Clearer on declaring an autonomous Taiwan without making a claim of independence from China.
Taiwan's corporates will do the Hong Kong shuffle and produce more offshore for the growing world market.
China will one day blockade, and (fast missile) sink any fleet sent to prevent this – thus the 1949 reprise (when the US fleet allowed the Nationalists to move on Taiwan). Then offer Taiwan autonomy within China, rather than invasion/occupation.
Having a delusional geopolitical stance is sensible: it anchors a nation firmly in the traditionalist camp: conservative is good.
Realists do the usual eye-roll at this puerile shit:
Following Taiwan’s election result, a spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said no matter “whatever changes take place in Taiwan, the basic fact that there is only one China in the world and Taiwan is part of China will not change.”
The spokesperson continued: “The one-China principle is the solid anchor for peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait. We believe that the international community will continue to adhere to the one-China principle and understand and support the Chinese people’s just cause of opposing ‘Taiwan independence’ separatist activities and striving to achieve national reunification.”
A spokesperson for China’s Taiwan Affairs Office earlier insisted the election result “does not represent the mainstream view on the island.”
The regime quite properly notes that democracy doesn't represent the mainstream view. It's merely a simulation. However, floating this assertion tacitly is so subtle a framing that it will go over the heads of most punters. Any competent political consultant would tell them to spit the dummy: "Guys, ya gotta tell it like it is real simple, y'know?"
Paternalism often works. Give everyone a firm instruction. Use moral authority: "The USA, the UK, and China are adamant that the One China Policy is the verdict of history, and will be retained forever." This is a safe move, given that Brits & Yanks of all political persuasions have been united in promoting this mass delusion my entire life.
Yet conservative solidarity has only ever worked on the basis of the mass moron theory of politics. You give the people shit & they swallow it. Human nature. What if a critical mass of humans don't operate like that? Conservatives don't like to consider such an awful possibility. Like pseudo-progressives (Labour) they pretend reality isn't really there. In reality, you get realpolitik producing outcomes. In geopolitics, this has mostly been driven by the principle of state sovereignty: nations are in the habit of recognising states in control of their territory. Which points to sovereignty in Taiwan being real…
Without US, and Western, support of Taiwan, accompanied by the threat of military backup, I suspect the "one China" theme would have been a reality long since. But the West probably has its own agenda in the region.
Playing both sides of the game – what Stalin excelled at. And it has worked rather well so far for the establishment. It helps to also be part of the UN umpire's admin.
Ukraine's sovereignty over its 1945 and 1991 borders was and is real in international law.
And will be made so to the extent the USA (both parties) is prepared to confront a nuclear armed Russian state to realise this.
The Taiwan peoples desire to be a real nation state will not occur (in the current geo-political order) – China has a veto in the UNSC and in international law is part of China. Independence could only occur by finding military partners prepared to go to war against China and also able to win. Tell it to MacArthur. It is as mad as the PNAC agenda for the 21st C.
Depends if the yanks & brits continue to maintain the status quo: supporting Chinese imperialism. Some kid may point out that the emperor isn't wearing an impressive suit of clothes at all. The delusion only works if nobody breaks the spell.
Red Sea as neolib artery, Yemen as cancer spreading onto the boundary of that…
When the Biden administration removed the Houthis from the list of designated terrorist groups and withdrew Patriot air defence systems from Saudi Arabia, the Saudis had even more reason to doubt America.
Cue Biden's apology to the American people: "Looks like I stuffed up, eh? Sorry, folks, won't do it again. I'll muse over the feasibility of making Donald Trump my resident geopolitical advisor, because clearly our CFR hasn't got an effing clue."
In 2023, Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince, renewed diplomatic relations with Iran, reopened his country’s Embassy in Tehran after seven years and welcomed a series of high-level Iranian officials to Riyadh. The reconciliation between Tehran and Riyadh was brokered by Beijing, not Washington. Part of this process involved a ceasefire in Yemen which continues today…
…Now, these two states benefit from a fragile peace with Iran and are not interested in a renewed confrontation with Iran’s proxies in Yemen.
Seems like an excellent development in the region. Why on earth would the US (and presumably Israel) not be in favour of this, I wonder?
In a well coordinated operation, a team of thieves has removed a large crop of blueberries from 700 bushes in a Hawkes Bay orchard. The owner of the orchard thinks it would have required vehicles, equipment, lights and crates.
"It was ghastly," Hirst said. "And what it means is, our team is standing there with their work gone. The foreman, the assistant foreman, all planning to work, packhouse people, gate sales and markets, all those people don't have their work and their money."
Unless the farm is folding, what that means is those people have no job security. My questions are,
are horticulture farms not able to get insurance for events like this, or is it that they just don't?
why is this industry allowed to operate like this?
By all means blame the thieves, but it could easily have been weather, so yet again that industry needs to take a long hard look at how it operates.
Picking blueberries under lights can't have been easy.
" vehicles, equipment, lights and crates" should have left plenty of evidence for the police to work on.
Inside job on an outside crop? You'd have to have been familiar with the fruit and the picking process, plus storage and distribution.
It is curious to consider how much packhouse work would have been lost, given the speed with which the crop was picked – how much processing is there in that relatively small amount of crop? Did they pick through the night? How many crates were filled?
"In conclusion, the best time of day to pick blueberries is in the morning when the sun is still low and the berries are at their juiciest. It is important to follow the steps outlined above to ensure you are picking the fruit at its peak and storing it properly. With a little bit of knowledge and preparation, you can enjoy the delicious taste of fresh-picked blueberries all summer long."
Generally crop insurance is completely cost prohibative in terms of orchards etc as there are to many thing that go wrong will the crop is still on the plant so to speak.
In terms of picking teams and packhouses staff move around the various orchards picking to a schedule and the packhouses are seperate again with most staff only working when fruit is coming in. Its always been highly season work. There are quite a few people that follow the circuit around the country its a lifestyle I guess.
Fyi commercial blueberries generally grow to around 1.8m tall and are generally picked over quite carefully as the fruit ripen gradually.
In this case it sounds like they just stripped the plants completely either way its a very strange thing to have happen lots of effort for a few thousand dollars if you can sell them.
Have to wonder if it was done due to a greivance perhaps not paying a picking crew or something?
thanks Cricklewood, all very interesting. It is strange. MSM have done PR pieces for the industry before, so maybe we're not getting the whole picture.
A few thousand dollars is ok for a nights work I guess. Maybe they were picking to order?
I'm aware of the nature of seasonal work and the people that do it as a lifestyle. The industry also relies on overseas visitors who want to make some cash while they travel and don't care so much about things like employment agreements, holiday/sick pay, having enough income to pay for rent and so on.
The problem is that workers don't have their right protected. I can't see a good rationale of that other than this is the way things are done.
Came across an interesting item on National Radio's Evenings show on Jan 13.
Poet Tusiata Avia was recently awarded a $60,000 Prime Minister's award prize for a poem which (quite savagely) attacked colonialism and fantasised about someone killing James Cook instead of welcoming him to New Zealand.
The ACT Party put out a press release under their member Todd Stephenson soon after ridiculing Avia for her work, complaining that tax payer money was being spent to support a racist, suggesting indirectly that Tavia was mentally ill and threatening to axe the prize completely if similar material ever happened again.
Here we have the so-called "free speech party" threatening to close down literary works because they don't like the content and using their power as a governing party to publicly abuse someone who cannot fight back, except through words.
ACT and literary achievement are obviously mutually exclusive concepts.
Your link to Act's statement doesn't work. I know they criticised the work as racist. If they threatened to axe the prize, I am utterly against this.
I think its a bad poem from a literary point of view, although I can only claim Stage One English at university as my credential to offer such criticism.
I think it is a highly inflamatory poem though. I think it would be hard to argue with that (see link below).
https://thespinoff.co.nz/books/27-02-2023/how-to-read-a-poem
Hey James,
it’s us.
These days
we’re driving round
in SUVs
looking for ya
or white men like you
who might be thieves
or rapists
or kidnappers
or murderers
yeah, or any of your descendants
or any of your incarnations
cos, you know
ay, bitch?
We’re gonna F… YOU UP.
Obviously there would be an absolute outcry if the races were reversed. So the discussion about the poem is worth having. I tend to think it is a silly poem, but would the poet be held responsible if some young kids got out and did what she suggested? In others words is this incitment to violence?
