have almost anything you want as long as you plan ahead and save for it.
Take a look at this Bloomberg article from last year to check the difference between the $8m and then some CEO and the plight of the minimum wage workers that increases shareholder profits for him.
I hereby resign in protest effective immediately……..
I have served the post-911 Military Industrial complex for 10 years, first as a soldier in Baghdad, and now as a defense contractor……
……I have always believed that if every foot soldier threw down his rifle war would end. I hereby throw mine down……
……Recent revelations by fearless journalists of war crimes including counterinsurgency “dirty” wars, drone terrorism, the suspension of due process, torture, mass surveillance, and widespread regulatory capture have shed light on the true nature of the current US Government. I encourage you to read more about these topics at the links I have provided…….
Brandon M. Toy Stryker Engineering Project Management
General Dynamics Land Systems
Sterling Heights, Michigan
Though on a smaller scale. Our own military and security agencies are just as complicit in these crimes. The efforts of one of our own top journalists to expose our complicity is met by deliberate counter efforts by NZ military commanders to smear and cast him cast him as a liar. What Defence Force Chief Lietenant General Rhys Jones and the like are frightened of, are that following the revelations revealed by Jon Stephenson, are that Kiwi versions of Brandon Toy, Edward Snowden, and Bradly Manning within our own military, security and surveillance agencies will be moved to also put down their rifles and speak out.
In May 2011, a Metro magazine article by Mr Stephenson said SAS troops in Afghanistan took prisoners who were handed over to authorities known to use torture…..
……Mr Stephenson is suing the Defence Force for defamation, saying its press statement on the subject suggested he “made stuff up”. He is seeking damages of $500,000…..
stuff.co.nz
Reading the defence force press releases and statements in court reveals inconssitencies and backtracking in their testimony that speak of deliberate lying. Jon Stephenson deserves the full amount of compensation he is seeking as a lesson to the deliberate liars and defenders of our role in torture and abuse and assault on civil liberties here and around the world.
On May 2, 2011, General Jones issued a press statement that said: “The CRU commander denies speaking with this journalist. The journalist has provided no evidence that he has ever entered the CRU base. We have evidence that he was denied entry.”……
….Lawyer Hugh Rennie, QC, who is representing Defence Force chief Lieutenant General Rhys Jones and the Defence Force, said Colonel B could not be found. However, he said General Jones now accepted that, on the face of it, from what he had heard in court since Monday, Mr Stephenson did go to the base and probably spoke to the colonel……
So our defence force spoke to the CRU colonel, who they claim denied that he was interviewed by Stephenson. Yet now, despite this unequivocal statement, admit that Stephenson probably did talk to him. If they had actually talked with the CRU colonel as they claimed, they would have known that what they now admit was “probably” true, was actual fact all along.
Len – as usual is all about him
Uesifili – good stuff about southern auckland and diversity
John Minto – great points, well made
John Palino – interesting how he made the same general points as John Minto but somehow I think his motivation is different
Penny – you were certainly the only one talking about the stuff you talked about
for sure Auckland will get the mayor they deserve.
Wow, such insight. It needs no citation, it is unfortunately true throughout the industry. But it is certainly not a so what moment, the fact that, in gender ratios, the two lists would be the complete opposite, is not a slam dunk moment Winnie. Back to school and up your national standards before we drug test you at your own expense for being such a numpty.
The Iron Man series of films have been blockbusters. Unfortunately, films with female leads often fail to lead annual box office charts. That suggests a whole other set of issues. Including the fact that female leads in movies are usually younger than male leads and get paid less.
I did have a chortle when you pointed that out because I hadn’t realised. In any case, though, it’s still interesting that the top eight are still men:
There’s no doubt that the whole industry is skewed towards “leading men” in the movies. The way they make the real big bucks is by getting a % of the box office takings. In the case of films like Iron Man that means big ongoing pay packets after a film is released.
Even in ensemble films like The Avengers, women are typically paid less.
Ever since the success of Star Wars in the ’70s, studios have banked on young men aged 13 to 25 to drive the box office, says Oliver Lyttelton at Indie Wire. But of this year’s Top 15 moneymakers, only three were aimed at that demographic — The Avengers, Men in Black 3, and Wrath of the Titans — and the latter two have earned significantly less than their franchise predecessors. And while action movies Battleship and John Carter flopped, female-targeted films like The Hunger Games, The Vow, Think Like a Man, and Magic Mike all surged past expectations. Studios would be wise to ease “off the relentless targeting of teenage boys, and start courting the ladies.
It’s thought that, when women go to the movies with men (eg on dates), it’s the male choice that tends to dominate.
In contrast, TV is seen as more of a medium that attracts women – being mostly viewed in the domestic sphere – that is why soap opera formats have been strong. Soap operas originally targeted housewives. In the later part of the 20th century, many TV genres included a “soap” element (focused on relationships and human behaviour). So ongoing dramas of all sorts tend to have that kind of an element included. Ditto “reality TV” etc.
A smile always rises when any group of humans gets all hot under the collar because their “culture” or their “heritage” or their “tradition” gets told to sharpen up as it is today inappropriate inhumane abusive racist sexist etc.
Latest example being Poland banning Halal and Kosher slaughtering of animals. The Jews are getting all hot under the collar bleating like the entire world is after them. The Muslims are…. well, don’t know because the news article concentrated on the Jews.
Never mind the poor animals eh. Culture and tradition must survive.
Culture and tradition is very often like a big vast empty tub into which anything can be tossed, worthy or otherwise.
And just as often culture, tradition and heritage are just euphemisms for religion, because the latter is meant to be kept out of politics, so can’t be openly cited as the ‘reason’ for opposition.
It’s quite clear to me you have no idea what you are talking about. Kosher slaughter specifies that animals must be slaughtered with “respect and compassion” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shechita
Also, given neither Jews or Muslims eat pork, that creates a whole category of cruel and inhumane farming practices that both are entirely innocent of. Nor does the flowing of blood and unconsciousness suggest any more suffering than death by electrocution or a clumsy bolt to the brain.
You also seem to be ignoring the rather unhappy history of the Jews in Poland, and that they might have a point about people being out to get them – precedence and all.
Still, now I can add to the list of things VTO doesn’t like:
Gays wanting to get married
South Island Maori land owners
Jews eating.
Muslims eating.
“Well either you are denying them religious freedom or you are condemning them to vegetarianism”
I’m doing neither actually Pop. As I stated, I don’t know enough about animal slaughter to have much of an opinion.
Take the emotive language out (condemning?? You fucking drama queen), and all vto is saying is that religious freedom should not supersede animal welfare.
It’s a far fucking cry from saying they should not eat.
So you admit you haven’t got a clue about the practice that supposedly should not trump animal welfare and are just arguing for the sake of arguing. You’re no better – you are trying to impose another set of beliefs on another by pretending it’s somehow more ethical when you have admitted a priori you have no idea whether this is the case or not.
I have made a clear case that halal and kosher slaughter is no more and possibly less stressful on the animal than other more widely used methods. I have demonstrated the hypocrasy of th elaw change given Poland actually flauts EU animal welfare laws in the secular context. I am arguing from the specific example vto is gloating over, not some abstract hypothetical situation.
“you are trying to impose another set of beliefs on another by pretending it’s somehow more ethical when you have admitted a priori you have no idea whether this is the case or not.”
No, I’m not. I simply don’t have a view on it.
As I’ve explained very clearly twice already, my comments have nothing whatsoever to do with halal/kosher issues in any way shape or form.
My comments are purely about your misrepresentation of vto’s comment, as it’s an example of something you do here with monotonous regularity.
Your repeated misrepresentations of mine on this topic are illustrating the point beautifully, thank you.
Oh poppet, you’ve got me all wrong. I’m not misprepresenting your arguments at all, I’m just not fucking interested in them because all you are doing is trying to derail my small, simple truth that in this case the law change may very well be religious persecution and vto shouldn’t be so quick to gloat.
VTO said something I found repellant – I proceeded to show why using his Polish example. You don’t like me, so you attack on sight even though you “simply don’t have a view on it”. Business as usual. Fuck off you addlepated carbuncle.
If you used that tiny little brain it might occur to you that if kosher or halal food is not available, Jews and Muslims are forbidden to eat it, THEY CAN NOT EAT IT – am I getting through? It sounds very much like a ploy to force them out altogether.
Of course you’re getting through. I never had any trouble understanding you, it’s just that you’re objectively wrong.
Not eating halal meat =/= not eating.
Now you don’t have to like that but it’s a fucking fact, so how about you behave like an adult and argue with what vto actually said for once in your life.
So they should become vegetarians?
No, if you can’t actually comprehend that a Muslim is about as emotionally able to eat non-halal meat as you are of eating one of your own children roasted, I’m going to ignore you. It’s a mortal sin, taboo. And lamb and goat in particular are central to the cuisines of most Muslim nations. I’m sorry you can’t grasp that some people are not prepared to give up a central element of their culture and their very core identity just to please bigots, or in your case stubborn dickheads who think you can be empirical about ethics – it’s a matter of human rights.
None of that is relevant to my comments in any way whatsoever.
For the fourth time (ffs) my only concern is that you accused vto of saying muslims and jews shouldn’t eat, and that’s blatantly objectively self-evidently bleeding-obviously a lie.
If you read closely Pop and stop letting your amazing knowledge of everything in the entire world getting in the way of your brain, you will see that I used this as an example of the absolute hubris and bullshit that gets tossed into the overused tub of culture and tradition from time to time… In this instance the apparently barbaric manner of animal slaughter that is involved in halal and kosher slaughter.
Nothing more nothing less.
But don’t let that stop you from adding all of that other crappola you have added in your above posts. You seem to confuse knowledge and understanding…
But really I suspect it was the Jewish connection that got you wasn’t it. Objectivity eh, such a tricky thing to master..
No I didn’t, that is what the poles did, according to the media article. I merely passed comment on the poison that variously gets dumped into the culture and heritage tip across all peoples. I used the pole example as an example.
And it is true.
Some cultural traditions are horribly sexist, some are racist, some are barbaric.
But yes maybe you and pop are right and culture and tradition trumps everything, no matter the effects on other peoples and living organisms on this wee planet, as pop says here ……. ” I’m sorry you can’t grasp that some people are not prepared to give up a central element of their culture and their very core identity just to please bigots, or in your case stubborn dickheads who think you can be empirical about ethics – it’s a matter of human rights.”
You see mcflock? It is all about us. Fuck everyone else. As Pop said one other time – get in first because if you don’t then someone else will. I mean, that’s right isn’t it. Go hard, go first, we’ve got the bomb and all that ………
the MO becomes very clear. Especially in Pop’s case.
You made that argument here. And repeated it. No source, no reasoning as to why kosher or halal slaughter is more cruel than standard industrial practises, nothing. Pop has provided several links, you provided nothing. And yet you still argue that it’s a case of “culture and tradition trumps everything, no matter the effects on other peoples and living organisms”.
mcflock, where did I say I agree with the poles that halal and kosher slaughter is barbaric, or inhumane, or should that be inanimale?
The Poles have banned those slaughters on those particular grounds. I merely passed comment on the reaction to it by jewish and muslim communities and their treasured traditions – on the fact that at times peoples get upset when out of date traditions etc get told to change with the times.
Do you see? The comment was made on the reaction to the issue, not the actual issue. Comprehendez vous?
I am merely pointing out that you chose to comment on the issue that “at times peoples get upset when out of date traditions etc get told to change with the times”, rather than the issue that sometimes nations use enlightened justifications to impose restrictions on the cultural expressions and practices of minority groups (animal welfare in this case, women’s rights and secularism in France regarding hijab, and visual resource management in Switzerland regarding minarets), but upon examination the enlightened pretext doesn’t hold up nearly so much as a desire by parts of the majority culture to limit the expression of others.
Given that you have presented no basis for preferring one perspective over the other, I merely asked if there was some basis for your choice to do so.
Its been a long time since you have written something sufficiently annoying enough to cause me to respond. How we kill animals in this country is neither humane nor animal focused. The utilitarian benefit we attach to animals translates to mechanised slaughtering on such a massive scale that the NZ animal welfare code reads like a horror tale.
As it happens, New Zealand is, apparently, one of the world’s largest exporters of halal sheep meat in the world. Your culture and tradition obviously continues to suffer from delusions of moral superiority.
You see the problem Adele is that people so often misread, make assumptions and see things in posts that are not there and are not even remotely commented on. Your post is a classic example of this.
Who said anything about New Zealand’s morality in this issue? Not me. That is your assumption, mis-reading, lack of focus…..
In fact to the contrary, what you say there enforces the point I originally made.
My apologies for taking so long to get back to you. Lets me count the ways that your missives ever say what they mean:
.
.
.
–
Perhaps you should take up knitting instead.
Kiaora Adele
Haven’t read you lately. You always have something stern to bring us into line. Probably needed. Like your icon. It’s a particularly attractive koru I think.
I guess you are vegetarian? Killing things is never noble. How should we kill our animals?
I am an avowed meat eater although I remain conflicted in terms of liking pigs and loving pork.
I kill fish, my female boss shoots ducks, my sister works in the bush and hunts pigs. My dad and uncle owned butcher shops.
I have recently moved back to my turangawaewae in the East Coast of the North Island and it appears that the only household that doesn’t have a gun is Tame Iti’s.
Killing animals is not the issue. Its western society fooling itself that it is more humane in its killing practices in comparison to other cultures that would rather confront the death of an animal face on than to sanitise the reality through mechanised killing factories.
“Coming up: heartbreak all over New South Wales as Queensland wins the deciding State of Origin!”
—Rachel Smalley tries to talk up the world’s most boring two-horse race.
TV3 Firstline, 8.15 a.m., Thursday 18 July 2013
Humbug Corner is dedicated to gathering, and highlighting, the most striking examples of faux solicitude, insincere apologies, and particularly stupid recycling of official canards. It is produced by the Insincerity Project®, a division of Daisycutter Sports Inc.
More humbugs….
No. 17 Jay Carney: ““He is not a human rights activist, he is not a dissident.”
No. 16 Barack Obama: “I wish Muslims across America & around the world a month blessed with the joys of family, peace & understanding.” http://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-11072013/#comment-661330
No.15 John Key: “They know this is an issue of national security…”
No. 14 Charles Saatchi: “I abhor violence of any kind against women…”
No. 13 Toyota New Zealand: “The more Kiwis that lean, the more motivated our ETNZ crew will be to win.”
No. 12 Pem Bird: “We’re there to do the business of advancing our people.”
No.11 Whenua Patuwai: “They’re my brothers and to see one of them goes [sic]—it’s tough.”
No. 10 [REMOVED]
No. 9 [REMOVED]
No. 8 Barack Obama: “…people standing up for what’s right…yearning for justice and dignity…” No. 7 Barack Obama: “Nelson Mandela is my personal hero…”
No. 6 John Key: “Yeah well the Greens’ answer to everything is rail, isn’t it.”
No.5 Dr. Rodney Syme: “If you want good, open, honest practice, you have to make it transparent.”
No. 4 Mike Bush: “Bruce Hutton’s… integrity beyond reproach…such great character…”
No. 3 Dean Lonergan: “Y’ know what? The only people who will mock them are people who are dwarfists.”
No. 2 Peter Dunne: “What a load of drivel and sanctimonious humbug…”
No. 1 Dominic Bowden: “It’s okay to be speechless.”
Why would I do that? I know nothing about him, his politics, or his motivations. However I suspect his actions will have far greater impact on basic human rights and freedoms more sorely needed than those of Bonnie Prince Snowden. Of course, the main difference is that the US government needs to keep its shenanigans secret from its public whereas Mugabe can pretty much steal from and massacre thousands of Zimbabweans with complete impunity – that says rather a lot about your comparison.
I would never normally cite a professional philosophy troll like Slavoj Žižek, but in this instance his take down of Numb Chumpsky nails perfectly the reasons that make you a tosser
And yet he’s absolutely right about you and Chomsky – you pretend you are being empirical but really you are just not interested in inconveniently subjective things like context or intent. You are a sad inflexible muppet.
If by “inflexible” you mean “not prepared to abandon all standards of decency and humanity just because the State Department instructs one to” then you are right on the money, my friend.
Actually, that IS what you mean. I am not joking at all here.
For those feeling ennui! about politics and would like to wash the dirty dust off their person – here is someone campaigning for clean water who is 150% sparking compared to the rest of us. He is motivational and we could all do something worthwhile being involved with a campaign like this.
Radionz http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon
10:05 Tara Okan – waste water scientist and magician
Tara Okan is a waste water scientist working for DCM Process Control Limited.The company has high-tech machines which can measure the waste products from sewage treatment and industrial plants.
