Daily review 12/12/2019
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5:30 pm, December 12th, 2019 - 63 comments
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- Treasury warns deeper recession worsening Budget deficit
The gift that keeps giving: David Seymour has now opened a split in the coalition over the future of National’s promise to build a new medical school. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / TheKakaKia ora. Long stories short, here’s my top things to note in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, climate and ...3 hours ago - Weekly Roundup 22-November-2024
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Record Numbers: The Hīkoi mō te Tiriti, which began at the tip of the North, and the tail of the South, on 11 November, culminated outside Parliament on Tuesday, 19 November 2024, in one of the largest demonstrations in New Zealand’s political history.ACCORDING TO TE ARA, the Ministry of Culture ...4 hours ago - The Rush To Blame “The Activists”
Activists are such easy scapegoats. The right and center have been conditioned for decades to roll their eyes at all protests. The left are easily aggravated over students leading movements they see as belonging to grownups, who have more important concerns like the economy and whether the trains come on ...4 hours ago - Cutting Through An Inundation of Dipshit Racists
Hi,Watching New Zealand from afar offers a strange perspective. It can be a good thing — distance from Aotearoa helped keep me sane while I reported on abuse at New Zealand’s biggest megachurch over the course of a year. It helps fuel my silly podcast. But it can also be ...5 hours ago - This is bad news
The speech yesterday by Treasury’s Chief Economic Advisor warning that the books are in worse shape than forecasted looks like it’s part of a softening-up process for either more cuts or a longer wait to get back into surplus. The speech was a highly unusual public preview of Treasury’s Half-Yearly ...6 hours ago - Skeptical Science New Research for Week #47 2024
Open access notables Projected increase in the frequency of extremely active Atlantic hurricane seasons, Lopez et al., Science Advances: Future changes to the year-to-year swings between active and inactive North Atlantic tropical cyclone (TC) seasons have received little attention, yet may have great societal implications in areas prone to hurricane ...15 hours ago - Chicken Kiev
Chatting in the supermarket this morning, I found I needed to lunge for the chicken drumsticks.Coping mechanisms: who hasn’t felt a greater need for them lately?When it all gets too much, I turn to demonstrating handy butchery hacks.It wasn’t that she’d said anything wrong, our friend, not at all. We ...19 hours ago - The year is 2024 and it’s 1984
This is written in response to the highly significant open letter from a group of economists that was today addressed to Christopher Luxon. The year is 2024, and it’s 1984. The country is reeling from a record Olympic medal gold haul, while the globe grapples with the choice of the ...19 hours ago - The IPCA has failed
Back in 2022, RNZ took an in-depth look at the "Independent" Police Conduct Authority and its handling of killings by police. These are the most serious test of oversight, and you would expect the police's use of lethal force to receive the most severe scrutiny. But despite the police regularly ...23 hours ago - Thursday 21 November 2024
The Hīkoi mō Te Tiriti arrived at Parliament on Tuesday – the size is being debated but estimates range from 42,000 to 100,000. The Prime Minister is defending not attending due to some of the organisers being affiliated with Te Pāti Māori. The national gang patch ban came into force ...24 hours ago - ‘These budget cuts are counter-productive and make no sense’
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- ACT’s Astroturfing & A Co-ordinated Attack on Te Pati Māori
Unity on the Streets / Unity at the TableAfter the Hīkoi, all three right wing Coalition leaders came together to push the idea that the 42,000 - 50,000 + strong Hikoi was somehow less potent and brave, and more illegitimate than the energy and crowd displayed.Prime Minister Christopher Luxon 20-November: ...1 day ago - Durability of carbon dioxide removal is critical for stabilizing temperatures
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- Economists call on PM to suspend budget cuts for the sake of the economy
Nicola Willis’ budget cuts are under fire from economists for having no clear rationale and worsening the recession. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāKia ora. Long stories short, here’s my top things to note in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, climate and poverty on Thursday, November 21: The news at ...1 day ago
- The end of policing by consent
National has appointed a new police commissioner. And he explicitly rejects policing by consent: Asked if he subscribed to policing by consent, he said he did not. “I don’t talk about policing by consent. I talk about trust and confidence, and it is fundamentally important that the police have ...2 days ago
