Daily Review 26/10/2017

Written By: - Date published: 5:28 pm, October 26th, 2017 - 32 comments
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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 …

32 comments on “Daily Review 26/10/2017 ”

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  1. Cinny 1
    26 October 2017 at 5:33 pm

    Congratulations to our new Government.

    This is the first time I’ve ever heard of a large crowd gathering to welcome in a new Government. Epic 😀

    So happy.

    • Booker 1.1
      26 October 2017 at 5:59 pm

      I was wondering about the crowd too – can’t recall that happening before? And her speech on the steps to the crowd instead of inside the Beehive – already this feels like a sea change and I’m really starting to get excited about what could happen with new vision and passion in the halls of power.

      • WILD KATIPO 1.1.1
        26 October 2017 at 7:29 pm

        Its called having an economy that’s equitable and that works for us and our own country back again.

        This is NOT somebody else’s country , – its bloody ours , – and so is our democracy and so is our economy and so is the right under that democracy to have representatives who actually do what the electorate bids.

        Its been so long it almost seems like a foreign concept.

        I can understand the relief people feel when a war is finally over ,… it takes time for that to sink in.

        • garibaldi 1.1.1.1
          26 October 2017 at 9:25 pm

          The war is not over by any stretch of the imagination. If anything it is going to get dirtier.

          • UncookedSelachimorpha 1.1.1.1.1
            27 October 2017 at 12:57 am

            I am optimistic too. But remember the hope for Barack Obama, big crowds and celebration…and then a few years later we have no real progress in the USA and the likes of Trump lying about the crowds at his own vile inauguration.

            I hope this current lot can actually pull it off!!! They are sounding great so far, and unlike Obama, they aren’t a single person trying to work against another layer of government that is resolutely obstructive and set against them.

            New Zealand might actually be ready to “do this”

    • Patricia Bremner 1.2
      26 October 2017 at 7:01 pm

      Same Cinny. I would have loved to have been there. An historic day!!!

    • JC 1.3
      26 October 2017 at 9:03 pm

      Fat Freddys too!

  2. McFlock 2
    26 October 2017 at 6:09 pm

    Cautious optimism feels weird after so long…

    • Grey Area 2.1
      26 October 2017 at 8:54 pm

      Likewise. It hit me today (even though ministers were only sworn in today) that we have a New Zealand Government again after nine long, dark years of being led by corrupt muppets.

      Already there have been a number of instances of minsters doing, or committing to do, the right thing – inflation adjusting Teina Pora’s comensation; bringing in a regional transport tax for Auckland; setting up a independent inquiry into the ECQ’s performance in Christchurch; splitting up MPI and so on.

      Challenging days ahead but our new political leadership has got off to a roaring start as a “government for all New Zealanders”.

  3. Draco T Bastard 3
    26 October 2017 at 6:33 pm

    Women’s rights threatened by fundamentalism and the far right, study finds

    Based on 54 submissions from governments, academics and non-government organisations, the report asserts that religious and non-religious extremist agendas are undermining women’s liberties around the world, including in Australia.

    In a submission to the report, the NGO Australian Lawyers for Human Rights said the mainstreaming of extremist ideas in the nation’s public discourse was a threat to women.

    Professor Karima Bennoune, UN Special Rapporteur on Cultural Rights and author of the report, said Australian Lawyers for Human Rights had raised particular concerns over a rise in “populist ultra-nationalism”.

    RWNJs: – A threat the world over.

  4. Reality 4
    26 October 2017 at 6:38 pm

    Was uplifting to see the excited crowds waiting to see our new PM on her return to Parliament, not something I recall before.

    • Patricia Bremner 4.1
      26 October 2017 at 10:21 pm

      4.1Reality, Apparently 800+ there, shades of Auckland Town Hall.

      People want to show their support in the face of Media stories.