In a world where people cry geniocide if they are “misgendered” thinking this poem is fine, shows a great deal of hypocracy
Obviously there would be an absolute outcry if the races were reversed.
The poem is about brown women's responses to colonial history. Avia is talking about killing white colonialist men who abused their positions of power and raped, kidnapped and murdered Polynesian women.
"Avia is talking about killing white colonialist men who abused their positions of power and raped, kidnapped and murdered Polynesian women."
No, she isn't. 'These days' is today. And there were no SUV's when "white colonialist men…" "…abused their positions of power and raped, kidnapped and murdered Polynesian women."
And if you want to argue she's employing poetic license, you will need to explain away why she says "we're going to F… YOU UP" with reference to any of your descendants".
It's not poetic licence, it's an actual poem. If you read a poem literally as you would say a blog post in prose, you are likely to miss what is being said. It's a piece of art using a range of language forms that require us to set aside our literal brains for a moment. It's not the language of an instruction manual.
No, she isn't. 'These days' is today.
Ok, she is talking about a number of things in the poem.
In my comment to anker, I was referring to anker's idea that the poem is racists and if this were reversed there would be an outcry. My comment was to lay out in simple terms the basic premise of the poem and to ask anker what she thinks would be the reverse of that.
But since you brought it up, colonisation and the impacts of it still exist.
I agree the descendants line is very challenging. Here's one way to understand it,
The poet uses a list to outline the ways in which James Cook and those who carry the colonising mentality, are arseholes: “thieves / or rapists / or kidnappers / or murderers”.
I think the part of the poem where she says'we’re driving round
in SUVs
looking for ya
or white men like you
who might be thieves
or rapists
or kidnappers
or murderers
yeah, or any of your descendants
or any of your incarnations
cos, you know
ay, bitch?
We’re gonna F… YOU UP."
I guess the paralell might be a Moariori from the Chatham Island writing a poem that says "we are looking for brown men like you from the Taranaki Iwi which commited atrocities on the Chatam Island and we are going to F…k you up".
I have been thinking about Pat's post yesterday with an article that is by or quotes Anne Salmond, talking about what happened in Serbia where very suddenly communities that got on well started othering people and it turned into an appalling war (she mentions neighbours raping their next doors wives).
Negative sentiment towards a race can change very quickly it seems and this poem certainly is displaying negative sentiment towards white males. Its not so long ago that Marama said that the violence in the world is cause by cis white males. There have also been many warnings of violence if the opposition goes ahead with the plans of a referendum on the Treaty.
I am not sure what the answer is. I don't think it is banning a poem though.
I'm not sure there would be an absolute outcry if a Chatham Islands poet wrote about their colonisation by Māori. I suspect it would either pass largely unnoticed, or there would be discussion along with racists using it to beat up Māori. Something along the lines of 'Māori are colonisers too' (as if we don't already know that) so shut up about white people. Here I am talking about people using that as part of their racism (which I see), I'm not talking about you.
Negative sentiment towards a race can change very quickly it seems and this poem certainly is displaying negative sentiment towards white males.
See this I don't get. Because the poem is clearly talking about men like Cook. White is a descriptor. She says,
white men like you who might be thieves/rapists/kidnappers/murderers
I'm wondering how you got from that to white men generally.
Its not so long ago that Marama said that the violence in the world is cause by cis white males.
She was very stupid to say that especially in the way that she did. It was compounded by her unwillingness to condemn the violence at Albert Park. If you are following the conversation between Molly and I today, you will see what I wrote about political ineptitude. MD's declaration was that of an activist, not of an MP with responsibilities to voters and constituents. There are ways to have the conversation about the role of Pākehā and men in violence and colonisation without coming across like Rik from the Young ones.
There have also been many warnings of violence if the opposition goes ahead with the plans of a referendum on the Treaty.
There have been a few that I have seen, not many. When they came from MPs like Jackson, that too was politically very unwise imo. MPs have a particular responsibility.
When it comes from people within Māoridom I think it's worth considering why they might be reacting that way, and that calming that situation down comes from pulling back from the referendum and finding other ways to have the conversation.
It's not like having a referendum on self ID, where we would almost certainly win. NZ is tipping towards reactionary pol at a fast rate, and a simplistic referendum on such a deeply important constitutional issues is just a bad, bad move. If we put the people talking about violence aside for a minute, there were also a number of progressives saying this is the hill they would die on. You will be familiar with that phrase from the GC movements.
Imo ACT are trolling liberals with that referendum. It's politicking and unnecessary. I don't believe they misunderstood how deeply protective many people feel about the Treaty, I think they knew exactly what they were doing.
I guess the point of addressing Cook directly and as if he is alive is because his legacy lives on. Hence driving around looking for the next lot of rapists and murders. As I said elsewhere in the thread, I'm ok with people wanting to fuck up rapists and murders.
"but taking out sound bites and not understanding the meaning is a problem".
The poem's meaning is open to interpretation. You've provided one version, but there are others. The expression "we're gonna F… YOU UP" is not a 'sound bite". It is a deliberately provocative, dare I say powerful, expression, that is intended to arouse strong emotions. Perhaps, in the end, the author has made her point.
I assume she got the prize for an entire body of work, not this short verse. So it has to be considered in that context. If this was meant to stand alone as a poem in itself, then it's quite thin conceptually in its understanding of history and emotionally limited to just pure rage. But if it's part of a longer work where many different voices cover the same ground but with differing and overlapping perspectives and emotional tones , then it might be part of quite a rich and rewarding poem. I don't know her writing at all, so couldn't say any more than that. Other than to note that literary quality is a real thing, it's not just a matter of personal preference. But basing the judgment of it on any repeatable set of objective criteria is completely impossible. The people who judge such awards generally have some background that one would expect to help them to make good decisions, but they can also be captured by fashionable agendas.
Jacinda and Clarke's long awaited wedding was a joyful celebration with their friends and families. I felt relieved and pleased that after all the responsibilities and challenges they have faced they finally had their day to remember. Both looked stunning and very happy.
Shame about the Daily Mail helicopter intrusion and pathetic protesters.
The Beehive Civilian notes that while it is common to marry while pregnant with ones first born, there is an exemption for those PM elect.
And while it is most uncommon for a mother of a child to marry in white, there is an exemption if the bridegroom wears black and it is Hawkeye territory.
And there was I thinking that the woman/white men/black was explained by this old saw.
'A little boy at a wedding asks his Mom, "Mommy how come bride's wear white dresses at their wedding." The Mom responds "Well because it's the happiest day of her life." The kid responds "Then how come the groom wears black?"'
And no, it has absolutely nothing the do with the couple concerned in this story. Jacinda certainly looked great in her dress, didn't she?
I bet those official photos of Jacinda and Clarke have swept around the world. Jacinda looked magnificent. What a contrast she makes to her venom filled detractors of both sexes.
I note a story/podcast plus happy family photo has emerged today about Luxon's wife's views on her marriage, Coincidence? I doubt it. No, I'm not going to link to it. Anyone who is interested can go to the Herald website – Lifestyle section.
Hi Anne … and it's also worth noting the piece about Luxon's wife's views on marriage (who cares), follows directly below the article and photo of Jacinda and Clarke after their wedding!
[Please fix your email address in your next comment, thanks – Incognito]
The " Amanda Luxon" story has not only pushed Jacinda and Clarke's wedding off 'Lifestyle' but she's now got the red revolving headline along the top. 😉
It's all dirty politics, Anne. The Herald piece on Amanda L was not only intended to detract from Jacinda and Clarke's wedding, but also to accentuate fashion clothing, thereby giving the MSM another opportunity to have a dig at Golriz Ghahraman. I'd put money on a link between the family Luxon and the owners of Scotties Boutique – probably a big National donor.
Have you considered the possibility that playing the one-up-man-ship game is common-place in politics, particularly among the right wingers, or are you just ignorant and a misogynist?
Have you considered the possibility that no-one really gives a toss about Ardern, Bennett or anyone else, and that it's only you and a hand full of other tin foil hat wearers who see conspiracy here?
I just read Anne's comments and all she has said is that the timing of the Luxon story was deliberate. That's not Dirty Politics, that's just normal political strategy and comms.
I'm not in moderator mode quite yet, but you certainly have my attention. I suggest backing off from the tinfoil accusations and focusing on the politics, because at the moment you look like a troll.
