You two are showing your Right side a bit much and getting sunburned there.
I think you are suffering from heat exhaustion and need a lie down, perhaps a cup of tea to recover from the bad National news. Be strong, there will be more of this.
What bad news? the last neutral poll had National on 46%
If I was going to make a prediction I’ll be surprised if Cindy makes it to 2020 I think the pressure and grind will get to her and she’ll’ chuck it in.
I don’t think she’ll even show up for parliament this week, that’s the level of her commitment.
Bridges on 6 or whatever it is and the nats in the 40s just shows how damaged our culture really is. The nats are in disarray (for now) but support for what the nats stand for these days is as strong as ever. Selfishness and hateful attitudes became the norm after the 1990s and it’s extremely hard to reverse that stuff. The task has now been left to Ardern and her band of merry people because of course Clark et al in her nine years not only made no effort to fix things but added to the cultural filth she inherited, campaigned to end and then finally adopted as her own. Ardern’s job has become that much harder because of it. Whether she can make a dent remains to be seen, especially given some of the people around her. But I think she’s very capable of being underestimated. And given the extent of the damage inherited by the previous governments from both sides even the slightest bit of progress towards erasing the cultural filth would be no mean feat.
I can’t see many getting into the polling booth and actually ticking National if Bridges is at the helm. That’s the test. TV polls are just anonymous words on the phone. They don’t require ticking the box with the marker.
Maybe the result under the current scenario is likely to be how you describe, especially given the nats’ current leadership crisis etc. But the cultural stuff, the cultural damage, until it’s fixed up, will always mean the they won’t be far behind. That’s what keeps them within striking distance even without coalition partners. All they need to come along is a half-interesting leader, its opponent to fall into leadership crisis or some other positive variable and they’re back in the game. Labour won’t have that luxury until NZ becomes a caring and compassionate nation again and will remain on the back foot until that happens.
Yes, New Zealand has become such a mean place. Perhaps was always this way but as a child of the middle I wasn’t aware of it. Interesting the the PM was though. She cites the lives of those around her growing up as a big reason for entering politics.
I totally believe the foot needs to be kept firmly on the throat of the National Party. They need to be kept in the dungeon for as long as possible because as you say they will eventually come up with an acceptable leader and the base vote of selfish NZ will fall in behind. Another period of division, zero government, and cutbacks will then follow. Communities will be broken and isolated. Those with power will have that power further entrenched. And services will be difficult to access.
And the foot kept on the nats’ throat also gives much needed time to develop the caring society. I sense Ardern knows that, too, and while she’s hampered by those around her, and that cultural change is helped by economic change, it doesn’t necessarily require it. Economic change can follow on. Some would say that a by stealth approach is in fact required.
No updates on the Police investigations into the National Party illegal donations, the Young Nat attempted rape or Maggie’s bullying and illegal use of staff resources. Haven’t heard anything about the death threats sent by the female MP either.
Have the many National Party leakers been silenced for simply telling the truth? It’s very strange. They must have all been paid off to keep quite. National needs the big donations to silence those annoying little people who expose the rot within.
Back when JLR resigned from National/was thrown out, Mallard as Speaker was said to have assigned him a speaking slot on Thurs, 13 December but nothing formal was ever issued/published on this.
This Thursday, 13 December, was set down as the last 2017 sitting day for the House, when the afternoon is taken up with (usually light-hearted) speeches from the leaders of each political party plus any Independent MPs, which is what JLR is now classified as. This is probably what was meant by the rumours of his having been assigned a speaking slot that day.
However. JLR advised (on Twitter?) that he would not be back this year on medical advice.
In mid-November when setting the House sitting programme for 2019, Parliament also agreed to extend their sitting days in December until Weds next week (19 December) when the House will rise and not resume until 12 Feb 2019, after Waitangi Day etc.
JLR apparently quietly slipped into Parliament last week. It has been suggested this was to clean out or move his office.
Media are there to sell stuff. They do that by backing winners, like who the most people support. That’s not sigh.moan at 7% and declining. Same goes for Stuff’s position on the future of our planet.
As for the word cloud, I spent today at a social event with people who would have been around 70% National voters. Stuffs word cloud was a pretty good reflection of opinions about National’s current leader, although today’s sample would have had Muppet quite prominent. But that might have been omitted from the Stuff sample on copyright grounds.
It shows that Bridges’ net favourability – the difference between those who have a positive impression and a negative one – was negative 31 per cent, the lowest of any leader since Jenny Shipley, around the time that National was removed from office in 1999 …
… “That’s just borne out by those [favourability] numbers. We’ve never had, I don’t think, an Opposition leader in such a net negative space,” Talbot said, adding that a string of unsuccessful Labour leaders had not seen such low numbers.
“We never saw that for [Phil] Goff, we never saw that for [David] Cunliffe, we never saw that for [Andrew] Little.
