Here is a good interview that helps in damping down the general slightly hysterical MSM reportage and allowing for a more balanced look at the overall situation in the Ukraine….
A rare and lone voice in the Guardian reminds readers of the Minsk accords signed years ago , but never implemented suggests they are the only way out of the Ukraine mess
Should I believe some random person on Tik Tok, insightful as it is, or this guy?
In October 2020, Professor Peter Doshi, the associate editor of the BMJ (formerly the British Medical Journal), claimed: “None of the [phase 3] trials currently under way are designed to detect a reduction in any serious outcome such as hospital admissions, use of intensive care, or deaths. Nor are the vaccines being studied to determine whether they can interrupt transmission of the virus”.
More recently, he’s complained that Pfizer has refused to release the raw data until 2025. That’s four years since rollout here began. Why should we have to wait until 2025 to get the raw data? And what if the data contradicts the picture painted by Pfizer?
Doshi made the following comment earlier this month:
As well as [getting] access to the underlying data, transparent decision making is essential. Regulators and public health bodies could release details such as why vaccine trials were not designed to test efficacy against infection and spread of SARS-CoV-2. Had regulators insisted on this outcome, countries would have learnt sooner about the effect of vaccines on transmission and been able to plan accordingly.
Big pharma is the least trusted industry. At least three of the many companies making covid-19 vaccines have past criminal and civil settlements costing them billions of dollars. One pleaded guilty to fraud. Other companies have no pre-covid track record. Now the covid pandemic has minted many new pharma billionaires, and vaccine manufacturers have reported tens of billions in revenue.
The BMJ supports vaccination policies based on sound evidence. As the global vaccine rollout continues, it cannot be justifiable or in the best interests of patients and the public that we are left to just trust ‘in the system,’ with the distant hope that the underlying data may become available for independent scrutiny at some point in the future. The same applies to treatments for covid-19. Transparency is the key to building trust and an important route to answering people’s legitimate questions about the efficacy and safety of vaccines and treatments and the clinical and public health policies established for their use…There is no place for wholesale exemptions from good practice during a pandemic. The public has paid for covid-19 vaccines through vast public funding of research, and it is the public that takes on the balance of benefits and harms that accompany vaccination. The public, therefore, has a right and entitlement to those data, as well as to the interrogation of those data by experts.
What possible reason could they have for not releasing the data? Pfizer’s revenue reportedly could top $100 billion in 2022, the first pharmaceutical company to reach that figure.
Doshi leads the RIAT Support Center, funded by the Laura and John Arnold Foundation. The Restoring Invisible and Abandoned Trials (RIAT) initiative enables researchers everywhere to address two long-standing problems in the biomedical literature: non-publication and misreporting of trials. The RIAT Support Center aims to accelerate the correction of the scientific record of clinical trials by making publications more accurate and more complete, addressing these problems of publication bias and reporting bias.
I can see how a child may faint in and around getting vaccinated.
Imagine at home you have parents on opposing sides of the administration of Pfizer's drugs.
One parent has lost their job and other domestic tensions arise because they don't have a passport. Can't go to that family wedding, dinner with the family etc.
Children aren't oblivious to these stresses and then they are put in a situation that implies choosing one parent over another.
I imagine any "passing out" that may have occurred, if in fact there was any at all, will have been the result of something like that, or the general tension that exists around the process, or perhaps the heat – not though, because of the contents of the needle, coursing through the child's veins, reacting badly and causing a physical reaction, as implied by the antivaxxers.
How the antivaxxer propagandists take advantage of slightest of scientific disputes and side shows to sneakilly sow seeds of doubt to encourage vaccine hesitancy, to undermine our nation's collective health response to the pandemic.
More fodder for anti-vaxxers
H. Holden Thorp – 11 November 2021
I talk about the extraordinary scrutiny that science is under and how any ineptness can be magnified and distorted in the public eye. Normal revisions to hypotheses and conclusions based on new data are being preyed upon by antiscience forces to sow doubt.
…….Moderna and the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) are at odds on inventorship of the COVID-19 vaccine. Inventorship is a highly technical and legal determination, and the collaborators have been trying to hash this out for a year. If patent issues are not resolved, the dispute will go to court. The quarrel feeds into anti-vaxxer beliefs that pharmaceutical companies and government scientists are willing to distort facts and harm the public in exchange for money and glory.
No probs Gsays. Any time. You're very welcome to butt in. As we will most likely not be getting any straight answers from our resident closet anti-vaxxers any time soon.
I reckon a "litmus test" here on TS would be: Do you believe children have collapsed here in New Zealand, as a result of the Pfizer's vaccine (rather than other factors)?
Gsays; "I can see how a child may faint in and around getting vaccinated." ie other factors.
Good, you have passed the test and are not an antivaxxer troll sneakily trying to sow doubt and muddy the waters, with screeds of irrelevant marginal studies.
So many causes why a child could faint. Just waiting in a queue in hot weather to needing questions answered about being vaccinated and not feeling as though questions can be asked.
Not an easy time for parents (especially single parents or parents who have parents overseas) and school has not opened yet.
I would not want to be a 5 year old starting school or a parent who has been told to work from home with a baby, a preschooler and a primary age child and a partner who is an essential worker.
[lprent: don’t write teasers like this – state why why you think others should look at an external link. If I see too many of these, then I’ll add a rule that requires at least a attached paragraph before a video link will be accepted.]
Jenny – before blazer “pleads the fifth” and you start claiming a pwned victory. And before I start getting annoyed with pig-fucker questions…
Like everything else in medicine and public health, vaccinations against infectious diseases are a question about balancing multiple risks against each other. Medical practices aren’t magic – they are a question of probabilities.
So rather than posing “why did you kill your baby?” questions, perhaps you might consider that the pig-fucker tactic is a two way path, causes really stupid flame wars, and I’m likely to land hard on whoever does it.
So getting whatever conversation that this is back to a reasonable level…
Are you aware that children get hospitalised and die from covid-19? Have you looked at the numbers? Can you understand the numbers?
The study – published in JAMA Network Open this week – followed more than 3000 children who presented to emergency departments and tested positive to the virus from 10 countries, including New Zealand, Canada and the United States.
It aimed to find out how frequently children presenting to emergency departments and infected with the virus experienced severe outcomes (such as myocarditis, neurological, respiratory, or infectious problems) and what were the risk factors.
Nearly a quarter of those observed in the emergency deparments required hospitalisation, four died, and three percent experienced severe outcomes within two weeks of being admitted to an emergency department.
“There is a perception that Covid-19 is only a very mild infection in children. However, as the pandemic has progressed, we are seeing greater numbers of children being infected and presenting to hospital worldwide,” Prof Dalziel said.
“There is certainly some benefit to adults with immunising children but I think what we forget with this discussion is that they also give protection to children.
“If we look at the US, there have 8,700,000 children diagnosed with Covid and of those 747 have died so that means one in 11,000 children who get Covid are likely to die, and we know that immunisations give us over 90 percent protection against hospitalisation, against severe outcomes and against death.”
parent – in Jenny's defence, the question was mine, and posed as a "litmus test", not in connection to pigs, as you put it. My proposal was that the response to the question would sort respondents into distinct "camps", cutting through the fog of multiple opinions, cutting to the chase, so to speak. It was intended as a clarifying device, but seems to fit the purpose badly. My apologies to Jenny for dropping her/you into it.
Provide clarity, in my view. What anyone does from that point on, is up to them. It seems to me that the reports of "children collapsing" were delivered and received differently and that acceptance, one way or the other, is indicative. It's like asking if a person accepts that humans have exacerbated the warming of the climate, or had no role in the change. My concept may well be flawed (seems so) but the opportunity seems a good one, to me, as it's quite clear-cut, in my opinion. Finding common ground is a fair objective, but so is honest declaration of position.
And sorry, Iprent, “parent” is the default spelling on my machine.
Into 'camps', 'declaration of position' are nice, harmless sounding euphemisms for othering. I have been fortunate through my life to mostly not be othered and if I was on the outer, it was my choice and I was confortable with it.
I have noticed no matter how many times it is pointed out, there is a world of difference between 'anti-vax' and against the mandates, passports and the state's power to coerce an individual into a medication they do not want. They may have folk in both camps, but being one does not necessarily make you the other.
sorting commenters on TS into camps is likely to lead to flamewars. And create an antagonistic atmosphere that puts other people off from commenting.
There are good reasons to nip that in the bud (which is what Lynn is doing).
You can see from how Lynn framed his question, that it elicits better debate, better information, and gives people room to learn and change (or even just back down). Putting people into camps does the opposite.
For the reasons you’ve given, the vaccine should really be called a drug, not a vaccine.
Another definition worth checking is “vaccine.” I am one of the academics that argues that these mRNA products which everybody calls vaccines are qualitatively different than standard vaccines. And so I found it fascinating to learn that Merriam-Webster changed its definition of vaccine early this year. mRNA products did not meet the definition of vaccine that has been in place for 15 years at Merriam-Webster. But the definition was expanded such that the mRNA products are now vaccines.
I highlight this to ask a question: how would you feel about mandating covid vaccines if we didn’t call them “vaccines”? What if these injections were called “drugs” instead?
So here’s the scenario: we have this DRUG – and we have evidence that it doesn’t prevent infection, nor does it stop viral transmission. But the drug is understood to reduce your risk of becoming very sick and dying of covid. Would you take a dose of this drug every six months or so for possibly the rest of your life, if that’s what it took for the drug to stay effective? Would you not just take this drug yourself, but support regulations mandating that everybody else around you take this drug? Or would you say “hold on a sec.” Maybe you’d say that if that’s all the drug does, why not use a normal medicine instead – the kind we take when we’re sick and want to get better? And why would you mandate it?
I don't think I am a RW, but I do think that it would have been helpful to have given urls for the "reports," and the question relates to the post it follows.
This Doshi guy appears to have no idea. Administering the vaccine to infected people won't make them better at all. It needs to be administered before infection to be effective and calling it a drug doesn't alter this one bit.
So here’s the scenario: we have this DRUG – and we have evidence that it doesn’t prevent infection, nor does it stop viral transmission. But the drug is understood to reduce your risk of becoming very sick and dying of covid.
Basically a completely spurious argument based on nitpicking word definitions.
Most vaccines ever developed during the initial phases of development required decades of development before they became capable of producing long-lasting effects. The goes for polio all the way through to the most recent ones. Some vaccines lose their efficacy regularly ever after decades of development – influenza vaccines for instance.
Whoever this Peter Doshi is, they either don’t know the history of vaccines or they are a PR wanker pushing a line for fooling illiterates.
Peter Doshi is an associate professor of pharmaceutical health services research in the School of Pharmacy and associate editor at The BMJ. His research focuses on policies related to drug safety and effectiveness evaluation in the context of regulation, evidence-based medicine, and debates over access to data. Doshi also has strong interests in journalism as a vehicle for encouraging better practice and improving the research enterprise.
So I think this guy does know what he is on about.
Doshi also has strong interests in journalism as a vehicle for encouraging better practice and improving the research enterprise.
So I think this guy does know what he is on about.
Actually I never said that they didn't know what they were speaking about. I was pretty specific.
The three I pointed out as probable explanations were.. Nitpicky word definitions. PR wanker. Lack of history on vaccine development.
First two sound probable.
The most effective way to make a name for yourself in academic circles if you can't do research, is to provide a new word definition and attach it to a field of study.
Another other effective way (especially in the US) is to become a talking head who spends time greasing up the media.
No particular evidence on knowing the history of vaccines. May have skipped those classes. From what I have heard, history of medicine and the development side of the medical profession is a low attendance set of classes.
What I was pointing at was that by the quoted definition and even my limited knowledge of the development history of vaccines, his statement doesn't stand up under even a basic scrutiny.
Simply claiming authority based on straight academic training and qualification isn't authoritative on its own. You have to have a argument that stands up to scrutiny and challenge.
Otherwise we'd still be living in a world dominated by the rather rigid scientific views of Lord Kelvin who at the end of the 19th century was proclaiming that physics was virtually all known and that the pesky experimental evidence of rays of radiation penetrating solid matter were irrelevant.
So I think this guy does know what he is on about.
A fine example of authority bias.
For obvious reasons, the Merriam-Webster dictionary is not on any list of recommended reading for any student of Immunology.
Doshi conveniently ignores that both science and language are not fixed but evolve over time and need constant revision to stay up-to-date and accurate.
For the reasons you’ve given, the vaccine should really be called a drug, not a vaccine.
lols
Merriam-webster changed their definition beyond virus.
OED describes the use of the word to include virus products from an example published in 1983:
1983 Sci. Amer. Feb. 48/2 There has been increasing interest in the preparation of synthetic vaccines, which is to say vaccines containing not intact viruses but merely peptides..that have been constructed in the laboratory to mimic a very small region of the virus's outer coat
Sounds like targeting the spike protein to me.
Yes, word definitions change over time, for example as new technology emerges. But either the board of M-W were a bit slow in keeping up with the technical literature around vaccines and then the MrNA use hit the spotlight, or they're the slow peddlers in a global conspiracy to inject people with "drugs".
To make your case, you've covered a lot of ground there Blazer
How conspiracists exploited [exploit] COVID-19 science
Kathleen Hall Jamieson – 01 November 2021
……on topics that range from mask wearing and COVID-19 treatments to vaccine safety and the funding of coronavirus research. Understanding the susceptibilities that conspiracists exploit should help us to identify ways to better safeguard both the trustworthiness of health science and public trust in it.
….conspiracy theorists have exploited the provisional nature of scientific consensus and the realities of how science is conducted to paint scientists and public health leaders as malign actors.
….The fluid nature of emergent science provides fuel for conspiracy theorists who offer certainty in place of the provisional, sometimes-updated statements of health experts.
Should I believe some random person on Tik Tok, insightful as it is, or this guy?
The irony is that the short Tik Tok clip is about confirmation bias and said nothing about COVID-19 as such, which you ‘countered’ using the words “believe” and “random” plus a strawman pulled out of Doshi’s rabbit hole (i.e. demonstrating his own strong bias and prejudice).
You might as well have asked “should I believe in Taylor Swift or Santa Claus”, which would have made for a more entertaining discussion than your idiosyncratic diatribe.
Here is a response refuting Doshi's comments. His basic claim that efficacy is less than claimed, seems well refuted to me. Technical complaints about data availability etc – I have not followed up.
In the real world, a consistent (and global) pattern has emerged of vaccinated people having far better Covid19 outcomes than unvaccinated people. This confirms that the efficacy of the vaccines (as claimed in the trials) is true in the real world.
The proof of the pudding is in in the eating.
Note that Doshi’s qualifications are in Anthropology, East Asian Studies and his PhD was in “history, anthropology, and science, technology and society”. He does not have specific health, pharmaceutical, vaccine, statistics or immunology qualifications, nor does he conduct original research in these fields (i.e. he doesn’t develop drugs, vaccines, trials – or publish in immunology etc).
