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r0b’s not available to put up the open mike for a while so I thought I would step up and put this here. I don’t have “Notices and Features” posting rights just yet so, please, ignore that and, no doubt, someone with greater abilities will fix it up later on.
I wrote to Peter Dunne about his apparently denying Helen Kelly her medical cannabis. I’ll copy his reply below – but can someone on-send this to Helen K please – I don’t have her email address. It sounds like there’s been some sort of mis-communication somewhere along the line. This is from Peter Dunne :
Jenny,
The facts in this instance are as follows.
The day after the application was received the Ministry of Health advised me it contained insufficient information for it to be able to assess it and make a recommendation to me.
Rather than decline the application at that point, I directed the Ministry on 29 January to go back to the applying oncologist to obtain the information it needed. The Ministry emailed him that evening, subsequently couriered its letter to him and made several attempts to contact him over the following weeks. This was all to no avail with no response at all from the oncologist until the middle of this week, when he undertook to discuss the matters the Ministry had raised further with his patient and come back to the Ministry after that. Nothing has been heard from him since.
The application has therefore been deferred, not declined, by the Ministry until it receives the information it had requested. It will then make a recommendation to me, and a decision will be made.
The delay in resolving this case, rests, for whatever reason, with the oncologist’s ongoing lack of response, not the Ministry of Health or me.
Hon Peter Dunne
Minister of Internal Affairs
Associate Minister of Health
Associate Minister of Conservation
MP for Ohariu
Leader, UnitedFuture
W: http://www.unitedfuture.org.nz
T: PeterDunneMP
From: Jenny Kirk
Sent: Saturday, 13 February 2016 9:20:42 p.m.
To: Hon Peter Dunne
Subject: Cannabis as a medical aide
He could simply just say yes. To weasel himself out that her doctors did not provide enough information? Really, Doctor says she is dying of cancer. More information is needed? Maybe he needs to know if her Pain level 10 is equivalent to his Pain level 10? Maybe he wants more copies of the application? A first born son?
The whole process in this day and age is a sham. Especially considering that we have this excrement of a human being to blame for legal highs.
The delay in resolving this case rests with the government for insisting the ministry follow such a byzantine and complex procedure to authorise what is a drug that is safely used for medicinal purposes in other jurisdictions (notably the US, whom we generally follow when it comes to drug testing and safety standards).
This is why patients should be given copies of all correspondence relating to their health as a matter of course, at the time that other parties receive it, unless they choose to opt out via informed consent.
Ah ! that confirms what I was thinking, Rosemary, after getting Dunne’s reply. Just a whole lot of beaurocratic delays and bungling – is it deliberate, or is it sheer incompetence or – a third option, are they (Dunne and his Ministry) all scared of the rednecks who object to decriminalising cannabis generally ? wouldn’t mind betting its the third option !
No, based on his past form, its more likely just the usual Dunne pomposity. How on earth he has survived so long in parliament and government beats me.
RACISM AND DISCRIMINATIONHILLARY CLINTONFEATUREFEBRUARY 29, 2016 ISSUE
Why Hillary Clinton Doesn’t Deserve the Black Vote
From the crime bill to welfare reform, policies Bill Clinton enacted—and Hillary Clinton supported—decimated black America.
By Michelle AlexanderFEBRUARY 10, 2016
Hillary and Bill Clinton in 1992. (Reuters Pictures)
Hillary Clinton loves black people.
And black people love Hillary—or so it seems.
Black politicians have lined up in droves to endorse her, eager to prove their loyalty to the Clintons in the hopes that their faithfulness will be remembered and rewarded.
Black pastors are opening their church doors, and the Clintons are making themselves comfortably at home once again, engaging effortlessly in all the usual rituals associated with “courting the black vote,” a pursuit that typically begins and ends with Democratic politicians making black people feel liked and taken seriously.
Doing something concrete to improve the conditions under which most black people live is generally not required.
Hillary is looking to gain momentum on the campaign trail as the primaries move out of Iowa and New Hampshire and into states like South Carolina, where large pockets of black voters can be found.
According to some polls, she leads Bernie Sanders by as much as 60 percent among African Americans. It seems that we—black people—are her winning card, one that Hillary is eager to play.
And it seems we’re eager to get played. Again.
…..
__________________________________
And it’s that community which Sanders’ magic wand of free US tertiary education and free US public healthcare will benefit the most. His general answer to questions on them is “Why can’t we just imagine that ………(insert anything you like)?”
If Hilary Clinton put up such proposals (or on any other policy area) without very detailed costings and achievement methodology she would get laughed out of town.
There’s as much likelihood of Sanders’ proposals occurring as there is a ginormous impenetrable wall being built from the Pacific to the Atlantic to keep the Mexicans out.
Following that link over to reuters we can see a gap in polling of blacks between February 3rd and 9th. During that period Sanders vote jumped 10%, mainly from O’Malley and a drop in “wouldn’t vote” (from 9% to 3%). Since then Sanders has been gaining at the expense of Clinton.
Interestingly the white “wouldn’t vote” is much higher, but has been reducing in a manner that seems to favour Sanders. He was behind in this demographic until late January when he started pulling ahead. On January 21st, They were tied on 35% with “wouldn’t vote” at 27% (with a high of 29% on the 23rd). At the last poll on Feb 12th, Sanders leads the white vote 43 to 34% with a “wouldn’t vote” of 23% (low of 18% on the 7th).
The black response rate is generally under 15% of total, the white above 70% (each poll seems to aim for 1000 respondents, with some variation).
A bit off topic, but following the discussion of supercandidates on yesterday’s OM; this is an interesting piece by Nate Silver. I would have put it on the other thread but I keep getting a red flag on the tab and a blank screen when I try to open it (which has been happening for different pages for the last few days but eventually clears up):
Sorry, my information yesterday about winner-take-all states was out of date. Apparently now the Democratic primaries for all states have proportional allotment of delegates according to rules set by the national Democratic Party (plus superdelegates). Which makes it a bit harder for Bernie than I had thought yesterday.
But the Republicans still have some winner-take-all states, the national Republican Party allows the states to set their own rules.
Yes,
We always go. We are GABA members so enjoy the GABA tent. Except for the visit from FJK. We go somewhere else until he and his slimy retinue have departed.
Come to New Zealand bringing skills we need, win awards and successfully bid for research funding…BUT…when Immigration New Zealand finds out you have an autistic son…it’s the big F-off.
“An award-winning Auckland University mathematics professor will leave the country after his residency application was rejected because of his stepson’s autism.
Professor Dimitri Leemans moved to New Zealand from Belgium in August 2011 with his wife, Francoise Duperoux, their 5-year-old daughter, Margaux, and his stepson, 13-year-old Peter Gourle, after winning a job at Auckland University.
He was the recipient of the 2014 New Zealand Mathematical Society Research Award and a Marsden grant of $580,000 for his work in mathematics. In a letter of support, Auckland University said it and the country would be disadvantaged without him.”
This family will not appeal the decision because…
“”Once I saw that Immigration New Zealand had decided it is above the UN convention of human rights, it is difficult for me to decide to raise my children here. For me the New Zealand story ends.””
Look, he got it wrong really. Instead of coming to NZ with a Job and a living in hand, he should have just bought a property in Auckland and bingo presto, he would be an Investor with a Residence permit.
Thanks Rosemary for that, I can’t blame the Professor wanting to leave NZ with Immigration’s decision. We have zilch compassion for anyone here who doesn’t measure up to cost ratios. The obviously needed Maths academic – when there is a serious lack of qualified Maths and Science teachers in our secondary schools – saying that he didn’t want to stay here if that was the attitude of this country says it all. I have just been listening to a debate on RNZ about the cost of the new drugs for Melanoma – costs again, you can’t blame PHARMAC if their costs have not been increased for years, back again to this Government – we will end up like the States with a two tier system, one for the 1% and the other for the rest. What a legacy for future generations. Sickening.
Yes, yes and yes….BUT…it is not entirely down to costs.
Another time I might comment with (appropriate links) on how many $$$ the government has saved by budgeting for happy clappy disability programs through both MOH and MOE that have recorded underspends because the programs were designed to be unworkable.
No, no, no.
This is about successive New Zealand governments choosing to deny disabled New Zealanders equal rights under the law, under the NZBORA, under the UNCORPD and as this guy says, the UN Convention for Human Rights.
New Zealand is a disability hostile environment.
(we also have a two tier system for disability supports…ACC…lucky, lucky bastards and MOH:DSS. ACC are the “born normal” but tragedy struck and here’s your compo…and they do alright thank you very much. MOH:DSS are mostly those born with disabilities…(that escaped the almost mandatory terminations.) and are basically treated like shit.
Is this really the New Zealand we want?
Come on… those political parties that aspire to the government benches….what are YOU going to do about the government mandated hate of non ACC disabled in New Zealand?
Their just shifting the costs (mental health and all the other policies they don’t subscribe to) to the next Govt that will take over.
Remember in 2000 Labour reinstated the ART,s funding after the nats had cut it completely, in the following years there was a proliferation of new bands and artists, all of which contributed to the economy successfully through the music industry
No, even under Labour our mental health services have sucked. In fact, one of the articles I posted in the last few days points out that it was the 4th Labour government that started the decline that we’ve seen over the last few decades and it wasn’t great before then.
That fourth Labour govt ended up being the worst Labour govt in history, but you can’t really call that govt a Labour one after being hijacked by Prebble and Douglas, the National Govt won the 1990 election by the largest majority of any govt in NZ history, and that wasn’t because they wanted a Nat govt, Labour was voted out of govt, not National being voted in.
I was living overseas when this govt reigned, had been for 10 years and in those days we weren’t blessed with the internet for keeping in touch, but I do remember seeing on tv in 1987 (the stock market crash), the demonstrations and anger against the govt, especially the sheep farmers who were losing their farms after the subsidies were removed.
That era was an unusual time, Muldoon, the stock market crash, springbok demonstrations, Rogernomics, nuclear free bans, rainbow warrior, intro of GST and increase of gst…..
I think Hannah Arendt argued that Human Rights are gazumped by Civil Rights and Sovereignty trumps all. When people’s freedoms and Civic Liberties are thwarted their only resort is to fall back onto Human Rights with uncertain outcome because it is not a fundamental inalienable right!
Sovereignty is ‘tradeable’ as longs as it is for the ‘common good’. This is where the semantics and political rhetoric enter as we know too well from recent developments.
At least Professor Dimitri Leemans and his family haven’t lost everything, except a ‘dream’ perhaps, and can go back to Belgium and readjust their lives. I wish them well.
INZ had no discretion in this decision at all – any decisions about being above human rights treaties were made by the government when they signed off on the Operations Manual.
+1
Yup. I walk in with fawning embarrassment every time I go order my meds from the health system here (even though our taxes cover it), because I know that there won’t be an Austrian with a similar disability-forming disease allowed to have residency in NZ.
step 1 is a box ticking black/white exercise where the staff have zero discretion – you either meet the policy or you dont
step 2 is where you appeal the first step, and the staff who hear the appeal have discretion
the issue isnt that we denied him entry – its that he doesnt understand the process or doesnt want to follow it
he has every right and ability to put his case and ask for discretion – there is absolutely nothing stopping him following the process and having his case heard by people who can bend the rules for him
What are / have any of the other 2016 Auckland Mayoral candidates done about Auckland Council Controlled Organisations (CCOs) – which, in my considered opinion, have been the mechanism for the effective corporate takeover of the Auckland region, via the forced amalgamation of the Auckland ‘Supercity’ (for the 1%)?
FYI – I received this email on Friday 13 February 2016, and have been asked to provide evidence to the Local Government and Environment Select Committee by 29 February 2016:
“The Local Government and Environment Committee considered your petition requesting that the House conduct an urgent inquiry into the cost-effectiveness, transparency, and democratic accountability to Auckland Council and the majority of Auckland citizens and ratepayers, of all Auckland Council Controlled Organisations (CCOs).
The Committee has decided to consider the petition in conjunction with the Controller and Auditor-General’s Report on the Governance and accountability of council-controlled organisations.
…”
________________________________________
What I have learned is – never underestimate the potential effectiveness of a Parliamentary petition ….
(Helped to stop the rort of Metrowater ‘charitable payments’ – where (former) Auckland City Council got their ‘commercialised’ water and wastewater services company to put up their prices – then took profits via ‘charitable payments’ to subsidise rates.
Also helped to stop the proposed Wellington ‘Supercity’ ….)
Audrey Young writes in The Herald about Gerry as Minister of Defence.
Apart from a whole lot of other tripe she says :-
Gerry Brownlee wanted it in 2011 but he was too overburdened with his earthquake recovery workload and Jonathan Coleman, a longtime John Key favourite, got it instead.
Brownlee asked for it again in 2014 and such is his standing for his work in Christchurch that he got his wish.
Brownlee is not easily fobbed off with an incomplete briefing or half the picture. He is not the thick woodwork teacher Labour invented. He may look like a blunt instrument but he is acutely sharp.
Not The Thick Woodwork Teacher? Looks like a Blunt Instrument?
He certainly is the epitome of a GOP (Grossly Overweight Person)
however, who squeezes through security doors at ChCh airport and gets away with it.
Ask the Cantabrians if they think the same as Audrey about his standing for his work in Christchurch.
Youngs columns should carry an advertising tag, she’s such a blatant shill I know a few Tories that Shake their head at her fawning sycophantic angles.
I posted on 13th Open Mike about this supply situation. Alwyn & CV have chosen to use it as a discussion about the merits or otherwise of Pharmac which is their choice but is an example of how things can get well off track on this site, sometimes by trolls taking the opportunity
to drip their venom and other times just the way things happen.
One article uses another name for the same drug, so there is no confusion I also posted this as a reply on the 13th and here it is again today.
So there is no confusion medically , metoprolol is the generic name for this medicine also known as Beta Blockers.
Here is the complete list of names used:-
Brand Names: Lopressor, Metoprolol Succinate ER, Metoprolol Tartrate, Toprol-XL
Generic Name: metoprolol (Pronunciation: me TOE pro lol)
CV & Alwyn are entitled to have their little political discussion about Pharmac but I was simply trying to bring this shortage situation to the attention of TS readers.
I posted my comment about the article in the paper because you didn’t seem to think that there had been any official notification or explanation of what was going on.
It was intended merely to point you to a place in the MSM where your interest could be answered. I take it you weren’t interested.
I only added to that because there was quite a lot in the story other than just metoprolol.
As usual debate continues on other things triggered by a post. Given it was on “Open Mike” it is of course quite ridiculous to say that something is “off the track or off topic”
For those unaware of the significance, Scalia was a reliable hard-hard-right vote on the Supreme Court.
The balance of power has just changed on a wide range of issues, from Obama’s attempt to limit CO2 emissions from power station, to voter ID laws which effectively disenfranchise minorities and poor people, corporate money influence in politics, abortion rights, science education, religious freedom for non-mainstream religions, privacy, separation of church and state…you name it. Any issue of importance to anyone concerned about social justice, progressives, the environment, Scalia would be found on the wrong side of it.
I don’t know how to say this without ghoulishly appearing to celebrate someone’s death, but the future of the planet suddenly looks a bit more hopeful.
Assuming Obama gets to choose the replacement. It might not get done till the next term. Crikey, imagine the kind of clown President Trump would be pushing for.
What Trump would push for is a lot less scary than what any of the other Republicans would push for.
The leaders of the Senate have already vowed to block any Obama nomination “so the next president who reflects the will of the people” gets to choose the replacement. Hoping it’s going to be a Republican, but taking the risk it will be a Bernie pick that gets approved by a Democratic senate.
Of particular importance to the labour movement is an upcoming case against public-sector unions, about whether non-union employees that benefited from union-led negotiations had to help fund the unions. With Scalia, the unions looked likely to lose 5-4 and a nasty legal precedent set. Without Scalia, it’s likely to be a 4-4 tie, which means the lower court decision stands (which was favourable to unions IIRC) and no precedent is set.
The bigots will jump on board BUT below is why private ownership is wrong. We MUST protect our country from capitalist accumulators without and within and not care about their desire for their diversified portfolios.
Chinese interests have paid $3.8 million for an iconic Northland holiday park.
