Gotta say, trying to boost the NRA is a particularly fiendish way for the rooskies to try to fuck up American society.
Hopefully this all gets a lot more exposure and causes blowback on the NRA for acting as agents of a malicious foreign power. Maybe it will even open the eyes of some moonbat lefties that still seem to think Russian government are just misunderstood.
Yeah. That’s one of the reasons I find it a minor relief that America’s Prolapsed Rectum is so fkn incompetent.
If he really was the 37-dimensional chess grandmaster some have asserted he is, he could have put it all together as a quiet private army and kept the official agencies supportive as well. But as it is, he seems determined to completely piss off everyone except his deplorables.
It most be noted, not all NRA kooks are in the deplorables basket, I’m pretty sure there’s a significant subset that will be seriously peeved about the NRA apparently becoming a wing of the Kremlin.
Thanks for the link, Morrissey. The Real News Network do some pretty good stuff and their subscriber based business model allows them a degree of independence other net based media sites don’t have. I know Bomber and others have tried to do similar work, however the size of NZ’s population makes it near impossible to sustain without advertising income. So we may have to wait a little while longer for the Standard News Network 😉
That’s abit like the British radical wing equivalent of Alternative for Germany, have taken over Brexit.
The demographics of their public’s voting blocks, along with a logical stepped referendum process to those, would lead the most functionable way ahead but rather it looks like there is abit of a meltdown going on.
The USA come out right into the open and just say that their coup’ in Venezuela is all about oil, of course anyone with even a sliver of a functioning brain could already quite plainly see this obvious truth…makes you wonder what the fuck goes on the craniums of a few commenters here..plainly not all that much.
I would have thought that Green Party supporters, which I think you are Cinny, would be opposed to any more Venezuelan production. It is a very heavy crude and contains a lot of sulphur, as are the tar sands that make up an even greater proportion of their reserves.
As such it has more severe environmental effects than does the comparatively light crude from Saudi Arabia.
You’re right, alwyn: Venezuela should have diversified long ago, and left the oil where it belongs. In the ground.
But the voracious superpower to the north would never tolerate that.
Whatever should be done in regards to Venezuela’s conservation strategies in the future, it’s certainly not Trump, Pence, Pelosi, or Pomposeo who have any rights to speak on the matter. Don’t they have enough pollution to sort out in their own country?
Alwyn, I think you misunderstand Cinny and Adrian. They’re pointing out the reason for the attempted coup, which is greed.
Oil production has declined under Chavez and Maduro, which is good for the world. If there is a successful coup, oil production will rise, which is bad for the world.
The reason for the production decline isn’t a commitment to green ideology, as far as I can tell. More to do with sacking most of the workers 15 years ago (they were relatively well off and anti-Chavez) and chronic under funding of the industry since. As you note, it’s not the best crude and is expensive to refine.
However, there’s a lot of it and the US has a President who doesn’t believe in climate change but does believe in money. So it’s easy to see where this is heading.
Talking of Venezuela, I read that a shipment of gold about to be loaded onto a Russian plane was stopped. That wouldn’t be Nicky-boy trying but failing to loot the remnants of the stunningly successful socialist economy, which has made nearly all Venezuelans equally poor, would it? Dear oh dear.
Important point from Allan Nairn – it’s not control of the oil extraction itself that the US wants, it’s control of where the profit from its sale ends up.
It’s about making an example of Venezuela for daring to direct some of that money away from the pockets of the local elites and US shareholders into social programmes for the poor. It’s about making it clear that any alternative forms of economic management wont be permitted. The Maduro government being (possibly) incompetent and corrupt doesn’t alter this underlying dynamic.
The US establishment really hates state oil company/state businesses/state banking revenues being used by socialist governments as
1. nation state functioning independent of the global private ownership capitalist profit market system challenge the TINA regime.
2. priority of the money for public education and health and housing demonstrates another way of organising distribition of resources.
Climate change and bizarre weather patterns are effecting weather, land and housing.
But the Auckland (and other) councils, environmental lawyers growing rich and the bovine environment court (that is just a rubber stamp to development no matter what the future outcomes are,) are just blithely allowing more and more building and resource consents without any risk assessment of what the liability of those consents are going to be in the future from climate change when you can have 43mm of rain falling in one hour in summer… they can’t even work out what to do, now it has happened.
We don’t just need more houses in NZ, we need SAFE livable houses that are designed to be immune to climate change, designed not to need remedial work from bad building work and not building on sites which are going to be at risk in the future and be unliveable!
The red zone in Christchurch for example was declined by the council to be built on due to earthquake risks, then the developers took the council to environment court and won, and then they were developed and destroyed in the earthquake. Didn’t see the council or environment court recovering that money from the developers who are able to litigate to build on unsafe land, then take the money, leaving all the devastation to future owners and ultimately the tax payer paid out.
Note the below is in Summer!!
“Forty-three millimetres of rain fell in the Waitakere Ranges in one hour, between 5pm and 6pm on Saturday. Compare that to Auckland Airport, where just 15mm fell over 24 hours.”
“We don’t just need more houses in NZ, we need SAFE livable houses that are designed to be immune to climate change,”
Not sure if that is possible really.
The Piha flooding is highlighting very real issues. I’m so sorry for those people.
CC events will lead to no rebuild, and worse longer decision making processes as people protect their arse. insurance is gonna be hit and miss with a lot of misses.
There is plenty that can be done and much of the current gormless planning is making it worse especially in Auckland where planners allow properties to run over building to non permeable surfaces more often than not against the rules as a matter of course, (normally for additional parking), houses are getting bigger with more parking, more tarsal everywhere and trees and non permeable grass areas being removed constantly for more roads, and ash felt, (which is then dug up constantly every time someone runs a utility line or changes the pavements and roads which in Auckland is constantly dug up and modified and often for no real reason apart from someone got a lucrative contract to do it), destruction, etc…
There is absolutely zero point building badly designed houses that some poor home owner who has done nothing wrong is then forced to rent while paying a mortgage of a property that is unliveable while the developers and their ‘experts’ get rich on the process of NZ famous, overpriced and poorly designed and built buildings.
Even worse those same home owners are then expected to pay higher rates to pay for the developer/council/BRANZ messes like leaky building syndrome, all designed to increase inequality.
Then they decide to add that extra taxes for the ordinary person just in the last year in Auckland we have petrol taxes, new rates on the rates for new builds passed onto the owner which used to be paid by the devloper, fees if you rent our your house short term…. etc etc
That’s just last year new taxes in Auckland, what are they planning when the shit hits the fan with the next ‘leaky building’ lots with bad resource consents that they ‘relaxed’ while not building the affordable houses, and instead McMansions everywhere…
Absolutely. Design can go a long way to alleviating all sorts of concerns. Solar roofs to take pressure off the power grid and owners utility bills; rain gardens and roof collection to take pressure off storm water systems and water supplies; passive heating and cooling to take pressure off utilities and utility bills, and the health system; tree planting to lower the urban heat island effect, add aesthetic beauty, clean air, habitat, shelter, and food; aspect to utilise solar angles…
Instead we have a box aligned with the other boxes aligned with the road. A very expensive box. A box we need to plug into and pay for all our water, power and food on top of the exorbitant rents/mortgages. Many of these boxes are shoddy nonsense requiring large power inputs to be at all comfortable.
Many of these boxes are supermarket friendly, power company friendly, oil transport friendly, keeping you dependent friendly, and bank friendly.
The hopeless dosile ‘Environment Court’ is owned by the Corporate industry.
So it should be dismantled and the (PCE) ‘Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment’ must be givem more poower to change Government poicy before we are all ‘sunk’ opps – sorry for the pun!!!
@Gabby, I agree but that is not what is being built in Auckland, the opposite is being built and what the planners are consenting based on the political and economic and market driven ‘third way’ (aka Rogernomics/Kiwibuild/Thatcherism) models of building big houses for profit and then making the state pay in weird deals a premium and then still not delivering any houses worthwhile while selling/swapping off land into private hands .
If you want weird weather patterns look at the flooding in Townsville right now. This time last we were up there and the place was exactly as per it’s usual name ‘Brownsville’. Dry and hot.
This year the monsoonal trough is way further south than normal, and the place is inundated. At one point they got 300mm of rain in 4 hours. And there’s forecast for the same conditions for another week:
Come on Red, it’s called “Clownsville, AJ Town” never heard of Brownsville. But mind you when I did the RAAF’s Combat Survival Cse, the Arid phase was cut short as we were barely making or producing a enough water let alone to survive on and Jungle solo phase was cut short for the lack of water as well. That was about 15yrs ago btw.
Yes it’s interesting that the Monsoon tough is a lot further Sth than usual and it arrived a mth and half late than usual as well. Darwin has recorded its direst Jan since records began. Parts of the Darwin rural area and out at my bush block, we are were just below the median level for rain in Jan and it’s even worst past Katherine and to the west towards WA.
Some Central and Nth Australia Cattle producers are already thinking of reducing their herds and other farmers are already thinking about reducing their crops and fruit because the lack of water from this years Wet season on current trends. If people down Sth and up here in Darwin are already complaining about the cost of meat, veggies and fruit? Then wait until after the Nth wet season, if fails to bring the rains and then it’s going to get interesting for a lot of people.
Its a well known thing that men seem to delay going to the doctor more that women do. The stark reality of the consequences of that became all to real yesterday when I was informed my best freind who isn’t even 40 yet has cancer. The mind numbing reality of that is the lymphoma growing on him was first noticed 8 months ago. He has other symptoms that suggests it’s spread that in themselves should have resulted in a doctors visit, but no. His partner even booked him in a month or so ago but he didnt turn up.
Why?
His childhood was crap, his father was absent, his mother was useless with kids to different dads and never worked a day in her life. He often comments about having to raise himself. He’s extremely paranoid about child abusers and wants to murder them all, so although he never says anything happened to him I’m suspicious. He failed completely in school, is illiterate. Witnessed his best freind standing next to him being shot dead by his brother as a teenager. A continuously drinking, sober alcoholic. Drug addict that like the alcoholism he has never been able to stop despite many attempts. Cigarettes and weed, that he can’t stop as well. His high is reckless driving, and motorcycle riding recently loosing his licence, again.
To me there’s just so many indicators of contempt for his own life, that the whole picture is just one of suicidle behavour.
That is such a painful tragic life story DJ (4). Very sad indeed.
Evidence children need to be lovingly nurtured from birth and made to feel worthy throughout their lives.
Let’s hope your friend is able to access the means to address both his mental and physical health issues ASAP, before both situations deteriorate even further.
DJ, I am really sorry to hear about your friend. Life can be so unfair at times and he certainly has been landed with a very short straw through no fault of his own. I can understand him not going to the doctor. Many people do the same and put off doing so when medical problems occur. I have no doubt that he will be hurting emotionally at present, as you obviously are. Hopefully he is now getting some support both physically and emotionally through people such as the Cancer Society, local hospice services etc; but I am sure that you will be there for him and his partner etc, as only a best friend can be. kia kaha to you all.
