With the Chinese economy looking like it is recovering a bunch faster than that of the United States and Europe, New Zealand needs a fresh wave of highly connected, wealthy, democratically-minded Chinese to immigrate here.
We should open our doors to those in Hong Kong who want to flee the brutal new Security Law that is requiring most of the human rights groups to shut their social media accounts, destroying the last vestiges of resistance to Xi Jinping's endlessly tightening totalitarianism.
Who knows, perhaps some of those pro-democracy protesters could come in under refugee status now that as of today New Zealand has increased its refugee intake to 1,500.
Auckland and New Zealand generally need a fresh generation of bilingual speakers to provide entrepeneurship, capital and cultural diversity to redouble that which they brought here in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
And it would be a great example for New Zealand to stand on the world stage and be proud as a democratic, open society by opening their doors to those of Hong Kong who wish to come and who qualify.
Yes.., and perhaps we could embrace Drury's idea and start building luxury homes for these downtrodden 'elites' in a place like Queenstown. That would be the kind thing to do and it would also help our construction sector…
The natural place for Hong Kong expats is Auckland – that's where Mandarin and Cantonese communities are already very strong. We sure need to keep our construction workers engaged here.
Aahh..good ol' Ad, King of the short term thinkers..guess thats why he is such a avid supporter of this neoliberal centrist freemarket Labour, yep they really are made for each other.
I think Ad may be outside the box that you are in Adrian. He is just being pragmatic. We have to try and manage our way out of the mess that we are in. Just black and white solutions are not suitable, what is the right medicine for our illness, in the right amount. The problem is that we may not be able to control the amount of medicine and how often taken.
Lets just hang on a bit, we already have 1 million Kiwis with an automatic right to walk right in and a fair few of them are thinking of doing just that. Can we even accommodate them even if only 250,000 came without real housing and job problems.
Think of what they can do for our GDP. It has been our national (lower case) MO for years. How to grow the economy? More milk powder and more immigrants. Keeps the wages down and unemployment up. Sell a few SOE’s, give middle NZ a tax cut and raise GST, and Bob’s your uncle. Home owners have been creaming it. Apparently, farmers are now having an anal aneurism because the Greens had the temerity of proposing a wealth tax; over their dead animals bodies.
Let's bring back estate duty and stamp duty too and spread that tax burden fairly over the country on a percentage basis. That would be a case where percentages are fair for the poorer people, they always work from a base sum. Estate duty should be also on deemed portions in trusts, valued at present valuation, or at part of those market prices before a present slump.
There is no reason that three-year marriages should result in good payouts to partners, but the tax department can be always a bridesmaid and never a bride when it comes to getting a proportion of the loot built up on the reasonable reliability of this country’s laws and stability.
And an interesting piece in stuff on some of the australian crowd who make up potential returnees. About two thirds are potential returnees and I feel sympathy for persons 1 and 3 who appear to have left after being slugged by over competition in entry level employee markets and the low wage economy here.
Person 3 was more interesting. The NZ passport was a second passport and I estimate that out of a 30 year working life around 14 years had been spent here and 9 years in Australia. The net cash assets from this work life appeared to be around $100k (low?) and no mention of property ownership. It was not clear if an australian passport had ever been applied for. Now he is thinking of returning (to collect our welfare I assume) along with an american wife who appears to have never set foot in New Zealand. They could of course choose to return to the UK or the USA
I can't help feeling there is something very wrong with this scenario and we are allowing ourselves to be taken for a ride..
And yes I do know about the work issues under the Clark government and no at the time I did not approve of the decision.
Ad:
I don't want to be unkind but Auckland is basically a slum with high-rise buildings and a small elite that desperately holds on to yesteryears way of society strata. Hardy a place that screams value, democracy, planning, equality, etc….
Those who are used to that environment will not find anything wrong with it. Naturally.
I realise Ad is trolling, but "wealthy, democratically-minded" is probably an unconscious oxymoron on his part. The rich will always use their wealth to influence the democratic process and tip the table in their direction. The best immigrants for the long term health of a society are highly technically skilled (i.e. not 'business skills') and not wealthy. And if we go into the contents of their minds at all, we might want to add 'equality' and ' environmentally' to 'democratically'.
It really is possible to walk and chew gum at the same time.
We need to dust off our histories of 1946. The worldwide migration this is going to force is going to make the post-Syrian European crisis look like a Mollie Woppie picnic.
I too assumed Ad was trolling – if only because he is suggesting that the "poor and huddled masses" who did all the hard work around the protests are going to be left behind to suffer. Very democratic not?
Plus I'd imagine that the wealthy have long since organised a bolt hole country. I certainly remember some coming here when Hongkong changed over staying just long enough for one of the couple to score residency, dumping their kids in the local schools and then bolting back to their real life in Hongkong. .
Colonel Comrade might be on the same page with you, he could 'liaise' with the new arrivals on behalf of the government (no, not our government). Just to maintain order.
Hong Kong Chinese – good idea Ad. They are keen, smart, good people, and more likely to be on our wavelength (outdated term) than many fleeing from CCP. Not a whole bunch though please at once, which will be impossible just now but include them by all means at the same time not forgetting to be ethical to other overseas people who have paid already, worked already, want to be NZs and are good ones. So the inevitable happens, we haven't been destroyed yet, and all those who can escape the shit of the big powers see us as a haven. (While many of the boofheads and the sweeties here want to throw that away and find the wealthy wonkers' lifestyles soo glamorous and desirable.)
I've been thinking along these lines myself, you more or less beat me to it Ad. Hong Kongers are different.
Most kiwis are fairly unaware of how China is not really a single coherent historic or cultural entity. In very broad terms it can be thought of in four major chunks, the bureacratic, military minded Han core in the northern Yellow River plain and centred in Beijing, the merchantile manufacturing minded groups of the Yangtze River represented by Shanghai as the largest city, the southern port cities of Hong Kong, Macau and Xian, and the fourth being the diverse ethnic groups of the central provinces.
The southern cities like Hong Kong were historically geographically isolated from Beijing and looked outward to the wider world, particularly in terms of trade and culture. Many Hong Kongers regard themselves as quite separate from the CCP run mainland and want absolutely nothing to do with it.. The passing of these new Security laws will prompt many to find ways to leave.
I've visited Hong Kong a few times, it’s a highly developed world city, full of surprises. Kiwis should welcome these people, they will bring much of real value with them.
… New Zealand needs a fresh wave of highly connected, wealthy, democratically-minded Chinese to immigrate here.
No we don't
Any Chinese that move here are likely to be sent by the Chinese government to fuck up our democracy
Auckland and New Zealand generally need a fresh generation of bilingual speakers to provide entrepeneurship, capital and cultural diversity to redouble that which they brought here in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
No, we need to settle what we've got into our own culture. Getting more of the same won't help.
Under the Key government heaps of property owners became millionaires overnight. So now Auckland is facing a housing crisis and a water crisis and record inequality. What does resident neoliberal Ad propose? More of the same.
God, high housing prices have been such a disaster.
Utterly devastating the younger generation and really screwing with family formation.
Why did we allow this to happen exactly?
— Nathaniel Diorio🇨🇦 (@DIorioNathaniel) July 1, 2020
I'm with you on this one DTB if Ad is serious. We've had these setting since the 90's and the one thing that really shows out is that our GDP per head has stayed static or gone backwards. Where are the factories and post processing plants and all the other benefits that were supposed to flow? Absolutely non existent.
Frankly for the average live out your life here citizen these policies have made their lives worse. The number of people that take part in a "global" workforce by having multiple passports and residency is tiny and over privileged. Yes houses may have gone up in value but if it's the only one you own then it's used for the basic service of "living in"
Hong Kong protesters would get a shock if they came here or say the UK, because they have better health system in HK They want freedom what, I saw a lot of American flags flying in those protest, a lot of NGO monies like NED funding anti mainland groups, there is more to life than HK dissidents money, no thanks, let them go to granny England or uncle Sam land.
The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is a private, nonprofit foundation dedicated to the growth and strengthening of democratic institutions around the world. Each year, NED makes more than 1,600 grants to support the projects of non-governmental groups abroad who are working for democratic goals in more than 90 countries.
And Allen Weinstein, who helped draft the legislation establishing NED, declared in 1991: “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.”
Yes, read that. About time we opt out of the 5 eyes bullshit that keeps us non independent from the capitalist spy network. Oops, sorry I forgot we are a crapitalist country.
You mean not just 5 eyes but ramping up to a ball with feelers like a Covid-19, or a 360o degree surveillance? Or have a dynamic ball chasing us like in Prisoner on tv? Why have only one eye per country – that's so limiting.
We should take all the doctors, nurses (and some health tech people) and teachers who want to leave (albeit they would be better paid in Oz).
And others in skilled worker areas (albeit …) engineers/construction to IT/finance etc
And the business owners who would base here and pay tax locally on their drawings/dividends from their Hong Kong activities.
Most however will just seek British passports (to be safe) and end citizenship activity. But if China acts against those who choose this route, we might get lucky.
Things might be heating up for the "two guys in a steam bath". Yep, those two guys are Pootee and his fascist-dictator-wannabe puppet. More and more is coming out about Pootee maybe paying bounties being paid on American soldiers, and Marmalardo getting briefed about it and being utterly uninterested.
I'm struggling to come up with any previous example anytime anywhere of a significant national leader being so objectively crap that they have come under this kind of sustained brutal attack across a huge number of topics, from respected senior members of their own party.
Yup. But it really just confirmed informed speculation about what resolution was possible just from the known size of spy satellites. Ie, what can you from a telescope of X diameter (2.4m from memory) orbiting Y kilometres up.
Then there was the time Don Dementia outed Israeli assets to Lavrov and Kislyak while getting all chummy in the Oval Office.
You a fan of the idea that two wrongs make a right, are you? Even in cases such as this, where the tangerine turdgoblin is deeply involved in the genesis of both wrongs?
No, just that for some reason your focusing on the bounty which Trump has sweet FA to do with rather than the one which he (and other members of the US administration including Pelosi) can actually do something about.
Oh, so it's simple whataboutery then. I had thought your cognitive processes had advanced beyond that kind of simple distraction tactic, but evidently not. My bad.
And since the point apparently needs to be spelled out for you in simple terms, the issue is about how Benedict Donald has responded to the possibility of Russia putting a bounty on US soldiers much more than about the bounty itself.
… the possibility of Russia putting a bounty on US soldiers…
You will, of course, be providing evidence of this dastardly crime. Something the entirely anonymous source of this wild and woolly story has yet to do.
We are awaiting your dump of verifiable and irrefutable “good stuff” with great anticipation, my good friend.
Uh, no, that's for those in the intelligence services to do to the satisfaction of their masters, if any follow-up appears likely.
But you too seem to have totally missed the point in your rush to indulge in another one of your displays of public political masturbation. Which is Emperor PalPutin's problematic response to being presented with the intelligence assessment, much more than whether or not the assessment is accurate.
Andre I applaud your word du jour for the orange tambourine – you bring expressive colour into the discourse, and may you do so till he goes to a better place – somewhere in the rust belt where they will treat him to unceasing religious ceremonies and don't believe in building big hotels, and playing with the stock market.
…the Hellenistic Age. The Macedonian King Seleucus (died 281BC) and his Persian wife Apame ruled a hybrid kingdom that mixed Greek, Persian, Jewish, Bactrian, Armenian, Sogdian and Aramaean cultures and religions.
With new cities, religions and cultures, this melting pot encouraged the rise of a thriving connectivity that linked urban centres in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan and Syria (where many of the Hellenistic sites (such as Apamea) have been devastated in recent years by war and looting). The great city of Seleucia-on-Tigris/Ctesiphon, just south of Baghdad on the Tigris river in modern Iraq, became the western capital and centre for learning, culture and power for a thousand years…
…The Sasanians ruled a massive geopolitical entity from 224-751AD. They were builders of cities and frontiers across the empire including the enormous Gorgan wall. This frontier wall stretched 195km from the Caspian Sea to the mountains in Turkmenistan and was built in the 5th century AD to protect the Iranian agricultural heartland from northern invaders like the Huns….
Iranian cultural heritage has no one geographic or cultural home, its roots belong to all of us and speak of the vast influence that the Iranians have had on the creation of the world we live in today. Iran’s past could never be wiped off the cultural map of the world for it is embedded in our very humanity.
Could Iran be cleverer than today's western boofheads? Can we wonder why they got enraged at the west messing with them, brazenly killing one of their revered Generals, and previously installing a puppet figurehead – who they eventually abandoned ignominiously? Can we manage our way through to keep our heads above water now? 'We haven't much money so we'll have to think hard' Rutherford said or words to that effect.
Food for thought. Yes. I am filling my head with new information and it's getting full I think and pass it on in case someone else is interested. I have had an ordinary education and can see it wasn't satisfactory and now think that most of our education is directed away from learning about ourselves, the most important thing. That was said before 1744!
The proper study of Man, is Man. Alexander Pope
Author Profession: Poet
Nationality: English
Born: May 21, 1688
Died: May 30, 1744
In one odd sense the historic Iranian culture could be thought of as the USA of the ancient world, the two have a lot in common, but for quite different reasons.
Iran is geographically different to the USA in every conceivable way, but it all boils down to one factor: populated Iran is a fused, sprawling mountain system. Iran’s Zagros mountain chain fills the country’s entire southwestern third, while the Elburz dominates the northern third. The contemporary capital of Tehran sits on a plateau where the two chains meet. With an average peak elevation of 3000m, the two chains not only force out fairly reliable rainfall, but their valley floors tend to above 1000m. Unlike nearly everywhere else in the region, it actually rains in Iran where people live. Direct rainfall enables agriculture without necessarily requiring irrigation. Lower labor requirements free workers to do other things, like going to school, practicing a trade, composing a poem or waging war. Culture here has roots stretching back five thousand years.
Mountain living has other advantages. Anyone wanting to invade Iran must fight their way uphill into the Persian core and batter through every mountain line. This defensibility shapes Persia’s participation in international affairs. Iran isn’t a destination, but instead a knot of difficult territory that must be bypassed by those in Asia or Europe, it's just too hard to invade and hold. In this it's very much like the USA, it's geography has always made it secure.
Unlike the dozens of city-states and empires that have risen and fallen throughout the Middle East, the Persians have art, history and culture that isn’t short-lived, incidental or fused with foreign practice but instead anchored in millennia of continuity. The Persian language and Persian customs—conservatively—date back hundreds of generations.
But the same geography also forced them to become the first multi-cultural society. Each mountain valley had it's group and identity, making them a very heterogeneous society, but united in one thing … the terrain around them was even worse. This forced them develop an enduring Persian identity from all these disparate parts much earlier than anywhere else in the world.
Located on the Silk Road trade route the medieval Persians managed to sustain a remarkable medieval prosperity, but two things buggered this for them. One was the invention of deep water navigation by the Portuguese, enabling traders to completely bypass them. The other is more subtle; the thousands of mountain valleys and plateaus make internal transport very expensive, and there are few large centers with necessary pre-conditions to support industrialisation.
In many ways it's useful to think of the Persians as an ancient super-power, but one that has been sidelined by history and technology. They retain much of their cultural capital, but the nature of the land they live in has constrained their ability to adapt to the modern world.