Thanks uncooked good that someone looks beyond the clickbait.
Real World the world has had a unprecedented pandemic in our life times.
A vaccine was needed many companies vied to produce vaccines.
The mRNA was the quickest to be developed using nano technology.
And is highly effective not perfect no vaccine is.
Luckily the vast majority is very happy it's been developed.
A very small but extremely vocal minority have pushed lies like sheading of vaccines will cause spread.5 g cell towers,then it was ivermectin, so and so on.
None of the antivax propaganda has stood the test of time.
Yeah, nah, he had time to stop and think about that one but reacted instead. It wasn't self defense. He could have stopped the bus and called the police instead of assaulting him back. Given he knows that the CCTV is there, I'd guess he lost it, which means he needs to sort out his ability to do that job that often involves people being arseholes. I hope he gets some support though, because that's a really shitty situation to be in.
he needs to sort out his ability to do that job that often involves people being arseholes.
Well, some people are arseholes but I suspect that a driver being punched in the head is rather rare. Yeah I guess he could have called police but he might have wondered when they would turn up. As it was, the attacked quickly departed and hasn’t been identified.
A wee observation from the psychologist that dare not speak his Canadian name.
Underlying male-male conversations, is the understanding that if a certain (changeable) line is crossed, it may be met with a physical violent response.
When I heard him discuss this, a light went on. It wasn't a blatant, obvious not readily apparent thing, but I knew what he was talking about.
Doesn't forgive or excuse either persons actions but may shed light on them.
makes sense to me. Thing is, it's still against the law to assault someone physically, and there was time to make a choice.
If the passenger had punched him and then stood there leaning over him and shouting and basically boxing him in and threatening him, getting physical would seem appropriate. Cf to the Mitre10 staff manhandling the anti-mask dude out of the shop. Or someone defending themselves.
Was Peterson saying that men can't help themselves? or just that it's socialised in men to behave like that? Or was he saying it's biological?
yes, and men make choices all the time to not harm the rugby players in the opposing team. The issue then is whether and to what extent men have choice in the moment. I think socialisation around emotion, entitlement, maleness and manhood all play a significant part.
Except there wasn't much in the way of talking prior to violence.
The problem generally isn't that a line might be crossed – that's basically a tautology. Every social interaction has a threat of violence, therefore there is always a "line". It's just that in nonviolent society, that line is rarely crossed.
Thing is, the drive for status and dealing with the physiological reactions to confrontation involve learned techniques: impulse control, using your words, or being somewhat inoculated to the stress of violence. Having a constant threat of violence to conversations isn't actually the norm.
Passenger dude had impulse control issues, maybe status issues and felt the crappy drive was a sign of disrespect. Driver was similarly controlled by his anger.
One thing I always found funny was watching many of the stupid late teens street fights at 3am. There was definitely a social script, it was basically rams butting horns. Each idiot had opportunities to walk away, the buildup was call:response in pattern, then the mutual approach, while maybe hoping friends would drag them away.
In contrast were folks who had obviously been around a bit. Very little in the way of puffing up, very quick to throw a punch (like passenger). They were a lot of work. If it was a status thing, they knew the winner was the person who could escalate first, so they didn't screw around.
My comment was in response to weka's observation a woman would have handled it differently. While there are a few exceptions, you'd like to think Hi-Vis man would not have coward punched a woman driver.
Spent six years running a rural town pub, what you say is very familiar. Especially the ‘been around a bit folks’. I had a memorable Christmas Eve ‘dance’ with one of them.
Makes me damn grateful I met a good partner early in life and that massively informed a lot of decisions I made through my adolescence.
timestamps suggest otherwise. Weka brought up the idea a woman would have handled it differently well after the comment I replied to.
I think women, on average would have handled being suckerpunched differently, but I also think that most men would have handled it differently. Not really judging the driver, but it was likely not his best work.
out of curiosity, do you see that playing out in online places like TS, or is it just a more superficial comparison?
Every social interaction has a threat of violence, therefore there is always a "line". It's just that in nonviolent society, that line is rarely crossed.
Hmm, really? Do you mean potentially has a threat of violence?
out of curiosity, do you see that playing out in online places like TS, or is it just a more superficial comparison?
Well, I know I've been pissed off at some stuff personally, as opposed to just frustration at not getting my point across. Especially if it's an issue that I know about in real life, and the other party is talking bullshit. that definitely creates a reaction similar to instances that happened face to face. That's when I on occasion go do something else, or let a comment mellow overnight. And I've seen other folks throw their toys out of the cot – e.g. the folks who just start abusing moderators to get a permaban.
But mostly online it's people talking past each other and barking at the moon, in my opinion.It's also safer than in real life, so that can encourage the naturally timid to over-express their machismo.
Every social interaction has a threat of violence, therefore there is always a "line". It's just that in nonviolent society, that line is rarely crossed.
Hmm, really? Do you mean potentially has a threat of violence?
Might be a definition difference there – potential is threat, in my context. So has a small possibility of violence.
I knew a lecturer who had some anxiety issues. He once had to duck out of a hobnob drinkies event because he became worried that people would start throwing chocolate eclairs at him and laughing at him. Now, that's highly unlikely, but if there were chocolate eclairs at that do, it's possible that could have happened. But it's highly unlikely unlikely enough for most people to not even have the possibility of violence cross their mind at a do like that.
I was working at a 21st when a young dude, sober (as everyone was at that stage), called the barman… names. So I told him to leave. He did, of his own accord, but it turned out he was the party person's ex, and was just looking to make life difficult for her because he didn't know how to deal with his own shit. That entire situation – happy people, still sober, all there for a birthday celebration, had a non-trivial potential for violence. Sure, it was guy/guy to start with, but he could have easily insulted a female bartender. Similarly, I saw a woman slap another woman's face in broad daylight, in a public hallway. That was unexpected, and almost certainly a learned way to express her own anger and pain.
I don't catch the bus and spend all the trip worried that the bus driver will screw up so a passenger thumps him. But there's always the possibility that someone has issues, or I piss someone off.
right, there are lots of situations that have potential violence, but were you saying there are none that don't have that? Because I can think of most social interactions I've had this week and I would rate the chance of them being violent at so close to zero may as well be zero.
Yeah, walking away from the keyboard at need is a very useful skill. The safer therefore more acting out thing makes sense.
I mean sure, the odds in any particular instance might be essentially infinitesimal, but that's the problem with the angle of "that" canadian, which was:
Underlying male-male conversations, is the understanding that if a certain (changeable) line is crossed, it may be met with a physical violent response.
I mean sure, on one level that's true, if problematic: essentially it's the "fighting words" doctrine, where a statement that is outrageous enough will obviously start a fight.
But on the other hand, no, most people use their words, and there is not the ever-present knowledge that a faux pas could suddenly provoke a physical attack is not the norm.
It's bit weirder with strangers, but that's just because I don't want to make a dick of myself, rather than a worry about getting thumped.
Can't hear enough of the bleeped dialogue to know exactly who's saying what to whom after the punch was thrown. Also we have no idea whether there was any exchange between the two before the punch incident from this short video.
It was a hard punch to the side of the face, though. Nothing justified that. Lots of guys would react to that with a rush of blood to the head and retaliate at least once.
"He received a final written warning for serious misconduct for allegedly not waiting until all passengers were seated before setting off, and verbally abusing and assaulting the man who punched him."
We don't know the driver's employment history. The bit about not waiting until all passengers were seated might be more significant than it seems, for example. I'm also wondering, after watching the clip several times, whether the driver's assailant is drunk or has mental health issues.
There's possibly a bit more to this story than the limited information given in the article. Maybe someone might identify the puncher after seeing the clip?
Best thing is for the driver to appeal the warning.
Whenever I have used public transport, which is a horrid experience I don't recommend to anyone, the bus driver sometimes moves the bus before passengers are seated. I have found both drivers and passengers can be obnoxious to deal with.
The perpetrator looks like the usual suspect and started this physical confrontation.. The bus driver made one mistake…he kicked the offender in the back. He should have run up; pivoted 90 degrees and stomped the calf or ankle. That would have been the end of the confrontation. The bus driver is lucky this feral didn't pull a knife or weapon after being kicked in the back.
Blade is a very blunt simplist. He won't see anything wrong with assaulting someone for assaulting someone.
If there is a vicious cycle, he will participate..
Well, a kick like blade describes would definitely leave a victim, but I'm not sure one actually needs a victim as such. The problem is that the fact the guy could walk off suggests we're not looking at any of the crimes that carry weight, maybe some summary offences act thing like common assault or fighting in a public place. Not likely worth court, with no complainant or victim impact statement.
So maybe a police warning, or diversion. If that.
If the dude gets identified from the video and it turns out he walked into ed in a few days after with a screwed vertebrae that was a miracle away from making him paraplegic, the story might change.
My grandson just asked me what concrete was made from. I was astonished to read, on Wikipedia, this:
"…Concrete is the second-most-used substance in the world after water, and is the most widely used building material. Its usage worldwide, ton for ton, is twice that of steel, wood, plastics, and aluminum combined …This widespread use results in a number of environmental impacts. Most notably, the production process for cement produces large volumes of greenhouse gas emissions, leading to net 8% of global emissions.""
Cement itself is mostly calcium carbonate (CaCO3) – ie usually mined from limestone or marble, mixed in with some fly ash. The usual process for making cement involved driving out water and any of its carbon dioxide at reasonably high temperatures (the first phase to clinker is CaCO3 -> CaO + CO2.
The most typical way of doing that is to use very very large fossil fuelled open ended or ventilated rotatory ovens.
But if you look at the whole process of cement making and producing concrete, the greenhouse gas emissions go up markedly. Mining and moving large quantities of stone for concrete, cement and limestone for cement around are a large chunk of our transport emissions. Alternatives like shaped stone, steel, glass and even wood don’t cut that part of the building emission process.
They’re starting to develop ways of doing the limestone burn without direct fossil fuels. But it is bloody hard to get alternative methods of producing the equivalent of those strong calcium bonds in construction materials.
Hempcrete is an interesting product that helps to minimise the carbon costs, both in production and also after installation.
Just like any crop, hemp absorbs CO2 from the atmosphere while growing, so hempcrete is considered a carbon-storing material. Accordingly, this CO2 will be stored in the hempcrete block after fabrication and for the duration of the block's life allowing positive environmental benefits. The specific amount of carbonates in the blocks actually increases with the age of the block.The amount of CO2 capture within the net life cycle CO2 emissions of hempcrete is estimated to be between -1.6 to -79 kg CO2e/m2.
I was well into adulthood before I learned that concrete "drying" was actually a specific chemical reaction forming a whole thing, rather than just being like a really good mud brick.
Not that I ever considered concrete all that much, but still – funny the things we carry over from childhood.
Concrete today with acrylic moderfiers is much stronger than earlier forms of concrete except maybe early forms of concrete used in the Eastern Mediterranean.
In the river valley where I live, there is a concrete arch bridge built in the 1920s there are only two left of this type, the other is in Canada. It's protected as an Historic Place. Our local roading contractor is responsible for maintenance and he says the concrete is much stronger than that used today. The only maintenance needed has been repairs after a milk tanker clipped the approach to the bridge.
His great great grandfather built the bridge – he couldn't read or write but also built a railway tunnel on the Nelson railway line!
I always heard the name "Horse Terrace Bridge" was a bit of a joke – a reference to the ladies of a nearby house of ill-repute, serving the local mining community.
It's not a joke!! Original name was Whores Terrace back when it was a tree trunk over the river for access and all the associated deaths by drowning. Fascinating to read all the lobbying of parliament to get the bridge built – William Massey was PM in those days.
"And, because all Covid variants surge, and peak, and then, after a few months of mayhem, go into decline,…"
Which addresses a question I've been nursing for a while – do the Cover family of viruses "fade" naturally, and why?"
Trotter goes on to say,
"..the Prime Minister’s heroic after-image will remain imprinted upon the voters’ retinas long after they have entered, and left, the polling-booths in 2023."
It didn’t take long until the idiosyncrasies of the new self-isolation system to rear their head:
Staff at the Motueka medical centre that saw patients linked to the Omicron outbreak don’t have to isolate.
Patients who visited Greenwood Health on Friday between 11.40am to 1.45pm are considered close contacts and should isolate and get tested immediately and again on day five.
Greenwood Health clinical manager Naomi Rosamond told Morning Report the staff members would have regular testing.
If staff are wearing all the appropriate PPE and distance as much as practicable, they're probably as protected as anyone. Health staff not isolating in these circumstances has been standard for months.
A field blooming with thousands of sunflowers, intended to subdue speeding motorists, appears to be having the desired effect.
Abbe Hoare planted 47,000 sunflower seeds in a half-hectare block near the roadside of her farm at Mangamaire, south of Pahīatua. The sunflowers started flowering about 10 days ago and now the field is filled with bright yellow heads all facing east, which are expected to last until the end of February.
“I wanted to slow the traffic down. No-one ever stops at this railway crossing. This is meant to be 70kmh but no-one ever goes 70kmh.”
If anyone is inclined to check the blooms out 'in the flesh', I heartily recommend Marima Domain just a little bit up the road. A beautiful river spot with the Mangahao River and lots of swimming holes.
Using money to control others seems as old as the hills. Good that taking it for granted seems to have been replaced by an effort to specify it…
BNZ identified 12,000 abusive online banking transactions in the space of just six months last year. While there are no official figures about how widespread economic abuse is in New Zealand, experts believe it is just as prevalent as other types of domestic abuse.
Holly Carrington, from the domestic abuse organisation Shine, said economic abuse did not happen in isolation. "It's important to understand that where there's economic abuse happening, it's almost always part of a larger pattern of behaviour where one person is controlling someone else," she said. Economic abuse has been added to the legal definition of family violence. https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/business/460141/bnz-finds-12-000-abusive-online-banking-transactions-over-six-months
We're told that cloth masks are no longer fit for purpose, surgical masks not fully effective for covid , and more expensive disposable respirator masks like N95 the most effective.
Is there any move to subsidise ?
Even surgical masks can cost up to $25 a week if used correctly.Thats for one person, a family at least $50.How many families can even afford the less effective surgical masks?
Weekly cost for one person wearing one N95 mask a day ..up to $70
Another hazard for the poor, cramped deficient housing(or a car), rising food costs, inflation, and now the ability to stay alive via masks
We got several hundred KN95 masks for work (loops around the ears rather than the back of the head). These cost around $30 per box of 10. So, nothing like the prices you are talking about.
We're told that cloth masks are no longer fit for purpose, surgical masks not fully effective for covid , and more expensive disposable respirator masks like N95 the most effective.
Really wish people would stop saying that. Cloth masks, wellfitted and with an insert or doubled up reduce risk of covid transmission. Likewise surgical.