Much love and support to your friend, his good fortune is having you in his life, well done for being there for him and not giving up on him.
Re motorcycle riding, it’s a way for him to release steam so to speak.
Has he got a dirt bike and safety gear?
Hard to lose a license off road, and blasting up and down steep dirt tracks is a hell of a rush. Just a thought….and it’s a heap of fun building jumps out of dirt and stuff. No idea if it’s possible to do such for him, just a thought that’s all.
Being proud of something in ones life helps so much, positive encouragement, support and a bit of direction is massively helpful. Least it has been in my experience.
It’s scary going to the Dr, sometimes we know in our minds what’s happening, but as soon as a health professional verbalises it, sometimes that is what causes the pain. Support person at the Dr’s visit maybe?
Fingers crossed this well being budget will bring the help that so many need.
PS… important for all to know the signs of possible suicide, I really think more people could help each other then. Mental health as a subject should be just as important as PE at school.
You conveyed this story very well. I’ve encountered more than a few similar men in the same shitty place myself.
You nail it in your last para:
To me there’s just so many indicators of contempt for his own life,
And given this truth, why would it be surprising if at least some of these men then treat the lives of those around them with equal contempt?
I think a lot depends on personality as to how this contempt manifests; it can be inwardly directed as high risk or suicidal behaviour, or outwardly directed as abuse and violence toward others. The behaviour we can see is different, but the root cause is much the same.
The Dunedin Longitudinal Study said a lot about this; that depending on innate personality those children whom they term “poorly controlled”, who were also abused as children between the ages of 4 and 8, were the ones most likely to be in prison as adult offenders.
This response to a suggestion that dogs should be banned from beaches because they are harassing and killing vulnerable protected birds I think reflects the anomic,
uncaring, immature and irresponsible attitude of a majority of NZs, probably men particularly.
…. who was braving the inclement weather in Christchurch to take Reba for a walk along Waimairi beach, thought a ban would be a terrible idea.
“The dog catches rabbits but birds, we don’t really see a lot, seagulls stuff like that but I don’t think there’s a massive risk. The birds probably move somewhere else… let the dogs run.”
… – who was taking Izza for a stroll at South Brighton beach – was similarly unimpressed with the idea of a ban.
“Bollocks, pretty much. There’s very few birds nesting around this area. It’s a good call to try to save the birds and everything but as far as me walking my dog in the morning, yeh I’m not interested in anybody telling me I can’t.”
I’ve spent many long hours hunting possums with my now deceased dog Bud and in my youth with a duck hunting dog named Bear. If you think dogs can’t hunt out birds and do it by instinct you don’t know what your talking about. With Bear we could go into an area and off the dog would go. It would often return with a duck without us even having to fire our gun. Bud would naturally find Turkey nests, and flush pheasants.
What’s needed in these situations is a class where the dog is taught not to go near the Penguins. The same class as they do for Kiwi and dogs in the bush. So yes walk your dog on the beach. It’s good for the person and the dog but a simple solution exists. Do the class, get a tag on the collar, all good.
Or get together with Doc, dog experts and create a class.
“reflects the anomic, uncaring, immature and irresponsible attitude of a majority of NZs”.
Sure – and if you’re not like that you’ll be written off as ‘PC’.
The rot runs very deep now.
We perhaps need a new setting for being a decent, good NZer. I feel that I might look for the traits of the good tradesmen I have come across as I get my old car ‘up to speed’ for a wof. Some repairs needed and I know I am lucky to be talking to people who are honest, practical, helpful – good attitudes.
Then there are those working at the coalface helping people who are struggling to get above the poor conditions facing the low or no-waged who have limited opportunities. I put these at a higher setting of value to those with money who hand out little bits of charity when it suits. Or those who have jobs who stride around in the right clothes and a confident manner handing out advice and threats for non-compliance.
NZ is allowing 63 tonne laden weight trucks on our rural unsealed roads and all local roads an highways with no concrete under-bases setting us up for a financial disaster in future as we will go bankrupt paying for roads maintenance by pouring money down the back of Steven Joyce’s dream of a tar sealed NZ where trucks can roam everywhere.
US/Canada have reinforced concrete under-based roads to carry trucks up to 62.5 tonnes or 155 000 pounds weight.
The truth is out about our NZ substandard ‘soft roads’ that is unable to withstand the new heavier trucks now on our roads and the video shown demonstrates that when these 63 tonne trucks laden travel along our sub-standard roads such as all our regional and local roads the engineers capture the time that these roads just stretch and buckle and separate like a squashed orange on the road, causing the surface of the road to break into pieces that are then picked up by other truck tyres and removed from the road surface leaving the road with no tar seal so we are witnessing the wholesale wrecking of our roads by heavy laden trucks now causing us billions in costs to repair the road until inside three months the roads are wrecked again and needing new surfacing.
We must return to rail to use ‘train freight’ or go bankrupt.
The end game is to place reinforced concrete bases under the roads to carry the 63 tonne trucks and that is being done all over the world including US/Canada and Europe.
US/Canadian limits of truck weights on their roads with concrete under-bases are 33 tonnes to 62.5 tonnes or 80 000 lbs to 150 000lbs.
NZ is allowing 63 tonne laden weight trucks on our rural unsealed roads and all local roads and highways with no concrete under-bases setting us up for a financial disaster in future as we will go bankrupt paying for roads maintenance by pouring money down the back of Steven Joyce’s dream of a tar-sealed NZ where trucks can roam everywhere.
Single Axle, Tandem Axle and Gross Weight Limits
Fourteen States have a single axle limit greater than the Federal standard of 20,000 pounds on
the Interstate. Off the Interstate, 17 States have limits greater than the Federal limit and three
States are below the Federal limit.
Fifteen States have a tandem axle limit greater than the Federal limit of 34,000 pounds on the
Interstate. On the non-Interstate State system, 21 States have limits greater than 34,000 pounds and two states are below the Federal limit.
Four States have grandfather rights to exceed 80,000 pounds on the Interstate. On non-Interstate State highways,
18 States have a GVW limit higher than 80,000 pounds. Alternatively, five States have GVWs less than 80,000 pounds on some of their non-Interstate highways.
“Routine” Permit Limits for a 5-axle unit there are 28 different permitted maximum GVW limits ranging from 80,000 pounds to 155,000 pounds. The mode value (the value that occurs most frequently) is 100,000 pounds and occurs in seven States.
For any number of axles there are 25 different
maximum permitted GVW limits (the mode value is 120,000 pounds and occurs in ten States).
For single axles there are 16 different limits ranging from 13,000 pounds to 32,000 pounds.
For tandem axles there are 17 different limits ranging from 26,000 pounds to 64,000 pounds.
2.1.1 Heavy-Vehicle Impact on Pavement Damage Commonly identified pavement distress associated with heavy vehicles can be characterized as fatigue cracking and rutting. On rigid pavements damage includes transverse cracking, corner breaking, and cracking on the wheel paths. Flexible pavements and granular roads are most susceptible to rutting. In all cases, cracking and rutting increase pavement roughness and reduce pavement life.
+1 cleangreen, not only is the cost of other’s paying for the trucks wrecking the roads when the trucks should have to pay to fix their destruction, there is also the problem of the congestion and length of time it takes when the maintenance people somehow manage to take months to fix up the roads.
Whenever you talk to anybody they despair at how the same roads are dug up again and again for maintenance while other roads are pot holed and not sealed or barely repaired…
It is not so much money in NZ but a culture of corruption and incompetence in that area. Shown by how Fletchers were so incompetent they lost money during the building boom, but expected to make up for their incompetence through road maintenance contracts that are so over priced that incompetent companies can keep going through the rorting of this lucrative activity throughout NZ.
If i had time I might think up a good verse to cleangreen’s comment “where trucks can roam everywhere”.
The best i can do off the cuff.
Oh give me a home, where truck’s do not roam,
And the kids can play anywhere.
Where seldom is heard
A discouraging word,
And the politicians
Come here and stay.
Excellent article and food for thought in particular the winning strategy of China to go from a low supply chain to a high value supply chain and BUY UP the supply as part of their success.
You can see how successful this strategy is in NZ where Chinese interests are buying up the supply chains here in particular in agriculture and natural resources like farms and water, and how NZ might be increasing our exports but are getting poorer as a country under our pavlov type ‘free trade’ which in NZ seems to be more about ‘thick trade’ than ‘free trade’. Who trades to get poorer and gives away in real terms natural resources like water and sand for a song, only to buy it back at extreme profit to an overseas firm?
NZ has moved the opposite way to China and going from a high value supply chain to a low value supply chain through government and official stupidity and lack of long term strategy here…
“The next factor is that China’s role in this is changing fundamentally. There are some great studies on this. Not the least is one by Standard Chartered Bank some three years ago. China is moving incredibly fast, from being a source of low-cost components for other people’s value chains to being a relatively high cost country. For example, it’s far more expensive to manufacture something in Shanghai than it is in Michigan. So they are moving very fast to build up their own value and supply chains around the world, of which the high value part of the chain is in China. Surrounding countries like Vietnam become the low-cost suppliers. It is interesting to see the US starting to articulate how it’s trying to do bilaterals with the likes of Vietnam to try to disrupt that process. Clearly, this asymmetry of supply chains, whereby greater benefit flows to a few players and less to the rest, is becoming a more marked feature of international trade.”
To simplify things SNZ, it has been, & is, by and largely the buying up of private interests (mostly National networked ones) that have embedded themselves in the public sector areas.
That comes back to the lack of a systemic dynamic demand and supply NZ lobbying system. It’s probably a constituitional issue ultimately related to the integration of democracy.
The Chinese, while their internal demand and supply is extremely top down rigid, it is also very much a unified lobbying system when it comes to it’s external imperialism in contrast to say the corruption inherent in it’s internal communistic demand and supply against the dynamisms of it’s own markets.
I think the well being budget approach incorporates a good start to grappling with this issue’s systemics, in that it can organically start to remove the magic numbers of false wealth gains out of the system enabling a clearer picture to emerge of what is going on & which will create movement to co-operative solutions that are more democratic (see 2nd sentence) and thus having more relative strength about them.
We already pay much higher interest rates than China, and many of the other countries that we trade with are able to out bid Kiwis and have the advantage of lower interest rates. At one point they were taxing savings in Japan aka you had to pay to put money in the bank! Here in NZ, although historically low interest rates, it is still much higher in NZ than other countries have to pay for interest rates and probably easier to manipulate our currency being a small nation to maximise profits.
““An 82-year-old woman believes a trio of the unruly tourists scammed her out of almost $9000, claiming they would fix her roof but left a hole in her ceiling….
Leonard (the 82 year old woman) told Newshub that she recognised one of the three from the rowdy British tourist group when she saw photos……”
And now:
“Two British men are set to be charged with fraud by police investigating a series of alleged roofing scams in Auckland.”
