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
Hungary has been a virtual dictatorship for a decade now, as Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has gradually eroded its democracy. But now, its official, with the passage of an indefinite emergency law allowing rule by decree:Hungary’s parliament has passed a new set of coronavirus measures that includes jail terms for ...
While the economy is on pause under lockdown, the government is beginning to plan how to cope with the post-lockdown, post-tourism, post-export education world we will eventually find ourselves in. They're planning a lot of infrastructure spending as economic stimulus, and have asked for proposals which can start the moment ...
It's my distraction, setting up tiny scenes to photograph. I've got stuck on the Babushka dolls for now. Something about their bubble shape. Something about their never changing, smiling features, suggesting persistent equanimity. Can we get through everything that is being thrown at us and keep at least a tiny ...
. . March 31: Day six of living in lock-down… This time I managed to sleep a little longer and the alarm woke me at the pre-set time: 6.55am. Then remembered I was working a later shift and could’ve slept in. Oh well, there are things to do at home. ...
Image credit:Diamond Harbour School Blogs I notice a few regulars no longer allow public access to the site counters. This may happen accidentally when the blog format is altered. If your blog is unexpectedly missing or ...
Yesterday's Horizon poll showing support for a "Yes" vote in this year's cannabis referendum sliding into the majority for the first time in a year looked like good news for reformers – and it probably is. But the result warrants some scrutiny.The poll is the fifth in a series commissioned ...
For almost a week now, every one of us who isn’t an essential worker has been confined to their bubble. We are allowed to go shopping for groceries, to visit the doctor, and to get a bit of exercise if we stay local. The reason we are doing this is ...
The Covid-19 saga will no doubt produce many twists and turns for us before it is finally brought to an end. But one thing it has shown us – and what comfort it should bring us – is that our country’s government is in good hands. I am not thinking ...
In the absence of a vaccine or a cure for a deadly disease, staying home in your bubble is what you do, the concept is not new. To the best of my knowledge last time we did this in NZ was for polio, in the years before a vaccine came ...
The following statement was released on March 28 by the National Network on Cuba, a coalition of 40 groups, based in the United States. In recent weeks, Cuba has deployed hundreds of medical providers to over a dozen countries in Europe, Asia, as well as to their neighbors in Latin ...
This has been a terrible summer for Hector’s dolphins. The first indication was very low numbers of dolphin sightings during late spring and early summer. The Otago University Marine Mammal Research Team has carried out routine dolphin surveys at Banks Peninsula for more than 30 years. In all that time, ...
On March 17, Finance Minister Grant Robertson was quick out of the blocks with an economic rescue package to help businesses through the inevitable recession resulting from the coronavirus pandemic. Robertson had pulled together a scheme in short order that so far seems to have saved many jobs. In his ...
The purpose of the lockdown is to save lives, by reducing the spread of covid-19. We won't know if its really working for another week, but given the devastation that will result if it doesn't - 14,000 dead is the optimistic scenario - its definitely worth trying. But pausing the ...
. . March 30: Day five of living in lock-down… Woke up still in darkness. Alarm hadn’t gone off. Turn to radio clock; it’s a few minutes after 6am… I lie there in the dark, waiting to drift off to sleep… but it ain’t happening. Clock ticks over to 6.55 ...
The story of Les Gray, the public sector psychologist who told the truth about his use of cannabis and set off a storm, has a special place in the lore of cannabis reform in New Zealand.When Paul Shannon interviewed Gray for the 'Dope and Hope' issue of Planet magazine in ...
by Phil Duncan For Marxists, a key concern about social trends is their context – not just their causes, but why they happen when they do. Events and phenomena have causes, but they also are time or period-specific. While much of the left have capitulated recently to postmodernism, most notably ...
Since the lockdown began, we've all suddenly been reminded who the actually essential workers in our society are: not the people at the top who pay themselves the big bucks and rort the perks, but the people at the bottom they screw over and squeeze: cleaners, warehouse staff, truck drivers ...
Kia ora! As I've watched nearly all my remaining work vanish over the past couple of days, it has occured to me that one good way to keep me away from arguing with fools on Twitter all the time (in the knowledge that all we're really doing is processing our ...
Aotearoa New Zealand has committed to trying to extirpate the virus that causes COVID-19 from its shores. To do that, as a society we’ve moved to “Level 4”. That means adapting to unprecedented restrictions on our personal freedoms, particularly to our rights to move freely and associate with friends and ...
When the Prime Minister declared a state of emergency last week, she handed the police powers to enforce it. And almost immediately, we started hearing about heavy-handed, arbitrary "enforcement" by police who (at best) cared more about order than law, or (more likely) had no idea what the rules were ...
. . Lock Down: Day 4 – A photo essay with observations . March 29: Usual wake up routine as RNZ snaps on my radio-clock. Jim Mora’s voice slowly enters my conciousness; there’s talk of a second wave of covid19 taking hold in South Korea; the week in Parliament – ...
Yesterday, New Zealand recorded its first Covid-19 related death on the West Coast. Unfortunately this is unlikely to be the only fatality, with the virus now being found in every region of the country.However despite the significant danger, people are still unfortunately breaching lockdown rules.There’s really only one main very ...
Story of the Week... Toon of the Week... Coming Soon on SkS... Climate Feedback Claim Review... SkS Week in Review... Poster of the Week... Story of the Week... ‘Misinformation kills’: The link between coronavirus conspiracies and climate denialGrist / Rob Kim / Stringer / CSA Images Scientific ...
The kids did surprisingly well today – meltdown count was about 3, and mostly fairly short ones. (And a fourth while I was writing.) Game-wise I had a go at Fell Seal: Arbiter’s Mark. It’s a fairly standard RPG with turn-based combat and what they call a “mature storyline” (it ...
by Don Franks Hi David, Nice hearing from you, I’m glad to hear you’re getting by okay in these grim times. You asked how’s it going for us back here in New Zealand. You would have heard that the whole country is locked down and with breaks for exercise and ...
. . Lock Down: Day 3 – A photo essay with observations . March 28: First day of the first weekend in Lock Down. It feels like it’s been weeks since only Level 3 was declared last Tuesday, only four days ago. Woke up this morning to RNZ; coffee; toast, ...
A chronological listing of news articles linked to on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week, i.e., Sun, Mar 22, 2020 through Sat, Mar 28, 2020Articles Linked to on FacebookSun, Mar 22, 2020In Just 10 Years, Warming Has Increased the Odds of Disasters by Chelsea Harvey, ...
I’m here in lockdown with my flatmate and her two girls (6 and 2) and it. is. a time. They’re usually really active so to start with the only boardgame in the house is the copy of Guess Who that the 6 year old got for her birthday. Flatmate commented ...
The CV-19 (COVID) pandemic has seen the imposition of a government ordered national quarantine and the promulgation of a series of measures designed to spread the burden of pain and soften the economic blow on the most strategically important and most vulnerable sectors of society. The national narrative is framed ...
. . Lock Down: Day 2 – A photo essay with observations . March 27 – Day 2 of our Strange New World. The Park and Ride near my suburb, usually filled with hundreds of vehicles, had just… four; . . Another drive into Wellington City on a highway nearly ...
Fortune's Children: Under extraordinary pressure, the leader of the Government and the leader of the Opposition will each show us what they are made of. Have they been blessed with intelligence, grace, wit, poise, toughness, empathy and humour – and in what measure? More importantly, to what extent have they ...