Yes, N95/P2 are more effective, if fitted properly, but this doesn't mean the other masks are useless.
Given there is a shortage of P2s already, I'm saving mine for when I really need them. I'm not using them yet, because there is no covid in the community where I live, and once there is I'll use them selectively eg when in town and people won't socially distance.
Why are the right wing almost universally opposed to our current government's world beating covid strategy?
The Merchants of Doubt
In their new book, Merchants of Doubt, historians Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway explain how a loose–knit group of high-level scientists, with extensive political connections, ran effective campaigns to mislead the public and deny well-established scientific knowledge over four decades. In seven compelling chapters addressing tobacco, acid rain, the ozone hole, global warming, and DDT, Oreskes and Conway roll back the rug on this dark corner of the American scientific community, showing how the ideology of free market fundamentalism, aided by a too-compliant media, has skewed public understanding of some of the most pressing issues of our era.
“A well-documented, pulls-no-punches account of how science works and how political motives can hijack the process by which scientific information is disseminated to the public.”—Kirkus Review
The relevance to the dispute of vaccine mandates, vaccine passports, Red light restrictions, lockdowns, is that prioritising public health comes at a cost to business, (and if not managed properly to the average citizen as well).
However our government's response to the pandemic has wide public support, which is hard for the right to confront directly.
Unable to confront the government directly, manufacturing doubt in our government's response to the pandemic has become a cottage industry among the right and far right..
"Rationing tests is something that may well happen during a surge, he said, and rapid antigen tests will be an important part of the response.
"When we have high levels of the virus circulating in the community the false negative and false positive side of the rapid antigen test doesn't matter so much."
But rapid antigen tests won't keep businesses operating, he said.
"It's not the golden chalice, it's a tool in the toolkit."
Professor Michael Baker said 4.5 million rapid antigen tests won't be enough to regularly screen essential workers to keep operations functioning.
According to Bill O'Reilly on Newstalk ZB last night (on demand at 5 about 7 minutes in), businesses have been trying for months to get tests approved to import. Only 4 brands approved here in New Zealand compared to 65 in Australia.
Surely the farmers didnt hve to do any extra "work " they just got paid more for their product .
From what i can make out riding arround on a quad all day constitutes "work" these days in fact i wouldnt be supprized if some of them drive down the hallway to take a dump ! .
typical day would involve getting on the quad ride 50 meters to the cowshed drain the cows of their milk ,then ride back home partake of a leisurely breakfast watch daytime tv til 3 jump back on the quad trundle up the race to open a gate reach down with a device that measures how long the grass is an tells you how much artificial nitrogen you are gonna have to put on to make the grass grow as much as you want it to , then back down to the cowshed again .etc .
If theres any actual "work" done it gets done by contractors doesnt it ?
Relax tricledrown was only a semi serious comment ! I know quite a few hard working farmers too an ive worked for some wonderful ones an some arseholes .
At its heart tho the dairy industry is ruthless in the extreme .Essentially you engineer all of your cows to get pregnant at the same time then as soon as the calves are born you steal them off the mothers truck off most of them to be killed and keep all the milk yourself .Before organizations such as Farmsafe came along the rules arround how a farmer could deal with bobby calves were almost non existant and pretty much nobody cared certainly not the farmers .Theres some truely awfull vids out there of goings on in the processing plants where they take the calves pretty sure it would chill most people to the marrow unless youve already sold your soul .
Your right about the two hrs i couldnt work on a dairy farm at least not a conventional one i wouldnt want the karma .
Blade, at #18 below, you'll find reference to farmers seeking workers to pick crops. No mention of wages paid by the farmers but reference made to highlight incentives for the work aiding farmers by the Seasonal Work Scheme.
65 years ago we ( not me, too tough) were dropping like flies during some random immunisation gig at school around mid 50s, most of them before they got anywhere near the front of the queue. Perfectly normal, and that was decades before Social Fucking Media putting the arse- clenching smoteing with lightning threat into us poor little buggers. Mind you we had just cause, vaccination needles then were just hollowed out 4 inch nails that had been used about a thousand times already, there was precautions ,they were wiped with an oily rag between shots. Happy days!.
Aye! Driven in and then extracted with a claw hammer. Then they went all soft and introduced an oral vaccine. My mother still made me face the needle though.
My uncle during WW2 was a sapper in the first echelon and stationed in North Africa. When blood was required urgently which was often men were pulled out of the ranks randomly and frog marched to the nearest field hospital and were required to give up their blood for the betterment of the sick. No pussy footing around and PC nonsense. He said the needles were like you were describing and he said he just got on with the job and put up with it. They had four years of that before they got their first furlough home. We are 2 and a bit years into this pandemic and many are still complaining and going on about loss of freedom. Beggars belief.
Yes Tricledrown and on top of that they laid mines under bridges etc and had to defuse them as well. He was strafed often and had to huddle in ditches. He lost his hard hat on one trip into a ditch and ran back for it, the ditch was obliterated and he lost mates while retrieving his tin hat. We haven't had anything serious like that to affect us for so many years we have all gone soft on it. I do hope we have the fortitude to endure this pandemic and can stay with the PM to get through it. We all need to harden up.
I wish no disrespect to your uncle, his response to his environment makes me think of a Jiddu Krishnamurti observation.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society."
I am starting to realise this may apply to our current situation, re Covid, in other ways. It may explain some of the resolve found in folk with dissenting views. The Public Health response may be one too many sacrifices or adjustments in this profoundly sick society.- Inequality, CC, environment degradation…
BTW, there was no escape, no matter how daring, it was a convent school and we were all sheparded into the biggest classroom and the exits were well guarded by nuns dressed with the full flying kit and carrying the most evil yard long leather-soaked-in-vinegar-for-days straps and just itching to use them. Deliriously happy days! Strangely enough we Mickey Doolans had the best immunisation numbers in the country.
There are those of us interested in urban affairs such as transport and housing. The Greater Auckland blog is a great example of writers who are knowledgeable and passionate about their subject.
The latest post takes a good look at road safety. Let’s hope is a blog read by Michael Wood and the mandarins at Waka Kowhai.
”In addition to the progressive safety programmes of work that are already underway, Waka Kotahi’s leaders need to let Vision Zero guide the entire programme. It isn’t something to “squeeze into” a sector feeling the pinch of funding pressures; it’s a way to critique everything in order to reprioritise funding. The scale of change required is immense, and some entirely new programmes are needed, based on Vision Zero principles and harnessing traffic circulation changes. Many programmes should also be discontinued, with their budgets reallocated.”
No mention when you go to the Pick Nelson/Tasman website either except for 'good' wages and mention of government supplied incentives such as accommodation supplements.
The site says, "These include the possibility of financial assistance for relocation costs, travel costs and work gear; an accommodation supplement; and up to $1,000 in cash incentives."
With Omicron appearing in the Motueka/Golden Bay Area, famous for it's unvaxxed, unmasked, unhinged freedumb-fighter underbelly, it'll be very interesting to watch what happens over the next couple of weeks.
I know a lot of those people, kind, compassionate, committed to low carbon footprints,and simple lives, organic gardeners, permaculture teachers,health practitioners, teachers , nurses, many of them.I wouldn't call them an underbelly, and I will stay friends with them although I may not see them close up for some time.
On another note it's fantastic to see what a tiny country under savage sanctions for decades can do with it's medical research
My own Riverton community mirrors the Golden Bay community closely. I call my unhinged friends just that and we all laugh – they think I'm a danger to society, just as I do them.
A listing of 26 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, April 28, 2024 thru Sat, May 4, 2024. Story of the week "It’s straight out of Big Tobacco’s playbook. In fact, research by John Cook and his colleagues ...
Yesterday I received come lovely feedback following my Star Wars themed newsletter. A few people mentioned they’d enjoyed reading the personal part at the beginning.I often begin newsletters with some memories, or general thoughts, before commencing the main topic. This hopefully sets the mood and provides some context in which ...
April 30 was going to be the day we’d be calling Mum from London to wish her a happy birthday. Then it became the day we would be going to St. Paul's at Evensong to remember her. The aim of the cathedral builders was to find a way to make their ...
Rob MacCulloch writes – Can’t remember the last book by a Kiwi author you read? Think the NZ government should spend less on the arts in favor of helping the homeless? If so, as far as Newsroom is concerned, you probably deserve to be called a cultural ignoramus ...
Eric Crampton writes – Grudges are bad. Better to move on. But it can be fun to keep a couple of really trivial ones, so you’re not tempted to have other ones. For example, because of the rootkit fiasco of 2005, no Sony products in our household. ...
A new report warns an estimated third of the adult population have unmet need for health care.Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāHere’s the six key things I learned about Aotaroa’s political economy this week around housing, climate and poverty:Politics - Three opinion polls confirmed support for PM Christopher Luxon ...
Today is May the fourth. Which was just a regular day when my mother took me to see the newly released Star Wars at the Odeon in Rotorua. The queue was right around the corner. Some years later this day became known as Star Wars Day, the date being a ...
Buzz from the Beehive Much more media attention is being paid to something Winston Peters said about former Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr than to a speech he delivered to the New Zealand China Council. One word is missing from the speech: AUKUS. But AUKUS loomed large in his considerations ...
Is the economy in another long stagnation? If so, why?This is about the time that the Treasury will be locking up its economic forecasts to be published in the 2024 Budget Economic and Fiscal Update (BEFU) on budget day, 30 May. I am not privy to what they will be ...
The annual list of who's been bribing our politicians is out, and journalists will no doubt be poring over it to find the juiciest and dirtiest bribes. The government's fast-track invite list is likely to be a particular focus, and we already know of one company on the list which ...
In the weeks after the October 7 Hamas attacks on Southern Israel I wrote about the possible 2nd, 3rd and even 4th order effects of the conflict. These included new fronts being opened in the West Bank (with Hamas), Golan … Continue reading → ...
Peter Dunne writes – It is one of the oldest truisms that there is never a good time for MPs to get a pay rise. This week’s announcement of pay raises of around 2.8% backdated to last October could hardly have come at a worse time, with the ...
David Farrar writes – Newshub reports: Newshub can reveal a fresh allegation of intimidation against Green MP Julie-Anne Genter. Genter is subject to a disciplinary process for aggressively waving a book in the face of National Minister Matt Doocey in the House – but it’s not the first time ...
The Treasury has published a paper today on the global productivity slowdown and how it is playing out in New Zealand: The productivity slowdown: implications for the Treasury’s forecasts and projections. The Treasury Paper examines recent trends in productivity and the potential drivers of the slowdown. Productivity for the whole economy ...
Winston Peters’ comments about former Australian foreign minister look set to be an ongoing headache for both him and Luxon. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for subscribers features co-hosts and , along with regular guests on Gaza and ...
These puppet strings don't pull themselvesYou're thinking thoughts from someone elseHow much time do you think you have?Are you prepared for what comes next?The debating chamber can be a trying place for an opposition MP. What with the person in charge, the speaker, typically being an MP from the governing ...
The land around Lyme Regis, where Meryl Streep once stood, in a hood, on the Cobb, is falling into the sea.MerylThe land around Lyme Regis, around the Cobb that made it rich, has always been falling slowly but surely into the sea. Read more ...
Buzz from the Beehive Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters was bound to win headlines when he set out his thinking about AUKUS in his speech to the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. The headlines became bigger when – during an interview on RNZ’s Morning Report today – he criticised ...
The Post reports on how the government is refusing to release its advice on its corrupt Muldoonist fast-track law, instead using the "soon to be publicly available" refusal ground to hide it until after select committee submissions on the bill have closed. Fast-track Minister Chris Bishop's excuse? “It's not ...
As pressure on it grows, the livestock industry’s approach to the transition to Net Zero is increasingly being compared to that of fossil fuel interests. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / Getty ImagesTL;DR: Here’s the top five news items of note in climate news for Aotearoa-NZ this week, and a discussion above ...
The New Zealand Herald reports – Stats NZ has offered a voluntary redundancy scheme to all of its workers as a way to give staff some control over their “future” amidst widespread job losses in the public sector. In an update to staff this morning, seen by the Herald, Statistics New Zealand ...
On Werewolf/Scoop, I usually do two long form political columns a week. From now on, there will be an extra column each week about music and movies. But first, some late-breaking political events:The rise in unemployment numbers for the March quarter was bigger than expected – and especially sharp ...
David Farrar writes – The Herald reports: TVNZ says it is dealing with about 50 formal complaints over its coverage of the latest 1News-Verian political poll, with some viewers – as well as the Prime Minister and a former senior Labour MP – critical of the tone of the 6pm report. ...
Muriel Newman writes – When Meridian Energy was seeking resource consents for a West Coast hydro dam proposal in 2010, local Maori “strenuously” objected, claiming their mana was inextricably linked to ‘their’ river and could be damaged. After receiving a financial payment from the company, however, the Ngai Tahu ...
Alwyn Poole writes – “An SEP,’ he said, ‘is something that we can’t see, or don’t see, or our brain doesn’t let us see, because we think that it’s somebody else’s problem. That’s what SEP means. Somebody Else’s Problem. The brain just edits it out, it’s like a ...
Our trust in our political institutions is fast eroding, according to a Maxim Institute discussion paper, Shaky Foundations: Why our democracy needs trust. The paper – released today – raises concerns about declining trust in New Zealand’s political institutions and democratic processes, and the role that the overuse of Parliamentary urgency ...
This article was prepared for publication yesterday. More ministerial announcements have been posted on the government’s official website since it was written. We will report on these later today …. Buzz from the BeehiveThere we were, thinking the environment is in trouble, when along came Jones. Shane Jones. ...
New Zealand now has the fourth most depressed construction sector in the world behind China, Qatar and Hong Kong. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 8:46am on Thursday, May 2:The Lead: ...
Hi,I am just going to state something very obvious: American police are fucking crazy.That was a photo gracing the New York Times this morning, showing New York City police “entering Columbia University last night after receiving a request from the school.”Apparently in America, protesting the deaths of tens of thousands ...
Winston Peters’ much anticipated foreign policy speech last night was a work of two halves. Much of it was a standard “boilerplate” Foreign Ministry overview of the state of the world. There was some hardening up of rhetoric with talk of “benign” becoming “malign” and old truths giving way to ...
Graham Adams assesses the fallout of the Cass Review — The press release last Thursday from the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls didn’t make the mainstream news in New Zealand but it really should have. The startling title of Reem Alsalem’s statement — “Implementation of ‘Cass ...
This open-for-business, under-new-management cliché-pockmarked government of Christopher Luxon is not the thing of beauty he imagines it to be. It is not the powerful expression of the will of the people that he asserts it to be. It is not a soaring eagle, it is a malodorous vulture. This newest poll should make ...
The latest labour market statistics, showing a rise in unemployment. There are now 134,000 unemployed - 14,000 more than when the National government took office. Which is I guess what happens when the Reserve Bank causes a recession in an effort to Keep Wages Low. The previous government saw a ...
