If you didn’t hear this talk at the weekend, then I highly recommend it.
Linda Tirado is the author of Hand to Mouth: Living in Bootstrap America. The book began as a first person blog post about living in poverty in Utah that went viral.
I listened to it as well Paul and I thought it was mind blowing, the courage and conviction that she spoke with and the “I will not apologise for my poverty” was very profound. Good luck with her future career as a writer representing the under-privileged.
Yeah, been quite a turn around in the weather in last week, shorts and tee shirt and not a sign of snow on Remarks the week before. Still very early though for snow to stay there but the first good dump is usually late May.
Not sure about sparking, but maybe more water wearing away at the rock.
Have to say I’m very glad that Shaw is co-leader. Having him, with his background in business, in that photo in a suit, is what is needed at this time. It’s his message to the business community and other power holders in society that is critical now. And the GP do have a plan that NZ could pick up and implement right now. Not as radical as many of us want or know is needed, but it’s a plan that those powerholders could get on board with.
The Green Party has developed a number of solutions that can be undertaken immediately to show New Zealand’s commitment to make this happen.
“First, we would put a proper price on pollution and redistribute the revenue as tax credits to direct spending and investment towards climate-friendly goods and services.
“Second, we would set up a politically independent Climate Commission to advise the Government on policy settings to guide the transition to a low-carbon economy.
“The Green Party would also set up a Green Investment Bank to spur investment in high value green jobs and industries.
“The world doesn’t have time for National to pay lip service to climate change measures. We must take action now. The consequences of a 2 degC temperature rise are too grave.
“Our climate change policy is about improving the way we live and do business. We can reduce emissions, create jobs and enhance our quality of life,” said Mr Shaw.
as an aside, for the people that think that the Greens believe electric cars will save the day,
No ‘silver bullet’ for climate change
“New Zealand’s top scientists have shown in this report that reducing emissions will require a re-think of the current strategy for agriculture, and that climate targets won’t be met by relying solely on tech-fixes like electric vehicles and methane inhibitors,” said Green Party Co-leader James Shaw.
Yes, petrol or diesel too. If you are going to manufacture a car, make it an electric one. But if you read their policy interconnectedly it’s obvious that they value things like public transport and biking more and have policies on them too.
It’s more that replacing the current fleet with electric cars means a huge amount of emissions when we should be powering down and not relying on individual car ownership. We need to travel less, because all travel has a GHG cost. More public transport, more walking/biking, more working and playing closer to home. It’s actually pretty recent in NZ for so many people to own cars (remember when Japanese imports were first allowed in in the 90s?).
I don’t have so much of a problem with the GP policy because NZ is patently not ready to give up its car culture yet and the GP don’t have enough power to be pushing that (thanks lefties who haven’t been voting for them!!). It’s just a pragmatic approach. If it takes us 20 years to transition to not relying on personal cars, we will still have lots of people in that time buying new cars, so they may as well be electric (the case can also be made for preserving the existing fleet for as long as possible, but there are problems with that too).
“It’s more that replacing the current fleet with electric cars ”
Those cars are going to get replaced regardless through the fact that companies tend to be on 3 to 5 year cycles and wealthy kiwis tend to be the same as companies. Add to that cars just don’t last now 20 years use would be rarity now.
As for depowering your right but it won’t happen willingly.
Which I’m guessing is part of what is behind the GP policy. If you have to replace a car anyway, why would you not make it electric in a country that already has power generation at 80% renewable and could pretty easily get it to 100% (GP policy is by 2030).
My car is 20 years old 🙂 I reckon if it had been looked after someone would get another 10 years out of it. If parts were available, it could last a lot longer. It’ll be the lack of parts that will eventually scrap it.
Sure. But not politically feasible in 2016. If we want to do the best thing, we have to start where we are. You and I can push for faster and more radical change. The Greens can’t. I don’t mean to have a go at you, so please don’t take this as that, but honestly, the GP were that radical back in the day, and not enough people voted for them including many lefties like yourself. This is a group of people who were thinking long and hard about CC and resource depletion well before we were even aware it was an issue. The time for them to lead that charge is past. NZ had it’s chance at being progressive via govt and it blew it. It’s going to have to come from somewhere else.
However, I still believe that voting Green (or supporting them in other ways) gives us a much better chance of achieving any meaningful change. Can you imagine how these conversations would be going and what would be happening in the public mind if we had a govt that was taking CC as seriously as the Greens are, even if they’re not yet where we want or need them to be?
I also believe that if a movement arises outside of govt that shifts the public, then parties like the Greens will follow. They want to do the right thing.
I can see the logic in pursuing formal position and power and therefore justifying participating in the Parliamentary game of status quo pretend and extend.
“It’s really a shame that people are so hung up on the electric car thing.”
the hang up is created by a desire to believe that all we need to do is make a few changes here and there and we can carry on pretty much as before…….self delusion can be powerful
It’s like people not being able to let go of Labour proposing that we have to raise the Super eligibility age.
What’s the big deal?
Well, the big deal is that it provides a huge insight into how they look at the world, and what they believe the real issues are. As well as the kinds of solutions which are needed.
Shaw is going where Hooton would advice him to go…well suited and cap in hand to the business community
the Green Party however would do well to remember what Naomi Klein has to say about such liaisons in ‘This Changes Everything – Capitalism vs. the Climate’…from her massive research and evaluations this modus operandi fails
( whenever I see Shaw in a suit I think of the failed ‘Red Peak’ corporate flag and Shaw’s attempt to curry favour with jonkey nactional)
…it will be interesting to see whether the new Green Party strategy is a winner with it’s grassroots voters
Hooton would also advise dissatisfied lefties to frame their potential parties in a poor light, so I guess that makes you and Shaw alike (both apparently defined by what Hooton might suggest).
Shaw isn’t going cap in hand to the business community. He’s speaking their language so he can influence them. It’s smart strategy.
The grassroots membership chose Shaw as co-leader. The green vote has increased every year since Norman was chosen as co-leader (in a business suit!) and everyone was ‘oooh, sell out, you’ll lose the grassroots and fail’. The grassroots chose Norman as co-leader too. Looks to me like they know what they are doing as a party.
If we want the business and political classes to adopt an actual climate change action plan, what other way would that happen if it wasn’t being spearheaded by someone they could understand and relate with?
The beauty of the Greens is that beside and behind Shaw are a whole team of very skilled MPs from a variety of backgrounds and perspectives. Having one suit in that team is not going to destroy the party.
I have heard him interviewed a number of times and if I didn’t know who he was the last party I would pick him as representing would be the Greens….his presentation of issues almost appears to deliberately avoid Green party platforms….
An observation of a non activist voter….politics is perception so they say.
What you will be getting from RNZ and TV is the messaging from the Greens to the business and power holder communities.
His maiden speech in parliament is worth listening to/reading. Then read Gordon Campbell’s interview and assessment of the speech and what it means and why it doesn’t meant what Hooton thinks it means (and let’s never forget that Hooton wants everyone to think that Shaw is Blue because it will lessen the green vote).
“Because I’m asking you about why *you* believe Shaw is Blue/Green, not what the media present”
I answered that in my original post……I am voter, not an active party member (like the vast majority of the electorate)….where do I get to “know” the politicians?…..by their public presentation.
If he is presenting as green/blue (your term) and he is not then it inspires little trust ..in other words, simply another politician……do we need any more simple politicians?
As things stand , and until some party with a vision and path form (unlikely imo to be any of the existing) the Greens will probably keep my vote next election despite Shaw
I don’t think he does present as a blue/green, I assumed that was what you meant when you implied that he wasn’t green. When I listen to him on TV or radio I can hear the green politics in what he says. I’m not put off by the suit.
For people that are put off, I’m pointing to evidence that he is real. What you appear to be saying is that he’s somehow misleading you by how he is on TV. I don’t really understand that, probably because all you’ve said is that you think he’s not green but you haven’t said why (and I assume you haven’t bothered watching the vid or reading the Campbell piece).
The Greens will always be open to speculation about who they are and if they are genuine, because they don’t fit into conventional notions of left/right politics. That’s why you can people like Turei and Shaw leading the same party. And that’s why Shaw can be pro market and pro intervention.
There’s not much Shaw can do to make himself more presentable to people who doubt him based on not much evidence (if he presented himself differently than he is, that would be him being false). I have to wonder here if it’s not the politics but the suit that is the problem. The criticisms I hear about Shaw are very similar to what people used to say about Norman.
whether your reasoning for his delivery on RNZ and TV is correct or not is irrelevant….its the perception it creates….anything M.Hooten has to say automatically instills an opposite view so no traction there….have read Gordon Campbell for a while and admire his work (though don’t always agree but hard to fault his research)….an exert from that piece you linked may bear re-examination…..
“Doesn’t a values-centred party always get hammered if it starts messing with its brand, in a belief this will lend them more credibility? “They do,” Shaw replies, “ And some of our people went and joined Mana for precisely that reason. There’s a political risk in anything you do. “ He points to the other current risk. “ If we remain outside of government permanently, I can’t see why anyone would want to continue voting for us. Like, I think it is now getting to that point.”
What’s your point about the Campbell quote? It’s not clear (and I think you have taken it out of context, but I’ll wait to hear what the point is).
If Shaw was say Tanzcos or Bradford, do you think he wouldn’t be creating an impression of some sort? I don’t get what is wrong with him appealing to the suit community. They have to change. Do you think they would listen more to someone who was more hippy or radical?
You appear to be saying that you personally believe that Shaw is Blue/Green based on what you see on brief interviews on TV. Did you listen to the speech and then read the Campbell interview? Because I’m asking you about why *you* believe Shaw is Blue/Green, not what the media present. If you already know that it’s a perception thing, why not go and find out who he really is?
“I don’t really understand that, probably because all you’ve said is that you think he’s not green but you haven’t said why (and I assume you haven’t bothered watching the vid or reading the Campbell piece).”
I have heard him interviewed a number of times and if I didn’t know who he was the last party I would pick him as representing would be the Greens….his presentation of issues almost appears to deliberately avoid Green party platforms….
An observation of a non activist voter….politics is perception so they say.
…and have read the Campbell piece a number of times.
“You appear to be saying that you personally believe that Shaw is Blue/Green based on what you see on brief interviews on TV.”
If he is presenting as green/blue (your term) and he is not then it inspires little trust ..in other words, simply another politician……do we need any more simple politicians?
mainly RNZ,couple TV…all relatively brief granted
“I have to wonder here if it’s not the politics but the suit that is the problem. The criticisms I hear about Shaw are very similar to what people used to say about Norman.”
lol…the suit goes with the job…I have no idea of what people said about Norman but I was never in any doubt as to what party he represented.
I think you may have answered the question……”And that’s why Shaw can be pro market and pro intervention.”….no, he cannot.
Ok, so this is an ideological issue for you. I think that’s why you can’t hear the green in what he says. Norman is also pro market and pro interventionist. It matters what people say about both of them, there’s precedence, and a much higher level of rw meme attack on the Greens now.
Repeating yourself doesn’t actually explain what you mean any better.
No but support the outrage. This is a good example of how a specific easily identified issue results in vast outrage and intense responses, but a more complex issue like TPPA gets a puzzled muted response. Clever corporates and politicians have deliberately made the TPPA issues obscure and have buried the real issues too deep to find.
It doesn’t solve the problem though, white middle class outrage at a problem in poor brown neighborhoods. Getting people out of poverty would help and there’s probably loads of other things that could help too.
I agree, I think that while being poor does play a big part (stress, worry causing excessive drinking etc) in domestic violence, I’m not sure how big a part it plays in the cases of child murder (its murder in my mind anyway) otherwise there would have been a lot of dead kids during the depression
I’m not so sure about that – firstly, I’m not even sure the data exists to make an assumption that there wasn’t a lot of dead kids during the Depression, and secondly we’re talking about somewhere around 8 kids a year being killed out of a population of 4 to 4.5 million. That level has been pretty consistent for at least the last ten years. So a major spike would be needed to demonstrate a meaningful difference in the rate, anyway.
Yes true, theres probably a lot that happened in the Depression that we’ll never know about.
When you’re assaulting a child it doesn’t take much for a hiding to turn fatal but I guess the point I was trying to make was that by focusing on one issue (poverty) then other , potential, issues might get ignored
Yeah, but when you have a factor of 6 or 8 times the rate when talking about poor kids, you definitely need to look at that issue.
There aren’t a huge amount of other factors that even come close to that level, especially (I suspect) when normalised for deprivation.
That having been said, there’s still a level of abuse that crosses economic boundaries (a prominent and unapologetic sports broadcaster comes to mind), so of course there are other issues to consider.
But my perspective is that if we know a major correlative factor and have significant case studies and plausible arguments to attribute a level of causation, then fixing that factor is the low-hanging fruit in solving the bulk of the problem.
And in this case, it would solve a lot of other issues as well.
That’s a good point but since this problem has been brewing for years (decades?) it’ll probably take the same amount of time to fix, but whats a short term issue that could be fixed right now to make a difference?
Well, given the comparatively low numbers, you might be right (or at least not demonstrably wrong 🙂 ).
But it will have an effect on some of the 110-odd other kids who die every year, too. And a more testable hypothesis is that it might bring down the assault hospitalisation rate (some of the static nature of assault deaths could well be just because we’re better at keeping them alive after they’ve been savagely assaulted).
This is a complex situation. But it may be that financial poverty is often found in the same households where there are other types of poverty: social connections, lack of support etc, time.
And it could be that these are the types of “poverty” that result in increased domestic violence – not necessarily a lack of cash.
I think economic poverty exacerbates and even causes much of those lifestyle poverties.
An example is social poverty – going out costs money, even just visiting. Petrol, busses, that sort of thing. I have a friend who has to save up to get the bus across town. Similarly, one of my key social groups is a regular weeknight at the pub. Anywhere between 4 and 8 people turning up on the same night. And I spend about $20-$40 on a given night. Once a week, but if I were on the dole I would gradually lose contact with those folks.
Time? I can earn in one hour what someone else has to work for an hour and a half to get. And I don’t have kids.
My firm opinion is that this is all just another way Marx was right: the system alienates people from each other, down to even the family unit.
“I think economic poverty exacerbates and even causes much of those lifestyle poverties.”
I agree to some extent, but to emphasise – there are those without funds who do have extended social support networks, and who do have a work/life balance that improves their ability to withstand stress and manage difficulties. So the lack of finance is not a causation – although it may be present.
I agree Molly, that the breaking up of social networks that provided positive social, educational (e.g. childcare and establishing effective households) and cultural support is an important factor in domestic violence. New Zealand’s Pakeha history seems to me a case study, as does the changes to employment and social structures that began in the 1980s that disproportionately affected low income (especially Maori) families.
At a guess, this is more important in poorer families with transient work because they are less likely to afford to build alternative community networks in the same way that people moving for high income jobs may be able to do. Having said that, it would be interesting to know if the rates of domestic violence, depression and aggression are greater in high income families that have a history of moving around compared with those that have long term social ties in the community in which they live.
Lots of smokers don’t get heart disease, and lots of non-smokers do get heart disease, but smoking still causes a substantial amount of heart disease.
Similarly, lots of poor people might have strong social networks, and lots of rich people might have weak or non-existent social networks, but I also know people whose poverty directly damages their social networks – embarrassed to visit or be visited because they can’t provide a box of bikkies, can’t afford transport, can’t afford to go out, etc.
I’m a bit hazy on the word “predicative” – it might be a technical word, but I’m hoping that it was a typo for “predictive”as in “can be used to predict”.
In which case, that wasn’t my premise – like pretty much all aggregate data, one can’t really say “this person is poor, therefore they probably have encountered domestic violence as victim/perpetrator”. But with enough data, we could maybe say “if we lower poverty by 50%, we would expect xxx fewer DV hospitalisations”. I.e. the attributable risk of poverty as a factor.
Again, apologies if you used a word bigger than I am and I went off on a tangent.