“You get a lot of ‘unsures’ and ‘don’t knows’, but not that almost vitriolic stuff that you’ve got there.
“I’m not having a crack at the guy [Bridges], Talbot said. “I’ve never met him and I don’t know him, but clearly, people are having a sort of quite deep negative emotional reaction to him.”
One should bear in mind, of course, that these results are from UMR’s Late October 2018 Poll, when we were witnessing Peak Jamie-Lee Ross.
You have to wonder how much taxpayer money is getting pushed Stuffs way to peddle this bull shit.
And people try to make out Labour doesn’t do dirty politics.
In fact, UMR have been conducting these Leader-description word clouds for quite some time … and in an entirely objective / robust way.
For example, in early 2011 – when Key was near his height in popularity – UMR’s word cloud was overwhelmingly positive for him: Charismatic / Honest / Personable / Intelligent were prominent … (so no pro-Labour bias)
UMR word clouds outrageously biased toward Labour ?
Wouldn't have thought so.
Here's UMR's word cloud for John Key in early 2011 (when Key was near his height of popularity). Highly positive words are prominent. pic.twitter.com/EFlbVJgu3C
… although by late 2016 the terms assoicated with Key had – like his Favourability ratings – taken a bit of a tumble: Arrogant / Untrustworthy / Smarmy / Liar being paramount.
Of course not. The Labour Party had nothing to do with it and the first Cindy knew about it was when she saw it on TV.
Now perhaps you will answer this question.
Why has your nose grown by 3 centimetres Pinocchio?
Yeah it’s an interesting one, going back in my mind over the various cases that had massive coverage vs those that got a brief report then nothing.
BM phrased it in their usual way, and might be approaching it from the opposite direction for all I know, but as a society we do seem more upset when the murdered person is young, pretty, and pale. We should take all the other murders just as seriously, now they barely get a mention.
It’s a good response.
It’s the correct response.
It’s the response we should have to every murder. And I include myself in that.
So it’s also a moment of self reflection about how we, including me, regard our fellow residents as well as our visitors.
There’s more interest when the victim is a visitor, a guest if you like. The tragedy too has global coverage which NZ media seems to gag for. There’s no global coverage on the death of Maori women.
Also, young tourists have an innocence applied to them by the right rump of NZ which Maori women simply don’t. As Joe90 has pointed out they see Maori victims as bad buggers themselves and not-so-innocent which is why they are ignored and forgotten.
There’s truth in that Muttonbird. I remember the death of a young Pacific Island woman where the police decided that her morals were lacking and that her death was collateral damage of behaving in an immoral way. (Could have been in the 1990s.)
So she was downgraded because they thought she was prostituting or having casual outdoor sex, and they came to that conclusion because she was brown and I think from South Auckland Assumptions, and lack of care about looking closely at a violent death; all blase’ and prejudiced.
There was a journalist who looked into the matter and it was later shown that she had been attacked, and I think had managed to get away and been pursued before being killed.
There was another nasty attack that nearly was a death about that time.
A young Pacific Island woman went into Auckland city and then missed the last bus home to South Auckland. She had to walk home, a long way.
A car drove up behind her and knocked her over, injuring one leg. She managed to get away to a house where she found a gap in the foundations and crawled under there for safety.
There are a thousand stories in the big city goes a saying, and it sure applies to Auckland, most of them ignored by the ‘comfortable other’ people.
I was just looking back a few decades and this comment from an overseas visitor with a NZ spouse on how NZ struck him, death-wish came to his mind:
A ski resort in winter, Whakapapa has a bizarrely posh hotel with interiors circa 1961, a grocery store, a nature centre and some cheap chalets with views across a hundred miles. …We went on a two-hour walk to Taranaki Falls (it took one hour), and slipped behind its thundering curtains. The falls have their dark side. At sunset that evening, two passers-by stopped for a chat. I said how lovely Taranaki was, and one of them, tilting his hat back and creasing up his craggy face, said: ‘Yeah, but did you hear what happened there?’ Pause for effect. ‘Bloke in a wheelchair got pushed off the top by his wife and her lover.’
The story was complicated, a confusing web of murderous threads involving the adulterous wife having sex (pronounced ‘six’ in New Zealand) in a cupboard. A few days later, we were in the Wairarapa, the heat-racked hills and valleys to the west of Wellington, staying with friends in a white clapboard house a few miles from anywhere….A carpenter called John was there and, like most New Zealanders, he was an affable, down-to-earth sort of bloke. He stopped for a drink. After he’d gone, our hostess sighed and shook her head. ‘Poor John,’ she said. ‘His wife tried to cut his head off with a chain saw.’ Poor John! ‘She’s doing life, of course,’ our hostess added. And it just kind of went on like that: everywhere we went, someone had a weird story, often involving menace and crime. https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/1999/aug/15/life1.lifemagazine2
We are said to be dour. Was he unlucky or just meeting that 2-3 degrees of separation here head-on and fast because of movement ariund the country and people impressing the visitor with their dramatic tales?
