istanbul. “The Gallipoli campaign is a defining event in our history. It will be a privilege to share the occasion ...
Science, Innovation and Technology and Defence Minister Judith Collins will next week attend the OECD Science and Technology Ministerial conference in Paris and Anzac Day commemorations in Belgium. “Science, innovation and technology have a major role to play in rebuilding our economy and achieving better health, environmental and social outcomes ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon held a bilateral meeting today with the President of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The Prime Minister was accompanied by MP Paulo Garcia, the first Filipino to be elected to a legislature outside the Philippines. During today’s meeting, Prime Minister Luxon and President Marcos Jr discussed opportunities to ...
The Government has announced that $20 million in funding will be made available to Westport to fund much needed flood protection around the town. This measure will significantly improve the resilience of the community, says Local Government Minister Simeon Brown. “The Westport community has already been allocated almost $3 million ...
The Government is proud to support the first ever Repco Supercars Championship event in Taupō as up to 70,000 motorsport fans attend the Taupō International Motorsport Park this weekend, says Economic Development Minister Melissa Lee. “Anticipation for the ITM Taupō Super400 is huge, with tickets and accommodation selling out weeks ...
Local Government Minister Simeon Brown has announced an increase to the Rates Rebate Scheme, putting money back into the pockets of low-income homeowners. “The coalition Government is committed to bringing down the cost of living for New Zealanders. That includes targeted support for those Kiwis who are doing things tough, such ...
The Coalition Government is investing in a project to boost survival rates of New Zealand mussels and grow the industry, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones has announced. “This project seeks to increase the resilience of our mussels and significantly boost the sector’s productivity,” Mr Jones says. “The project - ...
Benefit figures released today underscore the importance of the Government’s plan to rebuild the economy and have 50,000 fewer people on Jobseeker Support, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. “Benefit numbers are still significantly higher than when National was last in government, when there was about 70,000 fewer ...
The Government’s commitment to doubling New Zealand’s renewable energy capacity is backed by new data showing that clean energy has helped the country reach its lowest annual gross emissions since 1999, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. New Zealand’s latest Greenhouse Gas Inventory (1990-2022) published today, shows gross emissions fell ...
The Government is bringing the earthquake-prone building review forward, with work to start immediately, and extending the deadline for remediations by four years, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “Our Government is focused on rebuilding the economy. A key part of our plan is to cut red tape that ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and his Thai counterpart, Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin, have today agreed that New Zealand and the Kingdom of Thailand will upgrade the bilateral relationship to a Strategic Partnership by 2026. “New Zealand and Thailand have a lot to offer each other. We have a strong mutual desire to build ...
RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop and Transport Minister Simeon Brown have today announced the Coalition Government’s intention to extend port coastal permits for a further 20 years, providing port operators with certainty to continue their operations. “The introduction of the Resource Management Act in 1991 required ports to obtain coastal ...
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Crown research institute GNS Science is about to officially open its new green hydrogen lab in Lower Hutt. One day it could contribute to making sure that small rural communities cut off by disaster can still power through, with stored green hydrogen used to establish a kind of micro-grid. Michelle ...
Opinion: Artificial intelligence is increasingly part of life, and so are anxieties about how it will change life as we know it. How it will change our jobs is just one aspect of the dystopian future we imagine it is creating. Some, if not many, of these concerns warrant serious ...
Asia Pacific Report A score of Palestine solidarity protesters draped themselves in white shrouds with mock blood in a sombre “die-in” demonstration at Te Komitanga Square — the heart of Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city — today as speakers urged people to take a stronger boycott against Israeli products. The ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Tackling violence against women will be the sole agenda item for a national cabinet meeting Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has convened for Wednesday. The meeting, held remotely, follows thousands of Australians attending rallies across ...
The protest outside the White House correspondents’ dinner hotel. Image: Anatolu video screenshot APR More than two dozen Palestinian journalists had called for a boycott of the dinner, writing an open letter urging their American colleagues not to attend. “You have a unique responsibility to speak truth to power and ...
“Our exporters should, therefore, be deeply concerned that the Fast-track Approvals Bill was not assessed for consistency with any of our free trade commitments prior to being introduced to the House,” says Gary Taylor, Chief Executive of the Environmental ...
NZCTU President Richard Wagstaff is calling on all political parties to support the new Member’s Bill from Labour’s workplace relations and safety spokesperson Camilla Belich MP that would ensure negligent companies are held accountable when their employees ...
A historian with an uncanny track record of predicting US election winners tells RNZ's Sunday Morning that President Biden looks to be on track for another term, but things could still go very wrong for him. ...
A historian with a track record of predicting US election winners tells RNZ's Sunday Morning that President Biden looks to be on track for another term, but things could still go wrong for him. ...
Ngaio Marsh House is one of Christchurch’s best kept secrets – and contains more than a few mysteries of its own.Trust Ngaio Marsh to leave more than a few mysteries scattered through her house long after her departure. For a start, there’s the curious concrete portal in the garden, ...
Appointment viewing has been lost to the mists of time, but memories of Montana Sunday Theatre can still be conjured by hitting play on a particular piece of classical music. “You’re not going to be able to sell it.” Over 30 years on, Karen Bieleski still recalls how the task ...
Performance Review King Luxon sat behind His massive polished oak desk. It is Performance Review time. There is a knock on the door. “Enter!” says the King. In steps Minister of Disabilities and Carer Pedicures, Penny Simmonds. “I can explain everything …” she begins. “Fine,” says King Luxon, pressing the ...
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"Theres no such thing as a free lunch"
or so the saying goes…what does that mean to you?
Depends on context:
1. Somewhere, someone, somehow is paying.
2. You've taken on an obligation for reciprocity that at some point will have to be discharged.
It means they don't know the policies of this Labour government very well.
Labour has delivered hundreds of thousands of free lunches per day for several years now.
Which fits under:
1. Somewhere, someone, somehow is paying.
Adding to Molly's idea while it may not be you at the exact time it will be you later on
Wiki has some ideas
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_ain%27t_no_such_thing_as_a_free_lunch
The adding to the confusion is another saying…..
'Don't look a gift horse in the mouth'?
The proverbial saying 'don't look a gift horse in the mouth' means don't be ungrateful when you receive a gift.
So don't be ungrateful when you receive your free lunch that you may have to pay for sometime in the future.
… or find yourself doing the dishes…
At what price per litre of 91 is continuing an oil embargo of Russian oil still a good idea?
$2.80? $3? $3.50? $5?
We're now in an inflation v morality war
Im not sure that we as a nation have much choice. If our FM toned down the rhetoric and we got ourselves off the Russian list of unfriendly nations could we really expect to be able to buy cheap Russian oil? We would then face sanctions ourselves.
Can we nationalise our oil and gas reserves? Would this be enough? As things stand at present the only real immediate answer is to understand that the resources in your country are now absolutely a nations primary source for survival. Even the aluminium smelter should now be looked at as a national resource as aluminium prices rise.
The extraordinary thing is that the US still seems to think that money has some sort of intrinsic value divorced from reality. They really seem to think that a nation that is a net energy exporter can be brought to its knees by cutting it off from Swift. It didnt work for Iran. With Russia it will blow up in their face.
Steering a path through this will be very challenging. We have already seen with covid how difficult national unity for the public good is but also that we are one of the better nations at getting this right. It really is time to start looking at what we can do for ourselves and our immediate neighbours in the Pacific. If we can get actual physical help from larger nations we should be prepared to look at it on a case by case basis. We don't indulge in continual hand wringing about US wars of aggression every time we engage with them and should be prepared to do the same with Russia and China in any offers of help in especially energy infrastructure. If we want pumped hydro, we could talk to them about help, or Russia or Iran to upgrade a nationalised Marsden Point? Its definitely time to think outside the box. We will need all the help we can get.
"We don't indulge in continual hand wringing about US wars of aggression every time we engage with them and should be prepared to do the same with Russia and China in any offers of help in especially energy infrastructure."
We engage in voluminous hand wringing about US wars of aggression particularly when we are asked to join them. As we should.
"If we want pumped hydro, we could talk to them about help, or Russia or Iran to upgrade a nationalised Marsden Point?"
For pumped hydro I would turn to Australian and Irish examples that have been operational for a while.
I certainly agree that this is asking the right questions about our own energy resilience at the right time.
Hearing Luxon this morning saying the "ute tax" will go because there are no current electric alternatives in-market is just folly.
Smart companies should use this war to price shifting their whole fleets much faster.
Companies like rentals, construction and taxis who are less oil dependent are going to be sitting pretty while the rest in their combustion engines are screaming.
It’s a brutal mechanism but 91 Petrol is the climate change lever we all need.