“When you’re assaulting a child it doesn’t take much for a hiding to turn fatal…”
Hmm…in the majority of cases where an abused child has died the abuse was repetitive. Postmortems showed older injuries, sustained before the injuries that killed the child.
These older injuries include skull and limb fractures, most of which went untreated. The child would have been in pain.
I can stretch my brain to see how a caregiver can ‘lose it’…a one off incident with tragic results, and there are a few of these in the gallery of the dead children, but not many.
And there is a real element of devious deception as well in these cases…denying, hiding, blaming siblings for the abuse, threatening others who might ‘nark’.
You’d normally associate ‘mad’ with a don’t give a shit anymore attitude…this is not the case.
Self preservation is strong in these perpetrators.
I have no answers…I would just like to see various agencies doing their job properly, so when there is a complaint or disclosure they act proactively and promptly. Put the child first.
I’ve got none either, I like the idea of dismantling CYPS and starting anew but my worry is the same people will be put in the same areas with the same reults
They will contract the work out. (with former cyfs and ngo staff in prominent positions with ‘providers’.)
As with the other group of not-quite-real-people in New Zealand. Disabled New Zealanders.
The scariest thing is with disability support…the very portal through which one accesses support is run under contracts with “budget control requirements”. The disabled people with the highest need for support fare badly.
IF you wanted to know who the great depression affected the children, you could use that great search engine GOOGLE to help you find pages upon pages of information on the effect that hunger, homelessness, despairing parents, lack of schools/hospitals/ other public services had on children.
The Depression era is actually quite well documented, they did have a. newspapers, b. film, c. cartoons/caricatures, b. photography.
especially the photography is poingnant. it also pays to remember to see the parents not as 50+ years old, but often only in their late thrities. But i guess lack of food, water, basic sanitary hygiene and medicinal care in case of sickness will age one quickly.
In regards to child abuse, poverty is the one and the first thing to tackle. Stable housing (average rental time in NZ is around the 12 month mark), will lead to stable communities where people know each other and in times of hardship might be able to help each others, will lead to better school attendance where abuse might be recognised early enough, will lead to better job attendance / abilities as the resources needed to move every 12 month might be used to actually find a. a better job, or b. some extra up skilling via night courses etc.
But without tackling poverty we have always poverty as an excuse, oh what can you do, these people are lazy, bludgers, having children only for the benefit etc etc etc etc etc etc, and of course other then lamenting the injured or dead child and locking up the abuser nothing much is done. Its easier that way.
“This is a good example of how a specific easily identified issue results in vast outrage and intense responses, but a more complex issue like TPPA gets a puzzled muted response…”
In terms of numbers attending, and actual engagement with the issues being marched about (rather than just along for a selfie op) I’d say the Moko March and the TPPA March and the Climate Change March had about equal turnout in Hamilton.
Nearly abandoned the whole thing at the muster point as there seemed to be more interest in taking photos of self and groups….all grinning and laughing as if little Moko wasn’t dead.
I guess I’m getting old, tired, cynical and grumpy.
However….awesome turnout…despite the shitty weather.
Best speaker was Karen Morrison-Hume the Missioner for Anglican Action…(http://prisonforum2015.weebly.com/karen-morrison-hume.html is a paper she prepared for the Prison Forum which gives a very good picture of where she is coming from )
There was singing, then a haka….which I personally thought was utterly inappropriate under the circumstances.
And nobody remembered that Hamilton had done the march for (another) dead baby thing 16 years ago.
We marched for Mereana Edmonds. (http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=148329)
Some of us also decided to apply to be foster families, so the CYFs and other agencies could not use the excuse that there was a shortage of emergency foster homes to justify doing fuck all when a child discloses abuse.
I’m laughing….really.
I think the next slogan should be…”Hey, Child Protection Agency…What’s With the Phonecall???”
Another researched based public health stance bites the dust,
A large worldwide study has found that, contrary to popular thought, low-salt diets may not be beneficial and may actually increase the risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and death compared to average salt consumption. The study suggests that the only people who need to worry about reducing sodium in their diet are those with hypertension (high blood pressure) and have high salt consumption.
We have a real problem here. The fat hypothesis (dietary fat causes high cholesterol causes heart disease) is now being shown to be wrong, yet the public health message to eat less fat was based on medical research and conventional processes whereby authorities take research and turn it into health policy. The fat is bad message is now going to have to change, but health authorities are still lagging far behind the research and the growing public movements to make the changes regardless.
The salt hypothesis looks set to go the same way. This is a problem with how science is done and how it is used. It’s not good enough to say that this is science working, see they’ve figured it out eventually, when we’ve had 30+ years of exactly teh wrong advice being given. People will have died and been made sick from that advice.
If this was tobacco companies instead of the US FDA, AMA etc, we’d be talking lawsuits by now.
It has however, got everything to do with how results or supposed results are reported and it’s also got everything to do with (largely vested interests) funding dodgy research or promoting deliberately twisted research findings.
You want the crap to end, then have all science funding come from the public purse and get the private sector out of it, or legislate that every piece of research funded by private interests must headline the source of the funding and provide a rigorous breakdown of the various funding bodies/companies in an attached summary… and have all public funding levels guaranteed.
“It’s got nothing to do with how science is done.”
That depends on what you think science is. If you think about it in the abstract as set of tools to explore and explain the world, maybe. But even if you solve all the vested interest problems from commerce, there is still the issue that the Western scientific mindset creates pathways to follow and those aren’t always good.
Any piece of research is fallible. It’s the believe that the scientific method itself is somehow pure that is also giving us really bad results. Scientists are humans just like everyone else and have bias. Take someone out of the commercial framework and you still have bias, often unacknowledged. The scientific method doesn’t prevent that, and IMO encourages it by the very nature of its core ethos. It doesn’t help that too many pro-science people treat science like god.
None of that is unsolvable, but the very idea that science isn’t the problem is the one of the things that is stopping us from sovling that.
And yes, how science is funded is central as well. But government departments and governments can also have bias and agendas, ditto NGOs. I agree about full disclosure.
From what I remember, vested interests kicked in along the way, but those included the government and medical associations as much as drug companies and commerce. And it’s clear in hindsight that Keys was on a certain track from the start and that that led to the eventual fuck up.
Ancel Keys, responsible for the fat hypothesis, was a university scientist.
Yes. Same with the anti-salt fanatics. And all the public health academics peddling bullshit in New Zealand will be in the public sector as well. Industry funding of research is not the problem here.
Yep. Plus the GPs who are well aware of the problem but keep recommending and prescribing as if there weren’t one because of the direction from public health agencies and organisations.
I do think the pharmaceutical companies are a huge problem as well, with the whole bullshit that’s gone down around statins. Shifting the goalposts of what is unhealthy/healthy, and trying to use drugs with high serious side effect rates is largely their responsiblity. They’re the ones who will probably end up being sued (pretty sure they’ve lied about what they knew too).
Ancel had a hypothesis. Nothing wrong with that. But Ancel did absolutely no science that I’m aware of to try to prove or disprove his hypothesis, and Ancel didn’t appeal to any scientific experiment or enquiry or, well…. anything, that might prove or disprove his hypothesis. He looked at some numbers for heart disease rates in a population and he looked at some numbers for fat intake in the same population. He inferred (I think that’s the right word) a causal link from the two sets of numbers. That’s not science. That’s not even in the ball park of science.
It’s, as Psycho Milt says below – “analysing (interpreting) survey results or other statistical sets…”
And in flies vested business interests to push, what they want to promote as, a scientific finding or conclusion. Bat shit and dog shit.
Which ancient cultures had longer life expectancies than say the current American population, even with America’s current enormous dietary, substance abuse, environmental toxins and all kinds of other really unhealthy problems? What were the common causes of (non-violent) mortality in those ancient cultures? Do those problems still commonly cause death today?
Y’know, the same could be said of almost any culture… broad knowledges around unhealth and health.
But it’s the explanations or understandings, and how useful they are, that matter in the end. So, y’know, when science discovers that germs and not vapours are responsible for the likes of cholera, it’s not that the previous common sense explanation was wrong that mattered, so much as that a scientific understanding allowed for effective action to be taken against the disease…it was a more precise understanding.
I mean, London might have built sewers just to make the smell go away and so ended recurring cholera epidemics. But I doubt it.
And the Tibetan doctor who felt the pulse of a dying woman and gave her a fairly poetic and, to all intent purposes, accurate enough diagnosis or description of her heart failure and why it meant she’s going to die, was more useful on a number of levels than the western doctor who had diagnosed the same condition but rattled off a rather technical, and some may say sterile, prognosis for the woman to take on board.
And then again, without medical science, the Tibetan doctor would have been unable to operate had her condition been diagnosed sooner and been operable…
This whole black and white, or science and anti-science bullshit that flies around is just that….bullshit. Different knowledges have their place and uses, and none can be judged as blanket good or bad just by how close or far they seem to be from a scientific understanding.
That said, it would be pretty stupid to contend that vapours cause cholera…a field of knowledge exists that has given us an understanding so that we know vapours aren’t the cause.
And on the other hand (I don’t know if this is still the case) acupuncture works, but seems to be resisted by the western medical professional bodies on the grounds that no scientific explanation has been provided for its efficacy…or then again, maybe it’s just the same old story of a closed shop in operation 😉
I have no idea how many different knowledges there are or were around the disease. I’d be very surprised if only Europeans associated bad smell with illness though, and if only Europeans assigned a carrier capacity to smell.
And yet, for all its flaws, science still works better than some charismatic random just making shit up and getting a bunch of followers to believe it through a combination of placebo effect and confirmation bias.
After all, it is good science that ends up exposing the crap science or just outright bullshit and fantasy.
I have no idea who exactly you are referring to but you just dropped a gobsmackingly bad false binary into the conversation, one almost certainly based on ideology and prejudice not on evidence. I’m going to guess that you are referring to people people who practice and use non-Western medical health care (which is most people on the planet btw).
Scientists were critising Keys’ methodology right from the start. That’s nearly 70s years ago. And the public health message still isn’t changing, despite the problems now being very well known. I’ve been listening to non-medical people talking about the problems with the fat hypothesis long before Time magazine put it on their front page. Yes, they were relying on science, but the scientific community wasn’t doing anything about it (and were in fact ostracising and suppressing contrary evidence), so other communities of people did.
Basically your argument is that it’s ok to kill and maim people so long as afterwards you say oops, sorry, we were wrong, we’ve got a better idea now. Seventy fucking years. Then you have the gall to hate the alternative practitioners 🙄
People like Andre who are such huge backers of science as the ultimate way couldn’t possibly be victim to the very same biases and lazy thinking as he accuses others of.
As for the placebo effect.
It helps get a lot of people better. Even the orthopaedic surgeons are coming to that view.
Yep, the placebo effect is astonishingly effective. It’s made many a snake-oil salesman wealthy. Amazingly, it even works when the recipient knows it’s just a placebo, though not as well as when both the “practitioner” and recipient are fully emotionally invested in it. Modern medicine really should put a lot of effort into how to use it better.
My pain medicine lecturer said he considered it every practitioners ethical responsibility to maximise their use of the placebo effect. Safe, cheap, effective.
The difference being that some of big pharma’s products actually do work as claimed, better than a placebo. Not all of them get dodgily pushed onto the market on the basis of cherry-picked studies produced and reviewed by …ahh… financially compromised parties, just some of them. I figure that by the time a product has been on the market for 20 or 30 years, there’s been enough guinea pigs gone before me that the hokey products will have been weeded out.
Scientists were calling bullshit on Keys’ assertions from the beginning, yes. And a whole shifting edifice of non-scientific business and government power pushed it along and…threatened the livelihoods or careers or reputations of any scientist who stood up to say “Hey! – Just a minute”
In a different area of science, it happened to Hanson when he piped up with a politically unpalatable truth about global warming.
And so most scientists get on within their field of research and do (probably) good science and keep their mouths shut. You blame individual scientists for not taking it in the neck? I’d call their reaction kind of normal human behaviour and nothing peculiar to the field of science or to scientists.
Besides which, scientists are usually involved in narrowly demarcated areas within fields of research, and their findings are gathered up and compiled by those that stand on the cusp between science and public policy. And they (those on the cusp) are under pressure to say politically palatable stuff.
That’s a systems failure, not a failure of science.
Sometimes I read these criticisms of science and scientists and it’s as though on the one hand they are being accused of playing at god, and then on the other they get condemned for being merely human. Can’t have it both ways.
This is a problem with how science is done and how it is used.
It’s a problem with treating social science research as though it were science. All of these anti-food studies involve people analysing survey results or other statistical sets for evidence to back an agenda, from Keys down to the present day. That’s not science.
Sorry, only just got back to this thread. The scientific method involves hypotheses that can be disproven, and a means of disproving them. That applies even to stuff where you can’t set up an experiment to disprove your hypothesis, eg Haldane’s reported response to the question of whether the theory of evolution was science because what could disprove it? “Rabbits in the Pre-Cambrian.”
The problem with all this diet-related epidemiology is that there’s no useful way to disprove anything. It all involves studies in which you can’t genuinely isolate the factor you’re interested in (because you can’t fully control what a large number of people eat for a long period), which means if any study refutes your pet theory you can find umpteen ways in which the study was “flawed” and those results shouldn’t be taken seriously. The whole field is a mess of correlation = causation errors and confirmation bias. There’s no hypothesis involved for which any disproof that’s found can’t be weaseled out of.
Worse, the agendas seem to come first. The last Listener had a piece on how to live longer in which Jennifer Rowan refers (without citation) to a study in which Type-2 diabetics who replaced red meat with various carbs supposedly improved their blood glucose levels, to which anyone with any idea of the chemistry involved can only think “What the fucketty-fuck-fuck?” What mechanism could even be proposed for that happening? These studies are referred to as though they were science, but any scientist would have alarm bells shrieking in their ears on reading a paper claiming that.
Edited: please note the diet-related epidemiology part. Epidemiology for infectious diseases does a great job.
A huge amount of medical research relies on epidemiology. Likewise public health policy. Are you saying it’s all bogus? What constitutes proper research?
The problem with what Keys did wasn’t that he used data from people’s experiences, it was that he manipulated that data to suit his agenda.
Elijah Wood: ‘Hollywood in the grip of child abuse scandal similar to Jimmy Savile’
Hollywood is in the grip a child sexual abuse scandal similar to that of Jimmy Savile in Britain, Lord of the Rings star Elijah Wood has claimed.
The 35-year-old former child actor said paedophiles had been protected by powerful figures in the movie business and that abuse was probably still taking place.
In an interview with the Sunday Times, Wood said he had been protected from abuse as he was growing up, but that other child actors had been regularly “preyed upon” at parties by industry figures.
It does look like more stories are emerging, first a trickle then a torrent perhaps. You only have to look at Roman Polanski and how feted he is and that’s out in the open so I’d imagine theres a lot more happening
When Corey Feldman made the allegations I don’t think anyone would believe him but when Elijah Wood and Susan Sarandon start talking it might start going somewhere…
Have a look at Allen’s daughter’s account of him abusing her, and what happened to her when she spoke out. Her brother is a journalist and has written recently about the complicity in the press in not covering stories about famous people.
Roger Waters (of Pink Floyd) has described how US musicians are scared of speaking out about the Palestinian issue, believing that their careers will be destroyed if they do. The connection between Hollywood and other forms of mass media with the Zionist regime isn’t a secret, put pointing it out tends to attract the outrage of the sayanim.
this is a good read.
One does simply not forget having been homeless, and in the last few days i again (as so many times before) realised just how lucky i am.
At home, a nice fire, a happy partner, a happy pooch and warm meal waiting for us.
the worst night in my life was spend in an unfinished building in November in Germany. I was seventeen and i believed that i would freeze to death that night. One simply does not forget that shit.
And shame to a society that wants to pretend that it does not affect them, that it will not happen to them, and that those to whom it has happened deserve it cause they took a ‘bad decision’ or other bullshit that society wants to make up in order to feel better.