The Overseas Investment Office gave consent for Carrington Holiday Park Jade, owned by Guo Jie Gui, to buy the 2.5ha Whatuwhiwhi Holiday Park from its New Zealand owners…
Meanwhile, the Singapore Government’s Reco Otago Private got consent for a deal involving $1 billion of assets from St Lukes Group Holdings.
Reco is part of the GIC group, buying a half-share in Westfield shopping malls at Albany, Manukau, Newmarket, St Lukes and Riccarton. The deal went before the OIO because it involved $100 million-plus of assets…
China’s Pengxin Holdings (HK) got consent to buy a big Auckland office block in the Spark four-block Victoria St West campus from NZ business Mansons Holdings. The amount involved is suppressed…
Japan’s Beecom (NZ) got consent to buy an 11ha Central Otago vineyard from Kiwis Blair Linn and Estelle Hunt. Beecom intends to plant an additional 2ha of grape vines, exporting most of the wine to overseas markets such as Japan.
Te Hau Station, owned by Australian Phillip Colebatch, can now buy 1037ha at Whatatutu, Gisborne, from NZ’s Bremner Pastoral Properties.
China’s Waste Management NZ got consent for $8.8 million of land purchases at Puketutu Island and Bromley in Christchurch as part of its acquisition of Living Earth.
Switzerland’s Aitken Street Real Estate Netherlands & Credit Suisse Funds got consent for a deal involving $161.9 million of assets in Wellington.
The choice is we either accumulate owner-occupiers or we accumulate absentee landlords
talk about a f&%king no-brainer
People are dumb as dog shit – they need to wake up. A foreign mate always spouts on to me how we kiwis are really quite stupid in the way we refuse to think decently about these big and very important questions. “yeah, nah, everything will be alright.. blah blah..”….. My mate says “they won’t f&%king be right mate, they wont be right…”
wake up New Zealand, wake up ya lazy dopey dog shit brains
I don’t see it as an insult to have my intelligence compared to ‘the people’ Anne.
Unlike superior beings like yourself and VTO.
Two more lefties who style themselves as ‘peoples champions’, while at the same time sneering at ‘the peoples’ stupidity….
The bigots will jump on board BUT below is why private ownership is wrong. We MUST protect our country from capitalist accumulators without and within and not care about their desire for their diversified portfolios.
It’s not that they desire diversified portfolios but that they desire to live expansively upon the work of everyone else. Capitalists are the biggest bludgers around.
Tens of thousands of kiwis were prepared to crowd-fund to buy half a hectare of sand in the middle of nowhere last week, and apparently we all thought that was great.
No your point was clear as day. But it’s increasingly just wrong.
Foreign investment is simply not the evil you’re making it to be. The primary thing propping up the New Zealand real estate market – both urban and rural – is foreign capital. Not local capital.
“We MUST protect our country from capitalist accumulators without and within”
That is my point. If things are for sale someone will buy them, if you don’t want someone to buy them then don’t make them available for sale. I don’t want them (lots of things) available for sale – it has got us into a worldwide mess and will only make things worse. If that is wrong to you then so be it – you think I’m wrong.
Only a very few families in New Zealand choose not to sell, and to gradually accrete capital generation after generation. They are precious and rare. Trouble with those families is that they are so conservative, and so independent, they often need no interaction with the state whosoever.
Ad, we absolutely have to distinguish between foreign investment in NZ which builds up NZ technology, skills, capabilities and businesses, and foreign investment in NZ which is nothing more than glorified asset stripping.
Selling off our natural resources, existing assets and successful businesses to foreign buyers falls into that latter category: asset stripping.
what you are talking about and what I am talking about are different – I am not having your conversation with you. I don’t want to have the conversation you want to have.
I am talking about capitalism and the greedy little hands trying to accumulate – here and there. the greedy little hands that are not helping this world instead they are the ones that have endangered the world and continue to do so.
get fucked – the days when sock-puppets like you get to tell me what to do are over. But to help your conformist mind
– I don’t hate foreigners or immigrants
Your continued abuse of me by saying I do disturbs me and offends me – you know fucken nothing of my views even though I have posted them for years on here – you, a johnny come lately, spew insults at me based on your own fucked up defensive mode.
guess what ad-dy I don’t forgive and I don’t forget
capitalist, ignorant, abusive, conformist, right-wing people like you are the problem
The problem is ad that its not a level playing field, I’m all for globalization and a world with out borders but how do we transition theire with out enslaving all those who have no money?
Foreign investment is simply not the evil you’re making it to be. The primary thing propping up the New Zealand real estate market
The only people who benefit from the “propping up of the NZ real estate market” are the comfortable and wealthy property owning classes who love to see their property portfolio value climb and climb.
For ordinary NZers struggling to afford a decent home and who don’t treat their house as a financial asset, its a shitty situation.
TL/DR this foreign investment adjudicates against the bottom 80% of NZers and for the top 20%. And especially the top 1%.
Yes, it definitely helps the 60%+ of people who own their own home. That’s quite a lot of ordinary New Zealanders.
No it doesn’t. It doesn’t help most of them at all, that is.
The mistake here is that you have not separated out those Kiwis who are simple one home owners vs those Kiwis who have property portfolios on top of their own residence.
It does the Auckland single home owner no good if their house is rocketing upwards in value because if they sell it, they then have to buy right back into the same market.
It’s a zero sum game for those who only have their own property as a home.
But for the Auckland property investor who is trading in houses, of course, they then get even richer off unearned income of capital gains. They laugh all the way to the bank.
This is foreign money flows creating the ‘two NZs’ that Labour was complaining about.
Investors or one-house owner regardless, and wherever they are in New Zealand, it is still excellent because it gives them and their families real choices when they had none. All they have to do is wait until they are close to retirement, and sell. After that, they re-determine their lives with the choice that cash provides.
And before you go there, I would agree New Zealand is hopelessly overweighted to property, and the Reserve Bank has been shouting about the massive risks of this to our entire economic system for over a decade now. But that’s a different point.
After that, they re-determine their lives with the choice that cash provides.
The only way this kind of cashing up helps an Aucklander is if they sell up and move away from the networks of friends and family that they have built up over decades and move somewhere substantially cheaper in the regions.
Then, after that point, they can never move back to Auckland again because the market will have moved on without them.
And this is supposed to be the “benefit”?
And what about the rest of NZ who don’t live in one of these property price bubble centres, and who will never ever be able to afford to buy in Auckland, Wellington or Christchurch if they try and move away from Huntly, Ashurst or Palmerston?
In other words, this kind of economics may indeed be great for some Kiwis, but it screws everyone else.
I’m going to have to make it a point to ensure that “everyone else” begins to realise this crystal clear.
“And what about the rest of NZ who don’t live in one of these property price bubble centres, and who will never ever be able to afford to buy in Auckland, Wellington or Christchurch if they try and move away from Huntly, Ashurst or Palmerston?”
Bugger me !! We agree on something , as some one who loves the rural life that being a farm boy brings but as my body fails me would love to move to the inner city for the entertainment and comfort it provides its hard to not become bitter for being forever locked out.
Sorry, I was off at my local Chinese New Year. Recommended chaos and fireworks and people who settle here and buy assets.
Yes, people will have to move. But cashed-up free people are also great for the regions. They get to set up new things, as one would want.
As for property mis-matches, well, you have large campaigns from most major regions targeting Auckland people begging them to do just that. It’s exactly what the regions need, and they know it.
Those property booms are extending now not just to the Auckland region, but to Hamilton, Tauranga, Whangarei, Nelson-Wanaka Alexandra, Christchurch – hey presto you’ve covered three quarters of the population already.
The Auckland property bubble is a major risk to New Zealand, and in the meantime is also a major benefit. The migrant surge and property surge emanating from Auckland is one of the luckiest economic moments in our recent history.
Those property booms are extending now not just to the Auckland region, but to Hamilton, Tauranga, Whangarei, Nelson-Wanaka Alexandra, Christchurch – hey presto you’ve covered three quarters of the population already.
driving up the prices of housing so that people in the regions on low wages cannot afford houses any more?
As I said, this system works fabulously for cashed up Aucklanders liquidating property portfolios; it’s pretty average to pretty shit for everyone else.
“The primary thing propping up the New Zealand real estate market – both urban and rural – is foreign capital. Not local capital.”
You say that like it’s a good thing. It’s not. It’s a big part of why land is so expensive in NZ.
I’m generaly against foreign ownership because of the sovereignty issues, and because I don’t trust NZ governments to mandate that land has to be cared for.
That’s a good example of overseas ownership doing something good in NZ. It’s a cluster of high country stations in the Queenstown Lakes area that have had substantial money put into landcare including replanting natives, and it’s been protected legally. There aren’t many Kiwi owners doing that on that scale, but I don’t think that’s so much about not having the capital as not having the will of the conscience. Then there are the farmers that would do this kind of thing if they had the funds. So the issues here are distribution of wealth, the importance of land welfare (think social security for whenua), and
whether we actually give a shit enough to save things while we still can.
That piece of foreshore in Nelson should have been bought by the state. That DOC couldn’t afford it tells us everything we need to know about the mess we are in. Private money will not solve that, it will simply fund a few high profile cases like Nelson or the Motutapu blocks, and meanwhile the rest of NZ is being sacrificed to the global economy. For every private saviour there are dozens or hundreds of places in NZ, right now, being destroyed because the people that care can’t afford land.
Mutt Lange etc is a great foreign example. But there are more locals aggregating their capital to do good things than you perhaps realize. An interesting recent local example is the Morgan family – one of whom is in on that Mutt Lange arrangement.
Thought you’d like the neatness of your own example being both local and foreign. Ah well. Happy to admit my views have shifted a bit on this topic in the last few years.
Also happy to do a full list when Marty does a post with a decent argument attached and not merely a sad xenophobic rant.
once again your ignorance clouds your vision – you just abuse because you can’t compute – frankly you are a waste of time. Capitalism and fuckers like you are the problem NOT immigrants or foreigners – I am not xenophobic and take offence at being labeled with that. I have argued many many times against that – you are up yourself, puffed up and under some illusion that your view is meaningful – it isn’t.
Ad, in reply to 10.3.1.1. tell that to the people who live in my street, NZer’s by the diminishing number. For some reason Asians love our area and there are now 4 only families who are long term NZ residents left hanging in there. The latest to go under the hammer over the right of way from us has been bought by an Asian restauranter and the new tenants moved in today. By the way there are about 40 homes in our street – how’s that for a statistic. Why they don’t put a red archway over the beginning of our street and call it Chinatown, I do not know. I see in the future and not that too far off Auckland will be a major annex of China and there won’t be any kiwis left in it.
Tell me that is good for all the young New Zealanders who are looking for their first home, or any New Zealand born residents who want to own a home here. And, please don’t tell me I am a racist, its just the fact of the matter, we are being swamped with a stampede of overseas residents and it’s happening right in front of our eyes. I have family who live in the inner city and when we visit its like being in Shanghai, I have other family who have lived and worked in Shanghai and when they were here on holiday thought they hadn’t left the place. The Maoris should be very afraid for their lands, soon they won’t have anything left of it.
you must live in my neighbourhood. And the new settlement being build is build buy by Chinese for Chinese it seems. And again, this is an observation of what is happening in my street.
And it should be clear to anyone, that those who sell in AKL can’t afford to buy again, they will have to pack up and move out. So that may work for those that are off retirement age, or can work elsewhere, but that will not apply to the vast majority of Aucklanders. But then sometimes i think that if the rest of NZ could just bomb Auckland they would. Not that their any of their relatives would ever live there, or work there, or go to university there, or heavens forbid may need to go there to access Starship Hospital and so on and so on. No obviously Auckland is up for grabs, and those Aucklanders that don’t like it, can just move or die.
And then what happens to those rural areas that the cashed up Aucklanders move too? O h….yeah, they fuck up house prices for the locals there.
Sometimes it seems that the more educated a populace gets the more they have wee’s and poo’s for brains and absolutely no common sense or foresight is left. But surely there be a new episode of Shortland or a millionaire running after a ball dressed in allblack. See nothing to fucking worry about.
Do you know we are going through a massive age-shift that will require everyone in Auckland over 65 to either sell or shift in with their children?
It’s a massive economic shift that’s already underway. And it’s releasing hundreds of millions of dollars for people to do new things with – and they do.
Do you know it’s possible to be Asian and a New Zealander as well?
If you really don’t like the Auckland street you are in, and you don’t like the multicultural change you are experiencing, try any other town in the country.
Plus, do your neighborhood a favour and learn Mandarin.
OAB and AD- you are a patronising jerks – I would bet you are NIMBYS and have no experience of being alienated in your own street, with neighbours who are absent most of the time, have a different culture and having to live with a dislocation of friends who were neighbours moving out. It will take two or three generations of Asian immigrants living here before this city settles down and finds it not so alienating. By then as Sabine says it will be an Asian city and provinces will have to suffer rising house prices as the natives move out.
Off topic here but odd how the Eastern leafy suburbs are squealing and bleating on with the help of Sir John Walker about having to suffer the indignity of 3 storey apartment buildings – how sad for them, most of the North Shore now has to put up with it – I say get a life and get used to it. Too many suburbs like Remuera, Epsom are huge, some are an acre etc and are perfect for breaking up and housing the many who want to be close to the inner city for work and play. How come they have escaped the Unitary Plan for higher density housing? Combined with the massive increase in immigration snatching up existing stock like in our street, having 3 storey buildings will be perfect to house the rising immigrant population.
Well then you probably live outside Auckland but I apologise – but I still cannot understand how you can condone wide spread buying up of existing housing stock street upon street by people who are not going to dwell in them without considering what it is doing for our own people who now cannot afford to have a home of their own. We will end up like Germany where a house is passed down from generation to generation. I can see it will become widespread here.
1. The largest immigrant group come from the UK. No-one seems to be in the least bit worried about that, despite the cultural potential for sandals with socks, soccer hooligans and Cold Play.
2. Pākehā feeling a little bit of what Māori have put up with for two centuries might reflect on that fact.
I don’t know if that exactly counts as “condoning” it, but.
When I read garners articles I think to my self “I could wright that”
Which without wanting to be to hard on myself makes me think how the fuck did he get to where he is??
Given its location and size, it might actually be big enough to trigger some more liquefaction out east. I’m over towards Hornby, was a big wobbly thing over here, but nothing like any of the major quakes in 2010-2011.
Getting the latest via Radio NZ & #eqnz hashtag. Some dramatic cliff collapses, no reports of casualties. Looks like all the precautions are paying off
Record debt racked up by the third term National Government with no clues on how to repay it & promise tax cuts 2017 pic.twitter.com/9CEfVlUdmz— Elephant in the room (@NOCONSPIRACY1) November 5, 2015
‘Mr Key was making his annual visit to the event, where in the past he has received a generally positive reception, but today was the subject of a glitter prank and was also targeted by protesters opposed to the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement.
The incident took place shortly after he arrived at the event, held at Point Chevalier, while he was walking around with a police escort talking to members of the public and taking selfies.
Three people threw quite a large amount of pink glitter at Mr Key, which appeared to make considerable contact with him and those around him.
The people responsible then ran away from the scene with police officers hot on their heels.
A group of TPPA protesters with signs also followed the Prime Minister as he walked around.
When Mr Key took the stage to address the crowd, there was considerable booing and his speech lasted little more than 10 seconds before he left the stage.’
@ Paul (19) thanks for this info. The perceived “most popular PM”FJK’s popularity is beginning to wear thin. Good 😀 He’s had this coming for a while now. Long may it continue.
“John Key has been booed off stage at today’s Big Gay Out festival by a group of vocal anti-TPPA protesters.
Donned in a pink polo shirt, Mr Key took to the stage alongside National MPs Nikki Kaye and Maggie Barry. But a group of about 30 protesters clutching banners and shouting anti-TPPA slogans drowned out his short speech, and the prime minister then left the stage to loud booing.
Speaking to media immediately after his speech, Mr Key said he’s expected the reaction but stressed it was from a small group of individuals who did not support the National government.”
Wish I was there. Hope it happens more often given that Key avoids dissent. Hates being confronted by those who aren’t “Yes men and women.”
A small group does not equate to ‘considerable booing’ that would stop a speech after only 10 seconds.
Stuff’s coverage to date minimises the opposition and plays up the fanboy Key image.
Mark Weldon is earning his dollars for Key and the corporates.
