Social issues

Categories under Social issues

We don’t know how lucky we are

Written By: - Date published: 10:59 am, June 24th, 2020 - 32 comments

Looking at the rises in covid-19 infections worldwide is just damn depressing. Looking at the media and Nat supporters, the world, and covid-19 -ll I can say is thank you for the internet. And the kiwis who aren’t listening to the whining about here because they can see the slow disaster unfolding elsewhere with incompetent governments.

Humans – doing it to themselves

Written By: - Date published: 11:48 am, June 23rd, 2020 - 30 comments

About the only thing that surprised me was that it took so long for a pandemic to really break out into the modern world. Because our evolutionary and recorded history is mainly punctuated and constrained by disease and environmental change. We invented large cities many times in the past and lost them to plague or drought. It looks like we’re going through that phase again – just at a larger level.

In defence of Ashley Bloomfield

Written By: - Date published: 8:27 am, June 22nd, 2020 - 155 comments

National and elements of the media have gone full on attack on the Government’s and Ashley Bloomfield’s Covid 19 performance.  Which is unusual given that there is still no examples of community transmission and all recent infections have been picked up through the quarantine system.

Aroha Ardern Poster Banned?

Written By: - Date published: 9:24 pm, June 21st, 2020 - 66 comments

A piece of street art has got the right’s knickers in a twist. But Love conquers all.

Protesters, Anarchists, Agitators and Lowlifes

Written By: - Date published: 8:13 am, June 21st, 2020 - 96 comments

Donald Trump has planned to hold a political rally on the day used to celebrate the abolition of slavery at a place where one of the worst examples of white brutality on black people using advertising material containing nazi symbols.  All in the middle of a global pandemic.

West Auckland Shooting

Written By: - Date published: 3:10 pm, June 19th, 2020 - 171 comments

Two police officers have been shot in West Auckland. Is it time to arm the Police?

Things that will live

Written By: - Date published: 10:58 am, June 19th, 2020 - 14 comments

Despite downbeat economic predictions and an imminent global recession, the New Zealand recovery offers opportunities for entrepreneurial success that exceed anything we’ve seen for decades.

Responsible politics verses Gotcha politics

Written By: - Date published: 8:16 am, June 18th, 2020 - 215 comments

Michael Woodhouse has recently had a difficult ethical dilemma.  He received information suggesting that there were major weaknesses in the Covid quarantine system.  Should he do the responsible thing and point out these weaknesses to the authorities or should he play Gotcha politics?

A World That Just Doesn’t Need As Much Oil

Written By: - Date published: 7:22 am, June 18th, 2020 - 27 comments

BP yesterday sent a really big message that effectively now, Covid-19 is the break that tips the world away from oil dependence.

Covid really is a bastard

Written By: - Date published: 10:30 am, June 17th, 2020 - 93 comments

New Zealand’s outstanding daily run of ducks for new Covid infections was broken yesterday after it was reported that two visitors, here for the death of a family member, tested positive.  Questions are being raised about why they were not tested before being permitted to travel within New Zealand.

Viable treatment – cheap and proven

Written By: - Date published: 8:10 am, June 17th, 2020 - 9 comments

A medical treatment of drug used since the 1960s in medicine has proven to be effective in reducing the worst effects of human body over-reactive immune responses to covid-19 infections. This will be a boon for the countries with under developed hospital systems that are at the forefront of the current rising wave of infections. And it isn’t quack ‘science’.

National prepares to die in a ditch over racist American flag

Written By: - Date published: 4:10 pm, June 16th, 2020 - 26 comments

In politics there are two general theories, the conspiracy theory where events are the result of deep Machiavellian planning, and the f*ck up theory where things just happen because of human stuff ups.  Todd McClay’s decision to defend the use of the Confederate Flag is that much of a f*ck up there must be a deep Machiavellian reason for him deciding to do so publicly.

Labour’s List

Written By: - Date published: 12:54 pm, June 15th, 2020 - 38 comments

The Labour Party has released its list lineup. It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity to refresh the caucus, and it’s down to one leader’s sacrifice and another’s steller performance.

Covid-19 still raging.

Written By: - Date published: 9:01 am, June 15th, 2020 - 25 comments

A quick look at rising second wave in the US as covid-19 digs deeper into the less populated states and counties. Because of its deliberate lack of governmental cohesion, the US is a rack of petri dishes testing different strategies. When that comes to disease control and covid-19, that strategy is a bit of a disaster.