Following up on my post here linking to the interview I and Vinny Eastwood had with William Black banker hunter extra=ordinaire and as people are waking up to the horror of having a Wall street banker for a prime Minister, I thought Id republish a series of articles written from 2007-2008 Called the Financial Tsunami by William Engdahl on how we got here.
Here is part 1:
” Palm Beach billionaire Jeffrey Epstein is a financier and political donor. He is also a convicted sex offender who is the subject of ongoing litigation from at least a dozen of his then-underage victims.
Flight logs show Bill Clinton traveled at least 10 times on Epstein’s private jet, dubbed the “Lolita Express” by tabloids, and he is widely reported to have visited Little St. James, Epstein’s private island in the US Virgin Islands. That’s where, according to attorneys for Epstein’s victims, many of the worst crimes against minors were committed by Epstein and friends who traveled there with him.
In a 2011 interview with her attorneys, Virginia Roberts, one of the teenagers preyed upon by Epstein, said he had told her he had “compromising” information on Bill Clinton and that the former president “owes me a favor.”
Yet despite Bill Clinton’s ties to Epstein and Trump’s stated willingness to make Clinton’s sexual past an issue in the campaign, Trump will almost certainly avoid bringing up Epstein’s name. Because in addition to haunting Bill Clinton’s past, Epstein also haunts Trump’s.
* * *
Trump’s attorney Alan Garten told VICE News last week that the presidential candidate had “no relationship” with Epstein, and only knew him because Epstein was a member of Mar-A-Lago, Trump’s private club and residence in Palm Beach.
“A lot of people hung out there, including Jeffrey Epstein,” Garten said. “That is the only connection.”
But according to someone with intimate knowledge of the situation, Trump and Epstein appeared to have a somewhat stronger connection.
“I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy,” Trump told New Yorkmagazine in a 2002 profile of Epstein written three years before Epstein began to be investigated. “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it — Jeffrey enjoys his social life.”
…@ Penny…well I guess everyone who knew and thought Rolf Harris ( the Queen) and Jimmy Saville and Bill Crosby were good guys did not suspect their true nature and that they were sexual predators…this is how pedophiles and predators get away with these crimes for so long..they are experts at hiding what they do in secret
…so just because Trump came into contact with Epstein and thought he was a good guy does not mean Trump knew his real nature or crimes and endorsed them.. or partook in them!
Following up on my post here linking to the interview I and Vinny Eastwood had with William Black banker hunter extra-ordinaire and as people are waking up to the horror of having a Wall street banker for a prime Minister, I thought Id republish a series of articles written from 2007-2008 Called the Financial Tsunami by William Engdahl on how we got here.
Here is part 1
Not a good look having Tamati Coffey’s husband calling a journalist a nobody, even if it was an off-the-cuff remark. It shows what they really say about people behind closed doors. ‘Nobodies’ vote and make up the missing million. When are we going to get an effective, people-focused opposition? I think Andrew Little is doing a good job but he will need MPs and candidates to back him up. Not ‘somebodies’ who think the plebs are ‘nobodies’.
Not sure what your point is. Labour are saying they’d like to change the tax structure in NZ to make it fairer, including looking at taxing property speculation. Seems like a good idea to me.
Indeed. However, a capital gains tax is not the solution. Moreover, sorting out the property market will cease soaring capital gains. Eliminating the problem.
Don’t you think adding to the cost of housing should make Labour stop and think?
Taxing capital gains is about making taxation fairer. Why should some forms of income be taxed and not others?
“Don’t you think adding to the cost of housing should make Labour stop and think?”
I’m pretty sure that Labour think all the time and that like other parties weigh up the pros and cons. Looking at one aspect of a tax policy in isolation is not useful IMO, nor is looking at that one aspect out of context. I’m guessing this is why they’re forming a Tax Working Group, to look at the whole thing.
btw,
Labour leader Andrew Little would not rule out a comeback for the policies in the future, but said if it got into Government in 2017 it would not introduce them without campaigning on them again in a future election.
The working group would look again at a capital gains tax (CGT), dropped from Labour’s platform when Andrew Little took over as leader in late 2014, and a land tax.
A capital gains tax would not be part of the party’s platform in 2017, but it was not off the table for the working group.
“Why should some forms of income be taxed and not others?”
For starters, if the burden is going to be passed on, those attaining the income won’t bare the tax burden. Is that fair?
Moreover, the goal of sorting out the housing sector (which would take one term according to Little) is to eliminate soaring gains, therefore, with that achieved there would be little if any income to tax.
In a stable housing market, properties that aren’t maintained can actually decrease in value, resulting in losses.
Of course it shouldn’t be looked at in isolation. However, one can’t afford to overlook the risk of adding to the cost of housing when one’s goal is to improve the cost of housing, thus the need for a rethink.
In 2015 (as your first link highlights) Little said if Labour got into Government in 2017 it would not introduce them without campaigning on them again in a future election.
However, while it has been dumped and no longer on the party’s campaign platform, there was no longer any mention of them not introducing them later in that term when the working group reports back – see my link above (which is also your second link).
I’m guessing the use of a tax working group is similar to the ploy Lockwood Smith highlighted a number of years back – see link below.
Militrary helicopter, snow mobiles, sourced to rescue trapped snowed in drivers caught over night in Otago. Not so much S.Auckland overnight car sleepers.
Hooten worried, they might get pregnant, but not worried enough to call on govt to get them into housing, as he scoffed that one car refugee got pregnant while living out of their car. I mean, like they must have been in a benifit, and givt intervention in private citizenship was a sicial impertive for his social fascist.
yes Hooton was particularly strident on RNZ…and particularly sickening really…his making light of the housing crisis for New Zealanders….and he got away with it….you were left with the impression that there was NO REAL PROBLEM!…but there is a PROBLEM…and there is a CRISIS!…for Gods sake can’t nine-to-noon get on an effective counter to Hooton’s spin !!!???
However this interview with Danielle Bergin by Kathryn Ryan was MUCH better than Hooton’s spin…
“Once homeless herself, Danielle Bergin talks about, Island child, the housing trust she set up in East Auckland, and why more and more people are forced to sleep rough. She traces the start of the current housing crisis back to when WINZ took over housing assessments from HNZC.”
Instead of limiting foriegn and new investor kiwis to building new homes, Key pushed the inevitable housing bubble burst out a decade, with the consequence that the bottom of the housing need had no place to live.
This is all on Key, but we’ll never hear it since media is run by those locked into bubble economics.
What was shocking was how undemocratic the EU officials were, and how little power the elected EU finance ministers had in the face of the unelected Troika bureaucrats.
…”Russia does not want – and does not need – war. Yet the “Russian aggression” narrative never stops. Thus it’s always enlightening to come back to this RAND corporation study, which examined what would happen if a war actually took place. RAND reached an “unambiguous” conclusion after a series of war games in 2015-2015; Russia could overrun NATO in a mere 60 hours – if not less – if it ever amounted to a hot war on European soil. …
…”The Threat Narrative rules that Russia has to meekly accept being surrounded by NATO. Russia is not allowed any response; in any case, any response will be branded as “Russian aggression”. If Russia defends itself, this will be “exposed” as an unacceptable provocation. And may even furnish the pretext for a pre-emptive attack by NATO against Russia…
…Everything we were told by the neocons in the lead-up to war was false. To quote the title of a book by the antiwar British MP Peter Kilfoyle, there were Lies, Damned Lies and Iraq.
‘Saddam has existing and active military plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons, which could be activated within 45 minutes’.
Horse manure.
‘Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction program is active, detailed and growing’.
Hogwash.
‘Saddam Hussein… has the wherewithal to develop smallpox’.
Garbage.
‘We know that Iraq and al-Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade…We’ve learned that Iraq has trained al-Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases’.
Baloney.
‘The threat is very real and it is a threat not just to America or the international community but to Britain.’ Has the trash been collected yet?…
Worth remembering the shitty wee deal anticipating the territorial and political division of Romania, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Finland into spheres of influence.
Picking up from a comment on the Guest post yesterday
My only issue with inflated numbers on this site is figuring out what causes them so that I can make them drop back to reality. I’m interested in measuring what is actually happening rather than doing a Cameron and inflating numbers.
That is why we have 4 systems counting the numbers. Google analytics, statcounter, wordpress stats, and the log system. Because they operate in different three ways, I usually manage to spot the one(s) that are misbehaving.
For instance, a month ago, I was bemoaning (to the authors) that we seemed to be having inflated google analytics figures. I eventually tracked that down to a double hit in the mobile stats with two seperate plugins requesting the google analytics on the same account – one using async and the other using sync. Found and fixed about two weeks later. It was obviously an error simply because none of the other count mechanisms showed the same bump.
Back in 2012 we had some issues with facebook making a ‘pageview’ every time that someone scrolled past our page. That was showed up in both analytics and statcounter, to a lesser extent in wordpress stats. However it only showed up in awstats on the logs as an aberration with aborted page reads. It took weeks to find and a few months to fully work around. But I eventually worked around it by making statcounter only work on the footer. After a few months facebook obviously fixed whatever problem they had.
Then there are the external changes – especially with getting the growth in persistent visitors. Late last year and early part of this year, we had a minor drop in the growth of google search traffic as they did some significiant changes in their search algorithms. It hit some sites pretty hard – probably why Whaleoil dropped their public stats earlier this year.
If you’ve followed my posts about algorithm updates, you’ll notice I’ve covered ad problems many times. That includes aggressive advertising, blended advertising, too many ads, etc.
During the March algorithm updates, I noticed some sites in a competitive niche that employed very aggressive advertising that inhibited the user experience. Those sites got hammered by the March updates. It’s just a reminder that aggressive and annoying advertising can cause users to run screaming from your site, never to return again. Google can pick up on this in a number of ways. Avoid this at all costs.
Which essentially describes the problem that Whaleoil has most likely to have suffered (ie why they don’t show their figures in public any more). The last few times I have been over there, I’ve really noticed just how crappy the massive ad footprint makes it as a site to discuss issues on. I suspect that it causes pretty major bounce rate because people can’t find most of the post and certainly would have to look to find the comments.
I blame it on Cameron’s chronic inability to do anything in a moral fashion (eg dirty politics, trying to buy a criminal hack on my computers), stay out of court (eg his ignorant and eventually failed attempt to appeal to the Court of Appeal) and his need to make both a living and pay his court costs off the site. He just seems to keep stupidly hoiking ads on to the site and filling the site out with basically rubbish posts without considering what it makes him look like to a google SEO long term. The site has probably been relegated to trash level with recent google search changes.
Just to give you an idea how important google is for our readership growth. Today we have had about 17,500 page views according to wordpress. Incidentally it was a bit less than 17k according to statcounter and analytics. I’m not even going to mention the multiple thousands difference between sessions / visits / etc or each engines supposedly similar measurements of how long people stay on site.
Of those ~17k, ~2800 came from referrals.
About 1600 came from google search in various forms. ~800 from facebook (more than half being the tail end of one widely spread post). 135 from twitter (which is one of the reasons I generally ignore it).
260 from all others. Search sites (38 from yahoo and 14 from bing), blog sites (bowalley at 47 and no minister at 31), news websites (25 from scoop), and nothing much else.
But more importantly, we get almost all new users who stay in via google search. Of the new readers who visit more than 10 times over the following 30 days after first entering the site, usually about 80% come in from google. About 35% start by googling “The Standard” or some variation indicating word of mouth, about 40% from a query about non-current topics, and the remainder from topical topics – which used to be the mainstay. Obviously google search is pushing further back into the excellent posts here in the past from the rate that posts older than 6 months old have been rising. Gotta love google analytics 🙂
Facebook starts us with a lower number of new repeat users. And twitter just gives us people who already know of us (one of the other reasons I tend to ignore it – it appears to be quite self-referential).
Moreover most of the sustained abnormal boost in readers from searches in recent months that has come from NZ. I think that google localised their search results a bit further and made them a lot better targeted. Certainly I’ve noticed much reduced bounce rates both here and from some kiwi destination points offshore. We’re generally getting a lot less bounce traffic from offshore – including those audiences with massive bounce rates from the US overnight. We’re a definitively kiwi site with about 90% of our page view traffic coming from a small country with 4.4 million people. Random searches by humans for loose associations from the US shouldn’t be sent to us.
Anyway, the site is looking pretty healthy for the month. We should do as well as we did last year (and May was the top for 2015 at 537k pageviews) and far higher than May 2013 at the same point in the political cycle – 364k pageviews.
Even more interesting to me is the breaking of long standing periodic patterns. The last couple of years have shown we don’t drop much in winter any more which used to be a depressing yearly trait. I think we have also started to lose that summer vacation drop off as well.
But there are some pretty clear effects in the ‘day’. Since 2013, the times that the site starts and finishes are now quite different. We now start getting traffic at 6am and it goes through pretty solidly to 11pm with a lunch time spike. A far cry from the days when it was largely being read during work hours from 9am to 6pm.
Part of that I think is due to the amount of mobile traffic we now get. That lunchtime spike is has a large chunk of cell phones – about 50%. Probably why google now penalises sites without a good mobile version. Urrgh – for example the micro print of The Daily Blog in its desktop splendour or kiwiblog when I forget to manually insert m. instead of www. There is a reason why some sites say “mobile friendly” when you read google results on a mobile & kiwiblog doesn’t really deserve it.
Anyway, I’m starting to think about how I get the system to not fall over during the usual election month tripling of the site traffic next year and the usual headache of planning to get enough increase in data and speed to withstand both the election year and the subsequent 40-50% boost in annual traffic.
All done for total operational cost of about $250 per month largely from those who do a small voluntary, seldom mentioned, and completely unforced donations over a year (hint: you can donate here).
Of course a lot of skilled unpaid volunteer time, and the deliberately uncosted donation of part of my hotted up and over specced home computers (PBTech love me) helps.
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Newsroom has a story today about National's (fortunately failed) effort to disestablish the newly-created Inspector-General of Defence. The creation of this agency was the key recommendation of the Inquiry into Operation Burnham, and a vital means of restoring credibility and social licence to an agency which had been caught lying ...
Holding On To The Present:The moment a political movement arises that attacks the whole idea of social progress, and announces its intention to wind back the hands of History’s clock, then democracy, along with its unwritten rules, is in mortal danger.IT’S A COMMONPLACE of political speeches, especially those delivered in ...
Stuck In The Middle With You:As Christopher Luxon feels the hot breath of Act’s and NZ First’s extremists on the back of his neck and, as he reckons with the damage their policies are already inflicting upon a country he’s described as “fragile”, is there not some merit in reaching out ...
The unpopular coalition government is currently rushing to repeal section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act. The clause is Oranga Tamariki's Treaty clause, and was inserted after its systematic stealing of Māori children became a public scandal and resulted in physical resistance to further abductions. The clause created clear obligations ...
Buzz from the Beehive The government’s official website – which Point of Order monitors daily – not for the first time has nothing much to say today about political happenings that are grabbing media headlines. It makes no mention of the latest 1News-Verian poll, for example. This shows National down ...
It Takes A Train To Cry:Surely, there is nothing lonelier in all this world than the long wail of a distant steam locomotive on a cold Winter’s night.AS A CHILD, I would lie awake in my grandfather’s house and listen to the traffic. The big wooden house was only a ...
Packing A Punch: The election of the present government, including in its ranks politicians dedicated to reasserting the rights of the legislature in shaping and determining the future of Māori and Pakeha in New Zealand, should have alerted the judiciary – including its anomalous appendage, the Waitangi Tribunal – that its ...
Dead Woman Walking: New Zealand’s media industry had been moving steadily towards disaster for all the years Melissa Lee had been National’s media and communications policy spokesperson, and yet, when the crisis finally broke, on her watch, she had nothing intelligent to offer. Christopher Luxon is a patient man - but he’s not ...
Chris Trotter writes – New Zealand politics is remarkably easy-going: dangerously so, one might even say. With the notable exception of John Key’s flat ruling-out of the NZ First Party in 2008, all parties capable of clearing MMP’s five-percent threshold, or winning one or more electorate seats, tend ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Polling shows that Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau has the lowest approval rating of any mayor in the country. Siting at -12 per cent, the proportion of constituents who disapprove of her performance outweighs those who give her the thumbs up. This negative rating is ...