It would be a climate change mechanism if we all had the luxury of being able to afford to move over to electric, work local or from home. But most don't so the more likely scenario is an uplift in social unrest. Even Germany has been unable to resist the primacy of fossil fuel energy, the lack of which will drive right wing nationalism. If we don't come up with an immediate answer to rising fuel costs while we work on future energy shifts then it is likely that social cohesion will break down. Russia understands this and it is part of their decision process on why now is a good time. They may not have all the bells and whistles but will have the social cohesion that abundent energy resources bring. How are we going to mitigate this or are the recent scenes in Wellington just a gentle rehersal on the future?
Yes it will be the corporate fleets, taxis, local government, and central government Departments that will be able to put in orders for electric vehicles – which in turn starts a proper secondary market for the majority of New Zealanders. We still haven't seen enough government procurement support for this.
It was in 2019 that nearly 3% of the entire population of New Zealand marched up and down the country seeking much stronger action for climate change.
In May this year the full plan is supposed to come out that shows how we will fulfill that promise.
So May would be a really good time for those who want more to start preparing the kind of creative protest that got the 2021 tractor protest so much airtime.
If we get a petrol spike to $4 the political pressure from consumers to do less will be hard to resist – and that is when the government will need its supporters the most.
Absolute environmental madness for government to invest in whole fleets of electric vehicles, with all the carbon used to create them, when there are hundreds of thousands of good quality, serviceable vehicles, ripe for conversion.
If the money is there for a fleet, it's more than there to get deals on batteries, engines and motors and train the people to do it. If you want trickle down to affect us poor people, get the tech and process sorted and cheap enough for the countries top 10 best selling models by testing on the rich pricks and let us have at it. Got to better than waiting for new electric fleets to age, decay, and be passed on to the little people.
If you want to be all radical and revolutionary, you could keep it all in house and make parts with home grown aluminium from Tiwai, and when were done and gas free, mothball it.
I didn't realise it but apparently NZ was importing approx 15% of fuel from Russia this was almost totally oil for refining – with the refinery scheduled to close in April I would imagine forward contracts for refined fuel would already be in place I believe in my ferreting around that I saw that of our imports of fuel from Russia only about 1% was refined product. I would anticipate that our forward contracts for refined fuel would have barely included any from Russia – NZ will certainly be paying a lot more for it's fuel due to the international market conditions but any NZ ban on Russian product I think would be mainly symbolic. Any thoughts Ad?
I don't know enough about New Zealand fuel importing to comment specifically.
I do see though that we are going through a spike that will last at least as long as the Yom Kippur War, which started off the Muldoon government seeking as much energy independence as possible.
I want to see the petrol price rise debated in Parliament as soon as possible, so that Dr Woods can start revealing more plans than simply her confidence in forward contracts out of Singapore. The Comm Comm already went through the fuel company books two years ago and made fuck-all difference.
Pretty weird to see the future rushing at us when we're clearly not ready.
Government revenue from fuel excise is around 2 billion per year at an appropriate point politically they could announce a halving of the excise to "assist the country in dealing with the disruption caused by worldwide issues" or doubtlessly some better constructed phrase to maximise the political benefit of their actions cost 1 billion per annum.
Why not eliminate all the excise? Leave yourself the option so that you actually have an option.
When National demands all excise is removed …"but roading still has to be paid for and it is important for an element of the user paying to remain. Of course this remains an exercisable option if the international oil market……"
When the trucking lobby demands a subsidy for diesel costs….. " unfortunately in New Zealand the general public has been subsidising the trucking industry already for many years as the heavy transport industry does not and has not paid their fair share of roading costs. We are announcing a commission to investigate the fairest structure of revenue collection for roading costs going forward….."
Perhaps develop (or accelerate already existing plans for) vehicle charging network in NZ
Perhaps a levy on all new and used imports with solely ICE power and apply that levy to subsidise new and used electric and hybrid vehicle imports.
Perhaps embracing Efeso Collins plan for free public transport in Auckland – reducing the congestion costs to the economy in Auckland and the reduction in costs for the less well off would likely make it a winner from the economic point of view.
The government is hopefully looking at ideas like these as well as better measures thought of by people well paid to develop them.
I agree that the future is rushing at us
Ad at sparrow fart: “We’re now in an inflation v morality war”
Money trumps morality. That's capitalism.
Michael Hudson has written a sobering article on the economic consequences of recent events
The American Empire Self-Destructs
But nobody thought that it would happen this fast
fasthttps://www.unz.com/mhudson/the-american-empire-self-destructs/
Liking it. Bring on the bigger oil prices, time it was what it really cost us all to burn carbon.
yep. And best we get on with recreating society so that we don't get inundated with the fall out from that. Just transition.
There will be no transition, to many people are addicted to this life style.
I'm with those who say there will be a complete breakdown of the current system by 2030. We are fast running out of the ability to maintain this stupidity.
I prefer boycotting stuff I wasn't going to use anyway.
Well unsustainable policy from the government ie policy for biofuels was one of the main contributing factor in the food riots and arab spring.Here it was the underlying forcing beneath speculative bubbles and bursts.
https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/powering-nz%E2%80%99s-future-biofuels
https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1413108112#fig01
https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1413108112
Three weeks in and we're so short of nurses that we are now talking about having covid positive nurses back on wards, on the same day we're told that rest during infection is the best way to avoid long covid… doesnt make much sense does it, basically asking nurses to take an even bigger risk in sacrificing their long term health.
Perhaps we should be asking those unvaxxed nurses if they'd like to come back to work please…
Not knowing how long it is going to take for the Covid wave to peak and then drop is also a concern for nurses.
Not to mention the dangers of viral load.
It certainly poses some questions about 'sense.' Just like making sense of unvaxxed nurses.
They'd be administering medication to patients and carrying out procedures with the air of, "Trust me, I know what I'm doing. Trust me, I know exactly what's in this, how it was arrived at, all about the company that made it, and how your body is going to respond to it."
Much like you when you used your computer just now. Vast knowledge of computer science, physics, math, and micro-engineering. Or would you even turn it on – dilemma!
Well done, much impressed.
But you have to train to be a nurse, you don't have to train to use a computer.
The concern about unvaxxed nurses is they will, in that environment, inevitably and quickly become the cared-for, rather than the carers.
That post was unclear at best. I did ponder, after my ten minutes was up, if I'd interpreted it wrong.
I agree. Unvaxed nurses have no place in hospitals or any public facing role. But we all know the cliche by now, unprecedented times, aye.
We don't see it, but if you talk to public facing medical workers, it's really hard and has been for some time. Not just the increased work and work requirements, but the increase in crazy they're having to deal with. Putting unvaxed colleagues in that environment adds insult to injury.
Has there being a noticeable rise in crazy here?
Yes.
oh hell yes
"Oh hell yes"
That is unfortunate. A small, but SOO vocal, group.
At least we can laugh.
Groundswell have been quiet lately. Hope they're not in Waiouru pinching tanks.
If by crazy, you mean: othering, simplifying complex issues with pejoratives, deliberate misrepresenting of someone’s position then hell yes. Off the scale.
So rather than contribute to the discussion we have this non sequitur.
Why do you think it would be a good policy to employ unvaccinated nurses in front facing roles?
How are unvaccinated nurses supposed to function effectively and with the respect of their colleagues when they are not taking basic steps to protect themselves and others?
Crazy is all the ideas around for not having the vaccinations that are based on 'woo' and not medical reasons. I have absolutely no problem with people not having the vaccination if it is medically advised not to. Asking us to respect a decision based on
'doan wanna'
is a bit much.
Then there are the multitude of CTs that are advanced to 'rationalise/justify' a decision. Why do you defend these and tried to shift the opprobrium onto those who call them out? ie call them out by commonplace references, shorthand to the type of thinking behind them.
I am sure that if I had made up my mind not to have the vax for medical purposes or because I was troubled by the mRNA aspect there is no way in the world I would be allying myself with people whose reasons are because of 5G trackers, magnets, Aids or Covid giving especially if my concerns were related to the mRNA aspect. We have alternatives to this now.
You obviously did not read my reply to your previous posts about people being nasty, according to you. Plus another from me and one from Incognito
https://thestandard.org.nz/real-protestors-do-not-burn-kids-playgrounds/#comment-1871448
Until the vaccines were available, medical staff around the globe developed protocols to minimise infection.
We need to balance the success of such protocols against the need for medical personnel.
(Don't have either of those factors quantified, but I think that's the question that should be asked, and re-asked, as demand grows and available medical resources/personnel dwindle).
Oh bugger! All those years spent in teaching computer science – a complete an utter waste of time.
You definitely have to train to teach about and fix them.
That's a tiny part of computer science.
It's actually a pretty good analogy – any numpty can turn on a computer and work a desktop with a given margin for error, just like any numpty can change sheets or bandage a wound with a given margin for error.
