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Daily Review 07/06/2016

Written By: - Date published: 6:05 pm, June 7th, 2016 - 74 comments
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Donald Trump Chicken

Daily review is also your post.

This provides Standarnistas 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 …

74 comments on “Daily Review 07/06/2016 ”

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  1. weka 1
    7 June 2016 at 6:25 pm

    For the people who think nature should be left to sort itself out, forests in Northland are on the verge of collapse from possum damage,

    http://www.forestandbird.org.nz/stopforestcollapse

    That’s the trees, but the it’s the whole ecosystem. Stoats, rats and other predators are decimating the wildlife populations too.

    When you take key elements out of an ecosystem the whole thing is affected and not necessarily in ways that nature can accommodate well. Evolution is a thing, and where species have co-evolved, you get climax forests and stable systems. When you introduce elements that intervene in that outside of the evolutionary processes, you potentially get collapse. If even we thought that evolution will sort that out over the next centuries or millenia this is not something we want happening in the age of climate change.

    Those Northland forests could be protected with the knowledge and skill we have now. Political choices from National mean they’re not.

    • Paul 1.1
      7 June 2016 at 6:39 pm

      Just another day in John Key’s neo-liberal nightmare.
      We have become a cruel, selfish, uncaring and selfish nation under his wretched leadership.

      DOC’s funding being cut and nature dies.

    • Draco T Bastard 1.2
      7 June 2016 at 7:19 pm

      Those Northland forests could be protected with the knowledge and skill we have now.

      What knowledge and skill?

      And don’t say traps because traps aren’t enough. If they were we would have sorted out the pests decades ago.

      • weka 1.2.1
        7 June 2016 at 7:33 pm

        Trapping could reduce numbers enough to save the forest, sure. It’s not lack of traps or knowledge that’s the problem, it’s funding. Personally I’d prefer trapping over poisoning (including job and small business creation in the context of kaitiakitanga) but we have the poisoning tech too.

        • Draco T Bastard 1.2.1.1
          7 June 2016 at 8:27 pm

          Trapping could reduce numbers enough to save the forest, sure. It’s not lack of traps or knowledge that’s the problem, it’s funding.

          How many thousands of people out there minding how many millions of traps?
          Should we give them guns and ammo to shoot the pests if they see any?

          It’s not funding either, it’s actual physical capability. If we want to eradicate the pests that were introduced then it’s going to have to be a major concerted effort across the whole country over a short period of time and make sure we get the whole damn lot of them. And the chances are that we’d miss some which means that in a few short years we’d bee doing it all again.

          Me, I’m hoping that our scientists will develop a way to sterilise them all. Then we may have a chance to eradicate them. Unfortunately, this governments been cutting research through the stupidity of competition.

          • weka 1.2.1.1.1
            7 June 2016 at 8:44 pm

            We’re never going to eradicate those pests on the mainland (at least not in the foreseeable future). In order to save the forests, we don’t need eradication, we just need to keep the numbers down low enough for species and systems to thrive above reproduction level.

            I’ve spent a fair amount of time around trappers and in country more difficult than Northland forests. It takes surprisingly little to control a population in a given area. DOC and other govt organisations will have the research on this, but often even just having trap lines every x kms that get checked once a month can bring populations down enough for bird species to increase. You need to do extra in mast years. 1080 every decade or two if you have to. That research would have been done with a close eye on budgets (ie what’s the least amount of trapping we can do for the most effect), so giving them a decent budget instead of a minimal one would increase benefit substantially.

            Put together small teams of people who are self employed, who love spending time in the bush, let them live in the forest with a caretaking contract so they can do other work there too. They can make a living from the possum fur and a bounty on the stoat and rats. Huge potential. We already have volunteer networks in NZ doing trapping, so co-ordinate and increase that eg DOC or Landcare or whoever put in the lines and registered volunteers who are already in the area (trampers, fishermen, climbers etc) do the line checks. These aren’t difficult things, they just need vision and funding.

            • marty mars 1.2.1.1.1.1
              7 June 2016 at 10:33 pm

              my auntie was a possum trapper, one of my cousins partners and another cousin are full time possum trappers in the deep south, I have been a part time possum trapper – it is hard work.

              It can be done but you have to be very fit, smart, dedicated and basically not have any qualms about killing stuff.

              Could be that those qualities are in abundance out there with the not-employed – but it ain’t a video game and it is hard work even on easy country let alone hills.

              Still, the possums have to go.

