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notices and features - Date published:
6:00 pm, July 8th, 2016 - 37 comments
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The current rise of populism challenges the way we think about people’s relationship to the economy.We seem to be entering an era of populism, in which leadership in a democracy is based on preferences of the population which do not seem entirely rational nor serving their longer interests. ...
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Just to get an idea of how exponentially stupid industrial dairying is, here’s a handy chart of land equipped for irrigation by type of farm (h/t Russell Norman)
https://figure.nz/chart/v0efdW2nehRalM6t
You have to wonder, Weka, just what did dairy farmers do before irrigation ? (sarc)
I seem to remember there ALWAYS being plenty of milk, butter, cheese – never any shortage plus all of those products being sold overseas – a continual major export for NZ. (also sarc).
And now we have mega-farms, polluting our streams, taking water from our rivers, and not really doing anything very much different from in the past (oh, except no doubt increase their profits going to overseas investors). We are now very much the poorer for this so-called “innovation” of irrigation onto farmlands.
And that is a useful chart. thanks for posting it.
I’t be interesting to see the same chart showing an overlay of return (profit to farmer) / litre water for each of those uses. It could elucidate the stupidity of some / most conversion decisions.
This Dallas sniper thing – 5 police dead, 3 snipers they say, shootout on at the moment. so bad for the loved ones and the victims i send my sorrow. This could be another tipping point.
The shooting yesterday of Mr Castile, and the policeman who, lets face it, executed an unarmed Alton Sterling in Louisiana, are the catalysts. The cops in America have been getting away with murder, most cases don’t end with any kind of justice for the victims, and it’s plain to see that people have had enough and are now taking the law into their own hands.
What scam is National and Fletcher pulling? Are these vultures praying on the desperate UK migrants who are left fearful after the Brexit vote?
They are even putting out a call for expats living in NZ to contact their friends and relatives in the UK.
Fletcher heads to UK on big recruitment drive
“New Zealand’s biggest builder is off to London as it hunts for new staff to help fill vacancies in our building boom.
A massive surge in building work has prompted Fletcher Construction to kick off its latest recruitment drive with an event at New Zealand House in London on July 28, held in conjunction with Immigration New Zealand and a recruitment company.”
<a href="http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11670287
This given:
World’s biggest builder arrives in NZ for $375m in contracts
<a href="http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11668296
(China will bring in their own workers).
Plans for nearly 2000 of Auckland apartments ditched
<a href="http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11665063
And you can bet that a Chinese government owned company will pick those plans up.
The National government fudges unemployment figures again
<a href="http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/81579257/nz-unemployment-rate-tumbles-along-with-the-number-employed-in-recalculation
Quake rebuild delays drive workers out of Christchurch
"Tradesmen and builders are leaving Christchurch in frustation over a lack of work and continuing delays to the quake-hit city's reconstruction.
Although recruitment agencies continue to advertise overseas for qualified tradespeople to help with the devastated city's rebuild, local workers say there's not enough work to go around as it is."
<a href="http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10814294
Is what’s on offer ghost jobs? Not much is listed on the employment section on Fletcher’s website, and applications for graduates and interns is closed.
<a href="http://www.fletcherconstruction.co.nz/employment.php
And since New Zealand already has a massive housing crisis that is about to burst, where will National/Fletcher house all these new migrants from their huge UK recruitment drive?
More likely typical Fletcher’s decision making, marching forward while looking backwards, and thinking there’s a fortune in the next big thing. Then the new subsidiary goes tits up, or we have a disaster like untreated pine framing.
As an unemployable construction professional (came out the wrong side of recession, self employed in another field, now don’t fit the HR model) can also see the effects and perpetuation of short term, boom bust nature of our construction industry.
I think this may only be the beginning. Now we may see copy cat attacks on police that will amount to a black insurrection, then good ol’ white boy retaliation death squads cruising black neighbourhoods and the nervous police force, all tooled up with AR-15s and God knows what else, in a three way race war.
Corbyn says that 100,000 people have joined the UKLP since the EU referendum. The membership now stands at 500,000, the highest number in modern times (is that post-Thatcher?).
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jul/08/jeremy-corbyn-stands-defiant-after-labour-membership-surge
YES !!!!
