We only got 4 legs so we got the Quaddie, 2 x legs short of Pick Six yesterday Gosman was in the race early along with Alwyn, Mullet Head appeared early especially after Winston had made some moves the previous evening, Baby Gaga appeared mid day and started stirring as per usual.
Leg 1 Gosman
Leg 2 Alwyn
Leg 3 Mullet Head
Leg 4 Baby Gaga
If you want to keep vilifying and bullying commenters, all you do is look more and more like Whaleoil, Jason Ede, and the rest of the right wing guys that Rawshark warned us all about.
Stop attacking the commenters and start generating better argument.
In essence I agree with you Ad, but some days you get a break from working, and a ‘hate in’ by the usual suspects is in full swing here on the standard.
By the time you scroll past all the BS, it is just simpler to give up and go to another forum for a more engaging conversation. Then hope the next day it won’t be dominated by another ‘hate in’.
It is indeed a great honour and privilege to be considered in the same illustrious company as those mentioned above. I assure all readers of The Standard that while this added responsibility will at times weigh heavily on my shoulders, I will not shirk from my responsibility to you all.
There is a widely held view, including among public servants, that officials in the past two decades have focused too tightly on serving ministers, even at times anticipating and then serving up what their ministers might want to hear. Mr Hipkins sums it up as them asking ministers: “What advice would you like?”
We do now need to keep a daily count on these national trollls weho may be actuallly working on behalf of cameron Slater and the national party together.
So we need to keep on their tail showing how they are trying to sway the whle NZ election process going forward as they appear to enjoy attacking most other bloggers now.
Can you keep up your excellent daily reviews for watching these national trolls ‘activities’.
Some of the people mentioned are not trolls (as far as I can see).
James, chris73, stunnedmullet, Puckish Rogue, Gosman and Alwyn appear to be broadly sincere (if sometimes snarky or provocative) right wingers.
There is no guarantee that everyone you will meet here will be left wing. At least the RW guys provide someone you can have an argument with. It would be boring if everyone agreed all the time.
Baba Yaga and the Chairman I think are trolls, that is they do not believe what they say and are just here to wind you up. The Standard could do without them, but they are bound to cop a ban at some point so I wouldn’t worry too much.
“Alwyn appear to be broadly sincere”.
Why thank you, kind Sir. Of course I must admit that if you really want to make me snarky the best way is to lie and accuse me of being in the National Party.
Never have been and never will be a member of any Political Party.
In that regard I am like Groucho Marx. https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/groucho_marx_122546
What about accusing you of being over-histrionic? (kind Sir, thou foul knave, etc.)
And not being a member of a political party does not prevent you from having political bias inherent in your comments. Few here would see you as Left or Centrist….
Rather than warbling on here I thought you might have looked at my reply to a comment you made in yesterdays OM. https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-12-06-2018/#comment-1493282
You would have discovered there that your opinions on New Zealand’s Minimum wage were as erroneous as most of your opinions.
Why don’t you have a look at it now? You will learn something about a topic on which you have, to date, displayed total ignorance.
Idiot. My comparison was with what the rubbish collectors would have been getting paid before NZ got turned into a low-wage economy. I was comparing current miserable wages to workshop, and contrasting them to the decent wages NZers got before rogernomics, etc.
Had you read more carefully – but your way is to deliberately misinterpret, cherrypick, then add insults.
You do yourself no credit at all, and you still need a healthier pastime.
Your complete comment was this.
“alwyn, I would put it to you that the minimum wage is now so low that it is the equivalent of a sheltered workshop wage.
How desperate would you have to be to do hard, physically hurtful labour like picking Kiwifruit for possibly less than $15 an hour? (They jiggle it by paying by the basket, I believe.)
Be honest.”
Rubbish collectors? Rogernomics?
I defy anyone to take this to be saying anything like what you are now claiming. At least anyone with an IQ of more than room temperature.
How foolish of me! I was going to apologise, because the thread I was referring to was further down the screen than the source you gave.
But then I looked at the time of each comment, and saw that you had in fact read all the thread before you commented, attacking me.
My reply stands, and those who wish to understand fully should take alwyn’s link above and read on.., way down that thread.
alwyn, your false righteousness reveals you as a weaselly, loathsome knave. Begone. Nobody likes cheats.
I really think you should sit down. It is sad to see but you have reached the seventh stage described so vividly by a great writer about four centuries ago.
“Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.”
I suggest that you should sit down and try and relax. That nice attendant will be around shortly with a cup of Milo and your pills.
I’m afraid the only part of this comment of yours that is accurate is the first sentence where you admit “How foolish of me”.
… ‘ It would be boring if everyone agreed all the time ‘ …
Boring?
What , … people dying in Pike River due to AWOL health and Safety standards and lack of Mines Inspectors due to business interests, foreign banks and their grabastic shareholders whims , coupled with a govt that progressively detoothed Union intervention?
Or children dying of third world preventable respiratory diseases in cold damp moldy state houses that were left to degrade in order for the National party to enable an open door to privatization of rental accommodation for the poor???
Dunno about that, I work with plenty who could play that part. It pays to understand their twisted memes.
Born and raised rurals who haven’t left the colonial 19th century attitudes behind and suck up the msm swill as if it’s valid intelligent material. Blaming and slagging off whoever the msm instruct them to.
Sadly NZ is full of them, gos and co are simply reflective of that.
They’re the ones who vote every single time driven by that superiority complex mostly about being here first….yes it’s still about that sadly in 2018.
I love how you’ve created this strawman caricature of this Right leaning person and then applied it without thought to someone regardless of reality. Bravo on doing that.
For your information I never take what the MSM states as the absolute truth and try and get my information from multiple sources but by all means cvontinue to believe your fantasyland creation.
We need to keep track of the time wasters, otherwise known as trolls, for they keep driving on the wrong side of sanity. Which is very bad for the Kindergarten they belong to.
Gosman can put his shaky hand on anything and twist it inside out. I think of the damage he does to the children who follow him about as he drips sugar from his drool.
Chris 73 is an interesting one. Is he Christine? Christopher or Christ. He seems as coherent as anyone of the Capitalist Cult Creeps – Simon. Who also struggles to know what he is, and why he is, or when he is. He is the Leader of the Cult of Greed. Next week he will be studying how to button up a coat. Crikey.
I am guessing Gosman regularly [What brought this on? Deleted for flaming – MS], probably belongs to the same pony tail pulling club as one of our previous leaders.
Sorry, I should have looked at reply number more carefully.
I think TT has sucked us in a beauty with his troll register when he himself is on their side, and he sucked Ed in as well.
Below, you will see that ‘Enough is Enough’ twigged before I did.
Either a great rort that actually deserves a round of applause, or I am a silly old duffer.
The one I miss most was Lanthanide. He was a person you could debate with. He was always willing to consider a different point of view and behave like an adult.
The Standard has degenerated badly since he ceased to contribute. Mind you, I think he gave up commenting here because he saw, earlier than most, what the new breed of twits like T.T were doing to the debates. Abuse replaced the reason that he exemplified.
Antoine, your comment really needed a question mark. Otherwise, the rest of your paragraph is missing.
But you are actually encouraging James’s faux concern, aren’t you? Like PR.
Yes, I personally disapprove of Tamati Tautuhi’s faux pas.
(Deliberate? – But who is he, a Leftie? A black flag plant? I don’t remember seeing much from him on this site…)
But I disapprove much more of the sanctimonious way James and PR are rushing to inflame the issue.
You leave the Bishop alone James. At least you were not fooled by him using a pen name of Tamati. Follow his advice, and tithe, and he will lead you on the paths of righteousness. And good luck as you trail along wearing sackcloth and ashes like the Vino man.
As social bullying increases with these trolls, more ‘fair minded commenters’ refrain from contributing to the posts; – as we have sen time and time again so we need to encourage free flowing comments not buying as we all see today with those bunch of trolls always attacking in a “pack together”.
It is not the number of blogs that should determine the quality of a blogsite but the ‘constructive contents’ of those sites.
It’s called holding the government to account. Same as when National was in power and posters gleefully made lists of Nationals, alleged, broken promises or do you think the present government should just get a free pass with no criticism?
There was nothing “alleged” about National’s hefty list of lies and broken promises. If it were any more substantial you could probably beat someone to death with it. Having said that, no, the coalition should not get a free pass. They should be held to the same standard as any other government in terms of honesty. The problem is National doesn’t seem able to do that without resorting to mind-blowing levels of hypocrisy.
I presume you are aware the only other opposition party is ACT with one MP. Would you prefer they were ta larger party in Opposition would you? If not, who do you want to hold the government to account given you think National can’t do it?
Most of the troll critique is not factually based – nor is the Gnat’s in parliament, which is why they’re not getting much traction.
There is indeed a role for principled dissent – the moral vacuum the Gnats have become simply aren’t capable of providing it, and what they do provide isn’t particularly useful.
The more complacent the left becomes now that Labour and Greens are in government, the more the temptation by the left to simply bully and degrade commenters who disagree with them. It’s a simple temptation of power.
Far better to win hearts and minds with honey than with vinegar.
As my mother used to say.
That’s not what I hear people saying. What some are highlighting is that there is a small group of posters here whose MO seems always to snipe, hector and carp, and demonstrate no interest in really engaging in debate and/or showing any interest in changing their mind.
People call them out not for having an alternative point of view as you seem to say, rather for their consistent negative, sometimes nasty tone and attitudes which can make the Standard a real drag.
Some people here, thankfully not many, just seem to get their jollies in this unhealthy and unhelpful way.
I can only speak for myself here (all jokes about being a paid troll aside) but I know that in certain areas some of my positions have changed due to the arguments I’ve heard on here, from people who’ve earned my respect
The real issue is that my position changes due to how logical and well presented the argument is but, like most I suspect, I don’t respond well to being lectured to or hectored
I don’t know if I’ve swayed anyone’s position on anything (I suspect I might have on the inconsequential stuff) but if I haven’t its because I haven’t presented my argument well enough
It hurts I know, Pucky, but you’ve come out from under the bridge and there’s no crawling back! In any case, that space is stuffed with James and Baba.
As an example of a possible policy they could propose to stop all diary conversions in Canterbury and look to extend to other areas where diary just isn’t feasible
I also wouldn’t have a problem seeing all streams and rivers bordering farms to be fenced or having a minimum amount of shelter for farm animals (not sure how that would be implemented)
You ought to know before you make such an inflammatory statement, TT. ‘I believe’ is not good enough.
Does anyone else find it suspicious that it was precisely TT who put up the original ‘suck cock’ comment, and he appears to have been cheerleading and cooperating with James and PR since?
Surely Tamati Tautuhi needs to add his own name to the list at the very top of this thread?
I may be wrong, but my alarm bells are starting to ring.
” believe the Greens are still pro 1080″.
Really? I shall have to revise my opinion if that is true.
They will go from being 100% crazy down to 99% nuts.
Tell me that they have abandoned their irrational opposition to GMOs.
I will start taking them seriously when they do that.
That’s right. Or at least I think that is right.
Perhaps they are a Pop group like Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young?
No I’ve checked. Law firm it is. Their offices are right next to the firm that represents Winston Peters.
They are Sue, Grabbit and Run.
Tamati Tautuhi We have agreed with your advice here;
“We also have to be very careful how much we feed the trolls,”
That clear ‘fact’ could become the trigger for banning these trolls, as Martyn Bradbury seems to have chosen to do already.
As factually these trolls are truly actual “disrupters of our human rights to have free speech without fare or being attacked by others as it is a kind of aggression they are perpertrating.”
‘Verbal abuse is illegal on the social media’ – as we saw happen with the Careron Slater/dirty politics saga.
Mainstream media actually go to these sites to get leads on stories hence Key and Collins were releasing information to Slater and Doug Grahams son who would then leak it to the media ?
Why turn the standard into a clone of the faily blog? The standard has always had robust commentary from all sides. It’s what makes it one of the better communities in NZ politics. Yet here you are trying to shut it down after what, two years here?
Bans don’t work if all your banning is an opinion different from your very own. The amount of quotation marks you use in every comment is perhaps indicative of not having your own. Maybe you are jealous of those who do?
As factually these trolls are truly actual “disrupters of our human rights to have free speech without fare or being attacked by others as it is a kind of aggression they are perpertrating.”
‘Verbal abuse is illegal on the social media’ – as we saw happen with the Careron Slater/dirty politics saga.
How is having an opinion contradictory to your own a disruption of your right to free speech, if you want to ban said opinion?
Between you and tamati, you’ve really reached new heights of stupidity.
The Daily Blog still gets trolled by right-wing shills as a matter of course. They just receive an overwhelmingly hostile response and tend to not want to come back. From what I’ve seen, the moderators here are more inclined to opt for the ban-hammer than Bomber and friends.
“At a lecture I gave in Grand Forks, North Dakota in March of this year, someone asked me how do we finally knock the fools and obscurantists and believers in craziness out of the box once and for all. I told the woman that we can’t. Apart from hydrogen, the most common thing in the universe is stupidity.”
~Harlan Ellison.
Our trolls are merely representative of the hard-of-thinking who make up most of the hard right.
James does that “thing” where he repeats words he claims to be offended by. It’s a method favoured by 8-year olds generally, those who get some sort of buzz from using “bad words” under the guise of someone else having said them.
And Robert does that thing where he tries to ‘attack’ the people calling people out for disgusting behaviour.
In the meantime – Robert is happy for homophobic comments to be used against people he dosnt like – he is an enabler and this is the kind of thing that supports a homophobic culture.
“Robert is happy for homophobic comments to be used against people he dosnt (sic) like – he is an enabler and this is the kind of thing that supports a homophobic culture.”
James. I’m offended by your claims, because they are not true. If you believe you are being honest with what you’ve said, please explain and include any quotes from me that support your claim.
Robert – your behaviour supporting people being called cock suckers (a homophobic insult) speaks volumes – as does your sexist attitude refusing to call out people calling women trouts or chubby.
The behaviour you tolerate is the behaviour you support.
Robert’s observation is (unsurprisingly) accurate.
“James does that “thing” where he repeats words he claims to be offended by. It’s a method favoured by 8-year olds generally, those who get some sort of buzz from using “bad words” under the guise of someone else having said them.”
The East Coast forestry slash saga is developig into a real issue up here now today as the forestry chair Peter Weil has now admitted the past activities were very sadly lacking in any disapline as the old slash was just left all over the place to rot and cause drain blockages, and that was what shut down our Gisborne rail services in 2012 just when we were getting the freight up to record levels.
Then that slash just left tying around came down the slopes to block the rail line and wash out a one km section.
Then the oportunists in the National Government gleefully siezed that oportunity to close the rail service just then, and left us to support only road freight, and now the roads now rapidly quickly are falling apart and have become very dangerous now.
Best we get the rail fixed now since our roads are closed around gisborne again for the third time in 12 months now, while most of the rail line is still intact.
The one km section of rail repair has been costed to be only about $5 million to fix as they aere now getting the rail from Napier to Gisorne opened now, so we expect labour/NZF to get going and re-open this finally 40km section to Gisborne re-opened again as possible for our security, wellbeing and safety.
We must hold forestry companies liable for repairing the washed out Gisborne rail line (that was washed out by blocked drains after forestry slash blocked the drains in a large rainstorm back in 2012.
Our rail watch folks all went to see the damage and took pictures of the drains all jamed full of slash and logs along the Gisborne rail line then.
Since this admission of guilt has been made on 12/6/18 by forestry chair Peter weir has clarified said how slash has been causing damages to our infrastructure roads and rail for years.
This is an importance incident still unresolved:
Latest is the east coast farmers are considering a legal challenge to make forestry made accountable now.
Kiwirail as our own publically owned SOE must also go after the forestry companies for charging them costs for funding of the repair of the rail line theyn had a part of damaging.
“I wonder if they still hold those shares ?”.
I thought you might have noticed that the railway operations in New Zealand are owned and operated by KiwiRail. It is an SOE set up when Michael Cullen paid a totally insane amount of taxpayer money to buy the assets from the then Toll Rail.