              • weka …
                7 June 2016 at 10:59 pm

                Yeah, the biggest obstacle after funding and will is that we don’t have the same numbers of young guys coming through who go out and learn the trade. I guess I envisage us as a population having more physical lives in a post-carbon world, so may as well start now 🙂

                At least some of the people I know that do it love being in the bush. I think that would be key. Getting to live in the wilderness would be a pretty big attraction.

              • Ad …
                8 June 2016 at 9:04 am

                Full respect to you and your family for that commitment.
                Helluva a lot more than I do for saving the forest.

          • Lanthanide 1.2.1.1.2
            7 June 2016 at 8:55 pm

            Need a sexually transmitted disease that induces sterilization.

        • gsays 1.2.1.2
          8 June 2016 at 6:55 am

          Hi weka, amen to trapping over poisoning.

          No animal should die in such a cruel painful way as 1080 poison.

          Put a bounty on possum ears $2, $4,$10…

          There is enough money, just a lack of priorities.

      • mauī 1.2.2
        7 June 2016 at 8:40 pm

        What knowledge and skill?

        A helicopter and buckets of 1080.

        That’s one of the major reasons we now have the luxury of pest free islands and some of our native birds haven’t become extinct.

        It would be nigh on impossible to cover the Northland forests with traps, due to the number needed and there would be large chunks of area you wouldn’t be able to access on foot creating permanent reinfestation spots.

        • Draco T Bastard 1.2.2.1
          7 June 2016 at 8:42 pm

          And we’ve been dropping 1080 since the 1950s. In that time the pests have spread throughout NZ.

          • weka 1.2.2.1.1
            7 June 2016 at 8:48 pm

            I’m not a great fan of 1080, but it is pretty effective in restoring bird populations where it’s used appropriately.

            The comparison with the 50s is not that useful because how, where and when 1080 is used has changed so much.

            Spread of pests is complex. Possums and deer will spread faster and more where you open up areas with tracks and roads. Some of it is just time. It takes time for a population to expand out of its range.

          • mauī 1.2.2.1.2
            7 June 2016 at 8:54 pm

            If you 1080 every 3 or 4 years in the same place, those areas end up with a low levels of pests. We only do 1080 on a tiny fraction of the DoC estate, so it could clearly be increased by a lot.

        • weka 1.2.2.2
          7 June 2016 at 8:51 pm

          “It would be nigh on impossible to cover the Northland forests with traps, due to the number needed and there would be large chunks of area you wouldn’t be able to access on foot creating permanent reinfestation spots.”

          You do selected ridgelines, and you do the line once a month. I don’t know Northland but I’m guessing it’s not harder than country down south.

          1080 is useful, but it’s also got problems. I think it’s a mistake to rely on it as the main approach indefinitely across all native ecosystems (and increasingly across farmland).

          • mauī 1.2.2.2.1
            7 June 2016 at 9:03 pm

            I think that was the issue with possum trapping historically is that trappers would do the easy country all the time. It got rid of some possums, but the issue was that it wasn’t getting conservation benefits on the whole as there was plenty of country that still wasn’t getting pest control. I’ve been involved in pest control work and bait lines are about 50-100m apart with each bait station on the line about the same distance apart.

            • weka 1.2.2.2.1.1
              7 June 2016 at 9:11 pm

              Are trap lines done the same as bait lines?

              Trappers doing the easy country is a management issues, it’s solvable.

              • mauī …
                7 June 2016 at 10:07 pm

                With bait stations you only have to check/refill every six months, and they contain a couple of hundred pellets in each one – I’m not sure how many rats/possums that kills, probably a lot. And you get complete coverage of an area so long as they’re laid out in a grid over the land.

                With trapping, I’m assuming we’re talking leg-hold traps you’re only targetting possums as they’re the only thing of value. Rats are at least as big a problem as possums and they’re missed out. DoC does have the new Goodnature self-reseting traps that can kill 24 rats before they need a new gas cannister. That could be a way forward. Have they been used successfully in a large area like a Regional Park? Not sure.

                In a post carbon world, 1080 is probably not possible (using helicopters). Or maybe if helicopter use was prioritised for critical things like conservation we could carry on for another 50-100 years, who knows. In the long term I think we’re looking at only being able to manage pests in critical areas and close to population centres where people can access on foot using basic traps. The rest of the country might be unmanageable. Hope I’m wrong, but that could be the reality.

                • weka …
                  7 June 2016 at 10:36 pm

                  Any reason you can’t put out kill traps for the mustelids and rodents at the same time as doing the possum line? The Goodnature traps sound good, and I’m sure if there was more of a will there would more tech like that developped.