Three opinion polls have been released in the last two days, all showing that the new government is failing to hold their popular support. The usual honeymoon experienced during the first year of a first term government is entirely absent. The political mood is still gloomy and discontented, mainly due ...
National's Finance Minister once met a poor person.A scornful interview with National's finance guru who knows next to nothing about economics or people.There might have been something a bit familiar if that was the headline I’d gone with today. It would of course have been in tribute to the article ...
Rob MacCulloch writes – Throughout the pandemic, the new Vice-Chancellor-of-Otago-University-on-$629,000 per annum-Can-you-believe-it-and-Former-Finance-Minister Grant Robertson repeated the mantra over and over that he saved “lives and livelihoods”.As we update how this claim is faring over the course of time, the facts are increasingly speaking differently. NZ ...
Chris Trotter writes – IT’S A COMMONPLACE of political speeches, especially those delivered in acknowledgement of electoral victory: “We’ll govern for all New Zealanders.” On the face of it, the pledge is a strange one. Why would any political leader govern in ways that advantaged the huge ...
Bryce Edwards writes – The list of former National Party Ministers being given plum and important roles got longer this week with the appointment of former Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett as the chair of Pharmac. The Christopher Luxon-led Government has now made key appointments to Bill ...
TL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 10:06am on Wednesday, May 1:The Lead: Business confidence fell across the board in April, falling in some areas to levels last seen during the lockdowns because of a collapse in ...
Over the past 36 hours, Christopher Luxon has been dong his best to portray the centre-right’s plummeting poll numbers as a mark of virtue. Allegedly, the negative verdicts are the result of hard economic times, and of a government bravely set out on a perilous rescue mission from which not ...
Auckland Transport have started rolling out new HOP card readers around the network and over the next three months, all of them on buses, at train stations and ferry wharves will be replaced. The change itself is not that remarkable, with the new readers looking similar to what is already ...
Completed reads for April: The Difference Engine, by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling Carnival of Saints, by George Herman The Snow Spider, by Jenny Nimmo Emlyn’s Moon, by Jenny Nimmo The Chestnut Soldier, by Jenny Nimmo Death Comes As the End, by Agatha Christie Lord of the Flies, by ...
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a ...
Have a story to share about St Paul’s, but today just picturesPopular novels written at this desk by a young man who managed to bootstrap himself out of father’s imprisonment and his own young life in a workhouse Read more ...
The list of former National Party Ministers being given plum and important roles got longer this week with the appointment of former Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett as the chair of Pharmac. The Christopher Luxon-led Government has now made key appointments to Bill English, Simon Bridges, Steven Joyce, Roger Sowry, ...
Newsroom has a story today about National's (fortunately failed) effort to disestablish the newly-created Inspector-General of Defence. The creation of this agency was the key recommendation of the Inquiry into Operation Burnham, and a vital means of restoring credibility and social licence to an agency which had been caught lying ...
Holding On To The Present:The moment a political movement arises that attacks the whole idea of social progress, and announces its intention to wind back the hands of History’s clock, then democracy, along with its unwritten rules, is in mortal danger.IT’S A COMMONPLACE of political speeches, especially those delivered in ...
Stuck In The Middle With You:As Christopher Luxon feels the hot breath of Act’s and NZ First’s extremists on the back of his neck and, as he reckons with the damage their policies are already inflicting upon a country he’s described as “fragile”, is there not some merit in reaching out ...
The unpopular coalition government is currently rushing to repeal section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act. The clause is Oranga Tamariki's Treaty clause, and was inserted after its systematic stealing of Māori children became a public scandal and resulted in physical resistance to further abductions. The clause created clear obligations ...
Buzz from the Beehive The government’s official website – which Point of Order monitors daily – not for the first time has nothing much to say today about political happenings that are grabbing media headlines. It makes no mention of the latest 1News-Verian poll, for example. This shows National down ...
It Takes A Train To Cry:Surely, there is nothing lonelier in all this world than the long wail of a distant steam locomotive on a cold Winter’s night.AS A CHILD, I would lie awake in my grandfather’s house and listen to the traffic. The big wooden house was only a ...
Packing A Punch: The election of the present government, including in its ranks politicians dedicated to reasserting the rights of the legislature in shaping and determining the future of Māori and Pakeha in New Zealand, should have alerted the judiciary – including its anomalous appendage, the Waitangi Tribunal – that its ...
Dead Woman Walking: New Zealand’s media industry had been moving steadily towards disaster for all the years Melissa Lee had been National’s media and communications policy spokesperson, and yet, when the crisis finally broke, on her watch, she had nothing intelligent to offer. Christopher Luxon is a patient man - but he’s not ...
Chris Trotter writes – New Zealand politics is remarkably easy-going: dangerously so, one might even say. With the notable exception of John Key’s flat ruling-out of the NZ First Party in 2008, all parties capable of clearing MMP’s five-percent threshold, or winning one or more electorate seats, tend ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Polling shows that Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau has the lowest approval rating of any mayor in the country. Siting at -12 per cent, the proportion of constituents who disapprove of her performance outweighs those who give her the thumbs up. This negative rating is ...
Luxon will no doubt put a brave face on it, but there is no escaping the pressure this latest poll will put on him and the government. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political ...
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler In the wake of any unusual weather event, someone inevitably asks, “Did climate change cause this?” In the most literal sense, that answer is almost always no. Climate change is never the sole cause of hurricanes, heat waves, droughts, or ...
Something odd happened yesterday, and I’d love to know if there’s more to it. If there was something which preempted what happened, or if it was simply a throwaway line in response to a journalist.Yesterday David Seymour was asked at a press conference what the process would be if the ...
Hi,From time to time, I want to bring Webworm into the real world. We did it last year with the Jurassic Park event in New Zealand — which was a lot of fun!And so on Saturday May 11th, in Los Angeles, I am hosting a lil’ Webworm pop-up! I’ve been ...
Education Minister Erica Standford yesterday unveiled a fundamental reform of the way our school pupils are taught. She would not exactly say so, but she is all but dismantling the so-called “inquiry” “feel good” method of teaching, which has ruled in our classrooms since a major review of the New ...
Exactly where are we seriously going with this government and its policies? That is, apart from following what may as well be a Truss-Lite approach on the purported economic “plan“, and Victorian-era regression when it comes to social policy.Oh it’ll work this time of course, we’re basically assured, “the ...
Hey Uncle Dave, When the Poms joined the EEC, I wasn't one of those defeatists who said, Well, that’s it for the dairy job. And I was right, eh? The Chinese can’t get enough of our milk powder and eventually, the Poms came to their senses and backed up the ute ...
Polling shows that Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau has the lowest approval rating of any mayor in the country. Siting at -12 per cent, the proportion of constituents who disapprove of her performance outweighs those who give her the thumbs up. This negative rating is higher than for any other mayor ...
Buzz from the Beehive Pharmac has been given a financial transfusion and a new chair to oversee its spending in the pharmaceutical business. Associate Health Minister David Seymour described the funding for Pharmac as “its largest ever budget of $6.294 billion over four years, fixing a $1.774 billion fiscal cliff”. ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Many criticisms are being made of the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill, including by this writer. But as with everything in politics, every story has two sides, and both deserve attention. It’s important to understand what the Government is trying to achieve and its ...
TL;DR: Here’s my top 10 ‘pick ‘n’ mix of links to news, analysis and opinion articles as of 10:10am on Monday, April 29:Scoop: The children's ward at Rotorua Hospital will be missing a third of its beds as winter hits because Te Whatu Ora halted an upgrade partway through to ...
span class=”dropcap”>As hideous as David Seymour can be, it is worth keeping in mind occasionally that there are even worse political figures (and regimes) out there. Iran for instance, is about to execute the country’s leading hip hop musician Toomaj Salehi, for writing and performing raps that “corrupt” the nation’s ...
The Government is again adding to New Zealand’s growing unemployment, this time cutting jobs at the agencies responsible for urban development and growing much needed housing stock. ...
With Minister Karen Chhour indicating in the House today that she either doesn’t know or care about the frontline cuts she’s making to Oranga Tamariki, we risk seeing more and more of our children falling through the cracks. ...
The Labour Party is saddened to learn of the death of Sir Robert Martin, a globally renowned disability advocate who led the way for disability rights both in New Zealand and internationally. ...
Labour is calling for the Government to urgently rethink its coalition commitment to restart live animal exports, Labour animal welfare spokesperson Rachel Boyack said. ...
Today’s Financial Stability Report has once again highlighted that poverty and deep inequality are political choices - and this Government is choosing to make them worse. ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to do more for our households in most need as unemployment rises and the cost of living crisis endures. ...
Unemployment is on the rise and it’s only going to get worse under this Government, Labour finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds said. Stats NZ figures show the unemployment rate grew to 4.3 percent in the March quarter from 4 percent in the December quarter. “This is the second rise in unemployment ...
The New Zealand Labour Party welcomes the entering into force of the European Union and New Zealand free trade agreement. This agreement opens the door for a huge increase in trade opportunities with a market of 450 million people who are high value discerning consumers of New Zealand goods and ...
The National-led Government continues its fiscal jiggery pokery with its Pharmac announcement today, Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall says. “The government has increased Pharmac funding but conceded it will only make minimal increases in access to medicine”, said Ayesha Verrall “This is far from the bold promises made to fund ...
This afternoon’s interim Waitangi Tribunal report must be taken seriously as it affects our most vulnerable children, Labour children’s spokesperson Willow-Jean Prime. ...
Te Pāti Māori are demanding the New Zealand Government support an international independent investigation into mass graves that have been uncovered at two hospitals on the Gaza strip, following weeks of assault by Israeli troops. Among the 392 bodies that have been recovered, are children and elderly civilians. Many of ...
Our two-tiered system for veterans’ support is out of step with our closest partners, and all parties in Parliament should work together to fix it, Labour veterans’ affairs spokesperson Greg O’Connor said. ...
Stripping two Ministers of their portfolios just six months into the job shows Christopher Luxon’s management style is lacking, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said. ...
Tonight’s court decision to overturn the summons of the Children’s Minister has enabled the Crown to continue making decisions about Māori without evidence, says Te Pāti Māori spokesperson for Children, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “The judicial system has this evening told the nation that this government can do whatever they want when ...
It appears Nicola Willis is about to pull the rug out from under the feet of local communities still dealing with the aftermath of last year’s severe weather, and local councils relying on funding to build back from these disasters. ...
The Government is making short-sighted changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that will take away environmental protection in favour of short-term profits, Labour’s environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
Labour welcomes the release of the report into the North Island weather events and looks forward to working with the Government to ensure that New Zealand is as prepared as it can be for the next natural disaster. ...
The Labour Party has called for the New Zealand Government to recognise Palestine, as a material step towards progressing the two-State solution needed to achieve a lasting peace in the region. ...
Some of our country’s most important work, stopping the sexual exploitation of children and violent extremism could go along with staff on the frontline at ports and airports. ...
The Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill will give projects such as new coal mines a ‘get out of jail free’ card to wreak havoc on the environment, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The government's decision to reintroduce Three Strikes is a destructive and ineffective piece of law-making that will only exacerbate an inherently biased and racist criminal justice system, said Te Pāti Māori Justice Spokesperson, Tākuta Ferris, today. During the time Three Strikes was in place in Aotearoa, Māori and Pasifika received ...
Cuts to frontline hospital staff are not only a broken election promise, it shows the reckless tax cuts have well and truly hit the frontline of the health system, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
The Green Party has joined the call for public submissions on the fast-track legislation to be extended after the Ombudsman forced the Government to release the list of organisations invited to apply just hours before submissions close. ...
New Zealand’s good work at reducing climate emissions for three years in a row will be undone by the National government’s lack of ambition and scrapping programmes that were making a difference, Labour Party climate spokesperson Megan Woods said today. ...
More essential jobs could be on the chopping block, this time Ministry of Education staff on the school lunches team are set to find out whether they're in line to lose their jobs. ...
Te Pāti Māori is disgusted at the confirmation that hundreds are set to lose their jobs at Oranga Tamariki, and the disestablishment of the Treaty Response Unit. “This act of absolute carelessness and out of touch decision making is committing tamariki to state abuse.” Said Te Pāti Māori Oranga Tamariki ...
The Government is trying to bring in a law that will allow Ministers to cut corners and kill off native species, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said. ...
The Government has delivered on its election promise to provide a financially sustainable model for Auckland under its Local Water Done Well plan. The plan, which has been unanimously endorsed by Auckland Council’s Governing Body, will see Aucklanders avoid the previously projected 25.8 per cent water rates increases while retaining ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters discussed the need for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, and enhanced cooperation in the Pacific with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock during her first official visit to New Zealand today. "New Zealand and Germany enjoy shared interests and values, including the rule of law, democracy, respect for the international system ...
The Minister Responsible for RMA Reform, Chris Bishop today released his decision on four recommendations referred to him by the Western Bay of Plenty District Council, opening the door to housing growth in the area. The Council’s Plan Change 92 allows more homes to be built in existing and new ...
Thank you, John McKinnon and the New Zealand China Council for the invitation to speak to you today. Thank you too, all members of the China Council. Your effort has played an essential role in helping to build, shape, and grow a balanced and resilient relationship between our two ...
The Government is modernising insurance law to better protect Kiwis and provide security in the event of a disaster, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly announced today. “These reforms are long overdue. New Zealand’s insurance law is complicated and dated, some of which is more than 100 years old. ...
The coalition Government is refreshing its approach to supporting pay equity claims as time-limited funding for the Pay Equity Taskforce comes to an end, Public Service Minister Nicola Willis says. “Three years ago, the then-government introduced changes to the Equal Pay Act to support pay equity bargaining. The changes were ...
Structured literacy will change the way New Zealand children learn to read - improving achievement and setting students up for success, Education Minister Erica Stanford says. “Being able to read and write is a fundamental life skill that too many young people are missing out on. Recent data shows that ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay says Canada’s refusal to comply in full with a CPTPP trade dispute ruling in our favour over dairy trade is cynical and New Zealand has no intention of backing down. Mr McClay said he has asked for urgent legal advice in respect of our ‘next move’ ...
The rights of our children and young people will be enhanced by changes the coalition Government will make to strengthen oversight of the Oranga Tamariki system, including restoring a single Children’s Commissioner. “The Government is committed to delivering better public services that care for our most at-risk young people and ...
The Government is making it easier for minor changes to be made to a building consent so building a home is easier and more affordable, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “The coalition Government is focused on making it easier and cheaper to build homes so we can ...
New Zealand lost a true legend when internationally renowned disability advocate Sir Robert Martin (KNZM) passed away at his home in Whanganui last night, Disabilities Issues Minister Louise Upston says. “Our Government’s thoughts are with his wife Lynda, family and community, those he has worked with, the disability community in ...