Luxon will no doubt put a brave face on it, but there is no escaping the pressure this latest poll will put on him and the government. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political ...
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler In the wake of any unusual weather event, someone inevitably asks, “Did climate change cause this?” In the most literal sense, that answer is almost always no. Climate change is never the sole cause of hurricanes, heat waves, droughts, or ...
Something odd happened yesterday, and I’d love to know if there’s more to it. If there was something which preempted what happened, or if it was simply a throwaway line in response to a journalist.Yesterday David Seymour was asked at a press conference what the process would be if the ...
Hi,From time to time, I want to bring Webworm into the real world. We did it last year with the Jurassic Park event in New Zealand — which was a lot of fun!And so on Saturday May 11th, in Los Angeles, I am hosting a lil’ Webworm pop-up! I’ve been ...
Education Minister Erica Standford yesterday unveiled a fundamental reform of the way our school pupils are taught. She would not exactly say so, but she is all but dismantling the so-called “inquiry” “feel good” method of teaching, which has ruled in our classrooms since a major review of the New ...
Exactly where are we seriously going with this government and its policies? That is, apart from following what may as well be a Truss-Lite approach on the purported economic “plan“, and Victorian-era regression when it comes to social policy.Oh it’ll work this time of course, we’re basically assured, “the ...
Hey Uncle Dave, When the Poms joined the EEC, I wasn't one of those defeatists who said, Well, that’s it for the dairy job. And I was right, eh? The Chinese can’t get enough of our milk powder and eventually, the Poms came to their senses and backed up the ute ...
Polling shows that Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau has the lowest approval rating of any mayor in the country. Siting at -12 per cent, the proportion of constituents who disapprove of her performance outweighs those who give her the thumbs up. This negative rating is higher than for any other mayor ...
Buzz from the Beehive Pharmac has been given a financial transfusion and a new chair to oversee its spending in the pharmaceutical business. Associate Health Minister David Seymour described the funding for Pharmac as “its largest ever budget of $6.294 billion over four years, fixing a $1.774 billion fiscal cliff”. ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Many criticisms are being made of the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill, including by this writer. But as with everything in politics, every story has two sides, and both deserve attention. It’s important to understand what the Government is trying to achieve and its ...
TL;DR: Here’s my top 10 ‘pick ‘n’ mix of links to news, analysis and opinion articles as of 10:10am on Monday, April 29:Scoop: The children's ward at Rotorua Hospital will be missing a third of its beds as winter hits because Te Whatu Ora halted an upgrade partway through to ...
span class=”dropcap”>As hideous as David Seymour can be, it is worth keeping in mind occasionally that there are even worse political figures (and regimes) out there. Iran for instance, is about to execute the country’s leading hip hop musician Toomaj Salehi, for writing and performing raps that “corrupt” the nation’s ...
Yesterday marked 10 years since the first electric train carried passengers in Auckland so it’s a good time to look back at it and the impact it has had. A brief history The first proposals for rail electrification in Auckland came in the 1920’s alongside the plans for earlier ...
Right now, in Aotearoa-NZ, our ‘animal spirits’ are darkening towards a winter of discontent, thanks at least partly to a chorus of negative comments and actions from the Government Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on ...
You make people evil to punish the paststuck inside a sequel with a rotating castThe following photos haven’t been generated with AI, or modified in any way. They are flesh and blood, human beings. On the left is Galatea Young, a young mum, and her daughter Fiadh who has Angelman ...
April has been a quiet month at A Phuulish Fellow. I have had an exceptionally good reading month, and a decently productive writing month – for original fiction, anyway – but not much has caught my eye that suggested a blog article. It has been vaguely frustrating, to be honest. ...
A listing of 31 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, April 21, 2024 thru Sat, April 27, 2024. Story of the week Anthropogenic climate change may be the ultimate shaggy dog story— but with a twist, because here ...
Hi,I spent about a year on Webworm reporting on an abusive megachurch called Arise, and it made me want to stab my eyes out with a fork.I don’t regret that reporting in 2022 and 2023 — I am proud of it — but it made me angry.Over three main stories ...
The new Victoria University Vice-Chancellor decided to have a forum at the university about free speech and academic freedom as it is obviously a topical issue, and the Government is looking at legislating some carrots or sticks for universities to uphold their obligations under the Education and Training Act. They ...
The Government is again adding to New Zealand’s growing unemployment, this time cutting jobs at the agencies responsible for urban development and growing much needed housing stock. ...
With Minister Karen Chhour indicating in the House today that she either doesn’t know or care about the frontline cuts she’s making to Oranga Tamariki, we risk seeing more and more of our children falling through the cracks. ...
The Labour Party is saddened to learn of the death of Sir Robert Martin, a globally renowned disability advocate who led the way for disability rights both in New Zealand and internationally. ...
Labour is calling for the Government to urgently rethink its coalition commitment to restart live animal exports, Labour animal welfare spokesperson Rachel Boyack said. ...
Today’s Financial Stability Report has once again highlighted that poverty and deep inequality are political choices - and this Government is choosing to make them worse. ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to do more for our households in most need as unemployment rises and the cost of living crisis endures. ...
Unemployment is on the rise and it’s only going to get worse under this Government, Labour finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds said. Stats NZ figures show the unemployment rate grew to 4.3 percent in the March quarter from 4 percent in the December quarter. “This is the second rise in unemployment ...
The New Zealand Labour Party welcomes the entering into force of the European Union and New Zealand free trade agreement. This agreement opens the door for a huge increase in trade opportunities with a market of 450 million people who are high value discerning consumers of New Zealand goods and ...
The National-led Government continues its fiscal jiggery pokery with its Pharmac announcement today, Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall says. “The government has increased Pharmac funding but conceded it will only make minimal increases in access to medicine”, said Ayesha Verrall “This is far from the bold promises made to fund ...
This afternoon’s interim Waitangi Tribunal report must be taken seriously as it affects our most vulnerable children, Labour children’s spokesperson Willow-Jean Prime. ...
Te Pāti Māori are demanding the New Zealand Government support an international independent investigation into mass graves that have been uncovered at two hospitals on the Gaza strip, following weeks of assault by Israeli troops. Among the 392 bodies that have been recovered, are children and elderly civilians. Many of ...
Our two-tiered system for veterans’ support is out of step with our closest partners, and all parties in Parliament should work together to fix it, Labour veterans’ affairs spokesperson Greg O’Connor said. ...
Stripping two Ministers of their portfolios just six months into the job shows Christopher Luxon’s management style is lacking, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said. ...
Tonight’s court decision to overturn the summons of the Children’s Minister has enabled the Crown to continue making decisions about Māori without evidence, says Te Pāti Māori spokesperson for Children, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “The judicial system has this evening told the nation that this government can do whatever they want when ...
It appears Nicola Willis is about to pull the rug out from under the feet of local communities still dealing with the aftermath of last year’s severe weather, and local councils relying on funding to build back from these disasters. ...
The Government is making short-sighted changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that will take away environmental protection in favour of short-term profits, Labour’s environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
Labour welcomes the release of the report into the North Island weather events and looks forward to working with the Government to ensure that New Zealand is as prepared as it can be for the next natural disaster. ...
The Labour Party has called for the New Zealand Government to recognise Palestine, as a material step towards progressing the two-State solution needed to achieve a lasting peace in the region. ...
Some of our country’s most important work, stopping the sexual exploitation of children and violent extremism could go along with staff on the frontline at ports and airports. ...
The Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill will give projects such as new coal mines a ‘get out of jail free’ card to wreak havoc on the environment, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The government's decision to reintroduce Three Strikes is a destructive and ineffective piece of law-making that will only exacerbate an inherently biased and racist criminal justice system, said Te Pāti Māori Justice Spokesperson, Tākuta Ferris, today. During the time Three Strikes was in place in Aotearoa, Māori and Pasifika received ...
Cuts to frontline hospital staff are not only a broken election promise, it shows the reckless tax cuts have well and truly hit the frontline of the health system, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
The Green Party has joined the call for public submissions on the fast-track legislation to be extended after the Ombudsman forced the Government to release the list of organisations invited to apply just hours before submissions close. ...
New Zealand’s good work at reducing climate emissions for three years in a row will be undone by the National government’s lack of ambition and scrapping programmes that were making a difference, Labour Party climate spokesperson Megan Woods said today. ...
More essential jobs could be on the chopping block, this time Ministry of Education staff on the school lunches team are set to find out whether they're in line to lose their jobs. ...
Te Pāti Māori is disgusted at the confirmation that hundreds are set to lose their jobs at Oranga Tamariki, and the disestablishment of the Treaty Response Unit. “This act of absolute carelessness and out of touch decision making is committing tamariki to state abuse.” Said Te Pāti Māori Oranga Tamariki ...
The Government is trying to bring in a law that will allow Ministers to cut corners and kill off native species, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said. ...
Cancelling urgently needed new Cook Strait ferries and hiking the cost of public transport for many Kiwis so that National can announce the prospect of another tunnel for Wellington is not making good choices, Labour Transport Spokesperson Tangi Utikere said. ...
A laundry list of additional costs for Tāmaki Makarau Auckland shows the Minister for the city is not delivering for the people who live there, says Labour Auckland Issues spokesperson Shanan Halbert. ...
Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi, and Mema Paremata mō Tāmaki-Makaurau, Takutai Tarsh Kemp, will travel to the Gold Coast to strengthen ties with Māori in Australia next week (15-21 April). The visit, in the lead-up to the 9th Australian National Kapa haka Festival, will be an opportunity for both ...
The Minister Responsible for RMA Reform, Chris Bishop today released his decision on four recommendations referred to him by the Western Bay of Plenty District Council, opening the door to housing growth in the area. The Council’s Plan Change 92 allows more homes to be built in existing and new ...
Thank you, John McKinnon and the New Zealand China Council for the invitation to speak to you today. Thank you too, all members of the China Council. Your effort has played an essential role in helping to build, shape, and grow a balanced and resilient relationship between our two ...
The Government is modernising insurance law to better protect Kiwis and provide security in the event of a disaster, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly announced today. “These reforms are long overdue. New Zealand’s insurance law is complicated and dated, some of which is more than 100 years old. ...
The coalition Government is refreshing its approach to supporting pay equity claims as time-limited funding for the Pay Equity Taskforce comes to an end, Public Service Minister Nicola Willis says. “Three years ago, the then-government introduced changes to the Equal Pay Act to support pay equity bargaining. The changes were ...
Structured literacy will change the way New Zealand children learn to read - improving achievement and setting students up for success, Education Minister Erica Stanford says. “Being able to read and write is a fundamental life skill that too many young people are missing out on. Recent data shows that ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay says Canada’s refusal to comply in full with a CPTPP trade dispute ruling in our favour over dairy trade is cynical and New Zealand has no intention of backing down. Mr McClay said he has asked for urgent legal advice in respect of our ‘next move’ ...
The rights of our children and young people will be enhanced by changes the coalition Government will make to strengthen oversight of the Oranga Tamariki system, including restoring a single Children’s Commissioner. “The Government is committed to delivering better public services that care for our most at-risk young people and ...
The Government is making it easier for minor changes to be made to a building consent so building a home is easier and more affordable, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “The coalition Government is focused on making it easier and cheaper to build homes so we can ...
New Zealand lost a true legend when internationally renowned disability advocate Sir Robert Martin (KNZM) passed away at his home in Whanganui last night, Disabilities Issues Minister Louise Upston says. “Our Government’s thoughts are with his wife Lynda, family and community, those he has worked with, the disability community in ...
Good evening – Before discussing the challenges and opportunities facing New Zealand’s foreign policy, we’d like to first acknowledge the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. You have contributed to debates about New Zealand foreign policy over a long period of time, and we thank you for hosting us. ...
From today, passengers travelling internationally from Auckland Airport will be able to keep laptops and liquids in their carry-on bags for security screening thanks to new technology, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Creating a more efficient and seamless travel experience is important for holidaymakers and businesses, enabling faster movement through ...
People with an interest in the health of Northland’s marine ecosystems are invited to a public meeting to discuss how to deal with kina barrens, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones will lead the discussion, which will take place on Friday, 10 May, at Awanui Hotel in ...
Kiwi exporters are $100 million better off today with the NZ EU FTA entering into force says Trade Minister Todd McClay. “This is all part of our plan to grow the economy. New Zealand's prosperity depends on international trade, making up 60 per cent of the country’s total economic activity. ...
There are heartening signs that the extractive sector is once again becoming an attractive prospect for investors and a source of economic prosperity for New Zealand, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. “The beginnings of a resurgence in extractive industries are apparent in media reports of the sector in the past ...
The return of the historic Ō-Rākau battle site to the descendants of those who fought there moved one step closer today with the first reading of Te Pire mō Ō-Rākau, Te Pae o Maumahara / The Ō-Rākau Remembrance Bill. The Bill will entrust the 9.7-hectare battle site, five kilometres west ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has announced 25 new high-speed EV charging hubs along key routes between major urban centres and outlined the Government’s plan to supercharge New Zealand’s EV infrastructure. The hubs will each have several chargers and be capable of charging at least four – and up to 10 ...
The coalition Government will not proceed with the previous Government’s plans to regulate residential property managers, Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. “I have written to the Chairperson of the Social Services and Community Committee to inform him that the Government does not intend to support the Residential Property Managers Bill ...
The Government has announced an independent review into the disability support system funded by the Ministry of Disabled People – Whaikaha. Disability Issues Minister Louise Upston says the review will look at what can be done to strengthen the long-term sustainability of Disability Support Services to provide disabled people and ...
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith has attended the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva and outlined the Government’s plan to restore law and order. “Speaking to the United Nations Human Rights Council provided us with an opportunity to present New Zealand’s human rights progress, priorities, and challenges, while responding to issues and ...
The Government and Rotorua Lakes Council are committed to working closely together to end the use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua. Associate Minister of Housing (Social Housing) Tama Potaka says the Government remains committed to ending the long-term use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua by the ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay heads overseas today for high-level trade talks in the Gulf region, and a key OECD meeting in Paris. Mr McClay will travel to Riyadh to meet with counterparts from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). “New Zealand’s goods and services exports to the Gulf region ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford has outlined six education priorities to deliver a world-leading education system that sets Kiwi kids up for future success. “I’m putting ambition, achievement and outcomes at the heart of our education system. I want every child to be inspired and engaged in their learning so they ...
The new NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) App is a secure ‘one stop shop’ to provide the services drivers need, Transport Minister Simeon Brown and Digitising Government Minister Judith Collins say. “The NZTA App will enable an easier way for Kiwis to pay for Vehicle Registration and Road User Charges (RUC). ...
Whānau with tamariki growing up in emergency housing motels will be prioritised for social housing starting this week, says Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka. “Giving these whānau a better opportunity to build healthy stable lives for themselves and future generations is an essential part of the Government’s goal of reducing ...
Racing Minister Winston Peters has paid tribute to an icon of the industry with the recent passing of Dave O’Sullivan (OBE). “Our sympathies are with the O’Sullivan family with the sad news of Dave O’Sullivan’s recent passing,” Mr Peters says. “His contribution to racing, initially as a jockey and then ...
Assalaamu alaikum, greetings to you all. Eid Mubarak, everyone! I want to extend my warmest wishes to you and everyone celebrating this joyous occasion. It is a pleasure to be here. I have enjoyed Eid celebrations at Parliament before, but this is my first time joining you as the Minister ...
Associate Health Minister David Seymour has announced Pharmac’s largest ever budget of $6.294 billion over four years, fixing a $1.774 billion fiscal cliff. “Access to medicines is a crucial part of many Kiwis’ lives. We’ve committed to a budget allocation of $1.774 billion over four years so Kiwis are ...