- The Treaty Principles Bill: A Who’s Who
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NZCTU Te Kauae Kaimahi President Richard Wagstaff is calling on the Government to deliver an economic and industrial strategy for regional manufacturing, rather than just expressing sympathy for job losses, following the announced closure of Kinleith mill in Tokoroa. “The closure Kinleith mill in Tokoroa is not just devastating for ...2 days ago
- 27% of kids going hungry, up from 21% in a year
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- Young Maori take over
Neither Wellington nor Parliament has ever seen anything like it before. The Police said there were more than 40,000 but however many there were, yesterday’s Hikoi to Parliament was a monumental event. It was almost three times the Foreshore and Seabed martch of 2004 and many,many times bigger than ...2 days ago
- Gordon Campbell On The Hikoi Aftermath
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The government's Treaty Principles Bill is up for its first reading today - bought forward in a rush in a desperate effort to avoid the hikoi which is currently marching on Wellington. But the Prime Minister won’t be there for it – he’s literally running away to Peru! But he ...1 week ago
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The Treaty Principles Bill is set to have its First Reading in the House today, as the Hīkoi mō Te Tiriti continues. More than 40 KCs have written to the Prime Minister and Attorney-General outlining their “grave concerns” about the substance of the Treaty Principles Bill, while an academic and ...1 week ago
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Louise Upston has revealed her diminished vision for vulnerable youth against a backdrop of snubbed advice, scrapped priorities, shifted goal posts and thousands more children projected to fall into poverty. ...22 hours ago
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National Government’s backward-looking climate policy has seen New Zealand fall seven places on the Climate Change Performance Index to 41 out of 63 countries measured. ...22 hours ago
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When the Government says it has reduced the number of people in emergency housing, what it means is it is stopping people from accessing it in the first place. ...1 day ago
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The Government is turning its back on children by not only weakening child poverty reduction targets, but also removing child mental wellbeing as a priority focus in their Child and Youth Wellbeing Strategy. ...1 day ago
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The Government has taken a giant step backwards by reinstating live animal exports. ...2 days ago
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Today, Hīkoi mō te Tiriti arrived in Wellington, with thousands gathering to march in unity against the divisive Treaty Principles Bill. ...3 days ago
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Te Tiriti o Waitangi is our country’s founding document. It forms the basis of the relationship between Māori and the Crown – and the Aotearoa New Zealand we live in today. ...1 week ago
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- Chris Hipkins’ apology statement to state and faith-based care survivors
...1 week ago
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Labour joins with the Government in unreservedly apologising for the abuse, neglect and trauma including torture in state and faith-based care and for ignoring the voices of survivors for too long. ...1 week ago
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Today, the Green Party stands alongside the survivors of abuse in state care and faith-based care as the Government issues an historic apology. ...1 week ago
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The Green Party has written to the Speaker of the House requesting he enable a personal vote on the Treaty Principles Bill. ...2 weeks ago
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The Green Party is alarmed by the Government’s move to exclude a journalist from covering this week’s apology for the survivors of abuse in state and faith-based care. ...2 weeks ago
- Without action, an apology will be empty air
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- Release: Poroporoaki: Ta Robert (Bom) Gillies
Kua hinga te manawa kairākau o Te Rua Tekau Ma Waru Tiwhatiwha te po! Kakarauru i te po! Ka rapuhia kei hea koe kua riro! Haere e te Ika a Whiro ki o tini hoa kua ngaro atu ki te Pō ...2 weeks ago
- Labour, Greens and Te Pāti Māori call on the Prime Minister to block the Treaty Principles Bill
The opposition parties stand united for an Aotearoa that honours Te Tiriti, rather than seeking to rewrite it. Labour, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori are working together against the Government’s divisive Treaty Principles Bill. ...2 weeks ago
- Release: Labour, Greens and Te Pāti Māori call on the Prime Minister to block the Treaty Principle...
