“She made it clear from the outset that Maori and Pacific students did not deserve to be destined to a life of under-achievement and this view spread to become very contagious with the leaders and practitioners in the sector, as well as most teachers.”
So this ‘clarity’ from ‘Larger-Class-Sizes’ Parata was unprecedented then was it ? No one had ever visited that concept ? Right you are then…….nah…….it’s the “Sir” thing that’s the tip off.
“very contagious…….” ? FFS “Sir” Patrick what are you on ? The contagion here is post-truth pandering by bought and paid for shills. All wrapped up in a National Party box with a bow. That said it’s extremely worrying that there remain (apparently and according to “Sir” Patrick) teachers whom to this day and despite the benign attendances of Ms Parata, think that Maori and Pacific students DO deserve to be destined to a life of under achievement. That shows the shit of the singularly rewarded shill in my book.
He’s a nasty right wing ideologue. I was in an audience once where Pat Lynch praised Deng Xiaopeng, the butcher of Beijing, calling him “the guy who got democracy started in China.”
Aloha BM. You’re right. Those ‘bludging-bastard-bennies-having-a-beer-at-Xmas’……..those feeding out of their car boot in a scummy attempt to replicate a Clevedon polo meet…….they’re next on my list. Which will render you and your fellow trolls quite redundant. Meri Kirihimete BM !
While performing his Resignation Ritual on December 5 2016, Key’s voice broke.[4] It was the same hint of hurt meekness that occurred when reporters would not get with the program at the National Party’s campaign rally in Auckland in late August 2014 and instead pressed Key with questions over the Dirty Politics scandal.
…
To sum up, the Smiling Assassin’s political capital was in steady decline and he knew it.
Mainly because of rising concerns about poverty & inequality.
My hunch is that a three steps forward, one step backwards political waltz stratagem is in play. The advancement toward world government through the construction of Neo-Colonial super-states such as the European Union and mega economic super-bloc deals such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership Treaty, are deeply unpopular projects.[3] I think the Neo-Colonial puppet masters have decided the best way to get there is through a strategic sabotage of societies, fanning the flames of prejudice across multiples fronts, and in the process trigger multiple civil wars and major wars between major powers.[4]
But the point in part one about Key’s squeaky voice break, being a tell, is probably significant – just not sure what exactly it tells.
Politics offering fascination (me too a guilty consumer) there is bound to be colourful ‘anecdata’ swirling around. As to why King John decided to serve less time as PM than did Helen Clark. And there is. F….ous F……ting, viz. “Fabulous Fascinating”, stuff.
Key’s sudden, unexpected resignation is very odd. The best explanation so far is that he judged his popularity was on the slide, and best quit while ahead.
However, that doesn’t seem to explain the suddenness of the resignation – having interviews lined up, then cancelling them at the last minute to announce his resignation.
There must be something else, and it may be of significance to our understanding of politics in NZ in the 21st century.
The full, soundly evidence-based, story of John Key’s time in politics is still yet to be told.
Hager has covered some of it – tip of the iceberg. But there’s more to be told about why JK decided to enter politics when he did, and why he suddenly decided to leave.
I have no doubt, though, that Hager’s books will be re-visited over the next few years as more information comes to light. And extra pieces of the puzzle will be put in place. More of the bigger picture will be exposed.
Phosphate. All living things need it. We spread massive amounts around as fertilizer, which washes into waterways and fucks them up. Our current cheap sources are likely to run short in the foreseeable future. So here’s an effort to slow all that waste by engineering plants to use the phosphate in ways that animals and humans end up wasting less of it.
Nauru’s natural phosphate reserves once made millionaires of the entire population. Now they’re among the world’s poor, as sick and destitute as the refugees they’re taking in.
The Lynch piece on Parata will likely not be beaten as the Christmas /End of Year Vomit Stakes.
I had the experience of working under 18 Ministers of Education.
Parata stands out as being able to play the bureaucratic game and the bully game manipulated through that, the ability to cash in on the scumbag work of her predecessor and an unerring determination to follow through and do what she thought should happen.
In those senses she has been like Ovation of the Seas.
In the sense of learning and kids, innovation, and having New Zealand’s education system once again a world leader, she has been a leaky dinghy heading for rocks.
And on top to that, a scornful, blind, bereft pilot, forging on. i
Jonathan Freedland writes an article with unintended irony.
Freedland himself is a master of fake news and his newspaper the Guardian spreads propaganda about a whole range of things.
Heh. Trump’s doctor (y’know, the cartoon character from a bad sci-fi movie) goes “meh” over the idea of Trump dropping dead in office.
“If something happens to him, then it happens to him,” Bornstein told STAT. “It’s like all the rest of us, no? That’s why we have a vice president and a speaker of the House and a whole line of people. They can just keep dying.”
People have resorted to sleeping in public toilets as Tauranga’s homeless crisis deepens, with a report finding that mothers fear losing their children if they admit to having nowhere to live.
The report stated it was impossible to pin down the extent of the city’s homeless problem because of “a chronic lack of reliable and consistent local data”.
However the report, written by researcher Rachel Hatch for the Tauranga Homelessness Steering Group, did identify nine specific issues associated with homelessness in the city. It also made 19 recommendations to help fix the problem.
Ms Hatch wrote the report after a seven-day survey of homeless people and a count of families sleeping in cars on a Sunday night in September when freedom camping rules were being relaxed.
“They had sheets and blankets covering the windows and children would peep out as you drove past,” Ms Hatch said of the car families.
“They often prefer areas with security and lighting, not just for safety reasons but because their young children get frightened in dark areas and cannot settle.”
Among the findings were that the risk of becoming homeless had increased in Tauranga, and that homeless mothers were reluctant to approach social agencies out of fear of having their children uplifted………
….Key findings
• The risk of becoming homeless in Tauranga has increased
• The city’s homeless are either “transitional” or “chronic”
• Families with children are becoming “transient and unsettled”
• Mothers hide their homelessness, fearing CYF
• A men’s shelter has given single men some security
• There is a lack of emergency accommodation for women and children
• Homelessness is undermining health and social services
• A lack of affordable housing is a problem for low-income people
Recommendations include need for more and better monitoring of homelessness in the long term
Plus:
Structural
…
The monitoring approach above is combined with staff training to ensu
re that the data collected is accurate and in accordance with the New Zealand definition of homelessness.
Homeless women with children and women who face imminent eviction are able to access help without the fear of having their children uplifted by Child Youth and Family
Lack of documentation when accessing services are a significant barrier for homeless people. The criteria required to access services needs to be low
It may be cheaper in the long term to offer loans or payments to those facing eviction, with a poor credit rating or tenancy history
…
Institutional:
Emergency accommodation is supplied for all members of the family so that they can be together. …
The variety of social housing stock is increased.
Tauranga …However, they are being held back and progress stifled simply by a lack of affordable housing supply.
…
Supported accommodation is provided for those in a chronic and long term state of homelessness
Relationship and Personal
Again information sharing between health and social service providers can help identify those who are in an unstable housing environment.
In order to reach out to homeless people, in particular women and children, young people and older people it is recommended that a mobile “Housing Clinic” service is established.
…
It is recommended that the housing clinic utilises well established umbrella organisations such as Te Manu Toroa and Te Tuinga Whānau
It is recommended that homelessness people are not presented as passive victims, unreliable or deficient, but to give voice to the complex factors that have also caused the housing crisis here in Tauranga.
I think it is a failing of the NZ Herald article that it did not give detailed coverage of the recommendations.
I gather The Herald has run a sob story about two separate mothers living in motels at the governments expense [ $1000/$2000 per week ] because it doesn’t have the power [ I assume ] to deduct rent before it pays benefit.
“What you do not see you do not miss” is a financial policy I have followed for decades … pity these folk who do not pay their miniscule rent of State house cannot be educated with elementary living on whatever they earn / are given by the generous taxpaper. arrears of several thousands before being evicted … a stupid system it seems to me.
It disturbs me much more than Pat’s comments that a government department supposed to look after folk appears powerless to really help them live in the system. Letting them get deeper and deeper in the financial mire….I know from experience of years ago that once you miss one payment it is very hard to catch up again and “auto payments” are a simple and effective if long term way of getting out of trouble.
Like the rent due plus five or ten dollars extra to slowly pay off the arears.
The National Party has taken a 4.5 percentage point hit since the departure of former Prime Minister John Key on December 5, but the Labour Party continues to poll below 30% despite a 5.5 percentage point jump in support, according to a regularly volatile opinion poll conducted by Australian pollster Roy Morgan.
In the month since the previous Roy Morgan poll, which put National at 50% and Labour on 23%, National has dropped to 45.5% support and Labour jumped to 28.5%. Combined with the Greens, unchanged at 14.5%, a centre-left coalition commands 43% support, just short of National.
Winston Peters’s New Zealand First party was down half a point to 7.5% support.
Edit: NBR has the exact same article, but slightly different headline..
The ODT is owned by a family of 1%ers.
It’s cutting staff and is getting more and more articles from the Herald.
It certainly seems to have less ‘infotainment ‘ than Stuff or the Herald , but it ain’t left wing.