Wouldn’t labour NZ love even 5% of that for membership.
If the UK has a population of 64,000,000, then the UKLabour membership = 128th of the population.
NZ’s population is 4,500,000. Divide that by 128 and you get 35,000
The membership of the NZLP in 2010* was 56,700. If this were the UK, Labour’s membership would be 806,400.
What were you saying?
*before Cunliffe, so the number is likely significantly higher.
REFRAME: 100,000 new members signed up after the moron Blairite MPs launched their coup against him.
lolz, qft.
Yes Colonial Viper, that’s how I read it too. Awesome show of support for Corbyn, and it puts the lynch mob faction of Labour mps uncomfortably on the back foot. I still believe Corbyn will win this, and I hope he uses his mandate to clean house.
“The membership now stands at 500,000, the highest number in modern times (is that post-Thatcher?).”
Highest since 1979 (the year Thatcher became PM).
Reached close to 1 million in the late 40s during the legendary Attlee Labour Govt.
Slowly fell (albeit with a few roller-coaster ups and downs on the way) over the following 30 years to a little over half a mill. Then plunged in the 80s during both the Foot and Kinnock years.
Any thoughts on why it dropped after 1979?
Probably a mix of:
– Suddenly finding themselves in Opposition (having governed for 11 of the previous 15 years)
– The deep divisions opened up between Left and Right following Foot’s election as leader – and the on-going Kinnock vs Militant Tendency eruptions throughout the 80s
– Above all, the departure of a reasonable chunk of the Right of the Party to form the SDP breakaway in 1981.
But … clearly things have changed … bitter divisions within the PLP, Labour in long-term Opposition … and yet – as a direct result of those divisions – Party membership has just soared. The new zeitgeist.
Interesting.
Thanks Swordfish. I find your posts highly informative, and I learn a lot from them.
Malcolm X – October 7th, 1964
Watching the 5 part documentary series on O J Simpson, quite eye opening & shows racism in USA is a very complicated & deeply rooted beast. Incredible series if you have the chance to see it.
thanks for that quote mauī.
This kind of thing is why they killed Malcom X.
Mauī, I found the following link hugely interesting, it gives a completely different perspective, and how the establishment is trying to frame it, thought you might be interested.
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuBgcYWL6sQ
looking forward to the Olympics?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/08/the-city-should-not-be-this-way-fears-over-violence-in-rio-with-olympics-near
Incredulously, Paula Bennett believes the housing crisis is “because we have fewer New Zealanders leaving to go overseas that happened quite suddenly…”
<a href="http://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/larry-williams-drive-with-anz/audio/little-bennett-on-labours-emergency-housing-plan/
quote @10:24sec
Yes it’s now NZrs who don’t leave NZ fault, heard Key repeating that too, now if only all Kiwis would leave NZ there would be plenty of housing for everyone!
Yeah…….they’re like petulant children stubbornly denying the undeniable. It wasn’t that long ago that munter Michelle Boag couldn’t talk about housing without blaming aspiring first home buyers whom she claimed would settle for nothing less than Victoria Avenue, Remuera. Bitch liar.
Actually from her perspective she wasn’t lying. All the kids belonging to the Remuera/Parnell rich pricks WILL aspire to owning homes in Victoria Ave. What it demonstrates is how insulated the Boags of this world are from the real world the rest of us live in.
Don’t you mean incredibly? Paula never sounds incredulous, that’s for the rest of us to feel, as our incredulity increases incrementally every day. Incredible.
Lol… I used the word incredulously at the beginning of my post to describe my reaction to the bull bullshitting Bennett was saying.
damn those pesky New Zealanders not migrating out of New Zealands. don’t they know we need the houses for people migrating into New Zealand.
that women, that odious petty mean small minded useless women.
rofl
Tobacco loses!
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/755376b085e940199eee158910948294/uruguay-wins-dispute-tobacco-giant-philip-morris
Re the picture, you forgot to add the PM and his Ministers’ self-congratulatory framing:
Homelessness is ….
….just a media beat-up
….poor life choices
….budgeting issues
….having too many kids
….lack of personal responsibility
…Reserve Bank’s fault.
…Kiwis not leaving the country.