The United States joined a controversial proposal by Saudi Arabia and Russia this weekend to weaken a reference to a key report on the severity of global warming, sharpening battle lines at the global climate summit in Poland aimed at gaining consensus over how to combat rising temperatures.
Arguments erupted Saturday night before a United Nations working group focused on science and technology, where the United States teamed with Russia, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to challenge language that would have welcomed the findings of the landmark report, which said that the world has barely 10 years to cut carbon emissions by nearly half to avoid catastrophic warming.
Satellite imagery from Google Earth taken on November shows hundreds of Russian main battle tanks at a new military base on the outskirts of the Kamensk-Shakhtinsky.
The large-scale military base only 18 kilometers away from the border with toward rebel-held territory in eastern Ukraine. Images show hundreds of main battle tank like as T-64 and also T-62M, while a thousand military trucks, artillery systems and tankers are located slightly higher.
The weak international response to the Kerch Strait incident might well embolden Putin to take the canal feeding Crimea, as per Illarionov (below). It appears Russian OPE (propaganda and recon) north of Crimea in Kherson/Zaporozhye is getting more intense. https://t.co/q6GCa1KRmP— Michael Carpenter (@mikercarpenter) December 9, 2018
That would mean taking the entire southwestern portion of Kherson Oblast, up to Nova Kakhovka where the canal takes in its water from the Dnipro. A large-scale military operation, and done under the Russian flag. How would West respond?— Euan MacDonald (@Euan_MacDonald) December 9, 2018
That would mean taking the entire southwestern portion of Kherson Oblast, up to Nova Kakhovka where the canal takes in its water from the Dnipro. A large-scale military operation, and done under the Russian flag. How would West respond?
Despite its occasional Hippy excesses, VM’s Astral Weeks must surely be one of the greatest Albums of the last 60 years.
Interesting Doco on RNZ a few weeks ago, exploring the production of that seminal album … and emphasising that his session musicians exerted a profound influence on the final sound / arrangement. They really didn’t get their due.
With the likes of .. If I ventured in the slipstream, between the viaducts of your dream/ Where immobile steel rims crack, and the ditch in the back roads stop .. it had to be.
tc (10.1) … Desperate Natz keeping their gobshites in employment, courtesy NZH.
Then come the 2020 election, Natz is likely to commission NZH to dig up the other putrid corpses of Armstrong and Prebble again, to throw the muck at the coalition, in an attempt to keep Natz alive and kicking.
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Government documents reveal the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) approved a shipment of cattle last month, despite the Government announcing a review into live export five days earlier. ...
“The Government’s second round of firearms reforms has hunters concerned that they will be burdened with onerous and unnecessary compliance and costs,” says Game Animal Council Chair Don Hammond. ...
The Council of Licenced Firearms Owners (COLFO) are concerned at the statements by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Police Minister Stuart Nash at the Post-Cabinet Press Conference this afternoon stating that firearm ownership and licences should ...
National’s Climate Change spokesperson Todd Muller told Q+A he has “total confidence” that technology will be developed to mitigate the effects of climate change. “To simply take the New Zealand agriculture sector which is the most emissions efficient ...
PM can’t say whether the Government will meet its KiwiBuild goals. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern couldn’t say whether the Government would meet its goal of building 16-thousand KiwiBuild homes by the end of its first term. She was interviewed on ...
Greenpeace climbers are scaling the outside of the Majestic Centre, the tallest building in Wellington, to reach the headquarters of Austrian oil giant, OMV. ...
Media statement on behalf of Sir Edward Taihākurei Durie and Donna Marie Tai Tokerau Hall: Māori Television has admitted publishing false allegations about former High Court justice, Sir Edward Taihākurei Durie, and his wife, Donna Hall, and it has ...
Announcement today by the Prime Minister of further gun law reform is being shrouded by fear, so that scrutiny of the law is seen as an affront to the victims of the horror attack in March. The Prime Minister acknowledged ...
Misgivings about the practicality and cost of a firearms register is likely to dominate feedback from rural areas on the second round of proposed Arms Act amendments, Federated Farmers says. ...
School Strike 4 Climate NZ organisers Sophie Handford and Raven Maeder delivered a clear message to over 600 local government mayors, chairs, chief executives and councillors at the recent LGNZ conference : make climate change a priority. ...
The Police Association, Te Aka Hāpai backs the government’s emphasis on public safety as the driver of its second tranche of amendments to New Zealand’s firearms law, announced today. ...
The growing housing shortage crisis about more than supply and demand- it is about inequity. Recently released analysis by Kiwibank shows that last year’s “severe” shortage of housing has worsened, with the shortfall growing from 100,000 to 130,0000 ...
One of the country’s largest district health boards has a severe shortage of hospital specialists, says the senior doctors’ union, the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists (ASMS). ...
