This dumb-cunt boofhead managed a much higher score of injured victims than Delegat, feels the same “remorse” that could be better described as “sentence mitigation tactic” and has escaped a prison term because it might hurt his “career” prospects, to the extent that playing a game for a living can be called a career. Still, nice to see consistency from NZ rugby in the role models it provides for us.
what “future prospects” are acceptable to the courts, and what “future prospects” are deemed of no value?
Whether your future prospects are capable of making you a millionaire or not. It’s essentially the courts deciding who’s worthy or not which is something that the courts simply should not be doing.
ANAND HIRA: One law for rugby players and a different law for everyone else.
A man has beat up four people – including two women. No one is denying it happened. And if this mongrel was an accountant, truck driver, labourer, firefighter, lawyer, doctor or just about anything else – he would be in prison. Because no one in their right mind would believe their job should excuse such a brutal behaviour.
Unless your name is Losi Filipo and that career is playing rugby.
Then we can’t have the punishment adversely affect his career. That just wouldn’t be fair. If you are good at rugby, you can get away with anything. That’s the New Zealand we live in. There is one law for rugby players and a different law for everyone else.
One victim couldn’t work for three months. One of the women has to get platic surgery on her face, she was a model. The other women – a world class barbershop singer – feared she’d never sing again. And one of his victims couldn’t work for eight months after the assault, and still suffers chronic fatigue and migraines, oh – and he was a promising rugby player too, who will never play the game again.
Their careers were affected by this attack. So can someone explain to me how it’s fair that Losi Filipo gets discharged without conviction. Because it makes no sense to me.
Playing sport for a living should be an honour. To represent the rest of the community and be paid for it is a privledge. This is a god-damn disgrace. Our justice system cares more about rugby potential than protecting New Zealanders from monsters. I am ashamed of a justice system that cares so little for victims. But that’s not the worst of it. We should be afraid.
There are monsters walking our streets who think they are above the law. And the law as proven them right.
Steve Tew does not front for interview about abuse case.
Paul Henry talks with family spokesperson Ruth Money, followed by Mark Henaghan, University of Otago Law Professor, on the case of Losi Filipo. How can someone violently attack a group of four people and escape conviction?
Yes , another bullshit case from a thoroughly Neolib society.
It’s all about ‘personal responsibility’ if you’re a designated loser, but ‘nice guy- give him a break’ if you’re a designated winner.
It’s not so much a matter of class, it’s a matter of total bloody hypocrisy.
Obvious mitigating features would include his age (he was only 17 at the time); his lack of previous convictions; his remorse; willingness to undergo restorative justice; the large body of community support he enjoys suggesting an unlikelihood of ever re-offending; his commitment to counselling and voluntary community work and the like.
Judges’ willingness to call some particular bullshit a “mitigating feature” is entirely subjective.
In this case, “remorse” from the kind of person who hangs out on the street looking for people he can issue with an unprovoked beating should be treated with skepticism, not just accepted at face value. Is there any evidence that the shithead perp felt “remorse” at any time other than when he was facing sentencing? Because, according to his victims, there’s evidence that he didn’t.
The “commitment to counselling and voluntary community work” is likewise easy to say when facing sentencing – actual intent to carry it out is another matter.
And “the large body of community support he enjoys” is as likely to endow him with a feeling of entitlement to impunity as it is to discourage further offending.
All that is true Psycho.
Maybe though the issue of support and remedy and compensation for the victims should be a vital part of the story. Victims do seem to be neglected. Of course whatever happens to the assailant will not change the victims’ position.
If he got chucked on the scrap heap and left to rot in the company of career crims, would that change anything for his victims? What would they, or anyone, stand to gain?
Ugh he deserves to have the book thrown at him, and hard. I’m just thinking as to what that would actually achieve tho?
Not so important for League because you can have a viable sports career in one or two countries easily, and it helps that NZ and Oz have softer rules for each other than anyone else.
For rugby, you have to be able to travel for at least Super rugby, and once you get into international and overseas pro comps, international travel is a big part of it.
The case law on the subject is that loss of careers in these circumstances amount to fines to the amount of the lost income, which can be hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars for a young player with 10-15 years ahead of them, particularly if they from lower socio-economic backgrounds.
By all accounts hes pretty good at league as well so really protecting his career shouldn’t have come into it as he would still have options after a sentence
“Protecting a persons possible career is not the job of the courts.”
Agree, its a disgrace that he avoided a criminal conviction. This thug not only stomped (multiply times) on one of his victims head, but also male v female assault.
If he was a truck driver, jail time would of been a real possibility…
In my recent line of work, I have, among other things, been trying to place people (mostly beneficiaries) into low-skilled jobs. It is nigh impossible to place people with convictions of any sort at this level because it’s one of the first filters applied by the employer, rightly or wrongly.
I agree with the judge’s reasons because the alternative, in my view, is worse, and will involve throwing a teenager on the scrapheap until the Clean Slate Act saves him, and he can’t even rely on that if he’s jailed. Meanwhile, the gaps in his CV will also make him hard to employ later on.
When people say “he deserves it for his actions”, understand that a conviction makes life much, much harder, particularly for young people with no employment history to overcome the conviction in employers’ considerations. Also understand that the outcome is massively expensive to the taxpayer, both in terms of immediate sentence, and in terms of long term welfare dependency.
I realise not everyone agrees.
However, it’s not just potential pro sports players who receive discharges without conviction. Here are a couple of manslaughter cases which resulted in discharges:
In my recent line of work, I have, among other things, been trying to place people (mostly beneficiaries) into low-skilled jobs. It is nigh impossible to place people with convictions of any sort at this level because it’s one of the first filters applied by the employer, rightly or wrongly.
You know, the whole idea behind a sentence is that the person convicted has paid their debt to society for the crime that they committed, that there is an end to the punishment. What you’re describing is people continuing the punishment after the punishment is supposed to have ended.
Perhaps what we should be doing at the end of the sentence is clearing/hiding the conviction so that people understand that the punishment is over.
I agree with the judge’s reasons because the alternative, in my view, is worse, and will involve throwing a teenager on the scrapheap until the Clean Slate Act saves him, and he can’t even rely on that if he’s jailed.
I don’t. People who commit crimes should be convicted. What we should be doing is far more in rehabilitation for those convicted and making people understand that the punishment doesn’t go on forever no matter how much those at the Sensible Sentencing Trust want it to.
I’d love to see it, particularly with substantially stronger Clean Slate legislation (ours is weak compared to elsewhere) and following the Scandinavian model of rehabilitative prisons, but until we do, judges are required to make that decision based on the rules and society we have, not the rules and society we’d like to have.
I’d also add the Basic Income and better employment to decrease the 100 applications for 1 job which leads to that kind of filtering – almost as if this stuff is interlinked…
If he got chucked on the scrap heap and left to rot in the company of career crims, would that change anything for his victims?
A prison sentence for him isn’t about improving things for his victims, it’s about protecting his future victims for the duration of his sentence, and hopefully giving him a reason to want to not do stuff that would put him back there again.
Compensation would change things for his victims – it’s a pity the courts can’t put a lien on his future earnings.
For me the issue is not what effect putting someone in prison has – clearly not a good effect in many, many cases.
The issue, however, is that many, many people ARE thrown in prison, and certainly convicted, for just this kind of offence – yet not this person.
That he has lots of support, ‘mentoring’ and the like actually suggests to me that a conviction (which is what he completely escaped, never mind the sentence) would not be as severe a penalty as it would be for someone who has little social support, ‘mentoring’, etc.. He could ‘bounce back’ from a conviction given all those in his corner.
He’s actually in better condition and circumstances to sustain a conviction than many who come to court in these circumstances – yet he is the one who is let off.
No doubt the community work will be rugby centric.
I have been responsible for ensuring someone doing community work actually does it and it is a bit of a joke really. Very easy to manipulate and abuse.
His community work involved working with kids around his chosen sport. All his games and practices ended up being community work as well. He probably did about a quarter of what was required.
The “dumb-cunt boofhead” mentioned in comment number 1 above. Your comment is in the thread as a reply to that comment – I guess it was intended be a new comment, not a reply?
There are no “moderate” rebels in Syria. Just Islamists who pretend to be moderate in order to get aid and arms from the US, and then go back to being Islamists after receiving the aid and the arms from the US.
Colonial Viper, did you hear John “Lord of Empathy” Campbell’s little performance on National Radio yesterday? He seems to have bought in to every single bit of propaganda from the White House about Syria.
oh yeah i heard a bit of that; I replied that Campbell needs to instead interview Stephen F Cohen, Professor Emeritus of Russian Studies, Princeton University and New York University, Contributing Editor to the Nation Magazine.
Miller’s own blurb. This is the propagandist Campbell accepted without question.
“JAMES MILLER is the Managing Editor of The Interpreter where he reports on Russia, Ukraine, and Syria. James runs the “Under The Black Flag” column at RFE/RL which provides news, opinion, and analysis about the impact of the Islamic State extremist group in Syria, Iraq, and beyond. He is a contributor at Reuters, The Daily Beast, Foreign Policy Magazine, and other publications. He is an expert on verifying citizen journalism, and has been covering developments in the Middle East, specifically Syria and Iran, since 2009. ”
“The Interpreter is a daily translation and analysis journal funded and presented by Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty. In addition to covering political, social and economic events inside the Russian Federation, it chronicles Russia’s war in East Ukraine and its intervention in Syria in real time.
Founded in May 2013, this online journal set out with the modest goal of translating articles from the Russian press, the better to lower the language barrier that separates journalists, analysts, policymakers, diplomats and interested laymen in the English-speaking world from events taking place inside the Russian Federation.
Little did we realize then that The Interpreter would devote as much energy to covering what the Russian Federation got up to outside of its own borders.
The Interpreter is a leading real-time chronicle and analysis resource on all aspects of the crisis in Ukraine. Every day since violence first erupted in Kiev’s Independence Square, The Interpreter’s Ukraine live-blog has documented a revolution that became a war on European soil, often breaking news stories about Russia’s annexation of Crimea, its maskirovka insurgency in the Donbass, its cross-border shelling of Ukraine, the downing of MH17, and the Minsk II “cease-fire.”
None? Not a single one out of the entire 20 million people living there? Please keep in mind we’re talking about this planet, not the alternative one inhabited by RT watchers, in which the US government blew up the WTC and the Russian air force magically kills only “terrorists” when it rains phosphorus incendiaries on Aleppo.
It’s an especially astonishing claim because you’ve previously described the Assad regime, one of the most brutal dictatorships in the Middle East, as “moderate.” Those “Islamist” rebels must be demons in human form…
So why doesn’t everyone whose employment (and future employment) might be jeopardised by a conviction get similar lenient treatment under that section of the crimes act?
Or does only having a low wage job that’s at stake somehow make a conviction easier to bear?
When you’re on the bones of your bum, having trouble finding menial work because of a conviction can tip you into far more suffering than missing out on a professional rugby career and having to settle for an ordinary job.
There are many examples of diversion and discharge without convictions for precisely those reasons – two manslaughter cases are up thread. This gets press because of rugby, but with good legal representation, anyone else could have argued a similar case, and may well have been granted it as well.
That is according to prat Henry. You know the one who had his nose so far up Keys arse yesterday morning it was embarrassing.
Why I am not surprised by this prats right wing rant. Also, the Guardian is saying the shit against Corbyn is continuing.
It won’t be Corbyn that is unelectable, it will be the Labour Party that is unelectable if the shits don’t screw their heads in and get in behind the leader, and work to get Thatcher MkII and the Tories out.
Pat Mc Fadden calls for the party to seek inspiration from Wilson. Wilson who helped to destroy the British Aircraft Industry and fucking Blair a war criminal that should have been arrested years ago for war crimes, was so slippery earned the nickname of “Teflon Tony” McFadden must be fucking joking.
Quote from the Guardian
“Pat McFadden, the former minister, called for the party to seek inspiration from its “three great postwar leaders”, who he named as Clement Attlee, Harold Wilson and Tony Blair.”
“the Guardian is saying the shit against Corbyn is continuing”
I’m in the UK at the moment and can confirm that – surprise, surprise – the vilification continues. A whole series of spurious, utterly contrived little Gotchas in the broadcast media since Corbyn’s latest victory.
Same old “Left are Anti-Semitic” smears (eg arch-Blairite Tristram Hunt on ITV’s Peston on Sunday last night) , same sad attempts to portray Corbynite support-group Momentum as a hotbed of violent misogynist larrikins (unfortunately for the Blairite-Brownite brigade – almost two thirds of Women Labour Party Members voted for Corbyn – including, incidentally, my strongly-feminist cousin – a kiwi domiciled in London since the early 80s. Momentum activists, meanwhile, appear to be disproportionately female and middle-aged)
… and a few new variations on these themes …
For example, after a post-leadership election TV interview yesterday in which Corbyn’s Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell made very conciliatory gestures towards the PLP, he gets condemned by both the MSM, the Tories and the Establishment Centre-Right of the Labour Party for calling former Tory Minister Esther McVey “a stain on humanity” wayyyyy back in 2014 and refusing to apologise now. (also suggestions that he joked back in 2014 that McVey should be lynched – though he strongly disputes that allegation, suggesting he’d simply reported to the media what had been shouted at him at a public meeting).