As an SOE all the shares are owned by the Crown so the people you mention certainly won’t own any shares.
If you want to complain to the shareholders they are Grant Robertson and Tsar Winston Peters. I doubt if they will give you much heed.
Since this admission of guilt has been made on 12/6/18 by forestry chair Peter weir has clarified said how slash has been causing damages to our infrastructure roads and rail for years.
This is what I mean when I say that costs aren’t fully accounted for in our ‘market’ system and it’s a subsidy. This is why regulations are needed – to ensure that these costs are accounted for so that subsidies can be minimised.
And if we, as a nation, have these regulations then all our trading partners also need them else we end up subsidising them while our own economy fails.
The old colonialist exploitation of resources, I hope they are going to pay for the clean up. The rail was deliberately closed by John Key and the Natzi’s.
Yes the community farmers are now today announcing that they are considering optios to take legal preceedings against the Forestry compames for willful damages to thrie infrustructures so we will see come to and fro here from now we expect.
sadly when one particular forestry company caused a major drain blockage under the main hyway to napier in 2011 the rail line was stil in operation but that company was trucking all the logs to gisborne port while the slash was slidding down those steep banks against the rail line going through their forestry block at the location and we took pictures of the slas and gave a submission to the local council after wards.
The forestry company still refused to fix up the slash or even to help us by using the rail services then to ship the logs to the port so we knew then trouble was going to occur then…
Time to fix up this crappy activity now because the region will suffer and people will die if left as is.
Neo-liberalism and the deregulation that came with it was a way to ensure that rich people weren’t held accountable for their actions. A way to increase the bludging that the rich could do on the general populace.
We called the excecutives of kiwirail to investigate the blocking of the rail line drains and gave them evidence of it and pictures in 2012-2013, and later again in 2015 and they always advised us that they would investigate it.
And if found that they caused the rail washouts they would charge the forestry company for damage costs to fix the line and put it back in bussiness again but nothing was done sadly then and we wonder why? – Was it Government interference then parhaps???
I guess it’s a legal grey area that will gain clarity as global warming takes hold.
Those flash floods we see on the news, who pays for the damage done by the cars we see floating down streets? Am I responsible for the shop fronts my swept away car damages?
A big stack of firewood beside my house, if flood waters carry it away and down the valley, am I/my insurers responsible for the damage my float-away firewood causes? It would be just my luck for my stack of flotsam Macrocarpa to smash into my neighbour’s back room full of Hoteres and McCahons…..5 million dollars worth of railway line would look like a bargain…….”Can I pay it off at $5 a week?”
Unless you were negligent in your parking of the car or stacking the firewood its unlikely you would be held responsible for the flood damage that resulted . That primarily occurred because of the flood.
Thats where the logging companies have a problem, did they abide with the resource consents , if not they are negligent.
Of course you are kidding yourslef if your ‘firewood’ is anything like the volume of slash which has come down.
Are resource consents sought when a forest that has been in for 45 years is harvested? I dunno. Obviously worksite health and safety rules apply but maybe forestry roads are laid, the trees dropped and trucked out on the consent that they were planted under decades prior.
“Johnson and his chums ignored Northern Ireland in their Brexit campaign. That seemed to be the ultimate height of irresponsibility but they have now gone further – they are exploiting it. Their current strategy is to use the EU’s offer of a special deal for Northern Ireland, preserving many of the advantages of the single market even while leaving it, as an opening through which they can force the EU to concede the same have cake/eat cake privileges to Britain. They are trying to turn the sympathy that comes from a horrible conflict, in which nearly 2 per cent of the population was killed or injured, into a way of getting one over on Michel Barnier. This is political depravity.”
Yes Anne Tolley is the MP for Gisborne and now fleed to Ohope beach in Whakatane so she is called now “no show Tolley”.
At the time in 2012-3 she was firmly in support of our rail services but strangely reversed her support all of a sudden, “again maybe more Government interference???
Do you object to the lady living in her electorate?
Surely you don’t regard the MP for the electorate as being just to represent the Burghers of Gisborne?
I confess that if I had a choice of Ohope or Gisborne I would choose the Bay of Plenty over Poverty Bay any day. The only problem is that you would have Michael Cullen as a neighbour.
Neither can compare with the twin cities of Hawkes Bay of course.
Minister Eugenie Sage of the Green Party has just given consent to a Chinese company to buy land classed sensitive, close to Whakatane, to bottle water for exports. All in the name of increase in investment and jobs. Great stuff and totally aligned with the bravado before the election isn’t it ?? No shame on the daily backflips from this Government https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/104668519/green-party-members-revolt-over-water-bottling-decision
The site has an existing bottling plant they are just increasing the land area they have to increase production.
Where do you think jobs are going to come from in Otakiri Springs ? You sneers dont give jobs !
Thats a prime example being in opposition means you can oppose the things your supporters dont like.
Being in government means you have to work for the benefit of all Nzers
@humma – I have a lot of issues with this consent from the environmental point of view aka plastic bottles for those that can afford it and have polluted their own supply, now taking it from other countries. They should be forced to use glass bottles at least.
No doubt the council will fall over themselves to give away the free water from the aquifer, which is then taking a public asset and making it private which is not ok.
Also as we have seen before the ‘workers’ will not be local but probably Chinese and so it actually becomes a cost to NZ as more people on lowered wages are bought which means that that NZ asset is not employing local workers, and the new workers require housing, health, education… that the NZ tax payer pays subsidises as they gain residency and citizenship.
NZ assets have been bought up by foreign buyers for years, the problem is when it was the Ozzies and the Canadians they pay more in their countries for workers so they use Kiwi workers for their plants. We are not seeing the same with Asian buyers of our assets as they bring in their cheaper workers many of whom have studied in NZ and can be road to residency, which does the opposite takes local jobs away, lowers wages overall and not giving the same benefits to the community.
In addition if there becomes an issue with quality or counterfeiting, the NZ brand is damaged as of course the water will be heavily marketed as from NZ which is so far a trusted brand but of course that trust is easy to destroy.
The criteria of the OIA as well as the RMA needs immediate reform from the Green Party, NOT endorsing it, to stop NZ sinking further and further into becoming a polluted banana republic and to legally protect local people to ensure they get the full and long term benefits from the consents including long term environmental protection, a stop of production if new environmental evidence turns up aka the area starts running out of water or there is new evidence of any negative effects on the community.
Now Russel Norman has left, the Greens seem to have forgotten about the Chinese human rights abuses.. now we seem to be endorsing them!
I don’t like the use of 1080 but, mostly due to NZs terrain and the cost, I see the need for 1080 drops
I do dream, probably a fools dream, of a day where Nationals Predator Free 2050 is bolstered and supported, with more money, by every incoming government and that 1080 drops become used less as time passes
“They reckon releasing trained cats into the bush to catch possums is a safer alternative, makes sense ?”
Oh hell no it doesn’t, lets imagine you’re a cat and you’re climbing a tree and you have the choice of a possum which is bigger than you and will fight back or a bird
“These are properly trained registered cats”.
I’m afraid that statement should be in the past tense.
“These WERE properly trained registered cats”.
Gareth Morgan went after them. It is quite amazing what an AK47 does when fired on full automatic at a fence top line-up of cats. There were no survivors.
Evidently possum fur trapping is very profitable in areas with high possum infestations if I can get the information I will post it
.
The problem is a lot of the old possum trappers have retired and we have lost those skills from the industry, now we are using the old Vietnam/Agent Orange approach ?
The problem with possum trapping is there a financial aspect which means its in the trapper best interest to make sure you don’t trap all the possums you can, that you leave a few so you can come back and keep on collecting, same with rabbits, in essence farming the pests
If you put a time limit on the trapping however that might help
They tried that in the 1950s – it’s how the possums spread so well. The trappers carried them to where they lived so that they wouldn’t have to travel so far to work.
I find that hard to believe Draco. In the 1950s possums were well and truly spread across the country. There was no need to carry them anywhere.
Besides, it just doesn’t make sense. To populate an area, you’d have to move a reasonable number of pairs. And then wait a few years for the population to be plentiful enough for trapping to be worth while.
Yes, Te Ara says it was earlier. Can’t find the original link that I had although it’s probably somewhere on this site – I’ve linked to it before. It pointed out that the bounty offered in the 1950s resulted in some trappers moving animals around.
Could still be done today but for contractors you’d have to give them a set time limit to trap as many as they can then go to a government board/DOC to take over
Yes I said government board, it could also be tied into a form of National Service (which is something i think should be brought back) in that you do a certain amount of years in the NZDF or something similar like DOC or even a rejigged forestry service (help plant those billion trees)
You could pitch it like do two years and get a free years tertiary study (not saying thats exactly how it should be but just the gist of it)
It’s profitable when numbers are high . It becomes harder to make money as numbers get low . Fur trappers tend to farm the blocks leaving enough behind that it’s worth coming back every year or two
If the government wants to solve the housing crisis, here is a way.
Set up an affordable 3D printed house service for state housing and low cost housing. These houses are being produced NOW and the government should be bringing the tech to NZ with a license our own version or however it works, rather than relying on traditional methods such as the construction industry to advise which has become a slow, expensive and Ponzi scheme .
A 3D housing service in NZ would also be valuable to have after disasters or with global warming.
Starting thinking of the future NZ!
Affordable house can be 3D printed for $4,000 in less than 24 hours
These houses are being produced NOW and the government should be bringing the tech to NZ with a license our own version or however it works, rather than relying on traditional methods such as the construction industry to advise which has become a slow, expensive and Ponzi scheme .
True and they should also be doing a huge amount of R&D into 3D printing houses and, well, everything else. 3D printing is the future of production in pretty much everything. No country will be able to out produce any other country.
The only jobs it produces is in R&D which is a plus as it will help us develop our economy and our society.
The system currently prints with a wet cement like material. I’d imagine it would not be suitable for earthquake zones. With some R & D and the houses printed with a material that cures to have some flexibility, it could become the ideal way to build in earthquake zones.
Printing houses has merits but the basic shell of a house is what? 20% of a build price? The aluminium joinery, cabinetry, wiring, council rubber stamping etc is what stacks up the costs.
The system currently prints with a wet cement like material. I’d imagine it would not be suitable for earthquake zones.
Brick and concrete block houses have been built in NZ for years and still are.
Still, the big one for me would be how well insulated that material is. Cold houses are bane in NZ because of poor building processes that have been practised for decades.
Printing houses has merits but the basic shell of a house is what? 20% of a build price? The aluminium joinery, cabinetry, wiring, council rubber stamping etc is what stacks up the costs.
It’s the time and labour requirement that’s the problem. 3D printing will remove a large amount of that.
Time for some Kiwi ingenuity engineers to design one with full earthquake protection, if that is even an issue.
Also with the dutch link, they are experimenting with using plastic waste as materials for the houses… there are lots of options.
Agree with Draco, that it is the time and labour that has become the problem for the building and the infrastructure needs sorting as well but that applies to any new house.
The labour shortage is the new ‘catch’ cry from the right for everything to needing a truck driver to someone who can flip a burger as well as a tiler, decorator and builder.
The shell is probably a lot more than 20% of the build, and to be able to supply that for $4000 is a game changer and to print it on site in one day is the clincher.
Add on zero carbon aka full solar and sustainable waste water and incinerating toilets or something like that and it has the potential to recreate the state house into a 21 c model.
Except the problem with housing in NZ is less cost of houses (although it plays a part) and more to do with land availability. You can print all the 3D printed houses you like but if the land is not made available there will be nowhere for them to be put up.
@Gosman, That must be why the government has sold off so much land then isn’t it? Because it’s so expensive they want to give it away/ sell cheap to mates???
We have loads of land in NZ, if they limited foreign buyers the price of land would drop immediately.
The council costs are huge, but that is because the COO structure has not worked and now councils seem to spend half the money they collect on themselves and preserving their fiefdoms, which is not very sustainable.
I’d love to see a few 3D houses dotted around Remmer’s golf course to help the homeless… it’s that lovely diversity that the globalism bunch are all for, isn’t it? (Or is cultural diversity ok, but class diversity a no, no in 21c?)
I think you are mistaking the OIO approving land sales to the Government selling the land. The Government does not own most of the land going through the OIO.
BTW I too would love to see Urban Golf courses converted to something else like housing. Doing this is a matter for local authorities and the owners of the golf courses though not Central government.
I believe it was an honorary membership when he was Prime Minister.
Rather like Bethesda’s Congressional Country Club which does the same thing for Presidents. They must have gagged over the current one.
I don’t have toi start anywhere. However if you would like to change the land designation for the Golf courses in Auckland (or where ever) try and get the local councils to do this. Auckland is controlled by a left leaning council so should theoretically be amenable surely.
Gossie they are going to turn the Chamberlain Golf Club, Mt Albert, into a new Aquatic Centre and new sports fields, also a low cost housing estate so i believe.
I think they have started putting in a new children’s playground for Jacarandas new baby, the Council have already approved this.
@ Gosman, Unitech, Tamaki, many parts of former council or state land is being sold off all around the country or parts of privatised.
Government offloads 2800 state houses to Auckland development company
“Ownership and management of 2800 state houses will be transferred to an Auckland redevelopment company, as the Government moves to offload some of its massive stock of housing in Auckland.
The houses will be transferred to the Tamaki Redevelopment Company (TRC), “to encourage regeneration”, said Finance Minister Bill English and Building and Housing Minister Nick Smith in an announcement on Thursday.
English said the Government owned one in 16 houses in Auckland. ”
Of course the housing crisis has been manufactured the same way the meth crisis was, aka manufactured deliberately for mates to profit from and to add political ends.
Of course you will create a housing and infrastructure crisis if you have the 3rd highest immigration in the world. The genius seems to be selling it as solving the crisis by adding more people to contribute to the housing and infrastructure crisis.
It really is worthy of the MethCON… in fact it’s actually worse.
That’s it? That is the extent of the Government selling off land? I also note that the land will be redeveloped for MORE HOUSES. Which is what I thought we wanted to happen.
300-400 staff on $220k plus and trying to get an answer on anything is nigh on impossible. CEO’s on $700-$800k, $150k to Auckalnd City Council just to subdivide your section B4 you can start building ?
Land only become a problem if we continue to be stupid and build outwards rather than upwards. Continue to build low density rather than high density.
Of course, that’s what National and other RWNJs want to do despite the fact that it costs more and drives up rates. More profit in it – especially for the farmers that are land-banking.
Last month there were three big strikes across China, just really bloody hard to hear, and get information about them. It would appear that the Great Firewall of China is clamping down harder than ever.
@Adam, Our future if our government keeps turning a blind eye to our lowered wage and conditions culture and our increasingly 2 tier system of some employers paying by the rules and some just paying $2p/h which is forcing those playing by the rules out of business and enabling the spread of the $2 p/h brigade.
Spoke to an experienced truck driver who has got out of the industry. He quit when they started paying $16 p/h and telling him he was lucky because he was on $18 p/h.
If they want experienced drivers then how can you raise a family on $18 p/h so of course if the truck driver wages keep going down then the experienced people have to exit the industry. Then we start getting all these accidents weekly from trucks.
The industry practises need serious reform and the government immigration policy is just enabling them to get closer to the Chinese system of worker exploitation.
Go figure, when communism is supposed to be the pinnacle of worker rights!
Can we set up an Official Troll Register on The Standard so we know who to engage with, it is open for discussion any thoughts here are welcome, here are some names and all comments are welcome;
Gosman
Stunned Mullet
James
Alwyn
Baby Gaga
..are there any others this will ensure newcomers know and do not waste everyone’s time engaging with them.
With your references to sucking cock and telling other people on here to fuck of to Whale Scum, I would be putting you at the top of your Troll Register
“Land Information Minister Eugenie Sage, one of three Green ministers, announced the decision on Tuesday which allows in principle a Chinese water bottling giant to purchase land in order to expand their existing Otakiri Springs water bottling plant near Whakatane.
The decision was made with associate finance minister David Clark based on advice from the Overseas Investment Office.”