If you’ve ever had the misfortune of having to rent a property on the open market in New Zealand, which is one of the most expensive in the entire world, you’ll likely be keenly aware of just how arrogant and entitled landlords and their real estate agents can be.Unfortunately for ...
Society-wise, aside from the specific morbidity shall we say of the medically-oriented aspects of this COVID-19 crisis, what is unfolding before the world is in more than one way an instructive study of humanity and reactions to a high intensity, high stress environment in real time. Friends, we are at ...
Right now low waged and insecure workers are feeling the economic brunt of the looming #Covid19 Recession. In response legal advocate Toby Cooper* and hospitality and worker’s rights advocate Chloe Ann-King, are putting together a series of legal blogs about your employment rights:In this legal blog we outline some ...
by Equipo Jurídico Pueblos and Gearóid Ó Loingsigh (25/03/2020) An escape plan in question On the night of March 21st and the early morning of the 22nd, the forces of the Colombian state stormed into the Modelo prison in Bogotá, murdering 23 prisoners and injuring 83, in response to the ...
When the government banned semi-automatic weapons in response to a terrorist atrocity, gun-nuts were outraged. Mired in toxic American gun culture, they thought owning weapons whose sole purpose was killing people was some sort of "constitutional right", a necessity for "defending themselves" against the government. Now, the Court of Appeal ...
Just before midnight on Wednesday March 25, Aotearoa New Zealand entered a countrywide alert level four lockdown. For at least the next four weeks, everyone who isn’t an essential worker is confined to their bubble. We are doing this to stop the explosive growth in people contracting and dying from ...
. . Lock Down: Day 1 – A photo essay with observations . Day one of the Level 4 nationwide lock-down (or, DefCon 4 as I sometimes cheekily call it) started at 11.59PM on 25 March. For a moment, most of the nation held it’s collective breath. In that brief ...
Broad, Sunlit Uplands: How those words fired my young imagination! Or, perhaps, it is more accurate to say: how those words fused, in my young mind, with the image printed on every packet of Fielder’s Cornflour. Always fascinated by history, especially modern history, I cannot hear Churchill’s wonderfully evocative words, even ...
. . 24 March 2020 9.46AM Number of covid19 cases in Aotearoa New Zealand: 102 . As of 11.59 on Thursday, most of New Zealand will go into “lock down”. People will be expected not to travel to work; not to socialise; and to stay home. I will not be ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections A respected research group, Project Drawdown, finds that deploying solutions consistent with meeting the Paris climate targets would cost tens of trillions of dollars globally. But crucially, those outlays would also yield long-term savings many times larger than the up-front costs. The new 2020 Drawdown ...
It will pass. What happens next? Not immediately, but longer term. There are many opinions, fewer certainties. Will it “change everything!” as many confidently, and contradictorily predict? In this post I look at how foresight can help bound some of the uncertainties so you can more objectively consider the future. ...
We’ve been meaning t write something on Cuba and the coronavirus but have just discovered a very good article on the subject in the US left publication Jacobin. The article looks at how Cuba, a poor country but one where capitalism has been done away with, is leading the way ...
In 2018, El Shafee Elsheikh and Alexanda Kotey - two British citizens who had purportedly been stripped of their citizenship by the British government - were captured while fighting for Isis in Syria. The British government then conspired to hand them over to the US, and agreed to provide evidence ...
Transformers: The disaster of the Great Depression was transformed into a new and fairer society by the democratic socialism of the First Labour Government. The disaster of the Covid-19 Pandemic offers a similar transformative possibility to the Labour-NZ First-Green Government. Seize the time, Jacinda! You will never have a better ...
Tamper with The System? Well, we already are. But there's a difference between accidentally trickling sand into a precision gearbox versus formulating a plan to alter it on the fly with improvements in mind. One action is more or less innocently unscrupulous, the other amenable to earning an easy ...
Associate Prof George Thomson, Louise Delany, Prof Nick WilsonWhile it is possible that New Zealand can use intense public health controls to eradicate COVID-19 from the country – we must also plan for other scenarios where thousands of New Zealanders are sick – including many urgently hospitalised.1 Better resilience ...
Kia ora my name is Chloe Ann-King* and I am the founder of Raise the Bar, a campaign and non-profit that gives free legal aid, advocacy and tautoko to hospitality workers in Aotearoa. Right now all over our country hospo workers are being fired at will, having shifts cut or being ...
We're about to do something unprecedented as a nation. We hope that by taking this extraordinary action before a single life in New Zealand has been lost to the deadly novel virus we will save tens of thousands of lives. Our lives. We'll do it together, in households, in isolation ...
“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens.”So writes the author of Ecclesiastes, a book in the Old Testament that’s counted as a ‘wisdom’ book and written as if by an unnamed king of Jerusalem. But who would have thought there would be a time ...
I was surprised when the prime minister described the Economic Response to Covid-19 package as the ‘largest peacetime government spend in New Zealand's history’. Reflecting – checking through history – I realised that the term ‘spend’ was crucial and the package had no income tax cuts. Even so, it has ...
Years ago the Argentine sociologist Carlos Weisman wrote a book titled “Living within our Means.” It was a critique of Argentine society that focused on the paradoxical question of why, in a land of plenty, there was so much economic instability, inequality, corruption and political turmoil. His conclusion was basically ...
Parliament will be leading by example and adjourning tomorrow after a special sitting to consider an epidemic notice and state of emergency. Day-to-day oversight of the government will be delegated to a select committee. But that's not the only overight mechanism. The OIA will still be law, and (so far) ...
Michael Baker, University of OtagoOverjoyed. That’s not a word epidemiologists normally use, but that’s how I felt after hearing Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s announcement about New Zealand’s COVID-19 shutdown of everything except essential services for at least four weeks from midnight on Wednesday. More than anything, I just ...
How much homelessness is caused by house hoarding? We're about to find out. The pandemic has destroyed tourism, which means that house hoarders who put their hoarded properties up as short-term tourist rentals are now offering them on the ordinary rental market:Property investors are pulling properties from Airbnb to offer ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Bruce Lieberman It seems like such a simple, straightforward, empowering idea: plant trees – a lot of trees – all over the world, and watch the planet’s temperature fall. Who doesn’t love a tree or two, even far more – the right ...
According to Newshub, Simon Bridges is open to joining a “grand coalition” with Labour as we hunker down to go into a month long lockdown. The idea is sound. Before now, the role of the opposition was to scrutinise and oppose. In the context of what almost amounts to a ...
Kia ora my name is Chloe Ann-King* and I am the founder of Raise the Bar, a campaign and non-profit that gives free legal aid, advocacy and tautoko to hospitality workers in Aotearoa. Right now all over our country hospo workers are being fired at will, having shifts cut or ...
We need to be lifting our game against COVID-19. You and I need to help those working to prevent the spread of COVID-19 while they’re trying to lift the testing and treatment efforts. We don’t want to be playing this game running backwards. Best to play it solidly forward, from ...
Prof Tony Blakely, Prof Michael Baker, and Prof Nick WilsonThe NZ Government must do more to clearly articulate its COVID-19 strategy: eradication or ‘flattening the curve’ mitigation. But to do so means understanding the maths and ethics of both these strategies. In this blog, we adapt our work for ...
