Written By: - Date published: 8:15 am, August 18th, 2022 - 28 comments
You can be the most moral nation on earth and have no reward for it.
Written By: - Date published: 1:07 pm, August 9th, 2022 - 11 comments
Crises that profoundly test a small developed state like New Zealand have required huge growth in state strength and policy power. But was it the change we needed?
Written By: - Date published: 12:31 pm, June 14th, 2022 - 69 comments
The past couple of years has seen a significant increase in far right activity and rapidly increasing racism.
Written By: - Date published: 6:08 pm, June 12th, 2022 - 16 comments
We are about to have a proper gang control policy contest. It’s about time.
Written By: - Date published: 9:05 am, June 12th, 2022 - 20 comments
The Russian war of aggression against the Ukraine is now three months old. Prepare for a very long grind.
Written By: - Date published: 10:09 am, June 10th, 2022 - 53 comments
The world is too complex and hostile, so why bother trying to learn and understand.
Written By: - Date published: 6:28 pm, April 26th, 2022 - 9 comments
With RNZ and TVNZ now in full merger mode, we have yet another untested state megalith upon us. But where is the power that will hold it to account?
Written By: - Date published: 8:30 am, April 20th, 2022 - 93 comments
RNZ’s recent shock horror reporting on a memo from November 2021 proposing a wind back of MIQ is severely deficient. The framing is one sided and ignores the subsequent emergence of Omicron as a variant of concern.
Written By: - Date published: 2:09 pm, April 10th, 2022 - 47 comments
A recent study into New Zealand’s media suggests that trust in what the media says is declining and that views of what is good and bad media is more and more dependent on the participant’s world view.
Written By: - Date published: 7:26 am, April 7th, 2022 - 20 comments
If the 3 Waters reforms can survive its attacks and be implemented, a consequence will be that we are going to have a most enormous nationwide economic argument about the price of water and who pays for it all.
Written By: - Date published: 7:00 am, March 29th, 2022 - 60 comments
New Zealand does not have to settle for being small, quiet, and weak.
Written By: - Date published: 7:00 am, March 22nd, 2022 - 31 comments
Christchurch Council has billed Destiny Church for traffic management fees relating to recent protests. For once I am firmly if reluctantly on the side of Destiny Church. Exercising the right to protest should not attract Council bills.
Written By: - Date published: 7:00 am, March 17th, 2022 - 351 comments
Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelinsky has made a direct appeal broadcast to the United States Congress. That will sort out the Putin supporters from the rest. And with climate change beckoning it is time to pick a side.
Written By: - Date published: 8:59 am, March 15th, 2022 - 117 comments
In six months time the world could be in a very precarious position.
Written By: - Date published: 7:30 am, March 1st, 2022 - 18 comments
We will probably never get over the feeling that somehow, if enough people just banded together, it would all get better again, like we did when the United Nations charter was struck.
Written By: - Date published: 10:52 am, February 20th, 2022 - 72 comments
The Wellington protest has exceeded any moral mandate to protest.
Written By: - Date published: 10:21 am, February 20th, 2022 - 129 comments
The people camping outside Parliament are also us.
Written By: - Date published: 10:19 am, February 20th, 2022 - 40 comments
Trying to remember the numbers of protestors in Wellington are small in number compared to the rest of us
Written By: - Date published: 7:30 am, February 16th, 2022 - 25 comments
Over the past two years we have lost so many things that are not coming back.
Written By: - Date published: 10:05 am, February 13th, 2022 - 131 comments
Complaints that the police are unnecessarily interfering with the Wellington Convoy’s right to protest appear to be vastly overstated.
Written By: - Date published: 11:01 am, February 10th, 2022 - 42 comments
Chloe Swarbrick has requested that the government help Auckland central’s restaurants. But in a post Covid pre climate change world this is not going to help.
Written By: - Date published: 9:04 am, February 7th, 2022 - 37 comments
The things we don’t regret keeping are a strong measure of what we don’t value. COVID’s 2 year anniversary asks us this simply through what events we commemorate.
Written By: - Date published: 10:58 am, January 29th, 2022 - 166 comments
Neil Young’s decision to withdraw his music from Spotify because of its insistence on highlighting self declared idiot Joe Rogan has seen a number of people either cancelling their subscriptions or considering alternatives.
Written By: - Date published: 9:25 am, January 25th, 2022 - 212 comments
It appears that social media allegations against Jacinda Ardern are becoming more and more extreme.
Written By: - Date published: 11:38 am, January 23rd, 2022 - 21 comments
Joe Biden is struggling to get his agenda passed by the American Legislature. Because of two Senators, one with significant coal interests and the other Senator more willing to protect the rights of a minority of Senators to hold up legislation than the rights of a minority of Americans to vote.
Written By: - Date published: 8:32 am, January 19th, 2022 - 12 comments
In 2010 the poor but proud Island Nation raised $705,000 to donate to the Christchurch Earthquake Appeal Fund. If New Zealanders were to reciprocate their generosity we would donate over $30 million. It is time for us to return the favour.
Written By: - Date published: 1:11 pm, January 16th, 2022 - 151 comments
Where western minds are busy arguing if indigenous knowledge is science, botanist and first nations woman Robin Wall Kimmerer exemplifies how to do both at the same time.
Written By: - Date published: 10:40 pm, January 8th, 2022 - 22 comments
When I heard US Secretary of State Blinken’s take-away line from his D.C. press conference on RNZ’s news bulletin today on events in Kazakhstan ‘I think one lesson in recent history is that once Russians are in your house, it’s sometimes very difficult to get them to leave’ I wondered what the Iraqis would think.
Written By: - Date published: 7:05 pm, January 8th, 2022 - 12 comments
The Helen Kelly biography by Rebacca Macfie provides a clear and intense overview of what has happened to New Zealand society over the past 40 years from a time of high union membership and equality to now where unions struggle and inequality is significant.
Written By: - Date published: 6:58 am, December 29th, 2021 - 5 comments
We need to remember Joan Didion, who died December 23rd, as perhaps the best defensive pessimist we’ve ever had. She nailed the feet of her times down to the floor to make sure it talked and wept all its pain out. It’s not enough to call Joan Didion just a pessimist, because she wrote hard […]
Written By: - Date published: 8:09 am, December 25th, 2021 - 33 comments
Here at the Standard we choose to debate the important issues of the day. What needs to be done about climate change, how the Country’s covid response is going (remarkably well and don’t believe the naysayers), and which National faction is leaking and undermining which leader. But there is one debate that is currently raging that has until now not been addressed …
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