The New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union is joining opposition to possible regulations on the strength of nicotine vaping liquid. Taxpayers’ Union spokesman Louis Houlbrooke says, “The Government would certainly benefit from regulations on the strength ...
The Meat Industry Association (MIA) is calling for significant changes to the Zero Carbon Bill with a new analysis using the Government’s preferred modelling indicating that the proposed methane targets are excessive if all other gases go to net zero. ...
Victoria University Feminist Organisation and ALRANZ Abortion Rights Aotearoa, in conjunction with the VUW Feminist Law Students, Organise Aotearoa, Fem Force, and with the support of VUW Student Association announced they are sponsoring a march ...
With the Government's firearm buyback scheme starting to draw over 30,000 police man hours away from fighting crime, the safety of law abiding citizens is being compromised. ...
Social Credit Party leader Chris Leitch is calling on the sale of Westland Milk to Chinese company Yili to be put on hold pending an approach to the Government by Westland Milk for funding assistance. ...
Associate Health Minister Jenny Salesa seems intent on ensuring the Government’s vaping legislation will heavily target flavours and nicotine levels – a move that would be completely counterproductive to helping Kiwis quit smoking and achieving ...
A new website has launched in response to recent RNZ reporting about Police in Dunedin unlawfully entering people’s homes and breath-testing them. “I was disgusted when I saw what they cops were doing in Dunedin. Their behaviour undermines all of ...
Hundreds of whanau and Maori leaders gathered at a hui in Mangere last weekend where they voted unanimously for an inquiry into Oranga Tamariki. The historic meeting called for a child welfare framework to be developed by Maori, for Maori. ...
The Head of the New Zealand Maori Council has called for the Government to hold an immediate investigation into the global cosmetics company Sephora after they were caught dumping waste hundreds and thousands of waste paper products embedded with ...
The government has set in motion a plan for a major overhaul of the law that's supposed to sustainably manage New Zealand's natural and physical resources. ...
The government have announced plans to reform the Resource Management Act, a hideously complicated piece of legislation that gets a bad rap for all sorts of reasons. Here’s what it all means.What’s all this then?Imagine a set of laws which ...
The National Party leader thought the Green's attack ad mocking his accent was "kinda funny" but showed they and the government were under pressure, he said. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Belinda Nicholson, Lecturer, University of Southern Queensland Curious Kids is a series for children. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskids@theconversation.edu.au You might also ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ray Markey, Emeritus Professor, Macquarie University One of the Coalition government’s first priorities in the new parliament is the passage of its Ensuring Integrity Bill, aimed at tightening regulations on unions and ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Koval, Academic, Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, University of Melbourne How does a woman feel when a man wolf-whistles at her from across the street? Or when a male coworker gives ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Daniel Edwards, Research Director, Australian Council for Educational Research Australia spent A$111.8 billion on education in 2015, the most recent year for which the full dataset for all levels of education spending ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Neil Sipe, Professor of Urban and Regional Planning, The University of Queensland While car parking was a non-negotiable amenity for baby boomers, it is an eyesore to millennials and the up-and-coming iGen. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Whiteford, Professor, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University Since parliament has resumed three Liberal members – Dean Smith, Russell Broadbent and Andrew Wallace – have joined a group of ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Renee Knake, RMIT Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Entrepreneurship and Innovation; Professor of Law at the University of Houston, RMIT University In this series, we look at under-acknowledged women through the ages. When ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Roderick, Professor, Research School of Earth Sciences and Chief Investigator in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes, Australian National University The federal parliament has voted to funnel A$200 million ...
Good morning, and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Tax break for oil rigs raises subsidy questions, crackdown by police against Ihumātao occupation, and Boris Johnson set to become UK PM.A story about tax breaks for oil rigs has ...
The 700-page Thomas Piketty economic treatise Capital in the 21st Century was a surprise blockbuster five years ago. Now it’s been made into a documentary film, directed and produced by New Zealanders. The message is out there, Danyl Mclauchlan writes ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Scott Morrison on Tuesday had a firm message for his troops in the Coalition party room. Don’t go freelancing in public. Discipline is important in ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Simon Tormey, Professor of Politics, University of Sydney To no-one’s great surprise, Boris Johnson has been elected by the members of the Conservative Party to be the new leader, and by extension ...
Funny, charismatic, erudite – what could possibly go wrong? The votes are in and the people have decided – correction: the Conservative Party membership has decided – that the new prime minister of the United Kingdom shall be Alexander Boris ...
Opinion - The gun buyback scheme is working to remove firearms from society and enforcement laws are strong, but creating a meaningful gun registry is also essential, writes Lew Stoddart. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Therese Keane, Associate Professor, Deputy Chair Department of Education, Swinburne University of Technology A cute human-like robot taught students in a small, rural school how to code while also helping them learn ...
After months of protest, the last occupants were moved off Ihumātao in south Auckland by police this afternoon. Don Rowe reports. Most of the occupants of Ihumātao had been moved on. The police, numbering at least 30, had finally made good ...
