Something that other developed nations, (including NZ, in 1938), delivered decades ago.
‘The Time for Medicare for All Has Come’
Visionary Bill to Remake US Healthcare System
Jake Johnson, staff writer,Jon Queally, staff writer – Common Dreams, February 27, 2019
Calling for a “complete transformation of our healthcare system,” Democratic congresswoman says what her legislation will mean is simple: “Everybody in, nobody out.”
The huge and entrenched US profit driven health care system in the is a travesty, no one can rightfully defend it. Yet it still exists. Built on the desperation of the ill and dying, the huge returns this system brings to wealthy investors and insurance companies, make sure it does.
Not only do American taxpayers pay more than most countries to subsidise their profit driven health system, they also pay exorbitant private insurance and up front costs before they can receive it. Keeping many millions of Americans who can’t afford it, from life saving care and needless suffering.
Bringing in single payer will cost the American people far less,.prevent needless suffering, and save countless lives.
There are two reasons that bill is going precisely nowhere. The first that everyone here should be aware of is the Repug-controlled Senate and Il Douche in the Oval Office.
The second and much more difficult obstacle is that the majority of Americans get their health insurance through their (or a family member’s) workplace where the employer pays the majority of the cost. In 2018 the average annual premium for an employer-sponsored family health plan was around $20,000. The employer paid on average around $15,000 of that.
So any proposal to transition the US to some kind of universal single-payer health system has to first persuade those currently covered by their employer-sponsored insurance that they’ll be better off with the proposed new system. That part should be easy given what an exorbitantly expensive clusterfuck the current system is, but won’t be given most people’s fear of change.
Second, the plan has to map out how the cost burden is going to change. If it’s just by expanding Medicare and paying for it by increasing the existing payroll taxes, then that’s going to be a massive and highly visible tax increase on wage-and-salary earners and a massive windfall cost reduction to employers that will go straight into owner profits. I didn’t spot anything in in the commondreams piece or the linked 10 page summary that even mentioned this aspect of it.
Something that other developed nations, (including NZ, in 1938), delivered decades ago.
‘The Time for Medicare for All Has Come’
Visionary Bill to Remake US Healthcare System
Jake Johnson, staff writer,Jon Queally, staff writer – Common Dreams, February 27, 2019
Calling for a “complete transformation of our healthcare system,” Democratic congresswoman says what her legislation will mean is simple: “Everybody in, nobody out.”
The huge and entrenched US profit driven health care system is a travesty, no one can rightfully defend it. Yet it still exists. Built on the desperation of the ill and dying, the huge returns this system brings to wealthy investors and insurance companies, make sure it does.
Not only do American taxpayers pay more than most countries to subsidise their profit driven health system, they also pay exorbitant private insurance and up front costs before they can receive it. Preventing many millions of Americans who can’t afford private treatment, from receiving life saving care or undergoing needless suffering.
Bringing in single payer will cost the American people far less,.prevent needless suffering, and save countless lives.
“America is the most expensive nation in the world to give birth. When things go wrong – – from pre-eclampsia to premature birth – costs can quickly spiral into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. While the data is limited, experts in medical debt say the costs of childbirth factor into thousands of family bankruptcies in America each year.
America is simultaneously the most expensive and one of the riskiest industrialized nations in which to have children.
as many as 56,000 families each year still go bankrupt from adding a new family member through birth or adoption.
“Why any society should let anyone be bankrupted by medical bills is beyond me, frankly,” said Woolhandler. “It just doesn’t happen in other western democracies.”
…………………………………………..
TPPA is a corporate attempt to export this usa disease ……….
People are suffering from trade war fatigue, BREXIT, TPP11 ect. Undeniably there is a desires for a conservative health system where the deserving and undeserving poor a denied the basics of life.
You fan boys were never able to produce an argument for it that added up, so don’t feign surprise when this incredibly lousy deal elicits speculation as to your motives for boosting it.
Whats absurd is listening to some-one who always leaves out half the information Wayne…………..
A leaked negotiating text shows what the US is demanding on behalf of its big drug companies (known as “Big Pharma”) and how the benefits New Zealanders enjoy under PHARMAC are threatened by the TPPA. Although PHARMAC itself will not be dismantled, under the leaked text PHARMAC would:
: not be able to negotiate a bulk discount for medicines
: have to give detailed reasons to the drug companies about every purchasing decision
: give pharmaceutical companies the right to appeal PHARMAC’s decisions
: publish the identities of all decision-makers around the purchasing of medicines.
If adopted, this text would strengthen Big Pharma’s leverage over PHARMAC. The drug companies’ would gain new rights and opportunities to lobby PHARMAC decision makers and challenge their credentials, demand reasons if PHARMAC rejects their ‘expert’ reports and data, and pressure its decisions by constant threats of appeal. The goal of the big pharmaceutical companies is to influence PHARMAC’s criteria and decisions in their favour at the expense of affordability for the public. If the leaked text is adopted then government would have to massively increase the health budget, reduce the availability of subsidised drugs, or increase the price paid by ordinary New Zealanders.” https://itsourfuture.org.nz/access-to-medicines/
The drug companies are some of the worst corporations around …. like rust and nationals incrimental privitization of our public health … those fuckers never sleep.
They profit gouge and dodge tax.
Apart from misrepresenting the corporate goals in regard to the TPPA …. your lack of comment and presumably concern for the cruelty of the usa health system is noted … “experts in medical debt say the costs of childbirth factor into thousands of family bankruptcies in America each year.”
To which I’d add there is a lot of the homeless people in the usa …. who have ended up that way after getting sick …. cancer treatments costing them their homes etc.
And that isn’t pointing a finger at you Gabby, like your stuff. It’s the someone else that wants to drown us in a deluge from the usa piddling pool.
I think people need to remember that us and usa are two different peoples in different places and sizes. What a difference an ‘a’ makes.
And you will note that google drops the ‘A’ which designates them as being in America. The ‘United States’ is just an adjective and a noun, and perhaps not restricting it to a location is a subtle hint that the US authorities consider it is short for ‘The Planet’.
Gosman the flaming penis posts a lot of Gosyrrhea …. a cross between Gonorrhea and Diarrhea.
I’ve previously asked him for a yes / no response to; “The NZ economy would shit itself and die if we got the Venezuelan treatment from the u.s.a …
Apart from repeated usa coup participation ….He ignores and denies the economic siege / sanctions weapons being used ,,,, and their effects.
Two examples :…”the US government added further sanctions that prevent Venezuela from doing what governments routinely do with much of their debt, which is “roll it over” by borrowing again when a bond matures.”
and …. “Major financial institutions have delayed the processing of all financial transfers from Venezuelan entities, significantly hampering the ability of Venezuelan companies to do business in the United States.”
If the NZ Govt could not roll over and refinance the 80+ Billion dollar Govt debt National left us with ,,,,, and if our companies like Fonterra could not get paid and trade …. Then our economy would shit itself and die.
The Aussie economy …. , the british economy ,,,, and even the usa economy itself ,,,, they would all shit themselves and die …. if given the Venezuelan treatment.
Gooseman ignores all that … and tells usa lies about socialism being more to blame than the hostile actions of the usa …
He tells more usa lies about the Venezuelan elections.
The election before last was called the most free and fair in the world by Jimmy Carter ….
The last election was boycotted by an opposition which knew it would not win, they attacked approximately 100 polling stations to try and stop people voting.
However UN observers from over 50 countries declared the actual election fair and valid …. its the usa and its coup govt in waiting … and gooseman who are bullshitting with invalid claims …. Venezuelan elections are which are probably more legit than the usa ones …. the usa and its puppet do not want more fair elections …. without usa voter purges of the poor, they can not get into power the electoral way.
They want a military coup …… backed by the usa of course.
Regarding socialism …. I’ve twice challenged GooseStepper or other right wing trolls to put up or shut up ……..by showing me / us a capitalist country which improved the living standards / health / education for its people …. as qucikly as Libya did using socialism.
It went from one of the poorest impoverished countries in the world up to No 67 in the human development index…. all in little over a generation …
Libya was then of course destroyed by the usa / Nato …. its modern society replaced with a civil war hell hole, that has slave markets ,,, crucifixion of christians ,,, the Lynching of the usa ambassador ,,, kidnappings ,,, mass murders ,,, rapes etc etc.
The usa seems to be threatening the same treatment for Venezuela
Unlike Gosman I’m interested in what works around the world …. he’s an idealog and wants to silence evidence that contradicts his beliefs.
I’m certainly not saying NZ should copy Libya … as our circumstances and society are very different.
But we should be able to look at examples that work in the world …. and respond to problems like homelessness …without fear of the usa fucking us over.,,,
Now Imagine if the usa had declared the national party the winner in our last election and told NZ first they had to partner them ,,,,
Who out of our trolls / dickpicks would have gone along in this goose step direction ,,,, how about nact politicians ?
I’ll finish with a positive link to another good woman who makes judith collins look like grubby greedy trash
Just have to shake your head sometimes. If you think Gosmans a troll (I dont) ignore him dont spray shit about place. Essentially the post makes it look like Gosmans under you skin and has you beat. Sti’s the shits and a Nazi reference all in one post so classy.
Goose stepping is a long tradition of south American fascist regimes …. Nazis are indeed a subset of fascists.
modern history lesson History ….. south america was flooded by nazis using ratlines to escape from europe …. 50,000 to Argentina alone…… the generals / facists / juntas took over a large part of south america from the mid 60’s to the 1980’s….. with usa support.
The usa provided the computers and equipment behind ” operation condor ” ….. much like IBM provided computers to the Nazis to help them keep on top of the huge logistics in running their Jewish and Slavic mass killings / Holocaust.
The Gosman thing is interesting. He is extreme right wing as far as I’m concerned. As much was apparent yesterday when talking about 6000 Auckland houses and apartments being listed on the disruptive app, Airbnb.
This USA based app has introduced a major shift in the usage of secondary property in the last 2 to 3 years and obviously is having an impact on the number of available rentals for families in Auckland.
Gosman simply would not comprehend that houses were a scarce resource which must be utilised for working Kiwi families in the current shortage. He would not comprehend that secondary house owners had a duty to follow through on their reason for owning multiple properties which is to provide housing.
Gosman is an extreme right wing libertarian who simply refuses to play his part in a healthy society and has no concept of what stable communities look like because that sort of thing has never bothered him.
In fact I’m sure Gosman has no idea of what a healthy society looks like. His world view stops at the standard roses flourishing at his front door.
Venezuela has become a religious talisman for the right. Finger the beads and repeat the immortal truths about the perfection of markets, and shut down the possibility of change by frothing about Satan/Venezuela.
I think you are a wasting your time arguing. Ignore them and move on.
The trouble with the Maggie Barrys of this world, they have been allowed to get away with their bully girl tactics for so many years they think it is normal behaviour.
She no doubt sees herself as firm but fair, plain spoken and refreshingly honest and to the point. Of course woe betide anyone being plain spoken and refreshingly honest and to the point right back at her.