But managing an ICU bed? Knowing when to call a doctor before all the alarms start going off? Administering drugs properly, recognising errors or drug interactions that dr and pharmacy might have missed? With someone who feels they can pick and choose which protocols they should follow because their own research overrules the specialist guidelines?
Yeah, that's like a computer progammer who thinks a b-tree is the only way to store data or insists on using deprecated library modules. Sooner or later it will end in tears.
i commented here a while ago that they should never have terminated nurses employment for not being vaxxed. I made some suggestions about how these nurses might be redeployed to non contact roles, freeing up other nurses to be on the front line.
I think the situation is so desperate for nurses now, the unvaxxed should be re-instated and have daily rapid anti gen testing before and even during shifts. Many of these nurses will be youngish and fit and probably won't get omicron badly, then will recover. Given nurses with covid are needed to continue to keep the hospitals functioning, what difference is it going to make having an unvaxxed nurse working?
RAT inaccuracy during the early days of infection heightens the risk of having having infectious staff working.
ermbiggened
Despite the training the medical profession is as prone to poor decision making as any other group.
https://www.npr.org/2020/07/17/887590699/doctors-and-dentists-still-flooding-u-s-with-opioid-prescriptions
Yes indeed …the same with teachers…..being educated does not stop them from falling into illogical traps.
Several of those leading the scientific explanation of the pandemic in our media are principle investigators for this org: https://www.tepunahamatatini.ac.nz/about-us/
https://www.tepunahamatatini.ac.nz/siouxsie-wiles/
https://www.tepunahamatatini.ac.nz/shaun-hendy/
https://www.math.canterbury.ac.nz/~m.plank/
Hosted by the University of Auckland, it formed to coordinate experts with a grasp of the science of complexity, to provide insights into how it elucidates the interactions between ourselves and our world.
Here's an example of how it demonstrates relevance:
The big picture view derives from ecology.
So whereas economics provides a world-view based on money, ecology gives us a world-view based on how nature works. That's why politics and governance is based on economics. The political left & right have always agreed that money is more important than nature – which is why Green politics had to be neither left nor right.
Memes are catchy, and informational memes aren't necessarily more contagious than disinformational memes. Social media is an encompassing arena containing a multitude of component social ecosystems (networks) made vibrant via the interflow of infectious memes. As self-organising systems, these will learn to moderate the toxic effects of disinfo to ensure collective survival and health. Or they won't, and will either die or get warped by an uncontrolled infection.
So you can see how social media challenges us to transcend the habitual prioritisation of economics in our political focus, lest we get taken out by toxic invader memes. Just another form of pollution to worry about…
"Uniformly pro-Putin"
Of course they are. They've got their heads so far up their own asses their only means of taking in information is if it is diametrically opposed to common narrative.
It's All About Trust
We have been lucky to have a government we can trust during this pandemic
The difference in the death rate in Hong Kong pop. 7 mil. compared to New Zealand pop. 5mil. is dramatic, where trust in the government is low.
Many have put it down to distrust of the Communist government of Hong Kong by the elderly.
It's all about leadership.
We have been lucky to have a government we can trust during the pandemic. In my opinion, more than anything else majority trust in the leadership of New Zealand's Left of Centre government has helped keep this country's death rate from covid-19 relatively low.
Those MIGs from Poland (all of Poland's MIGs) are going to get delivered to Ukraine. A couple of dozen or more. They gave them to US so US can deliver them thereby fudging the rules around NATO involvement?
I'm not sure Putin's going to see Poland as an innocent party here. But really, screw that guy.
https://www.gov.pl/web/diplomacy/statement-of-the-minister-of-foreign-affairs-of-the-republic-of-poland-in-connection-with-the-statement-by-the-us-secretary-of-state-on-providing-airplanes-to-ukraine
Bah. Pentagon knocked it back.
Stuck Russian convoy has grown somewhat:
Stuck or stopped? And if stopped why stopped? First, a stopped convoy of this size shows the absolute dominance in the air and on the land of Russian forces. Second, a stopped convoy of this size demonstrates a possible destructive scenario while allowing those that want to leave to do so. The more people that leave the city, the more likely either surrender without fighting or at least fighting that lessens civilian casualties.
Just one daisy cutter bomb should do it.
https://www.history.com/videos/worlds-largest-conventional-bomb
Will one of these be the West’s next export to the Ukraine?
Yes, women are still and increasingly fucked off about having our words and concepts suppressed and being told to shut the fuck up.
JKR on fire this week. International Women’s Day
https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1501181554948775938?s=21
https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1501192047633608707?s=21
Transcript of that part of the interview where the Labour MP apparently says that the definition of ‘woman’ changes depending on which legislation you are referring to at the time 🤡
long past time to sort this mess out.
https://twitter.com/obsolesence/status/1501279108969517064?s=21
Unbelievable. A major political party in a modern democracy who can’t define “woman”. When is this crap going to end?
Not a major political party, most major political parties.
Currently watching documentary series available on Youtube: Dysphoria
Is this what Labour is proposing, or is it emotional rhetoric?
It’s satire. Read the room.
If you want to talk to feminists on IWD I’d suggest not leading with calling their politics emotional.
Satire in regards to this issue had a double radical masectomy, a hysterectomy, a vagina ectomy and now is waiting for an leg meat roll to be sewn onto their pubic bone so as no longer be the thing that men don't want to define, but believe any man can be.
Of course it's satire, but Keir Starmer did make the astonishing claim that it was wrong to say only women have a cervix.
he's not the only one. So much of this nonsense now.
I can't read that, it's locked, so I don't know the details of his argument. But why is it astonishing? Someone born female no longer wishes to be identified as such but hasn't had surgery. Continuing to call that person a woman is wrong, imo.
It's an issue because as a result of the ideology, women are now being called cervix havers, even when we don't want to be and when it harms us (think public health campaigns like cervical screening removing the word 'woman' from their material. Not all women know what a cervix is, or English is their second language, so this creates barriers for women who need clear communication around their bodies. It's fucked up to have to be even explaining this).
Trans women and trans men's needs can be met in various ways without dehumanising women (females). Only female bodied people have a cervix, the word we generally use to refer to those people is women. Not wanting to be called a woman is fine, wanting to change the language and concepts of a whole class of people so you can cope or feel included isn't when that class of people object on the basis of their own oppression and wellbeing.
The only way Starmer is right is if the word woman has no meaning. Hence 🤡 MP above.
Starmer article is here https://archive.ph/LC1G2
yep and when that person then dies of cervical cancer because they pretended to be a man than that is just oops. to bad?
You can identify as humpty dumpty, but that does not make you a twin egg in striped trousers.
And the male who had his penis/scrotum inverted into something resembling a 'vulva' and who needs to daily dilate his 'vagina' hole in order to keep depth and keep the hole open – after all their male body wants to shut and heal that hole- does not have a cervix. At the end of the ‘vagina’ hole he has some penile left over tissue or some intestinal tissue. Non of that is a cervix, as that part of the female body has a very clear reason for being. Namely keeping the uterus sterile and being able to open up to let a baby be born.
That man would never die of cervical cancer, but he would still die of penile cancer if he were unlucky enough to get it.
But yes, it is so unkind to pretend that a women on T does not have a cervix, and if it kills them.
edit: https://inews.co.uk/news/long-reads/ian-duncan-deputy-speaker-house-lords-interview-brother-died-ovarian-cancer-1125221
this is actually a rather sad article, but his brother died not because the language is not correct, but because his brother deluded themselves into thinking that they changed ‘sex’ which sadly they did not. They changed the outside of their bodies, and that was that. A lot of surgery and a lot of T but still a women, and killed by a disease that only women have.
So to some extend you could say that kindness kills transpeople.
and it's worth pointing out the long and horrendous history women have of medical mistreatment via sexism and misogyny, we have bloody good reasons for not giving up our hard won rights or our right to name ourselves in the way that is necessary for us.
"Continuing to call that person a woman is wrong, imo."
Continuing to call that person a 'woman' is factually correct. If we wish to respect that persons wishes by calling them a 'woman' on a personal level, we can do so if we wish. But changing the meaning of a word that defines the reality for the vast majority of adult female humans actually demeans their identity.
I think the solution for public health campaigns is for trans people to politically organise and come up with an overarching term that will include TM, NB females, and any of the other identities, so then we can say "women and [new term] people need to get a cervical smear every three years" or whatever.
(There’s an unclarity here because if we say ‘trans people’ then you get a subset of trans women wanting cervical smears so they feel like a woman despite them not having a cervix (the affirmation need or demand). In some cases there is an medical access issue to sort out, and there’s also a colonisation issue to resolve societally, where some trans women’s wants are unreasonable eg having fake pregnancies and wanting to be part of ante-natal women’s groups)
The problem remains of how to engage with a class of people (trans men) around their female bodies when they have dysphoria to an extent that they cannot tolerate reference to female bodies. This is a separate issue that needs addressing, and shouldn't be used to remove women's language and concepts.
women, transmen, and non binary.
men, transwomen and non binary.
works real well, is explicit in its meaning and need not to be created.