A cosmopolitan culture for so long, yet that biodiversity got clamped into a binary theology, and most religious historians derive that of islam & christianity from Zoroaster. Here's non-academic recycling of that view:
Thus the binary syndrome that makes leftists hate Trump. Life is an
eternal struggle and combat with an evil Other
Now Abraham came from Ur, where the Akkadian civilisation had recycled the Sumerian pantheon of diverse gods & goddesses. So the Israelites went seriously off the rails in departing from their Hebrew progenitor. Historians who write about this usually blame the acquisition of monotheism from Akhenaton during the Hebrew settlement in the Nile delta centuries. Interesting how cultures long complex can shift into banal simplification!
Thanks Greywarshark, a great follow up of the series "The Silk Road" extract on Zorastrians the Muslims Persia and Iran cultures narrated by Joanna Lumley.
yes, welcome home, i hope you have enough money to last 6 – 12 month – cause on unemployment you will not even manage to rent a ditch, let alone eat.
welcome home honey, sadly i can't hire you, we are all gonna be shit outta luck once the wage subsidy subsides.
welcome home you and your whanau, hopefully you are not picky n choosy cause fruit picking might be your best bet, and for your wife/husband and the kids.
welcome home, to what ever you find here waiting for you.
Exactly. The returnees will fall roughly into three categories.
There was about 50,000 kiwis travelling short term, most of whom have gotten home, but there will be still a few who have been stuck in odd places who have not yet been able to organise a flight for one reason or another.
About 200,000 kiwis in Australia do not qualify for any support there. Eventually a fair fraction of them will be forced to return if they do not have secure jobs. Probably about 50% of them over the next six months. Most will be younger adults and will likely return to family here, but not a lot of other prospects.
Another large and hard to qualify chunk will be ex-pats who have been living and working all around the world. Many will have been earning a good income, and would return with capital and experience. How many is very hard to guess, because their decision points will all be unique based on their circumstances, but I would guess maybe another 100,000 or so over the next few years. A lot depends of just how turbulent the world becomes in that period.
interesting post redlogix. already people in the third category are spending money. houses are being bought and renovations happening at my beach, by cashed up kiwis returning. my real estate colleague confirms that sales and prices are up, mainly driven by incoming cash. dont think we are going to need to selloff any more kiwi citizenships for a while.
A fair few will be those who can do their work from anywhere in the world, and will return still employed in their current jobs. Safe trumps cosmopolitan for the next few years.
Others will become self employed contractors living here but applying for international jobs they can do on-line. Others will run on-line businesses and or offer themselves as consultants to local business in their industry sector.
Some will simply take the jobs that have been going to skilled migrants.
Some will simply spend a year holidaying here, or doing a post grad course, where it is safe.
As for the Oz Kiwi crowd who return, hopefully a lot are into construction/roading and building and truck driving – younger adults back to home with parents are ideal for seasonal work (camper van).
Then there are the jobs that semi-skilled migrants – couriers/service stations/IT/Chorus connections have been doing.
50,000 migrants coming in, not. The lack of 100,000 students this year eases the hospitality sector downturn impact on employment.
No they left in the first place because they could not get any jobs here. Cause the one thing NZ sucks are really is the creation of good jobs, future proof jobs with a pay above min wage that would allow them to pay life and student loans.
And now they are back here with no jobs, no real chance to get a job, and most of them don't come with truck loads of money because were ever they lived before they did so on a regular wage paying regular things like food, rent, insurance etc etc etc.
But yeah, nah nah, quite a few of them will do what ever they can as 250$ per week un-employemnt is too little to live and too much to die on. And so far i have yet to see a proposal from any of the empty suits to raise this to the level of the wage subsidy so as to prevent further hardship and misery. And i don't expect to see anything meaningful about unemployment to come anytime soon.
As for us being the Nr. 1, our wage subsidies are still keeping many afloat. Take that away and see what happens to our Society when you have somewhere between 10 – 20% unemployment (certain regions even higher – and i am being very charitable with the numbers as i would expect them to go into the high 20s low 30s) who can neither pay food or rent on the current benefit levels.
The current projection is unemployment at 9% below the original projection of 10%.
Some tourism economy regions of course will be around 20% – the question will be how many of those are residents/citizens and entitled to benefit support
There is a reason why the wage subsidy was extended – i think they call this flattening the curve.
I love all that pie in the sky wishful thinking. What ever gets people trhough the day.
But i will make sure to tell the people that are sending me their unsolicited CVs that they can just declare themselves contractors to get some 'work from home' jobs, or that they just start working in roading/building (skills and training is for suckahs), or that they just do a year living in a Van (Freedom camping with the whole family is fun 🙂 ) and so on and so forth.
the real number of unemployment will be known when the wage subsidy runs out and is replaced with nothing. Until then, you have no numbers to throw about.
the takeaway from this thread (apart from preparing for community resilience) is that worker rights is a big priority. If Ad and his peers' children end up fruit picking, best make sure they have better wages and work conditions than the economic migrants and working holiday crowd have had up until now. Fruit picking is honest work, about time we made it good work too.
While I don't know the profit margins involved, and with exports in 2019 worth $6.2B – An increase of $720M, and an industry valued at $9.5B, out of principle I wouldn't go fruit picking until the wages for the hard grafting workers reflected their real worth and value to the horticulture big boys.
When Moss was appointed, then Minister for Vulnerable Children Anne Tolley (pictured) dismissed questions in the media over whether she was the right person for the job. Photo: Lynn Grieveson
"The panel convened by Rennie to make the decision was an all-Pākehā lineup: deputy State Services Commissioner Debbie Power, secretary of education Peter Hughes"
Two of the creators of the highly toxic environment at WINZ – beggars belief that the current government (naively maybe) put anyone from that era of management back in there – or actually maybe it doesn't considering some of their actions to date towards the poorest in society – not increasing benefits as per the WEAG recommendations, making the homeless pay 25% of their benefit to pay for their motel rooms, getting rid of including underage partners in superannuation – all those things make poor peoples lives harder. I can see why she would appeal to them both – cut from the same managerial mould/(mold?). Fits nicely with the earlier comments about the managerial class that were made.
yeah, nah nah, not relevant at all to what i asked – the people sending me CVs have not lost jobs for bullying and chances are will not be hired for their bullying nature.
they are ordinary people who have come home to nothing much, if anything at all.
Sorry Sabine. You wrote "CV" and I'm afraid that forever those two letters will pull that image of Moss' CV into my mind.
What to do with the returning sons and daughters who thought their best futures were Overseas?
Sadly, not all will be of the 'highly trained and qualified in a specialist field' group that seem to have the welcome mat laid out. I'm not entirely convinced of the essentiality of making movies about virtual blue folk, but I do see the necessity of having experts dealing with the leaking shit pipes in Wellington.
So those who can't be gainfully employed in one of the multibillion dollar projects announced by Our Leaders over the past few weeks will have to 'pivot', I believe is the current parlance, and broaden their horizons or lower their expectations.
And perhaps consider voting for the Green party and their ending poverty policy.
Because it would go a long way towards mending the safety net.
If someone with a PhD in particle physics applies for an honestly advertised minimum wage casual job as a cleaner…hire them. Or not.
'pivot' has become so passe @Rosemary – everybody is pivoting and they need something new. There is a new word on the horizon. Forgot where I heard it, but immediately I did, "ultimately" I knew it'd become the new normal going forward (in that space).
"so"…….. the best creds for something like the position of OT CEO could be experience as a used car salesman, as long as you make it clear you're also "passionate" about what you do, AND "compassionate".
On the other hand, as Anne Tolley has reckons, being a mother might be sufficient, although I'm not sure how the likes of Jeremy Lambert could ever aspire to such an exceptional position of CEO of OT
I'm not entirely convinced of the essentiality of making movies about virtual blue folk,
Art is essential because it tends to reflect us.
If someone with a PhD in particle physics applies for an honestly advertised minimum wage casual job as a cleaner…hire them. Or not.
Most likely not. People who are over-qualified for a job don't get employed for that job and if there aren't any jobs around for what they're qualified for then they end up as long term unemployed. Its one of the ways that our present system wastes its people.
so people that are returning are starting to sending in CVs. What are we to tell them?
anyone got any ideas? Other then sorry mate you are overqualified for fruit picking?
tell them the truth. Tell them that we have no idea what NZ will be like in 12 months time, or the world. We might be ok-ish (think high unemployment but a still functioning economy). Or we might be in the middle of a major GFC and our main concern is to have enough food for the coming year. Or something in between, which is probably worse than the first two.
I'd suggest learning how to grow protein and carb crops if they don't already know. Also, get to know your neighbours and be kind to them. And get to know the people in your community that know how to build resilient communities and have been practicing this.
Yep, unemployment and not enough income sucks. That's been true for too many for too long already. Best we learn, fast, how to do things differently.
I told my kiwi friends that so long as they can stay overseas, i .e . still have their visas and jobs to stay overseas. Keep distance, wear a mask, shower in sanitizer and stay where you are. Nothing much to come here for unless you have oodles of cash which the people that i know overseas don't have. They went overseas in the first place because unemployment and under employment in NZ sucks and they were lucky enough to find employment elsewhere.
But to pretend that we are not going to have issues with high number of unemployment , people without the capacity to pay rent and food is foolish imo, and it seems that a lot of people like to rather be foolish then look at the world as it is. And maybe some people just hope that we can pretend it ain't that bad, (as generally it is done) but i doubt this time around we can.
I read your post on the greens, and frankly it is neither bold nor future orientated. (again, the socialist in me is finding both the Greens and Labour timid in their approach)
The one things the wage subsidy has shown us in NZ is that it is the minimum one needs to 'live', not extravagantly but just subsistence level. So again the unemployment min income proposed by the Greens is already 150$ short at the very least. For 320 you may find a rental, but you wont' be eating, nor paying electricity nor food. So redundant. If this is not the time to talk honestly about what it costs to simply stay alive (food, shelter, warmth) then it will never be the time. As for growing food, lol. We might want to stop pretending that we are not in a country wide drought for a start. Water is vital to growing food, and in certain parts of the country water is an expensive good. Growing food is for those that have homes, stable homes. Growing a tomato in a pot is a nice supplement, but you don't want to try to survive on it.
So i really really hope that someone in our government will finally just be bold. If only for a refreshing change.
As for telling people how to vote, i won't. Never did, never will. I don't believe that parties lead, its the people that bring about the changes. The suits will follow when they have to and not a minute before.
thanks for a considerate answer tho, i was wondering if anyone here still gave a shit about others.
Though lifting the rates must go hand in hand with rent controls otherwise increase just become a revenue source for landlords. Even the US has rent controls in most places e.g. restrictions on how much you can increase rent on your rental property in a year – even when tenants change.
Maybe it's the difference in perspective for those of us that were locked out of the 'getting ahead' economy decades ago. It's not that I don't have empathy for people losing their jobs, it's more that I think the solution to that isn't to try and make things like they were before only better. If people still want a big house and a late model car and a new smart phone and an overseas holiday every year, sorry, but the ecologies we are utterly dependent upon just can't sustain that.
$325/wk is a minimum guaranteed income. Not a maximum, and there is no suggestion that this is what people should live on. You appear to have fundamentally misunderstood the policy.
Not recognising the radical and bold approach to disabled people in the policy is hardly surprising. Working people are the really important ones right? Who cares if the Greens are proposing to stop treating disabled people like third class citizens and give them a substantial increase income as well as a dedicated income support department of their own.
Growing tomatoes is not growing protein and carb crops. If you don't understand this, and who grows food in NZ and how and why, maybe take the time to learn. Not everyone has to grow food, those that can should. Not all of those people own or rent land they can garden on. If we think unemployment is bad wait until we're wondering where our years supply of food is going to come from.
Yes, parliament follows us, but we still need them to enact laws. Like minimum wages and work conditions, benefit rates and so on.
Drought in NZ is largely a human created disaster (I don't mean climate change, but local land use practices). We don't have a country-wide drought, we have water shortages in some places because humans are too stupid to adopt the systems and tech that already exist to farm/garden regeneratively and with respect for water as part of nature. Humans have been growing food for tens of thousands of years in places with lower rainfall than NZ has currently. It's not rocket science, we are just ideologically blind.
Mobile-phone location data from people who attended President Trump’s Oklahoma rally show most came from outside Tulsa, hailing from at least 44 counties spread across 12 states.
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem says the thousands of people who attend the July 3 celebration for Independence Day at Mount Rushmore with President Donald Trump will not be required to practice social distancing despite an increase in coronavirus cases across the country.
"We will have a large event at July 3rd. We told those folks that have concerns that they can stay home, but those who want to come and join us, we'll be giving out free face masks, if they choose to wear one. But we will not be social distancing," Noem, a Republican, said in an interview Monday night on Fox News' "The Ingraham Angle."
It's been the honor of a lifetime to be a @thegameawards Global Gaming Citizen
Growing up with a disability comes with a very unique set of challenges
My goal on this earth is to live as an inspiration to those with disabilities that not only can you survive, but you can thrive pic.twitter.com/K9Y4cg3vO0
Rebooting Your Life: 6 Steps You Can Follow to Find a New You
He has found a way to get over that problem for the time, and take other along on the road with him. He sounds like a Forrest Gump character – giving other people a boost as well as himself.
He is advocating for himself and others in need of compassion, and has a website and the heading above tells about his ideas for 6 mins I think. I didn't read it because I'm in the elderly group and at present is trying to reboot my democracy and everybody's life, mine being on the end of the plank. I have my own version and just give some ideas here and around as I go about just keeping the old you in good repair, with some time for appreciation of what good you do already have.
(You can see I have just been rereading Pollyanna, who is glad, very glad about the good things that happen and she manages to pass that on. Honestly, I have just been reading it – what was the mindset of people going through hard times in the past I asked myself? Pollyanna's we know. Another seems to keep on, to relate to others and help yourself and others.)
When Jock Anderson and Mihi Forbes agree that Jacinda has it exactly right re the border and Covid19, as they did on The Panel last night, National should be very scared. Anderson is notoriously conservative.
Anderson is also old – and maybe has a sense of his vulnerability to Covid. Meanwhile Muller demonstrates in recent interviews that his leadership style is to demand a type of impossible clairvoyance from his subordinates – insisting that there must be a plan (with timings) for an unknowable future.
Talking to the 18 yr old in the house last night. He is a tad over what he perceives to be the highly sensitive nature of folk concerning comedy and racism. Part of this is finding his own way with leaving home and being with a building crew and their conservative attitudes.
I mentioned 'punching-up' with comedy rather than down.
I want to give a shout out to Mihingarangi Forbes for her explanation around blackface.
In the context of Chris Lilley and his character Jonah from Tonga. She said that a Tongan teen/adolescent's stories are for a Tongan teen/adolescent to tell. When Chris Lilley occupies that space, there isn't room for a Tongan teen to be.
This helps me understand Brotown, in that the stories are for Kightley, Fane etc to tell.
Still a bit lost about Super City, Madeline Sami 'whitefacing' for a couple of her characters Linda and Ray. I figure it is about Pakeha being the dominant culture.
So should we reinterpret tv shows like Fawlty Towers, The Office and Little Britain as not successful comedy, but simply unfunny and offensive to too many groups of people..?
I can't see that happening. People need to laugh at themselves, the Greeks were doing similar comedy thousands of years ago.
Of course it's still successful comedy. Some of it is brilliant.
But things like brownface are at best an intelligent, sensitive comedian having more opportunity to appropriate the expression of a minority experience (albeit in a sympathetic manner) than someone in that actual demographic has to express their own experience in mainstream media. It doesn't make it unfunny. It does raise the question "why not someone who didn't need the makeup?"
The Fawlty thing is slightly different – I suspect recognition of the full harm that language causes makes it over-egg the effect they were going for. Audiences change over time, words change meaning, gain or lose emphasis. It's that sort of situation, imo.