A couple of the MSM reports I saw said that Key normally gets a good reception at the BGO, but I’m pretty sure he got booed last year too, and not by TPPA protestors.
Key won’t go to any more public events where he can be booed. But we can protest at the TPPA road shows around the country. Here’s the link for dates and locations:
Mr Whitby’s doctors at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital in Perth said they were not surprised by what happened to the healthy 27-year-old.
Liver specialist Professor Gary Jeffrey works in the liver transplant centre of Western Australia and said doctors were seeing what they believe is more liver damage from herbal remedies and herbal extracts.
We should really take a look at NZ liver damage stats and renal ward/dialysis cases and see how many of those patients were fucked due to approved pharma meds vs those by natural remedies.
I’d guess 200:1 due to prescription meds.
Life time dialysis cases due to paracetamol is through the roof and that’s just for starters.
Yep. and as such not subject to the same monitoring regime as pharmaceuticals with side-effects (communicated by the doctor and listed on the packet for the consumer) that include rare cases of liver damage.
Yet the very knowledge of side effects and practice of monitoring on ‘bigpharma’ products is scary enough to send people to a ‘bighealth’ product with unacknowledged risk and the reassurance of ‘natural’.
What do you think about big health putting out products with unacknowledged unmonitored risk to the consumer?
Do you think putting a warning on the packet and introducing monitoring for those who need the product (now there’s a thing) might change people’s purchasing decisions as it does for big pharma products?
Absolutely happy for the risks from medical intervention and the risks from natural/alternative remedies to be compared side by side in simple ways that consumers can understand and be educated about.
From that answer I could take it that you’d be happy for big pharma to put out product with unacknowledged and unmonitored risk, just their own marketing bumpf like big health does.
“Absolutely happy for the risks from medical intervention and the risks from natural/alternative remedies to be compared side by side”
Nah, you don’t get to box me in with your bullshit cleverness.
So you do think that big health shouldn’t be subject to the same regulatory and monitoring procedures as big pharma is subject to right now.
Well, I’m being pragmatic about this.
For instance, if you demonstrate to me that alternative medicines is causing hundreds of thousands/millions of premature deaths a year in western countries like conventional medicine is, then I believe that you’ll have a case for putting alternative medicine under the same level of scrutiny and regulation as conventional medicine.
I tend to agree with CV here. We’re still talking about pretty small numbers. If the object of tighter regulation is to decrease the numbers how will that work given that drugs cause so much damage and they’re apparently well regulated?
I’ll also point out that many of the adverse effects blamed on plant medicines are so badly reported that it’s hard to know what was actual cause. Add to that that most doctors and science types are largely ignorant of how plant medicines work, then it’s next to impossible to make valid claims about the size of the problem.
Having said that, there’s a huge amount of bullshit going on in the commerical side of the supplment and herb industries and as I comment below, those people need a big slap down.
You like being a smartass around these issues; I am sure alternative/indigenous/natural medicine providers would love to have access to university and other research resources to help them do this monitoring and oversight that you want so badly.
“if you demonstrate to me that alternative medicines is causing hundreds of thousands/millions of premature deaths a year in western countries like conventional medicine is”
Is that the proportion of deaths caused by regulated, on-label, prescribed use for disease, when the patient was informed of the risk (e.g. you have a disease that will kill you soon, this drug may help, but it may also result in your death)? Or are you including unregulated use?
Without looking, I’ll pretty much agree than unregulated use of pharma causes more deaths than unregulated alternatives. Dosage of active ingredients at a guess, would make a difference.
Meanwhile, can you give me the deaths by omission of effective treatment from unregulated on-label use of CAM?
Care to say where the line is between a product made from plants that should be monitored and the rosemary or garlic in your kitchen?
I’d say the line is somewhere around when you’re selling it as a health remedy equivalent to or safer than going to see an actual doctor.
Hey McFLock
You like being a smartass around these issues; I am sure alternative/indigenous/natural medicine providers would love to have access to university and other research resources to help them do this monitoring and oversight that you want so badly.
Lol
so they can treat medical conditions but they can’t bodge together even some basic information? Seriously, what do they do themselves? What records do they keep and share? Or are they afraid of putting some basic systems in place themselves?
“Meanwhile, can you give me the deaths by omission of effective treatment from unregulated on-label use of CAM?”
Define unregulated. Do you mean people self-treating using off the shelf products? Are you suggesting that people should be monitored at home? Do they do that for non-prescription meds?
The MoH surveys on CAM in NZ show that most people see alternative practitioners as an adjunct or after they’ve seen a medical doctor.
I’d say the line is somewhere around when you’re selling it as a health remedy equivalent to or safer than going to see an actual doctor
Also, as I’ve said below – the framing of ‘big health’ was deliberate. I never was talking about things like the chilli and ginger cough remedy for symptomatic relief that I made in the kitchen last week.
“The MoH surveys on CAM in NZ show that most people see alternative practitioners as an adjunct or after they’ve seen a medical doctor”
In my view, part of that is drugs don’t work for them as well as and/or as soon they’d hoped, and/or they are fully aware of the risks (and maybe over estimate them) because they are informed of those risks, and change to or add perceived ‘safe’ products in an attempt to improve outcomes and reduce side effects.
Or else they’ve had a wake-up call healthwise and are working through this.
Well given that big pharma takes up billions in tax payers money, and their product kills hundreds of thousands or millions a year in the developed western world, I reckon they should be in a fucked up category of hyper-regulation and hyper-scrutiny which is in a league of their own, thanks.
So just because big pharma is trying to manipulate the system, that makes it okay for bighealth to not be subject to even basic requirements to prove that their supplements and remedies are safe and deliver the advertised and claims?
Did I say it was just OK that alternative health remedies just do whatever?
I am calling for people to keep the problem in context and in scale.
Pharma drugs kill half a million to a million people a year in the USA. Let’s start from that as to where the scale of risk and damage to society sits.
Pharma drugs kill half a million to a million people a year in the USA. Let’s start from that as to where the scale of risk and damage to society sits.
How many in the US use mainstream medicine vs untested alternatives?
How many alternative medicine practitioners even count how many of their patients drop dead within three months of a consultation?
Thanks for making it clear that you have zero good faith in this debate McFlock. Good to see the bigotry too.
The fucked up irony here is that it’s the scienceheads arguing from a place of prejudice, ignorance and idiocy. Happy to demonstrate how any time you can garner even a smidgen of good intentions in teh debate.
It sounded blunt, but it’s pretty much what “mainstream” medicine does: for example perioperative mortality looks at any death within 30 days.
When comparing that level of use and examination (even if seriously flawed), against something that has pretty much no surveillance whatsoever… “half a million” is a meaningless number.
No, I meant what are the figures for physiotherapy of patients that drop dead within 3 months of a consult?
Because I’ve been to a physio a couple of times and then not seen them again so I’m curious how that physio knows I am still alive or not, and if dead what the reporting mechanism is.
ISTR three months was the general analysis line for prescription drug AE, as I said above perioperative mortality goes with 30 days, and I’d be surprised if physiotherapy went as long as that given the likely mechanism of harm (which seems to be the basis for the surveillance periods).
But assuming zero followup in the case of low-risk-of-death treatments (effort expended is related to likely harm avoided), your death would be registered with associated cause. Assuming no coronial connection was made with your physio treatment (i.e. on individual case analysis), the next point to identify the association would be population-level studies cross referencing mortality and treatment data, which happens pretty regularly.
Now, it is plausible that any actual connection between your physio treatment and your death might not be picked up by the above system. Nothing is perfect. This system has evolved over decades from institution-level AE case reviews, and can still be improved.
My point is that people are charging the public for treatments that might not even have proto-level efforts to keep patients safe.
You appear to expect herbal medicine practitioners to work to a higher safety standard than physios. Why is that?
Most of the alternative practitioners I’ve been to who use modalities that potentiall dangerous work within safety and ethical guidelines. They might not be via the state, but then again the mainstream medical treatments have a much higher rate of side effects and adverse reactions that I think state monitoring is warranted.
If you think that there is no way to know if the drug rate is far higher than the herbal medicine rate because there is no reporting, then you’re arguing from the abstract and from a position of relative ignorance. Also the argument seems to be one of pedantry and dogma rather than genuinely wishing to understand what the risks are and how they can be managed. These issues are immediately obvious to people who have actual experience in the filed.
You appear to expect herbal medicine practitioners to work to a higher safety standard than physios. Why is that?
Because herbs are more similar in expected effect to drugs rather than physiotherapy, so could be expected to have a similar envelope for delayed and cumulative effect. If they have any effect at all. Garlic and rosemary might be fine, but what of belladonna or hemlock? What about an ineffective treatment: are the people who failed to treat Steve Jobs still plugging the same advice to other patients with similar conditions?
Most of the alternative practitioners I’ve been to who use modalities that potentiall dangerous work within safety and ethical guidelines. They might not be via the state, but then again the mainstream medical treatments have a much higher rate of side effects and adverse reactions that I think state monitoring is warranted.
“Most”. Roll that word around a bit before moving on.
How do you know that mainstream medicine has a higher rate of side effects? You say they work within guidelines: how are those guidelines established and monitored? The question I keep coming back to, yet nobody seems to answer, is how are adverse events from non-mainstream medicine documented, collated, and analysed to find systemic issues?
If you think that there is no way to know if the drug rate is far higher than the herbal medicine rate because there is no reporting, then you’re arguing from the abstract and from a position of relative ignorance. Also the argument seems to be one of pedantry and dogma rather than genuinely wishing to understand what the risks are and how they can be managed. These issues are immediately obvious to people who have actual experience in the filed.
Of course I’m arguing from ignorance, that’s my entire argument: there’s no information on which to base a decision.
If an alternative healer says their product works and is safe, I have no way of knowing whether they’re right or are just bullshitting me. At least if a doc goes “off label” then I can tell, because my condition ain’t on the label. And even then the pharmacist is likely to catch any particularly gnarly drug combo or quantity.
“From that answer I could take it that you’d be happy for big pharma to put out product with unacknowledged and unmonitored risk, just their own marketing bumpf like big health does.”
A couple of points. One is that big pharma do this already via off-label prescribing. The other is that let’s differentiate between big health (and the connections between that and big pharma and other industrial complexes) and actual alternative practitioners and traditions.
I don’t think that ‘herbal remedies’ should face the same degree of scrutiny that pharmaceuticals do*, and part of the reason is that there are very real differences between a drug and a herb. You guys can make all the snide put downs about natural that you like but there are very good reasons for why penicillin based drugs should be tested and regulated but plants that are effective antibiotics like garlic shouldn’t be. Natural is actually safer if you know what you are doing. Yes, there are plants that are dangerous, but trying to classify plants as drugs is throwing the baby out with the bath water and displays a profound misunderstanding about what drugs are and what herbal remedies are. Much of what I am saying here applies to other ‘natural’ modalities as well.
Besides, the product used in the link Draco provided isn’t a herbal remedy. It’s a supplement made by a profit motivated industry that’s not too different from all the others, and yes it needs a big slap down. Trouble is, if we regulate all herbal products in that way we will lose a huge amount of useful medicine and hand the medicine to the commercial cartels.
What should be happening is stop treating all these things as alike and instead develop appropriate regulation for each thing as appropriate, and where inappropriate don’t regulate.
weka, bighealth has already blurred your wished for separation of “actual alternative practitioners and traditions” from the misinformative marketing practices employed by “big pharma and other industrial complexes”
Bighealth marketers manipulate patients, doctors and alternative practitioners alike when it comes to proof of safety and efficacy.
They also promote their untested ‘health’ and herbal products… often dangerously….as a better or safer alternative to proven mainstream medical therapies with known risk
While I agree with your sentiment that we should “develop appropriate regulation for each thing as appropriate, and where inappropriate don’t regulate,” I think this runs the risk of not requiring bighealth to provide evidence that there are: no adverse reactions and potential side effects of their products and therapies, the maximum safe amount for people with other conditions, the risks of taking or using them in combination with other therapies, or the risk of using them as an alternative to proven medical therapies, etc…
It’s not high trust it’s appropriate risk assessment. However in the absence of you checking out what I meant and being clear about what you mean, we’re just talking useless abstractions.
Tell me though, how would you regulate the use of garlic as a medicine when people can buy it at the supermarket?
For anyone selling it above market value, I’d look closely at their labeling and marketing.
For anyone teaching people how to grow it themselves, I’d probably give them a subsidy, and I’d have the applications audited, in case the fuckers be jumpin’ through that loophole too.
and as I said above, deaths due to pharma meds are orders of magnitude higher,
[citation needed]
It would have to be on a comparative basis such as per 1000 people taking the drug. I suspect that a proper comparison will actually show that it’s the other way around.
todays new earth quake in Christchurch will turn the city into an insurance black zone the risk factor has just went through the roof i cant see insurance companies taking on the risk after todays earth quake national decision to rebuild in geologically unsound area(ie a fucken swamp) has come back and bitten them hard today property in Christchurch is going to zero zero!!!!
Aftershocks of this magnitude have been predicted, so unless the insurance companies weren’t paying attention it won’t come as much of a surprise to them.
We probably should be grateful in a perverse way. The earthquakes in Christchurch are probably what killed ACC privatisation, with the insurance industry tied up with Christchuch and unwilling to take on ACC (apart from the accredited employer scheme).
The colloquial label for a partner, “my other half”, bears this out. It insinuates that you’re not still a whole person when you’re single; just some forlorn entity, desperately looking to be completed. It ignores the fact that you make an infinitely healthier partner if you come to the relationship feeling complete as a person in your own right. So those cards that claim “I was lost till I found you”? Don’t buy them. They perpetuate the idea that self-discovery and definition can only be fulfilled within a relationship, when the opposite is preferable.
Perhaps the reason why our social relations are so stuffed up (domestic violence, suicide, etc) is because we’ve been mistaught about them.
Thanks DTB, it’s important to have a whole self-image whether partnered or not. So many relationship problems come from this idealised fantasy of romance and whatnot. It’s important for every person feel valued and loved, but relying solely on one person to validate your life is too much to ask.
Statistically there are always more single people than partnered at any time, it’s actually the norm for most humans for much of their lives.
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TL;DR: The six newsey things that stood out to me as of 6:46am on Saturday, March 16.Andy Foster has accidentally allowed a Labour/Green amendment to cut road user chargers for plug-in hybrid vehicles, which the Government might accept; NZ HeraldThomas CoughlanSimeon Brown has rejected a plea from Westport ...
What seemed a booming success a couple of years ago has collapsed into fraud convictions.I looked at the crash of FTX (short for ‘Futures Exchange’) in November 2022 to see whether it would impact on the financial system as a whole. Fortunately there was barely a ripple, probably because it ...
Anybody following the situation in Ukraine and Russia would probably have been amused by a recent Tweet on X NATO seems to be putting in an awful lot of effort to influence what is, at least according to them, a sham election in an autocracy.When do the Ukrainians go to ...
TL;DR:Shaun Baker on Wynyard Quarter's transformation. Magdalene Taylor on the problem with smart phones. How private equity are now all over reinsurance. Dylan Cleaver on rugby and CTE. Emily Atkin on ‘Big Meat’ looking like ‘Big Oil’.Bernard’s six-stack of substacks at 6pm on March 15Photo by Jeppe Hove Jensen ...
Buzz from the Beehive Finance Minister Nicola Willis had plenty to say when addressing the Auckland Business Chamber on the economic growth that (she tells us) is flagging more than we thought. But the government intends to put new life into it: We want our country to be a ...
The Transport and Infrastructure Committee has reported back on the Road User Charges (Light Electric RUC Vehicles) Amendment Bill, basicly rubberstamping it. While there was widespread support among submitters for the principle that EV and PHEV drivers should pay their fair share for the roads, they also overwhelmingly disagreed with ...
Peter Dunne writes – This week’s government bailout – the fifth in the last eighteen months – of the financially troubled Ruapehu Alpine Lifts company would have pleased many in the central North Island ski industry. The government’s stated rationale for the $7 million funding was that it ...
See if you can spot the difference. An Iranian born female MP from a progressive party is accused of serial shoplifting. Her name is leaked to the media, which goes into a pack frenzy even before the Police launch an … Continue reading → ...
Ele Ludemann writes – The government is omitting general Treaty references from legislation : The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last Government in a bid to get greater coherence in the public service on Treaty ...