We have accurate language to name things. We just have a group that wants to remove any meaning of he word women and associated functions with that, i.e. the word Mother.
This is a removal of rights from women, to all of their rights they won over the last centuries, down to he 'are they actual humans'.
women, trans men, non-binary, genderfluid, third gender, etc
I think three categories is too many for good public health messaging. It's also clunky. Given this is primarily and identity issue, coining a new term that makes it easy to include people with a gender identity makes sense to me, and keeps things simple.
They are perfect as they are true.
We have two groups
Men – Women
Transmen and female non binary are sub categories of women.
Transwomen and male non binary are sub categories of men.
Everything else is porkies, and so far these porkies are killing trans/non binary people by witholding hte truth from them. Namely that they can not, ever – with todays medical advances – change their sex. That means transmen can get pregnant, can die of cervical, ovarian, uterine cancers, and transwomen can die of penile, testicular and prostate cancer. Cause in the end biology don't have any fucks to give about our need to be kind to the point of killing people thanks to lies.
It also means that children who grow up trans( puperty blockers, wrong sex hormones, castration, neo vag and leg/arm roll penis surgeries) have all the issues their sexed bodies have, minus the reproduction facilities, issues with arousal/orgasms etc. But it would not be kind to talk honestly about these issues.
@Sabine.
As confronting as some might find what you state – I agree with it all.
To allow the words relating to biological sex to be appropriated so as to be meaningless is more than problematic, it is deliberate obfuscation and gaslighting.
Seemingly, 'small' concessions will often have large repercussions. This adoption of alternative language definitions has already shown itself to be one of those instances.
Sorry my first sentence should have read "Continuing to call that person a 'woman' is factually incorrect."
I am more than happy to call a man who identifies as a woman 'she' at a personal and voluntary level. But official recognition of that term is not only a delusion of biological reality, it is to demean biological women.
As you have pointed out, the problem is the ideological results that matter. The reaction to simple statements of fact by JKR is a case in point.
Calling you an idiot is also factually correct. Am I ok to continue doing so?
/satire
that's not satire, it's trolling by someone who can't formulate an argument, and as you know, I will moderate such.
Only if "idiot" was a biological state that could not be changed, and Gypsy belonged to it.
But it is not is it?
Just like your comment was not '/satire'.
If I wanted to be identified as an idiot, and if I asked you to call me an idiot, then you would be welcome to. But equally, not being an idiot, calling me one would still be factually incorrect.
It will be a change anyway.
With our current Government every other day of the year is, to paraphrase the immortal Horace Rumpole, "We who must be obeyed day".
So we must stop questioning these things that are decided by those above our pay grade and get on with the obeying bit.
Some of us have a suitable response to that. It consists of 2 words. The first begins with F. The second word is 'that'.
i commented here a while ago that they should never have terminated nurses employment for not being vaxxed. I made some suggestions about how these nurses might be redeployed to non contact roles, freeing up other nurses to be on the front line.
I think the situation is so desperate for nurses now, the unvaxxed should be re-instated and have daily rapid anti gen testing before and even during shifts. Many of these nurses will be youngish and fit and probably won't get omicron badly, then will recover. Given nurses with covid are needed to continue to keep the hospitals functioning, what difference is it going to make having an unvaxxed nurse working?
Anker, I have recently come out of hospital after elected surgery. I would have been horrified to learn there were unvaccinated nurses in the building. At a time when the country is still to reach its Omicron peak, it is not the time to ease up on current policies. There are other ways that hospitals can reduce the effect of nursing shortages. The obvious one which I expect most are adopting is to cease all elective and other non urgent medical surgeries. My surgery was delayed 15 months due to Covid but I fully accepted there was no alternative.
Once we are tracking back downward which is hopefully only some 2 or 3 weeks away, then it could be appropriate to reconsider employing unvaccinated people but not now.
I have relatives in the Defence Force that were working in the MIQ facilities.
The number of nurses at one such facility was 26, for an MIQ capacity of 50.
They spent all day there, occasionally performing a COVID test. Times that waste of medical resources by the 80 MIQ facilities and you should then reasonably be asking – Could this be handled more efficiently?
This government could have – and still could – do better at allocating medical resources.
Oh yes, the government was caught with its pants down. But of course the current situation has been many years in the making and, as others have pointed out, you can't train nurses overnight.
I think it can be said of most governments whatever their stripes… there is nothing like a full scale emergency to expose the inherent weakness of some government policies.
Repetitive failure to acknowledge issues, and correct accordingly is a problem regardless of which government is in charge.
Current government seems to have this problem.
Firstly Anne, I am very glad you got your surgery and I hope it has gone well.
I have proposed that unvaxxed nurses could be re-deployed to non contact roles and that would involve working from home on secure tele health platforms.
There may come a time when the choice is having covid and being treated with an unvaxxed nurse who has had a RATs test (20% chance of false negatives). Or not getting treatment. Of course if you are in hospital with Covid, then you already have it.
I am very puzzled as to whether people think that a vaxxed nurse who has tested positive but is symptomless or has very mild symptoms should be allowed to work versus an unvaxxed nurse with a RAT test who has tested negative.
this is a good proposal imo. I'm not sure that MoH or DHBs are resilient and adaptable enough to manage that.
We should be looking hard at aged care for this issue too.
It would depend entirely on the reason why they are unvaxxed. If its because they are immunocompromised in some way then your idea is an excellent one. In fact it wouldn't surprise me if its happening in some locations already.
But if they are unvaxxed because they have disappeared down rabbit holes then it is a different story. By the very nature of their poor choice I would not want to see any nurse or doctor who has rejected Covid vaccinations on spurious or conspiratorial grounds being associated with a medical practice of any kind.
I know there are others with a different view, but I don’t believe there is any room for compromise on the matter of Covid vaccinations.
https://twitter.com/SophieXY44/status/1501288144146104320
Rowling tends to choose her causes fairly well, I think.
JK Rowling joins royals and celebrities in donating millions to Ukraine relief (msn.com)
COVID vaccines: time to confront anti-vax aggression
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01084-x
"Accurate, targeted counter-messaging from the global health community is important but insufficient, as is public pressure on social-media companies. The United Nations and the highest levels of governments must take direct, even confrontational, approaches with Russia, and move to dismantle anti-vaccine groups in the United States.
Efforts must expand into the realm of cyber security, law enforcement, public education and international relations. A high-level inter-agency task force reporting to the UN secretary-general could assess the full impact of anti-vaccine aggression, and propose tough, balanced measures. The task force should include experts who have tackled complex global threats such as terrorism, cyber attacks and nuclear armament, because anti-science is now approaching similar levels of peril. It is becoming increasingly clear that advancing immunization requires a counteroffensive."
Pretty sure nothing will actually happen.
– Chris Luxon
Just shooting off at the mouth like he did in the boardroom of Air NZ. Sad thing is this kind of phrasing will go down well with the political right because to them it shows his high aspiration for all Maori to be “high calibre”. This kind of unthinking corp-speak highlights Luxon’s inexperience.
Some comments:
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2022/03/national-leader-christopher-luxon-defends-high-calibre-m-ori-comment-after-criticism.html
What a daft thing for people to be upset about.
If you replace 'maori' with women, pacifica, people etc. would it cause a similar amount of angst ?
Should have said people, and further down the article he tries to explain that's what he meant.
If that's what he meant then why not just say that?
It was a rookie error and a telling slip. Thankfully highlighted by social media and now media.
Probably what he actually meant was wealthy, successful National-voting Maori because to Chris, wealth, success and voting National go hand in hand. While poor, unsuccessful people vote Labour.
Some really awesome high-calibre Māori reached out to me over summer.
– Chris Luxon
Yeah, I used to use that expression – high calibre – years ago when I was an immature, naive idiot who fancied herself. 😉
Oh dear, oh dear – what a chump call!
But they must have been very Big Guns being such High Calibre.
Mind you what more could one expect coming from an ex CEO of Air NZ where the whole culture and emphasis of the organisation (probably as a result of its ex CEO) is focused on bowing and scraping its "elite" customers.
If I have interpreted your comment correctly, don't you think Luxon is a naive chump to have expressed himself in such a way?
Sorry Mutton but I can't agree. As a non-journalist, my first question to someone who said "high-calibre people" would be to ask him to describe what low-calibre people are like. Is he talking about early proto-hominids and have we just time-travelled into a 19th Century anthropology lecture?
