Neoliberalism relies on globalisation and encourages immigration to weaken workers’ bargaining positions. This excerpt comes from a brilliant article by Martin Jacques.
“But the causes of this political crisis, glaringly evident on both sides of the Atlantic, are much deeper than simply the financial crisis and the virtually stillborn recovery of the last decade. They go to the heart of the neoliberal project that dates from the late 70s and the political rise of Reagan and Thatcher, and embraced at its core the idea of a global free market in goods, services and capital. The depression-era system of bank regulation was dismantled, in the US in the 1990s and in Britain in 1986, thereby creating the conditions for the 2008 crisis. Equality was scorned, the idea of trickle-down economics lauded, government condemned as a fetter on the market and duly downsized, immigration encouraged, regulation cut to a minimum, taxes reduced and a blind eye turned to corporate evasion.”
A geologist speculating on how water from the Tukituki might have gotten into the aquifer (drought created cracks in the clay, flooding spread the water to those areas). I’m still not seeing very good explanations though (is this surface clay? The 2 impervious layers?)
However, didn’t Labour and the Greens recently extend an open invitation to any party that wanted to join them in changing the Government? Or has that now been retracted?
It is difficult not to see the hand of Tuku Morgan behind most of what King Tuheitia says. Tuku appears to be making a strong political come back with his recent ascension to president of the Maori Party and a declared interest in bringing Hone Harawira in from the political wilderness.
Indeed, it is difficult not to see the hand of Tuku Morgan at play.
However, if Labour did change their position and have now ruled out working with the Māori Party, one could argue his position has some merit. Perhaps he was also unhappy with Labour’s unwillingness to work with Hone?
I presume Labour has ruled out working with the Maori Party because the M.P. has supported almost every bit of government legislation to which Labour is implacably opposed. In such circumstances, Labour is correct to side-step the M.P. If they can’t to what’s right by their own people, then what chance to trust them on anything else.
So that would be a no then. And all this speculation is based on a single sentence in an RNZ report that isn’t even a quote. And no-one bothering to define what ‘working with’ means in this context.
None of us yet know what either Labour or the Mp think or have done, nor really even what the Māori King said/meant.
The assertion that Labour won’t work with the MP was made by the King in the first link provided. Which is one of the reasons why he won’t be voting Labour. And which Little was later questioned on in the last link provided.
What I found interesting was Little never addressed the reason why the King won’t be voting Labour.
If the King was mistaken or incorrect, surely that would have been one of the first things Little would have addressed?
It was also somewhat supported by the report on TV3. Which I already highlighted above.
“The assertion that Labour won’t work with the MP was made by the King in the first link provided.”
Not quite. RNZ report that he said something like that. There is no quote or context.
The audio with Little was obviously edited and we don’t get to hear the original question. He wasn’t asked if Labour have ruled out working with the Mp, it doesn’t come up. He was asked about ruling out Harawira and answers that.
So, all we have is a single sentence in an RNZ report that no-one on the largest left wing blog in NZ is able to confirm.
Your overlooking it was also reported to be asserted by the King on TV3, which was a little more specific in their reporting. Directly naming Little and quoting the King as finding Little’s statement (Labour couldn’t work with the MP) “hurtful”
Nanaia Mahuta was also questioned on whether Little should retract and apologise, but wouldn’t be drawn.
Therefore, we have more than a single sentence in a RNZ report, but questions still remain.
As you point out, it’s interesting no-one on the largest left wing blog in NZ is able to confirm Labour’s alleged change of position, thus allowing us to fully ascertain whether the King and what has been reported is on the level.
Until someone can prove otherwise, I was assuming the Maori King’s contention that … he had changed his mind about the party [Labour] after its leadership said it would not work with the Māori Party is correct.
The party’s late leader, the now -person” David C certainly appeared to have done so when he was in power but it is almost impossible to find any definitive comment by the current party leader. He is a master of the “on the one hand… on the other hand ” approach of saying different things to different groups of course.
Cunliffe said
“The Labour leader says there will be a maximum of three parties in Government should the party take office after September 20 – Labour, the Green Party and New Zealand First.” and
“But he said Internet Mana and Maori Party “absolutely won’t be ministers”.” http://www.newshub.co.nz/politics/labour-wont-have-maori-party-in-govt-2014090822
Why on earth not?
You are making an assumption that he is talking about Andrew Little being the leader he meant.
The King didn’t say that however. He said, “He said he had changed his mind about the party after its leadership said it would not work with the Māori Party”.
He doesn’t say when that happened and it is only an assumption made by people on this blog that he meant the current leadership. He could have given up on Labour in 2014 for all we know.
That would make his statement perfectly understandable.
He is, after all, entitled to believe that statements of Labour Party policy stand until they are unequivocally reversed. Has Little ever said, about Cunliffe’s comment on working with Maori, that it no longer applies? He was very quick to announce that changing the age for Super was scrapped and that there would be no CGT.
Perhaps the Kings remark is merely an attempt to force Little to scrap the last remaining policy of Cunliffe’s reign?
“Neither Radio New Zealand, not TV3, claimed that Little had said that he would not work with the Maori Party, nor that the Maori King had claimed that Little had done so.”
That’s incorrect.
He blamed comments by leader Andrew Little that Labour couldn’t work with the Māori Party, calling the statements “hurtful”.
The homeless inquiry is run by Labour, the Greens and the Maori Party. So obviously the Labour and Green Coalition can and is working with the Maori Party.
As for the Maori Party they clearly state that they will work with whomever is in Power. Luckily for this country, everyone gets to have a vote an every one gets to vote by themselves.
In the end does it matter if the one publicly votes when everyone else is alone in the both making their choice?
I am not aware of any statement from Andrew Little saying Labour will not work with the Māori Party if there is a Labour led government. If he did can someone provide a citation?
I was initially surprised by this statement by Kīngi Tūheitia but not so much when I thought about the influence of Tuku Morgan. The only way the Māori Party can get more seats is by taking them off the Labour Party, so expect to hear more attacks on Labour now that Tuku Morgan is the president. He is far too right wing for my tastes but there is no question that he is a very astute politician.
As for Labour gifting seats to the Māori Party – what on earth for? There is no advantage to Labour in doing this. Even the Nats don’t stand aside in any electorate – including Epsom.
I don’t understand your response to my 3.1.1.1 Sabine. I didn’t say the M.P. has supported every bit of govt. legislation. I said “almost” which is true. Yes, there are areas where they can work reasonably well together but that’s the case between all political parties. I expect there are areas where Labour and ACT – or even the Greens and ACT – have something in common.
I reject the premise that a political party can be a part of “whomsoever is in power” It suggests they have no fundamental principles/values behind them – a sure-fire pathway to eventual failure. Would they have worked with an ACT govt. whose policies are counter to Maori aspiration? They would have been voting for their own swift demise.
i merely pointed out to the naysayer and those that want Labour to fail at any cost that irrespective of what one person says it actually means nothing.
my partner votes Green i don’t. I see the same thing happening elsewhere. One may state they will never ever do this or that, and its good and fine for them, and all the others will do this an that and its good and fine.
I don’t think that the majority of Maoris will base their vote on what the King says.
And for the naysayers that say that Labour can’t or won’t work with the Maori Party i merely pointed out that gasp, Labour and the Greens are already working with the Maori Party together in regards to our homeless crisis.
but then the spring is coming, and sleeping in a car maybe not be an issue anymore until next winter?
“I merely pointed out to the naysayer and those that want Labour to fail at any cost that irrespective of what one person says it actually means nothing”
One can’t deny that the opinion of one of such high notability doesn’t have some voter sway . Nevertheless, there is a good chance that anyone initially considering voting Labour, but are now swayed by the notion, may result in voting Mana instead.
“And for the naysayers that say that Labour can’t or won’t work with the Maori Party i merely pointed out that gasp, Labour and the Greens are already working with the Maori Party together in regards to our homeless crisis.”
The assertion is Little said Labour can’t or won’t work with the Maori Party. Which could be a new development (taking place after deciding to work together on the homeless crisis)?
you know what, it does not matter who people vote for in my opinion as long as they vote.
I have stated it some three years ago that the opposition parties need to learn to work and co-exists. In the long term that would include Mana or any other new party that will come along.
I don’t see how hard that is to understand?
MMP = coalitions. Labour/Mana/Greens/Maori/legalise Aotearoa etc etc etc.
MMP again. So for now the Labour Party is working with the Maori Party and the Greens on the homeless crisis. Kudos, they are doing it and all the others can get fucked in my books cause they are doing nothing.
As for your assertion that Little said this or that, please kindly provide a link. Thanks.
Cause the bibpartisan group to address homelessness in NZ has been on the books now for a few weeks/month.
re Chairman
so ‘your’ comment :The assertion is Little said Labour can’t or won’t work with the Maori Party.
is still without a link to any statement by Little.
I merely pointed out that Labour is already working with the Maori Party 🙂 Today they are already working together. Not next year after the election. Today.
Neither Radio New Zealand, not TV3, claimed that Little had said that he would not work with the Maori Party, nor that the Maori King had claimed that Little had done so..
What the Maori King said, and which I commented on a little further up this correspondence, was that
“He said he had changed his mind about the party after its leadership said it would not work with the Māori Party”.
This doesn’t put any particular time on when he did change his mind. It is simply a statement in the past tense about the “leadership”.
David Cunliffe DID say this. At the time he said it he was the leader of the Labour Party. Little has never said that the Labour Party no longer held this view. I suspect the Maori King is trying to put pressure on Little to come out and say that Labour would happily work with the M.P. This would put the cat among the pigeons for the Maori members of the Labour Party, and help the M.P in the next election..
Someone questioned our local MP on this tonight at our LEC meeting – Labour have not ruled out working with MP, and MP have not ruled out working with Labour. The Maori King believes Mana and MP should not be separate parties i.e. they should re-merge.
Mondayisation of Waitangi and ANZAC Day and the PPL bills are recent examples of bills from the member’s ballot being passed over the top of NAct, so there’s still room to work with them.
“I presume Labour has ruled out working with the Maori Party because the M.P. has supported almost every bit of government legislation to which Labour is implacably opposed.”
If your presumption is correct, it doesn’t explain why Labour initially extended an open invitation to work together.
Labour should have been working hard to reconcile with the Maori Party since Turia left.
However doing so would likely require Labour not contesting some seats. Which internally Labour would find unpalatable, especially as Labour views all the Maori Seats as naturally theirs. So the Maori Party get driven back into the arms of National.
Yep, maybe Labour might be wrong in the past, (in particular Hone Harawira) but the Maori party has made the situation much worse by propping up National for 8 years. And anyone who tries to justify that as being good for Maori, needs their head read. Maybe it is personally beneficial for the .1% Maori ‘at the table’ just like personally beneficial for the .1% elite Pakeha, Chinese, US etc as well, but what about the rest of Maori and the rest of the country?
Well when Labour shafted Maori over the forshore then maybe Maori remembered which party had actually done more to raise Maori up, not through words by through actions, Doug Graham anyone?
It is the worst kind of racist paternalism to expect/demand Maori vote for Labour without offering anything in return
And Tuku Morgan should have had the honesty to leave Labour with Douglas, Prebble, etc, and be part of the Act Party. He is indeed a 1%er, and is no doubt behind this statement by the so-called Maori king – whose monarchy a number of Maori reject.
Not sure Morgan was ever in Labour, though he may have been a member when he was younger, I suppose. He got elected as a NZF MP in the nineties and has proceeded further and further to the right from then on in.
Ulp! – I think you may be correct there. I associated him with Rogernomics and $90 taxpayer-funded undies, but it could well have been through NZF .. who are thereby equally tainted.
The comments of the Maori King are just the last throw of the dice by the dying Maori Party. Never forget the Maori Party represent brown privilege as expressed in the form of Iwi businesses that are busily proving capitalist greed is colour blind. At the top of the Iwi entitlement mythology tree is the Maori king.
These Brown Tories are poised to make an absolute fortune from National’s drive to privatise welfare and education through various shady Iwi organisations. If the Maori Party disappears, so does one of National’s support partners and if National loses power, all those fat, fat contracts featuring taxpayer money going to unaccountable private Maori providers goes with them.
Labour has a proud history of standing candidates in all seats, CV – to enable the Labour message to get out everywhere, including the Maori seats. Why should it deviate from this record now?
What is more, when Labour and Greens united, they both offered invitations to other Parties to join them. mpledger has it right. The Maori Party are close to National and the Maori King is being taken in by them.
Perhaps to help improve their wish of changing the Government?
For example, if Labour and the Greens stood down in Epsom (an electorate both would never win) and encouraged their supporters to vote for National, that would kill ACT.
Moreover, Labour and the Greens have indicated there is some potential for them to reach accommodations to support one anothers candidates in electoral seats, suggesting they may be considering deviating from this past record.
Hey, it’s an election, Adam. I been involved in plenty and nice is not a word I would usually associate with the process. Well, maybe if the Greens are involved 😉
I guess the point is that the WO spread meme that there was some cooperation between National and Labour still pops up from time to time. It’s bollocks, obviously, but for some people it’s easier to believe that rubbish than accept that Hone made a terrible tactical choice hooking up with a self absorbed millionaire. Ironically, the maori party have also hooked up with a self absorbed millionaire, but they’ve got away with it so far.
Not sure if he means the man or the position, but either way it’s easily the most racist comment in the thread so far :-/
FFS Ad, I know you’re doing this whole inflammatory style of politics now, but putting some context into that comment so it could be understood as anything other than outright offensive and supporting racism might have been a good idea.
You could be right AD but for once the guy is talking sense … Labour for years has taken Maori for granted whereas National has given more than crumbs during its stay in office. I hate to think of how many more lollies Maori would get if they had more seats.
I’d suggest that Maori have certainly done better then the first people in Australia, South Africa, Alaska or the USA (yeah yeah I know its the same country)
I mean if I had to choose from that selection I’d choose to be Maori everytime
Yup and if someone says something convinces me they’re right and I’m wrong I change or more likely someone points out something I hadn’t considered then I take that on board and that filters through to my postings
One of the reasons you don’t see me posting sexist stuff or how I’m likely to point to people that comments on someones physical appearance is not cool and that’s come directly from here
I’d post stuff that I didn’t realise was sexist or demeaning but once it was shown from others posts on the subject I immediately changed what I post
Fact, Germany grew up with a strong history of war the resulting lack of food and other goods.
Fact, when your stuff is re-possesed they can’t take 1 TV as the Government insists you need it for the news and to be informed of events such as terrorists attack and floods and other assorted shite that may have to keep you home or to be told where emergency assembly points, shelters and the likes are.
Fact, every now and then we have -25 – 30 degrees winter and in certain regions become un-reachables aka the Schwaebishe Alp and high mountain Farmers.
Fact, every now and then we have awesome floods that can make regions un-reachables for days on end.
Fact, also from Germany we are a transit country, goods come from the south, the east and the west and north to travel through Germany. Leaving us with lots of nice things in the shops. Should a war or terrorist attack happens stuff in the shops may run low. Thus a smart populace is prepared to some extend.
Fact, if the russians or the us fuckwits start playing war games, Germany France and the rest of europe is gone first and we know it.
Fact, we grew up with ABC alarms, Fact we have old people having lived through a lot of shit and some of them are awesome hoarders and makers.
Fact, you should really not start sprouting off about Germany, they are too sane for you. I hear Trump took a truck load of PlayDoh to Louisianna as disaster relieve – how is that for a brighter future.
AfD is going to gain more traction as economic and security conditions decline and Merkel insists on letting even more Middle Eastern refugees into the country.
As for facts how about this one – sales of pepper spray and requests for personal defence weapon permits appear to have reached record highs in Germany this year.