What was that judge thinking?Peter Williams writes – That Golriz Ghahraman and District Court Judge Maria Pecotic were once lawyer colleagues is incontrovertible. There is published evidence that they took at least one case to the Court of Appeal together. There was a report on ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read:Climate Scorpion – the sting is in the tail. Introducing planetary solvency. A paper via the University of Exeter’s Institute and Faculty of Actuaries.Local scoop:Kāinga Ora starts pulling out of its Auckland projects and selling land RNZ ...
Wellington’s massively upzoned District Plan adds the opportunity for tens of thousands of new homes not just in the central city (such as these Webb St new builds) but also close to the CBD and public transport links. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: Wellington gave itself the chance of ...
It’s Friday and we’re halfway through March Madness. Here’s some of the things that caught our attention this week. This Week in Greater Auckland On Monday Matt asked how we can get better event trains and an option for grade separating Morningside Dr. On Tuesday Matt looked into ...
Something you might not know about me is that I’m quite a stubborn person. No, really. I don’t much care for criticism I think’s unfair or that I disagree with. Few of us do I suppose.Back when I was a drinker I’d sometimes respond defensively, even angrily. There are things ...
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The five things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about via The Kākā and elsewhere for paying subscribers in the last week included:PM Christopher Luxon said the reversal of interest deductibility for landlords was done to help renters, who ...
It was not so much the Labour Party but really the Chris Hipkins party yesterday at Labour’s caucus retreat in Martinborough. The former Prime Minister was more or less consistent on wealth tax, which he was at best equivocal about, and social insurance, which he was not willing to revisit. ...
Buzz from the BeehiveThe text reproduced above appears on a page which records all the media statements and speeches posted on the government’s official website by Melissa Lee as Minister of Media and Communications and/or by Jenny Marcroft, her Parliamentary Under-secretary. It can be quickly analysed ...
For forty years, Robert Muldoon has been a dirty word in our politics. His style of government was so repulsive and authoritarian that the backlash to it helped set and entrench our constitutional norms. His pig-headedness over forcing through Think Big eventually gave us the RMA, with its participation and ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Is the new government reducing tax on rental properties to benefit landlords or to cut the cost of rents? That’s the big question this week, after Associate Finance Minister David Seymour announced on Sunday that the Government would be reversing the Labour Government’s removal ...
Saudi Arabia is rarely far from the international spotlight. The war in Gaza has brought new scrutiny to Saudi plans to normalise relations with Israel, while the fifth anniversary of the controversial killing of Jamal Khashoggi was marked shortly before the war began on October 7. And as the home ...
Questions need to be asked on both sides of the worldPeter Williams writes – The NRL Judiciary hands down an eight week suspension to Sydney Roosters forward Spencer Leniu , an Auckland-born Samoan, after he calls Ezra Mam, Sydney-orn but of Aboriginal and Torres Strait ...
Ele Ludemann writes – Contrary to what many headlines and news stories are saying, residential landlords are not getting a tax break. The government is simply restoring to them the tax deductibility of interest they had until the previous government removed it. There is no logical reason ...
I can't remember when it was goodMoments of happiness in bloomMaybe I just misunderstoodAll of the love we left behindWatching our flashbacks intertwineMemories I will never findIn spite of whatever you becomeForget that reckless thing turned onI think our lives have just begunI think our lives have just begunDoes anyone ...
Michael Bassett writes – At first reading, a front-page story in the New Zealand Herald on 13 March was bizarre. A group of severely intellectually limited teenagers, with little understanding of the law, have been pleading to the Justice Select Committee not to pass a bill dealing with ram ...
How much political capital is Christopher Luxon willing to burn through in order to deliver his $2.9 billion gift to landlords? Evidently, Luxon is: (a) unable to cost the policy accurately. As Anna Burns-Francis pointed out to him on Breakfast TV, the original ”rock solid” $2.1 billion cost he was ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read:Jonathon Porritt calling bullshit in his own blog post on mainstream climate science as ‘The New Denialism’.Local scoop:The Wellington City Council’s list of proposed changes to the IHP recommendations to be debated later today was leaked this ...
TL;DR:Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said yesterday tenants should be grateful for the reinstatement of interest deductibility because landlords would pass on their lower tax costs in the form of lower rents. That would be true if landlords were regulated monopolies such as Transpower or Auckland Airport1, but they’re not, ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Tom Toro Tom Toro is a cartoonist and author. He has published over 200 cartoons in The New Yorker since 2010. His cartoons appear in Playboy, the Paris Review, the New York Times, American Bystander, and elsewhere. Related: What 10 EV lovers ...
The business section of the NZ Herald is full of opinion. Among the more opinionated of all is the ex-Minister of Transport, ex-Minister of Railways, ex MP for Auckland Central (1975-93, Labour), Wellington Central (1996-99, ACT, then list-2005), ex-leader of the ACT Party, uncle to actor Antonia, the veritable granddaddy ...
Hi,Just quickly — I’m blown away by the stories you’ve shared with me over the last week since I put out the ‘Gary’ podcast, where I told you about the time my friend’s flatmate killed the neighbour.And you keep telling me stories — in the comments section, and in my ...
The first season of Rings of Power was not awful. It was thoroughly underwhelming, yes, and left a lingering sense of disappointment, but it was more expensive mediocrity than catastrophe. I wrote at length about the series as it came out (see the Review section of the blog, and go ...
Buzz from the Beehive Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden told Auckland Business Chamber members they were the first audience to hear her priorities as a minister in a government committed to cutting red tape and regulations. She brandished her liberalising credentials, saying Flexible labour markets are the ...
Chris Trotter writes – TO UNDERSTAND WHY NEWSHUB FAILED, it is necessary to understand how TVNZ changed. Up until 1989, the state broadcaster had been funded by a broadcasting licence fee, collected from every citizen in possession of a television set, supplemented by a relatively modest (compared ...
Bob Edlin writes – The Māori Party has been busy issuing a mix of warnings and threats as its expresses its opposition to interest deductibility for landlords and the plans of seabed miners. It remains to be seen whether they follow the example of indigenous litigants in Australia, ...
The Government has accepted Labour’s change to the Road User Charge (RUC) discount for hybrid vehicles, meaning there will still be some incentive for people to buy greener vehicles. ...
Kicking the most vulnerable people out of state housing and pushing them towards homelessness will result in a proliferation of poverty and trauma across our most vulnerable communities. ...
Te Pāti Māori co-leader and MP for Waiariki, Rawiri Waititi has penned a letter asking MPs to support his members bill to remove GST from all food. The bill is expected to go through its first reading in parliament this Wednesday. “I’m calling on all political parties to support my ...
This year is about getting real with Kiwis and discussing the tough issues, as the National Government exacerbates inequality and divides New Zealand, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said ...
The Government adding Significant Natural Areas (SNAs) to its already roaring environmental policy bonfire is an assault on the future of wildlife that makes Aotearoa unique. ...
After 12 years of fighting to protect our moana we are finding ourselves back at square one and back at court. Today, the Environmental Protection Agency is sitting in Hawera to reconsider an application from Trans-Tasman Resources to dig up 50 million tonnes of the seabed in South Taranaki. This ...
Minister Shane Jones’ decision to step away from a seabed mining project is evidence of the murky waters surrounding the Government’s fast-track legislation. ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The Coalition Government’s miscalculation saga continues as it has forgotten an eyewatering $90 million gap in its interest deductibility cost figures, say Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds and Revenue Spokesperson Deborah Russell. ...
He Pou a Rangi Climate Change Commission has today released advice that says if the Government doesn’t act now New Zealand is at risk of not meeting its climate goals. ...
The Coalition Government has today confirmed it is abandoning first home buyers who are struggling to get ahead, says Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds. ...
The New Zealand public voted for a change in direction at the 2023 general election and that is exactly what this coalition government has been delivering in its first 100 days. There was an immediate focus on the economy, easing the cost of living, cracking down on law and order ...
The Government has left the health system as an afterthought, announcing half-baked targets at the last minute of their 100-day plan, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
Kiwis are still waiting for their promised cost of living support after 100 days of a National Government that is taking us backwards, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The National Government has spent its first 100 days stopping, cutting and reversing. They have scrapped stuff for stuff for the sake of it, without putting up any solutions of their own – and it’s hardworking New Zealanders who will pay for it. ...
100 days of National taking NZ backwardsThe National Government has spent its first 100 days stopping, cutting and reversing. They have scrapped stuff for stuff for the sake of it, without putting up any solutions of their own – and it’s hardworking New Zealanders who will pay for it. ...
The Government must commit to funding free and healthy school lunches, as thousands of people sign the petition to keep them, education spokesperson Jan Tinetti says. ...
If the Government was serious about moving families into public housing, they would build more houses so there is actually somewhere for people to go. ...
The free and healthy school lunches programme feeds our kids, helps them to learn, and saves families money – but it is at risk under this Government, education spokesperson Jan Tinetti said. ...
The Government’s proposed changes to Firearms Prohibition Orders (FPO) add almost nothing new and are merely an attempt to distract from its plans to loosen gun laws, police spokesperson Ginny Andersen and justice spokesperson Dr Duncan Webb said. ...
The great Victorian era English politician Lord Macauley stood in the British House of Parliament and said, "The gallery in which the reporters sit has become a fourth estate of the realm".He understood and outlined even way back then, the significant role and influence media have in a democracy. ...
The government’s attack on Māori health this week is committing tangata-whenua to a premature death, says Te Pāti Māori. “The government have begun their onslaught on Māori health with the abolishment of the Māori Health Authority and smokefree laws in the same day” said health spokesperson and co-leader, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. ...
"The Government is moving quickly to realise an additional $46 million in tariff savings in the EU market this season for Kiwi exporters,” Minister for Trade and Agriculture, Todd McClay says. Parliament is set, this week, to complete the final legislative processes required to bring the New Zealand – European ...
New Zealand’s social workers are qualified, experienced, and more representative of the communities they serve, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. “I want to acknowledge and applaud New Zealand’s social workers for the hard work they do, providing invaluable support for our most vulnerable. “To coincide with World ...
Cabinet has agreed to a reduced road user charge (RUC) rate for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. Owners of PHEVs will be eligible for a reduced rate of $38 per 1,000km once all light electric vehicles (EVs) move into the RUC system from 1 April. ...
Minister of Agriculture and Trade, Todd McClay, says that today’s opening of Riverland Foods manufacturing plant in Christchurch is a great example of how trade access to overseas markets creates jobs in New Zealand. Speaking at the official opening of this state-of-the-art pet food factory the Minister noted that exports ...
Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Wellington today. “It was a pleasure to host Foreign Minister Wang Yi during his first official visit to New Zealand since 2017. Our discussions were wide-ranging and enabled engagement on many facets of New Zealand’s relationship with China, including trade, ...
Kāinga Ora – Homes & Communities has been instructed to end the Sustaining Tenancies Framework and take stronger measures against persistent antisocial behaviour by tenants, says Housing Minister Chris Bishop. “Earlier today Finance Minister Nicola Willis and I sent an interim Letter of Expectations to the Board of Kāinga Ora. ...
Tēna koutou katoa. Greetings everyone. Thank you to the Auckland Chamber of Commerce and the Honourable Simon Bridges for hosting this address today. I acknowledge the business leaders in this room, the leaders and governors, the employers, the entrepreneurs, the investors, and the wealth creators. The coalition Government shares your ...
Minister Winston Peters completed the final leg of his visit to South and South East Asia in Singapore today, where he focused on enhancing one of New Zealand’s indispensable strategic partnerships. “Singapore is our most important defence partner in South East Asia, our fourth-largest trading partner and a ...
Minister of Internal Affairs and Workplace Relations and Safety, Hon. Brooke van Velden, will travel to the Republic of Korea to represent New Zealand at the Third Summit for Democracy on 18 March. The summit, hosted by the Republic of Korea, was first convened by the United States in 2021, ...
ICNZ Speech 7 March 2024, Auckland Acknowledgements and opening Mōrena, ngā mihi nui. Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Nor Whanganui aho. Good morning, it’s a privilege to be here to open the ICNZ annual conference, thank you to Mark for the Mihi Whakatau My thanks to Tim Grafton for inviting me ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Lead Coordination Minister Judith Collins have expressed their deepest sympathy on the five-year anniversary of the Christchurch terror attacks. “March 15, 2019, was a day when families, communities and the country came together both in sorrow and solidarity,” Mr Luxon says. “Today we pay our respects to the 51 shuhada ...
Speech for Financial Advice NZ Conference 5 March 2024 Acknowledgements and opening Morena, Nga Mihi Nui. Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Nor Whanganui aho. Thanks Nate for your Mihi Whakatau Good morning. It’s a pleasure to formally open your conference this morning. What a lovely day in Wellington, What a great ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters held discussions in Jakarta today about the future of relations between New Zealand and South East Asia’s most populous country. “We are in Jakarta so early in our new government’s term to reflect the huge importance we place on our relationship with Indonesia and South ...
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters has announced that the Foreign Minister of China, Wang Yi, will visit New Zealand next week. “We look forward to re-engaging with Foreign Minister Wang Yi and discussing the full breadth of the bilateral relationship, which is one of New Zealand’s ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has today opened the new Auckland Rail Operations Centre, which will bring together KiwiRail, Auckland Transport, and Auckland One Rail to improve service reliability for Aucklanders. “The recent train disruptions in Auckland have highlighted how important it is KiwiRail and Auckland’s rail agencies work together to ...
The Government is proud to support the 10th edition of Crankworx Rotorua as the Crankworx World Tour returns to Rotorua from 16-24 March 2024, says Minister for Economic Development Melissa Lee. “Over the past 10 years as Crankworx Rotorua has grown, so too have the economic and social benefits that ...
Legislation implementing coalition Government tax commitments and addressing long-standing tax anomalies will be progressed in Parliament next week, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The legislation is contained in an Amendment Paper to the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023–24, Multinational Tax, and Remedial Matters) Bill issued today. “The Amendment Paper represents ...
Associate Environment Minister Andrew Hoggard has today announced that the Government has agreed to suspend the requirement for councils to comply with the Significant Natural Areas (SNA) provisions of the National Policy Statement for Indigenous Biodiversity for three years, while it replaces the Resource Management Act (RMA).“As it stands, SNAs ...
Agriculture Minister Todd McClay has classified the drought conditions in the Marlborough, Tasman, and Nelson districts as a medium-scale adverse event, acknowledging the challenging conditions facing farmers and growers in the district. “Parts of Marlborough, Tasman, and Nelson districts are in the grip of an intense dry spell. I know ...
The Government is helping farmers eradicate the significant impact of facial eczema (FE) in pastoral animals, Agriculture Minister Todd McClay announced. “A $20 million partnership jointly funded by Beef + Lamb NZ, the Government, and the primary sector will save farmers an estimated NZD$332 million per year, and aims to ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has completed a successful visit to India, saying it was an important step in taking the relationship between the two countries to the next level. “We have laid a strong foundation for the Coalition Government’s priority of enhancing New Zealand-India relations to generate significant future benefit for both countries,” says Mr Peters, ...
Cabinet has agreed to provide $7 million to ensure the 2024 ski season can go ahead on the Whakapapa ski field in the central North Island but has told the operator Ruapehu Alpine Lifts it is the last financial support it will receive from taxpayers. Cabinet also agreed to provide ...
Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says the launch of a new mobile breast screening unit in Counties Manukau reinforces the coalition Government’s commitment to drive better cancer services for all New Zealanders. Speaking at the launch of the new mobile clinic, Dr Reti says it’s a great example of taking ...
Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says the launch of a new mobile breast screening unit in Counties Manukau reinforces the coalition Government’s commitment to drive better cancer services for all New Zealanders. Speaking at the launch of the new mobile clinic, Dr Reti says it’s a great example of taking ...
Unlocking economic growth and land for housing are critical elements of the Government’s plan for our transport network, and planned upgrades to State Highway 29 (SH29) near Tauriko will deliver strongly on those priorities, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “The SH29 upgrades near Tauriko will improve safety at the intersections ...
Unlocking economic growth and land for housing are critical elements of the Government’s plan for our transport network, and planned upgrades to State Highway 29 (SH29) near Tauriko will deliver strongly on those priorities, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “The SH29 upgrades near Tauriko will improve safety at the intersections ...
