YES Tony, but the Right’s use of their promotion budget begins. We need the counter fiscal picture to outline where they are “Overegging” the picture.
We need a list of other opportunities for employment related to making the changes necessary to keep temperatures in the safe zone. We need a bullshit detector, like a dangerous lies meter.
Wind power design, manufacture and installation.
Wave power design, manufacture and installation.
Sustainable energy already provides more jobs in the USA, than oil.
Horticulture. And converting dairy to the same. Organic farming is now more profitable than dairy, but farmers need help to convert.
General manufacturing. Oop’s forgot, the right wing already killed those jobs with our artificially high dollar, and mania for FTA. Where were all these people that are so concerned, when Fitzroy yachts went under?
Five minutes off the top of my head. I’m sure we can come up with a lot more.
BTW. Unless there is some huge reserve of oil and gas in Taranaki we haven’t found, 30 billion is a gross exaggeration. Like all unsustainable extractive industries, oil and cases contribution to the Taranaki economy, was always going to be time limited.
But those that are could shift easily to another like field.
And engineers etc work off plans so can build whatever.
Be positive. Be more aspirational for you country.
Well people have been miners for coal, they dug peat for heating, windmills are undeniable one of the oldest form of energy harvesting, and in many countries some of the old mills still work, and new windmills are being established.
so yes, the people of the Taranki could become green energy engineers, maintenance crews, scientists etc etc etc. Are you saying that humans can’t adopt new technologies? are you saying you are still going about town on a donkey or a cart with a horse in front of it?
Chris T
Another sour snippy useless little bit of crap question from you with nothing
useful in ideas to put here. You must be a sad little man who finds satisfaction in writing here regularly – no ideas and dissing those wanting discussion. Is
this the only work you can do.
Show him up then.
What is your list of employment opportunities?
Don’t just carp in your usual manner. Tell us all the great opportunities there are and how many jobs they will supply.
If you can.
Good God, alwyn, haven’t you taken on board that climate change could kill all life on the planet? We simply cannot keep extracting and using fossil fuels.
I suspect, though I don’t profess to understand right-wing thought processes (or lack of) but even rwnjs might think unemployment would be preferable to being dead?
With government help, new employment opportunities will be found. Maybe that’s what the Provincial Growth Fund is for – just speculating.
I do not accept that any climate change that man may produce will “kill all life on this planet”, as you so melodramatically put it.
Banning all gas and oil exploration in New Zealand isn’t going to help. If we really want to make a difference we should be developing more Hydro and Geothermal power sources so that we can have renewable base line power for everything except aircraft. That will require fossil fuels to provide the power source for the foreseeable future. More wind power is not going to help us until a genuine cost-effective storage system for it is available.
Our politicians could perhaps help by setting a good example. Does Mr Shaw really have to fill in his time travelling to conferences around the world where they tut-tut about how much long haul flight is taking place?
And couldn’t the list MPs set a good example by coming to live in Wellington?
“I do not accept that any climate change that man may produce will “kill all life on this planet”, as you so melodramatically put it.”
“all life on this planet” is absolute and not an accurate claim, imo. However, without “all” in the sentence, the claim becomes true.
Alwyn; do you agree that changes to the climate caused by human activity has and will destroyed some living organisms? If so, could you comment on the extent of harm caused so far and again on what could reasonably be expected?
Of course it will have destroyed “some living organisms”.
But it won’t be anything like that caused simply by the fact that their are now far to many people in the world. That is, unfortunately, the main cause of mankind’s effect on the world.
Modern man owes his existence of course to a combination of global warming, after the last ice age and, if what I have read is accurate, the discovery of the benefits of cooking food and, in particular, meat. That provided sufficient energy to let the modern brain grow to its current size.
It doesn’t particularly worry me if species become extinct. I would think that at least 99% (or should it be 99.9%?) of all the species that have ever existed on earth are now extinct and the world continues quite happily. Tyrannosaurus Rex was without doubt a very impressive beast but I’m happy they aren’t around now.
I have found that the people who rabbit on the most about how all species have as much right to live as does mankind always turn out to be very selective in this matter when you question them closely. Dolphins are delightful of course but they are much more squeamish when quizzed about whether the smallpox virus has just as much right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
@Tony.
I suggest that you have a look at the science expressed in work on evolution. You take yourself far too seriously if you think that the survival of any particular species matters.
What do you think happened to the various other branches of humans besides our own Homo Sapiens strain? There were, and please excuse my errors if I get some wrong, Homo Erectus, Neanderthals, Homo floresiensis and Denisovans weren’t there?
I am sure there are plenty of people who read this blog who know much more about this than I do.
Does it really matter, in the long run that they became extinct and our strain survived?
It is ultimately going to be irrelevant anyway.
I hate to be the one to tell you this Tony but regardless of anything mankind might attempt all life on earth is going to become extinct in less that a billion years anyway.
All the oceans will evaporate.
There, are you suitably depressed?
Total distruction is impossible, partial distruction is ok because smallpox, and try to discount the possibility of CO2 levels and thermal disruption to currents resulting in ocean stagnation, anoxic events, and hydrogen sulphide discharges.
I really don’t think that mankind induced climate change can possibly be on the scale of the Permian Extinction. Do you think we can arrange volcanoes to erupt and cover about 2,000,000 sq km with lava?
These should also do so where they could ignite coal beds that might release a few trillion tons of carbon.
That is rather beyond our capabilities I should think, even if we exclude the possibility of a comet or asteroid hitting the Earth as well.
Your hyperbole, actually no I’ll just call it what it is, exaggerated BS, is unhelpful. I’d suggest you pause for breath. Here is some sensible critique of similarly catastrophic claims.
There is indeed a lot of hyperbole in the climate debate – exaggeration with a legitimate purpose – designed to waken those not yet awake, such as you and alwyn and Chris T.
Tony Veitch [not etc.]: ‘Hey, wake up, the house is burning!!!’
Shadders (semi-comatose state): ‘Oh what exaggerated BS, its only the kitchen.’
At least you know the kitchen is on fire Shadders, the sky (the roof) is indeed gonna fall in, so don’t turn over and go back to sleep – run!
The problem is that as these self appointed prophet’s of doom eventually have to eat their words, less and less people take the whole thing seriously. We don’t need to have the crap scared out of us. We need scientists who will give us realistic projections, and policy makers who respond with realistic solutions.
16million what? Certainly not climate refugees. From your own link:
“Sydney, on the other hand, saw seven consecutive days in November with maximum temperatures equal or above 25 degrees. This hasn’t happened at all since 1968 and has only occurred in two Novembers in the last 118 years.”
In other words the climatic conditions facing Sydney, in this case, were evident in 1968. Where did all those climate refugees head then?
From my link. “Scientists say that without major reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases, it’s believed that up to three in four people will face the threat of dying from heat by 2100”.
Facts too scary for you. In fact, if you have access to scientific journals, you will see that results show a pace and severity of global warming, is much faster than earlier predictions. Most of the alarms were too optimistic.
Links that actually back up the rhetoric with science. When you quote an article that states that current levels of heat were experienced in 1968, and then that 3/4 of the population will be dead from heat within 100 years, you have a serious disconnect that needs to be explained before you start talking about 40 million climate refugees, with guns, inundating NZ.
Seriously?
Are you really not aware of the science on the consequences of burning fossil fuels and the release of sequestered carbon into the atmosphere?
Chris – it makes no real difference to global CO2 budgets. That boat has already sailed. All we are doing now is trying to minimize the levels of climate change to something that as a civilization that we can survive next century.
Personally my assessment is that the civilization is screwed I anything like its current form by the end of the century. Extremes of weather and agriculture don’t mix too well.
Howver it also makes no real difference if tHt oil, gas,and coal is left in the ground. Perhaps you’d like to say whose xtractkbv it benefits…
I can’t see anyone apart from a few unproductive parasitical rent takers – and as far as I can see they should learn to enjoy poverty.
engineers, maintenance crews, welders, designers, essentially a host of jobs that already exist, especially in building the individual components for the windmills/water turbines.
If we feel that we need trainers to get our people up to scratch we could import a few from the Netherlands.
But i see no reason why a company like CPS Pacific, subsidiary of Fletcher Steel that builds lampposts and such could not build/weld the components of the windmills? http://www.csppacific.co.nz/
just to name one.
So yes, there are great opportunities for many different businesses.
And the source for this figure is what, precisely?
If you are going to quote numbers with out providing any source you are going to be, and deserve to be, laughed at.
Like you and the rest of the RWNJ’s endlessly repeating crap, you mean.
https://www.stats.govt.nz/news/fuel-drives-lift-in-imports
“Monthly imports of petroleum and products tend to move up and down; however, annual imports reached $5.7 billion in the year to March 2018, a rise of 24 percent. Petroleum and products is New Zealand’s third-largest import commodity, behind vehicles and parts, and mechanical machinery”.
I always give the source of any statistics I quote.
However that isn’t the point of my question.
How do you get the figure of $900k per year as the net cost of importing hydrocarbons?
The links you give don’t seem to provide any information from which you can derive that number.
You guys engaging with these Muppets over CC, or imagining a future makes me smile.
Mangling two quotes: ‘not to teach a pig to sing, you both get dirty but only the pig enjoys it’.
Also leadership, in the form of moving away from last century extractive industries, is unrecognizable to these folk as it may effect returns from their share portfolio.
And how much money are we going to safe:
Less road deaths and injuries, less obesity by reducing car usage?
Less respiratory illnesses, dementia etc. because of cleaner air and lower noise levels in the inner cities?
Less destruction from climate change and reduced sea level rise?
Surely, over time that accumulates to a lot more than 30billion dollars.
Now all we have to hope for, is that the establishment Democrats who are well known to be totally beholden to and in the pockets of their wealthy donors (private and corporate) don’t cheat the progressive movement again in 2020 at the behest of those same donors.
Thanks for the link Adrian.
Just listening to Bernie makes me want to join his movement.
It will be a hell of a contest and he may just surprise everyone next year.
I hope his security detail is in place.
Robert. The list is brilliant. This is the universal truth we all need to promote. That should be a post for next Sunday.. so many good ideas. Thanks Robert.
Practical… keep cats in at night. What else needs to change? Use the list as a guide!!
Nice list Robert – thanks. On this one:
“Champion fair tax systems so that the wealth our country produces is more equitably shared.”
I like the implicit recognition in this statement that wealth is created collectively and then distributed (or often appropriated) individually. And that current distribution outcomes bear little or no relationship to actual contribution, let alone need.
However if the solutions proposed are only or always through the tax system, i.e. inherently re-distributive, there is a world of pain in getting support. Because people think you are taking ‘their’ money and giving it to others. Instead, looking at pre-distribution solutions – maybe organising workplaces so that initial distribution decisions are arrived at democratically – might be worthwhile.
Oh – and it is also worth distinguishing real wealth from fictitious capital created by
deliberately engineering bubbles through the issuing of bank credit. e.g. our housing bubble
The wonderful Ed previously posted about this superb podcast with Rachel Stewart on New Zealand rivers and the impact of agriculture. It is now on line.
Thank you Ed.
Thank you Rachel.
Thank you Derrick.
Time for a rethink on shared cycleways. Particularly if the idea is to get more and more people commenting on bikes. This places adults going fast and children going to school on the footpaths at the same time.
Muttonbird
This is an important point. The authorities seem to get enthused by every new big thing. Cycles on shared pathways is one. Lime Scooters another – there is a pattern here. Also I think you said commenting when you meant commuting?
Sanctuary has the example of the very thing that bothers me.
But let’s all join hands and sing kumbaya, happy people mingling merrily in the sunlight being community for images to go on cycling and cycleway and Council publications (like Jehovahs Witnesses put on theirs, the lion lying down with the lamb and all peoples’ angst and stress absent.) Some stress is good for us apparently, but we have overdose.
(Incidentally the pattern of authorities’ lack of willingness to attempt to control ‘unfortunate’ effects from lots of things requiring checking and being held to a standard is probably abysmal if looked at objectively and thoroughly. (See WetheBlleple below on toxic effects from known likely polluters.)
I suspect the authorities figure that letting the footies and wheelies fight it out will lead them all back into their cars, and the natural order of things will be restored.
It is a horrible dilemma KJT. And I recognise both sides argument.
But no use asking for courtesy and consideration from bike users as a group; it is as hard for them to alter their riding style to suit vulnerable soft-fleshed people with no protection, as it is for car drivers with people on bikes, far less protected than vehicles, as they dawdle down the road built for at least 60km hour. And in fact many bike riders adopt exactly the same attitudes as car drivers that they would probably criticise when on the bike seat.
The adults if they are young males revel in speed, typical of their age.
The female that turned and threatened is one of those coarsened no doubt by an upbringing in a family of the undeserving which doesn’t get anything without shouldering the way through,. Quite a few really hard women around now; You’re either the quick or the dead in their lives, and that means them as well as you.
If we want kinder considerate people then we must apply such to the young parents struggling. (Not create huffy Gnat scenarios at select committee hearings of their requests to the government.)
Cyclists manage to be both self-righteous and reckless at the same time.
Is there anyone else who shares this combination of qualities – apart from suicide bombers? Not that I am even remotely comparing them…
Problem is that putting cycles on main roads in Auckland is far too dangerous. After I was nearly killed on Newton Road for the third time by drivers pushing me to the curb after getting off the cycleway to home, I now use the footpath.and carefully dodge pedestrians.
But pedestrians on shared cycleways are often a danger to themselves. At least one in ten is walking on wrong side or have spread themselves across the whole path. Most don’t read the signs or listen to bells or stop dead in the middle of the cycleway to read their damn cell or hear a bike coming from behind and veer to the wrong side – or all at once.
And the numbers of pedestrians who walk on the dedicated cycleways is pretty damn high. Parts of Customs Street in particular.
Auckland is dangerous on the roads, but at least the motorists are oblivious to you.
The car door opening in front of you, or the car edging you off the roundabout, simply wasn’t looking for bikes.
As for pedestrians on the cycleway. Tell me about it.
In Wellington they swear at you for being on the road, then chase you into the shingle, deliberately.
Yes lprent those things that pedestrians do were the perks that you once had when you were on foot – flexibility and safety of movement.
Because the authorities could not tame the car situation and slow the traffic down, lessen car numbers, put safe cycleways in, we now not only have road rage, we have footpath rage.
Walking is a basic human thing. Fuck all the machines, these mad oldies that are the deserving and will run you over as they proceed myopically along, and these scooters that will lead to having odd leg muscles – – one a pumpkin and the other
a pimple.
Let’s just walk for goodness sake, and as well let’s have small jeepneys, tuk tuks with easy on and off, easy peasy. So much better for community and for the environment than the latest toy machine for those who are whatever super-cool is called now.
I had a run in over three years ago the Northwestern cycle way with three MAMILs (actually one was MAWIL) who came hurtling along the Bright Street to St Lukes Road section of the cycleway at high speed on their racing bikes at 7.00am on pitch black winters morning. This section is basically unlit, narrow and used a lot by not just cyclists but pedestrians and schoolkids. They had minimum lights and were easily doing 40km/h+.
Being community minded and annoyed at their irresponsibility when I caught up with them at the lights at St Lukes road I sarcastically suggested that if they had aspirations to ride in the Tour De France they should stick to the road instead of trying to be Tuesday morning Olympians on a shared path. They became extremely abusive, the woman even tried to push me off my bike and threatened to come back the next day with unspecified reinforcements to “deal with me”.
I emailed AT about this, and got a reply to the effect they would “monitor the cycleway”.
We’re gonna lose $30B dollars according to the gatekeepers of Hell.
This figure appears to be magicked out of thin air, like oil really.
The reality is our oil fields have less than 20% production left and our gas less than 25%. So the easy stuff has been got at and largely consumed, now they want to go for the fracking, the deep offshore, the harder to get at stuff.
Well. I have some idea of what the oil industry makes, and how many they employ in New Zealand.
30 billion is a gross exaggeration, unless they are talking about the foreign exchange/ US dollars, saved by removing oil imports, and replacing with renewables.
If we follow the US and UK experience, the earnings, employment, and debt saved by going to sustainable energy, will more than cover any losses from stopping oil and gas. There is the potential for many new export industries, also.