Good evening – Before discussing the challenges and opportunities facing New Zealand’s foreign policy, we’d like to first acknowledge the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. You have contributed to debates about New Zealand foreign policy over a long period of time, and we thank you for hosting us. ...
From today, passengers travelling internationally from Auckland Airport will be able to keep laptops and liquids in their carry-on bags for security screening thanks to new technology, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Creating a more efficient and seamless travel experience is important for holidaymakers and businesses, enabling faster movement through ...
People with an interest in the health of Northland’s marine ecosystems are invited to a public meeting to discuss how to deal with kina barrens, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones will lead the discussion, which will take place on Friday, 10 May, at Awanui Hotel in ...
Kiwi exporters are $100 million better off today with the NZ EU FTA entering into force says Trade Minister Todd McClay. “This is all part of our plan to grow the economy. New Zealand's prosperity depends on international trade, making up 60 per cent of the country’s total economic activity. ...
There are heartening signs that the extractive sector is once again becoming an attractive prospect for investors and a source of economic prosperity for New Zealand, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. “The beginnings of a resurgence in extractive industries are apparent in media reports of the sector in the past ...
The return of the historic Ō-Rākau battle site to the descendants of those who fought there moved one step closer today with the first reading of Te Pire mō Ō-Rākau, Te Pae o Maumahara / The Ō-Rākau Remembrance Bill. The Bill will entrust the 9.7-hectare battle site, five kilometres west ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has announced 25 new high-speed EV charging hubs along key routes between major urban centres and outlined the Government’s plan to supercharge New Zealand’s EV infrastructure. The hubs will each have several chargers and be capable of charging at least four – and up to 10 ...
The coalition Government will not proceed with the previous Government’s plans to regulate residential property managers, Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. “I have written to the Chairperson of the Social Services and Community Committee to inform him that the Government does not intend to support the Residential Property Managers Bill ...
The Government has announced an independent review into the disability support system funded by the Ministry of Disabled People – Whaikaha. Disability Issues Minister Louise Upston says the review will look at what can be done to strengthen the long-term sustainability of Disability Support Services to provide disabled people and ...
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith has attended the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva and outlined the Government’s plan to restore law and order. “Speaking to the United Nations Human Rights Council provided us with an opportunity to present New Zealand’s human rights progress, priorities, and challenges, while responding to issues and ...
The Government and Rotorua Lakes Council are committed to working closely together to end the use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua. Associate Minister of Housing (Social Housing) Tama Potaka says the Government remains committed to ending the long-term use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua by the ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay heads overseas today for high-level trade talks in the Gulf region, and a key OECD meeting in Paris. Mr McClay will travel to Riyadh to meet with counterparts from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). “New Zealand’s goods and services exports to the Gulf region ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford has outlined six education priorities to deliver a world-leading education system that sets Kiwi kids up for future success. “I’m putting ambition, achievement and outcomes at the heart of our education system. I want every child to be inspired and engaged in their learning so they ...
The new NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) App is a secure ‘one stop shop’ to provide the services drivers need, Transport Minister Simeon Brown and Digitising Government Minister Judith Collins say. “The NZTA App will enable an easier way for Kiwis to pay for Vehicle Registration and Road User Charges (RUC). ...
Whānau with tamariki growing up in emergency housing motels will be prioritised for social housing starting this week, says Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka. “Giving these whānau a better opportunity to build healthy stable lives for themselves and future generations is an essential part of the Government’s goal of reducing ...
Racing Minister Winston Peters has paid tribute to an icon of the industry with the recent passing of Dave O’Sullivan (OBE). “Our sympathies are with the O’Sullivan family with the sad news of Dave O’Sullivan’s recent passing,” Mr Peters says. “His contribution to racing, initially as a jockey and then ...
Assalaamu alaikum, greetings to you all. Eid Mubarak, everyone! I want to extend my warmest wishes to you and everyone celebrating this joyous occasion. It is a pleasure to be here. I have enjoyed Eid celebrations at Parliament before, but this is my first time joining you as the Minister ...
Associate Health Minister David Seymour has announced Pharmac’s largest ever budget of $6.294 billion over four years, fixing a $1.774 billion fiscal cliff. “Access to medicines is a crucial part of many Kiwis’ lives. We’ve committed to a budget allocation of $1.774 billion over four years so Kiwis are ...
Hon Paula Bennett has been appointed as member and chair of the Pharmac board, Associate Health Minister David Seymour announced today. "Pharmac is a critical part of New Zealand's health system and plays a significant role in ensuring that Kiwis have the best possible access to medicines,” says Mr Seymour. ...
Hundreds of New Zealand families affected by Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) will benefit from a new Government focus on prevention and treatment, says Health Minister Dr Shane Reti. “We know FASD is a leading cause of preventable intellectual and neurodevelopmental disability in New Zealand,” Dr Reti says. “Every day, ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones today attended the official opening of Kaikohe’s new $14.7 million sports complex. “The completion of the Kaikohe Multi Sports Complex is a fantastic achievement for the Far North,” Mr Jones says. “This facility not only fulfils a long-held dream for local athletes, but also creates ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters’ engagements in Türkiye this week underlined the importance of diplomacy to meet growing global challenges. “Returning to the Gallipoli Peninsula to represent New Zealand at Anzac commemorations was a sombre reminder of the critical importance of diplomacy for de-escalating conflicts and easing tensions,” Mr Peters ...
Ambassador Millar, Burgemeester, Vandepitte, Excellencies, military representatives, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen – good morning and welcome to this sacred Anzac Day dawn service. It is an honour to be here on behalf of the Government and people of New Zealand at Buttes New British Cemetery, Polygon Wood – a deeply ...
Distinguished guests - It is an honour to return once again to this site which, as the resting place for so many of our war-dead, has become a sacred place for generations of New Zealanders. Our presence here and at the other special spaces of Gallipoli is made ...
Mai ia tawhiti pamamao, te moana nui a Kiwa, kua tae whakaiti mai matou, ki to koutou papa whenua. No koutou te tapuwae, no matou te tapuwae, kua honoa pumautia. Ko nga toa kua hinga nei, o te Waipounamu, o te Ika a Maui, he okioki tahi me o ...
Paul Goldsmith will take on responsibility for the Media and Communications portfolio, while Louise Upston will pick up the Disability Issues portfolio, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announced today. “Our Government is relentlessly focused on getting New Zealand back on track. As issues change in prominence, I plan to adjust Ministerial ...
Recreational catch limits will be reduced in areas of Fiordland and the Chatham Islands to help keep those fisheries healthy and sustainable, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. The lower recreational daily catch limits for a range of finfish and shellfish species caught in the Fiordland Marine Area and ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has welcomed an important milestone in New Zealand’s hydrogen future, with the opening of the country’s first network of hydrogen refuelling stations in Wiri. “I want to congratulate the team at Hiringa Energy and its partners K one W one (K1W1), Mitsui & Co New Zealand ...
The coalition Government is delivering on its commitment to improve resource management laws and give greater certainty to consent applicants, with a Bill to amend the Resource Management Act (RMA) expected to be introduced to Parliament next month. RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop has today outlined the first RMA Amendment ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra A new Commonwealth Prac Payment will provide students with $319.50 a week when they are on clinical and professional placements. The payment will be means tested and start from July 1 next year, which ...
Asia Pacific Report About 500 people honoured Palestinian journalists in the heart of the New Zealand city of Auckland today for their brave coverage of Israel’s War on Gaza, now in its seventh month with almost 35,000 people killed, mostly women and children. Marking the annual May 3 World Press ...
The Government Communications Security Bureau denies hosting a foreign spying capability flagged by the watchdog, differentiating it from the system recently criticised. ...
RNZ News A group of academic staff at New Zealand’s largest university have expressed concern at the administration’s move to block a protest encampment that was planned to take place on campus calling for support for the rights of Palestinians. This week, the University of Auckland warned that while it ...
Genterwocky After a hard days marching, Sir Doocey calls in at the Village Tavern For a pint of ale and a pork pie. The grim villagers stare at him. “Do not be travelling on the forest road,” warns a crusty old beak. “And why is that, antique peasant?” Grins Sir ...
Political conferences after a party returns to power are usually a chance for some healthy, even unhealthy backslapping. Yet National Party president Sylvia Wood’s address to its mainland representatives on Saturday hardly contained the unalloyed delight that one might have expected following National’s escape from the wilderness of opposition. Yes, ...
Comment: Almost half the world is voting in national elections this year and artificial intelligence is the elephant in the room. There are genuine fears AI-generated or AI-edited deepfakes will potentially manipulate election outcomes not just in the US and UK, but critically in countries such as India. For that ...
Ahead of the reality franchise’s return to New Zealand, allow us to introduce the eight brides and grooms. Chuck on a veil and tie back your man bun, because it’s time to say “I do” to a new season of Married at First Sight NZ. The reality TV “social experiment” ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Norton, Professor in the Practice of Higher Education Policy, Australian National University Every year on June 1, student debt in Australia is indexed to inflation. In 2023, high inflation pushed the indexation rate to 7.1%, the highest since 1990. This ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Changes in the May 14 budget will cut the student debt of more than three million people, wiping more than $3 billion from what people owe. The government will cap the HELP indexation rate ...
Asia Pacific Report The prosecutor’s office at the International Criminal Court (ICC) has appealed for an end to what it calls intimidation of its staff, saying such threats could constitute an offence against the “administration of justice” by the world’s permanent war crimes court. The Hague-based office of ICC Prosecutor ...
By Patrick Decloitre, RNZ Pacific correspondent French Pacific desk A women’s union in New Caledonia has staged a sit-in protest this week to support senior Kanak indigenous journalist Thérèse Waia, who works for public broadcaster Nouvelle-Calédonie la Première, after a smear attack by critics. The peaceful demonstration was held on ...
New Zealand Food Safety is monitoring overseas recalls of Indian packaged spice products manufactured by MDH and Everest due to concerns over a cancer-causing pesticide. ...
By Stephen Wright and Stefan Armbruster of BenarNews Fiji’s ranking in a global press freedom index has jumped into the top tier of countries with free or mostly free media after its government last year repealed a draconian law that threatened journalists with prison for doing their jobs. Fiji’s improvement ...
We might be in Invercargill but all anyone can talk about is Gore. Specifically, Salford Street. That’s where three-year-old Lachlan Jones lived, south of the centre of town, between the A&P Showgrounds and the Mataura River. Roughly 1.2 km away from the single level home he lived in with his ...
MONDAY I lined up the latest round of civil servants from city hall against the wall, and signalled for the firing squad to drop their rifles. I stepped up onto a wooden crate to look at the office workers in the eye. But that didn’t feel right, so I found ...
Keen hiker and second-year MSc student Liam Hewson wears two hats when he’s in the great outdoors. “The scientist in me appreciates nature and goes, ‘Oh, there’s that thing and there’s another thing,’ but then the tramper and the outdoorsy person in me thinks, ‘Cool bush.’” Born and bred in ...
After a long and illustrious career as a goal kicker, Dan Carter’s favourite way to unwind is… kicking goals. Why can’t he get enough of it? And what it’s like to watch him do it for an hour straight? A semicircle of people wielding cameras and phones has formed in ...
Dame Susan Devoy takes us through her life in television, including late night ER debriefs, her proudest CTI moment and the show she watches in secret. Quite aside from her four world champion squash titles, Dame Susan Devoy will likely go down in history as one of the best Celebrity ...
Hera Lindsay Bird reveals the best places in Ōtepoti to score more for your apocalypse-prep book hoard.Sometimes I get the feeling I’ve been killed in a car crash, and this second half of my life is just the brain unspooling itself, like one of those episodes of a hospital ...
ThreeNow’s new murder mystery series takes us on a dark, damp journey into the Australian wilderness.This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. High Country is ThreeNow’s new Australian eight-part crime drama, set in a remote part of the Victorian highlands. It tells ...
Introducing a new way to read The Spinoff every weekend. After nearly 10 years of being an online magazine, we’re finally embracing the weekend liftout. Despite our best efforts to convince you otherwise, writers and editors at The Spinoff don’t work weekend. It is through the sheer power of technology ...
Tip one: let yourself be nurtured by this big old man. Tip two: don’t ask him to adopt you. So, you’ve arrived at your first session with a new therapist. He tells you to make yourself comfortable and you opt for the tweed armchair, hoping it makes you look like ...
I didn’t know books could open you back up; that there were books that stayed with you, where reading was like a chemical event. I knew nothing.The Sunday Essay is made possible thanks to the support of Creative New Zealand.Not too long ago, I was listening to the American ...
Everyone thinks he’s dead. Every day they expect his body to be washed up along the coast. Most likely up Karitane way, the way the tide’s running. But nobody’ll be too surprised if his body’s never found. Even in death he wouldn’t have wished for such attention. He would have ...
Former Olympic swimmer James Magnussen has already started training for the Enhanced games, though says he won’t start taking performance enhancing substances until about nine months out from the competition. The Australian world champion was the first athlete to be announced by Enhanced, but he says the organisation has had ...
Council members voted 21 to 4 in favour of Ahluwalia returning to the Laucala campus following a much-awaited meeting in Vanuatu this week. It comes as USP and its two unions — the Association of the University of the South Pacific Staff (AUSPS) and the Administration and Support Staff Union ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicola Henry, Professor & Australian Research Council Future Fellow, Social and Global Studies Centre, RMIT University Shutterstock Following an emergency meeting of the National Cabinet this week, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has announced a raft of measures to tackle the problem ...
Analysis - A poll showing the opposition is more popular than the government raises questions, politicians go through their 'trial by pay rise' and a Green MP loses her cool in the debating chamber. ...
The entire stretch of Tokomaru Bay on the East Coast will be subject to a joint customary marine title for two hapū, and extending up to four miles out to sea. A High Court judge has found the two groups, who during the case settled a dispute over boundaries for ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Hall, Lecturer, Media & Cultural Studies, Edith Cowan University A longstanding feud between TikTok and Universal Music Group seems to have finally reached an end, with both parties signing a deal that will see Universal-backed music returned to the social media ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Siobhan O’Dean, Postdoctoral Research Associate, The Matilda Centre for Research in Mental Health and Substance Use, University of Sydney After several highly publicised alleged murders of women in Australia, the Albanese government this week pledged more than A$925 million over five years ...
Political parties have now fully disclosed the donations they received last year - with National getting more than double the cash of any other party. ...
A Pacific regionalism expert has called out New Zealand's Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters for withholding information from the public on AUKUS military pact. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard de Grijs, Professor of Astrophysics, Macquarie University Bruno Scramgnon/Pexels All systems are “go” for tonight’s launch of China’s next step in a carefully planned lunar exploration program. Placed on top of a powerful Long March 5 rocket, the Chang’e 6 ...
