Daily Review 02/02/2018

Written By: - Date published: 5:34 pm, February 2nd, 2018 - 46 comments
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Daily review is also your post.

This provides Standardistas the opportunity to review events of the day.

The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy).

Don’t forget to be kind to each other …

46 comments on “Daily Review 02/02/2018 ”

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  1. Ed 1
    2 February 2018 at 5:52 pm

    At last we have a conservation minister worthy of the name.

    Dramatic new maps have revealed the enormous loss of our natural wetlands – and undoing the damage will take years, Conservation Minister Eugenie Sage says.

    Around 90 per cent of these soggy refuges – vital for supporting plant and animal life – have vanished in the face of development.

    Home to an abundance of species like shorebirds, eels, whitebait, mangroves and kahikatea, our wetlands once stretched across 2.2m ha of countryside – that had now dwindled to 249,776ha.

    Southland lost 1000ha in just the last decade.

    Sage described wetlands as kidneys that captured sediments and nutrients, and slowly released water in drought-prone areas.

    “They are home to precious wildlife and plants and are wonderful places for people to experience nature,” she said.

    “We must protect the last 10 per cent.”

    http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11986182

  2. Ed 2
    2 February 2018 at 6:00 pm

    The Herald calls it weird weather.
    Stuff calls it our ‘weird weather week.’
    Rachel Stewart asks ” are we worried yet?”

    Storms.
    Cyclones.
    Tidal surges.
    Floods.
    Drought.
    Sea water at 6 degrees higher than normal.
    Bridges destroyed.
    Roads torn up.

    And now snow.
    In Otago.
    In February.

    Snow in summer: The latest twist to our weird weather week

    • ScottGN 2.1
      2 February 2018 at 6:52 pm

      It’s not that unusual for snow to fall on the hills around Central any month of the year Ed. It happens every summer pretty much. It comes from being 45 degrees of latitude south and fully exposed to the vagaries of the weather we get off the Southern Ocean.

    • mikes 2.2
      3 February 2018 at 1:32 am

      Like the metservice said, snow in the summer at high altitudes in Otago is less common than in winter (as you’d expect) but not unusual.

  3. Johnr 3
    2 February 2018 at 6:17 pm

    Think I’m going to enjoy Kim Hill on RNZ tomorrow. Where, as she’s advertised, Micheal Laws defends rodeo

    • Robert Guyton 4.1
      2 February 2018 at 7:46 pm

      Very good. Thie…f.

    • Pat 4.2
      2 February 2018 at 9:04 pm

      See our very own Wayne warrants a mention,

    • ianmac 4.3
      2 February 2018 at 9:20 pm

      Matt Nippert really is very thorough. I bet Thiel will want him sacked for invading his privacy.

      • ianmac 4.3.1
        2 February 2018 at 9:40 pm

        The previous Government under Key seemed able to hold very important meetings with very rich people, and surprisingly no minutes are kept. (Think Key- Dotcom.) They learned to leave no trail especially if dealing in dodgy.

  5. Son Of Don 5
    2 February 2018 at 7:20 pm

    NZ Medical Students Association just called out Liarbor on another of its pre election lies (seems the norm now..);

    NZMSA and Te Oranga have reviewed the Budget Policy Statement, and are concerned there is no mention of the EFTS cap policy, or costings for its removal. NZMSA and Te Oranga has requested to send a representative to the select committee to provide feedback on the budget and hold the government accountable for the EFTS caps promises made in the election.

    http://www.nzmsa.org.nz/press-release-submission-to-select-committee-on-budget-2018/

    • Robert Guyton 5.1
      2 February 2018 at 7:44 pm

      Anyone who uses the faux-word, “Liarbor” is, in my opinion, an idiot.

    • Robert Guyton 5.2
      2 February 2018 at 7:45 pm

      Anyone who uses the faux-word, “Liarbor” is, in my opinion, an idiot.