The cost balance between renewable energy and fossil fuels already favours renewables. That is before, we factor in the costs of global warming..
Meant to have the tail end of a cyclone heading here. Lots of rain and wild weather. Thing is, after the long drought, most ground is not able to take on water. Flooding may follow the rain.
Be careful out there on low lying land, especially with your stock. Keep a close eye on the forecast and move stock before the water arrives.
Be careful if you are in the bottom of a catchment where fires have been above your place. Earth may be destabilised from tree loss, and runoff may be toxic. Mind what the kids are playing in.
But, enjoy the rain when it arrives, we really need it.
Very curiouser Blazer. I tried the 7 meanings and its true. Politicians have to be alert because the printed word is not the same as the spoken word even though they are identical.
No wonder I loose the arguments with my wife. “You said….”
The family of a teenager who travelled to Syria to join Islamic State has been told the Home Office intends to revoke her British citizenship, according to their lawyer.
[…]
Javid told the Commons on Monday: “The powers available to me include banning non-British people from this country and stripping dangerous dual nationals of their British citizenship. Over 100 people have already been deprived in this way.”
Although Begum is not a dual citizen, the home secretary has been advised that, because her mother holds a Bangladeshi passport, he may be able to deprive her of her British citizenship. The Home Office has not commented
Worst. Split. Ever.
by RICHARD SEYMOUR, Feb. 19, 2019
I will be brief about this, since that is all it deserves. The secret seven are finally out, to the surprise of no one.
They call it a split; I call it doing a Jonestown. MPs quitting Labour today have just blown their “nuclear option” prematurely, in the least convincing manner. While damaging to Labour ahead of the Brexit deadline, expeditiously for May, it chiefly harms Corbyn’s opponents in Labour.
Allow me to ask the obvious questions. How many trade unions do you think will affiliate to a party founded by Chuka, Luciana, and Leslie, all recently spotted drinking the Anna Soubry kool-aid? How many councillors? How many members? Bear in mind that all of these individuals have awful relations with their local parties: hence their claim to be victims, driven out by the intolerance of yada yada. How many of these individuals would remain MPs after a general election? You could count the number in binary. Look at their breakaway statement. Is that the basis for a major realignment in British politics? Look at the issues they’ve chosen to split over. Brexit? They’ve just made it more likely that a version of May’s deal will pass. Antisemitic takeover of Labour? Few outside the circumference of Westminster really believe that. Venezuela? Really?
I’ve said before that this is not 1981. There is no generalised anti-socialist climate in this country at the moment, no deep-rooted backlash against the unions, no pervasive sense that Labour’s problems stem from having been too statist, and so on. Actually-existing-Corbynism, more Wilsonite than Bennite, is very popular. Chris Leslie merely seems aloof from reality when he bangs on about ‘communism’ and ‘marxism’. Nor, even if conditions were similar to 1981, do these vain Blairites have the heft or hard-headedness of the old hammers of the Left. …
As it turns out these ‘Labour’ MPs have more in common with the Tory MP splitters.
Probably centrists at best, totally lacking anything remotely left wing.
Kathryn Ryan is butchering her interview with Pussy Riot
RNZ National, Wednesday 20 February 2019, 10:10 a.m.
Ryan seems to lack basic common sense. Several times in this interview, she has delivered one of her long, pretentious, anacoluthonic questions to Pussy Riot’s Maria “Masha” Alyokhina, who has responded with a baffled “What?”
Then she rephrases. and baffles her poor victim even more.
I don’t expect her to be perfect. I do expect her not to be crass and bumptious, however. And I do expect her to ask the hard questions, occasionally. She rarely does.
Yes I saw mention of Larry Williams I think yesterday and he sounds ‘pretty’ shit. I don’t listen to him or any of them That’s the advantage of a democracy eh! In China they had Chairman Mao broadcast from every corner. Here they haven’t found a sneaky way of doing that yet and calling it good for us.
There was another Loudmouth Larry. Perhaps that name carries an echo of past lives with it?
Larry Claxton Flynt Jr. (/flɪnt/; born November 1, 1942) is an American publisher and the president of Larry Flynt Publications (LFP). LFP mainly produces magazines, such as Hustler, and sexually graphic videos. Flynt has fought several high profile legal battles involving the First Amendment, and has unsuccessfully run for public office.
He is paralyzed from the waist down due to injuries sustained in a 1978 murder attempt by serial killer Joseph Paul Franklin.[1] In 2003, Arena magazine listed him at No. 1 on the “50 Powerful People in Porn” list.[2] Wikipedia
Okay. But he does look and sound a little like a Trump in training on Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Flynt
He perhaps was a precursor; now we have the real curse!
Plenty of opportunities in the good ole USA for free-thinking individuals to stand for freedom, the flag and apple pie against the oppressor, blasphemer, or whatever sort of obsessive hater a guy may be (and women can have equal rights in this area of opportunity too.)
Good to see an unequivocal statement to our Parliament from the head of our GCSB Andrew Hampton that there was no exterior influence from any Five Eyes partner in his decision to raise serious security concerns about Huawei access to our 5G network.
Sometimes paranoid political hype is unhelpful; sometimes it’s just good judgement.
Interesting to see a right wing pile on regarding the wellington town hall restoration. All in one morning we have garner/farrar/Williams moaning about it.
I don’t recall this level of scrutiny over the proposed and pointless wellington convention centre which is budgeted even higher.
Does someone stand to gain from its demolition? Add the already empty and earthquake risk council building next door and it’s a huge chunk of prime real estate.
It would be wise for Councils to consider how to hold onto land that is away from the coast and elevated without requiring a climb to get at it. As tides rise and storms rage, the ability to retreat back to reposition in one’s own building will be important.
Or it will be a case of having to lease back the once-owned building or site, at a high rate from someone with an eye to the main chance that is bigger than the Council’s.
Newsroom noted that the most outspoken critics of CGT had vested interests.
Eg:”One of those business-owners appears to be Bridges’ wife, Natalie Bridges, who is the director of EHJ Property Limited, ….
EHJ was incorporated on September 29, 2017, Bridges and his wife own 50 percent – or 600 shares – each in the company.
Bridges has further financial interests in property through his one-man, private superannuation scheme, St Catherines. Through it, he owns an apartment in central Wellington and another in Parnell, one of Auckland’s most expensive suburbs, along with his family home in Tauranga. https://www.newsroom.co.nz/2019/02/19/449412/capital-gains-tax-a-vested-interest?preview=1
‘You know you lefties can’t say a good word about RW – it’s either that they lie, they are fudging which is sort of lying, they are pretending that they can’t remember or that they leave all that to their accountants, or as here, they can’t be exact but they are trying and still they get RW just can’t do the right thing ever. ‘
/sarc
Amateur landlordism is just what you do in this country.
And look where it’s led us – poor quality housing stock, itinerant communities, long lines for both public and private rentals, and increasing inequality.
If the malignancy known as humankind doesn’t succeed in killing everything that’s good on the damn planet, it certainly won’t be for lack of trying.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reported last week that in 2018 it issued so-called “emergency” approvals to spray sulfoxaflor—an insecticide the agency considers “very highly toxic” to bees—on more than 16 million acres of crops known to attract bees.
Of the 18 states where the approvals were granted for sorghum and cotton crops, 12 have been given the approvals for at least four consecutive years for the same “emergency.”
[…]
Under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act, the EPA has the authority to approve temporary emergency uses of pesticides, even those not officially approved, if the agency determines it is needed to prevent the spread of an unexpected outbreak of crop-damaging insects, for example. But the provision has been widely abused.
Clearly they’re just defaulting to type- nothing of substance to offer? No way to actually do our job and hold the current government to account? Shocking poll results we want to distract everyone from? Let’s play the bashing card. Doesn’t even have to be directly targeted at those bludgers. No one’s going to spot that are they?
“U.S. sanctions are designed to “make the economy scream” in Venezuela, exactly as President Nixon described the goal of U.S. sanctions against Chile before the CIA engineered the overthrow of democratically elected Salvador Allende in 1973. Venezuela’s economy is indeed screaming. It has shrunk by about half since 2014,”.
Good move by Shane Jones just as the Local Government was looking shaddy on every level from rejecting Climate change to some councils ready to assume selling off public assets like HB regional Council who is attempting to sell half of publicly owned Napier Port.
Shane Jones should help stop this madness invading the local Governments ‘slash and burn’ models of the John Key era.
New independent Commission to tackle infrastructure issues
Wednesday, 20 February 2019, 1:57 pm
Press Release: New Zealand Government
Hon Shane Jones
Minister for Infrastructure
20 February 2019 MEDIA STATEMENT
New independent Commission to tackle infrastructure issues
Infrastructure Minister Shane Jones has today announced the name, form and functions of New Zealand’s new independent infrastructure entity.
The New Zealand Infrastructure Commission – Te Waihanga – will be established as an Autonomous Crown Entity to carry out two broad functions – strategy and planning and procurement and delivery support.
“The new Commission will help ensure we are making the best decisions about infrastructure investment to improve the long-term economic performance and social wellbeing of our country,” Shane Jones said.
“The Commission will develop a broad consensus on long-term strategy, enable coordination of infrastructure planning and provide advice and best practice support to infrastructure initiatives.
“We want the Commission to be a well-respected public voice that has credibility among the private and public sector and helps integrate across our entire infrastructure system.
“A short-term, project specific focus by previous governments, along with underinvestment, means that New Zealand is now facing an unprecedented infrastructure deficit that this Government is committed to tackling.
“Our transport and urban infrastructure is struggling to keep up with population growth, increased demand and changing needs, including transitioning to a low emissions economy. New Zealand’s regional infrastructure is often not at a standard required by communities – this infrastructure deficit is manifesting in housing unaffordability, congestion, poor quality drinking water and lost productivity. That’s simply not good enough.
The Unjustices system of the world just serve the wealthy the mighty dollar they are all corupt . look at pike river corupt cover up .What happened to the person who was at a Marae in Puturau with a gun that was silanced well that was a cop LOST HIS MARBLES Eco Maori knows him quite well as he started this man hunt against me him an no fish . He lost IT after following me around leave a sign on the road everytime I went to Tauranga I could see the extream thing he got up to in Put AND Tok they covered that up and commited him I seen him at know fishes house a few times trying to intimadate me.
I see what they did to my Uncle 41 years ago they got his wife to sign a peace of paper and he ended up in Lake Alise When My grandmother died he died 2 weeks later with a big hole in the back of his head . I have learned from what the state did to him .
They would try to do that to Eco Maori but they are to scared . They have got my whanau to levea the farm But Eco Maori Is going to have the last laught on that issue.
Ka kite ano P.S everything I have said is true my uncle was the oldest of his generation like Eco Maori but I have this websight to help me fight the system
This is the system that runs our world the wealthy rulers worship money over every other phenomen like the sandflys money talks to them over there childrens futures over the health of there country you have someone making a mess of there country interfaring in Venezuela putting sanctions on the country who cares who dies so long as trumps masters the oil barrons price of oil gets a boost from his adminstrations callious ACTIONS
(CNN)Bhanu Patel couldn’t believe the news. The cost of the medication that allows her to move — the one that enabled her to walk stairs again — shot up to $375,000.
Fear gripped her: What would this mean for her independence? Would she become a financial burden on her family? How is this possible in the country that’s given her so much?
The past three years, she said, the medication had been completely free as part of a specialty program. Until recently, the drug was known as 3,4-DAP made by Jacobus Pharmaceutical. But late last year, Catalyst Pharmaceuticals won FDA approval for a slightly modified version of the drug after two small clinical trials and announced an annual list price of $375,000 for the new drug, called Firdapse.
For Patel, the drug has been a game-changer. She was diagnosed in 2015 with a rare neuromuscular disease called Lambert-Eaton myasthenic syndrome, a condition known as LEMS that affects about 1 in 100,000 people in the United States.
The disease attacked her hip muscles and abdominal muscles first, then her back muscles she said. Just trying to stand up to walk was agonizing. She dragged herself across rooms and up and down stairs to get around her home. For two years, she wore three back braces on top of each other to allow her to stand.
The disease even attacked her tongue, making it difficult to eat. She lost a lot of weight, and her muscles atrophied. Every aspect of her life was impacted.
Anatomy of a 97,000% drug price hike: One family’s fight to save their son
When she was introduced to the drug, her doctor told her it would make her feel more alert and allow her to regain basic functions. Her eyes opened wide whe
(CNN)Bhanu Patel couldn’t believe the news. The cost of the medication that allows her to move — the one that enabled her to walk stairs again — shot up to $375,000.
Fear gripped her: What would this mean for her independence? Would she become a financial burden on her family? How is this possible in the country that’s given her so much?
The past three years, she said, the medication had been completely free as part of a specialty program. Until recently, the drug was known as 3,4-DAP made by Jacobus Pharmaceutical. But late last year, Catalyst Pharmaceuticals won FDA approval for a slightly modified version of the drug after two small clinical trials and announced an annual list price of $375,000 for the new drug, called Firdapse.
For Patel, the drug has been a game-changer. She was diagnosed in 2015 with a rare neuromuscular disease called Lambert-Eaton myasthenic syndrome, a condition known as LEMS that affects about 1 in 100,000 people in the United States.
The disease attacked her hip muscles and abdominal muscles first, then her back muscles she said. Just trying to stand up to walk was agonizing. She dragged herself across rooms and up and down stairs to get around her home. For two years, she wore three back braces on top of each other to allow her to stand.
The disease even attacked her tongue, making it difficult to eat. She lost a lot of weight, and her muscles atrophied. Every aspect of her life was impacted.
Anatomy of a 97,000% drug price hike: One family’s fight to save their son
When she was introduced to the drug, her doctor told her it would make her feel more alert and allow her to regain basic functions. Her eyes opened wide when she first took the pills. “I said, ‘Wow, you’re right about that,’ ” Patel, 67, recalled. “You feel you want to live and have a life.
“Without this medication, you just can’t even move. It’s like your body is totally like a sweet potato.”
So imagine the predicament a skyrocketing price hike puts a patient like her, she said.
Fearful of burdening her family with exorbitant bills, Patel said, she’s begun rationing her meds — taking two pills a day, instead of four. She said she’s trying to stretch her three-month supply for as long as possible.
“The words that I can use is I can’t believe this is happening, to be honest,” she said.
Her son, Krishan Patel, said his mother has been rejected by Medicare for coverage of the medication, raising concerns the family could get stuck with a massive bill. He said she is appealing for coverage as an exception. His mother has also applied with the Assistance Fund, a nonprofit organization that helps pay for patients’ co-pays. He said she has yet to hear back.
Between he and his sister, Krishan Patel said, they will do everything they can to help their mother. He’s already begun writing and calling lawmakers, AARP, the drugmaker and anyone else who will listen.
He said he’s not just speaking up for his mom, but for those less fortunate. “If we’re not shining a light on these things,” he said, “then really what the hell are we doing?”
“My mother’s livelihood is fundamentally at the hands of a small outfit with full capability to do whatever they want,” he said. “You’re leveraging human suffering to make money — and that is a heartbreaking idea.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders earlier this month demanded answers about the price hike, saying he feared it will “cause patients to suffer or die.”
Bernie Sanders demands action
Sen. Bernie Sanders, who earlier this month demanded answers from Catalyst Pharmaceuticals about the drug’s $375,000 price, blasted the company for not responding, and he ripped Catalyst for endangering patients’ lives.
“Instead of answering my questions or lowering the price of this drug, they’ve hired a lobbying firm,” Sanders told CNN in a written statement Wednesday. “It is now clear that some patients are rationing their supply of Firdapse because they cannot afford to cover the outrageous cost of the drug, which they used to receive at no cost.
“If Catalyst does not immediately lower the price of the drug, I will ask FDA to allow pharmacies and manufacturers who were previously making this drug to be permitted to resume providing it, so that all patients can get the medication they need.”
CNN has contacted the US Food and Drug Administration for comment.
Two weeks ago, Sanders sent a blistering letter to Catalyst for its decision to raise the price of Firdapse — “and forcing production and distribution of the older, inexpensive version to cease.” Ka kite ano links below P.S Times are changing for the better
Kia ora Newshub all the neoliberals capitalist national supporters are up in arms over the new taxs reviews the reason we don’t have one now is the money men have had to much power over the years for others to implement a fair taxs system that takes the burden off the lower classes.
