Daily Review 13/02/2019

Written By: - Date published: 5:30 pm, February 13th, 2019 - 26 comments
Categories: Daily review, uncategorized - Tags:

Daily review is also your post.  

This provides Standardistas the opportunity to review events of the day.

The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy).

Don’t forget to be kind to each other …

26 comments on “Daily Review 13/02/2019 ”

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  1. mickysavage 1
    13 February 2019 at 5:46 pm

    Photo borrowed from Marja Lubec.

    At a parliamentary committee meeting this afternoon only National MP there was the chair …

    Maybe something is up?

    https://twitter.com/MarjaLubeck/status/1095518564977586176

    • Incognito 1.1
      13 February 2019 at 5:49 pm

      Maybe something is up?

      Nope, the other way round: something is down. Hint: it was in the news yesterday.

  2. Ad 2
    13 February 2019 at 6:02 pm

    Just three days ago I complained in a post by Mickey that this government were hopelessly weak when it came to Polytechs and if they had any gumption they should nationalize the lot.

    And now as of this afternoon, they are.

    It’s still very possible Hipkins has just run out of time to get any restructure this big enacted. Let’s see what he’s made of.

    http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA1902/S00098/a-new-future-for-work-skills-training-in-nz.htm

    “Ardern’s Polytech reforms propose a kind of regionalism also proposed for secondary education (in Hipkins’ “hubs”), also proposed for water (in amalgamating reticulated public waters suppliers), but hardly working for a decade in health (in District Health Boards), and also failing spatially (in regional local government).

    They just can’t name the fact that it’s a country small enough to require specific kinds of trades to be supplied when the economy requires them, which in turn requires a bit of central planning.

    Unlike our universities, there is no need to be a particular “critic and conscience of society”. As the Prime Minister notes, Polytechs are skill suppliers into the economy. All they have to do is match skills to the economic cycles, as she notes. 500 carpenters next year, and 200 concrete workers, on the double thanks.

    Labour market needs track as close to our cycles of the economy as electricity use, land transport use, tax mix and tax take, and mortgages. Electricity supply is nationally regulated. Transport networks are fully nationalized and regulated. Tax is fully regulated of course. Mortgages are regulated and there is also a state-owned provider. They’ve even decided that housing needs a central provider big enough to tilt its entire market. So why be shy about state direction in Polytechs?

    The Polytech proposal is a half-baked version of Hipkins’ secondary school proposals, which themselves are just jelly when you put a finger on them.

    There’s no coherent philosophy or guiding structure – between regional and centralized – to what this government proposes for the polytech industry, or indeed electricity, land transport, the tax system, education system, health system, water system, or much else with a natural national need for controlled supply and demand in a very small country.

    Since they are nearly halfway through their term, none of these ideas they are putting out will happen anyway. Since they are not going to be as lucky as Key, they have to look like they are thinking clearly and across the whole country if they want to be attractive enough to be voted in again.

    That starts with strong policy coherence, not this nonsense.”

    • greywarshark 2.1
      13 February 2019 at 7:06 pm

      Central planning. Central planning.
      Dormez vous? Dormez vous?
      Sonnez cloche d’alarme! Sonnez cloche d’alarme!
      Dang,dang,dang! Dang,dang,dang!

      (To the tune of Frere Jacques.)

    • Chris 2.2
      13 February 2019 at 7:20 pm

      Would be good if they had the guts to nationalise electricity distribution.

    • Gabby 2.3
      13 February 2019 at 9:04 pm

      I’m sure Southland is looking forward to getting the shitty end of the stick again.

    • marty mars 2.4
      13 February 2019 at 9:09 pm

      I tend to agree ad. Looks like a monster that will be very difficult to control let alone get results from. I hope I’m wrong but this seems a mistake.

  3. ScottGN 3
    13 February 2019 at 6:25 pm

    After suffering a stinging defeat in the House of Reps in Canberra yesterday over the Refugee Evacuation Bill which would give doctors a greater say over medical transfers of refugees from offshore detention centres to Australia, Scott Morrison has announced he reopening that hellhole Christmas Island to accommodate the transfers – in spite of the Island not having sufficient medical resources to deal with a medical emergency.

  4. Anne 4
    13 February 2019 at 6:50 pm

    Sorry Anne Marie Brady, you are to be sacrificed in the interests of deals with the Chinese Govt. As an ordinary NZer you are at the bottom of the justice heap. You count for nothing. But you are not the first to be treated in this way and unlikely to be the last:

    https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12203559

    Intelligence analyst and former University of Auckland lecturer Paul Buchanan said the Brady investigation – alongside whether Huawei equipment should be banned over security concerns – posed a major risks in seriously rupturing the China-New Zealand relationship.

    He said the announcement by police defused – for now – that risk, but raised additional questions.

    “It’s amazingly diplomatic, or cowardly, depending on which way you want to look at it,” he said.

    “You go almost for a year, in investigating this, and at the end you say you have nothing? Basic questions of competence begin to be raised.”

    I go with “cowardly” – having been in a similar type of situation with a similar outcome albeit not played out in the public arena.

    • Ad 4.1
      13 February 2019 at 7:11 pm

      Don’t worry Anne, Mike Smith will defend her, since clearly any attack on this academic’s work or home or security – an academic who has consistently revealed China’s efforts against us – is from the United States not China.

      Mike Smith can assure Anne Marie Brady there’s no reason at all to defend her since our own security assessments warning about China’s spy interests here should always be dismissed as merely ideological.