Hundreds of people marched to Parliament today calling for reform of New Zealand's abortion laws, as Cabinet prepares to consider a bill that would remove abortion from the Crimes Act. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra The two Centre Alliance senators, Stirling Griff and Rex Patrick will often be pivotal to the fate of government legislation. The smaller non-Green Senate crossbench ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Chongyi Feng, Associate Professor in China Studies, University of Technology Sydney Australian authorities have been told to stop interfering in the case of the Chinese-Australian writer Dr Yang Hengjun who has been ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tess Newton Cain, Adjunct Associate Professor, School of Political Science & International Studies, The University of Queensland Papua New Guinea Prime Minister James Marape is visiting Australia this week, his first overseas ...
The Greens may have achieved their sought-after mainstream credibility, and scored some wins in government, but commentators warn this will not necessarily result in more votes. On the contrary – it might even result in a loss of enthusiasm from ...
Dr Bryce EdwardsThe supposed end of the 20-year standoff between environmentalists and farmers was announced last week, with the release of the Interim Climate Change Committee’s report on “Action on agricultural emissions”. It was celebrated as an “historic consensus” ...
Editor’s Note: Here below is a list of the main issues currently under discussion in New Zealand and links to media coverage.New Zealand Parliament Buildings, Wellington, New Zealand.Today’s contentGovernment Joseph Nunweek (Spinoff): Jacinda Ardern and bringing the ...
The 2019 budget put aside $300m for venture capital for small to medium-sized startups with the hope it will allow businesses to grow locally and stay in New Zealand for longer. In a small rural town on the east coast ...
To give the Pacific a fighting chance Australia and NZ need to take a stand, writes a Fijian litigator and activist.Climate change is now an everyday reality for the Pacific. Its impact on our countries is undeniable. To remain within ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christine Grové, Educational Psychologist and Lecturer, Monash University Curious Kids is a series for children. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskids@theconversation.edu.au You might ...
Questions about political leanings in surveys by Inland Revenue, DOC and Stats NZ were inappropriate and had the potential to undermine political neutrality, a report has found. ...
Treaty Negotiations Minister Andrew Little says he cannot understand why the previous government ever accepted Ngāpuhi's problematic Tūhoronuku mandate. ...
The Electricity Authority’s latest take on transmission prices has softened the expected hike in power prices for Aucklanders from $176 per year to $21 a year. ...
New Zealanders are as parochial about charity as they are about sport, with only a fraction of the money we donate leaving our shores or even going outside our local areas.Less than 9% of private donations in New Zealand go ...
Infrastructure investor Infratil is looking for potential buyers of a group of mature investments across Australia and NZ's health, education and prison sectors,according to the AFR. ...
A nightmarish and near-fatal high-speed pursuit of a New Zealand Chinese family concluded with a judge rejecting the prosecution’s request for hate crime sentencing. Tze Ming Mok discusses why New Zealand’s approach to hate crime is utterly useless.I don’t like ...
The Māori midwives on the frontline of whānau care and Oranga Tamariki scrutiny say their voices are going unheard and their wisdom unheeded.*All names have been changed to protect the privacy of those involvedNewsroom’s powerful investigation into Oranga Tamariki’s attempt ...
From fine art school graduates to hobbyists, magazine-making talent from all over the city is showcased in Auckland Zinefest. Lucy Zee went along to check out the zines and meet some makers.Aucklanders love a festival. If it’s not food, wine ...
Daily Review 10/12/2018 
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https://i.stuff.co.nz/business/109229941/what-the-public-is-saying-about-simon-bridges-according-to-labours-pollsters
If this is your doing labour people ,grow the fuck up.
You have to wonder how much taxpayer money is getting pushed Stuffs way to peddle this bull shit.
And people try to make out Labour doesn’t do dirty politics.
You two are showing your Right side a bit much and getting sunburned there.
I think you are suffering from heat exhaustion and need a lie down, perhaps a cup of tea to recover from the bad National news. Be strong, there will be more of this.
What bad news? the last neutral poll had National on 46%
If I was going to make a prediction I’ll be surprised if Cindy makes it to 2020 I think the pressure and grind will get to her and she’ll’ chuck it in.
I don’t think she’ll even show up for parliament this week, that’s the level of her commitment.
Delusional yet again. You need to get it through your head – just because you say something doesn’t make it true.
She is not a flake like John Key – can’t you get that? Or perhaps you do but it’s all shit and giggles as usual.
She’s flakier than a piece of deep-fried hoki.
Oh look it’s BM commenting again, taking the approach he intends to take
Yes dear.
Yeah no bad news for the gnats LOL it’s all bad news so you and waggy will have to cry into your stouts.
