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Global elite plan their escape from “pleb masses”

Written By: - Date published: 11:03 am, March 29th, 2016 - 35 comments

So, Key has now come out and revealed to us how afraid the global oligarch class (and their well paid professional enablers) are. They appear to have no plans to reverse their activites to make things better for us.

the Global Death Economy

Written By: - Date published: 10:15 am, February 25th, 2016 - 141 comments

A new edition of “Confessions of an Economic Hitman” has been released. It makes it clear that we are in the grip of a global “Death Economy” and a collective embrace of ‘Thanatos’, the death instinct.

The great big list of John Key’s big fat lies (UPDATED)

Written By: - Date published: 7:00 am, January 27th, 2016 - 79 comments

How many more lies will John Key tell today in his so-called State of the Nation address? Virtual chocolate fish to whomever guesses the closest number.

As we bind ourselves with the TPP, so other countries will fill the need

Written By: - Date published: 5:58 pm, December 4th, 2015 - 112 comments

Reeling from tough produce sanctions, Russia will pursue a strategy as the world’s largest supplier of ‘ecologically clean’ food. And where is NZ?

Coleman to regulate high sugar industry

Written By: - Date published: 9:37 am, December 1st, 2015 - 32 comments

Health Minister Jonathan Coleman said there is a voluntary regime in place for the manufacture and sale of high sugar food but where there is is self regulation it is often ignored.

Because of the danger high sugar foods potentially pose it’s important to have a regulatory body and licensing/education regime to ensure manufacturers and retailers only provide food that has healthy outcomes.

Food Bank Charity

Written By: - Date published: 4:45 pm, October 30th, 2015 - 97 comments

Guest post from Kōrero Pono on the politics and ethics of food banks.

Key pinches Labour’s Kermadec Sanctuary Policy

Written By: - Date published: 7:00 am, September 30th, 2015 - 88 comments

National’s announced intention to create a marine sanctuary around the Kermadec Islands looks remarkably like Labour’s policy from the last election. And why did John Key not tell his caucus beforehand?

Guest Post – Hawkes Bay is GE free

Written By: - Date published: 9:41 am, September 14th, 2015 - 26 comments

A guest post by Ad on the Hawkes Bay’s decision to prohibit under its District Plan the release or the conducting of field trials of GM crops and animals.

Red Cross flood appeal

Written By: - Date published: 11:50 am, June 25th, 2015 - 5 comments

Red Cross is collecting for those recently affected by flooding in NZ. Here’s how to donate…

Auditor General rules on Dirty Politics allegation

Written By: - Date published: 8:33 am, May 16th, 2015 - 46 comments

The Auditor General has decided that Katherine Rich, head of the Food and Grocery Council which includes Coca Cola as well as Alcohol and Tobacco interests has no conflict in being a member of the Health Promotion Agency, a quango with the role of supporting healthy lifestyles.

Wild weather

Written By: - Date published: 6:22 am, May 15th, 2015 - 46 comments

All the best to those coping with the wild weather or its aftermath. We’ll see lots of photos of floods and damage, but no discussion of the increasing risks of extreme weather.

Police announcement – 1080 threat

Written By: - Date published: 3:43 pm, March 10th, 2015 - 155 comments

3 News is advertising a special announcement of “national significance” at 3:45. Will update post…

It’s a 1080 threat to the dairy industry – that has been known since last November. Look – over there!

National’s fruit flies

Written By: - Date published: 7:13 am, February 24th, 2015 - 73 comments

Brook Sabin pulls no punches laying the blame for the fruit fly outbreak at National’s feet. Key’s attempted denial is some of his worst work ever.

Local Bodies: Neoliberal Economics Limits Food Choice in Southland

Written By: - Date published: 8:54 am, January 10th, 2015 - 62 comments

bsprout on the Local Bodies blog, provides a case study, specific to Southland.  At the same time, it outlines a more general pattern that can be seen in many places, each with their own local circumstances.

Ministry lies about animal abuse.

Written By: - Date published: 9:06 am, December 5th, 2014 - 97 comments

Earlier this year Farmwatch investigated pig farming in New Zealand. We filmed horrific conditions and animal cruelty on several farms in Auckland and Christchurch. On one farm workers kicked and stomped on piglets. They beat a sow to death with a sledgehammer. It took more than an hour to kill her. Sunday, TVNZ’s weekend current […]

Jackal: The truth will out

Written By: - Date published: 8:39 pm, September 28th, 2014 - 114 comments

Cameron Slater is a complete arsehole. He gets paid to exercise these talents as was exposed in Dirty Politics. So the question is who is paying him to attack researchers in public health? Do we have a National Minister of Health yet? Or is it the junk food industry or the tobacco lobby? And does he declare his earnings to the IRD?

Positive Labour policy for meat industry

Written By: - Date published: 10:57 pm, July 27th, 2014 - 4 comments

In the late 1980’s I worked on the establishment of the Meat Industry Tradesmens Agreement, bringing eight  awards into one. My lasting memory is how the meat companies hated each other more than they hated the unions, and they were no union-lovers. 25 years later, the companies still can’t get their act together, and it is the country as well as the farmers who are hurting. It may surprise some, but it’s the Labour party who is putting forward policy to bring in the necessary change to the $8billion industry. Good work from Damien O’Connor and the Labour leadership.