Ignorant man – that has already happened, and I somehow doubt that you have experienced worse that I have.
You are the flippant one, with shallow, false-victim crap.
You might think it a clever debating device, but you are showing yourself to be a Hollow Man.
I put it to you that you are one who deserves to be locked up, for mendacity and false pretences, as well as sociopathic attitudes.
You should troll more cautiously.
Gee I hope you weren’t so flippant using it as an insult with your family member.
I’m assuming you would be annoyed with other people using it as an insult to your family member – so perhaps you should stop throwing it around at others without knowing their background.
And the ohhh my experience is worse than your experience is just bullshit without knowing.
So perhaps think of that next time you use it as a comment.
Mental health beds suggests the occupants will be sufferers of mental ill-health. As such, do they “deserve” to be locked up, or “need” to be locked up?
There’s a difference.
Isn’t it curious how fragile James seems to be! Offended by almost everything! Outraged, rendered purple-faced, blood shooting up to boiling point, ad nauseum! I worry, sometimes, for his mental health. Truly. No slight intended.
“If they are in jail – then they deserve to be there.”
It’s black and white, James?
Do you have any idea how many people have been wrongly incarcerated in NZ over the past 50 years? If not, would you like like to take a guess?
Do they deserve to be in there?
Black and white, James; black and white.
You need to pay more attention to what I post.
A fair share of my contributions are about being revolutionary.
I recommend you listen to Derrick Jensen.
There are intelligent people who are right wing.
The Hitchens brothers come to my mind.
But people who come on a left wing site to troll for the right are not intelligent.
Those things aren’t boring but some people would find endless reference to them, boring, I suppose. An adroit activist determined to keep those topics before an audience without boring them, would employ clever devices and strategies to gain maximum buy-in. I don’t mean you especially, Ed. I’m speaking generally.
“The first clue that things are done very differently on Bastoy prison island, which lies a couple of miles off the coast in the Oslo fjord, 46 miles south-east of Norway’s capital, comes shortly after I board the prison ferry. I’m taken aback slightly when the ferry operative who welcomed me aboard just minutes earlier, and with whom I’m exchanging small talk about the weather, suddenly reveals he is a serving prisoner – doing 14 years for drug smuggling. He notes my surprise, smiles, and takes off a thick glove before offering me his hand. “I’m Petter,” he says.
Before he transferred to Bastoy, Petter was in a high-security prison for nearly eight years. “Here, they give us trust and responsibility,” he says. “They treat us like grownups.” I haven’t come here particularly to draw comparisons, but it’s impossible not to consider how politicians and the popular media would react to a similar scenario in Britain.
There are big differences between the two countries, of course. Norway has a population of slightly less than five million, a 12th of the UK’s. It has fewer than 4,000 prisoners; there are around 84,000 in the UK. But what really sets us apart is the Norwegian attitude towards prisoners.”
So, James, some people have been wrongly incarcerated. Do you find that “tolerable”? Have you ever spoken out in support of the poor souls who have suffered that fate? Do you support the wrongful incarceration of New Zealanders? A troll once said:
“The behaviour you tolerate is the behaviour you support.”
Well put, Robert. It was the same gentle concern that prompted me to recommend that he enrol. But he misunderstood that gentle concern.
Too bad, I guess.
I suspect that the trolls will celebrate this as one of their best nights ever.
They got all matey, then brought a new plausible guy in, and look at their plunder.
I’ve even been smiling myself, and I am a dry old guy.
What are you on about, Chris73?
James will be most upset by your obvious derision of over-sized ladies. He will deeply resent your obvious attempt to pour derision upon them by blatant body-shaming.
I recommend you to withdraw and apologise before he sees the comment.
He is a sensitive soul, and will not permit this kind of discriminatory, humiliating branding on a website such as this!
(You have had a pretty good time tonight, haven’t you?)
We have all seen the videos of the filth that is choking our oceans.
Refunds on all packaging now.
Not long ago, we existed in a world without throwaway plastic, and we can thrive that way again. The world’s largest corporations – with all their profits and innovation labs – are well positioned to help move us beyond single-use plastics. All over the world people are already innovating toward solutions that focus on reusing and reducing plastics. It’s time to accelerate this process and move beyond half measures and baby steps. Corporations are safe when they can tell us to simply recycle away their pollution.
But we aren’t buying that any more. This is their crisis to tackle. We will continue to do our part, but it’s time for the world’s largest corporations to do theirs. Some 322m tons of plastic were produced in 2015, and that number is expected to double by 2025. The good news is that we are at a turning point. All over the world, people and businesses are waking up to the dangers created by single-use plastic. Now, we must demand a new era that prioritizes people and planet over profit and convenience.
Good morning The AM Show there you go one story on the scraping of a new prison and making the correct choices and the next a story about how much we abuse ALCOHOL there will be hundreds in jail because they got pissed and done something stupid and that’s a fact we badly need Alcohol reform laws.
ECO MAORI thinks something stink at Fonterra the bovine virus 12 years ago they advertise and got heaps of tangata whenua to work in the dairy than 5 years later they get the imagration laws change and flood the dairy work force with cheap labour the employers love these workers who run around kissing there ass. The prices of letting fees are shocking but u know the system is on can charge anything he likes so long as someone is willing to pay the price.
Ka kite ano
After a hiatus of over four months Selwyn Manning and I finally got it together to re-start the “A View from Afar” podcast series. We shall see how we go but aim to do 2 episodes per month if possible. … Continue reading → ...
In 2008, the UK Parliament passed the Climate Change Act 2008. The law established a system of targets, budgets, and plans, with inbuilt accountability mechanisms; the aim was to break the cycle of empty promises and replace it with actual progress towards emissions reduction. The law was passed with near-universal ...
Buzz from the Beehive Local Water Done Well – let’s be blunt – is a silly name, but the first big initiative to put it into practice has gone done well. This success is reflected in the headline on an RNZ report:District mayors welcome Auckland’s new water deal with ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate ConnectionsA farmworker cleans the solar panels of a solar water pump in the village of Jagadhri, Haryana Country, India. (Photo credit: Prashanth Vishwanathan/ IWMI) Decisions made in India over the next few years will play a key role in global ...
Lindsay Mitchell writes – The Children’s Minister, Karen Chhour, intends to repeal Section 7AA from the Oranga Tamariki Act 1989 because it creates conflict between claimed Crown Treaty obligations and the child’s best interests. In her words, “Oranga Tamariki’s governing principles and its act should be colour ...
Geoffrey Miller writes – The gloves are off. That might seem to be the undertone of surprisingly tough talk from New Zealand’s foreign and trade ministers. Winston Peters, the foreign minister, may be facing legal action after making allegations about former Australian foreign minister Bob Carr on Radio New Zealand. ...
Brian Easton writes – This is about the time that the Treasury will be locking up its economic forecasts to be published in the 2024 Budget Economic and Fiscal Update (BEFU) on budget day, 30 May. I am not privy to what they will be (I will report on them ...
TL;DR:Winston Peters is reported to have won a budget increase for MFAT. David Seymour wanted his Ministry of Regulation to be three times bigger than the Productivity Commission. Simeon Brown is appointing a Crown Monitor to Watercare to protect the Claytons Crown Guarantee he had to give ratings agencies ...
The gloves are off. That might seem to be the undertone of surprisingly tough talk from New Zealand’s foreign and trade ministers. Winston Peters, the foreign minister, may be facing legal action after making allegations about former Australian foreign minister Bob Carr on Radio New Zealand. Carr had made highly ...
I could be a florist'Round the corner from Rye LaneI'll be giving daisies to craziesBut, baby, I'll wrap you up real safe Oh, I can give you flowers At the end of every dayFor the center of your table, a rainbowIn case you have people 'round to stay Depending on ...
TL;DR: The six key events to watch in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the week to May 12 include:PM Christopher Luxon is scheduled to hold a post-Cabinet news conference at 4 pm today. Finance Minister Nicola Willis will give a pre-budget speech on Thursday.Parliament sits from Question Time at 2pm on ...
The price of the foreign affairs “reset” is now becoming apparent, with Defence set to get a funding boost in the Budget. Finance Minister Nicola Willis has confirmed that it will be one of the few votes, apart from Health and Education and possibly Police, which will get an increase ...
A listing of 26 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, April 28, 2024 thru Sat, May 4, 2024. Story of the week "It’s straight out of Big Tobacco’s playbook. In fact, research by John Cook and his colleagues ...
Yesterday I received come lovely feedback following my Star Wars themed newsletter. A few people mentioned they’d enjoyed reading the personal part at the beginning.I often begin newsletters with some memories, or general thoughts, before commencing the main topic. This hopefully sets the mood and provides some context in which ...
April 30 was going to be the day we’d be calling Mum from London to wish her a happy birthday. Then it became the day we would be going to St. Paul's at Evensong to remember her. The aim of the cathedral builders was to find a way to make their ...
Rob MacCulloch writes – Can’t remember the last book by a Kiwi author you read? Think the NZ government should spend less on the arts in favor of helping the homeless? If so, as far as Newsroom is concerned, you probably deserve to be called a cultural ignoramus ...
Eric Crampton writes – Grudges are bad. Better to move on. But it can be fun to keep a couple of really trivial ones, so you’re not tempted to have other ones. For example, because of the rootkit fiasco of 2005, no Sony products in our household. ...
A new report warns an estimated third of the adult population have unmet need for health care.Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāHere’s the six key things I learned about Aotaroa’s political economy this week around housing, climate and poverty:Politics - Three opinion polls confirmed support for PM Christopher Luxon ...
Today is May the fourth. Which was just a regular day when my mother took me to see the newly released Star Wars at the Odeon in Rotorua. The queue was right around the corner. Some years later this day became known as Star Wars Day, the date being a ...
Buzz from the Beehive Much more media attention is being paid to something Winston Peters said about former Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr than to a speech he delivered to the New Zealand China Council. One word is missing from the speech: AUKUS. But AUKUS loomed large in his considerations ...
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The annual list of who's been bribing our politicians is out, and journalists will no doubt be poring over it to find the juiciest and dirtiest bribes. The government's fast-track invite list is likely to be a particular focus, and we already know of one company on the list which ...
In the weeks after the October 7 Hamas attacks on Southern Israel I wrote about the possible 2nd, 3rd and even 4th order effects of the conflict. These included new fronts being opened in the West Bank (with Hamas), Golan … Continue reading → ...
Peter Dunne writes – It is one of the oldest truisms that there is never a good time for MPs to get a pay rise. This week’s announcement of pay raises of around 2.8% backdated to last October could hardly have come at a worse time, with the ...
David Farrar writes – Newshub reports: Newshub can reveal a fresh allegation of intimidation against Green MP Julie-Anne Genter. Genter is subject to a disciplinary process for aggressively waving a book in the face of National Minister Matt Doocey in the House – but it’s not the first time ...
The Treasury has published a paper today on the global productivity slowdown and how it is playing out in New Zealand: The productivity slowdown: implications for the Treasury’s forecasts and projections. The Treasury Paper examines recent trends in productivity and the potential drivers of the slowdown. Productivity for the whole economy ...
Winston Peters’ comments about former Australian foreign minister look set to be an ongoing headache for both him and Luxon. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for subscribers features co-hosts and , along with regular guests on Gaza and ...
These puppet strings don't pull themselvesYou're thinking thoughts from someone elseHow much time do you think you have?Are you prepared for what comes next?The debating chamber can be a trying place for an opposition MP. What with the person in charge, the speaker, typically being an MP from the governing ...
The land around Lyme Regis, where Meryl Streep once stood, in a hood, on the Cobb, is falling into the sea.MerylThe land around Lyme Regis, around the Cobb that made it rich, has always been falling slowly but surely into the sea. Read more ...
Buzz from the Beehive Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters was bound to win headlines when he set out his thinking about AUKUS in his speech to the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. The headlines became bigger when – during an interview on RNZ’s Morning Report today – he criticised ...
The Post reports on how the government is refusing to release its advice on its corrupt Muldoonist fast-track law, instead using the "soon to be publicly available" refusal ground to hide it until after select committee submissions on the bill have closed. Fast-track Minister Chris Bishop's excuse? “It's not ...
As pressure on it grows, the livestock industry’s approach to the transition to Net Zero is increasingly being compared to that of fossil fuel interests. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / Getty ImagesTL;DR: Here’s the top five news items of note in climate news for Aotearoa-NZ this week, and a discussion above ...
The New Zealand Herald reports – Stats NZ has offered a voluntary redundancy scheme to all of its workers as a way to give staff some control over their “future” amidst widespread job losses in the public sector. In an update to staff this morning, seen by the Herald, Statistics New Zealand ...
On Werewolf/Scoop, I usually do two long form political columns a week. From now on, there will be an extra column each week about music and movies. But first, some late-breaking political events:The rise in unemployment numbers for the March quarter was bigger than expected – and especially sharp ...
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Muriel Newman writes – When Meridian Energy was seeking resource consents for a West Coast hydro dam proposal in 2010, local Maori “strenuously” objected, claiming their mana was inextricably linked to ‘their’ river and could be damaged. After receiving a financial payment from the company, however, the Ngai Tahu ...
Alwyn Poole writes – “An SEP,’ he said, ‘is something that we can’t see, or don’t see, or our brain doesn’t let us see, because we think that it’s somebody else’s problem. That’s what SEP means. Somebody Else’s Problem. The brain just edits it out, it’s like a ...
Our trust in our political institutions is fast eroding, according to a Maxim Institute discussion paper, Shaky Foundations: Why our democracy needs trust. The paper – released today – raises concerns about declining trust in New Zealand’s political institutions and democratic processes, and the role that the overuse of Parliamentary urgency ...
This article was prepared for publication yesterday. More ministerial announcements have been posted on the government’s official website since it was written. We will report on these later today …. Buzz from the BeehiveThere we were, thinking the environment is in trouble, when along came Jones. Shane Jones. ...
New Zealand now has the fourth most depressed construction sector in the world behind China, Qatar and Hong Kong. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 8:46am on Thursday, May 2:The Lead: ...
Hi,I am just going to state something very obvious: American police are fucking crazy.That was a photo gracing the New York Times this morning, showing New York City police “entering Columbia University last night after receiving a request from the school.”Apparently in America, protesting the deaths of tens of thousands ...
Winston Peters’ much anticipated foreign policy speech last night was a work of two halves. Much of it was a standard “boilerplate” Foreign Ministry overview of the state of the world. There was some hardening up of rhetoric with talk of “benign” becoming “malign” and old truths giving way to ...
Graham Adams assesses the fallout of the Cass Review — The press release last Thursday from the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls didn’t make the mainstream news in New Zealand but it really should have. The startling title of Reem Alsalem’s statement — “Implementation of ‘Cass ...
This open-for-business, under-new-management cliché-pockmarked government of Christopher Luxon is not the thing of beauty he imagines it to be. It is not the powerful expression of the will of the people that he asserts it to be. It is not a soaring eagle, it is a malodorous vulture. This newest poll should make ...
The latest labour market statistics, showing a rise in unemployment. There are now 134,000 unemployed - 14,000 more than when the National government took office. Which is I guess what happens when the Reserve Bank causes a recession in an effort to Keep Wages Low. The previous government saw a ...
Three opinion polls have been released in the last two days, all showing that the new government is failing to hold their popular support. The usual honeymoon experienced during the first year of a first term government is entirely absent. The political mood is still gloomy and discontented, mainly due ...
National's Finance Minister once met a poor person.A scornful interview with National's finance guru who knows next to nothing about economics or people.There might have been something a bit familiar if that was the headline I’d gone with today. It would of course have been in tribute to the article ...
Rob MacCulloch writes – Throughout the pandemic, the new Vice-Chancellor-of-Otago-University-on-$629,000 per annum-Can-you-believe-it-and-Former-Finance-Minister Grant Robertson repeated the mantra over and over that he saved “lives and livelihoods”.As we update how this claim is faring over the course of time, the facts are increasingly speaking differently. NZ ...