That’s the national party way break the rules it all good the thing that they see as bad is if they get caught.???! Maggie Barry Issues..
I seen that story on CNN the stash of guns and explosives he was a member of some enforcement outfit . He planed to target the Democrats.
That’s cool that the Christchurch Town Hall is finally finished being repaired after the big earthquake that damage it.
My children buy Samsung phones.
Te Matatini will be great once again the biggest Maori culture proformance it the Papatuanukue Ka pai Ka kite ano P.S miss some of the news I was running around the whanau
Kia ora Mulls & Storm from The Crowd Goes Wild what the Dmaxs like to drive Mulls I have taken some vehicles in some of the meanest tracks and places that not many have been In my farming and Forestry adventure.
How’s the Netball going Storm
That’s a mean catch I remember when I was fit as a fiddle Ka kite ano P.S just trying to drum up a something to write about Nice Suite James well groomed to I got a bit blinded by how well you were polished E hoa Ka pai
Kia ora The AM Show I know who’s paying for your opinion they have instilled their Ideals on our society for a long time and look at what their ideals have served up to tangata whenua it does not matter 65% te tangata the people want change . I agree with Amanda men can be men and Wahine want to be heard it’s equality not matriarch or Wahines rules only its about ballance yin yang get it those types of society of the past have been the best .
Peter good to see you .
The environmental taxes congestion taxes are taxes that will give our mokos a better future a bit hard to comprehend for someone with a 2 minute memory thinking about other people futures is unthinkable .
I think it’s a brilliant move by Labour to get the taxes sorted so polluters pay for the mess they are making to our environment. At the minute businesses get to write off all there business losses/expenses some can have toy cars and other things and claim that against their tax of profits business have it sweet as farmers need to pay to you cannot leave them out as cheats will say they are farmers to avoid the tax and unless they are audited they will get away with it as the tax system works on trust that the business owners are honest YEA RIGHT you see labour can get the taxes sorted now and next year concentrate on the election with out losing the popular votes .
Sir Michael Cullen if it was not for him Aotearoa would be 60 billion out of pocket if we listened to bankers like shonky 8 billion a year would be going to Australian banks. Banks love houses it safe as houses is the saying hence the housing market shorts. Remember a capital gains tax is a tax on capital that is gain so if a business gains no add value /gains no tax is paid capital gains is value earned from time you go to sleep and your capital is gaining NO.
Condolences to Peter Tork whanau from The Monkey.
I got a excellent Movie The Umbrella Academy is a very good watch I won’t Say what platform it is SCREENING on.????.
nice dreams judy nationals creditable is in tatters with Pike River and all the other big messes you made to our society. Chris is correct most people don’t have a investment property of shares only the wealthy people do who some will do what ever it takes to not pay their fair share of taxes.
Yes people need to treat all animals with care and respect and Eco Maori gets the Morgan cat effect that is why I try to be careful what I write I do have some exceptions ta Tau ta Tau to some people.
Stereotypeing Maoris A. If that fool is not going to replant his forest block that’s his childens loss over paying a little more tax I think not.
And your story about a 30 year old finding cannabis is a farce quite easy to read farcical stories.
don it’s a tax on capital gained that is how it should be told it will affect the wealthy New Zealand First will not be gone don you wish.
The public don’t understand the tax the government should have had a advertising campaign to education te people. That is the very reason you say that the very wealthy people who made their money here leave New Zealand they make their money from the capital gained in NZ and flee with the capital All THE MORE reasons to tax the capital they gained in NZ to keep some of the capital in OUR Aotearoa society NO isn’t
that bad for a economy all the capital flowing out overseas .????? Ka kite ano
scott is here with trumps string attached to his ass trying to get NZ to obey trumps lead in forein policy we have much more to lose if we follow like puppets .Any way scott goverment is just spraying wai on New Zealand sending the problem made in his country to NZ the farcial apple ban and much more bulling served up to NZ from our bigger neighbours. ????????
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison is set to jet into Auckland on Friday, for high-level talks with Jacinda Ardern.
While the pair have met before, on the sidelines of of the ASEAN forum in Singapore last year, this will be Morrison’s first official visit to New Zealand and their first formal bi-lateral discussion since he rolled former Liberal Party leader Malcolm Turnbull and took over the Australian Premiership in August.
Morrison will be given a full pōwhiri welcome at Auckland’s Government House, where he will be greeted by Ardern.
A fleeting visit lasting less than a day, Morrison is forgoing the usual weekend retreat to New Zealand enjoyed by previous Australian Prime Ministers. link below P.S This story did not stay on the frount page for long ???????
Kia ora Newshub lime E scooters have been pulled from the streets in Auckland because of safety problems.
Kiwi saver is a awesome Labour initiative. I have said enough about the capital gains tax this morning.
That’s a massive land slip on the west coast of the south island is that global warming or what the Mayor down there is a climate change denier go figure I see some more neanderthal council have jumped on that sinking ship to.??????
That’s the way Jacinda tell scott exactly how dumb it is for Australia to deport their people problems here. The post above has got my opinion of his vist in it.
That’s good that big load of PEE is not going to hit our street that’s just the tip of the ice burg if PEE is easier to get than weed they say.
There you go PEE is the scrooge of NZ heaps of crimes are committed because of PEE.
That shows how strong animals are I was watching a documentary on the Orangutans the caretaker are very weary of the Orangutans strength. Ka kite ano
Kia ora James and Mulls from The Crowd Goes Wild Break dancing scateboarding in the Olympic a congratulations to Tom and Lisa for their Heilgburg awards James did the polish up included that Latin America grooming procedure lol I see my pic was in the running YEA James the – – – – Ka kite ano P.S hope its not getting to hot in the kitchen tangata
Rob MacCulloch writes – Can’t remember the last book by a Kiwi author you read? Think the NZ government should spend less on the arts in favor of helping the homeless? If so, as far as Newsroom is concerned, you probably deserve to be called a cultural ignoramus ...
Eric Crampton writes – Grudges are bad. Better to move on. But it can be fun to keep a couple of really trivial ones, so you’re not tempted to have other ones. For example, because of the rootkit fiasco of 2005, no Sony products in our household. ...
A new report warns an estimated third of the adult population have unmet need for health care.Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāHere’s the six key things I learned about Aotaroa’s political economy this week around housing, climate and poverty:Politics - Three opinion polls confirmed support for PM Christopher Luxon ...
Today is May the fourth. Which was just a regular day when my mother took me to see the newly released Star Wars at the Odeon in Rotorua. The queue was right around the corner. Some years later this day became known as Star Wars Day, the date being a ...
Buzz from the Beehive Much more media attention is being paid to something Winston Peters said about former Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr than to a speech he delivered to the New Zealand China Council. One word is missing from the speech: AUKUS. But AUKUS loomed large in his considerations ...
Is the economy in another long stagnation? If so, why?This is about the time that the Treasury will be locking up its economic forecasts to be published in the 2024 Budget Economic and Fiscal Update (BEFU) on budget day, 30 May. I am not privy to what they will be ...
The annual list of who's been bribing our politicians is out, and journalists will no doubt be poring over it to find the juiciest and dirtiest bribes. The government's fast-track invite list is likely to be a particular focus, and we already know of one company on the list which ...
In the weeks after the October 7 Hamas attacks on Southern Israel I wrote about the possible 2nd, 3rd and even 4th order effects of the conflict. These included new fronts being opened in the West Bank (with Hamas), Golan … Continue reading → ...
Peter Dunne writes – It is one of the oldest truisms that there is never a good time for MPs to get a pay rise. This week’s announcement of pay raises of around 2.8% backdated to last October could hardly have come at a worse time, with the ...
David Farrar writes – Newshub reports: Newshub can reveal a fresh allegation of intimidation against Green MP Julie-Anne Genter. Genter is subject to a disciplinary process for aggressively waving a book in the face of National Minister Matt Doocey in the House – but it’s not the first time ...
The Treasury has published a paper today on the global productivity slowdown and how it is playing out in New Zealand: The productivity slowdown: implications for the Treasury’s forecasts and projections. The Treasury Paper examines recent trends in productivity and the potential drivers of the slowdown. Productivity for the whole economy ...
Winston Peters’ comments about former Australian foreign minister look set to be an ongoing headache for both him and Luxon. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for subscribers features co-hosts and , along with regular guests on Gaza and ...
These puppet strings don't pull themselvesYou're thinking thoughts from someone elseHow much time do you think you have?Are you prepared for what comes next?The debating chamber can be a trying place for an opposition MP. What with the person in charge, the speaker, typically being an MP from the governing ...
The land around Lyme Regis, where Meryl Streep once stood, in a hood, on the Cobb, is falling into the sea.MerylThe land around Lyme Regis, around the Cobb that made it rich, has always been falling slowly but surely into the sea. Read more ...
Buzz from the Beehive Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters was bound to win headlines when he set out his thinking about AUKUS in his speech to the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. The headlines became bigger when – during an interview on RNZ’s Morning Report today – he criticised ...
The Post reports on how the government is refusing to release its advice on its corrupt Muldoonist fast-track law, instead using the "soon to be publicly available" refusal ground to hide it until after select committee submissions on the bill have closed. Fast-track Minister Chris Bishop's excuse? “It's not ...
As pressure on it grows, the livestock industry’s approach to the transition to Net Zero is increasingly being compared to that of fossil fuel interests. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / Getty ImagesTL;DR: Here’s the top five news items of note in climate news for Aotearoa-NZ this week, and a discussion above ...
The New Zealand Herald reports – Stats NZ has offered a voluntary redundancy scheme to all of its workers as a way to give staff some control over their “future” amidst widespread job losses in the public sector. In an update to staff this morning, seen by the Herald, Statistics New Zealand ...
On Werewolf/Scoop, I usually do two long form political columns a week. From now on, there will be an extra column each week about music and movies. But first, some late-breaking political events:The rise in unemployment numbers for the March quarter was bigger than expected – and especially sharp ...
David Farrar writes – The Herald reports: TVNZ says it is dealing with about 50 formal complaints over its coverage of the latest 1News-Verian political poll, with some viewers – as well as the Prime Minister and a former senior Labour MP – critical of the tone of the 6pm report. ...
Muriel Newman writes – When Meridian Energy was seeking resource consents for a West Coast hydro dam proposal in 2010, local Maori “strenuously” objected, claiming their mana was inextricably linked to ‘their’ river and could be damaged. After receiving a financial payment from the company, however, the Ngai Tahu ...
Alwyn Poole writes – “An SEP,’ he said, ‘is something that we can’t see, or don’t see, or our brain doesn’t let us see, because we think that it’s somebody else’s problem. That’s what SEP means. Somebody Else’s Problem. The brain just edits it out, it’s like a ...
Our trust in our political institutions is fast eroding, according to a Maxim Institute discussion paper, Shaky Foundations: Why our democracy needs trust. The paper – released today – raises concerns about declining trust in New Zealand’s political institutions and democratic processes, and the role that the overuse of Parliamentary urgency ...
This article was prepared for publication yesterday. More ministerial announcements have been posted on the government’s official website since it was written. We will report on these later today …. Buzz from the BeehiveThere we were, thinking the environment is in trouble, when along came Jones. Shane Jones. ...
New Zealand now has the fourth most depressed construction sector in the world behind China, Qatar and Hong Kong. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 8:46am on Thursday, May 2:The Lead: ...
Hi,I am just going to state something very obvious: American police are fucking crazy.That was a photo gracing the New York Times this morning, showing New York City police “entering Columbia University last night after receiving a request from the school.”Apparently in America, protesting the deaths of tens of thousands ...
Winston Peters’ much anticipated foreign policy speech last night was a work of two halves. Much of it was a standard “boilerplate” Foreign Ministry overview of the state of the world. There was some hardening up of rhetoric with talk of “benign” becoming “malign” and old truths giving way to ...
Graham Adams assesses the fallout of the Cass Review — The press release last Thursday from the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls didn’t make the mainstream news in New Zealand but it really should have. The startling title of Reem Alsalem’s statement — “Implementation of ‘Cass ...
This open-for-business, under-new-management cliché-pockmarked government of Christopher Luxon is not the thing of beauty he imagines it to be. It is not the powerful expression of the will of the people that he asserts it to be. It is not a soaring eagle, it is a malodorous vulture. This newest poll should make ...
The latest labour market statistics, showing a rise in unemployment. There are now 134,000 unemployed - 14,000 more than when the National government took office. Which is I guess what happens when the Reserve Bank causes a recession in an effort to Keep Wages Low. The previous government saw a ...
Three opinion polls have been released in the last two days, all showing that the new government is failing to hold their popular support. The usual honeymoon experienced during the first year of a first term government is entirely absent. The political mood is still gloomy and discontented, mainly due ...
National's Finance Minister once met a poor person.A scornful interview with National's finance guru who knows next to nothing about economics or people.There might have been something a bit familiar if that was the headline I’d gone with today. It would of course have been in tribute to the article ...
Rob MacCulloch writes – Throughout the pandemic, the new Vice-Chancellor-of-Otago-University-on-$629,000 per annum-Can-you-believe-it-and-Former-Finance-Minister Grant Robertson repeated the mantra over and over that he saved “lives and livelihoods”.As we update how this claim is faring over the course of time, the facts are increasingly speaking differently. NZ ...
Chris Trotter writes – IT’S A COMMONPLACE of political speeches, especially those delivered in acknowledgement of electoral victory: “We’ll govern for all New Zealanders.” On the face of it, the pledge is a strange one. Why would any political leader govern in ways that advantaged the huge ...
Bryce Edwards writes – The list of former National Party Ministers being given plum and important roles got longer this week with the appointment of former Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett as the chair of Pharmac. The Christopher Luxon-led Government has now made key appointments to Bill ...
TL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 10:06am on Wednesday, May 1:The Lead: Business confidence fell across the board in April, falling in some areas to levels last seen during the lockdowns because of a collapse in ...
Over the past 36 hours, Christopher Luxon has been dong his best to portray the centre-right’s plummeting poll numbers as a mark of virtue. Allegedly, the negative verdicts are the result of hard economic times, and of a government bravely set out on a perilous rescue mission from which not ...
Auckland Transport have started rolling out new HOP card readers around the network and over the next three months, all of them on buses, at train stations and ferry wharves will be replaced. The change itself is not that remarkable, with the new readers looking similar to what is already ...
Completed reads for April: The Difference Engine, by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling Carnival of Saints, by George Herman The Snow Spider, by Jenny Nimmo Emlyn’s Moon, by Jenny Nimmo The Chestnut Soldier, by Jenny Nimmo Death Comes As the End, by Agatha Christie Lord of the Flies, by ...
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a ...
Have a story to share about St Paul’s, but today just picturesPopular novels written at this desk by a young man who managed to bootstrap himself out of father’s imprisonment and his own young life in a workhouse Read more ...
The list of former National Party Ministers being given plum and important roles got longer this week with the appointment of former Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett as the chair of Pharmac. The Christopher Luxon-led Government has now made key appointments to Bill English, Simon Bridges, Steven Joyce, Roger Sowry, ...
Newsroom has a story today about National's (fortunately failed) effort to disestablish the newly-created Inspector-General of Defence. The creation of this agency was the key recommendation of the Inquiry into Operation Burnham, and a vital means of restoring credibility and social licence to an agency which had been caught lying ...
Holding On To The Present:The moment a political movement arises that attacks the whole idea of social progress, and announces its intention to wind back the hands of History’s clock, then democracy, along with its unwritten rules, is in mortal danger.IT’S A COMMONPLACE of political speeches, especially those delivered in ...
Stuck In The Middle With You:As Christopher Luxon feels the hot breath of Act’s and NZ First’s extremists on the back of his neck and, as he reckons with the damage their policies are already inflicting upon a country he’s described as “fragile”, is there not some merit in reaching out ...
The unpopular coalition government is currently rushing to repeal section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act. The clause is Oranga Tamariki's Treaty clause, and was inserted after its systematic stealing of Māori children became a public scandal and resulted in physical resistance to further abductions. The clause created clear obligations ...