I’ll take your word for it as I gave up reading/buying it years ago .
Cutting staff is common to most print media as people do not have time to read newspapers which are a dying aspect of life.
You only have to look at its leader page cartoons to see which way they are slanted
I think I get your drift but know little about either of the two ladies
At the time I was a keen supporter of ACT as a meaningful alternative to The Alliance with socialism but that was then not the current ACT.
As indicated in the article, the poll is unlikely to reflect the full impact of Key’s departure. Therefore, there is a good chance National’s support will further fall.
But once again, it also shows Labour shouldn’t be complacent.
“Though air travel emissions now account for only about 5 percent of warming, that fraction is projected to rise significantly, since the volume of air travel is increasing much faster than gains in flight fuel efficiency. (Also, emissions from most other sectors are falling.)”
I’m pleased to see you’re finally recognising the similarity between Russia’s bombing campaign against Syrian civilians and the USA’s similar activities in Iraq a decade or so earlier. Muslims certainly have noticed it, as witnessed by the assassination of the Russian ambassador to Turkey this week. The Russians are going to need US-levels of security from now on.
Hundreds sleep outside Auckland City Mission, night after night, over the Christmas period
At 10.30 pm Gordon Brown is snuggled under a green tartan sleeping bag, preparing for a long night camped out on Hobson St.
By 3.30 am he’s fifth in a line of hundreds, all waiting.
He’s not queuing for the latest iPhone or the opening of a new fashion boutique – Brown will wait 10 hours on the footpath in the hope of a full belly for Christmas.
Health beneficiary Gordon Brown arrived at 10 pm on Wednesday night, 11 hours before the City Mission would open its doors.
The Auckland City Mission dole out food packages from 9 am during the Christmas season, limited to 350 per people day.
“I’m hoping for sizzlers and maybe some real good milk – like there was last year,” said Brown, a health beneficiary in his third year queuing overnight for a donated bundle of basic necessities and the odd festive treat.
Gordon Brown’s son ferries hot coffee to his father from the car, as people wait all night outside Auckland City Mission …
By 11 pm on Wednesday 20 people are gathered, bundled in bright fluffy blankets and sitting on cushions or deckchairs.
Brown said any dawn arrivals would be forced to turn back, because the limited packages were distributed on a first in, first served basis.
Auckland City Mission fundraising manager Alexis Sawyers said there was less to go around this year because donations had been sluggish – while first time visitors “in desperate need” had increased.
30 years of the poison of neo-liberal ideology has reduced us to this……..
Emergency departments across New Zealand face a grim and growing annual Christmas tradition, dubbed “granny dumping” by hospital staff.
Each Christmas season, elderly people are being left at hospital emergency departments as the families who would normally care for them take off for a summer break.
New Zealand Resident Doctors’ Association national secretary Deborah Powell confirmed “granny dumping” was a growing reality.
“It is a thing – we are seeing more of it. Every year that passes, we are seeing a bit more.”
The practice amounted to “leaving granny at the doorstep [of ED], so to speak”, she said.
Figures were hard to come by, as she had heard only anecdotal evidence from her members, and no work had been done on investigating the scale of the problem.
“The cause of it isn’t well understood. We really haven’t investigated this fully enough. In fact, it is about time we did.”
It was clear that it put extra strain on hospitals, which would not turn elderly people out if it was not safe, she said.
That meant hospitals sometimes had to admit elderly people, despite their not having any pressing medical need.
Christmas was the worst time as many community support services, normally available to the elderly, closed down for the holiday period.
The problem highlighted the “strain families were under that brings them to this point”, with community “wraparound services” reduced over the break, Powell said.
New Zealand Nurses Organisation chief executive Memo Musa said the union was not aware of granny dumping, but recognised that there was a problem around affordable respite care for families.
“This extended holiday period can be stressful and lonely for some people, and it would be improper for us to assume that they would use the ED for respite care.
“We do have an issue in New Zealand reported by our members about the need for more affordable and accessible respite care in the community. Respite care gives family caregivers a break
Iain Macwhirter: Dumb Brexit means 2016 will go down as the year the Union died
“Compare and contrast those previous revolutionary years with the 2016 Brexit revolution. Its most distinguishing feature is its ignorance. It’s not so much red, white and blue Brexit, but stupid Brexit. It has no philosophy. There is no John Locke of Brexit, nor Tom Paine, no Karl Marx, no Jean Monnet. The intellectual driving force of Brexit has been the Ukip’s laughing gnome, Nigel Farage. There is no wisdom behind Brexit, only a vague fear of foreigners and a mantra of “taking back control.”
The eight-cylinder engine block on display at the Japan International Machine Tool Fair (JIMTOF) (seen above) shows one possible application of this technology, although it was just a partial build, in part, to show areas where the additive process was able to reduce weight. An entire 9.6-kg version of this engine block produced from AlSi10Mg material (including supports) was completed in 95 hours (90 hours for sintering and 5 hours for milling). Total production time, including support design, programming, fixture design/manufacturing, setup, and so on was 15 days. Although this might sound like a long time, company tests on a five-axis machining center showed it would take approximately 22 days to machine the engine block from a solid blank, including time for fixture design/manufacturing, programming, machine setup and so on.
Sure additive manufacturing is great for low-volume production, and to make components with complex internal structures that are very difficult to make other ways.
But it’s a very very long way away from displacing current common techniques for high volume production. 3D printing a plastic part will never compete with banging parts out of an injection mold with 20 second cycle times, complete with perfect surface finish straight out of the mould. Or forged or cast or stamped metal parts. When those parts are to be produced in high enough volumes to justify the tooling.
But that’s my point. Complex stuff that used to be made through milling is better off made through 3D printing. Just one of those machines can produce 90 engines a year. Any modifications to the engine can be easily introduced at any time.
It can produce more than engines and it doesn’t use people to produce anything. Once the design process is set up it’s fully automated. This effectively removes economies of scale and so such justifications as “produced in high enough volumes to justify the tooling” go out the window.
And the 3D printer can produce better variants of the stamped and forged stuff because it can be optimised for maximum strength while keeping the use of resources down using topological optimisation.
And the final bit is, of course, that as R&D goes into 3D printing the speed will also increase. I remember when home printers used to take minutes to print a page and now the speed is measured in pages per minute. It really won’t be long until the speed of 3D printing matches stamping and forging and the cost of the machine to do so will be cheaper than setting up the tooling for the stamping/forging and it will be far more useful.
Just out of curiosity, have you ever spent time in a high volume factory? And watched 3D printers at work? And handled and tested parts that come off the different kinds of machines?
90 engines per year is impressive if you’re, say, a Formula 1 team. But it’s very underwhelming if you’re a manufacturing engineer used to producing thousands per day from much simpler equipment.
Yes there will be a market for those people willing to pay a premium for the advantages of 3D printed parts, and there will be situations where 3D printed parts are cheaper due to low volume.
But the technological leaps needed for producing parts by additive methods to become competitive with conventional techniques are so enormous I just don’t see it happening for high volume items. Let alone questions around whether energy use and material costs for additive methods can come down to being competitive with conventional methods. Coz every time I’ve had anything to do with industrial lasers, I’ve always been struck by how much energy they use compared to how little gets delivered to the workpiece to do useful work.
90 engines per year is impressive if you’re, say, a Formula 1 team.
And if you’ve got 1000 units it’s 90,000 per year. How many new engines does NZ need per year?
And each unit is capable of producing more than engines. Anything of any complexity up to 1300kg from a variety of materials.
But it’s very underwhelming if you’re a manufacturing engineer used to producing thousands per day from much simpler equipment.
You’re missing the point. That much simpler machine needs to be justified by volume of the piece produced because it only produces that one item. The 3D printer doesn’t as if you don’t need an engine today then you can have it produce something else. In other words, the 3D printer is in use all the time any way. Amount of volume for each item is immaterial when the next item coming out of the printer can be a different item.
And the 3D printer will be cheaper to start off with and won’t need major engineering to produce a new item. Just a few days of programming.
But the technological leaps needed for producing parts by additive methods to become competitive with conventional techniques are so enormous I just don’t see it happening for high volume items.
Those technological feats are already happening. That’s what the article in my comment highlighted.
Let alone questions around whether energy use and material costs for additive methods can come down to being competitive with conventional methods.
Energy, especially renewable energy, is incredibly cheap compared to the physical resources used.
These post and comments of mine are to say that NZ needs to do the R&D into 3D printing and start manufacturing here in NZ using it else we’re going to find that we’re going backwards even faster. And it should be the government that does it.
The thing is, I’ve worked with the reality of what 3D printing produces. Starting from 20 years ago. Yes, the technology has made huge improvements in that time. But to get to the point of being competitive with conventional processes for volume manufacture of simple parts, the technologies would still need to make Moore’s law type improvements. But it’s more like the linear progress being made in, say, paper printing technology, or automotive technology (excluding electric).
Like most new technologies, it’s being massively oversold. Yes, it’s now possible to 3D print an engine block or crankshaft. But they don’t tell you it still needs all the critical surfaces finished by conventional techniques. They also don’t tell you that the material properties achieved will be well down on conventionally processed parts, with just a few exceptions.