Fact, if the russians or the us fuckwits start playing war games, Germany France and the rest of europe is gone first and we know it.
Yes.
Which makes me somewhat surprised that Germany is willing to risk war via treaties with countries like Latvia and Bulgaria.
The Germans have also allowed the US to run a lot of Middle Eastern wars as well as CIA renditions out of German bases. And Germany has accepted US directions to put harsh sanctions on Russia.
Has it not occurred to the German people that many of the costs and risks of these actions – like economic damage to German industry, destabilising the long standing strategic balance with Russia and millions of refugees on the door step – are being borne by the German people and not by the US leaders in far away Washington DC.
i doubt, i have absolutely no use what so ever for CV. I put him in the same box as the other trolls. For what it concerns Germany i sincerely doubt that CV has any knowledge what so ever. Sometimes it behoofes him to keep it shut.
I am sure there is some Hillary is sick meme that he can peddle if he feels bored and needs attention.
But how can this be, I mean they’ve opened their borders so everyone that enters should be really thankful and thus safe from terrorist attacks. If anything it should be these countries that should be doing the prepping:
How much water do you have?
Have you got your sanitation sorted?
Medication?
Cause the killing will be done by infected cuts, broken bones and shit everywhere.
NZ is a good place to go foraging if you know what is edible and if you know how to cook it.
But a cut to your finger infected is what is going to kill you. Same as it was some 200 years ago,
Really good stuff on here, theres a lot to go through however its also conservatively American but the information in there means you just need to ignore the political side of it
From there I take the information and balance it against what I already know and go from there
“Claims of forced organ harvesting from thousands of Chinese prisoners of conscience are revealed in a new documentary being screened around Aotearoa in coming weeks.
The film is called Hard to Believe – and it alleges the Chinese government is behind an industrial scale programme of organ harvesting – mostly targeting members of the religious sect Falun Gong. The Chinese government maintains this is all a lie, and donors are all prisoners on death row. Ethan Gutmann, author of the book, The Slaughter, is one of the authors of a new 800-page report, ‘An Update,’ that says up to 100,000 transplants are taking place in China each year. Dr Angela Ballantyne is Senior Lecturer in Bioethics at the University of Otago and President of the International Assn of Bioethics.
Yes. This has been around for a while. I mentally shelved it in the ‘need more information’ category, because it really is hard to believe. But if it is true then we have a problem.
When they start branding people, forcing them to wear yellow starts, pink triangles and other assorted symbols to represent their transgressions in public and in prison, when they have charts for its citizens to check if they are ‘aryan’ enough etc etc then you may compare the Chinese and the treatment of their minority groups and the likes to Nazi Germany, when they openly work people to death in mines, factories, fields, when they openly shoot them in front of mass graves for hours on end, when they end up killing 6 million people of one religion and several other million of people who happen to be gay, socialists, communists, catholic, protestant, jehovas witnesses, blind, deaf, mute, otherwise physically handicapped, old or sick then you may start looking for a comparison with the German organised and executed Holocoust.
In the meantime i suggest you find a different term for it. And then you should also ask yourself who profits of the atrocities committed in China.
@Sabine…agree with you re the SCALE of WWII holocaust perpetrated …(and not just against non aryan Jews killed but also many German aryan dissenters eg Dietrich Bonhoeffer and others who we a hardly ever hear about eg almost the entire population of European Gypsies wiped out , Jehovah Witnesses, women who had abortions …all in all about 13 million murdered, of whom about 6 million were Jews)
…however the cold blooded mutilating/murdering people and taking their organs is particularly heinous imo
re your question : “are you aryan enough to survive?”
…one could well ask “are you Jewish or Israeli enough to survive?”….because if you are a Palestinian you could well be in mortal danger ( seems like nothing has been learned here)…water deprivation, apartheid checkpoints, bombing of refugee camps , Palestinian houses and homelands taken, killing of Palestinian children and women
What a weekend for sport, even the doom merchant no joy lefties on here would have to say its been a pretty decent run
The Olympics team doing us proud, the All Blacks showing exactly why they’re the standard (pardon the expression ;-)) the only blot being the Diaz v McGregor fight (of course a third fight means bigger box office) and the rain affected 1st test against SA
Not the establishment line. I just like watching sports and this weekend was a doozy, sports wise
I know that most of the left would prefer to be suck on a lemon then celebrate NZs sporting achievements but sometimes theres a good weekend and you’re just glad to have watched it 🙂
Well, PR, I think Gordon Campbell has blown your ‘decent run’ apart.
More cost per medal for the taxpayer to bear than ever before, and a shrinking TV audience because of Paywall. Actually the lowest value NZ taxpayers have had from any Olympics, if I remember rightly.
Maybe the end of the current system, which is sick. I refuse to pay for sport on TV. So do so many others.
Read his latest article on Werewolf, admit that he is right, and stop your blathering rubbish.
A spot of googling tracks it down to an Ernst Hemingway quote: ‘There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games.’
SportAccord uses the following criteria, determining that a sport should:
have an element of competition
be in no way harmful to any living creature
not rely on equipment provided by a single supplier (excluding proprietary games such as arena football)
not rely on any “luck” element specifically designed into the sport
They also recognise that sport can be primarily physical (such as rugby or athletics), primarily mind (such as chess or go), predominantly motorised (such as Formula 1 or powerboating), primarily co-ordination (such as billiard sports), or primarily animal-supported (such as equestrian sport).
Neither would I count bullfighting, which is probably why I’d mentally erased it from my first version.
But weka is spot on, while I’ve played football, a bit of rugby and some softball, I found climbing, tramping, kayaking … all activities that challenge your own limitations … far more engaging.
Beating other people is easy; overcoming your own fears isn’t.
and nothing wrong with that either but for me tramping is something I do for fun, I’m not really looking to challenge myself as such (except for when I haven’t done it in a while and it feels like a challenge even taking a step but I digress)
I guess the sports I’ve, mostly, gravitated to are the more team orientated ones
However the main point of the original post was what a great weekend it was for NZ sport…maybe I should have added whatever sport it is you choose to participate in 🙂
Sport for competition or sport for the sheer enjoyment, either way it’s been a pleasure to be a spectator and to share some wonderful moments this Olympics…..
to see people realise their childhood dreams and to show us and the next generation that sporting excellence is as much about the journey, the teamwork and how you participate, as it is about individual achievement.
All that and more, absolutely. To see people from small towns like Waimate or Timaru etc and, not just compete, but succeed has been really excellent as well and if that’s not motivating enough the sheer class shown by athletes like (but not limited to) Valarie Adams will hopefully convince more women (and men of course) to strive for higher honours in their chosen sports
Yes I forgot to mention the cricket this weekend as well, they’ve done well in the bowling but the batting was looking a bit wobbly but unfortunately it looks like rain will have the final say
Just to let you all know, in Spain bullfighting is covered on the same pages as the theatre reviews and ballet performances, not in the sports section.
Of course its the establishment line, just look how the ABs are used by politicians and the media, and how someone of your viewpoint uses the subject on a political blog. Anyway Noam Chomsky says it better: https://youtu.be/Vz1nIHv6P6Q
Puckish Rogue said:
“I know that most of the left would prefer to be suck on a lemon then celebrate NZs sporting achievements…”
Tell us, PR, why if you believe what you have written, do you visit a Left wing blog to trumpet your support for something you believe the readers here would “rather suck on a lemon” than listen to? You’re better suited to a Right wing blog where sports fans such as yourself are all a twitter with excitement at the Olympic medal tally and the All Black win over Australia.
Probably because while most of the left do suck on lemons (see Pauls comment) not all lefties are like that, some even have comments that’re worth reading
The worst thing you can do when holding a position is to not try to understand what other peoples points of views are
If hell is other people then only existing with other people that agree with you may not be hell but it’d certainly be very boring
Sorry Chooky, but I think PR was displaying his form of wit, and did that error deliberately. His other many errors are through misguided political slant, and not so deliberate.
“The worst thing you can do when holding a position is to not try to understand what other peoples points of views are ”
oh the irony
i dont have a problem with sportspeople succeeding – but i do have an issue with the way sport is overhyped, over corporatised and the pack mentality displayed by many non participants.
I would be willing to bet that many have a somewhat similar take – and one that comes across as “dont like sport” if the detail isnt there
that thing you were saying about not understanding others points of view? 🙂
i dont have a problem with sportspeople succeeding – but i do have an issue with the way sport is overhyped, over corporatised and the pack mentality displayed by many non participants
and that’s a fair point, I feel something has been lost from NZ rugby and it’ll never come back again
I recall drinking the Cook down in Dunedin (early to mid 90s) and having a look at the uni a rugby photos and just looking at all the provincial and all blacks in the photos and going to games at the ‘brook and having a great time but now…I don’t know its just not quite the same
However I’d also not want to begrudge a player making decent money from the game, they’re only a tackle away from retirement after all
But hasn’t some of the performances from the NZ Olympics team, especially the women, been impressive?
Yeah wasn’t she impressive, hitting a PB at the exact time she needed it. I personally think Natalie Rooney was one of the, many, highlights for me
I’m stoked when I hit two clay birds in a row so I was just sitting getting more and more excited about her prospects and her attitude to silver was equally as impressive, she’ll be a good bet for 2020
Not just WWE, McFlock. Plenty of athletes, cyclists, body builders and others have died early, Florence Griffith Joyner being probably the most famous. Lord knows how many from Eastern Europe have died over the last few decades because it’s always been easier to hide the stats there.
I suspect if there were two Olympics, one clean the other not so much, the public would prefer the clean one. But Sky TV would happily show both.
Hi TRP, I had hoped [Deleted. No referring to what you think is my real life identity, please. TRP] would have given you more respect for due process and natural justice.
Isinbayeva is a two time Olympic gold medalist and three times world champion. She has been pole vault champion at at least four other major international competitions. Each of these events had independent drug testing before and after. AFAIK she was found clean each and every time.
So for her to be banned as a drug cheat as part of the collective punishment of the Russian athletics team and not be given any chance for individual appeal based on her outstanding record to date is nothing short of political and malicious.
CV, the sad fact is that Russian athletics is horribly tainted. I’ve no issue with Isinbayeva or any individual. But all of them were trained and employed under a regime that routinely cheated. It’s unfortunate for her not to be able to go to Rio if she was genuinely clean, but the likelihood is that she wasn’t. Even if she was unaware of what was happening (again, unlikely) the damage is done. It’s not the Olympic gold medal that has been diminished, as she claims, it’s her own record that is now suspect. And that’s the fault of the people she trusted to administer her sport at home, not the IOC.
btw, she hasn’t been world champ for ages and coming back after a break of a few years suggests she probably would have struggled to make the grade at Rio. Unless she had, ahem, help 😉
Yes I can sense your “sadness”. Collective punishment and collective guilt without individual right of appeal then.
From wikipedia
At the 2012 Olympic Games, she easily qualified for the finals, where she came third with 4.70 m. She considered the bronze medal as success but mentioned that she would like to retire as acting Olympic champion.
And again, despite your ungenerous assertions, she tested clean in both the pre and post Olympic drug testing regime.
The sadness is genuine. I’d much prefer that the workers in that industry weren’t being abused by their employers. But we can’t change the past, only influence the future.
ps, you probably need to look up ‘collective punishment’. It’s not what you appear to think it is.
Collective punishment is a form of retaliation whereby a suspected perpetrator’s family members, friends, acquaintances, sect, neighbors or entire ethnic group is targeted. The punished group may often have no direct association with the other individuals or groups, or direct control over their actions.
Russia definitely has had a drug cheat problem amongst some of its athletes.
Having said that, 2/3 of its Olympic team (except the athletics section) was finally cleared to compete at Rio so I think that the Russian drug testing regime isn’t as porous as is sometimes made out in the MSM.
It would be malicious and arbitrary to not allow individual para-olympians with clean drug records to appeal the collective decision and submit to additional testing protocols.
Well, that depends on how long the drugs have a benefit after they’re out of the system, doesn’t it? For example, if they bulk up muscle mass during training and carry that through (now “drug free”) to rio. Or whether you need a verifiable baseline to detect sudden spikes invarious drugs or hormones. Or whatever.
Frankly, I have no idea. Nor do you. Maybe your suggestion would be fair, or maybe quite frankly the russian drug testing debacle has genuinely tainted the entire team and there’s no way to make a plausible determination that any of them are clean.
National sports bodies wanting their athletes to compete at international events need to abide by the rules to ensure a fair competition.
For any individual athlete to compete at a top-level international event, their participation is dependant on the competence and integrity of their support staff and organisations, from coaches and doctors to their national sports organisations.
If those national sports bodies systematically failed to do that, then those athletes should rightly blame the sports body that failed to stick to the rules. Just like if an athlete is given a performance enhancing drug by a doctor who failed to ensure they abided by the rules, the athlete should blame the doctor, not the international body.
Wasn’t there some fuckup last olympics or so when a NZ athlete almost didn’t get to compete because someone in our sports organisation fucked up some paperwork? Same deal with Russia, only they fucked up the process for an entire team.
and that’s a fair point, I feel something has been lost from NZ rugby and it’ll never come back again
It’s so robotic and structured it’s just become boring, used to enjoy watching Rugby but haven’t seen a game in years
Last game was the All black world cup final in 2011, god it was dull, no flair at all it’s like the players have chips in their heads and the coaches were controlling the players .
re; olympics . absolutely – i’m all for giving the athletes their moment, after all, they are the ones who actually did “thing x”
not an avid follower, which has made the surprise angle even better. What really ruins it is the idiot media – on the pole vault it only took a minute or two till some egg used rugby line outs as a means to visualise the height she vaulted over – gahh!
but good lord – whats happening – i keep agreeing with you – good thing the lemon tree is going strong aye 🙂
It only comes back for me after I’ve made a comment. But it only hangs around if I just click on comments. It disappears again if I do a page refresh, or go back to the front page.
The “Reply” button on the bottom of each comment is there, and has always worked for me – but the “Replies” has been intermittent for some time now and mostly nothing appears when clicked. Never mind – I’ll live with it :).
It does seem to be interrupting the conversations though, because it makes it harder to find what one was talking about. I’m guessing people are mostly going with the convo that is in front of them.
“Medicinal marijuana campaigner Rebecca Reider has a history of bringing the drug into NZ. She suffers from chronic pain and has successfully been able to bring more into the country – straight past customs. We speak with her.”
What surprised me most about that interview is the amount of time they gave her to speak. Usually they only allot a tiny amount of time for these topics, and Suzie Ferguson keeps interrupting trying to move it on, not letting them actually say anything worthwhile.
Phil Twyford at Te Puea Marae in first open meeting to discuss the impacts of homelessness in our Society. This inquiry into Homelessness is bipartisan and is conducted by the Labour Party, the Green Party NZ and of course the Maori Party.
Notable absent – the Party that supposedly runs the government but then it is a government for some and not for all. Surely we can find Mrs. Bennett, Mr. English and Mr. Smith sipping latte in Mount Eden or another equally nice place so as to not disturb their pretty minds.
…”The people in India are one of the first to experience a crisis which within 15 years will affect everyone on the planet, according to scientists’ warnings. And it might be the most devastating one humankind has ever faced.”
Watch the documentary “H2WOE” on RT and RTD, premiering on September 22.
The Herald have an interview with an American academic who is involved in a campaign to get a woman as UN Secretary General.
She appears to be living about 200 years in the past, when all communication would have been hand-written and carried for months in a sailing vessel. In those days Ambassadors really did have to make decisions on behalf of their country.
The reason Helen is not doing too well in the contest is, according to her, because 14 of the 15 “people” on the Security Council are men. Ignoring the fact that there are 15 countries rather than people on the Council I find it rather strange that she seems to think that is the people who head their countries delegation to the UN who decide who to vote for rather than the country they represent.