  5. Carolyn_Nth 5
    26 October 2017 at 6:46 pm

    Go Jan Logie! her blog post today: benefit sanctions need to go:

    In the last three months, 14,724 people had their benefit sanctioned by Work and Income. The Green Party campaigned on removing excessive benefit sanctions as part of making the most significant change to our welfare system in a generation. Now that we are backing the Government, there is agreement that these excessive benefit sanctions have to go.
    …
    Our welfare system has been failing already disadvantaged communities. More than half of people having their benefits sanctioned are Māori and Pasifika. Benefit sanctions punish families who are already struggling to get by, and punish them by pushing them further into poverty. This becomes a self-defeating trap.

    For the people out there who have been struggling so much, we will be taking action to ensure you get the help you need. The Green Party is committed to ensuring poverty is never used as a weapon against any of us. We will all benefit from a Government that supports people in tough times.

  6. Richard Christie 6
    26 October 2017 at 6:50 pm

    You can read that Tui poster two ways.

    i) Scoffing at the overall message of the poster (including the refutation implied by the pile of shit he stands on), or

    ii) scoffing at English’s BS message only (my preferred take).

    just sayin

  7. Ed 7
    26 October 2017 at 6:51 pm

    The Herald has an unhealthy obsession with North Korea.
    Are they trying to scare their readers?

    The war scenarios: This is how conflict between the US and North Korea would unfold.

    http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=11937204

  8. Ed 8
    26 October 2017 at 9:07 pm

    More from Trotter.

    ‘Strategies Of Right-Wing Resistance: It CAN Happen Here.’

    ‘As the euphoria of victory wears off, and the sheer enormity of the challenge confronting progressive New Zealand reveals itself, it would be foolish not to feel just a little bit daunted. We face an economic system without the slightest idea how to solve the problems created by its discredited policies and practices. Nevertheless, the Neoliberal Establishment remains very strong, and just as soon as it settles upon an effective strategy of resistance, the fightback will begin.

    Two principle lines of attack present themselves. The first, sketched out in this morning’s NZ Herald editorial, is to paint the new Labour-led coalition as little more than a pink-tinted continuation of Bill English’s National Government.…….

    ….The most obvious deficiency with this “demoralisation” strategy is that it leaves the Opposition with very little room in which to manoeuvre politically. If the Labour-NZ First-Green Government is really just a slightly pinker version of its pale-blue predecessor, then how can National attack it with any credibility – or success?

    To raise a political storm violent enough to reclaim the Treasury Benches requires the red-hot passion of the fanatic – not the lofty sneers of the neoliberal intellectual who recognises kindred economic spirits when he sees them.

    That Richard Prebble recognised this in an instant is unsurprising. Few living New Zealand politicians can claim a better rapport with the dark animal spirits needed to rouse this country’s right-wing voters. It was Prebble who recognised the futility of Act attempting to sell pure free-market policies to an electorate that wasn’t buying them. It was only when he identified the party with law and order, crime and punishment, environmental scepticism, and the deep anti-Maori prejudices of rural and provincial New Zealand that Act was able to lift itself up and over the 5 percent MMP threshold. Like Rob Muldoon before him, Prebble understands that to make right-wing Kiwis angry enough to destroy the Left, you first have to frighten them out of their wits.

    Hence Prebble’s outrageous claim that Winston Peters is guilty of mounting a coup d’etat against Kiwi democracy.

    It is not his purpose, and neither, I suspect, does he believe it should be National’s, to convince New Zealanders that they have nothing to fear from what, in all likelihood, will prove to be a pretty mild and responsible Labour-led Government. His aim, and almost certainly the aim of most of the National Party caucus (and their surrogates in the mainstream news media) is to splash as much red paint over Jacinda Ardern, Winston Peters and James Shaw as is humanly possible.

    The Labour-NZ First-Green Government will be presented by these hard-line rightists as an illegitimate and dangerously anti-capitalist regime. Its anti-business and anti-farming policies, they will argue, are not only incompatible with genuine Kiwi democracy, but also constitute a direct attack on the sanctity of private property. As such, it will not be enough to merely oppose this far-left government; it will be necessary to fight it head-on.