But calibre, of course, is just one measure in the analogy. I, for example, would be more of a medium calibre low velocity pakeha with a progressive left-hand twist in my lands and grooves.. .
It would be exactly the same for me. Firstly, "awesome, high-calibre" is dickhead corporate language that means fuck all, and represents a clunky, transparent attempt to connect with 'average' people, who are incapable of thinking precisely and therefore beneath one; if he actually thinks it does mean something (which is not to be ruled out), then it's even worse, because it shows that he has trouble distinguishing between the content of his thoughts and the meaning of the words he is uttering. Secondly, regardless of the minority group he is referring to, it implicitly divides that minority group up into the worthy and the unworthy, and exudes the arrogant assumption that he is a fitting arbiter of which is which; it throws up the question as to whether he would even have bothered listening to their ideas if they hadn't met his worthiness criteria. That is the sort of call one can make on the fly if one is just a person on the street; less so if one is aspiring to govern a nation for all of its diverse people.
If he were talking about members of what he considered to be the dominant group in society, the connotations would be slightly different, but there's no real need to go into that here.
yep, Luxon has become Captain Dufus…
looking forward to the many foot-in-mouth's to come haha
House prices falling. Thanks Jacinda!
https://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/homed/real-estate/127987960/housing-market-correction-under-way-but-masked-by-last-years-price-increases
You have to actually read the whole article Mutton.
"On an annual basis, national price increases had slowed to 22.9 per cent in February, down from 26.8 per cent the month before."
So, contrary to the misleading framing of the statistics, house prices have gone up an incredible 22.9% from prices that were already mindlessly high a year ago.
There is a constant theme in the media to pretend that house prices are falling when the opposite is true which I don't understand-any theories out there?
Many in the media are idiots that stop thinking after the headline?
The actual purpose of our "news" papers is to spruik the property market?
no problem, it is the way you are despite all your obfuscation
so fucking boring haven't you got anything better to do?
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
What's starting to shock me is how this governments rhetoric has changed.
When asked about a problem this government used to say it would be looking into it and commited to fixing /changing the problem coming off as flexible and reactive if there was a crisis they would admit there was a crisis
Nowadays, the government gets defensive, point blank refuses to answer questions and gets into debates about the wording or definition of the problem and refuses to accept things are a problem. Instead of comiting to change or looking into something it usually lists why they can't do anything on x y z.
This is becoming an issue. They are becoming the can't, shan't , won't party.
Take for instance the cost of living crisis it's clear we're in one and have been in one for some time instead of saying yes it's a crisis because of global issues and we're going to try to address some of these in the budget to soften the blow the pm rejects the word crisis.
Or tax brackets. Tax brackets haven't been adjusted for 12 years, NZs tax system is broken and unfair and focuses far too much on sucking money out of the bottom, tax bracket creep is hurting people many min wage workers are wrongly about to be put in higher tax brackets, a reactive, flexible, energetic government would commit to adjusting tax brackets, it would be popular, instead the government rules out doing so with no argument. Too hard. Meanwhile the opposition commits to do doing so, keys govt would have blunted this by comiting to adjusting them Labour just scoffs. This is going to hurt them.
The government is coming off as tired and stuck in their ways and with some severely hard times coming up this winter problems on tax, housing,rents, fuel,food are falling on death ears it doesn't seem to care about a third term.
They could at the very least adjust tax brackets and drop gst to pre key levels of about 10% to line it up with Australias gst and to offset the 5% inflation.
I fear the govt is walking into its own winter if discontent. I'm not sure if it's arrogance or being captured by their ministries or just plane out of touch but there refusal to even admit problems or commit to simple changes is a big problem and they seem more like a fourth term govt than a govt in it's fifth year.
They desperately need a cabinet shake up and to start reading the room and getting back to a can do govt before the country sees them as out of touch and a govt of can't , shan't won't
I was thinking the same thing. The emerging denial is very john key – like. Jk always denied a housing crisis, inequality crisis and child poverty etc… Labour now starting to sound the same.
Tax lawyer stickies all over this.
https://twitter.com/SvarnUlfPol/status/1501272826413727746
The authorities of the Republic of Poland, after consultations between the President and the Government, are ready to deploy – immediately and free of charge – all their MIG-29 jets to the Ramstein Air Base and place them at the disposal of the Government of the United States of America.
At the same time, Poland requests the United States to provide us with used aircraft with corresponding operational capabilities. Poland is ready to immediately establish the conditions of purchase of the planes.
The Polish Government also requests other NATO Allies – owners of MIG-29 jets – to act in the same vein.
https://www.gov.pl/web/diplomacy/statement-of-the-minister-of-foreign-affairs-of-the-republic-of-poland-in-connection-with-the-statement-by-the-us-secretary-of-state-on-providing-airplanes-to-ukraine
And that's a no.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/08/poland-mig-29-jets-us-ukraine
They gotta have plausible deniability. Use an anonymous middleman is the usual way to finesse this situation. Poland gives planes to X while receiving replacements from Y (USA or agent). X gets planes to Ukraine AF.
Money talks so offer the deal to sympathetic govts for an enable fee. All you need is a team of trained-up pilots. If they are two-seaters, an experienced co-pilot could advise a trainee who is experienced with different planes.
And spend a couple of hundred hours obtaining a type rating in an aircraft travelling at more than twice the speed of sound with an unrefuelled range of 3,000km or so. Nah.
Young guns rise to such challenges! Anyone serious about helping Ukraine will have to use lateral thinking to finesse the mental blocks erected by old guys controlling the various hierarchies. History shows us this is how such challenges usually get dealt with. Forget business as usual and the bureaucratic slowdowns it normally imposes…
Poland has good quality Mig 29's Ukraine has more than enough people experienced in flying those planes but they would have none experienced in flying US manufactured planes like the F16
https://twitter.com/WomenReadWomen/status/1501318675592204292
https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1501291633165357056
So, JKR rightfully uses her institutionally and societally gifted power to talk the feminism she wants. I on the other hand am dropping IWD tweets in OM because I know that if I put up any of this as a post I will suffer social sanctions that unlike JKR I cannot afford, and today I don't have the spoons for it.
That's fucked up. And this is why feminists call JKR a queen.
It's hard enough writing as feminist in this very blokey space, as an author and/or as a commenter, for a range of reasons to do with society and the culture of TS in particular. No Debate and the sex/gender war make it actually risky. Many women cannot even express an opinion using their real life names because of fear of real life sanctions.
We're losing ground. Women, and society. Half of the left doesn't know what we're talking about and the other half thing we're bigots for demanding that being female is an actual thing and that it matters. It's imperative we find ways to name what is happening.
Here's Suzanne Moore,
Read the whole thing,
https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1501155484593704962
https://archive.ph/p1POV link from out behind the paywall.
Which is the point of all that exercise. Achieve 'equality' by dismantling it, calling for 'equity' and thus a fonterra board with 6 male and 6 transwomen or male non binaries or male gender fluids or any made up woo woo is suddenly not a 100% male board.
Have a womans team comprised of only transwomen. ! Equity!
Have transwomen dilute the women pool on women lists, jobs awards etc. And in the end, have these same trans identified males who appropriate womanhood make rules under which things who can no longer be named have to live.
I don't think many of the things who can no longer be named have thoughts about the practical implications, or for those in academia with government jobs maybe they believe that they will not be affected by the shit storm that is about to rain down on us.
The Ferengi Nation comes to mind. Womb rental and all.
Weka, I so endorse all you are saying………..I have been surprized how gender ideology has captured so many, especially the media, the public service, a raft of other organisations and The Labour and Green Parties.
Debate is shut down, people are called bigots and transphobes, lesbian woman tresspassed from Pride last year and had the police called to enforce the tresspass.
I spoke out recently on a group I am a member of FB page and had my post cancelled. I was drawing attention to the 25,000 detransitioners on Reddit. I know many in the group agree with me, but were too scared to speak up. One had previously spoken up and the gender ideologues rang their employee and they nearly lost their job……………..
We are close to a time where we will no longer be able to speak up without risking hate speech laws being used against us. This is the work of the left (whom I have always been aligned with)
the work of the left
An ideology empowered by leftists driven by pc is how I'd frame it (from my observer position). Viewing the situation with the lens of civil rights, the solution seems achievable via solidarity based on accurate identification of minority rights. Then traditional organising, using leverage & framing in a lobby group. Then, if necessary a class action.
Sharing aspirations is usually how such things originate – often combined with a common grievance based on perception of injustice. Then defining the common interest shared, then using that definition to construct a political action group. Keep membership rules simple, making it easy to join. Voluntary leadership by activists originates – then things get tricky (elections may be necessary at a critical threshold).