In his spare time he is also a magician. (And that is fascinating too.)
I don’t have a car and if I go to town at night I usually take a taxi. Most of the time by that hour the drivers are Afaghni, and because I speak a little Pushtun and Farsi I quite often strike up a conversation. Innevitably the story about home and the Taleban is exactly the same – it isn’t a fantasy, it’s all true and very much what life was like under the Taleban. The only loon is you.
Oh, would those be the Afghans who worked as translators? While I’m not blaming them for anything I have to say that those who collaborated with the Germans in Holland during the occupation ended up in jail or covered with tar and feathers and bald if you where a female. Much nicer than the Afghans would deal with the people who had to leave Afghanistan and all they had known for their entire life because the threw in their lot with the invaders.
When Māori rituals are undertaken without context – misunderstandings and misinformation occurs. Whose job is it to ensure that participants and those involved understand that context? Well I think the iwi do, but the general public don’t and king definitely doesn’t. The Government has a responsibility to help people understand but they don’t and haven’t because it doesn’t add to the divisiveness they require and that has been both labour and national. Now I’m not actually talking about pōwhiri here because that is just the particular battleground on this day and believe it or not Māori have been and are debating and discussing this for quite a while imo.
Interesting to note that King has decided what is best for tangata whenua
Labour MP Annette King said she was not comfortable with the “segregated nature” of the welcoming.
“In no way would this have happened during Helen Clark’s day,” she said.
Ms King said she would strive for gender equality for future Powhiri’s so that they could “accurately reflect” the House of Representatives.
“A change is long overdue, in my opinion,” she said.
Great mighty mars. You have to give clear direction to all these middle class women coming from a professional level as they tend to think they know everything and have reached the heights of understanding with only one-way interaction between them and others – downwards from their two and a half pillars of wisdom.
And I mention women because now that many have had the chance to move up from the lower positions once held, they have become more self-satisfied than men because they are so proud of that new achievement.
I can’t tell if you are being serious or sarcastic Rt sorry – imo all inequality is wrong and should be addressed in whatever way it can be by those who suffer from, and advocate for the removal of, that inequality. That includes gender, sexuality, ethnicity, ability, age and all of the others. But it is not the oppression-olympics and privileged people cannot impose solutions that they like onto other groups less privileged.
Well I’m being serious and not at all sarcastic. And I think your approach is really good. Mighty! It is not for Annette King to impose cultural behaviour in the name of Maori, it should be Maori who approve it. I have heard Maori say that it would be better not to have a powhiri at all rather than do a half-pie version.
This should be a matter for discussion with Maori to find what would be a suitable ritual. If one of the problems is the length of time required for a true powhiri, which sometimes is hard for timetabling that needs a discussion with those concerned.
Middle class women more “self-satisfied” and arrogantly pontificating,…. than…. whom? Gerry Brownlee? Simon Bridges? Ranting shock jock Laws? etc, etc? Peter Dunne?… etc, etc.
And then there’s Metiria Turei, Jane Kelsey, Anne Salmond….. etc, etc.
Karol, people need to make no mistake, the woman in politics, by and large, are chosen for for certain traits they have, and share many of the male politicians.
One only has to look at the female power players, in NZ and abroad, to see they are every bit, as poor quality, and corrupted as the men.
I know people believe that equality is a path to , well, equality, but thats too simplistic.
Certain types are chosen to rule over us, male/female, make no difference, because its got nothing to do with it, other than keep the little people snapping each others heels…
We gotta get rid of the sociopaths and such like, which means the system, has to go, because the players won’t change!
Oh those wicked women not knowing their place, not gratefully accepting the right to vote and resignedly slinking back off to the kitchen to be seen and not heard /sarc
But it sounds like you’re saying Maori tikanga is dead and static. I always understood it to be adaptive and evolving – you know, a living culture. I don’t know many Maori under the age of 35-40 who would still buy into that gender segregation crap.
Of course it is a living culture and continually evolving – you know that and you know I think that. It isn’t gender segregation – bloody hell why does everything have to be filtered through your particular worldview. The debate is there within Māoridom with strong advocates on all sides. Have you actually considered any of those views? Have you considered for instance that, as some argue, the whole debate about who gets to speak is based on a context where male behaviour is used as the norm against which female behaviour is judged. Or how about the idea that within an oral culture there are many ways to speak not just the obvious one and that women speak in many ways throughout pōwhiri and within a Māori cultural context – but oh it doesn’t fit the ‘right’ way to speak which is based upon an imposed western cultural system which is assumed to be the best way. Anyway there are many other angles and points around this other than the knee-jerk – oh look at the gender segregation. A living culture is able, entitled and obligated to evolve within its own parameters and worldview without interference from those who assume a superiority that isn’t deserved or matched with the realities they create in the world they dominate.
Woman’s mag editor humiliates dyspeptic old sod
“Let’s Ditch the Royals” The Vote, TV3, Wednesday 17 July 2013, 8:30 p.m.
I swear this dog of a program only ever gets worse. I just cannot sit through the whole vacuous, advertising-larded hour, but here are a few of the “highlights” I garnered from brief looks at last night’s travesty.
For the Moot: Duncan Garner, Louise Wright, Ron Mark, Simon O’Connor
Against the Moot: Guyon Espiner, Laila Harré, “Sir” Robert Jones, Shane Jones
Moderator: Linda Clark
Like a fish, a show rots from the head. Linda Clark has a law degree and is actually quite bright, but you would never know it by watching her on this program. Guyon Espiner might as well not even be there, he’s so disinterested. And Duncan Garner’s sole idea is to shout, “You’re a HYPOCRITE, Sir Bob!” intermittently throughout the hour.
As if Clark, Garner and Espiner aren’t substandard enough, just take a quick gander at the “talent” the hapless producers have lined up for this show. Louise Wright? She’s the particularly vacuous editor of a vacuous magazine, the Women’s Weekly. “Sir” Robert Jones? He’s unpleasant, cantankerous, and often physically violent. Linda Clark hinted the other day that Jones “behaved very badly” during this show; perhaps he will actually “do a Rod Vaughan” on Ron Mark or Simon O’Connor. Louise Wright is probably safe, though—even “Sir” Robert would probably not punch a woman on television. Ron Mark is notorious as a vacuous motormouth who has that rare ability to keep talking, even though he is actually saying nothing that makes sense. His too long tenure in parliament was marked by only one thing: his extraordinarily lengthy, anacoluthonic masterpieces during Question Time. Mark evidently considered himself to be quite clever. As anyone who listened to his questions, or managed to sit through last night’s program will know, he is anything but. In contrast to those three, Simon O’Connor, Laila Harré and Shane Jones should perform reasonably well.
So the choice of Wright, Mark and “Sir” Robert is a stark demonstration that the producers have absolutely no commitment to producing a serious show. Perhaps, though, the “talent” will confound us….
Actually, Louise Wright does exactly that, when she deals to the dreadful old property millionaire. She is vapouring on interminably about the love New Zealanders have for the Queen, and the great affection the Queen has for New Zealanders, when this happens…
SIR ROBERT JONES:[scowling and spluttering] Arrrrrghhhh! You would have been big on DOLLS when you were a little girl!
There is an uncomfortable silence. Just as animals in the wild can sense when a creature is rabid, the audience has quickly divined that Jones is slightly unhinged. Linda Clark dutifully breaks the tension…
LINDA CLARK:[nervously] Ha ha ha ha ha! AUDIENCE:[hesitantly] Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! LOUISE WRIGHT:[icily] Your charm is exceeded only by your beauty. SIR ROBERT JONES: Arrrrrrrrggghhhh! Harrrumph! [He scowls and slumps into a resentful, glowering silence.]
For the rest of the program, Sir Robert mostly retreats into his shell. He has been upstaged and humiliated by not only a woman, but the editor of a woman’s magazine. For someone who labors under the ridiculous impression that he is an antipodean Evelyn Waugh, that is a catastrophic humiliation. Occasionally he will emerge from his glowering silence to snarl out angrily, “Arrrrrgggghhhh!”, “Pass the vomit bucket!” and “That’s ridiculous, RIDICULOUS!”
Perhaps the funniest thing Sir Robert says all night—funny because he is absolutely serious—is when he utters a threat: “You all heard that, there’s a defamation suit going out next week!” and then waved his arms in angry dismissal of the whole assembly. For a more disturbing display of pathetic, even heart-rending anger, you’d have to watch Twelfth Night, with the humiliated Malvolio swearing, “I’ll be revenged on the lot o’ you!”
The rest of the program was, as I suspected it would be, simply dreadful. Ron Mark has gotten even more full of himself since leaving parliament. Now he sports a natty Van Dyke, which somehow serves to underline his glibness and vacuousness. He embarked on one of his trademark wandery locutions, and would not have stopped if Linda Clark had not intervened. As Mark rambled on, Jones buried his head in his hands.
DUNCAN GARNER: Are you saying we should throw out everything from England, Shane? SHANE JONES: No I’m not. I’m talking about an organic set of changes. DUNCAN GARNER: Well what does THAT mean? “An organic set of changes”.
After that, there is an especially witless exchange between Guyon Espiner and Ron Mark, mercifully broken up by the ever cheerful “moderator”…. LINDA CLARK: All right! Let’s cut it there! LOTS to think about when we come back….
After the break, Sir Robert Jones is back on the warpath. Having failed against the woman, he sets his sights on the youthful National MP for Tamaki, Simon O’Connor…. SIR ROBERT JONES:[dyspeptic, choking on bile] He’s wearing BROWN SHOES, for God’s sake! AUDIENCE:[uneasily] Ha ha ha ha ha! SIR ROBERT JONES: You’re a thirty-five-year-old octogenarian! If you are the future of the National Party, then—- arrrrrrrggghhh! AUDIENCE: Ha ha ha ha ha! SIR ROBERT JONES: This is NONSENSE! The question is ABSURD! [choke, splutter, snarl] Arrrrrrgggghhhh. It’s ABSURD! LINDA CLARK: Pause! Just PAUSE!
….Advertising…..
Sir Robert Jones’ epically funny meltdown was cringe-inducingly bad, but someone even more pathetic was to come. Regular listeners to Jim Mora’s Panel and Larry Lackwit Williams’ dire Huddle segment on NewstalkZB will have recognized the hapless figure that featured next: Tim Watkin unconvincingly pretending to “work the phones”, frenetically updating viewers on the “live voting”—no numbers ever supplied— for the New Zealand “Head of State” if we ever became independent: “A lot of votes for Mateparae, lots for Apiata….” he shouts breathlessly, as if he’s in the middle of a conflagration in a war zone. As Watkin spews out this garbage, he is backed by urgent music, to underline the high drama of the occasion. Then it’s back to the top-level debate….
SIR ROBERT JONES: Look, I don’t want to be unkind, so I’ll just be FACTUAL. Look, most of them are quite STUPID! AUDIENCE: Ha ha ha ha ha! SIMON O’CONNOR: Look, Prince Charles earned hundreds of millions of pounds last year for charity. He is a man who LOVES New Zealand. He has promoted New Zealand wool…. SIR ROBERT JONES: Arrrrrrgggghhhh! AUDIENCE: Ha ha ha ha ha! LINDA CLARK: Ha ha ha ha ha! Sir Robert, you’re like that grumpy old bastard from the Muppets! AUDIENCE: Ha ha ha ha ha! LINDA CLARK: I was tempted to come down and do a Rod Vaughan on you! AUDIENCE: Ha ha ha ha ha!
At the end of the program, all the voting is tallied up—-no actual numbers given, mind you—-and the pro-monarchy side has triumphed by 59 percent to 41. Nobody is surprised.
DUNCAN GARNER: I’m going to continue the debate on my Radio Live Drive program tomorrow. Thanks for watching The Vote. GUYON ESPINER: Good night!
This government is contracting out more and more of essential state services. It really is to the point to ask if the government is doing this because of these malpractices that boost profit.
Fraud, cherry picking ….
AS IF we haven’t been through it ALL before. (User pays in the health system during the 90s – for example).
Dear dear ole Helen had SUCH an opportunity in her third term to reverse some of those ills. It’s a shame she chose to have a lay down and a cuppa – it gave the likes of the ABC a foot in the door.
Now Labour are wondering why the masses are ditching them.
– Having a lay down in the third term
– 3rd Wayism
– Losing the principles on which they were founded (and that allowed most of them their careers)
– Continued sense of having ‘payed their dues’ and entitlement – all the while forgetting that they were ‘elected representatives’ (quaint idea I know).
$250, $225, $220, $215, $195, $175, $165, $150….hundreds of independents, all just chewing up Auckland dime!
Even some administrators around $100ph
Of course, once you map out the relationships, and all the alumni, it becomes clear that council, is run over by corporate types, most with no public sector experience what ever, and many only recently arrived in NZ!
The best way to honour Nelson Mandela would be to do what he used to do: struggle for justice. For instance, you might like to drop a line to New Zealand’s best journalist, John Stephenson, who is currently battling in court against the New Zealand Army, which has slandered him. Or you might sign up for this petition…. http://www.bradleymanning.org/featured/nyt-ad
Suggesting that John Key, who is the absolute antithesis of Mandela, “do something to celebrate Mandela’s achievements” is utterly inane.
Morrissey
Okay. You have been working so hard exposing the triviality of some on our airwaves probably you’ve got overheated. Turn off and drop out for a while. Did you listen to the clip link I put up for Bob Dylan and the lyrics too?
Forget the morality, worry about the ACCENT
Noelle McCarthy on the case
On today’s edition of The Panel, Noelle McCarthy chortles, they will be talking about Benedict Cumberpatch’s new movie role: as Julian Assange. What is exercising McCarthy’s mind is not whether this is another hatchet job on Assange, which is what a serious and intelligent journalist would be concerned about. No, what Noelle McCarthy is worrying about is whether or not Cumberpatch can do a passable Australian accent.
And don’t expect any intelligent or humane contributions from Zoe Ferguson, Chris Trotter or Lisa Scott, either. Ferguson is as determinedly frivolous and as reflexively right wing as Susan Baldacci, and as for Trotter and Scott, well, here’s how they went last time they were on the programme…. http://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-14062013/#comment-648511
As you read these transcripts, or sacrifice valuable time listening to their witless witterings, just remember that this is where YOUR tax money is going.
the company has tipped its hand and shown us the dark side of a culture where books are only available in electronic form. If the WhisperNet service from Kindle allows the company to delete books silently from your device, what other information might they have access to? Can the company monitor what you’re reading and when – and then hand that over to law enforcement? Can it replace a book file with a different file whose content is changed?
In the world of today, that final question "Can it replace a book file with a different file whose content is changed? "is a largely overlooked concern. Who regularly checks all their folders to see if any contents have changed? A recent spring cleaning of storage devices of various ages was an excellent reminder of how much data a person can collect. Even legally acquired/created data quickly piles up to the point there is no way a person will be able to reliably track what it is in their possession. (Add illegal movies and tunes into that mix and it is even more challenging)
History is written by the *winners*, nothing has changed, other than now, those who control history, can re-write it or delete it, and no one will realize!
We are in the very dangerous time of existence, which so many are blinded by the gadget bling, they simply can’t see where its all going to finish up.
Once life is fully digital, its good night from me, and its goodnight from him!
Just heard Matthew Hooton on the radio saying if the Pakeha Party gets into the game they’ll be taking votes from Winston Peters.
lolz. 50,000 facebook likes didn’t come from NZ First supporters you fool.
Would anyone like to hazard a guess which party the large numbers of i’m-all-right-jack, middle nz, anti-treaty, it’s-pc-gawn-mad, one-law-for-all, casually racist bbq dickheads have voted for in the last, oh let’s say three elections?
What I find concerning is that it’s the third consecutive RM fall for Labour (even if still above 30). Haven’t previously had consecutive falls this term. Although the descent seems to be slowing, so we’ll see, but it’s still concerning.
Well, I suppose I have a little happiness matrix regarding election2014:
🙂 🙂 🙂 Optimum outcome is a Lab/grn coalition under Shearer, just to laugh at the chicken littles.
.
🙂 🙂 Second-tier result is lab/grn coalition under someone else (C/R/who gives a shit). You’d be insufferable, but the nats would be out.
.
:)Third-tier is lab/grn/nz1 govt under anyone.
.
🙁 🙁 Fourth-tier (and first negative) result is Nat govt with Labour campaigning under C. I’d be insufferable, but the nats would be a third term govt.
.
🙁 🙁 🙁 Worst result is a nat govt with Labour campaigning under S. A third nat term and you’d be insufferable.