Buzz from the Beehive The government’s official website – which Point of Order monitors daily – not for the first time has nothing much to say today about political happenings that are grabbing media headlines. It makes no mention of the latest 1News-Verian poll, for example. This shows National down ...
It Takes A Train To Cry:Surely, there is nothing lonelier in all this world than the long wail of a distant steam locomotive on a cold Winter’s night.AS A CHILD, I would lie awake in my grandfather’s house and listen to the traffic. The big wooden house was only a ...
Packing A Punch: The election of the present government, including in its ranks politicians dedicated to reasserting the rights of the legislature in shaping and determining the future of Māori and Pakeha in New Zealand, should have alerted the judiciary – including its anomalous appendage, the Waitangi Tribunal – that its ...
Dead Woman Walking: New Zealand’s media industry had been moving steadily towards disaster for all the years Melissa Lee had been National’s media and communications policy spokesperson, and yet, when the crisis finally broke, on her watch, she had nothing intelligent to offer. Christopher Luxon is a patient man - but he’s not ...
Chris Trotter writes – New Zealand politics is remarkably easy-going: dangerously so, one might even say. With the notable exception of John Key’s flat ruling-out of the NZ First Party in 2008, all parties capable of clearing MMP’s five-percent threshold, or winning one or more electorate seats, tend ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Polling shows that Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau has the lowest approval rating of any mayor in the country. Siting at -12 per cent, the proportion of constituents who disapprove of her performance outweighs those who give her the thumbs up. This negative rating is ...
Luxon will no doubt put a brave face on it, but there is no escaping the pressure this latest poll will put on him and the government. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political ...
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler In the wake of any unusual weather event, someone inevitably asks, “Did climate change cause this?” In the most literal sense, that answer is almost always no. Climate change is never the sole cause of hurricanes, heat waves, droughts, or ...
Something odd happened yesterday, and I’d love to know if there’s more to it. If there was something which preempted what happened, or if it was simply a throwaway line in response to a journalist.Yesterday David Seymour was asked at a press conference what the process would be if the ...
Hi,From time to time, I want to bring Webworm into the real world. We did it last year with the Jurassic Park event in New Zealand — which was a lot of fun!And so on Saturday May 11th, in Los Angeles, I am hosting a lil’ Webworm pop-up! I’ve been ...
Education Minister Erica Standford yesterday unveiled a fundamental reform of the way our school pupils are taught. She would not exactly say so, but she is all but dismantling the so-called “inquiry” “feel good” method of teaching, which has ruled in our classrooms since a major review of the New ...
Exactly where are we seriously going with this government and its policies? That is, apart from following what may as well be a Truss-Lite approach on the purported economic “plan“, and Victorian-era regression when it comes to social policy.Oh it’ll work this time of course, we’re basically assured, “the ...
Hey Uncle Dave, When the Poms joined the EEC, I wasn't one of those defeatists who said, Well, that’s it for the dairy job. And I was right, eh? The Chinese can’t get enough of our milk powder and eventually, the Poms came to their senses and backed up the ute ...
Polling shows that Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau has the lowest approval rating of any mayor in the country. Siting at -12 per cent, the proportion of constituents who disapprove of her performance outweighs those who give her the thumbs up. This negative rating is higher than for any other mayor ...
Buzz from the Beehive Pharmac has been given a financial transfusion and a new chair to oversee its spending in the pharmaceutical business. Associate Health Minister David Seymour described the funding for Pharmac as “its largest ever budget of $6.294 billion over four years, fixing a $1.774 billion fiscal cliff”. ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Many criticisms are being made of the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill, including by this writer. But as with everything in politics, every story has two sides, and both deserve attention. It’s important to understand what the Government is trying to achieve and its ...
TL;DR: Here’s my top 10 ‘pick ‘n’ mix of links to news, analysis and opinion articles as of 10:10am on Monday, April 29:Scoop: The children's ward at Rotorua Hospital will be missing a third of its beds as winter hits because Te Whatu Ora halted an upgrade partway through to ...
span class=”dropcap”>As hideous as David Seymour can be, it is worth keeping in mind occasionally that there are even worse political figures (and regimes) out there. Iran for instance, is about to execute the country’s leading hip hop musician Toomaj Salehi, for writing and performing raps that “corrupt” the nation’s ...
Yesterday marked 10 years since the first electric train carried passengers in Auckland so it’s a good time to look back at it and the impact it has had. A brief history The first proposals for rail electrification in Auckland came in the 1920’s alongside the plans for earlier ...
Right now, in Aotearoa-NZ, our ‘animal spirits’ are darkening towards a winter of discontent, thanks at least partly to a chorus of negative comments and actions from the Government Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on ...
You make people evil to punish the paststuck inside a sequel with a rotating castThe following photos haven’t been generated with AI, or modified in any way. They are flesh and blood, human beings. On the left is Galatea Young, a young mum, and her daughter Fiadh who has Angelman ...
The Government is again adding to New Zealand’s growing unemployment, this time cutting jobs at the agencies responsible for urban development and growing much needed housing stock. ...
With Minister Karen Chhour indicating in the House today that she either doesn’t know or care about the frontline cuts she’s making to Oranga Tamariki, we risk seeing more and more of our children falling through the cracks. ...
The Labour Party is saddened to learn of the death of Sir Robert Martin, a globally renowned disability advocate who led the way for disability rights both in New Zealand and internationally. ...
Labour is calling for the Government to urgently rethink its coalition commitment to restart live animal exports, Labour animal welfare spokesperson Rachel Boyack said. ...
Today’s Financial Stability Report has once again highlighted that poverty and deep inequality are political choices - and this Government is choosing to make them worse. ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to do more for our households in most need as unemployment rises and the cost of living crisis endures. ...
Unemployment is on the rise and it’s only going to get worse under this Government, Labour finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds said. Stats NZ figures show the unemployment rate grew to 4.3 percent in the March quarter from 4 percent in the December quarter. “This is the second rise in unemployment ...
The New Zealand Labour Party welcomes the entering into force of the European Union and New Zealand free trade agreement. This agreement opens the door for a huge increase in trade opportunities with a market of 450 million people who are high value discerning consumers of New Zealand goods and ...
The National-led Government continues its fiscal jiggery pokery with its Pharmac announcement today, Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall says. “The government has increased Pharmac funding but conceded it will only make minimal increases in access to medicine”, said Ayesha Verrall “This is far from the bold promises made to fund ...
This afternoon’s interim Waitangi Tribunal report must be taken seriously as it affects our most vulnerable children, Labour children’s spokesperson Willow-Jean Prime. ...
Te Pāti Māori are demanding the New Zealand Government support an international independent investigation into mass graves that have been uncovered at two hospitals on the Gaza strip, following weeks of assault by Israeli troops. Among the 392 bodies that have been recovered, are children and elderly civilians. Many of ...
Our two-tiered system for veterans’ support is out of step with our closest partners, and all parties in Parliament should work together to fix it, Labour veterans’ affairs spokesperson Greg O’Connor said. ...
Stripping two Ministers of their portfolios just six months into the job shows Christopher Luxon’s management style is lacking, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said. ...
Tonight’s court decision to overturn the summons of the Children’s Minister has enabled the Crown to continue making decisions about Māori without evidence, says Te Pāti Māori spokesperson for Children, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “The judicial system has this evening told the nation that this government can do whatever they want when ...
It appears Nicola Willis is about to pull the rug out from under the feet of local communities still dealing with the aftermath of last year’s severe weather, and local councils relying on funding to build back from these disasters. ...
The Government is making short-sighted changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that will take away environmental protection in favour of short-term profits, Labour’s environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
Labour welcomes the release of the report into the North Island weather events and looks forward to working with the Government to ensure that New Zealand is as prepared as it can be for the next natural disaster. ...
The Labour Party has called for the New Zealand Government to recognise Palestine, as a material step towards progressing the two-State solution needed to achieve a lasting peace in the region. ...
Some of our country’s most important work, stopping the sexual exploitation of children and violent extremism could go along with staff on the frontline at ports and airports. ...
The Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill will give projects such as new coal mines a ‘get out of jail free’ card to wreak havoc on the environment, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The government's decision to reintroduce Three Strikes is a destructive and ineffective piece of law-making that will only exacerbate an inherently biased and racist criminal justice system, said Te Pāti Māori Justice Spokesperson, Tākuta Ferris, today. During the time Three Strikes was in place in Aotearoa, Māori and Pasifika received ...
Cuts to frontline hospital staff are not only a broken election promise, it shows the reckless tax cuts have well and truly hit the frontline of the health system, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
The Green Party has joined the call for public submissions on the fast-track legislation to be extended after the Ombudsman forced the Government to release the list of organisations invited to apply just hours before submissions close. ...
New Zealand’s good work at reducing climate emissions for three years in a row will be undone by the National government’s lack of ambition and scrapping programmes that were making a difference, Labour Party climate spokesperson Megan Woods said today. ...
More essential jobs could be on the chopping block, this time Ministry of Education staff on the school lunches team are set to find out whether they're in line to lose their jobs. ...
Te Pāti Māori is disgusted at the confirmation that hundreds are set to lose their jobs at Oranga Tamariki, and the disestablishment of the Treaty Response Unit. “This act of absolute carelessness and out of touch decision making is committing tamariki to state abuse.” Said Te Pāti Māori Oranga Tamariki ...
The Government is trying to bring in a law that will allow Ministers to cut corners and kill off native species, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said. ...
Cancelling urgently needed new Cook Strait ferries and hiking the cost of public transport for many Kiwis so that National can announce the prospect of another tunnel for Wellington is not making good choices, Labour Transport Spokesperson Tangi Utikere said. ...
A laundry list of additional costs for Tāmaki Makarau Auckland shows the Minister for the city is not delivering for the people who live there, says Labour Auckland Issues spokesperson Shanan Halbert. ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters discussed the need for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, and enhanced cooperation in the Pacific with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock during her first official visit to New Zealand today. "New Zealand and Germany enjoy shared interests and values, including the rule of law, democracy, respect for the international system ...
The Minister Responsible for RMA Reform, Chris Bishop today released his decision on four recommendations referred to him by the Western Bay of Plenty District Council, opening the door to housing growth in the area. The Council’s Plan Change 92 allows more homes to be built in existing and new ...
Thank you, John McKinnon and the New Zealand China Council for the invitation to speak to you today. Thank you too, all members of the China Council. Your effort has played an essential role in helping to build, shape, and grow a balanced and resilient relationship between our two ...
The Government is modernising insurance law to better protect Kiwis and provide security in the event of a disaster, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly announced today. “These reforms are long overdue. New Zealand’s insurance law is complicated and dated, some of which is more than 100 years old. ...
The coalition Government is refreshing its approach to supporting pay equity claims as time-limited funding for the Pay Equity Taskforce comes to an end, Public Service Minister Nicola Willis says. “Three years ago, the then-government introduced changes to the Equal Pay Act to support pay equity bargaining. The changes were ...
Structured literacy will change the way New Zealand children learn to read - improving achievement and setting students up for success, Education Minister Erica Stanford says. “Being able to read and write is a fundamental life skill that too many young people are missing out on. Recent data shows that ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay says Canada’s refusal to comply in full with a CPTPP trade dispute ruling in our favour over dairy trade is cynical and New Zealand has no intention of backing down. Mr McClay said he has asked for urgent legal advice in respect of our ‘next move’ ...
The rights of our children and young people will be enhanced by changes the coalition Government will make to strengthen oversight of the Oranga Tamariki system, including restoring a single Children’s Commissioner. “The Government is committed to delivering better public services that care for our most at-risk young people and ...
The Government is making it easier for minor changes to be made to a building consent so building a home is easier and more affordable, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “The coalition Government is focused on making it easier and cheaper to build homes so we can ...
New Zealand lost a true legend when internationally renowned disability advocate Sir Robert Martin (KNZM) passed away at his home in Whanganui last night, Disabilities Issues Minister Louise Upston says. “Our Government’s thoughts are with his wife Lynda, family and community, those he has worked with, the disability community in ...
Good evening – Before discussing the challenges and opportunities facing New Zealand’s foreign policy, we’d like to first acknowledge the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. You have contributed to debates about New Zealand foreign policy over a long period of time, and we thank you for hosting us. ...
From today, passengers travelling internationally from Auckland Airport will be able to keep laptops and liquids in their carry-on bags for security screening thanks to new technology, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Creating a more efficient and seamless travel experience is important for holidaymakers and businesses, enabling faster movement through ...
People with an interest in the health of Northland’s marine ecosystems are invited to a public meeting to discuss how to deal with kina barrens, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones will lead the discussion, which will take place on Friday, 10 May, at Awanui Hotel in ...
Kiwi exporters are $100 million better off today with the NZ EU FTA entering into force says Trade Minister Todd McClay. “This is all part of our plan to grow the economy. New Zealand's prosperity depends on international trade, making up 60 per cent of the country’s total economic activity. ...
There are heartening signs that the extractive sector is once again becoming an attractive prospect for investors and a source of economic prosperity for New Zealand, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. “The beginnings of a resurgence in extractive industries are apparent in media reports of the sector in the past ...
The return of the historic Ō-Rākau battle site to the descendants of those who fought there moved one step closer today with the first reading of Te Pire mō Ō-Rākau, Te Pae o Maumahara / The Ō-Rākau Remembrance Bill. The Bill will entrust the 9.7-hectare battle site, five kilometres west ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has announced 25 new high-speed EV charging hubs along key routes between major urban centres and outlined the Government’s plan to supercharge New Zealand’s EV infrastructure. The hubs will each have several chargers and be capable of charging at least four – and up to 10 ...
The coalition Government will not proceed with the previous Government’s plans to regulate residential property managers, Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. “I have written to the Chairperson of the Social Services and Community Committee to inform him that the Government does not intend to support the Residential Property Managers Bill ...
The Government has announced an independent review into the disability support system funded by the Ministry of Disabled People – Whaikaha. Disability Issues Minister Louise Upston says the review will look at what can be done to strengthen the long-term sustainability of Disability Support Services to provide disabled people and ...
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith has attended the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva and outlined the Government’s plan to restore law and order. “Speaking to the United Nations Human Rights Council provided us with an opportunity to present New Zealand’s human rights progress, priorities, and challenges, while responding to issues and ...
The Government and Rotorua Lakes Council are committed to working closely together to end the use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua. Associate Minister of Housing (Social Housing) Tama Potaka says the Government remains committed to ending the long-term use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua by the ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay heads overseas today for high-level trade talks in the Gulf region, and a key OECD meeting in Paris. Mr McClay will travel to Riyadh to meet with counterparts from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). “New Zealand’s goods and services exports to the Gulf region ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford has outlined six education priorities to deliver a world-leading education system that sets Kiwi kids up for future success. “I’m putting ambition, achievement and outcomes at the heart of our education system. I want every child to be inspired and engaged in their learning so they ...
The new NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) App is a secure ‘one stop shop’ to provide the services drivers need, Transport Minister Simeon Brown and Digitising Government Minister Judith Collins say. “The NZTA App will enable an easier way for Kiwis to pay for Vehicle Registration and Road User Charges (RUC). ...
Whānau with tamariki growing up in emergency housing motels will be prioritised for social housing starting this week, says Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka. “Giving these whānau a better opportunity to build healthy stable lives for themselves and future generations is an essential part of the Government’s goal of reducing ...
Racing Minister Winston Peters has paid tribute to an icon of the industry with the recent passing of Dave O’Sullivan (OBE). “Our sympathies are with the O’Sullivan family with the sad news of Dave O’Sullivan’s recent passing,” Mr Peters says. “His contribution to racing, initially as a jockey and then ...
Assalaamu alaikum, greetings to you all. Eid Mubarak, everyone! I want to extend my warmest wishes to you and everyone celebrating this joyous occasion. It is a pleasure to be here. I have enjoyed Eid celebrations at Parliament before, but this is my first time joining you as the Minister ...
Associate Health Minister David Seymour has announced Pharmac’s largest ever budget of $6.294 billion over four years, fixing a $1.774 billion fiscal cliff. “Access to medicines is a crucial part of many Kiwis’ lives. We’ve committed to a budget allocation of $1.774 billion over four years so Kiwis are ...