    Interviewed on RNZ’s “morning Report” this morning, Ken Shirley, CEO of the Road Transport Forum (and former right-wing comrade-in-arms with Richard Prebble and Roger Douglas in both the Labour and Act parties) reminded listeners of the massive truck-owners protest in the dying days of Helen Clark’s government. If Jacinda’s government went ahead with its plans to use the Road User Charges collected from the RTF’s members for purposes other than the maintenance and construction of roads, then similar protests could be expected.

    Prior to the coup that toppled the left-wing “Popular Unity” government of Salvador Allende in 1973, the country’s economy had been made to “scream” by a nationwide strike organised by the right-wing truckers’ union and supported by the bosses of Chile’s biggest trucking companies. The ensuing shortages brought thousands of angry, middle- and working-class women onto the streets, banging their pots and pans in protest. The right-wing newspapers maintained a relentless barrage of criticism against the “anti-democratic” and “incompetent” government of Chile’s self-proclaimed Marxist president. Calls for Allende’s forcible removal grew louder and more frequent until, on 11 September 1973, General Pinochet was obliged to overthrow the “communist dictator”.

    A very similar project of economic destabilisation and political mobilisation was set in train by the right-wing opponents of the left-wing Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez, in 2002.

    As a strategy of right-wing resistance, it has proved successful in a distressingly large number of countries. Progressive New Zealanders would be most unwise to believe, even for a moment, that it cannot happen here.‘

    http://bowalleyroad.blogspot.co.nz/2017/10/strategies-of-right-wing-resistance-it.html

    This documentary should be compulsory viewing for all New Zealanders who care about their country.

    • Ed 8.1
      26 October 2017 at 9:15 pm

      This should also be viewed if you want to be ready for the neo-liberal resistance.

      • WILD KATIPO 8.1.1
        27 October 2017 at 3:11 am

        Excellent , Ed , – and these two documentary’s should be constantly given as a reminder to the NZ public, – as a message to those far right wing neo liberal stooges in our news media that we know who they work for and it is an anti New Zealand agenda for the sake of personal wealth and power ,…

        And to keep shoving it RIGHT UNDER THEIR NOSES relentlessly that WE KNOW who is responsible for the poverty in this country , we know it was a deliberate ploy , – and furthermore WE KNOW the real reasons it was done.

        Speaking at you , #New Zealand Initiative , – aka the former Business Roundtable.

        And lets also not forget this from the late Hugh Price exposing not only these treasonous economic thugs for who they were and are , – but also their direct links to the London based Mont Pelerin Society ( for whom they work and are subservient to ), financed originally by the German Thule society , – the self same society that set up a ‘ workers wing ‘ called the NASDAP ,- which went on to become known as the NAZI party.

        This from Hugh Price:

        New Right Fight – Who are the New Right?
        http://www.newrightfight.co.nz/pageA.html

        • WILD KATIPO 8.1.1.1
          27 October 2017 at 3:45 am

          Oh , and just to pique your interest ,… here is a small extract from the above site quoted :

          Who Is The Mont Pelerin Society ?
          ————————————————-

          This looting and destruction of the nation-state of New Zealand was planned and implemented by the London-based Mont Pelerin Society.

          In 1947, Mont Pelerin founder von Hayek lamented that the war had drastically strengthened nation-states, which must be replaced, he said, with the classic, anti-state free trade “liberalism” of eighteenth and nineteenth century Britain.

          Many of those continental Europeans present, like von Hayek, carried the prefix “von” before their surnames, signifying that they came from the noble families which had governed Europe for centuries.