… and I suppose it’s never occurred to some of the Labs that they might start getting more traction by actually calling the Government to account for its incompetence, instead of indulging in an orgy of tragic butthurt because their favourite missed out on the Party Leader job…
Hang on Daveosaurus – its all those pro-Shearer Labour MPs who are NOT taking on the Nats, and who should be – that’s the real problem with the Labour caucus
Two options:
A) whine on the internet and pass as much ammunition as possible to the greasy cetacean and his ilk; or
B) use one’s political brilliance by caning the branch selection process and winning a seat to show the sluggards how it’s done.
It would appear that very few commenters here have chosen method B.
Look at posts on The Standard. Every day around 80% of posts are bleating on about real or imaginary faults of the National Government.
Left leaning folks use every opportunity to bag Key and his ‘cronies.’
Sadly though this is all preaching to the faithful.
The general public aren’t buying the bleating so it is ineffective and much hot air.
This is primarily why 2014 will go to Key and then the divided (and reduced) Labour caucus will flap around like fish out of water trying to decide how they lost election number 3.
I think you are all a callus bunch of dreamers , leave Shearer alone he and his party are doing a grand job.
With the labour getting on so with the greens our futures are all secure .
This combination will get the result they truly deserve at the next election .
Earths atmosphere is already loaded with radio active isotopes, its only lies and such which keeps people from understanding the real danger we have been in, since science began earth, sea and sky with nuclear weapons!
Thousands of detonations over many decades, add chernobyl, etc!
ABRE has the potential to create 21,000 high value engineering and manufacturing jobs; maximize the UK’s access to a conservatively estimated £13.8 billion launcher market over the next thirty years; and provide economic benefits from spill-over technology markets.
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, we need our own, government funded, space program.
The massive amount of resources and people we have sitting idle would tend to indicate that we could do the space program while also addressing those other areas. Funding really isn’t the problem – government just needs to create the money, spend it and possibly raise taxes slightly.
I’m not for the idea of developing a highly toxic, polluting industry for the sake of importing lots of printed overseas dollars, and which does little (or nothing) to help us adapt to climate change or fossil fuel depletion. There’s got to be a better way.
1.) It’s not highly polluting if you do it properly
2.) I really couldn’t care less about the imported dollars but while we’re trading in the world then we actually do need them
3.) Last time I looked James Hansen was employed by NASA so I’d say that there was a high probability that a space program would help us adapt to climate change
There’s got to be a better way.
Perhaps you’d prefer it if we went back to living in caves?
In a “Rejoinder to Noam Chomsky” in early October, Christopher Hitchens put up two sentences regarding my own writing, as follows:
“Mr. Herman has moved from opposing the bombing of Serbia to representing the Milosevic regime as a victim and as a nationalist peoples democracy. He has recently said, in a ludicrous attack on me, that the ‘methods and policies’ of the Western forces in Kosovo were ‘very similar’ to the tactics of Al-quaeda; an assertion that will not surprise those who are familiar with his style.”
This packs a lot of misrepresentation into two sentences. Nowhere in my writings have I ever used any one of the three words “nationalist peoples democracy” to describe the Milosevic regime and never would, so Hitchens’ language is straightforward fabrication and misrepresentation. For Hitchens I must be an apologist for Milosevic because I have “opposed the bombing of Serbia,” just as one might be called an apologist for Saddam Hussein for objecting to the “sanctions of mass destruction.” But of course he is not an apologist for NATO and Bill Clinton for supporting the bombing of Serbia.
Notice also that he speaks of my making the “Milosevic regime” the “victim” of NATO bombing rather than the people of that regime. But I have never focused my sympathy on the regime as victim, just the people killed, injured and traumatized. Imagine how Hitchens would assail for outrageous insensitivity to the real civilians massacred an individual who spoke sarcastically of somebody being bothered by the recent New York/Washington attacks which only “victimized” the “Bush and capitalist regimes.”
Hitchens says that I equate the tactics of Al-Quaeda with those of the Western forces “in Kosovo.” But the text that he is criticizing was comparing the attack on civilians in New York and Washington with the systematic NATO bombing of civilian facilities in SERBIA, not the military operations in Kosovo. In both the attacks on New York/Washington and Serbia, civilian “collateral damage” was either entirely acceptable or positively desired. In the Serbia bombing case there is solid evidence that the destruction of civilian facilities and inevitable civilian deaths and injuries were planned for and seen as positive….
Christopher Hitchens is/was a common prostitute to the ruling money class.
One of these people who are so flakey as to be “look at me look at me” wahanui Trots’ and Commies early on and then jump heaps of fences clear to the other side of the political spectrum. Announcing their arrival with redoubled tino wahanui as though no one’s noticed. Classic con-men/women. For example Rob Campbell…….Progressive Youth Movement back in the day……..latterly a seriously malevolent right wing Ports of Auckland schemer.
I must have got it wrong but I thought the unappealing egomaniac Hitchens died a couple of years ago. If you want some fun have a look on YouTube at the debate at some US university – Hard out George Galloway and Mr Pompous Narcissist Hitchens.
Beautiful ! In keeping with the narcissism Hitchens thought he’d won. HaHaHa !
I thought the unappealing egomaniac Hitchens died a couple of years ago.
He did indeed, but not before writing a particularly stupid autobiography. It looks like the poor fellow spent most of his last few months trying to get even with all those who had humiliated him over the last shameful decade of his life.
And by the way, no one considered that Hitchens got the better of Galloway in that epic confrontation in 2005. The person who, more than anyone else, realized that Galloway had vanquished him was Hitchens himself.
That laughable autobiography of his fires a few limp shots at Galloway, but I think even as he composed his bilious and dishonest prose, the dying Hitchens realized he was flogging a dead horse.
I recommend it if you want a good laugh, or indeed, a melancholy look at what happens to the venal and unfeasibly self-important.
National education data shows schools are not meeting the ambitious targets set by the government as part of its better public service targets…
Just what does Hekia hope to glean from these figures? Apparently she said the data was for regions to look at and understand. Well she could start by telling the journalists to provide us with some accurate data. (Apart from the percentage of children who can stand on their heads while reciting the magna carta and drink through a straw.
Take a look at the national standards for these central regions. They have an awful symmetry about them.
Manawatu – Wanganui:
National standards 2012:
Reading – 77.4 per cent
Maths – 73.6 per cent
Writing – 70 per cent
and Wellington:
and Tasman:
and Marlborough:
and Nelson:
and West Coast:
and Canterbury:
and Otago:
Exactly the same figures for them all … lazy journalism, bad cut and paste, or meaningless data.
The schools warned that she would misuse the data and this is obviously a starter.
In the round this is at least a moral win for Stephenson……….”the authorities” have had to admit that the ShonKey Python style of governance, the stock bizo ……. “deny and mock” ……. is shit.
Just hope he’s able to negotiate David’s legal costs being met by Goliath. Otherwise it’s a case of them cynically calling him a liar………he goes to court to force them to admit that he’s not, they admit they were wrong and they finally admit he’s not a liar like they said, then it costs him his entire worth.
Lives in Parnell..so well out of South Auckland, then. Indeed as he admits himself, he now lives among the wealthiest. Hope they have not put him up to split the Pacific Island vote and let a wingnut in.
Apparently a recent drone crash in the US was that of a QF-4. Its a full size Phantom F-4 jet fighter kitted out to be flown remotely from the ground. This makes me wonder what other full size jet planes they can fly remotely…
This makes me wonder what other full size jet planes they can fly remotely…
Any and all. All they need is the plane to have fly-by-wire and it’s easy to convert. If it doesn’t then it’d be slightly harder.
BTW, those military drones aren’t small. One of the bigger ones mentioned is described as having the wingspan of a 727. It’s not as big as a 727 but pictures I’ve seen of them would indicate that it’s bigger than a Beechcraft Baron.
They’ve been flying QF-4s for years. They’re basically just a supersonic target, following a line begun years ago and passing through the Queen Bee, a drone Tiger Moth (which certainly lacked fly by wire). They don’t have any of the offensive capabilities or autonomy found in Obama’s latest toys.
Drones can be as big as they like. They typically make them big enough to do the job, and no bigger. They start at about the size of a mosquito, which obviously won’t have much range or payload.
Identifying the engine type in your car is crucial for various reasons, including maintenance, repairs, and performance upgrades. Knowing the specific engine model allows you to access detailed technical information, locate compatible parts, and make informed decisions about modifications. This comprehensive guide will provide you with a step-by-step approach to ...
Introduction: The allure of racing is undeniable. The thrill of speed, the roar of engines, and the exhilaration of competition all contribute to the allure of this adrenaline-driven sport. For those who yearn to experience the pinnacle of racing, becoming a race car driver is the ultimate dream. However, the ...
Introduction Automobiles have become ubiquitous in modern society, serving as a primary mode of transportation and a symbol of economic growth and personal mobility. With countless vehicles traversing roads and highways worldwide, it begs the question: how many cars are there in the world? Determining the precise number is a ...
Maintaining a safe and reliable vehicle requires regular inspections. Whether it’s a routine maintenance checkup or a safety inspection, knowing how long the process will take can help you plan your day accordingly. This article delves into the factors that influence the duration of a car inspection and provides an ...
Mazda Motor Corporation, commonly known as Mazda, is a Japanese multinational automaker headquartered in Fuchu, Aki District, Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan. The company was founded in 1920 as the Toyo Cork Kogyo Co., Ltd., and began producing vehicles in 1931. Mazda is primarily known for its production of passenger cars, but ...
Your car battery is an essential component that provides power to start your engine, operate your electrical systems, and store energy. Over time, batteries can weaken and lose their ability to hold a charge, which can lead to starting problems, power failures, and other issues. Replacing your battery before it ...
In most states, you cannot register a car without a valid driver’s license. However, there are a few exceptions to this rule. Exceptions to the RuleIf you are under 18 years old: In some states, you can register a car in your name even if you do not ...
Mazda, a Japanese automotive manufacturer with a rich history of innovation and engineering excellence, has emerged as a formidable player in the global car market. Known for its reputation of producing high-quality, fuel-efficient, and driver-oriented vehicles, Mazda has consistently garnered praise from industry experts and consumers alike. In this article, ...
Struts are an essential part of a car’s suspension system. They are responsible for supporting the weight of the car and damping the oscillations of the springs. Struts are typically made of steel or aluminum and are filled with hydraulic fluid. How Do Struts Work? Struts work by transferring the ...
Car registration is a mandatory process that all vehicle owners must complete annually. This process involves registering your car with the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) and paying an associated fee. The registration process ensures that your vehicle is properly licensed and insured, and helps law enforcement and other authorities ...
Zoom is a video conferencing service that allows you to share your screen, webcam, and audio with other participants. In addition to sharing your own audio, you can also share the audio from your computer with other participants. This can be useful for playing music, sharing presentations with audio, or ...
Building your own computer can be a rewarding and cost-effective way to get a high-performance machine tailored to your specific needs. However, it also requires careful planning and execution, and one of the most important factors to consider is the time it will take. The exact time it takes to ...
Sleep mode is a power-saving state that allows your computer to quickly resume operation without having to boot up from scratch. This can be useful if you need to step away from your computer for a short period of time but don’t want to shut it down completely. There are ...
Introduction Computer-Assisted Translation (CAT) has revolutionized the field of translation by harnessing the power of technology to assist human translators in their work. This innovative approach combines specialized software with human expertise to improve the efficiency, accuracy, and consistency of translations. In this comprehensive article, we will delve into the ...
In today’s digital age, mobile devices have become an indispensable part of our daily lives. Among the vast array of portable computing options available, iPads and tablet computers stand out as two prominent contenders. While both offer similar functionalities, there are subtle yet significant differences between these two devices. This ...
A computer is an electronic device that can be programmed to carry out a set of instructions. The basic components of a computer are the processor, memory, storage, input devices, and output devices. The Processor The processor, also known as the central processing unit (CPU), is the brain of the ...
Voice Memos is a convenient app on your iPhone that allows you to quickly record and store audio snippets. These recordings can be useful for a variety of purposes, such as taking notes, capturing ideas, or recording interviews. While you can listen to your voice memos on your iPhone, you ...
Laptop screens are essential for interacting with our devices and accessing information. However, when lines appear on the screen, it can be frustrating and disrupt productivity. Understanding the underlying causes of these lines is crucial for finding effective solutions. Types of Screen Lines Horizontal lines: Also known as scan ...
Right-clicking is a common and essential computer operation that allows users to access additional options and settings. While most desktop computers have dedicated right-click buttons on their mice, laptops often do not have these buttons due to space limitations. This article will provide a comprehensive guide on how to right-click ...
Powering up and shutting down your ASUS laptop is an essential task for any laptop user. Locating the power button can sometimes be a hassle, especially if you’re new to ASUS laptops. This article will provide a comprehensive guide on where to find the power button on different ASUS laptop ...
Dell laptops are renowned for their reliability, performance, and versatility. Whether you’re a student, a professional, or just someone who needs a reliable computing device, a Dell laptop can meet your needs. However, if you’re new to Dell laptops, you may be wondering how to get started. In this comprehensive ...
Two-thirds of the country think that “New Zealand’s economy is rigged to advantage the rich and powerful”. They also believe that “New Zealand needs a strong leader to take the country back from the rich and powerful”. These are just two of a handful of stunning new survey results released ...
In today’s digital world, screenshots have become an indispensable tool for communication and documentation. Whether you need to capture an important email, preserve a website page, or share an error message, screenshots allow you to quickly and easily preserve digital information. If you’re an Asus laptop user, there are several ...
A factory reset restores your Gateway laptop to its original factory settings, erasing all data, apps, and personalizations. This can be necessary to resolve software issues, remove viruses, or prepare your laptop for sale or transfer. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to factory reset your Gateway laptop: Method 1: ...
“You talking about me?”The neoliberal denigration of the past was nowhere more unrelenting than in its depiction of the public service. The Post Office and the Railways were held up as being both irremediably inefficient and scandalously over-manned. Playwright Roger Hall’s “Glide Time” caricatures were presented as accurate depictions of ...
Roger Partridge writes – When the Coalition Government took office last October, it inherited a country on a precipice. With persistent inflation, decades of insipid productivity growth and crises in healthcare, education, housing and law and order, it is no exaggeration to suggest New Zealand’s first-world status was ...
Rob MacCulloch writes – In 2022, the Curriculum Centre at the Ministry of Education employed 308 staff, according to an Official Information Request. Earlier this week it was announced 202 of those staff were being cut. When you look up “The New Zealand Curriculum” on the Ministry of ...
Chris Bishop’s bill has stirred up a hornets nest of opposition. Photo: Lynn Grieveson for The KākāTL;DR: The six things that stood out to me in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, poverty and climate from the last day included:A crescendo of opposition to the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill is ...
Monday left me brokenTuesday, I was through with hopingWednesday, my empty arms were openThursday, waiting for love, waiting for loveThe end of another week that left many of us asking WTF? What on earth has NZ gotten itself into and how on earth could people have voluntarily signed up for ...
Hello! Here comes the Saturday edition of More Than A Feilding, catching you up on the past week’s editions.State of humanity, 20242024, it feels, keeps presenting us with ever more challenges, ever more dismay.Do you give up yet? It seems to ask.No? How about this? Or this?How about this?Full story Share ...
Determining the hardest sport in the world is a subjective matter, as the difficulty level can vary depending on individual abilities, physical attributes, and experience. However, based on various factors including physical demands, technical skills, mental fortitude, and overall accomplishment, here is an exploration of some of the most challenging ...
The allure of sport transcends age, culture, and geographical boundaries. It captivates hearts, ignites passions, and provides unparalleled entertainment. Behind the spectacle, however, lies a fascinating world of financial investment and expenditure. Among the vast array of competitive pursuits, one question looms large: which sport carries the hefty title of ...
Introduction Pickleball, a rapidly growing paddle sport, has captured the hearts and imaginations of millions around the world. Its blend of tennis, badminton, and table tennis elements has made it a favorite among players of all ages and skill levels. As the sport’s popularity continues to surge, the question on ...
Abstract: Soccer, the global phenomenon captivating millions worldwide, has a rich history that spans centuries. Its origins trace back to ancient civilizations, but the modern version we know and love emerged through a complex interplay of cultural influences and innovations. This article delves into the fascinating journey of soccer’s evolution, ...
Tinting car windows offers numerous benefits, including enhanced privacy, reduced glare, UV protection, and a more stylish look for your vehicle. However, the cost of window tinting can vary significantly depending on several factors. This article provides a comprehensive guide to help you understand how much you can expect to ...
The pungent smell of gasoline in your car can be an alarming and potentially dangerous problem. Not only is the odor unpleasant, but it can also indicate a serious issue with your vehicle’s fuel system. In this article, we will explore the various reasons why your car may smell like ...