National returned a massive donation the day after a Newsroom story linked the donors to a property being investigated for operating unlawfully as a migrant workers’ hostel. The party’s 2023 donation filings, released on Friday, show it returned a $200,000 donation from Buen Holdings on August 23. That was the ...
Pacific Media Watch New Zealand has slumped to an unprecedented 19th place in the annual Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index survey released today on World Press Freedom Day — May 3. This was a drop of six places from 13th last year when it slipped out of its ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joshua Black, Political Historian and Administrator Officer, Australian Historical Association, Australian National University Australia has had its fair share of public record-keeping controversies in recent years. Some have been mere farce, as in the case of two formerly government-owned filing cabinets (containing ...
Heavenly Culture, World Peace, Restoration of Light (HWPL), a United Nations-affiliated organization dedicated to fostering peace through civilian-led initiatives, has issued a statement in response to the escalating conflict between Israel and Iran. ...
A poem by Tessa Keenan, from AUP New Poets 10. Mātou These days we are a photograph; one of a farm strewn with cows that used to be bright harakeke or swamp. The kids point at it and say the sun sits behind a smudge (left by someone at Christmas); ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1 Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan (Faber & Faber, $25)The masterful Irish writer ...
Marriage and civil union statistics record the number of marriages and civil unions registered in New Zealand each year, and divorce statistics record the number of divorces granted in New Zealand each year. Key facts Marriages and civil unions In ...
Marriage and civil union statistics record the number of marriages and civil unions registered in New Zealand each year, and divorce statistics record the number of divorces granted in New Zealand each year. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lennon Y.C. Chang, Associate Professor of Cyber Risk and Policy, Deakin University Taiwan stands out as a beacon of democracy, innovation and resilience in an increasingly autocratic region. But this is under growing threat. In recent years, China has used a variety ...
In this excerpt from her new memoir, Dame Susan Devoy remembers her turn as star contestant on the 2022 season of Celebrity Treasure Island. The most anxious time of every day was pre-elimination, when you knew this could be your final day on the show. I felt such contradictory emotions, ...
A week that began in triumph ended in an all-too-familiar disaster for the Green Party. Duncan Greive asks if there’s something in the mission that breaks its best and brightest. A long, strange week for the Green party began with a fantastic poll result. On one level this is hardly ...
By Lydia Lewis, RNZ Pacific journalist Vanuatu’s former prime minister and opposition MP Ishmael Kalsakau has stepped down — just two days after he confirmed he was the rightful opposition leader. Kalsakau, MP for Port Vila, confirmed to ABC’s Pacific Beat, and the Vanuatu Daily Post on Thursday that he ...
What’s to blame for the coalition’s choppy start? Six months in, and the mojo meter is in the doldrums. A new poll would put National out of power and sees its leader, Chris Luxon, sliding in popularity. How much is it about policy, how much coalition management and a perception ...
The striking report goes far beyond the proposed repeal of the Oranga Tamariki Act’s Treaty of Waitangi provision, and its impact should be felt far beyond the unique circumstances of the claim it addresses. Earlier this week, the Waitangi Tribunal released an interim report on the government’s proposed repeal of ...
The world has been experiencing a productivity slowdown, from which New Zealand has not been exempt. COVID-19 temporarily boosted labour productivity, but more recently, productivity has retreated. The overall trend since 2007 has been one of slow productivity ...
What’s more wasteful than spending $315k on syrup and machine maintenance? Trying to drum up a controversy about it.Cast your mind back to the pre-pandemic idylls of 2019. A “rat” was a disgusting rodent and not a self-administered plague test; the sixth Labour government was in power; and the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Fitz-Gibbon, Professor of Social Sciences, Faculty of Arts, Monash University, Monash University Ken stocker/Shutterstock In the wake of numerous killings of women allegedly by men’s violence in 2024, thousands of Australians have joined rallies across the country to demand action ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Henry Cutler, Professor and Director, Macquarie University Centre for the Health Economy, Macquarie University Oleg Ivanov IL/Shutterstock Waiting times for public hospital elective surgery have been in the news ahead of this year’s federal budget. That’s the type of non-emergency surgery ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Konstantine Panegyres, McKenzie Postdoctoral Fellow, Historical and Philosophical Studies, The University of Melbourne Amna Artist/Shutterstock One of the earliest descriptions of someone with cancer comes from the fourth century BC. Satyrus, tyrant of the city of Heracleia on the Black Sea, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Rose, Professor of Sustainable Future Transport, University of Sydney LanaElcova/Shutterstock Electric vehicles are often seen as the panacea to cutting emissions – and air pollution – from transport. Is this view correct? Yes – but only once uptake accelerates. Despite the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Giselle Natassia Woodley, Researcher and Phd Candidate, Edith Cowan University There is widespread agreement Australia needs to do better when it comes to gender-based violence. Anger and frustration at the numbers of women being killed saw national rallies over the weekend and ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Graham, Lecturer in Economics, University of Sydney Mark and Anna Photography/Shutterstock As home ownership moves further out of reach for many Australians, “rentvesting” is being touted as a lifesaver. Rentvesting is the practice of renting one property to live ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sukhmani Khorana, Associate Professor, Faculty of Arts, Design and Architecture, UNSW Sydney Netflix The new season of Heartbreak High is garnering mixed reviews. Critics are writing about the racy story lines, comparing it to other coming-of-age series about teenage relationships and ...
Bob Carr intends to launch legal action against Winston Peters and Julie Anne Genter is facing a second allegation of bullying. Both sucked the air out of an announcement on education, writes Anna Rawhiti-Connell in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in ...
Here is a good interview that helps in damping down the general slightly hysterical MSM reportage and allowing for a more balanced look at the overall situation in the Ukraine….
Thanks Adrian
Will watch
The calibre of the likes of Boris Johnson means that this nonsense will not be resolved soon
The UK's naming of a Russian puppet succeeding Zelensky post invasion is vile, war mongering crap and legal proceedings may follow .
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/ukraine-russia-yevhen-murayev-b1999067.html
A rare and lone voice in the Guardian reminds readers of the Minsk accords signed years ago , but never implemented suggests they are the only way out of the Ukraine mess
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/24/autonomy-eastern-ukraine-crisis-nato-russia-minsk
So disappointing that the NZ media merely repeats the one sided rubbish coming from the UK 's "intelligence services" via Boris Johnson
Really good interview Adrian, with a very credible academic who knows his subject through and through
I too, will watch this soon. But I think it’s more than’Slightly Hysterical’ the BS spouted by the Imperialist West.
The euphemism 'Lethal Aid'. Sickening.
https://twitter.com/USEmbassyKyiv/status/1484709938807070721
Genius Tik Tok video in my inbox this morning.
https://www.facebook.com/100000611617500/videos/298844738722921
Love it.
Other trigger words for me include "theory" and "opinion. " (To which my wife said, "why stop there?)
Yes Jenny, Dr. Google and Dr. Facebook have a lot to answer for!
Should I believe some random person on Tik Tok, insightful as it is, or this guy?
In October 2020, Professor Peter Doshi, the associate editor of the BMJ (formerly the British Medical Journal), claimed: “None of the [phase 3] trials currently under way are designed to detect a reduction in any serious outcome such as hospital admissions, use of intensive care, or deaths. Nor are the vaccines being studied to determine whether they can interrupt transmission of the virus”.
More recently, he’s complained that Pfizer has refused to release the raw data until 2025. That’s four years since rollout here began. Why should we have to wait until 2025 to get the raw data? And what if the data contradicts the picture painted by Pfizer?
Doshi made the following comment earlier this month:
What possible reason could they have for not releasing the data? Pfizer’s revenue reportedly could top $100 billion in 2022, the first pharmaceutical company to reach that figure.
https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4037
https://www.bmj.com/content/376/bmj.o102
https://www.fiercepharma.com/pharma/pfizer-to-exceed-100b-revenue-2022-thanks-to-covid-19-drug-and-vaccine-analyst
Sounds like useful research.
https://faculty.rx.umaryland.edu/pdoshi/
Hi Ross, a question for you;
Do you believe children have collapsed here in New Zealand, as a result of the Pfizer's vaccine (rather than other factors)?
Excuse me for butting in…
I can see how a child may faint in and around getting vaccinated.
Imagine at home you have parents on opposing sides of the administration of Pfizer's drugs.
One parent has lost their job and other domestic tensions arise because they don't have a passport. Can't go to that family wedding, dinner with the family etc.
Children aren't oblivious to these stresses and then they are put in a situation that implies choosing one parent over another.
That's a very good observation, gsays.
I imagine any "passing out" that may have occurred, if in fact there was any at all, will have been the result of something like that, or the general tension that exists around the process, or perhaps the heat – not though, because of the contents of the needle, coursing through the child's veins, reacting badly and causing a physical reaction, as implied by the antivaxxers.
I rather object to Jenny's question though, in response to a post that is essentially a long quote from the associate editor of the BMJ
The Merchants of Doubt
How the antivaxxer propagandists take advantage of slightest of scientific disputes and side shows to sneakilly sow seeds of doubt to encourage vaccine hesitancy, to undermine our nation's collective health response to the pandemic.
As to the contents of that needle, it is pointed out above that Pfizer are not releasing the raw data until 2025.
I have read/heard (possibly Andrew Campbell), Pfizer were obliged or implied the data information would be made available well before then.
Medsafe already knows what’s “in the needle” and there’s no need to wait until 2025!?
https://www.medsafe.govt.nz/profs/Datasheet/c/comirnatyinj.pdf
I think I am getting my wires crossed with needle contents and metadata from early trials.
No probs Gsays. Any time. You're very welcome to butt in. As we will most likely not be getting any straight answers from our resident closet anti-vaxxers any time soon.
Gsays; "I can see how a child may faint in and around getting vaccinated." ie other factors.
Good, you have passed the test and are not an antivaxxer troll sneakily trying to sow doubt and muddy the waters, with screeds of irrelevant marginal studies.
So many causes why a child could faint. Just waiting in a queue in hot weather to needing questions answered about being vaccinated and not feeling as though questions can be asked.
Not an easy time for parents (especially single parents or parents who have parents overseas) and school has not opened yet.
I would not want to be a 5 year old starting school or a parent who has been told to work from home with a baby, a preschooler and a primary age child and a partner who is an essential worker.
Alot of trust vested in Big Pharma.
I recall when the virus was first identified, it was supposedly spread by touch.
Sanitisation of surfaces and washing hands was the recommended response.
Nek minit….transmitted by air.
Nek minit …vaccine will protect you
Nek minit….you need 2 shots
Nek minit…it won't protect you from getting it or spreading it…but it will lessen the chances.
Nek minit….the main benefit of vaccines is to prevent the health system from being over whelmed.
Nek minit…there is another new variant…2 shots will not protect you.
Nek minit…you must have a booster shot.
Nek minit…the booster will not protect you from getting or spreading Omicron.
Nek minit….if you do contract Omicron,isolate at home and rest for 10-14 days…
Nek minit…you may need ongoing…boo$ter$.
Trust Big Pharma?
Billions in Govt funding for vaccines….4 mins in…
[lprent: don’t write teasers like this – state why why you think others should look at an external link. If I see too many of these, then I’ll add a rule that requires at least a attached paragraph before a video link will be accepted.]
https://youtu.be/6ucuOvJOO0I
Hey, Blazer, before he pleads the Fifth. Maybe you would like to answer the question, I asked Ross above;
Do you believe children have collapsed here in New Zealand, as a result of the Pfizer's vaccine (rather than other factors)?
Jenny – before blazer “pleads the fifth” and you start claiming a pwned victory. And before I start getting annoyed with pig-fucker questions…
Like everything else in medicine and public health, vaccinations against infectious diseases are a question about balancing multiple risks against each other. Medical practices aren’t magic – they are a question of probabilities.
So rather than posing “why did you kill your baby?” questions, perhaps you might consider that the pig-fucker tactic is a two way path, causes really stupid flame wars, and I’m likely to land hard on whoever does it.
So getting whatever conversation that this is back to a reasonable level…
Are you aware that children get hospitalised and die from covid-19? Have you looked at the numbers? Can you understand the numbers?
Study observes severe Covid-19 infections in children
parent – in Jenny's defence, the question was mine, and posed as a "litmus test", not in connection to pigs, as you put it. My proposal was that the response to the question would sort respondents into distinct "camps", cutting through the fog of multiple opinions, cutting to the chase, so to speak. It was intended as a clarifying device, but seems to fit the purpose badly. My apologies to Jenny for dropping her/you into it.
So do we want to find common ground , or do we just want to divide people into "tents" so we can ignore them?
Provide clarity, in my view. What anyone does from that point on, is up to them. It seems to me that the reports of "children collapsing" were delivered and received differently and that acceptance, one way or the other, is indicative. It's like asking if a person accepts that humans have exacerbated the warming of the climate, or had no role in the change. My concept may well be flawed (seems so) but the opportunity seems a good one, to me, as it's quite clear-cut, in my opinion. Finding common ground is a fair objective, but so is honest declaration of position.
And sorry, Iprent, “parent” is the default spelling on my machine.
no-one is obligated to state their position though. Have to run, will come back to this later.
Into 'camps', 'declaration of position' are nice, harmless sounding euphemisms for othering. I have been fortunate through my life to mostly not be othered and if I was on the outer, it was my choice and I was confortable with it.
I have noticed no matter how many times it is pointed out, there is a world of difference between 'anti-vax' and against the mandates, passports and the state's power to coerce an individual into a medication they do not want. They may have folk in both camps, but being one does not necessarily make you the other.
sorting commenters on TS into camps is likely to lead to flamewars. And create an antagonistic atmosphere that puts other people off from commenting.
There are good reasons to nip that in the bud (which is what Lynn is doing).
You can see from how Lynn framed his question, that it elicits better debate, better information, and gives people room to learn and change (or even just back down). Putting people into camps does the opposite.
Spot on, Blazer.
For the reasons you’ve given, the vaccine should really be called a drug, not a vaccine.
https://faculty.rx.umaryland.edu/pdoshi/files/2021/11/Peter-Doshi-testimony.pdf
So what do you think of reports that children in this country have been collapsing after receiving the childhood covid vaccination?
No comment?
I'd be very surprised if you get a reply, Jenny.
These RWs are very adept at believing what they want to, and ignoring inconvenient facts.
I don't think I am a RW, but I do think that it would have been helpful to have given urls for the "reports," and the question relates to the post it follows.
I very much doubt them seeing as one lot that I read were promulgated by arch anti vaxxer Liz Gunn.
She is one of those featured in David Farrier's Loopy article from October 2021.
https://www.webworm.co/p/loopy
This Doshi guy appears to have no idea. Administering the vaccine to infected people won't make them better at all. It needs to be administered before infection to be effective and calling it a drug doesn't alter this one bit.
Which reasons did Blazer give @ 2.3.2 that support your confirmation bias and logical fallacy?