The Herald says
“She said on the Security Council itself, there were 14 men and the only woman was US Ambassador Samantha Power”
and then quote the woman, a Dr Jean Krasno, as saying
“They all know each other, they’ve all evolved over time with an old boys’ club. And that’s what always happens, they network, so they vote for them. It’s just old boy networking.”
I bet you didn’t know that it isn’t the New Zealand Government who decide who we are going to vote for but the head of our delegation to the UN. His name, for anyone who isn’t familiar with this seemingly very powerful individual, is Gerard van Bohemen. I wonder what he has been up to? Along with the representatives of Russia, China, Great Britain and so on. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=11698804
I feel rather sorry for Krasno’s students if this is the sort of thing she seems to believe.
I fail to see what sort of flame war you are talking about.
I was merely pointing out how far from reality that US academic seems to be.
I also don’t really see what connection your article has to my original comment.
Surely you would accept that her opinions about the various countries representatives at the UN doing what they want to rather than what their Governments tell them to do is irrational?.
As The Vancouver Housing Market Implodes, The “Smart Money” Is Rushing To Get Out Now
Three weeks after we suggested that the Vancouver housing bubble had popped in the aftermath of the implementation of the July 25 15% property tax in British Columbia targeting the Chinese free for all in Vancouver real estate, we got confirmation of that last week when we reported that only one word could describe what has happened to Vancouver housing in the past month: implosion.
Zolo, a Canadian real estate brokerage, which keeps track of MLS home sales in real-time and reports prices as an average rather than the “benchmark price”, showed as of last week a major correction underway in most Metro Vancouver markets. According to the website, the City of Vancouver currently has an average home price of $1.1 million, down 20.7% over the last 28 days and down 24.5% over the last three months. The average detached home is $2.6 million, down 7% compared to three months ago.
It looks like sales have stalled at the top end, but the bubble continues to expand. That’s probably what will happen in Ak at some point; the rich will back out of the market, but the middle class will remain trapped in the cycle of debt and demand.
John Campbell is dealing now with water pollution in Hawke’s Bay.
Crikey!
Water quality, in for example Tuki Tuki River is awful!
Must get a replay.
Dreadful!
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 ...
TL;DR: In today’s ‘six-stack’ of substacks at 6.06pm on Tuesday, March 19:Kāinga Ora’s dry rot The Spinoff DailyBill McKibben on ‘Climate Superfunds’ making Big Oil pay for climate damage The Crucial YearsPreston Mui on returning to 1980s-style productivity growth NoahpinionAndy Boenau on NIMBYs needing unusual bedfellows Urbanism SpeakeasyNed Resnikoff's case ...
Negative yesterday, negative today. Negative all year, according to one departing reader telling me I’ve grown strident and predictable. Fair enough. If it’s any help, every time I go to write about a certain topic that begins with C and ends with arrrrs, I do brace myself and ask: Again? Are ...
Bryce Edwards writes – It’s been a tumultuous time in politics in recent months, as the new National-led Government has driven through its “First 100 Day programme”. During this period there’s been a handful of opinion polls, which overall just show a minimal amount of flux in public support ...
Inspirational: The Family of Man is a glorious hymn to human equality, but, more than that, it is a clarion call to human freedom. Because equality, unleavened by liberty, is a broken piano, an unstrung harp; upon which the songs of fraternity will never be played.“Somebody must have been telling lies about ...
Tax Lawyer Barbara Edmonds vs Emperor Justinian I- Nolo Contendere: False historical explanations of pivotal events are very far from being inconsequential.WHEN BARBARA EDMONDS made reference to the Roman Empire, my ears pricked up. It is, lamentably, very rare to hear a politician admit to any kind of familiarity ...
It’s been a tumultuous time in politics in recent months, as the new National-led Government has driven through its “First 100 Day programme”. During this period there’s been a handful of opinion polls, which overall just show a minimal amount of flux in public support for the various parties in ...
Buzz from the Beehive Housing Minister Chris Bishop delivered news – packed with the ingredients to enflame political passions – worthy of supplanting Winston Peters in headline writers’ priorities. He popped up at the post-Cabinet press conference to promise a crackdown on unruly and antisocial state housing tenants. His ...
Ele Ludemann writes – The Reserve Bank is advertising for a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion advisor. The Bank has one mandate – to keep inflation between one and three percent. It has failed in that and is only slowly getting inflation back down to the upper limit. Will it ...
Last week former National Party leader Simon Bridges was appointed by the Government as the new chair of the New Zealand Transport Agency Waka Kotahi (NZTA). You can read about the appointment in Thomas Coughlan’s article, Simon Bridges to become chair of NZ Transport Agency Waka KotahiThe fact that a ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Last week former National Party leader Simon Bridges was appointed by the Government as the new chair of the New Zealand Transport Agency Waka Kotahi (NZTA). You can read about the appointment in Thomas Coughlan’s article, Simon Bridges to become chair of NZ Transport Agency ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read: Gavin Jacobson talks to Thomas Piketty 10 years on from Capital in the 21st CenturyThe SalvoLocal scoop: Green MP’s business being investigated over migrant exploitation claims StuffSteve KilgallonLocal deep-dive: The commercial contractors making money from School ...
It’s a home - but Kāinga Ora tenants accused of “abusing the privilege” may lose it. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The Government announced a crackdown on Kāinga Ora tenants who were unruly and/or behind on their rent, with Housing Minister Chris Bishop saying a place in a state ...
This is a guest post by Connor Sharp of Surface Light Rail Light rail in Auckland: A way forward sooner than you think With the coup de grâce of Auckland Light Rail (ALR) earlier this year, and the shift of the government’s priorities to roads, roads, and more roads, it ...
Note: As a paid-up Webworm member, I’ve recorded this Webworm as a mini-podcast for you as well. Some of you said you liked this option - so I aim to provide it when I get a chance to record! Read more ...
TL;DR: In my ‘six-stack’ of substacks at 6.06pm on Monday, March 18:IKEA is accused of planting big forests in New Zealand to green-wash; REDD-MonitorA City for People takes a well-deserved victory lap over Wellington’s pro-YIMBY District Plan votes; A City for PeopleSteven Anastasiou takes a close look at the sticky ...
Buzz from the Beehive Here’s hoping for a lively post-cabinet press conference when the PM and – perhaps – some of his ministers tell us what was discussed at their meeting today. Until then, Point of Order has precious little Beehive news to report after its latest monitoring of the ...
David Farrar writes – We now have almost all 2023 data in, which has allowed me to update my annual table of how labour went against its promises. This is basically their final report card. The promiseThe result Build 100,000 affordable homes over 10 ...
I’m a bit worried that I’ve started a previous newsletter with the words “just when you think they couldn’t get any worse…” Seems lately that I could begin pretty much every issue with that opening. Such is the nature of our coalition government that they seem to be outdoing each ...
Geoffrey Miller writes – Timing is everything. And from China’s perspective, this week’s visit by its foreign minister to New Zealand could be coming at just the right moment. The visit by Wang Yi to Wellington will be his first since 2017. Anniversaries are important to Beijing. ...
Depictions of Islam in Western popular culture have rarely been positive, even before 9/11. Five years on from the mosque shootings, this is one of the cultural headwinds that the Muslim community has to battle against. Whatever messages of tolerance and inclusion are offered in daylight, much of our culture ...
Last week Transport Minster Simeon Brown and Mayor Wayne Brown opened the new Auckland Rail Operations Centre. The new train control centre will see teams from KiwiRail, Auckland Transport and Auckland One Rail working more closely together to improve train services across the city. The Auckland Rail Operations Centre in ...
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: Retiring former Labour Finance Minister Grant Robertson said in an exit interview with Q+A yesterday the Government can and should sustain more debt to invest in infrastructure for future generations. Elsewhere in the news in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 6:36am: Read more ...
Timing is everything. And from China’s perspective, this week’s visit by its foreign minister to New Zealand could be coming at just the right moment. The visit by Wang Yi to Wellington will be his first since 2017. Anniversaries are important to Beijing. It is more than just a happy ...
TL;DR: The key events to watch in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the week to March 18 include:China’s Foreign Minister visiting Wellington today;A post-cabinet news conference this afternoon; the resumption of Parliament on Tuesday for two weeks before Easter;retiring former Labour Finance Minister Grant Robertson gives his valedictory speech in Parliament; ...
New Zealand First Leader Winston Peters’s state-of-the-nation speech on Sunday was really a state-of-Winston-First speech. He barely mentioned any of the Government’s key policies and could not even wholly endorse its signature income tax cuts. Instead, he rehearsed all of his complaints about the Ardern Government, including an extraordinary claim ...
A listing of 35 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 10, 2024 thru Sat, March 16, 2024. Story of the week This week we'll give you a little glimpse into how we collect links to share and ...
A listing of 35 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 10, 2024 thru Sat, March 16, 2024. Story of the week This week we'll give you a little glimpse into how we collect links to share and ...
“I’ve been internalising a really complicated situation in my head.”When they kept telling us we should wait until we get to know him, were they taking the piss? Was it a case of, if you think this is bad, wait till you get to know the real Christopher, after the ...
Happy fourth anniversary, Pandemic That Upended Bloody Everything. I have been observing it by enjoying my second bout of COVID. It’s 5.30 on Sunday morning and only now are lights turning back on for me.Allow me to copy and paste what I told reader Sara yesterday:Depleted, fogged and crappy. Resting, ...
Happy fourth anniversary, Pandemic That Upended Bloody Everything. I have been observing it by enjoying my second bout of COVID. It’s 5.30 on Sunday morning and only now are lights turning back on for me.Allow me to copy and paste what I told reader Sara yesterday:Depleted, fogged and crappy. Resting, ...
Happy fourth anniversary, Pandemic That Upended Bloody Everything. I have been observing it by enjoying my second bout of COVID. It’s 5.30 on Sunday morning and only now are lights turning back on for me.Allow me to copy and paste what I told reader Sara yesterday:Depleted, fogged and crappy. Resting, ...
.“$10 and a target that bleeds” - Bleeding Targets for Under $10!.Thanks for reading Frankly Speaking ! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.This government appears hell-bent on either scrapping life-saving legislation or reintroducing things that - frustrated critics insist - will be dangerous and likely ...
“It hardly strikes me as fair to criticise a government for doing exactly what it said it was going to do. For actually keeping its promises.”THUNDER WAS PLAYING TAG with lightning flashes amongst the distant peaks. Its rolling cadences interrupted by the here-I-come-here-I-go Doppler effect of the occasional passing car. ...
Subversive & Disruptive Technologies: Just as happened with that other great regulator of the masses, the Medieval Church, the advent of a new and hard-to-control technology – the Internet – is weakening the ties that bind. Then, and now, those who enjoy a monopoly on the dissemination of lies, cannot and will ...
Been Here Before: To find the precedents for what this Coalition Government is proposing, it is necessary to return to the “glory days” of Muldoonism.THE COALITION GOVERNMENT has celebrated its first 100 days in office by checking-off the last of its listed commitments. It remains, however, an angry government. It ...
Bob Edlin writes – And what is the world watching today…? The email newsletter from Associated Press which landed in our mailbox early this morning advised: In the news today: The father of a school shooter has been found guilty of involuntary manslaughter; prosecutors in Trump’s hush-money case ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Is another Green MP on their way out? And are the Greens severely tarnished by another integrity scandal? For the second time in three months, the Green Party has secretly suspended an MP over integrity issues. Mystery is surrounding the party’s decision to ...
For the last few years, the Green Party has been the party that has managed to avoid the plague of multiple scandals that have beleaguered other political parties. It appears that their luck has run out with a second scandal which, unfortunately for them, coincided with Golraz Ghahraman, the focus ...
TL;DR: The six newsey things that stood out to me as of 6:46am on Saturday, March 16.Andy Foster has accidentally allowed a Labour/Green amendment to cut road user chargers for plug-in hybrid vehicles, which the Government might accept; NZ HeraldThomas CoughlanSimeon Brown has rejected a plea from Westport ...
What seemed a booming success a couple of years ago has collapsed into fraud convictions.I looked at the crash of FTX (short for ‘Futures Exchange’) in November 2022 to see whether it would impact on the financial system as a whole. Fortunately there was barely a ripple, probably because it ...
Anybody following the situation in Ukraine and Russia would probably have been amused by a recent Tweet on X NATO seems to be putting in an awful lot of effort to influence what is, at least according to them, a sham election in an autocracy.When do the Ukrainians go to ...
TL;DR:Shaun Baker on Wynyard Quarter's transformation. Magdalene Taylor on the problem with smart phones. How private equity are now all over reinsurance. Dylan Cleaver on rugby and CTE. Emily Atkin on ‘Big Meat’ looking like ‘Big Oil’.Bernard’s six-stack of substacks at 6pm on March 15Photo by Jeppe Hove Jensen ...
Buzz from the Beehive Finance Minister Nicola Willis had plenty to say when addressing the Auckland Business Chamber on the economic growth that (she tells us) is flagging more than we thought. But the government intends to put new life into it: We want our country to be a ...
The Transport and Infrastructure Committee has reported back on the Road User Charges (Light Electric RUC Vehicles) Amendment Bill, basicly rubberstamping it. While there was widespread support among submitters for the principle that EV and PHEV drivers should pay their fair share for the roads, they also overwhelmingly disagreed with ...
Peter Dunne writes – This week’s government bailout – the fifth in the last eighteen months – of the financially troubled Ruapehu Alpine Lifts company would have pleased many in the central North Island ski industry. The government’s stated rationale for the $7 million funding was that it ...
See if you can spot the difference. An Iranian born female MP from a progressive party is accused of serial shoplifting. Her name is leaked to the media, which goes into a pack frenzy even before the Police launch an … Continue reading → ...
Ele Ludemann writes – The government is omitting general Treaty references from legislation : The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last Government in a bid to get greater coherence in the public service on Treaty ...
What was that judge thinking?Peter Williams writes – That Golriz Ghahraman and District Court Judge Maria Pecotic were once lawyer colleagues is incontrovertible. There is published evidence that they took at least one case to the Court of Appeal together. There was a report on ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read:Climate Scorpion – the sting is in the tail. Introducing planetary solvency. A paper via the University of Exeter’s Institute and Faculty of Actuaries.Local scoop:Kāinga Ora starts pulling out of its Auckland projects and selling land RNZ ...
Wellington’s massively upzoned District Plan adds the opportunity for tens of thousands of new homes not just in the central city (such as these Webb St new builds) but also close to the CBD and public transport links. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: Wellington gave itself the chance of ...
It’s Friday and we’re halfway through March Madness. Here’s some of the things that caught our attention this week. This Week in Greater Auckland On Monday Matt asked how we can get better event trains and an option for grade separating Morningside Dr. On Tuesday Matt looked into ...
Something you might not know about me is that I’m quite a stubborn person. No, really. I don’t much care for criticism I think’s unfair or that I disagree with. Few of us do I suppose.Back when I was a drinker I’d sometimes respond defensively, even angrily. There are things ...
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The five things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about via The Kākā and elsewhere for paying subscribers in the last week included:PM Christopher Luxon said the reversal of interest deductibility for landlords was done to help renters, who ...
It was not so much the Labour Party but really the Chris Hipkins party yesterday at Labour’s caucus retreat in Martinborough. The former Prime Minister was more or less consistent on wealth tax, which he was at best equivocal about, and social insurance, which he was not willing to revisit. ...
Buzz from the BeehiveThe text reproduced above appears on a page which records all the media statements and speeches posted on the government’s official website by Melissa Lee as Minister of Media and Communications and/or by Jenny Marcroft, her Parliamentary Under-secretary. It can be quickly analysed ...