Tree sap can be a sticky, unsightly mess on your car’s exterior. It can be difficult to remove, but with the right techniques and products, you can restore your car to its former glory. Understanding Tree Sap Tree sap is a thick, viscous liquid produced by trees to seal wounds ...
The amount of paint needed to paint a car depends on a number of factors, including the size of the car, the number of coats you plan to apply, and the type of paint you are using. In general, you will need between 1 and 2 gallons of paint for ...
Jump-starting a car is a common task that can be performed even in adverse weather conditions like rain. However, safety precautions and proper techniques are crucial to avoid potential hazards. This comprehensive guide will provide detailed instructions on how to safely jump a car in the rain, ensuring both your ...
Graham Adams writes about the $55m media fund — When Patrick Gower was asked by Mike Hosking last week what he would say to the many Newstalk ZB callers who allege the Labour government bribed media with $55 million of taxpayers’ money via the Public Interest Journalism Fund — and ...
Note: this blog post has been put together over the course of the week I followed the happenings at the conference virtually. Should recordings of the Great Debates and possibly Union Symposia mentioned below, be released sometime after the conference ends, I'll include links to the ones I participated in. ...
The following was my submission made on the “Fast Track Approvals Bill”. This potential law will give three Ministers unchecked powers, un-paralled since the days of Robert Muldoon’s “Think Big” projects.The submission is written a bit tongue-in-cheek. But it’s irreverent because the FTAB is in itself not worthy of respect. ...
One Could Reduce Child Poverty At No Fiscal CostFollowing the Richardson/Shipley 1990 ‘redesign of the welfare state’ – which eliminated the universal Family Benefit and doubled the rate of child poverty – various income supplements for families have been added, the best known being ‘Working for Families’, introduced in 2005. ...
Buzz from the Beehive A few days ago, Point of Order suggested the media must be musing “on why Melissa is mute”. Our article reported that people working in the beleaguered media industry have cause to yearn for a minister as busy as Melissa Lee’s ministerial colleagues and we drew ...
1. What was The Curse of Jim Bolger?a. Winston Peters b. Soon after shaking his hand, world leaders would mysteriously lose office or shuffle off this mortal coilc. Could never shake off the Mother of All Budgetsd. Dandruff2. True or false? The Chairman of a Kiwi export business has asked the ...
Jack Vowles writes – New Zealand is said to be suffering from ‘serious populist discontent’. An IPSOS MORI survey has reported that we have an increasing preference for strong leaders, think that the economy is rigged toward the rich and powerful, and political elites are ignoring ‘hard-working people’. ...
Chris Trotter writes – MELISSA LEE should be deprived of her ministerial warrant. Her handling – or non-handling – of the crisis engulfing the New Zealand news media has been woeful. The fate of New Zealand’s two linear television networks, a question which the Minister of Broadcasting, Communications ...
TL;DR: The podcast above features co-hosts and , along with regular guests Robert Patman on Gaza and AUKUS II, and on climate change.The six things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about via The Kākā and elsewhere for paying subscribers in the ...
Policymakers rarely wish to make plain or visible their desire to dismantle environmental policy, least of all to the young. Photo: Lynn GrievesonTL;DR: Here’s the top five news items of note in climate news for Aotearoa-NZ this week, and a discussion above between Bernard Hickey and The Kākā’s climate correspondent ...
I like to keep an eye on what’s happening in places like the UK, the US, and over the ditch with our good mates the Aussies. Let’s call them AUKUS, for want of a better collective term. More on that in a bit.It used to be, not long ago, that ...
TL;DR: The global economy will be one fifth smaller than it would have otherwise been in 2050 as a result of climate damage, according to a new study by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and published in the journal Nature. (See more detail and analysis below, and ...
New Zealand is said to be suffering from ‘serious populist discontent’. An IPSOS MORI survey has reported that we have an increasing preference for strong leaders, think that the economy is rigged toward the rich and powerful, and political elites are ignoring ‘hard-working people’. The data is from February this ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters is understood to be planning a major speech within the next fortnight to clear up the confusion over whether or not New Zealand might join the AUKUS submarine project. So far, there have been conflicting signals from the Government. RNZ reported the Prime Minister yesterday in ...
Life throws curveballs, and sometimes, those curveballs necessitate wiping your iPhone clean and starting anew. Whether you’re facing persistent software glitches, preparing to sell your device, or simply wanting a fresh start, knowing how to factory reset iPhone without a computer is a valuable skill. While using a computer with ...
Gone are the days when communication was limited to landline phones and physical proximity. Today, computers have become powerful tools for connecting with people across the globe through voice and video calls. But with a plethora of applications and methods available, how to call someone on a computer might seem ...
Open access notables Glacial isostatic adjustment reduces past and future Arctic subsea permafrost, Creel et al., Nature Communications:Sea-level rise submerges terrestrial permafrost in the Arctic, turning it into subsea permafrost. Subsea permafrost underlies ~ 1.8 million km2 of Arctic continental shelf, with thicknesses in places exceeding 700 m. Sea-level variations over glacial-interglacial cycles control ...
The operating system (OS) is the heart and soul of a computer, orchestrating every action and interaction between hardware and software. But have you ever wondered where on a computer is the operating system generally stored? The answer lies in the intricate dance between hardware and software components, particularly within ...
Laptops have become essential tools for work, entertainment, and communication, offering portability and functionality. However, with rising energy costs and growing environmental concerns, understanding a laptop’s power consumption is more important than ever. So, how many watts does a laptop use? The answer, unfortunately, isn’t straightforward. It depends on several ...
Screen recording has become an essential tool for various purposes, such as creating tutorials, capturing gameplay footage, recording online meetings, or sharing information with others. Fortunately, Dell laptops offer several built-in and external options for screen recording, catering to different needs and preferences. This guide will explore various methods on ...
A cracked or damaged laptop screen can be a frustrating experience, impacting productivity and enjoyment. Fortunately, laptop screen repair is a common service offered by various repair shops and technicians. However, the cost of fixing a laptop screen can vary significantly depending on several factors. This article delves into the ...
Gaming laptops represent a significant investment for passionate gamers, offering portability and powerful performance for immersive gaming experiences. However, a common concern among potential buyers is their lifespan. Unlike desktop PCs, which allow for easier component upgrades, gaming laptops have inherent limitations due to their compact and integrated design. This ...
The annual inventory report of New Zealand's greenhouse gas emissions has been released, showing that gross emissions have dropped for the third year in a row, to 78.4 million tons: All-told gross emissions have decreased by over 6 million tons since the Zero Carbon Act was passed in 2019. ...
Experiencing a locked computer can be frustrating, especially when you need access to your files and applications urgently. The methods to unlock your computer will vary depending on the specific situation and the type of lock you encounter. This guide will explore various scenarios and provide step-by-step instructions on how ...
While the world has largely transitioned to digital communication, faxing still holds relevance in certain industries and situations. Fortunately, gone are the days of bulky fax machines and dedicated phone lines. Today, you can easily send and receive faxes directly from your computer, offering a convenient and efficient way to ...
In our increasingly digital world, home computers have become essential tools for work, communication, entertainment, and more. However, this increased reliance on technology also exposes us to various cyber threats. Understanding these threats and taking proactive steps to protect your home computer is crucial for safeguarding your personal information, finances, ...
In the ever-evolving world of technology, server-based computing has emerged as a cornerstone of modern digital infrastructure. This article delves into the concept of server-based computing, exploring its various forms, benefits, challenges, and its impact on the way we work and interact with technology. Understanding Server-Based Computing: At its core, ...
The absolute brass neck of this guy.We want more medical doctors, not more spin doctors, Luxon was saying a couple of weeks ago, and now we’re told the guy has seven salaried adults on TikTok duty. Sorry, doing social media. The absolute brass neck of it. The irony that the ...
Buzz from the Beehive Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones relishes spatting and eagerly takes issue with environmentalists who criticise his enthusiasm for resource development. He relishes helping the fishing industry too. And so today, while the media are making much of the latest culling in the public service to ...
Having written, taught and worked for the US government on issues involving unconventional warfare and terrorism for 30-odd years, two things irritate me the most when the subject is discussed in public. The first is the Johnny-come-lately academics-turned-media commentators who … Continue reading → ...
Eric Crampton writes – Kainga Ora is the government’s house building agency. It’s been building a lot of social housing. Kainga Ora has its own (but independent) consenting authority, Consentium. It’s a neat idea. Rather than have to deal with building consents across each different territorial authority, Kainga Ora ...
Muriel Newman writes – The Coalition Government says it is moving with speed to deliver campaign promises and reverse the damage done by Labour. One of their key commitments is to “defend the principle that New Zealanders are equal before the law.” To achieve this, they have pledged they “will not advance ...
Chris Trotter writes – The absence of anything resembling a fightback from the public servants currently losing their jobs is interesting. State-sector workers’ collective fatalism in the face of Coalition cutbacks indicates a surprisingly broad acceptance of impermanence in the workplace. Fifty years ago, lay-offs in the thousands ...
The Green Party has joined the call for public submissions on the fast-track legislation to be extended after the Ombudsman forced the Government to release the list of organisations invited to apply just hours before submissions close. ...
New Zealand’s good work at reducing climate emissions for three years in a row will be undone by the National government’s lack of ambition and scrapping programmes that were making a difference, Labour Party climate spokesperson Megan Woods said today. ...
More essential jobs could be on the chopping block, this time Ministry of Education staff on the school lunches team are set to find out whether they're in line to lose their jobs. ...
The Government is trying to bring in a law that will allow Ministers to cut corners and kill off native species, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said. ...
Cancelling urgently needed new Cook Strait ferries and hiking the cost of public transport for many Kiwis so that National can announce the prospect of another tunnel for Wellington is not making good choices, Labour Transport Spokesperson Tangi Utikere said. ...
A laundry list of additional costs for Tāmaki Makarau Auckland shows the Minister for the city is not delivering for the people who live there, says Labour Auckland Issues spokesperson Shanan Halbert. ...
The Green Party has today launched a step-by-step guide to help New Zealanders make their voice heard on the Government’s democracy dodging and anti-environment fast track legislation. ...
The National Government’s proposed changes to the Residential Tenancies Act will mean tenants can be turfed from their homes by landlords with little notice, Labour housing spokesperson Kieran McAnulty said. ...
Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson is calling on all parties to support a common-sense change that’s great for the planet and great for consumers after her member’s bill was drawn from the ballot today. ...
A significant milestone has been reached in the fight to strike an anti-Pasifika and unfair law from the country’s books after Teanau Tuiono’s members’ bill passed its first reading. ...
New Zealand has today missed the opportunity to uphold the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment, says James Shaw after his member’s bill was voted down in its first reading. ...
Today’s advice from the Climate Change Commission paints a sobering reality of the challenge we face in combating climate change, especially in light of recent Government policy announcements. ...
Minister for Disability Issues Penny Simmonds appears to have delayed a report back to Cabinet on the progress New Zealand is making against international obligations for disabled New Zealanders. ...
The Government’s newly announced review of methane emissions reduction targets hints at its desire to delay Aotearoa New Zealand’s urgent transition to a climate safe future, the Green Party said. ...
The Government must commit to the Maitai School building project for students with high and complex needs, to ensure disabled students from the top of the South Island have somewhere to learn. ...
Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey and his Government colleagues have made a meal of their mental health commitments, showing how flimsy their efforts to champion the issue truly are, says Labour Mental Health spokesperson Ingrid Leary. ...
Māori are yet to see anything from this Government except cuts, reversals and taking our people backwards, Māori Development spokesperson Willie Jackson said. ...
The Coalition Government’s refusal to commit to ongoing funding for social housing is seeing the sector pull back on developments and families watch their dreams of securing a home fade away, says Labour Housing spokesperson Kieran McAnulty. ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has completed a successful trip to Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines, deepening relationships and capitalising on opportunities. Mr Luxon was accompanied by a business delegation and says the choice of countries represents the priority the New Zealand Government places on South East Asia, and our relationships in ...
New Zealand is demonstrating its commitment to reducing global greenhouse emissions, and supporting clean energy transition in South East Asia, through a contribution of NZ$41 million (US$25 million) in climate finance to the Asian Development Bank (ADB)-led Energy Transition Mechanism (ETM). Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Climate Change Minister Simon Watts announced ...
The Government is today releasing a list of organisations who received letters about the Fast-track applications process, says RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop. “Recently Ministers and agencies have received a series of OIA requests for a list of organisations to whom I wrote with information on applying to have a ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins today announced the appointment of Wellington Barrister David Jonathan Boldt as a Judge of the High Court, and the Honourable Justice Matthew Palmer as a Judge of the Court of Appeal. Justice Boldt graduated with an LLB from Victoria University of Wellington in 1990, and also holds ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford will lead the New Zealand delegation at the 2024 International Summit on the Teaching Profession (ISTP) held in Singapore. The delegation includes representatives from the Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) Te Wehengarua and the New Zealand Educational Institute (NZEI) Te Riu Roa. The summit is co-hosted ...
A stopbank upgrade project in Tairawhiti partly funded by the Government has increased flood resilience for around 7000ha of residential and horticultural land so far, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones today attended a dawn service in Gisborne to mark the end of the first stage of the ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters will represent the Government at Anzac Day commemorations on the Gallipoli Peninsula next week and engage with senior representatives of the Turkish government in Istanbul. “The Gallipoli campaign is a defining event in our history. It will be a privilege to share the occasion ...
Science, Innovation and Technology and Defence Minister Judith Collins will next week attend the OECD Science and Technology Ministerial conference in Paris and Anzac Day commemorations in Belgium. “Science, innovation and technology have a major role to play in rebuilding our economy and achieving better health, environmental and social outcomes ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon held a bilateral meeting today with the President of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The Prime Minister was accompanied by MP Paulo Garcia, the first Filipino to be elected to a legislature outside the Philippines. During today’s meeting, Prime Minister Luxon and President Marcos Jr discussed opportunities to ...
The Government has announced that $20 million in funding will be made available to Westport to fund much needed flood protection around the town. This measure will significantly improve the resilience of the community, says Local Government Minister Simeon Brown. “The Westport community has already been allocated almost $3 million ...
The Government is proud to support the first ever Repco Supercars Championship event in Taupō as up to 70,000 motorsport fans attend the Taupō International Motorsport Park this weekend, says Economic Development Minister Melissa Lee. “Anticipation for the ITM Taupō Super400 is huge, with tickets and accommodation selling out weeks ...
Local Government Minister Simeon Brown has announced an increase to the Rates Rebate Scheme, putting money back into the pockets of low-income homeowners. “The coalition Government is committed to bringing down the cost of living for New Zealanders. That includes targeted support for those Kiwis who are doing things tough, such ...
The Coalition Government is investing in a project to boost survival rates of New Zealand mussels and grow the industry, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones has announced. “This project seeks to increase the resilience of our mussels and significantly boost the sector’s productivity,” Mr Jones says. “The project - ...
Benefit figures released today underscore the importance of the Government’s plan to rebuild the economy and have 50,000 fewer people on Jobseeker Support, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. “Benefit numbers are still significantly higher than when National was last in government, when there was about 70,000 fewer ...
The Government’s commitment to doubling New Zealand’s renewable energy capacity is backed by new data showing that clean energy has helped the country reach its lowest annual gross emissions since 1999, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. New Zealand’s latest Greenhouse Gas Inventory (1990-2022) published today, shows gross emissions fell ...
The Government is bringing the earthquake-prone building review forward, with work to start immediately, and extending the deadline for remediations by four years, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “Our Government is focused on rebuilding the economy. A key part of our plan is to cut red tape that ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and his Thai counterpart, Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin, have today agreed that New Zealand and the Kingdom of Thailand will upgrade the bilateral relationship to a Strategic Partnership by 2026. “New Zealand and Thailand have a lot to offer each other. We have a strong mutual desire to build ...
RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop and Transport Minister Simeon Brown have today announced the Coalition Government’s intention to extend port coastal permits for a further 20 years, providing port operators with certainty to continue their operations. “The introduction of the Resource Management Act in 1991 required ports to obtain coastal ...
Today’s announcement that inflation is down to 4 per cent is encouraging news for Kiwis, but there is more work to be done - underlining the importance of the Government’s plan to get the economy back on track, acting Finance Minister Chris Bishop says. “Inflation is now at 4 per ...
Refreshed health guidance released today will help parents and schools make informed decisions about whether their child needs to be in school, addressing one of the key issues affecting school attendance, says Associate Education Minister David Seymour. In recent years, consistently across all school terms, short-term illness or medical reasons ...
Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones is streamlining high-level oceans management while maintaining a focus on supporting the sector’s role in the export-led recovery of the economy. “I am working to realise the untapped potential of our fishing and aquaculture sector. To achieve that we need to be smarter with ...