Basically a completely spurious argument based on nitpicking word definitions.
Most vaccines ever developed during the initial phases of development required decades of development before they became capable of producing long-lasting effects. The goes for polio all the way through to the most recent ones. Some vaccines lose their efficacy regularly ever after decades of development – influenza vaccines for instance.
Whoever this Peter Doshi is, they either don’t know the history of vaccines or they are a PR wanker pushing a line for fooling illiterates.
Quick search and
Peter Doshi is an associate professor of pharmaceutical health services research in the School of Pharmacy and associate editor at The BMJ. His research focuses on policies related to drug safety and effectiveness evaluation in the context of regulation, evidence-based medicine, and debates over access to data. Doshi also has strong interests in journalism as a vehicle for encouraging better practice and improving the research enterprise.
So I think this guy does know what he is on about.
He appears to have no specific expertise or research experience in:
Actually I never said that they didn't know what they were speaking about. I was pretty specific.
The three I pointed out as probable explanations were.. Nitpicky word definitions. PR wanker. Lack of history on vaccine development.
First two sound probable.
The most effective way to make a name for yourself in academic circles if you can't do research, is to provide a new word definition and attach it to a field of study.
Another other effective way (especially in the US) is to become a talking head who spends time greasing up the media.
No particular evidence on knowing the history of vaccines. May have skipped those classes. From what I have heard, history of medicine and the development side of the medical profession is a low attendance set of classes.
What I was pointing at was that by the quoted definition and even my limited knowledge of the development history of vaccines, his statement doesn't stand up under even a basic scrutiny.
Simply claiming authority based on straight academic training and qualification isn't authoritative on its own. You have to have a argument that stands up to scrutiny and challenge.
Otherwise we'd still be living in a world dominated by the rather rigid scientific views of Lord Kelvin who at the end of the 19th century was proclaiming that physics was virtually all known and that the pesky experimental evidence of rays of radiation penetrating solid matter were irrelevant.
A fine example of authority bias.
For obvious reasons, the Merriam-Webster dictionary is not on any list of recommended reading for any student of Immunology.
Doshi conveniently ignores that both science and language are not fixed but evolve over time and need constant revision to stay up-to-date and accurate.
lols
Merriam-webster changed their definition beyond virus.
OED describes the use of the word to include virus products from an example published in 1983:
Sounds like targeting the spike protein to me.
Yes, word definitions change over time, for example as new technology emerges. But either the board of M-W were a bit slow in keeping up with the technical literature around vaccines and then the MrNA use hit the spotlight, or they're the slow peddlers in a global conspiracy to inject people with "drugs".
I think the former is more likely.
Fuck I love books – they appear today as they did when published on the date on the front pages.
Collins Gem (as in "pocket") Dictionary and Thesaurus, London, 1995:
Justifies the book hoarding for another 30 years, lol
The Merchants of Doubt II
To make your case, you've covered a lot of ground there Blazer
I suppose the only question I have for you Blazer, is your motive malign or are you just naively ignorant of how science works?
I am not a scientist.
I just posted a chronological sequence of my personal…observations.
The irony is that the short Tik Tok clip is about confirmation bias and said nothing about COVID-19 as such, which you ‘countered’ using the words “believe” and “random” plus a strawman pulled out of Doshi’s rabbit hole (i.e. demonstrating his own strong bias and prejudice).
You might as well have asked “should I believe in Taylor Swift or Santa Claus”, which would have made for a more entertaining discussion than your idiosyncratic diatribe.
What makes you think Medsafe and its overseas equivalents don't have access to the raw data? If they have access, why do I need it today?
Here is a response refuting Doshi's comments. His basic claim that efficacy is less than claimed, seems well refuted to me. Technical complaints about data availability etc – I have not followed up.
In the real world, a consistent (and global) pattern has emerged of vaccinated people having far better Covid19 outcomes than unvaccinated people. This confirms that the efficacy of the vaccines (as claimed in the trials) is true in the real world.
The proof of the pudding is in in the eating.
Note that Doshi’s qualifications are in Anthropology, East Asian Studies and his PhD was in “history, anthropology, and science, technology and society”. He does not have specific health, pharmaceutical, vaccine, statistics or immunology qualifications, nor does he conduct original research in these fields (i.e. he doesn’t develop drugs, vaccines, trials – or publish in immunology etc).
Thanks uncooked good that someone looks beyond the clickbait.
Real World the world has had a unprecedented pandemic in our life times.
A vaccine was needed many companies vied to produce vaccines.
The mRNA was the quickest to be developed using nano technology.
And is highly effective not perfect no vaccine is.
Luckily the vast majority is very happy it's been developed.
A very small but extremely vocal minority have pushed lies like sheading of vaccines will cause spread.5 g cell towers,then it was ivermectin, so and so on.
None of the antivax propaganda has stood the test of time.
Bang on! Confirmation Bias is running rampant these days.
I feel sorry for the bus driver and they give him a final warning! I guess he must have said something to provoke the punch.
Bus driver punched, given final warning after act of revenge caught on CCTV | Stuff.co.nz
Yeah, nah, he had time to stop and think about that one but reacted instead. It wasn't self defense. He could have stopped the bus and called the police instead of assaulting him back. Given he knows that the CCTV is there, I'd guess he lost it, which means he needs to sort out his ability to do that job that often involves people being arseholes. I hope he gets some support though, because that's a really shitty situation to be in.
Also hope they find the guy who punched him.
he needs to sort out his ability to do that job that often involves people being arseholes.
Well, some people are arseholes but I suspect that a driver being punched in the head is rather rare. Yeah I guess he could have called police but he might have wondered when they would turn up. As it was, the attacked quickly departed and hasn’t been identified.
and the driver is potentially going to lose this job.
Let's just say that a woman would probably have handled it differently and not seen kicking someone in the back as the first response.
A wee observation from the psychologist that dare not speak his Canadian name.
Underlying male-male conversations, is the understanding that if a certain (changeable) line is crossed, it may be met with a physical violent response.
When I heard him discuss this, a light went on. It wasn't a blatant, obvious not readily apparent thing, but I knew what he was talking about.
Doesn't forgive or excuse either persons actions but may shed light on them.
makes sense to me. Thing is, it's still against the law to assault someone physically, and there was time to make a choice.
If the passenger had punched him and then stood there leaning over him and shouting and basically boxing him in and threatening him, getting physical would seem appropriate. Cf to the Mitre10 staff manhandling the anti-mask dude out of the shop. Or someone defending themselves.
Was Peterson saying that men can't help themselves? or just that it's socialised in men to behave like that? Or was he saying it's biological?
The origin I took was biological/evolutional.
A socialised example might be rugby, union or league, where there is all sorts of physical domination and aggression within an understanding.
yes, and men make choices all the time to not harm the rugby players in the opposing team. The issue then is whether and to what extent men have choice in the moment. I think socialisation around emotion, entitlement, maleness and manhood all play a significant part.
Habituated, inculcated behaviour, imo.
yep.
"I think socialisation around emotion, entitlement, maleness and manhood all play a significant part."
I agree. More and more of that socialisation isn't been done by men. Something Celia Lashlie was big on.
I'm a fan of Celia Lashlie's work 🙂
Except there wasn't much in the way of talking prior to violence.
The problem generally isn't that a line might be crossed – that's basically a tautology. Every social interaction has a threat of violence, therefore there is always a "line". It's just that in nonviolent society, that line is rarely crossed.
Thing is, the drive for status and dealing with the physiological reactions to confrontation involve learned techniques: impulse control, using your words, or being somewhat inoculated to the stress of violence. Having a constant threat of violence to conversations isn't actually the norm.
Passenger dude had impulse control issues, maybe status issues and felt the crappy drive was a sign of disrespect. Driver was similarly controlled by his anger.
One thing I always found funny was watching many of the stupid late teens street fights at 3am. There was definitely a social script, it was basically rams butting horns. Each idiot had opportunities to walk away, the buildup was call:response in pattern, then the mutual approach, while maybe hoping friends would drag them away.
In contrast were folks who had obviously been around a bit. Very little in the way of puffing up, very quick to throw a punch (like passenger). They were a lot of work. If it was a status thing, they knew the winner was the person who could escalate first, so they didn't screw around.
My comment was in response to weka's observation a woman would have handled it differently. While there are a few exceptions, you'd like to think Hi-Vis man would not have coward punched a woman driver.
Spent six years running a rural town pub, what you say is very familiar. Especially the ‘been around a bit folks’. I had a memorable Christmas Eve ‘dance’ with one of them.
Makes me damn grateful I met a good partner early in life and that massively informed a lot of decisions I made through my adolescence.
timestamps suggest otherwise. Weka brought up the idea a woman would have handled it differently well after the comment I replied to.
I think women, on average would have handled being suckerpunched differently, but I also think that most men would have handled it differently. Not really judging the driver, but it was likely not his best work.
Aahh true. I agree, he didn't cover himself in glory.
out of curiosity, do you see that playing out in online places like TS, or is it just a more superficial comparison?
Hmm, really? Do you mean potentially has a threat of violence?
Well, I know I've been pissed off at some stuff personally, as opposed to just frustration at not getting my point across. Especially if it's an issue that I know about in real life, and the other party is talking bullshit. that definitely creates a reaction similar to instances that happened face to face. That's when I on occasion go do something else, or let a comment mellow overnight. And I've seen other folks throw their toys out of the cot – e.g. the folks who just start abusing moderators to get a permaban.
But mostly online it's people talking past each other and barking at the moon, in my opinion.It's also safer than in real life, so that can encourage the naturally timid to over-express their machismo.
Might be a definition difference there – potential is threat, in my context. So has a small possibility of violence.
I knew a lecturer who had some anxiety issues. He once had to duck out of a hobnob drinkies event because he became worried that people would start throwing chocolate eclairs at him and laughing at him. Now, that's highly unlikely, but if there were chocolate eclairs at that do, it's possible that could have happened. But it's highly unlikely unlikely enough for most people to not even have the possibility of violence cross their mind at a do like that.
I was working at a 21st when a young dude, sober (as everyone was at that stage), called the barman… names. So I told him to leave. He did, of his own accord, but it turned out he was the party person's ex, and was just looking to make life difficult for her because he didn't know how to deal with his own shit. That entire situation – happy people, still sober, all there for a birthday celebration, had a non-trivial potential for violence. Sure, it was guy/guy to start with, but he could have easily insulted a female bartender. Similarly, I saw a woman slap another woman's face in broad daylight, in a public hallway. That was unexpected, and almost certainly a learned way to express her own anger and pain.
I don't catch the bus and spend all the trip worried that the bus driver will screw up so a passenger thumps him. But there's always the possibility that someone has issues, or I piss someone off.
right, there are lots of situations that have potential violence, but were you saying there are none that don't have that? Because I can think of most social interactions I've had this week and I would rate the chance of them being violent at so close to zero may as well be zero.
Yeah, walking away from the keyboard at need is a very useful skill. The safer therefore more acting out thing makes sense.
I mean sure, the odds in any particular instance might be essentially infinitesimal, but that's the problem with the angle of "that" canadian, which was:
I mean sure, on one level that's true, if problematic: essentially it's the "fighting words" doctrine, where a statement that is outrageous enough will obviously start a fight.
But on the other hand, no, most people use their words, and there is not the ever-present knowledge that a faux pas could suddenly provoke a physical attack is not the norm.
It's bit weirder with strangers, but that's just because I don't want to make a dick of myself, rather than a worry about getting thumped.
Can't hear enough of the bleeped dialogue to know exactly who's saying what to whom after the punch was thrown. Also we have no idea whether there was any exchange between the two before the punch incident from this short video.
It was a hard punch to the side of the face, though. Nothing justified that. Lots of guys would react to that with a rush of blood to the head and retaliate at least once.
"He received a final written warning for serious misconduct for allegedly not waiting until all passengers were seated before setting off, and verbally abusing and assaulting the man who punched him."
We don't know the driver's employment history. The bit about not waiting until all passengers were seated might be more significant than it seems, for example. I'm also wondering, after watching the clip several times, whether the driver's assailant is drunk or has mental health issues.
There's possibly a bit more to this story than the limited information given in the article. Maybe someone might identify the puncher after seeing the clip?
Best thing is for the driver to appeal the warning.
Whenever I have used public transport, which is a horrid experience I don't recommend to anyone, the bus driver sometimes moves the bus before passengers are seated. I have found both drivers and passengers can be obnoxious to deal with.
The perpetrator looks like the usual suspect and started this physical confrontation.. The bus driver made one mistake…he kicked the offender in the back. He should have run up; pivoted 90 degrees and stomped the calf or ankle. That would have been the end of the confrontation. The bus driver is lucky this feral didn't pull a knife or weapon after being kicked in the back.
stomping on someone's foot is still assault and in this case would also lead to a warning.
Quite true, but the time for allowing these pricks to hit people at will should be over.
Lordy! The lack of self-awareness is breath-taking!
You will need to expand on that Robert because I have no self-awareness.
This should be riveting.
Robert's response to that reply should be "I rest my case."
Yes, I agree. Robert does get into difficulties with me with his selective quotes and pretzel logic.
It's pretty clear. You are advocating assaulting someone for assaulting someone.
Blade is a very blunt simplist. He won't see anything wrong with assaulting someone for assaulting someone.
If there is a vicious cycle, he will participate..
Nah.
Firing and likely charges.
Permanent damage to the guy's legs is even more of an escalation than kicking him (poorly) in the back.
The driver shouldn't have to put up with that stuff, but that means "get off my bus" and/or calling the cops, not attacking him from behind.
Yep. I was meaning the work fairness side.
Would the police still charge for the kick? I'm guessing not having a victim to make a complaint makes that harder?
Well, a kick like blade describes would definitely leave a victim, but I'm not sure one actually needs a victim as such. The problem is that the fact the guy could walk off suggests we're not looking at any of the crimes that carry weight, maybe some summary offences act thing like common assault or fighting in a public place. Not likely worth court, with no complainant or victim impact statement.
So maybe a police warning, or diversion. If that.
If the dude gets identified from the video and it turns out he walked into ed in a few days after with a screwed vertebrae that was a miracle away from making him paraplegic, the story might change.
yes, there was a victim, but they couldn't find him.
Story might change, and, punch dude gets arrested as well.
There's been more than one fight where everyone involved got charged for their bit, yep
That comment is a curious mix of being ever so butch, yet also being too delicate to mix with normal people.
Reminded me of this:
https://terrypratchettappreciation.tumblr.com/post/653903384354684928/thats-horrid-horrible-thought-susan-the
As in, "Blade is having a horrid day on TS"?
That may be unkind and counterproductive Robert, but it's probably an accurate observation.
Blade should do a runner.