For forty years, Robert Muldoon has been a dirty word in our politics. His style of government was so repulsive and authoritarian that the backlash to it helped set and entrench our constitutional norms. His pig-headedness over forcing through Think Big eventually gave us the RMA, with its participation and ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Is the new government reducing tax on rental properties to benefit landlords or to cut the cost of rents? That’s the big question this week, after Associate Finance Minister David Seymour announced on Sunday that the Government would be reversing the Labour Government’s removal ...
Saudi Arabia is rarely far from the international spotlight. The war in Gaza has brought new scrutiny to Saudi plans to normalise relations with Israel, while the fifth anniversary of the controversial killing of Jamal Khashoggi was marked shortly before the war began on October 7. And as the home ...
Questions need to be asked on both sides of the worldPeter Williams writes – The NRL Judiciary hands down an eight week suspension to Sydney Roosters forward Spencer Leniu , an Auckland-born Samoan, after he calls Ezra Mam, Sydney-orn but of Aboriginal and Torres Strait ...
Ele Ludemann writes – Contrary to what many headlines and news stories are saying, residential landlords are not getting a tax break. The government is simply restoring to them the tax deductibility of interest they had until the previous government removed it. There is no logical reason ...
I can't remember when it was goodMoments of happiness in bloomMaybe I just misunderstoodAll of the love we left behindWatching our flashbacks intertwineMemories I will never findIn spite of whatever you becomeForget that reckless thing turned onI think our lives have just begunI think our lives have just begunDoes anyone ...
Michael Bassett writes – At first reading, a front-page story in the New Zealand Herald on 13 March was bizarre. A group of severely intellectually limited teenagers, with little understanding of the law, have been pleading to the Justice Select Committee not to pass a bill dealing with ram ...
How much political capital is Christopher Luxon willing to burn through in order to deliver his $2.9 billion gift to landlords? Evidently, Luxon is: (a) unable to cost the policy accurately. As Anna Burns-Francis pointed out to him on Breakfast TV, the original ”rock solid” $2.1 billion cost he was ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read:Jonathon Porritt calling bullshit in his own blog post on mainstream climate science as ‘The New Denialism’.Local scoop:The Wellington City Council’s list of proposed changes to the IHP recommendations to be debated later today was leaked this ...
TL;DR:Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said yesterday tenants should be grateful for the reinstatement of interest deductibility because landlords would pass on their lower tax costs in the form of lower rents. That would be true if landlords were regulated monopolies such as Transpower or Auckland Airport1, but they’re not, ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Tom Toro Tom Toro is a cartoonist and author. He has published over 200 cartoons in The New Yorker since 2010. His cartoons appear in Playboy, the Paris Review, the New York Times, American Bystander, and elsewhere. Related: What 10 EV lovers ...
The business section of the NZ Herald is full of opinion. Among the more opinionated of all is the ex-Minister of Transport, ex-Minister of Railways, ex MP for Auckland Central (1975-93, Labour), Wellington Central (1996-99, ACT, then list-2005), ex-leader of the ACT Party, uncle to actor Antonia, the veritable granddaddy ...
Hi,Just quickly — I’m blown away by the stories you’ve shared with me over the last week since I put out the ‘Gary’ podcast, where I told you about the time my friend’s flatmate killed the neighbour.And you keep telling me stories — in the comments section, and in my ...
The first season of Rings of Power was not awful. It was thoroughly underwhelming, yes, and left a lingering sense of disappointment, but it was more expensive mediocrity than catastrophe. I wrote at length about the series as it came out (see the Review section of the blog, and go ...
Buzz from the Beehive Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden told Auckland Business Chamber members they were the first audience to hear her priorities as a minister in a government committed to cutting red tape and regulations. She brandished her liberalising credentials, saying Flexible labour markets are the ...
Chris Trotter writes – TO UNDERSTAND WHY NEWSHUB FAILED, it is necessary to understand how TVNZ changed. Up until 1989, the state broadcaster had been funded by a broadcasting licence fee, collected from every citizen in possession of a television set, supplemented by a relatively modest (compared ...
Bob Edlin writes – The Māori Party has been busy issuing a mix of warnings and threats as its expresses its opposition to interest deductibility for landlords and the plans of seabed miners. It remains to be seen whether they follow the example of indigenous litigants in Australia, ...
The Government has accepted Labour’s change to the Road User Charge (RUC) discount for hybrid vehicles, meaning there will still be some incentive for people to buy greener vehicles. ...
Kicking the most vulnerable people out of state housing and pushing them towards homelessness will result in a proliferation of poverty and trauma across our most vulnerable communities. ...
Te Pāti Māori co-leader and MP for Waiariki, Rawiri Waititi has penned a letter asking MPs to support his members bill to remove GST from all food. The bill is expected to go through its first reading in parliament this Wednesday. “I’m calling on all political parties to support my ...
This year is about getting real with Kiwis and discussing the tough issues, as the National Government exacerbates inequality and divides New Zealand, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said ...
The Government adding Significant Natural Areas (SNAs) to its already roaring environmental policy bonfire is an assault on the future of wildlife that makes Aotearoa unique. ...
After 12 years of fighting to protect our moana we are finding ourselves back at square one and back at court. Today, the Environmental Protection Agency is sitting in Hawera to reconsider an application from Trans-Tasman Resources to dig up 50 million tonnes of the seabed in South Taranaki. This ...
Minister Shane Jones’ decision to step away from a seabed mining project is evidence of the murky waters surrounding the Government’s fast-track legislation. ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The Coalition Government’s miscalculation saga continues as it has forgotten an eyewatering $90 million gap in its interest deductibility cost figures, say Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds and Revenue Spokesperson Deborah Russell. ...
He Pou a Rangi Climate Change Commission has today released advice that says if the Government doesn’t act now New Zealand is at risk of not meeting its climate goals. ...
The Coalition Government has today confirmed it is abandoning first home buyers who are struggling to get ahead, says Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds. ...
The New Zealand public voted for a change in direction at the 2023 general election and that is exactly what this coalition government has been delivering in its first 100 days. There was an immediate focus on the economy, easing the cost of living, cracking down on law and order ...
The Government has left the health system as an afterthought, announcing half-baked targets at the last minute of their 100-day plan, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
Kiwis are still waiting for their promised cost of living support after 100 days of a National Government that is taking us backwards, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The National Government has spent its first 100 days stopping, cutting and reversing. They have scrapped stuff for stuff for the sake of it, without putting up any solutions of their own – and it’s hardworking New Zealanders who will pay for it. ...
100 days of National taking NZ backwardsThe National Government has spent its first 100 days stopping, cutting and reversing. They have scrapped stuff for stuff for the sake of it, without putting up any solutions of their own – and it’s hardworking New Zealanders who will pay for it. ...
The Government must commit to funding free and healthy school lunches, as thousands of people sign the petition to keep them, education spokesperson Jan Tinetti says. ...
If the Government was serious about moving families into public housing, they would build more houses so there is actually somewhere for people to go. ...
The free and healthy school lunches programme feeds our kids, helps them to learn, and saves families money – but it is at risk under this Government, education spokesperson Jan Tinetti said. ...
The Government’s proposed changes to Firearms Prohibition Orders (FPO) add almost nothing new and are merely an attempt to distract from its plans to loosen gun laws, police spokesperson Ginny Andersen and justice spokesperson Dr Duncan Webb said. ...
The great Victorian era English politician Lord Macauley stood in the British House of Parliament and said, "The gallery in which the reporters sit has become a fourth estate of the realm".He understood and outlined even way back then, the significant role and influence media have in a democracy. ...
"The Government is moving quickly to realise an additional $46 million in tariff savings in the EU market this season for Kiwi exporters,” Minister for Trade and Agriculture, Todd McClay says. Parliament is set, this week, to complete the final legislative processes required to bring the New Zealand – European ...
New Zealand’s social workers are qualified, experienced, and more representative of the communities they serve, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. “I want to acknowledge and applaud New Zealand’s social workers for the hard work they do, providing invaluable support for our most vulnerable. “To coincide with World ...
Cabinet has agreed to a reduced road user charge (RUC) rate for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. Owners of PHEVs will be eligible for a reduced rate of $38 per 1,000km once all light electric vehicles (EVs) move into the RUC system from 1 April. ...
Minister of Agriculture and Trade, Todd McClay, says that today’s opening of Riverland Foods manufacturing plant in Christchurch is a great example of how trade access to overseas markets creates jobs in New Zealand. Speaking at the official opening of this state-of-the-art pet food factory the Minister noted that exports ...
Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Wellington today. “It was a pleasure to host Foreign Minister Wang Yi during his first official visit to New Zealand since 2017. Our discussions were wide-ranging and enabled engagement on many facets of New Zealand’s relationship with China, including trade, ...
Kāinga Ora – Homes & Communities has been instructed to end the Sustaining Tenancies Framework and take stronger measures against persistent antisocial behaviour by tenants, says Housing Minister Chris Bishop. “Earlier today Finance Minister Nicola Willis and I sent an interim Letter of Expectations to the Board of Kāinga Ora. ...
Tēna koutou katoa. Greetings everyone. Thank you to the Auckland Chamber of Commerce and the Honourable Simon Bridges for hosting this address today. I acknowledge the business leaders in this room, the leaders and governors, the employers, the entrepreneurs, the investors, and the wealth creators. The coalition Government shares your ...
Minister Winston Peters completed the final leg of his visit to South and South East Asia in Singapore today, where he focused on enhancing one of New Zealand’s indispensable strategic partnerships. “Singapore is our most important defence partner in South East Asia, our fourth-largest trading partner and a ...
Minister of Internal Affairs and Workplace Relations and Safety, Hon. Brooke van Velden, will travel to the Republic of Korea to represent New Zealand at the Third Summit for Democracy on 18 March. The summit, hosted by the Republic of Korea, was first convened by the United States in 2021, ...
ICNZ Speech 7 March 2024, Auckland Acknowledgements and opening Mōrena, ngā mihi nui. Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Nor Whanganui aho. Good morning, it’s a privilege to be here to open the ICNZ annual conference, thank you to Mark for the Mihi Whakatau My thanks to Tim Grafton for inviting me ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Lead Coordination Minister Judith Collins have expressed their deepest sympathy on the five-year anniversary of the Christchurch terror attacks. “March 15, 2019, was a day when families, communities and the country came together both in sorrow and solidarity,” Mr Luxon says. “Today we pay our respects to the 51 shuhada ...
Speech for Financial Advice NZ Conference 5 March 2024 Acknowledgements and opening Morena, Nga Mihi Nui. Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Nor Whanganui aho. Thanks Nate for your Mihi Whakatau Good morning. It’s a pleasure to formally open your conference this morning. What a lovely day in Wellington, What a great ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters held discussions in Jakarta today about the future of relations between New Zealand and South East Asia’s most populous country. “We are in Jakarta so early in our new government’s term to reflect the huge importance we place on our relationship with Indonesia and South ...
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters has announced that the Foreign Minister of China, Wang Yi, will visit New Zealand next week. “We look forward to re-engaging with Foreign Minister Wang Yi and discussing the full breadth of the bilateral relationship, which is one of New Zealand’s ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has today opened the new Auckland Rail Operations Centre, which will bring together KiwiRail, Auckland Transport, and Auckland One Rail to improve service reliability for Aucklanders. “The recent train disruptions in Auckland have highlighted how important it is KiwiRail and Auckland’s rail agencies work together to ...
The Government is proud to support the 10th edition of Crankworx Rotorua as the Crankworx World Tour returns to Rotorua from 16-24 March 2024, says Minister for Economic Development Melissa Lee. “Over the past 10 years as Crankworx Rotorua has grown, so too have the economic and social benefits that ...
Legislation implementing coalition Government tax commitments and addressing long-standing tax anomalies will be progressed in Parliament next week, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The legislation is contained in an Amendment Paper to the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023–24, Multinational Tax, and Remedial Matters) Bill issued today. “The Amendment Paper represents ...
Associate Environment Minister Andrew Hoggard has today announced that the Government has agreed to suspend the requirement for councils to comply with the Significant Natural Areas (SNA) provisions of the National Policy Statement for Indigenous Biodiversity for three years, while it replaces the Resource Management Act (RMA).“As it stands, SNAs ...
Agriculture Minister Todd McClay has classified the drought conditions in the Marlborough, Tasman, and Nelson districts as a medium-scale adverse event, acknowledging the challenging conditions facing farmers and growers in the district. “Parts of Marlborough, Tasman, and Nelson districts are in the grip of an intense dry spell. I know ...
The Government is helping farmers eradicate the significant impact of facial eczema (FE) in pastoral animals, Agriculture Minister Todd McClay announced. “A $20 million partnership jointly funded by Beef + Lamb NZ, the Government, and the primary sector will save farmers an estimated NZD$332 million per year, and aims to ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has completed a successful visit to India, saying it was an important step in taking the relationship between the two countries to the next level. “We have laid a strong foundation for the Coalition Government’s priority of enhancing New Zealand-India relations to generate significant future benefit for both countries,” says Mr Peters, ...
Cabinet has agreed to provide $7 million to ensure the 2024 ski season can go ahead on the Whakapapa ski field in the central North Island but has told the operator Ruapehu Alpine Lifts it is the last financial support it will receive from taxpayers. Cabinet also agreed to provide ...
Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says the launch of a new mobile breast screening unit in Counties Manukau reinforces the coalition Government’s commitment to drive better cancer services for all New Zealanders. Speaking at the launch of the new mobile clinic, Dr Reti says it’s a great example of taking ...
Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says the launch of a new mobile breast screening unit in Counties Manukau reinforces the coalition Government’s commitment to drive better cancer services for all New Zealanders. Speaking at the launch of the new mobile clinic, Dr Reti says it’s a great example of taking ...
Unlocking economic growth and land for housing are critical elements of the Government’s plan for our transport network, and planned upgrades to State Highway 29 (SH29) near Tauriko will deliver strongly on those priorities, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “The SH29 upgrades near Tauriko will improve safety at the intersections ...
Unlocking economic growth and land for housing are critical elements of the Government’s plan for our transport network, and planned upgrades to State Highway 29 (SH29) near Tauriko will deliver strongly on those priorities, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “The SH29 upgrades near Tauriko will improve safety at the intersections ...
Lower fruit and vegetable prices are welcome news for New Zealanders who have been doing it tough at the supermarket, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. Stats NZ reported today the price of fruit and vegetables has dropped 9.3 percent in the 12 months to February 2024. “Lower fruit and vege ...
Tēnā koutou katoa and greetings to you all. Chair, I am honoured to address the sixty-eighth session of the Commission on the Status of Women. I acknowledge the many crises impacting the rights of women and girls. Heightened global tensions, war, climate related and humanitarian disasters, and price inflation all ...
Tēnā koutou katoa and greetings to you all. Chair, I am honoured to address the 68th session of the Commission on the Status of Women. I acknowledge the many crises impacting the rights of women and girls. Heightened global tensions, war, climate related and humanitarian disasters, and price inflation all ...
The coalition Government is supporting farmers to enhance land management practices by investing $3.3 million in locally led catchment groups, Agriculture Minister Todd McClay announced. “Farmers and growers deliver significant prosperity for New Zealand and it’s vital their ongoing efforts to improve land management practices and water quality are supported,” ...
Good evening everyone and thank you for that lovely introduction. Thank you also to the Honourable Simon Bridges for the invitation to address your members. Since being sworn in, this coalition Government has hit the ground running with our 100-day plan, delivering the changes that New Zealanders expect of us. ...
Recommendations from the Climate Change Commission for New Zealand on the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) auction and unit limit settings for the next five years have been tabled in Parliament, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. “The Commission provides advice on the ETS annually. This is the third time the ...
The coalition Government is beginning its fight to lower building costs and reduce red tape by exempting minor building work from paying the building levy, says Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk. “Currently, any building project worth $20,444 including GST or more is subject to the building levy which is ...