Hon Paula Bennett has been appointed as member and chair of the Pharmac board, Associate Health Minister David Seymour announced today. "Pharmac is a critical part of New Zealand's health system and plays a significant role in ensuring that Kiwis have the best possible access to medicines,” says Mr Seymour. ...
Hundreds of New Zealand families affected by Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) will benefit from a new Government focus on prevention and treatment, says Health Minister Dr Shane Reti. “We know FASD is a leading cause of preventable intellectual and neurodevelopmental disability in New Zealand,” Dr Reti says. “Every day, ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones today attended the official opening of Kaikohe’s new $14.7 million sports complex. “The completion of the Kaikohe Multi Sports Complex is a fantastic achievement for the Far North,” Mr Jones says. “This facility not only fulfils a long-held dream for local athletes, but also creates ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters’ engagements in Türkiye this week underlined the importance of diplomacy to meet growing global challenges. “Returning to the Gallipoli Peninsula to represent New Zealand at Anzac commemorations was a sombre reminder of the critical importance of diplomacy for de-escalating conflicts and easing tensions,” Mr Peters ...
Ambassador Millar, Burgemeester, Vandepitte, Excellencies, military representatives, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen – good morning and welcome to this sacred Anzac Day dawn service. It is an honour to be here on behalf of the Government and people of New Zealand at Buttes New British Cemetery, Polygon Wood – a deeply ...
Distinguished guests - It is an honour to return once again to this site which, as the resting place for so many of our war-dead, has become a sacred place for generations of New Zealanders. Our presence here and at the other special spaces of Gallipoli is made ...
Mai ia tawhiti pamamao, te moana nui a Kiwa, kua tae whakaiti mai matou, ki to koutou papa whenua. No koutou te tapuwae, no matou te tapuwae, kua honoa pumautia. Ko nga toa kua hinga nei, o te Waipounamu, o te Ika a Maui, he okioki tahi me o ...
Paul Goldsmith will take on responsibility for the Media and Communications portfolio, while Louise Upston will pick up the Disability Issues portfolio, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announced today. “Our Government is relentlessly focused on getting New Zealand back on track. As issues change in prominence, I plan to adjust Ministerial ...
Recreational catch limits will be reduced in areas of Fiordland and the Chatham Islands to help keep those fisheries healthy and sustainable, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. The lower recreational daily catch limits for a range of finfish and shellfish species caught in the Fiordland Marine Area and ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has welcomed an important milestone in New Zealand’s hydrogen future, with the opening of the country’s first network of hydrogen refuelling stations in Wiri. “I want to congratulate the team at Hiringa Energy and its partners K one W one (K1W1), Mitsui & Co New Zealand ...
The coalition Government is delivering on its commitment to improve resource management laws and give greater certainty to consent applicants, with a Bill to amend the Resource Management Act (RMA) expected to be introduced to Parliament next month. RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop has today outlined the first RMA Amendment ...
Overseas models for regulating the oil and gas sector, including their decommissioning regimes, are being carefully scrutinised as a potential template for New Zealand’s own sector, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. The Coalition Government is focused on rebuilding investor confidence in New Zealand’s energy sector as it looks to strengthen ...
Emergency Management and Recovery Minister Mark Mitchell has today released the Report of the Government Inquiry into the response to the North Island Severe Weather Events. “The report shows that New Zealand’s emergency management system is not fit-for-purpose and there are some significant gaps we need to address,” Mr Mitchell ...
We might be in Invercargill but all anyone can talk about is Gore. Specifically, Salford Street. That’s where three-year-old Lachlan Jones lived, south of the centre of town, between the A&P Showgrounds and the Mataura River. Roughly 1.2 km away from the single level home he lived in with his ...
MONDAY I lined up the latest round of civil servants from city hall against the wall, and signalled for the firing squad to drop their rifles. I stepped up onto a wooden crate to look at the office workers in the eye. But that didn’t feel right, so I found ...
Keen hiker and second-year MSc student Liam Hewson wears two hats when he’s in the great outdoors. “The scientist in me appreciates nature and goes, ‘Oh, there’s that thing and there’s another thing,’ but then the tramper and the outdoorsy person in me thinks, ‘Cool bush.’” Born and bred in ...
After a long and illustrious career as a goal kicker, Dan Carter’s favourite way to unwind is… kicking goals. Why can’t he get enough of it? And what it’s like to watch him do it for an hour straight? A semicircle of people wielding cameras and phones has formed in ...
Dame Susan Devoy takes us through her life in television, including late night ER debriefs, her proudest CTI moment and the show she watches in secret. Quite aside from her four world champion squash titles, Dame Susan Devoy will likely go down in history as one of the best Celebrity ...
Hera Lindsay Bird reveals the best places in Ōtepoti to score more for your apocalypse-prep book hoard.Sometimes I get the feeling I’ve been killed in a car crash, and this second half of my life is just the brain unspooling itself, like one of those episodes of a hospital ...
ThreeNow’s new murder mystery series takes us on a dark, damp journey into the Australian wilderness.This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. High Country is ThreeNow’s new Australian eight-part crime drama, set in a remote part of the Victorian highlands. It tells ...
Introducing a new way to read The Spinoff every weekend. After nearly 10 years of being an online magazine, we’re finally embracing the weekend liftout. Despite our best efforts to convince you otherwise, writers and editors at The Spinoff don’t work weekend. It is through the sheer power of technology ...
Tip one: let yourself be nurtured by this big old man. Tip two: don’t ask him to adopt you. So, you’ve arrived at your first session with a new therapist. He tells you to make yourself comfortable and you opt for the tweed armchair, hoping it makes you look like ...
I didn’t know books could open you back up; that there were books that stayed with you, where reading was like a chemical event. I knew nothing.The Sunday Essay is made possible thanks to the support of Creative New Zealand.Not too long ago, I was listening to the American ...
Former Olympic swimmer James Magnussen has already started training for the Enhanced games, though says he won’t start taking performance enhancing substances until about nine months out from the competition. The Australian world champion was the first athlete to be announced by Enhanced, but he says the organisation has had ...
Everyone thinks he’s dead. Every day they expect his body to be washed up along the coast. Most likely up Karitane way, the way the tide’s running. But nobody’ll be too surprised if his body’s never found. Even in death he wouldn’t have wished for such attention. He would have ...
Council members voted 21 to 4 in favour of Ahluwalia returning to the Laucala campus following a much-awaited meeting in Vanuatu this week. It comes as USP and its two unions — the Association of the University of the South Pacific Staff (AUSPS) and the Administration and Support Staff Union ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicola Henry, Professor & Australian Research Council Future Fellow, Social and Global Studies Centre, RMIT University Shutterstock Following an emergency meeting of the National Cabinet this week, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has announced a raft of measures to tackle the problem ...
Analysis - A poll showing the opposition is more popular than the government raises questions, politicians go through their 'trial by pay rise' and a Green MP loses her cool in the debating chamber. ...
The entire stretch of Tokomaru Bay on the East Coast will be subject to a joint customary marine title for two hapū, and extending up to four miles out to sea. A High Court judge has found the two groups, who during the case settled a dispute over boundaries for ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Hall, Lecturer, Media & Cultural Studies, Edith Cowan University A longstanding feud between TikTok and Universal Music Group seems to have finally reached an end, with both parties signing a deal that will see Universal-backed music returned to the social media ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Siobhan O’Dean, Postdoctoral Research Associate, The Matilda Centre for Research in Mental Health and Substance Use, University of Sydney After several highly publicised alleged murders of women in Australia, the Albanese government this week pledged more than A$925 million over five years ...
Political parties have now fully disclosed the donations they received last year - with National getting more than double the cash of any other party. ...
A Pacific regionalism expert has called out New Zealand's Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters for withholding information from the public on AUKUS military pact. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard de Grijs, Professor of Astrophysics, Macquarie University Bruno Scramgnon/Pexels All systems are “go” for tonight’s launch of China’s next step in a carefully planned lunar exploration program. Placed on top of a powerful Long March 5 rocket, the Chang’e 6 ...
National returned a massive donation the day after a Newsroom story linked the donors to a property being investigated for operating unlawfully as a migrant workers’ hostel. The party’s 2023 donation filings, released on Friday, show it returned a $200,000 donation from Buen Holdings on August 23. That was the ...
Pacific Media Watch New Zealand has slumped to an unprecedented 19th place in the annual Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index survey released today on World Press Freedom Day — May 3. This was a drop of six places from 13th last year when it slipped out of its ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joshua Black, Political Historian and Administrator Officer, Australian Historical Association, Australian National University Australia has had its fair share of public record-keeping controversies in recent years. Some have been mere farce, as in the case of two formerly government-owned filing cabinets (containing ...
Heavenly Culture, World Peace, Restoration of Light (HWPL), a United Nations-affiliated organization dedicated to fostering peace through civilian-led initiatives, has issued a statement in response to the escalating conflict between Israel and Iran. ...
A poem by Tessa Keenan, from AUP New Poets 10. Mātou These days we are a photograph; one of a farm strewn with cows that used to be bright harakeke or swamp. The kids point at it and say the sun sits behind a smudge (left by someone at Christmas); ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1 Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan (Faber & Faber, $25)The masterful Irish writer ...
Marriage and civil union statistics record the number of marriages and civil unions registered in New Zealand each year, and divorce statistics record the number of divorces granted in New Zealand each year. Key facts Marriages and civil unions In ...
Marriage and civil union statistics record the number of marriages and civil unions registered in New Zealand each year, and divorce statistics record the number of divorces granted in New Zealand each year. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lennon Y.C. Chang, Associate Professor of Cyber Risk and Policy, Deakin University Taiwan stands out as a beacon of democracy, innovation and resilience in an increasingly autocratic region. But this is under growing threat. In recent years, China has used a variety ...
In this excerpt from her new memoir, Dame Susan Devoy remembers her turn as star contestant on the 2022 season of Celebrity Treasure Island. The most anxious time of every day was pre-elimination, when you knew this could be your final day on the show. I felt such contradictory emotions, ...
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If you didn’t hear this talk at the weekend, then I highly recommend it.
Linda Tirado is the author of Hand to Mouth: Living in Bootstrap America. The book began as a first person blog post about living in poverty in Utah that went viral.
“I will not apologise for my poverty.”
http://www.radionz.co.nz/audio/player/201801602
I listened to it as well Paul and I thought it was mind blowing, the courage and conviction that she spoke with and the “I will not apologise for my poverty” was very profound. Good luck with her future career as a writer representing the under-privileged.
9/11 Trumped Democracy.
Elementary, my dear Watson !
Finally snow on Ruapehu! And Cardona!
Cardrona
Yeah, been quite a turn around in the weather in last week, shorts and tee shirt and not a sign of snow on Remarks the week before. Still very early though for snow to stay there but the first good dump is usually late May.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/political/304495/plan-needed-to-tackle-climate-change-greens
what chance this will spark some action?
Not sure about sparking, but maybe more water wearing away at the rock.
Have to say I’m very glad that Shaw is co-leader. Having him, with his background in business, in that photo in a suit, is what is needed at this time. It’s his message to the business community and other power holders in society that is critical now. And the GP do have a plan that NZ could pick up and implement right now. Not as radical as many of us want or know is needed, but it’s a plan that those powerholders could get on board with.
https://www.greens.org.nz/news/press-release/time-government-do-right-thing-and-take-strong-action-climate-change
Last year’s discussion paper,
Options for domestic climate action to achieve a target of 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030
https://www.greens.org.nz/sites/default/files/YesWeCanPresentation.pdf
as an aside, for the people that think that the Greens believe electric cars will save the day,
No ‘silver bullet’ for climate change
“New Zealand’s top scientists have shown in this report that reducing emissions will require a re-think of the current strategy for agriculture, and that climate targets won’t be met by relying solely on tech-fixes like electric vehicles and methane inhibitors,” said Green Party Co-leader James Shaw.
https://www.greens.org.nz/news/press-release/no-%E2%80%98silver-bullet%E2%80%99-climate-change
he thinks that electric cars are part of the solution. You have to release a lot of GHGs to manufacture an electric car.
Yes, petrol or diesel too. If you are going to manufacture a car, make it an electric one. But if you read their policy interconnectedly it’s obvious that they value things like public transport and biking more and have policies on them too.
http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/electric-cars-green
They’re still a better option depending on which country your in.
It’s more that replacing the current fleet with electric cars means a huge amount of emissions when we should be powering down and not relying on individual car ownership. We need to travel less, because all travel has a GHG cost. More public transport, more walking/biking, more working and playing closer to home. It’s actually pretty recent in NZ for so many people to own cars (remember when Japanese imports were first allowed in in the 90s?).
I don’t have so much of a problem with the GP policy because NZ is patently not ready to give up its car culture yet and the GP don’t have enough power to be pushing that (thanks lefties who haven’t been voting for them!!). It’s just a pragmatic approach. If it takes us 20 years to transition to not relying on personal cars, we will still have lots of people in that time buying new cars, so they may as well be electric (the case can also be made for preserving the existing fleet for as long as possible, but there are problems with that too).
“It’s more that replacing the current fleet with electric cars ”
Those cars are going to get replaced regardless through the fact that companies tend to be on 3 to 5 year cycles and wealthy kiwis tend to be the same as companies. Add to that cars just don’t last now 20 years use would be rarity now.
As for depowering your right but it won’t happen willingly.
Which I’m guessing is part of what is behind the GP policy. If you have to replace a car anyway, why would you not make it electric in a country that already has power generation at 80% renewable and could pretty easily get it to 100% (GP policy is by 2030).
My car is 20 years old 🙂 I reckon if it had been looked after someone would get another 10 years out of it. If parts were available, it could last a lot longer. It’ll be the lack of parts that will eventually scrap it.
There was a post recently which relayed the scientific opinion that we need to get down to zero fossil fuel use by 2030.
Manufacturing new cars is out of the question, in this scenario.
Sure. But not politically feasible in 2016. If we want to do the best thing, we have to start where we are. You and I can push for faster and more radical change. The Greens can’t. I don’t mean to have a go at you, so please don’t take this as that, but honestly, the GP were that radical back in the day, and not enough people voted for them including many lefties like yourself. This is a group of people who were thinking long and hard about CC and resource depletion well before we were even aware it was an issue. The time for them to lead that charge is past. NZ had it’s chance at being progressive via govt and it blew it. It’s going to have to come from somewhere else.
However, I still believe that voting Green (or supporting them in other ways) gives us a much better chance of achieving any meaningful change. Can you imagine how these conversations would be going and what would be happening in the public mind if we had a govt that was taking CC as seriously as the Greens are, even if they’re not yet where we want or need them to be?
I also believe that if a movement arises outside of govt that shifts the public, then parties like the Greens will follow. They want to do the right thing.
I can see the logic in pursuing formal position and power and therefore justifying participating in the Parliamentary game of status quo pretend and extend.
But they’re not justifying pretend and extend. I wonder how much of the GP material you actually read.
It’s really a shame that people are so hung up on the electric car thing.
Edit, sorry, that sounded a bit harsh. I’m just aware that there are lots of misperceptions about the Greens from outside views.
“It’s really a shame that people are so hung up on the electric car thing.”
the hang up is created by a desire to believe that all we need to do is make a few changes here and there and we can carry on pretty much as before…….self delusion can be powerful
But the Greens don’t believe that so why get hung up on that one small part of their policy?
It’s like people not being able to let go of Labour proposing that we have to raise the Super eligibility age.
What’s the big deal?
Well, the big deal is that it provides a huge insight into how they look at the world, and what they believe the real issues are. As well as the kinds of solutions which are needed.
And it’s not good.
Thanks for that link. Really good to see people including manufacturing emissions in their thinking.
Shaw is going where Hooton would advice him to go…well suited and cap in hand to the business community
the Green Party however would do well to remember what Naomi Klein has to say about such liaisons in ‘This Changes Everything – Capitalism vs. the Climate’…from her massive research and evaluations this modus operandi fails
( whenever I see Shaw in a suit I think of the failed ‘Red Peak’ corporate flag and Shaw’s attempt to curry favour with jonkey nactional)
…it will be interesting to see whether the new Green Party strategy is a winner with it’s grassroots voters
Hooton would also advise dissatisfied lefties to frame their potential parties in a poor light, so I guess that makes you and Shaw alike (both apparently defined by what Hooton might suggest).