Lower fruit and vegetable prices are welcome news for New Zealanders who have been doing it tough at the supermarket, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. Stats NZ reported today the price of fruit and vegetables has dropped 9.3 percent in the 12 months to February 2024. “Lower fruit and vege ...
Tēnā koutou katoa and greetings to you all. Chair, I am honoured to address the sixty-eighth session of the Commission on the Status of Women. I acknowledge the many crises impacting the rights of women and girls. Heightened global tensions, war, climate related and humanitarian disasters, and price inflation all ...
Tēnā koutou katoa and greetings to you all. Chair, I am honoured to address the 68th session of the Commission on the Status of Women. I acknowledge the many crises impacting the rights of women and girls. Heightened global tensions, war, climate related and humanitarian disasters, and price inflation all ...
The coalition Government is supporting farmers to enhance land management practices by investing $3.3 million in locally led catchment groups, Agriculture Minister Todd McClay announced. “Farmers and growers deliver significant prosperity for New Zealand and it’s vital their ongoing efforts to improve land management practices and water quality are supported,” ...
Good evening everyone and thank you for that lovely introduction. Thank you also to the Honourable Simon Bridges for the invitation to address your members. Since being sworn in, this coalition Government has hit the ground running with our 100-day plan, delivering the changes that New Zealanders expect of us. ...
Recommendations from the Climate Change Commission for New Zealand on the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) auction and unit limit settings for the next five years have been tabled in Parliament, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. “The Commission provides advice on the ETS annually. This is the third time the ...
The coalition Government is beginning its fight to lower building costs and reduce red tape by exempting minor building work from paying the building levy, says Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk. “Currently, any building project worth $20,444 including GST or more is subject to the building levy which is ...
Proposed changes to tax legislation to prevent the over-taxation of low-earning trusts are welcome, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The changes have been recommended by Parliament’s Finance and Expenditure Committee following consideration of submissions on the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023–24, Multinational Tax, and Remedial Matters) Bill. “One of the ...
Assalaamu alaikum. السَّلَام عليكم In light of the holy month of Ramadan, I want to extend my warmest wishes to our Muslim community in New Zealand. Ramadan is a time for spiritual reflection, renewed devotion, perseverance, generosity, and forgiveness. It’s a time to strengthen our bonds and appreciate the diversity ...
Former Transport Minister and CEO of the Auckland Business Chamber Hon Simon Bridges has been appointed as the new Board Chair of the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) for a three-year term, Transport Minister Simeon Brown announced today. “Simon brings extensive experience and knowledge in transport policy and governance to the role. He will ...
Good morning all, it is a pleasure to be here as Minister of Science, Innovation and Technology. It is fantastic to see how connected and collaborative the life science and biotechnology industry is here in New Zealand. I would like to thank BioTechNZ and NZTech for the invitation to address ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says he is looking forward to the day when three key water projects in Northland are up and running, unlocking the full potential of land in the region. Mr Jones attended a community event at the site of the Otawere reservoir near Kerikeri on Friday. ...
Associate Finance Minister David Seymour has today announced that the Government has agreed to restore deductibility for mortgage interest on residential investment properties. “Help is on the way for landlords and renters alike. The Government’s restoration of interest deductibility will ease pressure on rents and simplify the tax code,” says ...
Sport and Recreation Minister Chris Bishop will travel to Switzerland today to attend an Executive Committee meeting and Symposium of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). Mr Bishop will then travel on to London where he will attend a series of meetings in his capacity as Infrastructure Minister. “New Zealanders believe ...
Pacific Media Watch Ismail al-Ghoul, an Al Jazeera Arabic correspondent who was held for 12 hours at Gaza’s al-Shifa hospital, says Israeli forces rounded up Palestinian journalists at the facility and made them kneel on the ground for hours, while naked and blindfolded. “The occupation forces handcuffed and blindfolded us ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tony Wood, Program Director, Energy, Grattan Institute chinasong, Shutterstock Electricity customers in four Australian states can breathe a sigh of relief. After two years in a row of 20% price increases, power prices have finally stabilised. In many places they’re ...
Chumbawamba have reportedly issued the deputy PM a cease-and-desist notice after he used their song 'Tubthumping' before his state of the nation speech. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Deborah Lupton, SHARP Professor, Vitalities Lab, Centre for Social Research in Health and Social Policy Centre, and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society, UNSW Sydney kitzcorner/Shutterstock The assertion from Queensland’s chief health officer John Gerrard that ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Martin, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University Shutterstock Why are musicians so keen to get played on the radio? It can’t be because of the money. In Australia they are paid at rates so low they ...
"Farmers make a point not to tell our urban cousins how to live, yet Chlöe from central Auckland is hell-bent on having her say about farmers," says ACT Rural Communities spokesman Mark Cameron. “On her first day in the House as Green ...
Analysis by Dr Bryce Edwards – Democracy Project (https://democracyproject.nz)Political scientist, Dr Bryce Edwards. It’s been a tumultuous time in politics in recent months, as the new National-led Government has driven through its “First 100 Day programme”. During this period there’s been a handful of opinion polls, which overall just ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tim Curran, Associate Professor of Ecology, Lincoln University, New Zealand Getty Images/Gerald Corsi In the latest move to reform environmental laws in New Zealand, the coalition government has introduced a bill to fast-track consenting processes for projects deemed to ...
Uber has argued it does not have as much control over drivers as the unions suggest, and wants a judgment ruling that drivers are employees and not contractors set aside and sent back to the Employment Court. The 2022 ruling followed a three-week hearing in which four drivers sought to ...
What can and can’t be purchased by disabled people or their carers has been slashed in an effort by the Ministry of Disabled People Whaikaha to save money. The purchasing guidelines, a set of rules that sets out what can be purchased using the various streams of Government disability funding, ...
The Treasury has published today a new Analytical Note by Tod Wright and Hien Nguyen, Fiscal incidence in New Zealand: The effects of taxes and benefits on household incomes in tax year 2018/19 . Analyses of the distributional impact of taxation and government ...
The Treasury has published today a new Analytical Note by Cory Davis, Boston Hart and Benjamin Stubbing, Household cost-of-living impacts from the Emissions Trading Scheme and using transfers to mitigate regressive outcomes . This Analytical Note ...
A coalition of public transport and climate organisations, united as ‘Transport for All’, is actively opposing the government’s transport proposals. The draft Government Policy Statement (GPS) includes plans for higher fares for public transport, ...
Greater Wellington is inviting feedback on proposed changes to its Revenue and Financing Policy. The Revenue and Financing Policy covers the Council’s various sources of funding, and how the cost of services is shared across the region. This includes ...
Labour has conceded it could have done more to deal with disruptive state housing tenants while in government but says the current coalition is going too far. ...
The band has asked their record label to issue a cease and desist to stop the NZ First leader using their 1997 hit to support his ‘misguided political views’. “I get knocked down, but I get up again,” blared through the speakers on Sunday as Winston Peters took the stage ...
By Lydia Lewis, RNZ Pacific journalist Food rationing is underway in remote areas in Papua New Guinea’s Highlands following torrential rain and flash flooding. More than 20 people have been reported dead in Chimbu Province. In nearby Enga Province, the centre of last month’s massacre, a 15-year-old boy has been ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Hughes, Lecturer, Research School of Management, Australian National University After months of debate and intrigue, the AFL’s 19th and newest team, the Tasmania Devils, finally launched its jumper, logo and colours in Devonport this week. The Devils will wear green, ...
Brannavan Gnanalingam reviews the debut novel by Saraid de Silva.One of the most baffling things for children who move to a new country is what their parents’ (or grandparents’) lives were like prior to moving – for kids in particular, they’re too busy trying to fit in in their ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Gaunson, Associate Professor in Cinema Studies, RMIT University Narelle Portanier/Binge “If you don’t know who your mob are, you don’t know who you are,” Detective Andrea “Andie” Whitford (played by Leah Purcell) is told early into the new crime ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elise Klein, Associate professor, Australian National University It’s commonly accepted that women do the vast majority of caregiving in Australian society. But less appreciated is that Indigenous women do larger amounts of unpaid care than any other group. Working with the Aboriginal ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne Joe Biden and Donald Trump have both secured their parties’ nominations for the November 5 United States general election by winning a ...
Comment: There has been a striking contrast in trans-Tasman interest about Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi’s visit to New Zealand and Australia. While the Australian press has been full of articles about the visit – including his curious decision to meet with former prime minister and China booster Paul Keating ...
After years of pressuring banks and other institutions to stop investing in fossil fuels, climate campaigners are making some progress. So how does divestment work?For years, climate activists have been pushing banks and other big institutions to divest from fossil fuels. New research from climate advocacy group 350 Aotearoa ...
For Boba, Ethan and Ashley, K-pop is a place to belong, a way to express themselves, and a bridge to connect with others. The three young Polynesians are part of a K-pop fan community in Tāmaki Makaurau. It’s one of many that have sprung up worldwide as K-pop has gone ...
For Boba, Ethan and Ashley, K-pop is a place to belong, a way to express themselves, and a bridge to connect with others. This one-off documentary presents three intimate portraits of young Polynesians who are pulled into a Korean cultural phenomenon. K-POLYS is directed by Litia Tuiburelevu, Produced by Hex ...
There’s ample evidence demonstrating free school lunch programmes provide wide benefits across schools, households and communities according to public health researchers. ACT Minister David Seymour wants to reduce the spending on Aotearoa New Zealand’s ...
By Wata Shaw in Suva Fiji is facing an exodus of Fijians as many are leaving for overseas seeking employment and education and others are migrating, says Opposition MP Viliame Naupoto. Speaking in Parliament, he said: “His Excellency’s speech (Ratu Wiliame Katonivere) comes after a little over one year of ...
The Taxpayers’ Union is welcoming comments from Christopher Luxon this morning recommitting to ‘no new taxes’ as part of Budget 2024. “Mr Luxon’s refusal at the Post-Cabinet press conference yesterday to repeat the ‘no new taxes’ promise ...
SAFE is urgently calling on the Environment Committee to reject the Government’s Fast-Track Approvals Bill, and is urging New Zealanders to rally behind the call. The proposed Bill, currently under consideration with the Environment select committee, ...
Teammates who spend all their time picking fights with spectators are only helpful for the other team, writes Madeleine Chapman. Anyone who has ever played a team sport competitively, particularly as a child and particularly, for some reason, basketball, will know that there’s a lot of politics involved. While there ...
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‘
r0b’s not available to put up the open mike for a while so I thought I would step up and put this here. I don’t have “Notices and Features” posting rights just yet so, please, ignore that and, no doubt, someone with greater abilities will fix it up later on.
[Thanks BLiP. Fixed – MS]
I wrote to Peter Dunne about his apparently denying Helen Kelly her medical cannabis. I’ll copy his reply below – but can someone on-send this to Helen K please – I don’t have her email address. It sounds like there’s been some sort of mis-communication somewhere along the line. This is from Peter Dunne :
Jenny,
The facts in this instance are as follows.
The day after the application was received the Ministry of Health advised me it contained insufficient information for it to be able to assess it and make a recommendation to me.
Rather than decline the application at that point, I directed the Ministry on 29 January to go back to the applying oncologist to obtain the information it needed. The Ministry emailed him that evening, subsequently couriered its letter to him and made several attempts to contact him over the following weeks. This was all to no avail with no response at all from the oncologist until the middle of this week, when he undertook to discuss the matters the Ministry had raised further with his patient and come back to the Ministry after that. Nothing has been heard from him since.
The application has therefore been deferred, not declined, by the Ministry until it receives the information it had requested. It will then make a recommendation to me, and a decision will be made.
The delay in resolving this case, rests, for whatever reason, with the oncologist’s ongoing lack of response, not the Ministry of Health or me.
Hon Peter Dunne
Minister of Internal Affairs
Associate Minister of Health
Associate Minister of Conservation
MP for Ohariu
Leader, UnitedFuture
W: http://www.unitedfuture.org.nz
T: PeterDunneMP
From: Jenny Kirk
Sent: Saturday, 13 February 2016 9:20:42 p.m.
To: Hon Peter Dunne
Subject: Cannabis as a medical aide
He could simply just say yes. To weasel himself out that her doctors did not provide enough information? Really, Doctor says she is dying of cancer. More information is needed? Maybe he needs to know if her Pain level 10 is equivalent to his Pain level 10? Maybe he wants more copies of the application? A first born son?
The whole process in this day and age is a sham. Especially considering that we have this excrement of a human being to blame for legal highs.
The delay in resolving this case rests with the government for insisting the ministry follow such a byzantine and complex procedure to authorise what is a drug that is safely used for medicinal purposes in other jurisdictions (notably the US, whom we generally follow when it comes to drug testing and safety standards).
Well done Jenny. Hope it ends well- very soon.
This is why patients should be given copies of all correspondence relating to their health as a matter of course, at the time that other parties receive it, unless they choose to opt out via informed consent.
Russell Brown has a post up about this on PA…and a copy of the letter Helen received from the Misery of Health.
http://publicaddress.net/hardnews/helen-kellys-letter/
Ah ! that confirms what I was thinking, Rosemary, after getting Dunne’s reply. Just a whole lot of beaurocratic delays and bungling – is it deliberate, or is it sheer incompetence or – a third option, are they (Dunne and his Ministry) all scared of the rednecks who object to decriminalising cannabis generally ? wouldn’t mind betting its the third option !
No, based on his past form, its more likely just the usual Dunne pomposity. How on earth he has survived so long in parliament and government beats me.
This is getting interesting …..
http://www.thenation.com/article/hillary-clinton-does-not-deserve-black-peoples-votes/
RACISM AND DISCRIMINATIONHILLARY CLINTONFEATUREFEBRUARY 29, 2016 ISSUE
Why Hillary Clinton Doesn’t Deserve the Black Vote
From the crime bill to welfare reform, policies Bill Clinton enacted—and Hillary Clinton supported—decimated black America.
By Michelle AlexanderFEBRUARY 10, 2016
Hillary and Bill Clinton in 1992. (Reuters Pictures)
Hillary Clinton loves black people.
And black people love Hillary—or so it seems.
Black politicians have lined up in droves to endorse her, eager to prove their loyalty to the Clintons in the hopes that their faithfulness will be remembered and rewarded.
Black pastors are opening their church doors, and the Clintons are making themselves comfortably at home once again, engaging effortlessly in all the usual rituals associated with “courting the black vote,” a pursuit that typically begins and ends with Democratic politicians making black people feel liked and taken seriously.
Doing something concrete to improve the conditions under which most black people live is generally not required.
Hillary is looking to gain momentum on the campaign trail as the primaries move out of Iowa and New Hampshire and into states like South Carolina, where large pockets of black voters can be found.
According to some polls, she leads Bernie Sanders by as much as 60 percent among African Americans. It seems that we—black people—are her winning card, one that Hillary is eager to play.
And it seems we’re eager to get played. Again.
…..
__________________________________
Penny Bright
2016 Auckland Mayoral candidate.
And it’s that community which Sanders’ magic wand of free US tertiary education and free US public healthcare will benefit the most. His general answer to questions on them is “Why can’t we just imagine that ………(insert anything you like)?”
If Hilary Clinton put up such proposals (or on any other policy area) without very detailed costings and achievement methodology she would get laughed out of town.
There’s as much likelihood of Sanders’ proposals occurring as there is a ginormous impenetrable wall being built from the Pacific to the Atlantic to keep the Mexicans out.
except they have been costed….
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/saturday/audio/201789146/gerald-friedman-bernie,-hillary,-and-money
“According to some polls, she leads Bernie Sanders by as much as 60 percent among African Americans.”
And according to other (more recent) polls, not so much:
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/2/12/1484385/-Bernie-Surges-12-Clinton-Falls-11-in-Reuters-LV-Tracking-Poll-Sanders-Gains-13-With-Af-Ams
Following that link over to reuters we can see a gap in polling of blacks between February 3rd and 9th. During that period Sanders vote jumped 10%, mainly from O’Malley and a drop in “wouldn’t vote” (from 9% to 3%). Since then Sanders has been gaining at the expense of Clinton.
http://polling.reuters.com/#poll/TR131/filters/SC_RACE:2
Interestingly the white “wouldn’t vote” is much higher, but has been reducing in a manner that seems to favour Sanders. He was behind in this demographic until late January when he started pulling ahead. On January 21st, They were tied on 35% with “wouldn’t vote” at 27% (with a high of 29% on the 23rd). At the last poll on Feb 12th, Sanders leads the white vote 43 to 34% with a “wouldn’t vote” of 23% (low of 18% on the 7th).
http://polling.reuters.com/#poll/TR131/filters/SC_RACE:1
The black response rate is generally under 15% of total, the white above 70% (each poll seems to aim for 1000 respondents, with some variation).