                  Let people live in the parks. It changes the ratios hugely.

                  • mauī …
                    7 June 2016 at 11:24 pm

                    Yeah that would be a good way to work it. The Goodnature people happened to be the right people (industrial designers) looking at the problem of an archaic trap that DoC was using – the Doc 200 trap is still in use and it looks as if it was designed in the 1800s. The company got some grants a long the way, but it doesn’t appear it was targetted research. So yeah I think we’re just scratching the surface really without proper research funding.

                    I’m with you on having people living in Forests, Parks. The european approach has been to lock these places these up and people are only allowed to look, not touch. Contrary to what native cultures do, which is to actually live in the environment.

                • Draco T Bastard …
                  7 June 2016 at 10:53 pm

                  In a post carbon world, 1080 is probably not possible (using helicopters).

                  In a post carbon world you’d probably shift to using airships for the aerial drops of 1080. Bio-fuel and helium would mean that they’d still be practical.

                  • marty mars …
                    7 June 2016 at 11:39 pm

                    we should start using them now – where can you get them? can you build them?

                    • McFlock …
                      8 June 2016 at 12:07 am

                      There are some pretty interesting regulations around experimental aircraft above a trivial mass. Additionally, with airships the basics are easily done, but the control issues are pretty severe (especially for smaller blimps). Large sail area compared to mass/momentum. Sort of sucks in windy mountainous terrain.

                      It’s definitely a feasible idea – I immediately went to a sort of blimp roomba, dropping 1080 on a regular GPS run and returning to an automatic hopper station to refill/refuel. Payload a few times the size of a helicopter.

                      Whether that works for anyting approaching NZ weather and terrain, on the other hand… that’s what R&D is for 🙂

                  • Colonial Viper …
                    7 June 2016 at 11:44 pm

                    Draco the world is almost out of recoverable helium.

                  • McFlock …
                    7 June 2016 at 11:57 pm

                    helium is a bit of an issue, but for a drone airship dropping 1080 there’s no reason to not use hydrogen.

    • marty mars 1.3
      7 June 2016 at 7:27 pm

      I just have the (incorrect) Hey hey my my lyric “and once they’re gone, they won’t come back…” going round my head about this…

    • ianmac 2.1
      7 June 2016 at 7:51 pm

      Great idea Pat. As Gareth says, who has the balls to sell and action an idea. It would cost Gareth and Key so are they for it?
      The top 10% have the power to block and humiliate any possible proposers. And yet 90% of the people would benefit as would the Economy.

      • Pat 2.1.1
        7 June 2016 at 8:33 pm

        “who has the balls to sell and action an idea?”….. labour/green coalition perhaps

  3. Richardrawshark 3
    7 June 2016 at 7:01 pm

    Nice article on Stuff about the slush fund . TV3 picked it up.. Shocking. Pitch fork time. Seriously.

  5. Richardrawshark 5
    7 June 2016 at 7:15 pm

    http://www.newshub.co.nz/politics/asset-sales-cash-used-as-govt-slush-fund–peters-2016060713#axzz4AsLB1NRV

    Bugger, so many news links, it was newshub surprisingly not stuff nor has Herald picked it up yeti.

    The most beautiful woman in NZ the lovely Sam Hayes did a opening on TV3 news about Bill and his lies about our asset sales money.

    • Draco T Bastard 5.1
      7 June 2016 at 7:28 pm

      Paraphrasing Blinglish:
      Well, we didn’t have to borrow that money to pay for things…

      How much has he borrowed so far due to the tax cuts?
      And, of course, no government ever has to borrow money as they can, and should, just create it.

      • Richardrawshark 5.1.1
        7 June 2016 at 7:34 pm

        Deceitful fucks. Is all I call it DT. Peters said same thing it’s deceitful.

        He sells assets and tells the nation it will be used for, then doesn’t give too shits about sticking to his promises and does what the fuck he likes.

        Imagine if an agent sold your car for 5k, had instructions to use the money for another car but spent half the money on himself and only paid a deposit on the car you wanted.

        When are these jerks hitting the road to campaign.

    • Pat 5.2
      7 June 2016 at 7:33 pm

      and in the news today…National Gov caught in a lie (yet again)……and in other news……

    • tc 5.3
      7 June 2016 at 8:00 pm

      Surprise surprise, billy and johnny doing what they do best.