    • NewsFlash 5.3
      2 February 2018 at 8:18 pm

      Hey Sod

      You could write a book on the LIES that John Key spewed on a daily basis, and then the election showed that there are NO National party ,members that haven’t lied, the Coalition Govt have made more positive changes in a few months than National did in 9 yrs

    • Cinny 5.4
      2 February 2018 at 10:05 pm

      s.o.d, of course the NZMSA seeks reassurance from a government annoucement, it’s not a new type of behaviour from them, lolz

      Some swallow the whale blubber bait.. the more intelligent ones do their own research….

      29 August 2017 (under the nats, prior to their election loss)

      PRESS RELEASE: NZMSA seeks assurances over new School of Rural Medicine….

      As well in that article you will find the desperate pleas for more funding from the then nat government… I’m getting the feeling the NZMSA has been let down before… in that case it would only be natural to be seeking reassurance

    • Ed 5.5
      2 February 2018 at 10:31 pm

      Just another troll

    • red-blooded 5.6
      4 February 2018 at 7:01 am

      Not all commitments get followed through in the first budget. This government has 3 years to honour its promises.

  6. Macro 6
    2 February 2018 at 7:33 pm

    Love the heading tonight. Just remember that many in this country are here because of the “clearances”. Ie sheep before people.
    If you read the passenger lists of the boats travelling out from the Clyde to NZ in the 1840’s you see so many of the young ones died on the passage out.
    Last year I visited Clachan a small town on the Kintyre Pennisular from whence some of our forebears departed. The story goes that the Laird at that time was so despised that when he died he was buried as far from the town in the most inhospitable place as possible.

    • ianmac 6.1
      2 February 2018 at 8:54 pm

      My Great Grandparents left Loch Glendhu with 12 kids to immigrate to NZ. I visited their home area beside the Loch where their grandfather had remained after the Clearance, and he was listed as “Foxhunter.” Wow. I loved the place.

    • mac1 6.2
      2 February 2018 at 10:14 pm

      Seeing people heading for the immigrant ships and sleeping homeless in Scottish graveyards was a great motivator for our Liberal Minister of Lands, The Hon John McKenzie, who instituted the breaking up of the big estates here in New Zealand.

      https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/2m17/mckenzie-john

      At least four of my ancestors benefitted from this great political act. Some who did came of Glencoe McDonald stock, and the land they won in the ballot came from the lands owned by a former laird and land-owning employer here. Oh the karma of history!

      • weka 6.2.1
        2 February 2018 at 10:22 pm

        what time period was that mac? (the breaking up of the blocks).

        • mac1 6.2.1.1
          2 February 2018 at 10:30 pm

          Weka, from the source noted in my first post,

          “John McKenzie’s expertise on land matters won him the post of Minister of Lands in the Liberal cabinet from 1891 to 1900. He is best remembered for four things he achieved while holding that office: the introduction of a graduated land tax, which was incorporated in John Ballance’s Land and Income Assessment Act 1891; the lease-in-perpetuity tenure or 999-year lease, which was the major feature of the Land Act 1892; the purchase of the Cheviot Hills estate in 1893 under the auspices of the Land and Income Assessment Act 1891; and the state’s right of compulsory purchase, which was introduced under the Land for Settlements Act 1894. The celebrated Cheviot purchase was in fact forced on the government, but McKenzie seized the opportunity to make it a symbol of Liberal settlement policy.”

          My family settled in Cheviot (mentioned above) and on Banks Peninsula, which the Kinloch estate of Hugh Buchanan largely occupied.

    • mac1 6.3
      4 February 2018 at 4:30 pm

      Landlordism and the Lairds. Macro, thanks for your post.

      I have two tales from my travels. In Scotland the guide on a Rabbies’ Tour took us to a beautiful bronze statue titled “The Exiles”on the NW coast. As background he spoke of the Clearances and the role of the despised Duke of Sutherland in that. I read yesterday that an 1830 statue of the Duke was again damaged.