A few days ago I was starting to write something about the pandemic, which now seems unconscionable. It took the form of a letter to an agony aunt:“Dear Deidre, I have an ugly confession. I am quite excited by Covid-19.”This is how the piece went:“I’m not a psychopath, honest. Although the ...
Story of the Week... Toon of the Week... Climate Feedback Article Review... Coming Soon on SkS... Climate Feedback Claim Reviews... SkS Week in Review... Poster of the Week... Story of the Week... In Just 10 Years, Warming Has Increased the Odds of DisastersThe likelihood of extreme events ...
Last week, the government announced a $12 billion initial package to support people during the pandemic. Today, the Reserve Bank is buying government bonds - effectively printing money - to keep up the money supply during the crisis. Normally such moves would have the right apoplectic. Instead, the National Party ...
I am a pundit, somebody who opines and comments on the news. There are no real qualifications to punditry though having a rudimentary way with words and good general knowledge helps. That is one reason there is a constant oversupply of would-be pundits and why it is quite hard to ...
I recently encountered the following prescription from a Faculty of Education at a leading New Zealand University. At first I wondered if it was another product of the postmodern generator (http://www.elsewhere.org/journal/pomo/), designed to create gibberish in the postmodern form, but I’m told it is real: The “schooled” society: Towards the ...
The coronavirus pandemic has of course had a major impact on individual lives and on societies as a whole. But, long after the crisis has passed (assuming it does), we will begin to realise that its real and lasting significance lies in the lessons it has taught us, if only ...
COVID-19 has plunged Aotearoa New Zealand (indeed, the world) into territory that, while maybe not totally unprecedented, certainly hasn’t been seen during the lifetimes of most of us here today. Our borders are closed to non-citizens, we’re being told not to gather in groups of more than 500 outside/100 inside, ...
For the last few weeks, I’ve been urging you to prepare yourself, your family, business, and community for Covid-19. Now it’s time for real action. Yesterday the director-general of health Dr Ashley Bloomfield announced another 13 confirmed cases of Covid-19 in New Zealand, bringing our total to date to 52. ...
A chronological listing of news articles linked to on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week, i.e., Sun, Mar 15, 2020 through Sat, Mar 21, 2020 Editor's Pick Now Isn’t the Time to Forget About Our Climate Change EffortsTasha Tilberg, Lindsey Wixson, and Liu Wen photographed ...
by Jan Rivers The article has been corrected to show that it was Ewen MacAskill, former Guardian journalist and not Luke Harding who travelled to meet Edward Snowden with journalist Glenn Greenwald and filmmaker Laura Poitras. Some of the Guardian’s well-known journalists who did not sign the protest letter are ...
by Cultural Worker Late March 2020 amidst the virus. With gigs crashing and burning all around it was without much hope that I called a long standing rest home booking: “ Hi, I’m supposed to be entertaining at your place this afternoon – is it still on?” “”If you don’t ...
Whenever people demand real change from their politicians, we're told that "politics is the art of the possible". The implication is that change isn't possible, so we'd better just get used to the sucky status quo. But now that there's a pandemic, a lot of things we were previously told ...
New Zealand can emulate the success of the US after the Great Depression by exploiting our own resources to turn the economy around quickly, Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters says. Mr. Peters told Magic Talk that New Zealand has an opportunity to come out of the COVID-19 pandemic a "superior, ...
All 45 New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) personnel are either on their way back to New Zealand, or already in the country, according to Defence Minister Ron Mark."Twenty-eight personnel arrived back in New Zealand last week and are in isolation at the Royal New Zealand Air Force base in ...
The COVID-19 situation in New Zealand is moving fast - and to avoid what we've seen overseas - the Government's response must be to move fast too. We're committed to keeping New Zealanders safe and well-informed every step of the way. ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters is encouraging New Zealanders overseas to stay where they are amid the COVID-19 pandemic. "We are reaching a point where the best option for most New Zealanders offshore is to shelter in place, by preparing to safely stay where they are.” "This includes following the instructions ...
Rt. Hon. Winston Peters, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Foreign Affairs Foreign Minister Winston Peters is encouraging the tens of thousands of New Zealanders travelling overseas to consider sheltering in place, in light of COVID-19. “Since 18 March, we have been warning New Zealanders offshore that the window for flying ...
Ground-breaking law has passed that will decriminalise abortion and ensure women and pregnant people seeking abortions have compassionate healthcare. ...
The Green Party says that the measures announced by the Government today will help families and businesses to prioritise our collective health and wellbeing in the response to COVID-19. ...
As New Zealanders brace for a global downturn due to Covid-19, Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters says his Coalition Government’s rescue package "more significant" than any other he's seen around the world. The Coalition is to reveal a multi-billion-dollar stimulus plan on Tuesday afternoon designed to cushion the economic blow ...
We know some people are feeling anxious about COVID-19. While the situation is serious, New Zealand has a world-class health system and we’re well-prepared to keep New Zealanders safe. ...
Businesses can start applying to their banks for loans under the Business Finance Guarantee Scheme set up to support the New Zealand economy during the COVID-19 pandemic. “We’re moving quickly to protect New Zealand businesses, jobs and the economy during this unprecedented global economic shock,” Finance Minister Grant Robertson said. ...
Work is underway looking at measures to speed up consents for development and infrastructure projects during the recovery from COVID 19, to provide jobs and stimulate our economy. Environment Minister David Parker said the COVID-19 pandemic is a serious global crisis that will have a wide ranging and lasting impact ...
Advance payments will be made to transport construction industry contractors to retain the workforce and ensure it is ready to quickly gear up to build projects which will be vital to New Zealand’s COVID-19 economic recovery, Transport Minister Phil Twyford announced today. He said keeping the workforce required to build ...
The Government has tasked a group of industry leaders to seek out infrastructure projects that are ready to start as soon as the construction industry returns to normal to reduce the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, Economic Development Minister Phil Twyford and Infrastructure Minister Shane Jones say. The Infrastructure ...
Work to scale up the health system in preparation for COVID-19 was today outlined by Health Minister David Clark, as he reported back to the new Epidemic Response Committee. “We are well placed to contain the spread of COVID-19. We have taken early and decisive action at our borders, and ...
The Government is refining its COVID-19 essential business guidance to include the distribution of news publications for communities which are hard to reach. The Minister of Broadcasting, Communications and Digital Media, Kris Faafoi, said the move was in recognition of the importance for New Zealanders who might be harder to ...
Following the successful conclusion of the Building Partner Capacity (BPC) mission at Taji, New Zealand defence personnel are returning to New Zealand from Iraq, in accordance with the Cabinet decision made in June 2019, Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters and Defence Minister Ron Mark announced today. “New Zealand is very ...
The State of National Emergency to help stop the spread of COVID-19 has been extended for a further seven days, Minister of Civil Defence Peeni Henare said. The initial declaration on March 25 lasted seven days and can be extended as many times as necessary. “Since we went into isolation ...
New Zealand’s ability to go hard and go early in the fight against COVID-19 has been underpinned by strong Government finances and the growing economy heading into this global pandemic, Finance Minister Grant Robertson says. The Treasury today released the Crown financial statements for the eight months to the end ...