I was the target of a woman like that. She considered herself honest and always told the truth. In truth, she didn’t know the meaning of the word ‘truth’. She administered her own version of punishments for misdemeanours she believed her targets had committed except they hadn’t.
She was the “nutter” but she convinced herself other people were the nutters. She and Barry are two of a kind.
But there’s a breed of right-wing women who are – as you say – spectacularly horrid. If my personal experiences of them are any guide, they have sociopathic tendencies and a total lack of empathy for anyone who has fallen on hard times. They are fundamentally racist and see themselves as a cut above everyone else. In reality they are just ignorant nobodies trying desperately to be somebodies.
Oh, and when you add a naturally spiteful streak they can also be quite dangerous.
I’m calling out gosman for his flaming posts…. he’s been shown evidence … so we know he;s dishonest ….. not ignorant.
How about being all wet on him ….
There is no verbal abuse which comes within a country mile of uncivilized barbarian actions leading to suffering or death….. or support for such actions.
Some things deserve rudeness and contempt ….. Like this usa guy promoted to do his stuff in Venezuela.
Being rude to him is out of order too ……….. tut tut
Well, he might have been better than the one who did end up in the job. Or not.
Tell me. Suppose you had to choose between Christie and Trump to be President?
Which would you have chosen. Fleeing the country is not an option.
I personally would have fled the country, but I’m not going to allow you the easy way out. I thought the best qualified person actually running was John Kasich, the then Governor of Ohio.
Problem is, courage and fresh thinking are beyond the majority.
. Earlier this month, Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) introduced a Green New Deal resolution laying out an ambitious set of goals and principles aimed at transforming and decarbonizing the US economy.
The release prompted a great deal of smart, insightfulwriting, but also a lot of knee-jerk and predictable cant. Conservatives called it socialist. Moderates called it extreme. Pundits called it unrealistic. Wonks scolded it over this or that omission. Political gossip columnists obsessed over missteps in the rollout.
What ties the latter reactions together, from my perspective, is that they seem oblivious to the historical moment, like thespians acting out an old, familiar play even as the theater goes up in flames around them.
To put it bluntly: This is not normal. We are not in an era of normal politics. There is no precedent for the climate crisis, its dangers or its opportunities. Above all, it calls for courage and fresh thinking.
Joe90
Thanks for that link. These are words that should be written in capitals in front of everyone’s workplace, whatever.
What ties the latter reactions together, from my perspective, is that they seem oblivious to the historical moment, like thespians acting out an old, familiar play even as the theater goes up in flames around them.
To put it bluntly: This is not normal. We are not in an era of normal politics. There is no precedent for the climate crisis, its dangers or its opportunities. Above all, it calls for courage and fresh thinking.
” So when Wayne Mapp says he doesn’t want our foreignpolicy to be subject to a UN veto, what he is really saying is that he wants to wage war in contravention of international law and the UN charter – in other words, he wants us to be a rogue nation, just like the US… ” https://norightturn.blogspot.com/search?q=mapp+%2B+war
Q : Where does a bad mapp take you .???
A: Lost in child killing territory ….. so lost ,,, that medals of valor are awarded for killing children and civilians.
If we were to present Wayne mapp in front of Fatimas mother ….. would she be justified in judging him as a reckless uncaring savage of a man? ….
Wayne was in the position to prevent the murder of this mothers three year old girl … but he lacked the guts and probably the will …. to stop our invaders attack on her home and village …
booting his non-decision upstairs we discovered one of the few true things about key …. he was was indeed a smiling assassin.
Just to change to another foreign country. It is so much more interesting watching them than viewing our own disintegration. How do they do it, we must watch them so we can too only faster!
I was looking on TradeMe and saw the book Muldoon by Robert Muldoon, for $1.
Then there was a book on Thatcher for $12 and I wondered if the prices represented their political nous. I think we should be valuing Muldoon above $1.
I looked up the writer about Thatcher, Hugo Young. Besides his epitaph for her, he wrote a think piece on UK and the EU last century.* I thought Brexit followers might be interested in his opinions, which are Conservative I think. He tries to tap the zeitgeist of the people, and the politicians, and their divided sensibilities.
* • This is an extract trom This Blessed Plot: Britain and Europe from Churchill to Blair (1998), published by Macmillan
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/25/hugo-young-why-britain-never-sat-comfortably-in-europe The island people were not only different but, mercifully, separate, housed behind their moat. They were also inestimably superior, as was shown by history both ancient and modern: by the resonance of the Empire on which the sun never set, but equally by the immediate circumstances out of which the new Europe was born, the war itself. In that war, there had been only one unambiguous victor among European peoples, and she was not to be found on the mainland. The defence of historic uniqueness, against contamination from across the silver sea, was one powerful explanation for the course the British took during these 50 years.
But the plot was also tortuous. Little in the story was very straight. The nation’s thinking about itself lurched between different destinies. Hanging on to the past, in the form of the post-imperial Commonwealth, seemed for a time to be the answer. Remaining constant to the Anglo-American relationship, the most powerful bond in the English-speaking world, was apparently another necessity, which would be fatally compromised by the lure of something called the European Community. The idea that these amounted to alternative choices, the one necessarily imperilling the other, afflicted the decision of all leaders from Churchill to Margaret Thatcher, if not beyond.
Thatcher’s epitaph – ‘Days before he died in 2003, Guardian columnist and Thatcher biographer Hugo Young wrote an epitaph for the prime minister [died 8 April 2013 aged 87 years] who changed Britain forever.’
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/apr/08/margaret-thatcher-hugo-young Thatcher is remembered for her achievements, but more for a presence, which was wrapped up with being a woman. Several strong women on the continent have risen to the top, but this British woman, in Britain of all places, became a phenomenon, first, through her gender.
The woman, however, changed. The gender remained, its artefacts deployed with calculation. But it was overlaid by the supposedly masculine virtues, sometimes more manly than the men could ever assemble….
Thatcher became a supremely self-confident leader. No gloves, or hats, except for royalty or at funerals, but feet on the table, whisky glass at hand, into the small hours of solitude, for want of male cronies in the masculine world she dominated for all her 11 years in power…
One also can’t forget what happened to the agency that made Thatcher world‑famous: the Conservative party, of which she seemed such an improbable leader. Without it, she would have been nothing. It chose her in a fit of desperation, hats and all – though it quite liked the hats. It got over a deep, instinctive hostility to women at the top of anything, and put her there. Yet her long-term effect seems to have been to destroy it. The party she led three times to electoral triumph became unelectable for a generation.
There are many reasons for this. But Thatcher was a naturally, perhaps incurably, divisive figure. It was part of her conspicuous virtue, her indifference to familiar political conventions. It came to a head over her most egregious policy failure, Europe. She lost seven cabinet ministers on the Europe question, a record that permeated the party for years afterwards. It still does. So the woman I met in Curzon Street, dimpling elegantly, can now be seen in history with an unexpected achievement to her credit. She wrecked her own party, while promoting, via many a tortuous turn, Labour’s resurrection.
The last time I met her was after all this was over. We had had a strange relationship. She continued for some reason to consider me worth talking to. Yet I wrote columns of pretty unremitting hostility to most of what she did. It became obvious that, while granting that I had “convictions”, she never read a word of my stuff.
Compared to what we admire in Ms Ardern, Thatcher was very different. In being different Hugo Thomas says, she wrecked her own Party. She went further than they ever would. Steely conviction that she knew best. I don’t think Ms Ardern thinks like that. Should she veer towards it more? And Trump. Is he wrecking the Republicans as well as the USA?
“The party she led three times to electoral triumph became unelectable for a generation.”.
They certainly seem to have very short generations in Britain, at least according to Mr Young.
Maggie Thatcher left office in 1990. She was succeeded by John Major as Leader of the Conservative Party and PM who then won the election of 1992 and remained PM until 1997. When Thatcher quit the party was obviously not “unelectable” was it?
Labor then became the Government from 1997 until 2010. That is 13 years which seems to be the shortest “generation” I have ever heard of. I would think of a generation as being about 25 years.
The Conservatives then resumed office in 2010 and are still there.
Mr Young also seems to think that, because Thatcher continued to talk to him even though he wrote columns of unremitting hostility about her she must not have read what he wrote. What Rubbish. Thatcher lasted 11 years as PM. Having someone say nasty things about her would not have bothered her in the slightest. She would have had skin like a battleship’s armour plate.
As for comparing her with Ardern. You must be joking. Arderrn will be remembered as a person who was totally out of her depth as PM and left office after a very short termterm with nothing memorable to how for her time in office.
Having a crack at the Prime Minister for having a baby now? You do realise some poor woman had to give birth to you at some point in the distant past. I bet she regrets that now! 🤣
But that’s ok because the bulk of voters will not agree with you. Initially the Nats weren’t going to touch Ardern on being a young mother because it would be political poison.
Now they (you) are so desperate you’ve decided to attack her on just that.
The idea that most men are women haters, when in reality they spend most of their lives trying to work out how to please the ones in their lives … remains an enduring mystery to me 🙂
We don’t both agree on this stuff as you know – I find most often I disagree with your take, based on your experience, of gender politics and sexuality. I have learned this through numerous arguments with you on this forum. I’m pretty sure you really don’t want to go there so just back away slowly, as will I.
RL
What sized foot do you have? Rather large I think, because you manage often to put your foot in something when you talk about women. Even when you are being quite innocent of any miss-demeanour it comes out wrong. Better to stay away from the subject while on the blog. You may intermingle and comment as you wish in other places without let or hindrance.
Implicitly I was commenting on the use of the word ‘misogyny’ which has a strong and powerful meaning, in contexts like this where I don’t see it as warranted.
In my experience most men do spend their lives trying to please the women in their lives, they often love them beyond all reason and sacrifice much of their adult lives to provide and protect for them and their children. That doesn’t feel like any kind of ‘hatred’ to me.
What does seem to be happening is the word has taken on a political meaning that denotes ‘anyone who does not identify as a third-wave feminist or agree with it’s dogma’. Yet a quick search shows that typically less than 20% of Western populations self-identify as ‘feminist’; that’s an awful lot of potential ‘political misogynists’ out there.
It impresses me that you should find this simple logic so disconcerting.
Raising a child and being Prime Minister are both exceptionally demanding roles. That Adern is undertaking both at the same time, with both aplomb and dignity, is something I can only admire. I wish her and her family the best with this.
And probably not a smart topic to use for cheap shots around here.
Also, we were assured by opponents of the government that the PM would use her baby for self promotion and for the promotion of the government. It would be grossly unfair, they said, for the government to have such an asset with which to woo voters.
But guess what, Ardern and Gayford have studiously keep their family life private. This is in stark contrast to the leader of the opposition who has indulged in multiple women’s magazine shoots, shopping his family around the country via cheap ink on cheap paper stock all in the name of self-promotion.