A bit off topic, but following the discussion of supercandidates on yesterday’s OM; this is an interesting piece by Nate Silver. I would have put it on the other thread but I keep getting a red flag on the tab and a blank screen when I try to open it (which has been happening for different pages for the last few days but eventually clears up):
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/superdelegates-might-not-save-hillary-clinton/
Sorry, my information yesterday about winner-take-all states was out of date. Apparently now the Democratic primaries for all states have proportional allotment of delegates according to rules set by the national Democratic Party (plus superdelegates). Which makes it a bit harder for Bernie than I had thought yesterday.
But the Republicans still have some winner-take-all states, the national Republican Party allows the states to set their own rules.
Anyone else going to Auckland’s Big Gay Out today?
Yes,
We always go. We are GABA members so enjoy the GABA tent. Except for the visit from FJK. We go somewhere else until he and his slimy retinue have departed.
Nah, just yell at him for being a traitor to New Zealand until he leaves or the GABA people turn on you and show their true blue colours.
Surely the attendees will be able to scrounge up a few dildos to throw at him?
lol…..can see the headline now….”PM goes down under barrage of dildos”
take two….”PM goes down in a deluge of dildos”….has a nicer ring to it
i think he would prefer ponytails.
to quote Mick and Keith….”you can’t always get what you want……”
bwhahahahahahahahah
And miss out on the chance to boo him like last year?
We do the “Boo” thing from the crowd. Agreed that GABA has a high Tory ratio, but there are some good progressive people there as well.
Why don’t we share the love today….?
Come to New Zealand bringing skills we need, win awards and successfully bid for research funding…BUT…when Immigration New Zealand finds out you have an autistic son…it’s the big F-off.
“An award-winning Auckland University mathematics professor will leave the country after his residency application was rejected because of his stepson’s autism.
Professor Dimitri Leemans moved to New Zealand from Belgium in August 2011 with his wife, Francoise Duperoux, their 5-year-old daughter, Margaux, and his stepson, 13-year-old Peter Gourle, after winning a job at Auckland University.
He was the recipient of the 2014 New Zealand Mathematical Society Research Award and a Marsden grant of $580,000 for his work in mathematics. In a letter of support, Auckland University said it and the country would be disadvantaged without him.”
This family will not appeal the decision because…
“”Once I saw that Immigration New Zealand had decided it is above the UN convention of human rights, it is difficult for me to decide to raise my children here. For me the New Zealand story ends.””
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11589222
We only want perfect people living in our perfect country?
Yeah, nah.
Look, he got it wrong really. Instead of coming to NZ with a Job and a living in hand, he should have just bought a property in Auckland and bingo presto, he would be an Investor with a Residence permit.
and millsy…..hah!
He’s not Chinese.
Thanks Rosemary for that, I can’t blame the Professor wanting to leave NZ with Immigration’s decision. We have zilch compassion for anyone here who doesn’t measure up to cost ratios. The obviously needed Maths academic – when there is a serious lack of qualified Maths and Science teachers in our secondary schools – saying that he didn’t want to stay here if that was the attitude of this country says it all. I have just been listening to a debate on RNZ about the cost of the new drugs for Melanoma – costs again, you can’t blame PHARMAC if their costs have not been increased for years, back again to this Government – we will end up like the States with a two tier system, one for the 1% and the other for the rest. What a legacy for future generations. Sickening.
Yes, yes and yes….BUT…it is not entirely down to costs.
Another time I might comment with (appropriate links) on how many $$$ the government has saved by budgeting for happy clappy disability programs through both MOH and MOE that have recorded underspends because the programs were designed to be unworkable.
No, no, no.
This is about successive New Zealand governments choosing to deny disabled New Zealanders equal rights under the law, under the NZBORA, under the UNCORPD and as this guy says, the UN Convention for Human Rights.
New Zealand is a disability hostile environment.
(we also have a two tier system for disability supports…ACC…lucky, lucky bastards and MOH:DSS. ACC are the “born normal” but tragedy struck and here’s your compo…and they do alright thank you very much. MOH:DSS are mostly those born with disabilities…(that escaped the almost mandatory terminations.) and are basically treated like shit.
Is this really the New Zealand we want?
Come on… those political parties that aspire to the government benches….what are YOU going to do about the government mandated hate of non ACC disabled in New Zealand?
That would probably explain our poor mental health services. The government just assumes that everybody’s perfect and doesn’t need help.
Draco
Their just shifting the costs (mental health and all the other policies they don’t subscribe to) to the next Govt that will take over.
Remember in 2000 Labour reinstated the ART,s funding after the nats had cut it completely, in the following years there was a proliferation of new bands and artists, all of which contributed to the economy successfully through the music industry
https://books.google.com.au/books?id=P07XFnyk16MC&pg=PA228&lpg=PA228&dq=NZ+Labour+renews+art%27s+funding&source=bl&ots=kEFhjSPavu&sig=ZVXAh-i48yua2FjKjQ1zaEOd5iQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjMg876oPbKAhWBO5QKHfutBxUQ6AEINjAF#v=onepage&q=NZ%20Labour%20renews%20art's%20funding&f=false
No, even under Labour our mental health services have sucked. In fact, one of the articles I posted in the last few days points out that it was the 4th Labour government that started the decline that we’ve seen over the last few decades and it wasn’t great before then.
Draco
That fourth Labour govt ended up being the worst Labour govt in history, but you can’t really call that govt a Labour one after being hijacked by Prebble and Douglas, the National Govt won the 1990 election by the largest majority of any govt in NZ history, and that wasn’t because they wanted a Nat govt, Labour was voted out of govt, not National being voted in.
I was living overseas when this govt reigned, had been for 10 years and in those days we weren’t blessed with the internet for keeping in touch, but I do remember seeing on tv in 1987 (the stock market crash), the demonstrations and anger against the govt, especially the sheep farmers who were losing their farms after the subsidies were removed.
That era was an unusual time, Muldoon, the stock market crash, springbok demonstrations, Rogernomics, nuclear free bans, rainbow warrior, intro of GST and increase of gst…..
I think Hannah Arendt argued that Human Rights are gazumped by Civil Rights and Sovereignty trumps all. When people’s freedoms and Civic Liberties are thwarted their only resort is to fall back onto Human Rights with uncertain outcome because it is not a fundamental inalienable right!
Sovereignty is ‘tradeable’ as longs as it is for the ‘common good’. This is where the semantics and political rhetoric enter as we know too well from recent developments.
At least Professor Dimitri Leemans and his family haven’t lost everything, except a ‘dream’ perhaps, and can go back to Belgium and readjust their lives. I wish them well.
INZ had no discretion in this decision at all – any decisions about being above human rights treaties were made by the government when they signed off on the Operations Manual.
“INZ had no discretion in this decision at all…”
Yes…they merely reflect the government’s anti-disabled culture.
(although…there have been a few rather interesting exceptions…)
Agreed, and I look forward to seeing Labour change it.
What an up side down world we live in, the Germans have a “welcome policy” for all and sundry and New Zealand is denying this disabled child to come.
+1
Yup. I walk in with fawning embarrassment every time I go order my meds from the health system here (even though our taxes cover it), because I know that there won’t be an Austrian with a similar disability-forming disease allowed to have residency in NZ.
OK – lets not buy the MSM reporting on this
with such an application there are two steps
step 1 is a box ticking black/white exercise where the staff have zero discretion – you either meet the policy or you dont
step 2 is where you appeal the first step, and the staff who hear the appeal have discretion
the issue isnt that we denied him entry – its that he doesnt understand the process or doesnt want to follow it
he has every right and ability to put his case and ask for discretion – there is absolutely nothing stopping him following the process and having his case heard by people who can bend the rules for him
I smell the B.S dripping from you framu.
Nice attempt at a deflection, but more dishonest spin on your part.
Typical of Tory loving scum on this site of late.
oh shut up adam – the only thing your smelling is you shooting yourself in the foot
anyone whos been on TS long enough knows im no stinking tory
and if you have a problem with simple facts about process take it up with INZ
the point im making is that the reporting of the story is shit and creates a false impression of what the actual process is
the media have an appalling track record on immigration stories – this is yet another one
What are / have any of the other 2016 Auckland Mayoral candidates done about Auckland Council Controlled Organisations (CCOs) – which, in my considered opinion, have been the mechanism for the effective corporate takeover of the Auckland region, via the forced amalgamation of the Auckland ‘Supercity’ (for the 1%)?
FYI – I received this email on Friday 13 February 2016, and have been asked to provide evidence to the Local Government and Environment Select Committee by 29 February 2016:
“The Local Government and Environment Committee considered your petition requesting that the House conduct an urgent inquiry into the cost-effectiveness, transparency, and democratic accountability to Auckland Council and the majority of Auckland citizens and ratepayers, of all Auckland Council Controlled Organisations (CCOs).
The Committee has decided to consider the petition in conjunction with the Controller and Auditor-General’s Report on the Governance and accountability of council-controlled organisations.
…”
________________________________________
What I have learned is – never underestimate the potential effectiveness of a Parliamentary petition ….
(Helped to stop the rort of Metrowater ‘charitable payments’ – where (former) Auckland City Council got their ‘commercialised’ water and wastewater services company to put up their prices – then took profits via ‘charitable payments’ to subsidise rates.
Also helped to stop the proposed Wellington ‘Supercity’ ….)
Activists – ‘get things done’.
Penny Bright
2016 Auckland Mayoral candidate.
Audrey Young writes in The Herald about Gerry as Minister of Defence.
Apart from a whole lot of other tripe she says :-
Gerry Brownlee wanted it in 2011 but he was too overburdened with his earthquake recovery workload and Jonathan Coleman, a longtime John Key favourite, got it instead.
Brownlee asked for it again in 2014 and such is his standing for his work in Christchurch that he got his wish.
Brownlee is not easily fobbed off with an incomplete briefing or half the picture. He is not the thick woodwork teacher Labour invented. He may look like a blunt instrument but he is acutely sharp.
Not The Thick Woodwork Teacher? Looks like a Blunt Instrument?
He certainly is the epitome of a GOP (Grossly Overweight Person)
however, who squeezes through security doors at ChCh airport and gets away with it.
Ask the Cantabrians if they think the same as Audrey about his standing for his work in Christchurch.
The article is at http://tinyurl.com/hukfs52
Youngs columns should carry an advertising tag, she’s such a blatant shill I know a few Tories that Shake their head at her fawning sycophantic angles.
METOPROLOL IN SHORT SUPPLY
I posted on 13th Open Mike about this supply situation. Alwyn & CV have chosen to use it as a discussion about the merits or otherwise of Pharmac which is their choice but is an example of how things can get well off track on this site, sometimes by trolls taking the opportunity
to drip their venom and other times just the way things happen.
One article uses another name for the same drug, so there is no confusion I also posted this as a reply on the 13th and here it is again today.
So there is no confusion medically , metoprolol is the generic name for this medicine also known as Beta Blockers.
Here is the complete list of names used:-
Brand Names: Lopressor, Metoprolol Succinate ER, Metoprolol Tartrate, Toprol-XL
Generic Name: metoprolol (Pronunciation: me TOE pro lol)
CV & Alwyn are entitled to have their little political discussion about Pharmac but I was simply trying to bring this shortage situation to the attention of TS readers.
Thanks John. Let’s hope the discussion under your comment here can stay on topic.
I posted my comment about the article in the paper because you didn’t seem to think that there had been any official notification or explanation of what was going on.
It was intended merely to point you to a place in the MSM where your interest could be answered. I take it you weren’t interested.
I only added to that because there was quite a lot in the story other than just metoprolol.
As usual debate continues on other things triggered by a post. Given it was on “Open Mike” it is of course quite ridiculous to say that something is “off the track or off topic”
Huge US supreme Court news: Scalia has passed away.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/antonin-scalia-dead_us_56bfa5f7e4b0b40245c6f0d9
For those unaware of the significance, Scalia was a reliable hard-hard-right vote on the Supreme Court.
The balance of power has just changed on a wide range of issues, from Obama’s attempt to limit CO2 emissions from power station, to voter ID laws which effectively disenfranchise minorities and poor people, corporate money influence in politics, abortion rights, science education, religious freedom for non-mainstream religions, privacy, separation of church and state…you name it. Any issue of importance to anyone concerned about social justice, progressives, the environment, Scalia would be found on the wrong side of it.
I don’t know how to say this without ghoulishly appearing to celebrate someone’s death, but the future of the planet suddenly looks a bit more hopeful.
I must confess to a certain instinctive “yay” feeling before I recovered myself.
Quite a political gift to Obama.
Has a good chance of tilting his carbon-emissions policies into enactment.
Among other things.
Assuming Obama gets to choose the replacement. It might not get done till the next term. Crikey, imagine the kind of clown President Trump would be pushing for.
It voids Scalia’s initial judgements and locks the court 4-4.
This means decisions default to the status quo.
Overall empowering for Obama.
IN particular has the chance of reversing that egregious initial judgement on union activity for public sector unions.
What Trump would push for is a lot less scary than what any of the other Republicans would push for.
The leaders of the Senate have already vowed to block any Obama nomination “so the next president who reflects the will of the people” gets to choose the replacement. Hoping it’s going to be a Republican, but taking the risk it will be a Bernie pick that gets approved by a Democratic senate.
Of particular importance to the labour movement is an upcoming case against public-sector unions, about whether non-union employees that benefited from union-led negotiations had to help fund the unions. With Scalia, the unions looked likely to lose 5-4 and a nasty legal precedent set. Without Scalia, it’s likely to be a 4-4 tie, which means the lower court decision stands (which was favourable to unions IIRC) and no precedent is set.
The bigots will jump on board BUT below is why private ownership is wrong. We MUST protect our country from capitalist accumulators without and within and not care about their desire for their diversified portfolios.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11441306
Entirely correct marty mars….
The choice is we either accumulate owner-occupiers or we accumulate absentee landlords
talk about a f&%king no-brainer
People are dumb as dog shit – they need to wake up. A foreign mate always spouts on to me how we kiwis are really quite stupid in the way we refuse to think decently about these big and very important questions. “yeah, nah, everything will be alright.. blah blah..”….. My mate says “they won’t f&%king be right mate, they wont be right…”
wake up New Zealand, wake up ya lazy dopey dog shit brains
yep, been saying it for a few years now. It won’t be fucking right mate …insert what ever reason you could find.
People are dumb as dog shit ….we kiwis are really quite stupid …. blah blah..”….. My mate says… ya lazy dopey dog shit brains
If only ‘The People’ had your superior intelligence VTO!
Agreed. If only ‘The People’ had vto’s superior intelligence. In fact if only you had his s.i. too but that is expecting too much.
I don’t see it as an insult to have my intelligence compared to ‘the people’ Anne.
Unlike superior beings like yourself and VTO.
Two more lefties who style themselves as ‘peoples champions’, while at the same time sneering at ‘the peoples’ stupidity….
Let’s say you’ve made your case, and “sneering”* at stupidity is a purely left-wing trait. What do righties sneer at?
Ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, income status, recent bereavement, disability, human rights, the rule of law.
*in fact, vto and Anne are lamenting stupidity, but hey…
woooo…. touched a wee nerve there…….
people, as a group, at times are most definitely dumb as dog shit.
they have voted in h1tler
they voted in Muldoon several times
they now vote in Key
they cut down all the kauri
they slaughter all the whales
they shit in the water
dumb as dog shit
And also, mr appropriately named lost sheep…. to the actual point….
would you rather we accumulate foreign absentee landlords?
or local owner-occupiers?
It’s not that they desire diversified portfolios but that they desire to live expansively upon the work of everyone else. Capitalists are the biggest bludgers around.
Cuba libre!
Tens of thousands of kiwis were prepared to crowd-fund to buy half a hectare of sand in the middle of nowhere last week, and apparently we all thought that was great.
All of the properties you list were for sale.
If you want one, form the capital and buy one.
way to miss the point – A+
No your point was clear as day. But it’s increasingly just wrong.