McDonnell actually accepted in the interview that he’d sometimes “gone too far” in criticism of opponents but said voters wanted honesty rather than spin and he had been expressing honest anger back in 2014 over savage Tory Govt cuts to services for people with disabilities (McVey had been Disabilities Minister at the time) … Cue media beat-up over the last couple of days that McDonnell is encouraging a culture of intimidation, abuse and violence in the Party.
These tropes really are looking increasingly tired and desperate.
Meanwhile, the PLP plotters are pursuing a strategy of forcing Corbyn into a corner – either give whole-hearted support for the restoration of Shadow Cabinet elections (thus greatly empowering Corbyn’s critics in the PLP and possibly influencing which faction ultimately controls the NEC) or we’ll use every opportunity in the media to portray you as aggressive, divisive and insincere in your calls for unity and compromise.
Thanks for your report swordfish. Pretty much the impression I got over here from reading the UK media.
Those who control the narrative … just won’t give up their control of that narrative.
Makes sense when you don’t have popular support and it’s the only power going. But it results in such transparently silly hypocrisy it’s quite embarrassing. Dignity flies out the door when your grip on the levers starts to get a bit greasy.
Yes, Corbyn’s election has certainly shone a bright light on the enforcer role of various Courtiers and Bottom-feeders to the UK Establishment. Particularly the ruthlessly ambitious network of Blairite fellow-travellers within the “liberal” MSM and academia (not least, my own former lecturer in British politics, Tim Bale).
It seems that the moment they sniff a perceived threat to their interests, the UK Establishment swiftly closes ranks – and its those desperate souls out on the periphery of power – the most precarious of hangers-on – who appear to be the most aggressive in their defence of the Elite. Much like the legendary social snobbery of the Aristocracy’s leading Servants.
I enjoyed your Of bewildered herds blog post from July, incidentally. At roughly the same time as you, I was looking through Thrasher and Rallings’ National Equivalent Share of the Vote to try and get an unbiased take on the 2016 UK Locals in comparative perspective (I put all the detailed results going back to the late 70s in a draft post on my blog for future reference but, here in the UK, I’m locked out of both my email and my blog. Happens every time !).
Although some of Corbyn’s more enthusiastic supporters got a little carried away in their celebration of Labour’s result, the much more obvious spin came from the PLP plotters and their chums in the UK media who outrageously claimed that it was Labour’s worst performance in decades (They had a pre-prepared script and they were determined to stick to it)
For me, Labour’s Local Election results were mediocre but a long way from the disaster Blairites and Brownites were both predicting beforehand and desperately claiming afterwards.
I would be very afraid of a” more united Christendom”. History would lead one to suspect it would result in the usual “Preach more love and peace but carry out more war”.
I make the same comment about any of the monotheist religions . Their “one and only God” creates nothing but trouble as they run around killing each other in the name of their ‘version’.
I’m actually genuinely surprised about this, the amount of posts and threads on Clinton v Saunders and then Clinton v Trump I’d have thought people would want to see this
I’m pretty sure that there’s a lot of people interested in it. I’m not one of them and I’ve been keeping myself out of the Trump/Clinton debate as well. I don’t think either of them will be good for the US or the world.
+1,000,000 Muttonbird. Hype and more hype-Trump/Clinton will have been coached and scripted to the nth degree. Nothing new to learn here.
What gets me is the financial commentators are saying the stock market is jumping around on the basis of this debate, rather than on economic fundamentals.
On the same theme NZ’s awful trade figures today have been spun by the media as showing how strong the economy is where in fact it shows that we are not paying our way in the world. Borrowing and spending on flash cars and boats cannot go on ad infinitum, though Key and Blinglish seem to think it is fine.
The piece couches seven degrees in a 1000 year time frame. So, nothing to be concerned about. (Forget that we’re on track for something like four or six on our present course or that even if all Paris pledges honoured we’ll be hitting three or four)
Then the vid has talk of rectifying climate change – y’know, like we’ll just stick everything back together after we’ve broken it.
Don’t count on your time frame Bill. No-one knows exactly how this planet is going to behave because we have no record of such rapid change to make comparisons with. Anything is possible, and it’s not too far away (say ,about two decades).
Of course if you are an expert , like Hosking , then everything is business as usual and all will be honkydory as soon as these sunspots go away. Afterall these leftie plonkers that believe in Climate Change have just made a poor choice haven’t they?
No-one knows exactly how everything will respond to rising CO2. But we can extrapolate from ‘bench top’ experiments and employ concepts of probability to account for the uncertainty that a complex set of systems introduces to matters.
So we know that ‘x’ amount of CO2 will result in ‘y’ warming in a bench top scenario.
From that we can suggest carbon budgets for the planet and attach probable outcomes to each budget total. Not full proof. But bloody useful.
And when we throw in known rates of CO2 emissions, we can give a range of likely outcome. So. At present rates, we’re looking at 4 – 6 by century’s end. With Paris commitments, we’re looking at 3 – 4 by century’s end.
‘Century’s end’ doesn’t mean that we don’t hit that range of temperature before then – just that it’s the likely temp at that snapshot in time.
And, of course, that’s consciously and necessarily ignoring any and all non-linear tipping points that would set temps soaring and render any climate action redundant. All we know about them is that we don’t want them and that they become more likely with each incremental rise in temp.
So we know that ‘x’ amount of CO2 will result in ‘y’ warming in a bench top scenario.
That’s fine for a simplified, highly linear world, as you have identified.
However, you have also pointed out the reality which largely invalidates the usefulness of those bench top scenarios – or even the most complex climate models of today – as they do not account for all the positive feedback loops that climate change has already kicked off.
Everything from methane releases from fracking and melting permafrost (today’s increased atmospheric methane levels are equivalent to an extra 40-50ppm CO2), to the reduced albedo due to lost arctic sea ice, to the increased level of water vapour (a powerful greenhouse gas) in the atmosphere as the planet warms, to the cooling effect of the reflective heat shield that industrial pollutants in the atmosphere give us – which will disappear as we reduce the amount of coal and diesel that we burn, to the fact that large areas of rain forests – like the Amazon – have now become net contributors of CO2 as they become ravaged by climate change droughts and fires.
The dynamics of feedback loops are not known. What the threshold is for initiating any of the numerous feedback loops is also not known and probably not knowable. Feedback loops can only be learned about in retrospect – hardly useful. Given that, they can’t be factored in. Now, what’s your problem? Things aren’t being made to sound terrible enough?
Atmospheric concentrations of various gasses can be and are taken. Again, given the nightmarish complexities involved, extrapolations are made from basic knowable ‘bench top’ observations. Those extrapolations become more refined as better knowledge is gained from the observation of the real world situation.
What has been said to date – and this won’t hold in the future – is that the clutch of negative and positive forcings more or less balance out so that just looking at CO2 gives us a useful and usable ball park view of things.
But are you really saying that all the science around CO2 should be thrown away or disregarded and that we should just grapple blindly? Shining any light into a dark room is useful.
As a comparison. You know that the world view we use for navigation is a croc of shit? We place the world at the centre of things…and that’s not how things are. But it works – it’s accurate enough. The alternative is a complex tangle of head wrecking nonsense that produces results that are no better for most day to day, real world applications of navigational knowledge than the ‘wrong headed’ or simplistic one most people employ.
By the way – did you note that I wasn’t referring to models at all? No matter what complexities you want to feed in, they work on assumptions – circular walks in other words. Simply change an assumption (or two) if the results aren’t what are being sought. That’s useful for gaining understanding or insight.
Well, I think the whole mindset of – we still have this many more hundred gigatonnes of carbon dioxide we can put up, we have until 2030/2040/2050 to do this and do that – all that needs to be ended, right now, and some realistic talk take its place.
The dynamics of feedback loops are not known. What the threshold is for initiating any of the numerous feedback loops is also not known and probably not knowable.
However, at least some of these aren’t theoretical future phenomena. All the feedback loops I mentioned, defrosting permafrost, darkening of the arctic etc, are already well in motion.
I’ll indulge you one last time on this. (Will it finally get through to you?)
Until now, governments and NGOs have not quantified CO2. All they’ve done is push everything out into the future, disregard accumulated and accumulating amounts of CO2 and promised to cellotape everything back together after we’ve smashed it up.
The introduction of budgets provides a quantitative measure to work to/from. So all the unscientific and deeply insane talk of 30 below 1990 by 50 or whatever becomes redundant. Carbon budgets mean we have to look at what carbon we are releasing today and sort out what we are doing today.
Analogy?
How CC has been treated.
We’ll undertake to only drink half as much as we’re drinking now by the time 2 a.m. comes around. We’ll be right. We’ll have developed some detox wonder drug or technique by 2.30 am.
With carbon budgets.
If we carry on drinking like this, we’re on track for severe alcohol poisoning. We know that, by and large, the human body can only tolerate x amount of alcohol. So we can consume no more than y amount of alcohol if we want to avoid severe alcohol poisoning.
But you’d dismiss the latter because it wasn’t tabulating precise body weight or individual tolerances and a host of other factors?
However, at least some of these aren’t theoretical future phenomena. All the feedback loops I mentioned, defrosting permafrost, darkening of the arctic etc, are already well in motion.
See, here’s the question that you need to ask. Is defrosting permafrost (etc) currently irreversible? If it is, then we’re looking a non-linearity. If it’s not, then we’re not.
Can you answer that question one way or the other without the answer just being a matter of opinion?
Then – and even if your opinion is correct (that feed-back loops are proceeding) – what’s the point in clutching feverishly at the cock of doom?
We are in the midst of “abrupt climate change.” While there is no strict definition of what this is, major climate alterations occurring within one human life span would seem to count.
Methane release craters hundreds of metres wide, being discovered on land and on the sea floor.
I pick two degrees centigrade increase by 2030 (we are over one degree now) and four to six degrees centigrade by 2100.
That’s on average of course. Warming of five deg C to ten deg C over the last century has already been identified in various regions of the Arctic circle.
Which means that over the next 2 to 3 human generations (assuming a “generation” = 30 years or so) we are going to see multi metre sea level rise.
By the way, in the 1990s and early 2000s, serious scientists were talking about how anything over one degree C warming meant that we would cause serious, dangerous damage to the planet as we know it.
But like a frog in a pot of heating water we make excuses for how we can still manage things successfully.
People like McPherson need to stop flying. If they don’t, other people less commited will look at them and get the message that we can carry on BAU (see, the CC activists are still flying, it must be alright!). Actions speak louder than words.
I’m not only talking about the GHG emissions of his flights (divided by the numbers of people on the plane). I’m talking about the bigger picture. How much of the infrastructure that McPherson will use to get here is precisely the things that are causing CC. eg demands for cheap flights creates demand for new infrastructure, including new airports, which in turn increase the number of flights. And following from that all the GHG emitting infrastructure from transport, accommodation, meals etc. Unless one believes that airplanes will soon run on something other than FF, we have to stop flying now unless it is essential. There is no way around that argument morally if we are taking CC seriously.
We have the technology to share information without travelling (‘speaking tours’ are generally information sharing and not a lot else). And we need to be working towards relocalising as much as we can, and that includes activism (and making a living from speaking engagements). McPherson could instead be working with local activists remotely, training them up, getting them to work in their own communities, through NZ networks etc.
In order to respond meaningfully to CC we have to change our behaviour, all of us. And we have to stop using the cultural and conceptual tools that created CC in the first place (in this case flying, travel at will, globalisation,
Do I think we are at serious risk of runaway CC? Yes, of course. Do I think it’s too late and we are going to go extinct? Possibly but we don’t know that for a fact, so I disagree on McPherson’s view on that. Scaring people too much stops them acting.
What did you think about my viewpoints above re flying and change?
One reason it appears to be a “thousand year time frame” is because the scientists analysis wanted to cover several million years.
There is nothing to say that the 7 deg C rise detected in any given millenia could not have happened in say just 200 years.
Indeed, modern ice core analysis techniques can give researchers a year by year (or even month by month) account of how the atmosphere and climate changed. This is how scientists detected that in the past, parts of Greenland warmed by 10 deg C in just a few years.
The researchers talked about in the article could not have given us this same year by year account as much of the research they were examining for their own work would have been done before such techniques were available.
We’re already really fucked, but to have any chance at all we need to radically change everything we do today, and how we do it. And even then we’ll probably still be fucked but you might as well try and have fun doing it.
That during Democratic President Obama’s time, some of which Sec State Clinton was the top foreign policy officer, CO2 levels went up 20ppm, deep sea wells got green lit even after Deep Sea Horizon, the USA fought hard to water down the languaging at Paris COP, the fracking industry grew huge and Obama boasted how this would make the USA be energy independent.
But you support the Democrats if that makes you feel better, just make sure you understand what their true record on climate change actually is.
Point is that a media outlet headlined a possible 7 degree increase in a thousand years from now. Most casual readers (most people) would take that as some eye-brow raising factoid about the distant future…and then get straight down to their carbon profligacy. Climate change (the headline suggests) is a thousand years away. If 7 degrees takes a thousand years, then 1 degree takes 1/7th of 1000 years. Nothing to worry about. Torch that oil.
What is this ‘university educated political elite’ you refer to? You mean politicians?