The opposition parties stand united for an Aotearoa that honours Te Tiriti, rather than seeking to rewrite it. Labour, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori are working together against the Government’s divisive Treaty Principles Bill. ...2 weeks ago
- NZ must pursue independent foreign policy
The Green Party says the need is greater than ever for Aotearoa New Zealand to pursue an independent foreign policy. ...2 weeks ago
- Appointments strengthen Predator Free 2050
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Good luck with the voting Brits! May as well for the Hail Mary shot.
Heh.
https://twitter.com/davidimarcus/status/1204936303730708482
And the other polls released after this one give the conservatives leads of 9, 12, 10, 12, 9 and 11 points.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2019_United_Kingdom_general_election
It's going to be a fascinating watch tomorrow.
It will. Just one more sleep.
Trying to stifle any and all hope that tries to rise within me.
Let it flow freely and don’t cling on to it.
I dont want to be dissapointed. Been dissapointed so many times in the past few years.
Im fully expecting a Tory landslide tomorrow. In fact, if I had some spare cash around, I would go on Plus500 and long the pound. At least I would get some personal gain out of that blond public school buffoon.
In 2017 Labour picked up 5 percentage points at the ballot box, compared to the average of polls leading up to the election. While the Tories basically didn't move.
So hoping isn't completely ridiculous!
This rotten, entitled POS hunting and killing an endangered animal for fun epitomises just how disgusting the tRump crime family really are.
The president's eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., reportedly shot and killed an endangered sheep in Mongolia before receiving a permit from the Mongolian government.
A ProPublica report published Wednesday found that Trump Jr.'s recent hunting trip to Mongolia in August resulted in the president's son shooting and killing an argali, a species of sheep listed as endangered and which requires a permit to be hunted legally.
Trump Jr. was not offered a permit for shooting the animal until after he left the region, according to ProPublica, raising questions about whether he received special treatment.
https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/474046-mongolian-government-retroactively-granted-trump-jr-rare-permit
He shot it illegally and they only offered the permit retroactively to avoid the problem with the fact he would have had diplomatic immunity and they can not prosecute him anyway.
They wanted the easiest solution to getting the criminal case to vanish from their records
I bet someone paid a pretty penny for that permit to make the case disappear, and it would not have been him that paid for it. I bet if their charity foundation was still going and had not been wound up, it would have paid for it.
I doubt diplomatic immunity is extended to presidential shoats.
It takes a tough man to shoot such a fearsome animal like a sheep. Next up it’s baby Pandas.
Daddy will reserve the kittens for himself though.
Baby orangutans, more like, freshly squeezed and applied liberally.
I liked this quote on TDB today:
and that was followed by a rant –
So Labour’s ‘transformation’ equates to spending billions on bloody roads???
My thinking on this transport business is for readying the north and maybe Tauranga for shifting the Port of Auckland
That would be more useful than just being a Holiday Highway but more, it could be a good start for getting rail going as a prime mover and the trucks being temporary till then. It would be tricky but if the railway and road went side by side then during the making of the road, they could get parts of it with the gradient right for the train tracks to go down, and the road could become an equivalent 3 lane.
Just signposting the exhALANt post sitting over on the side bar. It covers a lot of ground and is very good.
it will hold …until it dosn't
brick walls are hard on the head
meh – only for those hanging around the citadel 🙂
was your head I was thinking of
Ah! I get you now. Thought you were referring to crumbling edifices rather than banging 🙂
exhALANt is always excellent IMO but I haven’t read that recent one yet.
It's certainly an impressive catalog of sins by the media.
But the most useful bit comes early, before the catalog starts:
Then, when a substantial part of the prevailing narrative is dodgy, the next trap to avoid falling into is second-option bias.