So best to focus on getting such a movement up & running. Success will be proportion to numbers joining in the origin phase. Recruitment based on networking, likemindedness. The pool is adult women, the pitch is non-partisan, so the only design challenge is framing. That must address the threat to civil rights. The learning curve will probably lie around what social factors insulate some women from seeing the problem. Incentives to shift their view have to be used in the framing.
Being uninvolved I offer this summary of technique due to a personal history of similar experiential situations & learning curves. Plus altruism.
A movement of what exactly?
But who are these people
I have a horrible feeling you are meaning natal women.
The minority is the transwomen community.
Many women would happily help them find a place, develop policies where they are no discriminated against that does not involve natal women having their rights and born identity sidelined.
Clarity in language is important.
Natal women are women. Unless half the world's population has agreed otherwise.
Transwomen are transwomen, and are also men.
Agree that was why I was curious as to who the people with minority rights were that Dennis mentioned. It surely could not be women as figures show that depending on when the count is taken we make up usually slightly more or very slightly less than 50% and in some age groups are the majority.
Agree that transwomen are transwomen, and are also men and transmen are transmen and are also women.
There is a lot of wool over eyes pulling and sleight of hand that brings to mind sayings of my youth 'I'm not as green as I am cabbage-looking, meaning, “I may look new to this, but I'm not.” and 'I did not come down in the last shower' used to indicate that someone is not foolish or gullible
When it is looked at simply I wonder why more men are not coming out against this word twisting.
The concept that transwomenhood is a male rights agenda seems to explain this.
Medical differences between men and women matter too.
I hadn't heard of this before but if true, should change protocols for both donating and receiving blood products:
https://www.statnews.com/2017/10/17/blood-transfusions-pregnant-women/
A movement of what exactly?
Far be it for a male to presume to answer that. All I can offer is suggestions! On that limited basis, my answer would hew to the simple formula of women who care enough to work together to solve the problem.
That said, I know it gets complicated. The formula of ready, willing and able is a good one to apply if those complaining about the situation default into assuming that they ought to solve it. Not all such people are willing. Some will be unable (due to personal circumstances such as prior commitments or disabilities). Some may want to help but are currently unready to do so.
So what tends to happen is a zeitgeist effect – all those who synch into the same collective space/time/attitude are the right ones!
Shifting from the generic to the particular, I wonder if it is appropriate to frame it as feminism with a number attached – to invoke the power of tradition. The new number defines progress as the agenda. So it becomes automatically progressive! This framing device works on a mutual recognition basis. Only viable if feminism as ideology is seen as non-toxic in essence by the majority of women, I suspect, and I can't comment on that issue…
thanks for clarifying, I wasn't quite sure what you meant.
There's an awesome grassroots feminist movement in the UK that we've not seen the like of in many a decade. Very heartening. It's arisen because of the impact on women's rights from gender ideology movements, and it's making good progress both in organising and in political gains. Some women have paid a hefty price with jobs, careers, abuse, and police attention.
In NZ there is that potential, but I don't know what the deal is with activism in NZ now. We all seem to be in a holding pattern of some sort (not just women).
Re naming, feminism is a good term on its own. Feminism has always had disagreement and different branches. For clarity currently we can talk about radical feminism, liberal feminism, 2nd and 3rd wave, gender critical feminism and so on.
And more than that too. I just read the wiki for 4th wave. There isn't one for the 5th wave yet but this popped up:
https://gayexpress.co.nz/2021/03/international-womens-day-what-will-fifth-wave-feminism-look-like/
If this wave is too amorphous to define as yet, then it will eventually crest. That means the time is ripe for those who seek to ride it. Doing so would be the best way to give it collective identity & form…
I must say this appealed to me…..Am I wrong to see it as a men's rights group?
The strategies, bulldozing through, sidelining those who disagree, wanting an end result that comes about by force of will rather than discussion, seem more like stereotypic male thinking.
https://twitter.com/KarenSeabrooke1/status/1501328594320207874
I think that some of the most vociferous on this topic (irrespective of gender identity), are misogynists who have found a new publicly and politically sanctioned way to harass and harm women.
The failure to recognise and reprimand such actions harms both women and transgender people.
Yes that is right….misogynists too.
I am not sure why non misogynistic men are not coming out in support of women. Or is the loyalty of a man to a fellow man greater than their loyalty to fairness.
Mind you it is a brave man who will stand with women.
'A number of New Zealand’s leading male politicians, including John Hall, Robert Stout, Julius Vogel, William Fox and John Ballance, supported women’s suffrage'.
https://nzhistory.govt.nz/politics/womens-suffrage/brief-history
In the UK
https://artsandculture.google.com/story/HgXhTLahLDp8Lg
In the US
https://suffragistmemorial.org/7-suffragist-men-and-the-importance-of-allies/
A couple of examples of male "allies" responding to a tweet by J K Rowling:
https://twitter.com/o_clis/status/1501319314414075904
https://twitter.com/Bearwhale/status/1501228714373173248
https://twitter.com/Bearwhale/status/1501229560670523393
,,, and the screenshot of the bravest…
Why yes Virginia, that is exactly what they are. 🙂 And they enjoy every it every bit.
It never ceases to amuse me that some people really believe that the men of the right and the left are not driven by the exact same misogyny. It is just couched in different terms, but the end effect is the same.
sorry, are you saying that all trans women are MRAs?
Transgenderism/Trans ideology is misogyny. Pure and unadulterated.
Gender Non Conforming Men are not broken beings that need to be shoved into womens places, pretending to be women to the point where they get to dictate women how to women. And that is MRA in the nutshell. They are men.
"Widening the bandwidth of being a male" perhaps?
https://youtu.be/JkK7zisjoDk
to me this is just bigotry. Trans women =/= trans ideology. There are many trans women who reject the ideology.
MRA is a specific set of philosophies. To equate all trans women with that is similar to saying that all feminists hate men.
You are putting words in my mouth that i don't say. I would like you to consider this for a moment.
Maybe it is not what i said that is the issue but how you interpretate it. I am not even considering William "lia' Thomas as a 'MRA', even tho he benefits greatly from the MRA that comes with TRA.
You can not seperate the MAN from Trans. Otherwise they would be women and then we would not have this issue to talk about.
Gender Non conforming men are not the fault of women and are not a problem for women. They should be an issue for Men and Men should be accomodating them in the male spaces, jobs, awards, and changing rooms. And in fact, i would venture a guess where Michael "lia' Thomas to be the 420 ranked swimmer in the Mens as an out and proud transwomen he would get way more support then he is getting now. But for some reason that is not what Michael "Lia" Thomas is doing. But i guess as someone ranked 420 – i.e. average – would not get to stand on a podium with the winning women ranked below him. And that is MRA in a nutshell. Maybe you need to consider that the two philosophies are intertwined and to some extend feed of each others.
Secondly, i don't consider the swimmer, or the surfer, or even Eddie Izzard a 'transwomen'. I consider them transvestites. Maybe already there we need to identify of whom we speak.
But i take your bigot, and i would add Terf, and Femnazi, and men hater, and i have no issues with that. In the end these words are meaningless and the actions for TRA's are standing on their own as do their words.
And just to re-enforce the idea once more, i do not speak about Transwomen per se, i speak about the movement, the political clout that movement has compared to say 'feminism' , the money behind it, big pharma, big surgery, and so on.
But again, i will wear that 'bigottry' t-shirt. It states that Women are adult human females.
I asked you a specific question,
You responded by saying,
I took that as you saying that you know what trans women are and you linked this again to MRAs, but you didn't actually answer my question directly, so I parsed it from your recent comments.
I see eventually you clarified that there is a difference between being trans, and trans ideology,
So my question and assumption served a purpose, of getting you to just say what you meant in relation to my query.
Honestly I didn't read the rest of your comment, because I was asking for a simple thing and as you know I get weary of the lectures at times.
no, trans women are not a men's rights group. Trans women are a group of gender non-conforming males, who just like every other group of people have varying needs and politics.
Gender identity activism (sometimes called trans rights activism) has strong parallels with MRAs. Lots of trans women aren't doing either of those two things. There are some that definitely are.
That's a clearer statement than mine.
Thanks, weka. I agree with every word.
Yes I get this.
I also get the view of Magdalen Burns in Molly's link above that why is it that women have to take the big breath of acceptance and why is it that that he is 'widening the bandwidth for women'. He should be widening the bandwidth for men.
Magdalen Burns has another video at this link
The reason i did not answer your question to your satisfaction is very simple.
I am not speaking of transwomen. I am speaking of the movement and only the movement. I can separate the two. So i am not going to answer your questions as your question is quite out of line and accusatory at best.
Its like with men and being a rapist. Not all man are rapists, but most rapists are men. There is quite a nuance in there. Ditto with Transwomen, Non binaries, genderfluid and any of the other 90+ made up 'genders' may not be themselves MRA's but they profit of the MRA tactics employed by TRAs that serve only to shut down women.