Foreign investment is simply not the evil you’re making it to be. The primary thing propping up the New Zealand real estate market – both urban and rural – is foreign capital. Not local capital.
“We MUST protect our country from capitalist accumulators without and within”
That is my point. If things are for sale someone will buy them, if you don’t want someone to buy them then don’t make them available for sale. I don’t want them (lots of things) available for sale – it has got us into a worldwide mess and will only make things worse. If that is wrong to you then so be it – you think I’m wrong.
Only a very few families in New Zealand choose not to sell, and to gradually accrete capital generation after generation. They are precious and rare. Trouble with those families is that they are so conservative, and so independent, they often need no interaction with the state whosoever.
Ad, we absolutely have to distinguish between foreign investment in NZ which builds up NZ technology, skills, capabilities and businesses, and foreign investment in NZ which is nothing more than glorified asset stripping.
Selling off our natural resources, existing assets and successful businesses to foreign buyers falls into that latter category: asset stripping.
Yup, fully agree with FDI that builds up New Zealand as you say.
If Marty had taken just one example and interrogated where either asset stripping or low value-add was occurring, I’d have had no problem.
what you are talking about and what I am talking about are different – I am not having your conversation with you. I don’t want to have the conversation you want to have.
I am talking about capitalism and the greedy little hands trying to accumulate – here and there. the greedy little hands that are not helping this world instead they are the ones that have endangered the world and continue to do so.
Then put up a proper post and defend it.
Just a list of foreigners you hate, with a rant, doesn’t define any argument at all.
get fucked – the days when sock-puppets like you get to tell me what to do are over. But to help your conformist mind
– I don’t hate foreigners or immigrants
Your continued abuse of me by saying I do disturbs me and offends me – you know fucken nothing of my views even though I have posted them for years on here – you, a johnny come lately, spew insults at me based on your own fucked up defensive mode.
guess what ad-dy I don’t forgive and I don’t forget
capitalist, ignorant, abusive, conformist, right-wing people like you are the problem
The problem is ad that its not a level playing field, I’m all for globalization and a world with out borders but how do we transition theire with out enslaving all those who have no money?
The only people who benefit from the “propping up of the NZ real estate market” are the comfortable and wealthy property owning classes who love to see their property portfolio value climb and climb.
For ordinary NZers struggling to afford a decent home and who don’t treat their house as a financial asset, its a shitty situation.
TL/DR this foreign investment adjudicates against the bottom 80% of NZers and for the top 20%. And especially the top 1%.
Yes, it definitely helps the 60%+ of people who own their own home. That’s quite a lot of ordinary New Zealanders.
I definitely agree that it’s much harder for first home buyers. And I agree that is a real problem.
No it doesn’t. It doesn’t help most of them at all, that is.
The mistake here is that you have not separated out those Kiwis who are simple one home owners vs those Kiwis who have property portfolios on top of their own residence.
It does the Auckland single home owner no good if their house is rocketing upwards in value because if they sell it, they then have to buy right back into the same market.
It’s a zero sum game for those who only have their own property as a home.
But for the Auckland property investor who is trading in houses, of course, they then get even richer off unearned income of capital gains. They laugh all the way to the bank.
This is foreign money flows creating the ‘two NZs’ that Labour was complaining about.
Investors or one-house owner regardless, and wherever they are in New Zealand, it is still excellent because it gives them and their families real choices when they had none. All they have to do is wait until they are close to retirement, and sell. After that, they re-determine their lives with the choice that cash provides.
And before you go there, I would agree New Zealand is hopelessly overweighted to property, and the Reserve Bank has been shouting about the massive risks of this to our entire economic system for over a decade now. But that’s a different point.
The only way this kind of cashing up helps an Aucklander is if they sell up and move away from the networks of friends and family that they have built up over decades and move somewhere substantially cheaper in the regions.
Then, after that point, they can never move back to Auckland again because the market will have moved on without them.
And this is supposed to be the “benefit”?
And what about the rest of NZ who don’t live in one of these property price bubble centres, and who will never ever be able to afford to buy in Auckland, Wellington or Christchurch if they try and move away from Huntly, Ashurst or Palmerston?
In other words, this kind of economics may indeed be great for some Kiwis, but it screws everyone else.
I’m going to have to make it a point to ensure that “everyone else” begins to realise this crystal clear.
“And what about the rest of NZ who don’t live in one of these property price bubble centres, and who will never ever be able to afford to buy in Auckland, Wellington or Christchurch if they try and move away from Huntly, Ashurst or Palmerston?”
Bugger me !! We agree on something , as some one who loves the rural life that being a farm boy brings but as my body fails me would love to move to the inner city for the entertainment and comfort it provides its hard to not become bitter for being forever locked out.
Sorry, I was off at my local Chinese New Year. Recommended chaos and fireworks and people who settle here and buy assets.
Yes, people will have to move. But cashed-up free people are also great for the regions. They get to set up new things, as one would want.
As for property mis-matches, well, you have large campaigns from most major regions targeting Auckland people begging them to do just that. It’s exactly what the regions need, and they know it.
Those property booms are extending now not just to the Auckland region, but to Hamilton, Tauranga, Whangarei, Nelson-Wanaka Alexandra, Christchurch – hey presto you’ve covered three quarters of the population already.
The Auckland property bubble is a major risk to New Zealand, and in the meantime is also a major benefit. The migrant surge and property surge emanating from Auckland is one of the luckiest economic moments in our recent history.
driving up the prices of housing so that people in the regions on low wages cannot afford houses any more?
As I said, this system works fabulously for cashed up Aucklanders liquidating property portfolios; it’s pretty average to pretty shit for everyone else.
“The primary thing propping up the New Zealand real estate market – both urban and rural – is foreign capital. Not local capital.”
You say that like it’s a good thing. It’s not. It’s a big part of why land is so expensive in NZ.
I’m generaly against foreign ownership because of the sovereignty issues, and because I don’t trust NZ governments to mandate that land has to be cared for.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/10350045/South-Island-land-gets-lifelong-protection
That’s a good example of overseas ownership doing something good in NZ. It’s a cluster of high country stations in the Queenstown Lakes area that have had substantial money put into landcare including replanting natives, and it’s been protected legally. There aren’t many Kiwi owners doing that on that scale, but I don’t think that’s so much about not having the capital as not having the will of the conscience. Then there are the farmers that would do this kind of thing if they had the funds. So the issues here are distribution of wealth, the importance of land welfare (think social security for whenua), and
whether we actually give a shit enough to save things while we still can.
That piece of foreshore in Nelson should have been bought by the state. That DOC couldn’t afford it tells us everything we need to know about the mess we are in. Private money will not solve that, it will simply fund a few high profile cases like Nelson or the Motutapu blocks, and meanwhile the rest of NZ is being sacrificed to the global economy. For every private saviour there are dozens or hundreds of places in NZ, right now, being destroyed because the people that care can’t afford land.
Mutt Lange etc is a great foreign example. But there are more locals aggregating their capital to do good things than you perhaps realize. An interesting recent local example is the Morgan family – one of whom is in on that Mutt Lange arrangement.
That’s one Ad. And it’s for the same bit of land. What about all the others and the point that too many NZers who care can’t afford land now?
Thought you’d like the neatness of your own example being both local and foreign. Ah well. Happy to admit my views have shifted a bit on this topic in the last few years.
Also happy to do a full list when Marty does a post with a decent argument attached and not merely a sad xenophobic rant.
once again your ignorance clouds your vision – you just abuse because you can’t compute – frankly you are a waste of time. Capitalism and fuckers like you are the problem NOT immigrants or foreigners – I am not xenophobic and take offence at being labeled with that. I have argued many many times against that – you are up yourself, puffed up and under some illusion that your view is meaningful – it isn’t.
Ad, you seem to think high capital values are a good thing.
This highlights your lack of understanding, and have clearly never thought about it
Ad, in reply to 10.3.1.1. tell that to the people who live in my street, NZer’s by the diminishing number. For some reason Asians love our area and there are now 4 only families who are long term NZ residents left hanging in there. The latest to go under the hammer over the right of way from us has been bought by an Asian restauranter and the new tenants moved in today. By the way there are about 40 homes in our street – how’s that for a statistic. Why they don’t put a red archway over the beginning of our street and call it Chinatown, I do not know. I see in the future and not that too far off Auckland will be a major annex of China and there won’t be any kiwis left in it.
Tell me that is good for all the young New Zealanders who are looking for their first home, or any New Zealand born residents who want to own a home here. And, please don’t tell me I am a racist, its just the fact of the matter, we are being swamped with a stampede of overseas residents and it’s happening right in front of our eyes. I have family who live in the inner city and when we visit its like being in Shanghai, I have other family who have lived and worked in Shanghai and when they were here on holiday thought they hadn’t left the place. The Maoris should be very afraid for their lands, soon they won’t have anything left of it.
you must live in my neighbourhood. And the new settlement being build is build buy by Chinese for Chinese it seems. And again, this is an observation of what is happening in my street.
And it should be clear to anyone, that those who sell in AKL can’t afford to buy again, they will have to pack up and move out. So that may work for those that are off retirement age, or can work elsewhere, but that will not apply to the vast majority of Aucklanders. But then sometimes i think that if the rest of NZ could just bomb Auckland they would. Not that their any of their relatives would ever live there, or work there, or go to university there, or heavens forbid may need to go there to access Starship Hospital and so on and so on. No obviously Auckland is up for grabs, and those Aucklanders that don’t like it, can just move or die.
And then what happens to those rural areas that the cashed up Aucklanders move too? O h….yeah, they fuck up house prices for the locals there.
Sometimes it seems that the more educated a populace gets the more they have wee’s and poo’s for brains and absolutely no common sense or foresight is left. But surely there be a new episode of Shortland or a millionaire running after a ball dressed in allblack. See nothing to fucking worry about.
Do you know we are going through a massive age-shift that will require everyone in Auckland over 65 to either sell or shift in with their children?
It’s a massive economic shift that’s already underway. And it’s releasing hundreds of millions of dollars for people to do new things with – and they do.
Do you know it’s possible to be Asian and a New Zealander as well?
If you really don’t like the Auckland street you are in, and you don’t like the multicultural change you are experiencing, try any other town in the country.
Plus, do your neighborhood a favour and learn Mandarin.
+1
Some pakeha seem to think they’re the only people who are allowed to affect demographics around here.
OAB and AD- you are a patronising jerks – I would bet you are NIMBYS and have no experience of being alienated in your own street, with neighbours who are absent most of the time, have a different culture and having to live with a dislocation of friends who were neighbours moving out. It will take two or three generations of Asian immigrants living here before this city settles down and finds it not so alienating. By then as Sabine says it will be an Asian city and provinces will have to suffer rising house prices as the natives move out.
Off topic here but odd how the Eastern leafy suburbs are squealing and bleating on with the help of Sir John Walker about having to suffer the indignity of 3 storey apartment buildings – how sad for them, most of the North Shore now has to put up with it – I say get a life and get used to it. Too many suburbs like Remuera, Epsom are huge, some are an acre etc and are perfect for breaking up and housing the many who want to be close to the inner city for work and play. How come they have escaped the Unitary Plan for higher density housing? Combined with the massive increase in immigration snatching up existing stock like in our street, having 3 storey buildings will be perfect to house the rising immigrant population.
You lose your bet.
Well then you probably live outside Auckland but I apologise – but I still cannot understand how you can condone wide spread buying up of existing housing stock street upon street by people who are not going to dwell in them without considering what it is doing for our own people who now cannot afford to have a home of their own. We will end up like Germany where a house is passed down from generation to generation. I can see it will become widespread here.
1. The largest immigrant group come from the UK. No-one seems to be in the least bit worried about that, despite the cultural potential for sandals with socks, soccer hooligans and Cold Play.
2. Pākehā feeling a little bit of what Māori have put up with for two centuries might reflect on that fact.
I don’t know if that exactly counts as “condoning” it, but.
propping up ?…. over inflating
“and apparently we all thought that was great.”
I didn’t. I was alarmed about the whole thing.
Analysis of media images shows bias towards Key in last election
Didn’t need an expert to show the media is biased to the party that provides the cushiest deal for transnational corporates,
Hosking
Henry
Christie
Smith
Plunket
Williams
Trevett
Young
O’Sullivan
Watkins
Add the “so called A political” Garner, and his sidekick Gower and Allen & wife Heather.
You mean “Soper & wife Heather”?
* The cad Soper!
When I read garners articles I think to my self “I could wright that”
Which without wanting to be to hard on myself makes me think how the fuck did he get to where he is??
Since you thought you could “wright that” as opposed to “write that” Im guessing you coundn’t
He he I guess if I had garners backing that little bobo would of picked up.
boo boo
I actually did that one on purpose , nothing like a bit of pedant fishing on a Sunday arvo
+ 1 Good one lol
“would *have* been” picked up
Actually, we did. Anecdotes don’t really prove anything even if they’re accurate whereas good research does.
Yep.
Not all of us can read the matrix as it flows by. We mere mortals need research upon which to base an opinion.
No, It’s Not Your Opinion. You’re Just Wrong
No, you’re not entitled to your opinion
5.8 earthquake in chch it was a biggie.scary.
http://www.geonet.org.nz/
http://m.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11589469
http://www.geonet.org.nz/quakes/region/newzealand/2016p118944
Big quake just now in Christchurch. Geonet says 5.8M just off the New Brighton coast, 19km deep.
Given its location and size, it might actually be big enough to trigger some more liquefaction out east. I’m over towards Hornby, was a big wobbly thing over here, but nothing like any of the major quakes in 2010-2011.
Are you sure a certain Minister was not out taking a stroll around his demesne?
That was a smaller of the whoppers out east, for sure. Brought people to tears in memories of recent years. There will be damage.
awful
Shit…I didn’t mean to make light of this…http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/76868535/christchurch-hit-by-severe-quake
Getting the latest via Radio NZ & #eqnz hashtag. Some dramatic cliff collapses, no reports of casualties. Looks like all the precautions are paying off
All National Party funded media reporters?
To those TS contributors and posters in Christchurch, having been shaken today by another quake, we JAFAs up here are thinking of you.
Kia Kaha comrades.
ditto for Waikato.
NatCorp™ “Prudent fiscal management” part 1
NatCorp™ “Prudent fiscal management” part 2
NatCorp™ “Prudent fiscal management” part 3
John Key booed off stage at Big Gay Out
‘Mr Key was making his annual visit to the event, where in the past he has received a generally positive reception, but today was the subject of a glitter prank and was also targeted by protesters opposed to the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement.
The incident took place shortly after he arrived at the event, held at Point Chevalier, while he was walking around with a police escort talking to members of the public and taking selfies.
Three people threw quite a large amount of pink glitter at Mr Key, which appeared to make considerable contact with him and those around him.
The people responsible then ran away from the scene with police officers hot on their heels.
A group of TPPA protesters with signs also followed the Prime Minister as he walked around.
When Mr Key took the stage to address the crowd, there was considerable booing and his speech lasted little more than 10 seconds before he left the stage.’
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11589495
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/john-key-glitter-bombed-booed-off-stage-at-big-gay-out?autoPlay=4754502739001
Nikkii Kaye apparently got the same treatment.
Key is going to struggle to appear in public at this rate.
@ Paul (19) thanks for this info. The perceived “most popular PM”FJK’s popularity is beginning to wear thin. Good 😀 He’s had this coming for a while now. Long may it continue.
ZB reported the booing.
http://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/news/politics/pm-booed-off-stage-at-big-gay-out/
“Nikkii Kaye apparently got the same treatment.
Key is going to struggle to appear in public at this rate”
Only in your dreams Paul.
A few feral shitheads wont bother JK.
he appeared a little “bothered ” about them at Waitangi
“John Key has been booed off stage at today’s Big Gay Out festival by a group of vocal anti-TPPA protesters.
Donned in a pink polo shirt, Mr Key took to the stage alongside National MPs Nikki Kaye and Maggie Barry. But a group of about 30 protesters clutching banners and shouting anti-TPPA slogans drowned out his short speech, and the prime minister then left the stage to loud booing.
Speaking to media immediately after his speech, Mr Key said he’s expected the reaction but stressed it was from a small group of individuals who did not support the National government.”
Wish I was there. Hope it happens more often given that Key avoids dissent. Hates being confronted by those who aren’t “Yes men and women.”