          Mont Pelerin shared the same “conservative revolution” philosophy as the Nazis. It also shared some of the same personnel. For instance, Max von Thurn und Taxis was a sponsor of von Hayek and his new society. Thurn und Taxis’ family had founded another society in southern Germany before World War 1, which was composed entirely of aristocrats, known as the Thule Society. Thule in turn formed a special “workers division” known as the “National Socialist German Workers Party” (NSDAP). The NSDAP, into which an Austrian corporal named Adolf Hitler was recruited, later became better known by the abbreviated version of its name, the “Nazis.” In 1989, Max von Thurn und Taxis attended a meeting of his Mont Pelerin Society in Christchurch, New Zealand, to judge, first hand, the results of the “worlds most radical free market revolution.”

    • left_forward 8.2
      27 October 2017 at 2:31 pm

      Thank you very much for this Ed – I have taken some time out this afternoon to watch this in its entirety.
      I agree with you that this should be compulsory viewing!

  9. JC 9
    26 October 2017 at 9:14 pm

    “She said the job was about following through, acknowledging failure, and being up front.”

    http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/checkpoint/audio/2018619376/i-want-the-government-to-bring-kindness-back

  10. Ed 10
    26 October 2017 at 9:42 pm

    Idiot Savant.

    ‘This is just wrong’

    ‘Its a known fact that WINZ benefits are deliberately not enough to live on, which forces beneficiaries into debt to survive. But it turns out that if you borrow money for food, WINZ considers it to be income and you guilty of fraud. And currently they’re pursuing a solo mother through the courts for $120,000 she doesn’t have, because they underpaid her in the first place:

    ‘In a case being heard in the High Court, the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) is arguing that a sole mother who took out loans to pay for her home repairs and to support her children – because she could not otherwise afford to on the benefit – should have to repay more than $120,000 in so-called ‘over payments’.

    This Friday, October 27 is the last day of the hearing. Ms X. has name suppression and is represented by Frances JoyChild QC.

    No form Ms X. ever filled out for her benefit asked her to list loans as a form of income. The cost of the nearly eight years of reviews and appeal is huge, both financially and in terms of her health.’

    http://norightturn.blogspot.com/2017/10/this-is-just-wrong.html

  11. Ed 11
    26 October 2017 at 9:56 pm

    The owners of the Herald really don’t like this government.
    They will do anything to unseat it.
    They are the few.
    We are the many.

  12. Draco T Bastard 12
    26 October 2017 at 10:04 pm

    In the email tonight:

    Dear ,

    This morning, the new Government was sworn into office and a new era for New Zealand began. It’s official now – and we did this together.

    Our Government will be one that faces up to and addresses the biggest issues facing our country. We will fix the housing crisis, make sure Kiwis get the healthcare they need, clean up our rivers, take serious action on climate change and rebuild our regions.

    We will put people first. We won’t try and gloss over bad bits and turn a blind eye when things aren’t going as well as they could. Instead, we will use our resources and initiative to fix them. Because that’s fundamentally what our Government is about: making New Zealand better. And it’s about making it better for everyone.

    I am incredibly honoured and proud to be leading our country, alongside a fantastic team of Ministers and MPs. I am so very grateful to every single person who helped us get here. This is your day, and your Government.

    Thank you from the bottom of my heart,

    Jacinda Ardern
    Prime Minister of New Zealand

    This email was sent to [deleted]. If you’d like to update your details, click here. Receiving emails from Labour is the best way to stay up to date, but if you want to unsubscribe, click here. You can also keep in touch by following us on Facebook and Twitter.

    Authorised by Andrew Kirton, 160 Willis St, Wellington.

    [lprent: Deleted the email address. Those things are like honey for ants. They attract busy little bots to the site. ]

  13. JC 13
    26 October 2017 at 10:06 pm

    Just in the event that some may have missed this event today…

    Jacinda Ardern addressed the hundreds of supporters who turned out for her first speech to the public, after being sworn in as Prime Minister of New Zealand.

    “We will work together and that work begins today.”

    http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/political/342393/we-will-work-together-and-that-work-begins-today

    “It was lovely.”