You think the piece in stuff was penned with politicians in mind? Even in the highly unlikely event that it was, why would a politician (assuming that’s what you mean by that phrase you used) be more or less likely to read it in any way differently to any other reader?
Quite true, although I am not sure why you used the word “IF”.
The permafrost is melting.
Entire Siberian towns are falling down as the foundations of buildings crumble over through softening permafrost and huge sink holes open up.
Under the sea, researchers have taken video of mile long plumes of methane bubbles rising up from destabilised thawing methane hydrates as if the water is lemonade.
New Zealand, we looked like hypocrites this week.
We told the rest of the world to help with Syria, but we’re not doing our own share.
Prime Minister John Key gave the United Nations a telling off this week.
He said the international community had failed Syria.
This is the exact quote:
“Syria has become a byword for failure. Failure of the parties and their supporters to put peace, and the lives of innocent people ahead of self-interest and zero-sum politics.”
It would be a bold statement, if not for our double-standards.
If New Zealand had put “the lives of innocent people ahead” of “politics” we’d have taken more refugees.
There are more Syrians who have fled their country than there are Kiwis living in New Zealand: an estimated 5 million of them.
We offered to take an extra 750 a year ago (7 September 2015).
Lebanon is a country of roughly the same size as New Zealand. They’ve taken more than a million refugees. Admittedly, Lebanon doesn’t have much choice given its proximity to Syria, but regardless, the international burden isn’t being spread equally.
The truth is, John Key would suffer politically if he accepted thousands of Syrians and things went wrong. Maybe they’d struggle to get jobs. Maybe they’d put pressure on housing.
But hey, he reckons we should put the lives of innocent people ahead” of “politics”.
“Schools, orphanages and hospitals in Aleppo that moved underground to escape the destruction around them now feel that even they are at risk.
” “When I saw it I thought, my God, is it possible that there is so much destruction here and nobody wants to help us?” he said. “At that moment I knew that the international community had sentenced us to death, that we would be recorded as martyrs that they will weep over at some future date.”
————
“I’ve been in Aleppo for five years and I’ve seen a lot of bombing, but the destruction of these bombs, I have never seen before,” said Omar Arab, a journalist who lives in the Mashhad neighbourhood..
———–
“The mask fell a long time ago from Russia and the regime, but now the mask has fallen from human rights defenders, from the international community. This is hell itself.”
As previously discussed, the PRA plays no part in decisions about *releasing* information – that’s the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act (LGOIMA).
Among the insanity it seems that if you do anything for the rugby player perpetrator of the violent attacks who has been in the news, that you condone what he did.
So someone who serves him take-aways condones his behaviour.
These deductions from the Paul Henry book of logic. Which it must be said, include more than a few chapters on the “look at me” syndrome.
It’s not who cares Paul. It’s so what you Tory scum bags, so business like you. Are you that retarded you need a survey to tell you that the party represents their issues is supported by them.
Seems the Tory scum in this country are that stupid…
Well for one the Labour party president who’s job is to fund raise for the 2017 election.
With Andrew Little rating below the grandmother of NZ gardening (Maggie Barry) it clearly indicates that Little has little respect (and confidence) from the business community.
And Paul ask yourself why James Shaw is so high on the list…and for that matter Jacinda…
He who pays the piper calls the tune. Getting money from business was Labour’s greatest mistake, and they are still paying for it. But your vision is limited to the importance of finance and business, it seems.
Well, that list has lost it’s credibility straight away when they list The Double Dipping Dickhead from Dipton who I would not trust with the local boy scouts jamboree money let alone the economy as the top of the hit parade.
Pretty much all of our credentials including yours are ” Not having added 100 Billion to the nations debt.”
Bill English is , has and always will be a tool, a sly old double dipping no nothing tool. I suppose the best on economics they had was someone who was smart enough to claim housing costs whilst owning a home in Wellington.
Isn’t that also about the time Rodney and a few others got greedy too.
Yeah, we should has slashed benefits,cut WFF and taken an axe to the public sevice , none of this borrowing money to get us through the earth quake and global recession 🙄
And the left wonders why no one takes them seriously.
Bingles speaks their language. He’s really good at not noticing stuff and he doesn’t think anything stinks to high heaven. Ponyboy knows a not tax haven when he doesn’t see one.
Can’t imagine what a bunch of bonus hungry ceos could possibly see in them.
As you may have heard in the news, on Friday 23 September our current email provider, Yahoo, announced that they had discovered a security breach that took place in late 2014 where a large number of customer accounts were compromised.
Unfortunately we believe that your account was one of these. While Yahoo have advised that they have no evidence that the stolen passwords were used to gain unauthorized access to your account, we highly recommend you change your email password now to keep your email safe.
Changed my password, but I sure would like to know which “foreign government” enabled the hacking. Russia or China?
“Please note: By resetting your password, you are also giving permission for Spark to bring my email home in the move early next year. Once your email has been moved, it will continue to be provided free of charge as long as you have a broadband, dial-up or mobile broadband service plan with us on the same account. If you don’t have one of these plans, Xtra email will cost $5.95 per month from early next year.”
Try the GSCB, five eyes n all that.., they know i’m a hard core sympathizer for the communist, isis, holy trinity roman catholic death squad lefty righty splinter group hell bent on planting another highly explosive bomb on the table at any meeting that might occur near Emperor Rimmer and Herr Keynocio in the future,
Long live the rebellion alalalalalalalala
Who knows if they want to trawl through some account I have I hope letters from mum were worth the several days it probably took them to get it.
No doubt i’ll be getting mailing from readers digest and lotto’s in Europe saying that I won, can’t wait.
A cousin in Kenya, left millions from a dieing spinster, my lucks changing.
No dirty deal. I have no doubt the Greens decided it wasn’t worth the expense of standing a candidate especially when Labour’s candidate, Michael Wood is so highly regarded. Open and honest.
Unlike National who pretended to stand a candidate in Epsom while making sure their voters knew to vote for the ACT candidate. Dirty and dishonest.
“No dirty deal. I have no doubt the Greens decided it wasn’t worth the expense of standing a candidate especially when Labour’s candidate, Michael Wood is highly regarded by both parties. Open and honest.”
Oh please Anne can’t you at least be a little honest??
Here is what Metiria Turei said today…
“The Mt Roskill by-election will be closely contested, and we don’t want to play any role in National winning the seat.”
False equivalence. Not putting up a candidate to avoid splitting left vote is far less despicable than National putting up a candidate, telling him not to campaign, then telling Nats to vote for a tiny party that would have no seat in Parliament without such skulduggery. Nats would normally win easily in Mt Eden. Not the same thing at all. Greens all that time ago won their electorate because enough people genuinely supported Jeanette. Nobody ever believed in ACT winners in Epsom = dirty rort; Greens are clean. And please note – Jeanette won her seat in 1993 before MMP, so no rort there. No extra seat in parliament, as Epsom gives.
@rsbandit It is an entirely sensible decision. If National is going to do deals in Epsom election after election, which it does, then any electorate is fair game for a deal on the Left.
And the argument that National never pulls its candidate in Epsom is bollocks-it told people to vote for Seymour/Act and gave Goldsmith a high place on the list, which is 99% the same as pulling a candidate.
Now the Greens need to pull their candidate from Ohariu in the election.
For those who want to know why the site had some outages and now has a different performance profile…
The caching plugin using on the site proved to have a nasty vulnerability. The update provided to fix it broke the site. I’ve been having too many issues with it, so I fixed by purchasing and installing a different one.
Expect a few idiocies from the site while I tune this one up. Looks adequate so far.
We can’t say just because they do, we’ll do it. That makes us no better. If we don’t have our integrity, then why should we trust our politicians any more than we trust the other team?
No deals. I hope this not the shape of things to come, because it makes a mockery of MMP.
TL;DR: Here’s six links that stood out to me in the last day in Aotearoa’s political economy to 6:06am on Sunday, May 19:Aotearoa-NZ is the seventh worst in the OECD’s homelessness rankings, just behind the United States and just ahead of Australia. BlackRock thinks rate hikes actually worsen inflation because ...
Halfway up a historic tower in York, we are neither up nor down. At the top you will have views of a city steeped in antiquity, made and remade by Romans, Normans, Vikings, Tescos. Below, you will find a retired minister happy to tell you all about this most astonishing ...
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. This fact brief was written by Sue Bin Park in collaboration with members from our Skeptical Science team. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline. Does breathing contribute to CO2 ...
David Farrar writes – The Herald reports: KiwiRail’s seemingly endless requests for more money is damning. At one point, KiwiRail assured Robertson when he was the Finance Minister that the worst-case scenario would be an extra $300 million before requesting $1.2 billion a few months later. Not what most people ...
No one knows what it's likeTo be the bad manTo be the sad manBehind blue eyesNo one knows what it's likeTo be hatedTo be fatedTo telling only liesHave you ever wondered what life must be like for Mike Hosking? Seeing things in black and white through blue tinted specs? In ...
Hello! Here comes the Saturday edition of More Than A Feilding, catching you up on the past two week’s editions.Share More Than A FeildingBike bling, London Read more ...
Hi,I think we all made it through another week — congratulations. I’ve been digesting the new Arab Strap record, which is astonishing. In other news, I’m going to be doing a Webworm popup in Auckland, New Zealand on Saturday July 13. I’ll bring a bunch of merch, and some other ...
The Fast-Track Approvals Bill enables cabinet ministers to circumvent key environmental planning and protection processes for infrastructure projects. Its difficulties have been well canvassed. This column suggests a different way of thinking about the proposal. I am going to explore the Bill from the perspective of its proponents with their ...
New Zealand First Cabinet Minister Shane Jones has become the best advertisement against the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill. In selling the radical new resource consenting processes, in which ministers can green light any mine, dam, or other major development, Jones seems to be shooting the proposal in the foot. ...
Buzz from the Beehive Associate Education Minister David Seymour is urging the PostPrimary Teachers Association to put learning ahead of ideology. He wants the union leaders to call off their teachers meetings around the country where they hope to muster the strength to undo the government’s plans to establish several ...
What are police for? "Fighting crime" is the obvious answer. If there's a burglary, they should show up and investigate. Ditto if there's a murder or sexual assault. Speeding or drunk or dangerous driving is a crime, so obviously they should respond to that. And obviously, they should respond to ...
Michael Reddell writes – I got curious yesterday about how the Australia/New Zealand real exchange rate had changed over the last decade, and so dug out the data on the changes in the two countries’ CPIs. Over the 10 years from March 2014 to March 2024, New Zealand’s ...
Graham Adams writes that 20 years after the land march, judges are quietly awarding a swathe of coastal rights to iwi. Early this month, an hour-long documentary was released by TVNZ to mark the 20th anniversary of the land-rights march to oppose Helen Clark’s Foreshore and Seabed Act. The account ...
David Farrar writes – The Herald reports: Suspended Green MP Darleen Tana has passed an unpleasant milestone: she has now been absent for as many parliamentary sitting days as she has been present for this year. Tana is on full pay while she is suspended, and will benefit from a ...
Peter Dunne writes – It is no coincidence that two Labour should-have-been MPs are making the most noise about public sector cuts. As assistant general secretary of the Public Service Association, Fleur Fitzsimons has been at the forefront of revealing where the next round of state sector job ...
Bryce Edwards writes – It’s becoming a classic case study for why lobbying deals with politicians need greater scrutiny. Former National Minister Steven Joyce runs a lobbying company with a major client – the University of Waikato. The University desperately wants $300m+ of taxpayer funding to establish a ...
This is one of the (extra) weekly columns on music or movies. Plenty of solid analyses of Possession exist online and most of them – inevitably – contain spoilers. This column is more in the way of a first-timer’s aid to getting your initial bearings. You don’t need to have ...
I am painting in oil, a portrait of a manWho has taken all the heart aches,And all the pain he can stand.I am using all the colors of blue,I have here on my stand.I am painting in oil, a portrait of a man.This has been an interesting week for me. ...
Helen Clark joins the Hoon as a special guest talking whether Aotearoa should join Aukus II, and her views on the fast track legislation and how Luxon and the new Government are performing. File Photo: Lynn GrievesonTL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for subscribers features co-hosts ...
With an election due in less than nine months, Britain’s embattled PM, Rishi Sunak, gave a useful speech earlier this week. He made a substantial case for his government, perhaps as compelling as is possible in the current environment. Quite an achievement. His overall theme was security, first pulling ...
Open access notablesPublicly expressed climate scepticism is greatest in regions with high CO2 emissions, Pearson et al., Climatic Change:We analysed a recently released corpus of climate-related tweets to examine the macro-level factors associated with public declarations of climate change scepticism. Analyses of over 2 million geo-located tweets in the U.S. showed that climate ...
You can be all negative about these charter schools if you want, but I’m here to accentuate the positive. You can get all worked up, if you want to, by the contradiction of Luxon saying We’re going to make sure that every school in the country is teaching exactly the same ...
Losing The Room: One can only speculate about what has persuaded the Coalition Government that it will pay no electoral price for unreasonably pushing ahead with policies that are so clearly against the national interest. They seem quite oblivious to the risk that by doing so they will convince an increasing ...
Name suppression decisions can be tough sometimes. No matter your views on free speech, you have to be hard-hearted not to be torn by the tug of the competing arguments. I think you can feel the Supreme Court wrestling with that in M v The King. The case for ...