What could possibly go wrong in a country where everybody and their dog has a weapon of war.
No more euphemisms. Trump and his propagandists are working to engineer violent civil conflict, to persuade white Americans that they're on the losing side in a race war. The White House's handling of the "white power" tweet gives away the game. New piece:https://t.co/QYx4hw0jbM
I read a few years ago that English is a second language for more that 50% of the population. Spanish a high proportion of first language. If so perhaps the White folk are nervous?
PS World: Of the approximately 1.5 billion people who speak English, less than 400 million use it as a first language. That means over 1 billion speak it as a secondary language
Looking at where english is the dominant language, there's the US(330M) UK(67M) Canada(37M) Oz(25M) plus rats and mice. So yeah, less than 400M worldwide being english-first speakers is plausible. The vast majority of those are in the US, then UK.
The idea of english being a second language for more than 50% of the US population is utterly implausible. Non-hispanic whites alone are 60%, and even the majority of non-whites will be US born or arrived at an early age so grew up speaking english as their primary language.
There may be some large pockets where english is a second language for more than half the residents – Puerto Rico being the largest example, but no doubt there's some fairly large pockets along the southern border.
But maybe that comment was just some snark from a UK pedant.
All that is true Andre that English is the most spoken. Not sure if it covers those who speak say Spanish first but have to speak English to survive. Anyway I surrender.
The question of Māori representation on the New Plymouth District Council is being debated again. But the debate all went pear-shaped with the representatives of all people should have their say at the NPDC Te Huinga Taumatua iwi committee meeting.
Poet and activist Sonya Taylor, shouted down from the gallery "racists do not deserve a fair say." The meeting was adjourned while she left the chamber. As she left she noted "Racism getting a fair say is why the oppression of Māori folks has been what it has been up to this point,"
"… the move was overturned in 2015 when a citizen-initiated referendum voted against it by 21,000 votes to 4285."
The accusation of structural racism is well-founded given the only CIR that is legally binding on the NPDC is the question of Māori representation and this situation exists nowehere else in the country.
Credit to the NPDC that they're trying to get this law removed, but hey there's not going to be much support for that it seems.
Well, as someone who did actually vote for at least one Maori candidate to the NPDC last time, I see that 5:1 ratio as a consequence of historical inertia. Take a look at this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_marae_in_Taranaki
Notice how the only marae in the city itself is in the outlying suburb of Bell Block – separated from the city proper by miles of countryside. There are three in/around Waitara a few miles further to the east, then just one each in Oakura & Inglewood a few miles to the west & south. Compare that to the list of maraes in south Taranaki to see the huge difference!
This population distribution is due to the original NZ company settlement in the year of the treaty, plus the genocide a generation earlier in which local tribes here were cleaned out by an invasion from Waikato tribes.
That structural racism doesn't accord with the dictionary definition (tacit, not overt) but I agree it does need to be flagged. A suitable political basis for that would be comparative analysis to maori representation in councils elsewhere – if that has been done on a treaty/quota basis. I've no idea what basis the protestors are using…
Many cities have a tenth set aside as fair from the takeover of land from Maori. They retained a tenth and that gives them their land by right or the right to have an argument if it starts being encroached on.
Taranaki got taken over by farmers and the Hawera blackface mentality is a carry-through. I don't know what era they are in, in their minds. Somewhere between post World War 2 and 1984 I'd say. Since then it's all been too confusing and there is a desire to retire to past highlights and memorials.
Yes, it's noticable to this day how proportionately-few Maori reside in New Plymouth compared to the rest of the district.
"a consequence of historical inertia"
Historical inertia alongside historical and current racism. People actually had to get themselves out of their chairs to instigate and vote in that referendum.
Structural racism can refer "to the ideologies, practices, processes, and institutions that operate at the macro level to produce and reproduce differential access to power and to life opportunities along racial and ethnic lines… embedded in societal-level institutions, policies, and practices"
I believe that definition covers what is going on with this.
"A suitable political basis for that would be comparative analysis to maori representation in councils elsewhere"
The articls states legally binding CIR only for Maori representation is unique to a NPDC. Even if the council and Maori agree on a representation model as in 2014. The people can vote it down. That's not a racist council, it's a racist act by the population.
One can read this most recent flurry of Russia, Russia, Russia paid the Taliban to kill GIs as an attempt to pre-empt the findings into Russiagate’s origins….
Of course the Taliban story was mindlessly parroted by RNZ this morning…seems as if fake news is fine at most mainstream news outlets just as long as it supports ones own narrative…no need for pesky things like…gasp! evidence or credible named sources.
“The intelligence assessment is said to be based at least in part on interrogations of captured Afghan militants and criminals.”
(my bold)
"How much of an unprincipled whore do you have to be to call yourself a journalist and uncritically parrot the completely unsubstantiated assertions of spooks while protecting their anonymity? How much work did these empire fluffers put into killing off every last shred of their dignity?
It really is funny how the most influential news outlets in the Western world will uncritically parrot whatever they’re told to say by the most powerful and depraved intelligence agencies on the planet, and then turn around and tell you without a hint of self-awareness that Russia and China are bad because they have state media."
Thanks, Brigid. Very good point. Our 'independent, privately-owned' press sometimes turns out to be even more bigoted and biased – but this must never be admitted.
Russiagate, that consumptive and sickly monstrosity conjured up from an ill-advised and disastrous mating of rogue CIA operatives and the discredited far right of the Democratic Party, is still wheezing and sputtering along, as can be seen by clicking on Comment No. 2 posted on this page at 8:41 a.m. today.
Dude Russian mercenaries are still Russians aren't they? Hell how is your memory? Was there not a time when Afganistan had a communist government and the USA supplied Osama Bin Laden with weaponry to kill soviet troops? I'm not talking morality-I 'm talking motivation – it seems like there's plenty to me……
Seems strange that the Pentagon chief Mark Esper says there's no corroborating evidence
U.S. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said in a statement Tuesday night that while the Pentagon has “no corroborating evidence” to support the explosive report last week that the Russian military was offering Taliban-linked militants bounties to kill American troops, he will continue to make sure any potential threat is taken seriously.
National MP Alastair Scott is defending his wine company's claim of more than $170,000 from the Government wage subsidy during what has been called an outstanding season for winegrowers.
It might suit your anti-capitalism to see NZ go down the gurgler DTB but what about the children?
Actually, what about the country and managing to keep its head above water. It is hard enough keeping down the dream-sequence kiwis who still support National, the others would soon desert Labour if the economy went down. So it is good that the wine got picked, so that people could get paid, so that it could be sold, and so there is money flowing into the economy. Paid work at a living wage, that is the goal and making sure that people have good lives. That's a big one as the world goes down, ice floes melting faster than expected. Hell is people running away but going towards the edge and being powerless to stop them, and knowing it isn't a dream.
We still have hopes of being able to turn the tide at the present. A recession and things would only get worse. Let's make the most of this world-wide problem and pinch the government as much as possible to make changes while we have some advantage in the world. And also keep Labour in front to win again. Don't count on anything remaining stable, we have to help NZ as we won't get second chances from hereon in.
There are lots of basic improvements to be done, we won't be better off if facing a full-scale depression. Everybody who doesn't want to do anything until it is the 'Right Thing' is just continuing the same useless mindset that brought us to the present debacle.
It might suit your anti-capitalism to see NZ go down the gurgler DTB but what about the children?
Never said that.
So it is good that the wine got picked, so that people could get paid, so that it could be sold, and so there is money flowing into the economy.
Wine grapes, unlike eating grapes, are picked and then sold later (it says so in the article). In other words, the lockdown hasn't affected him at all. A drought would have affected him worse and I'd expect him to have plans for that eventuality as well.
And having money flowing into the economy is easy and doesn't need to have direct subsidies to businesses. Just give everyone $100/wk and local business would have kept going.
Nick Smith again today acting like a child in Parliament. His recalcitrant childish apologising should be compulsory viewing by the voters down his way. Hopefully the boundary change helps his demise.
The moment a police officer & electoral official break @mediazzzona photojournalist David Frenkel's arm—& twist it—as he tries to cover irregularities in the vote on Putin's constitutional changes. Truly gut-wrenching pic.twitter.com/aqP5pcDsC5
For 45 years I manned polling booths and the worst anger I saw was directed at the orange felt tip pen that dried up. Aren't we lucky that our democracy is so benevolent.
Yes, but we can't sit back sleepily and take it for granted. It is slipping away, bit by bit starting even before 1984 but speeding up as time goes on.
Our Cranky Uncle Game can already be played in eight languages: English, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish. About 15 more languages are in the works at various stages of completion or have been offered to be done. To kick off the new year, we checked with how ...
The (new) Prime Minister said nobody understands what co-governance means, later modified to that there were so many varying interpretations that there was no common understanding.Co-governance cannot be derived from the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. It does not use the word. It refers to ‘government’ on ...
It’s that time of the week again when and I co-host our ‘hoon’ webinar with paying subscribers to The Kaka. Jump on this link for our chat about the week’s news with special guests Auckland Central MP Chloe Swarbrick and Auckland City Councillor Julie Fairey, including:Auckland’s catastrophic floods, which ...
In March last year, in a panic over rising petrol prices caused by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the government made a poor decision, "temporarily" cutting fuel excise tax by 25 cents a litre. Of course, it turned out not to be temporary at all, having been extended in May, July, ...
This month’s open thread for climate related topics. Please be constructive, polite, and succinct. The post Unforced variations: Feb 2023 first appeared on RealClimate. ...
Buzz from the Beehive Two fresh press releases had been posted when we checked the Beehive website at noon, both of them posted yesterday. In one statement, in the runup to Waitangi Day, Maori Crown Relations Minister Kelvin Davis drew attention to happenings on a Northland battle site in 1845. ...
It’s that time of the week again when I’m on the site for an hour for a chat in an Ask Me Anything with paying subscribers to The Kaka. Jump in for a chat on anything, including:Auckland’s catastrophic floods, which are set to cost insurers and the Government well over ...
Australia’s Treasurer Jim Chalmers (left) has published a 6,000 word manifesto called ‘Capitalism after the Crises’ arguing for ‘values-based capitalism’. Yet here in NZ we hear the same stale old rhetoric unchanged from the 1990s and early 2000s. Photo: Getty ImagesTLDR: The rest of the world is talking about inflation ...
A couple of weeks ago, after NCEA results came out, my son’s enrolment at Auckland Uni for this year was confirmed - he is doing a BSc majoring in Statistics. Well that is the plan now, who knows what will take his interest once he starts.I spent a bit of ...
Kia ora. What a week! We hope you’ve all come through last weekend’s extreme weather event relatively dry and safe. Header image: stormwater ponds at Hobsonville Point. Image via Twitter. The week in Greater Auckland There’s been a storm of information and debate since the worst of the flooding ...
Hi,At 4.43pm yesterday it arrived — a cease and desist letter from the guy I mentioned in my last newsletter. I’d written an article about “WEWE”, a global multi-level marketing scam making in-roads into New Zealand. MLMs are terrible for many of the same reasons megachurches are terrible, and I ...
Time To Call A Halt: Chris Hipkins knows that iwi leaders possess the means to make life very difficult for his government. Notwithstanding their objections, however, the Prime Minister’s direction of travel – already clearly signalled by his very public demotion of Nanaia Mahuta – must be confirmed by an emphatic ...
Open access notables Via PNAS, Ceylan, Anderson & Wood present a paper squarely in the center of the Skeptical Science wheelhouse: Sharing of misinformation is habitual, not just lazy or biased. The signficance statement is obvious catnip: Misinformation is a worldwide concern carrying socioeconomic and political consequences. What drives ...
Mark White from the Left free speech organisation Plebity looks at the disturbing trend of ‘book burning’ on US campuses In the abstract, people mostly agree that book banning is a bad thing. The Nazis did us the favor of being very clear about it and literally burning books, but ...
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has undergone a stern baptisim of fire in his first week in his new job, but it doesn’t get any easier. Next week, he has a vital meeting in Canberra with his Australian counterpart Anthony Albanese, where he has to establish ...
As PM Chris Hipkins says, it’s a “no brainer” to extend the fuel tax cut, half price public subsidy and the cut to the road user levy until mid-year. A no braoner if the prime purpose is to ease the burden on people struggling to cope with the cost of ...
Buzz from the Beehive Cost-of-living pressures loomed large in Beehive announcements over the past 24 hours. The PM was obviously keen to announce further measures to keep those costs in check and demonstrate he means business when he talks of focusing his government on bread-and-butter issues. His statement was headed ...
Poor Mike Hosking. He has revealed himself in his most recent diatribe to be one of those public figures who is defined, not by who he is, but by who he isn’t, or at least not by what he is for, but by what he is against. Jacinda’s departure has ...
New Zealand is the second least corrupt country on earth according to the latest Corruption Perception Index published yesterday by Transparency International. But how much does this reflect reality? The problem with being continually feted for world-leading political integrity – which the Beehive and government departments love to boast about ...
TLDR: Including my pick of the news and other links in my checks around the news sites since 4am. Paying subscribers can see them all below the fold.In Aotearoa’s political economyBrown vs Fish Read more ...
TLDR: Including my pick of the news and other links in my checks around the news sites since 4am. Paying subscribers can see them all below the fold.In Aotearoa’s political economyBrown vs Fish Read more ...
In other countries, the target-rich cohorts of swinging voters are given labels such as ‘Mondeo Man’, ‘White Van Man,’ ‘Soccer Moms’ and ‘Little Aussie Battlers.’ Here, the easiest shorthand is ‘Ford Ranger Man’ – as seen here parked outside a Herne Bay restaurant, inbetween two SUVs. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / ...
In other countries, the target-rich cohorts of swinging voters are given labels such as ‘Mondeo Man’, ‘White Van Man,’ ‘Soccer Moms’ and ‘Little Aussie Battlers.’ Here, the easiest shorthand is ‘Ford Ranger Man’ – as seen here parked outside a Herne Bay restaurant, inbetween two SUVs. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / ...
Transport Minister and now also Minister for Auckland, Michael Wood has confirmed that the light rail project is part of the government’s policy refocus. Wood said the light rail project was under review as part of a ministerial refocus on key Government projects. “We are undertaking a stocktake about how ...
Sometime before the new Prime Minister Chris Hipkins announced that this year would be about “bread and butter issues”, National’s finance spokesperson Nicola Willis decided to move from Wellington Central and stand for Ohariu, which spreads across north Wellington from the central city to Johnsonville and Tawa. It’s an ...
They say a week is a long time in politics. For Mayor Wayne Brown, turns out 24 hours was long enough for many of us to see, quite obviously, “something isn’t right here…”. That in fact, a lot was going wrong. Very wrong indeed.Mainly because it turns ...
One of the most effective, and successful, graphics developed by Skeptical Science is the escalator. The escalator shows how global surface temperature anomalies vary with time, and illustrates how "contrarians" tend to cherry-pick short time intervals so as to argue that there has been no recent warming, while "realists" recognise ...
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTLDR: Here’s a quick roundup of the news today for paying subscribers on a slightly frantic, very wet, and then very warm day. In Aotearoa’s political economy today Read more ...
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTLDR: Here’s a quick roundup of the news today for paying subscribers on a slightly frantic, very wet, and then very warm day. In Aotearoa’s political economy today Read more ...
Tomorrow we have a funeral, and thank you all of you for your very kind words and thoughts — flowers, even.Our friend Michèle messaged: we never get to feel one thing at a time, us grownups, and oh boy is that ever the truth. Tomorrow we have the funeral, and ...