Chris Trotter writes – IT’S A COMMONPLACE of political speeches, especially those delivered in acknowledgement of electoral victory: “We’ll govern for all New Zealanders.” On the face of it, the pledge is a strange one. Why would any political leader govern in ways that advantaged the huge ...
Bryce Edwards writes – The list of former National Party Ministers being given plum and important roles got longer this week with the appointment of former Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett as the chair of Pharmac. The Christopher Luxon-led Government has now made key appointments to Bill ...
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Over the past 36 hours, Christopher Luxon has been dong his best to portray the centre-right’s plummeting poll numbers as a mark of virtue. Allegedly, the negative verdicts are the result of hard economic times, and of a government bravely set out on a perilous rescue mission from which not ...
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The list of former National Party Ministers being given plum and important roles got longer this week with the appointment of former Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett as the chair of Pharmac. The Christopher Luxon-led Government has now made key appointments to Bill English, Simon Bridges, Steven Joyce, Roger Sowry, ...
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Stuck In The Middle With You:As Christopher Luxon feels the hot breath of Act’s and NZ First’s extremists on the back of his neck and, as he reckons with the damage their policies are already inflicting upon a country he’s described as “fragile”, is there not some merit in reaching out ...
The unpopular coalition government is currently rushing to repeal section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act. The clause is Oranga Tamariki's Treaty clause, and was inserted after its systematic stealing of Māori children became a public scandal and resulted in physical resistance to further abductions. The clause created clear obligations ...
Buzz from the Beehive The government’s official website – which Point of Order monitors daily – not for the first time has nothing much to say today about political happenings that are grabbing media headlines. It makes no mention of the latest 1News-Verian poll, for example. This shows National down ...
It Takes A Train To Cry:Surely, there is nothing lonelier in all this world than the long wail of a distant steam locomotive on a cold Winter’s night.AS A CHILD, I would lie awake in my grandfather’s house and listen to the traffic. The big wooden house was only a ...
Packing A Punch: The election of the present government, including in its ranks politicians dedicated to reasserting the rights of the legislature in shaping and determining the future of Māori and Pakeha in New Zealand, should have alerted the judiciary – including its anomalous appendage, the Waitangi Tribunal – that its ...
Dead Woman Walking: New Zealand’s media industry had been moving steadily towards disaster for all the years Melissa Lee had been National’s media and communications policy spokesperson, and yet, when the crisis finally broke, on her watch, she had nothing intelligent to offer. Christopher Luxon is a patient man - but he’s not ...
Chris Trotter writes – New Zealand politics is remarkably easy-going: dangerously so, one might even say. With the notable exception of John Key’s flat ruling-out of the NZ First Party in 2008, all parties capable of clearing MMP’s five-percent threshold, or winning one or more electorate seats, tend ...
Ministers must front up about which projects it will push through under its Fast Track Approvals legislation, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
The Government is again adding to New Zealand’s growing unemployment, this time cutting jobs at the agencies responsible for urban development and growing much needed housing stock. ...
With Minister Karen Chhour indicating in the House today that she either doesn’t know or care about the frontline cuts she’s making to Oranga Tamariki, we risk seeing more and more of our children falling through the cracks. ...
The Labour Party is saddened to learn of the death of Sir Robert Martin, a globally renowned disability advocate who led the way for disability rights both in New Zealand and internationally. ...
Labour is calling for the Government to urgently rethink its coalition commitment to restart live animal exports, Labour animal welfare spokesperson Rachel Boyack said. ...
Today’s Financial Stability Report has once again highlighted that poverty and deep inequality are political choices - and this Government is choosing to make them worse. ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to do more for our households in most need as unemployment rises and the cost of living crisis endures. ...
Unemployment is on the rise and it’s only going to get worse under this Government, Labour finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds said. Stats NZ figures show the unemployment rate grew to 4.3 percent in the March quarter from 4 percent in the December quarter. “This is the second rise in unemployment ...
The New Zealand Labour Party welcomes the entering into force of the European Union and New Zealand free trade agreement. This agreement opens the door for a huge increase in trade opportunities with a market of 450 million people who are high value discerning consumers of New Zealand goods and ...
The National-led Government continues its fiscal jiggery pokery with its Pharmac announcement today, Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall says. “The government has increased Pharmac funding but conceded it will only make minimal increases in access to medicine”, said Ayesha Verrall “This is far from the bold promises made to fund ...
This afternoon’s interim Waitangi Tribunal report must be taken seriously as it affects our most vulnerable children, Labour children’s spokesperson Willow-Jean Prime. ...
Te Pāti Māori are demanding the New Zealand Government support an international independent investigation into mass graves that have been uncovered at two hospitals on the Gaza strip, following weeks of assault by Israeli troops. Among the 392 bodies that have been recovered, are children and elderly civilians. Many of ...
Our two-tiered system for veterans’ support is out of step with our closest partners, and all parties in Parliament should work together to fix it, Labour veterans’ affairs spokesperson Greg O’Connor said. ...
Stripping two Ministers of their portfolios just six months into the job shows Christopher Luxon’s management style is lacking, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said. ...
Tonight’s court decision to overturn the summons of the Children’s Minister has enabled the Crown to continue making decisions about Māori without evidence, says Te Pāti Māori spokesperson for Children, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “The judicial system has this evening told the nation that this government can do whatever they want when ...
It appears Nicola Willis is about to pull the rug out from under the feet of local communities still dealing with the aftermath of last year’s severe weather, and local councils relying on funding to build back from these disasters. ...
The Government is making short-sighted changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that will take away environmental protection in favour of short-term profits, Labour’s environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
Labour welcomes the release of the report into the North Island weather events and looks forward to working with the Government to ensure that New Zealand is as prepared as it can be for the next natural disaster. ...
The Labour Party has called for the New Zealand Government to recognise Palestine, as a material step towards progressing the two-State solution needed to achieve a lasting peace in the region. ...
Some of our country’s most important work, stopping the sexual exploitation of children and violent extremism could go along with staff on the frontline at ports and airports. ...
The Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill will give projects such as new coal mines a ‘get out of jail free’ card to wreak havoc on the environment, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The government's decision to reintroduce Three Strikes is a destructive and ineffective piece of law-making that will only exacerbate an inherently biased and racist criminal justice system, said Te Pāti Māori Justice Spokesperson, Tākuta Ferris, today. During the time Three Strikes was in place in Aotearoa, Māori and Pasifika received ...
Cuts to frontline hospital staff are not only a broken election promise, it shows the reckless tax cuts have well and truly hit the frontline of the health system, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
The Green Party has joined the call for public submissions on the fast-track legislation to be extended after the Ombudsman forced the Government to release the list of organisations invited to apply just hours before submissions close. ...
New Zealand’s good work at reducing climate emissions for three years in a row will be undone by the National government’s lack of ambition and scrapping programmes that were making a difference, Labour Party climate spokesperson Megan Woods said today. ...
More essential jobs could be on the chopping block, this time Ministry of Education staff on the school lunches team are set to find out whether they're in line to lose their jobs. ...
Te Pāti Māori is disgusted at the confirmation that hundreds are set to lose their jobs at Oranga Tamariki, and the disestablishment of the Treaty Response Unit. “This act of absolute carelessness and out of touch decision making is committing tamariki to state abuse.” Said Te Pāti Māori Oranga Tamariki ...
Six tertiary students have been selected to work on NASA projects in the US through a New Zealand Space Scholarship, Space Minister Judith Collins announced today. “This is a fantastic opportunity for these talented students. They will undertake internships at NASA’s Ames Research Center or its Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), where ...
New Zealanders will be safer because of a $1.9 billion investment in more frontline Corrections officers, more support for offenders to turn away from crime, and more prison capacity, Corrections Minister Mark Mitchell says. “Our Government said we would crack down on crime. We promised to restore law and order, ...
The OECD’s latest report on New Zealand reinforces the importance of bringing Government spending under control, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The OECD conducts country surveys every two years to review its members’ economic policies. The 2024 New Zealand survey was presented in Wellington today by OECD Chief Economist Clare Lombardelli. ...
The Government has delivered on its election promise to provide a financially sustainable model for Auckland under its Local Water Done Well plan. The plan, which has been unanimously endorsed by Auckland Council’s Governing Body, will see Aucklanders avoid the previously projected 25.8 per cent water rates increases while retaining ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters discussed the need for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, and enhanced cooperation in the Pacific with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock during her first official visit to New Zealand today. "New Zealand and Germany enjoy shared interests and values, including the rule of law, democracy, respect for the international system ...
The Minister Responsible for RMA Reform, Chris Bishop today released his decision on four recommendations referred to him by the Western Bay of Plenty District Council, opening the door to housing growth in the area. The Council’s Plan Change 92 allows more homes to be built in existing and new ...
Thank you, John McKinnon and the New Zealand China Council for the invitation to speak to you today. Thank you too, all members of the China Council. Your effort has played an essential role in helping to build, shape, and grow a balanced and resilient relationship between our two ...
The Government is modernising insurance law to better protect Kiwis and provide security in the event of a disaster, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly announced today. “These reforms are long overdue. New Zealand’s insurance law is complicated and dated, some of which is more than 100 years old. ...
The coalition Government is refreshing its approach to supporting pay equity claims as time-limited funding for the Pay Equity Taskforce comes to an end, Public Service Minister Nicola Willis says. “Three years ago, the then-government introduced changes to the Equal Pay Act to support pay equity bargaining. The changes were ...
Structured literacy will change the way New Zealand children learn to read - improving achievement and setting students up for success, Education Minister Erica Stanford says. “Being able to read and write is a fundamental life skill that too many young people are missing out on. Recent data shows that ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay says Canada’s refusal to comply in full with a CPTPP trade dispute ruling in our favour over dairy trade is cynical and New Zealand has no intention of backing down. Mr McClay said he has asked for urgent legal advice in respect of our ‘next move’ ...
The rights of our children and young people will be enhanced by changes the coalition Government will make to strengthen oversight of the Oranga Tamariki system, including restoring a single Children’s Commissioner. “The Government is committed to delivering better public services that care for our most at-risk young people and ...
The Government is making it easier for minor changes to be made to a building consent so building a home is easier and more affordable, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “The coalition Government is focused on making it easier and cheaper to build homes so we can ...
New Zealand lost a true legend when internationally renowned disability advocate Sir Robert Martin (KNZM) passed away at his home in Whanganui last night, Disabilities Issues Minister Louise Upston says. “Our Government’s thoughts are with his wife Lynda, family and community, those he has worked with, the disability community in ...
Good evening – Before discussing the challenges and opportunities facing New Zealand’s foreign policy, we’d like to first acknowledge the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. You have contributed to debates about New Zealand foreign policy over a long period of time, and we thank you for hosting us. ...
From today, passengers travelling internationally from Auckland Airport will be able to keep laptops and liquids in their carry-on bags for security screening thanks to new technology, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Creating a more efficient and seamless travel experience is important for holidaymakers and businesses, enabling faster movement through ...
People with an interest in the health of Northland’s marine ecosystems are invited to a public meeting to discuss how to deal with kina barrens, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones will lead the discussion, which will take place on Friday, 10 May, at Awanui Hotel in ...
Kiwi exporters are $100 million better off today with the NZ EU FTA entering into force says Trade Minister Todd McClay. “This is all part of our plan to grow the economy. New Zealand's prosperity depends on international trade, making up 60 per cent of the country’s total economic activity. ...
There are heartening signs that the extractive sector is once again becoming an attractive prospect for investors and a source of economic prosperity for New Zealand, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. “The beginnings of a resurgence in extractive industries are apparent in media reports of the sector in the past ...
The return of the historic Ō-Rākau battle site to the descendants of those who fought there moved one step closer today with the first reading of Te Pire mō Ō-Rākau, Te Pae o Maumahara / The Ō-Rākau Remembrance Bill. The Bill will entrust the 9.7-hectare battle site, five kilometres west ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has announced 25 new high-speed EV charging hubs along key routes between major urban centres and outlined the Government’s plan to supercharge New Zealand’s EV infrastructure. The hubs will each have several chargers and be capable of charging at least four – and up to 10 ...
The coalition Government will not proceed with the previous Government’s plans to regulate residential property managers, Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. “I have written to the Chairperson of the Social Services and Community Committee to inform him that the Government does not intend to support the Residential Property Managers Bill ...
The Government has announced an independent review into the disability support system funded by the Ministry of Disabled People – Whaikaha. Disability Issues Minister Louise Upston says the review will look at what can be done to strengthen the long-term sustainability of Disability Support Services to provide disabled people and ...
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith has attended the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva and outlined the Government’s plan to restore law and order. “Speaking to the United Nations Human Rights Council provided us with an opportunity to present New Zealand’s human rights progress, priorities, and challenges, while responding to issues and ...
The Government and Rotorua Lakes Council are committed to working closely together to end the use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua. Associate Minister of Housing (Social Housing) Tama Potaka says the Government remains committed to ending the long-term use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua by the ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay heads overseas today for high-level trade talks in the Gulf region, and a key OECD meeting in Paris. Mr McClay will travel to Riyadh to meet with counterparts from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). “New Zealand’s goods and services exports to the Gulf region ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford has outlined six education priorities to deliver a world-leading education system that sets Kiwi kids up for future success. “I’m putting ambition, achievement and outcomes at the heart of our education system. I want every child to be inspired and engaged in their learning so they ...
The new NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) App is a secure ‘one stop shop’ to provide the services drivers need, Transport Minister Simeon Brown and Digitising Government Minister Judith Collins say. “The NZTA App will enable an easier way for Kiwis to pay for Vehicle Registration and Road User Charges (RUC). ...
Whānau with tamariki growing up in emergency housing motels will be prioritised for social housing starting this week, says Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka. “Giving these whānau a better opportunity to build healthy stable lives for themselves and future generations is an essential part of the Government’s goal of reducing ...
Racing Minister Winston Peters has paid tribute to an icon of the industry with the recent passing of Dave O’Sullivan (OBE). “Our sympathies are with the O’Sullivan family with the sad news of Dave O’Sullivan’s recent passing,” Mr Peters says. “His contribution to racing, initially as a jockey and then ...
Assalaamu alaikum, greetings to you all. Eid Mubarak, everyone! I want to extend my warmest wishes to you and everyone celebrating this joyous occasion. It is a pleasure to be here. I have enjoyed Eid celebrations at Parliament before, but this is my first time joining you as the Minister ...
Associate Health Minister David Seymour has announced Pharmac’s largest ever budget of $6.294 billion over four years, fixing a $1.774 billion fiscal cliff. “Access to medicines is a crucial part of many Kiwis’ lives. We’ve committed to a budget allocation of $1.774 billion over four years so Kiwis are ...
Hon Paula Bennett has been appointed as member and chair of the Pharmac board, Associate Health Minister David Seymour announced today. "Pharmac is a critical part of New Zealand's health system and plays a significant role in ensuring that Kiwis have the best possible access to medicines,” says Mr Seymour. ...
Hundreds of New Zealand families affected by Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) will benefit from a new Government focus on prevention and treatment, says Health Minister Dr Shane Reti. “We know FASD is a leading cause of preventable intellectual and neurodevelopmental disability in New Zealand,” Dr Reti says. “Every day, ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones today attended the official opening of Kaikohe’s new $14.7 million sports complex. “The completion of the Kaikohe Multi Sports Complex is a fantastic achievement for the Far North,” Mr Jones says. “This facility not only fulfils a long-held dream for local athletes, but also creates ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters’ engagements in Türkiye this week underlined the importance of diplomacy to meet growing global challenges. “Returning to the Gallipoli Peninsula to represent New Zealand at Anzac commemorations was a sombre reminder of the critical importance of diplomacy for de-escalating conflicts and easing tensions,” Mr Peters ...
Ambassador Millar, Burgemeester, Vandepitte, Excellencies, military representatives, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen – good morning and welcome to this sacred Anzac Day dawn service. It is an honour to be here on behalf of the Government and people of New Zealand at Buttes New British Cemetery, Polygon Wood – a deeply ...