Things that will die

Written By: - Date published: 8:55 am, June 15th, 2020 - 90 comments

For three decades tourism has been the great tidal surge that has made many otherwise spiralling towns stablise, and in some cases expand.  Post Covid we are going to see some of these towns die.

National has a discipline problem

Written By: - Date published: 12:03 pm, June 13th, 2020 - 28 comments

Yesterday saw two back bench National MPs unintentionally set National’s position on the Government response to Covid 19 and on Hamilton City’s decision to take down a statute that was repugnant to Waikato Tainui.  What has happened to their messaging discipline?

Chris Penk has been thinking

Written By: - Date published: 8:54 am, June 12th, 2020 - 59 comments

Chris Penk has written a book suggesting that the Government’s Covid 19 response has been terrible.  Because it was not quite perfect.

Strike Force Raptor is no more

Written By: - Date published: 12:20 pm, June 11th, 2020 - 10 comments

National has backed away from its policy of creating Strike Force Raptor Police Unit, a unit based on an Australian force dedicated to terrorising possible gang members.

Angry Ardern

Written By: - Date published: 12:10 pm, June 11th, 2020 - 86 comments

A challenging post where Ad challenges Jacinda Ardern and the Labour Government to do more.

Black lives matter Aotearoa version

Written By: - Date published: 9:35 am, June 10th, 2020 - 53 comments

The Black Lives Matter movement is causing many countries to reflect on their history and practices.  And the decision of the police to discontinue the Armed Response Teams Trial and the Childrens Commissioner’s scathing report on Oranga Tamariki’s practices in the uplifting of young children, mostly Maori, from their mothers are examples of the change that is happening.

NZ Police abandon Armed Response Teams

Written By: - Date published: 7:05 am, June 10th, 2020 - 9 comments

We have a model of policing by consent and that means we need the vast majority of people to see as legitimate the style in which we’re policing and it’s been clear to me that there has not been acceptance of this as an appropriate style of policing in New Zealand. – Police Commissioner Andrew Coster

Guest Post – Industrial Democracy for Air New Zealand?

Written By: - Date published: 2:56 pm, June 9th, 2020 - 16 comments

To assist with the emergence from the Covid19 crisis it is time to build firms like Air New Zealand into social institutions of democracy, accountable to citizens and not subject to a takeover by the private interests of capital.

Protesters Say Statue Tripped, Fell Into Water

Written By: - Date published: 9:09 am, June 9th, 2020 - 100 comments

The toppling of a statute of former slave trader Edward Coulson has led to conjecture that the statute may have tripped and fallen rather than forcibly removed and deposited in Bristol Harbour.

Thanks Jacinda – Zero cases of Covid19 in Aotearoa!

Written By: - Date published: 1:15 pm, June 8th, 2020 - 93 comments

Thanks to clear and decisive leadership, an intelligent government, the decision to go hard and fast, respect for science, and overwhelming commitment to local kiwis we can celebrate a milestone, Aotearoa has no current cases of Covid 19.

Black lives matter

Written By: - Date published: 1:09 am, June 6th, 2020 - 106 comments

The civil war may have ended slavery, the civil rights movement may have changed the legal framework ending segregation in the Southern States, but the idea that white people’s lives matter more has survived into the 21st century.

Babylon’s Burning

Written By: - Date published: 3:17 pm, June 5th, 2020 - 24 comments

Nothing changes

Bunker boy Trump finally builds that wall

Written By: - Date published: 1:23 pm, June 5th, 2020 - 23 comments

This week Donald Trump has hid in a bunker, used tear gas to move protestors away from a church so that he could have a photo opportunity with a bible, and has started to build his much vaunted wall.  Although it is around the White House and not on the Mexican border.

How Covid 19 appears to be playing out

Written By: - Date published: 10:51 am, June 4th, 2020 - 108 comments

The politics of Covid 19 present difficulties for the opposition.  They cannot fault execution of the plan so far and have been reduced to complaining that the restrictions are not being loosened quickly enough.

The four horsemen of the apocalypse

Written By: - Date published: 8:03 am, June 4th, 2020 - 16 comments

Ok so this is the worst year I can think of in my lifetime. But apocalyptopia it ain’t.

Stunned Muller

Written By: - Date published: 8:01 am, June 3rd, 2020 - 85 comments

Todd Muller thinks it is up to Donald Trump to decide if Donald Trump is a racist.

The wood, the trees and the ETS

Written By: - Date published: 7:00 am, June 3rd, 2020 - 4 comments

It’s a brutal thing to propose more taxes and costs on business during our worst economic meltdown in a century. But yesterday the Government increased the cost of Carbon.  But we need to do more.