Shaw isn’t going cap in hand to the business community. He’s speaking their language so he can influence them. It’s smart strategy.
The grassroots membership chose Shaw as co-leader. The green vote has increased every year since Norman was chosen as co-leader (in a business suit!) and everyone was ‘oooh, sell out, you’ll lose the grassroots and fail’. The grassroots chose Norman as co-leader too. Looks to me like they know what they are doing as a party.
If we want the business and political classes to adopt an actual climate change action plan, what other way would that happen if it wasn’t being spearheaded by someone they could understand and relate with?
The beauty of the Greens is that beside and behind Shaw are a whole team of very skilled MPs from a variety of backgrounds and perspectives. Having one suit in that team is not going to destroy the party.
well I guess with Norman he wore his suit very casually ( as does David Cunliffe)and it was clear Norman was an activist in a suit
…with Shaw the suit wears him
at least Russel Norman’s suit was green
lol …the Green ELF look
What makes you think Shaw’s isn’t?
I have heard him interviewed a number of times and if I didn’t know who he was the last party I would pick him as representing would be the Greens….his presentation of issues almost appears to deliberately avoid Green party platforms….
An observation of a non activist voter….politics is perception so they say.
Interesting how we can hear such different things. Do you mind me asking what kind of interviews you heard?
mainly RNZ,couple TV…all relatively brief granted…..perhaps he improves with time
What you will be getting from RNZ and TV is the messaging from the Greens to the business and power holder communities.
His maiden speech in parliament is worth listening to/reading. Then read Gordon Campbell’s interview and assessment of the speech and what it means and why it doesn’t meant what Hooton thinks it means (and let’s never forget that Hooton wants everyone to think that Shaw is Blue because it will lessen the green vote).
https://home.greens.org.nz/speeches/james-shaws-maiden-speech
http://gordoncampbell.scoop.co.nz/2014/11/04/gordon-campbell-on-greens-mp-james-shaw-and-the-prospects-for-ecumenical-politics/
None of this makes sense to me. Why would you use your RNZ and TV time to message to the business elite.
It’s not just the business elite. And why wouldn’t you? It’s not like it’s the only way that the Greens talk to that part of society.
“Because I’m asking you about why *you* believe Shaw is Blue/Green, not what the media present”
I answered that in my original post……I am voter, not an active party member (like the vast majority of the electorate)….where do I get to “know” the politicians?…..by their public presentation.
If he is presenting as green/blue (your term) and he is not then it inspires little trust ..in other words, simply another politician……do we need any more simple politicians?
As things stand , and until some party with a vision and path form (unlikely imo to be any of the existing) the Greens will probably keep my vote next election despite Shaw
I don’t think he does present as a blue/green, I assumed that was what you meant when you implied that he wasn’t green. When I listen to him on TV or radio I can hear the green politics in what he says. I’m not put off by the suit.
For people that are put off, I’m pointing to evidence that he is real. What you appear to be saying is that he’s somehow misleading you by how he is on TV. I don’t really understand that, probably because all you’ve said is that you think he’s not green but you haven’t said why (and I assume you haven’t bothered watching the vid or reading the Campbell piece).
The Greens will always be open to speculation about who they are and if they are genuine, because they don’t fit into conventional notions of left/right politics. That’s why you can people like Turei and Shaw leading the same party. And that’s why Shaw can be pro market and pro intervention.
There’s not much Shaw can do to make himself more presentable to people who doubt him based on not much evidence (if he presented himself differently than he is, that would be him being false). I have to wonder here if it’s not the politics but the suit that is the problem. The criticisms I hear about Shaw are very similar to what people used to say about Norman.
whether your reasoning for his delivery on RNZ and TV is correct or not is irrelevant….its the perception it creates….anything M.Hooten has to say automatically instills an opposite view so no traction there….have read Gordon Campbell for a while and admire his work (though don’t always agree but hard to fault his research)….an exert from that piece you linked may bear re-examination…..
“Doesn’t a values-centred party always get hammered if it starts messing with its brand, in a belief this will lend them more credibility? “They do,” Shaw replies, “ And some of our people went and joined Mana for precisely that reason. There’s a political risk in anything you do. “ He points to the other current risk. “ If we remain outside of government permanently, I can’t see why anyone would want to continue voting for us. Like, I think it is now getting to that point.”
What’s your point about the Campbell quote? It’s not clear (and I think you have taken it out of context, but I’ll wait to hear what the point is).
If Shaw was say Tanzcos or Bradford, do you think he wouldn’t be creating an impression of some sort? I don’t get what is wrong with him appealing to the suit community. They have to change. Do you think they would listen more to someone who was more hippy or radical?
You appear to be saying that you personally believe that Shaw is Blue/Green based on what you see on brief interviews on TV. Did you listen to the speech and then read the Campbell interview? Because I’m asking you about why *you* believe Shaw is Blue/Green, not what the media present. If you already know that it’s a perception thing, why not go and find out who he really is?
“I don’t really understand that, probably because all you’ve said is that you think he’s not green but you haven’t said why (and I assume you haven’t bothered watching the vid or reading the Campbell piece).”
I have heard him interviewed a number of times and if I didn’t know who he was the last party I would pick him as representing would be the Greens….his presentation of issues almost appears to deliberately avoid Green party platforms….
An observation of a non activist voter….politics is perception so they say.
…and have read the Campbell piece a number of times.
“You appear to be saying that you personally believe that Shaw is Blue/Green based on what you see on brief interviews on TV.”
If he is presenting as green/blue (your term) and he is not then it inspires little trust ..in other words, simply another politician……do we need any more simple politicians?
mainly RNZ,couple TV…all relatively brief granted
“I have to wonder here if it’s not the politics but the suit that is the problem. The criticisms I hear about Shaw are very similar to what people used to say about Norman.”
lol…the suit goes with the job…I have no idea of what people said about Norman but I was never in any doubt as to what party he represented.
I think you may have answered the question……”And that’s why Shaw can be pro market and pro intervention.”….no, he cannot.
Ok, so this is an ideological issue for you. I think that’s why you can’t hear the green in what he says. Norman is also pro market and pro interventionist. It matters what people say about both of them, there’s precedence, and a much higher level of rw meme attack on the Greens now.
Repeating yourself doesn’t actually explain what you mean any better.
the repetition appeared to be required ….I thought it was expressed clearly enough….sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
and ideological?..meh…always considered myself a more of a pragmatist
Did anyone go to the anti-child-violence marches on the weekend?
No but support the outrage. This is a good example of how a specific easily identified issue results in vast outrage and intense responses, but a more complex issue like TPPA gets a puzzled muted response. Clever corporates and politicians have deliberately made the TPPA issues obscure and have buried the real issues too deep to find.
It doesn’t solve the problem though, white middle class outrage at a problem in poor brown neighborhoods. Getting people out of poverty would help and there’s probably loads of other things that could help too.
maui…if poverty causes child abuse, then there would be a shit load more dead babies.
Poor people don’t stomp on their children until their insides burst.
Bad or totally mad people do.
Hi Rosemary
I agree, I think that while being poor does play a big part (stress, worry causing excessive drinking etc) in domestic violence, I’m not sure how big a part it plays in the cases of child murder (its murder in my mind anyway) otherwise there would have been a lot of dead kids during the depression
I’m not so sure about that – firstly, I’m not even sure the data exists to make an assumption that there wasn’t a lot of dead kids during the Depression, and secondly we’re talking about somewhere around 8 kids a year being killed out of a population of 4 to 4.5 million. That level has been pretty consistent for at least the last ten years. So a major spike would be needed to demonstrate a meaningful difference in the rate, anyway.
On the flipside, we also know that assaults on children are much more frequent among poor kids.
Poverty doesn’t make people bad, but it might make them mad.
Yes true, theres probably a lot that happened in the Depression that we’ll never know about.
When you’re assaulting a child it doesn’t take much for a hiding to turn fatal but I guess the point I was trying to make was that by focusing on one issue (poverty) then other , potential, issues might get ignored
Yeah, but when you have a factor of 6 or 8 times the rate when talking about poor kids, you definitely need to look at that issue.
There aren’t a huge amount of other factors that even come close to that level, especially (I suspect) when normalised for deprivation.
That having been said, there’s still a level of abuse that crosses economic boundaries (a prominent and unapologetic sports broadcaster comes to mind), so of course there are other issues to consider.
But my perspective is that if we know a major correlative factor and have significant case studies and plausible arguments to attribute a level of causation, then fixing that factor is the low-hanging fruit in solving the bulk of the problem.
And in this case, it would solve a lot of other issues as well.
That’s a good point but since this problem has been brewing for years (decades?) it’ll probably take the same amount of time to fix, but whats a short term issue that could be fixed right now to make a difference?
Make benefits more accessible (e.g guards, forms, staff who treat you like muck, walk-in appointments). And boost every benefit by $50/wk.
That would put a dent in poverty right there.
I’d have no issues with an increase in the benefit paid out however I don’t think it’ll do anything to stop kids getting killed
Well, given the comparatively low numbers, you might be right (or at least not demonstrably wrong 🙂 ).
But it will have an effect on some of the 110-odd other kids who die every year, too. And a more testable hypothesis is that it might bring down the assault hospitalisation rate (some of the static nature of assault deaths could well be just because we’re better at keeping them alive after they’ve been savagely assaulted).
This is a complex situation. But it may be that financial poverty is often found in the same households where there are other types of poverty: social connections, lack of support etc, time.
And it could be that these are the types of “poverty” that result in increased domestic violence – not necessarily a lack of cash.
I think economic poverty exacerbates and even causes much of those lifestyle poverties.
An example is social poverty – going out costs money, even just visiting. Petrol, busses, that sort of thing. I have a friend who has to save up to get the bus across town. Similarly, one of my key social groups is a regular weeknight at the pub. Anywhere between 4 and 8 people turning up on the same night. And I spend about $20-$40 on a given night. Once a week, but if I were on the dole I would gradually lose contact with those folks.
Time? I can earn in one hour what someone else has to work for an hour and a half to get. And I don’t have kids.
My firm opinion is that this is all just another way Marx was right: the system alienates people from each other, down to even the family unit.
Reply to McFlock:
“I think economic poverty exacerbates and even causes much of those lifestyle poverties.”
I agree to some extent, but to emphasise – there are those without funds who do have extended social support networks, and who do have a work/life balance that improves their ability to withstand stress and manage difficulties. So the lack of finance is not a causation – although it may be present.
I agree Molly, that the breaking up of social networks that provided positive social, educational (e.g. childcare and establishing effective households) and cultural support is an important factor in domestic violence. New Zealand’s Pakeha history seems to me a case study, as does the changes to employment and social structures that began in the 1980s that disproportionately affected low income (especially Maori) families.
At a guess, this is more important in poorer families with transient work because they are less likely to afford to build alternative community networks in the same way that people moving for high income jobs may be able to do. Having said that, it would be interesting to know if the rates of domestic violence, depression and aggression are greater in high income families that have a history of moving around compared with those that have long term social ties in the community in which they live.
I’m not sure I agree with that logic, Molly.
Lots of smokers don’t get heart disease, and lots of non-smokers do get heart disease, but smoking still causes a substantial amount of heart disease.
Similarly, lots of poor people might have strong social networks, and lots of rich people might have weak or non-existent social networks, but I also know people whose poverty directly damages their social networks – embarrassed to visit or be visited because they can’t provide a box of bikkies, can’t afford transport, can’t afford to go out, etc.
Reply to McFlock:
Yes, having been in that situation myself, I agree there is reluctance on keeping some social contacts going because of lack of funds.
But the original premise, was that financial hardship is predicative of domestic abuse. I still think this is too simplistic.
It is the lack of social connections and reliable support that may be worth looking at.
@ molly
I’m a bit hazy on the word “predicative” – it might be a technical word, but I’m hoping that it was a typo for “predictive”as in “can be used to predict”.
In which case, that wasn’t my premise – like pretty much all aggregate data, one can’t really say “this person is poor, therefore they probably have encountered domestic violence as victim/perpetrator”. But with enough data, we could maybe say “if we lower poverty by 50%, we would expect xxx fewer DV hospitalisations”. I.e. the attributable risk of poverty as a factor.
Again, apologies if you used a word bigger than I am and I went off on a tangent.
“I think economic poverty exacerbates and even causes much of those lifestyle poverties.”
Indeed.
“When you’re assaulting a child it doesn’t take much for a hiding to turn fatal…”
Hmm…in the majority of cases where an abused child has died the abuse was repetitive. Postmortems showed older injuries, sustained before the injuries that killed the child.
These older injuries include skull and limb fractures, most of which went untreated. The child would have been in pain.
I can stretch my brain to see how a caregiver can ‘lose it’…a one off incident with tragic results, and there are a few of these in the gallery of the dead children, but not many.
And there is a real element of devious deception as well in these cases…denying, hiding, blaming siblings for the abuse, threatening others who might ‘nark’.
You’d normally associate ‘mad’ with a don’t give a shit anymore attitude…this is not the case.
Self preservation is strong in these perpetrators.
I have no answers…I would just like to see various agencies doing their job properly, so when there is a complaint or disclosure they act proactively and promptly. Put the child first.
I’ve got none either, I like the idea of dismantling CYPS and starting anew but my worry is the same people will be put in the same areas with the same reults
They will contract the work out. (with former cyfs and ngo staff in prominent positions with ‘providers’.)
As with the other group of not-quite-real-people in New Zealand. Disabled New Zealanders.
The scariest thing is with disability support…the very portal through which one accesses support is run under contracts with “budget control requirements”. The disabled people with the highest need for support fare badly.
a quick read on the ‘family’ during the great depression.
start here
http://www.wisegeek.org/what-were-the-effects-on-the-children-of-the-great-depression.htm
or here
http://ic.galegroup.com/ic/uhic/ReferenceDetailsPage/ReferenceDetailsWindow?displayGroupName=Reference&zid=7acfdc9d4390b9e20a4818ed155eab29&p=UHIC%3AWHIC&action=2&catId=&documentId=GALE%7CCX3404500173&source=Bookmark&u=nysl_ro_rush&jsid=11f17704edb9a99bc9
click through the three pages
http://newdeal.feri.org/eleanor/er2a.htm
or here
http://informationgreatdepression.weebly.com/affect-on-children.html
IF you wanted to know who the great depression affected the children, you could use that great search engine GOOGLE to help you find pages upon pages of information on the effect that hunger, homelessness, despairing parents, lack of schools/hospitals/ other public services had on children.
The Depression era is actually quite well documented, they did have a. newspapers, b. film, c. cartoons/caricatures, b. photography.
especially the photography is poingnant. it also pays to remember to see the parents not as 50+ years old, but often only in their late thrities. But i guess lack of food, water, basic sanitary hygiene and medicinal care in case of sickness will age one quickly.
http://www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/lange/
http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/depression/photoessay.htm
In regards to child abuse, poverty is the one and the first thing to tackle. Stable housing (average rental time in NZ is around the 12 month mark), will lead to stable communities where people know each other and in times of hardship might be able to help each others, will lead to better school attendance where abuse might be recognised early enough, will lead to better job attendance / abilities as the resources needed to move every 12 month might be used to actually find a. a better job, or b. some extra up skilling via night courses etc.
But without tackling poverty we have always poverty as an excuse, oh what can you do, these people are lazy, bludgers, having children only for the benefit etc etc etc etc etc etc, and of course other then lamenting the injured or dead child and locking up the abuser nothing much is done. Its easier that way.
@ianmac
“This is a good example of how a specific easily identified issue results in vast outrage and intense responses, but a more complex issue like TPPA gets a puzzled muted response…”
In terms of numbers attending, and actual engagement with the issues being marched about (rather than just along for a selfie op) I’d say the Moko March and the TPPA March and the Climate Change March had about equal turnout in Hamilton.