Lynn and I have just returned from a news conference where Hipkins, fresh from visiting a relief centre in Mangere, was repeatedly challenged to justify the extension of subsidies to create more climate emissions when the effects of climate change had just proved so disastrous. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The ...
Lynn and I have just returned from a news conference where Hipkins, fresh from visiting a relief centre in Mangere, was repeatedly challenged to justify the extension of subsidies to create more climate emissions when the effects of climate change had just proved so disastrous. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The ...
A new Prime Minister, a revitalised Cabinet, and possibly revised priorities – but is the political and, importantly, economic landscape much different? Certainly some within the news media were excited by the changes which Chris Hipkins announced yesterday or – before the announcement – by the prospect of changes in ...
Currently the government's strategy for reducing transport emissions hinges on boosting vehicle fuel-efficiency, via the clean car standard and clean car discount, and some improvements to public transport. The former has been hugely successful, and has clearly set us on the right path, but its also not enough, and will ...
Buzz from the Beehive Before he announced his Cabinet yesterday, Prime Minister Chris Hipkins announced he would be flying to Australia next week to meet that country’s Prime Minister. And before Kieran McAnulty had time to say “Three Waters” after his promotion to the Local Government portfolio, he was dishing ...
The quarterly labour market statistics were released this morning, showing that unemployment has risen slightly to 3.4%. There are now 99,000 people unemployed - 24,000 fewer than when Labour took office. So, I guess the Reserve Bank's plan to throw people out of work to stop wage rises "inflation", and ...
Another night of heavy rain, flooding, damage to homes, and people worried about where the hell all this water is going to go as we enter day twenty two of rain this year.Honestly if the government can’t sell Three Waters on the back of what has happened with storm water ...
* Dr Bryce Edwards writes – Prime Minister Chris Hipkins continues to be the new broom in Government, re-setting his Government away from its problem areas in his Cabinet reshuffle yesterday, and trying to convince voters that Labour is focused on “bread and butter” issues. The ministers responsible for unpopular ...
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins continues to be the new broom in Government, re-setting his Government away from its problem areas in his Cabinet reshuffle yesterday, and trying to convince voters that Labour is focused on “bread and butter” issues. The ministers responsible for unpopular reforms in water and DHB centralisation ...
Hi,It’s weird to me that in 2023 we still have people falling for multi-level marketing schemes (MLMs for short). There are Netflix documentaries about them, countless articles, and last year we did an Armchaired and Dangerous episode on them.Then you check a ticketing website like EventBrite and see this shit ...
Nanaia Mahuta fell the furthest in the Cabinet reshuffle. Photo: Lynn Grieveson/Getty ImagesTLDR: PM Chris Hipkins unveiled a Cabinet this afternoon he hopes will show wavering voters that a refreshed Labour Government is focused on ‘bread and butter cost of living’ issues, rather than the unpopular, unwieldy and massively centralising ...
Nanaia Mahuta fell the furthest in the Cabinet reshuffle. Photo: Lynn Grieveson/Getty ImagesTLDR: PM Chris Hipkins unveiled a Cabinet this afternoon he hopes will show wavering voters that a refreshed Labour Government is focused on ‘bread and butter cost of living’ issues, rather than the unpopular, unwieldy and massively centralising ...
Shortly, the absolute state of Wayne Brown. But before that, something I wrote four years ago for the council’s own media machine. It was a day-in-the-life profile of their many and varied and quite possibly unnoticed vital services. We went all over Auckland in 48 hours for the story, the ...
Completed reads for January Lilith, by George MacDonald The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (poem), by Samuel Taylor Coleridge Christabel (poem), by Samuel Taylor Coleridge The Saga of Ragnar Lodbrok, by Anonymous The Lay of Kraka (poem), by Anonymous 1066 and All That, by W.C. Sellar and R.J. ...
Pity the poor Brits. They just can’t catch a break. After years of reporting of lying Boris Johnson, a change to a less colourful PM in Rishi Sunak has resulted in a smooth media pivot to an end-of-empire narrative. The New York Times, no less, amplifies suggestions that Blighty ...
On that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. And rain fell on the earth.Genesis 6:11-12THE TORRENTIAL DOWNPOURS that dumped a record-breaking amount of rain on Auckland this anniversary weekend will reoccur with ever-increasing frequency. The planet’s atmosphere is ...
Buzz from the Beehive There has been plenty to keep the relevant Ministers busy in flood-stricken Auckland over the past day or two. But New Zealand, last time we looked, extends north of Auckland into Northland and south of the Bombay Hills all the way to the bottom of the ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Jeff Masters When early settlers came to the confluence of the Sacramento and American Rivers before the California Gold Rush, Indigenous people warned them that the Sacramento Valley could become an inland sea when great winter rains came. The storytellers described water filling the ...
Wayne Brown managed a smile when meeting with Remuera residents, but he was grumpy about having to deal with “media drongos”. Photo: Lynn Grieveson/Getty ImagesTLDR: In my pick of the news links found in my rounds since 4am for paying subscribers below the paywall:Wayne Brown moans about the media and ...
Wayne Brown managed a smile when meeting with Remuera residents, but he was grumpy about having to deal with “media drongos”. Photo: Lynn Grieveson/Getty ImagesTLDR: In my pick of the news links found in my rounds since 4am for paying subscribers below the paywall:Wayne Brown moans about the media and ...
Dr Bryce Edwards writes – Last night’s opinion polls answered the big question of whether a switch of prime minister would really be a gamechanger for election year. The 1News and Newshub polls released at 6pm gave the same response: the shift from Jacinda Ardern to Chris Hipkins ...
Hipkins’ aim this year will be to present a ‘low target’ for those seeking to attack Labour’s policies and spending. Photo: Lynn Grieveson/Getty ImagesTLDR: Anyone dealing with Government departments and councils who wants some sort of big or long-term decision out of officials or politicians this year should brace for ...
Hipkins’ aim this year will be to present a ‘low target’ for those seeking to attack Labour’s policies and spending. Photo: Lynn Grieveson/Getty ImagesTLDR: Anyone dealing with Government departments and councils who wants some sort of big or long-term decision out of officials or politicians this year should brace for ...
Last night’s opinion polls answered the big question of whether a switch of prime minister would really be a gamechanger for election year. The 1News and Newshub polls released at 6pm gave the same response: the shift from Jacinda Ardern to Chris Hipkins has changed everything, and Labour is back ...
Over the last few years, it’s seemed like city after city around the world has become subject to extreme flooding events that have been made worse by impacts from climate change. We’ve highlighted many of them in our Weekly Roundup series. Sadly, over the last few days it’s been Auckland’s ...
And so the first month of the year draws to a close. It rained in Auckland on 21 out of the 31 days in January. Feels like summer never really happened this year. It’s actually hard to believe there were 10 days that it didn’t rain. Was it any better where ...
A ‘small target’ strategy is not going to cut it anymore if National want to win the upcoming election. The game has changed and the game plan needs to change as well. Jacinda Ardern’s abrupt departure from the 9th floor has the potential to derail what looked to be an ...
When Grant Robertson talks about how the economy might change post-covid, one of the things he talks about is what he calls an unsung but interesting white paper on science. “It’s really important,” he says. The Minister in charge of the White Paper — Te Ara Paerangi, Future Pathways ...
The clean up has begun but more rain is on the way. Photo: Lynn Grieveson/Getty ImagesTLDR: Auckland’s floods over the last three days are turning into a macroeconomic event, with losses from Aotearoa’s biggest-ever climate event estimated at around $500 million and Auckland’s schools all closed for a week until ...
The clean up has begun but more rain is on the way. Photo: Lynn Grieveson/Getty ImagesTLDR: Auckland’s floods over the last three days are turning into a macroeconomic event, with losses from Aotearoa’s biggest-ever climate event estimated at around $500 million and Auckland’s schools all closed for a week until ...
The news media were at one ceremony by the looks of things. The Governor-General, the Prime Minister and his deputy were at another. The news media were at a swearing-in ceremony. The country’s leaders were at an appointment ceremony. The New Zealand Gazette record of what transpired says: Appointment of ...
I n some alternative universe, Auckland mayor Efeso Collins readily grasped the scale of Friday’s deluge, and quickly made the emergency declaration that enabled central government to immediately throw its resources behind the rescue and remediation effort. As Friday evening became night, Mayor Collins seemed to be everywhere: talking with ...
They called it an “atmospheric river”, the weather bombardment which hit NZ’s northern region at the weekend. It exacted a terrible toll on metropolitan Auckland and the rest of the region. Few living there may have noted a statement from electricity generator Mercury Energy labelled “WET, WET, WET!” This was ...
I know, that is a pretty corny title but given the circumstances here in the Auckland region, I just had to say it. The more oblique reference embedded in the title is to the leadership failures exhibited by Mayor Wayne Brown and his so-called leadership team when confronted by the ...
How much confidence should the public have in authorities managing natural disasters? Not much, judging by the farcical way in which the civil defence emergence in Auckland has played out. The way authorities dealt with Auckland’s extreme weather on Friday illustrated how hit-and-miss our civil defence emergency system is. In ...
TLDR: Here’s the key news links and useful longer reads I’ve spotted since 4 am this morning, including:calls for a more ‘spongey’ urban infrastructure after Auckland’s floods;demands for an inquiry into Auckland Council’s communications failure;the latest on Chris Hipkins’ plans for Three Waters; inside the PR trainwreck that is Wayne ...
TLDR: Here’s the key news links and useful longer reads I’ve spotted since 4 am this morning, including:calls for a more ‘spongey’ urban infrastructure after Auckland’s floods;demands for an inquiry into Auckland Council’s communications failure;the latest on Chris Hipkins’ plans for Three Waters; inside the PR trainwreck that is Wayne ...
Mayor Wayne Brown, under fire for his communication failures, quietly visited the scene of the fatal Remuera slip on Sunday, with his staff taking photos for social media updates. Photo: Lynn Grieveson/Getty ImagesTLDR: The cleanup and the post-mortem have begun, even though the rain just keeps falling in Auckland after ...
Mayor Wayne Brown, under fire for his communication failures, quietly visited the scene of the fatal Remuera slip on Sunday, with his staff taking photos for social media updates. Photo: Lynn Grieveson/Getty ImagesTLDR: The cleanup and the post-mortem have begun, even though the rain just keeps falling in Auckland after ...
Thanks for reading Frankly Speaking ! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.The recent leadership change in the governing Labour party resulted in a very strange response from National’s (current) leader, Christopher Luxon. Mr Luxon berated Labour for it’s change of leader, citing no actual change.As ...
A chronological listing of news articles posted on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week: Sun, Jan 22, 2023 thru Sat, Jan 28, 2023. Story of the Week New Study Reveals Arctic Ice, Tracked Both Above and Below, Is Freezing LaterClimate change is affecting the timing of both ...
We’ve just announced a massive infrastructure investment to kick-start new housing developments across New Zealand. Through our Infrastructure Acceleration Fund, we’re making sure that critical infrastructure - like pipes, roads and wastewater connections - is in place, so thousands more homes can be built. ...
The Green Party is joining more than 20 community organisations to call for an immediate rent freeze in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, after reports of landlords intending to hike rents after flooding. ...
When Chris Hipkins took on the job of Prime Minister, he said bread and butter issues like the cost of living would be the Government’s top priority – and this week, we’ve set out extra support for families and businesses. ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to provide direct support to low-income households and to stop subsidising fossil fuels during a climate crisis. ...
The tools exist to help families with surging costs – and as costs continue to rise it is more urgent than ever that we use them, the Green Party says. ...
Over $10 million infrastructure funding to unlock housing in Whangārei The purchase of a 3.279 hectare site in Kerikeri to enable 56 new homes Northland becomes eligible for $100 million scheme for affordable rentals Multiple Northland communities will benefit from multiple Government housing investments, delivering thousands of new homes for ...
A memorial event at a key battle site in the New Zealand land wars is an important event to mark the progress in relations between Māori and the Crown as we head towards Waitangi Day, Minister for Te Arawhiti Kelvin Davis said. The Battle of Ohaeawai in June 1845 saw ...
More Police officers are being deployed to the frontline with the graduation of 54 new constables from the Royal New Zealand Police College today. The graduation ceremony for Recruit Wing 362 at Te Rauparaha Arena in Porirua was the first official event for Stuart Nash since his reappointment as Police ...
The Government is unlocking an additional $700,000 in support for regions that have been badly hit by the recent flooding and storm damage in the upper North Island. “We’re supporting the response and recovery of Auckland, Waikato, Coromandel, Northland, and Bay of Plenty regions, through activating Enhanced Taskforce Green to ...
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has welcomed the announcement that Her Royal Highness The Princess Royal, Princess Anne, will visit New Zealand this month. “Princess Anne is travelling to Aotearoa at the request of the NZ Army’s Royal New Zealand Corps of Signals, of which she is Colonel in Chief, to ...
A new Government and industry strategy launched today has its sights on growing the value of New Zealand’s horticultural production to $12 billion by 2035, Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor said. “Our food and fibre exports are vital to New Zealand’s economic security. We’re focussed on long-term strategies that build on ...
25 cents per litre petrol excise duty cut extended to 30 June 2023 – reducing an average 60 litre tank of petrol by $17.25 Road User Charge discount will be re-introduced and continue through until 30 June Half price public transport fares extended to the end of June 2023 saving ...
The strong economy has attracted more people into the workforce, with a record number of New Zealanders in paid work and wages rising to help with cost of living pressures. “The Government’s economic plan is delivering on more better-paid jobs, growing wages and creating more opportunities for more New Zealanders,” ...
The Government is providing a further $1 million to the Mayoral Relief Fund to help communities in Auckland following flooding, Minister for Emergency Management Kieran McAnulty announced today. “Cabinet today agreed that, given the severity of the event, a further $1 million contribution be made. Cabinet wishes to be proactive ...
The new Cabinet will be focused on core bread and butter issues like the cost of living, education, health, housing and keeping communities and businesses safe, Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has announced. “We need a greater focus on what’s in front of New Zealanders right now. The new Cabinet line ...
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins will travel to Canberra next week for an in person meeting with Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese. “The trans-Tasman relationship is New Zealand’s closest and most important, and it was crucial to me that my first overseas trip as Prime Minister was to Australia,” Chris Hipkins ...
The Government is providing establishment funding of $100,000 to the Mayoral Relief Fund to help communities in Auckland following flooding, Minister for Emergency Management Kieran McAnulty announced. “We moved quickly to make available this funding to support Aucklanders while the full extent of the damage is being assessed,” Kieran McAnulty ...
As the Mayor of Auckland has announced a state of emergency, the Government, through NEMA, is able to step up support for those affected by flooding in Auckland. “I’d urge people to follow the advice of authorities and check Auckland Emergency Management for the latest information. As always, the Government ...
Ka papā te whatitiri, Hikohiko ana te uira, wāhi rua mai ana rā runga mai o Huruiki maunga Kua hinga te māreikura o te Nota, a Titewhai Harawira Nā reira, e te kahurangi, takoto, e moe Ka mōwai koa a Whakapara, kua uhia te Tai Tokerau e te kapua pōuri ...
Carmel Sepuloni, Minister for Social Development and Employment, has activated Enhanced Taskforce Green (ETFG) in response to flooding and damaged caused by Cyclone Hale in the Tairāwhiti region. Up to $500,000 will be made available to employ job seekers to support the clean-up. We are still investigating whether other parts ...