My comment related to a number of Anne's posts that claimed a variety of events were the result of some kind of conspiracy. Anne seemed to understand and responded with good grace. But thanks, I'll accept the warning.
David @ 8:23pm is probably referring to my comments re – Golriz Ghahraman.
When someone has been leaking information that is not coming from any of the people directly involved (including the Green leaders) and it transpires that the original news source was ZB radio, and one of the tale tellers happens to be closely associated with Cameron Slater who has apparently been twittering about it since, then you just know that dirty politics is in there somewhere. One doesn't need to resort to conspiracy theories to figure that out.
I say to David:
Sorting the facts from the fiction coming from NAct and their enablers as many of us here try to do, does not constitute conspiracy in the accepted sense of the word.
You'd have to be a little (wilfully) naive to pretend Benefit's AMA installment wasn't timed to drop the day after the wedding. I imagine Benefit wanted to do it on the day of the wedding but wiser head prevailed.
In the print precision of the interview it doesn't say anything about Amanda Luxon's career. Has she ever worked outside the family? Her kids are late teens so there has been plenty of time for her to find a job and indeed Benefit herself required mums to get off the couch once their kids turned 5 if I recall correctly…
…also, with the biceps. If you squint she could be a man.
You're obviously well down the rabbit hole. Bennett is more likely setting herself up for a mayoral run than trying to compete with an ex PM. As for the Luxon's, puff pieces like that are common. Do you seriously think either Luxon or Bennett timed their PR campaigns to one-up Ardern?
Benefit is not competing with Jacinda Ardern (that happened already and the result was clear), and her ambitions for Auckland mayoralty are absolutely in line with running puff pieces on Amanda Luxon at convenient moments. How else does Benefit attract the required support and funding?
There would always have to be a few conspiracy theorist misanthropes to try and spoil Jacinda and Clarke's big day. Nutters like that can't help themselves, the gene pool might be seriously small.
"Hesitant hitmen jailed over botched assassination in China
Businessman Tan Youhui hired a hitman to "take out" his competitor for $282,000 (£218,000), a court heard.
But the hitman hired another man to do the job, offering $141,000. That man hired another hitman, who hired another hitman, who hired another hitman.
The plan crumbled when the final hitman met the man, named only as Wei, in a cafe and proposed faking his death.
All six men – the five hitmen and Tan – were convicted of attempted murder by the court in Nanning, Guangxi, following a trial that lasted three years."
Talk about a corrupt court, the 5th hitman only sought to fake Tan's death and planning to have the state declare a living person to be dead, is not an attempt to kill him, but to liberate him from a life as Tan in a communist party ruled nation.
Free enterprise seems to be catching on there. I've got an excellent history of the Chinese triads. Check out the cool photo of the leader of one with a million members holding the broom with which Mao made him sweep the streets of Shanghai in 1950!
It's not surprising there would be some remnants now. The immersion and investment in such organisations would have been huge, and the fear hard to relinquish entirely.
Two minutes of my life I'll never get back reading this somewhat interesting – but ultimately useless – factoid. Which exposed my lack of knowledge, to enjoy your punnish humour.
So (as in the USA) much of the donated support remains in the donor country, not 'bags of money given to Zelenskyy' as russia's supporters like to say.
Be great not to need an arms industry, but then you have countries like russia that force war and subjugation upon their neighbours.
Russia has increased its military budget by 70% year on year, to 40% of its entire expenditure – USD 109 billion military spending planned for 2024. Combined with russia's unprovoked attacks on multiple neighbours and imperialist rhetoric, this forces everyone else to increase their defence spending.
You seem confused. Critiquing the U.S. government and its client states, like Ukraine, Saudi Arabia, and Israel does not make one a supporter of Russia.
… countries like russia that force war and subjugation upon their neighbours.
Such wildly one-sided and unscholarly rants against Russia tell us nothing about the subject in hand, but they do reveal a lot about you.
When the yanks went after Saddam I was bemused. British capitalists had spent an entire decade arming Iraq. Thatcher, otoh, was likely not amused, in the style of her queen. I found all the media stories about the gung ho British armaments industry quite tedious back then.
However I had years earlier when Reagan was doing his thing written him an angry letter telling him to stop supporting right wing dictatorships all over the place so you could argue that my letter had a belated impact. At least, that's the impression I got when Bush Sr took out Noriega after the little drug-dealing ruler of Panama waved his machete on prime-time tv news too much.
Hmm, I thought, so the CFR finally got it right – time-lag around 4 years, perhaps not too bad a performance for chronic conservatives…
The thumb in the pocket was very much a trad macho stance, back in the days when guys did the wall-flower thing around the fringe of a party. Unusual to see it exhibited by such a young feller.
Auckland’s light rail has officially been tossed on the scrap heap by the National-led coalition government. Transport minister Simeon Brown put the final nail in the coffin of the multi-billion dollar project on Sunday after a stop work notice was issued to the project last year after the government came to power. “Scrapping the expensive project is part of the coalition agreements and we have taken swift action,” Brown said.
The project, which was expected to take up to 14,500 vehicles off the road, was intended to link a light rail system between the city centre and Māngere and Auckland Airport.
Ak's constipation status is no longer under threat! That's the good news. We can expect it to get worse as neolib choke-point, making the incoming govt seem clueless. Ak's destiny as trash-pile now seems inevitable. Labour will be devastated: "It was our Green credibility front-runner. Instead of seeming progressive, we would have gone down in history as actually progressive."
Pre Covid, bus traffic on Symonds St was 100 bus movements per hour in peak times. Symonds St is a bus sewer and it does not matter how any double deckers you put on it, it will not keep up with population pressure.
They have been talking about some sort of light rail or separated busway on Dominion Rd for decades. Auckland City Council even bought some property in strategic areas to enable the transit mode to go around the back of the areas with the most heritage street frontages.
With the major redevelopment in Owairaka, the pressure on Sandringham Rd, Dominion Rd and New North Road will become even greater.
If the last Government had not played silly buggers with expensive tunnels to placate the noisy Dominion Rd business people who did not want the disruption of construction, this could have been well under way by now.
One would expect Luxon to feel obliged to come up with Plan B, even if only to prevent the inevitable Ak swing back to Labour if he doesn't. It will be interesting to see how he handles media questions around that. A professional politician would already have an angle figured out, and added a preliminary consensus in principle with the two minor leaders to that. If he hasn't, he'll seem to be floundering…
A dedicated busway would be the best bet imo, we'll also need to get some land back off the ports for the exchange apperently theres not alot of capacity to put more busses into the city.
Could get rid of the carparks on Dominion road to make space. Theres a massive underutilized carpark on balmoral dominion intersection so should hurt all the resteraunts. Its an improvment that could be done comparativly easily.
Good luck with that idea. The Dominion Rd business people fight for every car parking space. They already complain about every second of the bus lanes.
Of the four news sites that I regularly look at, Leighton Heilkill at Newshub was the only one which didn't credit the wedding photographer. Kind of annoying.
Easy come easy go for those with huge amounts of disposable cash to invest, but why do they cry foul of banks when they themselves have very poor personal security practices?
My debt card was compromised once, the details of which had been sold by some entity I had purchased something from. One day $400 was stolen in a series of small amounts, a modest sum but a lot to my family. The Kiwibank fraud specialist was very good and spent quite a bit of time with me.
Apparently, banks have long wanted increased security measures, particularly cool off periods for online purchases/transactions but consumers, businesses, and governments won't have it because it interferes with ease of business.
So, suck it up soldier, and don't be so arrogantly stupid next time.
COVID levels are two to 19 times higher than numbers being reported around the world, a WHO official said Friday, citing wastewater data.
The news comes as the organization warns of the yet unknown dangers of repeat COVID infection, which can occur without symptoms.
[…]
“Five years, 10 years, 20 years from now, what are we going to see in terms of cardiac impairment, pulmonary impairment, neurologic impairment? It’s year five in the pandemic, but there’s still a lot we don’t know about it.”
Marijuana is neither as risky nor as prone to abuse as other tightly controlled substances and has potential medical benefits, and therefore should be removed from the nation’s most restrictive category of drugs, federal scientists have concluded.
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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 ...