    • emergency mike 5.4
      7 June 2016 at 10:41 pm

      Wow 167 mil for membership for two international banks. Nice work if you can get it.

  6. Draco T Bastard 6
    7 June 2016 at 7:22 pm

    30,000 Troops Kick Off NATO’s Largest Eastern Europe War Game Ever, Will Practice Invading Russia’s Kaliningrad

    The troops are advancing into NATO member Lithuania for the operation, but are heading in the general direction of the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, a clear message that the operation is a simulation of a NATO invasion of Russian territory.

    Anyone would think that the West wanted a war with Russia.

    Oh, and then there’s this bit:

    The biggest concern among NATO officials is the involvement of Poland’s “territorial army,” a makeshift paramilitary force built of gun club members and soccer hooligans. Two brigades of such forces are to “assist” in the operation.

    Someone invited the gun nuts along for the ride.

  7. Pete George 7
    7 June 2016 at 7:27 pm

    One News Colmar Brunton poll for June 2016:

    National 48% (down from 50)
    Labour 29% (up from 28)
    Greens 12% (up from 10)
    NZ First 9%
    Maori Party 0.7% (down from 1.1)
    Conservative Party 0.7% (up from 0.3)
    ACT Party 0.3% (down from 0.7)
    Other 0.6% (up from 0,2)

    Polling was done between 28th of May and 2nd of June, the MoU announcement part way through so can’t take much from that.

    Preferred Prime Minister:

    John Key 39%
    Winston Peters 12% (up from 10)
    Andrew Little 7%

    http://colmarbrunton.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/160607-ONE-News-Colmar-Brunton-Poll-report-28-May-2-June-2016-prelim.pdf

    • Draco T Bastard 7.1
      7 June 2016 at 8:15 pm

      Doesn’t the Colmar-Brunton poll always have National 4+ percentage points above their actual support?

    • mickysavage 7.2
      7 June 2016 at 8:21 pm

      Trend is good. National down 2 Labour+Greens up 3.

      • Colonial Viper 7.2.1
        7 June 2016 at 8:32 pm

        Colmar Brunton has frequently had LAB + GR at the low to mid 40’s several times recently, this poll basically returns to that recent ‘norm’ after the prior poll went a bit low on the LAB/GR block:

        Newshub poll – Key falls to lowest popularity

        Swordfish from a few weeks back:

        This poll, together with the last 3 Roy Morgans reinforces my hunch that the latest (April 2016) Colmar Brunton was a bit of an Outlier / Rogue.

        All 10 of the Reid Research and Colmar Brunton Polls carried out since May 2015 have placed the Oppo Bloc ahead of the Govt … except for the April 2016 CB which swung from a 2 point Oppo lead in February to a 5 point Govt lead in April. The other 4 polls since February (3 RMs / 1 RR) have all placed the Opposition Bloc ahead by between 2 and 8 points.

        All of which means … I await the next Colmar Brunton with interest.

        This latest poll just solidifies that result i.e. LAB + GR are sitting at low to mid 40s.

        • b waghorn 7.2.1.1
          7 June 2016 at 9:15 pm

          Low to mid forties this far out is all good . if it starts to shift to the mid 40s and higher in the new year we might see key go for an early election.

    • Ben 7.3
      7 June 2016 at 9:18 pm

      The finer print of the poll separates the results into pre and post MoU, and post MoU it shows Labour support increasing by 5.2%, Greens dropping by 3.5%, Nat increasing by 1.9% and NZF dropping by 4.1%. So pretty much break even between Lab/Gr and Nat post MoU. NZF took a big hit though. Shown on page 9 of the report:

      http://colmarbrunton.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/160607-ONE-News-Colmar-Brunton-Poll-report-28-May-2-June-2016-prelim.pdf

  8. weka 8
    7 June 2016 at 8:02 pm

    the big Australian storm hit Tassie today, more loss of life, catastrophic floods, evacuations. As in the Sydney storm, rescue crews are saying that too many people are doing daft things which diverts workers away from other work to rescue them. I wonder if this is an emerging extreme weather phenomena. People getting caught out more because of the severity, more people not knowing what are good decisions, and just a higher percentage of wrong place wrong time.

    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-06-07/woman's-body-found-latrobe-tasmania-major-flooding-wreaks-havoc/7483726

      • weka 8.1.1
        7 June 2016 at 8:33 pm

        They need something like an electronic anti-rescue beacon bracelet. If something happens to them while adventuring during an extreme weather event no-one has to come to the rescue if shit goes south.