      In Ireland I found numerous responses to Landlordism and the evils of the Famine ranging from a hand written notice in a Clare cemetery to an exhibition in a museum at Gort to another beautiful yet poignant black statue of a mourning woman in a Cork famine grave yard.

      At Gort, at the house at Coole Park where Yeats wrote his poem “The Wild Swans at Coole,” there was a levelled great house site where the house in which Lady Gregory, a patroness of the Irish artistic renaissance, lived until her death in the early 30’s.

      The house was levelled by the government to the height of the metre high foundations and was a grassy area. It was seen as a monument to oppression.

      Lord Gregory was despised as one of the architects of misery in Ireland during the Famine with his Gregory Amendment which meant that if you had more than a quarter of an acre of land you could not receive assistance. The Archbishop of Tuam referred to him as “Quarter Acre Gregory”. This provision brought about wholesale dispossession and misery.

      The lessons of history still must be taught, and heeded indeed.

      • Macro 6.3.1
        4 February 2018 at 5:08 pm

        Thanks for those thoughts mac1. My great grandparents only spoke the Gaelic and lived on Gigha a small island off the Kintyre Pennisular. It was a stopping off point on the way between Ireland and Scotland, and has a long history which has been beautifully written up by Scotland’s Catherine Czerkawaska and entitled “God’s Islanders”.
        At one stage the Island was owned by a Col Scarlett who build a substantial house with Gardens later developed by another owner The gardens there are filled with rhododendrons of many varieties and rival the garden of Lady Campbell just up the road from Lochgilphred*. The Island is unique in that it is now owned by the Islanders themselves, and they became the first of the Scottish Isles to achieve this. The cost of the purchase was funded by the buying of three windmills “The dancing ladies”, there is now a forth, and exporting the electricity generated to the mainland.
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigha
        Clachan which I referred to above, was where my wife’s folks arrived from on the Jane Gifford in 1842. The son built the current scow “Jane Gifford” which is now located in Warkworth.
        http://www.janegifford.org.nz/
        When my daughter heard of the close proximity of Gigha and Clachan she pronounced “I knew there was inbreeding in this family!” 🙂

        *This is now a Scottish National Trust Garden and if ever in the area in springtime an absolute must to visit.

  7. greywarshark 7
    2 February 2018 at 8:21 pm

    It may be that NZ to survive economically and socially will have to change so that everyone is expected to help out in the country in some way each year. They need grape workers in Central Otago. Travelling work teams that would be maintained between jobs could go down and work during the season. Teenagers at school could be on half-days and so get their theoretical education and work experience.

    https://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/food-wine/101077482/earliest-harvest-in-25-years-central-otago-desperate-for-workers

    • weka 7.1
      2 February 2018 at 10:25 pm

      Vinyards and orchards need a different business model so that people can make a decent living from working for them. Then they will get the workers. It’s not rocket science.

      (also, wine really isn’t high on my list of priorities for saving NZ. How much is export with large carbon miles attached to it?).

        • CHCOff 7.1.2.1
          2 February 2018 at 11:59 pm

          This is due to the value of work being distorted by the value of money, & that break down in market demand and supply economics is a political problem caused by out of balance monopolies in particular sectors of the modern economic system.

          This then increases red tape, bureaucracies, and inefficiencies for all the other sectors. Cheap Labour is not a belief in capitalism, and the free hand of the market to allocate the most efficient and socially desirable results where free market economics serves populace.

          • CHCOff 7.1.2.1.1
            3 February 2018 at 9:01 am

            In further addition to the above, it is about the contrast between free market Guild economics or economy as opposed to that of free trade.

            The fundamental difference being that Guild economics is built on the principles of mutually beneficial reciprocation, participants in successful guild systems/structures buy quality as comes to labour & product standards, as they know this is in essence paying for their own success of participation in economy on those terms.

          • Draco T Bastard 7.1.2.1.2
            3 February 2018 at 12:43 pm

            Er what?