Health Minister Dr David Clark says 36 new intensive care beds at Christchurch Hospital’s new Hagley building are being fast tracked so they are available for treatment of COVID-19 patients. The Ministry of Health is working with contractor CPB and Canterbury DHB to enable access to the hospital’s ICU, ...
The Government has fast-tracked up to $1 million to help Air New Zealand move urgent freight to and from New Zealand, with the first flight to Shanghai leaving tonight, Transport Minister Phil Twyford announced today. Phil Twyford says it’s crucial that trade in vital goods such as medical supplies and ...
New Zealand will temporarily remove tariffs on all medical and hygiene imports needed for the COVID-19 response. Trade and Export Growth Minister David Parker and Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Kris Faafoi said today that the New Zealand Customs Service will apply tariff concessions to all diagnostic reagents and testing ...
Minister of Finance Grant Robertson has clarified that the changes to the wage subsidy scheme announced yesterday mean that employers should be passing on the full subsidy to workers, except in the case where the person’s normal income is less than the level of the subsidy. “We still want employers ...
Medical face masks from the national reserve supply are now being distributed to District Health Boards, while at the same time local production is being ramped up. Yesterday more than 640,000 masks were sent to DHBS – that is an immediate two week supply, with more to follow in coming ...
The Government has made modifications to the wage subsidy scheme to ensure people don’t lose their jobs during the national lockdown. These changes will soften the impact of COVID-19 on workers, families and businesses, and position them to exit the lockdown and look to recovery, Finance Minister Grant Robertson says. ...
Farmers whose herds were culled in response to the outbreak of Mycoplasma bovis will be able to minimise the tax treatment of their income in some circumstances. Revenue Minister Stuart Nash says Cabinet has agreed to change the law. It means farmers may be eligible to spread their income over ...
A $27 million dollar package, effective immediately, is being provided to social sector services and community groups to ensure they can continue to provide essential support to communities as we stay at home as a nation to stop the spread of COVID-19, Minister for Social Development Carmel Sepuloni announced. “At ...
“The guilty plea today will provide some relief to the many people whose lives were shattered by what happened on March 15,” Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said. “These guilty pleas and conviction bring accountability for what happened and also save the families who lost loved ones, those who were injured, ...
The Prime Minister is holding daily press conferences to update New Zealanders on the Government's response to COVID-19. Links to videos and transcripts of these updates below. These transcripts also include All of Government press conferences led by Director Ministry of Health's Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield. 25 March: Live update from the Prime ...
Frontline Police numbers have broken through the 10,000 mark for the first time in history as officers step forward to keep the community safe during the COVID19 lockdown. “Two Police graduations in Auckland and Wellington in the past week have been conducted in unprecedented circumstances,” Police Minister Stuart Nash said. ...
Urgent legislation has been passed to support the package of economic and social measures needed to recover from the impact of the coronavirus outbreak. “The COVID-19 Response (Taxation and Social Assistance Urgent Measures) Bill will cushion New Zealanders from the worst economic impacts of the COVID-19 outbreak,” said Revenue Minister ...
From tomorrow, Government support for farmers and growers affected by drought will be expanded and extended across the country, with access to Rural Assistance Payments (RAPS) available throughout the North Island, parts of the South Island and the Chatham Islands, Social Development Minister Carmel Sepuloni announced. “These challenging conditions have ...
Parliament has passed amendments to legislation that give the Secretary of Education stronger powers to act in the fight to limit the spread of COVID-19, Education Minister Chris Hipkins said today. “They are part of a suite of changes passed under the COVID-19 Response (Urgent Management Measures) Legislation Bill,” Chris ...
Canada, Australia, Chile, Brunei and Myanmar have joined forces with New Zealand and Singapore by committing to keep supply chains open and remove any existing trade restrictive measures on essential goods, especially medical supplies, in the face of the Covid-19 crisis. Trade and Export Growth Minister David Parker today welcomed ...
Immediate freeze on rent increases Tenancies will not be terminated during the lock-down period, unless the parties agree, or in limited circumstances Tenants who had previously given notice can stay in their if they need to stay in the tenancy during the lock-down period Tenants will still be able to ...
As New Zealand unites to lock-down in the fight against COVID-19, the Finance Minister is urging all businesses and workers to stay connected over the next four weeks. “We understand the extreme pressure many businesses are under right now. I know most business owners think of their workers as family ...
A State of National Emergency has been declared across the country as the Government pulls out all the stops to curtail the spread of COVID-19. “Today we put in place our country’s second ever State of National Emergency as we fight a global pandemic, save New Zealanders’ lives and prevent ...
Mr Speaker I wish to make a Ministerial Statement under Standing Order 347 in relation to the recent declaration of a State of National Emergency. Having considered the advice of the Director Civil Defence Emergency Management, the Minister of Civil Defence declared a State of National Emergency for the whole of ...
People needing to travel on domestic flights, trains and Cook Strait ferries to get home before the country moves into level 4 lock-down tomorrow night will be able to continue using the passenger services until midnight on Friday, Transport Minister Phil Twyford said today. Domestic passenger services, particularly ferries, have ...
The Government, retail banks and the Reserve Bank are today announcing a major financial support package for home owners and businesses affected by the economic impacts of COVID-19. The package will include a six month principal and interest payment holiday for mortgage holders and SME customers whose incomes have been ...
Minister of Transport Phil Twyford has today announced details of the Government’s support package to keep key air freight moving and ensure New Zealanders retain access to essential goods during the four-week level 4 lockdown. “The Government is working with airlines and air freight operators to ensure New Zealand’s key ...
New Zealand moved up to COVID-19 Alert Level 3 – Restrict New Zealand to move up to COVID-19 Alert Level 4 – Eliminate, in 48 hours Two-staged approach to give people and businesses time to prepare Level 3, from tomorrow Non-essential businesses must close All events and gatherings must be ...
Good afternoon The Cabinet met this morning to discuss our next actions in the fight against COVID-19. Like the rest of the world, we are facing the potential for devastating impacts from this virus. But, through decisive action, and through working together, do we have a small window to get ...
The Government is announcing significant further support for the economy, workers and businesses as the country unites to prepare for Alert Level 4 in the fight against COVID-19. Cabinet today agreed to remove the cap on the Government’s wage subsidy scheme, which will inject a further $4 billion into the ...
The Government is backing the Reserve Bank’s latest action to support the economy by reducing longer-term interest rates, meaning lower costs for businesses and mortgage holders, and a lower currency to help our exporters. The Minister of Finance has signed a memorandum of understanding and a letter of indemnity with ...
The Government has asked the Commerce Commission to take account of the exceptional circumstances created by COVID-19 when monitoring business behaviour in coming weeks. “The purpose of my request to the Commerce Commission is to make sure businesses can work together in ways that will allow them to provide ...
The New Zealand Government has temporarily closed its High Commission in Bridgetown, Barbados and its Embassy in Yangon, Myanmar due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “Due to the increasing scarcity of air links in and out of Bridgetown and Yangon, and the pressure COVID-19 is placing ...
Associate Health and Whānau Ora Minister Peeni Henare has today announced the Government’s plan to support Māori communities and businesses in the face of COVID-19. “Our Government’s $12.1 billion economic package will help many Māori whānau, workers and businesses, whether it’s through wage subsidies, income support and worker redeployment, or ...