Proposed changes to tax legislation to prevent the over-taxation of low-earning trusts are welcome, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The changes have been recommended by Parliament’s Finance and Expenditure Committee following consideration of submissions on the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023–24, Multinational Tax, and Remedial Matters) Bill. “One of the ...
Assalaamu alaikum. السَّلَام عليكم In light of the holy month of Ramadan, I want to extend my warmest wishes to our Muslim community in New Zealand. Ramadan is a time for spiritual reflection, renewed devotion, perseverance, generosity, and forgiveness. It’s a time to strengthen our bonds and appreciate the diversity ...
Former Transport Minister and CEO of the Auckland Business Chamber Hon Simon Bridges has been appointed as the new Board Chair of the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) for a three-year term, Transport Minister Simeon Brown announced today. “Simon brings extensive experience and knowledge in transport policy and governance to the role. He will ...
Good morning all, it is a pleasure to be here as Minister of Science, Innovation and Technology. It is fantastic to see how connected and collaborative the life science and biotechnology industry is here in New Zealand. I would like to thank BioTechNZ and NZTech for the invitation to address ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says he is looking forward to the day when three key water projects in Northland are up and running, unlocking the full potential of land in the region. Mr Jones attended a community event at the site of the Otawere reservoir near Kerikeri on Friday. ...
Associate Finance Minister David Seymour has today announced that the Government has agreed to restore deductibility for mortgage interest on residential investment properties. “Help is on the way for landlords and renters alike. The Government’s restoration of interest deductibility will ease pressure on rents and simplify the tax code,” says ...
Sport and Recreation Minister Chris Bishop will travel to Switzerland today to attend an Executive Committee meeting and Symposium of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). Mr Bishop will then travel on to London where he will attend a series of meetings in his capacity as Infrastructure Minister. “New Zealanders believe ...
Pacific Media Watch Earthwise hosts Lois and Martin Griffiths. Earthwise presenters Lois and Martin Griffiths on Plains FM 96.9 community radio talk to Dr David Robie, a New Zealand author, independent journalist and media educator with a passion for the Asia-Pacific region. David talks about the struggle to raise awareness ...
Pacific Media Watch Ismail al-Ghoul, an Al Jazeera Arabic correspondent who was held for 12 hours at Gaza’s al-Shifa hospital, says Israeli forces rounded up Palestinian journalists at the facility and made them kneel on the ground for hours, while naked and blindfolded. “The occupation forces handcuffed and blindfolded us ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tony Wood, Program Director, Energy, Grattan Institute chinasong, Shutterstock Electricity customers in four Australian states can breathe a sigh of relief. After two years in a row of 20% price increases, power prices have finally stabilised. In many places they’re ...
Chumbawamba have reportedly issued the deputy PM a cease-and-desist notice after he used their song 'Tubthumping' before his state of the nation speech. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Deborah Lupton, SHARP Professor, Vitalities Lab, Centre for Social Research in Health and Social Policy Centre, and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society, UNSW Sydney kitzcorner/Shutterstock The assertion from Queensland’s chief health officer John Gerrard that ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Martin, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University Shutterstock Why are musicians so keen to get played on the radio? It can’t be because of the money. In Australia they are paid at rates so low they ...
"Farmers make a point not to tell our urban cousins how to live, yet Chlöe from central Auckland is hell-bent on having her say about farmers," says ACT Rural Communities spokesman Mark Cameron. “On her first day in the House as Green ...
Analysis by Dr Bryce Edwards – Democracy Project (https://democracyproject.nz)Political scientist, Dr Bryce Edwards. It’s been a tumultuous time in politics in recent months, as the new National-led Government has driven through its “First 100 Day programme”. During this period there’s been a handful of opinion polls, which overall just ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tim Curran, Associate Professor of Ecology, Lincoln University, New Zealand Getty Images/Gerald Corsi In the latest move to reform environmental laws in New Zealand, the coalition government has introduced a bill to fast-track consenting processes for projects deemed to ...
Uber has argued it does not have as much control over drivers as the unions suggest, and wants a judgment ruling that drivers are employees and not contractors set aside and sent back to the Employment Court. The 2022 ruling followed a three-week hearing in which four drivers sought to ...
What can and can’t be purchased by disabled people or their carers has been slashed in an effort by the Ministry of Disabled People Whaikaha to save money. The purchasing guidelines, a set of rules that sets out what can be purchased using the various streams of Government disability funding, ...
The Treasury has published today a new Analytical Note by Tod Wright and Hien Nguyen, Fiscal incidence in New Zealand: The effects of taxes and benefits on household incomes in tax year 2018/19 . Analyses of the distributional impact of taxation and government ...
The Treasury has published today a new Analytical Note by Cory Davis, Boston Hart and Benjamin Stubbing, Household cost-of-living impacts from the Emissions Trading Scheme and using transfers to mitigate regressive outcomes . This Analytical Note ...
A coalition of public transport and climate organisations, united as ‘Transport for All’, is actively opposing the government’s transport proposals. The draft Government Policy Statement (GPS) includes plans for higher fares for public transport, ...
Greater Wellington is inviting feedback on proposed changes to its Revenue and Financing Policy. The Revenue and Financing Policy covers the Council’s various sources of funding, and how the cost of services is shared across the region. This includes ...
Labour has conceded it could have done more to deal with disruptive state housing tenants while in government but says the current coalition is going too far. ...
The band has asked their record label to issue a cease and desist to stop the NZ First leader using their 1997 hit to support his ‘misguided political views’. “I get knocked down, but I get up again,” blared through the speakers on Sunday as Winston Peters took the stage ...
By Lydia Lewis, RNZ Pacific journalist Food rationing is underway in remote areas in Papua New Guinea’s Highlands following torrential rain and flash flooding. More than 20 people have been reported dead in Chimbu Province. In nearby Enga Province, the centre of last month’s massacre, a 15-year-old boy has been ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Hughes, Lecturer, Research School of Management, Australian National University After months of debate and intrigue, the AFL’s 19th and newest team, the Tasmania Devils, finally launched its jumper, logo and colours in Devonport this week. The Devils will wear green, ...
Brannavan Gnanalingam reviews the debut novel by Saraid de Silva.One of the most baffling things for children who move to a new country is what their parents’ (or grandparents’) lives were like prior to moving – for kids in particular, they’re too busy trying to fit in in their ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Gaunson, Associate Professor in Cinema Studies, RMIT University Narelle Portanier/Binge “If you don’t know who your mob are, you don’t know who you are,” Detective Andrea “Andie” Whitford (played by Leah Purcell) is told early into the new crime ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elise Klein, Associate professor, Australian National University It’s commonly accepted that women do the vast majority of caregiving in Australian society. But less appreciated is that Indigenous women do larger amounts of unpaid care than any other group. Working with the Aboriginal ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne Joe Biden and Donald Trump have both secured their parties’ nominations for the November 5 United States general election by winning a ...
Comment: There has been a striking contrast in trans-Tasman interest about Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi’s visit to New Zealand and Australia. While the Australian press has been full of articles about the visit – including his curious decision to meet with former prime minister and China booster Paul Keating ...
After years of pressuring banks and other institutions to stop investing in fossil fuels, climate campaigners are making some progress. So how does divestment work?For years, climate activists have been pushing banks and other big institutions to divest from fossil fuels. New research from climate advocacy group 350 Aotearoa ...
For Boba, Ethan and Ashley, K-pop is a place to belong, a way to express themselves, and a bridge to connect with others. The three young Polynesians are part of a K-pop fan community in Tāmaki Makaurau. It’s one of many that have sprung up worldwide as K-pop has gone ...
For Boba, Ethan and Ashley, K-pop is a place to belong, a way to express themselves, and a bridge to connect with others. This one-off documentary presents three intimate portraits of young Polynesians who are pulled into a Korean cultural phenomenon. K-POLYS is directed by Litia Tuiburelevu, Produced by Hex ...
There’s ample evidence demonstrating free school lunch programmes provide wide benefits across schools, households and communities according to public health researchers. ACT Minister David Seymour wants to reduce the spending on Aotearoa New Zealand’s ...
By Wata Shaw in Suva Fiji is facing an exodus of Fijians as many are leaving for overseas seeking employment and education and others are migrating, says Opposition MP Viliame Naupoto. Speaking in Parliament, he said: “His Excellency’s speech (Ratu Wiliame Katonivere) comes after a little over one year of ...
The Taxpayers’ Union is welcoming comments from Christopher Luxon this morning recommitting to ‘no new taxes’ as part of Budget 2024. “Mr Luxon’s refusal at the Post-Cabinet press conference yesterday to repeat the ‘no new taxes’ promise ...
SAFE is urgently calling on the Environment Committee to reject the Government’s Fast-Track Approvals Bill, and is urging New Zealanders to rally behind the call. The proposed Bill, currently under consideration with the Environment select committee, ...
Teammates who spend all their time picking fights with spectators are only helpful for the other team, writes Madeleine Chapman. Anyone who has ever played a team sport competitively, particularly as a child and particularly, for some reason, basketball, will know that there’s a lot of politics involved. While there ...
The long-running Wellington music festival is too focused on the Jim Beam-ness and not enough on the Homegrown-ness.There is something about Homegrown that’s difficult to place. A barely perceptible-ness. Like feeling a ghost is watching you from the corner of the room but when you look, there’s nothing there. ...
The latest Ipsos New Zealand Issues Monitor reveals that fewer New Zealanders believe crime / law and order is one of the top issues facing our country. In 2018, Ipsos New Zealand started tracking the key issues facing New Zealand. In this wave ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Griffiths, Deputy Program Director, Budgets and Government, Grattan Institute Australia’s political donations rules are woefully inadequate, but donations reform is finally on the agenda. The federal government has signalled its interest in reform and will soon begin briefing MPs on its ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Patrick Taylor, Chief Environmental Scientist, EPA Victoria; Honorary Professor, School of Natural Sciences, Macquarie University Naiyana Somchitkaeo/Shutterstock A recent study published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine has linked microplastics with risk to human health. The study ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Albert Van Dijk, Professor, Water and Landscape Dynamics, Fenner School of Environment & Society, Australian National University Global climate records were shattered in 2023, from air and sea temperatures to sea-level rise and sea-ice extent. Scores of countries recorded their hottest year ...
As part of our series exploring how New Zealanders live and our relationship with money, a teacher explains why he and his partner are in frugal mode – and how they’re making it work. Gender: Male Age: 35Ethnicity: Pākehā Role: I am an intermediate school teacher and my partner is ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Bendall, Senior Lecturer, Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences, Australian Catholic University Binge Mary & George, the new British television drama series, depicts the real-life story of Mary Villiers and her son George, and their social climbing at the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jason Nassios, Associate Professor, Centre of Policy Studies, Victoria University This article is part of The Conversation’s series examining the housing crisis. Read the other articles in the series here. Australian state and federal governments spend money in many ways to ...
The finance minister is denying that there’s a $5.6b shortfall in paying for the government’s campaign promises, including tax cuts. At his post-cabinet press conference yesterday, the PM refused to rule out new taxes to pay for the cuts, writes Anna Rawhiti-Connell in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s ...
Kāinga Ora tenants abused by their neighbours are doubting the government's crackdown on disruptive tenants will make a difference on their behaviour. ...
Kāinga Ora is New Zealand’s biggest residential landlord, housing more than 180,000 vulnerable people in more than 67,000 properties. Yesterday the government announced a crackdown on its tenants who fall behind on rent. One longtime Kāinga Ora tenant shares her experience.For 18 years I lived in a 1960s standalone ...
Why does this myth persist, and what’s the real reason our skin is suffering?It’s one of the biggest international grievances New Zealanders hold, up there with the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior and 1981’s underarm incident. We’re quick to tell international travellers that the world’s pollution led to the ...
Bob’s relationship with certain members of Lincoln’s academic staff continued to deteriorate in the 1990s. Others supported him publicly, though articles such as Roland Clark’s 1993 piece in Growing Today cannot have pleased the university management. Clark wrote that Bob was selling onions from the Biological Husbandry Unit to a ...
SailGP’s races feature in-your-face action, with agile, hydro-foiling catamarans tacking and jibing for the title over several days. However, public comments ahead of the global series’ return to New Zealand have left this past year’s controversy in the shadows, as a key appointment attracts criticism from dolphin advocates. A year ...
Opinion: We are fast approaching a fundamental change in prisons. As the number of people on custodial remand looks set to overtake the number of sentenced prisoners, the main function of prisons in New Zealand may become incarcerating un-sentenced people who may not be guilty of offending. We have already ...
A huge seven months lies in store for the White Ferns, beginning this week with the visit of England and culminating with the T20 World Cup in Bangladesh in September and October. Starting on Tuesday in Dunedin, the world ranked No. 2 visitors will play five T20s and three ODIs, ...
Opinion: In a move that has shocked road safety advocates across the country, the new Minister of Transport, Simeon Brown, is poised to abandon the previous government’s speed limit reduction policy, particularly around schools. Even more alarmingly, he wants school speed limits to be variable rather than full-time, arguing ...
Auckland Council is opposing a fast-track development backed by Sir John Kirwan and Spark NZ, because it doesn’t meet stringent new climate adaptation requirements The post Surf-data centre faces new 3.8C climate warming rules appeared first on Newsroom. ...
When the Criminal Proceeds (Recovery) Act was introduced in 2009 it was firmly targeted at gangs and drugs. The legislation means police no longer need a conviction to seize assets that criminals can’t prove were paid for legitimately, as long as their alleged offences are punishable by more than a ...
Loading…(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){var ql=document.querySelectorAll('A[quiz],DIV[quiz],A[data-quiz],DIV[data-quiz]'); if(ql){if(ql.length){for(var k=0;k<ql.length;k++){ql[k].id='quiz-embed-'+k;ql[k].href="javascript:var i=document.getElementById('quiz-embed-"+k+"');try{qz.startQuiz(i)}catch(e){i.start=1;i.style.cursor='wait';i.style.opacity='0.5'};void(0);"}}};i['QP']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){(i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)})(window,document,'script','https://take.quiz-maker.com/3012/CDN/quiz-embed-v1.js','qp'); Got a good quiz question?Send Newsroom your questions. The post Newsroom daily quiz, Tuesday 19 March appeared first on Newsroom. ...
The letters, which were published last week, were addressed to Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) Chairperson Megawati Sukarnoputri, National Democrat Party (NasDem) Chairperson Surya Paloh, National Awakening Party (PKB) Chairperson Muhaimin Iskandar, Justice and Prosperity Party (PKS) President Ahmad Syaikhu and United Development Party (PPP) Chairperson Muhammad Mardiono. In ...
Evicting more people from state housing is ignorant to the consequences of poverty, the Greens say, but the Housing Minister says it's a privilege that can be taken away if abused. ...
Evicting more people from state housing is ignorant to the consequences of poverty, the Greens say, but the Housing Minister says it's a privilege that can be taken away if abused. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emerald L King, Lecturer in Humanities, University of Tasmania IMDB Between Netflix’s 2023 live-action version of One Piece, and its latest take on Avatar: The Last Airbender, fans are once again asking: why are live-action anime adaptations so tricky to ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emerald L King, Lecturer in Humanities, University of Tasmania IMDB Between Netflix’s 2023 live-action version of One Piece, and its latest take on Avatar: The Last Airbender, fans are once again asking: why are live-action anime adaptations so tricky to ...
The government says it still intends to deliver tax cuts by July, but will not lock them in until they have got them past their coalition partners. ...
Looks like another surge of immigrants is arriving to put further pressure on our housing crisis.
http://i.stuff.co.nz/national/83406855/British-registrations-to-move-to-New-Zealand-double-after-Brexit-Immigration-NZ
Neoliberalism relies on globalisation and encourages immigration to weaken workers’ bargaining positions. This excerpt comes from a brilliant article by Martin Jacques.