Associate Agriculture Minister Mark Patterson is speaking at the International Wool Textile Organisation Congress in Adelaide, promoting New Zealand wool, and outlining the coalition Government’s support for the revitalisation the sector. "New Zealand’s wool exports reached $400 million in the year to 30 June 2023, and the coalition Government ...
The Government is making legislative changes to make it easier for new early learning services to be established, and for existing services to operate, Associate Education Minister David Seymour says. The changes involve repealing the network approval provisions that apply when someone wants to establish a new early learning service, ...
Changes to the Resource Management Act will align consenting for coal mining to other forms of mining to reduce barriers that are holding back economic development, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. “The inconsistent treatment of coal mining compared with other extractive activities is burdensome red tape that fails to acknowledge ...
Trade, Agriculture and Forestry Minister Todd McClay has concluded productive discussions with ministerial counterparts in Beijing today, in support of the New Zealand-China trade and economic relationship. “My meeting with Commerce Minister Wang Wentao reaffirmed the complementary nature of the bilateral trade relationship, with our Free Trade Agreement at its ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon today paid tribute to Singapore’s outgoing Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. Meeting in Singapore today immediately before Prime Minister Lee announced he was stepping down, Prime Minister Luxon warmly acknowledged his counterpart’s almost twenty years as leader, and the enduring legacy he has left for Singapore and South East ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon held a bilateral meeting today with Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. While in Singapore as part of his visit to South East Asia this week, Prime Minister Luxon also met with Singapore President Tharman Shanmugaratnam and will meet with Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong. During today’s meeting, Prime Minister Luxon ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has made further appointments to the Board of Antarctica New Zealand as part of a continued effort to ensure the Scott Base Redevelopment project is delivered in a cost-effective and efficient manner. The Minister has appointed Neville Harris as a new member of the Board. Mr ...
Finance Minister Nicola Willis will travel to the United States on Tuesday to attend a meeting of the Five Finance Ministers group, with counterparts from Australia, the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. “I am looking forward to meeting with our Five Finance partners on how we can work ...
The coalition Government has today announced purrfect and pawsitive changes to the Residential Tenancies Act to give tenants with pets greater choice when looking for a rental property, says Housing Minister Chris Bishop. “Pets are important members of many Kiwi families. It’s estimated that around 64 per cent of New ...
State Highway 1 (SH1) through Wellington City is heavily congested at peak times and while planning continues on the duplicate Mt Victoria Tunnel and Basin Reserve project, the Government has also asked NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) to consider and provide advice on a Long Tunnel option, Transport Minister Simeon Brown ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Foreign Minister Winston Peters have condemned Iran’s shocking and illegal strikes against Israel. “These attacks are a major challenge to peace and stability in a region already under enormous pressure," Mr Luxon says. "We are deeply concerned that miscalculation on any side could ...
Hundreds of people in little over a week have turned out in Northland to hear Regional Development Minister Shane Jones speak about plans for boosting the regional economy through infrastructure. About 200 people from the infrastructure and associated sectors attended an event headlined by Mr Jones in Whangarei today. Last ...
Health Minister Dr Shane Reti has today thanked outgoing Health New Zealand – Te Whatu Ora Chair Dame Karen Poutasi for her service on the Board. “Dame Karen tendered her resignation as Chair and as a member of the Board today,” says Dr Reti. “I have asked her to ...
The NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) has signalled their proposed delivery approach for the Government’s 15 Roads of National Significance (RoNS), with the release of the State Highway Investment Proposal (SHIP) today, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Boosting economic growth and productivity is a key part of the Government’s plan to ...
New Zealand is renewing its connections with a world facing urgent challenges by pursuing an active, energetic foreign policy, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “Our country faces the most unstable global environment in decades,” Mr Peters says at the conclusion of two weeks of engagements in Egypt, Europe and the United States. “We cannot afford to sit back in splendid ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has announced the Australian Governor-General, His Excellency General The Honourable David Hurley and his wife Her Excellency Mrs Linda Hurley, will make a State visit to New Zealand from Tuesday 16 April to Thursday 18 April. The visit reciprocates the State visit of former Governor-General Dame Patsy Reddy ...
Associate Health Minister David Seymour has announced that Medsafe has approved 11 cold and flu medicines containing pseudoephedrine. Pharmaceutical suppliers have indicated they may be able to supply the first products in June. “This is much earlier than the original expectation of medicines being available by 2025. The Government recognised ...
New Zealand and the United States have recommitted to their strategic partnership in Washington DC today, pledging to work ever more closely together in support of shared values and interests, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “The strategic environment that New Zealand and the United States face is considerably more ...
April 11, 2024 Joint Declaration by United States Secretary of State the Honorable Antony J. Blinken and New Zealand Minister of Foreign Affairs the Right Honourable Winston Peters We met today in Washington, D.C. to recommit to the historic partnership between our two countries and the principles that underpin it—rule ...
By Koroi Hawkins, RNZ Pacific editor in Honiara Solomon Islands’ incumbent prime minister Manasseh Sogavare has been re-elected in the East Choiseul constituency. It is the opening move in the political chess match to form the country’s next government. Returning officer Christopher Makoni made the declaration late last night after ...
Headline: The moment of friction. – 36th Parallel Assessments In strategic studies “friction” is a term that it is used to describe the moment when military action encounters adversary resistance. “Friction” is one of four (along with an unofficial fifth) “F’s” in military strategy, which includes force (kinetic mass), ...
The Fast-track Bill, if passed, would allow three Ministers, unchallenged and unchecked, to approve the immediate extraction and exhaustion of one-off resources. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Duckett, Honorary Enterprise Professor, School of Population and Global Health, and Department of General Practice and Primary Care, The University of Melbourne iamharin/Shutterstock For many people, the term “bulk billed” refers to a GP visit they don’t have to pay ...
Emmas Hislop, Sidnam and Wehipeihana discuss what’s in a name. Emma Sidnam: Hello Emmas! Thank you so much for agreeing to do this with me. My first question for you is related to what’s been on my mind for a while. It’s very important. You see we’ve recently had some ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Sievers, Research Fellow, Global Wetlands Project, Australia Rivers Institute, Griffith University Chris Brown Humans love the coast. But we love it to death, so much so we’ve destroyed valuable coastal habitat – in the case of some types of habitat, ...
Josh Thomson on the 80s milk ad jingle he can’t stop singing, the beauty of The Simpsons, why Jersey Shore is as good as Shakespeare and more. For someone who spends a lot of time on our screens, popping up in everything from 7 Days to Taskmaster, Educators to Good ...
In apparent defiance of the Biden administration, the Netanyahu government has now initiated missile strikes against Iran. Last Saturday night (Sunday morning in New Zealand) Iran launched more than 300 drones, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles against Israeli military targets. With the assistance of US, UK and possibly French forces, ...
Māori representation brings a perspective that encompasses not only the interests of Māori communities but also a broader, holistic approach to environmental stewardship and community well-being, principles deeply embedded in Te Ao Māori (the Māori ...
When Thomas James was on his solo camp as part of Outward Bound, the keen outdoorsman didn’t find it too challenging, as others often do. In what might just be the perfect illustration of his character, he saw it as a great opportunity to solve a few problems. “I thought, ...
This week in Auckland, a group of young people took over the microphone at a ministerial press conference, to explain why they oppose the Fast-Track Approvals Bill. One young woman said, ‘We’re here because we love Aotearoa New Zealand. We want to raise our children in an environment that’s thriving, ...
The summer was wonderful. Evie was wonderful, too; finally a teenager, finally worthy of long, hot days. She shaved her legs for the first time and bought cut-off shorts from the op-shop that made them look long. She got a Warehouse singlet so tight on her new shape that her ...
From the unstable and drippy to the hi-tech and pretty, here’s our ranking of all the tunnels you can drive through in this country. The first tunnel seems to have been built in 2200BC in Babylonia, kicking off a global phenomenon for digging holes in order to get places more ...
Lucinda Bennett on the art of being greedy but resourceful. This is an excerpt from our weekly food newsletter, The Boil Up. When I picture the market, it is always this time of year. Crisp air, dripping nose, counting coins with cold fingers. Sunlight pale, filtered through specks of dew still ...
Zoë Colling’s favourite piece in the ‘That’s So Last Century’ collection is a lubrication chart for a sewing machine from the ’60s. It’s about the size of a postcard, and carefully maintained. “I like it that this piece of ephemera highlights that manual and technical side of the skill involved ...
Kia Ora Gaza A passionate haka reverberated through Auckland International Airport as a medical team of three New Zealand doctors received an emotional farewell from a big crowd of supporters before flying to Turkey to join the international Freedom Flotilla to Gaza. The doctors, who left Auckland yesterday, hope to ...
With submissions closing today, Macassey-Pickard says groups around the country have been supporting a huge range of people to make their submissions. ...
Our response to the new legislation is informed by targeted conversations with practitioners working in the system and through an implementation lens. ...
The new ‘Fast-track Approvals Bill’ would give just three Ministers the power to approve or deny development projects. They would avoid the usual checks and balances that are in place to protect rivers, land, the ocean, and communities. ...
COMMENTARY:By Eugene Doyle Helen Clark, how I miss you. The former New Zealand Prime Minister — the safest pair of hands this country has had in living memory — gave a masterclass on the importance of maintaining an independent foreign policy when she spoke at an AUKUS symposium held ...
The government's released the list of organisations provided with information on how to apply - just hours before public submissions on the bill close. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Milton Speer, Visiting Fellow, School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, University of Technology Sydney Before climate change really got going, eastern Australia’s flash floods tended to concentrate on our coastal regions, east of the Great Dividing Range. But that’s changing. Now ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elizabeth Finkel, Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow, La Trobe University Sia Duff / South Australian Museum In February, the South Australian Museum “re-imagined” itself. In the face of rising costs and inadequate government funds, CEO David Gaimster, who took the reins last June, declared ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alan Pearce, Professor, School of Allied Heath, Human Services & Sport, La Trobe University, La Trobe University This week, Collingwood AFL player Nathan Murphy announced his retirement, brought on by his concussion history and ongoing issues. The 24-year-old’s seemingly sudden retirement, ...
The Mental Health Foundation provides support and resources for those facing the loss of their job, so it’s wrong in the very week the Government adds another 1000 jobs to its tally of cuts, that this is happening. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexander Howard, Senior Lecturer, Discipline of English and Writing, University of Sydney Daniel Boud/Sydney Theatre Company Decay, terror, revulsion. These are three of the central themes of Thomas Bernhard’s rarely performed play The President. The Austrian is one of the greatest ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon says threats by ministers Shane Jones and David Seymour to reform or close down the Waitangi Tribunal were “ill-considered”, as legal experts say the ministers may have breached Cabinet Manual conventions. “I think those comments are ill-considered and we expect all ministers to actually exercise good ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ye In (Jane) Hwang, Postdoctoral Research Associate at School of Population Health, UNSW Sydney Shutterstock You’d be hard pressed to find any aspect of daily life that doesn’t require some form of digital literacy. We need only to look back ten ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rob Newton, Professor of Exercise Medicine, Edith Cowan University Pexels/RDNE stock project You’re not in your 20s or 30s anymore and you know regular health checks are important. So you go to your GP. During the appointment they measure your waist. ...
A new poem by Evangeline Riddiford Graham. Mitochondrial Problem I. It was long drive to Kansas for the man and his dog but you have to understand he said She doesn’t fly. Which calls to mind not carsick shitting barking or whining but a dog who chooses not to as ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1 Hemingway’s Goblet by Dermot Ross (Mary Egan Publishing, $38)Hot off the press, this debut ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laura Wajnryb McDonald, PhD candidate in Criminology, University of Sydney Less than 24 hours after Ashlee Good was murdered in Bondi Junction, her family released a statement requesting the media take down photographs they had reproduced of Ashlee and her family without ...
Chief executive Shaun Robinson said it has not had any government funding cut, but government-funded contracts have not kept pace with rising costs. ...
The Ministry of Health has delayed the release of its evidence brief on the safety, reversibility and mental health and wellbeing outcomes for puberty blockers. While we wait, Julia de Bres speaks to those with firsthand experience. Best practice gender-affirming healthcare is based on trans people’s self-determination and agency. The ...
Barcelona’s city streets have gone from traffic-clogged to pedestrian-friendly. How? Superblocks. Ellen Rykers explains. This is an excerpt from our weekly environmental newsletter Future Proof. Sign up here. Last week I read a great interview with renowned urbanist Janette Sadik-Khan by The Spinoff’s Wellington editor Joel MacManus: “You can reimagine streets, ...
Student groups ‘Climate Action VUW’, Schools Strike 4 Climate and VUWSA will be on the street in Wellington today, the last day for submissions on the Fast-track Approvals Bill, with a message that the fight against the Government’s ‘War on ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sofia Ammassari, Research Fellow, Griffith University Since 2014, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s popularity has grown exponentially – and so has the formidable organisational machine of his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). These two factors will be key to delivering the BJP a ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brendon Hyndman, Associate Professor of Education (Adjunct) & Senior Manager (BCE), Charles Sturt University During COVID almost all Australian students and their families experienced online learning. But while schools have long since gone back to in-person teaching, online learning has not gone ...
Yes, they’re better for the environment. No, that’s not a good enough reason for me to use them. Once every 26 days or so, my period arrives, and if struck by an act of God, I am caught red-crotched without products. How, after 17 years of this, do I still ...
“It will cause significant harm to our environment and communities. It is completely at odds with New Zealanders’ relationship with nature and our need for a low-carbon, sustainable economic future." ...
The Chair of the National Maori Authority, Matthew Tukaki, has warned a Parliamentary Select Committee that fast-tracking legislation is a perilous practice that undermines the core tenets of democracy, transparency, and accountability. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tim Tenbensel, Associate Professor, Health Policy, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau Getty Images Since coming into power, the coalition government has adopted a simple but shrewd see-how-fast-we-can-move political strategy. However, in the health sector this need for speed entails ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anastasia Hronis, Clinical Psychologist, University of Technology Sydney Darya Sannikova/Pexels Whether you’re watching TV, attending a footy game, or eating a meal at your local pub, gambling is hard to escape. Although the rise of gambling is not unique to Australia, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Wong, Forrest Fellow, School of Biological Sciences, The University of Western Australia Have you ever wondered if there are more insects out at night than during the day? We set out to answer this question by combing through the scientific ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Carol T Kulik, Research Professor, University of South Australia IR Stone/Shutterstock In Australia, it’s not the done thing to know – let alone ask – what our colleagues are paid. Yet, it’s easy to see how pay transparency can make pay ...
The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) is sounding a warning to migrants, that running foul of the law may see them leaving the country prematurely. ...
The government’s plan to get 50,000 people off jobseeker support by 2030 has had a rocky start, writes Catherine McGregor in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here. Beneficiary numbers are up – and so are ...
Raglan Roast is a staple of Wellington coffee culture. But with five branches across the capital, which one is the best? I am a die-hard Raglan Roast fan. It’s consistently the most affordable cafe in Wellington, and one of the only places you can get a coffee after 3pm. So, ...
Residents of University of Auckland halls are being urged to withhold their accommodation fees from May 1, in a bid to force the university to take student concerns over rent hikes seriously.The University of Auckland is facing a strike from students over the cost of on-campus accommodation. The Students ...
New Zealand and the Philippines have signed a new maritime security agreement and stated their concerns over activity in the South China Sea, as Chinese vessels continue to flout international law. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Philippines President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos committed to signing a Mutual Logistics Supporting Arrangement by ...
The thousands of government “back-office” job cuts are causing widespread pain in the capital city. In today’s episode of The Detail, we speak to three journalists and a think tank researcher, looking at the larger picture around the cuts and what effect it will have on Wellington, a city that’s ...
Opinion: The famed American architect and urban designer Daniel Burnham once said, “Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood!” Burnham wouldn’t have been referring to the transport plans in Aotearoa New Zealand over the past five years; projects so big they hadn’t the credibility to ...