The 2023 General Election will be held on Saturday 14 October 2023, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced today. “Announcing the election date early in the year provides New Zealanders with certainty and has become the practice of this Government and the previous one, and I believe is best practice,” Jacinda ...
Jacinda Ardern has announced she will step down as Prime Minister and Leader of the Labour Party. Her resignation will take effect on the appointment of a new Prime Minister. A caucus vote to elect a new Party Leader will occur in 3 days’ time on Sunday the 22nd of ...
The Government is maintaining its strong trade focus in 2023 with Trade and Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor visiting Europe this week to discuss the role of agricultural trade in climate change and food security, WTO reform and New Zealand agricultural innovation. Damien O’Connor will travel tomorrow to Switzerland to attend the ...
The Government has extended its medium-scale classification of Cyclone Hale to the Wairarapa after assessing storm damage to the eastern coastline of the region. “We’re making up to $80,000 available to the East Coast Rural Support Trust to help farmers and growers recover from the significant damage in the region,” ...
After four years, executive director Max Tweedie has stepped down from Auckland Pride. He tells Sam Brooks about shepherding the festival through a tumultuous few years, and where he’s going from here.This year’s Auckland Pride Festival is set to be the biggest one yet. Over the course of more ...
A flailing mayor was only the public face of a multifaceted flooding communications failure. Duncan Greive examines the mess, and asks what can be done to improve it.It’s a chilling timeline. Stuff’s Kelly Dennett catalogued, beat-by-beat, the 12 hours in which Auckland was pummelled by a catastrophic deluge, interspersing ...
The Dunedin branch of the Green Party has selected Francisco Hernandez as its candidate for the Dunedin electorate in this year’s general election. Francisco Hernandez was the Otago University Students Association President in 2013. He has held a number ...
Waitangi organisers are trying to push political leaders to the side at Sunday's pōwhiri, but Labour's deputy leader says it's not for them to decide who speaks. Te Tai Tokerau MP and Labour’s deputy leader, Kelvin Davis, says the Prime Minister will speak at Sunday’s pōwhiri at Waitangi, in defiance of local ...
Every weekday, The Detail makes sense of the big news stories. This week, we spoke to an aid worker who had made the trip to the war zone in Ukraine, looked at why Carmel Sepuloni was picked to be the new deputy prime minister, visited the flood-torn streets of Titirangi in West ...
Schools play an integral but often unrecognised and unacknowledged role in helping communities respond to and recover from disastersOpinion: Schools in Auckland and other flood-affected areas are about to re-open after a delayed start to the new school year. Students will return to school having experienced wide-ranging impacts. While some ...
A very short story for Waitangi weekend The pā is a lonely place nowadays. Gorse has marched on it like the British troops of old, consuming the hills and leaving the marae looking a bald patch on the head of the earth mother herself. Even the roads have worn thin, ...
This is The Detail's Long Read - one in-depth story read by us every weekend. This week, it's The School Away From School written by Bill Morris and published in NZ Geographic's January/February 2023 issue. You can find the entire article, with photos from Lottie Hedley, on the NZ Geographic website. One hundred years since its ...
COMMENTARY:By Kayt Davies in Perth I wasn’t good at French in my final year of high school. My classmates had five years of language studies behind them. I had three. As a result of my woeful grip on the language, I wrote a terribly bad essay in my final ...
RNZ Pacific Journalist Victor Mambor, who is the chief editor of the West Papuan newspaper and websiteJubi, has received the Oktovianus Pogau Award from the Indonesian-based Pantau Foundation for courage in journalism. The foundation’s Andreas Harsono said Mambor’s decision to return to his father’s homeland and defend the rights ...
RNZ News Green Party MP Chlöe Swarbrick is brushing off concerns a temporary rent freeze in flood-hit Auckland would just see landlords hike rents even more when the controls were lifted — arguing they should stay permanently. More than 20 organisations have signed a letter urging Minister for Auckland Michael ...
Iwi leaders have accused National and ACT of "fanning the flames of racism", urging the prime minister to be brave and not walk away from partnership on three waters. ...
About this time last week it had become apparent that Auckland was in for a bit more than just a wet Friday. While the state of emergency remains in place for another seven days, it appears the worst should now be behind us. Last night, Niwa shared a fascinating thread ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Hawkins, Senior Lecturer, Canberra School of Politics, Economics and Society, University of Canberra ShutterstockIndigenous Australians are respectfully advised that the following includes the names and images of some people who are now deceased. The Reserve Bank of Australia ...
The government has confirmed the money will be spent in Northland, including unlocking greenfields land and transport upgrades like a new bridge in Kamo. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gabrielle Appleby, Professor, UNSW Law School, UNSW Sydney Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has confirmed that sometime between August and November this year, the Australian people will go to a referendum for the first time since 1999. We’ll be asked whether we support ...
Viewers across the United States were today shown a slice of New Zealand, with a reporter for Good Morning America broadcasting live from Rotorua. Robin Roberts, a co-anchor for the popular morning TV show, has been touring the country this week. During her visit to Rotorua’s Te Puia centre, she ...
They can be environmentally unsound and are a symbol used to shame millennials, but everyone still loves an avo. I love avocados, always have, always will. The buttery golden-green flesh from a perfectly ripe avocado is a culinary blessing. Today I’d love to simply wax poetic about twisting open a ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin (Penguin Press, $50) The beautiful ...
A new poem by Robin Peace. To the kahikatea I see from my bed Thinking inside the square, the ellipse, the round of what life is, I only see the trees. Not only as if that were the only thing I see, but only as if the tree matters more. ...
A week ago, Elton John’s first Auckland show was called off at the last minute. What was it like getting there, being there, and trying to return home afterwards?Elton John has long been a blessing for our ears, but in recent years his Auckland shows have been cursed. His ...
For Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown, sorry seems to be the hardest word to say The mayoral chains must have been heavy this week for Auckland’s Wayne Brown, as his response to last week’s flood garnered its own veritable torrent of scandals and media scrutiny. Almost exactly one week on from ...
For Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown, sorry seems to be the hardest word to say The mayoral chains must have been heavy this week for Auckland’s Wayne Brown, as his response to last week’s flood garnered its own veritable torrent of scandals and media scrutiny. Almost exactly one week on from ...
Ours Not Mines is cautiously excited about reporting that the Government is drafting legislation to ban new mines on conservation land. The anti-mining group's spokesperson, Morgan Donoghue says: "The Government has been promising us some action for ...
People who enjoy the outdoors for recreation, fishing and hunting will lose rights under the Natural and Built Environments Bill. Fish & Game New Zealand chief executive Corina Jordan says the proposed replacement for the Resource Management ...
Auckland mayor Wayne Brown has conceded he “dropped the ball” during last Friday’s major flooding event. The state of emergency in the super city has today been extended for a further seven days, though Brown said he expects it will be lifted early. After a week of defensiveness over his ...
As the reality TV juggernaut returns for a new season, Tara Ward steps into the minds of the show’s relationship experts to assess the compatibility of this year’s brides and grooms. Married at First Sight: Australia returns on Monday night, and by season ten, you’d think the show’s relationship experts ...
Auckland’s state of emergency is expected to be extended for another seven days, according to the Herald. It was due to expire overnight after being declared a week ago, the day of the worst flooding in the super city. While weather conditions have improved, the city is continuing to experience ...
Proposed pay equity claim settlements for school librarians and science technicians have been reached between the Ministry of Education and NZEI Te Riu Roa, Secretary for Education, Iona Holsted and NZEI Te Riu Roa president, Mark Potter, announced ...
Members of NZEI Te Riu Roa negotiating on behalf of school librarians, library assistants and science technicians are excited to announce that proposed pay equity settlements are ready to be voted on by their colleagues. They include pay increases of up to ...
The Public Transport Users Association (PTUA) is calling for Michael Wood, the Minister of Transport, and now Auckland, to cancel the light rail project immediately. Auckland Light Rail was never going to happen, as our group has repeatedly said dozens of ...
Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has been asked to intervene following confirmation today that the Government plans to implement a ban on all extractive sector activities on the conservation estate. Wayne Scott, CEO of the Aggregate and Quarry Association, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexander Gillespie, Professor of Law, University of Waikato Getty Images The heated (and often confused) debate about “co-governance” in Aotearoa New Zealand inevitably leads back to its source, Te Tiriti o Waitangi. But, as its long-contested meanings demonstrate, very little ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Hunter, Lecturer in Art and Performance, Deakin University Jodie Hutchinson/Red StitchReview: Wittenoom, directed by Susie Dee, Red Stitch Deep in the remote Pilbara region of Western Australia, the town of Wittenoom lies empty, desolate … and contaminated. Wittenoom ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Oliver Bown, Postdoctoral fellow, UNSW Sydney Shutterstock The past few years have seen an explosion in applications of artificial intelligence to creative fields. A new generation of image and text generators is delivering impressiveresults. Now AI has also found ...
New Zealand’s egg shortage is hitting cruise ships too – forcing the crew of one vessel to hatch a poaching plan. This story was first published on Stuff. On the hunt for eggs, a crew from a luxury cruise ship got cracking and hatched a cunning plan. Earlier this week, Stuff ...
Now demolished, the First Church of Christ Scientist was a masterclass of architectural imagination. Kate Linzey visits the site on which it once stood, to learn more. The object is delicate and small. Small enough to sit in the palm of my hand and weighing less than 300 grams. It ...
When your food parcel arrives before the emergency alert, you know something’s not working properly.This is an excerpt from our weekly food newsletter, The Boil Up. I’ve spent the last week desperately and at times fruitlessly attempting to drain and then sweep my whānau home of knee-deep water, pull up ...
Drongo-gate continues for another day with the Herald reporting that Auckland’s mayor has been caught out using the slang term for a second time. It comes this time from a former minor mayoral candidate, Mike Kampkes, who said he received a message from Brown in response to a media release ...
How does Aotearoa stop relying so heavily on agriculture to prop up our economy? Online tax and accounting service Hnry just raised $35m to grow its software on-demand service across the globe. Bernard Hickey talks with AirTree partner Jackie Vullinghs about how venture capitalists are funding Aotearoa’s fastest growing, least-polluting ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adam Guastella, Professor and Clinical Psychologist, Michael Crouch Chair in Child and Youth Mental Health, University of Sydney Shutterstock With childcare and schools starting the new year, parents might be anxiously wondering how their child will adapt in a new ...
I am delighted to announce the appointment of John Price ONZM as the new Director Civil Defence Emergency Management and Deputy Chief Executive Emergency Management for the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA). John has been a member of the ...
Coromandel Watchdog of Hauraki are calling on the new Prime Minister and new Minister of Conservation Willow Jean Prime to immediately implement the 2017 promise to ban new mining activity on conservation lands. “ The mining industry group Straterra ...
How does Aotearoa stop relying so heavily on agriculture to prop up our economy? Online tax and accounting service Hnry just raised $35m to grow its software on-demand service across the globe. In the latest episode of When the Facts Change, Bernard Hickey talks with AirTree partner Jackie Vullinghs about how ...
There’s a fear that highlighting menopause will undermine women, especially at work. But what have centuries of secrecy achieved for us? Are you sick of hearing about menopause? Kim Hill is. The living legend of Aotearoa broadcasting told actor Robyn Malcolm (also a legend) on her Saturday Morning show on RNZ ...
Dunedin city council has reached an agreement to save Foulden Maar from commercial mining. The maar is the site of a crater lake from 23 million years ago with the diatomite of the lake preserving fossils and a climate record covering 100,000 years from that period. It is fantastic news for Otago University ...
Some are speculating whether the Auckland Mayor's leadership is circling the drain. James Elliott hopes they're right. There’s never been a week quite like it. It was the week when the rains came. All of them. Even the rain from Spain that was supposed to fall mainly on the plain, came. ...
The Bus and Coach Association supports the Government’s decision to continue half-price fares on public transport services. The fare reduction was set to expire on 31 March 2023, but will now continue to 30 June 2023. “Half-price fares have cost ten-times ...
Analysis by Dr Bryce Edwards. Political Roundup: Hipkins’ bread and butter reshufflePolitical scientist, Dr Bryce Edwards. Prime Minister Chris Hipkins continues to be the new broom in Government, re-setting his Government away from its problem areas in his Cabinet reshuffle yesterday, and trying to convince voters that Labour is focused ...
Analysis by Dr Bryce Edwards. Political Roundup: Chris Hipkins hires a lobbyist to run the BeehiveNew Zealand Prime Minister, Chris Hipkins, speaking when Minister of Education, at NZEI Te Riu Roa strike rally on the steps of the New Zealand Parliament, 15th August 2018. Image; Wiki Commons. New Zealand is ...
New Zealand Politics Daily is a collation of the most prominent issues being discussed in New Zealand. It is edited by Dr Bryce Edwards of The Democracy Project. Items of interest and importance todayCO-GOVERNANCE, WAITANGI, THREE WATERS Chris Trotter (Daily Blog): Blowing Off The Froth: Why Chris Hipkins Must Ditch ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brian Tweed, Senior lecturer, Massey University Shutterstock/Renata Apanaviciene As we approach another Waitangi Day, we should be thinking again about what Te Tiriti o Waitangi means. As the late Moana Jackson commented, the meaning of Te Tiriti will be ...
Even prime ministers get caught in bad weather. It’s a week on from the devastating flooding that hit Auckland and Northland and Chris Hipkins has been forced to drive north for the start of Waitangi weekend commemorations after his plan was turned away from Kerikeri airport (twice). Today will see ...
Less than a year ago, co-governance had a future, at least as potentially accepted terminology. Now some iwi leaders want the label removed and replaced, writes Anna Rawhiti-Connell in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here. ...
“The decision by the Reserve Bank of Australia to not replace the late Queen with Charles on the Aussie $5 note should indicate to our Reserve Bank that it’s time to change the NZ $20 note” said Lewis Holden, campaign chair of New ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Christian Wolf, Associate Professor, Astronomy & Astrophysics, Australian National University Somchat Parkaythong/Shutterstock Black holes are bizarre things, even by the standards of astronomers. Their mass is so great, it bends space around them so tightly that nothing can escape, even ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laura Revell, Associate Professor in Environmental Physics, University of Canterbury Getty Images The ozone layer is on track to heal within four decades, according to a recent UN report, but this progress could be undone by an upsurge in rocket ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Clune, Honorary Associate, Government and International Relations, University of Sydney At the New South Wales election on March 25 a 12-year-old Coalition government will be seeking re-election. Hoping to return as premier is Liberal leader Dominic Perrottet – a political conservative ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Trauer, Associate Professor, Monash University Anastelfy/Shutterstock The XBB.1.5 subvariant, known informally as “Kraken”, is the latest in a menagerie of Omicron subvariants to dominate the headlines, following increasing detection in the United States and United Kingdom. But there ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Madeline Combe, Doctoral student, University of Technology Sydney Shutterstock As the economist Herman Daly pithily said, the economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment – not the reverse. Nature makes our lives possible through what scientists call ecosystem ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Jefferson, Lecturer in Education, Edith Cowan University Shutterstock Grit. Don’t quit. That’s the mantra many parents may have in mind when they, like me, spend what feels like years ferrying children to a seemingly endless variety of sports and ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Humphery-Jenner, Associate Professor of Finance, UNSW Sydney Sam Shere/Wikimedia Commons A few weeks ago, Gautam Adani was indisputably India’s richest man. Now his fortune is slipping away as the stocks of his many companies crash, thanks to the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Divna Haslam, Senior Research Fellow, Queensland University of Technology Shutterstock Have you ever found yourself scrolling through social media and noticed you felt a bit down? Maybe a little envious? Why aren’t you on a yacht? Running a startup? Looking ...