The Government and the hospitality industry have worked together to produce guidelines to assist with managing and reducing transmission of COVID-19, Health Minister David Clark announced today. The guidelines developed between the Government, Hospitality New Zealand and SkyCity Entertainment Group, set out how the new restrictions on physical distancing and ...
Four stage Alert System for COVID-19 announced New Zealand moved up to COVID-19 Alert Level 2 – Reduce Contact New Zealanders over 70 and those with certain medical conditions told to stay at home as much as they can to reduce risk of contact with the virus Workplaces to implement ...
By RNZ News New Zealanders in their 20s are the age group with the biggest numbers of Covid-19 and are “the vector for transmission”, says Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Ardern has thanked NZ for its efforts, but says it is still too early to say if the level four ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kristy Hess, Associate Professor (Communication), Deakin University The coronavirus pandemic has spawned a lexicon of its own. We have had to quickly incorporate words like “self-isolation” and “social distancing” into our everyday language to navigate it. “Essential service” is another one. In ...
Analysis by Keith Rankin I was concerned to read last night that Greta Thunberg and her father almost certainly have Covid19; however, because of very restrictive testing criteria used in Sweden, they have not been tested. And I heard yesterday, on a Radio New Zealand news bulletin, a story about ...
Support services have raised alarm bells over the lockdown, saying it could spark more cases of family violence in New Zealand. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said this afternoon that nearly half of the $27 million allocated for NGOs and community ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicole Blay, Research Fellow – workforce, Western Sydney University The number of people going to hospital with the coronavirus is expected to rise, putting a strain on our health and aged care services and their workforce. Australian undergraduate student nurses and those ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Haiqing Yu, Associate Professor, School of Media and Communication, RMIT University China has gradually emerged out of its shadow of despair as the epicentre where the coronavirus pandemic started. Now, there is face saving required – as well as agenda-setting in the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephen Duckett, Director, Health Program, Grattan Institute The growth in COVID-19 cases in Australia appears to have slowed across all states, through a combination of tighter border control and spatial distancing. With the number of new cases each day growing at a ...
The third in our new series of charts, graphics and data-visualisations by Chris McDowall, covering the Covid-19 epidemic within New Zealand. We’ll publish the latest set each day on The Spinoff.This work is entirely funded by the generosity of The Spinoff MembersInformation about confirmed and probable cases of Covid-19 in ...
The Government must stamp out Covid-19 but also answer questions, writes David Williams OPINION: It’s a national emergency, almost all Kiwis are locked down, and all arms of government must work as hard as they can to find, stamp out and eradicate Covid-19. But that doesn’t absolve those taxpayer-paid bureaucrats and ...
Paengawhāwhā (April) also known as Kaipō or Whetūkaupō (Deneb star) is the eleventh month of the Māori year and is a productive time. Get planting!Kia ora e te whānau, ngā mihi mahana o te marama a Paengawhāwhā.March and August are often our most challenging lunar cycles from my observation, and ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Martina Doblin, Senior Research Fellow, Plant Functional Biology & Climate Change, University of Technology Sydney As the climate warms, the land we use for growing energy-intensive crops such as wheat and corn is becoming less productive. We need to find ways to ...
Helping Low Income Families cope in this time of crisis is critical to their survival says Peter Malcolm Spokesperson for Income Equality Aotearoa NZ Inc—“Closing the Gap” Families on low incomes need and deserve all the financial help they can ...
With neither a bang nor barely a whimper, barely one week ago New Zealand put being a long established and respected Parliamentary democracy on hold to become a virtual Police state in the ongoing fight against Covid-19, writes Peter Dunne We have settled into a life regime more restrictive ...
Almost a week into the level four lockdown and people are probably starting to feel a little cooped up. To help with this, some subscription services and brands have begun to make their products temporarily free. Here are just some of the things currently on offer.For those with the privilege ...
Life and health insurers are trimming their policy offerings in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, because some risks linked to the virus are deemed too great. Partners Life founder and risk expert Naomi Ballantyne said it was important consumers knew what they were covered for, particularly if they were ...
Life and health insurers are trimming their policy offerings in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, because some risks linked to the virus are deemed too great. Partners Life founder and risk expert Naomi Ballantyne said it was important consumers knew what they were covered for, particularly if they were ...
The housing market continued to perform well through the pre-lockdown period, with properties in all 16 major centres growing in value for the fourth consecutive month. The QV House Price Index data rose 6.1 percent in the year to March, with the average house price rising to $728,276. However, last ...
The District Court continues to operate during the AlertLevel 4 period to deal with priority proceedings as the need arises. For this purpose, there will be District Court Judges and Ministry of Justice staff available. The Chief District Court Judge ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robert Breunig, Professor of Economics and Director, Tax and Transfer Policy Institute, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University How would you feel if you were having a Zoom meeting with your accountant and they asked “how would you like to ...
Kathmandu has moved to strengthen its finances to counter the impact of the Covid-19 virus. The outdoors clothing retailer will raise $207 million through a sale of new shares, some of which will go to large investment funds, with the balance offered to existing shareholders. Group chief executive Xavier Simonet ...
The country's banks are likely to take a significant hit to their profits from the Covid-19 virus, according to a new report. Business advisory firm KPMG's latest quarterly Financial Institutions Performance Survey for the final three months of last year showed bank profits had already fallen nearly 7 percent, $1.1 ...
Child Poverty Action Group applauds the Prime Minister's move to go hard and early to curb the spread of Covid-19. And we believe the Government needs to take the same approach when it comes to supporting those doing it tough during this ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By C Raina MacIntyre, Professor of Global Biosecurity, NHMRC Principal Research Fellow, Head, Biosecurity Program, Kirby Institute, UNSW Editor’s note: this is an edited version of a paper written in late March to outline the rationale for a short, sharp lockdown. The full ...
Anna Rawhiti-Connell's ode to Director-General Ashley Bloomfield - the balm for our furrowed brows When children ask me what I did during the great pandemic of the 2020s, I will tell them I participated in idolatry so egregious that the Golden Calf would’ve blushed a dusky shade of metallic rose. Every ...
The Single Object is a series exploring our material culture, examining the meaning and influence of objects that surround us in everyday life. Artist Bronwyn Holloway-Smith shares her obsession with the 30,000km long Southern Cross Cable that connects New Zealand to the internet and the rest of the world, and ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Stephanie Collins, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Australian Catholic University To the young and healthy, our new “social distancing” rules may look unnecessarily draconian. If you’re in a demographic that’s low risk for coronavirus, it may be difficult to see the benefit of ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dr Mette Hotker, Lecturer in Social Planning, RMIT University Most Australians know you never end up winning on the pokies. What Australians might not know is that the odds of winning a case against a poker-machine proposal in their local neighbourhood are ...
Sports journalist Jim Kayes was a weekend host for the canned Radio Sport channel - and reckons its demise and cuts to sports reporting nationally can in part be put down to snobbery and neglect. It was never my plan to cover sport but a busted knee saw it happen. ...
The number of Māori academic staff remains disproportionately low at New Zealand universities. Simon Day spoke to three newly appointed Māori professors at the University of Otago about why putting te ao Māori at the centre of their work is so important. Māori participation in tertiary education is steadily increasing. According ...
Wellington, 1 April - Rushing to deal with new vaping legislation during an unprecedented economic lockdown is not just folly, it is anti-democratic, according to a public submission by the New Zealand Initiative. While most businesses and public services ...