“But the causes of this political crisis, glaringly evident on both sides of the Atlantic, are much deeper than simply the financial crisis and the virtually stillborn recovery of the last decade. They go to the heart of the neoliberal project that dates from the late 70s and the political rise of Reagan and Thatcher, and embraced at its core the idea of a global free market in goods, services and capital. The depression-era system of bank regulation was dismantled, in the US in the 1990s and in Britain in 1986, thereby creating the conditions for the 2008 crisis. Equality was scorned, the idea of trickle-down economics lauded, government condemned as a fetter on the market and duly downsized, immigration encouraged, regulation cut to a minimum, taxes reduced and a blind eye turned to corporate evasion.”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/21/death-of-neoliberalism-crisis-in-western-politics
A geologist speculating on how water from the Tukituki might have gotten into the aquifer (drought created cracks in the clay, flooding spread the water to those areas). I’m still not seeing very good explanations though (is this surface clay? The 2 impervious layers?)
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/311529/river-water-may-have-contaminated-supply-scientist
The Māori King will not be voting for Labour again.
He said he had changed his mind about the party after its leadership said it would not work with the Māori Party.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/te-manu-korihi/311515/maori-king-rejects-labour-in-unscripted-speech-closing
However, didn’t Labour and the Greens recently extend an open invitation to any party that wanted to join them in changing the Government? Or has that now been retracted?
Thoughts?
It is difficult not to see the hand of Tuku Morgan behind most of what King Tuheitia says. Tuku appears to be making a strong political come back with his recent ascension to president of the Maori Party and a declared interest in bringing Hone Harawira in from the political wilderness.
Indeed, it is difficult not to see the hand of Tuku Morgan at play.
However, if Labour did change their position and have now ruled out working with the Māori Party, one could argue his position has some merit. Perhaps he was also unhappy with Labour’s unwillingness to work with Hone?
I presume Labour has ruled out working with the Maori Party because the M.P. has supported almost every bit of government legislation to which Labour is implacably opposed. In such circumstances, Labour is correct to side-step the M.P. If they can’t to what’s right by their own people, then what chance to trust them on anything else.
How many votes have labour mate with there mates in the gnats???
Talk about letting people down – A+ for labs.
Have Labour ruled out working with the Mp? Citation please.
“Have Labour ruled out working with the Mp?”
According to the Māori King.
However, as highlighted by Sabine, it seems the King is being somewhat disingenuous. Unless there is more to it and he knows something we don’t?
So that would be a no then. And all this speculation is based on a single sentence in an RNZ report that isn’t even a quote. And no-one bothering to define what ‘working with’ means in this context.
None of us yet know what either Labour or the Mp think or have done, nor really even what the Māori King said/meant.
“So that would be a no then. And all this speculation is based on a single sentence in an RNZ report that isn’t even a quote.”
No.
Little was also interviewed about it on RNZ. He didn’t dispute Labour no longer willing to work with them.
And there is this from TV3, the King blamed comments made by Little that Labour couldn’t work with the Māori Party.
Nanaia Mahutatold told Newshub the Māori King was as free to make political statements as anyone else, but that she has spoken to Mr Little about it.
“I’ve given him a brief of what was said and the context in which it was said. It’s up to Andrew in terms of how he chooses to respond.”
However, Ms Mahuta wouldn’t be drawn on whether Mr Little should retract and apologise for his comments, to heal divisions.
“There is no doubt Andrew will reflect on a whole lot of comments from a whole lot of people.”
Can you please link to where Little made this statement on RNZ?
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/201813022/labour-shrugs-off-criticisms-by-maori-king
Thanks.
So, there is nothing there that says that Labour won’t work with the Mp (he does say they won’t work with Harawira).
Which means this whole conversation is based on pretty much nothing.
The assertion that Labour won’t work with the MP was made by the King in the first link provided. Which is one of the reasons why he won’t be voting Labour. And which Little was later questioned on in the last link provided.
What I found interesting was Little never addressed the reason why the King won’t be voting Labour.
If the King was mistaken or incorrect, surely that would have been one of the first things Little would have addressed?
It was also somewhat supported by the report on TV3. Which I already highlighted above.
http://www.newshub.co.nz/politics/mori-king-dumps-labour-backs-mori-and-mana-2016082209
The whole thing raises a lot of questions, hence why I started the discussion.
“The assertion that Labour won’t work with the MP was made by the King in the first link provided.”
Not quite. RNZ report that he said something like that. There is no quote or context.
The audio with Little was obviously edited and we don’t get to hear the original question. He wasn’t asked if Labour have ruled out working with the Mp, it doesn’t come up. He was asked about ruling out Harawira and answers that.
So, all we have is a single sentence in an RNZ report that no-one on the largest left wing blog in NZ is able to confirm.
Your overlooking it was also reported to be asserted by the King on TV3, which was a little more specific in their reporting. Directly naming Little and quoting the King as finding Little’s statement (Labour couldn’t work with the MP) “hurtful”
Nanaia Mahuta was also questioned on whether Little should retract and apologise, but wouldn’t be drawn.
Therefore, we have more than a single sentence in a RNZ report, but questions still remain.
As you point out, it’s interesting no-one on the largest left wing blog in NZ is able to confirm Labour’s alleged change of position, thus allowing us to fully ascertain whether the King and what has been reported is on the level.
I was replying to TC @ 3 weka.
Until someone can prove otherwise, I was assuming the Maori King’s contention that … he had changed his mind about the party [Labour] after its leadership said it would not work with the Māori Party is correct.
The party’s late leader, the now -person” David C certainly appeared to have done so when he was in power but it is almost impossible to find any definitive comment by the current party leader. He is a master of the “on the one hand… on the other hand ” approach of saying different things to different groups of course.
Cunliffe said
“The Labour leader says there will be a maximum of three parties in Government should the party take office after September 20 – Labour, the Green Party and New Zealand First.” and
“But he said Internet Mana and Maori Party “absolutely won’t be ministers”.”
http://www.newshub.co.nz/politics/labour-wont-have-maori-party-in-govt-2014090822
Nothing to do with this conversation though.
Why on earth not?
You are making an assumption that he is talking about Andrew Little being the leader he meant.
The King didn’t say that however. He said, “He said he had changed his mind about the party after its leadership said it would not work with the Māori Party”.
He doesn’t say when that happened and it is only an assumption made by people on this blog that he meant the current leadership. He could have given up on Labour in 2014 for all we know.
That would make his statement perfectly understandable.
He is, after all, entitled to believe that statements of Labour Party policy stand until they are unequivocally reversed. Has Little ever said, about Cunliffe’s comment on working with Maori, that it no longer applies? He was very quick to announce that changing the age for Super was scrapped and that there would be no CGT.
Perhaps the Kings remark is merely an attempt to force Little to scrap the last remaining policy of Cunliffe’s reign?
“Neither Radio New Zealand, not TV3, claimed that Little had said that he would not work with the Maori Party, nor that the Maori King had claimed that Little had done so.”
That’s incorrect.
He blamed comments by leader Andrew Little that Labour couldn’t work with the Māori Party, calling the statements “hurtful”.
http://www.newshub.co.nz/politics/mori-king-dumps-labour-backs-mori-and-mana-2016082209
The homeless inquiry is run by Labour, the Greens and the Maori Party. So obviously the Labour and Green Coalition can and is working with the Maori Party.
As for the Maori Party they clearly state that they will work with whomever is in Power. Luckily for this country, everyone gets to have a vote an every one gets to vote by themselves.
In the end does it matter if the one publicly votes when everyone else is alone in the both making their choice?
Thanks Sabine. There is a large amount of misinformation being peddled in this thread.
Exactly, Sabine.
I am not aware of any statement from Andrew Little saying Labour will not work with the Māori Party if there is a Labour led government. If he did can someone provide a citation?
I was initially surprised by this statement by Kīngi Tūheitia but not so much when I thought about the influence of Tuku Morgan. The only way the Māori Party can get more seats is by taking them off the Labour Party, so expect to hear more attacks on Labour now that Tuku Morgan is the president. He is far too right wing for my tastes but there is no question that he is a very astute politician.
As for Labour gifting seats to the Māori Party – what on earth for? There is no advantage to Labour in doing this. Even the Nats don’t stand aside in any electorate – including Epsom.
I don’t understand your response to my 3.1.1.1 Sabine. I didn’t say the M.P. has supported every bit of govt. legislation. I said “almost” which is true. Yes, there are areas where they can work reasonably well together but that’s the case between all political parties. I expect there are areas where Labour and ACT – or even the Greens and ACT – have something in common.
I reject the premise that a political party can be a part of “whomsoever is in power” It suggests they have no fundamental principles/values behind them – a sure-fire pathway to eventual failure. Would they have worked with an ACT govt. whose policies are counter to Maori aspiration? They would have been voting for their own swift demise.
i merely pointed out to the naysayer and those that want Labour to fail at any cost that irrespective of what one person says it actually means nothing.
my partner votes Green i don’t. I see the same thing happening elsewhere. One may state they will never ever do this or that, and its good and fine for them, and all the others will do this an that and its good and fine.
I don’t think that the majority of Maoris will base their vote on what the King says.
And for the naysayers that say that Labour can’t or won’t work with the Maori Party i merely pointed out that gasp, Labour and the Greens are already working with the Maori Party together in regards to our homeless crisis.
but then the spring is coming, and sleeping in a car maybe not be an issue anymore until next winter?
“I merely pointed out to the naysayer and those that want Labour to fail at any cost that irrespective of what one person says it actually means nothing”
One can’t deny that the opinion of one of such high notability doesn’t have some voter sway . Nevertheless, there is a good chance that anyone initially considering voting Labour, but are now swayed by the notion, may result in voting Mana instead.
“And for the naysayers that say that Labour can’t or won’t work with the Maori Party i merely pointed out that gasp, Labour and the Greens are already working with the Maori Party together in regards to our homeless crisis.”
The assertion is Little said Labour can’t or won’t work with the Maori Party. Which could be a new development (taking place after deciding to work together on the homeless crisis)?
you know what, it does not matter who people vote for in my opinion as long as they vote.
I have stated it some three years ago that the opposition parties need to learn to work and co-exists. In the long term that would include Mana or any other new party that will come along.
I don’t see how hard that is to understand?
MMP = coalitions. Labour/Mana/Greens/Maori/legalise Aotearoa etc etc etc.
MMP again. So for now the Labour Party is working with the Maori Party and the Greens on the homeless crisis. Kudos, they are doing it and all the others can get fucked in my books cause they are doing nothing.
As for your assertion that Little said this or that, please kindly provide a link. Thanks.
Cause the bibpartisan group to address homelessness in NZ has been on the books now for a few weeks/month.
“As for your assertion that Little said this or that, please kindly provide a link. Thanks.”
It’s not my assertion. I was referring to the assertion reported – i.e. RNZ, TV3.
http://www.newshub.co.nz/politics/mori-king-dumps-labour-backs-mori-and-mana-2016082209
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/te-manu-korihi/311515/maori-king-rejects-labour-in-unscripted-speech-closing
re Chairman
so ‘your’ comment :The assertion is Little said Labour can’t or won’t work with the Maori Party.
is still without a link to any statement by Little.
I merely pointed out that Labour is already working with the Maori Party 🙂 Today they are already working together. Not next year after the election. Today.
“So ‘your’ comment :The assertion is Little said Labour can’t or won’t work with the Maori Party is still without a link to any statement by Little.”
That’s because the assertion was reportedly made by the King. As shown in the links.
“I merely pointed out that Labour is already working with the Maori Party”
Yes, which further brings into question what’s been reported.
Neither Radio New Zealand, not TV3, claimed that Little had said that he would not work with the Maori Party, nor that the Maori King had claimed that Little had done so..
What the Maori King said, and which I commented on a little further up this correspondence, was that
“He said he had changed his mind about the party after its leadership said it would not work with the Māori Party”.
This doesn’t put any particular time on when he did change his mind. It is simply a statement in the past tense about the “leadership”.
David Cunliffe DID say this. At the time he said it he was the leader of the Labour Party. Little has never said that the Labour Party no longer held this view. I suspect the Maori King is trying to put pressure on Little to come out and say that Labour would happily work with the M.P. This would put the cat among the pigeons for the Maori members of the Labour Party, and help the M.P in the next election..
Someone questioned our local MP on this tonight at our LEC meeting – Labour have not ruled out working with MP, and MP have not ruled out working with Labour. The Maori King believes Mana and MP should not be separate parties i.e. they should re-merge.
Mondayisation of Waitangi and ANZAC Day and the PPL bills are recent examples of bills from the member’s ballot being passed over the top of NAct, so there’s still room to work with them.
“I presume Labour has ruled out working with the Maori Party because the M.P. has supported almost every bit of government legislation to which Labour is implacably opposed.”
If your presumption is correct, it doesn’t explain why Labour initially extended an open invitation to work together.
I didn’t catch up with that TC. Was it a general invitation or just on some specific legislation? How long ago? Genuine questions.
Anne, have you seen something specific where Labour says they won’t work with the Mp?
“I didn’t catch up with that TC. Was it a general invitation or just on some specific legislation? How long ago?”
It was an open invitation, extended when they announced their MOU.
Labour should have been working hard to reconcile with the Maori Party since Turia left.
However doing so would likely require Labour not contesting some seats. Which internally Labour would find unpalatable, especially as Labour views all the Maori Seats as naturally theirs. So the Maori Party get driven back into the arms of National.
The Maori party choose to go back into the arms of National. But it seems their intent is to remain MPs at the expense of doing what’s best for Maori.
And what do you think of all the Maori roll voters who support them?
Yep, maybe Labour might be wrong in the past, (in particular Hone Harawira) but the Maori party has made the situation much worse by propping up National for 8 years. And anyone who tries to justify that as being good for Maori, needs their head read. Maybe it is personally beneficial for the .1% Maori ‘at the table’ just like personally beneficial for the .1% elite Pakeha, Chinese, US etc as well, but what about the rest of Maori and the rest of the country?
+100 save nz
Well when Labour shafted Maori over the forshore then maybe Maori remembered which party had actually done more to raise Maori up, not through words by through actions, Doug Graham anyone?
It is the worst kind of racist paternalism to expect/demand Maori vote for Labour without offering anything in return
yet they forgot why labour did what it did – after a certain party kicked the hornets nest
(thats not to excuse labours actions – just part of the mix at that time)
That’s also true
And Tuku Morgan should have had the honesty to leave Labour with Douglas, Prebble, etc, and be part of the Act Party. He is indeed a 1%er, and is no doubt behind this statement by the so-called Maori king – whose monarchy a number of Maori reject.
Not sure Morgan was ever in Labour, though he may have been a member when he was younger, I suppose. He got elected as a NZF MP in the nineties and has proceeded further and further to the right from then on in.
Ulp! – I think you may be correct there. I associated him with Rogernomics and $90 taxpayer-funded undies, but it could well have been through NZF .. who are thereby equally tainted.
Some Maori.
The comments of the Maori King are just the last throw of the dice by the dying Maori Party. Never forget the Maori Party represent brown privilege as expressed in the form of Iwi businesses that are busily proving capitalist greed is colour blind. At the top of the Iwi entitlement mythology tree is the Maori king.
These Brown Tories are poised to make an absolute fortune from National’s drive to privatise welfare and education through various shady Iwi organisations. If the Maori Party disappears, so does one of National’s support partners and if National loses power, all those fat, fat contracts featuring taxpayer money going to unaccountable private Maori providers goes with them.
Labour has a proud history of standing candidates in all seats, CV – to enable the Labour message to get out everywhere, including the Maori seats. Why should it deviate from this record now?