Hon Paula Bennett has been appointed as member and chair of the Pharmac board, Associate Health Minister David Seymour announced today. "Pharmac is a critical part of New Zealand's health system and plays a significant role in ensuring that Kiwis have the best possible access to medicines,” says Mr Seymour. ...
Hundreds of New Zealand families affected by Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) will benefit from a new Government focus on prevention and treatment, says Health Minister Dr Shane Reti. “We know FASD is a leading cause of preventable intellectual and neurodevelopmental disability in New Zealand,” Dr Reti says. “Every day, ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones today attended the official opening of Kaikohe’s new $14.7 million sports complex. “The completion of the Kaikohe Multi Sports Complex is a fantastic achievement for the Far North,” Mr Jones says. “This facility not only fulfils a long-held dream for local athletes, but also creates ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters’ engagements in Türkiye this week underlined the importance of diplomacy to meet growing global challenges. “Returning to the Gallipoli Peninsula to represent New Zealand at Anzac commemorations was a sombre reminder of the critical importance of diplomacy for de-escalating conflicts and easing tensions,” Mr Peters ...
Ambassador Millar, Burgemeester, Vandepitte, Excellencies, military representatives, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen – good morning and welcome to this sacred Anzac Day dawn service. It is an honour to be here on behalf of the Government and people of New Zealand at Buttes New British Cemetery, Polygon Wood – a deeply ...
Distinguished guests - It is an honour to return once again to this site which, as the resting place for so many of our war-dead, has become a sacred place for generations of New Zealanders. Our presence here and at the other special spaces of Gallipoli is made ...
Mai ia tawhiti pamamao, te moana nui a Kiwa, kua tae whakaiti mai matou, ki to koutou papa whenua. No koutou te tapuwae, no matou te tapuwae, kua honoa pumautia. Ko nga toa kua hinga nei, o te Waipounamu, o te Ika a Maui, he okioki tahi me o ...
Paul Goldsmith will take on responsibility for the Media and Communications portfolio, while Louise Upston will pick up the Disability Issues portfolio, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announced today. “Our Government is relentlessly focused on getting New Zealand back on track. As issues change in prominence, I plan to adjust Ministerial ...
Recreational catch limits will be reduced in areas of Fiordland and the Chatham Islands to help keep those fisheries healthy and sustainable, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. The lower recreational daily catch limits for a range of finfish and shellfish species caught in the Fiordland Marine Area and ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has welcomed an important milestone in New Zealand’s hydrogen future, with the opening of the country’s first network of hydrogen refuelling stations in Wiri. “I want to congratulate the team at Hiringa Energy and its partners K one W one (K1W1), Mitsui & Co New Zealand ...
The coalition Government is delivering on its commitment to improve resource management laws and give greater certainty to consent applicants, with a Bill to amend the Resource Management Act (RMA) expected to be introduced to Parliament next month. RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop has today outlined the first RMA Amendment ...
Overseas models for regulating the oil and gas sector, including their decommissioning regimes, are being carefully scrutinised as a potential template for New Zealand’s own sector, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. The Coalition Government is focused on rebuilding investor confidence in New Zealand’s energy sector as it looks to strengthen ...
By Stephen Wright and Stefan Armbruster of BenarNews Fiji’s ranking in a global press freedom index has jumped into the top tier of countries with free or mostly free media after its government last year repealed a draconian law that threatened journalists with prison for doing their jobs. Fiji’s improvement ...
We might be in Invercargill but all anyone can talk about is Gore. Specifically, Salford Street. That’s where three-year-old Lachlan Jones lived, south of the centre of town, between the A&P Showgrounds and the Mataura River. Roughly 1.2 km away from the single level home he lived in with his ...
MONDAY I lined up the latest round of civil servants from city hall against the wall, and signalled for the firing squad to drop their rifles. I stepped up onto a wooden crate to look at the office workers in the eye. But that didn’t feel right, so I found ...
Keen hiker and second-year MSc student Liam Hewson wears two hats when he’s in the great outdoors. “The scientist in me appreciates nature and goes, ‘Oh, there’s that thing and there’s another thing,’ but then the tramper and the outdoorsy person in me thinks, ‘Cool bush.’” Born and bred in ...
After a long and illustrious career as a goal kicker, Dan Carter’s favourite way to unwind is… kicking goals. Why can’t he get enough of it? And what it’s like to watch him do it for an hour straight? A semicircle of people wielding cameras and phones has formed in ...
Dame Susan Devoy takes us through her life in television, including late night ER debriefs, her proudest CTI moment and the show she watches in secret. Quite aside from her four world champion squash titles, Dame Susan Devoy will likely go down in history as one of the best Celebrity ...
Hera Lindsay Bird reveals the best places in Ōtepoti to score more for your apocalypse-prep book hoard.Sometimes I get the feeling I’ve been killed in a car crash, and this second half of my life is just the brain unspooling itself, like one of those episodes of a hospital ...
ThreeNow’s new murder mystery series takes us on a dark, damp journey into the Australian wilderness.This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. High Country is ThreeNow’s new Australian eight-part crime drama, set in a remote part of the Victorian highlands. It tells ...
Introducing a new way to read The Spinoff every weekend. After nearly 10 years of being an online magazine, we’re finally embracing the weekend liftout. Despite our best efforts to convince you otherwise, writers and editors at The Spinoff don’t work weekend. It is through the sheer power of technology ...
Tip one: let yourself be nurtured by this big old man. Tip two: don’t ask him to adopt you. So, you’ve arrived at your first session with a new therapist. He tells you to make yourself comfortable and you opt for the tweed armchair, hoping it makes you look like ...
I didn’t know books could open you back up; that there were books that stayed with you, where reading was like a chemical event. I knew nothing.The Sunday Essay is made possible thanks to the support of Creative New Zealand.Not too long ago, I was listening to the American ...
Former Olympic swimmer James Magnussen has already started training for the Enhanced games, though says he won’t start taking performance enhancing substances until about nine months out from the competition. The Australian world champion was the first athlete to be announced by Enhanced, but he says the organisation has had ...
Everyone thinks he’s dead. Every day they expect his body to be washed up along the coast. Most likely up Karitane way, the way the tide’s running. But nobody’ll be too surprised if his body’s never found. Even in death he wouldn’t have wished for such attention. He would have ...
Council members voted 21 to 4 in favour of Ahluwalia returning to the Laucala campus following a much-awaited meeting in Vanuatu this week. It comes as USP and its two unions — the Association of the University of the South Pacific Staff (AUSPS) and the Administration and Support Staff Union ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicola Henry, Professor & Australian Research Council Future Fellow, Social and Global Studies Centre, RMIT University Shutterstock Following an emergency meeting of the National Cabinet this week, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has announced a raft of measures to tackle the problem ...
Analysis - A poll showing the opposition is more popular than the government raises questions, politicians go through their 'trial by pay rise' and a Green MP loses her cool in the debating chamber. ...
The entire stretch of Tokomaru Bay on the East Coast will be subject to a joint customary marine title for two hapū, and extending up to four miles out to sea. A High Court judge has found the two groups, who during the case settled a dispute over boundaries for ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Hall, Lecturer, Media & Cultural Studies, Edith Cowan University A longstanding feud between TikTok and Universal Music Group seems to have finally reached an end, with both parties signing a deal that will see Universal-backed music returned to the social media ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Siobhan O’Dean, Postdoctoral Research Associate, The Matilda Centre for Research in Mental Health and Substance Use, University of Sydney After several highly publicised alleged murders of women in Australia, the Albanese government this week pledged more than A$925 million over five years ...
Political parties have now fully disclosed the donations they received last year - with National getting more than double the cash of any other party. ...
A Pacific regionalism expert has called out New Zealand's Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters for withholding information from the public on AUKUS military pact. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard de Grijs, Professor of Astrophysics, Macquarie University Bruno Scramgnon/Pexels All systems are “go” for tonight’s launch of China’s next step in a carefully planned lunar exploration program. Placed on top of a powerful Long March 5 rocket, the Chang’e 6 ...
National returned a massive donation the day after a Newsroom story linked the donors to a property being investigated for operating unlawfully as a migrant workers’ hostel. The party’s 2023 donation filings, released on Friday, show it returned a $200,000 donation from Buen Holdings on August 23. That was the ...
Pacific Media Watch New Zealand has slumped to an unprecedented 19th place in the annual Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index survey released today on World Press Freedom Day — May 3. This was a drop of six places from 13th last year when it slipped out of its ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joshua Black, Political Historian and Administrator Officer, Australian Historical Association, Australian National University Australia has had its fair share of public record-keeping controversies in recent years. Some have been mere farce, as in the case of two formerly government-owned filing cabinets (containing ...
Heavenly Culture, World Peace, Restoration of Light (HWPL), a United Nations-affiliated organization dedicated to fostering peace through civilian-led initiatives, has issued a statement in response to the escalating conflict between Israel and Iran. ...
A poem by Tessa Keenan, from AUP New Poets 10. Mātou These days we are a photograph; one of a farm strewn with cows that used to be bright harakeke or swamp. The kids point at it and say the sun sits behind a smudge (left by someone at Christmas); ...
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 Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan (Faber & Faber, $25)The masterful Irish writer ...
Marriage and civil union statistics record the number of marriages and civil unions registered in New Zealand each year, and divorce statistics record the number of divorces granted in New Zealand each year. Key facts Marriages and civil unions In ...
Marriage and civil union statistics record the number of marriages and civil unions registered in New Zealand each year, and divorce statistics record the number of divorces granted in New Zealand each year. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lennon Y.C. Chang, Associate Professor of Cyber Risk and Policy, Deakin University Taiwan stands out as a beacon of democracy, innovation and resilience in an increasingly autocratic region. But this is under growing threat. In recent years, China has used a variety ...
In this excerpt from her new memoir, Dame Susan Devoy remembers her turn as star contestant on the 2022 season of Celebrity Treasure Island. The most anxious time of every day was pre-elimination, when you knew this could be your final day on the show. I felt such contradictory emotions, ...
A week that began in triumph ended in an all-too-familiar disaster for the Green Party. Duncan Greive asks if there’s something in the mission that breaks its best and brightest. A long, strange week for the Green party began with a fantastic poll result. On one level this is hardly ...
By Lydia Lewis, RNZ Pacific journalist Vanuatu’s former prime minister and opposition MP Ishmael Kalsakau has stepped down — just two days after he confirmed he was the rightful opposition leader. Kalsakau, MP for Port Vila, confirmed to ABC’s Pacific Beat, and the Vanuatu Daily Post on Thursday that he ...
What’s to blame for the coalition’s choppy start? Six months in, and the mojo meter is in the doldrums. A new poll would put National out of power and sees its leader, Chris Luxon, sliding in popularity. How much is it about policy, how much coalition management and a perception ...
The striking report goes far beyond the proposed repeal of the Oranga Tamariki Act’s Treaty of Waitangi provision, and its impact should be felt far beyond the unique circumstances of the claim it addresses. Earlier this week, the Waitangi Tribunal released an interim report on the government’s proposed repeal of ...
The world has been experiencing a productivity slowdown, from which New Zealand has not been exempt. COVID-19 temporarily boosted labour productivity, but more recently, productivity has retreated. The overall trend since 2007 has been one of slow productivity ...
What’s more wasteful than spending $315k on syrup and machine maintenance? Trying to drum up a controversy about it.Cast your mind back to the pre-pandemic idylls of 2019. A “rat” was a disgusting rodent and not a self-administered plague test; the sixth Labour government was in power; and the ...
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Bob Carr intends to launch legal action against Winston Peters and Julie Anne Genter is facing a second allegation of bullying. Both sucked the air out of an announcement on education, writes Anna Rawhiti-Connell in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in ...
In 1995, Sally Clark went out on her own in a bold and unorthodox attempt to join an illustrious group of equestrian riders conquering the world. In the days of glovebox road maps, brick cell phones, and the hit song How Bizarre, Clark refused to follow Sir Mark Todd, Blyth ...
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To celebrate the start of New Zealand music month, we look back at the best local tuneage that managed to weasel its way into Hollywood productions. There’s nothing quite like the thrilling zap of recognition when New Zealand weasels its way into a glamorous Hollywood production. Crack open a Tui ...
People trust other people more than institutions. So how can the media gain that trust through journalists without losing what’s important about the institution? Anna Rawhiti-Connell reflects on two years of curating the news for The Bulletin.Amonth ago, armed cops descended on my neighbourhood as calls to “lock your ...
Essay: If the Crown harms children, how do you hold it accountable? Analysis by Aaron Smale in light of the Waitangi Tribunal court decision. The post The Crown versus Māori Children appeared first on Newsroom. ...
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NONFICTION 1 The Last Secret Agent by Pippa Latour & Jude Dobson (Allen & Unwin, $37.99)’ This is the hottest book in New Zealand, number one with a bullet in its first week, selling more than any overseas title, and demand is so huge that it’s already been reprinted. A ...
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So . . . a report commissioned by Oil and Gas says the ban on exploration for fossil fuels will cost the economy $28 billion.
How can we believe, or take seriously, these buggers, who have lied about climate change since at least the 1970s.
Well done the Coalition – a small step, but surely in the right direction.
YES Tony, but the Right’s use of their promotion budget begins. We need the counter fiscal picture to outline where they are “Overegging” the picture.
We need a list of other opportunities for employment related to making the changes necessary to keep temperatures in the safe zone. We need a bullshit detector, like a dangerous lies meter.
“We need a list of other opportunities for employment related to making the changes necessary to keep temperatures in the safe zone. ”
Off you go then
Write a list of employment opportunities in Taranaki
Wind power design, manufacture and installation.
Wave power design, manufacture and installation.
Sustainable energy already provides more jobs in the USA, than oil.
Horticulture. And converting dairy to the same. Organic farming is now more profitable than dairy, but farmers need help to convert.
General manufacturing. Oop’s forgot, the right wing already killed those jobs with our artificially high dollar, and mania for FTA. Where were all these people that are so concerned, when Fitzroy yachts went under?
Five minutes off the top of my head. I’m sure we can come up with a lot more.
BTW. Unless there is some huge reserve of oil and gas in Taranaki we haven’t found, 30 billion is a gross exaggeration. Like all unsustainable extractive industries, oil and cases contribution to the Taranaki economy, was always going to be time limited.
Thanks KJT.
“Wind power design, manufacture and installation.
Wave power design, manufacture and installation.”
So everyone in Taranaki are going to suddenly become green energy scientists?
Installation!
The way we all, suddenly, became oil and gas industry experts.
With Government help.
Kiwi’s are adaptable.
I worked with drill crews that were dairy farmers, only a few months before.
no Chris they have 20 odd years to transition.
You saying that the guys in oil tech business are to thick to learn new skills.
Very few people can be development scientists
Very few people can be seismic or wire-line data analysts, or micropaleontologists.
But those that are could shift easily to another like field.
And engineers etc work off plans so can build whatever.
Be positive. Be more aspirational for you country.
Chris
you have no faith in ‘Kiwi can do’ – don’t you?
Do you always like to insult everyone now?
Well people have been miners for coal, they dug peat for heating, windmills are undeniable one of the oldest form of energy harvesting, and in many countries some of the old mills still work, and new windmills are being established.
so yes, the people of the Taranki could become green energy engineers, maintenance crews, scientists etc etc etc. Are you saying that humans can’t adopt new technologies? are you saying you are still going about town on a donkey or a cart with a horse in front of it?
Seriously?
Chris T
Another sour snippy useless little bit of crap question from you with nothing
useful in ideas to put here. You must be a sad little man who finds satisfaction in writing here regularly – no ideas and dissing those wanting discussion. Is
this the only work you can do.
Show him up then.
What is your list of employment opportunities?
Don’t just carp in your usual manner. Tell us all the great opportunities there are and how many jobs they will supply.
If you can.
Good God, alwyn, haven’t you taken on board that climate change could kill all life on the planet? We simply cannot keep extracting and using fossil fuels.
I suspect, though I don’t profess to understand right-wing thought processes (or lack of) but even rwnjs might think unemployment would be preferable to being dead?
With government help, new employment opportunities will be found. Maybe that’s what the Provincial Growth Fund is for – just speculating.
I do not accept that any climate change that man may produce will “kill all life on this planet”, as you so melodramatically put it.