Not sure I understand your comment there Andre. Elevating the focus of the individual and getting that focus accepted as 'normal' (as exhALANt is saying) is/gs been fairly central to the roll out of liberalism.
But I can't for the life of me see why you so readily draw a line from a resistance/denial of that mindset to one of thoughtless gullibility/belief.
Given the analysis offered up by exhALANt, (the piece is much more than a simplistic descriptive catalogue of ‘media sins’) I'd suggest your concern about dogmatism is moot – people whose opinions result from critical thinking and analysis are not the type of people who view the world in simplistic black and white terms.
And for those who do see the world in terms of 'black hat/white hat' – whose opinions are generally received – then your "second option bias" is less of a trap than an inevitability.
Military and Police staff may be keen on mounting a volcanic body recovery mission tomorrow morning, but GNS remains cautious about the safety of its scientists:
https://twitter.com/gnsscience/status/1204977956365328385
Report from the press conference just before. The NZDF are going in at first light.
Really biting my tongue over the people that have basically spent 4 days calling the police and other agencies cowards. This rescue is not for the fainthearted.
https://twitter.com/BenJStrang/status/1205008784680087552
Did someone say it was going to be easy? I said that it involved risk, and required close deliberations. It is really important that we look at things objectively, and then ensure that we consider the human side too, but not just dismiss questions and criticism. Maybe we could do things better than people have envisaged in the past.
There's been a bunch of bullshit on twitter (not going into detail at the moment, but may write about this at some point), some of it politicised, some of it MSM meddling. There's also been other comments on twitter that I think come out of people's pain and fear, but I think are ill-judged.
The categorising of the police in particular as self-serving, OSH obsessed, controllers who should be taking the risk or letting others get on with it has been particularly hard to watch and I'm still perplexed at the attitude behind this.
Asking questions is good, there have been those conversations as well (and I've asked a few questions myself). I think there's value in asking the right people. One of the things that happened on the first day or two was quite a few volcanologists and other scientists were tweeting to listen to and amplify expert voices on volcanoes. I think one thing we can take away from Whakaari this week is that we can apply this to the various agencies involved in rescue and recovery.
Not sure if you have seen this yet, but this is a remarkable press conference from the Deputy Commander Mike Clement, and I think he is exemplifying what you are naming in terms of being objective and being human. The care he has for his staff and the staff of other agencies, as well as the families and community is very clear.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/checkpoint/audio/2018726705/whakaari-white-island-eruption-police-detail-plan-for-recovery-of-bodies
Well it's now or never with the recovery mission, I do find it quite strange that the police head shed/ leadership group are so risk adverse these days?
With Pike River, they stop the mine recuse team from doing what they were are trained in.
Army relief convoy during the Kaikoura Earthquakes was stop on the orders of the Police, even though Army has practice in these types of events and develop its TTP's (SOP's on old money). From my old ex crew commander, who is now a truckie said " we had all the gear from recovery trucks, heavy engineer support from 3Fld Engineer SQN and a reccon engineer team going ahead of the main convoy. A few choice words were said to the Police and CD Leadership group." The amount of trees we chop down developing our plans, COA's, CONOP's and finally to a formal set of orders is mindboggling to an outsider
The two coppers who stopped that Muppet committing more deaths in CHCH by running him of the rd. Those two just got on the with job to stop the Muppet from doing more damage.
The Airlift of the wounded from White Island was run by a legend of Airborne Recuse in NZ, Ray Fernnell. He was in a fix wing aircraft directing, Co/Ording the Recuse Helicopters on where to go and provide over watch. Most of Helicopter crews and paramedic's have some form of Military/ Special Forces background who were on the scene quite quickly and knew what to do, develop their COA's within themselves and they all knew the risk factor at they were doing.
Sometimes I wonder what sheet of music the Police is it ass covering (to protect) or on the serve (to back yourself with the odd risk) sheet of music. When they should be doing both at the same time.