Distinguished guests - It is an honour to return once again to this site which, as the resting place for so many of our war-dead, has become a sacred place for generations of New Zealanders. Our presence here and at the other special spaces of Gallipoli is made ...
Mai ia tawhiti pamamao, te moana nui a Kiwa, kua tae whakaiti mai matou, ki to koutou papa whenua. No koutou te tapuwae, no matou te tapuwae, kua honoa pumautia. Ko nga toa kua hinga nei, o te Waipounamu, o te Ika a Maui, he okioki tahi me o ...
Paul Goldsmith will take on responsibility for the Media and Communications portfolio, while Louise Upston will pick up the Disability Issues portfolio, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announced today. “Our Government is relentlessly focused on getting New Zealand back on track. As issues change in prominence, I plan to adjust Ministerial ...
This episode of A View From Afar was recorded LIVE on May 6, 2024 (NZST) which is Sunday evening, May 5, 2024 at 8:30pm (USEST). In an analytical essay titled ‘A moment of friction’ political scientist Dr Paul Buchanan wrote how we are living within a decisive moment ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alison Taylor, Assistant Professor, Bond University Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures At the crux of the critical response to Luca Guadagnino’s new movie Challengers is one word: “sexy”. The film charts a love triangle between three up-and-coming tennis players: Tashi (Zendaya), ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jenny Stewart, Professor of Public Policy, ADFA Canberra, UNSW Sydney For years, First Nations people have been telling governments they want to be listened to. In particular, they want more ownership of the programs and services that are supposed to help them. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gregory Moore, Senior Research Associate, School of Ecosystem and Forest Sciences, The University of Melbourne Why do trees have bark? Julien, age 6, Melbourne. This is a great question, Julien. We are so familiar with bark on trees, that most of us ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anthony Nasser, Senior Lecturer in Physiotherapy, University of Technology Sydney PeopleImages.com – Yuri A/Shutterstock The anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) is an important ligament in the knee. It runs from the thigh bone (femur) to the shin bone (tibia) and helps stabilise ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne I covered the May 2 United Kingdom local government elections for The Poll Bludger. The Blackpool South parliamentary byelection was also held, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Deanna Grant-Smith, Professor of Management, University of the Sunshine Coast The federal government has announced a “Commonwealth Prac Payment” to support selected groups of students doing mandatory work placements. Those who are studying to be a teacher, nurse, midwife or social ...
We round up everything coming to streaming services this week, including Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+, Apple TV+, ThreeNow, Neon and TVNZ+. If you love a dark comedy: Bodkin (Netflix, May 9)An English podcaster, an Irish podcaster and American podcaster walk into a pub and…make a TV show? ...
By Eleisha Foon, RNZ Pacific senior journalist A Pacific regionalism academic has called out New Zealand’s Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters for withholding information from the public on AUKUS and says the security deal “raises serious questions for the Pacific region”. Auckland University of Technology academic Dr Marco de Jong ...
How worried should we be about the cloud? This is an excerpt from our weekly environmental newsletter Future Proof. Sign up here. I currently have a few thousand unread emails languishing in my inbox, mostly old marketing newsletters and piles of unread science journal press releases. I have a similar number ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nuurrianti Jalli, Assistant Professor of Communication Studies College of Arts and Sciences Department of Languages, Literature, and Communication Studies, Northern State University Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Southeast Asian governments not only have to deal with the virus but also with the false ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Murakami Wood, Professor of Critical Surveillance and Securities Studies, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa The skyline of Riyadh, the capital and largest city of the Kingdom of Saudia Arabia.(Shutterstock) There is a long history of planned city building by both governments ...
The LIVE Recording of A View from Afar podcast will begin today at 12:45pm May 6, 2024 (NZST) which is Sunday evening, 8:30pm (USEST). In an analytical essay titled ‘A moment of friction’ political scientist Dr Paul Buchanan wrote how we are living within a decisive moment of ...
The Boil Up’s Lucinda Bennett considers the oyster – from freshness to pearls to the joy of shucking your own. This is an excerpt from our weekly food newsletter, The Boil Up. In Carmen Maria Machado’s short story ‘Eight Bites’, a woman begins her last supper before bariatric surgery with “a cavalcade ...
Asia Pacific Report A group of 65 Auckland University academics have written an open letter to vice-chancellor Dawn Freshwater criticising the institution’s stance over students protesting in solidarity with Palestine. They have called on her administration to “support” the students who were denied permission to establish an “overnight encampment” by ...
The Student Volunteer Army is on the march, generating approximately 1.6 million hours of volunteering from roughly 35,000 secondary school students in just five years. For Rebekah Brown, the pathway to volunteering started with her singing coach. With a passion for the arts, the suggestion to volunteer at Acting Antics, ...
Keeping up with online communication can be exhausting, so Fran Barclay enlisted the help of Meta’s new ‘intelligent assistant’ to respond to all her messages. Could her mates tell the difference? For centuries, technology has ruled the ways in which we communicate. From the dawn of written language, to the ...
Jamie Arbuckle, a councillor who has become an member of parliament, says he has settled into having two roles so comfortably he's going to keep both pay cheques. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Luis Gómez Romero, Senior Lecturer in Human Rights, Constitutional Law and Legal Theory, University of Wollongong Fifty years ago, Australian feminist Anne Summers denounced “the ideology of sexism” governing over so many women’s lives. Unfortunately, sexism is as lethal today as it ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jose Antonio Lara-Hernandez, Senior Researcher in Architecture, Auckland University of Technology Getty Images The COVID-19 pandemic and the hybrid work patterns it fostered have changed the way we think about office space, and central business districts in general. While fears ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dale Boccabella, Associate Professor of Taxation Law, UNSW Sydney There’s a good reason your local volunteer-run netball club doesn’t pay tax. In Australia, various nonprofit organisations are exempt from paying income tax, including those that do charitable work, such as churches. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marina Deller, Casual Academic, Creative Writing and English Literature, Flinders University NetflixComedy is opening up spaces for silences to be broken and trauma stories to be told. In 2018, Hannah Gadsby started a revolution with Nanette, asking audiences to rethink ...
The workplace can be a minefield of bad comms and passive aggression. Kinksters can help you navigate it. A friend and colleague recently gave me a compliment I loved. They told me I’d always been good at emotional communication and making people feel comfortable. “But I feel like it’s really ...
Even if some students are now just texting on their laptops. Stewart Sowman-Lund writes in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here. ...
Councils from Horowhenua, Kāpiti, Wairarapa, the Hutt Valley, Porirua and Wellington City will meet this Friday to work together on a plan for a Greater Wellington region water deal. ...
Renowned musician, advocate, and proud born and raised daughter of Tauranga, Ria Hall, is announcing her candidacy for Mayor of Tauranga and Pāpāmoa Ward for the upcoming election on July 20th. ...
The new Aotearoa histories curriculum is rich with potential. There’s still work to be done, but the education minister’s criticisms about ‘balance’ miss the mark, argues primary school teacher Jessie Moss. In 2015, Ōtorohanga College students presented to parliament a petition signed by more than 10,000 people calling for a ...
For too long our so-called national bird has maintained its stranglehold on the economy of regional New Zealand. Thanks to the fast track legislation, we will have our revenge. Theories abound on what ails New Zealand’s economy. National leader Chris Luxon has posited that we’re negative, wet, whiny, and inward-looking; ...
Late one afternoon in March 1860 a man in a thin green velveteen jacket and a wide-awake hat arrived on foot at a sheep station named Glenmark, about 65 kilometres north of Christchurch. The man was in his mid-fifties but he looked older. Several people who met him that day ...
If building one of Auckland’s possible waterfront stadiums was funded privately, it would need to hold a sold-out Ed Sherran concert every weekday for 25 years. That’s Rob Hamlin’s finding – he’s a senior marketing lecturer at the University of Otago. “It’s not going to happen; forget about it,” he ...
Comment: The debate over the future relationship between news and social media is bringing us closer to a long-overdue reckoning. Social media isn’t trying to kill journalism, because social media has never really cared about journalism. Social media is resolutely in the attention business. News propels some attention — perhaps ...
Loading…(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){var ql=document.querySelectorAll('A,DIV,A[data-quiz],DIV[data-quiz]'); if(ql){if(ql.length){for(var k=0;k<ql.length;k++){ql[k].id='quiz-embed-'+k;ql[k].href="javascript:var i=document.getElementById('quiz-embed-"+k+"');try{qz.startQuiz(i)}catch(e){i.start=1;i.style.cursor='wait';i.style.opacity='0.5'};void(0);"}}};i['QP']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){(i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)})(window,document,'script','https://take.quiz-maker.com/3012/CDN/quiz-embed-v1.js','qp'); Got a good quiz question?Send Newsroom your questions. The post Newsroom daily quiz, Monday 6 May appeared first on Newsroom. ...
For the past 12 years, Georgia-Rose Brown has balanced on the brink of making an Olympic Games – but always landed gracefully on the wrong side. Reaching the Olympics is a dream the gymnast has harboured since she was a six-year-old; a dream that would dwindle every four years, yet ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra A new Commonwealth Prac Payment will provide students with $319.50 a week when they are on clinical and professional placements. The payment will be means tested and start from July 1 next year, which ...
Asia Pacific Report About 500 people honoured Palestinian journalists in the heart of the New Zealand city of Auckland today for their brave coverage of Israel’s War on Gaza, now in its seventh month with almost 35,000 people killed, mostly women and children. Marking the annual May 3 World Press ...
The Government Communications Security Bureau denies hosting a foreign spying capability flagged by the watchdog, differentiating it from the system recently criticised. ...
RNZ News A group of academic staff at New Zealand’s largest university have expressed concern at the administration’s move to block a protest encampment that was planned to take place on campus calling for support for the rights of Palestinians. This week, the University of Auckland warned that while it ...
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Political conferences after a party returns to power are usually a chance for some healthy, even unhealthy backslapping. Yet National Party president Sylvia Wood’s address to its mainland representatives on Saturday hardly contained the unalloyed delight that one might have expected following National’s escape from the wilderness of opposition. Yes, ...
Comment: Almost half the world is voting in national elections this year and artificial intelligence is the elephant in the room. There are genuine fears AI-generated or AI-edited deepfakes will potentially manipulate election outcomes not just in the US and UK, but critically in countries such as India. For that ...
Ahead of the reality franchise’s return to New Zealand, allow us to introduce the eight brides and grooms. Chuck on a veil and tie back your man bun, because it’s time to say “I do” to a new season of Married at First Sight NZ. The reality TV “social experiment” ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Norton, Professor in the Practice of Higher Education Policy, Australian National University Every year on June 1, student debt in Australia is indexed to inflation. In 2023, high inflation pushed the indexation rate to 7.1%, the highest since 1990. This ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Changes in the May 14 budget will cut the student debt of more than three million people, wiping more than $3 billion from what people owe. The government will cap the HELP indexation rate ...
Asia Pacific Report The prosecutor’s office at the International Criminal Court (ICC) has appealed for an end to what it calls intimidation of its staff, saying such threats could constitute an offence against the “administration of justice” by the world’s permanent war crimes court. The Hague-based office of ICC Prosecutor ...
By Patrick Decloitre, RNZ Pacific correspondent French Pacific desk A women’s union in New Caledonia has staged a sit-in protest this week to support senior Kanak indigenous journalist Thérèse Waia, who works for public broadcaster Nouvelle-Calédonie la Première, after a smear attack by critics. The peaceful demonstration was held on ...
New Zealand Food Safety is monitoring overseas recalls of Indian packaged spice products manufactured by MDH and Everest due to concerns over a cancer-causing pesticide. ...
By Stephen Wright and Stefan Armbruster of BenarNews Fiji’s ranking in a global press freedom index has jumped into the top tier of countries with free or mostly free media after its government last year repealed a draconian law that threatened journalists with prison for doing their jobs. Fiji’s improvement ...
We might be in Invercargill but all anyone can talk about is Gore. Specifically, Salford Street. That’s where three-year-old Lachlan Jones lived, south of the centre of town, between the A&P Showgrounds and the Mataura River. Roughly 1.2 km away from the single level home he lived in with his ...
MONDAY I lined up the latest round of civil servants from city hall against the wall, and signalled for the firing squad to drop their rifles. I stepped up onto a wooden crate to look at the office workers in the eye. But that didn’t feel right, so I found ...
Keen hiker and second-year MSc student Liam Hewson wears two hats when he’s in the great outdoors. “The scientist in me appreciates nature and goes, ‘Oh, there’s that thing and there’s another thing,’ but then the tramper and the outdoorsy person in me thinks, ‘Cool bush.’” Born and bred in ...
12/6/18 Trolling Pick Six Results – Quaddie
We only got 4 legs so we got the Quaddie, 2 x legs short of Pick Six yesterday Gosman was in the race early along with Alwyn, Mullet Head appeared early especially after Winston had made some moves the previous evening, Baby Gaga appeared mid day and started stirring as per usual.
Leg 1 Gosman
Leg 2 Alwyn
Leg 3 Mullet Head
Leg 4 Baby Gaga
Huzzah another race caller for Daisycutter Sports Inc.
New talent is so hard to come by.
I obviously have been derelict in my duties if I’m not getting a mention
Yeah, come on, Chris. Pull your finger out, mate. The Standard doesn’t troll itself you know.
If you want to keep vilifying and bullying commenters, all you do is look more and more like Whaleoil, Jason Ede, and the rest of the right wing guys that Rawshark warned us all about.
Stop attacking the commenters and start generating better argument.
In essence I agree with you Ad, but some days you get a break from working, and a ‘hate in’ by the usual suspects is in full swing here on the standard.
By the time you scroll past all the BS, it is just simpler to give up and go to another forum for a more engaging conversation. Then hope the next day it won’t be dominated by another ‘hate in’.
Its called ironic humour , mate .
And pretty tame compared to anything Whaleoil ever spewed out.
Get a grip on yourself , cob.
A Troll is not someone who has a different political perspective to your own.
What is wrong with your view of the world being challenged?
It is indeed a great honour and privilege to be considered in the same illustrious company as those mentioned above. I assure all readers of The Standard that while this added responsibility will at times weigh heavily on my shoulders, I will not shirk from my responsibility to you all.
Thanks You again.
BY
Piss off , idiot.
Oh dear, having a bad day?
The old neoliberal Goof Ball under pressure at Auckland City Council ?
There is a widely held view, including among public servants, that officials in the past two decades have focused too tightly on serving ministers, even at times anticipating and then serving up what their ministers might want to hear. Mr Hipkins sums it up as them asking ministers: “What advice would you like?”
Explains a lot.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/on-the-inside/359453/is-public-service-working-for-mps-or-the-public
Well done Tamati Tautuhi,
We do now need to keep a daily count on these national trollls weho may be actuallly working on behalf of cameron Slater and the national party together.
So we need to keep on their tail showing how they are trying to sway the whle NZ election process going forward as they appear to enjoy attacking most other bloggers now.
Can you keep up your excellent daily reviews for watching these national trolls ‘activities’.
We also have to be very careful how much we feed the trolls, as they can consume a lot of precious time and energy ?
Some of the people mentioned are not trolls (as far as I can see).
James, chris73, stunnedmullet, Puckish Rogue, Gosman and Alwyn appear to be broadly sincere (if sometimes snarky or provocative) right wingers.
There is no guarantee that everyone you will meet here will be left wing. At least the RW guys provide someone you can have an argument with. It would be boring if everyone agreed all the time.
Baba Yaga and the Chairman I think are trolls, that is they do not believe what they say and are just here to wind you up. The Standard could do without them, but they are bound to cop a ban at some point so I wouldn’t worry too much.
A.
“Alwyn appear to be broadly sincere”.
Why thank you, kind Sir. Of course I must admit that if you really want to make me snarky the best way is to lie and accuse me of being in the National Party.
Never have been and never will be a member of any Political Party.
In that regard I am like Groucho Marx.
https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/groucho_marx_122546
What about accusing you of being over-histrionic? (kind Sir, thou foul knave, etc.)