So yes, it’s a useful technology if you’re RocketLab or Team New Zealand, wanting to build a small number of complex parts where there’s a huge value in minute weight savings. But F&P Healthcare won’t have much use for the technology outside their R&D department. Because to make a few hundred plastic cases or metal chassis, it’s still going to be cheaper and quicker to knock up a die and mount it in an injection moulding machine or press. Although it may end up cheaper and quicker to make the die by 3D printing.
As far as what our industrial strategy should be, well, we’re too small to do it all ourselves. We do have some notable players in niche markets, such as magnetic technologies with Buckley Systems and Magritek. Where there’s a lot of intellectual content but fairly low production volumes. There’s plenty of other similar niches we could be going after.
But just because we could make anything we wanted to here by a high cost low throughput process like 3D printing doesn’t make it a good idea to forego getting those items from overseas where there’s enough volume to justify setting up much lower cost processes.
But they don’t tell you it still needs all the critical surfaces finished by conventional techniques.
The device linked to in my first comment does that.
They also don’t tell you that the material properties achieved will be well down on conventionally processed parts, with just a few exceptions.
That piece of data is a few years out of date.
But F&P Healthcare won’t have much use for the technology outside their R&D department.
For now but not for much longer.
As far as what our industrial strategy should be, well, we’re too small to do it all ourselves.
And that to is significantly out of date. Productivity is now so high that we actually can do everything ourselves. 3D printing will add to that productivity.
But just because we could make anything we wanted to here by a high cost low throughput process like 3D printing doesn’t make it a good idea to forego getting those items from overseas where there’s enough volume to justify setting up much lower cost processes.
And that shows a fundamental misunderstanding of economics. You’re still thinking in terms of money rather than in terms of resources used. Using less resources is always cheaper than using more resources.
3d printing will come into it’s own when/if we go to space in a big way, you could send dozens of preprogrammed printers to build habitats etc the possibilities are endless
Wrong. It’s already coming into it’s own. There’s that bike that I linked up above, GE and Rolls Royce are using it to produce jet engines and the NZ firm RocketLab are using it to produce their rocket engines as an assembly line item.
II.
“Post-truth politics” is just what we have been living under. The “monstrous worship of facts,” as Wilde called it, the tyranny of technique, is an avoidance of truth.
In a narrow sense, it is possible to question whether a given statement is true or not — that is, whether it is factual. But what would it mean to ask whether liberalism, socialism, or fascism were factual? Each of these discourses can organise a set of factual claims in their support, but their truth or falsehood seems to reside elsewhere, in the register of desire. When politics obscures this, when we can no longer inquire as to the truth of the discourse by which we are governed, our politics has become “post-truth”.
The media are accusing citizens, of living in a ‘post truth’ world because the normally compliant masses are no longer buying into the medias own “Truth’ narrative.
Witness the resounding defeat of the free market Blairites in the UK in the face of straight out aggression from all MSM, through to the Democrats worst election defeat in US political history, again with the full and unashamed support of pretty well all MSM.
No I think this post truth narrative is just the pathetic death rattle of a media that has been totally and utterly exposed as being almost powerless to shape the world to it’s preferred image….hence, rapidly becoming redundant to it’s pay masters.
This incredible and rapid shift in power is in my opinion the real news of 2016.
Woot, woot. Awesomeness. Time to show the rest of NZ what a by election is like without the dirty politics.
Two of my most favourite ladies in Parliament, dang it’s going to be a win either way, and a wonderful platform for them to inform the public on their party policies.
Personally one of the reasons I voted for Greens last election was because I wanted to see Julie-Anne stay in the house, she is an incredible talent. And now the media will give her even more exposure wooo hoooo. Loving this MOU, loving the Nat’s not in this race.
Both of these ladies are classy as, there will be no personal politics, and no drama between them. Just loads of media exposure for them and their parties, and a mighty difficult but fine choice for the voters in Mt Albert.
Go get em girls 😀 either way the voters are going to be so thrilled with their new MP, that is a given.
The media will highlight every tiny bit of difference to foment the picture of disunity. Labour will struggle to get out the vote and National voters may well vote for Genter. No good news options for Labour
The research is interesting. The researchers interviewed leaders in corporations and public services. It seems such leaders across the world are worried that the old “normal” has broken down. Worrying things are happening unexpectedly – from Brexit, to Trump, etc. and the leaders no longer know how to act, or lead.
The leaders are worried about the growing anger against corporate and political leaders, by consumers. that’s the interesting part.
Gowing says leaders need to be open to new ideas – to the unthinkable and unpalatable. But he and the other speakers at the conference still seem to think ity’s unthinkable that the whole system needs changing.
gower says what needs to change is the culture and mind-set of corporations – not the systems. But cultures and mindsets are not separable from systems and structures.
The CEOs seem to be looking for ways to exploit the young, and customers, to provide them with new ideas. But they want to use these ideas for business as usual – to maintain them in their positions, wealth and power.
Interesting though, that corporate CEOs and shareholders are very worried about the rising anger of various sections of the public.
“worst election defeat in US political history”.
Don’t you think you are going just a little over the top?
Don’t you think, at least for the Presidential election, that 1964 and 1972 were rather more spectacular thrashings?
Or do you have something else in mind?
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What are police for? "Fighting crime" is the obvious answer. If there's a burglary, they should show up and investigate. Ditto if there's a murder or sexual assault. Speeding or drunk or dangerous driving is a crime, so obviously they should respond to that. And obviously, they should respond to ...
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Graham Adams writes that 20 years after the land march, judges are quietly awarding a swathe of coastal rights to iwi. Early this month, an hour-long documentary was released by TVNZ to mark the 20th anniversary of the land-rights march to oppose Helen Clark’s Foreshore and Seabed Act. The account ...
David Farrar writes – The Herald reports: Suspended Green MP Darleen Tana has passed an unpleasant milestone: she has now been absent for as many parliamentary sitting days as she has been present for this year. Tana is on full pay while she is suspended, and will benefit from a ...
Peter Dunne writes – It is no coincidence that two Labour should-have-been MPs are making the most noise about public sector cuts. As assistant general secretary of the Public Service Association, Fleur Fitzsimons has been at the forefront of revealing where the next round of state sector job ...
Bryce Edwards writes – It’s becoming a classic case study for why lobbying deals with politicians need greater scrutiny. Former National Minister Steven Joyce runs a lobbying company with a major client – the University of Waikato. The University desperately wants $300m+ of taxpayer funding to establish a ...
This is one of the (extra) weekly columns on music or movies. Plenty of solid analyses of Possession exist online and most of them – inevitably – contain spoilers. This column is more in the way of a first-timer’s aid to getting your initial bearings. You don’t need to have ...
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With an election due in less than nine months, Britain’s embattled PM, Rishi Sunak, gave a useful speech earlier this week. He made a substantial case for his government, perhaps as compelling as is possible in the current environment. Quite an achievement. His overall theme was security, first pulling ...
Open access notablesPublicly expressed climate scepticism is greatest in regions with high CO2 emissions, Pearson et al., Climatic Change:We analysed a recently released corpus of climate-related tweets to examine the macro-level factors associated with public declarations of climate change scepticism. Analyses of over 2 million geo-located tweets in the U.S. showed that climate ...
You can be all negative about these charter schools if you want, but I’m here to accentuate the positive. You can get all worked up, if you want to, by the contradiction of Luxon saying We’re going to make sure that every school in the country is teaching exactly the same ...
Losing The Room: One can only speculate about what has persuaded the Coalition Government that it will pay no electoral price for unreasonably pushing ahead with policies that are so clearly against the national interest. They seem quite oblivious to the risk that by doing so they will convince an increasing ...
Name suppression decisions can be tough sometimes. No matter your views on free speech, you have to be hard-hearted not to be torn by the tug of the competing arguments. I think you can feel the Supreme Court wrestling with that in M v The King. The case for ...
The Merchants of Menace: The Coalition Government has convinced itself that the “Brahmins’” emollient functions have become much too irksome and expensive. Those who see themselves as the best hope of rebuilding New Zealand’s ailing capitalist system, appear to have convinced themselves that a little bit of blunt trauma is what their mollycoddled ...
When National first proposed its Muldoonist "fast-track" law, they were warned that it would inevitably lead to corruption. And that is exactly what has happened, with Resources Minister Shane Jones taking secret meetings with potential applicants:On Tuesday, in a Newsroom story, questions were raised about a dinner Jones ...
Buzz from the Beehive One day – hopefully – we will push that Russian rascal, Vladimir Putin, beyond breaking point. Perhaps it will happen today, when he learns that Foreign Minister Winston Peters is again tightening the thumbscrews. Peters announced further sanctions, this time on 28 individuals and 14 entities ...
How Labour’s and National’s failure to move beyond neoliberalism has brought New Zealand to the brink of economic and cultural chaos.TO START LOSING, so soon after you won, requires a special kind of political incompetence. At the heart of this Coalition Government’s failure to retain, and build upon, the public ...