@Ad
Yes.
Hamilton.
Nearly abandoned the whole thing at the muster point as there seemed to be more interest in taking photos of self and groups….all grinning and laughing as if little Moko wasn’t dead.
I guess I’m getting old, tired, cynical and grumpy.
However….awesome turnout…despite the shitty weather.
Best speaker was Karen Morrison-Hume the Missioner for Anglican Action…(http://prisonforum2015.weebly.com/karen-morrison-hume.html is a paper she prepared for the Prison Forum which gives a very good picture of where she is coming from )
The other standout speaker was Cherie Kurarangi Sweeny…(http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/5072801/Child-abuse-nark-starts-Facebook-page)
And there was a short but effective speech from Darryl Brougham (http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11554286)
There was singing, then a haka….which I personally thought was utterly inappropriate under the circumstances.
And nobody remembered that Hamilton had done the march for (another) dead baby thing 16 years ago.
We marched for Mereana Edmonds. (http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=148329)
Some of us also decided to apply to be foster families, so the CYFs and other agencies could not use the excuse that there was a shortage of emergency foster homes to justify doing fuck all when a child discloses abuse.
I’m laughing….really.
I think the next slogan should be…”Hey, Child Protection Agency…What’s With the Phonecall???”
Another researched based public health stance bites the dust,
A large worldwide study has found that, contrary to popular thought, low-salt diets may not be beneficial and may actually increase the risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and death compared to average salt consumption. The study suggests that the only people who need to worry about reducing sodium in their diet are those with hypertension (high blood pressure) and have high salt consumption.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/05/160521071410.htm
We have a real problem here. The fat hypothesis (dietary fat causes high cholesterol causes heart disease) is now being shown to be wrong, yet the public health message to eat less fat was based on medical research and conventional processes whereby authorities take research and turn it into health policy. The fat is bad message is now going to have to change, but health authorities are still lagging far behind the research and the growing public movements to make the changes regardless.
The salt hypothesis looks set to go the same way. This is a problem with how science is done and how it is used. It’s not good enough to say that this is science working, see they’ve figured it out eventually, when we’ve had 30+ years of exactly teh wrong advice being given. People will have died and been made sick from that advice.
If this was tobacco companies instead of the US FDA, AMA etc, we’d be talking lawsuits by now.
It’s got nothing to do with how science is done.
It has however, got everything to do with how results or supposed results are reported and it’s also got everything to do with (largely vested interests) funding dodgy research or promoting deliberately twisted research findings.
You want the crap to end, then have all science funding come from the public purse and get the private sector out of it, or legislate that every piece of research funded by private interests must headline the source of the funding and provide a rigorous breakdown of the various funding bodies/companies in an attached summary… and have all public funding levels guaranteed.
“It’s got nothing to do with how science is done.”
That depends on what you think science is. If you think about it in the abstract as set of tools to explore and explain the world, maybe. But even if you solve all the vested interest problems from commerce, there is still the issue that the Western scientific mindset creates pathways to follow and those aren’t always good.
Any piece of research is fallible. It’s the believe that the scientific method itself is somehow pure that is also giving us really bad results. Scientists are humans just like everyone else and have bias. Take someone out of the commercial framework and you still have bias, often unacknowledged. The scientific method doesn’t prevent that, and IMO encourages it by the very nature of its core ethos. It doesn’t help that too many pro-science people treat science like god.
None of that is unsolvable, but the very idea that science isn’t the problem is the one of the things that is stopping us from sovling that.
And yes, how science is funded is central as well. But government departments and governments can also have bias and agendas, ditto NGOs. I agree about full disclosure.
Ancel Keys, responsible for the fat hypothesis, was a university scientist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lipid_hypothesis
One of his main studies was funded by the US Public Health Service,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Countries_Study
From what I remember, vested interests kicked in along the way, but those included the government and medical associations as much as drug companies and commerce. And it’s clear in hindsight that Keys was on a certain track from the start and that that led to the eventual fuck up.
Ancel Keys, responsible for the fat hypothesis, was a university scientist.
Yes. Same with the anti-salt fanatics. And all the public health academics peddling bullshit in New Zealand will be in the public sector as well. Industry funding of research is not the problem here.
Yep. Plus the GPs who are well aware of the problem but keep recommending and prescribing as if there weren’t one because of the direction from public health agencies and organisations.
I do think the pharmaceutical companies are a huge problem as well, with the whole bullshit that’s gone down around statins. Shifting the goalposts of what is unhealthy/healthy, and trying to use drugs with high serious side effect rates is largely their responsiblity. They’re the ones who will probably end up being sued (pretty sure they’ve lied about what they knew too).
Surely the truth can remain intact and be properly expounded and delivered to us from within massive hierarchies of money, power and prestige.
Ancel had a hypothesis. Nothing wrong with that. But Ancel did absolutely no science that I’m aware of to try to prove or disprove his hypothesis, and Ancel didn’t appeal to any scientific experiment or enquiry or, well…. anything, that might prove or disprove his hypothesis. He looked at some numbers for heart disease rates in a population and he looked at some numbers for fat intake in the same population. He inferred (I think that’s the right word) a causal link from the two sets of numbers. That’s not science. That’s not even in the ball park of science.
It’s, as Psycho Milt says below – “analysing (interpreting) survey results or other statistical sets…”
And in flies vested business interests to push, what they want to promote as, a scientific finding or conclusion. Bat shit and dog shit.
Good luck to you guys chasing this science around in circles. Ancient cultures already figured out what is required for good health and a long life.
No human can survive in a toxic, hostile environment for long.
Which ancient cultures had longer life expectancies than say the current American population, even with America’s current enormous dietary, substance abuse, environmental toxins and all kinds of other really unhealthy problems? What were the common causes of (non-violent) mortality in those ancient cultures? Do those problems still commonly cause death today?
mate, you think its such a superior lifestyle, you are free to go live like the typical American. Good luck.
But since you are over here, I think you already figured out something different.
Y’know, the same could be said of almost any culture… broad knowledges around unhealth and health.
But it’s the explanations or understandings, and how useful they are, that matter in the end. So, y’know, when science discovers that germs and not vapours are responsible for the likes of cholera, it’s not that the previous common sense explanation was wrong that mattered, so much as that a scientific understanding allowed for effective action to be taken against the disease…it was a more precise understanding.
I mean, London might have built sewers just to make the smell go away and so ended recurring cholera epidemics. But I doubt it.
And the Tibetan doctor who felt the pulse of a dying woman and gave her a fairly poetic and, to all intent purposes, accurate enough diagnosis or description of her heart failure and why it meant she’s going to die, was more useful on a number of levels than the western doctor who had diagnosed the same condition but rattled off a rather technical, and some may say sterile, prognosis for the woman to take on board.
And then again, without medical science, the Tibetan doctor would have been unable to operate had her condition been diagnosed sooner and been operable…
This whole black and white, or science and anti-science bullshit that flies around is just that….bullshit. Different knowledges have their place and uses, and none can be judged as blanket good or bad just by how close or far they seem to be from a scientific understanding.
That said, it would be pretty stupid to contend that vapours cause cholera…a field of knowledge exists that has given us an understanding so that we know vapours aren’t the cause.
And on the other hand (I don’t know if this is still the case) acupuncture works, but seems to be resisted by the western medical professional bodies on the grounds that no scientific explanation has been provided for its efficacy…or then again, maybe it’s just the same old story of a closed shop in operation 😉
Anyway. Fuck all cultists, say I.
Yes its very handy to know that bacterium cause cholera.
But most old cultures had long figured out that you don’t shit upstream of where you collect your drinking water.
As for the vapours causing cholera…IIRC only primitive western culture believed in that one.
I have no idea how many different knowledges there are or were around the disease. I’d be very surprised if only Europeans associated bad smell with illness though, and if only Europeans assigned a carrier capacity to smell.
Miasma huh, and then John Snow drew his picture.
And yet, for all its flaws, science still works better than some charismatic random just making shit up and getting a bunch of followers to believe it through a combination of placebo effect and confirmation bias.
After all, it is good science that ends up exposing the crap science or just outright bullshit and fantasy.
I have no idea who exactly you are referring to but you just dropped a gobsmackingly bad false binary into the conversation, one almost certainly based on ideology and prejudice not on evidence. I’m going to guess that you are referring to people people who practice and use non-Western medical health care (which is most people on the planet btw).
Scientists were critising Keys’ methodology right from the start. That’s nearly 70s years ago. And the public health message still isn’t changing, despite the problems now being very well known. I’ve been listening to non-medical people talking about the problems with the fat hypothesis long before Time magazine put it on their front page. Yes, they were relying on science, but the scientific community wasn’t doing anything about it (and were in fact ostracising and suppressing contrary evidence), so other communities of people did.
Basically your argument is that it’s ok to kill and maim people so long as afterwards you say oops, sorry, we were wrong, we’ve got a better idea now. Seventy fucking years. Then you have the gall to hate the alternative practitioners 🙄
People like Andre who are such huge backers of science as the ultimate way couldn’t possibly be victim to the very same biases and lazy thinking as he accuses others of.
As for the placebo effect.
It helps get a lot of people better. Even the orthopaedic surgeons are coming to that view.
Yep, the placebo effect is astonishingly effective. It’s made many a snake-oil salesman wealthy. Amazingly, it even works when the recipient knows it’s just a placebo, though not as well as when both the “practitioner” and recipient are fully emotionally invested in it. Modern medicine really should put a lot of effort into how to use it better.
My pain medicine lecturer said he considered it every practitioners ethical responsibility to maximise their use of the placebo effect. Safe, cheap, effective.
Like the big pharma corporations.
The difference being that some of big pharma’s products actually do work as claimed, better than a placebo. Not all of them get dodgily pushed onto the market on the basis of cherry-picked studies produced and reviewed by …ahh… financially compromised parties, just some of them. I figure that by the time a product has been on the market for 20 or 30 years, there’s been enough guinea pigs gone before me that the hokey products will have been weeded out.
IMO the brand new “block buster” drugs are the riskiest…
Scientists were calling bullshit on Keys’ assertions from the beginning, yes. And a whole shifting edifice of non-scientific business and government power pushed it along and…threatened the livelihoods or careers or reputations of any scientist who stood up to say “Hey! – Just a minute”
In a different area of science, it happened to Hanson when he piped up with a politically unpalatable truth about global warming.
And so most scientists get on within their field of research and do (probably) good science and keep their mouths shut. You blame individual scientists for not taking it in the neck? I’d call their reaction kind of normal human behaviour and nothing peculiar to the field of science or to scientists.
Besides which, scientists are usually involved in narrowly demarcated areas within fields of research, and their findings are gathered up and compiled by those that stand on the cusp between science and public policy. And they (those on the cusp) are under pressure to say politically palatable stuff.
That’s a systems failure, not a failure of science.
Sometimes I read these criticisms of science and scientists and it’s as though on the one hand they are being accused of playing at god, and then on the other they get condemned for being merely human. Can’t have it both ways.
This is a problem with how science is done and how it is used.
It’s a problem with treating social science research as though it were science. All of these anti-food studies involve people analysing survey results or other statistical sets for evidence to back an agenda, from Keys down to the present day. That’s not science.
Can you explain that some more?
Sorry, only just got back to this thread. The scientific method involves hypotheses that can be disproven, and a means of disproving them. That applies even to stuff where you can’t set up an experiment to disprove your hypothesis, eg Haldane’s reported response to the question of whether the theory of evolution was science because what could disprove it? “Rabbits in the Pre-Cambrian.”
The problem with all this diet-related epidemiology is that there’s no useful way to disprove anything. It all involves studies in which you can’t genuinely isolate the factor you’re interested in (because you can’t fully control what a large number of people eat for a long period), which means if any study refutes your pet theory you can find umpteen ways in which the study was “flawed” and those results shouldn’t be taken seriously. The whole field is a mess of correlation = causation errors and confirmation bias. There’s no hypothesis involved for which any disproof that’s found can’t be weaseled out of.
Worse, the agendas seem to come first. The last Listener had a piece on how to live longer in which Jennifer Rowan refers (without citation) to a study in which Type-2 diabetics who replaced red meat with various carbs supposedly improved their blood glucose levels, to which anyone with any idea of the chemistry involved can only think “What the fucketty-fuck-fuck?” What mechanism could even be proposed for that happening? These studies are referred to as though they were science, but any scientist would have alarm bells shrieking in their ears on reading a paper claiming that.
Edited: please note the diet-related epidemiology part. Epidemiology for infectious diseases does a great job.
yup
A huge amount of medical research relies on epidemiology. Likewise public health policy. Are you saying it’s all bogus? What constitutes proper research?
The problem with what Keys did wasn’t that he used data from people’s experiences, it was that he manipulated that data to suit his agenda.
OMG Scotland just won a Sevens round against South Africa!
New Zealand team really need to improve before Rio if they keep running fourth in every round.
Elijah Wood: ‘Hollywood in the grip of child abuse scandal similar to Jimmy Savile’
Hollywood is in the grip a child sexual abuse scandal similar to that of Jimmy Savile in Britain, Lord of the Rings star Elijah Wood has claimed.
The 35-year-old former child actor said paedophiles had been protected by powerful figures in the movie business and that abuse was probably still taking place.
In an interview with the Sunday Times, Wood said he had been protected from abuse as he was growing up, but that other child actors had been regularly “preyed upon” at parties by industry figures.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/22/hollywood-in-the-grip-of-child-abuse-scandal-similar-to-jimmy-sa/
It does look like more stories are emerging, first a trickle then a torrent perhaps. You only have to look at Roman Polanski and how feted he is and that’s out in the open so I’d imagine theres a lot more happening
Been a few allegations about Woody Allen as well
Yes susan sarandon was very up front about woody allen with her views….interesting times
And some still make movies:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Salva
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryan_Singer#Personal_life
When Corey Feldman made the allegations I don’t think anyone would believe him but when Elijah Wood and Susan Sarandon start talking it might start going somewhere…
Also, if you’re interested: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3677412/
Have a look at Allen’s daughter’s account of him abusing her, and what happened to her when she spoke out. Her brother is a journalist and has written recently about the complicity in the press in not covering stories about famous people.
Roger Waters (of Pink Floyd) has described how US musicians are scared of speaking out about the Palestinian issue, believing that their careers will be destroyed if they do. The connection between Hollywood and other forms of mass media with the Zionist regime isn’t a secret, put pointing it out tends to attract the outrage of the sayanim.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/roger-waters-pink-floyd-israel-boycott-ban-palestine-a6884971.html
My advise to any young person contemplating a career in the creative industry: Don’t.
Unless you plan to work as a sell out for big fuck off corporate entities in PR, advertising, surveillance, etc.
Ironically for our society to survive we need more people creating in the not for profit arts and literature, not less.
this is a good read.
One does simply not forget having been homeless, and in the last few days i again (as so many times before) realised just how lucky i am.
At home, a nice fire, a happy partner, a happy pooch and warm meal waiting for us.
the worst night in my life was spend in an unfinished building in November in Germany. I was seventeen and i believed that i would freeze to death that night. One simply does not forget that shit.
And shame to a society that wants to pretend that it does not affect them, that it will not happen to them, and that those to whom it has happened deserve it cause they took a ‘bad decision’ or other bullshit that society wants to make up in order to feel better.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/304469/'i've-been-homeless-i-know-how-it-feels‘
Following up on my post here linking to the interview I and Vinny Eastwood had with William Black banker hunter extra=ordinaire and as people are waking up to the horror of having a Wall street banker for a prime Minister, I thought Id republish a series of articles written from 2007-2008 Called the Financial Tsunami by William Engdahl on how we got here.
Here is part 1:
Can the moderator please delete this version of my comment? I’ts missing a link
Convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, Bill Clinton and Donald Trump – sordid connections of the global elite?