TL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 10:06am on Wednesday, May 1:The Lead: Business confidence fell across the board in April, falling in some areas to levels last seen during the lockdowns because of a collapse in ...
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 ...
Auckland Transport have started rolling out new HOP card readers around the network and over the next three months, all of them on buses, at train stations and ferry wharves will be replaced. The change itself is not that remarkable, with the new readers looking similar to what is already ...
Completed reads for April: The Difference Engine, by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling Carnival of Saints, by George Herman The Snow Spider, by Jenny Nimmo Emlyn’s Moon, by Jenny Nimmo The Chestnut Soldier, by Jenny Nimmo Death Comes As the End, by Agatha Christie Lord of the Flies, by ...
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a ...
Have a story to share about St Paul’s, but today just picturesPopular novels written at this desk by a young man who managed to bootstrap himself out of father’s imprisonment and his own young life in a workhouse Read more ...
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, ...
Newsroom has a story today about National's (fortunately failed) effort to disestablish the newly-created Inspector-General of Defence. The creation of this agency was the key recommendation of the Inquiry into Operation Burnham, and a vital means of restoring credibility and social licence to an agency which had been caught lying ...
Holding On To The Present:The moment a political movement arises that attacks the whole idea of social progress, and announces its intention to wind back the hands of History’s clock, then democracy, along with its unwritten rules, is in mortal danger.IT’S A COMMONPLACE of political speeches, especially those delivered in ...
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 ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Polling shows that Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau has the lowest approval rating of any mayor in the country. Siting at -12 per cent, the proportion of constituents who disapprove of her performance outweighs those who give her the thumbs up. This negative rating is ...
Luxon will no doubt put a brave face on it, but there is no escaping the pressure this latest poll will put on him and the government. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political ...
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler In the wake of any unusual weather event, someone inevitably asks, “Did climate change cause this?” In the most literal sense, that answer is almost always no. Climate change is never the sole cause of hurricanes, heat waves, droughts, or ...
Something odd happened yesterday, and I’d love to know if there’s more to it. If there was something which preempted what happened, or if it was simply a throwaway line in response to a journalist.Yesterday David Seymour was asked at a press conference what the process would be if the ...
Hi,From time to time, I want to bring Webworm into the real world. We did it last year with the Jurassic Park event in New Zealand — which was a lot of fun!And so on Saturday May 11th, in Los Angeles, I am hosting a lil’ Webworm pop-up! I’ve been ...
Education Minister Erica Standford yesterday unveiled a fundamental reform of the way our school pupils are taught. She would not exactly say so, but she is all but dismantling the so-called “inquiry” “feel good” method of teaching, which has ruled in our classrooms since a major review of the New ...
Exactly where are we seriously going with this government and its policies? That is, apart from following what may as well be a Truss-Lite approach on the purported economic “plan“, and Victorian-era regression when it comes to social policy.Oh it’ll work this time of course, we’re basically assured, “the ...
Hey Uncle Dave, When the Poms joined the EEC, I wasn't one of those defeatists who said, Well, that’s it for the dairy job. And I was right, eh? The Chinese can’t get enough of our milk powder and eventually, the Poms came to their senses and backed up the ute ...
Polling shows that Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau has the lowest approval rating of any mayor in the country. Siting at -12 per cent, the proportion of constituents who disapprove of her performance outweighs those who give her the thumbs up. This negative rating is higher than for any other mayor ...
Buzz from the Beehive Pharmac has been given a financial transfusion and a new chair to oversee its spending in the pharmaceutical business. Associate Health Minister David Seymour described the funding for Pharmac as “its largest ever budget of $6.294 billion over four years, fixing a $1.774 billion fiscal cliff”. ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Many criticisms are being made of the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill, including by this writer. But as with everything in politics, every story has two sides, and both deserve attention. It’s important to understand what the Government is trying to achieve and its ...
TL;DR: Here’s my top 10 ‘pick ‘n’ mix of links to news, analysis and opinion articles as of 10:10am on Monday, April 29:Scoop: The children's ward at Rotorua Hospital will be missing a third of its beds as winter hits because Te Whatu Ora halted an upgrade partway through to ...
span class=”dropcap”>As hideous as David Seymour can be, it is worth keeping in mind occasionally that there are even worse political figures (and regimes) out there. Iran for instance, is about to execute the country’s leading hip hop musician Toomaj Salehi, for writing and performing raps that “corrupt” the nation’s ...
Yesterday marked 10 years since the first electric train carried passengers in Auckland so it’s a good time to look back at it and the impact it has had. A brief history The first proposals for rail electrification in Auckland came in the 1920’s alongside the plans for earlier ...
Right now, in Aotearoa-NZ, our ‘animal spirits’ are darkening towards a winter of discontent, thanks at least partly to a chorus of negative comments and actions from the Government Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on ...
You make people evil to punish the paststuck inside a sequel with a rotating castThe following photos haven’t been generated with AI, or modified in any way. They are flesh and blood, human beings. On the left is Galatea Young, a young mum, and her daughter Fiadh who has Angelman ...
April has been a quiet month at A Phuulish Fellow. I have had an exceptionally good reading month, and a decently productive writing month – for original fiction, anyway – but not much has caught my eye that suggested a blog article. It has been vaguely frustrating, to be honest. ...
A listing of 31 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, April 21, 2024 thru Sat, April 27, 2024. Story of the week Anthropogenic climate change may be the ultimate shaggy dog story— but with a twist, because here ...
Hi,I spent about a year on Webworm reporting on an abusive megachurch called Arise, and it made me want to stab my eyes out with a fork.I don’t regret that reporting in 2022 and 2023 — I am proud of it — but it made me angry.Over three main stories ...
The new Victoria University Vice-Chancellor decided to have a forum at the university about free speech and academic freedom as it is obviously a topical issue, and the Government is looking at legislating some carrots or sticks for universities to uphold their obligations under the Education and Training Act. They ...
Do you remember when Melania Trump got caught out using a speech that sounded awfully like one Michelle Obama had given? Uncannily so.Well it turns out that Abraham Lincoln is to Winston Peters as Michelle was to Melania. With the ANZAC speech Uncle Winston gave at Gallipoli having much in ...
She was born 25 years ago today in North Shore hospital. Her eyes were closed tightly shut, her mouth was silently moving. The whole theatre was all quiet intensity as they marked her a 2 on the APGAR test. A one-minute eternity later, she was an 8. The universe was ...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. This fact brief was written by Sue Bin Park in collaboration with members from our Skeptical Science team. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline. Is Antarctica gaining land ice? ...
Images of US students (and others) protesting and setting up tent cities on US university campuses have been broadcast world wide and clearly demonstrate the growing rifts in US society caused by US policy toward Israel and Israel’s prosecution of … Continue reading → ...
Barrie Saunders writes – Dear Paul As the new Minister of Media and Communications, you will be inundated with heaps of free advice and special pleading, all in the national interest of course. For what it’s worth here is my assessment: Traditional broadcasting free to air content through ...
Many criticisms are being made of the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill, including by this writer. But as with everything in politics, every story has two sides, and both deserve attention. It’s important to understand what the Government is trying to achieve and its arguments for such a bold reform. ...
Peter Dunne writes – The great nineteenth British Prime Minister, William Gladstone, once observed that “the first essential for a Prime Minister is to be a good butcher.” When a later British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, sacked a third of his Cabinet in July 1962, in what became ...
Ele Ludemann writes – New Zealanders had the OECD’s second highest tax increase last year: New Zealanders faced the second-biggest tax raises in the developed world last year, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) says. The intergovernmental agency said the average change in personal income tax ...
We all know something’s not right with our elections. The spread of misinformation, people being targeted with soundbites and emotional triggers that ignore the facts, even the truth, and influence their votes.The use of technology to produce deep fakes. How can you tell if something is real or not? Can ...
This video includes conclusions of the creator climate scientist Dr. Simon Clark. It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any). This year you will be lied to! Simon Clark helps prebunk some misleading statements you'll hear about climate. The video includes ...
It is all very well cutting the backrooms of public agencies but it may compromise the frontlines. One of the frustrations of the Productivity Commission’s 2017 review of universities is that while it observed that their non-academic staff were increasing faster than their academic staff, it did not bother to ...
Buzz from the Beehive Two speeches delivered by Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters at Anzac Day ceremonies in Turkey are the only new posts on the government’s official website since the PM announced his Cabinet shake-up. In one of the speeches, Peters stated the obvious: we live in a troubled ...