Maybe just put up a sign, scammers come to NZ, they can join the already full troops of arrivals in the courts… of course in NZ we tend to just take the losses and be grateful for any cash dished out from fraudsters and dishonesty operating here, in this case the person is offering to settle LESS than the amount owed.
Wonder why with people being better off with committing crimes it is continuing to skyrocket… and why our justice system does not seek to penalise clearly so send a message to other fraudsters…
Bridges said it would involve $650M in the first year, so why both the Herald and the Dominion Post mislead with the figure of $1.7B for last year is inexplicable.
Absolutely right even taking the $0.7B on offer this is pure sophistry by Bridges and people are buying it because the media are selling it as a “really good and ‘obvious'” idea. About 650k-700k will get $15 and likely lose a bit of WFF, those under $50k get about a paltry $2 per week but I doubt they realise this and if National follows through with its 2017 intention to remove the Independent Earners rebate of $10 per week they are far worse off. Just as are those who just sucked it up in 2011 when National took $520 per year back in Kiwisaver contributions, The “paper boys and girls” that the National Party imposed taxes on will get nothing.
Thanks RedLogix. A Brilliant presentation. The technology which allows such precision is vast. And Titan might be inhabitable?
With such high level science what is missing from the human condition which doesn’t seem to fully engage with the needs of our own planet?
Jenny – How to get there? 18
30 January 2019 at 10:40 pm
Talleys a New Zealand synonym for greed, bullying and environmental abuse. Opening new coal mines in the Waikato. Victimising unionists in Afco and now plundering a marine reserve.
“The New Zealand Government was pushing hard to get the Talley’s vessel off the international IUU blacklist of disreputable fishing vessels, in spite of SPRFMO Compliance and Technical Committee finding that the Talley’s vessel was involved in IUU activities,” he says.
“Other countries at the meeting objected, and the result is that the Talleys boat will remain on the draft IUU list.
“Incidentally, Talley’s is the same company that donated heavily to the campaign of Shane Jones, who has emerged as the defacto Minister of Fisheries in the current Government.”
“Rather than trying to protect Talley’s from an international IUU listing, the Government should welcome the listing as a warning to other fishing companies that they must follow rules to protect the environment.
A gigantic cavity two-thirds the area of Manhattan and almost 1,000 feet (300 meters) tall has been found growing at the bottom of Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica.
About the size of Florida, Thwaites Glacier is currently responsible for approximately 4 percent of global sea level rise.
It holds enough ice to raise the world ocean a little over 2 feet (65 centimeters) and backstops neighboring glaciers that would raise sea levels an additional 8 feet (2.4 meters) if all the ice were lost……
The Amaltal Apollo, a vessel owned by a subsidiary of Talley’s, is facing 14 charges for fishing in protected waters in the Tasman Sea.
And Cabinet rules clearly state: “Ministers do not comment on or involve themselves in the investigation of offences or the decision as to whether a person should be prosecuted.”
“I think there’s no question that Jones has breached the Cabinet Manual, which is the rules that govern the behaviour of Ministers,” Mr Norman said.
Shane Jones: now pimping for Sealords
Written By: LPRENT – Date published: 11:34 am, October 3rd, 2012
……After all presumably he didn’t merely blow off because his ex-employer and current political donor asked him? Presumably he got approval from the shadow cabinet and Labour caucus to make the statement since he was making a statement on areas covered by someone else’s portfolio? It must be completely obvious to all of the people involved around politics exactly why this is far far more important a topic for Labour to be pursuing right now than the continuing disintergration of the Key government…..
……So Greenpeace are asserting that there is overfishing going on, that the populations of yellowfin tuna are decreasing, and that sealord are buying from sources using seine nets with the significiant bycatch issues. Certainly it isn’t hard to find support for that view from everyone from game fisherman to organisations the FAO.
But lets see how our self-appointed spokesman from Labour deals with these issues.
“Their concerns are about some obscure ecosystem …”
That is it. The rest of his reported statement is essentially a rant that would look good if he were the owner of Sealords, concerned mostly with the loss of short-term profits, and full of a faux concern about jobs. For if Greenpeace are right about the over fishing and the unsustainability of the fishery, then there are no long-term jobs and no long-term profits. Jones makes a big thing about Sealord being mostly owned by Maori. Who bloody cares? Not Greenpeace, not me as a consumer, in fact no-one apart from Shane Jones raising it. What we are interested in is the fish and how they are caught.
Make no mistake this is a fight for the soul of this government.
Who will blink first?
If Winston Peters decides to make a stand on behalf of Jones, will the Prime Minister call his bluff?
Will Jacinda Adern fight for her leadership?
And if necessary, in the face of Peters possible refusal to back down, threaten to put it to the country?
An election that in my opinion the Prime Minister would handily win, returning to the treasury benches with a weakened NZ First and a strengthened Green Party
All the cards are in the Prime Minister’s hands.
Will she play them, or quietly try to paper over the cracks only to have them blow apart at some later date when she is in a weaker position?
Will the Prime Minister concede, or make a stand?
Jones has to go, and Peters needs to accept it.
Even if Peters threatens to pull the house down, the Prime Minister must stand her ground, or be forever lost. Instead of the great leader she is otherwise destined to be.
Shane Jones. It doesn’t look good when looking at his work on fishing while in his new ministerial position. Cosseting fishing companies which are falling off their charts of legal fishing locations as Jenny has sat up late into the early morning documenting.
It doesn’t look good in Gisborne, when he organises more tree planting but the locals don’t see signs of better roads, and improved port facilities to handle present logs, much less those from the future of fast-growing radiata. (I put up comment about this.)
What a pity. All the practical men liked his no-nonsense manly style. An honest broker they thought. Someone who can see problems and bite them to size.
Looks like he is swallowing a rat instead.
Here you go Whanau when a group of White Collar Crim,s are caught with the hands in peoples pockets stealing off people they are ASKED TO BE NICE TO THERE customer,s When A poor person blue Collar gets caught they get thrown in jail there right taken away the media kicks the story around for weeks and our minor cultures mana gets eroded away. I have told you its a illusion that the so called( professionail upper classes have the 97. % well being at Heart ) YEA RIGHT . We have to be viglant and make them KNOW we expect them to use the power of rule to treat all kiwis respectfully and that means stop ripping US OFF And stop letting there M8 OFF THE HOOK
They got away with it again.
Executives and board members of New Zealand’s life insurers will be quietly breathing heavy sighs of relief this morning, just as their colleagues in the banking industry did last year.
Many work for the same companies or are in partnership. And many know exactly what being exposed in public for their wrongdoing and punished in the court of public opinion looks like.
They only need to read Australia’s daily newspapers and watch the litany of sackings and share price slumps and public condemnation they see convulsing through the Australian life insurance and banking industries every day because of the ongoing Hayne Royal Commission into banking, superannuation and financial advice industries.
One New Zealand-based life insurer has been selling a life product to foreign customers, even though cover was only available to New Zealand residents. Another insurer incorrectly recorded customers’ dates of birth, due to manual errors, resulting in 30 customers being overcharged. That insurer is now in the process of refunding those affected customers, the FMA and RBNZ said without naming the company.
Another incorrectly calculated the impact of a consumer price index-linked premium increase by up to 30 times. In all, 223 customers were over-charged. That problem was discovered in 2015 but the insurer didn’t contact those customers, instead relying on them to complain. Three years after the event, that insurer had failed to remediate 111 of the affected customers.
The review found examples of insurers failing to cancel old policies when a customer transferred to a new policy and continuing to charge premiums on both policies. It found insurers which failed to notify policyholders of premium increases.
The FMA took the same approach to a review it released in July when it said three of the 11 life insurance companies were responsible for behaviour so bad that it was considering taking regulatory action against them. It turns out that after follow-up inquiries, the FMA decided further action was unwarranted. Again, we’ll never know what went on.
We are expected to wait and trust the FMA and the Reserve Bank will look after consumers’ interests in the quiet time after the report. Their past record is not inspiring.
Sunlight is the best disinfectant
It’s clear from reading the report that the FMA and the Reserve Bank are most concerned about the reputation of the industry and its financial soundness, rather than the interests of consumers.
Repeatedly, and as identified in this chart below, the industry has over-charged premiums and got away with unacceptable behaviour because its products are complicated and they can rely on many to just set and forget their policies.
Simply asking them to be nice won’t work. They are beholden to their own shareholders and the employment agreements that incentivise them to go for the highest profits in the shortest term. Only the fear of career-ending exposure, fines and prison terms will change that. Ka kite ano links below
Kia ora Newshub ecoli in the Waiarapa water doesn’t look good that’s why I say our society needs to respect Wai much more than we do.
WAR IS FOR NEANDERTHAL.they cannot even account for %25 of their War budget spending ??????????.
Towns villa flooding condolences to all the people who have been hit by the flooding.
Alcohol causes big problem for OUR society I read a article that stated that alcohol sugar and prosessed food cause more damage to our society than drugs there you go the 00.1 %.
I quite admire Indian culture for the way they care about their Wild life what’s a couple of humans compared to the Havoc that we rage against our wild life Eco Maori say any were else the leopard would have been KILLED.
That’s shocking that mother in Britain FGM cutting her 3 year old daughter genital the reason is beyond me.
Tracey is doing a awesome job looking after all those abandoned chihuahua dogs but that’s not for Eco the Mokopunas tire me out in 3 days.
Tutankhamen is a awesome Egyptian that culture shows Eco Maori that we have forgotten more great technology than we know that’s why we should all ways respect and houner Ones Tipuna. I seen a story that Egypt was a matriarch society back in those days
Racism is shocking all around Papatuanukue. Ka kite ano
Kia R&R The neanderthal alt right shonky don’t want common people to be able to stay at home a care and education our children. They want to keep the common people that busy just trying to keep the Waka afloat we have no time to see the cheating moves they make against us. It also limits our participation in elections. We had one parent at home to care for our tamariki but that was when times were much easier than at the minute. I know of people working long hours and are treading water. That’s why I Back Jim Bolger, s new employment laws and what do you know ECO MAORI cannot find the story on the Internet today a controlled society is what we live in.
Ka kite ano P.S Well Come back to the Internet SAMOANS Ki kaha Eco Maori Tau Tokos the greatest contribution Wahine give to our society’s
Who said that one group of people can make there wages hundreds times higher than the group that makes the money the majority and make our wages a pittance.
We are the majority in a TRUE Democratic society the laws would be made to be good for the many that is not happening so who is cheating in everyway they can the 00.1% are ripping the many off thats a FACT . Back Jim Bolgers new employment laws with all you have got Tangata whenua and minority cultures if you want a better future for te mokopuna,s
Jim Bolger: New Zealand’s low productivity to blame for poor wages
The Government’s been handed a set of fair pay guidelines to set minimum standards across an industry or occupation.