Banning all gas and oil exploration in New Zealand isn’t going to help. If we really want to make a difference we should be developing more Hydro and Geothermal power sources so that we can have renewable base line power for everything except aircraft. That will require fossil fuels to provide the power source for the foreseeable future. More wind power is not going to help us until a genuine cost-effective storage system for it is available.
Our politicians could perhaps help by setting a good example. Does Mr Shaw really have to fill in his time travelling to conferences around the world where they tut-tut about how much long haul flight is taking place?
And couldn’t the list MPs set a good example by coming to live in Wellington?
“I do not accept that any climate change that man may produce will “kill all life on this planet”, as you so melodramatically put it.”
“all life on this planet” is absolute and not an accurate claim, imo. However, without “all” in the sentence, the claim becomes true.
Alwyn; do you agree that changes to the climate caused by human activity has and will destroyed some living organisms? If so, could you comment on the extent of harm caused so far and again on what could reasonably be expected?
Of course it will have destroyed “some living organisms”.
But it won’t be anything like that caused simply by the fact that their are now far to many people in the world. That is, unfortunately, the main cause of mankind’s effect on the world.
Modern man owes his existence of course to a combination of global warming, after the last ice age and, if what I have read is accurate, the discovery of the benefits of cooking food and, in particular, meat. That provided sufficient energy to let the modern brain grow to its current size.
It doesn’t particularly worry me if species become extinct. I would think that at least 99% (or should it be 99.9%?) of all the species that have ever existed on earth are now extinct and the world continues quite happily. Tyrannosaurus Rex was without doubt a very impressive beast but I’m happy they aren’t around now.
I have found that the people who rabbit on the most about how all species have as much right to live as does mankind always turn out to be very selective in this matter when you question them closely. Dolphins are delightful of course but they are much more squeamish when quizzed about whether the smallpox virus has just as much right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Are you in favour of wiping out smallpox Robert?
You and a virus are the exact same thing? That is what you are saying?
“It doesn’t particularly worry me if species become extinct. ”
That’s got to be one of the most profoundly disturbing statements I’ve ever read on a political blog!
Still, I don’t suppose a cockroach will be ‘particularly worried’ if the human race becomes extinct.
@Tony.
I suggest that you have a look at the science expressed in work on evolution. You take yourself far too seriously if you think that the survival of any particular species matters.
What do you think happened to the various other branches of humans besides our own Homo Sapiens strain? There were, and please excuse my errors if I get some wrong, Homo Erectus, Neanderthals, Homo floresiensis and Denisovans weren’t there?
I am sure there are plenty of people who read this blog who know much more about this than I do.
Does it really matter, in the long run that they became extinct and our strain survived?
It is ultimately going to be irrelevant anyway.
I hate to be the one to tell you this Tony but regardless of anything mankind might attempt all life on earth is going to become extinct in less that a billion years anyway.
All the oceans will evaporate.
There, are you suitably depressed?
What an utterly fatuous comment. Of course, in the cosmic scheme of things, nothing matters.
I just happen to appreciate the multitude of species that make up the biosphere of earth, and don’t like to think of losing any through human greed.
lol welcome to the denialist’s world.
Total distruction is impossible, partial distruction is ok because smallpox, and try to discount the possibility of CO2 levels and thermal disruption to currents resulting in ocean stagnation, anoxic events, and hydrogen sulphide discharges.
Oh LOL LOL Everybody should change before I have to!! Alwyn gotcha!!
You cant use ‘logic’ on Alwyn; – as the DNA wont work on that issue,
It’s like a computer saying; – ‘I do not compute’; – ‘i do not compute’; – you get it.
The 5th Great Extinction – the Permian, killed 95% of all life on the planet at the time. Perhaps I have been guilty of hyperbole, but not by much.
Reputable scientists have already talked about the 6th mass extinction, the one we are currently engineering.
But I give up! One can’t argue with such profound and wilful ignorance as that displayed by a climate change denier.
I really don’t think that mankind induced climate change can possibly be on the scale of the Permian Extinction. Do you think we can arrange volcanoes to erupt and cover about 2,000,000 sq km with lava?
These should also do so where they could ignite coal beds that might release a few trillion tons of carbon.
That is rather beyond our capabilities I should think, even if we exclude the possibility of a comet or asteroid hitting the Earth as well.
Oh well. It is only going to kill 50% of life on the planet.
“Not so bad, then”.
Perhaps you can tell us where you come up with that 50% figure.
Just jumped into your empty mind did it?
Your hyperbole, actually no I’ll just call it what it is, exaggerated BS, is unhelpful. I’d suggest you pause for breath. Here is some sensible critique of similarly catastrophic claims.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2017/07/12/new-york-magazine-climate-doom-piece-is-a-case-study-in-how-not-to-communicate-risk/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.bd2d5ecb7639
https://climatefeedback.org/evaluation/scientists-explain-what-new-york-magazine-article-on-the-uninhabitable-earth-gets-wrong-david-wallace-wells/
Climate change is real and problematic, but morphing into Chicken Little is just turning people off taking meaningful steps to mitigate the impacts.
There is indeed a lot of hyperbole in the climate debate – exaggeration with a legitimate purpose – designed to waken those not yet awake, such as you and alwyn and Chris T.
Tony Veitch [not etc.]: ‘Hey, wake up, the house is burning!!!’
Shadders (semi-comatose state): ‘Oh what exaggerated BS, its only the kitchen.’
At least you know the kitchen is on fire Shadders, the sky (the roof) is indeed gonna fall in, so don’t turn over and go back to sleep – run!
The problem is that as these self appointed prophet’s of doom eventually have to eat their words, less and less people take the whole thing seriously. We don’t need to have the crap scared out of us. We need scientists who will give us realistic projections, and policy makers who respond with realistic solutions.
Goodnight Shadgirl, sleep tight, probably won’t see you in the morning.
Realistic and necessary solutions, like stopping oil exploration and funding sustainable energy, have your lot in fits.
In other words, deny, obfuscate and delay, until it is too late.
A sense of urgency and fear is the only way we will really avert the impending disaster.
Or. Are you going to wait until we are inundated by 40 million climate refugees, with guns.
“…40 million climate refugees, with guns.“
Yep, that’s exactly the sort of nonsense I’m talking about.
Not going to happen you think?
Here’s 16 million to start with. https://www.techly.com.au/2017/11/27/scientists-say-heatwaves-getting-worse-will-make-australian-cities-uninhabitable/
In reality I am probably being optimistic. https://www.iom.int/migration-and-climate-change-0
Do you really think Indonesians and Australians are going to stay at home and die, when there is a cooler and almost MT country next door.
Queenstown is already full of wealthy ones.
But carry on with your head in the sand, if it keeps you happy.
“Here’s 16 million to start with. ”
16million what? Certainly not climate refugees. From your own link:
“Sydney, on the other hand, saw seven consecutive days in November with maximum temperatures equal or above 25 degrees. This hasn’t happened at all since 1968 and has only occurred in two Novembers in the last 118 years.”
In other words the climatic conditions facing Sydney, in this case, were evident in 1968. Where did all those climate refugees head then?
How many links do you want?
From my link. “Scientists say that without major reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases, it’s believed that up to three in four people will face the threat of dying from heat by 2100”.
Facts too scary for you. In fact, if you have access to scientific journals, you will see that results show a pace and severity of global warming, is much faster than earlier predictions. Most of the alarms were too optimistic.
“How many links do you want?”
Links that actually back up the rhetoric with science.
“How many links do you want?”
Links that actually back up the rhetoric with science. When you quote an article that states that current levels of heat were experienced in 1968, and then that 3/4 of the population will be dead from heat within 100 years, you have a serious disconnect that needs to be explained before you start talking about 40 million climate refugees, with guns, inundating NZ.
Stopping our piddly oil and gas in NZ is going to stop climate change and stop the planet dying?
Do you mind posting some research on that?
Seriously?
Are you really not aware of the science on the consequences of burning fossil fuels and the release of sequestered carbon into the atmosphere?
2C + O2 = 2CO2
Actually 2C + O2 = 2CO. That is carbon monoxide rather than carbon dioxide and will pretty quickly poison you.
Yo.
So Chris T, alwyn is partially right, I made a mistake.
The equation is even simpler:
C + O2 = CO2
It is also true that burning carbon produces carbon monoxide.
Chris – it makes no real difference to global CO2 budgets. That boat has already sailed. All we are doing now is trying to minimize the levels of climate change to something that as a civilization that we can survive next century.
Personally my assessment is that the civilization is screwed I anything like its current form by the end of the century. Extremes of weather and agriculture don’t mix too well.
Howver it also makes no real difference if tHt oil, gas,and coal is left in the ground. Perhaps you’d like to say whose xtractkbv it benefits…
I can’t see anyone apart from a few unproductive parasitical rent takers – and as far as I can see they should learn to enjoy poverty.
engineers, maintenance crews, welders, designers, essentially a host of jobs that already exist, especially in building the individual components for the windmills/water turbines.
If we feel that we need trainers to get our people up to scratch we could import a few from the Netherlands.
But i see no reason why a company like CPS Pacific, subsidiary of Fletcher Steel that builds lampposts and such could not build/weld the components of the windmills? http://www.csppacific.co.nz/
just to name one.
So yes, there are great opportunities for many different businesses.
We save over a 900k a year, net, by not, importing hydrocarbons.
And the source for this figure is what, precisely?
If you are going to quote numbers with out providing any source you are going to be, and deserve to be, laughed at.
Like you and the rest of the RWNJ’s endlessly repeating crap, you mean.
https://www.stats.govt.nz/news/fuel-drives-lift-in-imports
“Monthly imports of petroleum and products tend to move up and down; however, annual imports reached $5.7 billion in the year to March 2018, a rise of 24 percent. Petroleum and products is New Zealand’s third-largest import commodity, behind vehicles and parts, and mechanical machinery”.
The net outgoings, from hydrocarbons, actually got a lot worse than I said, recently. With the halving of the price we get for condensate.
https://i.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/90611800/the-slow-demise-or-temporary-slump-of-new-zealands-oil-and-gas-industry
I always give the source of any statistics I quote.
However that isn’t the point of my question.
How do you get the figure of $900k per year as the net cost of importing hydrocarbons?
The links you give don’t seem to provide any information from which you can derive that number.
Not all statistics are online, in simple form. But I am sure you are capable of subtracting one number from another.
Debt from negative balance of trade and cost of hydrocarbons imported. less earnings from hydrocarbons exported.
In fact my number is outdated. From when I was last at UNI.
The current number, is much worse, than I thought.
In other words, I understated, the benefits of going way from an economy dependent on imported hydrocarbons.
You guys engaging with these Muppets over CC, or imagining a future makes me smile.
Mangling two quotes: ‘not to teach a pig to sing, you both get dirty but only the pig enjoys it’.
Also leadership, in the form of moving away from last century extractive industries, is unrecognizable to these folk as it may effect returns from their share portfolio.
The funny thing, is that most of the right wingers on here probably do not have a share portfolio, or any wealth.
Wannabees that worship the rich. With fantasies that, someday, they may become one of them.
Hemp plastic, hemp clothes, hemp fuel, hemp cars,paper etc etc etc.
could be a start.
I like it Bruce – this is indeed the way we need to go.
Spot on Bruce, also developing tools and machinery to harvest and process this wonderful plant.
Building products as well. Hemp seed oil.
I am surprised that hemp industries have not emerged here in Aotearoa.
How much money did we save by not exploring for oil.
I.e. tourism, fishing industries etc.
Maybe that is what needs to be mathed up?
And how much money are we going to safe:
Less road deaths and injuries, less obesity by reducing car usage?
Less respiratory illnesses, dementia etc. because of cleaner air and lower noise levels in the inner cities?
Less destruction from climate change and reduced sea level rise?
Surely, over time that accumulates to a lot more than 30billion dollars.
Over 30 years as well, so on our current GDP of $291 billion, approximately 0.3% of the economy – not the disaster it’s being portrayed as.
The cost of removing an industry that is dying anyway, is nowhere near 30 billion.
I agree with you on that, but even it was accurate, it would be a drop in the bucket.
Bernie Sanders 2020
Now all we have to hope for, is that the establishment Democrats who are well known to be totally beholden to and in the pockets of their wealthy donors (private and corporate) don’t cheat the progressive movement again in 2020 at the behest of those same donors.
Thanks for the link Adrian.
Just listening to Bernie makes me want to join his movement.
It will be a hell of a contest and he may just surprise everyone next year.
I hope his security detail is in place.
Here Ad:
http://localbodies-bsprout.blogspot.com/2019/02/a-green-new-deal-for-aotearoa.html
Robert. The list is brilliant. This is the universal truth we all need to promote. That should be a post for next Sunday.. so many good ideas. Thanks Robert.
Practical… keep cats in at night. What else needs to change? Use the list as a guide!!
A list is not a plan.
Mickey addresses it much better in another post.
We are not dissing Mickey’s post Ad, in fact his post has stirred our thoughts.
Dave Kennedy wrote that post. I taught him everything I know 🙂
But it starts people thinking…. which is no bad thing?
Agree Robert.
Watch out though, you will be called a “purist” for actually advocating, left wing policies.
Nice list Robert – thanks. On this one:
“Champion fair tax systems so that the wealth our country produces is more equitably shared.”
I like the implicit recognition in this statement that wealth is created collectively and then distributed (or often appropriated) individually. And that current distribution outcomes bear little or no relationship to actual contribution, let alone need.
However if the solutions proposed are only or always through the tax system, i.e. inherently re-distributive, there is a world of pain in getting support. Because people think you are taking ‘their’ money and giving it to others. Instead, looking at pre-distribution solutions – maybe organising workplaces so that initial distribution decisions are arrived at democratically – might be worthwhile.
Oh – and it is also worth distinguishing real wealth from fictitious capital created by
deliberately engineering bubbles through the issuing of bank credit. e.g. our housing bubble
The wonderful Ed previously posted about this superb podcast with Rachel Stewart on New Zealand rivers and the impact of agriculture. It is now on line.
Thank you Ed.
Thank you Rachel.
Thank you Derrick.
Thank you maui you put the item up all on your own. Very good, you can do it and we will be informed by you as we need to be. Keep it up.
Thank you grey.
Is this like the moment in Jurassic Park when they realise velociraptors can open doors?
LOL!
Time for a rethink on shared cycleways. Particularly if the idea is to get more and more people commenting on bikes. This places adults going fast and children going to school on the footpaths at the same time.
https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/382903/auckland-s-northwestern-cycleway-too-dangerous-for-primary-school-children-principal
Muttonbird
This is an important point. The authorities seem to get enthused by every new big thing. Cycles on shared pathways is one. Lime Scooters another – there is a pattern here. Also I think you said commenting when you meant commuting?
Sanctuary has the example of the very thing that bothers me.
But let’s all join hands and sing kumbaya, happy people mingling merrily in the sunlight being community for images to go on cycling and cycleway and Council publications (like Jehovahs Witnesses put on theirs, the lion lying down with the lamb and all peoples’ angst and stress absent.) Some stress is good for us apparently, but we have overdose.
(Incidentally the pattern of authorities’ lack of willingness to attempt to control ‘unfortunate’ effects from lots of things requiring checking and being held to a standard is probably abysmal if looked at objectively and thoroughly. (See WetheBlleple below on toxic effects from known likely polluters.)
I suspect the authorities figure that letting the footies and wheelies fight it out will lead them all back into their cars, and the natural order of things will be restored.
Gabby
LoL
In Tauranga, the cycleway, shared path has a 15k speed limit.
Which I think is appropriate for shared paths. And the way forward.
No way do I want kids cycling on the road.
The lycra brigade at 30k are competent enough, though not always sensible enough, to survive on the road.
Nearly got knocked over in Auckland, by a lime scooter going at least 20k, and barely in control.
Walking speed? 4-5 km hour? You hear tales of kids walking 10 miles or so to school in the ‘auld days’. We still need to walk.
You Need Feet
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oipBGjMNEAM
Give us our footpaths back and we will turn out and cheer – 500 Miles we will go!
Under 15km is the speed where a cyclist or scooter can stop almost instantly.
I bike on shared pathways in Nelson and Tauranga often, and sometimes in Auckland.