Loading…(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){var ql=document.querySelectorAll('A[quiz],DIV[quiz],A[data-quiz],DIV[data-quiz]'); if(ql){if(ql.length){for(var k=0;k<ql.length;k++){ql[k].id='quiz-embed-'+k;ql[k].href="javascript:var i=document.getElementById('quiz-embed-"+k+"');try{qz.startQuiz(i)}catch(e){i.start=1;i.style.cursor='wait';i.style.opacity='0.5'};void(0);"}}};i['QP']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){(i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)})(window,document,'script','https://take.quiz-maker.com/3012/CDN/quiz-embed-v1.js','qp'); Got a good quiz question?Send Newsroom your questions. The post Newsroom daily quiz, Friday 19 April appeared first on Newsroom. ...
http://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-17072013/#comment-664319
I posted this overnight, but reckon it’s worth doing again. McDonalds agrees workers require two jobs to to make a living in the U.S. …
According to their helpful budget you can work two jobs and
Take a look at this Bloomberg article from last year to check the difference between the $8m and then some CEO and the plight of the minimum wage workers that increases shareholder profits for him.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/07/16-5
Though on a smaller scale. Our own military and security agencies are just as complicit in these crimes. The efforts of one of our own top journalists to expose our complicity is met by deliberate counter efforts by NZ military commanders to smear and cast him cast him as a liar. What Defence Force Chief Lietenant General Rhys Jones and the like are frightened of, are that following the revelations revealed by Jon Stephenson, are that Kiwi versions of Brandon Toy, Edward Snowden, and Bradly Manning within our own military, security and surveillance agencies will be moved to also put down their rifles and speak out.
Reading the defence force press releases and statements in court reveals inconssitencies and backtracking in their testimony that speak of deliberate lying. Jon Stephenson deserves the full amount of compensation he is seeking as a lesson to the deliberate liars and defenders of our role in torture and abuse and assault on civil liberties here and around the world.
So our defence force spoke to the CRU colonel, who they claim denied that he was interviewed by Stephenson. Yet now, despite this unequivocal statement, admit that Stephenson probably did talk to him. If they had actually talked with the CRU colonel as they claimed, they would have known that what they now admit was “probably” true, was actual fact all along.
Here you go folks!
Those of us who have announced our candidacy for Auckland Mayor, were each given 300 words by the NZ Herald to explain why people should vote for us.
(I’ve listed the Auckland Mayoral candidates alphabetically.)
Split vote could lead to close mayoral contest
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10899525
Why you should vote for me: Penny Bright
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10899523
Why you should vote for me: Len Brown (incumbent)
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10899535
Why you should vote for me: John Minto
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10899529
Why you should vote for me: John Palino
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10899534
Why you should vote for me: Uesifili Unasa
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10899531
Cheers!
‘Her Warship’ 😉
Penny Bright
http://www.occupyaucklandvsaucklandcouncilappeal.org.nz/
Thanks Penny I enjoyed reading all of those.
Len – as usual is all about him
Uesifili – good stuff about southern auckland and diversity
John Minto – great points, well made
John Palino – interesting how he made the same general points as John Minto but somehow I think his motivation is different
Penny – you were certainly the only one talking about the stuff you talked about
for sure Auckland will get the mayor they deserve.
Even the top ten highest paid actors are men. What a coincidence.
http://nz.entertainment.yahoo.com/news/article/-/18029478/robert-downey-jr-named-highest-paid-actor/
So what? The industry pays actors what they think they’re worth which is why the porn industry pays women more.
[citation needed]
Wow, such insight. It needs no citation, it is unfortunately true throughout the industry. But it is certainly not a so what moment, the fact that, in gender ratios, the two lists would be the complete opposite, is not a slam dunk moment Winnie. Back to school and up your national standards before we drug test you at your own expense for being such a numpty.
The Iron Man series of films have been blockbusters. Unfortunately, films with female leads often fail to lead annual box office charts. That suggests a whole other set of issues. Including the fact that female leads in movies are usually younger than male leads and get paid less.
That and you picked an exclusive male only list, Mary. Forbes does another list for “actresses”.
I did have a chortle when you pointed that out because I hadn’t realised. In any case, though, it’s still interesting that the top eight are still men:
http://www.forbes.com/pictures/mfl45gdgh/angelina-jolie-30-million/
There’s no doubt that the whole industry is skewed towards “leading men” in the movies. The way they make the real big bucks is by getting a % of the box office takings. In the case of films like Iron Man that means big ongoing pay packets after a film is released.
Even in ensemble films like The Avengers, women are typically paid less.
Generally, in recent decades, Hollywood movies predominantly target a (fairly young) male audience:
It’s thought that, when women go to the movies with men (eg on dates), it’s the male choice that tends to dominate.
In contrast, TV is seen as more of a medium that attracts women – being mostly viewed in the domestic sphere – that is why soap opera formats have been strong. Soap operas originally targeted housewives. In the later part of the 20th century, many TV genres included a “soap” element (focused on relationships and human behaviour). So ongoing dramas of all sorts tend to have that kind of an element included. Ditto “reality TV” etc.
Thats what happens when ideology meets the real world because I’m guessing you think its wrong that female actors arn’t paid as much as male actors.
The studios are there to make money and they give people what they they want and this is what they want.
Most (but not all of course) movies wouldn’t make as much money if the male leads were replaced by females.
Are you sure about that or is it your inbuilt sexism talking?
A smile always rises when any group of humans gets all hot under the collar because their “culture” or their “heritage” or their “tradition” gets told to sharpen up as it is today inappropriate inhumane abusive racist sexist etc.
Latest example being Poland banning Halal and Kosher slaughtering of animals. The Jews are getting all hot under the collar bleating like the entire world is after them. The Muslims are…. well, don’t know because the news article concentrated on the Jews.
Never mind the poor animals eh. Culture and tradition must survive.
Culture and tradition is very often like a big vast empty tub into which anything can be tossed, worthy or otherwise.
And just as often culture, tradition and heritage are just euphemisms for religion, because the latter is meant to be kept out of politics, so can’t be openly cited as the ‘reason’ for opposition.
You can be rest assured that whilst their response has not been reported, Muslims are strapping on the bomb vests as we speak.
well, that comment did not improve my impression of you, KK*.
Hes not probably not wrong though, plenty of naive, misguided fools well be whipped into a frenzy over this
Really? What are you planning to do?
KK shows his age and breeding yet again.
It’s quite clear to me you have no idea what you are talking about. Kosher slaughter specifies that animals must be slaughtered with “respect and compassion”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shechita
Nor does Halal slaughter cause any more and possibly less trauma than other practices
http://www.mustaqim.co.uk/halalstudy.htm
Also, given neither Jews or Muslims eat pork, that creates a whole category of cruel and inhumane farming practices that both are entirely innocent of. Nor does the flowing of blood and unconsciousness suggest any more suffering than death by electrocution or a clumsy bolt to the brain.
You also seem to be ignoring the rather unhappy history of the Jews in Poland, and that they might have a point about people being out to get them – precedence and all.
Still, now I can add to the list of things VTO doesn’t like:
Gays wanting to get married
South Island Maori land owners
Jews eating.
Muslims eating.
Carry on.
I’m no expert on animal slaughter so I’ll leave that well alone.
However vto saying people shouldn’t slaughter animals in a certain way is not at all the same thing as saying people shouldn’t eat.
It’s that same old set/subset/superset thing you often have so much trouble with.
Well either you are denying them religious freedom or you are condemning them to vegetarianism, based almost entirely on some very dubious views about the cruelty of a practice. Poland, for example, has, along with Italy, ignored EU regualtions against battery farming http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jan/03/egg-producers-challenge-imported-battery
and other practices
http://www.ciwf.org.uk/news/beef_and_dairy_farming/polish_investigation_reveals_cruelty.aspx
So I can only conclude that these Polish law changes are motivated by bigotry, and vto’s cheering them on is only making him/her/it complicit in that bigotry.
“Well either you are denying them religious freedom or you are condemning them to vegetarianism”
I’m doing neither actually Pop. As I stated, I don’t know enough about animal slaughter to have much of an opinion.
Take the emotive language out (condemning?? You fucking drama queen), and all vto is saying is that religious freedom should not supersede animal welfare.
It’s a far fucking cry from saying they should not eat.
So you admit you haven’t got a clue about the practice that supposedly should not trump animal welfare and are just arguing for the sake of arguing. You’re no better – you are trying to impose another set of beliefs on another by pretending it’s somehow more ethical when you have admitted a priori you have no idea whether this is the case or not.
I have made a clear case that halal and kosher slaughter is no more and possibly less stressful on the animal than other more widely used methods. I have demonstrated the hypocrasy of th elaw change given Poland actually flauts EU animal welfare laws in the secular context. I am arguing from the specific example vto is gloating over, not some abstract hypothetical situation.
“you are trying to impose another set of beliefs on another by pretending it’s somehow more ethical when you have admitted a priori you have no idea whether this is the case or not.”
No, I’m not. I simply don’t have a view on it.
As I’ve explained very clearly twice already, my comments have nothing whatsoever to do with halal/kosher issues in any way shape or form.
My comments are purely about your misrepresentation of vto’s comment, as it’s an example of something you do here with monotonous regularity.
Your repeated misrepresentations of mine on this topic are illustrating the point beautifully, thank you.
Oh poppet, you’ve got me all wrong. I’m not misprepresenting your arguments at all, I’m just not fucking interested in them because all you are doing is trying to derail my small, simple truth that in this case the law change may very well be religious persecution and vto shouldn’t be so quick to gloat.
VTO said something I found repellant – I proceeded to show why using his Polish example. You don’t like me, so you attack on sight even though you “simply don’t have a view on it”. Business as usual. Fuck off you addlepated carbuncle.
If you used that tiny little brain it might occur to you that if kosher or halal food is not available, Jews and Muslims are forbidden to eat it, THEY CAN NOT EAT IT – am I getting through? It sounds very much like a ploy to force them out altogether.
Of course you’re getting through. I never had any trouble understanding you, it’s just that you’re objectively wrong.
Not eating halal meat =/= not eating.
Now you don’t have to like that but it’s a fucking fact, so how about you behave like an adult and argue with what vto actually said for once in your life.
So they should become vegetarians?
No, if you can’t actually comprehend that a Muslim is about as emotionally able to eat non-halal meat as you are of eating one of your own children roasted, I’m going to ignore you. It’s a mortal sin, taboo. And lamb and goat in particular are central to the cuisines of most Muslim nations. I’m sorry you can’t grasp that some people are not prepared to give up a central element of their culture and their very core identity just to please bigots, or in your case stubborn dickheads who think you can be empirical about ethics – it’s a matter of human rights.
None of that is relevant to my comments in any way whatsoever.
For the fourth time (ffs) my only concern is that you accused vto of saying muslims and jews shouldn’t eat, and that’s blatantly objectively self-evidently bleeding-obviously a lie.
If you read closely Pop and stop letting your amazing knowledge of everything in the entire world getting in the way of your brain, you will see that I used this as an example of the absolute hubris and bullshit that gets tossed into the overused tub of culture and tradition from time to time… In this instance the apparently barbaric manner of animal slaughter that is involved in halal and kosher slaughter.
Nothing more nothing less.
But don’t let that stop you from adding all of that other crappola you have added in your above posts. You seem to confuse knowledge and understanding…
But really I suspect it was the Jewish connection that got you wasn’t it. Objectivity eh, such a tricky thing to master..
What’s so “barbaric” about halal/kosher methods of slaughter?
It’s routinely done in NZ, in accordance with animal welfare guidelines.
ask the poles
You’re the one who framed it here as a conflict between animal welfare and cultural practise.
No I didn’t, that is what the poles did, according to the media article. I merely passed comment on the poison that variously gets dumped into the culture and heritage tip across all peoples. I used the pole example as an example.
And it is true.
Some cultural traditions are horribly sexist, some are racist, some are barbaric.
But yes maybe you and pop are right and culture and tradition trumps everything, no matter the effects on other peoples and living organisms on this wee planet, as pop says here ……. ” I’m sorry you can’t grasp that some people are not prepared to give up a central element of their culture and their very core identity just to please bigots, or in your case stubborn dickheads who think you can be empirical about ethics – it’s a matter of human rights.”
You see mcflock? It is all about us. Fuck everyone else. As Pop said one other time – get in first because if you don’t then someone else will. I mean, that’s right isn’t it. Go hard, go first, we’ve got the bomb and all that ………
the MO becomes very clear. Especially in Pop’s case.
Which and whose cultural traditions are racist?
sorry, I ended up going out for the night.
You made that argument here. And repeated it. No source, no reasoning as to why kosher or halal slaughter is more cruel than standard industrial practises, nothing. Pop has provided several links, you provided nothing. And yet you still argue that it’s a case of “culture and tradition trumps everything, no matter the effects on other peoples and living organisms”.
mcflock, where did I say I agree with the poles that halal and kosher slaughter is barbaric, or inhumane, or should that be inanimale?
The Poles have banned those slaughters on those particular grounds. I merely passed comment on the reaction to it by jewish and muslim communities and their treasured traditions – on the fact that at times peoples get upset when out of date traditions etc get told to change with the times.
Do you see? The comment was made on the reaction to the issue, not the actual issue. Comprehendez vous?
I am merely pointing out that you chose to comment on the issue that “at times peoples get upset when out of date traditions etc get told to change with the times”, rather than the issue that sometimes nations use enlightened justifications to impose restrictions on the cultural expressions and practices of minority groups (animal welfare in this case, women’s rights and secularism in France regarding hijab, and visual resource management in Switzerland regarding minarets), but upon examination the enlightened pretext doesn’t hold up nearly so much as a desire by parts of the majority culture to limit the expression of others.
Given that you have presented no basis for preferring one perspective over the other, I merely asked if there was some basis for your choice to do so.
It appears not.
Kiaora vto
Its been a long time since you have written something sufficiently annoying enough to cause me to respond. How we kill animals in this country is neither humane nor animal focused. The utilitarian benefit we attach to animals translates to mechanised slaughtering on such a massive scale that the NZ animal welfare code reads like a horror tale.
As it happens, New Zealand is, apparently, one of the world’s largest exporters of halal sheep meat in the world. Your culture and tradition obviously continues to suffer from delusions of moral superiority.
You see the problem Adele is that people so often misread, make assumptions and see things in posts that are not there and are not even remotely commented on. Your post is a classic example of this.
Who said anything about New Zealand’s morality in this issue? Not me. That is your assumption, mis-reading, lack of focus…..
In fact to the contrary, what you say there enforces the point I originally made.
’til next time
Kiaora, vto
My apologies for taking so long to get back to you. Lets me count the ways that your missives ever say what they mean:
.
.
.
–
Perhaps you should take up knitting instead.
Kiaora Adele
Haven’t read you lately. You always have something stern to bring us into line. Probably needed. Like your icon. It’s a particularly attractive koru I think.
I guess you are vegetarian? Killing things is never noble. How should we kill our animals?
Kiaora, Rose-tinted
I am an avowed meat eater although I remain conflicted in terms of liking pigs and loving pork.
I kill fish, my female boss shoots ducks, my sister works in the bush and hunts pigs. My dad and uncle owned butcher shops.
I have recently moved back to my turangawaewae in the East Coast of the North Island and it appears that the only household that doesn’t have a gun is Tame Iti’s.
Killing animals is not the issue. Its western society fooling itself that it is more humane in its killing practices in comparison to other cultures that would rather confront the death of an animal face on than to sanitise the reality through mechanised killing factories.
Humbug Corner
No. 18: RACHEL SMALLEY
“Coming up: heartbreak all over New South Wales as Queensland wins the deciding State of Origin!”
—Rachel Smalley tries to talk up the world’s most boring two-horse race.
TV3 Firstline, 8.15 a.m., Thursday 18 July 2013
Humbug Corner is dedicated to gathering, and highlighting, the most striking examples of faux solicitude, insincere apologies, and particularly stupid recycling of official canards. It is produced by the Insincerity Project®, a division of Daisycutter Sports Inc.
More humbugs….
No. 17 Jay Carney: ““He is not a human rights activist, he is not a dissident.”
No. 16 Barack Obama: “I wish Muslims across America & around the world a month blessed with the joys of family, peace & understanding.”
http://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-11072013/#comment-661330
No.15 John Key: “They know this is an issue of national security…”
No. 14 Charles Saatchi: “I abhor violence of any kind against women…”
No. 13 Toyota New Zealand: “The more Kiwis that lean, the more motivated our ETNZ crew will be to win.”
No. 12 Pem Bird: “We’re there to do the business of advancing our people.”
No.11 Whenua Patuwai: “They’re my brothers and to see one of them goes [sic]—it’s tough.”
No. 10 [REMOVED]
No. 9 [REMOVED]
No. 8 Barack Obama: “…people standing up for what’s right…yearning for justice and dignity…” No. 7 Barack Obama: “Nelson Mandela is my personal hero…”
No. 6 John Key: “Yeah well the Greens’ answer to everything is rail, isn’t it.”
No.5 Dr. Rodney Syme: “If you want good, open, honest practice, you have to make it transparent.”
No. 4 Mike Bush: “Bruce Hutton’s… integrity beyond reproach…such great character…”
No. 3 Dean Lonergan: “Y’ know what? The only people who will mock them are people who are dwarfists.”
No. 2 Peter Dunne: “What a load of drivel and sanctimonious humbug…”
No. 1 Dominic Bowden: “It’s okay to be speechless.”