The working group report was headed up by former National Prime Minister Jim Bolger.
It recommends workers be able to trigger a fair pay agreement if they can reach a threshold of 1000 workers, or 10 percent of workers in a specific sector or job.
Bolger told Larry Williams that this was devised to help the working poor who are struggling the most by increasing their pay packets.
“We have more and more families relying on welfare even if they are in full time employment. The system allows them to be on very low wages even if they work a 40 hour week.”
He says that it’s not much different to how the minimum wage is enshrined in law.
Bolger says they never looked at compulsory unionism, which he scrapped when he was Prime Minister.
“We shouldn’t scare people on this. What we’re saying is there are issues out there, there are problems out there, why don’t we sensibly look at how we resolve them?”
He says they looked at multiple other countries for innovative ideas, but none of their models worked in the New Zealand, forcing them to come up with their own interpretation. Ka kite ano Links below
Speaker Nancy Pelosi stands with House Democrats to re-introduce the Paycheck Fairness Act. Photograph: Yuri Gripas/Reuters
Equal pay requires honest discussions
The gender pay gap, as every right-thinking person knows, is a feminist myth. Those figures you’ve seen about white women earning around 80% of what white men make, and black women earning just 61%, are probably wrong. And if they’re not, then, as many conservatives have pointed out, there are rational explanations for the disparity. Such as the fact that, as Jordan Peterson has explained, women are just more agreeable than men, meaning they don’t ask for more money. Which is a very agreeable explanation if you don’t want to confront structural inequality.
Women swear sometimes – let’s get the hell over it
Arwa Mahdawi
While many on the right insist the gender pay gap doesn’t exist, they also appear keen to block legislation that would strengthen equal pay protection and make it easier for employees to share wage information. Which would appear to be a contradictory position. As congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted on Wednesday “If ‘the wage gap is a myth’ as some allege, then workplaces should have no problem with workers disclosing our salaries with one another.
Ocasio-Cortez’s tweet followed a news conference in which she, along with other Democrats, re-introduced the Paycheck Fairness Act, which strives to close the gender wage gap by giving women tools to challenge unequal pay. For example, it would stop employers retaliating against workers who discuss their salaries with each other. The bill was first introduced in 1997, but has been repeatedly blocked by Republicans.
While the pay gap has narrowed since 1980, not much progress has been made in the last 15 years. Arguably, one reason for this is the lack of transparency around pay. Most of us don’t know how much our colleagues make, which makes it easier for companies to ignore the issue. Indeed, Lean In’s 2018 Black Women’s Equal Pay Survey found that 50% of Americans aren’t aware of pay gap between black and white women, and hiring managers are also ignorant of the disparity.Ka kite ano Links below. P.S Wahine deserve to be respected and all payed the same as MAN
Kia ora R&R Waiata is a good tool that have many uses and one is to protest about injustices that have been dished out to Tangata Whenua O Aoteoroa for the last 250 years by the settlors .
The other use,s for maori is recording history boost ones mana and wairua mauri educate tangata unite tangata .
One could create a great tangata whenua waiata artist that,s is known all around Papatuanuku and one doesn’t have to invent the wheel to do this just be smart we have the tallent in Maori society .
The 00.1 % have made it so we are to busy to protest or to vote to busy rowing one own waka to servive and have know time to protest and they scrapped free education to stop that phenomenon.
Ka kite ano
Kia ora Newshub Townsville North Queens land has had extreme rain and flooding our scientists priditived that.
Ralph Northem should step DOWN from his Vigina governors office because of that old shocking photo of him in that racist yearbook. $100 million is cool for Maori business growth on Maori land but I still want to see Jim Bolgers new Employment laws that will deliver billions to the lower classes.
Nice one Stue Muir that’s a name of olden time in Aotearoa it’s cool you are regeneration the mangrove mash land that are the filters of the whenua on your farm land .
That’s a happy end to the story of bubbles the chihuahua being found an is safe and sound being returned to it owner in Hamilton hospital. Ka kite ano
A new study says that hydrogen fuel for vehicles and businesses is unlikely in the foreseeable future – in spite of Government financial support for private company research.
Simon Coates, director of Concept Consulting, said converting electricity or gas to power a fleet of hydrogen trucks would take more than three times more energy than using electricity and batteries.
His report was jointly funded by Contact Energy, the Energy Efficiency Conservation Authority, First Gas, Meridian Energy, Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment, and Powerco. “Most of the technologies involved in hydrogen production and use are mature and well understood, because they have been used at scale for many decades to support industrial processes such as synthetic fertiliser manufacture. Other hydrogen technologies, such as fuel cells, were discovered many decades ago but have not yet been applied at scale.”
The report said it may be possible to reduce hydrogen production costs during periods of low electricity prices, but this would require more renewable power stations to be built.
Almost three times more renewable energy was required to power a hydrogen vehicle than an electric vehicle, and approximately twice as much renewable energy was required to fuel a hydrogen boiler or heater, compared with an electric boiler or heat pump.
The report is available here Ka kite ano links below
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Please find attached embargoed copies of two media statements from the Interim Climate Change Committee http://img.scoop.co.nz/media/pdfs/1907/Embargoed_Interim_Climate_Change_Committee_Accelerated_electrification_MEDIA_STATEMENT.pdf ...
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The addition of an absurd Treaty of Waitangi clause in the Plant Varieties Act raises the question whether “Maoridom” will claim royalties on new plant varieties, Hobson’s Pledge spokesperson Casey Costello said today. ...
What are we going to do about District Health Boards? News this week that the Government is looking at a further bail-out of cash-strapped Boards to help reduce their deficits has raised afresh questions about the sustainability of the current ...
Legal proceedings were filed in the Wellington High Court this week to have certain blocks of land at Shelly Bay returned to the ownership of Taranaki Whānui iwi. The land in issue is currently the proposed site for a high ...
Heart Kids, the only charity which supports families of heart children, acknowledges the fear and distress of families who have voiced their concern over paediatric cardiac services in New Zealand. ...
Amnesty International has released a scathing report into the United States’ response to gun violence, a report that New Zealand policy-makers can learn from. In Scars of Survival: Gun Violence and Barriers to Reparation in the USA, survivors of gun ...
New Plymouth District Council has corrected information it gave the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union regarding ratepayer-funded flight expenses in 2017/18. A Council spokesperson states: ...
The Islamic Women’s Council of New Zealand welcomes the announcement of Meng Foon as the new Race Relations Commissioner. “Our community, along with many others, has deeply felt the absence of an advocate in that role, particularly in light of ...
The Taxpayers’ Union can reveal that New Plymouth District Council was the fourth highest-spending council in the country when it game to air travel in the 2017/18 financial year. The Council spent $285,391 on flights, $256,235 of which was domestic, ...
Today I have submitted against the application of the Queenstown Lakes District Council seeking a "right to polllute" in their latest resource management application to the Otago Regional Council. I have done so in my capacity as a Dunstan ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Harry Hobbs, Lecturer, University of Technology Sydney Queensland Deputy Premier Jackie Trad has announced that the state will begin a conversation about a pathway to treaty with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mair Underwood, Lecturer in Anthropology and Sociology, The University of Queensland Months after a public breakup with her husband, the politician Barnaby Joyce, Natalie Joyce made news when she displayed her “new” ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brittany Huber, Postdoctoral researcher, Swinburne University of Technology Most (80%) Australian parents worry children spend too much time with screens. But what children are doing on and off screen matters more than ...
A local photographer has posted emails from Warner Brothers NZ requesting they work “unpaid” on Married At First Sight NZ. A wedding photographer has posted emails from Warner Brothers NZ on Reddit after the production company requested that they work for ...
How ANZ Bank fought for more than three years to keep its role in New Zealand’s biggest Ponzi scheme quiet and stop a regulator telling out-of-pocket investors the details. ...
Sam Brooks reviews Mean Mums, the new sitcom from Three that manages to make putting a great show together look easy.When it premiered as part of Three’s Pilot Week last year, I called Mean Mums the winner of the bunch. Nearly ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Last week on this podcast we talked to Ken Wyatt about the government’s plan for a referendum – hopefully this parliamentary term – to recognise ...
Imagine if we treated our native birds with as little care as we do our precious fish stocks, writes ecologist Stella McQueen.Earlier this year, 900 at-risk native mudfish were relocated to make way for a wastewater development. But despite a ...
For when toast or cereal just doesn’t cut it, but you don’t have the time or inclination to do any actual cooking, try this. If I ever cook rice (or grains of any kind) for dinner, I often make extra to ...
For their latest ageing episode, Hilary Barry joins the On the Rag team to talk wrinkle creams, menopause and why people still think she is Jeremy Wells’ mum. This month’s episode of On the Rag is all about ageing. Time ravages ...
The Auditor-General's investigators are to look into the National Party's complaints about taxpayer funding being used to underwrite KiwiBuild homes. ...
Its rolling slate of cringey jokes and meaningless trivia is a familiar sight wherever there’s a captive audience – but what the hell is Giggle TV? Johnny Crawford looks into the tweet-stealing, wife joke-telling phenomenon.If you’ve spent any time in ...
COMMENTARY:By Yamin Kogoya in Auckland More than 50 years of “torture” has been inflicted on the Papuan people by the Indonesian government. With the complicity of Western governments, great fear has been put in the hearts and minds ...
It’s landlords who are finding themselves out in the cold as property managers begin to walk away from clients who haven’t insulated their rentals, reports Don Rowe.Two weeks after the first of New Zealand’s healthy homes deadlines, property managers are ...
Event date and time: Friday, July 26, 2019 – 17:00–18:30JOIN US for this Pacific Media Centre‘s smorgasbord “launch” mid-winter fono and celebration for: + Two new documentaries on climate change and media freedom + The ...
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.Tuesday’s contentForeign affairs and trade Barry Soper (Newstalk ZB): US ...
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.Monday’s contentOranga Tamariki, state care of children, adoption Bonnie Sumner (Newsroom): Māori ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Renaud Joannes-Boyau, Senior research fellow, Southern Cross University Humans’ distant ancestor Australopithecus africanus had a unique approach to raising their young, as shown in our new research published today in Nature. Geochemical ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonti Horner, Professor (Astrophysics), 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 ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joyce Y.M. Nip, Senior lecturer, Department of Media and Communications; Department of Chinese Studies, University of Sydney As China grows more powerful and influential, our New Superpower series looks at what this ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Trent Yarwood, Infectious Diseases Physician, Senior Lecturer, James Cook University and, The University of Queensland This year’s flu season is off to an early start, with 144,000 confirmed cases so far in ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Todd Denham, PhD Candidate, School of Global, Urban & Social Studies, RMIT University Governments are looking to fast rail services to regional cities to relieve population pressures in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Zsuzsanna Csereklyei, Lecturer in Economics, RMIT University Wholesale prices in the National Electricity Market have climbed significantly in recent years. The increase has coincided with a rapid increase in the proportion of ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Koa Whittingham, Psychologist and Research Fellow, The University of Queensland Bluey is a ground-breaking Australian children’s television series and the most downloaded show in ABC iView history. Since premiering in October 2018, ...