Do you scale? Your entire body of comments here are in question. Now your entire reason for being here is clear. Your agenda is to discredit The Prime Minister is New Zealand based on a series of comments that are fascile and ideological, I just debuncked your tax agenda, now you’re ducking. So before you continue along your agenda. What’s the Strongest Politician living past or present that can beat Jacinda in a straight up election. The conditions are equal MMP states. Labour42.5%, National42.5%, NZFirst5%, Greens5%, ACT5%. Economy steady @3%, unemployment 5%, inflation 3%. Who beats Jacinda and why?
“Your agenda is to discredit The Prime Minister is New Zealand based on…”
No, it isn’t. But if it was, I wouldn’t really have to try too hard. She’s doing a good job of discrediting herself without my assistance. I do have some sympathy for her, however. She became leader of Labour only out of the party’s utter desperation, and then only became PM by virtue of a bitter, but admittedly wily, old fox. She is and was woefully unqualified in terms of life experience, and it’s showing. Day after day.
I know the idea of actually consulting with the public, listening to experts and thinking carefully about policy, is a foreign concept to the “Masters of the Universe”.
Who prefer the peasants are just told what to do.
It is the sign of a good leader, to consider and reason.
The sign of a good leader is the ability to make good quality, timely decisions. Listening and consulting is important, if it is in order to inform a decision. When it is simply to kick decisions down the road, that is a sign of weakness.
But I’m quite happy for her to keep listening, because the decisions she has made so far haven’t been great.
In your, somewhat self interested and biased opinion.
I am not even a Labour supporter, but so far she is heading in the right direction. Difficult as it is with ignorant greedy arseholes, like yourself, making any progress an uphill battle.
There is zero requirement to agree with him, but so far Shadrach has generally engaged here in good faith and presented his case with reasoned argument and data.
Personal attacks like this invariably say more about the person making them …
Duck clap. That’s at least the secound time Iv seen you say that. Didn’t work the first time, what makes you think it will work a secound, Mr Logic?
In my book a blatant insult deserves a blatant insult. Shaddy maybe using sophisticated insults but they are insults. As long as health and education resources are equal to demand there isn’t a bad thing any one can say about Jacinda.
You know the problem with agnoring insults is it doesn’t work on those who aren’t payed to grab your attention or are just trying to grab your attention like journalist. Want to harm them then ignore them and reduce self deception and bullshit.
Praying on the other hand is the gospel of the weak and downtrodden. There’s something strange about preying I public.
In my view, a person is Christian if they says theyre Christian. Anything else leads to unending arguments over who is a “true Christian” and who isn’t, because there’s no objective standard to determine who is and who isn’t a true believer.
Don’t get over anxious on my account Sam, I’ve participated in literally thousands of conversation here in the past decade and I’ve developed some idea what works for me. For what it’s worth I tapered off on the ‘insult for insult’ approach at least five years back, given that it seemed counterproductive more often than not.
But you’d be wrong if you think I’m incapable of them.
Nor am I specifically a Christian either, although I’d like to think I can recognise wisdom regardless of what costume she’s wearing on the day.
A sobering and brutally honest column from Steve Braunias today. Quite hard to read because it reminds us we are only a short distance from fragility and loneliness – especially as we grow older.
What’s so special about that Steve Braunias. We are all on the same journey or parallel; at different stages. Like the ‘Spain’s Camino de Santiago ‘.* I’ve put the link down the bottom as it might be something to concentrate on doing while you reorient yourself.
Come and write here. Give us lessons on angst and how to market it. Everything is business these days – how to call out for other’s attention, successfully. We are not succeeding. Or are we; perhaps we get the attention of someone who takes a point from our writing that was not our intention. Can’t people out there concentrate on trying to understand, not go to the trouble of telling you that no-one says ‘whom’ these days! Tell me how you feel about my use of semi-colons Steve. Are they naff; too frequent?
Join the club Steve, perhaps there is already one formed for people who are trying, but find that others just regard them as very trying. We can laugh at ourselves ironically. We may not be getting far even slowly, but we are moving forward – that’s so ‘in’ these days. At the end of the day it is irony that brings some steel into your life,
and gives you strength to stagger on!
P>S> Tom Scott has drawn a cartoon showing himself in apparent safari shirt and shorts and giving an impression of leaving. Says something about a book and heroes. Probably like Muldoon he is going to write about himself. Both of them are heroes in their own ways. You too Steve.
Keep us fizzing you heroes – we’ll try to keep the water flowing, and perhaps turning it into wine if we have that special power, and you put the bubbles in. Okay? Deal?
Canada – the reporter in this Guardian article (thanks Guardian i must give you a donation regularly), says that watching Trudeau front up to behaviour below par is like watching a unicorn being run over! Such wonderful hyperbole.
To recap, Wilson-Raybould [former Attorney-General and Justice Minister]
was demoted to the position of veterans affairs minister in a cabinet shuffle earlier this year. Shortly thereafter, reports emerged that she and her staff had been subjected to a “sustained” campaign by the prime minister’s office over the handling of corruption charges against SNC-Lavalin, a Montreal-based engineering giant accused of bribing Libyan officials. It happens to be a large employer in Quebec, Trudeau’s home state – the prime minister’s office made sure to remind her of that, the job losses such charges might cause and the fact that it was an election year. There was a string of increasingly irate calls, texts and emails. Still, Wilson-Raybould held her ground. The prime minister lost the battle. Then she was demoted.
When the story broke, Trudeau denied any connection between the standoff and Raybould-Wilson’s political punishment. He denied having done anything inappropriate or wrong. The press and public howled. His principle secretary, Gerald Butts, who has been his bestie since their halcyon days in the 90s at McGill University, tried to take one for the team by resigning last week. But it was already too late. Now, Canada’s Tory opposition and many respected commentators are calling for Trudeau’s resignation. It’s a political bloodbath, Canadian style
Simplifying the Mainzeal collapse into one word: reckless.
Jenny Shipley is, was, and always will be reckless. She was leader of a reckless party, the National Party. Subsequent leaders have also been reckless – it is in their very nature.
The recklessness of John Key’s term is plain for all see. A housing crisis, corruption in the education sector, underfunding of health and infrastructure, poor immigration management, and worse environmental management.
These two and all their colleagues are cut from the same cloth and I hope people can finally see that truth.
I was thinking about the word, “reckless” the other night and realised that it stems from “reckon”, that is, thought/thinking/reckoning, therefore, I reasoned, “reckless” means acting without reckoning.
Nek minute nightmares at , 11pm, 12.20am, 4.30am, 6.23am. Tired grumpy kids are hard work. No devices today girls, mum needs a full nights sleep so she can be a good parent.
On the upside it could be a good way to explain to the girls how much social media trending fake news (momo ain’t real) can influence someone and change a persons thinking.
Better arm myself with some bad dream spray tonight, (perfume, air freshner, waving around some incense, what ever i can find at the time lolz) worked a treat on me when I was a kid lmao.
Hellooooo coffee 🙂 It’s a beautiful day here today.
The social credit system aims to incentivise “trustworthy” behaviour through penalties as well as rewards. According to a government document about the system dating from 2014, the aim is to “allow the trustworthy to roam everywhere under heaven while making it hard for the discredited to take a single step.”
Social credit offences range from not paying individual taxes or fines to spreading false information and taking drugs. More minor violations include using expired tickets, smoking on a train or not walking a dog on a leash.
One thinks of Gilbert and Sullivan, and the line about the punishment fitting the crime!The chorus from a 2012 version of the Mikado which is Japanese but will carry the similar sentiments of this Chinese edict: Mikado:
A more humane Mikado never
Did in Japan exist,
To nobodys second,
I’m certainly reckoned
A true philanthropist.
It is my very humane endeavour
To make, to some extent,
Each evil liver
A running river
Of harmless merriment.
My object all sublime
I shall achieve in time —
To let the punishment fit the crime —
The punishment fit the crime;
And make each prisoner pent
Unwillingly represent
A source of innocent merriment!
Of innocent merriment!
I wonder if anyone has anecdotes of what it was like to live in Singapore where they introduced draconian rules post WW2 that sound similar to those in China.
Meanwhile our Christchurch police are arming themselves and a stray shot from a recent ‘episode’ went through a window in a nearby building, where there were a number of people felling terrified, as you would.
Two horrible truck fatalities over the last three days.
Trucks are now gridlocked on NZ roads causing higher casualties than Australia now. Back in 2017 it was bad but we now have had according to NZTA an 8% a year increase in trucks.
The country’s road toll has been declining for years, but after a series of horror crashes it is set to soar.
After a crash north of Taupō in which four people were killed, this year’s grim toll climbed to 297.
That’s already above than the toll for each of the past six calendar years and there are still more than two months to go.
Of course, the population has also been growing, but the per capita road toll has also been increasing in recent years and the ratio of fatalities to vehicles on the road has flatlined after declining almost every year since 2000.”
Here were the two latest fatal truck crashes last week.
• Last friday morning another truck and a car accident on Highway 1 near Turangi and Taupo.
• The day before three died in a four vehicle accident involving three trucks on highway 2 near Matata near Whakatane.
Rail would have saved four lives that NZTA cost each life lost at $3.4 million.
So rail would have saved us all almost $14 million.
Yeah, saw that last night and almost wrote a post on that but it was too getting too late. I’ll see how I go this weekend as there’s good fodder there to write about. Maybe you’d like to have a go at a Guest Post here?
No worries. I’m writing the post right now and I’m no good at writing either. In any case, people who disagree with your points but who have no real counter argument or simply can’t be bothered often resort to nit-picking about grammar, sentence structure (syntax), punctuation, and most of all semantics.
A proper green party should always be part of a government in an MMP environment, the fact the current Greens can’t work with anyone but Labour rules themselves out of that role.
Hopefully, Tava can develop and grow the Sustainable party into a position where the can take over from the current Greens and fullfill that role.
Yet at the same time the elimination of poverty and meeting the technical challenge of climate change both demand innovation and growth.
Take away ‘growth’, collapse our global economy back to the pre-Industrial, pre-capitalist era and not only will we entirely lack the tools to meet these challenges, we will have 7 billion mouths to feed and no obvious means to do so.
Take food, for example. Say we waste 30% of food globally. Someone innovates and halves that wastage. If we maintain production, people are better off. If we reduce production by 5%, actual consumed food still increases significantly. But how would that affect the food component of “growth”? You’d get an increase of GDP from the food that’s ploughed back into fields for whatever reason, but the food sent back to the restaurant kitchen, or that expires on the pantry shelf? Reducing that won’t affect GDP at all. Might even reduce it.
I’m not so sure about ‘growth’ either. KJT uses the word in a distinctively prerogative frame, yet this cannot be the whole story.
In part you’re absolutely correct about efficiency; there is so much we could and should do to minimise our existing resource use, just within our current technological framework.