As the Covid-19 pandemic takes its toll on the New Zealand economy, Greenpeace is pushing back on industry lobbyists and politicians arguing for weakening and delaying environmental protections. The environment group says that now more than ever, we ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Craig Jeffrey, Director and CEO of the Australia India Institute; Professor of Development Geography, University of Melbourne Last week, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a 21-day lockdown for India’s 1.3 billion people. With just four hours’ notice, the government instructed everyone to ...
In the new series Final Mix, music journalist Yadana Saw chats with local musicians and listens to their latest tracks in the ultimate testing ground: the car. The first episode is with cross-Atlantic country maven Tami Neilson.“There’s before, and then there’s after.”It’s a prophetic lyric on Tami Neilson’s new album ...
With broader testing criteria coming into place, the Government is expecting to discover more Covid-19 cases within the community, Marc Daalder reports The Ministry of Health admitted on Wednesday afternoon that it was likely missing cases of Covid-19 spreading within the community because testing criteria were too narrow. "We still ...
The New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union is slamming today’s announcement of $25 million — $10 million for local iwi groups and $15 million for Whānau Ora providers — and says that funding based on skin colour at a time when the nation needs to come ...
How is Covid-19 spreading within the country? Newsroom is collating information as it's available to paint a picture of what's happening. There were 61 new cases of Covid-19 in New Zealand today, up from the previous day's 58 new cases. Details of how many tests have been completed are now being ...
A non-profit group is signing up qualified health professionals - retired, out of the workforce or part-time - to join a kind-of Home Guard to fill areas of need in the health system during the pandemic. As we enter week two of the Level 4 Covid-19 alert, we need to preserve ...
Join Leonie Hayden as she works through the first four weeks of Scotty Morrison’s Māori Made Easy.Rāapa/WednesdayToday we’re practising our pronunciation of the letter ‘r’ and in order to do that, we’re going to practise Māori place names. These are probably the words we’ve been taught to pronounce incorrectly the most, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Matthew Kearnes, Professor, Environment & Society, School of Humanities and Languages, UNSW Public health messages about COVID-19 have been inconsistent and changed rapidly. Many have called for a unified source of expertise to guide responses to the crisis. However, with the federal, ...
Tim Pankhurst, chief executive of Seafood NZ and former leading newspaper editor, retires this week after 48 years in the workforce. He looks back on a final week like no other. A week ago before the world changed we were fishing at dawn on the shore of the Rangaunu Harbour ...
MPs and economists are calling for greater transparency on the use of welfare and business subsidies, as the Finance Minister outlines the economic challenge ahead for New Zealand.The financial fallout from the coronavirus pandemic is set to be markedly worse for New Zealand than that from the global financial ...
OPINION:By Laurens Ikinia A sad story has taken place again in the PT Freeport Indonesia gold and copper mine area near Timika in West Papua on Monday with one New Zealander shot dead and seven other workers being severely wounded as reported by Asia Pacific Report yesterday. As ...
The Taxpayers’ Union is welcoming the comments from Finance Minister Grant Robertson, and National Party MP Gerry Brownlee, calling on councils across New Zealand to look at their books and see what is possible to reduce the rates burden on New Zealanders. ...
What are you going to be watching in April? The Spinoff rounds up everything that’s coming to streaming services this month, including Netflix, Lightbox, Amazon Prime, Disney+, Apple TV+, Neon and TVNZ OnDemand.Click here to read our listings from March.The BiggiesRun (Season 1 on Neon weekly from April 13)I’m calling it: ...
As millions of Kiwis stay home, power companies say Covid-19 hasn't factored into their annual power price changes, the majority of which kick in on April 1. ...
In these testing times, we’re all spending a fair amount of time on our phones and computers. Here are some simple ways to make that time safer for yourself.As if we weren’t all indoors on our phones enough already, Covid-19 is ensuring that our screen time is going to be ...
As the new season of Kirstie and Phil’s Love It or List It drops, Tara Ward investigates how the gurus can help us with our own interpersonal property dilemmas.We’re approaching the second week of national lockdown, and it’s about now that many of us will begin to have the “love ...
The outside is telling us, ‘I could do that again whenever I wanted. You think about that.’ Read more Lockdown letters here.‘When I’m being a badger I live in a hole and eat earthworms,” the nature writer Charles Foster wrote. “When I’m being an otter I try to catch fish ...
The government is doubling the amount it plans to borrow for the current financial year to pay for its various Covid-19 rescue and support packages. ...
Across the United States the concert halls and theatres are silent. Broadway has shut down. The mighty 3800-seat Metropolitan Opera House is in lock-down. Actors, opera stars and choruses, musicians are on furlough if they are lucky. But the best shows in town remain: the midday news conference by News ...
The Sensible Sentencing Trust (SST) are in absolute shock at the early release of multi-millionaire child sex offender Martin Lawes, after only a mere 18 months into his 4 year and 6 month jail term. SST National spokesperson Jess McVicar said the ...
Our Covid-19 gifs are now available in te reo Māori. Spread the word (while staying at home).The suite of excellent illustrations and gifs created by microbiologist Siouxsie Wiles and illustrator Toby Morris have had an undeniable impact during the Covid-19 crisis. They offer clear communication of sometimes complex concepts, and ...
The Taxpayers’ Union is calling on the Wellington City and Wellington Regional Councils to freeze the funding of their economic and tourism promotion agency after its ill-judged “We Wellington” campaign - wasting tens of thousands in ratepayer ...
Lotta Dann reflects on staying sober in the midst of a global crisis, and shares some advice for those who are looking to cut back. If you’ve seen the endless news reports and social media posts about alcohol, you’d be forgiven for thinking all New Zealanders are drinking away their days ...
Editor’s Note: Here below is a list of the main issues currently under discussion in New Zealand and links to media coverage.New Zealand Parliament Buildings, Wellington, New Zealand.Today’s contentPublic health strategy Derek Cheng (Herald): Lockdown ‘not enough’, top professor tells Govt video conference Derek Cheng (Herald): Just when you ...
Spending through Paymark dropped more than 70 per cent on the first day of lockdown, and remained at record low levels through the week to Sunday, March 29. ...
Trump sees 100k US deaths as "very good job" as better than initial forecast of 2.2m; US deaths overtake 9/11; Eight percent of over 50s need hospitalisation. Peter Bale wraps the Covid-19 news overnight.The "deathalyser" keeps climbing: The evil mathematical simplicity of the exponential nature of the novel coronavirus plays out ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amanda Gearing, Journalist, author, broadcaster, Queensland University of Technology I’m trying to work out what to do before I end up in a body bag but that seems unavoidable right now. This was one of the first replies this month ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marissa Parrott, Reproductive Biologist, Wildlife Conservation & Science, Zoos Victoria, and Honorary Research Associate, BioSciences, University of Melbourne Tree kangaroos are so unusual that when Europeans first encountered them in Australia in 1872, they were sceptical. Who would believe a kangaroo could ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Luke Zaphir, Researcher for the University of Queensland Critical Thinking Project, The University of Queensland With the COVID-19 pandemic causing a great deal of anxiety, we might come to think people are irrational, selfish or downright crazy. We see people showing up ...