Bridges on 6 or whatever it is and the nats in the 40s just shows how damaged our culture really is. The nats are in disarray (for now) but support for what the nats stand for these days is as strong as ever. Selfishness and hateful attitudes became the norm after the 1990s and it’s extremely hard to reverse that stuff. The task has now been left to Ardern and her band of merry people because of course Clark et al in her nine years not only made no effort to fix things but added to the cultural filth she inherited, campaigned to end and then finally adopted as her own. Ardern’s job has become that much harder because of it. Whether she can make a dent remains to be seen, especially given some of the people around her. But I think she’s very capable of being underestimated. And given the extent of the damage inherited by the previous governments from both sides even the slightest bit of progress towards erasing the cultural filth would be no mean feat.
I can’t see many getting into the polling booth and actually ticking National if Bridges is at the helm. That’s the test. TV polls are just anonymous words on the phone. They don’t require ticking the box with the marker.
Maybe the result under the current scenario is likely to be how you describe, especially given the nats’ current leadership crisis etc. But the cultural stuff, the cultural damage, until it’s fixed up, will always mean the they won’t be far behind. That’s what keeps them within striking distance even without coalition partners. All they need to come along is a half-interesting leader, its opponent to fall into leadership crisis or some other positive variable and they’re back in the game. Labour won’t have that luxury until NZ becomes a caring and compassionate nation again and will remain on the back foot until that happens.
Yes, New Zealand has become such a mean place. Perhaps was always this way but as a child of the middle I wasn’t aware of it. Interesting the the PM was though. She cites the lives of those around her growing up as a big reason for entering politics.
I totally believe the foot needs to be kept firmly on the throat of the National Party. They need to be kept in the dungeon for as long as possible because as you say they will eventually come up with an acceptable leader and the base vote of selfish NZ will fall in behind. Another period of division, zero government, and cutbacks will then follow. Communities will be broken and isolated. Those with power will have that power further entrenched. And services will be difficult to access.
And the foot kept on the nats’ throat also gives much needed time to develop the caring society. I sense Ardern knows that, too, and while she’s hampered by those around her, and that cultural change is helped by economic change, it doesn’t necessarily require it. Economic change can follow on. Some would say that a by stealth approach is in fact required.
Yep, lots of bad news for the National Party.
No updates on the Police investigations into the National Party illegal donations, the Young Nat attempted rape or Maggie’s bullying and illegal use of staff resources. Haven’t heard anything about the death threats sent by the female MP either.
Have the many National Party leakers been silenced for simply telling the truth? It’s very strange. They must have all been paid off to keep quite. National needs the big donations to silence those annoying little people who expose the rot within.
Well, all that might change after Jami-Lee’s welcome return to the House next year.
Ross will have been paid off I suspect. His speech on Thursday will be a walk-back from the brutally candid revelations a month ago.
It’ll be all about how he’s found peace (and a big payout from Peter Goodfellow).
That’s how national roll. Money talks, shouts gets what it’s masters want….silence or mea culpa it was all JLR.
I didn’t see anywhere that Ross was coming back to the House this Thursday. Is that happening?
I thought he was due to speak on 13 December.
Back when JLR resigned from National/was thrown out, Mallard as Speaker was said to have assigned him a speaking slot on Thurs, 13 December but nothing formal was ever issued/published on this.
This Thursday, 13 December, was set down as the last 2017 sitting day for the House, when the afternoon is taken up with (usually light-hearted) speeches from the leaders of each political party plus any Independent MPs, which is what JLR is now classified as. This is probably what was meant by the rumours of his having been assigned a speaking slot that day.
However. JLR advised (on Twitter?) that he would not be back this year on medical advice.
In mid-November when setting the House sitting programme for 2019, Parliament also agreed to extend their sitting days in December until Weds next week (19 December) when the House will rise and not resume until 12 Feb 2019, after Waitangi Day etc.
JLR apparently quietly slipped into Parliament last week. It has been suggested this was to clean out or move his office.
I hope he’s not planning on moving too far.
How is it “dirty politics”? Labour didn’t hire a shill to manipulate and abuse people in order for another shill to pick it up and pass it to the MSM.
Media are there to sell stuff. They do that by backing winners, like who the most people support. That’s not sigh.moan at 7% and declining. Same goes for Stuff’s position on the future of our planet.
As for the word cloud, I spent today at a social event with people who would have been around 70% National voters. Stuffs word cloud was a pretty good reflection of opinions about National’s current leader, although today’s sample would have had Muppet quite prominent. But that might have been omitted from the Stuff sample on copyright grounds.
So who did they say would be a better leader?
It doesn’t matter. The depth isn’t there. The question’s more like who wouldn’t make the worst.
Do you consider Ardern a leader or just a marketable commodity?
A leader. A neoliberal it seems, but a leader nevertheless.
Your lot wouldn’t see any difference, although it does depend on the party you’re talking about.
UMR’s David Talbot
One should bear in mind, of course, that these results are from UMR’s Late October 2018 Poll, when we were witnessing Peak Jamie-Lee Ross.