1. Which of these would you not expect to read in The Waikato Invader?a. Luxon is here to do business, don’t you worry about thatb. Mr KPI expects results, and you better believe itc. This decisive man of action is getting me all hot and excitedd. Melissa Lee is how ...
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 ...
The Government is trying to bring in a law that will allow Ministers to cut corners and kill off native species, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said. ...
Cancelling urgently needed new Cook Strait ferries and hiking the cost of public transport for many Kiwis so that National can announce the prospect of another tunnel for Wellington is not making good choices, Labour Transport Spokesperson Tangi Utikere said. ...
A laundry list of additional costs for Tāmaki Makarau Auckland shows the Minister for the city is not delivering for the people who live there, says Labour Auckland Issues spokesperson Shanan Halbert. ...
Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi, and Mema Paremata mō Tāmaki-Makaurau, Takutai Tarsh Kemp, will travel to the Gold Coast to strengthen ties with Māori in Australia next week (15-21 April). The visit, in the lead-up to the 9th Australian National Kapa haka Festival, will be an opportunity for both ...
The 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 ...
Recreational catch limits will be reduced in areas of Fiordland and the Chatham Islands to help keep those fisheries healthy and sustainable, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. The lower recreational daily catch limits for a range of finfish and shellfish species caught in the Fiordland Marine Area and ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has welcomed an important milestone in New Zealand’s hydrogen future, with the opening of the country’s first network of hydrogen refuelling stations in Wiri. “I want to congratulate the team at Hiringa Energy and its partners K one W one (K1W1), Mitsui & Co New Zealand ...
The coalition Government is delivering on its commitment to improve resource management laws and give greater certainty to consent applicants, with a Bill to amend the Resource Management Act (RMA) expected to be introduced to Parliament next month. RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop has today outlined the first RMA Amendment ...
Overseas models for regulating the oil and gas sector, including their decommissioning regimes, are being carefully scrutinised as a potential template for New Zealand’s own sector, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. The Coalition Government is focused on rebuilding investor confidence in New Zealand’s energy sector as it looks to strengthen ...
Emergency Management and Recovery Minister Mark Mitchell has today released the Report of the Government Inquiry into the response to the North Island Severe Weather Events. “The report shows that New Zealand’s emergency management system is not fit-for-purpose and there are some significant gaps we need to address,” Mr Mitchell ...
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith is today travelling to Europe where he’ll update the United Nations Human Rights Council on the Government’s work to restore law and order. “Attending the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva provides us with an opportunity to present New Zealand’s human rights progress, priorities, and challenges, while ...
Associate Agriculture Minister, Mark Patterson, formally reopened the world’s largest wool processing facility today in Awatoto, Napier, following a $50 million rebuild and refurbishment project. “The reopening of this facility will significantly lift the economic opportunities available to New Zealand’s wool sector, which already accounts for 20 per cent of ...
Essay: If the Crown harms children, how do you hold it accountable? Analysis by Aaron Smale in light of the Waitangi Tribunal court decision. The post The Crown versus Māori Children appeared first on Newsroom. ...
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https://www.teaonews.co.nz/2024/01/13/that-boys-got-hope-the-tiny-gesture-that-gave-a-judge-hope-for-a-troubled-teen/
A ray of hope for youth offending, as long as the nats don't dismantle it for boot camps.
And maybe all judges should be bought down from on high to sit eye to eye with those they judge.
Lai Ching-Te wins the Taiwan election and is very strong on clearer autonomy from China.
Expect Xi to fire up, and Biden to respond. To start with.
Yeah, just like Aotearoa is part of the British empire. History is a powerful dream., particularly when you keep on dreaming it…
Clearer on declaring an autonomous Taiwan without making a claim of independence from China.
Taiwan's corporates will do the Hong Kong shuffle and produce more offshore for the growing world market.
China will one day blockade, and (fast missile) sink any fleet sent to prevent this – thus the 1949 reprise (when the US fleet allowed the Nationalists to move on Taiwan). Then offer Taiwan autonomy within China, rather than invasion/occupation.
And he won despite China's malicious interference in Taiwan's elections.
China's bullying and abuse of its democratic neighbour is appalling.
Having a delusional geopolitical stance is sensible: it anchors a nation firmly in the traditionalist camp: conservative is good.
Realists do the usual eye-roll at this puerile shit:
The regime quite properly notes that democracy doesn't represent the mainstream view. It's merely a simulation. However, floating this assertion tacitly is so subtle a framing that it will go over the heads of most punters. Any competent political consultant would tell them to spit the dummy: "Guys, ya gotta tell it like it is real simple, y'know?"
Paternalism often works. Give everyone a firm instruction. Use moral authority: "The USA, the UK, and China are adamant that the One China Policy is the verdict of history, and will be retained forever." This is a safe move, given that Brits & Yanks of all political persuasions have been united in promoting this mass delusion my entire life.
Yet conservative solidarity has only ever worked on the basis of the mass moron theory of politics. You give the people shit & they swallow it. Human nature. What if a critical mass of humans don't operate like that? Conservatives don't like to consider such an awful possibility. Like pseudo-progressives (Labour) they pretend reality isn't really there. In reality, you get realpolitik producing outcomes. In geopolitics, this has mostly been driven by the principle of state sovereignty: nations are in the habit of recognising states in control of their territory. Which points to sovereignty in Taiwan being real…
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/01/13/asia/taiwan-presidential-election-results-intl-hnk/index.html
Without US, and Western, support of Taiwan, accompanied by the threat of military backup, I suspect the "one China" theme would have been a reality long since. But the West probably has its own agenda in the region.
the West probably has its own agenda
Playing both sides of the game – what Stalin excelled at. And it has worked rather well so far for the establishment. It helps to also be part of the UN umpire's admin.
Ukraine's sovereignty over its 1945 and 1991 borders was and is real in international law.
And will be made so to the extent the USA (both parties) is prepared to confront a nuclear armed Russian state to realise this.
The Taiwan peoples desire to be a real nation state will not occur (in the current geo-political order) – China has a veto in the UNSC and in international law is part of China. Independence could only occur by finding military partners prepared to go to war against China and also able to win. Tell it to MacArthur. It is as mad as the PNAC agenda for the 21st C.
Depends if the yanks & brits continue to maintain the status quo: supporting Chinese imperialism. Some kid may point out that the emperor isn't wearing an impressive suit of clothes at all. The delusion only works if nobody breaks the spell.
And will be made so to the extent the USA (both parties) is prepared to confront a nuclear armed Russian state to realise this.
Which they are not prepared to do. They are prepared to sacrifice Ukrainian lives in their proxy war, however.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/kremlin-blinkens-kyiv-visit-says-us-is-ready-fund-war-the-last-ukrainian-2023-09-06/
Red Sea as neolib artery, Yemen as cancer spreading onto the boundary of that…
Cue Biden's apology to the American people: "Looks like I stuffed up, eh? Sorry, folks, won't do it again. I'll muse over the feasibility of making Donald Trump my resident geopolitical advisor, because clearly our CFR hasn't got an effing clue."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Members_of_the_Council_on_Foreign_Relations
I'll muse over the feasibility of making Donald Trump my resident geopolitical advisor,
Because, of course, Kissenger is no longer with us.
Seems like an excellent development in the region. Why on earth would the US (and presumably Israel) not be in favour of this, I wonder?
In a well coordinated operation, a team of thieves has removed a large crop of blueberries from 700 bushes in a Hawkes Bay orchard. The owner of the orchard thinks it would have required vehicles, equipment, lights and crates.
Now that's organised crime for you.
Seems a lot of effort for a few hundred kilos of blueberries….cant imagine theres much of a black market for them.
yeah, I'm trying to see how they could be sold. Farmers Markets?
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/country/506517/hundreds-of-kilograms-of-blueberries-stolen-from-hawke-s-bay-farm
Also of note,
Unless the farm is folding, what that means is those people have no job security. My questions are,
By all means blame the thieves, but it could easily have been weather, so yet again that industry needs to take a long hard look at how it operates.
Picking blueberries under lights can't have been easy.
" vehicles, equipment, lights and crates" should have left plenty of evidence for the police to work on.
Inside job on an outside crop? You'd have to have been familiar with the fruit and the picking process, plus storage and distribution.