The Merchants of Menace: The Coalition Government has convinced itself that the “Brahmins’” emollient functions have become much too irksome and expensive. Those who see themselves as the best hope of rebuilding New Zealand’s ailing capitalist system, appear to have convinced themselves that a little bit of blunt trauma is what their mollycoddled ...
When National first proposed its Muldoonist "fast-track" law, they were warned that it would inevitably lead to corruption. And that is exactly what has happened, with Resources Minister Shane Jones taking secret meetings with potential applicants:On Tuesday, in a Newsroom story, questions were raised about a dinner Jones ...
Buzz from the Beehive One day – hopefully – we will push that Russian rascal, Vladimir Putin, beyond breaking point. Perhaps it will happen today, when he learns that Foreign Minister Winston Peters is again tightening the thumbscrews. Peters announced further sanctions, this time on 28 individuals and 14 entities ...
How Labour’s and National’s failure to move beyond neoliberalism has brought New Zealand to the brink of economic and cultural chaos.TO START LOSING, so soon after you won, requires a special kind of political incompetence. At the heart of this Coalition Government’s failure to retain, and build upon, the public ...
“Members of Parliament don’t work for us, they represent us, an entirely different thing. As with so much that has turned out badly, the re-organising of MPs’ responsibilities began with the Fourth Labour Government. That’s when they began to be treated like employees – public servants – whose diaries had ...
It’s becoming a classic case study for why lobbying deals with politicians need greater scrutiny. Former National Minister Steven Joyce runs a lobbying company with a major client – the University of Waikato. The University desperately wants $300m+ of taxpayer funding to establish a third medical school in New Zealand, ...
Time To Choose: Like it or not, the Kiwis are either going into AUKUS’s “Pillar 2” – or they are going to China.HAD ZHENG HE’S FLEET sailed east, not west, in the early Fifteenth Century, how different our world would be. There is little reason to suppose that the sea-going junks ...
Henry Ergas writes – When in Randall Jarrell’s Pictures from an Institution, a college president is accused of being a hypocrite, the novel’s narrator retorts that the description is grossly unfair. After all, the man is still far from the stage of moral development at which the charge ...
David Farrar writes – Radio NZ reports: The Education Review Office says too many new teachers feel poorly prepared for their jobs. In a report published on Monday, the review office said 60 percent of the principals it interviewed said their new teachers were not ready. ...
New Zealand’s economic performance and the PM’s vision Michael Reddell writes – When I wrote yesterday morning’s post, highlighting how poorly both New Zealand and its Anglo peer countries have been doing in respect of productivity in recent times (ie, in the case of New ...
Hi all,Firstly - thank you! You guys are awesome. The response I’ve received to last night’s mail has been quite overwhelming. It’s a ghastly day outside, but there are no clouds in here.In case you didn’t read my email and are wondering what on earth I’m talking about you can ...
If there was still any doubt as to who is actually running this government – and it isn’t the buffoon from Botany – then this week’s announcement of a huge spend up on charter schools has settled the matter. While jobs and public services continue to be cut in the ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Gaye Taylor As widespread drought raises expectations for a repeat of last year’s ferocious wildfire season, response teams across Canada are grappling with the rapidly changing face of fire in a warming climate. No longer quenched by winter, nor quelled by the ...
Half of Christchurch City Holdings Ltd’s directors and its chair resigned en masse last night in protest at Christchurch City Council’s demand to front-load dividends File Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The chair of Christchurch City Council’s investment company and four of its independent directors resigned in protest last ...
The University of Waikato has reworded an advertisement that begins the tender process for its new $300 million-plus medical school even though the Government still needs to approve it. However, even the reworded ad contains an architect’s visualisations of what the school might look like. ACT leader David Seymour told ...
As a follow-up to the Rings of Power trailer discussion, I thought I needed to add something. There has been some online mockery about the use of the same actor for both the Halbrand and Annatar incarnations of Sauron. The reasoning is that Halbrand with a shave and a new ...
This isn’t quite as dramatic as the title might suggest. I’m not going anywhere, but there is something I wanted to talk to you about.Let’s start with a typical day.Most days I send out a newsletter in the morning. If I’ve written a lot the previous evening it might be ...
Buzz from the Beehive The promise of tax relief loomed large in his considerations when the PM delivered a pre-Budget speech to the Auckland Business Chamber. The job back in Wellington is getting government spending back under control, he said, bandying figures which show that in per capita terms, the ...
Yesterday de facto Prime Minister David Seymour announced that his glove puppet government would be re-introducing charter schools, throwing $150 million at his pet quacks, donors and cronies and introducing an entire new government agency to oversee them (the existing Education Review Office, which actually knows how to review schools, ...
Seeing that, in order to discredit the figures and achieve moral superiority while attempting to deflect attention away from the military assault on Rafa, Israel supporters in NZ have seized on reports that casualty numbers in Gaza may be inflated … Continue reading → ...
David Farrar writes – Newstalk ZB report: The man responsible for a horror hit and run in central Wellington last year was on a suspended licence and was so drunk he later asked police, “Did I kill someone?” Jason Tuitama injured two women when he ran a red ...
Muriel Newman writes – Former US President Ronald Reagan once said, “Freedom is a fragile thing and it’s never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by way of inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation.” The fight for ...
Why Courts should have said Waitangi Tribunal could not summons Karen Chhour Gary Judd writes – In the High Court, Justice Isacs declined to uphold the witness summons issued by the Waitangi Tribunal to compel Minister for Children, Karen Chhour, to appear before it to be ...
Bryce Edwards writes – The number of voices raising concerns about the Government’s Fast-Track Approvals Bill is rapidly growing. This is especially apparent now that Parliament’s select committee is listening to submissions from the public to evaluate the proposed legislation. Twenty-seven thousand submissions have been made to Parliament ...
An average of 166 New Zealand citizens left the country every day during the March quarter, up 54% from a year ago.Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The economy and housing market is sinking into a longer recession through the winter after a slump in business and consumer confidence in ...
The government has made it abundantly clear they’re addicted to the smell of new asphalt. On Tuesday they introduced a new term to the country’s roading lexicon, the Roads of Regional Significance (RoRS), a little brother for the Roads of National (Party) Significance (RoNS). Driving ahead with Roads of Regional ...
School is outAnd I walk the empty hallwaysI walk aloneAlone as alwaysThere's so many lucky penniesLying on the floorBut where the hell are all the lucky peopleI can't see them any moreYesterday morning, I’d just sent out my newsletter on Tama Potaka, and I was struggling to make the coffee. ...
Hi,I wanted to check in and ask how you’re doing.This is perhaps a selfish act, of attempting to find others feeling a similar way to me — that is to say, a little hopeless at the moment.Misery loves company, that sort of deal.Some context.I wish I could say I got ...
I have hitherto been fairly quiet on the new season of Rings of Power, on the basis that the underwhelming first season did not exactly build excitement – and the rumours were fairly daft. The only real thing of substance to come out has been that they have re-cast Adar ...
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a ...
“The thing is,” Chris Luxon says, leaning forward to make his point, “this has always been my thing.”“This goes all the way back to the first multinational I worked for. I was saying exactly the same thing back then. The name of our business needs to be more clear; people ...
Buzz from the Beehive It’s been a momentous few days for Children’s Minister Karen Chhour. The Court of Appeal has overturned a High Court decision which blocked a summons order from the Waitangi Tribunal for her. And today she has announced the Government is putting children first by introducing to ...
In 2014 former Australian army lawyer David McBride leaked classified military documents about Australian war crimes to the ABC. Dubbed "The Afghan Files", the documents led to an explosive report on Australian war crimes, the disbanding of an entire SAS unit, and multiple ongoing prosecutions. The journalist who wrote the ...
Rob MacCulloch writes – According to the respected Pew Research Centre, “In seven of eight [European] countries surveyed, the most trusted news outlet asked about is the public news organization in each country”. For example, “in Sweden, an overwhelming majority (90%) say they trust the public broadcaster SVT”. ...
David Farrar writes – Kata MacNamara reports: Details of Tony Blakely’s involvement in the New Zealand Government’s response to the pandemic raise serious questions about the work of the Covid-19 Royal Commission of Inquiry over which he presides. It has long been clear that Blakely, a ...
Chris Trotter writes – Are you a Brahmin or a Merchant? Or, are you merely one of those whose lives are profoundly influenced by the decisions of Brahmins and Merchants? Those are the questions that are currently shaping the politics of New Zealand and the entire West. ...
RNZ reports – It’s supposed to be a haven of healing and spiritual awakening but residents of the Kawai Purapura community say they’ve been hurt and deceived. It’s the successor to the former Centrepoint commune, and has been on the bush block opposite Albany shopping centre since 2008. It ...
TL;DR : Here’s the top six items climate news for Aotearoa-NZ this week, as selected by Bernard Hickey and The Kākā’s climate correspondent Cathrine Dyer. Usually we have a video chat to go with this wrap, but were unable to do one this week. We’ll be back next week.Several reports ...
The Transport Minister has set a hard 'fiscal envelope' of $6.54 billion for transport capital spending. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The economy is settling into a state of suspended animation as the Government’s funding freezes and job cuts chill confidence and combine with stubbornly high interest rates to ...
To be precise, the term “anti- Zionism” refers to (a) criticism of the political movement that created a modern Jewish state on the historical land of Israel, and to (b)the subjugation of Palestinians by the Israeli state. By contrast, the term “anti-Semitism” means bigotry and racism directed at Jewish people, ...
This is a re-post from the Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler Because hurricanes are one of the big-ticket weather disasters that humanity has to face, climate misinformers spend a lot of effort muddying the waters on whether climate change is making hurricanes more damaging. With the official start to the hurricane ...
Yesterday the Mayor released what he calls his “plan to save public transport” which is part of his final proposal for the Council’s Long Term Plan (LTP). This comes following consultation on the draft version that occurred in March which showed, once again, that people want more done on transport, especially ...
And it's a pleasure that I have knownAnd it's a treasure that I have gainedAotearoa’s coalition government is fragile. It’s held together by the obsequious sycophancy of Christopher Luxon, who willingly contorts his party into the fringe positions of his junior coalition partners and is unwilling to contradict them. The ...
The Select Committee hearing submissions on the fast-track consenting legislation is starting to become a beat-up of regional councils. The inflexibility and slow workings of the Councils were prominent in two submissions yesterday. One, from the Coromandel Marine Farmers Association, simply said that the Waikato Regional Council’s planning decisions were ...
Back in April, the High Court surprised everyone by ruling that Ministers are above the law, at least as far as the Waitangi Tribunal is concerned. The reason for this ruling was "comity" - the idea that the different branches of government shouldn't interfere with each other's functions. Which makes ...
Buzz from the BeehiveTolling was mentioned when Transport Minister Simeon Brown announced the government was re-introducing the Roads of National Significance (RoNS) programme, with 15 “crucial” projects to support economic growth and regional development across New Zealand. All RoNS would be four-laned, grade-separated highways, and all funding, financing, and ...
or the past 14 years, ever since the Spanish government cheated on an autonomy deal, Catalonia has reliably given pro-independence parties a majority of seats in their regional parliament. But now that seems to be over. Catalans went to the polls yesterday, and stripped the Catalan parties of their majority. ...
David Farrar writes – Radio NZ report: Labour Party leader Chris Hipkins said the Electoral Commission should make sure the system ran smoothly and “taking away the right of thousands of people to vote” was not the answer. “Thousands of people enroled and voted on the day. If ...
The Government’s introduction of legislation that would enable landlords to end tenancies with no reason marks a dark day for the 1.4 million people who rent their home in Aotearoa. ...
The Minister for Mental Health has found the Suicide Prevention Office and mental health support for 111 calls slipping through his fingers, says Labour spokesperson for Mental Health Ingrid Leary. ...
Today’s justification from the Minister for Children for scrapping protections for our tamariki was either a case of ignorance or deliberate deception. ...
The Green Party says the Government’s misguided policy on gangs will fail, following the announcement of the establishment of a national gang unit and district gang disruption units to target gang activities. ...
“With Police pay negotiations still unresolved after six months in Government, Mark Mitchell has today rolled the Commissioner out for a rebrand of their approach to gang crime,” Labour police spokesperson Ginny Andersen said. ...
The Government bringing back 50 charter schools will not increase achievement and is a distraction from the core mission of the education system, Labour education spokesperson Jan Tinetti said. ...
Te Pāti Māori is showing extreme concern over the Environment Select Committees adoption of a lucky dip draw to determine hearings for the Fast Track Approvals bill. Of the 27,000 submissions, 2,900 requested to present. All organisations will be heard; however, the remaining 2,350 submitters will be subject to a ...
Today New Zealand First will introduce a Member’s Bill that will protect women’s spaces. The ‘Fair Access to Bathrooms Bill’ will require, primarily in the interest and safety of women and girls, that all new non-domestic publicly accessible buildings provide separate, clearly demarcated, unisex and single sex bathrooms. This Bill ...
The Green Party is welcoming Climate Change Minister Simon Watts’ continuation of Hon. James Shaw’s cross-party work on climate adaptation, now in the form of a Finance and Expenditure Committee Inquiry. ...