And frankly, you, Molly, Anker, Shangreah and others we have had more then one discussion on this subject and it seems that only you saw it fit to declare bigotry where there is none, implied or otherwise.
Transideology is at its heart deeply mysogynistic, starting with the idea that a women gives birth to a child 'with a wrong body'. Humans have one body, once that body is used up we die. We can modify that body with wrong sex hormones, puberty blockers, plastic surgery, fillers, silicon, make up, full body silicon suits, tattoos, implants and what not, but it is still the same body and it is still sexed exactly the same way it was on the day of it emerging from a womans vagina. Yet, here we ask women to make way for men into their spaces, jobs, awards, camps, changing rooms, sports on the ground of these men living in the 'wrong' body. Lol. And as the beautiful clip of the Sainted Magdalene Berns stated, that dude with a beard and horrible dressing sense is now a women and we have to affirm this dude as a women cause kindness and otherwise bigotry. IF that is not MRA tactics in action i must have a different definition of MRAs then you. And fwiw, that dude might not see it as that, but then he is the one that wants to be in places where women are in various stages of undress and he is the one that now has that right, and any women who is uncomfortable with him being in a changing room with her is a ‘terf’ ‘bigot’ ‘transphope’ ‘cissy’ and other assorted bs. The insults change the premise for them stays the same.
Understand that i generally don't go after people and pretend they are something, and if i were to do that, i would have absolutely no qualms and issue in naming the person and stating why i would do so. I am only discussing the movement, the philosophy the legal aspects and the rights that women are losing thanks to this movement that elevates men feels above the rights women earned through hard work, beatings, forced feedings, and ridicule. This may make you uncomfortable, maybe you even think i should be kinder, softer and more accommodating, but to that i only have a 'No, thank you' to give you. I rather be rude then a liar and someone who then must continuously affirm that lie. I personally can't be bothered with that. It would be too exhausting to be honest.
Sabine, while I agreed with weka above, I considered it a response to Shanreagh who seems to be exploring this topic more in recent days, and might not be aware of the distinction between the activism around the gender identity ideology, and the people who are living as transgender. That was only my take, could be wrong.
I understand your position, and agree with it as well.
It is the gender identity ideology that is problematic, and the refusal to put that belief system under the same scrutiny and objectivity that any other belief system would undergo.
The medical interventions promoted for children and young people, the removal of single sex spaces of all kinds (physical and otherwise), the distortion of language, the negative impact on women's sports, the indoctrination of institutions and services, the elimination of lesbians, and gays from their own movement, and the complete failure to ask for empirical evidence is a dangerous movement.
I know that is not the limit of the negative effects, but you get my drift.
Anyway, was cheered up by watching this week's The Mess We're In, in celebration of Women's International Day. If you are wanting something to watch, it's here:
https://youtu.be/LO43BU_OqW8
All of us that have been talking about this for ages now are on the same page: it's the ideology and activism that is the problem.
It's really important that we don't lump all trans people in with that. For one thing, it will step over the line in terms of TS debate rules. We have trans people here, they have a right to be here. If people are going to be casual in their rhetoric about transness, and not clear, and they sound like bigots, then it's unfair on trans people, it creates an atmosphere that inhibits debate.
It will also be harder to then argue that feminists have any rights to not be exposed to such when debate women's rights.
For another, it's wrong and not fair.
We cannot expect to have our own arguments respected if we won't make an effort to separate out trans people from the problematic ideology.
weka, if you haven't done so. Watch the link posted above – my daughter and I enjoyed the whole hour, and the display of humour and understanding between the women. I hope you do as well.
I think there exists the same energy – for the most part – between female commentators on here. I hope I'm right about that.
(Edit: Thinking of writing a post about the damage of the medicalised response (and social transitioning) of children, based on the recent changes to that after evidential reviews in the Netherlands, Finland, Sweden and France. Having just watched the Dysphoria series on Youtube, its a timely conversation for NZ, that has an “affirmation health care” model.)
Will see if I can get something coherent drafted.
👍👍
Sent email with draft post, .
👍
Yes, it was a nice 'beer' hour in good albeit physically distanced ways, excellent company and as far as i can crush on ladies, oh do i have a crush on Helen Joyce. To the Queen her Ladies!
Yes, I'm tempted to get that audio book just to listen to Helen Joyce for hours.
that's a good idea! I have the hard back but haven't gotten far through yet.
Sabine, this is literally what I was asking you to clarify. You've done that now, but it took far more work than was necessary imo. A simple clarification would have sufficed.
If you can't handle someone calling your position bigotry, then maybe take more care with how you express it. I'm not the only one who sometimes misunderstands what you say. I'm not saying be kind, I'm saying pay attention to who you are talking to and listen to what they are saying. My original question was incredibly clear and simple to answer. But you didn't.
I don't think you are a bigot now that you have made it clear what you mean. It definitely wasn't clear from your first comment (which is why I asked) or your second.
Again, didn't read most of your comment because am sick of the patronising lectures, as if I don't already know all that stuff.
I tend to abstain from words such as bigotry or any insults to anyone generally specifically insults as generally that always says more about the one using these words then those against whom they are deployed. ,
I am sorry that you thought that my second or first comment was a lecture, i honestly believed that i had to make myself even clearer in my thoughts and words.
My problem is when you don't listen. I didn't need long posts of explanation, I already know what you think about trans ideology, and we are generally on the same page. All I needed was clarification on that one point. See my comment to Molly below for the reasons why. It matters how we talk about trans people here, in the same way it matters how men talk about women. Making it clear that it is the ideology that is being critiqued is a good way to do this 👍
I enjoy reading Suzanne Moore – kicked off the Guardian for.. continuing to be herself – a clear writer.
Helping the underdog fight better:
So the imbalance may be gradually evening out. I couldn't find any update on the Ukraine army situation online.
Because Ukrainian operation security will be as tight as a drum while every tool the West has works to crack Russia's, and publicise every last detail.
https://twitter.com/michaeldweiss/status/1500916082630172682
https://twitter.com/christogrozev/status/1500946339886247940
Giddy with excitement over all this 'war porn' arent you.
Probably using the garmin hand held taped to the cockpit if the Russian Glonasss GPS system is jammed while over Ukraine
Says TS's #1 hasbarah warrior for the autocratic warmonger calling the shots.
/
Thats defamatory . Ive said its a terrible war as they always are including those by the US and friends 'good wars' and a massive mistake by Putin.
Omicron has just shut down a major infrastructure project, temporarily.
Omicron brings Auckland tunnelling machine to a halt (1news.co.nz)
A third of workers are down as 'close contacts' or infected.
This will be a shockwave through the construction industry, which is one of New Zealand's largest employers.
Likewise a third of the Nat caucus is down with omicron. An accurate statistical match with the tunnellers, huh? Probably due to the function of boring that both share…
https://www.1news.co.nz/2022/03/07/around-11-national-mps-isolating-or-with-covid-willis/
Ha ha very smart Dennis
High calibres require a lot of boring.
And, as Reginald Perrin notes: "Praise the Lord for small bores, for small bores get bigger every day,"
"Let it rip" huh?
Certainly 'ripping' at the moment.
Hipkin seems to have his Ted Bundy hat on,with the unscientific rationale of reduced isolation to 7 days.
https://twitter.com/yaneerbaryam/status/1480954038137016320?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1480954038137016320%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpublish.twitter.com%2F%3Fquery%3Dhttps3A2F2Ftwitter.com2Fyaneerbaryam2Fstatus2F1480954038137016320widget%3DTweet
"A third of the National Party has either been infected with Covid-19 or is isolating with someone who has, as the Omicron wave hits Parliament.?
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/300535648/covid19-nz-national-hit-hardest-as-omicron-reaches-parliament
If they can't keep themselves safe, how can they keep the rest of us safe??
they've all just got colds
/sarc
So censorship is the new normal. Funny how the whole legacy media is complaining about censorship in Russia, then are deathly quite whilst the tech companies shut down alternative news in the west. In particular anti-war voices, it's frightening.
If you have the time worth hearing the whole thing. I say hear as I just play like a podcast, and do other work.
https://twitter.com/jelle_simons/status/1501260045505466368
The Opposition is getting better at following their themes eg adjusting tax brackets. (Which the Budget may be already getting ready to do that.
https://www.parliament.nz/en/pb/order-paper-questions/list-of-oral-questions/oral-questions-9-march-2022/
One does get the sneaking suspicion …
Putin has offered Ukraine peace, for recognition of the annexation of Crimea and eastern Ukraine areas in Luhansk and Donetsk occupied since 2014 and declaring neutrality (not joining NATO).
The generous offer is indicative of Putin's real agenda.