Usually there are no pedestrians for miles. When approaching them, I slow down to walking pace, anyway. Which most other cyclists, I’ve seen, do also.
Biking on the road, in those places is suicidal. Not something I want kids, scooters or slow cyclists to be doing.
I think A bit more education about courtesy and consideration, rather than bans, is the answer.
I slow way down. But pedestrians are really really unpredictable.
Especially the adults. LOL.
Wait until I get a mobility scooter. I’m putting a V8 in it!
It is a horrible dilemma KJT. And I recognise both sides argument.
But no use asking for courtesy and consideration from bike users as a group; it is as hard for them to alter their riding style to suit vulnerable soft-fleshed people with no protection, as it is for car drivers with people on bikes, far less protected than vehicles, as they dawdle down the road built for at least 60km hour. And in fact many bike riders adopt exactly the same attitudes as car drivers that they would probably criticise when on the bike seat.
The adults if they are young males revel in speed, typical of their age.
The female that turned and threatened is one of those coarsened no doubt by an upbringing in a family of the undeserving which doesn’t get anything without shouldering the way through,. Quite a few really hard women around now; You’re either the quick or the dead in their lives, and that means them as well as you.
If we want kinder considerate people then we must apply such to the young parents struggling. (Not create huffy Gnat scenarios at select committee hearings of their requests to the government.)
Cyclists manage to be both self-righteous and reckless at the same time.
Is there anyone else who shares this combination of qualities – apart from suicide bombers? Not that I am even remotely comparing them…
National party MP’s?
Motorists. Just read the comments on any Stuff article regarding cycling.
Problem is that putting cycles on main roads in Auckland is far too dangerous. After I was nearly killed on Newton Road for the third time by drivers pushing me to the curb after getting off the cycleway to home, I now use the footpath.and carefully dodge pedestrians.
But pedestrians on shared cycleways are often a danger to themselves. At least one in ten is walking on wrong side or have spread themselves across the whole path. Most don’t read the signs or listen to bells or stop dead in the middle of the cycleway to read their damn cell or hear a bike coming from behind and veer to the wrong side – or all at once.
And the numbers of pedestrians who walk on the dedicated cycleways is pretty damn high. Parts of Customs Street in particular.
Auckland is dangerous on the roads, but at least the motorists are oblivious to you.
The car door opening in front of you, or the car edging you off the roundabout, simply wasn’t looking for bikes.
As for pedestrians on the cycleway. Tell me about it.
In Wellington they swear at you for being on the road, then chase you into the shingle, deliberately.
Yes lprent those things that pedestrians do were the perks that you once had when you were on foot – flexibility and safety of movement.
Because the authorities could not tame the car situation and slow the traffic down, lessen car numbers, put safe cycleways in, we now not only have road rage, we have footpath rage.
Walking is a basic human thing. Fuck all the machines, these mad oldies that are the deserving and will run you over as they proceed myopically along, and these scooters that will lead to having odd leg muscles – – one a pumpkin and the other
a pimple.
Let’s just walk for goodness sake, and as well let’s have small jeepneys, tuk tuks with easy on and off, easy peasy. So much better for community and for the environment than the latest toy machine for those who are whatever super-cool is called now.
I had a run in over three years ago the Northwestern cycle way with three MAMILs (actually one was MAWIL) who came hurtling along the Bright Street to St Lukes Road section of the cycleway at high speed on their racing bikes at 7.00am on pitch black winters morning. This section is basically unlit, narrow and used a lot by not just cyclists but pedestrians and schoolkids. They had minimum lights and were easily doing 40km/h+.
Being community minded and annoyed at their irresponsibility when I caught up with them at the lights at St Lukes road I sarcastically suggested that if they had aspirations to ride in the Tour De France they should stick to the road instead of trying to be Tuesday morning Olympians on a shared path. They became extremely abusive, the woman even tried to push me off my bike and threatened to come back the next day with unspecified reinforcements to “deal with me”.
I emailed AT about this, and got a reply to the effect they would “monitor the cycleway”.
We’re gonna lose $30B dollars according to the gatekeepers of Hell.
This figure appears to be magicked out of thin air, like oil really.
The reality is our oil fields have less than 20% production left and our gas less than 25%. So the easy stuff has been got at and largely consumed, now they want to go for the fracking, the deep offshore, the harder to get at stuff.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_and_gas_industry_in_New_Zealand
Of course you could read the reports on the local oil and see if they are the exemplars of the community they claim to be:
https://www.trc.govt.nz/council/plans-and-reports/environmental/consent-compliance-monitoring-reports/oil-and-gas-production/
I opened one…. Westside NZ Limited:
“Likely or actual adverse effects on the receiving environment were significant”.
“Typically there were grounds for either a prosecution or an infringement notice”.
“Material failings to meet the administrative requirements of the resource consents. Significant intervention by the Council was required”
Open another at random…. Taranaki Ventures Limited:
Excused for losing data due to a flood…
“”Likely or actual adverse effects on the receiving environment were significant”. (is this a pattern?)
“Typically there were grounds for either a prosecution or an infringement notice”.
Are the people monitoring just copy pasting?
“Material failings to meet the administrative requirements of the resource consents. Significant intervention by the Council was required”
One more for luck…. Shell Taranaki Limited:
“Likely or actual adverse effects on the receiving environment were significant”.
“Typically there were grounds for either a prosecution or an infringement notice”.
And of course:
“Material failings to meet the administrative requirements of the resource consents. Significant intervention by the Council was required”
Something dirty going on here. These are just going through the motions each a clone of the next.
And three out of three checked – non-compliant polluters.
And how many fines in that lot bleepy?
Well. I have some idea of what the oil industry makes, and how many they employ in New Zealand.
30 billion is a gross exaggeration, unless they are talking about the foreign exchange/ US dollars, saved by removing oil imports, and replacing with renewables.
If we follow the US and UK experience, the earnings, employment, and debt saved by going to sustainable energy, will more than cover any losses from stopping oil and gas. There is the potential for many new export industries, also.
The cost balance between renewable energy and fossil fuels already favours renewables. That is before, we factor in the costs of global warming..
Meant to have the tail end of a cyclone heading here. Lots of rain and wild weather. Thing is, after the long drought, most ground is not able to take on water. Flooding may follow the rain.
Be careful out there on low lying land, especially with your stock. Keep a close eye on the forecast and move stock before the water arrives.
Be careful if you are in the bottom of a catchment where fires have been above your place. Earth may be destabilised from tree loss, and runoff may be toxic. Mind what the kids are playing in.
But, enjoy the rain when it arrives, we really need it.
A nuclear middle east. What could possibly go wrong.
https://twitter.com/nprpolitics/status/1097901885162434561
Wonder if there’s an ‘agriculture hub’ connexion.
But…but…Uranium One…
https://twitter.com/KingstonAReif/status/1097907289695109127
“I never said she stole my money.”
7 words, and 7 different meanings depending on which word you stress.
Very curiouser Blazer. I tried the 7 meanings and its true. Politicians have to be alert because the printed word is not the same as the spoken word even though they are identical.
No wonder I loose the arguments with my wife. “You said….”
Wot you talkin’ bart Blazer? Linky.
no link,no scandal.
A stand alone sentence, displaying the nuances of English language.
Thanks – it was surprising the meanings on each stressed word.
Bangladesh has another problem.
The family of a teenager who travelled to Syria to join Islamic State has been told the Home Office intends to revoke her British citizenship, according to their lawyer.
[…]
Javid told the Commons on Monday: “The powers available to me include banning non-British people from this country and stripping dangerous dual nationals of their British citizenship. Over 100 people have already been deprived in this way.”
Although Begum is not a dual citizen, the home secretary has been advised that, because her mother holds a Bangladeshi passport, he may be able to deprive her of her British citizenship. The Home Office has not commented
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/feb/19/isis-briton-shamima-begum-to-have-uk-citizenship-revoked
Worst. Split. Ever.
by RICHARD SEYMOUR, Feb. 19, 2019
I will be brief about this, since that is all it deserves. The secret seven are finally out, to the surprise of no one.
They call it a split; I call it doing a Jonestown. MPs quitting Labour today have just blown their “nuclear option” prematurely, in the least convincing manner. While damaging to Labour ahead of the Brexit deadline, expeditiously for May, it chiefly harms Corbyn’s opponents in Labour.
Allow me to ask the obvious questions. How many trade unions do you think will affiliate to a party founded by Chuka, Luciana, and Leslie, all recently spotted drinking the Anna Soubry kool-aid? How many councillors? How many members? Bear in mind that all of these individuals have awful relations with their local parties: hence their claim to be victims, driven out by the intolerance of yada yada. How many of these individuals would remain MPs after a general election? You could count the number in binary. Look at their breakaway statement. Is that the basis for a major realignment in British politics? Look at the issues they’ve chosen to split over. Brexit? They’ve just made it more likely that a version of May’s deal will pass. Antisemitic takeover of Labour? Few outside the circumference of Westminster really believe that. Venezuela? Really?
I’ve said before that this is not 1981. There is no generalised anti-socialist climate in this country at the moment, no deep-rooted backlash against the unions, no pervasive sense that Labour’s problems stem from having been too statist, and so on. Actually-existing-Corbynism, more Wilsonite than Bennite, is very popular. Chris Leslie merely seems aloof from reality when he bangs on about ‘communism’ and ‘marxism’. Nor, even if conditions were similar to 1981, do these vain Blairites have the heft or hard-headedness of the old hammers of the Left. …
Read more….
https://www.patreon.com/posts/24784500
As it turns out these ‘Labour’ MPs have more in common with the Tory MP splitters.
Probably centrists at best, totally lacking anything remotely left wing.
Kathryn Ryan is butchering her interview with Pussy Riot
RNZ National, Wednesday 20 February 2019, 10:10 a.m.
Ryan seems to lack basic common sense. Several times in this interview, she has delivered one of her long, pretentious, anacoluthonic questions to Pussy Riot’s Maria “Masha” Alyokhina, who has responded with a baffled “What?”
Then she rephrases. and baffles her poor victim even more.
Another wasted opportunity.
https://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon
https://morrisseybreen.blogspot.com/2018/01/mental-skills-coach-gilbert-enoka.html
https://morrisseybreen.blogspot.com/2018/02/bradley-manning-show-trial-begins-in.html
Isn’t it good that Kathryn Ryan isn’t perfect. You wouldn’t have anything to test your sharp intellect on.
I don’t expect her to be perfect. I do expect her not to be crass and bumptious, however. And I do expect her to ask the hard questions, occasionally. She rarely does.
I agree that she is getting to the stage of asking questions longer than the answers. But usually good questions. But apparently not this time.
She does very well a lot of the time. I don’t want it to seem like I revile her.
I do revile Larry Williams, however. And his colleagues at NewstalkZzzzzB.
Yes I saw mention of Larry Williams I think yesterday and he sounds ‘pretty’ shit. I don’t listen to him or any of them That’s the advantage of a democracy eh! In China they had Chairman Mao broadcast from every corner. Here they haven’t found a sneaky way of doing that yet and calling it good for us.
There was another Loudmouth Larry. Perhaps that name carries an echo of past lives with it?
Larry Claxton Flynt Jr. (/flɪnt/; born November 1, 1942) is an American publisher and the president of Larry Flynt Publications (LFP). LFP mainly produces magazines, such as Hustler, and sexually graphic videos. Flynt has fought several high profile legal battles involving the First Amendment, and has unsuccessfully run for public office.
He is paralyzed from the waist down due to injuries sustained in a 1978 murder attempt by serial killer Joseph Paul Franklin.[1] In 2003, Arena magazine listed him at No. 1 on the “50 Powerful People in Porn” list.[2] Wikipedia
Larry Williams is an idiot. Larry Flynt was not.
See if you can find his darkly hilarious “Prayer for the Death of Bill O’Reilly” from about sixteen years ago.
Okay. But he does look and sound a little like a Trump in training on Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Flynt
He perhaps was a precursor; now we have the real curse!
Flynt was shot and paralyzed by a white supremacist. Trump is endorsed by, and himself endorses, white supremacists.
Plenty of opportunities in the good ole USA for free-thinking individuals to stand for freedom, the flag and apple pie against the oppressor, blasphemer, or whatever sort of obsessive hater a guy may be (and women can have equal rights in this area of opportunity too.)
Good to see an unequivocal statement to our Parliament from the head of our GCSB Andrew Hampton that there was no exterior influence from any Five Eyes partner in his decision to raise serious security concerns about Huawei access to our 5G network.
Sometimes paranoid political hype is unhelpful; sometimes it’s just good judgement.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12205495
Looking forward to the results of the next British HCSEC report to see if those concerns really have decreased.
Gooder to see an unequivocal statement from ol’ Andy as to what his evidence is then don’t you reckon addy?
I’m quite happy for secret intelligence to remain that way. Part of being a state.
There’s no specific fire to call Huawei out on; but there’s an awful lot of smoke from a lot of directions.
For a big step change like 5G, the precautionary principle should hold.
Interesting to see a right wing pile on regarding the wellington town hall restoration. All in one morning we have garner/farrar/Williams moaning about it.
I don’t recall this level of scrutiny over the proposed and pointless wellington convention centre which is budgeted even higher.
Does someone stand to gain from its demolition? Add the already empty and earthquake risk council building next door and it’s a huge chunk of prime real estate.
It would be wise for Councils to consider how to hold onto land that is away from the coast and elevated without requiring a climb to get at it. As tides rise and storms rage, the ability to retreat back to reposition in one’s own building will be important.
Or it will be a case of having to lease back the once-owned building or site, at a high rate from someone with an eye to the main chance that is bigger than the Council’s.
Nationals antics with the finance select committee has had some serious ramifications as highlighted bythe Child action poverty group.
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2019/02/20/childrens-voices-denied-in-select-committee-debacle-cpag/
Matamoros!!!
to soon…
A message from the Taxpayers Bunion.
GST on repairs – an imposition on top of an unfortunate position.
Car repairs – $66 to the Government through GST. Adds insult to injury as they say.
Some wit could make up a good song on car rap-airs.
GST on lisencing fees. GST on WOF and Rego. GST on food. GST on electricity. GST on water.
did the Taxpayers Bunion say something when GST was increased under the last governemnt?
I’m sure they tried to but a big foot came down and stamped on them. Ouch.
(Monty Python’s, my go-to for analogies etc.)
I laughed yesterday when Todd McClay was asked how many properties he owned and he couldn’t recall if it was 3 or 4.
That sort of smug slipperiness is why Kiwis don’t trust National. To most people Todd made himself and his party look like wankers.
Newsroom noted that the most outspoken critics of CGT had vested interests.
Eg:”One of those business-owners appears to be Bridges’ wife, Natalie Bridges, who is the director of EHJ Property Limited, ….
EHJ was incorporated on September 29, 2017, Bridges and his wife own 50 percent – or 600 shares – each in the company.
Bridges has further financial interests in property through his one-man, private superannuation scheme, St Catherines. Through it, he owns an apartment in central Wellington and another in Parnell, one of Auckland’s most expensive suburbs, along with his family home in Tauranga.
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/2019/02/19/449412/capital-gains-tax-a-vested-interest?preview=1
He was just trying to be honest.
‘You know you lefties can’t say a good word about RW – it’s either that they lie, they are fudging which is sort of lying, they are pretending that they can’t remember or that they leave all that to their accountants, or as here, they can’t be exact but they are trying and still they get RW just can’t do the right thing ever. ‘
/sarc
Muttonbird they are wankers !
Don’t for a moment think that landlording is restricted to the Nats.
And yes, they do look like wankers.
For sure.
Amateur landlordism is just what you do in this country.
And look where it’s led us – poor quality housing stock, itinerant communities, long lines for both public and private rentals, and increasing inequality.
Meddling in other countries’ affairs
National Party Sausage Sizzle #2
https://m.facebook.com/183355881680015/posts/2671283936220518/?sfnsn=mo
At least their equally abject and dishonest 1975 campaign was a little bit funny….
https://www.nzonscreen.com/title/dancing-cossacks-national-party-ad-1975
If the malignancy known as humankind doesn’t succeed in killing everything that’s good on the damn planet, it certainly won’t be for lack of trying.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reported last week that in 2018 it issued so-called “emergency” approvals to spray sulfoxaflor—an insecticide the agency considers “very highly toxic” to bees—on more than 16 million acres of crops known to attract bees.