The National Government plans to cut 390 jobs at ACC, including roles in the areas of prevention of sexual violence, road safety and workplace safety. ...
The Government has been caught in opposition to evidence once again as it looks to usher in tried, tested and failed work seminar obligations for job-seeking beneficiaries. ...
The Green Party is welcoming the announcement by the Minister Responsible for RMA Reform Chris Bishop to approve most of the Wellington City Council’s District Plan recommendations. ...
David Seymour has failed to get the sweeping cuts he wanted to the free and healthy school lunch programme, Labour education spokesperson Jan Tinetti said. ...
Hon Willie Jackson has been invited by the Oxford Union to debate the motion “This House Believes British Museums are not Very British’ on May 23rd. ...
Green Party MP Hūhana Lyndon says her Public Works (Prohibition of Compulsory Acquisition of Māori Land) Amendment Bill is an opportunity to right some past wrongs around the alienation of Māori land. ...
A senior, highly respected King’s Counsel with decades of experience in our law courts, Gary Judd KC, has filed a complaint about compulsory tikanga Māori studies for law students - highlighting the utter depths of absurdity this woke cultural madness has taken our society. The tikanga regulations will compel law ...
The Government needs to be clear with the people of the Nelson Marlborough region about the changes it is considering for the Nelson Hospital rebuild, Labour health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall said. ...
Ministers must front up about which projects it will push through under its Fast Track Approvals legislation, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
The Government is again adding to New Zealand’s growing unemployment, this time cutting jobs at the agencies responsible for urban development and growing much needed housing stock. ...
With Minister Karen Chhour indicating in the House today that she either doesn’t know or care about the frontline cuts she’s making to Oranga Tamariki, we risk seeing more and more of our children falling through the cracks. ...
The Labour Party is saddened to learn of the death of Sir Robert Martin, a globally renowned disability advocate who led the way for disability rights both in New Zealand and internationally. ...
Labour is calling for the Government to urgently rethink its coalition commitment to restart live animal exports, Labour animal welfare spokesperson Rachel Boyack said. ...
Today’s Financial Stability Report has once again highlighted that poverty and deep inequality are political choices - and this Government is choosing to make them worse. ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to do more for our households in most need as unemployment rises and the cost of living crisis endures. ...
Unemployment is on the rise and it’s only going to get worse under this Government, Labour finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds said. Stats NZ figures show the unemployment rate grew to 4.3 percent in the March quarter from 4 percent in the December quarter. “This is the second rise in unemployment ...
The New Zealand Labour Party welcomes the entering into force of the European Union and New Zealand free trade agreement. This agreement opens the door for a huge increase in trade opportunities with a market of 450 million people who are high value discerning consumers of New Zealand goods and ...
The National-led Government continues its fiscal jiggery pokery with its Pharmac announcement today, Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall says. “The government has increased Pharmac funding but conceded it will only make minimal increases in access to medicine”, said Ayesha Verrall “This is far from the bold promises made to fund ...
This afternoon’s interim Waitangi Tribunal report must be taken seriously as it affects our most vulnerable children, Labour children’s spokesperson Willow-Jean Prime. ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has announced that the Government will make it easier for lines firms to take action to remove vegetation from obstructing local powerlines. The change will ensure greater security of electricity supply in local communities, particularly during severe weather events. “Trees or parts of trees falling on ...
Wairarapa Moana ki Pouakani were the top winners at this year’s Ahuwhenua Trophy awards recognising the best in Māori dairy farming. Māori Development Minister Tama Potaka announced the winners and congratulated runners-up, Whakatōhea Māori Trust Board, at an awards celebration also attended by Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Finance Minister ...
"On the 27th of March, I sought assurances from the Chief Executive, Department of Internal Affairs, that the Department’s correct processes and policies had been followed in regards to a passport application which received media attention,” says Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden. “I raised my concerns after being ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins has announced the appointment of three new District Court Judges, to replace Judges who have recently retired. Peter James Davey of Auckland has been appointed a District Court Judge with a jury jurisdiction to be based at Whangarei. Mr Davey initially started work as a law clerk/solicitor with ...
Associate Education Minister David Seymour is calling on the Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) to put ideology to the side and focus on students’ learning, in reaction to the union holding paid teacher meetings across New Zealand about charter schools. “The PPTA is disrupting schools up and down the ...
Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly today announced the appointment of Craig Stobo as the new chair of the Financial Markets Authority (FMA). Mr Stobo takes over from Mark Todd, whose term expired at the end of April. Mr Stobo’s appointment is for a five-year term. “The FMA plays ...
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New Zealand and Tuvalu have reaffirmed their close relationship, Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters says. “New Zealand is committed to working with Tuvalu on a shared vision of resilience, prosperity and security, in close concert with Australia,” says Mr Peters, who last visited Tuvalu in 2019. “It is my pleasure ...
New Zealand is gravely concerned about the situation in New Caledonia, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “The escalating situation and violent protests in Nouméa are of serious concern across the Pacific Islands region,” Mr Peters says. “The immediate priority must be for all sides to take steps to de-escalate the ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon met today with Samoa’s O le Ao o le Malo, Afioga Tuimalealiifano Vaaletoa Sualauvi II, who is making a State Visit to New Zealand. “His Highness and I reflected on our two countries’ extensive community links, with Samoan–New Zealanders contributing to all areas of our national ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has announced that he has approved Waiheke Island ferry operator Island Direct to be eligible for SuperGold Card funding, paving the way for a commercial agreement to bring the operator into the scheme. “Island Direct started operating in November 2023, offering an additional option for people ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters today announced further sanctions on 28 individuals and 14 entities providing military and strategic support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “Russia is directly supported by its military-industrial complex in its illegal aggression against Ukraine, attacking its sovereignty and territorial integrity. New Zealand condemns all entities and ...
A year on from the tragedy at Loafers Lodge, the Government is working hard to improve building fire safety, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “I want to share my sincere condolences with the families and friends of the victims on the anniversary of the tragic fire at Loafers ...
Ka nui te mihi kia koutou. Kia ora and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you so much for having me here in the lead up to my Government’s first Budget. Before I get started can I acknowledge: Simon Bridges – Auckland Business Chamber CEO. Steve Jurkovich – Kiwibank CEO. Kids born ...
New Zealand and Vanuatu will enhance collaboration on issues of mutual interest, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “It is important to return to Port Vila this week with a broad, high-level political delegation which demonstrates our deep commitment to New Zealand’s relationship with Vanuatu,” Mr Peters says. “This ...
Minister for Land Information, Chris Penk will travel to Peru this week to represent New Zealand at a meeting of trade ministers from the Asia-Pacific region on behalf of Trade Minister Todd McClay. The annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Ministers Responsible for Trade meeting will be held on 17-18 May ...
Minister of Education Erica Stanford will head to the United Kingdom this week to participate in the 22nd Conference of Commonwealth Education Ministers (CCEM) and the 2024 Education World Forum (EWF). “I am looking forward to sharing this Government’s education priorities, such as introducing a knowledge-rich curriculum, implementing an evidence-based ...
Minister of Education Erica Stanford has today thanked outgoing New Zealand Qualifications Authority Chair, Hon Tracey Martin. “Tracey Martin tendered her resignation late last month in order to take up a new role,” Ms Stanford says. Ms Martin will relinquish the role of Chair on 10 May and current Deputy ...
New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and President Emmanuel Macron of France today announced a new non-governmental organisation, the Christchurch Call Foundation, to coordinate the Christchurch Call’s work to eliminate terrorist and violent extremist content online. This change gives effect to the outcomes of the November 2023 Call Leaders’ Summit, ...
Distinguished public servant and former diplomat Sir Maarten Wevers will lead the independent review into the disability support services administered by the Ministry of Disabled People – Whaikaha. The review was announced by Disability Issues Minister Louise Upston a fortnight ago to examine what could be done to strengthen the ...
Today’s announcement by Police Commissioner Andrew Coster of a National Gang Unit and district Gang Disruption Units will help deliver on the coalition Government’s pledge to restore law and order and crack down on criminal gangs, Police Minister Mark Mitchell says. “The National Gang Unit and Gang Disruption Units will ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has today expressed regret at North Korea’s aggressive rhetoric towards New Zealand and its international partners. “New Zealand proudly stands with the international community in upholding the rules-based order through its monitoring and surveillance deployments, which it has been regularly doing alongside partners since 2018,” Mr ...
Air Vice-Marshal Tony Davies MNZM is the new Chief of Defence Force, Defence Minister Judith Collins announced today. The Chief of Defence Force commands the Navy, Army and Air Force and is the principal military advisor to the Defence Minister and other Ministers with relevant portfolio responsibilities in the defence ...
Legislation to repeal section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act has been introduced to Parliament. The Bill’s introduction reaffirms the Coalition Government’s commitment to the safety of children in care, says Minister for Children, Karen Chhour. “While section 7AA was introduced with good intentions, it creates a conflict for Oranga ...
Defence Minister Judith Collins will this week travel to the UK and Italy to meet with her defence counterparts, and to attend Battles of Cassino commemorations. “I am humbled to be able to represent the New Zealand Government in Italy at the commemorations for the 80th anniversary of what was ...
The upcoming Budget will include funding for up to 50 charter schools to help lift declining educational performance, Associate Education Minister David Seymour announced today. $153 million in new funding will be provided over four years to establish and operate up to 15 new charter schools and convert 35 state ...
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New Zealand voted in favour of a resolution broadening Palestine’s participation at the United Nations General Assembly overnight, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “The resolution enhances the rights of Palestine to participate in the work of the UN General Assembly while stopping short of admitting Palestine as a full ...
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Defence Minister Judith Collins today announced the upcoming Budget will include new funding of $571 million for Defence Force pay and projects. “Our servicemen and women do New Zealand proud throughout the world and this funding will help ensure we retain their services and expertise as we navigate an increasingly ...
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Jobseeker beneficiaries who have work obligations must now meet with MSD within two weeks of their benefit starting to determine their next step towards finding a job, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. “A key part of the coalition Government’s plan to have 50,000 fewer people on Jobseeker ...
A new standalone Social Investment Agency will power-up the social investment approach, driving positive change for our most vulnerable New Zealanders, Social Investment Minister Nicola Willis says. “Despite the Government currently investing more than $70 billion every year into social services, we are not seeing the outcomes we want for ...
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So much for “If Nikolas Delegat had been poor and brown he would have got gaol time:”
Wellington rugby player discharged without conviction
This dumb-cunt boofhead managed a much higher score of injured victims than Delegat, feels the same “remorse” that could be better described as “sentence mitigation tactic” and has escaped a prison term because it might hurt his “career” prospects, to the extent that playing a game for a living can be called a career. Still, nice to see consistency from NZ rugby in the role models it provides for us.
everyone who comes before the court must be able to run the “will harm my future prospects” line ….
what “future prospects” are acceptable to the courts, and what “future prospects” are deemed of no value?
Whether your future prospects are capable of making you a millionaire or not. It’s essentially the courts deciding who’s worthy or not which is something that the courts simply should not be doing.
White Privilege
Sport privilege
Wealth privilege
I could go on.
Classless society all right,
ANAND HIRA: One law for rugby players and a different law for everyone else.
http://www.radiolive.co.nz/ANAND-HIRA-One-law-for-rugby-players-and-a-different-law-for-everyone-else/tabid/615/articleID/129218/Default.aspx
Steve Tew does not front for interview about abuse case.
Paul Henry talks with family spokesperson Ruth Money, followed by Mark Henaghan, University of Otago Law Professor, on the case of Losi Filipo. How can someone violently attack a group of four people and escape conviction?
http://www.radiolive.co.nz/Wellington-rugby-player-escapes-conviction-after-assaulting-four-people/tabid/504/articleID/129217/Default.aspx
Sponsors of the Wellington Lions.
Victoria University
Vodafone
Les Mills
The Dominion Post
Powerade
The image below shows the whole list.
Boycott them.
http://www.wellingtonlions.co.nz/assets/Uploads/_resampled/SetWidth586-Lions-sponsors-2016.png
How do you boycott a university?
Aren’t universities supposed to be progressive lefty organisations?
Students can pressurise their University.
Like this…
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/ED1609/S00124/yale-students-urge-auckland-university-to-go-fossil-free.htm
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO1609/S00309/chancellor-presented-with-student-petition.htm
http://sustainable.org.nz/sustainability-news/victoria-university-to-divest-from-fossil-fuels#.V-muA_l97cs
The students are all paying big fees and in deep debt, they need to graduate to feed themselves, the system is designed to keep them quiet.
True, that.
Another person let off.
Now a prominent voice in sport…..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Veitch#Domestic_violence_controversy
Yes , another bullshit case from a thoroughly Neolib society.
It’s all about ‘personal responsibility’ if you’re a designated loser, but ‘nice guy- give him a break’ if you’re a designated winner.
It’s not so much a matter of class, it’s a matter of total bloody hypocrisy.
+111
On Morning Report they read out the Judge’s reasons for his judgement on the 17 year old school boy. Not quite so black and white.
@ 9:20 http://www.radionz.co.nz/audio/player?audio_id=201817670
The judge says:
Obvious mitigating features would include his age (he was only 17 at the time); his lack of previous convictions; his remorse; willingness to undergo restorative justice; the large body of community support he enjoys suggesting an unlikelihood of ever re-offending; his commitment to counselling and voluntary community work and the like.
