Daily Review 02/08/2018

Written By: - Date published: 5:30 pm, August 2nd, 2018 - 26 comments
Categories: Daily review - Tags:

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 …

26 comments on “Daily Review 02/08/2018 ”

    • Nordy 1.1

      Well said…isn’t it great to have a person of compassion, intelligence, and so ‘down to earth’, as our PM.

  1. bwaghorn 2

    I see every construction has a heap of unfinished apartments . Time for sir Twyford to saddle up his trusty kiwibuild stead and ride to the rescue.

    • Draco T Bastard 2.1

      Subsidising the developers so that they can finish them and get a government guaranteed profit?

      Or do you think he should simply nationalise them and then finish them?

      • John up North 2.1.1

        DTB as with any failed project, someone can step in buy up on the cheap and complete the construction and take any benefits. I’ve seen this in the past and in one case the company that took all the gains was a phoenix company of the original that went bust and walked away from all creditors. Unsurprisingly the gains were pretty good once you told a bunch of subbies and suppliers to fuck off.

        In essence I think you’re on the money, rather than just handing over a subsidy to complete (and guarantee profit) to the failing/failed initial developer, the govt should buy and complete as a Kiwi Build investment.

      • bwaghorn 2.1.2

        I’m not against private profit .
        A lot of the apartments a pre sold but if there is say 20 % unsold the government could make sure it gets finished but 10% of apartments become state houses and the rest kiwi build .
        And those people who have brought off the plans will never forget that labour saved their houses.

        • Draco T Bastard 2.1.2.1

          I’m not against private profit .

          I am as it’s nothing more than bludging and is detrimental to society.

          A lot of the apartments a pre sold but if there is say 20 % unsold the government could make sure it gets finished but 10% of apartments become state houses and the rest kiwi build .

          That’s an option that may work but if the government buys up 20% of the housing (What they’d be doing if they ensure that the building is finished) shouldn’t they own 20%?

          And shouldn’t the failed developers fail rather than get rewarded for their failure?

      • Ad 2.1.3

        That’s just providing license for every fuck-knuckle flybynight developer to do a shit job knowing nanny state will swoop in and pick up the pieces. South Canterbury Finance here we come.

        • bwaghorn 2.1.3.1

          Surly the finance companies would weed out the idiots at stage one .

          • Ad 2.1.3.1.1

            The history of NZ’s boom and bust cycles in my lifetime says otherwise.

            It’s almost the reverse. For example most people blame materials and regulatory deregulation for the entire leaky buildings saga. But it was also mezzanine finance companies putting out shit buildings at rock bottom prices for suckers – and tens of thousands of kiwis lost their shirts.

            And of course, the government eventually agreed to play the chump underwriter of all those sucker-citizens, and those wanker developers largely ran scott free and state subsidized.

          • Draco T Bastard 2.1.3.1.2

            Finance companies don’t make a profit if they go round stopping all the hair-brained schemes.

        • Draco T Bastard 2.1.3.2

          That would depend upon how it’s done wouldn’t it? Could it be done in a way so that the failed developer actually fails while the government saves and completes the housing?

          • bwaghorn 2.1.3.2.1

            I took it as a given that the company would be left to rot . I assumed the receiver would find a buyer to complete the building. That’s were Twyford and co could find a way to make it happen . Is possible ? Buggered if I know.

  2. Anne 3

    This linked photo should be used for tomorrow’s Daily Review:

    https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/363217/controversial-alt-right-pair-land-in-nz

    A deliberate insult to Maori art and culture.

    What a pair of arrogant, ignorant and uncultured, attention seeking pre-neanderthals.

  3. Draco T Bastard 4

    Quoting Why we can’t afford the rich:

    But the problem is not just negligent or reckless individuals, or cocaine-fuelled traders, ever seeking to rout competitors and clients, but the ‘criminogenic environment’ of the financial system.

    Yes, there is a problem with the very ‘culture’ of the financial system. It comes from the financial pressures and opportunities that make such behaviour probable. Deregulated, neoliberal finance actively encourages malpractice. In volatile, fiercely competitive financial markets, with constant pressure for short-term gains that deliver shareholder value, ruthlessness, including aggressive tax avoidance and/or evasion, is essential for success, at both corporate and individual level.

    The financial system is broken as it encourages unethical behaviour but, then, we’ve known that for awhile. It’s why tax havens, which National was attempting to turn NZ into, exist – to support that unethical behaviour.

    Hormonal traders
    The financial sector is and has always been male dominated, macho and mean, but it is becoming more so. Since the crisis, a new drug of choice, after cocaine, has emerged among financial executives and traders wanting to be alpha males: testosterone. Several clinics that used to offer it as treatment for impotence are now providing it to traders wanting to stay aggressive, confident and decisive throughout their 12-hour working days.102 This of course makes them even more likely to take extreme risks and act irresponsibly and unethically.

    Seems that drug testing needs to happen in the financial ‘industry’ as well.

    In the upper reaches of the financial sector, and particularly in investment banking, the system attracts the ethically challenged and moulds individuals to be still more selfish and myopic. The wider social costs of their private actions simply don’t come into the equation. This is why media handwringing about ethics rather than the system itself must have many members of the financial sector privately rolling their eyes – or smirking.

    At least some in the financial ‘industry’ will know that they’re not operating ethically – but they simply don’t care.

    It was not only that bosses had limited understanding of their most exotic products, but something more general: a kind of ‘money-illusion’, in which getting more money – that is, bigger claims on the wealth produced by others – is mistaken for creating wealth. They deceived themselves as well as others.

    And that is the biggest deception of all – the belief that these parasites are actually producing wealth.

  4. Ed 5

    We have been warned.

    “Global heatwave is symptom of early stage cycle of civilisational collapse
    Welcome to a 1C planet: the precursor of an 8C catastrophe in 82 years if we keep burning up fossil fuels like there’s no tomorrow.”

    The extreme weather events of the summer of 2018 are not just symptoms of climate breakdown. They are early stage warnings of a protracted process of civilisational collapse as industrial societies face some of the opening symptoms of having already breached the limits of a safe climate. These events are a taste of things to come on a business-as-usual trajectory. They elicit a sense of how industrial civilisational systems are vulnerable to collapse due to escalating climate impacts. And they highlight the urgent necessity of communities everywhere undertaking steps to achieve a systemic civilisational transition toward post-capitalist systems which can survive and prosper after fossil fuels.”

    Read more here…..

    https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/global-heatwave-is-symptom-of-early-stage-cycle-of-civilisational-collapse-efef3c1dd7eb

  5. corodale 6

    Adopt technologies to decentralise, perhaps counter-intuitively, globalisation isn’t looking like the answer. Strengthen cooperative systems, as competitive-finance self-destructs. eg. Don’t panic, go organic. And block-chain developments which decentralise banking.

  6. Jenny 7

    Gaza blockade: Mike Treen returns to NZ with ‘a few stories to tell’
    Newshub staff – August 2, 2018

    https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2018/08/gaza-blockade-mike-treen-returns-to-nz-with-a-few-stories-to-tell.amp.html

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