Good morning, and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Both PM and deputy PM in action on foreign relationships, major climate report being released today, and DOC staff facing escalating threats. Both the PM and deputy PM are in action ...
The Auditor-General's investigators are to look into the National Party's complaints about taxpayer funding being used to underwrite KiwiBuild homes. ...
Cancer can happen to anyone, even if they have followed the advice. While healthy living is not a guarantee, it does stack the odds in your favour. ...
Food researcher George Henderson assesses best-selling NZ low-carb cookbook What The Fat, and asks: How did it become so popular, and why is a laxative included in the sausage roll recipe? ...
Practical steps to take right now if you’re appalled at the news coming out of the United States.This article was originally published in June 2018 and has been updated with current information.From the far side of an ocean, we in ...
Grant Robertson, a cricket fanatic whose day jobs include being minister for finance and minister for sport, raced from Wellington to northwest London on the weekend to watch the Black Caps in what turned into the greatest one-day international ever ...
Ātea editor Leonie Hayden headed out to the hui for a Māori-led inquiry into Oranga Tamariki, the Ministry for Children, and found a unified Māori force that has decided enough is enough.When first announced, Saturday’s Oranga Tamariki hui was to ...
A vulnerability has hit users everywhere, New Zealand included, and it reveals something very troubling about the way the tech world worksNew Zealand Schools, district health boards and even the perhaps the halls of power have found themselves compromised by ...
By RNZ Pacific New Caledonia has a healthy lead on the Pacific Games medals table after the first week of the competition. The French Territory has won 42 gold medals after the first six days of competition and more ...
Open Mike 01/02/2019 
The Interim Climate Change Committee's report on Action on agricultural emissions: Evidence, analysis and recommendations was finally released today, and as you might guess from the title, it is recommending that we actually act, rather than let farmers keep ...13 hours ago
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by Gearóid Ó Loingsigh The recent statements made by the former FARC commander, Carlos Lozada (legal name Julian Gallo), where, from his seat in Congress, he praised the Colombian Army demonstrate how low the farianos have sunk. Lozada began by ...3 days ago
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Welcome to another heaping helping of research publications related to climate change drivers and mechanisms, the effects of climate change and how we might yet grope our way into systems approaches to dealing with the mess we're making, despite ourselves. ...2 weeks ago
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Gotta say, trying to boost the NRA is a particularly fiendish way for the rooskies to try to fuck up American society.
Hopefully this all gets a lot more exposure and causes blowback on the NRA for acting as agents of a malicious foreign power. Maybe it will even open the eyes of some moonbat lefties that still seem to think Russian government are just misunderstood.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/nra-heavyweight-wanted-access-to-putin-leaked-email?ref=home
Heavily armed agents of a foreign power.
That could play interestingly.
Yeah. That’s one of the reasons I find it a minor relief that America’s Prolapsed Rectum is so fkn incompetent.
If he really was the 37-dimensional chess grandmaster some have asserted he is, he could have put it all together as a quiet private army and kept the official agencies supportive as well. But as it is, he seems determined to completely piss off everyone except his deplorables.
It most be noted, not all NRA kooks are in the deplorables basket, I’m pretty sure there’s a significant subset that will be seriously peeved about the NRA apparently becoming a wing of the Kremlin.
Not every country in the world is terrified of crossing
the Trump, Bolton, Pompeo, Pence, Abrams gang.
“Democracy never needs to be imposed. It is tyranny that needs to be imposed.”
—Elliott Abrams
Thanks for the link, Morrissey. The Real News Network do some pretty good stuff and their subscriber based business model allows them a degree of independence other net based media sites don’t have. I know Bomber and others have tried to do similar work, however the size of NZ’s population makes it near impossible to sustain without advertising income. So we may have to wait a little while longer for the Standard News Network 😉
Just as an aside, a business opportunity for the Daisycutter media group may have opened up: https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/110300114/the-fire-the-forklift-and-the-fights-nightmare-company-goes-bust
Thanks for the heads-up, Te Reo! I’ll get Tiggy Ponsford and the acquisitions team to take a look at that.
Morrissey
A sixteen minute clip! If it was BBC or any other mainstream media site they could have given the key message in a two minute item.
Two minutes. That’s what you gave the “intelligence” briefers before you sent our troops to terrorize villagers in Afghanistan, Wayne?
well the BBC is good at signalling UK intentions to the Europeans (in under 20 sec)
That’s abit like the British radical wing equivalent of Alternative for Germany, have taken over Brexit.
The demographics of their public’s voting blocks, along with a logical stepped referendum process to those, would lead the most functionable way ahead but rather it looks like there is abit of a meltdown going on.
Brilliant critique, Nat boy – it was too long!
If that’s the depth of Nat thinking on international relations, no wonder we arse licked the USA under a Nat government.
The USA come out right into the open and just say that their coup’ in Venezuela is all about oil, of course anyone with even a sliver of a functioning brain could already quite plainly see this obvious truth…makes you wonder what the fuck goes on the craniums of a few commenters here..plainly not all that much.
Venezuela has the largest oil reserves on the planet.
Absolutely agree with your comment above.
Cheers for the link Adrian, following this with great interest, it’s very unsettling what is happening along with all the players in the game.
I would have thought that Green Party supporters, which I think you are Cinny, would be opposed to any more Venezuelan production. It is a very heavy crude and contains a lot of sulphur, as are the tar sands that make up an even greater proportion of their reserves.
As such it has more severe environmental effects than does the comparatively light crude from Saudi Arabia.
You’re right, alwyn: Venezuela should have diversified long ago, and left the oil where it belongs. In the ground.
But the voracious superpower to the north would never tolerate that.
Whatever should be done in regards to Venezuela’s conservation strategies in the future, it’s certainly not Trump, Pence, Pelosi, or Pomposeo who have any rights to speak on the matter. Don’t they have enough pollution to sort out in their own country?
Hey Alwyn, I’m a bit of a swing voter 🙂
I didn’t know re heavy crude v’s light crude thanks for that, I’ve learnt something today, that should always happen 🙂
Wonder if the severe environmental effects has prevented Venezuela pumping out their heavy crude… or is it the cost of extraction?
“prevented Venezuela pumping out their heavy crude”.
I think TRP, just below, is spot on with the reasons for the cut in production.
ps. Sorry if I have misinterpreted your political opinions.
Alwyn, I think you misunderstand Cinny and Adrian. They’re pointing out the reason for the attempted coup, which is greed.
Oil production has declined under Chavez and Maduro, which is good for the world. If there is a successful coup, oil production will rise, which is bad for the world.
The reason for the production decline isn’t a commitment to green ideology, as far as I can tell. More to do with sacking most of the workers 15 years ago (they were relatively well off and anti-Chavez) and chronic under funding of the industry since. As you note, it’s not the best crude and is expensive to refine.
However, there’s a lot of it and the US has a President who doesn’t believe in climate change but does believe in money. So it’s easy to see where this is heading.
Talking of Venezuela, I read that a shipment of gold about to be loaded onto a Russian plane was stopped. That wouldn’t be Nicky-boy trying but failing to loot the remnants of the stunningly successful socialist economy, which has made nearly all Venezuelans equally poor, would it? Dear oh dear.
Important point from Allan Nairn – it’s not control of the oil extraction itself that the US wants, it’s control of where the profit from its sale ends up.
It’s about making an example of Venezuela for daring to direct some of that money away from the pockets of the local elites and US shareholders into social programmes for the poor. It’s about making it clear that any alternative forms of economic management wont be permitted. The Maduro government being (possibly) incompetent and corrupt doesn’t alter this underlying dynamic.
The US establishment really hates state oil company/state businesses/state banking revenues being used by socialist governments as
1. nation state functioning independent of the global private ownership capitalist profit market system challenge the TINA regime.
2. priority of the money for public education and health and housing demonstrates another way of organising distribition of resources.
Climate change and bizarre weather patterns are effecting weather, land and housing.
But the Auckland (and other) councils, environmental lawyers growing rich and the bovine environment court (that is just a rubber stamp to development no matter what the future outcomes are,) are just blithely allowing more and more building and resource consents without any risk assessment of what the liability of those consents are going to be in the future from climate change when you can have 43mm of rain falling in one hour in summer… they can’t even work out what to do, now it has happened.
We don’t just need more houses in NZ, we need SAFE livable houses that are designed to be immune to climate change, designed not to need remedial work from bad building work and not building on sites which are going to be at risk in the future and be unliveable!
The red zone in Christchurch for example was declined by the council to be built on due to earthquake risks, then the developers took the council to environment court and won, and then they were developed and destroyed in the earthquake. Didn’t see the council or environment court recovering that money from the developers who are able to litigate to build on unsafe land, then take the money, leaving all the devastation to future owners and ultimately the tax payer paid out.
Note the below is in Summer!!
“Forty-three millimetres of rain fell in the Waitakere Ranges in one hour, between 5pm and 6pm on Saturday. Compare that to Auckland Airport, where just 15mm fell over 24 hours.”
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2018/02/piha-flooding-causes-evacuations-damage.html
Piha flooding: ‘If it’s raining you’re terrified in your own home’ – Residents frustrated at further report delays
https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/381442/piha-flooding-if-it-s-raining-you-re-terrified-in-your-own-home-residents-frustrated-at-further-report-delays
“We don’t just need more houses in NZ, we need SAFE livable houses that are designed to be immune to climate change,”
Not sure if that is possible really.
The Piha flooding is highlighting very real issues. I’m so sorry for those people.
CC events will lead to no rebuild, and worse longer decision making processes as people protect their arse. insurance is gonna be hit and miss with a lot of misses.
There is plenty that can be done and much of the current gormless planning is making it worse especially in Auckland where planners allow properties to run over building to non permeable surfaces more often than not against the rules as a matter of course, (normally for additional parking), houses are getting bigger with more parking, more tarsal everywhere and trees and non permeable grass areas being removed constantly for more roads, and ash felt, (which is then dug up constantly every time someone runs a utility line or changes the pavements and roads which in Auckland is constantly dug up and modified and often for no real reason apart from someone got a lucrative contract to do it), destruction, etc…
There is absolutely zero point building badly designed houses that some poor home owner who has done nothing wrong is then forced to rent while paying a mortgage of a property that is unliveable while the developers and their ‘experts’ get rich on the process of NZ famous, overpriced and poorly designed and built buildings.
Even worse those same home owners are then expected to pay higher rates to pay for the developer/council/BRANZ messes like leaky building syndrome, all designed to increase inequality.