    • Psycho Milt 4.2
      13 February 2019 at 9:58 pm

      You have to feel some sympathy for the cops. Totalitarian regimes have pretty good security services, so unlike, ooh, say France’s security services for example, they wouldn’t leave all kinds of clues so the NZ coppers could catch them.

      • Anne 4.2.1
        13 February 2019 at 10:20 pm

        Yes, PM that is true. But the wording of the release says it all to me.

        The police declared they are unable to determine who was responsible.

        Of course they don’t know the identities of the person/persons who carried out the harassment and intimidation. But they know that the person/persons were acting on behalf of the Chinese government. The NZ government knows that the person/persons were acting on behalf of the Chinese government too.

        They could at least acknowledge as much for the sake of Anne Marie Brady and her family. To do so would assist to keep them safe from any escalation of the hostile acts against them.

        We’ve been talking about ‘tardiness’ on another post today and the police do seem to have been tardy with their investigation of this case. The persons would have been long gone before they even left the starting blocks.

      • In Vino 4.2.2
        13 February 2019 at 10:21 pm

        No PM, it was not incompetence The DGSE French Secret Service who did the Rainbow Warrior) were a very right-wing lot, who had no liking for Mitterand’s Socialist Govt. When they got the order to do the Rainbow Warrior, they made bloody sure that the filthy Socialist regime would wear the blame.
        Not incompetence – our scheming bastards are actually worse than the totalitarians. It appears that competition makes them better… Not a great leftie argument, but there is indeed a place for competition.
        Edit – Sorry Anne, but I think what I say about Rainbow warrior is true, and PM was making light of it.
        Not trying to contradict anything about Anne Marie Brady.

  5. Mark 5
    13 February 2019 at 7:59 pm

    Of course the police made the right statement. They had no leads, they were likely never to (most burglaries are unsolved), and cannot just level charges at possible parties willy nilly. Its not ‘cowardly’ or otherwise.

    As for who it was, far more likely it was the US than China. Cui bono? The US had everything to gain by putting Brady in the spotlight – China everything to lose.

    And the US has a long history of dirty tricks in foreign affairs- far more extensive than those of the Chinese.

    The French are also bad —after all they committed a terrorist act on NZ soil murdering an innocent photographer–that is the French government.

    Imagine the hue and cry if the Chinese did that – but the French and Americans are white (mainly) so that is OK.

    • In Vino 5.1
      13 February 2019 at 10:39 pm

      Oh, go easy Mark. Manslaughter at the most. Murder is utterly intentional. The French set off a smaller blast to get everyone off the boat. The fact that the photographer ignored that and rushed back for his photos meant that he thought he could beat the odds. He failed, through unlucky timing. If he had made it, Ok… The poor guy obviously treasured his work.
      But he must have known bloody well the risk he was taking when he ran back onto the boat.
      I get tired of NZers overplaying the Rainbow Warrior as Terrorism. I see it as despicable, filthy sabotage. Terrorists rarely set off a smaller charge to warn people to get clear, and terrorism is supposed to strike fear into all the population because the random act could hit them too.
      Rainbow Warrior comes close, but does not really qualify. Attempt to get people clear of main blast, and no attempt to hurt random citizens.

      I agree that the whole lot, including USA, are bloody bad.

  6. UncookedSelachimorpha 6
    13 February 2019 at 9:29 pm

    Climate change denial holds strong in the National Party. Blue-Green my arse!

    https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/farming/110499590/national-party-mp-unsure-whats-scientifically-accurate-wades-into-methane-debate

    “So why did Kaikōura MP Stuart Smith take to Facebook last month to declare “Agriculture is NOT the major source of NZ’s greenhouse gas emissions”, refuting the stance of the Ministry for the Environment, Landcare Research, and the New Zealand Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Research Centre.”

  7. Muttonbird 7
    13 February 2019 at 9:30 pm

    Interesting. National getting a caning from some for an attack ad which appears to simply reflect the party’s natural pomposity, arrogance and misogyny.

    Why are people surprised?

    It shows a lack of awareness and control over their image, something which has tanked since ponytail left the building.

    https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2019/02/all-sizzle-no-sausage-national-roasted-for-sexist-bbq-attack-ad-on-labour.html

  8. R.P Mcmurphy 8
    13 February 2019 at 10:56 pm

    getting really annoyed at jenna lynch at newschlub and her attempts at journalism.
    her clips are not journalism but party political broadcasts confabulatedwith the worst type of feminine jealousy and envy.
    I saw the face on it at Martinborough and it wasnt nice in fact it was ugly and pinched. she knew she was doing the sneaks turn and it showed.
    she hasnt stopped since pouring a big dollop of bile on everything she does.
    I guess being the consort of chris bishop is a sure indication of the sort of person she is.
    basically she has forfeited all respect for her profession by her rotten behaviour

  9. Cinny 9
    13 February 2019 at 11:02 pm

    Mike King just won the New Zealander of Year 🙂

    Absolutely ecstatic about this news, so well deserved.

    Congrat’s Mike, keep doing what you are doing, you are changing and saving peoples lives. Mike King is an inspiration.

    CONGRATULATIONS !!!!!

    • Incognito 9.1
      14 February 2019 at 7:45 am

      I wonder whether the National Party has approached him yet; they’re pretty desperate at the moment 😉

  10. patricia bremner 10
    13 February 2019 at 11:49 pm

    So pleased it is you Mike, courageous honest and caring. Well deserved.