It is curious to consider how much packhouse work would have been lost, given the speed with which the crop was picked – how much processing is there in that relatively small amount of crop? Did they pick through the night? How many crates were filled?
It's an odd tale…
headlamps? Blueberry bushes aren't that tall right?
Maybe it was former blueberry industry workers who have lost work/jobs 😈 Blackmarket unions arising in the vacuum created by NZ’s employment law.
"In conclusion, the best time of day to pick blueberries is in the morning when the sun is still low and the berries are at their juiciest. It is important to follow the steps outlined above to ensure you are picking the fruit at its peak and storing it properly. With a little bit of knowledge and preparation, you can enjoy the delicious taste of fresh-picked blueberries all summer long."
https://shuncy.com/article/best-time-of-day-to-pick-blueberries
I agree it seems a bit strange – sounds like quite a lot of work.
Surely there are easier ways to make a dishonest living?
I suspect a gang, led by Violet Beauregarde.
The birds got all of our crop – except for 3! hehehe I got a taste.
I'm not sure making a dishonest living is easy at the best of times. Maybe someone wanted a big feed? Or they're making jam.
Generally crop insurance is completely cost prohibative in terms of orchards etc as there are to many thing that go wrong will the crop is still on the plant so to speak.
In terms of picking teams and packhouses staff move around the various orchards picking to a schedule and the packhouses are seperate again with most staff only working when fruit is coming in. Its always been highly season work. There are quite a few people that follow the circuit around the country its a lifestyle I guess.
Fyi commercial blueberries generally grow to around 1.8m tall and are generally picked over quite carefully as the fruit ripen gradually.
In this case it sounds like they just stripped the plants completely either way its a very strange thing to have happen lots of effort for a few thousand dollars if you can sell them.
Have to wonder if it was done due to a greivance perhaps not paying a picking crew or something?
thanks Cricklewood, all very interesting. It is strange. MSM have done PR pieces for the industry before, so maybe we're not getting the whole picture.
A few thousand dollars is ok for a nights work I guess. Maybe they were picking to order?
I'm aware of the nature of seasonal work and the people that do it as a lifestyle. The industry also relies on overseas visitors who want to make some cash while they travel and don't care so much about things like employment agreements, holiday/sick pay, having enough income to pay for rent and so on.
The problem is that workers don't have their right protected. I can't see a good rationale of that other than this is the way things are done.
Avocados went the same way, not so long ago.
Good though, that Kiwis are eating fresh fruit!
Came across an interesting item on National Radio's Evenings show on Jan 13.
Poet Tusiata Avia was recently awarded a $60,000 Prime Minister's award prize for a poem which (quite savagely) attacked colonialism and fantasised about someone killing James Cook instead of welcoming him to New Zealand.
The ACT Party put out a press release under their member Todd Stephenson soon after ridiculing Avia for her work, complaining that tax payer money was being spent to support a racist, suggesting indirectly that Tavia was mentally ill and threatening to axe the prize completely if similar material ever happened again.
Here we have the so-called "free speech party" threatening to close down literary works because they don't like the content and using their power as a governing party to publicly abuse someone who cannot fight back, except through words.
ACT and literary achievement are obviously mutually exclusive concepts.
links:
http://www.rnz.co.nz/audio/player?audio_id=2018922108
https://www.act.org.nz/act_condemns_60_000_poetry_award
[link fixed to replace the https]
If Cook had been killed instead of du Fresne we'd have no Treaty but better cooking standards.
We'd be French toast!
Your link to Act's statement doesn't work. I know they criticised the work as racist. If they threatened to axe the prize, I am utterly against this.
I think its a bad poem from a literary point of view, although I can only claim Stage One English at university as my credential to offer such criticism.
I think it is a highly inflamatory poem though. I think it would be hard to argue with that (see link below).
https://thespinoff.co.nz/books/27-02-2023/how-to-read-a-poem
Hey James,
it’s us.
These days
we’re driving round
in SUVs
looking for ya
or white men like you
who might be thieves
or rapists
or kidnappers
or murderers
yeah, or any of your descendants
or any of your incarnations
cos, you know
ay, bitch?
We’re gonna F… YOU UP.
Obviously there would be an absolute outcry if the races were reversed. So the discussion about the poem is worth having. I tend to think it is a silly poem, but would the poet be held responsible if some young kids got out and did what she suggested? In others words is this incitment to violence?
In a world where people cry geniocide if they are “misgendered” thinking this poem is fine, shows a great deal of hypocracy
And because Mike fundamentally misrepresented what ACT said, here's a link to the press release:
ACT Condemns $60,000 Poetry Award | Scoop News
Let Tusiata fund her racist, vile rantings on her own dime.
The poem is about brown women's responses to colonial history. Avia is talking about killing white colonialist men who abused their positions of power and raped, kidnapped and murdered Polynesian women.
What would be the reverse of that?
"Avia is talking about killing white colonialist men who abused their positions of power and raped, kidnapped and murdered Polynesian women."
No, she isn't. 'These days' is today. And there were no SUV's when "white colonialist men…" "…abused their positions of power and raped, kidnapped and murdered Polynesian women."
And if you want to argue she's employing poetic license, you will need to explain away why she says "we're going to F… YOU UP" with reference to any of your descendants".
The poem is filth, plain and simple.
It's not poetic licence, it's an actual poem. If you read a poem literally as you would say a blog post in prose, you are likely to miss what is being said. It's a piece of art using a range of language forms that require us to set aside our literal brains for a moment. It's not the language of an instruction manual.
Ok, she is talking about a number of things in the poem.
In my comment to anker, I was referring to anker's idea that the poem is racists and if this were reversed there would be an outcry. My comment was to lay out in simple terms the basic premise of the poem and to ask anker what she thinks would be the reverse of that.
But since you brought it up, colonisation and the impacts of it still exist.
I agree the descendants line is very challenging. Here's one way to understand it,
https://thespinoff.co.nz/books/27-02-2023/how-to-read-a-poem
We can take 'descendants' as the cultural children of Cook.
There's no problem with you hating the poem, but taking out sound bites and not understanding the meaning is a problem.
I think the part of the poem where she says'we’re driving round
in SUVs
looking for ya
or white men like you
who might be thieves
or rapists
or kidnappers
or murderers
yeah, or any of your descendants
or any of your incarnations
cos, you know
ay, bitch?
We’re gonna F… YOU UP."
I guess the paralell might be a Moariori from the Chatham Island writing a poem that says "we are looking for brown men like you from the Taranaki Iwi which commited atrocities on the Chatam Island and we are going to F…k you up".
I have been thinking about Pat's post yesterday with an article that is by or quotes Anne Salmond, talking about what happened in Serbia where very suddenly communities that got on well started othering people and it turned into an appalling war (she mentions neighbours raping their next doors wives).
Negative sentiment towards a race can change very quickly it seems and this poem certainly is displaying negative sentiment towards white males. Its not so long ago that Marama said that the violence in the world is cause by cis white males. There have also been many warnings of violence if the opposition goes ahead with the plans of a referendum on the Treaty.
I am not sure what the answer is. I don't think it is banning a poem though.
I'm not sure there would be an absolute outcry if a Chatham Islands poet wrote about their colonisation by Māori. I suspect it would either pass largely unnoticed, or there would be discussion along with racists using it to beat up Māori. Something along the lines of 'Māori are colonisers too' (as if we don't already know that) so shut up about white people. Here I am talking about people using that as part of their racism (which I see), I'm not talking about you.
See this I don't get. Because the poem is clearly talking about men like Cook. White is a descriptor. She says,
I'm wondering how you got from that to white men generally.
She was very stupid to say that especially in the way that she did. It was compounded by her unwillingness to condemn the violence at Albert Park. If you are following the conversation between Molly and I today, you will see what I wrote about political ineptitude. MD's declaration was that of an activist, not of an MP with responsibilities to voters and constituents. There are ways to have the conversation about the role of Pākehā and men in violence and colonisation without coming across like Rik from the Young ones.
There have been a few that I have seen, not many. When they came from MPs like Jackson, that too was politically very unwise imo. MPs have a particular responsibility.
When it comes from people within Māoridom I think it's worth considering why they might be reacting that way, and that calming that situation down comes from pulling back from the referendum and finding other ways to have the conversation.