BM
In fact, UMR have been conducting these Leader-description word clouds for quite some time … and in an entirely objective / robust way.
For example, in early 2011 – when Key was near his height in popularity – UMR’s word cloud was overwhelmingly positive for him: Charismatic / Honest / Personable / Intelligent were prominent … (so no pro-Labour bias)
… although by late 2016 the terms assoicated with Key had – like his Favourability ratings – taken a bit of a tumble: Arrogant / Untrustworthy / Smarmy / Liar being paramount.
The results are sent to corporates and this particular piece of research was not commissioned by the Labour party.
I hope not . Higher standard and all that.
I can tell you that Labour is relishing doing no dirty politics and watching National burn itself to the ground!
Of course not. The Labour Party had nothing to do with it and the first Cindy knew about it was when she saw it on TV.
Now perhaps you will answer this question.
Why has your nose grown by 3 centimetres Pinocchio?
Where’s ‘slick’ waggers? That’d be my choice but nobody asked.
Hey Minister Twyford losing two agency CEs in a day is not a good look
Go kick State Services ass and settle this in January. More fun than DPMC involved where you don’t need them.
And stay safe: we need you driving for multiple terms
Sounds like they were both f%$king useless ?
Prior govt appointees ?
Best of the webs
Oh…
brilliant
Simon Bridges urgently demanded that the Police name the leaker.
The Police told him to fuck off.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2018/12/exclusive-simon-bridges-urged-top-cop-to-reveal-expenses-leaker-s-identity.html
Hardly surprising when the top cop is working for Labour and doing their bidding.
NZ is a banana republic.
Poor choice, huh.
Had the same thought. Mike Bush a Labour man?
But maybe on the Planet Delusion, who knows?
Oh look it’s BM commenting again, taking the approach he intends to take
BM
You really are clutching at straws.
Hey no need to call him a wanker.
Oh very very well played
🤣🤣
It’s all they’ve got now shonky has taken his snake oil show back to corporate.
It’s hangers on, past the used by and Eade/Lusk acolytes now, good luck with that.
Wow – get simon to investigate it like he did the leaker – who is still leaking LOL
Why don’t you read what you just wrote.
Lol.
BM
NZ is a banana republic.
Actually this is pristine proof that NZ is NOT a banana republic. If it was National would have been provided with the information.
This is the sort of behaviour which leads to the public forming the word cloud they did.
I’m finding the pack hysteria surrounding the death of the English girl a bit disturbing.
My god BM that’s an extraordinary thing to say. You are implying that people are feeling exaggerated or uncontrollable feeling about this tragedy.
Perhaps you have difficulty empathizing. Why other people’s very understandable deep sadness over this is disturbing to you, is IMO disturbing…….
Yet their was little hysteria about the killing of Ariana Eva Mahu,Te Awhiahua Toko, Chozyn Koroheke, Lynace Parakuka, and Aroha Kerehoma.
Yeah it’s an interesting one, going back in my mind over the various cases that had massive coverage vs those that got a brief report then nothing.
BM phrased it in their usual way, and might be approaching it from the opposite direction for all I know, but as a society we do seem more upset when the murdered person is young, pretty, and pale. We should take all the other murders just as seriously, now they barely get a mention.
Gosh can’t we just allow people the compassionate response they are having.
It’s a good response.
It’s the correct response.
It’s the response we should have to every murder. And I include myself in that.
So it’s also a moment of self reflection about how we, including me, regard our fellow residents as well as our visitors.
There’s more interest when the victim is a visitor, a guest if you like. The tragedy too has global coverage which NZ media seems to gag for. There’s no global coverage on the death of Maori women.
Also, young tourists have an innocence applied to them by the right rump of NZ which Maori women simply don’t. As Joe90 has pointed out they see Maori victims as bad buggers themselves and not-so-innocent which is why they are ignored and forgotten.
There’s truth in that Muttonbird. I remember the death of a young Pacific Island woman where the police decided that her morals were lacking and that her death was collateral damage of behaving in an immoral way. (Could have been in the 1990s.)
So she was downgraded because they thought she was prostituting or having casual outdoor sex, and they came to that conclusion because she was brown and I think from South Auckland Assumptions, and lack of care about looking closely at a violent death; all blase’ and prejudiced.
There was a journalist who looked into the matter and it was later shown that she had been attacked, and I think had managed to get away and been pursued before being killed.
There was another nasty attack that nearly was a death about that time.
A young Pacific Island woman went into Auckland city and then missed the last bus home to South Auckland. She had to walk home, a long way.
A car drove up behind her and knocked her over, injuring one leg. She managed to get away to a house where she found a gap in the foundations and crawled under there for safety.
There are a thousand stories in the big city goes a saying, and it sure applies to Auckland, most of them ignored by the ‘comfortable other’ people.
She was missing for a week, so it drew attention. The Father arriving created a new level of sadness. Their worst fears were correct. She was a guest.