The end of sanctions on Russia for the annexation of Crimea (and occupation in eastern Ukraine) – this only occurs when an independent and internationally recognised sovereign Ukraine consents.
Ukraine should, in my opinion agree, provided Russia takes over a proportion of the national debt of Ukraine equivalent to the land and resources transferred to Russia.
And also agree to neutrality, provided it retains an independent defence capability. And that it can still join the EU at or by the time the EU and Russia have an FTA. From this a positive Ukraine and Russian economic relationship, in which Russia and the EU would assist with Ukraine's reconstruction.
The increase of sanctions on Russia applied recently would have sharpened focus on the importance of a negotiated settlement.
While Putin would still be free to negotiate a reduced NATO presence in former WP nations, via a military build up threat of securing a land bridge to Kaliningrad via Lithuania – developing a co-operative relationship between the EU and Russia over Ukraine's economic revival would reduce the risk of NATO-Russian conflict
The Russian military appears to be overcommitted in Ukraine.
At least to the point that the Belarusian military are throwing sickies rather than join them.
With the mass of their heavy equipment set to be abandoned in the coming rout, it will be Ukraine that decides where the borders lie, as Russian conventional forces are defanged and disgraced, and no economy exists to rebuild them for decades.
Putin must have thought he was the god of intelligence, turning the former US president, but as another US president noted, you can't fool all of the people all of the time.
A monopoly? Really?
I didn't realise all those planes that fly in and out of New Zealand airports were Air New Zealand planes in disguise.
I didn't realise that planes labelled as being owned by Qantas, Air China, Etihad Airways, EVA Air, Singapore Airlines, United and Jetstar were actually part of Air New Zealand.
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
Don’t be a legalistic pedant.
https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/mike-hosking-breakfast/audio/kevin-ward-warnings-over-air-new-zealand-monopoly-as-price-for-domestic-flights-rises/
Not only that but ANZ has a dominant position with either weak opposition or are in cahoots with the foreign carrier on many routes
Especially for most lucrative in regrads numbers of travellers and business segment
https://www.qantas.com/nz/en/qantas-experience/network-and-partner-airlines/air-new-zealand.html
That might be the case, but this Post is not about ANZ as such. Why is it so hard for some here to stay on topic, even loosely?
I am not sure you really want to bring peoples attention to this. The link you provide is dated 20/01/2020. It talks about Air New Zealand putting up its fares when Jetstar stopped flying domestically.
The withdrawal was announced on 25 September 2019 and took effect in November 2019. Well Luxon resigned from Air NZ in June 2019 and left the company on 25 September that year. Hence the increase in fares being complained about took place after his successor took over. It wasn't Luxon's doing at all, was it? After all, would he really be setting the future policy for the airline on his last day in the office?
Legalistic pedant? I think not. I just like to see the truth being told.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/business/399566/jetstar-to-pull-out-of-regional-flying-in-nz-at-end-of-november
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/116075634/luxons-last-stand-air-nz-chief-executive-steps-down-at-annual-meeting
You’re missing the point yet again. If you want to talk about Luxon and National’s shambolic financial analyses, then fine, comment under Micky’s Post all you like and give the other side a tough debate. If you want to talk about ANZ, use OM.
You were out by 8 days with the link date; you may value “the truth”, but you obviously don’t value accuracy in and of your statements.
Have a nice day.
Quite right. It was 28/02/2020. I notice you don't question the rest of my comment though. Pity the fare rises were after his time in the chair isn't it?
No need to respond any further to your diversions – I just like to keep convos more or less on track. Others may want to waste their time, if they so wish – they may even get something useful out of your comments, but I doubt it.
As the world fractures in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine what chance the global co operation vital to addressing climate change?
Will this end up being the scandal of the century?
"regular use of ivermectin as a prophylactic agent was associated with significantly reduced COVID-19 infection, hospitalization, and mortality rates," based on an observational study of 159,561 residents ages 18 and over in Itajaí, Brazil.
'After adjusting for variables, the authors said, they found a 67% reduction in hospitalization rate and a 70% reduction in mortality rate for ivermectin users.'
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35070575/
"Conclusion: In this large PSM study, regular use of ivermectin as a prophylactic agent was associated with significantly reduced COVID-19 infection, hospitalization, and mortality rates."
https://www.cureus.com/articles/82162-ivermectin-prophylaxis-used-for-covid-19-a-citywide-prospective-observational-study-of-223128-subjects-using-propensity-score-matching
Those numbers are similar to 2 x shots plus booster(3) in regards to Omricon!
Obviously the Oxford trial is still on-going, but there seems to be a picture forming around this very cheap and safe drug.
Scandal of the century my arse.
Even if ivermectin comes out of the wash as being as effective as its premature proponents have claimed for however long, so what? A decision based on insufficient evidence is still a gamble, even if one happens to win.
"so what"?
"insufficient evidence"
A gamble was taken by us all in the greatest real-time human experiment! I'm vaccinated. And I'm very concerned we were all duped by the least trusted company in the least trusted industry in modern times, with government/societal 'aid'.
@McFlock its maybe time to confront all the lies your told to believe are fact. I know its not easy as it will shake your version of an 'augmented' reality we've all bought in too.
Serious question: what actual clinical trials has ivermectin gone through compared to the pfizer vaccine regarding efficacy against covid?
This study is promising, shame it took them a year to process and publish their results. It has more participants, but was not blind. Intereference of other treatments was not documented. Absence of adverse events seems to have been assumed rather than actually examined.
Committing oneself to a course of action before sufficient evidence is in might have a desired result, but it doesn't win at science. It could just as easily be an error.
I'm very concerned that absolute morons have undermined effective public health measures to the point that NZ seems to have decided to accept several deaths a day just so some cafe owner can bitch that not enough people are walking through the door.
Stick your augmented reality in your rear usb port, your CPU is throwing a critical runtime error.
“Serious question: what actual clinical trials has ivermectin gone through compared to the pfizer vaccine regarding efficacy against covid?”
https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2021-06-23-ivermectin-be-investigated-possible-treatment-covid-19-oxford-s-principle-trial
It's still going….. takes time to get this information on trials and studies at the end of a global pandemic right?!!
https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-detail/pfizer-and-biontech-provide-update-ongoing-studies-covid-19
Cancelling and ignoring your usual ‘attacks and distractions’ @Mcflock
omagerd I bin cancelled. 🙄
I'm not sure what you think your links demonstrate, but they just go to show that what you regard as "experimental" has been more thoroughly studied against covid than ivermectin. And seems to have better results.
You enjoyed the cancel joke… It's all the rage at present, I knew you'd love it
"has been more thoroughly studied against covid than ivermectin". Really? Please do provide the ‘evidence’, because it seems to be blurred more and more for ‘some reason or another’.
I'm sure it will all come out in the wash eventually right….? https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/wait-what-fda-wants-55-years-process-foia-request-over-vaccine-data-2021-11-18/
P.S. Demonstrating what you asked for.
Read the links again.
Look at:
Maybe you're right?
Both the Oxford trial on efficacy and 'real world' study from Brazil looking at effectiveness, have no value at all. May rock the boat of augmented reality we're all clinging to too much?
Nothing to see, look away, back to meta kids.
https://www.medsafe.govt.nz/safety/Alerts/ivermectin-covid19.htm
I trust consensus expert medical opinion. If you trust ivermectin, then go for it, but please get vaccinated against COVID-19 too.
In NZ , so far 1 in 77000 people have tragically lost their lives to COVID-19; in Brazil it's roughly 1 in 330. I don't trust ivermectin to keep me safe from COVID. Three doses of the mRNA vaccine are all I need for now, and that's not just the placebo talking.
Vaccination status of new hospitalisations per 100,000 of population segment: Boosted – 1; Unvaccinated – 5.5.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/in-depth/450874/covid-19-data-visualisations-nz-in-numbers
Hmmm.
If you take that from my comments, especially the one that was a simple list of questions about the links already provided, then expecting you to understand even your own links is an exercise in futility.
Or you didn't actually take that from my comments, but these are the lengths you'll go to in order to avoid addressing simple questions to which you might not like the answers.
"pointed out potential conflicts of interest with the study’s authors. They noted that although the preprint version of the study mentions that two of its authors received money from a pharmaceutical company that manufactures ivermectin, the published version leaves that detail out.'
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/jan/28/facebook-posts/study-brazil-ivermectin-covid-19-prevention-flawed/
In Brazil even before covid , Ivermectin was a commonly prescribed anti parasite drug and what portion the citys inhabitants were already using the drug and of course covid vaccines were also used – which the authors say was still the best protection
But of course for the facebook epidemiologists its of no concern why no real experts will take much notice of the other evidence
If you have worms go for Ivermectin all you like
lol big worming got to 'em, huh.