“Members of Parliament don’t work for us, they represent us, an entirely different thing. As with so much that has turned out badly, the re-organising of MPs’ responsibilities began with the Fourth Labour Government. That’s when they began to be treated like employees – public servants – whose diaries had ...
It’s becoming a classic case study for why lobbying deals with politicians need greater scrutiny. Former National Minister Steven Joyce runs a lobbying company with a major client – the University of Waikato. The University desperately wants $300m+ of taxpayer funding to establish a third medical school in New Zealand, ...
Time To Choose: Like it or not, the Kiwis are either going into AUKUS’s “Pillar 2” – or they are going to China.HAD ZHENG HE’S FLEET sailed east, not west, in the early Fifteenth Century, how different our world would be. There is little reason to suppose that the sea-going junks ...
Henry Ergas writes – When in Randall Jarrell’s Pictures from an Institution, a college president is accused of being a hypocrite, the novel’s narrator retorts that the description is grossly unfair. After all, the man is still far from the stage of moral development at which the charge ...
David Farrar writes – Radio NZ reports: The Education Review Office says too many new teachers feel poorly prepared for their jobs. In a report published on Monday, the review office said 60 percent of the principals it interviewed said their new teachers were not ready. ...
New Zealand’s economic performance and the PM’s vision Michael Reddell writes – When I wrote yesterday morning’s post, highlighting how poorly both New Zealand and its Anglo peer countries have been doing in respect of productivity in recent times (ie, in the case of New ...
Hi all,Firstly - thank you! You guys are awesome. The response I’ve received to last night’s mail has been quite overwhelming. It’s a ghastly day outside, but there are no clouds in here.In case you didn’t read my email and are wondering what on earth I’m talking about you can ...
If there was still any doubt as to who is actually running this government – and it isn’t the buffoon from Botany – then this week’s announcement of a huge spend up on charter schools has settled the matter. While jobs and public services continue to be cut in the ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Gaye Taylor As widespread drought raises expectations for a repeat of last year’s ferocious wildfire season, response teams across Canada are grappling with the rapidly changing face of fire in a warming climate. No longer quenched by winter, nor quelled by the ...
Half of Christchurch City Holdings Ltd’s directors and its chair resigned en masse last night in protest at Christchurch City Council’s demand to front-load dividends File Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The chair of Christchurch City Council’s investment company and four of its independent directors resigned in protest last ...
The University of Waikato has reworded an advertisement that begins the tender process for its new $300 million-plus medical school even though the Government still needs to approve it. However, even the reworded ad contains an architect’s visualisations of what the school might look like. ACT leader David Seymour told ...
As a follow-up to the Rings of Power trailer discussion, I thought I needed to add something. There has been some online mockery about the use of the same actor for both the Halbrand and Annatar incarnations of Sauron. The reasoning is that Halbrand with a shave and a new ...
This isn’t quite as dramatic as the title might suggest. I’m not going anywhere, but there is something I wanted to talk to you about.Let’s start with a typical day.Most days I send out a newsletter in the morning. If I’ve written a lot the previous evening it might be ...
Buzz from the Beehive The promise of tax relief loomed large in his considerations when the PM delivered a pre-Budget speech to the Auckland Business Chamber. The job back in Wellington is getting government spending back under control, he said, bandying figures which show that in per capita terms, the ...
Yesterday de facto Prime Minister David Seymour announced that his glove puppet government would be re-introducing charter schools, throwing $150 million at his pet quacks, donors and cronies and introducing an entire new government agency to oversee them (the existing Education Review Office, which actually knows how to review schools, ...
Seeing that, in order to discredit the figures and achieve moral superiority while attempting to deflect attention away from the military assault on Rafa, Israel supporters in NZ have seized on reports that casualty numbers in Gaza may be inflated … Continue reading → ...
David Farrar writes – Newstalk ZB report: The man responsible for a horror hit and run in central Wellington last year was on a suspended licence and was so drunk he later asked police, “Did I kill someone?” Jason Tuitama injured two women when he ran a red ...
Muriel Newman writes – Former US President Ronald Reagan once said, “Freedom is a fragile thing and it’s never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by way of inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation.” The fight for ...
Why Courts should have said Waitangi Tribunal could not summons Karen Chhour Gary Judd writes – In the High Court, Justice Isacs declined to uphold the witness summons issued by the Waitangi Tribunal to compel Minister for Children, Karen Chhour, to appear before it to be ...
Bryce Edwards writes – The number of voices raising concerns about the Government’s Fast-Track Approvals Bill is rapidly growing. This is especially apparent now that Parliament’s select committee is listening to submissions from the public to evaluate the proposed legislation. Twenty-seven thousand submissions have been made to Parliament ...
An average of 166 New Zealand citizens left the country every day during the March quarter, up 54% from a year ago.Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The economy and housing market is sinking into a longer recession through the winter after a slump in business and consumer confidence in ...
The government has made it abundantly clear they’re addicted to the smell of new asphalt. On Tuesday they introduced a new term to the country’s roading lexicon, the Roads of Regional Significance (RoRS), a little brother for the Roads of National (Party) Significance (RoNS). Driving ahead with Roads of Regional ...
School is outAnd I walk the empty hallwaysI walk aloneAlone as alwaysThere's so many lucky penniesLying on the floorBut where the hell are all the lucky peopleI can't see them any moreYesterday morning, I’d just sent out my newsletter on Tama Potaka, and I was struggling to make the coffee. ...
Hi,I wanted to check in and ask how you’re doing.This is perhaps a selfish act, of attempting to find others feeling a similar way to me — that is to say, a little hopeless at the moment.Misery loves company, that sort of deal.Some context.I wish I could say I got ...
I have hitherto been fairly quiet on the new season of Rings of Power, on the basis that the underwhelming first season did not exactly build excitement – and the rumours were fairly daft. The only real thing of substance to come out has been that they have re-cast Adar ...
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a ...
“The thing is,” Chris Luxon says, leaning forward to make his point, “this has always been my thing.”“This goes all the way back to the first multinational I worked for. I was saying exactly the same thing back then. The name of our business needs to be more clear; people ...
Buzz from the Beehive It’s been a momentous few days for Children’s Minister Karen Chhour. The Court of Appeal has overturned a High Court decision which blocked a summons order from the Waitangi Tribunal for her. And today she has announced the Government is putting children first by introducing to ...
In 2014 former Australian army lawyer David McBride leaked classified military documents about Australian war crimes to the ABC. Dubbed "The Afghan Files", the documents led to an explosive report on Australian war crimes, the disbanding of an entire SAS unit, and multiple ongoing prosecutions. The journalist who wrote the ...
Rob MacCulloch writes – According to the respected Pew Research Centre, “In seven of eight [European] countries surveyed, the most trusted news outlet asked about is the public news organization in each country”. For example, “in Sweden, an overwhelming majority (90%) say they trust the public broadcaster SVT”. ...
David Farrar writes – Kata MacNamara reports: Details of Tony Blakely’s involvement in the New Zealand Government’s response to the pandemic raise serious questions about the work of the Covid-19 Royal Commission of Inquiry over which he presides. It has long been clear that Blakely, a ...
Chris Trotter writes – Are you a Brahmin or a Merchant? Or, are you merely one of those whose lives are profoundly influenced by the decisions of Brahmins and Merchants? Those are the questions that are currently shaping the politics of New Zealand and the entire West. ...
RNZ reports – It’s supposed to be a haven of healing and spiritual awakening but residents of the Kawai Purapura community say they’ve been hurt and deceived. It’s the successor to the former Centrepoint commune, and has been on the bush block opposite Albany shopping centre since 2008. It ...
TL;DR : Here’s the top six items climate news for Aotearoa-NZ this week, as selected by Bernard Hickey and The Kākā’s climate correspondent Cathrine Dyer. Usually we have a video chat to go with this wrap, but were unable to do one this week. We’ll be back next week.Several reports ...
The Transport Minister has set a hard 'fiscal envelope' of $6.54 billion for transport capital spending. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The economy is settling into a state of suspended animation as the Government’s funding freezes and job cuts chill confidence and combine with stubbornly high interest rates to ...
To be precise, the term “anti- Zionism” refers to (a) criticism of the political movement that created a modern Jewish state on the historical land of Israel, and to (b)the subjugation of Palestinians by the Israeli state. By contrast, the term “anti-Semitism” means bigotry and racism directed at Jewish people, ...
This is a re-post from the Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler Because hurricanes are one of the big-ticket weather disasters that humanity has to face, climate misinformers spend a lot of effort muddying the waters on whether climate change is making hurricanes more damaging. With the official start to the hurricane ...
Yesterday the Mayor released what he calls his “plan to save public transport” which is part of his final proposal for the Council’s Long Term Plan (LTP). This comes following consultation on the draft version that occurred in March which showed, once again, that people want more done on transport, especially ...
And it's a pleasure that I have knownAnd it's a treasure that I have gainedAotearoa’s coalition government is fragile. It’s held together by the obsequious sycophancy of Christopher Luxon, who willingly contorts his party into the fringe positions of his junior coalition partners and is unwilling to contradict them. The ...