Then they decide to add that extra taxes for the ordinary person just in the last year in Auckland we have petrol taxes, new rates on the rates for new builds passed onto the owner which used to be paid by the devloper, fees if you rent our your house short term…. etc etc
That’s just last year new taxes in Auckland, what are they planning when the shit hits the fan with the next ‘leaky building’ lots with bad resource consents that they ‘relaxed’ while not building the affordable houses, and instead McMansions everywhere…
Absolutely. Design can go a long way to alleviating all sorts of concerns. Solar roofs to take pressure off the power grid and owners utility bills; rain gardens and roof collection to take pressure off storm water systems and water supplies; passive heating and cooling to take pressure off utilities and utility bills, and the health system; tree planting to lower the urban heat island effect, add aesthetic beauty, clean air, habitat, shelter, and food; aspect to utilise solar angles…
Instead we have a box aligned with the other boxes aligned with the road. A very expensive box. A box we need to plug into and pay for all our water, power and food on top of the exorbitant rents/mortgages. Many of these boxes are shoddy nonsense requiring large power inputs to be at all comfortable.
Many of these boxes are supermarket friendly, power company friendly, oil transport friendly, keeping you dependent friendly, and bank friendly.
People and environment friendly?
Wasn’t in the design.
100% support SAVENZ well honestly said.
The hopeless dosile ‘Environment Court’ is owned by the Corporate industry.
So it should be dismantled and the (PCE) ‘Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment’ must be givem more poower to change Government poicy before we are all ‘sunk’ opps – sorry for the pun!!!
We need CHEAP houses that cost less to repair/replace/insure.
@Gabby, I agree but that is not what is being built in Auckland, the opposite is being built and what the planners are consenting based on the political and economic and market driven ‘third way’ (aka Rogernomics/Kiwibuild/Thatcherism) models of building big houses for profit and then making the state pay in weird deals a premium and then still not delivering any houses worthwhile while selling/swapping off land into private hands .
Well the council don’t want cheap houses built. They’re happy to squeeze the poor until the pips squeak.
If you want weird weather patterns look at the flooding in Townsville right now. This time last we were up there and the place was exactly as per it’s usual name ‘Brownsville’. Dry and hot.
This year the monsoonal trough is way further south than normal, and the place is inundated. At one point they got 300mm of rain in 4 hours. And there’s forecast for the same conditions for another week:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-02-01/townsville-as-flooding-emergency-continues-man-missing/10768656
And in addition … a new record:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-02-01/australian-weather-hottest-month-on-record-in-january/10769392
Come on Red, it’s called “Clownsville, AJ Town” never heard of Brownsville. But mind you when I did the RAAF’s Combat Survival Cse, the Arid phase was cut short as we were barely making or producing a enough water let alone to survive on and Jungle solo phase was cut short for the lack of water as well. That was about 15yrs ago btw.
Yes it’s interesting that the Monsoon tough is a lot further Sth than usual and it arrived a mth and half late than usual as well. Darwin has recorded its direst Jan since records began. Parts of the Darwin rural area and out at my bush block, we are were just below the median level for rain in Jan and it’s even worst past Katherine and to the west towards WA.
Some Central and Nth Australia Cattle producers are already thinking of reducing their herds and other farmers are already thinking about reducing their crops and fruit because the lack of water from this years Wet season on current trends. If people down Sth and up here in Darwin are already complaining about the cost of meat, veggies and fruit? Then wait until after the Nth wet season, if fails to bring the rains and then it’s going to get interesting for a lot of people.
Its a well known thing that men seem to delay going to the doctor more that women do. The stark reality of the consequences of that became all to real yesterday when I was informed my best freind who isn’t even 40 yet has cancer. The mind numbing reality of that is the lymphoma growing on him was first noticed 8 months ago. He has other symptoms that suggests it’s spread that in themselves should have resulted in a doctors visit, but no. His partner even booked him in a month or so ago but he didnt turn up.
Why?
His childhood was crap, his father was absent, his mother was useless with kids to different dads and never worked a day in her life. He often comments about having to raise himself. He’s extremely paranoid about child abusers and wants to murder them all, so although he never says anything happened to him I’m suspicious. He failed completely in school, is illiterate. Witnessed his best freind standing next to him being shot dead by his brother as a teenager. A continuously drinking, sober alcoholic. Drug addict that like the alcoholism he has never been able to stop despite many attempts. Cigarettes and weed, that he can’t stop as well. His high is reckless driving, and motorcycle riding recently loosing his licence, again.
To me there’s just so many indicators of contempt for his own life, that the whole picture is just one of suicidle behavour.
That’s sad. If we want to get better functioning and mentally well people in NZ it helps if they are cared for and protected as children.
That is such a painful tragic life story DJ (4). Very sad indeed.
Evidence children need to be lovingly nurtured from birth and made to feel worthy throughout their lives.
Let’s hope your friend is able to access the means to address both his mental and physical health issues ASAP, before both situations deteriorate even further.
DJ, I am really sorry to hear about your friend. Life can be so unfair at times and he certainly has been landed with a very short straw through no fault of his own. I can understand him not going to the doctor. Many people do the same and put off doing so when medical problems occur. I have no doubt that he will be hurting emotionally at present, as you obviously are. Hopefully he is now getting some support both physically and emotionally through people such as the Cancer Society, local hospice services etc; but I am sure that you will be there for him and his partner etc, as only a best friend can be. kia kaha to you all.
Much love and support to your friend, his good fortune is having you in his life, well done for being there for him and not giving up on him.
Re motorcycle riding, it’s a way for him to release steam so to speak.
Has he got a dirt bike and safety gear?
Hard to lose a license off road, and blasting up and down steep dirt tracks is a hell of a rush. Just a thought….and it’s a heap of fun building jumps out of dirt and stuff. No idea if it’s possible to do such for him, just a thought that’s all.
Being proud of something in ones life helps so much, positive encouragement, support and a bit of direction is massively helpful. Least it has been in my experience.
It’s scary going to the Dr, sometimes we know in our minds what’s happening, but as soon as a health professional verbalises it, sometimes that is what causes the pain. Support person at the Dr’s visit maybe?
Fingers crossed this well being budget will bring the help that so many need.
PS… important for all to know the signs of possible suicide, I really think more people could help each other then. Mental health as a subject should be just as important as PE at school.
https://www.health.govt.nz/your-health/conditions-and-treatments/mental-health/preventing-suicide
I truly feel for you DJ.
Watching a mate in pain is amongst the hardest things to endure.
FWIW, I can suggest being there to listen when (and if) he wants to talk.
Just listening, don’t feel burdened that you must solve anything.
Best of luck mate.
DJW
You conveyed this story very well. I’ve encountered more than a few similar men in the same shitty place myself.
You nail it in your last para:
To me there’s just so many indicators of contempt for his own life,
And given this truth, why would it be surprising if at least some of these men then treat the lives of those around them with equal contempt?
I think a lot depends on personality as to how this contempt manifests; it can be inwardly directed as high risk or suicidal behaviour, or outwardly directed as abuse and violence toward others. The behaviour we can see is different, but the root cause is much the same.
The Dunedin Longitudinal Study said a lot about this; that depending on innate personality those children whom they term “poorly controlled”, who were also abused as children between the ages of 4 and 8, were the ones most likely to be in prison as adult offenders.
This response to a suggestion that dogs should be banned from beaches because they are harassing and killing vulnerable protected birds I think reflects the anomic,
uncaring, immature and irresponsible attitude of a majority of NZs, probably men particularly.
…. who was braving the inclement weather in Christchurch to take Reba for a walk along Waimairi beach, thought a ban would be a terrible idea.
“The dog catches rabbits but birds, we don’t really see a lot, seagulls stuff like that but I don’t think there’s a massive risk. The birds probably move somewhere else… let the dogs run.”
… – who was taking Izza for a stroll at South Brighton beach – was similarly unimpressed with the idea of a ban.
“Bollocks, pretty much. There’s very few birds nesting around this area. It’s a good call to try to save the birds and everything but as far as me walking my dog in the morning, yeh I’m not interested in anybody telling me I can’t.”
Ōamaru now rakes in thousands of tourist dollars every year thanks to the Little Blue penguins that call its harbour home.
https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/378218/call-for-ban-on-dog-walkers-along-coastlines-with-little-penguins
Just a little sexism there but I’ll let it slide.
Some mansplianing.
I’ve spent many long hours hunting possums with my now deceased dog Bud and in my youth with a duck hunting dog named Bear. If you think dogs can’t hunt out birds and do it by instinct you don’t know what your talking about. With Bear we could go into an area and off the dog would go. It would often return with a duck without us even having to fire our gun. Bud would naturally find Turkey nests, and flush pheasants.
What’s needed in these situations is a class where the dog is taught not to go near the Penguins. The same class as they do for Kiwi and dogs in the bush. So yes walk your dog on the beach. It’s good for the person and the dog but a simple solution exists. Do the class, get a tag on the collar, all good.
Or get together with Doc, dog experts and create a class.
Or, keep your dog on a leash in public.
“reflects the anomic, uncaring, immature and irresponsible attitude of a majority of NZs”.
Sure – and if you’re not like that you’ll be written off as ‘PC’.
The rot runs very deep now.
We perhaps need a new setting for being a decent, good NZer. I feel that I might look for the traits of the good tradesmen I have come across as I get my old car ‘up to speed’ for a wof. Some repairs needed and I know I am lucky to be talking to people who are honest, practical, helpful – good attitudes.
Then there are those working at the coalface helping people who are struggling to get above the poor conditions facing the low or no-waged who have limited opportunities. I put these at a higher setting of value to those with money who hand out little bits of charity when it suits. Or those who have jobs who stride around in the right clothes and a confident manner handing out advice and threats for non-compliance.
https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/reports/tswstudy/v2chap2.pdf
NZ is allowing 63 tonne laden weight trucks on our rural unsealed roads and all local roads an highways with no concrete under-bases setting us up for a financial disaster in future as we will go bankrupt paying for roads maintenance by pouring money down the back of Steven Joyce’s dream of a tar sealed NZ where trucks can roam everywhere.
US/Canada have reinforced concrete under-based roads to carry trucks up to 62.5 tonnes or 155 000 pounds weight.
The truth is out about our NZ substandard ‘soft roads’ that is unable to withstand the new heavier trucks now on our roads and the video shown demonstrates that when these 63 tonne trucks laden travel along our sub-standard roads such as all our regional and local roads the engineers capture the time that these roads just stretch and buckle and separate like a squashed orange on the road, causing the surface of the road to break into pieces that are then picked up by other truck tyres and removed from the road surface leaving the road with no tar seal so we are witnessing the wholesale wrecking of our roads by heavy laden trucks now causing us billions in costs to repair the road until inside three months the roads are wrecked again and needing new surfacing.
We must return to rail to use ‘train freight’ or go bankrupt.
https://www.tmr.qld.gov.au/business-industry/Heavy-vehicles
https://www.quora.com/Why-do-some-roads-have-a-weight-limit
The end game is to place reinforced concrete bases under the roads to carry the 63 tonne trucks and that is being done all over the world including US/Canada and Europe.