        • Sabine 8.1.1.1
          7 June 2016 at 8:39 pm

          very much like the geezers in their four wheel drives. Innit?

          I would assume that the security and first emergency team is privately employed. Each team comes with their own first response team. At the end of the day the guys that do the sport will not care, and at this level of skill and danger you need a specialised team to do rescue work.

          • weka 8.1.1.1.1
            7 June 2016 at 8:56 pm

            Not really. Pretty sure the 4WD dudes were just regular people, not extreme sportspeople. And they didn’t go out to adventure in an extreme weather event that was a civil emergency, they got caught out by a fairly normal weather pattern (just like motorists and the NZTA elsewhere that day)

            • Graeme 8.1.1.1.1.1
              7 June 2016 at 10:12 pm

              Sorry weka, but I wouldn’t have called the weather pattern that day fairly normal, and somewhere “regular people” would have prudently gone. What happened was pretty much to my reading of the forecast. What happened elsewhere, like on Crown Range was resolved from a personal safety perspective within minutes. There’s absolutely no comparison there.

              • weka …
                7 June 2016 at 10:32 pm

                and no comparison with extreme sportspeople either.

                What was out of the ordinary about the weather that day?

                • Graeme …
                  8 June 2016 at 9:08 am

                  The storm was forecast, a heavy snow warning for Otago high country, and it looked like shit from late the day before.

                  They have also almost admitted that the poor conditions where the reason they went up there, for the challenge.

                  • weka …
                    8 June 2016 at 9:18 am

                    RIght, but just a fairly normal storm for Central. Not a climate change extreme weather event like Australia has just experienced?

                    The sub thread is that I commented that extreme sportspeople who intentionally go out to play during a civil emergency could cede their right to rescue services that are needed elsewhere (I support their right to play). Sabine then said it was the same as the 4WD dudes. I think the situations are completely different, for multiple reasons, some of which I’ve explained. I don’t really need to rehash the 4WD situation (you and I will probably have to agree to disagree on their degree of idiocy and culpability there, my main point in the past has been that they shouldn’t be charged for the rescue). I was just clarifying that that was a normal weather even for May in Central.

                    • Graeme …
                      8 June 2016 at 11:30 am

                      Sorry, and thanks for the clarification. I took your comments to mean conditions were benign.

                      But in the same way that those conditions weren’t unusual for Central Otago, the south east coast of Australia is very exposed to high energy air masses from Coral Sea interacting with stuff from Southern Ocean. That’s how the sandstone cliffs along that coast have formed. They are relatively infrequent events, so the bold build their mansions out onto the sand dunes….

                      What is common between the two situations is inappropriate decisions people make in the actual or possible danger, as you pointed out in your original post. And the difficulty the same people have in taking responsibility for their poor decisions. It’s intriguing that the same people tend to inhabit the right of the political spectrum.

                      It’s this disconnect that makes meaningful discussion on pre-emptive actions to avert climate change almost impossible. I await the awarding of the Darwin Award to a denier for demise due to climatic events.

                    • weka …
                      8 June 2016 at 3:07 pm

                      It does seem like a good opportunity to talk about changing risk assessment in a climate change world. I think there is the modern problem of people taking risks because they have 4WDs and cell phones, risks they wouldn’t have taken back in the day. And people who think they know how to do something because they’ve read about it on the internet and we live in a culture where you learn how to use tools from reading a Mitre10 tutorial instead of in the past when we learnt from people who knew how to actually do things. All that is a potent mix for people doing stupid shit.

                      When I read through some of the Sydney reports the emergecny crews were saying again and again how often they had to go and rescue people from stupid situations when they were needed elsewhere. We’ve always had people who do stupid or ignorant things (been there myself), but I think the numbers are greater now. And more people are less experienced at dealing with nature.

                    • Graeme …
                      8 June 2016 at 8:35 pm

                      I remember floods and snow storms from the 60’s to 80’s, and they were real rippers, like delivering milk and bread in a jet boat, and Invercargill under water. People took responsibility for themselves and helped others, and got on with it.

                      Today it’s all the fault of someone or something, come and rescue me. The media narrative around Global Warming feeds this to an extent by narrowing what is “normal” and defining events with statistical return periods of 50 years as abnormal. And since weather records in this part of the world are so short, only a couple of hundred years, we have no idea what the extremes are on a millennial scale.