The Select Committee hearing submissions on the fast-track consenting legislation is starting to become a beat-up of regional councils. The inflexibility and slow workings of the Councils were prominent in two submissions yesterday. One, from the Coromandel Marine Farmers Association, simply said that the Waikato Regional Council’s planning decisions were ...
Back in April, the High Court surprised everyone by ruling that Ministers are above the law, at least as far as the Waitangi Tribunal is concerned. The reason for this ruling was "comity" - the idea that the different branches of government shouldn't interfere with each other's functions. Which makes ...
Buzz from the BeehiveTolling was mentioned when Transport Minister Simeon Brown announced the government was re-introducing the Roads of National Significance (RoNS) programme, with 15 “crucial” projects to support economic growth and regional development across New Zealand. All RoNS would be four-laned, grade-separated highways, and all funding, financing, and ...
or the past 14 years, ever since the Spanish government cheated on an autonomy deal, Catalonia has reliably given pro-independence parties a majority of seats in their regional parliament. But now that seems to be over. Catalans went to the polls yesterday, and stripped the Catalan parties of their majority. ...
David Farrar writes – Radio NZ report: Labour Party leader Chris Hipkins said the Electoral Commission should make sure the system ran smoothly and “taking away the right of thousands of people to vote” was not the answer. “Thousands of people enroled and voted on the day. If ...
The Government’s introduction of legislation that would enable landlords to end tenancies with no reason marks a dark day for the 1.4 million people who rent their home in Aotearoa. ...
The Minister for Mental Health has found the Suicide Prevention Office and mental health support for 111 calls slipping through his fingers, says Labour spokesperson for Mental Health Ingrid Leary. ...
Today’s justification from the Minister for Children for scrapping protections for our tamariki was either a case of ignorance or deliberate deception. ...
The Green Party says the Government’s misguided policy on gangs will fail, following the announcement of the establishment of a national gang unit and district gang disruption units to target gang activities. ...
“With Police pay negotiations still unresolved after six months in Government, Mark Mitchell has today rolled the Commissioner out for a rebrand of their approach to gang crime,” Labour police spokesperson Ginny Andersen said. ...
The Government bringing back 50 charter schools will not increase achievement and is a distraction from the core mission of the education system, Labour education spokesperson Jan Tinetti said. ...
Te Pāti Māori is showing extreme concern over the Environment Select Committees adoption of a lucky dip draw to determine hearings for the Fast Track Approvals bill. Of the 27,000 submissions, 2,900 requested to present. All organisations will be heard; however, the remaining 2,350 submitters will be subject to a ...
Today New Zealand First will introduce a Member’s Bill that will protect women’s spaces. The ‘Fair Access to Bathrooms Bill’ will require, primarily in the interest and safety of women and girls, that all new non-domestic publicly accessible buildings provide separate, clearly demarcated, unisex and single sex bathrooms. This Bill ...
The Green Party is welcoming Climate Change Minister Simon Watts’ continuation of Hon. James Shaw’s cross-party work on climate adaptation, now in the form of a Finance and Expenditure Committee Inquiry. ...
The National Government plans to cut 390 jobs at ACC, including roles in the areas of prevention of sexual violence, road safety and workplace safety. ...
The Government has been caught in opposition to evidence once again as it looks to usher in tried, tested and failed work seminar obligations for job-seeking beneficiaries. ...
The Green Party is welcoming the announcement by the Minister Responsible for RMA Reform Chris Bishop to approve most of the Wellington City Council’s District Plan recommendations. ...
David Seymour has failed to get the sweeping cuts he wanted to the free and healthy school lunch programme, Labour education spokesperson Jan Tinetti said. ...
Hon Willie Jackson has been invited by the Oxford Union to debate the motion “This House Believes British Museums are not Very British’ on May 23rd. ...
Green Party MP Hūhana Lyndon says her Public Works (Prohibition of Compulsory Acquisition of Māori Land) Amendment Bill is an opportunity to right some past wrongs around the alienation of Māori land. ...
A senior, highly respected King’s Counsel with decades of experience in our law courts, Gary Judd KC, has filed a complaint about compulsory tikanga Māori studies for law students - highlighting the utter depths of absurdity this woke cultural madness has taken our society. The tikanga regulations will compel law ...
The Government needs to be clear with the people of the Nelson Marlborough region about the changes it is considering for the Nelson Hospital rebuild, Labour health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall said. ...
Ministers must front up about which projects it will push through under its Fast Track Approvals legislation, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
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. ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has announced that the Government will make it easier for lines firms to take action to remove vegetation from obstructing local powerlines. The change will ensure greater security of electricity supply in local communities, particularly during severe weather events. “Trees or parts of trees falling on ...
Wairarapa Moana ki Pouakani were the top winners at this year’s Ahuwhenua Trophy awards recognising the best in Māori dairy farming. Māori Development Minister Tama Potaka announced the winners and congratulated runners-up, Whakatōhea Māori Trust Board, at an awards celebration also attended by Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Finance Minister ...
"On the 27th of March, I sought assurances from the Chief Executive, Department of Internal Affairs, that the Department’s correct processes and policies had been followed in regards to a passport application which received media attention,” says Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden. “I raised my concerns after being ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins has announced the appointment of three new District Court Judges, to replace Judges who have recently retired. Peter James Davey of Auckland has been appointed a District Court Judge with a jury jurisdiction to be based at Whangarei. Mr Davey initially started work as a law clerk/solicitor with ...
Associate Education Minister David Seymour is calling on the Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) to put ideology to the side and focus on students’ learning, in reaction to the union holding paid teacher meetings across New Zealand about charter schools. “The PPTA is disrupting schools up and down the ...
Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly today announced the appointment of Craig Stobo as the new chair of the Financial Markets Authority (FMA). Mr Stobo takes over from Mark Todd, whose term expired at the end of April. Mr Stobo’s appointment is for a five-year term. “The FMA plays ...
Surf Life Saving New Zealand and Coastguard New Zealand will continue to be able to keep people safe in, on, and around the water following a funding boost of $63.644 million over four years, Transport Minister Simeon Brown and Associate Transport Minister Matt Doocey say. “Heading to the beach for ...
New Zealand and Tuvalu have reaffirmed their close relationship, Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters says. “New Zealand is committed to working with Tuvalu on a shared vision of resilience, prosperity and security, in close concert with Australia,” says Mr Peters, who last visited Tuvalu in 2019. “It is my pleasure ...
New Zealand is gravely concerned about the situation in New Caledonia, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “The escalating situation and violent protests in Nouméa are of serious concern across the Pacific Islands region,” Mr Peters says. “The immediate priority must be for all sides to take steps to de-escalate the ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon met today with Samoa’s O le Ao o le Malo, Afioga Tuimalealiifano Vaaletoa Sualauvi II, who is making a State Visit to New Zealand. “His Highness and I reflected on our two countries’ extensive community links, with Samoan–New Zealanders contributing to all areas of our national ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has announced that he has approved Waiheke Island ferry operator Island Direct to be eligible for SuperGold Card funding, paving the way for a commercial agreement to bring the operator into the scheme. “Island Direct started operating in November 2023, offering an additional option for people ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters today announced further sanctions on 28 individuals and 14 entities providing military and strategic support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “Russia is directly supported by its military-industrial complex in its illegal aggression against Ukraine, attacking its sovereignty and territorial integrity. New Zealand condemns all entities and ...
A year on from the tragedy at Loafers Lodge, the Government is working hard to improve building fire safety, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “I want to share my sincere condolences with the families and friends of the victims on the anniversary of the tragic fire at Loafers ...
Ka nui te mihi kia koutou. Kia ora and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you so much for having me here in the lead up to my Government’s first Budget. Before I get started can I acknowledge: Simon Bridges – Auckland Business Chamber CEO. Steve Jurkovich – Kiwibank CEO. Kids born ...
New Zealand and Vanuatu will enhance collaboration on issues of mutual interest, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “It is important to return to Port Vila this week with a broad, high-level political delegation which demonstrates our deep commitment to New Zealand’s relationship with Vanuatu,” Mr Peters says. “This ...
Minister for Land Information, Chris Penk will travel to Peru this week to represent New Zealand at a meeting of trade ministers from the Asia-Pacific region on behalf of Trade Minister Todd McClay. The annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Ministers Responsible for Trade meeting will be held on 17-18 May ...
Minister of Education Erica Stanford will head to the United Kingdom this week to participate in the 22nd Conference of Commonwealth Education Ministers (CCEM) and the 2024 Education World Forum (EWF). “I am looking forward to sharing this Government’s education priorities, such as introducing a knowledge-rich curriculum, implementing an evidence-based ...
Minister of Education Erica Stanford has today thanked outgoing New Zealand Qualifications Authority Chair, Hon Tracey Martin. “Tracey Martin tendered her resignation late last month in order to take up a new role,” Ms Stanford says. Ms Martin will relinquish the role of Chair on 10 May and current Deputy ...
New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and President Emmanuel Macron of France today announced a new non-governmental organisation, the Christchurch Call Foundation, to coordinate the Christchurch Call’s work to eliminate terrorist and violent extremist content online. This change gives effect to the outcomes of the November 2023 Call Leaders’ Summit, ...