On the face of it the simple notion of unlimited resource consumption on a fundamentally limited planet is absurd. Everyone understands this at some level. Yet as they say the Stone Age did not end because they ran out of stones; instead we developed Bronze which turned out to be a far more efficient use of the very limited energy resources available to us at the time.
Through a series of major stages we’ve progressed through the Iron Age, the Coal Age, and the Oil Age, In this sense ‘growth’ has a far more constructive meaning; it’s about how efficiently we utilise the energy and physical resources available to us.
Right now we are hard up against the limits of fossil carbon burning, and potentially some metals. Our agricultural systems consume too much land and our raping of the oceans is an abomination. Don’t mis-characterise me, I’m as vividly aware of the potential for total eco-collapse as the deepest shade of Greenie.
The only solution we know that will work is to progress beyond the limits of our current technologies, and leap once again up the efficiency ladder into completely new industrial forms. Forms perhaps dominated by solar, solid state lithium storage, fusion cells, new exotic materials like graphene and the like. There is a massive amount of R&D happening globally in all these areas; it only take a small fraction of it to make it from the lab to commercial products to utterly transform the world.
I don’t propose any guarantee this plan will work, but it is the only ethical bet in town.
“On the face of it the simple notion of unlimited resource consumption on a fundamentally limited planet is absurd.”
You understand the absurdity of continual growth, yet you argue for it to continue.
We talk about the “magic of compounding interest”. And, in a world capable of infinite expansion, yes.
In a finite world, infinitely compounding growth required for exponentially expanding returns, is a total impossibility.
Simple maths.
Then. The technological fix. We cannot even get the idiots to agree to a stop to oil drilling, in thirty years time.
Haven’t you seen the resistance to the current technological solutions. Vested interests are fighting alternative energy, public transport and reduced energy use, tooth and nail.
If the idiots had any ethics, we will have a chance. But they would rather the world end, than lose any money. They still have the delusion they can load all the costs on the already poor.
It appears to me you missapply the term growth in this context when what you actually mean is improvement/progress….although synonyms they are not the same .
Who the hell said anything about collapsing back to the pre industrial era.
As for growth. Continued using up of the environment simply cannot happen.
Or this argument will be moot, as a few desperate remnants of humanity cling onto an environment incompatible with human life.
Late stage Capitalism, has meant a huge amount of waste and mis -directed resources. The “competition” with Polytechnics, and ports, is but one small example.
The only hope, is that we stop spending our efforts into finding ever more elaborate ways of ripping other people off, which is the aim of the majority of businesses these days, and co-operate in solutions.
Those who are making plenty of money from business as usual have shown they will fight every step of the way.
The infinite growth required for our current system of finance, economy and social organization to continue, is an absurdity.
Modi has internationalised the Kashmir dispute. He has demonstrated to the world that Kashmir is potentially the most dangerous place on earth, the flash-point for nuclear war. Every person, country, and organisation that worries about the prospect of nuclear war has the right to intervene and do everything in its power to prevent it.
[…]
The attack that killed at least 40 men was yet another hideous chapter in the unfolding tragedy of Kashmir. Since 1990, more than 70,000 people have been killed in the conflict, thousands have “disappeared,” tens of thousands have been tortured and hundreds of young people maimed and blinded by pellet guns. The death toll over the last 12 months has been the highest since 2009. The Associated Press reports that almost 570 people have lost their lives, 260 of them militants, 160 civilians and 150 Indian armed personnel who died in the line of duty.
i hate these forced birthers with a passion i can hardly put in words
how fucked up do you have to be to refuse an abortion to an 11 year old girl who was raped by the 65 year old partner of her grandmother on the grounds of your personal believes.
Like how fucked up do you have to be in your believes to force an 11 year old girl to carry a pregnancy to terms?
how fucked up do you have to be to ‘consider the mothers consent to the abortion not enough’ and yet request the ‘grandmothers consent as she lived with her grandmother, even tho she got raped at her grandmothers’, so that eventually the girl is over 20 weeks along, and you need a ‘cesarian’ to cut the baby out.
How fucked up, how mean, how petty and how cruel do you have to be to force an 11 year old girl through a pregnancy, and please fucking leave god out of it, cause if that is ok by god, then god is a fucking sadist and ok with baby rapists.
However, her request was delayed by almost five weeks, and some doctors refused to carry out the procedure.
Eventually doctors carried out a C-section instead, arguing it would have been too risky to perform the abortion.
The baby is alive but doctors say it has little chance of surviving.
The girl was 23 weeks pregnant when – after several delays – she was to have the abortion.”
” Local media report that the girl had been clear from the beginning that she wanted to terminate her pregnancy, telling officials: “I want this thing the old man put inside me taken out.””
just how fucked up does one have to be to not simply see all that is wrong with the forced birther crowd. For the unborn, and to hell with those born and ‘potential hosts’.
We’ve often disagreed in the past Sabine, but on this I share your anger. This is what happens when absolutists go mad.
It’s quite striking how attitudes toward abortion vary dramatically around the world; in many parts of Asia it’s virtually seen as a routine method of contraception, while parts Latin America, as in this horrible story, hold to the opposite extreme. In the West we tend to hover around the middle, generally accepting it as an unfortunate necessity, a last resort when all other better options have been exhausted.
Personally I’ve never engaged with the debate preferring to see it available, lightly regulated and a matter of personal conscience.
As the old saying goes, “if it bleeds, it breeds”. To me, those that refuse these procedures on grounds of morals simply refuse to see women and girls for that matter as nothing more as hosts, vessels, this is gods plan, blablabla.
fact is this girl could have/ would have been seriously damaged physically trying to carry this pregnancy to term, birth would have been potentially only possible via cesarean.
to give her the run around, completely and utterly ignoring her needs, her physical welfare, her mental welfare and simply not giving a fuck about the ‘host’, cause the morals only apply to the ‘unborn’. Once born, both the host and the unborn are on their own, and can you image the stigma of being a 15 year old with a three year old kid. Morals, no, this is not about morals, this is about putting this girl firmly in its place. Single, unmarried, with child. On your own.
look away from the act, and tell me how anyone can pretend that this stuff simply does not serve to dehumanize the women or girl in question. Be they pregnant by choice or wanting an abortion, all hosts.
We are set in the farming mould here in NZ. The jelly mould, and women must have their jellybabies. The farming types can’t decide whether women are like breeding stock and have an owner or whether they should be allowed to run free and graze on the long acre eking out a life. If they want to provide a secure family life with a role model of a capable, intelligent good mother and afford to provide things that other children have, the mother trying to get training will be made to jump through hoops. So perhaps unmarried women are sort of like circus animals.
I’ve been listening to this evening. Quite a fascinating and vivid discussion on depression with deep political implications. Warning, quite long at 1:25
Kia ora R & R whanau ora is just cyps rebranded with a Maori name. I say Bill set it up so his wife could setup a company to milk the people and the system it’s was not about fixing the problems that this raciest system has on minority culture.
I have seen no evidence that whanau ora is s delivering better our comes for our Mokopunas with LOST parents. The extended whanau is still there to look after the tamariki. I say we need a Maori approach to fixing our tamariki with parents lost to the system. But the real people in control of the system don’t want to give Maori any Mana if you pay good money you will get good carers pay peanuts and you get – – -. Ka kite ano P.S invest good money and have a simple system that holds people accountable for there actions if they don’t improve the tamariki lives
Kia ora The Hui it does not matter that difference age groups have a slightly different opinion on the main subject it’s democracy and the people have been educated on the truths of how the system operates and they have spoken to stop this system of harvesting Maoris into the justice system that provides jobs for old white men and legalise weed. 75%,is a good majority. I say a 18 year old ban is what is needed some people will consume it when they are younger but as people are like sheep the majority will obey the LAW. Correct it won’t fix the unjustice system but it is a start on the road to reforms of the unjustice system. Ka kite ano
Kia or a R & R People cannot predict Papatuanuku. But I’m pretty sure she will give plenty of warnings when a volcano is about to erupt it’s up to the rulers that these Waring be heard IE re tangata is education correctly . LOOK at climate change that is a way Bigger threat to Aotearoa than a volcanic eruption and the climate change deniers have that topic suppressed and we are talking about volcanoes just distracting tactics from the oil barons control MEDIA Ka kite Ano P.S were,s the concomedian GLOBAL WARMING IS WHAT WE SHOULD BE TAKING ABOUT
STRIKE FOR OUR CHILDREDS RIGHT TO BE LEFT A GOOD CLIMATE 15 MARCH .
Could everyone who cares about our mokopunas futures strike to kia kaha we will let the oil barrons know its no JOKE
Here you go WHANAU back to the Real issue the is going to make or BREAK our mokopunas futures not Volcanos .
Climate crisis and a betrayed generation
Activists behind recent youth-led climate protests say their views are being ignored in the debate about global warmin
We, the young, are deeply concerned about our future. Humanity is currently causing the sixth mass extinction of species and the global climate system is at the brink of a catastrophic crisis. Its devastating impacts are already felt by millions of people around the globe. Yet we are far from reaching the goals of the Paris agreement.
Young people make up more than half of the global population. Our generation grew up with the climate crisis and we will have to deal with it for the rest of our lives. Despite that fact, most of us are not included in the local and global decision-making process. We are the voiceless future of humanity.
We will no longer accept this injustice. We demand justice for all past, current and future victims of the climate crisis, and so we are rising up. Thousands of us have taken to the streets in the past weeks all around the world. Now we will make our voices heard. On 15 March, we will protest on every continent.
We finally need to treat the climate crisis as a crisis. It is the biggest threat in human history and we will not accept the world’s decision-makers’ inaction that threatens our entire civilisation. We will not accept a life in fear and devastation. We have the right to live our dreams and hopes. Climate change is already happening. People did die, are dying and will die because of it, but we can and will stop this madness.
We, the young, have started to move. We are going to change the fate of humanity, whether you like it or not. United we will rise until we see climate justice. We demand the world’s decision-makers take responsibility and solve this crisis.
You have failed us in the past. If you continue failing us in the future, we, the young people, will make change happen by ourselves. The youth of this world has started to move and we will not rest again.
The global coordination group of the youth-led climate strike.
Links Below ka kite ano
I thought I would giving another on SUGAR as I seen one story blaming the bad effects of sugar on Pacific peoples genitics big companys control OUR media hence the truth about the bad thing in ones life are suppressed
Your Teeth
You probably rolled your eyes at age 12, but your mother was right: Candy can rot your teeth. Bacteria that cause cavities love to eat sugar lingering in your mouth after you eat something sweet.
Your Joints
If you have joint pain, here’s more reason to lay off the candy: Eating lots of sweets has been shown to worsen joint pain because of the inflammation they cause in the body. Plus, studies show that sugar consumption can increase your risk of developing rheumatoid arthritis.
Your Skin
Another side effect of inflammation: It may make your skin age faster. Sugar attaches to proteins in your bloodstream and creates harmful molecules called “AGEs,” or advanced glycation end products. These molecules do exactly what they sound like they do: age your skin. They have been shown to damage collagen and elastin in your skin — protein fibers that keep your skin firm and youthful. The result? Wrinkles and saggy skin.