Judges’ willingness to call some particular bullshit a “mitigating feature” is entirely subjective.
In this case, “remorse” from the kind of person who hangs out on the street looking for people he can issue with an unprovoked beating should be treated with skepticism, not just accepted at face value. Is there any evidence that the shithead perp felt “remorse” at any time other than when he was facing sentencing? Because, according to his victims, there’s evidence that he didn’t.
The “commitment to counselling and voluntary community work” is likewise easy to say when facing sentencing – actual intent to carry it out is another matter.
And “the large body of community support he enjoys” is as likely to endow him with a feeling of entitlement to impunity as it is to discourage further offending.
All that is true Psycho.
Maybe though the issue of support and remedy and compensation for the victims should be a vital part of the story. Victims do seem to be neglected. Of course whatever happens to the assailant will not change the victims’ position.
+1
If he got chucked on the scrap heap and left to rot in the company of career crims, would that change anything for his victims? What would they, or anyone, stand to gain?
Ugh he deserves to have the book thrown at him, and hard. I’m just thinking as to what that would actually achieve tho?
Would going to prison preclude him from a professional sports career?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Packer
Not so important for League because you can have a viable sports career in one or two countries easily, and it helps that NZ and Oz have softer rules for each other than anyone else.
For rugby, you have to be able to travel for at least Super rugby, and once you get into international and overseas pro comps, international travel is a big part of it.
The case law on the subject is that loss of careers in these circumstances amount to fines to the amount of the lost income, which can be hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars for a young player with 10-15 years ahead of them, particularly if they from lower socio-economic backgrounds.
By all accounts hes pretty good at league as well so really protecting his career shouldn’t have come into it as he would still have options after a sentence
Yep, including being a truck driver.
Protecting a persons possible career is not the job of the courts.
“Protecting a persons possible career is not the job of the courts.”
Agree, its a disgrace that he avoided a criminal conviction. This thug not only stomped (multiply times) on one of his victims head, but also male v female assault.
If he was a truck driver, jail time would of been a real possibility…
In my recent line of work, I have, among other things, been trying to place people (mostly beneficiaries) into low-skilled jobs. It is nigh impossible to place people with convictions of any sort at this level because it’s one of the first filters applied by the employer, rightly or wrongly.
I agree with the judge’s reasons because the alternative, in my view, is worse, and will involve throwing a teenager on the scrapheap until the Clean Slate Act saves him, and he can’t even rely on that if he’s jailed. Meanwhile, the gaps in his CV will also make him hard to employ later on.
When people say “he deserves it for his actions”, understand that a conviction makes life much, much harder, particularly for young people with no employment history to overcome the conviction in employers’ considerations. Also understand that the outcome is massively expensive to the taxpayer, both in terms of immediate sentence, and in terms of long term welfare dependency.
I realise not everyone agrees.
However, it’s not just potential pro sports players who receive discharges without conviction. Here are a couple of manslaughter cases which resulted in discharges:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/5981533/Mum-walks-free-after-daughters-drowning
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/69124061/no-conviction-for-woman-in-manslaughter-of-her-son
Yes, they are negligent rather than deliberate offenses, but on the other hand, people died.
You know, the whole idea behind a sentence is that the person convicted has paid their debt to society for the crime that they committed, that there is an end to the punishment. What you’re describing is people continuing the punishment after the punishment is supposed to have ended.
Perhaps what we should be doing at the end of the sentence is clearing/hiding the conviction so that people understand that the punishment is over.
I don’t. People who commit crimes should be convicted. What we should be doing is far more in rehabilitation for those convicted and making people understand that the punishment doesn’t go on forever no matter how much those at the Sensible Sentencing Trust want it to.
I’d love to see it, particularly with substantially stronger Clean Slate legislation (ours is weak compared to elsewhere) and following the Scandinavian model of rehabilitative prisons, but until we do, judges are required to make that decision based on the rules and society we have, not the rules and society we’d like to have.
I’d also add the Basic Income and better employment to decrease the 100 applications for 1 job which leads to that kind of filtering – almost as if this stuff is interlinked…
If he got chucked on the scrap heap and left to rot in the company of career crims, would that change anything for his victims?
A prison sentence for him isn’t about improving things for his victims, it’s about protecting his future victims for the duration of his sentence, and hopefully giving him a reason to want to not do stuff that would put him back there again.
Compensation would change things for his victims – it’s a pity the courts can’t put a lien on his future earnings.
For me the issue is not what effect putting someone in prison has – clearly not a good effect in many, many cases.
The issue, however, is that many, many people ARE thrown in prison, and certainly convicted, for just this kind of offence – yet not this person.
That he has lots of support, ‘mentoring’ and the like actually suggests to me that a conviction (which is what he completely escaped, never mind the sentence) would not be as severe a penalty as it would be for someone who has little social support, ‘mentoring’, etc.. He could ‘bounce back’ from a conviction given all those in his corner.
He’s actually in better condition and circumstances to sustain a conviction than many who come to court in these circumstances – yet he is the one who is let off.
Makes no sense.
No doubt the community work will be rugby centric.
I have been responsible for ensuring someone doing community work actually does it and it is a bit of a joke really. Very easy to manipulate and abuse.
His community work involved working with kids around his chosen sport. All his games and practices ended up being community work as well. He probably did about a quarter of what was required.
A guy wearing a “New Zealand” t-shirt beats a Syrian soldier senseless
https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/warning-graphic-content-syrias-moderate-rebels-brutally-torture-syrian-soldier/
I’m pretty sure Filipo’s not responsible for that one.
Who is, or was, Filipo ?
The “dumb-cunt boofhead” mentioned in comment number 1 above. Your comment is in the thread as a reply to that comment – I guess it was intended be a new comment, not a reply?
There are no “moderate” rebels in Syria. Just Islamists who pretend to be moderate in order to get aid and arms from the US, and then go back to being Islamists after receiving the aid and the arms from the US.
Colonial Viper, did you hear John “Lord of Empathy” Campbell’s little performance on National Radio yesterday? He seems to have bought in to every single bit of propaganda from the White House about Syria.
oh yeah i heard a bit of that; I replied that Campbell needs to instead interview Stephen F Cohen, Professor Emeritus of Russian Studies, Princeton University and New York University, Contributing Editor to the Nation Magazine.
This was the interview.
Miller’s own blurb. This is the propagandist Campbell accepted without question.
“JAMES MILLER is the Managing Editor of The Interpreter where he reports on Russia, Ukraine, and Syria. James runs the “Under The Black Flag” column at RFE/RL which provides news, opinion, and analysis about the impact of the Islamic State extremist group in Syria, Iraq, and beyond. He is a contributor at Reuters, The Daily Beast, Foreign Policy Magazine, and other publications. He is an expert on verifying citizen journalism, and has been covering developments in the Middle East, specifically Syria and Iran, since 2009. ”
“The Interpreter is a daily translation and analysis journal funded and presented by Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty. In addition to covering political, social and economic events inside the Russian Federation, it chronicles Russia’s war in East Ukraine and its intervention in Syria in real time.
Founded in May 2013, this online journal set out with the modest goal of translating articles from the Russian press, the better to lower the language barrier that separates journalists, analysts, policymakers, diplomats and interested laymen in the English-speaking world from events taking place inside the Russian Federation.
Little did we realize then that The Interpreter would devote as much energy to covering what the Russian Federation got up to outside of its own borders.
The Interpreter is a leading real-time chronicle and analysis resource on all aspects of the crisis in Ukraine. Every day since violence first erupted in Kiev’s Independence Square, The Interpreter’s Ukraine live-blog has documented a revolution that became a war on European soil, often breaking news stories about Russia’s annexation of Crimea, its maskirovka insurgency in the Donbass, its cross-border shelling of Ukraine, the downing of MH17, and the Minsk II “cease-fire.”
There are no “moderate” rebels in Syria.
None? Not a single one out of the entire 20 million people living there? Please keep in mind we’re talking about this planet, not the alternative one inhabited by RT watchers, in which the US government blew up the WTC and the Russian air force magically kills only “terrorists” when it rains phosphorus incendiaries on Aleppo.
It’s an especially astonishing claim because you’ve previously described the Assad regime, one of the most brutal dictatorships in the Middle East, as “moderate.” Those “Islamist” rebels must be demons in human form…
Psycho Milt, you’re out of your depth, my friend.
He escaped a sentence because of section 106 of the crimes act when the punishment may outweigh the crime.
So why doesn’t everyone whose employment (and future employment) might be jeopardised by a conviction get similar lenient treatment under that section of the crimes act?
Or does only having a low wage job that’s at stake somehow make a conviction easier to bear?
When you’re on the bones of your bum, having trouble finding menial work because of a conviction can tip you into far more suffering than missing out on a professional rugby career and having to settle for an ordinary job.
There are many examples of diversion and discharge without convictions for precisely those reasons – two manslaughter cases are up thread. This gets press because of rugby, but with good legal representation, anyone else could have argued a similar case, and may well have been granted it as well.
Breaking News.
CORBYN IS UNELECTABLE.
That is according to prat Henry. You know the one who had his nose so far up Keys arse yesterday morning it was embarrassing.
Why I am not surprised by this prats right wing rant. Also, the Guardian is saying the shit against Corbyn is continuing.
It won’t be Corbyn that is unelectable, it will be the Labour Party that is unelectable if the shits don’t screw their heads in and get in behind the leader, and work to get Thatcher MkII and the Tories out.
Pat Mc Fadden calls for the party to seek inspiration from Wilson. Wilson who helped to destroy the British Aircraft Industry and fucking Blair a war criminal that should have been arrested years ago for war crimes, was so slippery earned the nickname of “Teflon Tony” McFadden must be fucking joking.
Quote from the Guardian
“Pat McFadden, the former minister, called for the party to seek inspiration from its “three great postwar leaders”, who he named as Clement Attlee, Harold Wilson and Tony Blair.”
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/sep/25/jeremy-corbyn-critics-will-not-be-silenced-despite-unity-calls
Maybe Corbyn is just feeding them rope ….
Funny how ‘Mr Unelectable’ has held his own seat for 30+ years and now won two leadership elections and increased his majority.
Corbyn’s detractors want to replace him with someone electable, like THIS BLOKE…
https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/image/2014/12/11/15/ed-miliband.jpg
“the Guardian is saying the shit against Corbyn is continuing”
I’m in the UK at the moment and can confirm that – surprise, surprise – the vilification continues. A whole series of spurious, utterly contrived little Gotchas in the broadcast media since Corbyn’s latest victory.
Same old “Left are Anti-Semitic” smears (eg arch-Blairite Tristram Hunt on ITV’s Peston on Sunday last night) , same sad attempts to portray Corbynite support-group Momentum as a hotbed of violent misogynist larrikins (unfortunately for the Blairite-Brownite brigade – almost two thirds of Women Labour Party Members voted for Corbyn – including, incidentally, my strongly-feminist cousin – a kiwi domiciled in London since the early 80s. Momentum activists, meanwhile, appear to be disproportionately female and middle-aged)
… and a few new variations on these themes …
For example, after a post-leadership election TV interview yesterday in which Corbyn’s Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell made very conciliatory gestures towards the PLP, he gets condemned by both the MSM, the Tories and the Establishment Centre-Right of the Labour Party for calling former Tory Minister Esther McVey “a stain on humanity” wayyyyy back in 2014 and refusing to apologise now. (also suggestions that he joked back in 2014 that McVey should be lynched – though he strongly disputes that allegation, suggesting he’d simply reported to the media what had been shouted at him at a public meeting).
McDonnell actually accepted in the interview that he’d sometimes “gone too far” in criticism of opponents but said voters wanted honesty rather than spin and he had been expressing honest anger back in 2014 over savage Tory Govt cuts to services for people with disabilities (McVey had been Disabilities Minister at the time) … Cue media beat-up over the last couple of days that McDonnell is encouraging a culture of intimidation, abuse and violence in the Party.
These tropes really are looking increasingly tired and desperate.
Meanwhile, the PLP plotters are pursuing a strategy of forcing Corbyn into a corner – either give whole-hearted support for the restoration of Shadow Cabinet elections (thus greatly empowering Corbyn’s critics in the PLP and possibly influencing which faction ultimately controls the NEC) or we’ll use every opportunity in the media to portray you as aggressive, divisive and insincere in your calls for unity and compromise.
Thanks for your report swordfish. Pretty much the impression I got over here from reading the UK media.
Those who control the narrative … just won’t give up their control of that narrative.
Makes sense when you don’t have popular support and it’s the only power going. But it results in such transparently silly hypocrisy it’s quite embarrassing. Dignity flies out the door when your grip on the levers starts to get a bit greasy.
Cheers, Puddleglum.
Yes, Corbyn’s election has certainly shone a bright light on the enforcer role of various Courtiers and Bottom-feeders to the UK Establishment. Particularly the ruthlessly ambitious network of Blairite fellow-travellers within the “liberal” MSM and academia (not least, my own former lecturer in British politics, Tim Bale).