Distinguished public servant and former diplomat Sir Maarten Wevers will lead the independent review into the disability support services administered by the Ministry of Disabled People – Whaikaha. The review was announced by Disability Issues Minister Louise Upston a fortnight ago to examine what could be done to strengthen the ...
Today’s announcement by Police Commissioner Andrew Coster of a National Gang Unit and district Gang Disruption Units will help deliver on the coalition Government’s pledge to restore law and order and crack down on criminal gangs, Police Minister Mark Mitchell says. “The National Gang Unit and Gang Disruption Units will ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has today expressed regret at North Korea’s aggressive rhetoric towards New Zealand and its international partners. “New Zealand proudly stands with the international community in upholding the rules-based order through its monitoring and surveillance deployments, which it has been regularly doing alongside partners since 2018,” Mr ...
Air Vice-Marshal Tony Davies MNZM is the new Chief of Defence Force, Defence Minister Judith Collins announced today. The Chief of Defence Force commands the Navy, Army and Air Force and is the principal military advisor to the Defence Minister and other Ministers with relevant portfolio responsibilities in the defence ...
Legislation to repeal section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act has been introduced to Parliament. The Bill’s introduction reaffirms the Coalition Government’s commitment to the safety of children in care, says Minister for Children, Karen Chhour. “While section 7AA was introduced with good intentions, it creates a conflict for Oranga ...
Defence Minister Judith Collins will this week travel to the UK and Italy to meet with her defence counterparts, and to attend Battles of Cassino commemorations. “I am humbled to be able to represent the New Zealand Government in Italy at the commemorations for the 80th anniversary of what was ...
The upcoming Budget will include funding for up to 50 charter schools to help lift declining educational performance, Associate Education Minister David Seymour announced today. $153 million in new funding will be provided over four years to establish and operate up to 15 new charter schools and convert 35 state ...
“The results of the public consultation on the terms of reference for the Royal Commission into COVID-19 Lessons has now been received, with results indicating over 13,000 submissions were made from members of the public,” Internal Affairs Minister Brooke van Velden says. “We heard feedback about the extended lockdowns in ...
Foreign Minister, Defence Minister, other Members of Parliament Acting Chief of Defence Force, Secretary of Defence Distinguished Guests Defence and Diplomatic Colleagues Ladies and Gentlemen, Good afternoon, tēna koutou, apinun tru It’s a pleasure to be back in Port Moresby today, and to speak here at the Kumul Leadership ...
Health, infrastructure, renewable energy, and stability are among the themes of the current visit to Papua New Guinea by a New Zealand political delegation, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “Papua New Guinea carries serious weight in the Pacific, and New Zealand deeply values our relationship with it,” Mr Peters ...
The coalition Government is launching Roads of Regional Significance to sit alongside Roads of National Significance as part of its plan to deliver priority roading projects across the country, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “The Roads of National Significance (RoNS) built by the previous National Government are some of New Zealand’s ...
A high-level New Zealand political delegation in Honiara today congratulated the new Government of Solomon Islands, led by Jeremiah Manele, on taking office. “We are privileged to meet the new Prime Minister and members of his Cabinet during his government’s first ten days in office,” Deputy Prime Minister and ...
New Zealand voted in favour of a resolution broadening Palestine’s participation at the United Nations General Assembly overnight, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “The resolution enhances the rights of Palestine to participate in the work of the UN General Assembly while stopping short of admitting Palestine as a full ...
Introduction Good morning. It’s a great privilege to be here at the 2024 Infrastructure Symposium. I was extremely happy when the Prime Minister asked me to be his Minister for Infrastructure. It is one of the great barriers holding the New Zealand economy back from achieving its potential. Building high ...
Defence Minister Judith Collins today announced the upcoming Budget will include new funding of $571 million for Defence Force pay and projects. “Our servicemen and women do New Zealand proud throughout the world and this funding will help ensure we retain their services and expertise as we navigate an increasingly ...
New Zealand’s ability to cope with climate change will be strengthened as part of the Government’s focus to build resilience as we rebuild the economy, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. “An enduring and long-term approach is needed to provide New Zealanders and the economy with certainty as the climate ...
Jobseeker beneficiaries who have work obligations must now meet with MSD within two weeks of their benefit starting to determine their next step towards finding a job, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. “A key part of the coalition Government’s plan to have 50,000 fewer people on Jobseeker ...
A new standalone Social Investment Agency will power-up the social investment approach, driving positive change for our most vulnerable New Zealanders, Social Investment Minister Nicola Willis says. “Despite the Government currently investing more than $70 billion every year into social services, we are not seeing the outcomes we want for ...
Check against delivery Good morning. It is a pleasure to be with you to outline the Coalition Government’s approach to our first Budget. Thank you Mark Skelly, President of the Hutt Valley Chamber of Commerce, together with your Board and team, for hosting me. I’d like to acknowledge His Worship ...
Your Excellency Ambassador Meredith, Members of the Diplomatic Corps and Ambassadors from European Union Member States, Ministerial colleagues, Members of Parliament, and other distinguished guests, Thank you everyone for joining us. Ladies and gentlemen - In diplomacy, we often speak of ‘close’ and ‘long-standing’ relations. ...
The Therapeutic Products Act (TPA) will be repealed this year so that a better regime can be put in place to provide New Zealanders safe and timely access to medicines, medical devices and health products, Associate Health Minister Casey Costello announced today. “The medicines and products we are talking about ...
Arawata Shane Arawata Shane had wandered long In the wild tangled hills of the West Coast. He came to a stop on the mighty range And looked down at the wide river flats. He breathed in the clean air, And he took in the shadows playing across The face of ...
SPECIAL REPORT:Islands Business in Suva Today is the 24th anniversary of renegade and failed businessman George Speight’s coup in 2000 Fiji. The elected coalition government headed by Mahendra Chaudhry, the first and only Indo-Fijian prime minister of Fiji, was held hostage at gunpoint for 56 days in the country’s ...
By Lydia Lewis, RNZ Pacific journalist and Kelvin Anthony, RNZ Pacific digital journalist Police have used tear gas and stun grenades on rioters at an airport near Nouméa as the chaos in New Caledonia stretched into its sixth day. Five people, including two police officers, have died and hundreds of ...
Asia Pacific ReportThe global human rights watchdog Amnesty International has called on France to not “misuse” a crackdown in the ongoing unrest in the non-self-governing French Pacific territory of Kanaky New Caledonia in the wake of a controversial vote by the French Parliament to adopt a bill changing the territory’s ...
A major provider of school lunches fears the government's new $3 limit for most students will see them eating more pre-packaged and processed food. ...
The star of Dark City: The Cleaner takes us through his life in TV, including the VHS revolution and the John Campbell impression that started it all. Best known for his comedic roles, Cohen Holloway says he struggled at times to maintain the stone cold facade of serial killer on ...
David Hill remembers an old friend, who you’ve probably never heard of. My friend Doug never travelled; he had little interest in the world beyond his own tiny rural town. I’ve rarely known anyone who radiated such contentment. Doug (I’ll call him that) died in March. You won’t know him. ...
Some of the earliest photos of life in Aotearoa are on display at Auckland Museum right now – but the identities of some of the people in them are a mystery.What was it like to be one of the first people in New Zealand to have their photo taken? ...
Since its founding almost a decade ago, Featherston Booktown has grown into one of the country’s most interesting and idiosyncratic literary events. Erin Banks reports from the audience. “Come in, have you had lunch? I’m about to make a cheese toastie.” Mary Biggs, operations manager of Featherston Booktown Karukatea Festival, ...
After 33 years abroad, Loveni Enari recently returned to Aotearoa and Samoa in what a friend joked was an “existential crisis”. He learnt and re-learnt so much about his family, friends and both countries. Almost as an afterthought, he got a Samoan tatau. This is his story. (Accompanying it are ...
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“Sir” Patrick Lynch on Hekia Parata as Minister of Education:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=11767517
“She made it clear from the outset that Maori and Pacific students did not deserve to be destined to a life of under-achievement and this view spread to become very contagious with the leaders and practitioners in the sector, as well as most teachers.”
So this ‘clarity’ from ‘Larger-Class-Sizes’ Parata was unprecedented then was it ? No one had ever visited that concept ? Right you are then…….nah…….it’s the “Sir” thing that’s the tip off.
“very contagious…….” ? FFS “Sir” Patrick what are you on ? The contagion here is post-truth pandering by bought and paid for shills. All wrapped up in a National Party box with a bow. That said it’s extremely worrying that there remain (apparently and according to “Sir” Patrick) teachers whom to this day and despite the benign attendances of Ms Parata, think that Maori and Pacific students DO deserve to be destined to a life of under achievement. That shows the shit of the singularly rewarded shill in my book.
Sir Pat was mainly head of Catholic Schools – integrated from being private schools under a Labour government, as they were about to collapse financially.
Sir Pat played a role in the way these schools were integrated.
Made a knight in 2015, after an earlier NZ honour awarded during the time of the Bolger government.
He’s a nasty right wing ideologue. I was in an audience once where Pat Lynch praised Deng Xiaopeng, the butcher of Beijing, calling him “the guy who got democracy started in China.”