Your Liver
An abundance of added sugar may cause your liver to become resistant to insulin, an important hormone that helps turn sugar in your bloodstream into energy. This means your body isn’t able to control your blood sugar levels as well, which can lead to type 2 diabetes.
Your Kidneys
If you have diabetes, too much sugar can lead to kidney damage. The kidneys play an important role in filtering your blood sugar. Once blood sugar levels reach a certain amount, the kidneys start to let excess sugar into your urine. If left uncontrolled, diabetes can damage the kidneys, which prevents them from doing their job in filtering out waste in your blood. This can lead to kidney failure.
Your Body Weight
This probably isn’t news to you, but the more sugar you eat, the more you’ll weigh. Research shows that people who drink sugar-sweetened beverages tend to weigh more — and be at higher risk for type 2 diabetes — than those who don’t. One study even found that people who increased their sugar intake gained about 1.7 pounds in less than 2 months.
Your Sexual Health
You may want to skip the dessert on date night: Sugar may impact the chain of events needed for an erection. “One common side effect of chronically high levels of sugar in the bloodstream is that it can make men impotent,” explains Brunilda Nazario, MD, WebMD’s associate medical editor. This is because it affects your circulatory system, which controls the blood flow throughout your body and needs to be working properly to get and keep an erection.
Ka kite ano links below.
Kia ora Newshub Lighting strikes caused fires in Australia it must be dry there they would laugh at our droughts.
Some in the retirement industry don’t show the retired people the respect they deserve.
Yes democracy needed to be protected and all donations to political parties needed to be declared.
I won’t say who I am backing in the Auckland mayor race but you can work it out quite easily. It’s cool that lady is making dolls specially for children with disabilities that will lift there spirits.
Ka kite ano
Kia ora The AM Show The Green Party has a better grasp of reality than the 2 neanderthal climate change denier. Adults YEA RIGHT.
national ran schools broke so they could have a private education system that only the rich could afford to get a decent education you know how it is its easier to CON a uneducated society than a education one. (O we don’t KNOW what is the main cause of obesity) .
Sitting on the fence.
If it was not for the POWER of social media our realitys would be buried under pile of oil barrons $$$$$$. Climate change has taken 30 years to get through that pile.
The youth should be heard as it is there futures we are SHITTING ON at the minute. Social media gives them the power for their VOICES to be heard. That’s the big picture leave Papatuanukue with a better or similar condition as we received it most people want their children to be better off than they have.
There you go kicking the poor people not everyone that is in prison is a big criminal minor crimes like being Maori and unpaid fines and the ujustice system will stich you up like they are trying to do to Me.
This same phenomenon happened other times Labour was in power strikes.
Well I tryed to use the unjustice system to stop my reputation being SHIT on but everyone now knows that the rich make the laws of our society to serve them and lock up the common poor people you need $20.000 to get a fair deal out of the system.
Im just going to ignore the new joke on the block give it no oxygen and it will disappear. Ka kite ano P.S LoL
I see the TROLLS are jumping all over Maori Mana once again blaming us for the Toheroa not recovering from that westen Thing of stipping a resorce untill it collapeses look at the Crafish in Auckland the Orange Roughy that fisheries started when I was a in my teens and it only lasted 10 to 15 years do you blame te Maori for this to fools . At Wai tahi spit there was heaps of Pipis now its skint blame those Maoris . For one a shellfish wont last long with a one ton car driving ontop of it two we know that all shellfish need clean water as the filter wai to get there food they are the filters of Tangaroa the person who wrote this story talks shit saying that he does not know the link between dirty water and the decline of the Toheroa YEA RIGHT just another put down of Maori Cultures . 3 THE ANONMOUS informants are most likley Kehuas Gost made up + just to give credibality to this persons bullshit story 4 I have never seen Toheroa at a Marae
Decades of fishing bans have not rescued seafood delicacy toheroa
Toheroa was a favourite NZ seafood delicacy of the 1900s. It was vastly over-harvested and collecting was banned in the 1970s. In the decades since, it has not recovered. Why not? Will Harvie reports.
It would probably appal Kiwis who feasted on toheroa in the last century that the seafood delicacy is now almost forgotten.
Until the 1960s, toheroa was New Zealand’s “great contribution to the epicurean world”.
The kai moana was “highly esteemed by the most fastidious gourmet” and a “gift of nature … that has done much to advertise the Dominion all over the world”, according to the NZ Railways Magazine in 1936.
Toheroa thrived on the western beaches of the North Island – Ninety Mile, Ripiro and Muriwai. It abounded on the beaches of Kāpiti-Horowhenua near Wellington. Mysteriously, it thrived on Oreti and Te Waewae beaches in Southland. There were pockets elsewhere.
The surf clam was a staple of the Māori diet for centuries. In the 20th century, it seemed to be an “almost inexhaustible resource” to many.
From 1928-69, Northland factories canned about 20 tonnes of toheroa a year. In 1940, they canned 77 tonnes, the record
In almost all discussions of the customary harvests of toheroa, words such as “limited” and “restricted” are used to indicate these are minor events.
But there’s evidence and testimony that customary catches of toheroa are neither.
“Based on our observations and communications with kaitiaki, honorary fisheries officers and residents at Ripiro, and to a lesser extent at other locations, it would appear that the levels of human harvesting are significant,” wrote Ross and co-authors in the main paper on toheroa to come out of the Marsden funding.
“Illegal harvesting is common,” they wrote.
“Poaching events range in size from residents or visitors just getting a feed every now and then – which may be once a year or once a week – to large-scale illegal harvesting for the black market
Fresh water comes up often. There’s both evidence and knowledge that toheroa probably need clean, fresh water coming onto beaches from inland. It probably cools them and they probably get nutrients from it.
In Northland, where many streams and seeps have dried up, there are questions from locals whether this has contributed to the decline.
“There are also accounts from elders of streams ‘running black’ after logging operations and this coinciding with the disappearance of the toheroa bed at the end of that particular stream,” he wrote in an email.
“There is clearly a relationship between toheroa and streams, we just don’t understand it yet. Which makes it difficult to advise land and environment managers. We are working on it.”
Across many North Island iwi, toheroa is closely tied to the dune grass pingao. There are several stories from Māori lore on the connection and Ross thinks the association is worth investigating further. Ka kite ano links below
Well its about time some more money was invested into Waka building look at all the flash yacth clubs the flash rowing clubs thanks anyway ka pai try getting funding like that for Maori cultures out of national they would SQUEAL like they were shitting bricks lol
$ 4.6m grant to make Sir Hek’s waka dream a reality
The government is to invest nearly $8 million in two major Far North projects, including a long-held dream of waka tohunga
he told the Waitangi Tribunal three years ago he would not be around forever, and his dearest wish was for the funding for a navigation school so that the traditional techniques of Pacific voyaging could be passed on to a younger generation.
“Sir Hek is truly an icon of the Far North,” Mr Davis said.
“The Kupe Waka centre will see his knowledge preserved and also bring people to the area from New Zealand and overseas to this incredible part of our country.”
The government is also investing $3m in a multi-use sports centre in Kaitaia. Participation in sport and fitness was a key part of maintaining a healthy lifestyle and improving the wellbeing of whānau and communities, Mr Davis said.
“This facility will create jobs, attract people to live here and help retain workers, young people and athletes in Kaitaia.”
The investment package also includes support for three iwi: Te Aupōuri, Ngāti Kahu and Te Rarawa, to make progress on major projects.
https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/te-manu-korihi/383515/dollar4-6m-grant-to-make-sir-hek-s-waka-dream-a-reality
They include investigations into a water storage project for horticulture and exploring the potential for a barge to transport logs to Northport in Whangārei.
The package announced today is worth $8.2m, but the government has tagged more than $90m from the Provincial Growth Fund for Northland projects from Kaipara to the Far North. Ka kite ano links below
In 1974, the US Supreme Court issued its decision in United States v. Nixon, finding that the President was not a King, but was subject to the law and was required to turn over the evidence of his wrongdoing to the courts. It was a landmark decision for the rule ...
Every day now just seems to bring in more fresh meat for the grinder.In their relentlessly ideological drive to cut back on the “excessive bloat” (as they see it) of the previous Labour-led government, on the mountains of evidence accumulated in such a short period of time do not ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Megan Valére SosouMarket gardening site of the Itchèléré de Itagui agricultural cooperative in Dassa-Zoumè (Image credit: Megan Valère Sossou) For the residents of Dassa-Zoumè, a city in the West African country of Benin, choosing between drinking water and having enough ...
Buzz from the Beehive Melissa Lee – as may be discerned from the screenshot above – has not been demoted for doing something seriously wrong as Minister of ...
Morning in London Mother hugs beloved daughter outside the converted shoe factory in which she is living.Afternoon in London Travelling writer takes himself and his wrist down to A&E, just to be sure. Read more ...
Mike Grimshaw writes – The recent announcement of the University Advisory Group, chaired by Sir Peter Gluckman, makes very clear where the Government’s focus and priorities lie. The remit of the Advisory Group is that Group members will consider challenges and opportunities for improvement in the university sector including: ...
Eric Crampton writes – The Reserve Bank of New Zealand desperately wants to find reasons to have workstreams in climate change. It makes little sense. They’ve run another stress test on the banks looking to see if they could find a prudential regulation case. They couldn’t. They ...
Rob MacCullough writes – Pundits from the left and the right are arguing that National’s Fast Track Bill that is designed to speed up infrastructure decisions could end up becoming mired in a cesspool of corruption. Political commentator ...
Looking at the headlines this morning it’s hard to feel anything other than pessimistic about the future of humanity.Note that I’m not speaking about the future of mankind, but the survival of our humanity. The values that we believe in seem to be ebbing away, by the day.Perhaps every generation ...
Swabbing mixed breed baby chicks to test for avian influenzaUh oh. Bird flu – often deadly to humans – is not only being transmitted from infected birds to dairy cows, but is now travelling between dairy cows. As of last Friday, Bloomberg News reports, there were 32 American dairy herds ...
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a ...
What is it with the mining industry? Its not enough for them to pillage the earth - they apparently can't even be bothered getting resource consent to do so: The proponent behind a major mine near the Clutha River had already been undertaking activity in the area without a ...
Photo # 1 I am a huge fan of Singapore’s approach to housing, as described here two years ago by copying and pasting from The ConversationWhat Singapore has that Australia does not is a public housing developer, the Housing Development Board, which puts new dwellings on public and reclaimed land, ...
Buzz from the Beehive Reactions to news of the government’s readiness to make urgent changes to “the resource management system” through a Bill to amend the Resource Management Act (RMA) suggest a balanced approach is being taken. The Taxpayers’ Union says the proposed changes don’t go far enough. Greenpeace says ...