Phil Goff: Contemporary China Research Centre

Written By: - Date published: 6:25 pm, July 2nd, 2014 - 9 comments

It isn’t that often that we put up speeches by politicians. They’re usually aimed at the general public and don’t really get into the guts of the issues in the way that our activist commenters like to argue at – they tend to be political and in this site preaching to the converted.  However this speech by Phil Goff is exceptional. It was made at a centre looking at China, and looks at the benefits and risks of our current and future relationships with that country. Worth reading

NRT: Climate change: War, disease, and famine

Written By: - Date published: 6:01 pm, March 18th, 2014 - 38 comments

The biggest single threat to civilisation from human initiated CO2 forced climate change is going to be in food production and distribution. In a leaked version of the IPCC’s AR5 second volume ” the report predicts that climate change will reduce median crop yields by 2 per cent per decade for the rest of the century – at a time of rapidly growing demand for food.”

Polity: Fizzy drinks: Tax or no tax?

Written By: - Date published: 2:48 pm, February 18th, 2014 - 80 comments

There has been some discussion recently about whether we should tax fizzy drinks as a threat to public health. Otago University public health people say yes. Various anti-tax groups say no. Here’s Rob Salmond’s 2c worth.

Some interesting arguments

Australian hissy fit at supermarkets

Written By: - Date published: 7:20 pm, February 5th, 2014 - 135 comments

Australia again. I wish they would adopt an honourable and fair stance to New Zealand instead of using us whenever they want to gain advantage for themselves or throw a hissy fit. Now they are discriminating against our food exports in two large supermarkets, one of which has a large store ownership here.

Send gummy bears to your representatives

Written By: - Date published: 3:43 pm, February 4th, 2014 - 25 comments

Last night Lyn was regaling me with an advertisement on amazon for a 5 pound bag of “Haribo Classic Sugar Free Gummy Bears” with its 643 product evaluations. In this fine example of online consumerism, all appeared to agree that these really were some of the tastiest snacks around. In fact they were so good that many were suggesting that they got sent to all members of congress. Should we do the same for MPs? Then they might get the concept behind food labelling

It wasn’t a dirty pipe

Written By: - Date published: 8:27 am, August 15th, 2013 - 205 comments

It wasn’t a dirty pipe. That is the claim made by veterinarian and farm performance consultant Frank Rowson, as reported by Stuff yesterday. Rowson says “This disease originates in contaminated feed and animal manure”. Let the enquiries begin – we need to be honest about the problem and fix it.

Key needs to get real on Fonterra crisis

Written By: - Date published: 12:11 pm, August 11th, 2013 - 128 comments

The Fonterra fiasco is turning into a genuine crisis and a huge risk to our economy. John Key needs to stop playing politics and get real. It’s urgent.

Hockey stick becomes a wheelchair

Written By: - Date published: 2:15 pm, April 30th, 2013 - 23 comments

When you look at the dependence of farmers in extreme climates around the world who are reliant on regular weather like the monsoons in Bangladesh or the mild winters in the gulf stream washed areas like Europe, it is clear how reliant we are for food on our relatively unchanging climate of the past 11,000 years.

How bad does it have to get?

Written By: - Date published: 9:23 am, March 5th, 2013 - 63 comments

Record breaking droughts in Australia and America, drought in NZ. Food prices rising. Worse to come. How bad does it have to get before we take action?

Sunday Reading

Written By: - Date published: 9:30 am, September 30th, 2012 - 17 comments

My regular Sunday piece of interesting, longer, deeper stories I found during the week. It’s also a chance for you to share what you found this week too. This week: Obama the Tory, fish, Planet Key and the UK’s hit political single.

Who’s heading in the right direction?

Written By: - Date published: 9:37 am, September 10th, 2012 - 13 comments

While Labour and the Greens are laying out concrete policies to tackle poverty and its consequences that lead to life-long problems (child payment and home insulation from the Greens, food in schools and reading recovery from Labour), National MPs are acting as slum landlords, refusing to spend a few thousand dollars to bring their rentals up to standard.

GM lobby can butt out

Written By: - Date published: 10:22 am, September 5th, 2012 - 53 comments

There are perfectly good reasons that NZ as a country should remain GM free. And we should stand up and say so in the face of inept and blatant lobbying from the GM industry.

Climate change causing (another) food shock

Written By: - Date published: 12:37 pm, July 12th, 2012 - 57 comments

Climate change is causing the world’s temperatures and seas levels to rise but this isn’t a steady process. Instead we see more frequent and more extreme weather events. The record-busting heatwave in the US and floods in Russia are examples. The big problem is the effects of these weather events on our production of food and other vital goods.

Rio: another chance lost

Written By: - Date published: 9:22 am, June 27th, 2012 - 14 comments

How do we move forward from here?  How do we get the consensus we need?  How do we get more politicians around the world making not just speeches like David Cunliffe’s, but acting on them?  Setting the targets and the plan behind them to avoid the brutal logic of climate change.

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