It seems that the moment they sniff a perceived threat to their interests, the UK Establishment swiftly closes ranks – and its those desperate souls out on the periphery of power – the most precarious of hangers-on – who appear to be the most aggressive in their defence of the Elite. Much like the legendary social snobbery of the Aristocracy’s leading Servants.
I enjoyed your Of bewildered herds blog post from July, incidentally. At roughly the same time as you, I was looking through Thrasher and Rallings’ National Equivalent Share of the Vote to try and get an unbiased take on the 2016 UK Locals in comparative perspective (I put all the detailed results going back to the late 70s in a draft post on my blog for future reference but, here in the UK, I’m locked out of both my email and my blog. Happens every time !).
Although some of Corbyn’s more enthusiastic supporters got a little carried away in their celebration of Labour’s result, the much more obvious spin came from the PLP plotters and their chums in the UK media who outrageously claimed that it was Labour’s worst performance in decades (They had a pre-prepared script and they were determined to stick to it)
For me, Labour’s Local Election results were mediocre but a long way from the disaster Blairites and Brownites were both predicting beforehand and desperately claiming afterwards.
This was a timely and welcome return with the first presidential debate being imminent:
Awesomesauce, ty for the link, it’s brilliant
What a great teaser for this afternoons debate 🙂
A couple of really good points from the Pope.
All about corruption…
https://cruxnow.com/vatican/2016/09/18/pope-francis-says-corruption-addictive-drugs/
You can just see some priests kicking themselves over that one.
And for all of you who take peace seriously…
http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/peace-requires-us-to-do-more-than-change-the-channel-pope-francis-says-95272/
Good to see a more united Christendom
I would be very afraid of a” more united Christendom”. History would lead one to suspect it would result in the usual “Preach more love and peace but carry out more war”.
You do release it is no longer the middle ages there Garibaldi????
You sure about that adam.
http://m.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=11717522
I make the same comment about any of the monotheist religions . Their “one and only God” creates nothing but trouble as they run around killing each other in the name of their ‘version’.
Nice one adam, pay no attention to the ignorant. The current Pope is the most progressive ever, doing God’s work always annoys people
IT IS ON!
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=11717437
Yawn.
You’re really not interested in the Trump v Clinton debate?
Yawn.
I am surprised
Two establishment figures working for the establishment?
No.
pr sees politics are a form of entertainment, not a means to improve our society and our world.
It can ackshully be both so I’m interested in seeing how Clinton is going to handle Trump and vice versa
Its probably going to determine the US election (or at least a large part of it) so yeah I look forward to it
I’m actually genuinely surprised about this, the amount of posts and threads on Clinton v Saunders and then Clinton v Trump I’d have thought people would want to see this
Definitely, though I may not be able to watch it live this afternoon unfortunately
I’m wondering if I have the sound down real low I might be able to catch it on line though management tend to look down on that sort of thing 🙂
It won’t be as fun but there’s got to be a live subtitled version somewhere for the hearing impaired
Jennifer Saunders is from the UK and isn’t running for Pres.
George Clinton v Jennifer Saunders would be an interesting match up
Its the US
How about George Clooney vs Jennifer Garner
He’ll probably end up in politics at some point
I’m pretty sure that there’s a lot of people interested in it. I’m not one of them and I’ve been keeping myself out of the Trump/Clinton debate as well. I don’t think either of them will be good for the US or the world.
+1,000,000 Muttonbird. Hype and more hype-Trump/Clinton will have been coached and scripted to the nth degree. Nothing new to learn here.
What gets me is the financial commentators are saying the stock market is jumping around on the basis of this debate, rather than on economic fundamentals.
On the same theme NZ’s awful trade figures today have been spun by the media as showing how strong the economy is where in fact it shows that we are not paying our way in the world. Borrowing and spending on flash cars and boats cannot go on ad infinitum, though Key and Blinglish seem to think it is fine.
If you watch no other music video this year.
The wonderful and thought provoking Saul Williams.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXfVIPqcF9I
I’m a candle…
Poetic genius
Indeed
A dose of reality in the msm for once.
Today’s greenhouse gas levels could result in up to 7 degrees of warming
http://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/climate-news/84687810/todays-greenhouse-gas-levels-could-result-in-up-to-7-degrees-of-warming
Dunno about that Paul.
The piece couches seven degrees in a 1000 year time frame. So, nothing to be concerned about. (Forget that we’re on track for something like four or six on our present course or that even if all Paris pledges honoured we’ll be hitting three or four)
Then the vid has talk of rectifying climate change – y’know, like we’ll just stick everything back together after we’ve broken it.
Don’t count on your time frame Bill. No-one knows exactly how this planet is going to behave because we have no record of such rapid change to make comparisons with. Anything is possible, and it’s not too far away (say ,about two decades).
Of course if you are an expert , like Hosking , then everything is business as usual and all will be honkydory as soon as these sunspots go away. Afterall these leftie plonkers that believe in Climate Change have just made a poor choice haven’t they?
I didn’t give a time frame.
No-one knows exactly how everything will respond to rising CO2. But we can extrapolate from ‘bench top’ experiments and employ concepts of probability to account for the uncertainty that a complex set of systems introduces to matters.
So we know that ‘x’ amount of CO2 will result in ‘y’ warming in a bench top scenario.
From that we can suggest carbon budgets for the planet and attach probable outcomes to each budget total. Not full proof. But bloody useful.
And when we throw in known rates of CO2 emissions, we can give a range of likely outcome. So. At present rates, we’re looking at 4 – 6 by century’s end. With Paris commitments, we’re looking at 3 – 4 by century’s end.
‘Century’s end’ doesn’t mean that we don’t hit that range of temperature before then – just that it’s the likely temp at that snapshot in time.
And, of course, that’s consciously and necessarily ignoring any and all non-linear tipping points that would set temps soaring and render any climate action redundant. All we know about them is that we don’t want them and that they become more likely with each incremental rise in temp.
That’s fine for a simplified, highly linear world, as you have identified.
However, you have also pointed out the reality which largely invalidates the usefulness of those bench top scenarios – or even the most complex climate models of today – as they do not account for all the positive feedback loops that climate change has already kicked off.
Everything from methane releases from fracking and melting permafrost (today’s increased atmospheric methane levels are equivalent to an extra 40-50ppm CO2), to the reduced albedo due to lost arctic sea ice, to the increased level of water vapour (a powerful greenhouse gas) in the atmosphere as the planet warms, to the cooling effect of the reflective heat shield that industrial pollutants in the atmosphere give us – which will disappear as we reduce the amount of coal and diesel that we burn, to the fact that large areas of rain forests – like the Amazon – have now become net contributors of CO2 as they become ravaged by climate change droughts and fires.
The dynamics of feedback loops are not known. What the threshold is for initiating any of the numerous feedback loops is also not known and probably not knowable. Feedback loops can only be learned about in retrospect – hardly useful. Given that, they can’t be factored in. Now, what’s your problem? Things aren’t being made to sound terrible enough?
Atmospheric concentrations of various gasses can be and are taken. Again, given the nightmarish complexities involved, extrapolations are made from basic knowable ‘bench top’ observations. Those extrapolations become more refined as better knowledge is gained from the observation of the real world situation.
What has been said to date – and this won’t hold in the future – is that the clutch of negative and positive forcings more or less balance out so that just looking at CO2 gives us a useful and usable ball park view of things.
But are you really saying that all the science around CO2 should be thrown away or disregarded and that we should just grapple blindly? Shining any light into a dark room is useful.
As a comparison. You know that the world view we use for navigation is a croc of shit? We place the world at the centre of things…and that’s not how things are. But it works – it’s accurate enough. The alternative is a complex tangle of head wrecking nonsense that produces results that are no better for most day to day, real world applications of navigational knowledge than the ‘wrong headed’ or simplistic one most people employ.
By the way – did you note that I wasn’t referring to models at all? No matter what complexities you want to feed in, they work on assumptions – circular walks in other words. Simply change an assumption (or two) if the results aren’t what are being sought. That’s useful for gaining understanding or insight.
Well, I think the whole mindset of – we still have this many more hundred gigatonnes of carbon dioxide we can put up, we have until 2030/2040/2050 to do this and do that – all that needs to be ended, right now, and some realistic talk take its place.
However, at least some of these aren’t theoretical future phenomena. All the feedback loops I mentioned, defrosting permafrost, darkening of the arctic etc, are already well in motion.
I’ll indulge you one last time on this. (Will it finally get through to you?)
Until now, governments and NGOs have not quantified CO2. All they’ve done is push everything out into the future, disregard accumulated and accumulating amounts of CO2 and promised to cellotape everything back together after we’ve smashed it up.
The introduction of budgets provides a quantitative measure to work to/from. So all the unscientific and deeply insane talk of 30 below 1990 by 50 or whatever becomes redundant. Carbon budgets mean we have to look at what carbon we are releasing today and sort out what we are doing today.
Analogy?
How CC has been treated.
We’ll undertake to only drink half as much as we’re drinking now by the time 2 a.m. comes around. We’ll be right. We’ll have developed some detox wonder drug or technique by 2.30 am.
With carbon budgets.
If we carry on drinking like this, we’re on track for severe alcohol poisoning. We know that, by and large, the human body can only tolerate x amount of alcohol. So we can consume no more than y amount of alcohol if we want to avoid severe alcohol poisoning.
But you’d dismiss the latter because it wasn’t tabulating precise body weight or individual tolerances and a host of other factors?
See, here’s the question that you need to ask. Is defrosting permafrost (etc) currently irreversible? If it is, then we’re looking a non-linearity. If it’s not, then we’re not.
Can you answer that question one way or the other without the answer just being a matter of opinion?
Then – and even if your opinion is correct (that feed-back loops are proceeding) – what’s the point in clutching feverishly at the cock of doom?
We are in the midst of “abrupt climate change.” While there is no strict definition of what this is, major climate alterations occurring within one human life span would seem to count.
Methane release craters hundreds of metres wide, being discovered on land and on the sea floor.
I pick two degrees centigrade increase by 2030 (we are over one degree now) and four to six degrees centigrade by 2100.
That’s on average of course. Warming of five deg C to ten deg C over the last century has already been identified in various regions of the Arctic circle.
Which means that over the next 2 to 3 human generations (assuming a “generation” = 30 years or so) we are going to see multi metre sea level rise.
By the way, in the 1990s and early 2000s, serious scientists were talking about how anything over one degree C warming meant that we would cause serious, dangerous damage to the planet as we know it.
But like a frog in a pot of heating water we make excuses for how we can still manage things successfully.
Professor Guy McPherson’s November 2016 NZ Speaking Tour
In November 2016 Professor Guy McPherson will be returning to NZ for another speaking tour on Runaway Abrupt Climate Change. ,
https://kevinhester.live/2016/05/15/professor-guy-mcphersons-november-2016-nz-speaking-tour/
People like McPherson need to stop flying. If they don’t, other people less commited will look at them and get the message that we can carry on BAU (see, the CC activists are still flying, it must be alright!). Actions speak louder than words.
I’m not only talking about the GHG emissions of his flights (divided by the numbers of people on the plane). I’m talking about the bigger picture. How much of the infrastructure that McPherson will use to get here is precisely the things that are causing CC. eg demands for cheap flights creates demand for new infrastructure, including new airports, which in turn increase the number of flights. And following from that all the GHG emitting infrastructure from transport, accommodation, meals etc. Unless one believes that airplanes will soon run on something other than FF, we have to stop flying now unless it is essential. There is no way around that argument morally if we are taking CC seriously.
We have the technology to share information without travelling (‘speaking tours’ are generally information sharing and not a lot else). And we need to be working towards relocalising as much as we can, and that includes activism (and making a living from speaking engagements). McPherson could instead be working with local activists remotely, training them up, getting them to work in their own communities, through NZ networks etc.
In order to respond meaningfully to CC we have to change our behaviour, all of us. And we have to stop using the cultural and conceptual tools that created CC in the first place (in this case flying, travel at will, globalisation,
Do you agree with his viewpoint?
Which viewpoint?
Abrupt climate change, as outlined by cv and Guy McPherson.
Also explained in this film.
Do I think we are at serious risk of runaway CC? Yes, of course. Do I think it’s too late and we are going to go extinct? Possibly but we don’t know that for a fact, so I disagree on McPherson’s view on that. Scaring people too much stops them acting.
What did you think about my viewpoints above re flying and change?
I agree with you.
One reason it appears to be a “thousand year time frame” is because the scientists analysis wanted to cover several million years.
There is nothing to say that the 7 deg C rise detected in any given millenia could not have happened in say just 200 years.
Indeed, modern ice core analysis techniques can give researchers a year by year (or even month by month) account of how the atmosphere and climate changed. This is how scientists detected that in the past, parts of Greenland warmed by 10 deg C in just a few years.
The researchers talked about in the article could not have given us this same year by year account as much of the research they were examining for their own work would have been done before such techniques were available.
Thanks CV… just what I said above, but with a little more verbosity!
A bad habit of mine lol
We’re already really fucked, but to have any chance at all we need to radically change everything we do today, and how we do it. And even then we’ll probably still be fucked but you might as well try and have fun doing it.
Yeah we could support deniers too – like you do.
I’ve learnt a lot about climate change in the last 6 months marty mars, do yourself a favour and do the same.
I know deniers are the problem and hypocrites also. What have you learnt 5ppm?