What is more, when Labour and Greens united, they both offered invitations to other Parties to join them. mpledger has it right. The Maori Party are close to National and the Maori King is being taken in by them.
What did the Labour and Greens leadership offer to the Maori Party in exchange for their support?
How is the strategy of alienating or eliminating potential MMP allies going for Labour so far?
You can’t really offer them anything substantial without alienating and pissing off the Maori sector of the Labour party.
That’s why the Maori party partners with National far more opportunity to get stuff done
That and Turia had a major major grudge against Helen Clark.
Or just to get stuff.
“Why should it deviate from this record now?”
Perhaps to help improve their wish of changing the Government?
For example, if Labour and the Greens stood down in Epsom (an electorate both would never win) and encouraged their supporters to vote for National, that would kill ACT.
Moreover, Labour and the Greens have indicated there is some potential for them to reach accommodations to support one anothers candidates in electoral seats, suggesting they may be considering deviating from this past record.
You are only allowed to work cross party to get rid of left wing MPs like Hone Harawira.
Except that never happened. They had an election and Hone came second.
Yeah mana shot themselves in the foot, but labour did the dirty too. It was not as nice as you’d like it to be te reo putake
Hey, it’s an election, Adam. I been involved in plenty and nice is not a word I would usually associate with the process. Well, maybe if the Greens are involved 😉
I guess the point is that the WO spread meme that there was some cooperation between National and Labour still pops up from time to time. It’s bollocks, obviously, but for some people it’s easier to believe that rubbish than accept that Hone made a terrible tactical choice hooking up with a self absorbed millionaire. Ironically, the maori party have also hooked up with a self absorbed millionaire, but they’ve got away with it so far.
“What is more, when Labour and Greens united, they both offered invitations to other Parties to join them”
Citation for that please Jenny.
The Maori King is a stupid piece of useless corrupt inbred fawning that holds Maori back.
You offensive creep – luckily your obnoxious opinion is worth nothing. What a foul arsehole you are.
Not sure if he means the man or the position, but either way it’s easily the most racist comment in the thread so far :-/
FFS Ad, I know you’re doing this whole inflammatory style of politics now, but putting some context into that comment so it could be understood as anything other than outright offensive and supporting racism might have been a good idea.
+1
The Maori King has been easily led I would say.
You could be right AD but for once the guy is talking sense … Labour for years has taken Maori for granted whereas National has given more than crumbs during its stay in office. I hate to think of how many more lollies Maori would get if they had more seats.
Tainui is also a real business power house in the Waikato now.
They have their fingers in lots of pies and are doing lots of developments, hardly surprising they see their future with National, not Labour.
Just as Maori showed during the early settlement period they can work the capitalism system as well as any whitey.
I suspect its one of the reasons that Maori have done relatively better then most other peoples that have been colonised
What??? How do all those stats look? Typical rubbish from a gnat – it’s all relative unless it’s them.
I’d suggest that Maori have certainly done better then the first people in Australia, South Africa, Alaska or the USA (yeah yeah I know its the same country)
I mean if I had to choose from that selection I’d choose to be Maori everytime
Bully for you and your stupid view not based an anything except your belly button lint.
Please accept this virtual hug from me to you, I feel like you could use one right now and I hope that whatever has you down is resolved soon 🙂
Wow, 3 minutes earlier you said, The worst thing you can do when holding a position is to not try to understand what other peoples points of views are
Yup and if someone says something convinces me they’re right and I’m wrong I change or more likely someone points out something I hadn’t considered then I take that on board and that filters through to my postings
One of the reasons you don’t see me posting sexist stuff or how I’m likely to point to people that comments on someones physical appearance is not cool and that’s come directly from here
I’d post stuff that I didn’t realise was sexist or demeaning but once it was shown from others posts on the subject I immediately changed what I post
Tell us what you really think, don’t hold anything back 🙂
Someone doesn’t know how to use fawning in a sentence.
The German government tells its people that they must hold 10 days worth of personal food and water in case of terrorist attack. Brighter future?
http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/europe/83406644/germany-to-tell-people-to-stockpile-food-and-water-in-case-of-attacks
Fact, Germany grew up with a strong history of war the resulting lack of food and other goods.
Fact, when your stuff is re-possesed they can’t take 1 TV as the Government insists you need it for the news and to be informed of events such as terrorists attack and floods and other assorted shite that may have to keep you home or to be told where emergency assembly points, shelters and the likes are.
Fact, every now and then we have -25 – 30 degrees winter and in certain regions become un-reachables aka the Schwaebishe Alp and high mountain Farmers.
Fact, every now and then we have awesome floods that can make regions un-reachables for days on end.
Fact, also from Germany we are a transit country, goods come from the south, the east and the west and north to travel through Germany. Leaving us with lots of nice things in the shops. Should a war or terrorist attack happens stuff in the shops may run low. Thus a smart populace is prepared to some extend.
Fact, if the russians or the us fuckwits start playing war games, Germany France and the rest of europe is gone first and we know it.
Fact, we grew up with ABC alarms, Fact we have old people having lived through a lot of shit and some of them are awesome hoarders and makers.
Fact, you should really not start sprouting off about Germany, they are too sane for you. I hear Trump took a truck load of PlayDoh to Louisianna as disaster relieve – how is that for a brighter future.
AfD is going to gain more traction as economic and security conditions decline and Merkel insists on letting even more Middle Eastern refugees into the country.
As for facts how about this one – sales of pepper spray and requests for personal defence weapon permits appear to have reached record highs in Germany this year.
Yes.
Which makes me somewhat surprised that Germany is willing to risk war via treaties with countries like Latvia and Bulgaria.
The Germans have also allowed the US to run a lot of Middle Eastern wars as well as CIA renditions out of German bases. And Germany has accepted US directions to put harsh sanctions on Russia.
Has it not occurred to the German people that many of the costs and risks of these actions – like economic damage to German industry, destabilising the long standing strategic balance with Russia and millions of refugees on the door step – are being borne by the German people and not by the US leaders in far away Washington DC.
Has it ever incurred to you that you know jack shit about Germany?
What about that Truckload of Playdoh? Anything to say about the brighter future?
C’mon CV and Sabine .From where I am sitting you are both correct.
i doubt, i have absolutely no use what so ever for CV. I put him in the same box as the other trolls. For what it concerns Germany i sincerely doubt that CV has any knowledge what so ever. Sometimes it behoofes him to keep it shut.
I am sure there is some Hillary is sick meme that he can peddle if he feels bored and needs attention.
But how can this be, I mean they’ve opened their borders so everyone that enters should be really thankful and thus safe from terrorist attacks. If anything it should be these countries that should be doing the prepping:
http://qz.com/635110/these-are-the-routes-being-closed-off-to-refugees-fleeing-into-europe/
But seriously everyone should be prepping anyway, I myself have just completed my three week preps and am now starting on three months
How much water do you have?
Have you got your sanitation sorted?
Medication?
Cause the killing will be done by infected cuts, broken bones and shit everywhere.
NZ is a good place to go foraging if you know what is edible and if you know how to cook it.
But a cut to your finger infected is what is going to kill you. Same as it was some 200 years ago,
The earthquakes showed me just how unprepared I was (complacent) so I started to some research and found some web sites that were very helpful
These in particular are very good:
http://thesurvivalmom.com/
Very good starting point, some American stuff of course but a mostly useful, common sense approach to prepping
http://www.americanpreppersnetwork.net/
Really good stuff on here, theres a lot to go through however its also conservatively American but the information in there means you just need to ignore the political side of it
From there I take the information and balance it against what I already know and go from there
Kiwis should do the same evidently – for when the real trickledown (bovine fecal matter into aquifers) becomes a flood.
(Song) Justin Bieber ft. Auckland Law Revue – Sorry to Māori
https://youtu.be/jpEzMKIO9UQ
Will this National’s new policy if they get a 4th term? Scary stuff. (Have they already started arresting people).
U.S. Marshals Are Arresting People in Texas Who Have Outstanding Student Loans
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/02/us-marshals-forcibly-collecting-student-debt.html
Debtors prisons, the way of the future.
The selling of student loans by a government seems to me like the use of debt to reintroduce slavery – a variation on private prisons.
China’s shame!…how does this compare with Nazi Germany?…the maiming and murder of dissidents and Tibetans and other minority ethnic groups
‘Ethan Gutmann and Angela Ballantyne – Forced Organ Harvesting’
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/sunday/audio/201812988/ethan-gutmann-and-angela-ballantyne-forced-organ-harvesting
“Claims of forced organ harvesting from thousands of Chinese prisoners of conscience are revealed in a new documentary being screened around Aotearoa in coming weeks.
The film is called Hard to Believe – and it alleges the Chinese government is behind an industrial scale programme of organ harvesting – mostly targeting members of the religious sect Falun Gong. The Chinese government maintains this is all a lie, and donors are all prisoners on death row. Ethan Gutmann, author of the book, The Slaughter, is one of the authors of a new 800-page report, ‘An Update,’ that says up to 100,000 transplants are taking place in China each year. Dr Angela Ballantyne is Senior Lecturer in Bioethics at the University of Otago and President of the International Assn of Bioethics.
https://youtu.be/_SAFxAcNmno
Yes. This has been around for a while. I mentally shelved it in the ‘need more information’ category, because it really is hard to believe. But if it is true then we have a problem.
Quite a big one.
…very BIG one…and agree it is so bad it is hard to believe! …it puts other human rights violations and crimes against humanity in the pale
When they start branding people, forcing them to wear yellow starts, pink triangles and other assorted symbols to represent their transgressions in public and in prison, when they have charts for its citizens to check if they are ‘aryan’ enough etc etc then you may compare the Chinese and the treatment of their minority groups and the likes to Nazi Germany, when they openly work people to death in mines, factories, fields, when they openly shoot them in front of mass graves for hours on end, when they end up killing 6 million people of one religion and several other million of people who happen to be gay, socialists, communists, catholic, protestant, jehovas witnesses, blind, deaf, mute, otherwise physically handicapped, old or sick then you may start looking for a comparison with the German organised and executed Holocoust.
In the meantime i suggest you find a different term for it. And then you should also ask yourself who profits of the atrocities committed in China.
are you aryan enough to survive?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Jewish_laws#/media/File:Nuremberg_laws.jpg
@Sabine…agree with you re the SCALE of WWII holocaust perpetrated …(and not just against non aryan Jews killed but also many German aryan dissenters eg Dietrich Bonhoeffer and others who we a hardly ever hear about eg almost the entire population of European Gypsies wiped out , Jehovah Witnesses, women who had abortions …all in all about 13 million murdered, of whom about 6 million were Jews)
…however the cold blooded mutilating/murdering people and taking their organs is particularly heinous imo
re your question : “are you aryan enough to survive?”
…one could well ask “are you Jewish or Israeli enough to survive?”….because if you are a Palestinian you could well be in mortal danger ( seems like nothing has been learned here)…water deprivation, apartheid checkpoints, bombing of refugee camps , Palestinian houses and homelands taken, killing of Palestinian children and women
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/06/israel-water-tool-dominate-palestinians-160619062531348.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabra_and_Shatila_massacre
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/the-forgotten-massacre-8139930.html
‘”A Hideous Atrocity”: Noam Chomsky on Israel’s Assault on Gaza & U.S. Support for the Occupation’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BX0MOmDM8I
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dqw2yUQdACs
What a weekend for sport, even the doom merchant no joy lefties on here would have to say its been a pretty decent run
The Olympics team doing us proud, the All Blacks showing exactly why they’re the standard (pardon the expression ;-)) the only blot being the Diaz v McGregor fight (of course a third fight means bigger box office) and the rain affected 1st test against SA
Its all good 🙂
It is the brighter future JK has promised us PR 🙂
Surprising seeing you running the establishment line again PR..
Not the establishment line. I just like watching sports and this weekend was a doozy, sports wise
I know that most of the left would prefer to be suck on a lemon then celebrate NZs sporting achievements but sometimes theres a good weekend and you’re just glad to have watched it 🙂
If sport is t he most important thing to you.
Bet you’re real fun at parties
Yes I am because I am able to talk about a lot more than sport and real estate.
Folk whose repertoire is just sport tend to make parties dull.
Of course because how can anyone enjoy mere sport when there is so many more important things to worry about out there
Well, PR, I think Gordon Campbell has blown your ‘decent run’ apart.
More cost per medal for the taxpayer to bear than ever before, and a shrinking TV audience because of Paywall. Actually the lowest value NZ taxpayers have had from any Olympics, if I remember rightly.
Maybe the end of the current system, which is sick. I refuse to pay for sport on TV. So do so many others.
Read his latest article on Werewolf, admit that he is right, and stop your blathering rubbish.
Idiot – the left love sports, sportspeople often vote too and for many parties. The right don’t like sport they like competition.
http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/545/236/38d.jpg
Are you feeling all right this morning? You seem to be more irritable then usual, let it all out if it’ll make you feel better 🙂
I feel assaulted by ignorance and bigotry but yeah I’m good.
This isn’t a competition ☺
I like sports but winning is more enjoyable when theres decent competition and something on the line
For instance the All Blacks beating say Italy is nice but the All blacks beating Australia in the world cup final was something else entirely
What sports do you like that aren’t competitive?
Seriously? All sports require an element of competition unless you’re practicing of course
And then there is the old school of thinking that says the only true sports are motor racing and alpine climbing. All the rest are games.
I’m genuinely interested, whats their reasoning behind that and I’m assuming that motor racing includes various types of sailing as well?
“All sports require an element of competition unless you’re practicing of course”
What do you call kayaking done outside of competition and practice for competition?
Or rock climbing for the joy of it?
A spot of googling tracks it down to an Ernst Hemingway quote: ‘There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games.’
And more references here:
http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/auto_racing_bullfighting_and_mountain_climbing_are_the_only_real_sports_all
I’m not sure I’d call bull fighting any sort of sport
Well Weka practice is just that, practice but this is a pretty good definition I reckon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sport
SportAccord uses the following criteria, determining that a sport should:
have an element of competition
be in no way harmful to any living creature
not rely on equipment provided by a single supplier (excluding proprietary games such as arena football)
not rely on any “luck” element specifically designed into the sport
They also recognise that sport can be primarily physical (such as rugby or athletics), primarily mind (such as chess or go), predominantly motorised (such as Formula 1 or powerboating), primarily co-ordination (such as billiard sports), or primarily animal-supported (such as equestrian sport).
Neither would I count bullfighting, which is probably why I’d mentally erased it from my first version.
But weka is spot on, while I’ve played football, a bit of rugby and some softball, I found climbing, tramping, kayaking … all activities that challenge your own limitations … far more engaging.
Beating other people is easy; overcoming your own fears isn’t.
and nothing wrong with that either but for me tramping is something I do for fun, I’m not really looking to challenge myself as such (except for when I haven’t done it in a while and it feels like a challenge even taking a step but I digress)
I guess the sports I’ve, mostly, gravitated to are the more team orientated ones
However the main point of the original post was what a great weekend it was for NZ sport…maybe I should have added whatever sport it is you choose to participate in 🙂
Sport for competition or sport for the sheer enjoyment, either way it’s been a pleasure to be a spectator and to share some wonderful moments this Olympics…..
to see people realise their childhood dreams and to show us and the next generation that sporting excellence is as much about the journey, the teamwork and how you participate, as it is about individual achievement.
About the only sport that I don’t find boring is Cricket.
I don’t think there’s another game that requires as much mental toughness and skill as cricket.
It’s a real rooster one moment, feather duster next sort of game ….. or over.