Of the 18 states where the approvals were granted for sorghum and cotton crops, 12 have been given the approvals for at least four consecutive years for the same “emergency.”
[…]
Under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act, the EPA has the authority to approve temporary emergency uses of pesticides, even those not officially approved, if the agency determines it is needed to prevent the spread of an unexpected outbreak of crop-damaging insects, for example. But the provision has been widely abused.
https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-epa-pesticides–2629292283.html
undo any regulation going back to nixon.
was that not when the EPA was birthed in the US with rivers burning and such?
but her fucking emails.
There’s been a suspicious rise in the number of attack stories against Housing NZ, the waiting lists, and indirectly tenants, frequently peppered with quotes from certain Oppositions MPs. Like Judith’s latest offering:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/110730341/judith-collins-accuses-housing-new-zealand-of-crowding-out-home-buyers
Naturally Stuff nearly always has their comments open for these stories to encourage the nasties out there.
Clearly they’re just defaulting to type- nothing of substance to offer? No way to actually do our job and hold the current government to account? Shocking poll results we want to distract everyone from? Let’s play the bashing card. Doesn’t even have to be directly targeted at those bludgers. No one’s going to spot that are they?
Alternate headline: Judith Collins upset that the needy take priority over the upper middle classes.
+1000 McFlock 🙂
Judee’s Beijingian sponsors upset that rentals getting harder to snap up.
https://tinyurl.com/y3nyoz8k
Another take on Venezuela.
“U.S. sanctions are designed to “make the economy scream” in Venezuela, exactly as President Nixon described the goal of U.S. sanctions against Chile before the CIA engineered the overthrow of democratically elected Salvador Allende in 1973. Venezuela’s economy is indeed screaming. It has shrunk by about half since 2014,”.
Good move by Shane Jones just as the Local Government was looking shaddy on every level from rejecting Climate change to some councils ready to assume selling off public assets like HB regional Council who is attempting to sell half of publicly owned Napier Port.
Shane Jones should help stop this madness invading the local Governments ‘slash and burn’ models of the John Key era.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA1902/S00173/new-independent-commission-to-tackle-infrastructure-issues.htm
New independent Commission to tackle infrastructure issues
Wednesday, 20 February 2019, 1:57 pm
Press Release: New Zealand Government
Hon Shane Jones
Minister for Infrastructure
20 February 2019 MEDIA STATEMENT
New independent Commission to tackle infrastructure issues
Infrastructure Minister Shane Jones has today announced the name, form and functions of New Zealand’s new independent infrastructure entity.
The New Zealand Infrastructure Commission – Te Waihanga – will be established as an Autonomous Crown Entity to carry out two broad functions – strategy and planning and procurement and delivery support.
“The new Commission will help ensure we are making the best decisions about infrastructure investment to improve the long-term economic performance and social wellbeing of our country,” Shane Jones said.
“The Commission will develop a broad consensus on long-term strategy, enable coordination of infrastructure planning and provide advice and best practice support to infrastructure initiatives.
“We want the Commission to be a well-respected public voice that has credibility among the private and public sector and helps integrate across our entire infrastructure system.
“A short-term, project specific focus by previous governments, along with underinvestment, means that New Zealand is now facing an unprecedented infrastructure deficit that this Government is committed to tackling.
“Our transport and urban infrastructure is struggling to keep up with population growth, increased demand and changing needs, including transitioning to a low emissions economy. New Zealand’s regional infrastructure is often not at a standard required by communities – this infrastructure deficit is manifesting in housing unaffordability, congestion, poor quality drinking water and lost productivity. That’s simply not good enough.
The Unjustices system of the world just serve the wealthy the mighty dollar they are all corupt . look at pike river corupt cover up .What happened to the person who was at a Marae in Puturau with a gun that was silanced well that was a cop LOST HIS MARBLES Eco Maori knows him quite well as he started this man hunt against me him an no fish . He lost IT after following me around leave a sign on the road everytime I went to Tauranga I could see the extream thing he got up to in Put AND Tok they covered that up and commited him I seen him at know fishes house a few times trying to intimadate me.
I see what they did to my Uncle 41 years ago they got his wife to sign a peace of paper and he ended up in Lake Alise When My grandmother died he died 2 weeks later with a big hole in the back of his head . I have learned from what the state did to him .
They would try to do that to Eco Maori but they are to scared . They have got my whanau to levea the farm But Eco Maori Is going to have the last laught on that issue.
Ka kite ano P.S everything I have said is true my uncle was the oldest of his generation like Eco Maori but I have this websight to help me fight the system
This is the system that runs our world the wealthy rulers worship money over every other phenomen like the sandflys money talks to them over there childrens futures over the health of there country you have someone making a mess of there country interfaring in Venezuela putting sanctions on the country who cares who dies so long as trumps masters the oil barrons price of oil gets a boost from his adminstrations callious ACTIONS
(CNN)Bhanu Patel couldn’t believe the news. The cost of the medication that allows her to move — the one that enabled her to walk stairs again — shot up to $375,000.
Fear gripped her: What would this mean for her independence? Would she become a financial burden on her family? How is this possible in the country that’s given her so much?
The past three years, she said, the medication had been completely free as part of a specialty program. Until recently, the drug was known as 3,4-DAP made by Jacobus Pharmaceutical. But late last year, Catalyst Pharmaceuticals won FDA approval for a slightly modified version of the drug after two small clinical trials and announced an annual list price of $375,000 for the new drug, called Firdapse.
For Patel, the drug has been a game-changer. She was diagnosed in 2015 with a rare neuromuscular disease called Lambert-Eaton myasthenic syndrome, a condition known as LEMS that affects about 1 in 100,000 people in the United States.
The disease attacked her hip muscles and abdominal muscles first, then her back muscles she said. Just trying to stand up to walk was agonizing. She dragged herself across rooms and up and down stairs to get around her home. For two years, she wore three back braces on top of each other to allow her to stand.
The disease even attacked her tongue, making it difficult to eat. She lost a lot of weight, and her muscles atrophied. Every aspect of her life was impacted.
Anatomy of a 97,000% drug price hike: One family’s fight to save their son
When she was introduced to the drug, her doctor told her it would make her feel more alert and allow her to regain basic functions. Her eyes opened wide whe
(CNN)Bhanu Patel couldn’t believe the news. The cost of the medication that allows her to move — the one that enabled her to walk stairs again — shot up to $375,000.
Fear gripped her: What would this mean for her independence? Would she become a financial burden on her family? How is this possible in the country that’s given her so much?
The past three years, she said, the medication had been completely free as part of a specialty program. Until recently, the drug was known as 3,4-DAP made by Jacobus Pharmaceutical. But late last year, Catalyst Pharmaceuticals won FDA approval for a slightly modified version of the drug after two small clinical trials and announced an annual list price of $375,000 for the new drug, called Firdapse.
For Patel, the drug has been a game-changer. She was diagnosed in 2015 with a rare neuromuscular disease called Lambert-Eaton myasthenic syndrome, a condition known as LEMS that affects about 1 in 100,000 people in the United States.
The disease attacked her hip muscles and abdominal muscles first, then her back muscles she said. Just trying to stand up to walk was agonizing. She dragged herself across rooms and up and down stairs to get around her home. For two years, she wore three back braces on top of each other to allow her to stand.
The disease even attacked her tongue, making it difficult to eat. She lost a lot of weight, and her muscles atrophied. Every aspect of her life was impacted.
Anatomy of a 97,000% drug price hike: One family’s fight to save their son
When she was introduced to the drug, her doctor told her it would make her feel more alert and allow her to regain basic functions. Her eyes opened wide when she first took the pills. “I said, ‘Wow, you’re right about that,’ ” Patel, 67, recalled. “You feel you want to live and have a life.
“Without this medication, you just can’t even move. It’s like your body is totally like a sweet potato.”
So imagine the predicament a skyrocketing price hike puts a patient like her, she said.
Fearful of burdening her family with exorbitant bills, Patel said, she’s begun rationing her meds — taking two pills a day, instead of four. She said she’s trying to stretch her three-month supply for as long as possible.
“The words that I can use is I can’t believe this is happening, to be honest,” she said.
Her son, Krishan Patel, said his mother has been rejected by Medicare for coverage of the medication, raising concerns the family could get stuck with a massive bill. He said she is appealing for coverage as an exception. His mother has also applied with the Assistance Fund, a nonprofit organization that helps pay for patients’ co-pays. He said she has yet to hear back.
Between he and his sister, Krishan Patel said, they will do everything they can to help their mother. He’s already begun writing and calling lawmakers, AARP, the drugmaker and anyone else who will listen.
He said he’s not just speaking up for his mom, but for those less fortunate. “If we’re not shining a light on these things,” he said, “then really what the hell are we doing?”
“My mother’s livelihood is fundamentally at the hands of a small outfit with full capability to do whatever they want,” he said. “You’re leveraging human suffering to make money — and that is a heartbreaking idea.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders earlier this month demanded answers about the price hike, saying he feared it will “cause patients to suffer or die.”
Bernie Sanders demands action
Sen. Bernie Sanders, who earlier this month demanded answers from Catalyst Pharmaceuticals about the drug’s $375,000 price, blasted the company for not responding, and he ripped Catalyst for endangering patients’ lives.
“Instead of answering my questions or lowering the price of this drug, they’ve hired a lobbying firm,” Sanders told CNN in a written statement Wednesday. “It is now clear that some patients are rationing their supply of Firdapse because they cannot afford to cover the outrageous cost of the drug, which they used to receive at no cost.
“If Catalyst does not immediately lower the price of the drug, I will ask FDA to allow pharmacies and manufacturers who were previously making this drug to be permitted to resume providing it, so that all patients can get the medication they need.”
CNN has contacted the US Food and Drug Administration for comment.
Two weeks ago, Sanders sent a blistering letter to Catalyst for its decision to raise the price of Firdapse — “and forcing production and distribution of the older, inexpensive version to cease.” Ka kite ano links below P.S Times are changing for the better
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/02/20/health/firdapse-expensive-drug-mom-bernie-sanders-eprise/index.html
Some Eco Maori Music for the minute.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XaS93WMRQQ
MONEY IS ALL THATS IN THERE HEADS
Kia ora Newshub all the neoliberals capitalist national supporters are up in arms over the new taxs reviews the reason we don’t have one now is the money men have had to much power over the years for others to implement a fair taxs system that takes the burden off the lower classes.
That’s the national party way break the rules it all good the thing that they see as bad is if they get caught.???! Maggie Barry Issues..
I seen that story on CNN the stash of guns and explosives he was a member of some enforcement outfit . He planed to target the Democrats.
That’s cool that the Christchurch Town Hall is finally finished being repaired after the big earthquake that damage it.
My children buy Samsung phones.
Te Matatini will be great once again the biggest Maori culture proformance it the Papatuanukue Ka pai Ka kite ano P.S miss some of the news I was running around the whanau
Kia ora Mulls & Storm from The Crowd Goes Wild what the Dmaxs like to drive Mulls I have taken some vehicles in some of the meanest tracks and places that not many have been In my farming and Forestry adventure.
How’s the Netball going Storm
That’s a mean catch I remember when I was fit as a fiddle Ka kite ano P.S just trying to drum up a something to write about Nice Suite James well groomed to I got a bit blinded by how well you were polished E hoa Ka pai
Kia ora The AM Show I know who’s paying for your opinion they have instilled their Ideals on our society for a long time and look at what their ideals have served up to tangata whenua it does not matter 65% te tangata the people want change . I agree with Amanda men can be men and Wahine want to be heard it’s equality not matriarch or Wahines rules only its about ballance yin yang get it those types of society of the past have been the best .
Peter good to see you .
The environmental taxes congestion taxes are taxes that will give our mokos a better future a bit hard to comprehend for someone with a 2 minute memory thinking about other people futures is unthinkable .
I think it’s a brilliant move by Labour to get the taxes sorted so polluters pay for the mess they are making to our environment. At the minute businesses get to write off all there business losses/expenses some can have toy cars and other things and claim that against their tax of profits business have it sweet as farmers need to pay to you cannot leave them out as cheats will say they are farmers to avoid the tax and unless they are audited they will get away with it as the tax system works on trust that the business owners are honest YEA RIGHT you see labour can get the taxes sorted now and next year concentrate on the election with out losing the popular votes .
Sir Michael Cullen if it was not for him Aotearoa would be 60 billion out of pocket if we listened to bankers like shonky 8 billion a year would be going to Australian banks. Banks love houses it safe as houses is the saying hence the housing market shorts. Remember a capital gains tax is a tax on capital that is gain so if a business gains no add value /gains no tax is paid capital gains is value earned from time you go to sleep and your capital is gaining NO.
Condolences to Peter Tork whanau from The Monkey.
I got a excellent Movie The Umbrella Academy is a very good watch I won’t Say what platform it is SCREENING on.????.
nice dreams judy nationals creditable is in tatters with Pike River and all the other big messes you made to our society. Chris is correct most people don’t have a investment property of shares only the wealthy people do who some will do what ever it takes to not pay their fair share of taxes.
Yes people need to treat all animals with care and respect and Eco Maori gets the Morgan cat effect that is why I try to be careful what I write I do have some exceptions ta Tau ta Tau to some people.
Stereotypeing Maoris A. If that fool is not going to replant his forest block that’s his childens loss over paying a little more tax I think not.
And your story about a 30 year old finding cannabis is a farce quite easy to read farcical stories.
don it’s a tax on capital gained that is how it should be told it will affect the wealthy New Zealand First will not be gone don you wish.
The public don’t understand the tax the government should have had a advertising campaign to education te people. That is the very reason you say that the very wealthy people who made their money here leave New Zealand they make their money from the capital gained in NZ and flee with the capital All THE MORE reasons to tax the capital they gained in NZ to keep some of the capital in OUR Aotearoa society NO isn’t
that bad for a economy all the capital flowing out overseas .????? Ka kite ano
scott is here with trumps string attached to his ass trying to get NZ to obey trumps lead in forein policy we have much more to lose if we follow like puppets .Any way scott goverment is just spraying wai on New Zealand sending the problem made in his country to NZ the farcial apple ban and much more bulling served up to NZ from our bigger neighbours. ????????
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison is set to jet into Auckland on Friday, for high-level talks with Jacinda Ardern.
While the pair have met before, on the sidelines of of the ASEAN forum in Singapore last year, this will be Morrison’s first official visit to New Zealand and their first formal bi-lateral discussion since he rolled former Liberal Party leader Malcolm Turnbull and took over the Australian Premiership in August.
Morrison will be given a full pōwhiri welcome at Auckland’s Government House, where he will be greeted by Ardern.
A fleeting visit lasting less than a day, Morrison is forgoing the usual weekend retreat to New Zealand enjoyed by previous Australian Prime Ministers. link below P.S This story did not stay on the frount page for long ???????
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/110755400/australian-prime-minister-scott-morrison-jets-in-for-first-official-visit
Some Eco Maori Music for the minute
Kia ora Newshub lime E scooters have been pulled from the streets in Auckland because of safety problems.
Kiwi saver is a awesome Labour initiative. I have said enough about the capital gains tax this morning.
That’s a massive land slip on the west coast of the south island is that global warming or what the Mayor down there is a climate change denier go figure I see some more neanderthal council have jumped on that sinking ship to.??????
That’s the way Jacinda tell scott exactly how dumb it is for Australia to deport their people problems here. The post above has got my opinion of his vist in it.
That’s good that big load of PEE is not going to hit our street that’s just the tip of the ice burg if PEE is easier to get than weed they say.
There you go PEE is the scrooge of NZ heaps of crimes are committed because of PEE.
That shows how strong animals are I was watching a documentary on the Orangutans the caretaker are very weary of the Orangutans strength. Ka kite ano
Kia ora James and Mulls from The Crowd Goes Wild Break dancing scateboarding in the Olympic a congratulations to Tom and Lisa for their Heilgburg awards James did the polish up included that Latin America grooming procedure lol I see my pic was in the running YEA James the – – – – Ka kite ano P.S hope its not getting to hot in the kitchen tangata