That during Democratic President Obama’s time, some of which Sec State Clinton was the top foreign policy officer, CO2 levels went up 20ppm, deep sea wells got green lit even after Deep Sea Horizon, the USA fought hard to water down the languaging at Paris COP, the fracking industry grew huge and Obama boasted how this would make the USA be energy independent.
But you support the Democrats if that makes you feel better, just make sure you understand what their true record on climate change actually is.
You throw that and then support a denier who is worse based on your own reckoning – bit funny that eh 5ppm
Just saying it like it is marty mars.
Yep foot in both camps – plausible deniability – a weak strategy in the times we are in 5ppm.
Point is that a media outlet headlined a possible 7 degree increase in a thousand years from now. Most casual readers (most people) would take that as some eye-brow raising factoid about the distant future…and then get straight down to their carbon profligacy. Climate change (the headline suggests) is a thousand years away. If 7 degrees takes a thousand years, then 1 degree takes 1/7th of 1000 years. Nothing to worry about. Torch that oil.
Ok that’s the casual reader, and yes they probably thought – hey that’s a long time away that makes it someone elses problem.
How about our university educated political elite class? What message will they take from it?
What is this ‘university educated political elite’ you refer to? You mean politicians?
You think the piece in stuff was penned with politicians in mind? Even in the highly unlikely event that it was, why would a politician (assuming that’s what you mean by that phrase you used) be more or less likely to read it in any way differently to any other reader?
If the permafrosts melt, get ready for a methane overload. And some pretty nasty consequences to go with it.
https://willnewzealandberight.com/2016/09/25/carbon-dioxide-not-th-only-gas-threat-to-climate/
Quite true, although I am not sure why you used the word “IF”.
The permafrost is melting.
Entire Siberian towns are falling down as the foundations of buildings crumble over through softening permafrost and huge sink holes open up.
Under the sea, researchers have taken video of mile long plumes of methane bubbles rising up from destabilised thawing methane hydrates as if the water is lemonade.
Heather du Plessis Allen writes some sense.
http://www.radiolive.co.nz/HEATHER-DU-PLESSIS-ALLAN-Were-hypocrites/tabid/615/articleID/129036/Default.aspx
Sharon Murdoch nails it.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CtJUd2VVUAAYDId.jpg:large
Has anyone noticed that since Key has been at the UN ‘helping’ Clarke her rating in the straw polls have been falling.
Yeah – Because the International Media and Leaders of every country hate Keys and laugh at him
He is a disgrace
Let’s hope, for Helen’s sake, he shakes off his magic ‘flag referendum’ touch.
Bunker bombs being used in Aleppo:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/26/hell-itself-aleppo-reels-from-alleged-use-of-bunker-buster-bombs
“Schools, orphanages and hospitals in Aleppo that moved underground to escape the destruction around them now feel that even they are at risk.
” “When I saw it I thought, my God, is it possible that there is so much destruction here and nobody wants to help us?” he said. “At that moment I knew that the international community had sentenced us to death, that we would be recorded as martyrs that they will weep over at some future date.”
————
“I’ve been in Aleppo for five years and I’ve seen a lot of bombing, but the destruction of these bombs, I have never seen before,” said Omar Arab, a journalist who lives in the Mashhad neighbourhood..
———–
“The mask fell a long time ago from Russia and the regime, but now the mask has fallen from human rights defenders, from the international community. This is hell itself.”
At last a Council actually does what Penny Bright thinks has been going on elsewhere all the time – breach the Public Records Act: http://norightturn.blogspot.co.nz/2016/09/full-and-accurate.html
As previously discussed, the PRA plays no part in decisions about *releasing* information – that’s the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act (LGOIMA).
Among the insanity it seems that if you do anything for the rugby player perpetrator of the violent attacks who has been in the news, that you condone what he did.
So someone who serves him take-aways condones his behaviour.
These deductions from the Paul Henry book of logic. Which it must be said, include more than a few chapters on the “look at me” syndrome.
Mood of the boardroom survey.
Warning you have to scroll a long way down for Mr Little … Marks out of 5
Jacinda however received a strong endorsement.
1 – Bill English 4.51
2 – John Key 4.00
3 – Steven Joyce 3.51
4 – Jacinda Ardern 3.37
5 – James Shaw 3.21
6 – Jonathan Coleman 3.17
7 – Simon Bridges 3.12
9 – Annette King 3.10
10 – Anne Tolley 3.09
11 – Michael Woodhouse 3.06
12 – Phil Twyford 2.93
13 – Nathan Guy 2.91
14 – Todd McClay 2.90
15 – Winston Peters 2.90
16 – Grant Robertson 2.86
17 – Hekia Parata 2.85
18 – Murray McCully 2.77
19 – David Shearer 2.72
20 – Gerry Brownlee 2.66
21 – David Parker 2.55
22 – Nick Smith 2.52
23 – Chris Hipkins 2.46
24 – Julie-Anne Genter 2.42
25 – Metiria Turei 2.37
26 – David Clark 2.35
27 – Maggie Barry 2.34
28 – Andrew Little 2.22
29 – Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga 2.15
30 – Ron Mark 2.13
Who cares?
Get out of the cave Paul, the shadows are not reality
Hes kind of ignorant like that. Head in sand and not very bright.
I mean it.
Why do most people care what CEOs think?
If you could just answer the question as opposed to the usual ad hominems.
Well. Some voters care for a start.
And let’s face it – being on 7% preferred PM you would think Little would care as well.
Yes the CEOs represent the 1%.
So ACT voters care.
It’s not who cares Paul. It’s so what you Tory scum bags, so business like you. Are you that retarded you need a survey to tell you that the party represents their issues is supported by them.
Seems the Tory scum in this country are that stupid…
“Who cares?”
Well for one the Labour party president who’s job is to fund raise for the 2017 election.
With Andrew Little rating below the grandmother of NZ gardening (Maggie Barry) it clearly indicates that Little has little respect (and confidence) from the business community.
And Paul ask yourself why James Shaw is so high on the list…and for that matter Jacinda…
Why would the leader of a socialist party want the support of neo-liberal business leaders.
Sausage sizzles Chuck, no need for these neo-liberal business swine.
I for one am getting tired of your straw man arguments Chucky. Go troll whaleoil, I’m sure he’d love to have your half baked conspiracy theories.
Where is the conspiracy theory Adam?
Labour needs funds, business has funds, business thinks Andrew Little is a clown, therefore highly likely business won’t part with much needed funds.
He who pays the piper calls the tune. Getting money from business was Labour’s greatest mistake, and they are still paying for it. But your vision is limited to the importance of finance and business, it seems.
Well, that list has lost it’s credibility straight away when they list The Double Dipping Dickhead from Dipton who I would not trust with the local boy scouts jamboree money let alone the economy as the top of the hit parade.
He is responsible for this.
$111 billion and counting.
http://www.nationaldebtclocks.org/debtclock/newzealand
And your credentials regarding finance are ?
Pretty much all of our credentials including yours are ” Not having added 100 Billion to the nations debt.”
Bill English is , has and always will be a tool, a sly old double dipping no nothing tool. I suppose the best on economics they had was someone who was smart enough to claim housing costs whilst owning a home in Wellington.
Isn’t that also about the time Rodney and a few others got greedy too.
Yeah, we should has slashed benefits,cut WFF and taken an axe to the public sevice , none of this borrowing money to get us through the earth quake and global recession 🙄
And the left wonders why no one takes them seriously.
I reckon Cullen would have got us through, with a surplus, the two big debt excuses Nats like yourself always trot out, the GFC and the quakes.
Or maybe English shouldn’t have done a regressive tax switch, or bailed out SCF, or trashed CoalCorp, or impoverished thousands of workers
Badge of Honour for Little
More like mark of the arse.
Bingles speaks their language. He’s really good at not noticing stuff and he doesn’t think anything stinks to high heaven. Ponyboy knows a not tax haven when he doesn’t see one.
Can’t imagine what a bunch of bonus hungry ceos could possibly see in them.
Anyone else had one of these from Spark?
Changed my password, but I sure would like to know which “foreign government” enabled the hacking. Russia or China?
Did you notice this?
“Please note: By resetting your password, you are also giving permission for Spark to bring my email home in the move early next year. Once your email has been moved, it will continue to be provided free of charge as long as you have a broadband, dial-up or mobile broadband service plan with us on the same account. If you don’t have one of these plans, Xtra email will cost $5.95 per month from early next year.”
Yes.
The United States is a “foreign government” and they have worked closely with all the large internet providers to put back doors in all their systems.
Try the GSCB, five eyes n all that.., they know i’m a hard core sympathizer for the communist, isis, holy trinity roman catholic death squad lefty righty splinter group hell bent on planting another highly explosive bomb on the table at any meeting that might occur near Emperor Rimmer and Herr Keynocio in the future,
Long live the rebellion alalalalalalalala
Who knows if they want to trawl through some account I have I hope letters from mum were worth the several days it probably took them to get it.
No doubt i’ll be getting mailing from readers digest and lotto’s in Europe saying that I won, can’t wait.
A cousin in Kenya, left millions from a dieing spinster, my lucks changing.
What’s the dirty deal in Mt Roskill?
I thought we were better than NACT….
Not impressed.
No dirty deal. I have no doubt the Greens decided it wasn’t worth the expense of standing a candidate especially when Labour’s candidate, Michael Wood is so highly regarded. Open and honest.
Unlike National who pretended to stand a candidate in Epsom while making sure their voters knew to vote for the ACT candidate. Dirty and dishonest.
“No dirty deal. I have no doubt the Greens decided it wasn’t worth the expense of standing a candidate especially when Labour’s candidate, Michael Wood is highly regarded by both parties. Open and honest.”
Oh please Anne can’t you at least be a little honest??
Here is what Metiria Turei said today…
“The Mt Roskill by-election will be closely contested, and we don’t want to play any role in National winning the seat.”
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=11717757
Right. There is no moral high ground here at all. If it’s dirty when NACT do it, it’s dirty when we do it.
Dirty Politics. Disappointed.
False equivalence. Not putting up a candidate to avoid splitting left vote is far less despicable than National putting up a candidate, telling him not to campaign, then telling Nats to vote for a tiny party that would have no seat in Parliament without such skulduggery. Nats would normally win easily in Mt Eden. Not the same thing at all. Greens all that time ago won their electorate because enough people genuinely supported Jeanette. Nobody ever believed in ACT winners in Epsom = dirty rort; Greens are clean. And please note – Jeanette won her seat in 1993 before MMP, so no rort there. No extra seat in parliament, as Epsom gives.
and the rest of the article directly after your link makes it clear all it is is an independant decision by the greens to not run in that seat
theres no deal
theres no directing voters to vote labour
theres no joint decision by labour and greens
and most importantly,
the greens arent engineering a situation that allows a sub 5% party to get a seat
the whole thing is a dumb beat up
Its quite funny reading these comments…at least Bearded Git is being honest about the situation (apart from pulling a candidate, its not the same).
Unlike framu, Anne, Paul, adam etc.
Ignore the chuck troll.
😎
Chucky is a conspiracy theorist….
Chuck’s not clued up enough to recognise a by-election is different to a general election. Go easy on him.
MMP for the win, hope they do the same for the Nelson seat. MOU all the way.
@rsbandit It is an entirely sensible decision. If National is going to do deals in Epsom election after election, which it does, then any electorate is fair game for a deal on the Left.
And the argument that National never pulls its candidate in Epsom is bollocks-it told people to vote for Seymour/Act and gave Goldsmith a high place on the list, which is 99% the same as pulling a candidate.
Now the Greens need to pull their candidate from Ohariu in the election.
Dirty Politics.
What about the Green voters in Ohariu who WANT to vote Green?
They vote Green on the party vote. Which is the vote that matters if you want another Green MP in parliament.
Dr Gabor Maté – Why Capitalism Makes Us Sick
For those who want to know why the site had some outages and now has a different performance profile…
The caching plugin using on the site proved to have a nasty vulnerability. The update provided to fix it broke the site. I’ve been having too many issues with it, so I fixed by purchasing and installing a different one.
Expect a few idiocies from the site while I tune this one up. Looks adequate so far.
Thanks; I’m prone to idiocies so quite used to them 😉
You’re welcome. I’m unhappy to have supplied them for you tonight, however it is gratifying to meet a satisfied and replete customer….
😈
Ah, well that may explain why on my replies tab I have all of RedLogix’ replies but not mine.
EDIT: 😈 😀 🙄
And better smilies as well 🙂
Yes, I’m getting replies to RedLogix’s comments as well.
Me too 😺
We are all RedLogix
Actually, none of the tabs are updating at all.
Same here. But we have some new html tags to play with (shame img isn’t one of them)
code
If MMP were a software program it’s got a massive bug and needs a programmer to fix it.
Simply put.
The ACT scam with National, shows how the bug can be exploited.
But since this bug/glitch exploitation favours a particular party that’s ok.
IF you want people to engage in the political system make the political system hold a smidgeon of integrity.
But I don’t think ANY of you MP’s want that.
Well said.
We can’t say just because they do, we’ll do it. That makes us no better. If we don’t have our integrity, then why should we trust our politicians any more than we trust the other team?
No deals. I hope this not the shape of things to come, because it makes a mockery of MMP.