Since late 2019, the world has been fighting the coronavirus disease (COVID-19). In response to the pandemic, governments around the world have been using data and technology in their efforts to contain the spread of the virus. Access Now puts forward ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Warwick Smith, Research economist, University of Melbourne Understandably, given we are in a crisis, the government has baulked at including superannuation contributions in the A$140 billion worth of $1,500 per fortnight wage top-ups it will be directing to six million Australians. As ...
Business confidence and retail sales collapse as lockdown begins; Infrastructure NZ sees 30 percent of jobs lost in 6 months; Kathmandu shares haltedSurvival mode:ANZ’s latest business confidence survey made for grim reading. The bank said there was very little that was positive in the survey as businesses switch ...
Good morning and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Government approach to testing faces serious scrutiny, second Queenstown nurse tests positive, and PM rejects curfew call.The government’s approach to fighting the Covid-19 outbreak has faced a robust bout of scrutiny, both from MPs and experts. It only took one sitting ...
Government could enter the construction market in a way not seen in several generations, Dileepa Fonseka reports Ministers are rushing to prevent the country's construction sector hollowing out under lockdown. However, they've also admitted the state's role in construction will massively expand in a way unheard of in several generations. That could include turning Crown Infrastructure ...
Jacinda Ardern says New Zealand is willing to help thousands of people from overseas get back to their own countries, but doing it under lockdown may take a bit longer. ...
Auckland GP Himali McInnes makes a plea for anyone needing medical care to call their doctor.Last week, I wrote of the Covid-induced frenzy in our general practise waiting roomin Three Kings, Auckland. Anxiety flurried in and out, bringing on its coat-tails the marginally unwell. Patients avoided eye contact ...
For all The Spinoff’s latest coverage of Covid-19 see here. Read Siouxsie Wiles’s work here. New Zealand is currently in alert level four. The country is shut down, apart from essential services. For updated official government advice, see here.The Spinoff’s coverage of the Covid-19 outbreak is funded by The Spinoff Members. To support this work, join The ...
Open Mike 01/02/2019 
46 Articles Physical science of global warming & effects Global response of evapotranspiration ratio to climate conditions and watershed characteristics in a changing environment Greenhouse effect: the relative contributions of emission height and total absorption Observations & observational methods of global warming & effects Climate change induced a ...3 hours ago
Hungary has been a virtual dictatorship for a decade now, as Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has gradually eroded its democracy. But now, its official, with the passage of an indefinite emergency law allowing rule by decree:Hungary’s parliament has passed a new set of coronavirus measures that includes jail terms for ...5 hours ago
It's my distraction, setting up tiny scenes to photograph. I've got stuck on the Babushka dolls for now. Something about their bubble shape. Something about their never changing, smiling features, suggesting persistent equanimity. Can we get through everything that is being thrown at us and keep at least a tiny ...9 hours ago
. . March 31: Day six of living in lock-down… This time I managed to sleep a little longer and the alarm woke me at the pre-set time: 6.55am. Then remembered I was working a later shift and could’ve slept in. Oh well, there are things to do at home. ...10 hours ago
Image credit: Diamond Harbour School Blogs I notice a few regulars no longer allow public access to the site counters. This may happen accidentally when the blog format is altered. If your blog is unexpectedly missing or ... 11 hours ago
For almost a week now, every one of us who isn’t an essential worker has been confined to their bubble. We are allowed to go shopping for groceries, to visit the doctor, and to get a bit of exercise if we stay local. The reason we are doing this is ...12 hours ago
The Covid-19 saga will no doubt produce many twists and turns for us before it is finally brought to an end. But one thing it has shown us – and what comfort it should bring us – is that our country’s government is in good hands. I am not thinking ...13 hours ago
The following statement was released on March 28 by the National Network on Cuba, a coalition of 40 groups, based in the United States. In recent weeks, Cuba has deployed hundreds of medical providers to over a dozen countries in Europe, Asia, as well as to their neighbors in Latin ...1 day ago
On March 17, Finance Minister Grant Robertson was quick out of the blocks with an economic rescue package to help businesses through the inevitable recession resulting from the coronavirus pandemic. Robertson had pulled together a scheme in short order that so far seems to have saved many jobs. In his ...1 day ago
Yesterday, New Zealand recorded its first Covid-19 related death on the West Coast. Unfortunately this is unlikely to be the only fatality, with the virus now being found in every region of the country.However despite the significant danger, people are still unfortunately breaching lockdown rules.There’s really only one main very ...2 days ago
The kids did surprisingly well today – meltdown count was about 3, and mostly fairly short ones. (And a fourth while I was writing.) Game-wise I had a go at Fell Seal: Arbiter’s Mark. It’s a fairly standard RPG with turn-based combat and what they call a “mature storyline” (it ...3 days ago
by Don Franks Hi David, Nice hearing from you, I’m glad to hear you’re getting by okay in these grim times. You asked how’s it going for us back here in New Zealand. You would have heard that the whole country is locked down and with breaks for exercise and ...3 days ago
The CV-19 (COVID) pandemic has seen the imposition of a government ordered national quarantine and the promulgation of a series of measures designed to spread the burden of pain and soften the economic blow on the most strategically important and most vulnerable sectors of society. The national narrative is framed ...4 days ago
Fortune's Children: Under extraordinary pressure, the leader of the Government and the leader of the Opposition will each show us what they are made of. Have they been blessed with intelligence, grace, wit, poise, toughness, empathy and humour – and in what measure? More importantly, to what extent have they ...4 days ago
Society-wise, aside from the specific morbidity shall we say of the medically-oriented aspects of this COVID-19 crisis, what is unfolding before the world is in more than one way an instructive study of humanity and reactions to a high intensity, high stress environment in real time. Friends, we are at ...5 days ago
Right now low waged and insecure workers are feeling the economic brunt of the looming #Covid19 Recession. In response legal advocate Toby Cooper* and hospitality and worker’s rights advocate Chloe Ann-King, are putting together a series of legal blogs about your employment rights: In this legal blog we outline some ...5 days ago
Kia ora my name is Chloe Ann-King* and I am the founder of Raise the Bar, a campaign and non-profit that gives free legal aid, advocacy and tautoko to hospitality workers in Aotearoa. Right now all over our country hospo workers are being fired at will, having shifts cut or being ...1 week ago
According to Newshub, Simon Bridges is open to joining a “grand coalition” with Labour as we hunker down to go into a month long lockdown. The idea is sound. Before now, the role of the opposition was to scrutinise and oppose. In the context of what almost amounts to a ...1 week ago
Kia ora my name is Chloe Ann-King* and I am the founder of Raise the Bar, a campaign and non-profit that gives free legal aid, advocacy and tautoko to hospitality workers in Aotearoa. Right now all over our country hospo workers are being fired at will, having shifts cut or ...1 week ago
A few days ago I was starting to write something about the pandemic, which now seems unconscionable. It took the form of a letter to an agony aunt:“Dear Deidre, I have an ugly confession. I am quite excited by Covid-19.”This is how the piece went:“I’m not a psychopath, honest. Although the ...1 week ago
I am a pundit, somebody who opines and comments on the news. There are no real qualifications to punditry though having a rudimentary way with words and good general knowledge helps. That is one reason there is a constant oversupply of would-be pundits and why it is quite hard to ...1 week ago