I’m starting to wonder if Anna Burns-Francis might be the best political interviewer we’ve got. That might sound unlikely to you, it came as a bit of a surprise to me.Jack Tame can be excellent, but has some pretty average days. I like Rebecca Wright on Newshub, she asks good ...
Chris Trotter writes – Willie Jackson is said to be planning a “media summit” to discuss “the state of the media and how to protect Fourth Estate Journalism”. Not only does the Editor of The Daily Blog, Martyn Bradbury, think this is a good idea, but he has also ...
Graeme Edgeler writes – This morning [April 21], the Wellington High Court is hearing a judicial review brought by Hon. Karen Chhour, the Minister for Children, against a decision of the Waitangi Tribunal. This is unusual, judicial reviews are much more likely to brought against ministers, rather than ...
Both of Parliament’s watchdogs have now ripped into the Government’s Fast-track Approvals Bill. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāMy pick of the six newsey things to know from Aotearoa’s political economy and beyond on the morning of Tuesday, April 23 are:The Lead: The Auditor General,John Ryan, has joined the ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Sarah SpengemanPeople wait to board an electric bus in Pune, India. (Image credit: courtesy of ITDP) Public transportation riders in Pune, India, love the city’s new electric buses so much they will actually skip an older diesel bus that ...
The infrastructure industry yesterday issued a “hurry up” message to the Government, telling it to get cracking on developing a pipeline of infrastructure projects.The hiatus around the change of Government has seen some major projects cancelled and others delayed, and there is uncertainty about what will happen with the new ...
Hi,Over the weekend I revisited a podcast I really adore, Dead Eyes. It’s about a guy who got fired from Band of Brothers over two decades ago because Tom Hanks said he had “dead eyes”.If you don’t recall — 2001’s Band of Brothers was part of the emerging trend of ...
Buzz from the Beehive The 180 or so recipients of letters from the Government telling them how to submit infrastructure projects for “fast track” consideration includes some whose project applications previously have been rejected by the courts. News media were quick to feature these in their reports after RMA Reform Minister Chris ...
It would not be a desirable way to start your holiday by breaking your back, your head, or your wrist, but on our first hour in Singapore I gave it a try.We were chatting, last week, before we started a meeting of Hazel’s Enviro Trust, about the things that can ...
Calling all journalists, academics, planners, lawyers, political activists, environmentalists, and other members of the public who believe that the relationships between vested interests and politicians need to be scrutinised. We need to work together to make sure that the new Fast-Track Approvals Bill – currently being pushed through by the ...
Feel worried. Shane Jones and a couple of his Cabinet colleagues are about to be granted the power to override any and all objections to projects like dams, mines, roads etc even if: said projects will harm biodiversity, increase global warming and cause other environmental harms, and even if ...
Bryce Edwards writes- The ability of the private sector to quickly establish major new projects making use of the urban and natural environment is to be supercharged by the new National-led Government. Yesterday it introduced to Parliament one of its most significant reforms, the Fast Track Approvals Bill. ...
Michael Bassett writes – If you think there is a move afoot by the radical Maori fringe of New Zealand society to create a parallel system of government to the one that we elect at our triennial elections, you aren’t wrong. Over the last few days we have ...
Without a corresponding drop in interest rates, it’s doubtful any changes to the CCCFA will unleash a massive rush of home buyers. Photo: Lynn GrievesonTL;DR: The six things that stood out to me in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, poverty and climate on Monday, April 22 included:The Government making a ...
Sunday was a lazy day. I started watching Jack Tame on Q&A, the interviews are usually good for something to write about. Saying the things that the politicians won’t, but are quite possibly thinking. Things that are true and need to be extracted from between the lines.As you might know ...
In our Weekly Roundup last week we covered news from Auckland Transport that the WX1 Western Express is going to get an upgrade next year with double decker electric buses. As part of the announcement, AT also said “Since we introduced the WX1 Western Express last November we have seen ...
TL;DR: The six key events to watch in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the week to April 29 include:PM Christopher Luxon is scheduled to hold a post-Cabinet news conference at 4 pm today. Stats NZ releases its statutory report on Census 2023 tomorrow.Finance Minister Nicola Willis delivers a pre-Budget speech at ...
A listing of 29 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, April 14, 2024 thru Sat, April 20, 2024. Story of the week Our story of the week hinges on these words from the abstract of a fresh academic ...
The ability of the private sector to quickly establish major new projects making use of the urban and natural environment is to be supercharged by the new National-led Government. Yesterday it introduced to Parliament one of its most significant reforms, the Fast Track Approvals Bill. The Government says this will ...
This is a column to say thank you. So many of have been in touch since Mum died to say so many kind and thoughtful things. You’re wonderful, all of you. You’ve asked how we’re doing, how Dad’s doing. A little more realisation each day, of the irretrievable finality of ...
Identifying the engine type in your car is crucial for various reasons, including maintenance, repairs, and performance upgrades. Knowing the specific engine model allows you to access detailed technical information, locate compatible parts, and make informed decisions about modifications. This comprehensive guide will provide you with a step-by-step approach to ...
Introduction: The allure of racing is undeniable. The thrill of speed, the roar of engines, and the exhilaration of competition all contribute to the allure of this adrenaline-driven sport. For those who yearn to experience the pinnacle of racing, becoming a race car driver is the ultimate dream. However, the ...
Introduction Automobiles have become ubiquitous in modern society, serving as a primary mode of transportation and a symbol of economic growth and personal mobility. With countless vehicles traversing roads and highways worldwide, it begs the question: how many cars are there in the world? Determining the precise number is a ...
Maintaining a safe and reliable vehicle requires regular inspections. Whether it’s a routine maintenance checkup or a safety inspection, knowing how long the process will take can help you plan your day accordingly. This article delves into the factors that influence the duration of a car inspection and provides an ...
Mazda Motor Corporation, commonly known as Mazda, is a Japanese multinational automaker headquartered in Fuchu, Aki District, Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan. The company was founded in 1920 as the Toyo Cork Kogyo Co., Ltd., and began producing vehicles in 1931. Mazda is primarily known for its production of passenger cars, but ...
Your car battery is an essential component that provides power to start your engine, operate your electrical systems, and store energy. Over time, batteries can weaken and lose their ability to hold a charge, which can lead to starting problems, power failures, and other issues. Replacing your battery before it ...
In most states, you cannot register a car without a valid driver’s license. However, there are a few exceptions to this rule. Exceptions to the RuleIf you are under 18 years old: In some states, you can register a car in your name even if you do not ...
Mazda, a Japanese automotive manufacturer with a rich history of innovation and engineering excellence, has emerged as a formidable player in the global car market. Known for its reputation of producing high-quality, fuel-efficient, and driver-oriented vehicles, Mazda has consistently garnered praise from industry experts and consumers alike. In this article, ...
Struts are an essential part of a car’s suspension system. They are responsible for supporting the weight of the car and damping the oscillations of the springs. Struts are typically made of steel or aluminum and are filled with hydraulic fluid. How Do Struts Work? Struts work by transferring the ...
Car registration is a mandatory process that all vehicle owners must complete annually. This process involves registering your car with the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) and paying an associated fee. The registration process ensures that your vehicle is properly licensed and insured, and helps law enforcement and other authorities ...
Zoom is a video conferencing service that allows you to share your screen, webcam, and audio with other participants. In addition to sharing your own audio, you can also share the audio from your computer with other participants. This can be useful for playing music, sharing presentations with audio, or ...
Building your own computer can be a rewarding and cost-effective way to get a high-performance machine tailored to your specific needs. However, it also requires careful planning and execution, and one of the most important factors to consider is the time it will take. The exact time it takes to ...
Sleep mode is a power-saving state that allows your computer to quickly resume operation without having to boot up from scratch. This can be useful if you need to step away from your computer for a short period of time but don’t want to shut it down completely. There are ...
Introduction Computer-Assisted Translation (CAT) has revolutionized the field of translation by harnessing the power of technology to assist human translators in their work. This innovative approach combines specialized software with human expertise to improve the efficiency, accuracy, and consistency of translations. In this comprehensive article, we will delve into the ...
In today’s digital age, mobile devices have become an indispensable part of our daily lives. Among the vast array of portable computing options available, iPads and tablet computers stand out as two prominent contenders. While both offer similar functionalities, there are subtle yet significant differences between these two devices. This ...
A computer is an electronic device that can be programmed to carry out a set of instructions. The basic components of a computer are the processor, memory, storage, input devices, and output devices. The Processor The processor, also known as the central processing unit (CPU), is the brain of the ...
Voice Memos is a convenient app on your iPhone that allows you to quickly record and store audio snippets. These recordings can be useful for a variety of purposes, such as taking notes, capturing ideas, or recording interviews. While you can listen to your voice memos on your iPhone, you ...
Laptop screens are essential for interacting with our devices and accessing information. However, when lines appear on the screen, it can be frustrating and disrupt productivity. Understanding the underlying causes of these lines is crucial for finding effective solutions. Types of Screen Lines Horizontal lines: Also known as scan ...
Right-clicking is a common and essential computer operation that allows users to access additional options and settings. While most desktop computers have dedicated right-click buttons on their mice, laptops often do not have these buttons due to space limitations. This article will provide a comprehensive guide on how to right-click ...
Powering up and shutting down your ASUS laptop is an essential task for any laptop user. Locating the power button can sometimes be a hassle, especially if you’re new to ASUS laptops. This article will provide a comprehensive guide on where to find the power button on different ASUS laptop ...
Dell laptops are renowned for their reliability, performance, and versatility. Whether you’re a student, a professional, or just someone who needs a reliable computing device, a Dell laptop can meet your needs. However, if you’re new to Dell laptops, you may be wondering how to get started. In this comprehensive ...
Two-thirds of the country think that “New Zealand’s economy is rigged to advantage the rich and powerful”. They also believe that “New Zealand needs a strong leader to take the country back from the rich and powerful”. These are just two of a handful of stunning new survey results released ...
In today’s digital world, screenshots have become an indispensable tool for communication and documentation. Whether you need to capture an important email, preserve a website page, or share an error message, screenshots allow you to quickly and easily preserve digital information. If you’re an Asus laptop user, there are several ...
A factory reset restores your Gateway laptop to its original factory settings, erasing all data, apps, and personalizations. This can be necessary to resolve software issues, remove viruses, or prepare your laptop for sale or transfer. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to factory reset your Gateway laptop: Method 1: ...
“You talking about me?”The neoliberal denigration of the past was nowhere more unrelenting than in its depiction of the public service. The Post Office and the Railways were held up as being both irremediably inefficient and scandalously over-manned. Playwright Roger Hall’s “Glide Time” caricatures were presented as accurate depictions of ...
Roger Partridge writes – When the Coalition Government took office last October, it inherited a country on a precipice. With persistent inflation, decades of insipid productivity growth and crises in healthcare, education, housing and law and order, it is no exaggeration to suggest New Zealand’s first-world status was ...