The science of ‘event attribution’ is growing, with researchers working to accelerate their assessments. A leading NZ climate scientist tells Toby Manhire how it works, how climate change impacted the ‘off the chart’ weekend downpours, and why we can’t put a number on it tomorrow. Brutal, unexpected, record-breaking, destructive, tragic. ...
Those lockdown vibes are back – and maybe they never really went away. We were supposed to be organised. For a while there, we were. A uniform, purchased across a frenzied weekend dashing between specialist stores, was spread out over our son’s bed. Tags removed, shirts folded, socks in balls, ...
Establishing a Truth, Reconciliation and Justice Commission and recognising Māori tino rangatiratanga are among several recommendations in two pivotal reports released today (Friday 3 February) by Te Kāhui Tika Tangata Human Rights Commission. The ...
By extending the fuel excise duty cut, the Government is encouraging people to drive more, which will only worsen the climate challenges we face in the very near futureOpinion: By most accounts, the storms that have been wreaking havoc in Auckland and Northland are fuelled by climate change. The ...
Is a sponge city the answer to Auckland's flooding woes? The Detail finds out what the concept is all about. With the cleanup in full swing all over Auckland after this week's catastrophic flooding, people are starting to talk about throwing out the old building rules and "unengineering" our city - ...
With the Chinese economy looking like it is recovering a bunch faster than that of the United States and Europe, New Zealand needs a fresh wave of highly connected, wealthy, democratically-minded Chinese to immigrate here.
We should open our doors to those in Hong Kong who want to flee the brutal new Security Law that is requiring most of the human rights groups to shut their social media accounts, destroying the last vestiges of resistance to Xi Jinping's endlessly tightening totalitarianism.
Who knows, perhaps some of those pro-democracy protesters could come in under refugee status now that as of today New Zealand has increased its refugee intake to 1,500.
Auckland and New Zealand generally need a fresh generation of bilingual speakers to provide entrepeneurship, capital and cultural diversity to redouble that which they brought here in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
And it would be a great example for New Zealand to stand on the world stage and be proud as a democratic, open society by opening their doors to those of Hong Kong who wish to come and who qualify.
It's all dirty money though, isn't it. That's what cause the housing crisis in the first place so going back there can't be a good idea.
Racist much? Hardly just Hong Kong citizens who drove house prices upward.
Ad’s made a worthwhile point, and a stand In support of a nations democratic right
Let's sacrifice the poor and send even more Kiwis into the precariat so that we can boost our property portfolios. While claiming a cloak of virtue.
All money is dirty. Everything in the money-system is dirty.
Tell them this:
Welcome home.
"All money is dirty", but some monies are more dirty than others.
Yes.., and perhaps we could embrace Drury's idea and start building luxury homes for these downtrodden 'elites' in a place like Queenstown. That would be the kind thing to do and it would also help our construction sector…
The natural place for Hong Kong expats is Auckland – that's where Mandarin and Cantonese communities are already very strong. We sure need to keep our construction workers engaged here.
Aahh..good ol' Ad, King of the short term thinkers..guess thats why he is such a avid supporter of this neoliberal centrist freemarket Labour, yep they really are made for each other.
Good to see you're standing with the hard-right Trumpites and European xenophobes.
Chinese have been here for over a century and have proven to be an exceedingly hard-working, productive and culturally rich addition to New Zealand.
We are effectively in a 1946 moment, and it's about to roil the entire world.
This is where the real left get to stand up for people.
Er plenty of migrants have been hard working and productive. Should we assign particular characteristics to a race country or ethnic group?
I think Ad may be outside the box that you are in Adrian. He is just being pragmatic. We have to try and manage our way out of the mess that we are in. Just black and white solutions are not suitable, what is the right medicine for our illness, in the right amount. The problem is that we may not be able to control the amount of medicine and how often taken.
Proposing a stupid idea that will likely bring harm is not pragmatic.
ATM, that means leaving our borders closed.
Lets just hang on a bit, we already have 1 million Kiwis with an automatic right to walk right in and a fair few of them are thinking of doing just that. Can we even accommodate them even if only 250,000 came without real housing and job problems.
Think of what they can do for our GDP. It has been our national (lower case) MO for years. How to grow the economy? More milk powder and more immigrants. Keeps the wages down and unemployment up. Sell a few SOE’s, give middle NZ a tax cut and raise GST, and Bob’s your uncle. Home owners have been creaming it. Apparently, farmers are now having an anal aneurism because the Greens had the temerity of proposing a wealth tax; over their dead
animalsbodies.https://www.stats.govt.nz/news/net-migration-high-but-down-from-peak
Let's bring back estate duty and stamp duty too and spread that tax burden fairly over the country on a percentage basis. That would be a case where percentages are fair for the poorer people, they always work from a base sum. Estate duty should be also on deemed portions in trusts, valued at present valuation, or at part of those market prices before a present slump.
There is no reason that three-year marriages should result in good payouts to partners, but the tax department can be always a bridesmaid and never a bride when it comes to getting a proportion of the loot built up on the reasonable reliability of this country’s laws and stability.
And an interesting piece in stuff on some of the australian crowd who make up potential returnees. About two thirds are potential returnees and I feel sympathy for persons 1 and 3 who appear to have left after being slugged by over competition in entry level employee markets and the low wage economy here.
Person 3 was more interesting. The NZ passport was a second passport and I estimate that out of a 30 year working life around 14 years had been spent here and 9 years in Australia. The net cash assets from this work life appeared to be around $100k (low?) and no mention of property ownership. It was not clear if an australian passport had ever been applied for. Now he is thinking of returning (to collect our welfare I assume) along with an american wife who appears to have never set foot in New Zealand. They could of course choose to return to the UK or the USA
I can't help feeling there is something very wrong with this scenario and we are allowing ourselves to be taken for a ride..
And yes I do know about the work issues under the Clark government and no at the time I did not approve of the decision.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/300045314/homeward-bound-struggling-kiwis-in-oz
[Link fixed]
Ad:
I don't want to be unkind but Auckland is basically a slum with high-rise buildings and a small elite that desperately holds on to yesteryears way of society strata. Hardy a place that screams value, democracy, planning, equality, etc….
Those who are used to that environment will not find anything wrong with it. Naturally.
It'd certainly bring in the Yankee dollar
Heh. Indeed.
I realise Ad is trolling, but "wealthy, democratically-minded" is probably an unconscious oxymoron on his part. The rich will always use their wealth to influence the democratic process and tip the table in their direction. The best immigrants for the long term health of a society are highly technically skilled (i.e. not 'business skills') and not wealthy. And if we go into the contents of their minds at all, we might want to add 'equality' and ' environmentally' to 'democratically'.
It really is possible to walk and chew gum at the same time.
We need to dust off our histories of 1946. The worldwide migration this is going to force is going to make the post-Syrian European crisis look like a Mollie Woppie picnic.
I too assumed Ad was trolling – if only because he is suggesting that the "poor and huddled masses" who did all the hard work around the protests are going to be left behind to suffer. Very democratic not?
Plus I'd imagine that the wealthy have long since organised a bolt hole country. I certainly remember some coming here when Hongkong changed over staying just long enough for one of the couple to score residency, dumping their kids in the local schools and then bolting back to their real life in Hongkong. .
Colonel Comrade might be on the same page with you, he could 'liaise' with the new arrivals on behalf of the government (no, not our government). Just to maintain order.
Hong Kong Chinese – good idea Ad. They are keen, smart, good people, and more likely to be on our wavelength (outdated term) than many fleeing from CCP. Not a whole bunch though please at once, which will be impossible just now but include them by all means at the same time not forgetting to be ethical to other overseas people who have paid already, worked already, want to be NZs and are good ones. So the inevitable happens, we haven't been destroyed yet, and all those who can escape the shit of the big powers see us as a haven. (While many of the boofheads and the sweeties here want to throw that away and find the wealthy wonkers' lifestyles soo glamorous and desirable.)
good news about the refugee numbers.
Would be interesting to see our immigration settings changed to include democratically-minded 😈
I've been thinking along these lines myself, you more or less beat me to it Ad. Hong Kongers are different.
Most kiwis are fairly unaware of how China is not really a single coherent historic or cultural entity. In very broad terms it can be thought of in four major chunks, the bureacratic, military minded Han core in the northern Yellow River plain and centred in Beijing, the merchantile manufacturing minded groups of the Yangtze River represented by Shanghai as the largest city, the southern port cities of Hong Kong, Macau and Xian, and the fourth being the diverse ethnic groups of the central provinces.
The southern cities like Hong Kong were historically geographically isolated from Beijing and looked outward to the wider world, particularly in terms of trade and culture. Many Hong Kongers regard themselves as quite separate from the CCP run mainland and want absolutely nothing to do with it.. The passing of these new Security laws will prompt many to find ways to leave.
I've visited Hong Kong a few times, it’s a highly developed world city, full of surprises. Kiwis should welcome these people, they will bring much of real value with them.
No, we need to settle what we've got into our own culture. Getting more of the same won't help.
Under the Key government heaps of property owners became millionaires overnight. So now Auckland is facing a housing crisis and a water crisis and record inequality. What does resident neoliberal Ad propose? More of the same.
I'm with you on this one DTB if Ad is serious. We've had these setting since the 90's and the one thing that really shows out is that our GDP per head has stayed static or gone backwards. Where are the factories and post processing plants and all the other benefits that were supposed to flow? Absolutely non existent.
Frankly for the average live out your life here citizen these policies have made their lives worse. The number of people that take part in a "global" workforce by having multiple passports and residency is tiny and over privileged. Yes houses may have gone up in value but if it's the only one you own then it's used for the basic service of "living in"
Hong Kong protesters would get a shock if they came here or say the UK, because they have better health system in HK They want freedom what, I saw a lot of American flags flying in those protest, a lot of NGO monies like NED funding anti mainland groups, there is more to life than HK dissidents money, no thanks, let them go to granny England or uncle Sam land.
Byd0nz Which group do you belong to that uses acronyms as an in-group – NED? I looked on Wikipedia – guess it doesn't mean No evidence of disease.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NED
Under Organisations.
I guess it is a US term of which I remain as ignorant as they are of democracy. So –
.
Cleangreen might be interested in this one –
"New Engine Desperado", a type of UK railfan, see Glossary of United Kingdom railway terms
The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is a private, nonprofit foundation dedicated to the growth and strengthening of democratic institutions around the world. Each year, NED makes more than 1,600 grants to support the projects of non-governmental groups abroad who are working for democratic goals in more than 90 countries.
[Fixed typo in user name]
Well we are sure to help that then?
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/in-depth/420210/nz-broke-into-embassies-for-cia-and-mi6
https://williamblum.org/chapters/rogue-state/trojan-horse-the-national-endowment-for-democracy
The classic quote
Yes, read that. About time we opt out of the 5 eyes bullshit that keeps us non independent from the capitalist spy network. Oops, sorry I forgot we are a crapitalist country.
Agree , but instead I think the whole 5eyes thing is ramping up
https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO1710/S00213/five-eyes-governments-on-encryption.htm
You mean not just 5 eyes but ramping up to a ball with feelers like a Covid-19, or a 360o degree surveillance? Or have a dynamic ball chasing us like in Prisoner on tv? Why have only one eye per country – that's so limiting.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6Ffr1U7KMY
I'm pretty sure that the USians should stay out of other people's countries and their governance just like they want others to stay out of theirs.
If they still stick their nose in then they don't get to complain about Russia influencing their politics.
We should take all the doctors, nurses (and some health tech people) and teachers who want to leave (albeit they would be better paid in Oz).
And others in skilled worker areas (albeit …) engineers/construction to IT/finance etc
And the business owners who would base here and pay tax locally on their drawings/dividends from their Hong Kong activities.
Most however will just seek British passports (to be safe) and end citizenship activity. But if China acts against those who choose this route, we might get lucky.
Things might be heating up for the "two guys in a steam bath". Yep, those two guys are Pootee and his fascist-dictator-wannabe puppet. More and more is coming out about Pootee maybe paying bounties being paid on American soldiers, and Marmalardo getting briefed about it and being utterly uninterested.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-putin-approval-calls-us-cnn-steam-bath-a9593111.html
I'm just loving this Lincoln Project series. Such concision!
The interviews with the Project founders are also excellent.
Such a cornucopia of rich targets.
I'm struggling to come up with any previous example anytime anywhere of a significant national leader being so objectively crap that they have come under this kind of sustained brutal attack across a huge number of topics, from respected senior members of their own party.
I liked Pelosis theory, the intelligence agencies don't tell Trump because Trump would get on the phone and tell Putin.
Bound to be some of that going on. There's going to be a huge amount of fascinating stuff coming out in Darth Drumpfski's post-presidency.
via twitter – didn't he "declassify" a sat photo a while back, at much higher resolution than anything previously released?
Yup. But it really just confirmed informed speculation about what resolution was possible just from the known size of spy satellites. Ie, what can you from a telescope of X diameter (2.4m from memory) orbiting Y kilometres up.
Then there was the time Don Dementia outed Israeli assets to Lavrov and Kislyak while getting all chummy in the Oval Office.
How much is that bounty the US government has out on the Venezuelan president again?
You a fan of the idea that two wrongs make a right, are you? Even in cases such as this, where the tangerine turdgoblin is deeply involved in the genesis of both wrongs?
No, just that for some reason your focusing on the bounty which Trump has sweet FA to do with rather than the one which he (and other members of the US administration including Pelosi) can actually do something about.
Oh, so it's simple whataboutery then. I had thought your cognitive processes had advanced beyond that kind of simple distraction tactic, but evidently not. My bad.
And since the point apparently needs to be spelled out for you in simple terms, the issue is about how Benedict Donald has responded to the possibility of Russia putting a bounty on US soldiers much more than about the bounty itself.
… the possibility of Russia putting a bounty on US soldiers…
You will, of course, be providing evidence of this dastardly crime. Something the entirely anonymous source of this wild and woolly story has yet to do.
We are awaiting your dump of verifiable and irrefutable “good stuff” with great anticipation, my good friend.
Uh, no, that's for those in the intelligence services to do to the satisfaction of their masters, if any follow-up appears likely.
But you too seem to have totally missed the point in your rush to indulge in another one of your displays of public political masturbation. Which is Emperor PalPutin's problematic response to being presented with the intelligence assessment, much more than whether or not the assessment is accurate.
The Taliban dont need outside incentives to kill American soldiers
I have it on impeccable authority that it was Truthful Woodhouse who was the source, so there’s the evidence!
Andre I applaud your word du jour for the orange tambourine – you bring expressive colour into the discourse, and may you do so till he goes to a better place – somewhere in the rust belt where they will treat him to unceasing religious ceremonies and don't believe in building big hotels, and playing with the stock market.
Fair's fair.
Edit
Hah. Iran was one of the smartest places in the world once, may be again.
https://theconversation.com/irans-cultural-heritage-reflects-the-grandeur-and-beauty-of-the-golden-age-of-the-persian-empire-129413
…the Hellenistic Age. The Macedonian King Seleucus (died 281BC) and his Persian wife Apame ruled a hybrid kingdom that mixed Greek, Persian, Jewish, Bactrian, Armenian, Sogdian and Aramaean cultures and religions.