US/Canadian limits of truck weights on their roads with concrete under-bases are 33 tonnes to 62.5 tonnes or 80 000 lbs to 150 000lbs.
NZ is allowing 63 tonne laden weight trucks on our rural unsealed roads and all local roads and highways with no concrete under-bases setting us up for a financial disaster in future as we will go bankrupt paying for roads maintenance by pouring money down the back of Steven Joyce’s dream of a tar-sealed NZ where trucks can roam everywhere.
Single Axle, Tandem Axle and Gross Weight Limits
Fourteen States have a single axle limit greater than the Federal standard of 20,000 pounds on
the Interstate. Off the Interstate, 17 States have limits greater than the Federal limit and three
States are below the Federal limit.
Fifteen States have a tandem axle limit greater than the Federal limit of 34,000 pounds on the
Interstate. On the non-Interstate State system, 21 States have limits greater than 34,000 pounds and two states are below the Federal limit.
Four States have grandfather rights to exceed 80,000 pounds on the Interstate. On non-Interstate State highways,
18 States have a GVW limit higher than 80,000 pounds. Alternatively, five States have GVWs less than 80,000 pounds on some of their non-Interstate highways.
“Routine” Permit Limits for a 5-axle unit there are 28 different permitted maximum GVW limits ranging from 80,000 pounds to 155,000 pounds. The mode value (the value that occurs most frequently) is 100,000 pounds and occurs in seven States.
For any number of axles there are 25 different
maximum permitted GVW limits (the mode value is 120,000 pounds and occurs in ten States).
For single axles there are 16 different limits ranging from 13,000 pounds to 32,000 pounds.
For tandem axles there are 17 different limits ranging from 26,000 pounds to 64,000 pounds.
http://www2.ku.edu/~iri/publications/HighwayDamageCosts.pdf
2.1.1 Heavy-Vehicle Impact on Pavement Damage Commonly identified pavement distress associated with heavy vehicles can be characterized as fatigue cracking and rutting. On rigid pavements damage includes transverse cracking, corner breaking, and cracking on the wheel paths. Flexible pavements and granular roads are most susceptible to rutting. In all cases, cracking and rutting increase pavement roughness and reduce pavement life.
+1 cleangreen, not only is the cost of other’s paying for the trucks wrecking the roads when the trucks should have to pay to fix their destruction, there is also the problem of the congestion and length of time it takes when the maintenance people somehow manage to take months to fix up the roads.
Whenever you talk to anybody they despair at how the same roads are dug up again and again for maintenance while other roads are pot holed and not sealed or barely repaired…
It is not so much money in NZ but a culture of corruption and incompetence in that area. Shown by how Fletchers were so incompetent they lost money during the building boom, but expected to make up for their incompetence through road maintenance contracts that are so over priced that incompetent companies can keep going through the rorting of this lucrative activity throughout NZ.
If i had time I might think up a good verse to cleangreen’s comment “where trucks can roam everywhere”.
The best i can do off the cuff.
Oh give me a home, where truck’s do not roam,
And the kids can play anywhere.
Where seldom is heard
A discouraging word,
And the politicians
Come here and stay.
+1000 cleangreen….and Labour is doing…wait for it….nothing.
Excellent article and food for thought in particular the winning strategy of China to go from a low supply chain to a high value supply chain and BUY UP the supply as part of their success.
You can see how successful this strategy is in NZ where Chinese interests are buying up the supply chains here in particular in agriculture and natural resources like farms and water, and how NZ might be increasing our exports but are getting poorer as a country under our pavlov type ‘free trade’ which in NZ seems to be more about ‘thick trade’ than ‘free trade’. Who trades to get poorer and gives away in real terms natural resources like water and sand for a song, only to buy it back at extreme profit to an overseas firm?
NZ has moved the opposite way to China and going from a high value supply chain to a low value supply chain through government and official stupidity and lack of long term strategy here…
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2019/02/01/guest-blog-rod-oram-nz-in-internationalised-supply-chains/
“The next factor is that China’s role in this is changing fundamentally. There are some great studies on this. Not the least is one by Standard Chartered Bank some three years ago. China is moving incredibly fast, from being a source of low-cost components for other people’s value chains to being a relatively high cost country. For example, it’s far more expensive to manufacture something in Shanghai than it is in Michigan. So they are moving very fast to build up their own value and supply chains around the world, of which the high value part of the chain is in China. Surrounding countries like Vietnam become the low-cost suppliers. It is interesting to see the US starting to articulate how it’s trying to do bilaterals with the likes of Vietnam to try to disrupt that process. Clearly, this asymmetry of supply chains, whereby greater benefit flows to a few players and less to the rest, is becoming a more marked feature of international trade.”
To simplify things SNZ, it has been, & is, by and largely the buying up of private interests (mostly National networked ones) that have embedded themselves in the public sector areas.
That comes back to the lack of a systemic dynamic demand and supply NZ lobbying system. It’s probably a constituitional issue ultimately related to the integration of democracy.
The Chinese, while their internal demand and supply is extremely top down rigid, it is also very much a unified lobbying system when it comes to it’s external imperialism in contrast to say the corruption inherent in it’s internal communistic demand and supply against the dynamisms of it’s own markets.
I think the well being budget approach incorporates a good start to grappling with this issue’s systemics, in that it can organically start to remove the magic numbers of false wealth gains out of the system enabling a clearer picture to emerge of what is going on & which will create movement to co-operative solutions that are more democratic (see 2nd sentence) and thus having more relative strength about them.
We’ll be taxed for the Chinese loans borrowed to fix the roads ruined by raw materials bound for China. Win win win, for China.
We already pay much higher interest rates than China, and many of the other countries that we trade with are able to out bid Kiwis and have the advantage of lower interest rates. At one point they were taxing savings in Japan aka you had to pay to put money in the bank! Here in NZ, although historically low interest rates, it is still much higher in NZ than other countries have to pay for interest rates and probably easier to manipulate our currency being a small nation to maximise profits.
““An 82-year-old woman believes a trio of the unruly tourists scammed her out of almost $9000, claiming they would fix her roof but left a hole in her ceiling….
Leonard (the 82 year old woman) told Newshub that she recognised one of the three from the rowdy British tourist group when she saw photos……”
And now:
“Two British men are set to be charged with fraud by police investigating a series of alleged roofing scams in Auckland.”
Wonder if they were part of those pesky rowdy tourists?
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12199950
Maybe just put up a sign, scammers come to NZ, they can join the already full troops of arrivals in the courts… of course in NZ we tend to just take the losses and be grateful for any cash dished out from fraudsters and dishonesty operating here, in this case the person is offering to settle LESS than the amount owed.
Wonder why with people being better off with committing crimes it is continuing to skyrocket… and why our justice system does not seek to penalise clearly so send a message to other fraudsters…
https://courtnews.co.nz/2019/01/30/tax-bill-ballooning-to-1-3m/
Wonder how many other restaurants went out of business while those that got the untaxed meat profited…
The Herald and Stuff are publishing that the cost of tax creep in 2017 was $1.7B .
I am not sure this can be credible given the total income tax take is $30B and this is over 5%.
Fake news from our MSM print media, surely not?
Tax on other income at your marginal tax rate, interest, shares etc
You are right with your surly not , paranoid maybe about msm ?
Bridges said it would involve $650M in the first year, so why both the Herald and the Dominion Post mislead with the figure of $1.7B for last year is inexplicable.
Absolutely right even taking the $0.7B on offer this is pure sophistry by Bridges and people are buying it because the media are selling it as a “really good and ‘obvious'” idea. About 650k-700k will get $15 and likely lose a bit of WFF, those under $50k get about a paltry $2 per week but I doubt they realise this and if National follows through with its 2017 intention to remove the Independent Earners rebate of $10 per week they are far worse off. Just as are those who just sucked it up in 2011 when National took $520 per year back in Kiwisaver contributions, The “paper boys and girls” that the National Party imposed taxes on will get nothing.
In among all the bad news, here is an inspiring one. And very, very cool …
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-02-01/sofia-flying-telescope-occultation-chasing-shadow-titan/10635802
Definitely cool, but the link looks like they’re using some special ceremony to invoke Cronus back into existence 🙂
LOL … it does too!
Thanks RedLogix. A Brilliant presentation. The technology which allows such precision is vast. And Titan might be inhabitable?
With such high level science what is missing from the human condition which doesn’t seem to fully engage with the needs of our own planet?
Being identical macca?
And now openly exposed by Greenpeace as a purchaser of an unprincipled, turncoat opportunist for sale to the highest bidder, posing as a politician.
While unprincipled politicians like Shane Jones still peddle their influence to dangerous oil corporations and exploitative fishing companies.
Fears rise ‘world’s most dangerous glacier’ could be on the verge of collapse as NASA study reveals gigantic cavity two-thirds the area of Manhattan and almost 1,000 feet tall at base of Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica
Male no mistake, this is a make or break moment for the Coalition Government
Will the Prime Minister act, as she clearly must, according to the Cabinet Manual?
Or will she bow to corporate pressure, to let their hireling continue to peddle his poisonous influence inside the government and cabinet?
Will Winston Peters back the Prime Minister’s decision to expel Shane Jones from the Cabinet?
Or will Peters use this opportunity as an excuse to break the government?
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2019/02/shane-jones-in-hot-water-over-support-for-talley-s-accused-of-illegal-fishing.html
A serial offender
Make no mistake this is a fight for the soul of this government.
Who will blink first?
If Winston Peters decides to make a stand on behalf of Jones, will the Prime Minister call his bluff?
Will Jacinda Adern fight for her leadership?
And if necessary, in the face of Peters possible refusal to back down, threaten to put it to the country?
An election that in my opinion the Prime Minister would handily win, returning to the treasury benches with a weakened NZ First and a strengthened Green Party
All the cards are in the Prime Minister’s hands.
Will she play them, or quietly try to paper over the cracks only to have them blow apart at some later date when she is in a weaker position?
Will the Prime Minister concede, or make a stand?
Jones has to go, and Peters needs to accept it.
Even if Peters threatens to pull the house down, the Prime Minister must stand her ground, or be forever lost. Instead of the great leader she is otherwise destined to be.
Shane Jones. It doesn’t look good when looking at his work on fishing while in his new ministerial position. Cosseting fishing companies which are falling off their charts of legal fishing locations as Jenny has sat up late into the early morning documenting.
It doesn’t look good in Gisborne, when he organises more tree planting but the locals don’t see signs of better roads, and improved port facilities to handle present logs, much less those from the future of fast-growing radiata. (I put up comment about this.)
What a pity. All the practical men liked his no-nonsense manly style. An honest broker they thought. Someone who can see problems and bite them to size.
Looks like he is swallowing a rat instead.
Some Eco Maori Music for the minute.