                      I’m not saying that global warming isn’t a very real thing, but that the appreciation and respect of our weather’s variability and power is being eroded responsibility put to “someone else”

                    • lprent []
                      8 June 2016 at 10:28 pm

                      And since weather records in this part of the world are so short, only a couple of hundred years, we have no idea what the extremes are on a millennial scale.

                      Wrong. Those are just the day by day records of weather. But any exceptional weather is pushed into the geology and the living organisms. That is literally what causes flood plains and erosion. Normal weather doesn’t do that much. Exceptional weather does.

                      We have accurate climate records for extreme weather about the last 20 thousand years for most of the world with an accuracy down to about a 20-50 year level depending of area, and moderately inaccurate for about the last couple of million years. It gets pretty inaccurate (ie about 50k years) after that.

                      Basically we haven’t seen anything like this since the Eocene about 34 million years ago, and we only have an accuracy in the order of 100k years then. This looks freakingly fast climate change.

                      Get used to it. At the current rate we’re looking at about 6 degrees C this century. That is something that we last saw happen over 250k years – more than 34 million years ago…

                    • Colonial Viper …
                      8 June 2016 at 10:48 pm

                      Get used to it. At the current rate we’re looking at about 6 degrees C this century. That is something that we last saw happen over 250k years – more than 34 million years ago…

                      As far as I can tell, we are going to beat 2 deg C warming over the pre-industrial baseline, in the next 10 years.

                      If Global Dimming particulate solar shielding effects disappeared, we would already be there.

                      And now we are consistently over 400ppm CO2, we have basically gone back 15M years. During the mid Miocene. And the temp then was way hotter than 2 deg C over the pre-industrial baseline.

                      The thermal inertia of the system means we won’t feel the full heat of today’s 405ppm for half a generation. Fun times.

                      Want more economic growth, people?

        • joe90 8.1.1.2
          7 June 2016 at 9:41 pm

          Another day at the office with their own safety/rescue crews.

    • Sabine 8.2
      8 June 2016 at 10:03 am

      a few things that i have raised before

      a. we don’t have enough full time emergency staff to cope with the increase of natural emergencies, and all services are having a hard time finding volunteers.

      b. we don’t have a population that is prepared to a. look after themselves in case of an emergency or b. be able to volunteer and help the emergency services.

      c. check for auckland – i.e. emergency shelters – we will be told where to shelter when the emergency is ongoing – does that make you feel safer? The same can be said for anywhere else in NZ>

      As i said in another thread, these are not free services, we are not well prepared here or anywhere else on the planet

      I am not saying this to be uppity or aggravating, but as I have stated it before, we – the civilians – are pretty much fucked if we were to have a proper storm/flood/tsunami etc.

      As for idiots needing saving …..we don’t need a storm for that, we already have them on any given sunday, see last discussions we had.

      • weka 8.2.1
        8 June 2016 at 5:05 pm

        I’m pretty much on board with all that. I expect a certain amount from civil defence but generally assume they will be overwhelmed by a big event. If it’s s traumatic event like a quake expect some of them to be traumatised too.

        I am curious about the number of people in Sydney that got into trouble and how many were just caught out and how many were trying to save possessions or thought they’d just get through that bit of flood so they didn’t have to spend a night away from home, that kind of thing.

  9. weka 9
    7 June 2016 at 9:03 pm

    Great. Hollywood has decided it will make a film about the Persian poet, mystic and scholar Rumi to address Muslim stereotypes in film, by casting Euro-Americans in the lead roles (not that that will be the limit of their imperialism).

    http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/06/jalaluddin-al-rumi-film-muslim-stereotypes-gladiator-david-franzoni

  10. Pat 10
    7 June 2016 at 9:22 pm

    “Politicians keep saying they are concerned but their actions, or lack of them, drown out their words. Any one of the analyses of how the latest budget failed the reef is enough to confirm this. Perhaps most astonishing in this shameful chapter in reef guardianship, the federal government tried to cover up what was happening by removing reef-related observations from a UN report.”

    we could replace the word ‘reef’ with ‘river’……….

    http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/jun/07/as-a-worker-on-the-great-barrier-reef-im-ashamed-to-look-my-children-in-the-eye

    http://www.theguardian.com/environment/video/2016/jun/07/great-barrier-reef-diving-in-the-stench-of-millions-of-rotting-animals-video

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  • Tuvalu language revival and COVID-19
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  • United Nations General Assembly: 76th General Debate Statement
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  • Funding to help clean up contaminated sites
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  • Predator Free apprenticeships open up new job opportunities
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  • Further NCEA support confirmed for Auckland students
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