With new cities, religions and cultures, this melting pot encouraged the rise of a thriving connectivity that linked urban centres in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan and Syria (where many of the Hellenistic sites (such as Apamea) have been devastated in recent years by war and looting). The great city of Seleucia-on-Tigris/Ctesiphon, just south of Baghdad on the Tigris river in modern Iraq, became the western capital and centre for learning, culture and power for a thousand years…
…The Sasanians ruled a massive geopolitical entity from 224-751AD. They were builders of cities and frontiers across the empire including the enormous Gorgan wall. This frontier wall stretched 195km from the Caspian Sea to the mountains in Turkmenistan and was built in the 5th century AD to protect the Iranian agricultural heartland from northern invaders like the Huns….
Iranian cultural heritage has no one geographic or cultural home, its roots belong to all of us and speak of the vast influence that the Iranians have had on the creation of the world we live in today. Iran’s past could never be wiped off the cultural map of the world for it is embedded in our very humanity.
Could Iran be cleverer than today's western boofheads? Can we wonder why they got enraged at the west messing with them, brazenly killing one of their revered Generals, and previously installing a puppet figurehead – who they eventually abandoned ignominiously? Can we manage our way through to keep our heads above water now? 'We haven't much money so we'll have to think hard' Rutherford said or words to that effect.
Thanks for the informative history lesson Greywarshark, certainly food for thought.
Food for thought. Yes. I am filling my head with new information and it's getting full I think and pass it on in case someone else is interested. I have had an ordinary education and can see it wasn't satisfactory and now think that most of our education is directed away from learning about ourselves, the most important thing. That was said before 1744!
one of the hardest quests in life is knowing yourself and peeling back the layers… good on ya m8
If they can shake off the iron foot of the theocrats, maybe.
In one odd sense the historic Iranian culture could be thought of as the USA of the ancient world, the two have a lot in common, but for quite different reasons.
Iran is geographically different to the USA in every conceivable way, but it all boils down to one factor: populated Iran is a fused, sprawling mountain system. Iran’s Zagros mountain chain fills the country’s entire southwestern third, while the Elburz dominates the northern third. The contemporary capital of Tehran sits on a plateau where the two chains meet. With an average peak elevation of 3000m, the two chains not only force out fairly reliable rainfall, but their valley floors tend to above 1000m. Unlike nearly everywhere else in the region, it actually rains in Iran where people live. Direct rainfall enables agriculture without necessarily requiring irrigation. Lower labor requirements free workers to do other things, like going to school, practicing a trade, composing a poem or waging war. Culture here has roots stretching back five thousand years.
Mountain living has other advantages. Anyone wanting to invade Iran must fight their way uphill into the Persian core and batter through every mountain line. This defensibility shapes Persia’s participation in international affairs. Iran isn’t a destination, but instead a knot of difficult territory that must be bypassed by those in Asia or Europe, it's just too hard to invade and hold. In this it's very much like the USA, it's geography has always made it secure.
Unlike the dozens of city-states and empires that have risen and fallen throughout the Middle East, the Persians have art, history and culture that isn’t short-lived, incidental or fused with foreign practice but instead anchored in millennia of continuity. The Persian language and Persian customs—conservatively—date back hundreds of generations.
But the same geography also forced them to become the first multi-cultural society. Each mountain valley had it's group and identity, making them a very heterogeneous society, but united in one thing … the terrain around them was even worse. This forced them develop an enduring Persian identity from all these disparate parts much earlier than anywhere else in the world.
Located on the Silk Road trade route the medieval Persians managed to sustain a remarkable medieval prosperity, but two things buggered this for them. One was the invention of deep water navigation by the Portuguese, enabling traders to completely bypass them. The other is more subtle; the thousands of mountain valleys and plateaus make internal transport very expensive, and there are few large centers with necessary pre-conditions to support industrialisation.
In many ways it's useful to think of the Persians as an ancient super-power, but one that has been sidelined by history and technology. They retain much of their cultural capital, but the nature of the land they live in has constrained their ability to adapt to the modern world.
A cosmopolitan culture for so long, yet that biodiversity got clamped into a binary theology, and most religious historians derive that of islam & christianity from Zoroaster. Here's non-academic recycling of that view:
Thus the binary syndrome that makes leftists hate Trump. Life is an
Now Abraham came from Ur, where the Akkadian civilisation had recycled the Sumerian pantheon of diverse gods & goddesses. So the Israelites went seriously off the rails in departing from their Hebrew progenitor. Historians who write about this usually blame the acquisition of monotheism from Akhenaton during the Hebrew settlement in the Nile delta centuries. Interesting how cultures long complex can shift into banal simplification!
Thanks Greywarshark, a great follow up of the series "The Silk Road" extract on Zorastrians the Muslims Persia and Iran cultures narrated by Joanna Lumley.
My friend, I have a bridge you might be interested in buying. Where could we meet?
I might be interested. Who did you buy it from and how much did you pay?
so people that are returning are starting to sending in CVs. What are we to tell them?
anyone got any ideas? Other then sorry mate you are overqualified for fruit picking?
Tell them this Sabine:
Welcome home.
yes, welcome home, i hope you have enough money to last 6 – 12 month – cause on unemployment you will not even manage to rent a ditch, let alone eat.
welcome home honey, sadly i can't hire you, we are all gonna be shit outta luck once the wage subsidy subsides.
welcome home you and your whanau, hopefully you are not picky n choosy cause fruit picking might be your best bet, and for your wife/husband and the kids.
welcome home, to what ever you find here waiting for you.
welcome home. You are on your own.
is that what you are talking about Ad?
Ours is now one of the most coherent, intact, and functioning civil societies on earth.
It's good if they brought money with them – and they usually bring it in by the truckload. That's why they went overseas in the first place.
The newcomers wont be picking fruit. More than likely our children will be.
Exactly. The returnees will fall roughly into three categories.
There was about 50,000 kiwis travelling short term, most of whom have gotten home, but there will be still a few who have been stuck in odd places who have not yet been able to organise a flight for one reason or another.
About 200,000 kiwis in Australia do not qualify for any support there. Eventually a fair fraction of them will be forced to return if they do not have secure jobs. Probably about 50% of them over the next six months. Most will be younger adults and will likely return to family here, but not a lot of other prospects.
Another large and hard to qualify chunk will be ex-pats who have been living and working all around the world. Many will have been earning a good income, and would return with capital and experience. How many is very hard to guess, because their decision points will all be unique based on their circumstances, but I would guess maybe another 100,000 or so over the next few years. A lot depends of just how turbulent the world becomes in that period.
New Zealand can cope with this.
interesting post redlogix. already people in the third category are spending money. houses are being bought and renovations happening at my beach, by cashed up kiwis returning. my real estate colleague confirms that sales and prices are up, mainly driven by incoming cash. dont think we are going to need to selloff any more kiwi citizenships for a while.
The internationalistas
A fair few will be those who can do their work from anywhere in the world, and will return still employed in their current jobs. Safe trumps cosmopolitan for the next few years.
Others will become self employed contractors living here but applying for international jobs they can do on-line. Others will run on-line businesses and or offer themselves as consultants to local business in their industry sector.
Some will simply take the jobs that have been going to skilled migrants.
Some will simply spend a year holidaying here, or doing a post grad course, where it is safe.
As for the Oz Kiwi crowd who return, hopefully a lot are into construction/roading and building and truck driving – younger adults back to home with parents are ideal for seasonal work (camper van).
Then there are the jobs that semi-skilled migrants – couriers/service stations/IT/Chorus connections have been doing.
50,000 migrants coming in, not. The lack of 100,000 students this year eases the hospitality sector downturn impact on employment.
Yes dear, also Lol. Lol. Lol.
No they left in the first place because they could not get any jobs here. Cause the one thing NZ sucks are really is the creation of good jobs, future proof jobs with a pay above min wage that would allow them to pay life and student loans.
And now they are back here with no jobs, no real chance to get a job, and most of them don't come with truck loads of money because were ever they lived before they did so on a regular wage paying regular things like food, rent, insurance etc etc etc.
But yeah, nah nah, quite a few of them will do what ever they can as 250$ per week un-employemnt is too little to live and too much to die on. And so far i have yet to see a proposal from any of the empty suits to raise this to the level of the wage subsidy so as to prevent further hardship and misery. And i don't expect to see anything meaningful about unemployment to come anytime soon.
As for us being the Nr. 1, our wage subsidies are still keeping many afloat. Take that away and see what happens to our Society when you have somewhere between 10 – 20% unemployment (certain regions even higher – and i am being very charitable with the numbers as i would expect them to go into the high 20s low 30s) who can neither pay food or rent on the current benefit levels.
The current projection is unemployment at 9% below the original projection of 10%.
Some tourism economy regions of course will be around 20% – the question will be how many of those are residents/citizens and entitled to benefit support
think unemployment will turn out to be a bitter disappointment for the nats.
some tourism areas will be well above that.
There is a reason why the wage subsidy was extended – i think they call this flattening the curve.
I love all that pie in the sky wishful thinking. What ever gets people trhough the day.
But i will make sure to tell the people that are sending me their unsolicited CVs that they can just declare themselves contractors to get some 'work from home' jobs, or that they just start working in roading/building (skills and training is for suckahs), or that they just do a year living in a Van (Freedom camping with the whole family is fun 🙂 ) and so on and so forth.
the real number of unemployment will be known when the wage subsidy runs out and is replaced with nothing. Until then, you have no numbers to throw about.
the takeaway from this thread (apart from preparing for community resilience) is that worker rights is a big priority. If Ad and his peers' children end up fruit picking, best make sure they have better wages and work conditions than the economic migrants and working holiday crowd have had up until now. Fruit picking is honest work, about time we made it good work too.
While I don't know the profit margins involved, and with exports in 2019 worth $6.2B – An increase of $720M, and an industry valued at $9.5B, out of principle I wouldn't go fruit picking until the wages for the hard grafting workers reflected their real worth and value to the horticulture big boys.
New Zealand horticulture exports grow to $6.2 billion
Your reply was to a misrepresentation of what I wrote. Not your best work.
As to unemployment figures, prepared to make a bet?
They send in a Grainne Moss CV… https://www.newsroom.co.nz/1248845/get-your-handbag-its-not-going-to-be-pleasant …problem solved.
Yep ……….. As I just sent to Bradbury's Open Mike:
Just another example of how good people get shat on in our neo-liberal public service
http://www.newsroom.co.nz/1270488/the-brave-new-world-of-oranga-tamariki
All the good intentions in the world result in SFA
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/sunday/audio/201845427/hoani-jeremy-lambert-listening-to-our-kids
Jeremy looks pretty intense in that Newsroom photo.
Sweet fuck all indeed.
I wandered over to Newsroom for the link and found part 2…became so engrossed I damn near neglected my other duties.
Why the hell Moss is still there….I reckon this issue warrants it's own post.
PS…I have never heard of NUPE until today. Why is that?
Interesting that she was A tolley appointee (against advice).
Yes it was an engrossing read.
Tolley or Bennet?
When Moss was appointed, then Minister for Vulnerable Children Anne Tolley (pictured) dismissed questions in the media over whether she was the right person for the job. Photo: Lynn Grieveson
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/the-brave-new-world-of-oranga-tamariki
"The panel convened by Rennie to make the decision was an all-Pākehā lineup: deputy State Services Commissioner Debbie Power, secretary of education Peter Hughes"
Two of the creators of the highly toxic environment at WINZ – beggars belief that the current government (naively maybe) put anyone from that era of management back in there – or actually maybe it doesn't considering some of their actions to date towards the poorest in society – not increasing benefits as per the WEAG recommendations, making the homeless pay 25% of their benefit to pay for their motel rooms, getting rid of including underage partners in superannuation – all those things make poor peoples lives harder. I can see why she would appeal to them both – cut from the same managerial mould/(mold?). Fits nicely with the earlier comments about the managerial class that were made.
yeah, nah nah, not relevant at all to what i asked – the people sending me CVs have not lost jobs for bullying and chances are will not be hired for their bullying nature.
they are ordinary people who have come home to nothing much, if anything at all.
Sorry Sabine. You wrote "CV" and I'm afraid that forever those two letters will pull that image of Moss' CV into my mind.
What to do with the returning sons and daughters who thought their best futures were Overseas?
Sadly, not all will be of the 'highly trained and qualified in a specialist field' group that seem to have the welcome mat laid out. I'm not entirely convinced of the essentiality of making movies about virtual blue folk, but I do see the necessity of having experts dealing with the leaking shit pipes in Wellington.
So those who can't be gainfully employed in one of the multibillion dollar projects announced by Our Leaders over the past few weeks will have to 'pivot', I believe is the current parlance, and broaden their horizons or lower their expectations.
And perhaps consider voting for the Green party and their ending poverty policy.
Because it would go a long way towards mending the safety net.
If someone with a PhD in particle physics applies for an honestly advertised minimum wage casual job as a cleaner…hire them. Or not.
'pivot' has become so passe @Rosemary – everybody is pivoting and they need something new. There is a new word on the horizon. Forgot where I heard it, but immediately I did, "ultimately" I knew it'd become the new normal going forward (in that space).
"so"…….. the best creds for something like the position of OT CEO could be experience as a used car salesman, as long as you make it clear you're also "passionate" about what you do, AND "compassionate".
On the other hand, as Anne Tolley has reckons, being a mother might be sufficient, although I'm not sure how the likes of Jeremy Lambert could ever aspire to such an exceptional position of CEO of OT
Art is essential because it tends to reflect us.
Most likely not. People who are over-qualified for a job don't get employed for that job and if there aren't any jobs around for what they're qualified for then they end up as long term unemployed. Its one of the ways that our present system wastes its people.
Oh, I don't know. I'd pay a wee bit extra for a Thesis in Three with my double shot mocha.
Fruit picking season has been and gone in our region.
I hear farmers are in demand should they wish to farm.
anyone can be a farmer? Great. I will tell people to just be a farmer, i was told they are in high demand. lol.
There are already training programs underway
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/farming/121989572/slow-start-to-35m-course-setup-to-fill-1000-vacant-dairy-jobs
Miss 15 wants to sign up when she is a bit older, it looks fantastic.
tell them the truth. Tell them that we have no idea what NZ will be like in 12 months time, or the world. We might be ok-ish (think high unemployment but a still functioning economy). Or we might be in the middle of a major GFC and our main concern is to have enough food for the coming year. Or something in between, which is probably worse than the first two.
I'd suggest learning how to grow protein and carb crops if they don't already know. Also, get to know your neighbours and be kind to them. And get to know the people in your community that know how to build resilient communities and have been practicing this.
Yep, unemployment and not enough income sucks. That's been true for too many for too long already. Best we learn, fast, how to do things differently.
Also, tell them to vote Green.
I told my kiwi friends that so long as they can stay overseas, i .e . still have their visas and jobs to stay overseas. Keep distance, wear a mask, shower in sanitizer and stay where you are. Nothing much to come here for unless you have oodles of cash which the people that i know overseas don't have. They went overseas in the first place because unemployment and under employment in NZ sucks and they were lucky enough to find employment elsewhere.
But to pretend that we are not going to have issues with high number of unemployment , people without the capacity to pay rent and food is foolish imo, and it seems that a lot of people like to rather be foolish then look at the world as it is. And maybe some people just hope that we can pretend it ain't that bad, (as generally it is done) but i doubt this time around we can.
I read your post on the greens, and frankly it is neither bold nor future orientated. (again, the socialist in me is finding both the Greens and Labour timid in their approach)
The one things the wage subsidy has shown us in NZ is that it is the minimum one needs to 'live', not extravagantly but just subsistence level. So again the unemployment min income proposed by the Greens is already 150$ short at the very least. For 320 you may find a rental, but you wont' be eating, nor paying electricity nor food. So redundant. If this is not the time to talk honestly about what it costs to simply stay alive (food, shelter, warmth) then it will never be the time. As for growing food, lol. We might want to stop pretending that we are not in a country wide drought for a start. Water is vital to growing food, and in certain parts of the country water is an expensive good. Growing food is for those that have homes, stable homes. Growing a tomato in a pot is a nice supplement, but you don't want to try to survive on it.