🙄
Populuxe1 will no doubt be joining in the campaign against THIS whistleblower
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-07-17/mugabe-offers-243002c000-for-outing-of-anonymous-whistleblower/4824498
Unless he’s a canting hypocrite, of course.
Why would I do that? I know nothing about him, his politics, or his motivations. However I suspect his actions will have far greater impact on basic human rights and freedoms more sorely needed than those of Bonnie Prince Snowden. Of course, the main difference is that the US government needs to keep its shenanigans secret from its public whereas Mugabe can pretty much steal from and massacre thousands of Zimbabweans with complete impunity – that says rather a lot about your comparison.
Ha! Just as I thought.
You condemn yourself with every craven sentence you write.
I would never normally cite a professional philosophy troll like Slavoj Žižek, but in this instance his take down of Numb Chumpsky nails perfectly the reasons that make you a tosser
http://esjaybe.wordpress.com/2013/07/15/zizeks-response-to-chomsky/
You are out of your depth. You already know that painful fact, of course, but it needs to be said.
Quoting a poseur like Žižek is of no help to your already shattered credibility.
“Numb Chumpsky”? Oh I see what you’re doing! You’re quite the wit.
And yet he’s absolutely right about you and Chomsky – you pretend you are being empirical but really you are just not interested in inconveniently subjective things like context or intent. You are a sad inflexible muppet.
If by “inflexible” you mean “not prepared to abandon all standards of decency and humanity just because the State Department instructs one to” then you are right on the money, my friend.
Actually, that IS what you mean. I am not joking at all here.
Ha! Just as I thought.
You condemn yourself with every craven sentence you write.
…the US government needs to keep its shenanigans secret from its public
Ha! Just as I thought.
You condemn yourself with every craven sentence you write.
For those feeling ennui! about politics and would like to wash the dirty dust off their person – here is someone campaigning for clean water who is 150% sparking compared to the rest of us. He is motivational and we could all do something worthwhile being involved with a campaign like this.
Radionz http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon
10:05 Tara Okan – waste water scientist and magician
Tara Okan is a waste water scientist working for DCM Process Control Limited.The company has high-tech machines which can measure the waste products from sewage treatment and industrial plants.
In his spare time he is also a magician. (And that is fascinating too.)
very interesting interview, thanks
Weird letter from a Taliban leader apologising for shooting Malala Yousafzai, but still claiming it was her fault. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/17/taliban-letter-malala-yousafzai
A bit embarrasing for the loon posting here the other day claiming the shooting never happened. Shamed by the Taliban; a world first.
“You made me shoot you”
– Sounds depressingly familiar
We hear it every day from the U.S. president.
Are you still buying this, Voice.
The Teleban leader apologised, what a crock of shite!
You can smell the stench on the Malala story a mile away!
The loons are those taken in by these, stories, which is all they are, fantasy to sucker in the believers!
I don’t have a car and if I go to town at night I usually take a taxi. Most of the time by that hour the drivers are Afaghni, and because I speak a little Pushtun and Farsi I quite often strike up a conversation. Innevitably the story about home and the Taleban is exactly the same – it isn’t a fantasy, it’s all true and very much what life was like under the Taleban. The only loon is you.
Oh, would those be the Afghans who worked as translators? While I’m not blaming them for anything I have to say that those who collaborated with the Germans in Holland during the occupation ended up in jail or covered with tar and feathers and bald if you where a female. Much nicer than the Afghans would deal with the people who had to leave Afghanistan and all they had known for their entire life because the threw in their lot with the invaders.
Pop, notice, I am not saying the Teleban, are/are not for real, or that they are good/bad/ugly.
I am only stating my opinion on this particular point – That is, the Malala story, is piffle!
Designed and timed, for whatever reason, to serve whatever purpose!
When Māori rituals are undertaken without context – misunderstandings and misinformation occurs. Whose job is it to ensure that participants and those involved understand that context? Well I think the iwi do, but the general public don’t and king definitely doesn’t. The Government has a responsibility to help people understand but they don’t and haven’t because it doesn’t add to the divisiveness they require and that has been both labour and national. Now I’m not actually talking about pōwhiri here because that is just the particular battleground on this day and believe it or not Māori have been and are debating and discussing this for quite a while imo.
Interesting to note that King has decided what is best for tangata whenua
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO1307/S00226/youth-parliament-gender-segregated-powhiri-wrong.htm
Short answer from me is, get stuffed king, you don’t get to tell tangata whenua what to do.
Great mighty mars. You have to give clear direction to all these middle class women coming from a professional level as they tend to think they know everything and have reached the heights of understanding with only one-way interaction between them and others – downwards from their two and a half pillars of wisdom.
And I mention women because now that many have had the chance to move up from the lower positions once held, they have become more self-satisfied than men because they are so proud of that new achievement.
I can’t tell if you are being serious or sarcastic Rt sorry – imo all inequality is wrong and should be addressed in whatever way it can be by those who suffer from, and advocate for the removal of, that inequality. That includes gender, sexuality, ethnicity, ability, age and all of the others. But it is not the oppression-olympics and privileged people cannot impose solutions that they like onto other groups less privileged.
Well I’m being serious and not at all sarcastic. And I think your approach is really good. Mighty! It is not for Annette King to impose cultural behaviour in the name of Maori, it should be Maori who approve it. I have heard Maori say that it would be better not to have a powhiri at all rather than do a half-pie version.
This should be a matter for discussion with Maori to find what would be a suitable ritual. If one of the problems is the length of time required for a true powhiri, which sometimes is hard for timetabling that needs a discussion with those concerned.
Cool – I agree with your comment.
Middle class women more “self-satisfied” and arrogantly pontificating,…. than…. whom? Gerry Brownlee? Simon Bridges? Ranting shock jock Laws? etc, etc? Peter Dunne?… etc, etc.
And then there’s Metiria Turei, Jane Kelsey, Anne Salmond….. etc, etc.
Karol, people need to make no mistake, the woman in politics, by and large, are chosen for for certain traits they have, and share many of the male politicians.
One only has to look at the female power players, in NZ and abroad, to see they are every bit, as poor quality, and corrupted as the men.
I know people believe that equality is a path to , well, equality, but thats too simplistic.
Certain types are chosen to rule over us, male/female, make no difference, because its got nothing to do with it, other than keep the little people snapping each others heels…
We gotta get rid of the sociopaths and such like, which means the system, has to go, because the players won’t change!
Oh those wicked women not knowing their place, not gratefully accepting the right to vote and resignedly slinking back off to the kitchen to be seen and not heard /sarc
But it sounds like you’re saying Maori tikanga is dead and static. I always understood it to be adaptive and evolving – you know, a living culture. I don’t know many Maori under the age of 35-40 who would still buy into that gender segregation crap.
Of course it is a living culture and continually evolving – you know that and you know I think that. It isn’t gender segregation – bloody hell why does everything have to be filtered through your particular worldview. The debate is there within Māoridom with strong advocates on all sides. Have you actually considered any of those views? Have you considered for instance that, as some argue, the whole debate about who gets to speak is based on a context where male behaviour is used as the norm against which female behaviour is judged. Or how about the idea that within an oral culture there are many ways to speak not just the obvious one and that women speak in many ways throughout pōwhiri and within a Māori cultural context – but oh it doesn’t fit the ‘right’ way to speak which is based upon an imposed western cultural system which is assumed to be the best way. Anyway there are many other angles and points around this other than the knee-jerk – oh look at the gender segregation. A living culture is able, entitled and obligated to evolve within its own parameters and worldview without interference from those who assume a superiority that isn’t deserved or matched with the realities they create in the world they dominate.
Woman’s mag editor humiliates dyspeptic old sod
“Let’s Ditch the Royals”
The Vote, TV3, Wednesday 17 July 2013, 8:30 p.m.
I swear this dog of a program only ever gets worse. I just cannot sit through the whole vacuous, advertising-larded hour, but here are a few of the “highlights” I garnered from brief looks at last night’s travesty.
For the Moot: Duncan Garner, Louise Wright, Ron Mark, Simon O’Connor
Against the Moot: Guyon Espiner, Laila Harré, “Sir” Robert Jones, Shane Jones
Moderator: Linda Clark
Like a fish, a show rots from the head. Linda Clark has a law degree and is actually quite bright, but you would never know it by watching her on this program. Guyon Espiner might as well not even be there, he’s so disinterested. And Duncan Garner’s sole idea is to shout, “You’re a HYPOCRITE, Sir Bob!” intermittently throughout the hour.
As if Clark, Garner and Espiner aren’t substandard enough, just take a quick gander at the “talent” the hapless producers have lined up for this show. Louise Wright? She’s the particularly vacuous editor of a vacuous magazine, the Women’s Weekly. “Sir” Robert Jones? He’s unpleasant, cantankerous, and often physically violent. Linda Clark hinted the other day that Jones “behaved very badly” during this show; perhaps he will actually “do a Rod Vaughan” on Ron Mark or Simon O’Connor. Louise Wright is probably safe, though—even “Sir” Robert would probably not punch a woman on television. Ron Mark is notorious as a vacuous motormouth who has that rare ability to keep talking, even though he is actually saying nothing that makes sense. His too long tenure in parliament was marked by only one thing: his extraordinarily lengthy, anacoluthonic masterpieces during Question Time. Mark evidently considered himself to be quite clever. As anyone who listened to his questions, or managed to sit through last night’s program will know, he is anything but. In contrast to those three, Simon O’Connor, Laila Harré and Shane Jones should perform reasonably well.
So the choice of Wright, Mark and “Sir” Robert is a stark demonstration that the producers have absolutely no commitment to producing a serious show. Perhaps, though, the “talent” will confound us….
Actually, Louise Wright does exactly that, when she deals to the dreadful old property millionaire. She is vapouring on interminably about the love New Zealanders have for the Queen, and the great affection the Queen has for New Zealanders, when this happens…
SIR ROBERT JONES: [scowling and spluttering] Arrrrrghhhh! You would have been big on DOLLS when you were a little girl!
There is an uncomfortable silence. Just as animals in the wild can sense when a creature is rabid, the audience has quickly divined that Jones is slightly unhinged. Linda Clark dutifully breaks the tension…
LINDA CLARK: [nervously] Ha ha ha ha ha!
AUDIENCE: [hesitantly] Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
LOUISE WRIGHT: [icily] Your charm is exceeded only by your beauty.
SIR ROBERT JONES: Arrrrrrrrggghhhh! Harrrumph! [He scowls and slumps into a resentful, glowering silence.]
For the rest of the program, Sir Robert mostly retreats into his shell. He has been upstaged and humiliated by not only a woman, but the editor of a woman’s magazine. For someone who labors under the ridiculous impression that he is an antipodean Evelyn Waugh, that is a catastrophic humiliation. Occasionally he will emerge from his glowering silence to snarl out angrily, “Arrrrrgggghhhh!”, “Pass the vomit bucket!” and “That’s ridiculous, RIDICULOUS!”
Perhaps the funniest thing Sir Robert says all night—funny because he is absolutely serious—is when he utters a threat: “You all heard that, there’s a defamation suit going out next week!” and then waved his arms in angry dismissal of the whole assembly. For a more disturbing display of pathetic, even heart-rending anger, you’d have to watch Twelfth Night, with the humiliated Malvolio swearing, “I’ll be revenged on the lot o’ you!”
The rest of the program was, as I suspected it would be, simply dreadful. Ron Mark has gotten even more full of himself since leaving parliament. Now he sports a natty Van Dyke, which somehow serves to underline his glibness and vacuousness. He embarked on one of his trademark wandery locutions, and would not have stopped if Linda Clark had not intervened. As Mark rambled on, Jones buried his head in his hands.
DUNCAN GARNER: Are you saying we should throw out everything from England, Shane?
SHANE JONES: No I’m not. I’m talking about an organic set of changes.
DUNCAN GARNER: Well what does THAT mean? “An organic set of changes”.
After that, there is an especially witless exchange between Guyon Espiner and Ron Mark, mercifully broken up by the ever cheerful “moderator”….
LINDA CLARK: All right! Let’s cut it there! LOTS to think about when we come back….
After the break, Sir Robert Jones is back on the warpath. Having failed against the woman, he sets his sights on the youthful National MP for Tamaki, Simon O’Connor….
SIR ROBERT JONES: [dyspeptic, choking on bile] He’s wearing BROWN SHOES, for God’s sake!
AUDIENCE: [uneasily] Ha ha ha ha ha!
SIR ROBERT JONES: You’re a thirty-five-year-old octogenarian! If you are the future of the National Party, then—- arrrrrrrggghhh!
AUDIENCE: Ha ha ha ha ha!
SIR ROBERT JONES: This is NONSENSE! The question is ABSURD! [choke, splutter, snarl] Arrrrrrgggghhhh. It’s ABSURD!
LINDA CLARK: Pause! Just PAUSE!
….Advertising…..
Sir Robert Jones’ epically funny meltdown was cringe-inducingly bad, but someone even more pathetic was to come. Regular listeners to Jim Mora’s Panel and Larry Lackwit Williams’ dire Huddle segment on NewstalkZB will have recognized the hapless figure that featured next: Tim Watkin unconvincingly pretending to “work the phones”, frenetically updating viewers on the “live voting”—no numbers ever supplied— for the New Zealand “Head of State” if we ever became independent: “A lot of votes for Mateparae, lots for Apiata….” he shouts breathlessly, as if he’s in the middle of a conflagration in a war zone. As Watkin spews out this garbage, he is backed by urgent music, to underline the high drama of the occasion. Then it’s back to the top-level debate….
SIR ROBERT JONES: Look, I don’t want to be unkind, so I’ll just be FACTUAL. Look, most of them are quite STUPID!
AUDIENCE: Ha ha ha ha ha!
SIMON O’CONNOR: Look, Prince Charles earned hundreds of millions of pounds last year for charity. He is a man who LOVES New Zealand. He has promoted New Zealand wool….
SIR ROBERT JONES: Arrrrrrgggghhhh!
AUDIENCE: Ha ha ha ha ha!
LINDA CLARK: Ha ha ha ha ha! Sir Robert, you’re like that grumpy old bastard from the Muppets!
AUDIENCE: Ha ha ha ha ha!
LINDA CLARK: I was tempted to come down and do a Rod Vaughan on you!
AUDIENCE: Ha ha ha ha ha!
At the end of the program, all the voting is tallied up—-no actual numbers given, mind you—-and the pro-monarchy side has triumphed by 59 percent to 41. Nobody is surprised.
DUNCAN GARNER: I’m going to continue the debate on my Radio Live Drive program tomorrow. Thanks for watching The Vote.
GUYON ESPINER: Good night!
“For the Moot … Against the Moot” – you had a 50% random chance of getting that one right.
For the record, this writer, i.e. moi, is FOR the moot.
I/S is on to it again:
This government is contracting out more and more of essential state services. It really is to the point to ask if the government is doing this because of these malpractices that boost profit.
Fraud, cherry picking ….
AS IF we haven’t been through it ALL before. (User pays in the health system during the 90s – for example).
Dear dear ole Helen had SUCH an opportunity in her third term to reverse some of those ills. It’s a shame she chose to have a lay down and a cuppa – it gave the likes of the ABC a foot in the door.
Now Labour are wondering why the masses are ditching them.
– Having a lay down in the third term
– 3rd Wayism
– Losing the principles on which they were founded (and that allowed most of them their careers)
– Continued sense of having ‘payed their dues’ and entitlement – all the while forgetting that they were ‘elected representatives’ (quaint idea I know).
Yep – it’s time to CUT OUT THE CONTRACTORS!
At both central and local government.
Penny Bright
Good luck with that Penny.
Top independent rates I see around
$250, $225, $220, $215, $195, $175, $165, $150….hundreds of independents, all just chewing up Auckland dime!
Even some administrators around $100ph
Of course, once you map out the relationships, and all the alumni, it becomes clear that council, is run over by corporate types, most with no public sector experience what ever, and many only recently arrived in NZ!
I wonder if Serco are adopting the same sort of practices in running the NZ prison as they are accused of in the UK.
I wonder if Serco are adopting the same sort of practices in running the NZ prison as they are accused of in the UK.
There has been a suggestion that people in South Africa do something for each other or the country to celebrate Nelson Mandela’s great achievements.
I wonder what John Key would provoke or enthuse people to do for each other in NZ.
The best way to honour Nelson Mandela would be to do what he used to do: struggle for justice. For instance, you might like to drop a line to New Zealand’s best journalist, John Stephenson, who is currently battling in court against the New Zealand Army, which has slandered him. Or you might sign up for this petition….
http://www.bradleymanning.org/featured/nyt-ad
Suggesting that John Key, who is the absolute antithesis of Mandela, “do something to celebrate Mandela’s achievements” is utterly inane.