It's not like having a referendum on self ID, where we would almost certainly win. NZ is tipping towards reactionary pol at a fast rate, and a simplistic referendum on such a deeply important constitutional issues is just a bad, bad move. If we put the people talking about violence aside for a minute, there were also a number of progressives saying this is the hill they would die on. You will be familiar with that phrase from the GC movements.
Imo ACT are trolling liberals with that referendum. It's politicking and unnecessary. I don't believe they misunderstood how deeply protective many people feel about the Treaty, I think they knew exactly what they were doing.
But Avia is a poet, not an MP. The rules are different for poets.
"Because the poem is clearly talking about men like Cook. White is a descriptor."
Yes, men like Cook (who are white), who 'might be thieves or kidnappers or murderers' (emphasis mine).
Don't you see the racial profiling going on there?
No, I don't. She's talking about the people of European descent that colonised the Pacific since the 1700s. What is wrong with naming them as white?
She is clearly expressing non-literal truths, ideas and emotion. No-one here thinks Cook is still alive, so why take the other lines literally?
I guess the point of addressing Cook directly and as if he is alive is because his legacy lives on. Hence driving around looking for the next lot of rapists and murders. As I said elsewhere in the thread, I'm ok with people wanting to fuck up rapists and murders.
Perhaps the words 'might be' are problematic to me. Anyway, clearly we see this differently.
might seems to me to be a poetic word in this context.
She’s a poet not a policeman.
"I don't think it is banning a poem though."
Of course not. But I'm unsure why we fund this kind of work that is essentially cultural elitism.
"but taking out sound bites and not understanding the meaning is a problem".
The poem's meaning is open to interpretation. You've provided one version, but there are others. The expression "we're gonna F… YOU UP" is not a 'sound bite". It is a deliberately provocative, dare I say powerful, expression, that is intended to arouse strong emotions. Perhaps, in the end, the author has made her point.
or perhaps she is expressing strong emotions that brown women often haven't been able to.
Myself, I don't have too much trouble with her wanting to fuck up rapists and murderers, but then I'm taking her literally.
I assume she got the prize for an entire body of work, not this short verse. So it has to be considered in that context. If this was meant to stand alone as a poem in itself, then it's quite thin conceptually in its understanding of history and emotionally limited to just pure rage. But if it's part of a longer work where many different voices cover the same ground but with differing and overlapping perspectives and emotional tones , then it might be part of quite a rich and rewarding poem. I don't know her writing at all, so couldn't say any more than that. Other than to note that literary quality is a real thing, it's not just a matter of personal preference. But basing the judgment of it on any repeatable set of objective criteria is completely impossible. The people who judge such awards generally have some background that one would expect to help them to make good decisions, but they can also be captured by fashionable agendas.
AB the full poem is in the link. It is part of a longer body of work, a book by the same name as the poem I think
Jacinda and Clarke's long awaited wedding was a joyful celebration with their friends and families. I felt relieved and pleased that after all the responsibilities and challenges they have faced they finally had their day to remember. Both looked stunning and very happy.
Shame about the Daily Mail helicopter intrusion and pathetic protesters.
The Beehive Civilian notes that while it is common to marry while pregnant with ones first born, there is an exemption for those PM elect.
And while it is most uncommon for a mother of a child to marry in white, there is an exemption if the bridegroom wears black and it is Hawkeye territory.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2024/01/the-big-day-everything-we-know-about-dame-jacinda-ardern-s-wedding.html
And there was I thinking that the woman/white men/black was explained by this old saw.
'A little boy at a wedding asks his Mom, "Mommy how come bride's wear white dresses at their wedding." The Mom responds "Well because it's the happiest day of her life." The kid responds "Then how come the groom wears black?"'
And no, it has absolutely nothing the do with the couple concerned in this story. Jacinda certainly looked great in her dress, didn't she?
I bet those official photos of Jacinda and Clarke have swept around the world. Jacinda looked magnificent. What a contrast she makes to her venom filled detractors of both sexes.
I note a story/podcast plus happy family photo has emerged today about Luxon's wife's views on her marriage, Coincidence? I doubt it. No, I'm not going to link to it. Anyone who is interested can go to the Herald website – Lifestyle section.
It’s strategic from Paula Benefit and the Herald. They couldn’t let Jacinda marry, hog the spotlight, and send out those photos without having a cry.
A Paula Bennett heist to steal limelight from Jacinda. That woman is so transparent.
Hi Anne … and it's also worth noting the piece about Luxon's wife's views on marriage (who cares), follows directly below the article and photo of Jacinda and Clarke after their wedding!
[Please fix your email address in your next comment, thanks – Incognito]
Mod note
The " Amanda Luxon" story has not only pushed Jacinda and Clarke's wedding off 'Lifestyle' but she's now got the red revolving headline along the top. 😉
Jacinda probably doesn't give.
It's all dirty politics, Anne. The Herald piece on Amanda L was not only intended to detract from Jacinda and Clarke's wedding, but also to accentuate fashion clothing, thereby giving the MSM another opportunity to have a dig at Golriz Ghahraman. I'd put money on a link between the family Luxon and the owners of Scotties Boutique – probably a big National donor.
(all /sarc).
It's all dirty politics, Anne.
Nah. Just the Nats and cohorts playing their usual game of 'one-up-man-ship'. (not sarc.)
Silly attempt, because she doesn't come within coo-ee of Jacinda Ardern. 🙂
Have you considered the possibility that you’re over-egging the whole thing just a little?
Have you considered the possibility that playing the one-up-man-ship game is common-place in politics, particularly among the right wingers, or are you just ignorant and a misogynist?
Have you considered the possibility that no-one really gives a toss about Ardern, Bennett or anyone else, and that it's only you and a hand full of other tin foil hat wearers who see conspiracy here?
sounds like you are the one over-egging things.
I just read Anne's comments and all she has said is that the timing of the Luxon story was deliberate. That's not Dirty Politics, that's just normal political strategy and comms.
I'm not in moderator mode quite yet, but you certainly have my attention. I suggest backing off from the tinfoil accusations and focusing on the politics, because at the moment you look like a troll.
Read the site Policy too (top of the page).
My comment related to a number of Anne's posts that claimed a variety of events were the result of some kind of conspiracy. Anne seemed to understand and responded with good grace. But thanks, I'll accept the warning.
it would help if you were specific when you are referring to past comments and discussions ie link.
@ weka,
David @ 8:23pm is probably referring to my comments re – Golriz Ghahraman.
When someone has been leaking information that is not coming from any of the people directly involved (including the Green leaders) and it transpires that the original news source was ZB radio, and one of the tale tellers happens to be closely associated with Cameron Slater who has apparently been twittering about it since, then you just know that dirty politics is in there somewhere. One doesn't need to resort to conspiracy theories to figure that out.
I say to David:
Sorting the facts from the fiction coming from NAct and their enablers as many of us here try to do, does not constitute conspiracy in the accepted sense of the word.
You'd have to be a little (wilfully) naive to pretend Benefit's AMA installment wasn't timed to drop the day after the wedding. I imagine Benefit wanted to do it on the day of the wedding but wiser head prevailed.
In the print precision of the interview it doesn't say anything about Amanda Luxon's career. Has she ever worked outside the family? Her kids are late teens so there has been plenty of time for her to find a job and indeed Benefit herself required mums to get off the couch once their kids turned 5 if I recall correctly…
…also, with the biceps. If you squint she could be a man.
You're obviously well down the rabbit hole. Bennett is more likely setting herself up for a mayoral run than trying to compete with an ex PM. As for the Luxon's, puff pieces like that are common. Do you seriously think either Luxon or Bennett timed their PR campaigns to one-up Ardern?
I see comprehension isn't your strong point.
Benefit is not competing with Jacinda Ardern (that happened already and the result was clear), and her ambitions for Auckland mayoralty are absolutely in line with running puff pieces on Amanda Luxon at convenient moments. How else does Benefit attract the required support and funding?
"If you squint she could be a man."
So good, Muttonbird. I appreciate your sense of humour here.
There would always have to be a few conspiracy theorist misanthropes to try and spoil Jacinda and Clarke's big day. Nutters like that can't help themselves, the gene pool might be seriously small.
I note that Amanda Luxon doesn't want be referred to as "First Lady". Just as well as we don't use that term in Aotearoa New Zealand.
haha.