So i really really hope that someone in our government will finally just be bold. If only for a refreshing change.
As for telling people how to vote, i won't. Never did, never will. I don't believe that parties lead, its the people that bring about the changes. The suits will follow when they have to and not a minute before.
thanks for a considerate answer tho, i was wondering if anyone here still gave a shit about others.
Though lifting the rates must go hand in hand with rent controls otherwise increase just become a revenue source for landlords. Even the US has rent controls in most places e.g. restrictions on how much you can increase rent on your rental property in a year – even when tenants change.
Maybe it's the difference in perspective for those of us that were locked out of the 'getting ahead' economy decades ago. It's not that I don't have empathy for people losing their jobs, it's more that I think the solution to that isn't to try and make things like they were before only better. If people still want a big house and a late model car and a new smart phone and an overseas holiday every year, sorry, but the ecologies we are utterly dependent upon just can't sustain that.
$325/wk is a minimum guaranteed income. Not a maximum, and there is no suggestion that this is what people should live on. You appear to have fundamentally misunderstood the policy.
Not recognising the radical and bold approach to disabled people in the policy is hardly surprising. Working people are the really important ones right? Who cares if the Greens are proposing to stop treating disabled people like third class citizens and give them a substantial increase income as well as a dedicated income support department of their own.
Growing tomatoes is not growing protein and carb crops. If you don't understand this, and who grows food in NZ and how and why, maybe take the time to learn. Not everyone has to grow food, those that can should. Not all of those people own or rent land they can garden on. If we think unemployment is bad wait until we're wondering where our years supply of food is going to come from.
Yes, parliament follows us, but we still need them to enact laws. Like minimum wages and work conditions, benefit rates and so on.
Drought in NZ is largely a human created disaster (I don't mean climate change, but local land use practices). We don't have a country-wide drought, we have water shortages in some places because humans are too stupid to adopt the systems and tech that already exist to farm/garden regeneratively and with respect for water as part of nature. Humans have been growing food for tens of thousands of years in places with lower rainfall than NZ has currently. It's not rocket science, we are just ideologically blind.
Exactly Weka
Just like there is wealth enough to go around if its equitably distributed, there's enough water if its not squandered in non essential car washes etc
Community gardens are a valuable and initial step in providing food and building community.
We really do need to have a different mind set , insread of weeping and wailing we need to get in and start doing and helping where we can
6 months paid parental leave, starting today.
Top work Labour.
Come on you post-lockdown couples, get to work.
They're so fucked.
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem says the thousands of people who attend the July 3 celebration for Independence Day at Mount Rushmore with President Donald Trump will not be required to practice social distancing despite an increase in coronavirus cases across the country.
"We will have a large event at July 3rd. We told those folks that have concerns that they can stay home, but those who want to come and join us, we'll be giving out free face masks, if they choose to wear one. But we will not be social distancing," Noem, a Republican, said in an interview Monday night on Fox News' "The Ingraham Angle."
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/s-dakota-gov-noem-says-we-will-not-be-social-n1232507
Pro-life repugs got their death panels.
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Has the guy in the image got an alien in his neck? He doesn't sound as if he'd be glad to see one though.
It's a tracheostomy tube.
http://stevespohn.com/
Edit
http://stevespohn.com/rebooting-your-life/
Rebooting Your Life: 6 Steps You Can Follow to Find a New You
He has found a way to get over that problem for the time, and take other along on the road with him. He sounds like a Forrest Gump character – giving other people a boost as well as himself.
He is advocating for himself and others in need of compassion, and has a website and the heading above tells about his ideas for 6 mins I think. I didn't read it because I'm in the elderly group and at present is trying to reboot my democracy and everybody's life, mine being on the end of the plank. I have my own version and just give some ideas here and around as I go about just keeping the old you in good repair, with some time for appreciation of what good you do already have.
(You can see I have just been rereading Pollyanna, who is glad, very glad about the good things that happen and she manages to pass that on. Honestly, I have just been reading it – what was the mindset of people going through hard times in the past I asked myself? Pollyanna's we know. Another seems to keep on, to relate to others and help yourself and others.)
Darwinism at work.
When Jock Anderson and Mihi Forbes agree that Jacinda has it exactly right re the border and Covid19, as they did on The Panel last night, National should be very scared. Anderson is notoriously conservative.
Anderson is also old – and maybe has a sense of his vulnerability to Covid. Meanwhile Muller demonstrates in recent interviews that his leadership style is to demand a type of impossible clairvoyance from his subordinates – insisting that there must be a plan (with timings) for an unknowable future.
Talking to the 18 yr old in the house last night. He is a tad over what he perceives to be the highly sensitive nature of folk concerning comedy and racism. Part of this is finding his own way with leaving home and being with a building crew and their conservative attitudes.
I mentioned 'punching-up' with comedy rather than down.
I want to give a shout out to Mihingarangi Forbes for her explanation around blackface.
In the context of Chris Lilley and his character Jonah from Tonga. She said that a Tongan teen/adolescent's stories are for a Tongan teen/adolescent to tell. When Chris Lilley occupies that space, there isn't room for a Tongan teen to be.
This helps me understand Brotown, in that the stories are for Kightley, Fane etc to tell.
Still a bit lost about Super City, Madeline Sami 'whitefacing' for a couple of her characters Linda and Ray. I figure it is about Pakeha being the dominant culture.
So should we reinterpret tv shows like Fawlty Towers, The Office and Little Britain as not successful comedy, but simply unfunny and offensive to too many groups of people..?
I can't see that happening. People need to laugh at themselves, the Greeks were doing similar comedy thousands of years ago.
Of course it's still successful comedy. Some of it is brilliant.
But things like brownface are at best an intelligent, sensitive comedian having more opportunity to appropriate the expression of a minority experience (albeit in a sympathetic manner) than someone in that actual demographic has to express their own experience in mainstream media. It doesn't make it unfunny. It does raise the question "why not someone who didn't need the makeup?"
The Fawlty thing is slightly different – I suspect recognition of the full harm that language causes makes it over-egg the effect they were going for. Audiences change over time, words change meaning, gain or lose emphasis. It's that sort of situation, imo.
I think of the Carry On movies I watched as a kid , hopelessly unfunny now .They
relied on repressed sexuality,stereotypes about women and homosexuality and provided "naughty" thrills.
Viewed now on vintage TV they are just puzzling, but a great social history lesson
What could possibly go wrong in a country where everybody and their dog has a weapon of war.
http://archive.li/kpQgS
I read a few years ago that English is a second language for more that 50% of the population. Spanish a high proportion of first language. If so perhaps the White folk are nervous?
PS World: Of the approximately 1.5 billion people who speak English, less than 400 million use it as a first language. That means over 1 billion speak it as a secondary language
Looking at where english is the dominant language, there's the US(330M) UK(67M) Canada(37M) Oz(25M) plus rats and mice. So yeah, less than 400M worldwide being english-first speakers is plausible. The vast majority of those are in the US, then UK.
The idea of english being a second language for more than 50% of the US population is utterly implausible. Non-hispanic whites alone are 60%, and even the majority of non-whites will be US born or arrived at an early age so grew up speaking english as their primary language.
There may be some large pockets where english is a second language for more than half the residents – Puerto Rico being the largest example, but no doubt there's some fairly large pockets along the southern border.
But maybe that comment was just some snark from a UK pedant.
2017 stats in wikipedia say english well out in front in USA.
All that is true Andre that English is the most spoken. Not sure if it covers those who speak say Spanish first but have to speak English to survive. Anyway I surrender.
Nervous about being a minority because they know just how poorly minorities are treated, or something?
The question of Māori representation on the New Plymouth District Council is being debated again. But the debate all went pear-shaped with the representatives of all people should have their say at the NPDC Te Huinga Taumatua iwi committee meeting.
Poet and activist Sonya Taylor, shouted down from the gallery "racists do not deserve a fair say." The meeting was adjourned while she left the chamber. As she left she noted "Racism getting a fair say is why the oppression of Māori folks has been what it has been up to this point,"
Recall 2014 when then Mayor Andrew Judd called himself a recovering racist and supported the Māori ward proposal. And in this day and age, who wouldn't?
Well, the answer is here:
"… the move was overturned in 2015 when a citizen-initiated referendum voted against it by 21,000 votes to 4285."
The accusation of structural racism is well-founded given the only CIR that is legally binding on the NPDC is the question of Māori representation and this situation exists nowehere else in the country.
Credit to the NPDC that they're trying to get this law removed, but hey there's not going to be much support for that it seems.
Utterly shameful.
Well, as someone who did actually vote for at least one Maori candidate to the NPDC last time, I see that 5:1 ratio as a consequence of historical inertia. Take a look at this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_marae_in_Taranaki
Notice how the only marae in the city itself is in the outlying suburb of Bell Block – separated from the city proper by miles of countryside. There are three in/around Waitara a few miles further to the east, then just one each in Oakura & Inglewood a few miles to the west & south. Compare that to the list of maraes in south Taranaki to see the huge difference!
This population distribution is due to the original NZ company settlement in the year of the treaty, plus the genocide a generation earlier in which local tribes here were cleaned out by an invasion from Waikato tribes.
That structural racism doesn't accord with the dictionary definition (tacit, not overt) but I agree it does need to be flagged. A suitable political basis for that would be comparative analysis to maori representation in councils elsewhere – if that has been done on a treaty/quota basis. I've no idea what basis the protestors are using…
Many cities have a tenth set aside as fair from the takeover of land from Maori. They retained a tenth and that gives them their land by right or the right to have an argument if it starts being encroached on.
Taranaki got taken over by farmers and the Hawera blackface mentality is a carry-through. I don't know what era they are in, in their minds. Somewhere between post World War 2 and 1984 I'd say. Since then it's all been too confusing and there is a desire to retire to past highlights and memorials.
Yes, it's noticable to this day how proportionately-few Maori reside in New Plymouth compared to the rest of the district.
"a consequence of historical inertia"
Historical inertia alongside historical and current racism. People actually had to get themselves out of their chairs to instigate and vote in that referendum.
Structural racism can refer "to the ideologies, practices, processes, and institutions that operate at the macro level to produce and reproduce differential access to power and to life opportunities along racial and ethnic lines… embedded in societal-level institutions, policies, and practices"
I believe that definition covers what is going on with this.
"A suitable political basis for that would be comparative analysis to maori representation in councils elsewhere"
The articls states legally binding CIR only for Maori representation is unique to a NPDC. Even if the council and Maori agree on a representation model as in 2014. The people can vote it down. That's not a racist council, it's a racist act by the population.
[Fixed typo in e-mail address]
Russiagate’s Last Gasp
One can read this most recent flurry of Russia, Russia, Russia paid the Taliban to kill GIs as an attempt to pre-empt the findings into Russiagate’s origins….
https://consortiumnews.com/2020/06/29/ray-mcgovern-russiagates-last-gasp/
Of course the Taliban story was mindlessly parroted by RNZ this morning…seems as if fake news is fine at most mainstream news outlets just as long as it supports ones own narrative…no need for pesky things like…gasp! evidence or credible named sources.
Thanks Adrian
For others, tl;dr?
“The intelligence assessment is said to be based at least in part on interrogations of captured Afghan militants and criminals.”
(my bold)
"How much of an unprincipled whore do you have to be to call yourself a journalist and uncritically parrot the completely unsubstantiated assertions of spooks while protecting their anonymity? How much work did these empire fluffers put into killing off every last shred of their dignity?
It really is funny how the most influential news outlets in the Western world will uncritically parrot whatever they’re told to say by the most powerful and depraved intelligence agencies on the planet, and then turn around and tell you without a hint of self-awareness that Russia and China are bad because they have state media."
Thanks, Brigid. Very good point. Our 'independent, privately-owned' press sometimes turns out to be even more bigoted and biased – but this must never be admitted.
Russiagate, that consumptive and sickly monstrosity conjured up from an ill-advised and disastrous mating of rogue CIA operatives and the discredited far right of the Democratic Party, is still wheezing and sputtering along, as can be seen by clicking on Comment No. 2 posted on this page at 8:41 a.m. today.
Russian agents offering bounties on US soldiers …why would they do that ?
https://www.newsweek.com/total-f-russian-mercenaries-syria-lament-us-strike-killed-dozens-818073
Maybe?
Russian mercenaries and not actually Russia.
Dude Russian mercenaries are still Russians aren't they? Hell how is your memory? Was there not a time when Afganistan had a communist government and the USA supplied Osama Bin Laden with weaponry to kill soviet troops? I'm not talking morality-I 'm talking motivation – it seems like there's plenty to me……
Indeed
Seems strange that the Pentagon chief Mark Esper says there's no corroborating evidence
Fun facts…. vineyards were still able to harvest, wine was still sold in the supermarkets and it was a bumper grape crop this year.
As Blinglish of Dipton proved, the rich will always take any money that they can scheme to get their hands on – no matter how immoral that scheme.
It might suit your anti-capitalism to see NZ go down the gurgler DTB but what about the children?
Actually, what about the country and managing to keep its head above water. It is hard enough keeping down the dream-sequence kiwis who still support National, the others would soon desert Labour if the economy went down. So it is good that the wine got picked, so that people could get paid, so that it could be sold, and so there is money flowing into the economy. Paid work at a living wage, that is the goal and making sure that people have good lives. That's a big one as the world goes down, ice floes melting faster than expected. Hell is people running away but going towards the edge and being powerless to stop them, and knowing it isn't a dream.
We still have hopes of being able to turn the tide at the present. A recession and things would only get worse. Let's make the most of this world-wide problem and pinch the government as much as possible to make changes while we have some advantage in the world. And also keep Labour in front to win again. Don't count on anything remaining stable, we have to help NZ as we won't get second chances from hereon in.
See Susan St John on TDB – https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2020/07/01/when-will-labour-get-it-right-for-the-worst-off-children/
There are lots of basic improvements to be done, we won't be better off if facing a full-scale depression. Everybody who doesn't want to do anything until it is the 'Right Thing' is just continuing the same useless mindset that brought us to the present debacle.
Never said that.
Wine grapes, unlike eating grapes, are picked and then sold later (it says so in the article). In other words, the lockdown hasn't affected him at all. A drought would have affected him worse and I'd expect him to have plans for that eventuality as well.
And having money flowing into the economy is easy and doesn't need to have direct subsidies to businesses. Just give everyone $100/wk and local business would have kept going.
Actually, a recession is likely to do more for slowing climate change than keeping business going as per normal.
O O
The House sitting calendar still shows 1 July as the last sitting day?
Nick Smith again today acting like a child in Parliament. His recalcitrant childish apologising should be compulsory viewing by the voters down his way. Hopefully the boundary change helps his demise.
Meanwhile, in democratic Russia.
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(sound off if you're squeamish)
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/ussia-journalist-david-frenkel-attack-police-video-mediazona-election-a9594351.html
The police stayed down a long time giving him the treatment!
For 45 years I manned polling booths and the worst anger I saw was directed at the orange felt tip pen that dried up. Aren't we lucky that our democracy is so benevolent.
Yes, but we can't sit back sleepily and take it for granted. It is slipping away, bit by bit starting even before 1984 but speeding up as time goes on.