"How do voters respond to that, especially those who have done least well out of the past decade? They tune out. Earlier this year I went door-knocking round a Northumberland housing estate with Jamie Driscoll, Labour North of Tyne mayor, and in what is called Labour’s heartland the most common response was: “I don’t follow politics”, followed by the slamming of a door. One canvasser remarked: “Policy doesn’t matter here. They’ve forgotten what government can do.” If there’s one statement Labour should take to heart after this election, it’s that."
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/12/labour-leave-voters-politics-general-election-brexit
Doorknocking must be one of the grimmer political jobs.
something that those that want to get elected should be doing more of.
but then, what are volunteers for 🙂 In the US post card writing is the new form of door knocking.
"This is what decades of distrust produces. Not magical thinking or unstinting belief in posh-boy fairytales, but a deep and sullen resentment. A nihilism that neither party nor any other democratic institution can even get their hands around, let alone find a response to."
it must take the most optimistic of souls
That draws the picture – "deep and sullen resentment". And what thinking person can blame them.
That's quite the description. I haven't been following Brexit lately, but this is my sense of that too, that it transcends the traditional spectrum and that well off liberals really haven't been paying attention despite the massive opportunity to do so. Depressing af that there's been more than three years to actually address the issues that underpin the whole sorry mess.
started long before Brexit
Ae, but Brexit was an opportunity to look that in the face, one apparently wasted.
we'll know soon enough if it was wasted…theres always a chance it hasnt been
I've got all my fingers and toes crossed.
Hope.
https://twitter.com/MORTSTHIRDTIME/status/1205048241919803392
seeing quite a few of these too,
https://twitter.com/SophK05/status/1205044252478201856
a lot of coverage on twitter?…will have to try and access
Best tool for events like elections.
You might be able to see these but it will be much easier to follow (especially threads) if you have an account (which is very easy to set up) https://twitter.com/search?q=%23GeneralElection2019
(If you decide to get into convos, know that twitter has its own culture and unwritten rules, esp #nzpol)
Sad that First Past The Post effectively erases all those impassioned votes in 'safe' electorates.
it's so interesting to me that leftie Brits distrust PR systems.
just discovered i need to create an account to access…add in the 'unwritten rules' and I'll stick to following thru links….certainly appears youth vote turning out
You used to be able to just read stuff without signing up.
yeah I can if I click on someone elses post…theres a few on guardian live coverage
the unwritten rules are only if you start tweeting, it was just a heads up in case you were tempted. They don't apply if you have a dummy account to follow what is going on. It's much easier to follow with an account.
https://twitter.com/OwenJones84/status/1205042517936398336
I've always been struck by the way Brits refer to the political class in the third person. It's always "they" that brought in the change, and regulations, never "we" or "that politician". Always the dis-empowerd "they"
hangover from class system?
Heh! TIME picking Greta as "Person of the Year" TRIGGERED somebody, hehehe
Don’t worry, Don, as POTUS you will always be POTY.
Big queues at polling booths. Apparently quite unprecedented.
I guess it could be the Tory faithful 😉
I've been living in Balham, London for 6 years, I have never seen a queue like this at my polling station.
Big queue of 100+ people ahead of me at the polling station in marginal Battersea There’s 50 odd people behind me too
And so on
I guess this will make future denials of genocidal crimes a doddle.
/
Austrian writer Peter Handke has been declared a "persona non grata" in Kosovo over his position on late Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic, Kosovo Foreign Minister Behgjet Pacolli declared on Wednesday, a day after Handke was handed the 2019 Nobel Prize for Literature in Stockholm.
https://www.dw.com/en/kosovo-declares-peter-handke-persona-non-grata/a-51635357
https://twitter.com/RachBlevins/status/1204425885572567041
She was on a comittee which oversaw the torture of prisoners in early 2000s. This is probably why she never called for impeachment.
Traditional Thai massage has now been recognized by UNESCO as part of the world's cultural heritage.
Now there's another happy ending!
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-50770641
So I assume the British people have spoken and they do not like Corbyn.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/world/europe/118191851/boris-johnson-and-uk-conservatives-win-massive-majority