And not being a member of a political party does not prevent you from having political bias inherent in your comments. Few here would see you as Left or Centrist….
Rather than warbling on here I thought you might have looked at my reply to a comment you made in yesterdays OM.
https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-12-06-2018/#comment-1493282
You would have discovered there that your opinions on New Zealand’s Minimum wage were as erroneous as most of your opinions.
Why don’t you have a look at it now? You will learn something about a topic on which you have, to date, displayed total ignorance.
Idiot. My comparison was with what the rubbish collectors would have been getting paid before NZ got turned into a low-wage economy. I was comparing current miserable wages to workshop, and contrasting them to the decent wages NZers got before rogernomics, etc.
Had you read more carefully – but your way is to deliberately misinterpret, cherrypick, then add insults.
You do yourself no credit at all, and you still need a healthier pastime.
Your complete comment was this.
“alwyn, I would put it to you that the minimum wage is now so low that it is the equivalent of a sheltered workshop wage.
How desperate would you have to be to do hard, physically hurtful labour like picking Kiwifruit for possibly less than $15 an hour? (They jiggle it by paying by the basket, I believe.)
Be honest.”
Rubbish collectors? Rogernomics?
I defy anyone to take this to be saying anything like what you are now claiming. At least anyone with an IQ of more than room temperature.
How foolish of me! I was going to apologise, because the thread I was referring to was further down the screen than the source you gave.
But then I looked at the time of each comment, and saw that you had in fact read all the thread before you commented, attacking me.
My reply stands, and those who wish to understand fully should take alwyn’s link above and read on.., way down that thread.
alwyn, your false righteousness reveals you as a weaselly, loathsome knave. Begone. Nobody likes cheats.
I really think you should sit down. It is sad to see but you have reached the seventh stage described so vividly by a great writer about four centuries ago.
“Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.”
I suggest that you should sit down and try and relax. That nice attendant will be around shortly with a cup of Milo and your pills.
I’m afraid the only part of this comment of yours that is accurate is the first sentence where you admit “How foolish of me”.
I don’t post anything I don’t believe. At times I have been proven wrong, and have accepted the instruction graciously. Along with one ban.
… ‘ It would be boring if everyone agreed all the time ‘ …
Boring?
What , … people dying in Pike River due to AWOL health and Safety standards and lack of Mines Inspectors due to business interests, foreign banks and their grabastic shareholders whims , coupled with a govt that progressively detoothed Union intervention?
Or children dying of third world preventable respiratory diseases in cold damp moldy state houses that were left to degrade in order for the National party to enable an open door to privatization of rental accommodation for the poor???
That’s merely boring???
Nah mate , – that’s fucking criminal.
Childhood diseases in the land of milk and poverty – NZ Herald
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11913334
Fuck off ya bastard.
Great work Tamati Tautuhi.
These trolls are scum and ruin this site.
Dunno about that, I work with plenty who could play that part. It pays to understand their twisted memes.
Born and raised rurals who haven’t left the colonial 19th century attitudes behind and suck up the msm swill as if it’s valid intelligent material. Blaming and slagging off whoever the msm instruct them to.
Sadly NZ is full of them, gos and co are simply reflective of that.
They’re the ones who vote every single time driven by that superiority complex mostly about being here first….yes it’s still about that sadly in 2018.
I love how you’ve created this strawman caricature of this Right leaning person and then applied it without thought to someone regardless of reality. Bravo on doing that.
For your information I never take what the MSM states as the absolute truth and try and get my information from multiple sources but by all means cvontinue to believe your fantasyland creation.
I try and stay away from this site as it has turned into a Kindegarten or Day Care Centre for demented adults ?
Thank you Tamati Tauhui
We need to keep track of the time wasters, otherwise known as trolls, for they keep driving on the wrong side of sanity. Which is very bad for the Kindergarten they belong to.
Gosman can put his shaky hand on anything and twist it inside out. I think of the damage he does to the children who follow him about as he drips sugar from his drool.
Chris 73 is an interesting one. Is he Christine? Christopher or Christ. He seems as coherent as anyone of the Capitalist Cult Creeps – Simon. Who also struggles to know what he is, and why he is, or when he is. He is the Leader of the Cult of Greed. Next week he will be studying how to button up a coat. Crikey.
With the benefit of hindsight, I do not exactly trust this Tamati Tauhui guy, and suspect that he has had a ball today sucking us in.
I am guessing Gosman regularly [What brought this on? Deleted for flaming – MS], probably belongs to the same pony tail pulling club as one of our previous leaders.
it is always so ironic when trolls complain about trolls.
I see you were onto it straight away, yet I and so many others missed it. Well done.
I was referring and responding to Ed.
Sorry, I should have looked at reply number more carefully.
I think TT has sucked us in a beauty with his troll register when he himself is on their side, and he sucked Ed in as well.
Below, you will see that ‘Enough is Enough’ twigged before I did.
Either a great rort that actually deserves a round of applause, or I am a silly old duffer.
Scum? Oh come on Eddie. That’s not nice.
I know you militant vegans hate opposing views but scum that does not make.
If you don’t watch this and feel militant, something is wrong with you……
Good trailer and good movie, well worth a look.
So have you actually watched the movie this time? Or is there no need?
The way animals are treated by the industrial food empire is horrific.
No better than Treblinka.
Mass murderers.
No need. Great cinematography.
These trolls are scum. Well said Ed
In the real world it is called “sucking cock” ?
And this is the level that the standard has sunk to since Weka left.
Classy post. Keep it up and drive more and more people away from the site.
And since r0b left. I miss that boy
The one I miss most was Lanthanide. He was a person you could debate with. He was always willing to consider a different point of view and behave like an adult.
The Standard has degenerated badly since he ceased to contribute. Mind you, I think he gave up commenting here because he saw, earlier than most, what the new breed of twits like T.T were doing to the debates. Abuse replaced the reason that he exemplified.
Pretty sure it’s “she”, but I could be wrong.
What’s wrong with sucking cock
A.
I’m a big supporter of oral sex 🙂 (but only with consent and following all legal guidelines)
Antoine, your comment really needed a question mark. Otherwise, the rest of your paragraph is missing.
But you are actually encouraging James’s faux concern, aren’t you? Like PR.
It may be fake concern but his point is valid.
Yes, I personally disapprove of Tamati Tautuhi’s faux pas.
(Deliberate? – But who is he, a Leftie? A black flag plant? I don’t remember seeing much from him on this site…)
But I disapprove much more of the sanctimonious way James and PR are rushing to inflame the issue.
Doesn’t that qualify as homophobic?
Next Tamaki will be advocating for a bit of gay bashing – sad to see this level of behaviour anywhere these days.
Amazing the people who have NOT called him out on it.
James, as I pointed out above, your faux concern is a bit obvious, and few care about your fake sadness.
As you also seem not to care about the homophobic comments being used in this site.
You leave the Bishop alone James. At least you were not fooled by him using a pen name of Tamati. Follow his advice, and tithe, and he will lead you on the paths of righteousness. And good luck as you trail along wearing sackcloth and ashes like the Vino man.
Nicely done – you have a deft humorous touch at times, alwyn.
Tamati is actually bisexual and does not get involved in gay bashing.
May I recommend self-flagellation? I am not in your category, but over the years I have known people to try it.
The more diverse opinion the better imo.
Too easy to write people off as trolls.
Nah; Zorb6
As social bullying increases with these trolls, more ‘fair minded commenters’ refrain from contributing to the posts; – as we have sen time and time again so we need to encourage free flowing comments not buying as we all see today with those bunch of trolls always attacking in a “pack together”.
It is not the number of blogs that should determine the quality of a blogsite but the ‘constructive contents’ of those sites.
Cleangreen the problem is they get into a feeding frenzy like a pack of rabid hyenas when they smell a bit of blood ?
It’s called holding the government to account. Same as when National was in power and posters gleefully made lists of Nationals, alleged, broken promises or do you think the present government should just get a free pass with no criticism?
There was nothing “alleged” about National’s hefty list of lies and broken promises. If it were any more substantial you could probably beat someone to death with it. Having said that, no, the coalition should not get a free pass. They should be held to the same standard as any other government in terms of honesty. The problem is National doesn’t seem able to do that without resorting to mind-blowing levels of hypocrisy.
ie Dirty Politics 101 & 102
Agreed, I’d bring in Judith Collins as leader to start to apply the blow torch but i was more referring to some of the posters on here.
It seems to be, to some, that to point out the present governments failings or broken promises is trolling
I agree with you Puck I think they should definitely replace Simon No Bridges with Judith Collins at least she has got some balls ?
I presume you are aware the only other opposition party is ACT with one MP. Would you prefer they were ta larger party in Opposition would you? If not, who do you want to hold the government to account given you think National can’t do it?
Most of the troll critique is not factually based – nor is the Gnat’s in parliament, which is why they’re not getting much traction.
There is indeed a role for principled dissent – the moral vacuum the Gnats have become simply aren’t capable of providing it, and what they do provide isn’t particularly useful.
What is this fact based critique? Can you give me an example of a fact based critique of the 3 Strikes policy being nixed by NZ First?
You should really learn to google – but https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07418820400095791
“In the real world it is called “sucking cock” ?”
Would this be the kind of social bullying you are talking about cleangreen?
Or are you ok with this kind of comment if you don’t like who it’s said too?
I’m pretty sure CG is okay with that sort of comment so long as the targets are people who disagree with CG.
Indeed it would seem so.
Exactly right Zorb 6.
The more complacent the left becomes now that Labour and Greens are in government, the more the temptation by the left to simply bully and degrade commenters who disagree with them. It’s a simple temptation of power.
Far better to win hearts and minds with honey than with vinegar.
As my mother used to say.
That’s not what I hear people saying. What some are highlighting is that there is a small group of posters here whose MO seems always to snipe, hector and carp, and demonstrate no interest in really engaging in debate and/or showing any interest in changing their mind.
People call them out not for having an alternative point of view as you seem to say, rather for their consistent negative, sometimes nasty tone and attitudes which can make the Standard a real drag.
Some people here, thankfully not many, just seem to get their jollies in this unhealthy and unhelpful way.
I can only speak for myself here (all jokes about being a paid troll aside) but I know that in certain areas some of my positions have changed due to the arguments I’ve heard on here, from people who’ve earned my respect
The real issue is that my position changes due to how logical and well presented the argument is but, like most I suspect, I don’t respond well to being lectured to or hectored
I don’t know if I’ve swayed anyone’s position on anything (I suspect I might have on the inconsequential stuff) but if I haven’t its because I haven’t presented my argument well enough
Pukish,,,,,,,,,,,,,that is good. Right or left it is a big thing for anyone to change their mind.
Puck’s mind is gaining some flexibility perhaps ?
That’s about the optimal standard of commenting Puckish.
Cheers.
Pucky changed the tone of his comments way back and is enjoying a certain fondness here. James remains…unreconstructed and generally reviled.
Puck is getting pissed off he hasn’t been put on the Official Trolling Register
I reckon Pucky doesn’t qualify as a troll.
You take that back!
It hurts I know, Pucky, but you’ve come out from under the bridge and there’s no crawling back! In any case, that space is stuffed with James and Baba.
If there was a blue-green party I’d be voting for it
What positions would your blue green party take?
As an example of a possible policy they could propose to stop all diary conversions in Canterbury and look to extend to other areas where diary just isn’t feasible
I also wouldn’t have a problem seeing all streams and rivers bordering farms to be fenced or having a minimum amount of shelter for farm animals (not sure how that would be implemented)
This site isn’t really about debate. It is largely an echo chamber for people to tut tut right wing political parties and rah rah left leaning ones.
There’s tonnes of debate here, Gosman and often you are embroiled in it. Your claim is unconvincing.
Puck NZF is the only party that wants to look at getting 1080 removed NZ uses 70-80% of the world’s 1080.
I believe the Greens are still pro 1080
You ought to know before you make such an inflammatory statement, TT. ‘I believe’ is not good enough.
Does anyone else find it suspicious that it was precisely TT who put up the original ‘suck cock’ comment, and he appears to have been cheerleading and cooperating with James and PR since?
Surely Tamati Tautuhi needs to add his own name to the list at the very top of this thread?
I may be wrong, but my alarm bells are starting to ring.
” believe the Greens are still pro 1080″.
Really? I shall have to revise my opinion if that is true.
They will go from being 100% crazy down to 99% nuts.
Tell me that they have abandoned their irrational opposition to GMOs.
I will start taking them seriously when they do that.
Snipe, Hector and Carp are a legal firm, no?
That’s right. Or at least I think that is right.
Perhaps they are a Pop group like Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young?
No I’ve checked. Law firm it is. Their offices are right next to the firm that represents Winston Peters.
They are Sue, Grabbit and Run.
No, I believe that position is already taken by Clutch, Grabbit and Tweak.
I really like the things you are saying here Ad, but I can’t believe your mother really said ‘hearts and minds’
Yes it was just the “honey and vinegar” bit.
Rest her soul.
Tamati Tautuhi We have agreed with your advice here;
“We also have to be very careful how much we feed the trolls,”
That clear ‘fact’ could become the trigger for banning these trolls, as Martyn Bradbury seems to have chosen to do already.
As factually these trolls are truly actual “disrupters of our human rights to have free speech without fare or being attacked by others as it is a kind of aggression they are perpertrating.”
‘Verbal abuse is illegal on the social media’ – as we saw happen with the Careron Slater/dirty politics saga.
Mainstream media actually go to these sites to get leads on stories hence Key and Collins were releasing information to Slater and Doug Grahams son who would then leak it to the media ?
Why turn the standard into a clone of the faily blog? The standard has always had robust commentary from all sides. It’s what makes it one of the better communities in NZ politics. Yet here you are trying to shut it down after what, two years here?
Bans don’t work if all your banning is an opinion different from your very own. The amount of quotation marks you use in every comment is perhaps indicative of not having your own. Maybe you are jealous of those who do?
As factually these trolls are truly actual “disrupters of our human rights to have free speech without fare or being attacked by others as it is a kind of aggression they are perpertrating.”
‘Verbal abuse is illegal on the social media’ – as we saw happen with the Careron Slater/dirty politics saga.
How is having an opinion contradictory to your own a disruption of your right to free speech, if you want to ban said opinion?
Between you and tamati, you’ve really reached new heights of stupidity.
The Daily Blog still gets trolled by right-wing shills as a matter of course. They just receive an overwhelmingly hostile response and tend to not want to come back. From what I’ve seen, the moderators here are more inclined to opt for the ban-hammer than Bomber and friends.
The comment feature of the Dailyblog is pathetic. Hence why there are less comments there.
Gossie you spend all day here with your lures out why don’t you f off back to Kiwi Bog or Whale Scum
Because I enjoy challenging my views as much as yours.
You don’t challenge your views.
You just sneer in a puerile and trivial manner.
Bomber approves every single comment that goes through. Hence the paucity of them.
And the creation in cleangreens mind of a delusion that his opinion is important and correct
Stupidity has “heights”?
I’d have thought, “depths”.
I must have been feeling optimistic about leaving the depths this morning.
Stupidity is ubiquitous.
“At a lecture I gave in Grand Forks, North Dakota in March of this year, someone asked me how do we finally knock the fools and obscurantists and believers in craziness out of the box once and for all. I told the woman that we can’t. Apart from hydrogen, the most common thing in the universe is stupidity.”
~Harlan Ellison.
Our trolls are merely representative of the hard-of-thinking who make up most of the hard right.
Verbal abuse is illegal on social media?
Really?
Have a quick look on this single thread and point out who is using verbal abuse ?
Referring to cock sucking and scum?
Yep. The people you seem to agree with.
Naughty boy/girl.
James does that “thing” where he repeats words he claims to be offended by. It’s a method favoured by 8-year olds generally, those who get some sort of buzz from using “bad words” under the guise of someone else having said them.
Has James started trolling again today trying to get a bite ?
Yes.
Been very busy.
And Robert does that thing where he tries to ‘attack’ the people calling people out for disgusting behaviour.