@ Grey Area (8) … we could call her " the Gym Lady."
Just a Sunday afternoon musing, but did anyone catch this real-life Coen brother happening in China in 2019?
Came up on my twitter feed, and I found the BBC article which gave me a chuckle. …Can't find anyone to do the work these days….
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-50137450
Talk about a corrupt court, the 5th hitman only sought to fake Tan's death and planning to have the state declare a living person to be dead, is not an attempt to kill him, but to liberate him from a life as Tan in a communist party ruled nation.
I did admire the resourcefulness of the final hitman, who met up with the target to discuss faking his death.
No stylised John Wick movie script, rather a comedy of errors along the lines of Fargo.
Wei=Tan.
Free enterprise seems to be catching on there. I've got an excellent history of the Chinese triads. Check out the cool photo of the leader of one with a million members holding the broom with which Mao made him sweep the streets of Shanghai in 1950!
It's in Zhang Zhiheng's account of it: https://www.quora.com/Do-triads-still-exist-in-China-today
Just scroll down the contributors to the answer & you'll see his name.
Thanks, Dennis.
It's not surprising there would be some remnants now. The immersion and investment in such organisations would have been huge, and the fear hard to relinquish entirely.
Isn't Phaic Tan a Tai tourist beach?
Thanks for that Ad.
Two minutes of my life I'll never get back reading this somewhat interesting – but ultimately useless – factoid. Which exposed my lack of knowledge, to enjoy your punnish humour.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phaic_T%C4%83n#:~:text=misusing%20a%20gun.-,Geography%20and%20provinces,the%20north%20and%20east%20respectively.
If I'm ever in the unlikely position of being on a popular quiz show, I may be in touch to ask if you will be my "Phone a Friend"…
Subcontracting gone mad.
Does Britain have an armaments industry? And, if so, is that industry expecting to receive a billion pounds worth of business from Ukraine?
Or am I just being a bit too cynical?
I'm sure you know – the UK has a huge arms industry.
So (as in the USA) much of the donated support remains in the donor country, not 'bags of money given to Zelenskyy' as russia's supporters like to say.
Be great not to need an arms industry, but then you have countries like russia that force war and subjugation upon their neighbours.
Russia has increased its military budget by 70% year on year, to 40% of its entire expenditure – USD 109 billion military spending planned for 2024. Combined with russia's unprovoked attacks on multiple neighbours and imperialist rhetoric, this forces everyone else to increase their defence spending.
as russia's supporters like to say.
You seem confused. Critiquing the U.S. government and its client states, like Ukraine, Saudi Arabia, and Israel does not make one a supporter of Russia.
… countries like russia that force war and subjugation upon their neighbours.
Such wildly one-sided and unscholarly rants against Russia tell us nothing about the subject in hand, but they do reveal a lot about you.
The point is, it is wildly one-sided.
When did another country make war against russia, invade or subjugate it, post WWII?
While the list of countries that russia has invaded and/or subjugated since WWII, is long.
It's about one-twentieth of the number of countries invaded and subjugated by the United States.
List of countries with highest military expenditures:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_highest_military_expenditures
When the yanks went after Saddam I was bemused. British capitalists had spent an entire decade arming Iraq. Thatcher, otoh, was likely not amused, in the style of her queen. I found all the media stories about the gung ho British armaments industry quite tedious back then.
However I had years earlier when Reagan was doing his thing written him an angry letter telling him to stop supporting right wing dictatorships all over the place so you could argue that my letter had a belated impact. At least, that's the impression I got when Bush Sr took out Noriega after the little drug-dealing ruler of Panama waved his machete on prime-time tv news too much.
Hmm, I thought, so the CFR finally got it right – time-lag around 4 years, perhaps not too bad a performance for chronic conservatives…
https://i.imgur.com/7UbFp7Q.jpeg
Beautiful photo
The thumb in the pocket was very much a trad macho stance, back in the days when guys did the wall-flower thing around the fringe of a party. Unusual to see it exhibited by such a young feller.
A lovely couple, looking so happy.
A lovely couple. So pleased for them.
Is this a good news story or what?!
Ak's constipation status is no longer under threat! That's the good news. We can expect it to get worse as neolib choke-point, making the incoming govt seem clueless. Ak's destiny as trash-pile now seems inevitable. Labour will be devastated: "It was our Green credibility front-runner. Instead of seeming progressive, we would have gone down in history as actually progressive."
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/301039545/government-pulls-the-pin-on-multibillion-dollar-auckland-light-rail-project
Pre Covid, bus traffic on Symonds St was 100 bus movements per hour in peak times. Symonds St is a bus sewer and it does not matter how any double deckers you put on it, it will not keep up with population pressure.
They have been talking about some sort of light rail or separated busway on Dominion Rd for decades. Auckland City Council even bought some property in strategic areas to enable the transit mode to go around the back of the areas with the most heritage street frontages.
With the major redevelopment in Owairaka, the pressure on Sandringham Rd, Dominion Rd and New North Road will become even greater.
If the last Government had not played silly buggers with expensive tunnels to placate the noisy Dominion Rd business people who did not want the disruption of construction, this could have been well under way by now.
One would expect Luxon to feel obliged to come up with Plan B, even if only to prevent the inevitable Ak swing back to Labour if he doesn't. It will be interesting to see how he handles media questions around that. A professional politician would already have an angle figured out, and added a preliminary consensus in principle with the two minor leaders to that. If he hasn't, he'll seem to be floundering…
A dedicated busway would be the best bet imo, we'll also need to get some land back off the ports for the exchange apperently theres not alot of capacity to put more busses into the city.
Could get rid of the carparks on Dominion road to make space. Theres a massive underutilized carpark on balmoral dominion intersection so should hurt all the resteraunts. Its an improvment that could be done comparativly easily.
Good luck with that idea. The Dominion Rd business people fight for every car parking space. They already complain about every second of the bus lanes.
Of the four news sites that I regularly look at, Leighton Heilkill at Newshub was the only one which didn't credit the wedding photographer. Kind of annoying.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2024/01/the-big-day-everything-we-know-about-dame-jacinda-ardern-s-wedding.html
A fool and his money are soon parted.
Easy come easy go for those with huge amounts of disposable cash to invest, but why do they cry foul of banks when they themselves have very poor personal security practices?
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/consumer-nz-calls-for-asb-to-refund-scam-victims-100k-loss-due-to-substandard-bank-security-systems/76EFIOGKBBDK7IAGCOARDPAO7M/
My debt card was compromised once, the details of which had been sold by some entity I had purchased something from. One day $400 was stolen in a series of small amounts, a modest sum but a lot to my family. The Kiwibank fraud specialist was very good and spent quite a bit of time with me.
Apparently, banks have long wanted increased security measures, particularly cool off periods for online purchases/transactions but consumers, businesses, and governments won't have it because it interferes with ease of business.
So, suck it up soldier, and don't be so arrogantly stupid next time.
Our most recent waste water data is incomplete.
@drseanmullen
Explain to me how this TikTok’r gets it and “public health experts” don’t. MDs don’t. Share widely on multiple platforms.
https://twitter.com/drseanmullen/status/1745635997558153369
COVID levels are two to 19 times higher than numbers being reported around the world, a WHO official said Friday, citing wastewater data.
The news comes as the organization warns of the yet unknown dangers of repeat COVID infection, which can occur without symptoms.
[…]
“Five years, 10 years, 20 years from now, what are we going to see in terms of cardiac impairment, pulmonary impairment, neurologic impairment? It’s year five in the pandemic, but there’s still a lot we don’t know about it.”
https://fortune.com/well/2024/01/12/covid-jn1-pandemic-world-health-organization-warns-dangers-repeat-covid-infection-cardiac-pulmonary-neurologic/
JAMA freebie.
From “Immunity Debt” to “Immunity Theft”—How COVID-19 Might Be Tied to Recent Respiratory Disease Surges
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2814028?guestAccessKey
edit:
direct link to X vid
https://www.tiktok.com/@mudflapbrokentire/video/7318832123119553823
National the government that will not be of any help.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/fifth-wave-of-covid-19-hits-new-high-in-nz-as-govt-looks-at-ending-free-rats/XKFST2TBBFHW5BIEZXYAQ6YA6Q/
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/12/health/marijuana-fda-dea.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Nk0.OnWm.oMx4dSB0NpMo&smid=url-share