A small group does not equate to ‘considerable booing’ that would stop a speech after only 10 seconds.
Stuff’s coverage to date minimises the opposition and plays up the fanboy Key image.
Mark Weldon is earning his dollars for Key and the corporates.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/auckland/local-news/auckland-city-harbour-news/76869025/big-gay-out-with-colour-and-crowds
Greens were solid openly supporting the booing, Labour not openly, go figure!
A couple of the MSM reports I saw said that Key normally gets a good reception at the BGO, but I’m pretty sure he got booed last year too, and not by TPPA protestors.
Here’s video of his 10 second speech.
https://twitter.com/annaloren/status/698711715844792320
More video
https://twitter.com/SusanStrongman
Key won’t go to any more public events where he can be booed. But we can protest at the TPPA road shows around the country. Here’s the link for dates and locations:
http://www.tpp.mfat.govt.nz/events
It is important we are there to publicly protest.
Auckland, 7 March, Rendezvous Hotel, corner Mayoral Drive and Vincent Street, Auckland Central.
Christchurch, 11 March, Rydges Hotel, 30 Latimer Square, Christchurch City
Dunedin, 14 March, The Dunedin Centre, 1 Harrop Street, Dunedin
Wellington, 18 March, Westpac Stadium, 105 Waterloo Quay, Pipitea, Wellington.
If you want to go inside and hear what the government is peddling, register using the link above BEFORE 1 March 2016.
P.S. Road show attendance is free but they warn they will chuck you out on your ass if you cause any trouble inside.
http://www.tpp.mfat.govt.nz/events
You mean like asking questions?
Better off on the outside anyway 😉
Man given two weeks to live after taking popular weight-loss product purchased online
So much for herbal remedies being safe.
but they’re nachrall…
LOL, you kidders.
We should really take a look at NZ liver damage stats and renal ward/dialysis cases and see how many of those patients were fucked due to approved pharma meds vs those by natural remedies.
I’d guess 200:1 due to prescription meds.
Life time dialysis cases due to paracetamol is through the roof and that’s just for starters.
prescription meds also have a demonstrable benefit.
Yep. and as such not subject to the same monitoring regime as pharmaceuticals with side-effects (communicated by the doctor and listed on the packet for the consumer) that include rare cases of liver damage.
Yet the very knowledge of side effects and practice of monitoring on ‘bigpharma’ products is scary enough to send people to a ‘bighealth’ product with unacknowledged risk and the reassurance of ‘natural’.
rattle snake venom is natural
asbestos is natural
botulism bacteria are natural
and as I said above, deaths due to pharma meds are orders of magnitude higher, so let’s keep some perspective.
What do you think about big health putting out products with unacknowledged unmonitored risk to the consumer?
Do you think putting a warning on the packet and introducing monitoring for those who need the product (now there’s a thing) might change people’s purchasing decisions as it does for big pharma products?
Absolutely happy for the risks from medical intervention and the risks from natural/alternative remedies to be compared side by side in simple ways that consumers can understand and be educated about.
From that answer I could take it that you’d be happy for big pharma to put out product with unacknowledged and unmonitored risk, just their own marketing bumpf like big health does.
“Absolutely happy for the risks from medical intervention and the risks from natural/alternative remedies to be compared side by side”
Alongside efficacy.
“efficacy” is fine as far as it goes, effectiveness is what matters to end users.
Of course, big pharma will try and use these measures as regulatory and cost hurdles designed to shut down alternative/unconventional medicine.
Ok, I’ll go with effectiveness as well. Nothing like a compromise.
So you do think that big health shouldn’t be subject to the same regulatory and monitoring procedures as big pharma is subject to right now.
Question answered.
Nah, you don’t get to box me in with your bullshit cleverness.
Well, I’m being pragmatic about this.
For instance, if you demonstrate to me that alternative medicines is causing hundreds of thousands/millions of premature deaths a year in western countries like conventional medicine is, then I believe that you’ll have a case for putting alternative medicine under the same level of scrutiny and regulation as conventional medicine.
lol
How can the harm be demonstrated when their use, harm, and efficacy/effectiveness isn’t monitored?
At least “big pharma” has some testing it needs to go through. The natural health shop in the same mall? none.
I tend to agree with CV here. We’re still talking about pretty small numbers. If the object of tighter regulation is to decrease the numbers how will that work given that drugs cause so much damage and they’re apparently well regulated?
I’ll also point out that many of the adverse effects blamed on plant medicines are so badly reported that it’s hard to know what was actual cause. Add to that that most doctors and science types are largely ignorant of how plant medicines work, then it’s next to impossible to make valid claims about the size of the problem.
Having said that, there’s a huge amount of bullshit going on in the commerical side of the supplment and herb industries and as I comment below, those people need a big slap down.
“How can the harm be demonstrated when their use, harm, and efficacy/effectiveness isn’t monitored?”
Care to say where the line is between a product made from plants that should be monitored and the rosemary or garlic in your kitchen?
Hey McFLock
You like being a smartass around these issues; I am sure alternative/indigenous/natural medicine providers would love to have access to university and other research resources to help them do this monitoring and oversight that you want so badly.
“if you demonstrate to me that alternative medicines is causing hundreds of thousands/millions of premature deaths a year in western countries like conventional medicine is”
Is that the proportion of deaths caused by regulated, on-label, prescribed use for disease, when the patient was informed of the risk (e.g. you have a disease that will kill you soon, this drug may help, but it may also result in your death)? Or are you including unregulated use?
Without looking, I’ll pretty much agree than unregulated use of pharma causes more deaths than unregulated alternatives. Dosage of active ingredients at a guess, would make a difference.
Meanwhile, can you give me the deaths by omission of effective treatment from unregulated on-label use of CAM?
Thisn’s a twofer:
I’d say the line is somewhere around when you’re selling it as a health remedy equivalent to or safer than going to see an actual doctor.
Lol
so they can treat medical conditions but they can’t bodge together even some basic information? Seriously, what do they do themselves? What records do they keep and share? Or are they afraid of putting some basic systems in place themselves?
“Meanwhile, can you give me the deaths by omission of effective treatment from unregulated on-label use of CAM?”
Define unregulated. Do you mean people self-treating using off the shelf products? Are you suggesting that people should be monitored at home? Do they do that for non-prescription meds?
The MoH surveys on CAM in NZ show that most people see alternative practitioners as an adjunct or after they’ve seen a medical doctor.
“define unregulated”
It draw the line much as mcflock has done
Also, as I’ve said below – the framing of ‘big health’ was deliberate. I never was talking about things like the chilli and ginger cough remedy for symptomatic relief that I made in the kitchen last week.
“The MoH surveys on CAM in NZ show that most people see alternative practitioners as an adjunct or after they’ve seen a medical doctor”
In my view, part of that is drugs don’t work for them as well as and/or as soon they’d hoped, and/or they are fully aware of the risks (and maybe over estimate them) because they are informed of those risks, and change to or add perceived ‘safe’ products in an attempt to improve outcomes and reduce side effects.
Or else they’ve had a wake-up call healthwise and are working through this.
causing hundreds of thousands/millions of premature deaths a year in western countries like conventional medicine is
[citations needed], to put it mildly.
Put up or shut up, petit boy.
OAB, not my job to enlighten you of major facts which have been known for years now.
Big pharma has a record of hiding, suppressing or biasing critical studies and statistics as suits it, so what would be new?
It certainly does. Time to make improvements for both, don’t you think?
Well given that big pharma takes up billions in tax payers money, and their product kills hundreds of thousands or millions a year in the developed western world, I reckon they should be in a fucked up category of hyper-regulation and hyper-scrutiny which is in a league of their own, thanks.
Millions, while increasing life expectancy, Weaseltongue.
So just because big pharma is trying to manipulate the system, that makes it okay for bighealth to not be subject to even basic requirements to prove that their supplements and remedies are safe and deliver the advertised and claims?
This is a good article for anyone interested in what bighealth and their promoters and prescribers are doing and getting away with http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/06/18/book-raises-alarms-about-alternative-medicine/2429385/
Did I say it was just OK that alternative health remedies just do whatever?
I am calling for people to keep the problem in context and in scale.
Pharma drugs kill half a million to a million people a year in the USA. Let’s start from that as to where the scale of risk and damage to society sits.
How many in the US use mainstream medicine vs untested alternatives?
How many alternative medicine practitioners even count how many of their patients drop dead within three months of a consultation?
Thanks for making it clear that you have zero good faith in this debate McFlock. Good to see the bigotry too.
The fucked up irony here is that it’s the scienceheads arguing from a place of prejudice, ignorance and idiocy. Happy to demonstrate how any time you can garner even a smidgen of good intentions in teh debate.
I’m off to bed.
It sounded blunt, but it’s pretty much what “mainstream” medicine does: for example perioperative mortality looks at any death within 30 days.
When comparing that level of use and examination (even if seriously flawed), against something that has pretty much no surveillance whatsoever… “half a million” is a meaningless number.
What are the figures for physiotherapy?
Damned if I know offhand. What figures do you want: efficacy of treatment or adverse events, or both?
It appears that physiotherapy adverse events are reported to HQSC, so you might well start there.
Looking at pros and cons of specific treatments, you can look for the evidence base in google scholar, for example.
No, I meant what are the figures for physiotherapy of patients that drop dead within 3 months of a consult?
Because I’ve been to a physio a couple of times and then not seen them again so I’m curious how that physio knows I am still alive or not, and if dead what the reporting mechanism is.
ISTR three months was the general analysis line for prescription drug AE, as I said above perioperative mortality goes with 30 days, and I’d be surprised if physiotherapy went as long as that given the likely mechanism of harm (which seems to be the basis for the surveillance periods).
But assuming zero followup in the case of low-risk-of-death treatments (effort expended is related to likely harm avoided), your death would be registered with associated cause. Assuming no coronial connection was made with your physio treatment (i.e. on individual case analysis), the next point to identify the association would be population-level studies cross referencing mortality and treatment data, which happens pretty regularly.
Now, it is plausible that any actual connection between your physio treatment and your death might not be picked up by the above system. Nothing is perfect. This system has evolved over decades from institution-level AE case reviews, and can still be improved.
My point is that people are charging the public for treatments that might not even have proto-level efforts to keep patients safe.
You appear to expect herbal medicine practitioners to work to a higher safety standard than physios. Why is that?
Most of the alternative practitioners I’ve been to who use modalities that potentiall dangerous work within safety and ethical guidelines. They might not be via the state, but then again the mainstream medical treatments have a much higher rate of side effects and adverse reactions that I think state monitoring is warranted.
If you think that there is no way to know if the drug rate is far higher than the herbal medicine rate because there is no reporting, then you’re arguing from the abstract and from a position of relative ignorance. Also the argument seems to be one of pedantry and dogma rather than genuinely wishing to understand what the risks are and how they can be managed. These issues are immediately obvious to people who have actual experience in the filed.
Because herbs are more similar in expected effect to drugs rather than physiotherapy, so could be expected to have a similar envelope for delayed and cumulative effect. If they have any effect at all. Garlic and rosemary might be fine, but what of belladonna or hemlock? What about an ineffective treatment: are the people who failed to treat Steve Jobs still plugging the same advice to other patients with similar conditions?
“Most”. Roll that word around a bit before moving on.
How do you know that mainstream medicine has a higher rate of side effects? You say they work within guidelines: how are those guidelines established and monitored? The question I keep coming back to, yet nobody seems to answer, is how are adverse events from non-mainstream medicine documented, collated, and analysed to find systemic issues?
Of course I’m arguing from ignorance, that’s my entire argument: there’s no information on which to base a decision.
If an alternative healer says their product works and is safe, I have no way of knowing whether they’re right or are just bullshitting me. At least if a doc goes “off label” then I can tell, because my condition ain’t on the label. And even then the pharmacist is likely to catch any particularly gnarly drug combo or quantity.
“From that answer I could take it that you’d be happy for big pharma to put out product with unacknowledged and unmonitored risk, just their own marketing bumpf like big health does.”
A couple of points. One is that big pharma do this already via off-label prescribing. The other is that let’s differentiate between big health (and the connections between that and big pharma and other industrial complexes) and actual alternative practitioners and traditions.
I don’t think that ‘herbal remedies’ should face the same degree of scrutiny that pharmaceuticals do*, and part of the reason is that there are very real differences between a drug and a herb. You guys can make all the snide put downs about natural that you like but there are very good reasons for why penicillin based drugs should be tested and regulated but plants that are effective antibiotics like garlic shouldn’t be. Natural is actually safer if you know what you are doing. Yes, there are plants that are dangerous, but trying to classify plants as drugs is throwing the baby out with the bath water and displays a profound misunderstanding about what drugs are and what herbal remedies are. Much of what I am saying here applies to other ‘natural’ modalities as well.
Besides, the product used in the link Draco provided isn’t a herbal remedy. It’s a supplement made by a profit motivated industry that’s not too different from all the others, and yes it needs a big slap down. Trouble is, if we regulate all herbal products in that way we will lose a huge amount of useful medicine and hand the medicine to the commercial cartels.
What should be happening is stop treating all these things as alike and instead develop appropriate regulation for each thing as appropriate, and where inappropriate don’t regulate.
*the government agrees with me on that btw
I don’t disagree with you weka, that ‘big health’ framing I used was deliberate.
Sweet. I wish others here would get that.
weka, bighealth has already blurred your wished for separation of “actual alternative practitioners and traditions” from the misinformative marketing practices employed by “big pharma and other industrial complexes”
Bighealth marketers manipulate patients, doctors and alternative practitioners alike when it comes to proof of safety and efficacy.
They also promote their untested ‘health’ and herbal products… often dangerously….as a better or safer alternative to proven mainstream medical therapies with known risk
While I agree with your sentiment that we should “develop appropriate regulation for each thing as appropriate, and where inappropriate don’t regulate,” I think this runs the risk of not requiring bighealth to provide evidence that there are: no adverse reactions and potential side effects of their products and therapies, the maximum safe amount for people with other conditions, the risks of taking or using them in combination with other therapies, or the risk of using them as an alternative to proven medical therapies, etc…
where inappropriate don’t regulate
Ah, the ‘high trust model’ so beloved of whoever writes the Prime Minister’s lines.
In other spheres that’s what you call a ‘loophole’. Big PharmaHealth be jumpin’ through it before you can say quack.
It’s not high trust it’s appropriate risk assessment. However in the absence of you checking out what I meant and being clear about what you mean, we’re just talking useless abstractions.
Tell me though, how would you regulate the use of garlic as a medicine when people can buy it at the supermarket?
For anyone selling it above market value, I’d look closely at their labeling and marketing.
For anyone teaching people how to grow it themselves, I’d probably give them a subsidy, and I’d have the applications audited, in case the fuckers be jumpin’ through that loophole too.
Applications?
[citation needed]
It would have to be on a comparative basis such as per 1000 people taking the drug. I suspect that a proper comparison will actually show that it’s the other way around.
todays new earth quake in Christchurch will turn the city into an insurance black zone the risk factor has just went through the roof i cant see insurance companies taking on the risk after todays earth quake national decision to rebuild in geologically unsound area(ie a fucken swamp) has come back and bitten them hard today property in Christchurch is going to zero zero!!!!
Aftershocks of this magnitude have been predicted, so unless the insurance companies weren’t paying attention it won’t come as much of a surprise to them.
Nice excuse to further hike the premiums though.
We probably should be grateful in a perverse way. The earthquakes in Christchurch are probably what killed ACC privatisation, with the insurance industry tied up with Christchuch and unwilling to take on ACC (apart from the accredited employer scheme).
Australian insurers rebuffed the govt’s attempts to sell in late 2008/early 2009 because it didn’t stack up as a deal for them. That’s all.
Single? Write out a thousand times: you are a whole person
Perhaps the reason why our social relations are so stuffed up (domestic violence, suicide, etc) is because we’ve been mistaught about them.
Thanks DTB, it’s important to have a whole self-image whether partnered or not. So many relationship problems come from this idealised fantasy of romance and whatnot. It’s important for every person feel valued and loved, but relying solely on one person to validate your life is too much to ask.
Statistically there are always more single people than partnered at any time, it’s actually the norm for most humans for much of their lives.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/feb/12/four-billion-people-face-severe-water-scarcity-new-research-finds