In the meantime – Robert is happy for homophobic comments to be used against people he dosnt like – he is an enabler and this is the kind of thing that supports a homophobic culture.
“Robert is happy for homophobic comments to be used against people he dosnt (sic) like – he is an enabler and this is the kind of thing that supports a homophobic culture.”
James. I’m offended by your claims, because they are not true. If you believe you are being honest with what you’ve said, please explain and include any quotes from me that support your claim.
Robert – your behaviour supporting people being called cock suckers (a homophobic insult) speaks volumes – as does your sexist attitude refusing to call out people calling women trouts or chubby.
The behaviour you tolerate is the behaviour you support.
Robert’s observation is (unsurprisingly) accurate.
4.1.1.1.1 “That shows what kind of bitch you are.” – c’mon James, you love it.
James, does your faux concern have no end? It really is most unconvincing, sorry.
James lives in the gutter.
No doubt he’s been forced out of the culvert he once inhabited and pretentiously called “a bridge” by deluges of decaying cow poo.
Media headlines after the first US president in history to meet with the North Korean leader.
“What attire says about Kim”
“‘Looks like little rockets being launched’: Kim Jong Un’s signature under fire”
Pretty poor.
…then.. work out what went on yourself,
“Do you believe the world is a safer place as a result of the Singapore summit?”
The media sucks.
It is also annoyed as its owners will be poorer if peace breaks out.
It was probably a double so the signature is not valid ?
Ha, could be. Trump’s signature cracks me up though.
This is a live story developing today.
The East Coast forestry slash saga is developig into a real issue up here now today as the forestry chair Peter Weil has now admitted the past activities were very sadly lacking in any disapline as the old slash was just left all over the place to rot and cause drain blockages, and that was what shut down our Gisborne rail services in 2012 just when we were getting the freight up to record levels.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/6170590/At-risk-rail-line-can-t-cope-with-demand
Then that slash just left tying around came down the slopes to block the rail line and wash out a one km section.
Then the oportunists in the National Government gleefully siezed that oportunity to close the rail service just then, and left us to support only road freight, and now the roads now rapidly quickly are falling apart and have become very dangerous now.
Best we get the rail fixed now since our roads are closed around gisborne again for the third time in 12 months now, while most of the rail line is still intact.
The one km section of rail repair has been costed to be only about $5 million to fix as they aere now getting the rail from Napier to Gisorne opened now, so we expect labour/NZF to get going and re-open this finally 40km section to Gisborne re-opened again as possible for our security, wellbeing and safety.
We must hold forestry companies liable for repairing the washed out Gisborne rail line (that was washed out by blocked drains after forestry slash blocked the drains in a large rainstorm back in 2012.
Our rail watch folks all went to see the damage and took pictures of the drains all jamed full of slash and logs along the Gisborne rail line then.
Since this admission of guilt has been made on 12/6/18 by forestry chair Peter weir has clarified said how slash has been causing damages to our infrastructure roads and rail for years.
This is an importance incident still unresolved:
Latest is the east coast farmers are considering a legal challenge to make forestry made accountable now.
Kiwirail as our own publically owned SOE must also go after the forestry companies for charging them costs for funding of the repair of the rail line theyn had a part of damaging.
https://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/checkpoint/audio/2018648971/forestry-companies-committed-to-do-our-fair-share
John Key & Fay Richwhite used to be shareholders in NZRail, I wonder if they still hold those shares ?
“I wonder if they still hold those shares ?”.
I thought you might have noticed that the railway operations in New Zealand are owned and operated by KiwiRail. It is an SOE set up when Michael Cullen paid a totally insane amount of taxpayer money to buy the assets from the then Toll Rail.
As an SOE all the shares are owned by the Crown so the people you mention certainly won’t own any shares.
If you want to complain to the shareholders they are Grant Robertson and Tsar Winston Peters. I doubt if they will give you much heed.
Were charges laid over the washout on the Gisborne to Napier Line.
This is what I mean when I say that costs aren’t fully accounted for in our ‘market’ system and it’s a subsidy. This is why regulations are needed – to ensure that these costs are accounted for so that subsidies can be minimised.
And if we, as a nation, have these regulations then all our trading partners also need them else we end up subsidising them while our own economy fails.
It’s like roadkill on the roads in Northland when the logging trucks run over cars, does that go into the cost/benefit analysis ?
Somewhere under the detritus is the ever-incompetent Ministry of Primary Industries.
Standards for logging, tracks, watershed protection were worked out in the 1980s and before. They’re clearly being neglected.
Perhaps heads will roll. Or not. The SSC just seems to want to play musical chairs with a set of talking heads.
The old colonialist exploitation of resources, I hope they are going to pay for the clean up. The rail was deliberately closed by John Key and the Natzi’s.
Yes the community farmers are now today announcing that they are considering optios to take legal preceedings against the Forestry compames for willful damages to thrie infrustructures so we will see come to and fro here from now we expect.
sadly when one particular forestry company caused a major drain blockage under the main hyway to napier in 2011 the rail line was stil in operation but that company was trucking all the logs to gisborne port while the slash was slidding down those steep banks against the rail line going through their forestry block at the location and we took pictures of the slas and gave a submission to the local council after wards.
The forestry company still refused to fix up the slash or even to help us by using the rail services then to ship the logs to the port so we knew then trouble was going to occur then…
Time to fix up this crappy activity now because the region will suffer and people will die if left as is.
Neoliberalism or Natzism ?
Neoliberalism is a form of fascism ?
Neo-liberalism and the deregulation that came with it was a way to ensure that rich people weren’t held accountable for their actions. A way to increase the bludging that the rich could do on the general populace.
Were charges laid over the washout on the Gisborne to Napier Line.
We called the excecutives of kiwirail to investigate the blocking of the rail line drains and gave them evidence of it and pictures in 2012-2013, and later again in 2015 and they always advised us that they would investigate it.
And if found that they caused the rail washouts they would charge the forestry company for damage costs to fix the line and put it back in bussiness again but nothing was done sadly then and we wonder why? – Was it Government interference then parhaps???
Probably political interference if you want my professional opinion ?
“if you want my professional opinion”
Reading your comments on here – including the homophobic ones – I doubt your opinion is professional in the slightest.
Probably but you won’t find any evidence as it would be a backroom deal that’s not in the records.
I guess it’s a legal grey area that will gain clarity as global warming takes hold.
Those flash floods we see on the news, who pays for the damage done by the cars we see floating down streets? Am I responsible for the shop fronts my swept away car damages?
A big stack of firewood beside my house, if flood waters carry it away and down the valley, am I/my insurers responsible for the damage my float-away firewood causes? It would be just my luck for my stack of flotsam Macrocarpa to smash into my neighbour’s back room full of Hoteres and McCahons…..5 million dollars worth of railway line would look like a bargain…….”Can I pay it off at $5 a week?”
Its called insurance.
Unless you were negligent in your parking of the car or stacking the firewood its unlikely you would be held responsible for the flood damage that resulted . That primarily occurred because of the flood.
Thats where the logging companies have a problem, did they abide with the resource consents , if not they are negligent.
Of course you are kidding yourslef if your ‘firewood’ is anything like the volume of slash which has come down.
Yes, I agree with all you say duke.
Are resource consents sought when a forest that has been in for 45 years is harvested? I dunno. Obviously worksite health and safety rules apply but maybe forestry roads are laid, the trees dropped and trucked out on the consent that they were planted under decades prior.
yes a consent is required
see example
http://www.gdc.govt.nz/crown-forestry-resource-consent-application
On Brexit and Boris Johnson
“Johnson and his chums ignored Northern Ireland in their Brexit campaign. That seemed to be the ultimate height of irresponsibility but they have now gone further – they are exploiting it. Their current strategy is to use the EU’s offer of a special deal for Northern Ireland, preserving many of the advantages of the single market even while leaving it, as an opening through which they can force the EU to concede the same have cake/eat cake privileges to Britain. They are trying to turn the sympathy that comes from a horrible conflict, in which nearly 2 per cent of the population was killed or injured, into a way of getting one over on Michel Barnier. This is political depravity.”
…another top piece from Fintan O’Toole,
https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/fintan-o-toole-brexiteers-cannot-allow-the-english-bulldog-to-be-wagged-by-an-irish-tail-1.3526939
Anne Tolley the MP for that region by any chance ?
Yes Anne Tolley is the MP for Gisborne and now fleed to Ohope beach in Whakatane so she is called now “no show Tolley”.
At the time in 2012-3 she was firmly in support of our rail services but strangely reversed her support all of a sudden, “again maybe more Government interference???
Do you object to the lady living in her electorate?
Surely you don’t regard the MP for the electorate as being just to represent the Burghers of Gisborne?
I confess that if I had a choice of Ohope or Gisborne I would choose the Bay of Plenty over Poverty Bay any day. The only problem is that you would have Michael Cullen as a neighbour.
Neither can compare with the twin cities of Hawkes Bay of course.
Minister Eugenie Sage of the Green Party has just given consent to a Chinese company to buy land classed sensitive, close to Whakatane, to bottle water for exports. All in the name of increase in investment and jobs. Great stuff and totally aligned with the bravado before the election isn’t it ?? No shame on the daily backflips from this Government
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/104668519/green-party-members-revolt-over-water-bottling-decision
Could be a poisoned chalice evidently the arsenic levels are quite high in that water in that area ?
Very difficult to reconcile the ‘bottle’ part of these ventures with approval from a ‘Green’ politician.
More plastic waste anyone?
Still down the rabbit hole.
SSDD
The greens are well intentioned but they are still away with the fairies ?
Bombastic pomposity noted.
The site has an existing bottling plant they are just increasing the land area they have to increase production.
Where do you think jobs are going to come from in Otakiri Springs ? You sneers dont give jobs !
Thats a prime example being in opposition means you can oppose the things your supporters dont like.
Being in government means you have to work for the benefit of all Nzers
Why do you think that such jobs that cause so much damage are important?
We should be getting rid of them and developing our economy and not just exporting it.
We need to start taxing plastic bottles like they do in Australia & the USA ?
Is that you, Mr Chairman?
@humma – I have a lot of issues with this consent from the environmental point of view aka plastic bottles for those that can afford it and have polluted their own supply, now taking it from other countries. They should be forced to use glass bottles at least.
No doubt the council will fall over themselves to give away the free water from the aquifer, which is then taking a public asset and making it private which is not ok.
Also as we have seen before the ‘workers’ will not be local but probably Chinese and so it actually becomes a cost to NZ as more people on lowered wages are bought which means that that NZ asset is not employing local workers, and the new workers require housing, health, education… that the NZ tax payer pays subsidises as they gain residency and citizenship.
NZ assets have been bought up by foreign buyers for years, the problem is when it was the Ozzies and the Canadians they pay more in their countries for workers so they use Kiwi workers for their plants. We are not seeing the same with Asian buyers of our assets as they bring in their cheaper workers many of whom have studied in NZ and can be road to residency, which does the opposite takes local jobs away, lowers wages overall and not giving the same benefits to the community.
In addition if there becomes an issue with quality or counterfeiting, the NZ brand is damaged as of course the water will be heavily marketed as from NZ which is so far a trusted brand but of course that trust is easy to destroy.
The criteria of the OIA as well as the RMA needs immediate reform from the Green Party, NOT endorsing it, to stop NZ sinking further and further into becoming a polluted banana republic and to legally protect local people to ensure they get the full and long term benefits from the consents including long term environmental protection, a stop of production if new environmental evidence turns up aka the area starts running out of water or there is new evidence of any negative effects on the community.
Now Russel Norman has left, the Greens seem to have forgotten about the Chinese human rights abuses.. now we seem to be endorsing them!
Yes, that’s right, the Greens are obviously supporting the human rights abuses of china because bottled water.
Endorsement by 1000 cuts.
How?
Greens also support 1080 I heard somewhere ?
1080 is one of “those” topics but here goes…
I don’t like the use of 1080 but, mostly due to NZs terrain and the cost, I see the need for 1080 drops
I do dream, probably a fools dream, of a day where Nationals Predator Free 2050 is bolstered and supported, with more money, by every incoming government and that 1080 drops become used less as time passes
They reckon releasing trained cats into the bush to catch possums is a safer alternative, makes sense ?
I am not a fan of eating 1080 flavoured wild pork & venison ?
Cat v possum?
I know which id have my money on
“They reckon releasing trained cats into the bush to catch possums is a safer alternative, makes sense ?”
Oh hell no it doesn’t, lets imagine you’re a cat and you’re climbing a tree and you have the choice of a possum which is bigger than you and will fight back or a bird
What are you going to pick?
..but the cat is trained. It holds a certificate in killing possums, as authorised by the Vegan Society of NZ and it promised only to kill possums.
Yeah I wasn’t sure if the poster was being serious or not so I tried to treat it as serious
https://imgur.com/gallery/9ZOgqGO
Puck I thought so myself when I was told yesterday by someone if I can get some info I will post it on this site.
These are properly trained registered cats not your average Persian fluffy thing that sits on John Key’s couch in Parnell ?
That maybe but the last thing NZ needs (IMHO) is more introduced predators
“These are properly trained registered cats”.
I’m afraid that statement should be in the past tense.
“These WERE properly trained registered cats”.
Gareth Morgan went after them. It is quite amazing what an AK47 does when fired on full automatic at a fence top line-up of cats. There were no survivors.
Evidently possum fur trapping is very profitable in areas with high possum infestations if I can get the information I will post it
.
The problem is a lot of the old possum trappers have retired and we have lost those skills from the industry, now we are using the old Vietnam/Agent Orange approach ?
The problem with possum trapping is there a financial aspect which means its in the trapper best interest to make sure you don’t trap all the possums you can, that you leave a few so you can come back and keep on collecting, same with rabbits, in essence farming the pests
If you put a time limit on the trapping however that might help
They tried that in the 1950s – it’s how the possums spread so well. The trappers carried them to where they lived so that they wouldn’t have to travel so far to work.
I find that hard to believe Draco. In the 1950s possums were well and truly spread across the country. There was no need to carry them anywhere.
Besides, it just doesn’t make sense. To populate an area, you’d have to move a reasonable number of pairs. And then wait a few years for the population to be plentiful enough for trapping to be worth while.
Yes, Te Ara says it was earlier. Can’t find the original link that I had although it’s probably somewhere on this site – I’ve linked to it before. It pointed out that the bounty offered in the 1950s resulted in some trappers moving animals around.
Really can you give me some reference material on that or a you just trying to get a bite ?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_brushtail_possum#Reproduction_and_life_history
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_brushtail_possum_in_New_Zealand
Could still be done today but for contractors you’d have to give them a set time limit to trap as many as they can then go to a government board/DOC to take over
Yes I said government board, it could also be tied into a form of National Service (which is something i think should be brought back) in that you do a certain amount of years in the NZDF or something similar like DOC or even a rejigged forestry service (help plant those billion trees)
You could pitch it like do two years and get a free years tertiary study (not saying thats exactly how it should be but just the gist of it)
It’s profitable when numbers are high . It becomes harder to make money as numbers get low . Fur trappers tend to farm the blocks leaving enough behind that it’s worth coming back every year or two
If the government wants to solve the housing crisis, here is a way.
Set up an affordable 3D printed house service for state housing and low cost housing. These houses are being produced NOW and the government should be bringing the tech to NZ with a license our own version or however it works, rather than relying on traditional methods such as the construction industry to advise which has become a slow, expensive and Ponzi scheme .
A 3D housing service in NZ would also be valuable to have after disasters or with global warming.
Starting thinking of the future NZ!
Affordable house can be 3D printed for $4,000 in less than 24 hours
https://singularityhub.com/2018/03/18/this-3d-printed-house-goes-up-in-a-day-for-under-10000/
https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/innovation/why-3-d-printed-homes-may-save-lives-well-environment-n730606
https://www.treehugger.com/green-architecture/icon-3d-printed-affordable-homes.html
https://3dprintingindustry.com/news/americas-first-3d-printed-houses-99189/
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/health-26543569/patient-s-face-rebuilt-with-3d-printed-parts
True and they should also be doing a huge amount of R&D into 3D printing houses and, well, everything else. 3D printing is the future of production in pretty much everything. No country will be able to out produce any other country.