COVID-19 has plunged Aotearoa New Zealand (indeed, the world) into territory that, while maybe not totally unprecedented, certainly hasn’t been seen during the lifetimes of most of us here today. Our borders are closed to non-citizens, we’re being told not to gather in groups of more than 500 outside/100 inside, ...1 week ago
New Zealand can emulate the success of the US after the Great Depression by exploiting our own resources to turn the economy around quickly, Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters says. Mr. Peters told Magic Talk that New Zealand has an opportunity to come out of the COVID-19 pandemic a "superior, ...1 day ago
The COVID-19 situation in New Zealand is moving fast - and to avoid what we've seen overseas - the Government's response must be to move fast too. We're committed to keeping New Zealanders safe and well-informed every step of the way. ...4 days ago
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The scale of what we face right now is unlike anything we have ever seen before. Overcoming it is our common purpose. ...1 week ago
Businesses can start applying to their banks for loans under the Business Finance Guarantee Scheme set up to support the New Zealand economy during the COVID-19 pandemic. “We’re moving quickly to protect New Zealand businesses, jobs and the economy during this unprecedented global economic shock,” Finance Minister Grant Robertson said. ...4 hours ago
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brett Montgomery, Senior Lecturer in General Practice, University of Western Australia As of this week, everyone with a Medicare card is eligible for Medicare-funded telehealth. That means you can have a consultation with your GP, psychologist and other health providers via video ...1 hour ago
Support services have raised alarm bells over the lockdown, saying it could spark more cases of family violence in New Zealand. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said this afternoon that nearly half of the $27 million allocated for NGOs and community ...2 hours ago
The third in our new series of charts, graphics and data-visualisations by Chris McDowall, covering the Covid-19 epidemic within New Zealand. We’ll publish the latest set each day on The Spinoff.This work is entirely funded by the generosity of The Spinoff MembersInformation about confirmed and probable cases of Covid-19 in ...4 hours ago
The Government must stamp out Covid-19 but also answer questions, writes David Williams OPINION: It’s a national emergency, almost all Kiwis are locked down, and all arms of government must work as hard as they can to find, stamp out and eradicate Covid-19. But that doesn’t absolve those taxpayer-paid bureaucrats and ...4 hours ago
With neither a bang nor barely a whimper, barely one week ago New Zealand put being a long established and respected Parliamentary democracy on hold to become a virtual Police state in the ongoing fight against Covid-19, writes Peter Dunne We have settled into a life regime more restrictive ...5 hours ago
Life and health insurers are trimming their policy offerings in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, because some risks linked to the virus are deemed too great. Partners Life founder and risk expert Naomi Ballantyne said it was important consumers knew what they were covered for, particularly if they were ...5 hours ago
The housing market continued to perform well through the pre-lockdown period, with properties in all 16 major centres growing in value for the fourth consecutive month. The QV House Price Index data rose 6.1 percent in the year to March, with the average house price rising to $728,276. However, last ...5 hours ago
Kathmandu has moved to strengthen its finances to counter the impact of the Covid-19 virus. The outdoors clothing retailer will raise $207 million through a sale of new shares, some of which will go to large investment funds, with the balance offered to existing shareholders. Group chief executive Xavier Simonet ...5 hours ago
The country's banks are likely to take a significant hit to their profits from the Covid-19 virus, according to a new report. Business advisory firm KPMG's latest quarterly Financial Institutions Performance Survey for the final three months of last year showed bank profits had already fallen nearly 7 percent, $1.1 ...5 hours ago
Anna Rawhiti-Connell's ode to Director-General Ashley Bloomfield - the balm for our furrowed brows When children ask me what I did during the great pandemic of the 2020s, I will tell them I participated in idolatry so egregious that the Golden Calf would’ve blushed a dusky shade of metallic rose. Every ...6 hours ago
Sports journalist Jim Kayes was a weekend host for the canned Radio Sport channel - and reckons its demise and cuts to sports reporting nationally can in part be put down to snobbery and neglect. It was never my plan to cover sport but a busted knee saw it happen. ...7 hours ago
With broader testing criteria coming into place, the Government is expecting to discover more Covid-19 cases within the community, Marc Daalder reports The Ministry of Health admitted on Wednesday afternoon that it was likely missing cases of Covid-19 spreading within the community because testing criteria were too narrow. "We still ...8 hours ago
How is Covid-19 spreading within the country? Newsroom is collating information as it's available to paint a picture of what's happening. There were 61 new cases of Covid-19 in New Zealand today, up from the previous day's 58 new cases. Details of how many tests have been completed are now being ...8 hours ago
The Minister for Infrastructure Shane Jones, says building new roads could help address the looming unemployment crisis. ...9 hours ago
More questions were fired at top government officials in the second Epidemic Response Committee meeting. ...9 hours ago
A non-profit group is signing up qualified health professionals - retired, out of the workforce or part-time - to join a kind-of Home Guard to fill areas of need in the health system during the pandemic. As we enter week two of the Level 4 Covid-19 alert, we need to preserve ...9 hours ago
Tim Pankhurst, chief executive of Seafood NZ and former leading newspaper editor, retires this week after 48 years in the workforce. He looks back on a final week like no other. A week ago before the world changed we were fishing at dawn on the shore of the Rangaunu Harbour ...9 hours ago
MPs and economists are calling for greater transparency on the use of welfare and business subsidies, as the Finance Minister outlines the economic challenge ahead for New Zealand. The financial fallout from the coronavirus pandemic is set to be markedly worse for New Zealand than that from the global financial ...9 hours ago
As millions of Kiwis stay home, power companies say Covid-19 hasn't factored into their annual power price changes, the majority of which kick in on April 1. ...10 hours ago
Across the United States the concert halls and theatres are silent. Broadway has shut down. The mighty 3800-seat Metropolitan Opera House is in lock-down. Actors, opera stars and choruses, musicians are on furlough if they are lucky. But the best shows in town remain: the midday news conference by News ...11 hours ago
The National Party leader Simon Bridges, says quarantine and more testing are needed to eliminate Covid-19. ...13 hours ago
Spending through Paymark dropped more than 70 per cent on the first day of lockdown, and remained at record low levels through the week to Sunday, March 29. ...13 hours ago
Trump sees 100k US deaths as "very good job" as better than initial forecast of 2.2m; US deaths overtake 9/11; Eight percent of over 50s need hospitalisation. Peter Bale wraps the Covid-19 news overnight. The "deathalyser" keeps climbing: The evil mathematical simplicity of the exponential nature of the novel coronavirus plays out ...13 hours ago
Business confidence and retail sales collapse as lockdown begins; Infrastructure NZ sees 30 percent of jobs lost in 6 months; Kathmandu shares halted Survival mode: ANZ’s latest business confidence survey made for grim reading. The bank said there was very little that was positive in the survey as businesses switch ...14 hours ago
Government could enter the construction market in a way not seen in several generations, Dileepa Fonseka reports Ministers are rushing to prevent the country's construction sector hollowing out under lockdown. However, they've also admitted the state's role in construction will massively expand in a way unheard of in several generations. That could include turning Crown Infrastructure ...15 hours ago
Auckland GP Himali McInnes makes a plea for anyone needing medical care to call their doctor. Last week, I wrote of the Covid-induced frenzy in our general practise waiting room in Three Kings, Auckland. Anxiety flurried in and out, bringing on its coat-tails the marginally unwell. Patients avoided eye contact ...16 hours ago
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