Rob MacCulloch writes – In 2022, the Curriculum Centre at the Ministry of Education employed 308 staff, according to an Official Information Request. Earlier this week it was announced 202 of those staff were being cut. When you look up “The New Zealand Curriculum” on the Ministry of ...
Chris Bishop’s bill has stirred up a hornets nest of opposition. Photo: Lynn Grieveson for The KākāTL;DR: The six things that stood out to me in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, poverty and climate from the last day included:A crescendo of opposition to the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill is ...
Monday left me brokenTuesday, I was through with hopingWednesday, my empty arms were openThursday, waiting for love, waiting for loveThe end of another week that left many of us asking WTF? What on earth has NZ gotten itself into and how on earth could people have voluntarily signed up for ...
Hello! Here comes the Saturday edition of More Than A Feilding, catching you up on the past week’s editions.State of humanity, 20242024, it feels, keeps presenting us with ever more challenges, ever more dismay.Do you give up yet? It seems to ask.No? How about this? Or this?How about this?Full story Share ...
Determining the hardest sport in the world is a subjective matter, as the difficulty level can vary depending on individual abilities, physical attributes, and experience. However, based on various factors including physical demands, technical skills, mental fortitude, and overall accomplishment, here is an exploration of some of the most challenging ...
The allure of sport transcends age, culture, and geographical boundaries. It captivates hearts, ignites passions, and provides unparalleled entertainment. Behind the spectacle, however, lies a fascinating world of financial investment and expenditure. Among the vast array of competitive pursuits, one question looms large: which sport carries the hefty title of ...
Introduction Pickleball, a rapidly growing paddle sport, has captured the hearts and imaginations of millions around the world. Its blend of tennis, badminton, and table tennis elements has made it a favorite among players of all ages and skill levels. As the sport’s popularity continues to surge, the question on ...
Abstract: Soccer, the global phenomenon captivating millions worldwide, has a rich history that spans centuries. Its origins trace back to ancient civilizations, but the modern version we know and love emerged through a complex interplay of cultural influences and innovations. This article delves into the fascinating journey of soccer’s evolution, ...
Tinting car windows offers numerous benefits, including enhanced privacy, reduced glare, UV protection, and a more stylish look for your vehicle. However, the cost of window tinting can vary significantly depending on several factors. This article provides a comprehensive guide to help you understand how much you can expect to ...
Our two-tiered system for veterans’ support is out of step with our closest partners, and all parties in Parliament should work together to fix it, Labour veterans’ affairs spokesperson Greg O’Connor said. ...
Stripping two Ministers of their portfolios just six months into the job shows Christopher Luxon’s management style is lacking, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said. ...
It appears Nicola Willis is about to pull the rug out from under the feet of local communities still dealing with the aftermath of last year’s severe weather, and local councils relying on funding to build back from these disasters. ...
The Government is making short-sighted changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that will take away environmental protection in favour of short-term profits, Labour’s environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
Labour welcomes the release of the report into the North Island weather events and looks forward to working with the Government to ensure that New Zealand is as prepared as it can be for the next natural disaster. ...
The Labour Party has called for the New Zealand Government to recognise Palestine, as a material step towards progressing the two-State solution needed to achieve a lasting peace in the region. ...
Some of our country’s most important work, stopping the sexual exploitation of children and violent extremism could go along with staff on the frontline at ports and airports. ...
The Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill will give projects such as new coal mines a ‘get out of jail free’ card to wreak havoc on the environment, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
Cuts to frontline hospital staff are not only a broken election promise, it shows the reckless tax cuts have well and truly hit the frontline of the health system, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
The Green Party has joined the call for public submissions on the fast-track legislation to be extended after the Ombudsman forced the Government to release the list of organisations invited to apply just hours before submissions close. ...
New Zealand’s good work at reducing climate emissions for three years in a row will be undone by the National government’s lack of ambition and scrapping programmes that were making a difference, Labour Party climate spokesperson Megan Woods said today. ...
More essential jobs could be on the chopping block, this time Ministry of Education staff on the school lunches team are set to find out whether they're in line to lose their jobs. ...
The Government is trying to bring in a law that will allow Ministers to cut corners and kill off native species, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said. ...
Cancelling urgently needed new Cook Strait ferries and hiking the cost of public transport for many Kiwis so that National can announce the prospect of another tunnel for Wellington is not making good choices, Labour Transport Spokesperson Tangi Utikere said. ...
A laundry list of additional costs for Tāmaki Makarau Auckland shows the Minister for the city is not delivering for the people who live there, says Labour Auckland Issues spokesperson Shanan Halbert. ...
The Green Party has today launched a step-by-step guide to help New Zealanders make their voice heard on the Government’s democracy dodging and anti-environment fast track legislation. ...
The National Government’s proposed changes to the Residential Tenancies Act will mean tenants can be turfed from their homes by landlords with little notice, Labour housing spokesperson Kieran McAnulty said. ...
Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson is calling on all parties to support a common-sense change that’s great for the planet and great for consumers after her member’s bill was drawn from the ballot today. ...
A significant milestone has been reached in the fight to strike an anti-Pasifika and unfair law from the country’s books after Teanau Tuiono’s members’ bill passed its first reading. ...
New Zealand has today missed the opportunity to uphold the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment, says James Shaw after his member’s bill was voted down in its first reading. ...
Today’s advice from the Climate Change Commission paints a sobering reality of the challenge we face in combating climate change, especially in light of recent Government policy announcements. ...
Minister for Disability Issues Penny Simmonds appears to have delayed a report back to Cabinet on the progress New Zealand is making against international obligations for disabled New Zealanders. ...
The Government’s newly announced review of methane emissions reduction targets hints at its desire to delay Aotearoa New Zealand’s urgent transition to a climate safe future, the Green Party said. ...
The Government must commit to the Maitai School building project for students with high and complex needs, to ensure disabled students from the top of the South Island have somewhere to learn. ...
Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey and his Government colleagues have made a meal of their mental health commitments, showing how flimsy their efforts to champion the issue truly are, says Labour Mental Health spokesperson Ingrid Leary. ...
Paul Goldsmith will take on responsibility for the Media and Communications portfolio, while Louise Upston will pick up the Disability Issues portfolio, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announced today. “Our Government is relentlessly focused on getting New Zealand back on track. As issues change in prominence, I plan to adjust Ministerial ...
Recreational catch limits will be reduced in areas of Fiordland and the Chatham Islands to help keep those fisheries healthy and sustainable, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. The lower recreational daily catch limits for a range of finfish and shellfish species caught in the Fiordland Marine Area and ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has welcomed an important milestone in New Zealand’s hydrogen future, with the opening of the country’s first network of hydrogen refuelling stations in Wiri. “I want to congratulate the team at Hiringa Energy and its partners K one W one (K1W1), Mitsui & Co New Zealand ...
The coalition Government is delivering on its commitment to improve resource management laws and give greater certainty to consent applicants, with a Bill to amend the Resource Management Act (RMA) expected to be introduced to Parliament next month. RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop has today outlined the first RMA Amendment ...
Overseas models for regulating the oil and gas sector, including their decommissioning regimes, are being carefully scrutinised as a potential template for New Zealand’s own sector, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. The Coalition Government is focused on rebuilding investor confidence in New Zealand’s energy sector as it looks to strengthen ...
Emergency Management and Recovery Minister Mark Mitchell has today released the Report of the Government Inquiry into the response to the North Island Severe Weather Events. “The report shows that New Zealand’s emergency management system is not fit-for-purpose and there are some significant gaps we need to address,” Mr Mitchell ...
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith is today travelling to Europe where he’ll update the United Nations Human Rights Council on the Government’s work to restore law and order. “Attending the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva provides us with an opportunity to present New Zealand’s human rights progress, priorities, and challenges, while ...
Associate Agriculture Minister, Mark Patterson, formally reopened the world’s largest wool processing facility today in Awatoto, Napier, following a $50 million rebuild and refurbishment project. “The reopening of this facility will significantly lift the economic opportunities available to New Zealand’s wool sector, which already accounts for 20 per cent of ...
Hon Andrew Bayly, Minister for Small Business and Manufacturing At the Southland Otago Regional Engineering Collective (SOREC) Summit, 18 April, Dunedin Ngā mihi nui, Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Ko Whanganui aho Good Afternoon and thank you for inviting me to open your summit today. I am delighted ...
The Government is delivering on its commitment to bring back the Three Strikes legislation, Associate Justice Minister Nicole McKee announced today. “Our Government is committed to restoring law and order and enforcing appropriate consequences on criminals. We are making it clear that repeat serious violent or sexual offending is not ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has today announced four new diplomatic appointments for New Zealand’s overseas missions. “Our diplomats have a vital role in maintaining and protecting New Zealand’s interests around the world,” Mr Peters says. “I am pleased to announce the appointment of these senior diplomats from the ...
New Zealand is contributing NZ$7 million to support communities affected by severe food insecurity and other urgent humanitarian needs in Ethiopia and Somalia, Foreign Minister Rt Hon Winston Peters announced today. “Over 21 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance across Ethiopia, with a further 6.9 million people ...
Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage Paul Goldsmith is congratulating Mataaho Collective for winning the Golden Lion for best participant in the main exhibition at the Venice Biennale. "Congratulations to the Mataaho Collective for winning one of the world's most prestigious art prizes at the Venice Biennale. “It is good ...
The Government is reforming financial services to improve access to home loans and other lending, and strengthen customer protections, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly and Housing Minister Chris Bishop announced today. “Our coalition Government is committed to rebuilding the economy and making life simpler by cutting red tape. We are ...
“China remains a strong commercial opportunity for Kiwi exporters as Chinese businesses and consumers continue to value our high-quality safe produce,” Trade and Agriculture Minister Todd McClay says. Mr McClay has returned to New Zealand following visits to Beijing, Harbin and Shanghai where he met ministers, governors and mayors and engaged in trade and agricultural events with the New ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has completed a successful trip to Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines, deepening relationships and capitalising on opportunities. Mr Luxon was accompanied by a business delegation and says the choice of countries represents the priority the New Zealand Government places on South East Asia, and our relationships in ...
New Zealand is demonstrating its commitment to reducing global greenhouse emissions, and supporting clean energy transition in South East Asia, through a contribution of NZ$41 million (US$25 million) in climate finance to the Asian Development Bank (ADB)-led Energy Transition Mechanism (ETM). Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Climate Change Minister Simon Watts announced ...
The Government is today releasing a list of organisations who received letters about the Fast-track applications process, says RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop. “Recently Ministers and agencies have received a series of OIA requests for a list of organisations to whom I wrote with information on applying to have a ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins today announced the appointment of Wellington Barrister David Jonathan Boldt as a Judge of the High Court, and the Honourable Justice Matthew Palmer as a Judge of the Court of Appeal. Justice Boldt graduated with an LLB from Victoria University of Wellington in 1990, and also holds ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford will lead the New Zealand delegation at the 2024 International Summit on the Teaching Profession (ISTP) held in Singapore. The delegation includes representatives from the Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) Te Wehengarua and the New Zealand Educational Institute (NZEI) Te Riu Roa. The summit is co-hosted ...