How much support is Donald Trump going to get from ordinary ‘anti-establishment’ Americans when this story spreads?
https://news.vice.com/article/the-salacious-ammo-even-donald-trump-wont-use-in-a-fight-against-hillary-clinton-bill-clinton
” Palm Beach billionaire Jeffrey Epstein is a financier and political donor. He is also a convicted sex offender who is the subject of ongoing litigation from at least a dozen of his then-underage victims.
Flight logs show Bill Clinton traveled at least 10 times on Epstein’s private jet, dubbed the “Lolita Express” by tabloids, and he is widely reported to have visited Little St. James, Epstein’s private island in the US Virgin Islands. That’s where, according to attorneys for Epstein’s victims, many of the worst crimes against minors were committed by Epstein and friends who traveled there with him.
In a 2011 interview with her attorneys, Virginia Roberts, one of the teenagers preyed upon by Epstein, said he had told her he had “compromising” information on Bill Clinton and that the former president “owes me a favor.”
Yet despite Bill Clinton’s ties to Epstein and Trump’s stated willingness to make Clinton’s sexual past an issue in the campaign, Trump will almost certainly avoid bringing up Epstein’s name. Because in addition to haunting Bill Clinton’s past, Epstein also haunts Trump’s.
* * *
Trump’s attorney Alan Garten told VICE News last week that the presidential candidate had “no relationship” with Epstein, and only knew him because Epstein was a member of Mar-A-Lago, Trump’s private club and residence in Palm Beach.
“A lot of people hung out there, including Jeffrey Epstein,” Garten said. “That is the only connection.”
But according to someone with intimate knowledge of the situation, Trump and Epstein appeared to have a somewhat stronger connection.
“I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy,” Trump told New Yorkmagazine in a 2002 profile of Epstein written three years before Epstein began to be investigated. “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it — Jeffrey enjoys his social life.”
….”
In my view – sickening.
Penny Bright
2016 Auckland Mayoral candidate.
…@ Penny…well I guess everyone who knew and thought Rolf Harris ( the Queen) and Jimmy Saville and Bill Crosby were good guys did not suspect their true nature and that they were sexual predators…this is how pedophiles and predators get away with these crimes for so long..they are experts at hiding what they do in secret
…so just because Trump came into contact with Epstein and thought he was a good guy does not mean Trump knew his real nature or crimes and endorsed them.. or partook in them!
Bill Clinton however does seem to have a history…
Following up on my post here linking to the interview I and Vinny Eastwood had with William Black banker hunter extra-ordinaire and as people are waking up to the horror of having a Wall street banker for a prime Minister, I thought Id republish a series of articles written from 2007-2008 Called the Financial Tsunami by William Engdahl on how we got here.
Here is part 1
Hi travellerev,
Do you know of any sources that documents these claims made by Vinnie Eastwood?
http://www.thevinnyeastwoodshow.com/vinny-mr-news-eastwoods-blog/john-keys-real-past-exposed-must-see-please-share-6mins
This is what a war on the weak looks like
http://www.gaynz.com/articles/publish/2/article_18297.php
Just one more reasons why civil disobedience is the only answer.
Anybody else seen this. 14000000 owed to the IRS is a lot of money.
http://www.leagle.com/decision/In%20CACO%2020090616012/IN%20RE%20MARRIAGE%20OF%20FAIRBANK
Munter McMutton maybe should check that the cheque cleared.
Not a good look having Tamati Coffey’s husband calling a journalist a nobody, even if it was an off-the-cuff remark. It shows what they really say about people behind closed doors. ‘Nobodies’ vote and make up the missing million. When are we going to get an effective, people-focused opposition? I think Andrew Little is doing a good job but he will need MPs and candidates to back him up. Not ‘somebodies’ who think the plebs are ‘nobodies’.
Yeah they knuckleheads.
While National play the on again off again tax cuts, seems Labour are doing similar with capital gains.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/money/80272365/tax-increases-on-the-table-for-labour-for-2017-campaign
https://youtu.be/YT5G3Cq_d2Q
Not sure what your point is. Labour are saying they’d like to change the tax structure in NZ to make it fairer, including looking at taxing property speculation. Seems like a good idea to me.
Not to long ago Little ruled out a capital gains tax, now it’s back on the table.
Areas of high demand and short supply (in which vendors set the asking price) will allow vendors to pass the burden on, adding to the cost of housing.
Does that still seem like a good idea to you?
The property market has to be sorted out anyway, shouldn’t stop Labour rearranging the tax system to be fairer.
Citation for Little ruling out a CGT?
“The property market has to be sorted out anyway”
Indeed. However, a capital gains tax is not the solution. Moreover, sorting out the property market will cease soaring capital gains. Eliminating the problem.
Don’t you think adding to the cost of housing should make Labour stop and think?
Taxing capital gains is about making taxation fairer. Why should some forms of income be taxed and not others?
“Don’t you think adding to the cost of housing should make Labour stop and think?”
I’m pretty sure that Labour think all the time and that like other parties weigh up the pros and cons. Looking at one aspect of a tax policy in isolation is not useful IMO, nor is looking at that one aspect out of context. I’m guessing this is why they’re forming a Tax Working Group, to look at the whole thing.
btw,
Labour leader Andrew Little would not rule out a comeback for the policies in the future, but said if it got into Government in 2017 it would not introduce them without campaigning on them again in a future election.
Nov 2015
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11541749
The working group would look again at a capital gains tax (CGT), dropped from Labour’s platform when Andrew Little took over as leader in late 2014, and a land tax.
A capital gains tax would not be part of the party’s platform in 2017, but it was not off the table for the working group.
May 2016
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/money/80272365/tax-increases-on-the-table-for-labour-for-2017-campaign
That looks consistent to me. Perhaps we should leave this conversation until the 2020 election.
“Why should some forms of income be taxed and not others?”
For starters, if the burden is going to be passed on, those attaining the income won’t bare the tax burden. Is that fair?
Moreover, the goal of sorting out the housing sector (which would take one term according to Little) is to eliminate soaring gains, therefore, with that achieved there would be little if any income to tax.
In a stable housing market, properties that aren’t maintained can actually decrease in value, resulting in losses.
Of course it shouldn’t be looked at in isolation. However, one can’t afford to overlook the risk of adding to the cost of housing when one’s goal is to improve the cost of housing, thus the need for a rethink.
In 2015 (as your first link highlights) Little said if Labour got into Government in 2017 it would not introduce them without campaigning on them again in a future election.
However, while it has been dumped and no longer on the party’s campaign platform, there was no longer any mention of them not introducing them later in that term when the working group reports back – see my link above (which is also your second link).
I’m guessing the use of a tax working group is similar to the ploy Lockwood Smith highlighted a number of years back – see link below.
http://www.newshub.co.nz/nznews/lockwood-smith-secretly-recorded-suggests-national-has-hidden-agenda-2008080518#axzz49SO2cIZ7
Labour don’t seem to want to let this one go.
Militrary helicopter, snow mobiles, sourced to rescue trapped snowed in drivers caught over night in Otago. Not so much S.Auckland overnight car sleepers.
Hooten worried, they might get pregnant, but not worried enough to call on govt to get them into housing, as he scoffed that one car refugee got pregnant while living out of their car. I mean, like they must have been in a benifit, and givt intervention in private citizenship was a sicial impertive for his social fascist.
yes Hooton was particularly strident on RNZ…and particularly sickening really…his making light of the housing crisis for New Zealanders….and he got away with it….you were left with the impression that there was NO REAL PROBLEM!…but there is a PROBLEM…and there is a CRISIS!…for Gods sake can’t nine-to-noon get on an effective counter to Hooton’s spin !!!???
However this interview with Danielle Bergin by Kathryn Ryan was MUCH better than Hooton’s spin…
“Once homeless herself, Danielle Bergin talks about, Island child, the housing trust she set up in East Auckland, and why more and more people are forced to sleep rough. She traces the start of the current housing crisis back to when WINZ took over housing assessments from HNZC.”
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon/audio/201801690/from-sleeping-rough-to-providing-shelter
Instead of limiting foriegn and new investor kiwis to building new homes, Key pushed the inevitable housing bubble burst out a decade, with the consequence that the bottom of the housing need had no place to live.
This is all on Key, but we’ll never hear it since media is run by those locked into bubble economics.
Some good insight here
https://youtu.be/szIGZVrSAyc
Ha, watched this last night!!!
What was shocking was how undemocratic the EU officials were, and how little power the elected EU finance ministers had in the face of the unelected Troika bureaucrats.
It was a good and insightful discussion.
‘Beware what you wish for: Russia is ready for war’
https://www.rt.com/op-edge/344002-beware-russia-war-us/
…”Russia does not want – and does not need – war. Yet the “Russian aggression” narrative never stops. Thus it’s always enlightening to come back to this RAND corporation study, which examined what would happen if a war actually took place. RAND reached an “unambiguous” conclusion after a series of war games in 2015-2015; Russia could overrun NATO in a mere 60 hours – if not less – if it ever amounted to a hot war on European soil. …
…”The Threat Narrative rules that Russia has to meekly accept being surrounded by NATO. Russia is not allowed any response; in any case, any response will be branded as “Russian aggression”. If Russia defends itself, this will be “exposed” as an unacceptable provocation. And may even furnish the pretext for a pre-emptive attack by NATO against Russia…
Worth remembering that “NATO” is at least 75% US forces.
yep…meantime
‘Architects of disastrous Iraq War still at large’
https://www.rt.com/op-edge/343174-time-conversation-iraq-war/
…Everything we were told by the neocons in the lead-up to war was false. To quote the title of a book by the antiwar British MP Peter Kilfoyle, there were Lies, Damned Lies and Iraq.
‘Saddam has existing and active military plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons, which could be activated within 45 minutes’.
Horse manure.
‘Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction program is active, detailed and growing’.
Hogwash.
‘Saddam Hussein… has the wherewithal to develop smallpox’.
Garbage.
‘We know that Iraq and al-Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade…We’ve learned that Iraq has trained al-Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases’.
Baloney.
‘The threat is very real and it is a threat not just to America or the international community but to Britain.’ Has the trash been collected yet?…
Worth remembering the shitty wee deal anticipating the territorial and political division of Romania, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Finland into spheres of influence.
It was the ordinary imperial/colonial behaviour of the day. From dividing up China to dividing up the middle east to dividing up europe.
A ratepayer-backed insurer is seeking permission to hike directors’ fees by 15 per cent, even though it is unable to write new business.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/80292689/cash-strapped-council-insurer-seeks-15-per-cent-director-fee-hike
Thoughts?
Picking up from a comment on the Guest post yesterday
My only issue with inflated numbers on this site is figuring out what causes them so that I can make them drop back to reality. I’m interested in measuring what is actually happening rather than doing a Cameron and inflating numbers.
That is why we have 4 systems counting the numbers. Google analytics, statcounter, wordpress stats, and the log system. Because they operate in different three ways, I usually manage to spot the one(s) that are misbehaving.
For instance, a month ago, I was bemoaning (to the authors) that we seemed to be having inflated google analytics figures. I eventually tracked that down to a double hit in the mobile stats with two seperate plugins requesting the google analytics on the same account – one using async and the other using sync. Found and fixed about two weeks later. It was obviously an error simply because none of the other count mechanisms showed the same bump.
Back in 2012 we had some issues with facebook making a ‘pageview’ every time that someone scrolled past our page. That was showed up in both analytics and statcounter, to a lesser extent in wordpress stats. However it only showed up in awstats on the logs as an aberration with aborted page reads. It took weeks to find and a few months to fully work around. But I eventually worked around it by making statcounter only work on the footer. After a few months facebook obviously fixed whatever problem they had.
Then there are the external changes – especially with getting the growth in persistent visitors. Late last year and early part of this year, we had a minor drop in the growth of google search traffic as they did some significiant changes in their search algorithms. It hit some sites pretty hard – probably why Whaleoil dropped their public stats earlier this year.
I was having a look at this post last month (repetitive as it was to read)
http://www.gsqi.com/marketing-blog/march-2016-google-algorithm-update/
I particularly liked the
Which essentially describes the problem that Whaleoil has most likely to have suffered (ie why they don’t show their figures in public any more). The last few times I have been over there, I’ve really noticed just how crappy the massive ad footprint makes it as a site to discuss issues on. I suspect that it causes pretty major bounce rate because people can’t find most of the post and certainly would have to look to find the comments.
I blame it on Cameron’s chronic inability to do anything in a moral fashion (eg dirty politics, trying to buy a criminal hack on my computers), stay out of court (eg his ignorant and eventually failed attempt to appeal to the Court of Appeal) and his need to make both a living and pay his court costs off the site. He just seems to keep stupidly hoiking ads on to the site and filling the site out with basically rubbish posts without considering what it makes him look like to a google SEO long term. The site has probably been relegated to trash level with recent google search changes.
Just to give you an idea how important google is for our readership growth. Today we have had about 17,500 page views according to wordpress. Incidentally it was a bit less than 17k according to statcounter and analytics. I’m not even going to mention the multiple thousands difference between sessions / visits / etc or each engines supposedly similar measurements of how long people stay on site.
Of those ~17k, ~2800 came from referrals.
About 1600 came from google search in various forms. ~800 from facebook (more than half being the tail end of one widely spread post). 135 from twitter (which is one of the reasons I generally ignore it).
260 from all others. Search sites (38 from yahoo and 14 from bing), blog sites (bowalley at 47 and no minister at 31), news websites (25 from scoop), and nothing much else.
But more importantly, we get almost all new users who stay in via google search. Of the new readers who visit more than 10 times over the following 30 days after first entering the site, usually about 80% come in from google. About 35% start by googling “The Standard” or some variation indicating word of mouth, about 40% from a query about non-current topics, and the remainder from topical topics – which used to be the mainstay. Obviously google search is pushing further back into the excellent posts here in the past from the rate that posts older than 6 months old have been rising. Gotta love google analytics 🙂
Facebook starts us with a lower number of new repeat users. And twitter just gives us people who already know of us (one of the other reasons I tend to ignore it – it appears to be quite self-referential).
Moreover most of the sustained abnormal boost in readers from searches in recent months that has come from NZ. I think that google localised their search results a bit further and made them a lot better targeted. Certainly I’ve noticed much reduced bounce rates both here and from some kiwi destination points offshore. We’re generally getting a lot less bounce traffic from offshore – including those audiences with massive bounce rates from the US overnight. We’re a definitively kiwi site with about 90% of our page view traffic coming from a small country with 4.4 million people. Random searches by humans for loose associations from the US shouldn’t be sent to us.
Anyway, the site is looking pretty healthy for the month. We should do as well as we did last year (and May was the top for 2015 at 537k pageviews) and far higher than May 2013 at the same point in the political cycle – 364k pageviews.
Even more interesting to me is the breaking of long standing periodic patterns. The last couple of years have shown we don’t drop much in winter any more which used to be a depressing yearly trait. I think we have also started to lose that summer vacation drop off as well.
But there are some pretty clear effects in the ‘day’. Since 2013, the times that the site starts and finishes are now quite different. We now start getting traffic at 6am and it goes through pretty solidly to 11pm with a lunch time spike. A far cry from the days when it was largely being read during work hours from 9am to 6pm.
Part of that I think is due to the amount of mobile traffic we now get. That lunchtime spike is has a large chunk of cell phones – about 50%. Probably why google now penalises sites without a good mobile version. Urrgh – for example the micro print of The Daily Blog in its desktop splendour or kiwiblog when I forget to manually insert m. instead of www. There is a reason why some sites say “mobile friendly” when you read google results on a mobile & kiwiblog doesn’t really deserve it.
Anyway, I’m starting to think about how I get the system to not fall over during the usual election month tripling of the site traffic next year and the usual headache of planning to get enough increase in data and speed to withstand both the election year and the subsequent 40-50% boost in annual traffic.
All done for total operational cost of about $250 per month largely from those who do a small voluntary, seldom mentioned, and completely unforced donations over a year (hint: you can donate here).
Of course a lot of skilled unpaid volunteer time, and the deliberately uncosted donation of part of my hotted up and over specced home computers (PBTech love me) helps.