The only jobs it produces is in R&D which is a plus as it will help us develop our economy and our society.
The system currently prints with a wet cement like material. I’d imagine it would not be suitable for earthquake zones. With some R & D and the houses printed with a material that cures to have some flexibility, it could become the ideal way to build in earthquake zones.
Printing houses has merits but the basic shell of a house is what? 20% of a build price? The aluminium joinery, cabinetry, wiring, council rubber stamping etc is what stacks up the costs.
Brick and concrete block houses have been built in NZ for years and still are.
Still, the big one for me would be how well insulated that material is. Cold houses are bane in NZ because of poor building processes that have been practised for decades.
It’s the time and labour requirement that’s the problem. 3D printing will remove a large amount of that.
Time for some Kiwi ingenuity engineers to design one with full earthquake protection, if that is even an issue.
Also with the dutch link, they are experimenting with using plastic waste as materials for the houses… there are lots of options.
Agree with Draco, that it is the time and labour that has become the problem for the building and the infrastructure needs sorting as well but that applies to any new house.
The labour shortage is the new ‘catch’ cry from the right for everything to needing a truck driver to someone who can flip a burger as well as a tiler, decorator and builder.
The shell is probably a lot more than 20% of the build, and to be able to supply that for $4000 is a game changer and to print it on site in one day is the clincher.
Add on zero carbon aka full solar and sustainable waste water and incinerating toilets or something like that and it has the potential to recreate the state house into a 21 c model.
Except the problem with housing in NZ is less cost of houses (although it plays a part) and more to do with land availability. You can print all the 3D printed houses you like but if the land is not made available there will be nowhere for them to be put up.
@Gosman, That must be why the government has sold off so much land then isn’t it? Because it’s so expensive they want to give it away/ sell cheap to mates???
We have loads of land in NZ, if they limited foreign buyers the price of land would drop immediately.
The council costs are huge, but that is because the COO structure has not worked and now councils seem to spend half the money they collect on themselves and preserving their fiefdoms, which is not very sustainable.
I’d love to see a few 3D houses dotted around Remmer’s golf course to help the homeless… it’s that lovely diversity that the globalism bunch are all for, isn’t it? (Or is cultural diversity ok, but class diversity a no, no in 21c?)
Where has the Government sold off so much land?
I think you are mistaking the OIO approving land sales to the Government selling the land. The Government does not own most of the land going through the OIO.
BTW I too would love to see Urban Golf courses converted to something else like housing. Doing this is a matter for local authorities and the owners of the golf courses though not Central government.
Start with the Remuera Golf Course and see what sort of reaction you would get ?
I think John Key is a Life Member there ?
I think you will find John Key plays at Royal Auckland, not Remuera
I thought it was Hawaii? Key will not care too much, I think he sold his Parnell mansion to a Chinese buyer. Got a good price. His work is done.
A bit of Kauri Cliffs as well with his drunken mate Obama
I know he is a member of the Royal Auckland Golf Club, however I think Remuera gave him a life membership not sure ?
I believe it was an honorary membership when he was Prime Minister.
Rather like Bethesda’s Congressional Country Club which does the same thing for Presidents. They must have gagged over the current one.
I don’t have toi start anywhere. However if you would like to change the land designation for the Golf courses in Auckland (or where ever) try and get the local councils to do this. Auckland is controlled by a left leaning council so should theoretically be amenable surely.
Gossie they are going to turn the Chamberlain Golf Club, Mt Albert, into a new Aquatic Centre and new sports fields, also a low cost housing estate so i believe.
I think they have started putting in a new children’s playground for Jacarandas new baby, the Council have already approved this.
@ Gosman, Unitech, Tamaki, many parts of former council or state land is being sold off all around the country or parts of privatised.
Government offloads 2800 state houses to Auckland development company
“Ownership and management of 2800 state houses will be transferred to an Auckland redevelopment company, as the Government moves to offload some of its massive stock of housing in Auckland.
The houses will be transferred to the Tamaki Redevelopment Company (TRC), “to encourage regeneration”, said Finance Minister Bill English and Building and Housing Minister Nick Smith in an announcement on Thursday.
English said the Government owned one in 16 houses in Auckland. ”
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/68152582/Government-offloads-2800-state-houses-to-Auckland-development-company
Of course the housing crisis has been manufactured the same way the meth crisis was, aka manufactured deliberately for mates to profit from and to add political ends.
Of course you will create a housing and infrastructure crisis if you have the 3rd highest immigration in the world. The genius seems to be selling it as solving the crisis by adding more people to contribute to the housing and infrastructure crisis.
It really is worthy of the MethCON… in fact it’s actually worse.
That’s it? That is the extent of the Government selling off land? I also note that the land will be redeveloped for MORE HOUSES. Which is what I thought we wanted to happen.
Free land, come and get it! So you think it was a good idea for the government to ‘transfer’ so much prime land?
More houses, is not affordable houses… or state houses owned by taxpayers.
Since the HouseCON scam started their affordable housing drive & rezoning they have driven up the price of houses by double…
Apparently the are thinking of issuing 55,000 overseas residents and work permits for construction.
Oh that’s a lot of housing we need to create the housing… and a lot more land as well that can’t be recreated…
A 3D printer of housing and not getting 55,000 cheaper workers to compete with our existing poor, is a better bet for affordable housing.
To house the new Asian immigrants.
That sounds like a racist comment. Are they all Asian, and of so what difference would that make?
DNFTT
300-400 staff on $220k plus and trying to get an answer on anything is nigh on impossible. CEO’s on $700-$800k, $150k to Auckalnd City Council just to subdivide your section B4 you can start building ?
Land only become a problem if we continue to be stupid and build outwards rather than upwards. Continue to build low density rather than high density.
Of course, that’s what National and other RWNJs want to do despite the fact that it costs more and drives up rates. More profit in it – especially for the farmers that are land-banking.
Another reasonably big labour strike in China. Got this email link from a mate, and have been struggling to find other sources.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/truck-drivers-in-multiple-chinese-provinces-on-strike-demanding-better-treatment_2556721.html
This from the mouthpiece of the USA military.
https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/strike-06112018112639.html
Last month there were three big strikes across China, just really bloody hard to hear, and get information about them. It would appear that the Great Firewall of China is clamping down harder than ever.
@Adam, Our future if our government keeps turning a blind eye to our lowered wage and conditions culture and our increasingly 2 tier system of some employers paying by the rules and some just paying $2p/h which is forcing those playing by the rules out of business and enabling the spread of the $2 p/h brigade.
Spoke to an experienced truck driver who has got out of the industry. He quit when they started paying $16 p/h and telling him he was lucky because he was on $18 p/h.
If they want experienced drivers then how can you raise a family on $18 p/h so of course if the truck driver wages keep going down then the experienced people have to exit the industry. Then we start getting all these accidents weekly from trucks.
The industry practises need serious reform and the government immigration policy is just enabling them to get closer to the Chinese system of worker exploitation.
Go figure, when communism is supposed to be the pinnacle of worker rights!
… and when you have Indian’s selling them for $500 through the East Tamaki Office ?
Ah corporations, hating on working people any chance they can get.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-nlrb/worker-testifies-that-tesla-stopped-him-from-organizing-union-idUSKBN1J803Z
https://auto.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/passenger-vehicle/cars/worker-testifies-that-tesla-stopped-him-from-organizing-union/64551931
Tesla, using the usual bully and standover tactics of the criminally minded. Who would have thought it…
Can we set up an Official Troll Register on The Standard so we know who to engage with, it is open for discussion any thoughts here are welcome, here are some names and all comments are welcome;
Gosman
Stunned Mullet
James
Alwyn
Baby Gaga
..are there any others this will ensure newcomers know and do not waste everyone’s time engaging with them.
All comments are welcome and appreciated.
With your references to sucking cock and telling other people on here to fuck of to Whale Scum, I would be putting you at the top of your Troll Register
Thanks, Enough is Enough. I was beginning to fear that I was the only one.
Starting to get a bit miffed my name keeps getting left out…
Also some friendly advice, the moderators tend to take a dim view on being told what to do on their own blog
What are your views on starting on a list based on sexist or homophobic comments?
Perhaps listing people who call women “chubby” or “trouts”, or people “cock suckers” about people who disagree with them?
“Land Information Minister Eugenie Sage, one of three Green ministers, announced the decision on Tuesday which allows in principle a Chinese water bottling giant to purchase land in order to expand their existing Otakiri Springs water bottling plant near Whakatane.
The decision was made with associate finance minister David Clark based on advice from the Overseas Investment Office.”
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/104668519/green-party-members-revolt-over-water-bottling-decision
First the TPPA, Then keeping the three strikes law, now allowing selling off of land for water bottling to Chinese.
You guys gotta be loving this government. Who would have seen those three things when you voted for them?
Yep could get sued by the Chinese Government for not adherring to our Trade Deals however try buying a water bottling plant in China ?
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2018/06/government-to-announce-600-beds-at-waikeria-prison.html
Excellent – 600 new beds to lock up the people who deserve to be locked up.
Well done labour.
Good to see the government governing (is that a word?) for all of NZ
Of course it is a valid word PR. Are you semi-literate?
And, James, many of those will be Mental Health beds. I suggest you enrol asap.
Using mental health as an insult.
Classy.
Hope that you never have it in your family and have to deal with the realities of it.
Perhaps then you will be less flippant about it.
Ignorant man – that has already happened, and I somehow doubt that you have experienced worse that I have.
You are the flippant one, with shallow, false-victim crap.
You might think it a clever debating device, but you are showing yourself to be a Hollow Man.
I put it to you that you are one who deserves to be locked up, for mendacity and false pretences, as well as sociopathic attitudes.
You should troll more cautiously.
Gee I hope you weren’t so flippant using it as an insult with your family member.
I’m assuming you would be annoyed with other people using it as an insult to your family member – so perhaps you should stop throwing it around at others without knowing their background.
And the ohhh my experience is worse than your experience is just bullshit without knowing.
So perhaps think of that next time you use it as a comment.
You reek of falseness.
Mental health beds suggests the occupants will be sufferers of mental ill-health. As such, do they “deserve” to be locked up, or “need” to be locked up?
There’s a difference.
Isn’t it curious how fragile James seems to be! Offended by almost everything! Outraged, rendered purple-faced, blood shooting up to boiling point, ad nauseum! I worry, sometimes, for his mental health. Truly. No slight intended.
If they are in jail – then they deserve to be there.
Great they will get the right help whilst in there.
“If they are in jail – then they deserve to be there.”
It’s black and white, James?
Do you have any idea how many people have been wrongly incarcerated in NZ over the past 50 years? If not, would you like like to take a guess?
Do they deserve to be in there?
Black and white, James; black and white.
James represents everything that is wrong with New Zealand.
Pale
Male
Stale
Fuck, you can’t get any more stale than the revolutionary nonsense that you preach.
“Revolutionary”??
You need to pay more attention to what I post.
A fair share of my contributions are about being revolutionary.
I recommend you listen to Derrick Jensen.
In a strictly Leninist sense. Not to be confused with the progressive use of the word.
Also worth listening to..
Chris Hedges
David Harvey
This is not stale.
And it is revolutionary.
I watched through it but couldn’t find the bit where they kill off the traitors and nationalise everything.
So not in the sense of original, startling or interesting then.
James is just yer average guy, no better, no worse.
What annoys me is that he thinks he’s clever.
You cannot be a right wing troll and be clever.
You are doing low paid work for someone like Farrar.
There are clever trolls from the Right. You’ve just not detected their presence.
and how clever are you left wing trolls?
There are intelligent people who are right wing.
The Hitchens brothers come to my mind.
But people who come on a left wing site to troll for the right are not intelligent.
Pale
Male
Stale
Maybe or maybe not but unlike you hes not boring
Matter of opinion that….
Glad to hear you find animal cruelty, climate catastrophe, inequality and foreign wars boring.
More of a group consensus as opposed to an opinion
Why do you hate poor people Ed?
Potentially fascinating subjects all, depending on the narrator.
Those things aren’t boring but some people would find endless reference to them, boring, I suppose. An adroit activist determined to keep those topics before an audience without boring them, would employ clever devices and strategies to gain maximum buy-in. I don’t mean you especially, Ed. I’m speaking generally.
“Do you have any idea how many people have been wrongly incarcerated in NZ over the past 50 years?”
Nope. Not many.
A lot less than by people who have been let out early.
Educate yourself.
Try to avoid being neanderthal.
“The first clue that things are done very differently on Bastoy prison island, which lies a couple of miles off the coast in the Oslo fjord, 46 miles south-east of Norway’s capital, comes shortly after I board the prison ferry. I’m taken aback slightly when the ferry operative who welcomed me aboard just minutes earlier, and with whom I’m exchanging small talk about the weather, suddenly reveals he is a serving prisoner – doing 14 years for drug smuggling. He notes my surprise, smiles, and takes off a thick glove before offering me his hand. “I’m Petter,” he says.
Before he transferred to Bastoy, Petter was in a high-security prison for nearly eight years. “Here, they give us trust and responsibility,” he says. “They treat us like grownups.” I haven’t come here particularly to draw comparisons, but it’s impossible not to consider how politicians and the popular media would react to a similar scenario in Britain.
There are big differences between the two countries, of course. Norway has a population of slightly less than five million, a 12th of the UK’s. It has fewer than 4,000 prisoners; there are around 84,000 in the UK. But what really sets us apart is the Norwegian attitude towards prisoners.”
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/feb/25/norwegian-prison-inmates-treated-like-people
So, James, some people have been wrongly incarcerated. Do you find that “tolerable”? Have you ever spoken out in support of the poor souls who have suffered that fate? Do you support the wrongful incarceration of New Zealanders? A troll once said:
“The behaviour you tolerate is the behaviour you support.”
Well put, Robert. It was the same gentle concern that prompted me to recommend that he enrol. But he misunderstood that gentle concern.
Too bad, I guess.
I suspect that the trolls will celebrate this as one of their best nights ever.
They got all matey, then brought a new plausible guy in, and look at their plunder.
I’ve even been smiling myself, and I am a dry old guy.
Blunder, as Fezzik would say.
But for now, rest well and dream of large women.
What are you on about, Chris73?
James will be most upset by your obvious derision of over-sized ladies. He will deeply resent your obvious attempt to pour derision upon them by blatant body-shaming.
I recommend you to withdraw and apologise before he sees the comment.
He is a sensitive soul, and will not permit this kind of discriminatory, humiliating branding on a website such as this!
(You have had a pretty good time tonight, haven’t you?)
Does that mean we can pre-count that there will be 600 less people in poverty under this government?
The government need to act.
We have all seen the videos of the filth that is choking our oceans.
Refunds on all packaging now.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/09/recycling-plastic-crisis-oceans-pollution-corporate-responsibility
Good morning The AM Show there you go one story on the scraping of a new prison and making the correct choices and the next a story about how much we abuse ALCOHOL there will be hundreds in jail because they got pissed and done something stupid and that’s a fact we badly need Alcohol reform laws.
ECO MAORI thinks something stink at Fonterra the bovine virus 12 years ago they advertise and got heaps of tangata whenua to work in the dairy than 5 years later they get the imagration laws change and flood the dairy work force with cheap labour the employers love these workers who run around kissing there ass. The prices of letting fees are shocking but u know the system is on can charge anything he likes so long as someone is willing to pay the price.
Ka kite ano
A trilogy of recent blog posts about Three Strikes:
https://phuulishfellow.wordpress.com/2018/05/31/the-end-of-three-strikes-new-zealand-politics/
https://phuulishfellow.wordpress.com/2018/06/05/the-penguin-on-crime-new-zealand-politics/
https://phuulishfellow.wordpress.com/2018/06/12/of-useful-idiots-and-trolls-new-zealand-politics/