Thank you Eco Maori, one of my all time favourites!
,
Here you go Whanau when a group of White Collar Crim,s are caught with the hands in peoples pockets stealing off people they are ASKED TO BE NICE TO THERE customer,s When A poor person blue Collar gets caught they get thrown in jail there right taken away the media kicks the story around for weeks and our minor cultures mana gets eroded away. I have told you its a illusion that the so called( professionail upper classes have the 97. % well being at Heart ) YEA RIGHT . We have to be viglant and make them KNOW we expect them to use the power of rule to treat all kiwis respectfully and that means stop ripping US OFF And stop letting there M8 OFF THE HOOK
They got away with it again.
Executives and board members of New Zealand’s life insurers will be quietly breathing heavy sighs of relief this morning, just as their colleagues in the banking industry did last year.
Many work for the same companies or are in partnership. And many know exactly what being exposed in public for their wrongdoing and punished in the court of public opinion looks like.
They only need to read Australia’s daily newspapers and watch the litany of sackings and share price slumps and public condemnation they see convulsing through the Australian life insurance and banking industries every day because of the ongoing Hayne Royal Commission into banking, superannuation and financial advice industries.
One New Zealand-based life insurer has been selling a life product to foreign customers, even though cover was only available to New Zealand residents. Another insurer incorrectly recorded customers’ dates of birth, due to manual errors, resulting in 30 customers being overcharged. That insurer is now in the process of refunding those affected customers, the FMA and RBNZ said without naming the company.
Another incorrectly calculated the impact of a consumer price index-linked premium increase by up to 30 times. In all, 223 customers were over-charged. That problem was discovered in 2015 but the insurer didn’t contact those customers, instead relying on them to complain. Three years after the event, that insurer had failed to remediate 111 of the affected customers.
The review found examples of insurers failing to cancel old policies when a customer transferred to a new policy and continuing to charge premiums on both policies. It found insurers which failed to notify policyholders of premium increases.
The FMA took the same approach to a review it released in July when it said three of the 11 life insurance companies were responsible for behaviour so bad that it was considering taking regulatory action against them. It turns out that after follow-up inquiries, the FMA decided further action was unwarranted. Again, we’ll never know what went on.
We are expected to wait and trust the FMA and the Reserve Bank will look after consumers’ interests in the quiet time after the report. Their past record is not inspiring.
Sunlight is the best disinfectant
It’s clear from reading the report that the FMA and the Reserve Bank are most concerned about the reputation of the industry and its financial soundness, rather than the interests of consumers.
Repeatedly, and as identified in this chart below, the industry has over-charged premiums and got away with unacceptable behaviour because its products are complicated and they can rely on many to just set and forget their policies.
Simply asking them to be nice won’t work. They are beholden to their own shareholders and the employment agreements that incentivise them to go for the highest profits in the shortest term. Only the fear of career-ending exposure, fines and prison terms will change that. Ka kite ano links below
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/2019/01/29/420889/another-big-fat-and-wet-bus-ticket
Eco Maori Video for thee above post.
Kia ora Newshub ecoli in the Waiarapa water doesn’t look good that’s why I say our society needs to respect Wai much more than we do.
WAR IS FOR NEANDERTHAL.they cannot even account for %25 of their War budget spending ??????????.
Towns villa flooding condolences to all the people who have been hit by the flooding.
Alcohol causes big problem for OUR society I read a article that stated that alcohol sugar and prosessed food cause more damage to our society than drugs there you go the 00.1 %.
I quite admire Indian culture for the way they care about their Wild life what’s a couple of humans compared to the Havoc that we rage against our wild life Eco Maori say any were else the leopard would have been KILLED.
That’s shocking that mother in Britain FGM cutting her 3 year old daughter genital the reason is beyond me.
Tracey is doing a awesome job looking after all those abandoned chihuahua dogs but that’s not for Eco the Mokopunas tire me out in 3 days.
Tutankhamen is a awesome Egyptian that culture shows Eco Maori that we have forgotten more great technology than we know that’s why we should all ways respect and houner Ones Tipuna. I seen a story that Egypt was a matriarch society back in those days
Racism is shocking all around Papatuanukue. Ka kite ano
Kia R&R The neanderthal alt right shonky don’t want common people to be able to stay at home a care and education our children. They want to keep the common people that busy just trying to keep the Waka afloat we have no time to see the cheating moves they make against us. It also limits our participation in elections. We had one parent at home to care for our tamariki but that was when times were much easier than at the minute. I know of people working long hours and are treading water. That’s why I Back Jim Bolger, s new employment laws and what do you know ECO MAORI cannot find the story on the Internet today a controlled society is what we live in.
Ka kite ano P.S Well Come back to the Internet SAMOANS Ki kaha Eco Maori Tau Tokos the greatest contribution Wahine give to our society’s
Some Eco Maori Music for the minute.
We have to change from $ to counting good stars as $ gives the evil people to much power to CRAP on OUR Papatuanuku. We only have ONE PAPATUANUKU
Who said that one group of people can make there wages hundreds times higher than the group that makes the money the majority and make our wages a pittance.
We are the majority in a TRUE Democratic society the laws would be made to be good for the many that is not happening so who is cheating in everyway they can the 00.1% are ripping the many off thats a FACT . Back Jim Bolgers new employment laws with all you have got Tangata whenua and minority cultures if you want a better future for te mokopuna,s
Jim Bolger: New Zealand’s low productivity to blame for poor wages
The Government’s been handed a set of fair pay guidelines to set minimum standards across an industry or occupation.
The working group report was headed up by former National Prime Minister Jim Bolger.
It recommends workers be able to trigger a fair pay agreement if they can reach a threshold of 1000 workers, or 10 percent of workers in a specific sector or job.
Bolger told Larry Williams that this was devised to help the working poor who are struggling the most by increasing their pay packets.
“We have more and more families relying on welfare even if they are in full time employment. The system allows them to be on very low wages even if they work a 40 hour week.”
He says that it’s not much different to how the minimum wage is enshrined in law.
Bolger says they never looked at compulsory unionism, which he scrapped when he was Prime Minister.
“We shouldn’t scare people on this. What we’re saying is there are issues out there, there are problems out there, why don’t we sensibly look at how we resolve them?”
He says they looked at multiple other countries for innovative ideas, but none of their models worked in the New Zealand, forcing them to come up with their own interpretation. Ka kite ano Links below
https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/larry-williams-drive/audio/jim-bolger-new-zealands-low-productivity-to-blame-for-poor-wages/
Speaker Nancy Pelosi stands with House Democrats to re-introduce the Paycheck Fairness Act. Photograph: Yuri Gripas/Reuters
Equal pay requires honest discussions
The gender pay gap, as every right-thinking person knows, is a feminist myth. Those figures you’ve seen about white women earning around 80% of what white men make, and black women earning just 61%, are probably wrong. And if they’re not, then, as many conservatives have pointed out, there are rational explanations for the disparity. Such as the fact that, as Jordan Peterson has explained, women are just more agreeable than men, meaning they don’t ask for more money. Which is a very agreeable explanation if you don’t want to confront structural inequality.
Women swear sometimes – let’s get the hell over it
Arwa Mahdawi
While many on the right insist the gender pay gap doesn’t exist, they also appear keen to block legislation that would strengthen equal pay protection and make it easier for employees to share wage information. Which would appear to be a contradictory position. As congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted on Wednesday “If ‘the wage gap is a myth’ as some allege, then workplaces should have no problem with workers disclosing our salaries with one another.
Ocasio-Cortez’s tweet followed a news conference in which she, along with other Democrats, re-introduced the Paycheck Fairness Act, which strives to close the gender wage gap by giving women tools to challenge unequal pay. For example, it would stop employers retaliating against workers who discuss their salaries with each other. The bill was first introduced in 1997, but has been repeatedly blocked by Republicans.
While the pay gap has narrowed since 1980, not much progress has been made in the last 15 years. Arguably, one reason for this is the lack of transparency around pay. Most of us don’t know how much our colleagues make, which makes it easier for companies to ignore the issue. Indeed, Lean In’s 2018 Black Women’s Equal Pay Survey found that 50% of Americans aren’t aware of pay gap between black and white women, and hiring managers are also ignorant of the disparity.Ka kite ano Links below. P.S Wahine deserve to be respected and all payed the same as MAN
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/feb/02/if-the-gender-pay-gap-is-a-feminist-myth-then-why-not-disclose-salaries
Kia ora R&R Waiata is a good tool that have many uses and one is to protest about injustices that have been dished out to Tangata Whenua O Aoteoroa for the last 250 years by the settlors .
The other use,s for maori is recording history boost ones mana and wairua mauri educate tangata unite tangata .
One could create a great tangata whenua waiata artist that,s is known all around Papatuanuku and one doesn’t have to invent the wheel to do this just be smart we have the tallent in Maori society .
The 00.1 % have made it so we are to busy to protest or to vote to busy rowing one own waka to servive and have know time to protest and they scrapped free education to stop that phenomenon.
Ka kite ano
Some Eco Maori Music for the minute.
Kia ora Newshub Townsville North Queens land has had extreme rain and flooding our scientists priditived that.
Ralph Northem should step DOWN from his Vigina governors office because of that old shocking photo of him in that racist yearbook. $100 million is cool for Maori business growth on Maori land but I still want to see Jim Bolgers new Employment laws that will deliver billions to the lower classes.
Nice one Stue Muir that’s a name of olden time in Aotearoa it’s cool you are regeneration the mangrove mash land that are the filters of the whenua on your farm land .
That’s a happy end to the story of bubbles the chihuahua being found an is safe and sound being returned to it owner in Hamilton hospital. Ka kite ano
Some Eco Maori Music for the minute.
Some Eco Maori music for the minute been studying history
A new study says that hydrogen fuel for vehicles and businesses is unlikely in the foreseeable future – in spite of Government financial support for private company research.
Simon Coates, director of Concept Consulting, said converting electricity or gas to power a fleet of hydrogen trucks would take more than three times more energy than using electricity and batteries.
His report was jointly funded by Contact Energy, the Energy Efficiency Conservation Authority, First Gas, Meridian Energy, Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment, and Powerco. “Most of the technologies involved in hydrogen production and use are mature and well understood, because they have been used at scale for many decades to support industrial processes such as synthetic fertiliser manufacture. Other hydrogen technologies, such as fuel cells, were discovered many decades ago but have not yet been applied at scale.”
The report said it may be possible to reduce hydrogen production costs during periods of low electricity prices, but this would require more renewable power stations to be built.
Almost three times more renewable energy was required to power a hydrogen vehicle than an electric vehicle, and approximately twice as much renewable energy was required to fuel a hydrogen boiler or heater, compared with an electric boiler or heat pump.
The report is available here Ka kite ano links below
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/110350993/cost-of-hydrogen-power-remains-biggest-hurdle-for-widespread-use-says-new-study