            Money has no value. If it did then it wouldn’t work as a means of exchange.

            Introducing robotics to replace people increases productivity but the effect isn’t really to make us richer as the economists and politicians say. What it allows is the shift of people from doing one thing to doing something else. In other words, it allows diversification and development of the economy especially if that ‘something else’ happens to be R&D.

            Free-market economics may serve the economy and the populace but capitalism only serves the rich.

            BTW, regulation is needed to define the market and acceptable practice within it.

            • CHCOff 7.1.2.1.2.1
              3 February 2018 at 5:31 pm

              I think what you are saying is abit of a muddle in reply so i understand how what i posted may seem to you also in this case.

              R & D is often chasing the value of artificial scarcity in it’s implementation to modern economic systems, for the reasons touched upon in my initial post, & is why technological progress is casting a big shadow on how it will work or be integrated into modern economics, in that it is a problem. This is because it is chasing distorted demand and supply signal chains.

              • Draco T Bastard …
                3 February 2018 at 5:49 pm

                R & D is often chasing the value of artificial scarcity in it’s implementation to modern economic systems

                No.

                R&D looks to do several things:
                1. Make things more efficiently
                2. Make them safer
                3. Make new things that are beneficial to society (robots are in this category)

                This is because it is chasing distorted demand and supply signal chains.

                Wrong.

                There are distorted signals but that has everything to do with chasing profits rather than R&D.

  8. Eco Maori 8
    2 February 2018 at 10:09 pm

    It’s all good Steven The Americans don’t like it when someone points out the reality of the shit they impose on the rest of the World. I know that Trump or one of his Muppet reads my post daily .That’s how this great communication device works anyone anywhere on Papatunuku can read my post .The coaches should have subbed you off and put someone more suited to defend against that midget you are still pumping bro I won’t say anymore as this mite give them reasons to give you a low blow like they did last time I wrote about you . A similar phenomenon happened to Lydia all I was trying to do was boost her confidence and the sandflys stirred shit up I hope she gets her game going again. It will be good for the equality for the lady’s in Aotearoa Like your sister is
    Here’s a win for lady’s
    https://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/life/101113064/what-will-happen-now-grid-girls-have-been-discontinued Kia kaha bro Ka kite ano

  9. WILD KATIPO 9
    2 February 2018 at 11:48 pm

    Earlier on I had an online knuckleup with Puckish Rogue.

    I used his / her Americana fetish aka the far right wing globalist neo liberalism against him / her by citing the Constitutional right to bear arms against a government deemed to be oppressive and operating outside and beyond the democratic mandate of the civilian population.

    That sort of talk while figurative , – and citing historic examples as to why that section of the American Constitution exists , – never ceases to put the fear of the masses up those who would be king.

    Let it never be said that these elected officials have any right , reason or rationale to assert their preeminence over the very people who elected them.

    That is democracy. If they do not like that fact , then they should not consider themselves as servants of the people , – but rather enemies of the people.

    I find it humorous that the very same people who would endorse an elite and secretive position of privilege citing America as an example of freedom , – are the very same people who recoil in horror at the slightest hint of the actual power vested in the general populace backed up by force if needs be . And legally backed up by a sector of the the Constitution of the United States of America which is designed to guarantee the future freedoms of that same people.

    I apologize for nothing I said.

    And while no one wants to see a country torn apart by factions , and no one wants to see others harmed,.. it would bode well for all elected officials to remember their station and the fact that they were elected and placed there to simply be the executors and servants of the peoples will.

    And nothing more.

    Expelled No Intelligence Allowed full movie – YouTube
    Video for Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (full movie)▶ 1:38:00

  10. Eco Maori 10
    3 February 2018 at 1:27 am

    Here you go American’s trying to impose there controls of us IE data.
    Here a link from THE guardian.
    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jan/31/data-laws-corporate-america-capitalism
    Ka kite ano