Can you articulate why? Not that I am trying to dismiss your reaction, just wondering if you are able to dissect it?
I think a lot of it is fake bandwagoning .the media running it hard to get views and clicks .
I was just looking back a few decades and this comment from an overseas visitor with a NZ spouse on how NZ struck him, death-wish came to his mind:
A ski resort in winter, Whakapapa has a bizarrely posh hotel with interiors circa 1961, a grocery store, a nature centre and some cheap chalets with views across a hundred miles. …We went on a two-hour walk to Taranaki Falls (it took one hour), and slipped behind its thundering curtains. The falls have their dark side. At sunset that evening, two passers-by stopped for a chat. I said how lovely Taranaki was, and one of them, tilting his hat back and creasing up his craggy face, said: ‘Yeah, but did you hear what happened there?’ Pause for effect. ‘Bloke in a wheelchair got pushed off the top by his wife and her lover.’
The story was complicated, a confusing web of murderous threads involving the adulterous wife having sex (pronounced ‘six’ in New Zealand) in a cupboard. A few days later, we were in the Wairarapa, the heat-racked hills and valleys to the west of Wellington, staying with friends in a white clapboard house a few miles from anywhere….A carpenter called John was there and, like most New Zealanders, he was an affable, down-to-earth sort of bloke. He stopped for a drink. After he’d gone, our hostess sighed and shook her head. ‘Poor John,’ she said. ‘His wife tried to cut his head off with a chain saw.’ Poor John! ‘She’s doing life, of course,’ our hostess added. And it just kind of went on like that: everywhere we went, someone had a weird story, often involving menace and crime.
https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/1999/aug/15/life1.lifemagazine2
We are said to be dour. Was he unlucky or just meeting that 2-3 degrees of separation here head-on and fast because of movement ariund the country and people impressing the visitor with their dramatic tales?
Do you struggle to comprehend other people’s emotions BMmer?
Petrogarchs united.
The United States joined a controversial proposal by Saudi Arabia and Russia this weekend to weaken a reference to a key report on the severity of global warming, sharpening battle lines at the global climate summit in Poland aimed at gaining consensus over how to combat rising temperatures.
Arguments erupted Saturday night before a United Nations working group focused on science and technology, where the United States teamed with Russia, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to challenge language that would have welcomed the findings of the landmark report, which said that the world has barely 10 years to cut carbon emissions by nearly half to avoid catastrophic warming.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-administration-resists-global-climate-efforts-at-home-overseas/2018/12/09/b94a9ef0-fa41-11e8-863c-9e2f864d47e7_story.html?
It is staged theatre, J90 and
The UN are playing a role too..
Consensus…right…
It was 10 years more 15 years ago…
15 years more 10 years ago…
I believe the UN/IPCC about as much as I believe in Moodeys/S&P…
Same game…same personnel…
So we should be alright then.
You have a gut feeling on this no doubt.
I wonder if they’re there to correct mistakes.
Satellite imagery from Google Earth taken on November shows hundreds of Russian main battle tanks at a new military base on the outskirts of the Kamensk-Shakhtinsky.
The large-scale military base only 18 kilometers away from the border with toward rebel-held territory in eastern Ukraine. Images show hundreds of main battle tank like as T-64 and also T-62M, while a thousand military trucks, artillery systems and tankers are located slightly higher.
https://defence-blog.com/army/satellite-imagery-shows-hundreds-of-russian-tanks-near-the-border-with-ukraine.html
Not looking very friendly all of that weaponry. Vlad must be getting ready for something…
Just some army-surplus cub scouts going to pop over to say “hi”, honest.
If Ukraine not come to free military fun fair, free military funfair go to Ukraine.
Well, you’d need lots of kit if you were going to take the entire southwestern portion of Kherson Oblast, up to Nova Kakhovka where the canal takes in its water from the Dnipro.
Seventy four years old, fourth album in fourteen months, and sounding as good as he ever has.
Van Morrison – The Prophet Speaks – Ain’t Gonna Moan No More
Despite its occasional Hippy excesses, VM’s Astral Weeks must surely be one of the greatest Albums of the last 60 years.
Interesting Doco on RNZ a few weeks ago, exploring the production of that seminal album … and emphasising that his session musicians exerted a profound influence on the final sound / arrangement. They really didn’t get their due.
With the likes of .. If I ventured in the slipstream, between the viaducts of your dream/ Where immobile steel rims crack, and the ditch in the back roads stop .. it had to be.
Leighton Smith’s last day on Friday. What a great day for New Zealand.
His herald regular column awaits whilst another red neck rant host is lined up.
tc (10.1) … Desperate Natz keeping their gobshites in employment, courtesy NZH.
Then come the 2020 election, Natz is likely to commission NZH to dig up the other putrid corpses of Armstrong and Prebble again, to throw the muck at the coalition, in an attempt to keep Natz alive and kicking.
Quite sad really!