Good job that Rt didn’t suggest that then.
Good job that Rt didn’t suggest that then.
Oh God, I’ve flown off the handle without checking carefully, yet again. Sorry, Rosetinted. I thought you were smarter than that, and you are.
As “Sir” Robert Jones would say: “Arrrrrrrggggghhhh!”
Morrissey
Okay. You have been working so hard exposing the triviality of some on our airwaves probably you’ve got overheated. Turn off and drop out for a while. Did you listen to the clip link I put up for Bob Dylan and the lyrics too?
Morrissey link here for Bob and great poetry I reckon.
http://thestandard.org.nz/sick-bastards/#comment-664450
Thanks for that, Rosetinted. I’ll tune in, drop out and turn on your link.
Forget the morality, worry about the ACCENT
Noelle McCarthy on the case
On today’s edition of The Panel, Noelle McCarthy chortles, they will be talking about Benedict Cumberpatch’s new movie role: as Julian Assange. What is exercising McCarthy’s mind is not whether this is another hatchet job on Assange, which is what a serious and intelligent journalist would be concerned about. No, what Noelle McCarthy is worrying about is whether or not Cumberpatch can do a passable Australian accent.
And don’t expect any intelligent or humane contributions from Zoe Ferguson, Chris Trotter or Lisa Scott, either. Ferguson is as determinedly frivolous and as reflexively right wing as Susan Baldacci, and as for Trotter and Scott, well, here’s how they went last time they were on the programme….
http://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-14062013/#comment-648511
As you read these transcripts, or sacrifice valuable time listening to their witless witterings, just remember that this is where YOUR tax money is going.
Doctor’s advice Morissey:
Don’t listen – you’ll do yourself an injury! I just turned her off after Van Morrison.
Let her pump her ego. It’s all the rage
Don’t listen – you’ll do yourself an injury!
Thanks, Dr. Tim. But I have to listen, and I have to transcribe. It’s a kind of sickness, I know, but I have to do it….
http://io9.com/5317703/amazon-secretly-removes-1984-from-the-kindle
In the world of today, that final question "Can it replace a book file with a different file whose content is changed? "is a largely overlooked concern. Who regularly checks all their folders to see if any contents have changed? A recent spring cleaning of storage devices of various ages was an excellent reminder of how much data a person can collect. Even legally acquired/created data quickly piles up to the point there is no way a person will be able to reliably track what it is in their possession. (Add illegal movies and tunes into that mix and it is even more challenging)
Indeed, Freedom!
History is written by the *winners*, nothing has changed, other than now, those who control history, can re-write it or delete it, and no one will realize!
We are in the very dangerous time of existence, which so many are blinded by the gadget bling, they simply can’t see where its all going to finish up.
Once life is fully digital, its good night from me, and its goodnight from him!
Just heard Matthew Hooton on the radio saying if the Pakeha Party gets into the game they’ll be taking votes from Winston Peters.
lolz. 50,000 facebook likes didn’t come from NZ First supporters you fool.
Would anyone like to hazard a guess which party the large numbers of i’m-all-right-jack, middle nz, anti-treaty, it’s-pc-gawn-mad, one-law-for-all, casually racist bbq dickheads have voted for in the last, oh let’s say three elections?
Anyone?
How many of those “likes” were for trolling purposes, though?
No way of knowing, but I wouldn’t imagine it’s a huge number compared to 50,000.
I’d like to think a lot of that number were just clicking like because they thought it was a laugh and they weren’t really thinking too much about it.
But then I remember 2005…
Latest Roy Morgan is out. National up to 47%, Labour down to 31%, Greens drop 1.5% to 11.5%.
Not good …
http://www.roymorgan.com/findings/new-zealand-morgan-poll-july-18-2013-201307180442
Bugger.
What I find concerning is that it’s the third consecutive RM fall for Labour (even if still above 30). Haven’t previously had consecutive falls this term. Although the descent seems to be slowing, so we’ll see, but it’s still concerning.
At least it’ll cheer up CV.
Not fussed mate; I see the true level of support for Labour as sitting around 32%-33% so this falls exactly in line with my expectations +/- 2%.
However once National pile on the pressure in election year (Labour not fit to govern etc.) I expect that figure to drop by quite a bit.
lol
There you are, back to happily predicting another national government.
I’m hoping Robertson uses his sway in caucus to move Shearer on and initiate a leadership primary, instead of letting that Shearer based defeat occur.
Well, I suppose I have a little happiness matrix regarding election2014:
Man, you’re thorough if nothing else, mate.
The Labour Party caucus is a sick man…with constipation
Perfect numbers for the right wing dead wood of Labour who would get to sidle up to Winston and lock themsleves in for another few years…
Coup watch from Duncan Garner about to intensify
And yet you seem to be ignoring that NZF economic policy is well to the left of Labour’s
… and I suppose it’s never occurred to some of the Labs that they might start getting more traction by actually calling the Government to account for its incompetence, instead of indulging in an orgy of tragic butthurt because their favourite missed out on the Party Leader job…
I’ve read that several times but it still doesn’t make any sense.
Who is not calling the government to account? Or, who is?
Who isn’t? All the people who are whining about Shearer when they should be taking on the Nats, that’s who.
Hang on Daveosaurus – its all those pro-Shearer Labour MPs who are NOT taking on the Nats, and who should be – that’s the real problem with the Labour caucus
Under-performing caucus in your opinion?
Two options:
A) whine on the internet and pass as much ammunition as possible to the greasy cetacean and his ilk; or
B) use one’s political brilliance by caning the branch selection process and winning a seat to show the sluggards how it’s done.
It would appear that very few commenters here have chosen method B.
Rubbish that is happening.
Look at posts on The Standard. Every day around 80% of posts are bleating on about real or imaginary faults of the National Government.
Left leaning folks use every opportunity to bag Key and his ‘cronies.’
Sadly though this is all preaching to the faithful.
The general public aren’t buying the bleating so it is ineffective and much hot air.
This is primarily why 2014 will go to Key and then the divided (and reduced) Labour caucus will flap around like fish out of water trying to decide how they lost election number 3.
Robertson holds the key to not losing election number 3.
Go Grant!
Go Go GO!!
Let’s do it!!!
Not a surprising result, National have started campaigning and have scored some easy points against a pathetic Labour Leader.
I think you are all a callus bunch of dreamers , leave Shearer alone he and his party are doing a grand job.
With the labour getting on so with the greens our futures are all secure .
This combination will get the result they truly deserve at the next election .
Don’t ya just love it.
Should we be concerned?
http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/asia/8936213/Steam-rising-from-Fukushima-reactor
The Japanese Government has assured people that they are safe and that the situation is stable and closely monitored.
Who are we to disagree?
No not really.
Earths atmosphere is already loaded with radio active isotopes, its only lies and such which keeps people from understanding the real danger we have been in, since science began earth, sea and sky with nuclear weapons!
Thousands of detonations over many decades, add chernobyl, etc!
No wonder they are replacing there nuclear power stations with coal fired generation , Germany the same.
You can always count on coal.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10899523
Who are members of the Committee for Auckland – who are the real corporate controllers of the Auckland region?
http://www.committeeforauckland.co.nz/membership/member-organisations
Check for yourself………………
Penny Bright
Does Shearer need a “I’m with Stupid –>” T-shirt?
http://www.whaleoil.co.nz/2013/07/does-he-mean-the-start-of-the-bbq-season/
Spending time in the sewer is not good for you.
Yes Wolf, but perhaps with the arrow pointing upwards.
ps pay no attention to Lusk, he’s a coward who hides behind a fool.
UK Invests in World’s First Air-Breathing Rocket Engine
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, we need our own, government funded, space program.
Just like our own advanced semiconductor industry? No, I don’t think so.
Got a reason why not?
The massive expense of a space program in light of other areas that are in desperate need of funding is a start.
The massive amount of resources and people we have sitting idle would tend to indicate that we could do the space program while also addressing those other areas. Funding really isn’t the problem – government just needs to create the money, spend it and possibly raise taxes slightly.
They’re always going to object to ideas that create jobs and use our resources for our own advantage.
If you want the likes of TheContrarian to support it you’ll have to find a way to funnel the profits and benefits offshore.
I’m not for the idea of developing a highly toxic, polluting industry for the sake of importing lots of printed overseas dollars, and which does little (or nothing) to help us adapt to climate change or fossil fuel depletion. There’s got to be a better way.
No doubt there is. Perhaps a massive investment in solar energy and catskin farming.
Catskins are renewable and while solar is not, it should be good for another couple of hundred million years.
Damn right it’s renewable. We feed the rats to the cats and the cats to the rats and get the cat skins for nothing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qii5us2lB4
Well,
1.) It’s not highly polluting if you do it properly
2.) I really couldn’t care less about the imported dollars but while we’re trading in the world then we actually do need them
3.) Last time I looked James Hansen was employed by NASA so I’d say that there was a high probability that a space program would help us adapt to climate change
Perhaps you’d prefer it if we went back to living in caves?
Yeah, right. Funnel money offshore. Uh-huh.
Say what? Do some MSM journalists have a sufficient understanding of out political system? Or is the problem off-shore copy editors?
NZ Herald Amelia Wade article on out of control wheel clamping in Mt Roskill:
Or did Phil just switch sides?
Switch sides to what?
Here’s his facebook post.
Of course, neither Goff nor the MSM seem to realise that the actual problem is people using cars to pick up their kids from school.
“Minister” rather than “Member” seems to be the issue.
Ah, missed that 😳
Morgan poll is hardly surprising. It looks like even Shearer has given up …
https://twitter.com/DavidShearerMP
Did anything happen in July? Apart from government pissing on the law, shafting the poor and other trivial matters?
He lost his phone a few weeks ago. His staff are gonna get another one, no hurry though.
And none of them know how to use Twitter from a computer instead.
Yeah but they have to set up a new twitter account for him. He lost his phone.
And they’ll get him a new phone once they find the insurance policy and make the required claim?
Yep, and if they wait another 6 months they can still get the no-claims bonus for this year.
Long term strategic thinking they call it.
Did they check the Sky City corporate box?
Yeah they found the smashed up remnants of a phone but it was beyond identification.
Looked liked it had been hurled at the wall by a passionate man in a manly fit of passion.
I hope it was just his phone.
Am beginning to feel more despondent for Labour.
Unforgettable Ass-Kickings
No. 1: Ed Herman deals to Christopher Hitchens
Rejoinder To Christopher Hitchens
by EDWARD HERMAN, 25 August 2008
http://www.zcommunications.org/rejoinder-to-christopher-hitchens-by-edward-herman
In a “Rejoinder to Noam Chomsky” in early October, Christopher Hitchens put up two sentences regarding my own writing, as follows:
“Mr. Herman has moved from opposing the bombing of Serbia to representing the Milosevic regime as a victim and as a nationalist peoples democracy. He has recently said, in a ludicrous attack on me, that the ‘methods and policies’ of the Western forces in Kosovo were ‘very similar’ to the tactics of Al-quaeda; an assertion that will not surprise those who are familiar with his style.”
This packs a lot of misrepresentation into two sentences. Nowhere in my writings have I ever used any one of the three words “nationalist peoples democracy” to describe the Milosevic regime and never would, so Hitchens’ language is straightforward fabrication and misrepresentation. For Hitchens I must be an apologist for Milosevic because I have “opposed the bombing of Serbia,” just as one might be called an apologist for Saddam Hussein for objecting to the “sanctions of mass destruction.” But of course he is not an apologist for NATO and Bill Clinton for supporting the bombing of Serbia.
Notice also that he speaks of my making the “Milosevic regime” the “victim” of NATO bombing rather than the people of that regime. But I have never focused my sympathy on the regime as victim, just the people killed, injured and traumatized. Imagine how Hitchens would assail for outrageous insensitivity to the real civilians massacred an individual who spoke sarcastically of somebody being bothered by the recent New York/Washington attacks which only “victimized” the “Bush and capitalist regimes.”
Hitchens says that I equate the tactics of Al-Quaeda with those of the Western forces “in Kosovo.” But the text that he is criticizing was comparing the attack on civilians in New York and Washington with the systematic NATO bombing of civilian facilities in SERBIA, not the military operations in Kosovo. In both the attacks on New York/Washington and Serbia, civilian “collateral damage” was either entirely acceptable or positively desired. In the Serbia bombing case there is solid evidence that the destruction of civilian facilities and inevitable civilian deaths and injuries were planned for and seen as positive….
Read more….
http://www.zcommunications.org/rejoinder-to-christopher-hitchens-by-edward-herman
Christopher Hitchens is/was a common prostitute to the ruling money class.
One of these people who are so flakey as to be “look at me look at me” wahanui Trots’ and Commies early on and then jump heaps of fences clear to the other side of the political spectrum. Announcing their arrival with redoubled tino wahanui as though no one’s noticed. Classic con-men/women. For example Rob Campbell…….Progressive Youth Movement back in the day……..latterly a seriously malevolent right wing Ports of Auckland schemer.
I must have got it wrong but I thought the unappealing egomaniac Hitchens died a couple of years ago. If you want some fun have a look on YouTube at the debate at some US university – Hard out George Galloway and Mr Pompous Narcissist Hitchens.
Beautiful ! In keeping with the narcissism Hitchens thought he’d won. HaHaHa !
I thought the unappealing egomaniac Hitchens died a couple of years ago.
He did indeed, but not before writing a particularly stupid autobiography. It looks like the poor fellow spent most of his last few months trying to get even with all those who had humiliated him over the last shameful decade of his life.
And by the way, no one considered that Hitchens got the better of Galloway in that epic confrontation in 2005. The person who, more than anyone else, realized that Galloway had vanquished him was Hitchens himself.
That laughable autobiography of his fires a few limp shots at Galloway, but I think even as he composed his bilious and dishonest prose, the dying Hitchens realized he was flogging a dead horse.
I recommend it if you want a good laugh, or indeed, a melancholy look at what happens to the venal and unfeasibly self-important.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10899904
National education data shows schools are not meeting the ambitious targets set by the government as part of its better public service targets…
Just what does Hekia hope to glean from these figures? Apparently she said the data was for regions to look at and understand. Well she could start by telling the journalists to provide us with some accurate data. (Apart from the percentage of children who can stand on their heads while reciting the magna carta and drink through a straw.
Take a look at the national standards for these central regions. They have an awful symmetry about them.
Manawatu – Wanganui:
National standards 2012:
Reading – 77.4 per cent
Maths – 73.6 per cent
Writing – 70 per cent
and Wellington:
and Tasman:
and Marlborough:
and Nelson:
and West Coast:
and Canterbury:
and Otago:
Exactly the same figures for them all … lazy journalism, bad cut and paste, or meaningless data.
The schools warned that she would misuse the data and this is obviously a starter.
In the round this is at least a moral win for Stephenson……….”the authorities” have had to admit that the ShonKey Python style of governance, the stock bizo ……. “deny and mock” ……. is shit.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/8935989/No-decision-in-Defence-defamation-trial
Just hope he’s able to negotiate David’s legal costs being met by Goliath. Otherwise it’s a case of them cynically calling him a liar………he goes to court to force them to admit that he’s not, they admit they were wrong and they finally admit he’s not a liar like they said, then it costs him his entire worth.
Not right !
On the Herald…..Why you should vote for me: Uesifili Unasa
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10899531
“As a young migrant from Samoa, growing up in Kelston, ministered in Mangere, living in Parnell
Lives in Parnell..so well out of South Auckland, then. Indeed as he admits himself, he now lives among the wealthiest. Hope they have not put him up to split the Pacific Island vote and let a wingnut in.
The Drone That Killed My Grandson
Apparently a recent drone crash in the US was that of a QF-4. Its a full size Phantom F-4 jet fighter kitted out to be flown remotely from the ground. This makes me wonder what other full size jet planes they can fly remotely…
http://www.airspacemag.com/military-aviation/Where-Have-All-the-Phantoms-Gone.html
Any and all. All they need is the plane to have fly-by-wire and it’s easy to convert. If it doesn’t then it’d be slightly harder.
BTW, those military drones aren’t small. One of the bigger ones mentioned is described as having the wingspan of a 727. It’s not as big as a 727 but pictures I’ve seen of them would indicate that it’s bigger than a Beechcraft Baron.
They’ve been flying QF-4s for years. They’re basically just a supersonic target, following a line begun years ago and passing through the Queen Bee, a drone Tiger Moth (which certainly lacked fly by wire). They don’t have any of the offensive capabilities or autonomy found in Obama’s latest toys.
Drones can be as big as they like. They typically make them big enough to do the job, and no bigger. They start at about the size of a mosquito, which obviously won’t have much range or payload.