My grandson just asked me what concrete was made from. I was astonished to read, on Wikipedia, this:
"…Concrete is the second-most-used substance in the world after water, and is the most widely used building material. Its usage worldwide, ton for ton, is twice that of steel, wood, plastics, and aluminum combined …This widespread use results in a number of environmental impacts. Most notably, the production process for cement produces large volumes of greenhouse gas emissions, leading to net 8% of global emissions.""
How did you miss that! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cement
Cement itself is mostly calcium carbonate (CaCO3) – ie usually mined from limestone or marble, mixed in with some fly ash. The usual process for making cement involved driving out water and any of its carbon dioxide at reasonably high temperatures (the first phase to clinker is CaCO3 -> CaO + CO2.
The most typical way of doing that is to use very very large fossil fuelled open ended or ventilated rotatory ovens.
But if you look at the whole process of cement making and producing concrete, the greenhouse gas emissions go up markedly. Mining and moving large quantities of stone for concrete, cement and limestone for cement around are a large chunk of our transport emissions. Alternatives like shaped stone, steel, glass and even wood don’t cut that part of the building emission process.
They’re starting to develop ways of doing the limestone burn without direct fossil fuels. But it is bloody hard to get alternative methods of producing the equivalent of those strong calcium bonds in construction materials.
Hempcrete is an interesting product that helps to minimise the carbon costs, both in production and also after installation.
I was well into adulthood before I learned that concrete "drying" was actually a specific chemical reaction forming a whole thing, rather than just being like a really good mud brick.
Not that I ever considered concrete all that much, but still – funny the things we carry over from childhood.
Concrete today with acrylic moderfiers is much stronger than earlier forms of concrete except maybe early forms of concrete used in the Eastern Mediterranean.
The soil beneath concrete, I believe, is dead.
There's a lot of soil lying dead, beneath concrete!
Tragedy.
In the river valley where I live, there is a concrete arch bridge built in the 1920s there are only two left of this type, the other is in Canada. It's protected as an Historic Place. Our local roading contractor is responsible for maintenance and he says the concrete is much stronger than that used today. The only maintenance needed has been repairs after a milk tanker clipped the approach to the bridge.
His great great grandfather built the bridge – he couldn't read or write but also built a railway tunnel on the Nelson railway line!
https://westcoast.recollect.co.nz/nodes/view/21234
I live not far from you.
I always heard the name "Horse Terrace Bridge" was a bit of a joke – a reference to the ladies of a nearby house of ill-repute, serving the local mining community.
It's not a joke!! Original name was Whores Terrace back when it was a tree trunk over the river for access and all the associated deaths by drowning. Fascinating to read all the lobbying of parliament to get the bridge built – William Massey was PM in those days.
Like most things we create, wonderful! Until we over-do it.
Discretion! It's the challenge we face as a species.
Chris Trotter writes:
"And, because all Covid variants surge, and peak, and then, after a few months of mayhem, go into decline,…"
Which addresses a question I've been nursing for a while – do the Cover family of viruses "fade" naturally, and why?"
Trotter goes on to say,
"..the Prime Minister’s heroic after-image will remain imprinted upon the voters’ retinas long after they have entered, and left, the polling-booths in 2023."
Which sounds reasonable to me.
http://bowalleyroad.blogspot.com/2022/01/omicron-has-come.html
Oh dear. Chris has been reading his favourite poetry again.
Whenever he starts reading the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam he gets into this mood and stops writing prose and starts trying to write poetry.
Read a bit of the Fitzgerald translation and you will see what I mean.
https://www.therubaiyatofomarkhayyam.com/rubaiyat-full-text/
That's right, alwyn, attack the messenger, not the message!
It didn’t take long until the idiosyncrasies of the new self-isolation system to rear their head:
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/460148/staff-at-motueka-clinic-linked-to-omicron-cases-not-isolating
If staff are wearing all the appropriate PPE and distance as much as practicable, they're probably as protected as anyone. Health staff not isolating in these circumstances has been standard for months.
If the cases presented with symptoms they might have been seen outside too.
Novel traffic-calming method:
If anyone is inclined to check the blooms out 'in the flesh', I heartily recommend Marima Domain just a little bit up the road. A beautiful river spot with the Mangahao River and lots of swimming holes.
Using money to control others seems as old as the hills. Good that taking it for granted seems to have been replaced by an effort to specify it…
We're told that cloth masks are no longer fit for purpose, surgical masks not fully effective for covid , and more expensive disposable respirator masks like N95 the most effective.
Is there any move to subsidise ?
Even surgical masks can cost up to $25 a week if used correctly.Thats for one person, a family at least $50.How many families can even afford the less effective surgical masks?
Weekly cost for one person wearing one N95 mask a day ..up to $70
Another hazard for the poor, cramped deficient housing(or a car), rising food costs, inflation, and now the ability to stay alive via masks
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/127579055/approved-respirators-most-effective-against-omicron–but-are-they-affordable
We got several hundred KN95 masks for work (loops around the ears rather than the back of the head). These cost around $30 per box of 10. So, nothing like the prices you are talking about.
I'm using a quote from the article .Not many households can afford to buy in bulk
These are disposable masks. But if you are only using them to go out to the shops or whatever, then a mask should last a week at least I would expect.
BTW, the masks we purchased are identical to the one the person is wearing in the picture in the article you linked to.
Really wish people would stop saying that. Cloth masks, wellfitted and with an insert or doubled up reduce risk of covid transmission. Likewise surgical.
Yes, N95/P2 are more effective, if fitted properly, but this doesn't mean the other masks are useless.
Given there is a shortage of P2s already, I'm saving mine for when I really need them. I'm not using them yet, because there is no covid in the community where I live, and once there is I'll use them selectively eg when in town and people won't socially distance.
Follow the money.
Public Health vs. Private Wealth
Why are the right wing almost universally opposed to our current government's world beating covid strategy?
The Merchants of Doubt
The relevance to the dispute of vaccine mandates, vaccine passports, Red light restrictions, lockdowns, is that prioritising public health comes at a cost to business, (and if not managed properly to the average citizen as well).
However our government's response to the pandemic has wide public support, which is hard for the right to confront directly.
Unable to confront the government directly, manufacturing doubt in our government's response to the pandemic has become a cottage industry among the right and far right..
According to Michael Baker we need a lot more RAT tests:
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/460152/covid-19-isolation-rules-should-ease-once-omicron-takes-off-more-rapid-antigen-tests-needed-baker
"Rationing tests is something that may well happen during a surge, he said, and rapid antigen tests will be an important part of the response.
"When we have high levels of the virus circulating in the community the false negative and false positive side of the rapid antigen test doesn't matter so much."
But rapid antigen tests won't keep businesses operating, he said.
"It's not the golden chalice, it's a tool in the toolkit."
Professor Michael Baker said 4.5 million rapid antigen tests won't be enough to regularly screen essential workers to keep operations functioning.
According to Bill O'Reilly on Newstalk ZB last night (on demand at 5 about 7 minutes in), businesses have been trying for months to get tests approved to import. Only 4 brands approved here in New Zealand compared to 65 in Australia.
By the time we get enough, we won't need them.
Excellent. Thanks farmers for your hard work. You get no thanks from this government. Hopefully his may make things a little better.
Robbo will love this.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/farming/agribusiness/127587120/fonterra-lifts-farmgate-milk-price-to-record-level-sees-138b-economic-boost
Surely the farmers didnt hve to do any extra "work " they just got paid more for their product .
From what i can make out riding arround on a quad all day constitutes "work" these days in fact i wouldnt be supprized if some of them drive down the hallway to take a dump ! .
typical day would involve getting on the quad ride 50 meters to the cowshed drain the cows of their milk ,then ride back home partake of a leisurely breakfast watch daytime tv til 3 jump back on the quad trundle up the race to open a gate reach down with a device that measures how long the grass is an tells you how much artificial nitrogen you are gonna have to put on to make the grass grow as much as you want it to , then back down to the cowshed again .etc .
If theres any actual "work" done it gets done by contractors doesnt it ?
Weston this agriculture boom couldn't have come at a better time.
All farmers I know work 60hr plus weeks.
You would last a couple of hrs at best.
We have lost tourism,hospitality,education etc
We are lucky to have farmer's otherwise what do we export, 60% of our export earnings, probably higher now other areas have collapsed
Relax tricledrown was only a semi serious comment ! I know quite a few hard working farmers too an ive worked for some wonderful ones an some arseholes .
At its heart tho the dairy industry is ruthless in the extreme .Essentially you engineer all of your cows to get pregnant at the same time then as soon as the calves are born you steal them off the mothers truck off most of them to be killed and keep all the milk yourself .Before organizations such as Farmsafe came along the rules arround how a farmer could deal with bobby calves were almost non existant and pretty much nobody cared certainly not the farmers .Theres some truely awfull vids out there of goings on in the processing plants where they take the calves pretty sure it would chill most people to the marrow unless youve already sold your soul .
Your right about the two hrs i couldnt work on a dairy farm at least not a conventional one i wouldnt want the karma .
Blade, at #18 below, you'll find reference to farmers seeking workers to pick crops. No mention of wages paid by the farmers but reference made to highlight incentives for the work aiding farmers by the Seasonal Work Scheme.
https://www.workandincome.govt.nz/products/a-z-benefits/nz-seasonal-work-scheme.html
No thanks from this government indeed!
I wanted a decent explanation of what’s going on in the Ukraine, and why. Got it here.
https://youtu.be/QbBiFAzz-C8
I liked the other explanation better thank goodness it didnt contain silly musac in the background either .
65 years ago we ( not me, too tough) were dropping like flies during some random immunisation gig at school around mid 50s, most of them before they got anywhere near the front of the queue. Perfectly normal, and that was decades before Social Fucking Media putting the arse- clenching smoteing with lightning threat into us poor little buggers. Mind you we had just cause, vaccination needles then were just hollowed out 4 inch nails that had been used about a thousand times already, there was precautions ,they were wiped with an oily rag between shots. Happy days!.
"hollowed out 4 inch nails"
Luxury!
Another…Yorkshire man!
Aye! Driven in and then extracted with a claw hammer. Then they went all soft and introduced an oral vaccine. My mother still made me face the needle though.
My uncle during WW2 was a sapper in the first echelon and stationed in North Africa. When blood was required urgently which was often men were pulled out of the ranks randomly and frog marched to the nearest field hospital and were required to give up their blood for the betterment of the sick. No pussy footing around and PC nonsense. He said the needles were like you were describing and he said he just got on with the job and put up with it. They had four years of that before they got their first furlough home. We are 2 and a bit years into this pandemic and many are still complaining and going on about loss of freedom. Beggars belief.
Thanks whispering Kate for the best comment on this subject.
Those soldiers endured that so we can have the freedoms of today.
The freedoms of the self entitled seem to have no bounds.
My parents were young teenagers who ran from abject poverty in Ireland to help the War effort in London circa 1943to 45.
They endured bombing,V1doodle bugs and v2 rockets.Stupendously high rents as many houses we're uninhabitable.
Landlords profiteered.
Put today's antvaxxers and public health underminers back into that scenario.
They would not even make a sound.
Yes Tricledrown and on top of that they laid mines under bridges etc and had to defuse them as well. He was strafed often and had to huddle in ditches. He lost his hard hat on one trip into a ditch and ran back for it, the ditch was obliterated and he lost mates while retrieving his tin hat. We haven't had anything serious like that to affect us for so many years we have all gone soft on it. I do hope we have the fortitude to endure this pandemic and can stay with the PM to get through it. We all need to harden up.
Thanks WK for those recollections.
I wish no disrespect to your uncle, his response to his environment makes me think of a Jiddu Krishnamurti observation.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society."
I am starting to realise this may apply to our current situation, re Covid, in other ways. It may explain some of the resolve found in folk with dissenting views. The Public Health response may be one too many sacrifices or adjustments in this profoundly sick society.- Inequality, CC, environment degradation…
BTW, there was no escape, no matter how daring, it was a convent school and we were all sheparded into the biggest classroom and the exits were well guarded by nuns dressed with the full flying kit and carrying the most evil yard long leather-soaked-in-vinegar-for-days straps and just itching to use them. Deliriously happy days! Strangely enough we Mickey Doolans had the best immunisation numbers in the country.
There are those of us interested in urban affairs such as transport and housing. The Greater Auckland blog is a great example of writers who are knowledgeable and passionate about their subject.
The latest post takes a good look at road safety. Let’s hope is a blog read by Michael Wood and the mandarins at Waka Kowhai.
”In addition to the progressive safety programmes of work that are already underway, Waka Kotahi’s leaders need to let Vision Zero guide the entire programme. It isn’t something to “squeeze into” a sector feeling the pinch of funding pressures; it’s a way to critique everything in order to reprioritise funding. The scale of change required is immense, and some entirely new programmes are needed, based on Vision Zero principles and harnessing traffic circulation changes. Many programmes should also be discontinued, with their budgets reallocated.”
https://www.greaterauckland.org.nz/2022/01/25/a-safer-course/
Another bullshit "Labour Shortage" (aka "WAGES shortage") campaign.
Pick Nelson-Tasman to work, campaign urges
Not a single mention of pay and conditions anywhere in the article!
that's unfortunate timing, not sure there will be many people wanting to flock to that area just now.
No mention when you go to the Pick Nelson/Tasman website either except for 'good' wages and mention of government supplied incentives such as accommodation supplements.
The site says, "These include the possibility of financial assistance for relocation costs, travel costs and work gear; an accommodation supplement; and up to $1,000 in cash incentives."
Government funded under the Seasonal Work Scheme.
Bloody socialists.
Excellent observation.
Private business expecting everyone else to contribute to their profit margin because they won't pay the actual cost of labour.
Parasites.
With Omicron appearing in the Motueka/Golden Bay Area, famous for it's unvaxxed, unmasked,
unhingedfreedumb-fighter underbelly, it'll be very interesting to watch what happens over the next couple of weeks.(Apologies to the other good folk of Te Tauihu).
Unhinged eh
I know a lot of those people, kind, compassionate, committed to low carbon footprints,and simple lives, organic gardeners, permaculture teachers,health practitioners, teachers , nurses, many of them.I wouldn't call them an underbelly, and I will stay friends with them although I may not see them close up for some time.
On another note it's fantastic to see what a tiny country under savage sanctions for decades can do with it's medical research
https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO2201/S00131/effective-and-cheap-cubas-vaccines-brings-hope-to-poorer-countries.htm
Also , this will go down like a cup of cold sick but comparative studies of different vaccines, show Sputnik looking pretty damn good
http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20220120000928
Endorsed by US vaccine experts
https://www.rt.com/russia/547239-us-vaccine-researcher-sputnik-pfizer-omicron/
My own Riverton community mirrors the Golden Bay community closely. I call my unhinged friends just that and we all laugh – they think I'm a danger to society, just as I do them.
I'm still seeing them face to face.
Yay thats all gd to hear francesca always wished we,d had more choice but nah we had to trot along behind mother america like obedient little sheep .!