Consider that his complaince paves the way for public financing of his catholic schools….he knows how the nats work.
🙄
Here you go…….Key playing the Dalai Lama https://mobile.twitter.com/gredge/status/486220364922753024
I know this is tough for you North, but Key is no longer PM,
you’re going to have to find someone else to demonise.
Aloha BM. You’re right. Those ‘bludging-bastard-bennies-having-a-beer-at-Xmas’……..those feeding out of their car boot in a scummy attempt to replicate a Clevedon polo meet…….they’re next on my list. Which will render you and your fellow trolls quite redundant. Meri Kirihimete BM !
Interesting post by Steve Snoopman Edwards, on why John Key quit.
Mainly because of rising concerns about poverty & inequality.
Part two lost me around the time it got into game theory – and I was reaching for my tinfoil hat.
ditto part three:
But the point in part one about Key’s squeaky voice break, being a tell, is probably significant – just not sure what exactly it tells.
Politics offering fascination (me too a guilty consumer) there is bound to be colourful ‘anecdata’ swirling around. As to why King John decided to serve less time as PM than did Helen Clark. And there is. F….ous F……ting, viz. “Fabulous Fascinating”, stuff.
Key’s sudden, unexpected resignation is very odd. The best explanation so far is that he judged his popularity was on the slide, and best quit while ahead.
However, that doesn’t seem to explain the suddenness of the resignation – having interviews lined up, then cancelling them at the last minute to announce his resignation.
There must be something else, and it may be of significance to our understanding of politics in NZ in the 21st century.
The full, soundly evidence-based, story of John Key’s time in politics is still yet to be told.
It has been told, by Nicky Hager, first in The Hollow Men, then even more damningly in Dirty Politics.
Hager has covered some of it – tip of the iceberg. But there’s more to be told about why JK decided to enter politics when he did, and why he suddenly decided to leave.
I have no doubt, though, that Hager’s books will be re-visited over the next few years as more information comes to light. And extra pieces of the puzzle will be put in place. More of the bigger picture will be exposed.
Phosphate. All living things need it. We spread massive amounts around as fertilizer, which washes into waterways and fucks them up. Our current cheap sources are likely to run short in the foreseeable future. So here’s an effort to slow all that waste by engineering plants to use the phosphate in ways that animals and humans end up wasting less of it.
http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/12/engineering-rice-to-waste-less-fertilizer/
Paradise Lost – Nauru
Nauru’s natural phosphate reserves once made millionaires of the entire population. Now they’re among the world’s poor, as sick and destitute as the refugees they’re taking in.
The Lynch piece on Parata will likely not be beaten as the Christmas /End of Year Vomit Stakes.
I had the experience of working under 18 Ministers of Education.
Parata stands out as being able to play the bureaucratic game and the bully game manipulated through that, the ability to cash in on the scumbag work of her predecessor and an unerring determination to follow through and do what she thought should happen.
In those senses she has been like Ovation of the Seas.
In the sense of learning and kids, innovation, and having New Zealand’s education system once again a world leader, she has been a leaky dinghy heading for rocks.
And on top to that, a scornful, blind, bereft pilot, forging on. i
Jonathan Freedland writes an article with unintended irony.
Freedland himself is a master of fake news and his newspaper the Guardian spreads propaganda about a whole range of things.
To name a few
Scotland
Corbyn
The Ukraine
Syria
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/dec/16/not-post-truth-simpler-words-lies-aleppo-trump-mainstream
Heh. Trump’s doctor (y’know, the cartoon character from a bad sci-fi movie) goes “meh” over the idea of Trump dropping dead in office.
“If something happens to him, then it happens to him,” Bornstein told STAT. “It’s like all the rest of us, no? That’s why we have a vice president and a speaker of the House and a whole line of people. They can just keep dying.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-doctor-harold-bornstein_us_585af903e4b0eb58648517c3
what fear sounds like…
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/201828814/a-look-at-the-year-in-us-politics
China devaluation risk is rising as capital outflows reach danger level
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11772045
John Key’s legacy.
‘The brighter future.’
Read the whole article here.
Tauranga’s homeless resort to sleeping in public toilets
Good report; very bad situation & the buck stops with the government.
But the article doesn’t mention what the recommendations are:
http://econtent.tauranga.govt.nz/data/our_communities/files/hidden_homelessness_report.pdf
Thanks.
Recommendations include need for more and better monitoring of homelessness in the long term
Plus:
I think it is a failing of the NZ Herald article that it did not give detailed coverage of the recommendations.
I gather The Herald has run a sob story about two separate mothers living in motels at the governments expense [ $1000/$2000 per week ] because it doesn’t have the power [ I assume ] to deduct rent before it pays benefit.
“What you do not see you do not miss” is a financial policy I have followed for decades … pity these folk who do not pay their miniscule rent of State house cannot be educated with elementary living on whatever they earn / are given by the generous taxpaper. arrears of several thousands before being evicted … a stupid system it seems to me.
one more time….in english
Perhaps you only think you understand the english language in your futile sarcasm
either that or after having read your post several times I still had no idea what you’re trying to say.
You really understand the Christmas message.
What a horrible person you are to others.
It disturbs me much more than Pat’s comments that a government department supposed to look after folk appears powerless to really help them live in the system. Letting them get deeper and deeper in the financial mire….I know from experience of years ago that once you miss one payment it is very hard to catch up again and “auto payments” are a simple and effective if long term way of getting out of trouble.
Like the rent due plus five or ten dollars extra to slowly pay off the arears.
ACT is the inevitable next stop for this useless waka-jumper
Has anyone else caught the news about disgraced former M.P. Shane Jones working as a security guard in San Diego?
http://deadspin.com/security-guard-appears-to-be-masturbating-near-cheerlea-1790317271
The Otago Daily Times is the only MSM outlet I have seen that has reported on the latest Roy Morgan Poll.
Edit: NBR has the exact same article, but slightly different headline..
The ODT is not owned by NZME or Fairfax.
Well, the main MSM sites don’t seem to have reported the poll, but NewstalkZB did.
The ODT caters for its population which is largely left wing.
The ODT is owned by a family of 1%ers.
It’s cutting staff and is getting more and more articles from the Herald.
It certainly seems to have less ‘infotainment ‘ than Stuff or the Herald , but it ain’t left wing.
I’ll take your word for it as I gave up reading/buying it years ago .
Cutting staff is common to most print media as people do not have time to read newspapers which are a dying aspect of life.
You only have to look at its leader page cartoons to see which way they are slanted
I sense anyone to the left of Golden Dawn and Pauline Hansen is left to you.
I think I get your drift but know little about either of the two ladies
At the time I was a keen supporter of ACT as a meaningful alternative to The Alliance with socialism but that was then not the current ACT.
As indicated in the article, the poll is unlikely to reflect the full impact of Key’s departure. Therefore, there is a good chance National’s support will further fall.
But once again, it also shows Labour shouldn’t be complacent.
On RM’s reputation it is likely National will bounce up again in the next RM Poll.
the obese weta now you…….
The New Zealand tourist industry and climate change.
https://www.odt.co.nz/business/auckland-airport-tops-record-international-passengers
“Though air travel emissions now account for only about 5 percent of warming, that fraction is projected to rise significantly, since the volume of air travel is increasing much faster than gains in flight fuel efficiency. (Also, emissions from most other sectors are falling.)”
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/27/sunday-review/the-biggest-carbon-sin-air-travel.html
Maybe a member of the press should ask Lieutenant General Ben Hodges about Fallujah.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/world/321100/claims-russia-used-syria-as-'live-fire-training‘
Or Gaza.
I’m pleased to see you’re finally recognising the similarity between Russia’s bombing campaign against Syrian civilians and the USA’s similar activities in Iraq a decade or so earlier. Muslims certainly have noticed it, as witnessed by the assassination of the Russian ambassador to Turkey this week. The Russians are going to need US-levels of security from now on.
John Key’s legacy.
‘The brighter future.’
Hundreds sleep outside Auckland City Mission, night after night, over the Christmas period
Read the whole article here.
Hundreds sleep outside Auckland City Mission, night after night, over the Christmas period
30 years of the poison of neo-liberal ideology has reduced us to this……..
Read the whole article here.
Doctors raise concerns over ‘granny dumping’ as families head away at Christmas
Liberation of East Aleppo: Testimonies from Hanano
How true is the following?
“Labour builds an electoral majority by having as many people as possible reliant on state spending. That is what matters to them.”
[lprent: How true is the following
“If you want to be a stupid troll, then don’t do it here.”
Banned 4 weeks for stupidly trying to invoke some kind of dumb flamewar from 2008. FFS grow up. ]
Iain Macwhirter: Dumb Brexit means 2016 will go down as the year the Union died
“Compare and contrast those previous revolutionary years with the 2016 Brexit revolution. Its most distinguishing feature is its ignorance. It’s not so much red, white and blue Brexit, but stupid Brexit. It has no philosophy. There is no John Locke of Brexit, nor Tom Paine, no Karl Marx, no Jean Monnet. The intellectual driving force of Brexit has been the Ukip’s laughing gnome, Nigel Farage. There is no wisdom behind Brexit, only a vague fear of foreigners and a mantra of “taking back control.”