All that and more, absolutely. To see people from small towns like Waimate or Timaru etc and, not just compete, but succeed has been really excellent as well and if that’s not motivating enough the sheer class shown by athletes like (but not limited to) Valarie Adams will hopefully convince more women (and men of course) to strive for higher honours in their chosen sports
Yes I forgot to mention the cricket this weekend as well, they’ve done well in the bowling but the batting was looking a bit wobbly but unfortunately it looks like rain will have the final say
Just to let you all know, in Spain bullfighting is covered on the same pages as the theatre reviews and ballet performances, not in the sports section.
Of course its the establishment line, just look how the ABs are used by politicians and the media, and how someone of your viewpoint uses the subject on a political blog. Anyway Noam Chomsky says it better:
https://youtu.be/Vz1nIHv6P6Q
So I don’t like watching sports?
$27 million for one silver medal in cycling…..or $54 million for one cycling silver and the same flag.
Money well spent indeed.
Puckish Rogue said:
“I know that most of the left would prefer to be suck on a lemon then celebrate NZs sporting achievements…”
Tell us, PR, why if you believe what you have written, do you visit a Left wing blog to trumpet your support for something you believe the readers here would “rather suck on a lemon” than listen to? You’re better suited to a Right wing blog where sports fans such as yourself are all a twitter with excitement at the Olympic medal tally and the All Black win over Australia.
Don’t forget UFC 202 🙂
Probably because while most of the left do suck on lemons (see Pauls comment) not all lefties are like that, some even have comments that’re worth reading
The worst thing you can do when holding a position is to not try to understand what other peoples points of views are
If hell is other people then only existing with other people that agree with you may not be hell but it’d certainly be very boring
PR with your incorrect use of ‘ then/than’, it makes your crap hard to read.
Sucks to be you than doesn’t it
Sucks is plural, PR, so it should be ‘doesn’t they’. ☺
…and how about “then” instead of “than”
Sorry Chooky, but I think PR was displaying his form of wit, and did that error deliberately. His other many errors are through misguided political slant, and not so deliberate.
damn went completely over my head…I thought I had smarty PR on the grammar…(and I am not too hot on grammar myself)
“The worst thing you can do when holding a position is to not try to understand what other peoples points of views are ”
oh the irony
i dont have a problem with sportspeople succeeding – but i do have an issue with the way sport is overhyped, over corporatised and the pack mentality displayed by many non participants.
I would be willing to bet that many have a somewhat similar take – and one that comes across as “dont like sport” if the detail isnt there
that thing you were saying about not understanding others points of view? 🙂
i dont have a problem with sportspeople succeeding – but i do have an issue with the way sport is overhyped, over corporatised and the pack mentality displayed by many non participants
and that’s a fair point, I feel something has been lost from NZ rugby and it’ll never come back again
I recall drinking the Cook down in Dunedin (early to mid 90s) and having a look at the uni a rugby photos and just looking at all the provincial and all blacks in the photos and going to games at the ‘brook and having a great time but now…I don’t know its just not quite the same
However I’d also not want to begrudge a player making decent money from the game, they’re only a tackle away from retirement after all
But hasn’t some of the performances from the NZ Olympics team, especially the women, been impressive?
The unexpected medal from the pole vaulter was the high light for me .
Nothing like peaking at the right time.
Yeah wasn’t she impressive, hitting a PB at the exact time she needed it. I personally think Natalie Rooney was one of the, many, highlights for me
I’m stoked when I hit two clay birds in a row so I was just sitting getting more and more excited about her prospects and her attitude to silver was equally as impressive, she’ll be a good bet for 2020
Very nice but the medal is not worth the same as Isinbayeva the world champion was not permitted to compete.
There’s an obvious answer: two Olympics, one drug free and one drugged up to the eyeballs.
Trouble with that is that we’ve seen the results with WWE wrestlers. Very high death rate in middle age.
Dunno if sports really deserve the “one crowded hour” attitude.
Not just WWE, McFlock. Plenty of athletes, cyclists, body builders and others have died early, Florence Griffith Joyner being probably the most famous. Lord knows how many from Eastern Europe have died over the last few decades because it’s always been easier to hide the stats there.
I suspect if there were two Olympics, one clean the other not so much, the public would prefer the clean one. But Sky TV would happily show both.
well, that’s capitalism for ya.
Hi TRP, I had hoped [Deleted. No referring to what you think is my real life identity, please. TRP] would have given you more respect for due process and natural justice.
Isinbayeva is a two time Olympic gold medalist and three times world champion. She has been pole vault champion at at least four other major international competitions. Each of these events had independent drug testing before and after. AFAIK she was found clean each and every time.
So for her to be banned as a drug cheat as part of the collective punishment of the Russian athletics team and not be given any chance for individual appeal based on her outstanding record to date is nothing short of political and malicious.
You shouldn’t excuse it.
CV, the sad fact is that Russian athletics is horribly tainted. I’ve no issue with Isinbayeva or any individual. But all of them were trained and employed under a regime that routinely cheated. It’s unfortunate for her not to be able to go to Rio if she was genuinely clean, but the likelihood is that she wasn’t. Even if she was unaware of what was happening (again, unlikely) the damage is done. It’s not the Olympic gold medal that has been diminished, as she claims, it’s her own record that is now suspect. And that’s the fault of the people she trusted to administer her sport at home, not the IOC.
btw, she hasn’t been world champ for ages and coming back after a break of a few years suggests she probably would have struggled to make the grade at Rio. Unless she had, ahem, help 😉
Yes I can sense your “sadness”. Collective punishment and collective guilt without individual right of appeal then.
From wikipedia
And again, despite your ungenerous assertions, she tested clean in both the pre and post Olympic drug testing regime.
The sadness is genuine. I’d much prefer that the workers in that industry weren’t being abused by their employers. But we can’t change the past, only influence the future.
ps, you probably need to look up ‘collective punishment’. It’s not what you appear to think it is.
Seems like an appropriate use of the term.
If you think that after reading the definition, you’re a goose.
Isinbayeva was let down by her country’s inability to demonstrate its athletes aren’t drug cheats.
Russia definitely has had a drug cheat problem amongst some of its athletes.
Having said that, 2/3 of its Olympic team (except the athletics section) was finally cleared to compete at Rio so I think that the Russian drug testing regime isn’t as porous as is sometimes made out in the MSM.
Sounds pretty evenhanded then – they only barred the section with the endemic cheating problem
And they’ve now banned the Russian para-olympians too. The Olympics finest hour.
well, maybe the Russians should have tried harder to prevent drug cheats.
It would be malicious and arbitrary to not allow individual para-olympians with clean drug records to appeal the collective decision and submit to additional testing protocols.
Well, that depends on how long the drugs have a benefit after they’re out of the system, doesn’t it? For example, if they bulk up muscle mass during training and carry that through (now “drug free”) to rio. Or whether you need a verifiable baseline to detect sudden spikes invarious drugs or hormones. Or whatever.
Frankly, I have no idea. Nor do you. Maybe your suggestion would be fair, or maybe quite frankly the russian drug testing debacle has genuinely tainted the entire team and there’s no way to make a plausible determination that any of them are clean.
So, its to be a judgement of collective guilt with zero right of appeal and no means of proving innocence then?
Sounds fair and square.
National sports bodies wanting their athletes to compete at international events need to abide by the rules to ensure a fair competition.
For any individual athlete to compete at a top-level international event, their participation is dependant on the competence and integrity of their support staff and organisations, from coaches and doctors to their national sports organisations.
If those national sports bodies systematically failed to do that, then those athletes should rightly blame the sports body that failed to stick to the rules. Just like if an athlete is given a performance enhancing drug by a doctor who failed to ensure they abided by the rules, the athlete should blame the doctor, not the international body.
Wasn’t there some fuckup last olympics or so when a NZ athlete almost didn’t get to compete because someone in our sports organisation fucked up some paperwork? Same deal with Russia, only they fucked up the process for an entire team.
Yet countries like Kenya and Jamaica have practices that allow for systemic doping and their athletes are given the all clear.
If that were true they should have been banned as well.
and that’s a fair point, I feel something has been lost from NZ rugby and it’ll never come back again
It’s so robotic and structured it’s just become boring, used to enjoy watching Rugby but haven’t seen a game in years
Last game was the All black world cup final in 2011, god it was dull, no flair at all it’s like the players have chips in their heads and the coaches were controlling the players .
I’m finding the rubgy played by the All Blacks to be “total” rugby but I’ve found the exposure of the Super teams a bit much
Having said that the evening out of the NPC competition has been a revelation with the re-emergence of the smaller centres being competitive
Just…somewhere its lost…something
re; olympics . absolutely – i’m all for giving the athletes their moment, after all, they are the ones who actually did “thing x”
not an avid follower, which has made the surprise angle even better. What really ruins it is the idiot media – on the pole vault it only took a minute or two till some egg used rugby line outs as a means to visualise the height she vaulted over – gahh!
but good lord – whats happening – i keep agreeing with you – good thing the lemon tree is going strong aye 🙂
I’ve long surmised that those on the left and those on the right that post on here probably have more things in common then not on here
Take all on the right and an approximate amount from the left, add a pub and I’m sure most would get on famously
As long as politics isn’t brought up 🙂
Odd you have not said much about our tax dollars funding the olympics, but it’s behind a pay wall…
Oh well the Swans are going well, and the Demons dropped the ball…
Sports, love what you love – personally I find the olympics dull as dish water – too much politics.
The “replies” tab is back – yay! Or…fck, I guess we get more of those interminable long streams of pointless ping-pong from ego 1 and ego 2 🙁
Maybe it’ll fall over again? 🙂
It only comes back for me after I’ve made a comment. But it only hangs around if I just click on comments. It disappears again if I do a page refresh, or go back to the front page.
I think I’m in the same boat. It just disappeared again 🙂
And should be back in a moment after I submit this comment?
edit. Yup. And then I refreshed the page and….gone again.
edit 2. And back again after editing the comment 🙂
The “Reply” button on the bottom of each comment is there, and has always worked for me – but the “Replies” has been intermittent for some time now and mostly nothing appears when clicked. Never mind – I’ll live with it :).
It does seem to be interrupting the conversations though, because it makes it harder to find what one was talking about. I’m guessing people are mostly going with the convo that is in front of them.
Yip, it’s still broken. Lynn hasn’t had any time to look at it.
Excellent interview on Morning Report …what a wonderful woman!
‘Medicial cannabis campaigner brings more into NZ – past Customs’
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/201813060/medicial-cannabis-campaigner-brings-more-into-nz-past-customs
“Medicinal marijuana campaigner Rebecca Reider has a history of bringing the drug into NZ. She suffers from chronic pain and has successfully been able to bring more into the country – straight past customs. We speak with her.”
What surprised me most about that interview is the amount of time they gave her to speak. Usually they only allot a tiny amount of time for these topics, and Suzie Ferguson keeps interrupting trying to move it on, not letting them actually say anything worthwhile.
Rebecca is also a very good poet
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=11698404
A bit of a conundrum . Is it right to evict a tenant who is happy with their flat ,because the conversion of the garage is unpermitted .
Yep. Permits exist for a reason.
What isn’t right is that they were there in the first place, rather than a decent state house.
Wouldn’t it be better to work with the owner to get it permitted if possible.
Well, we don’t know if it’s possible. Maybe between everything else in the lot, the site isn’t zoned for that many residences.
Phil Twyford at Te Puea Marae in first open meeting to discuss the impacts of homelessness in our Society. This inquiry into Homelessness is bipartisan and is conducted by the Labour Party, the Green Party NZ and of course the Maori Party.
Notable absent – the Party that supposedly runs the government but then it is a government for some and not for all. Surely we can find Mrs. Bennett, Mr. English and Mr. Smith sipping latte in Mount Eden or another equally nice place so as to not disturb their pretty minds.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1182604225138444&set=a.112303772168500.13663.100001666321260&type=3&theater
On the topic of water:
‘India’s water crisis: 8 liters for 7 days, for drinking and all other needs (RT DOCUMENTARY)’
https://www.rt.com/news/356679-india-water-crisis-documentary/
…”The people in India are one of the first to experience a crisis which within 15 years will affect everyone on the planet, according to scientists’ warnings. And it might be the most devastating one humankind has ever faced.”
Watch the documentary “H2WOE” on RT and RTD, premiering on September 22.
https://youtu.be/uuUgIYtTtNc
This is really bad news.
And here in NZ we treat our fresh water with shit.
lol…yes very ironic…if you are not prone to despair
Trump statue removed.
“NYC Parks stands firmly against any unpermitted erection in city parks, no matter how small,” a spokesperson told AFP in an email.
Haha!
Something which cannot be unseen. (nsfw or sensitive souls)
http://i.imgur.com/i5kZoAU.jpg
my eyes! Oh god no!
Sag and stretch
lol…
communication is the art of breaking a few eggs for making an omelette,as opposed to the internecine squawks of the big and little endians.
https://medium.com/@nntaled/how-to-legally-own-another-person-4145a1802bf6#.ej7yhhr15
its a wow.
The Herald have an interview with an American academic who is involved in a campaign to get a woman as UN Secretary General.
She appears to be living about 200 years in the past, when all communication would have been hand-written and carried for months in a sailing vessel. In those days Ambassadors really did have to make decisions on behalf of their country.
The reason Helen is not doing too well in the contest is, according to her, because 14 of the 15 “people” on the Security Council are men. Ignoring the fact that there are 15 countries rather than people on the Council I find it rather strange that she seems to think that is the people who head their countries delegation to the UN who decide who to vote for rather than the country they represent.
The Herald says
“She said on the Security Council itself, there were 14 men and the only woman was US Ambassador Samantha Power”
and then quote the woman, a Dr Jean Krasno, as saying
“They all know each other, they’ve all evolved over time with an old boys’ club. And that’s what always happens, they network, so they vote for them. It’s just old boy networking.”
I bet you didn’t know that it isn’t the New Zealand Government who decide who we are going to vote for but the head of our delegation to the UN. His name, for anyone who isn’t familiar with this seemingly very powerful individual, is Gerard van Bohemen. I wonder what he has been up to? Along with the representatives of Russia, China, Great Britain and so on.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=11698804
I feel rather sorry for Krasno’s students if this is the sort of thing she seems to believe.
A response to alwyn’s little flame war attempt:
http://i.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/opinion/83391128/Has-New-Zealand-held-back-on-the-Security-Council-because-of-Helen-Clark
I fail to see what sort of flame war you are talking about.
I was merely pointing out how far from reality that US academic seems to be.
I also don’t really see what connection your article has to my original comment.
Surely you would accept that her opinions about the various countries representatives at the UN doing what they want to rather than what their Governments tell them to do is irrational?.
Early indications that the Vancouver property bubble has popped and that investors local and foreign are running for the exits.
We’ll know more if this is truly the case over the next 4 to 8 weeks as more sales data comes out.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-08-21/vancouver-housing-market-implodes-smart-money-scrambles-get-out-now
24.5% price drop over 3 months is eye watering
Mind you only a slight dip year on year so if you bought in early 2015 you’re still in the black.
Heh! I see your 24.5% drop and raise you 24.6%:
https://www.biv.com/article/2016/7/Metro-Vancouver-housing-prices-continue-uptrend-in/
It looks like sales have stalled at the top end, but the bubble continues to expand. That’s probably what will happen in Ak at some point; the rich will back out of the market, but the middle class will remain trapped in the cycle of debt and demand.
Indeed, the median and average prices can move differently depending on which part of the market collapses first/more.
John Campbell is dealing now with water pollution in Hawke’s Bay.
Crikey!
Water quality, in for example Tuki Tuki River is awful!
Must get a replay.
Dreadful!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NkMwVoP5wc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gulj8JQmEUo
Good work Paul. How did you do that?
Just copy and paste the Youtube link for RNZ.
https://www.youtube.com/user/radionz/videos
Charter Schools: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_htSPGAY7I