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/14981053.Iain_Macwhirter__Dumb_Brexit_means_2016_will_go_down_as_the_year_the_Union_died/
Addendum to yesterdays comment on 3D Printing:
Hybrid Additive Manufacturing Machine Steps up in Size
Sure additive manufacturing is great for low-volume production, and to make components with complex internal structures that are very difficult to make other ways.
But it’s a very very long way away from displacing current common techniques for high volume production. 3D printing a plastic part will never compete with banging parts out of an injection mold with 20 second cycle times, complete with perfect surface finish straight out of the mould. Or forged or cast or stamped metal parts. When those parts are to be produced in high enough volumes to justify the tooling.
But that’s my point. Complex stuff that used to be made through milling is better off made through 3D printing. Just one of those machines can produce 90 engines a year. Any modifications to the engine can be easily introduced at any time.
It can produce more than engines and it doesn’t use people to produce anything. Once the design process is set up it’s fully automated. This effectively removes economies of scale and so such justifications as “produced in high enough volumes to justify the tooling” go out the window.
And the 3D printer can produce better variants of the stamped and forged stuff because it can be optimised for maximum strength while keeping the use of resources down using topological optimisation.
And the final bit is, of course, that as R&D goes into 3D printing the speed will also increase. I remember when home printers used to take minutes to print a page and now the speed is measured in pages per minute. It really won’t be long until the speed of 3D printing matches stamping and forging and the cost of the machine to do so will be cheaper than setting up the tooling for the stamping/forging and it will be far more useful.
Just out of curiosity, have you ever spent time in a high volume factory? And watched 3D printers at work? And handled and tested parts that come off the different kinds of machines?
90 engines per year is impressive if you’re, say, a Formula 1 team. But it’s very underwhelming if you’re a manufacturing engineer used to producing thousands per day from much simpler equipment.
Yes there will be a market for those people willing to pay a premium for the advantages of 3D printed parts, and there will be situations where 3D printed parts are cheaper due to low volume.
But the technological leaps needed for producing parts by additive methods to become competitive with conventional techniques are so enormous I just don’t see it happening for high volume items. Let alone questions around whether energy use and material costs for additive methods can come down to being competitive with conventional methods. Coz every time I’ve had anything to do with industrial lasers, I’ve always been struck by how much energy they use compared to how little gets delivered to the workpiece to do useful work.
And if you’ve got 1000 units it’s 90,000 per year. How many new engines does NZ need per year?
And each unit is capable of producing more than engines. Anything of any complexity up to 1300kg from a variety of materials.
You’re missing the point. That much simpler machine needs to be justified by volume of the piece produced because it only produces that one item. The 3D printer doesn’t as if you don’t need an engine today then you can have it produce something else. In other words, the 3D printer is in use all the time any way. Amount of volume for each item is immaterial when the next item coming out of the printer can be a different item.
And the 3D printer will be cheaper to start off with and won’t need major engineering to produce a new item. Just a few days of programming.
Those technological feats are already happening. That’s what the article in my comment highlighted.
Energy, especially renewable energy, is incredibly cheap compared to the physical resources used.
These post and comments of mine are to say that NZ needs to do the R&D into 3D printing and start manufacturing here in NZ using it else we’re going to find that we’re going backwards even faster. And it should be the government that does it.
The thing is, I’ve worked with the reality of what 3D printing produces. Starting from 20 years ago. Yes, the technology has made huge improvements in that time. But to get to the point of being competitive with conventional processes for volume manufacture of simple parts, the technologies would still need to make Moore’s law type improvements. But it’s more like the linear progress being made in, say, paper printing technology, or automotive technology (excluding electric).
Like most new technologies, it’s being massively oversold. Yes, it’s now possible to 3D print an engine block or crankshaft. But they don’t tell you it still needs all the critical surfaces finished by conventional techniques. They also don’t tell you that the material properties achieved will be well down on conventionally processed parts, with just a few exceptions.
So yes, it’s a useful technology if you’re RocketLab or Team New Zealand, wanting to build a small number of complex parts where there’s a huge value in minute weight savings. But F&P Healthcare won’t have much use for the technology outside their R&D department. Because to make a few hundred plastic cases or metal chassis, it’s still going to be cheaper and quicker to knock up a die and mount it in an injection moulding machine or press. Although it may end up cheaper and quicker to make the die by 3D printing.
As far as what our industrial strategy should be, well, we’re too small to do it all ourselves. We do have some notable players in niche markets, such as magnetic technologies with Buckley Systems and Magritek. Where there’s a lot of intellectual content but fairly low production volumes. There’s plenty of other similar niches we could be going after.
But just because we could make anything we wanted to here by a high cost low throughput process like 3D printing doesn’t make it a good idea to forego getting those items from overseas where there’s enough volume to justify setting up much lower cost processes.
The device linked to in my first comment does that.
That piece of data is a few years out of date.
For now but not for much longer.
And that to is significantly out of date. Productivity is now so high that we actually can do everything ourselves. 3D printing will add to that productivity.
And that shows a fundamental misunderstanding of economics. You’re still thinking in terms of money rather than in terms of resources used. Using less resources is always cheaper than using more resources.
3d printing will come into it’s own when/if we go to space in a big way, you could send dozens of preprogrammed printers to build habitats etc the possibilities are endless
Wrong. It’s already coming into it’s own. There’s that bike that I linked up above, GE and Rolls Royce are using it to produce jet engines and the NZ firm RocketLab are using it to produce their rocket engines as an assembly line item.
The nocturnal side of reason
The media are accusing citizens, of living in a ‘post truth’ world because the normally compliant masses are no longer buying into the medias own “Truth’ narrative.
Witness the resounding defeat of the free market Blairites in the UK in the face of straight out aggression from all MSM, through to the Democrats worst election defeat in US political history, again with the full and unashamed support of pretty well all MSM.
No I think this post truth narrative is just the pathetic death rattle of a media that has been totally and utterly exposed as being almost powerless to shape the world to it’s preferred image….hence, rapidly becoming redundant to it’s pay masters.
This incredible and rapid shift in power is in my opinion the real news of 2016.
The rise of Trump suggests that is not necessarily a good thing. Brexiters and Trump voters are woefully misinformed about the most basic facts
British voters ‘ignorant’ about Brexit thanks to misinformation, new poll finds
Trump Won Because Voters Are Ignorant, Literally
(edit: links)
Woot, woot. Awesomeness. Time to show the rest of NZ what a by election is like without the dirty politics.
Two of my most favourite ladies in Parliament, dang it’s going to be a win either way, and a wonderful platform for them to inform the public on their party policies.
Personally one of the reasons I voted for Greens last election was because I wanted to see Julie-Anne stay in the house, she is an incredible talent. And now the media will give her even more exposure wooo hoooo. Loving this MOU, loving the Nat’s not in this race.
Both of these ladies are classy as, there will be no personal politics, and no drama between them. Just loads of media exposure for them and their parties, and a mighty difficult but fine choice for the voters in Mt Albert.
Go get em girls 😀 either way the voters are going to be so thrilled with their new MP, that is a given.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=11772229
The media will highlight every tiny bit of difference to foment the picture of disunity. Labour will struggle to get out the vote and National voters may well vote for Genter. No good news options for Labour
I weas interested in some comments on Al Jazeera News today, from Nik Gowing – co-author of “Thinking the unthinkable: A New Imperative for Leadership in the Digital Age”.
The research is interesting. The researchers interviewed leaders in corporations and public services. It seems such leaders across the world are worried that the old “normal” has broken down. Worrying things are happening unexpectedly – from Brexit, to Trump, etc. and the leaders no longer know how to act, or lead.
The leaders are worried about the growing anger against corporate and political leaders, by consumers. that’s the interesting part.
I watched this video from a conference at the beginning of November.
Gowing says leaders need to be open to new ideas – to the unthinkable and unpalatable. But he and the other speakers at the conference still seem to think ity’s unthinkable that the whole system needs changing.
gower says what needs to change is the culture and mind-set of corporations – not the systems. But cultures and mindsets are not separable from systems and structures.
The CEOs seem to be looking for ways to exploit the young, and customers, to provide them with new ideas. But they want to use these ideas for business as usual – to maintain them in their positions, wealth and power.
Interesting though, that corporate CEOs and shareholders are very worried about the rising anger of various sections of the public.
I think they got over-confident and impatient – the populace hadn’t been dumbed down enough
“worst election defeat in US political history”.
Don’t you think you are going just a little over the top?
Don’t you think, at least for the Presidential election, that 1964 and 1972 were rather more spectacular thrashings?
Or do you have something else in mind?
Ebola vaccine good news.
http://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2016/12/22/14039628/rvsv-zebov-ebola-vaccine-trial-effective
The legacy.
The brighter future.
Slave rates.
And fisiani’s proud of this wretched set up.
http://m.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11772381
On a lighter note, from Dan News
https://twitter.com/dannews/status/811322785150578688
😆