A stopbank upgrade project in Tairawhiti partly funded by the Government has increased flood resilience for around 7000ha of residential and horticultural land so far, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones today attended a dawn service in Gisborne to mark the end of the first stage of the ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters will represent the Government at Anzac Day commemorations on the Gallipoli Peninsula next week and engage with senior representatives of the Turkish government in Istanbul. “The Gallipoli campaign is a defining event in our history. It will be a privilege to share the occasion ...
Science, Innovation and Technology and Defence Minister Judith Collins will next week attend the OECD Science and Technology Ministerial conference in Paris and Anzac Day commemorations in Belgium. “Science, innovation and technology have a major role to play in rebuilding our economy and achieving better health, environmental and social outcomes ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon held a bilateral meeting today with the President of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The Prime Minister was accompanied by MP Paulo Garcia, the first Filipino to be elected to a legislature outside the Philippines. During today’s meeting, Prime Minister Luxon and President Marcos Jr discussed opportunities to ...
The Government has announced that $20 million in funding will be made available to Westport to fund much needed flood protection around the town. This measure will significantly improve the resilience of the community, says Local Government Minister Simeon Brown. “The Westport community has already been allocated almost $3 million ...
The Government is proud to support the first ever Repco Supercars Championship event in Taupō as up to 70,000 motorsport fans attend the Taupō International Motorsport Park this weekend, says Economic Development Minister Melissa Lee. “Anticipation for the ITM Taupō Super400 is huge, with tickets and accommodation selling out weeks ...
Local Government Minister Simeon Brown has announced an increase to the Rates Rebate Scheme, putting money back into the pockets of low-income homeowners. “The coalition Government is committed to bringing down the cost of living for New Zealanders. That includes targeted support for those Kiwis who are doing things tough, such ...
The Coalition Government is investing in a project to boost survival rates of New Zealand mussels and grow the industry, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones has announced. “This project seeks to increase the resilience of our mussels and significantly boost the sector’s productivity,” Mr Jones says. “The project - ...
Benefit figures released today underscore the importance of the Government’s plan to rebuild the economy and have 50,000 fewer people on Jobseeker Support, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. “Benefit numbers are still significantly higher than when National was last in government, when there was about 70,000 fewer ...
The Government’s commitment to doubling New Zealand’s renewable energy capacity is backed by new data showing that clean energy has helped the country reach its lowest annual gross emissions since 1999, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. New Zealand’s latest Greenhouse Gas Inventory (1990-2022) published today, shows gross emissions fell ...
The Government is bringing the earthquake-prone building review forward, with work to start immediately, and extending the deadline for remediations by four years, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “Our Government is focused on rebuilding the economy. A key part of our plan is to cut red tape that ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and his Thai counterpart, Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin, have today agreed that New Zealand and the Kingdom of Thailand will upgrade the bilateral relationship to a Strategic Partnership by 2026. “New Zealand and Thailand have a lot to offer each other. We have a strong mutual desire to build ...
RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop and Transport Minister Simeon Brown have today announced the Coalition Government’s intention to extend port coastal permits for a further 20 years, providing port operators with certainty to continue their operations. “The introduction of the Resource Management Act in 1991 required ports to obtain coastal ...
Today’s announcement that inflation is down to 4 per cent is encouraging news for Kiwis, but there is more work to be done - underlining the importance of the Government’s plan to get the economy back on track, acting Finance Minister Chris Bishop says. “Inflation is now at 4 per ...
Refreshed health guidance released today will help parents and schools make informed decisions about whether their child needs to be in school, addressing one of the key issues affecting school attendance, says Associate Education Minister David Seymour. In recent years, consistently across all school terms, short-term illness or medical reasons ...
Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones is streamlining high-level oceans management while maintaining a focus on supporting the sector’s role in the export-led recovery of the economy. “I am working to realise the untapped potential of our fishing and aquaculture sector. To achieve that we need to be smarter with ...
Associate Agriculture Minister Mark Patterson is speaking at the International Wool Textile Organisation Congress in Adelaide, promoting New Zealand wool, and outlining the coalition Government’s support for the revitalisation the sector. "New Zealand’s wool exports reached $400 million in the year to 30 June 2023, and the coalition Government ...
The Government is making legislative changes to make it easier for new early learning services to be established, and for existing services to operate, Associate Education Minister David Seymour says. The changes involve repealing the network approval provisions that apply when someone wants to establish a new early learning service, ...
Changes to the Resource Management Act will align consenting for coal mining to other forms of mining to reduce barriers that are holding back economic development, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. “The inconsistent treatment of coal mining compared with other extractive activities is burdensome red tape that fails to acknowledge ...
Trade, Agriculture and Forestry Minister Todd McClay has concluded productive discussions with ministerial counterparts in Beijing today, in support of the New Zealand-China trade and economic relationship. “My meeting with Commerce Minister Wang Wentao reaffirmed the complementary nature of the bilateral trade relationship, with our Free Trade Agreement at its ...
“Never again - No AUKUS” was the message of the wreath laid at this morning’s national ANZAC Day commemorative service at Pukeahu National War Memorial Park this morning by the Stop AUKUS group. ...
Until this month, Auckland swimmer Hazel Ouwehand had never met a qualifying time in an Olympic event for a New Zealand team, even as a junior. Now she’s very likely off to the Paris Olympics after swimming well under the qualifying standard in the 100m butterfly twice – both in ...
While Anzac Day has experienced a resurgence in recent years, our other day of remembrance has slowly faded from view.The Sunday Essay is made possible thanks to the support of Creative New Zealand. Original illustrations by Hope McConnell.First published in 2022.The high school’s head girl and ...
Australian and New Zealand volunteers fought together in the Waikato War, yet still its place in the Anzac tradition is unacknowledged by our defence forces or Returned Services Association.First published in 2018.When I was a boy cub I attended Anzac Day services in the South Auckland suburb of ...
A poem by Wellington writer Tayi Tibble.Hoki Mai She kisses him goodbye with her eyes still wet and alight from their last swim in the Awatere river. At the train station celebration, she leads the Kapa Haka but her voice keeps breaking under and over itself like waves. ...
A poem from Bill Manhire’s 2017 book of verse Some Things to Place in a Coffin.My World War I Poem Inside each trench, the sound of prayer. Inside each prayer, the sound of digging. Image courtesy of Auckland War Memorial Museum. ...
There are three books I have wolfed down in one sitting over the last two years. Colleen Maria Lenihan’s gorgeous and sad debut Kōhine, Noelle McCarthy’s memoir Grand about becoming her mother and then unbecoming her, and now Hine Toa, a staunch yet gentle self-portrait by living legend Ngāhuia te ...
Loading…(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){var ql=document.querySelectorAll('A[quiz],DIV[quiz],A[data-quiz],DIV[data-quiz]'); if(ql){if(ql.length){for(var k=0;k<ql.length;k++){ql[k].id='quiz-embed-'+k;ql[k].href="javascript:var i=document.getElementById('quiz-embed-"+k+"');try{qz.startQuiz(i)}catch(e){i.start=1;i.style.cursor='wait';i.style.opacity='0.5'};void(0);"}}};i['QP']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){(i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)})(window,document,'script','https://take.quiz-maker.com/3012/CDN/quiz-embed-v1.js','qp'); Got a good quiz question?Send Newsroom your questions. The post Newsroom daily quiz, Thursday 25 April appeared first on Newsroom. ...
Asia Pacific Report Students and activist staff at Australia’s University of Sydney (USyd) have set up a Gaza solidarity encampment in support of Palestinians and similar student-led protests in the United States. The camp was pitched as mass graves, crippled hospitals, thousands of civilian deaths and the near-total destruction of ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James B. Dorey, Lecturer in Biological Sciences, University of Wollongong Australian teddy bear bees are cute and fluffy, but get a look at that massive (unbarbed) stinger! James Dorey Photography Most of us have been stung by a bee and we ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jen Roberts, Senior Lecturer, School of Humanities and Social Inquiry, University of Wollongong Aussie~mobs/FlickrVictor Farr, a private in the 1st Infantry Battalion, was among the first to land at Anzac Cove just before dawn on April 25 1915. Victor Farr ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gregory Moore, Senior Research Associate, School of Ecosystem and Forest Sciences, The University of Melbourne Gregory Moore I had the good fortune to care for the sugar gum at The University of Melbourne’s Burnley Gardens in Victoria where I worked for ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Hawkins, Senior Lecturer, Canberra School of Politics, Economics and Society, University of Canberra BagzhanSadvakassov/Upsplash, CC BY-SA Australia’s inflation rate has fallen for the fifth successive quarter, and it’s now less than half of what it was back in late 2022. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rachel Ong ViforJ, ARC Future Fellow & Professor of Economics, Curtin University Just when we think the price of rentals could not get any worse, this week’s Rental Affordability Snapshot by Anglicare has revealed low-income Australians are facing a housing crisis like ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Meighen McCrae, Associate Professor of Strategic & Defence Studies, Australian National University American and Australian stretcher bearers working together near the front line during the Battle of Hamel in 1918.Australian War Memorial While the AUKUS alliance is new, the Australian-American partnership ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tracey Holmes, Professorial Fellow in Sport, University of Canberra When the news broke last weekend that 23 Chinese swimmers had tested positive to a banned drug in early 2021 and were allowed to compete at the Tokyo Olympic Games six months later ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cally Jetta, Senior Lecturer and Academic Lead; College for First Nations, University of Southern Queensland Australian War MemorialAboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains names and images of deceased people, as well as sensitive historical information ...
RNZ News Melissa Lee has been ousted from New Zealand’s coalition cabinet and stripped of the Media portfolio, and Penny Simmonds has lost the Disability Issues portfolio in a reshuffle. Climate Change and Revenue Minister Simon Watts will take Lee’s spot in cabinet. Simmonds was a minister outside of cabinet. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Lindenmayer, Professor, Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University laurello/Shutterstock Some reports and popular books, such as Bill Gammage’s Biggest Estate on Earth, have argued that extensive areas of Australia’s forests were kept open through frequent burning by ...
Analysis - Christopher Luxon framing the demotion of two ministers as the portfolios getting "too complex" is a charitable way of saying they weren't up to the job. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra With Jim Chalmers’s third budget on May 14, Australians will be looking for some more cost-of-living relief – beyond the tax cuts – although they have been warned extra measures will be modest. As ...
Analysis: Melissa Lee has lost the media portfolio and her spot in Cabinet after multiple failed attempts to find solutions for a media industry in crisis. On Wednesday, the Prime Minister announced Lee would be losing her spot in Cabinet along with her media and communications ministerial portfolio. The job ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Simon Wilmot, Senior Lecturer, Film, Deakin University Among the many Australian who served during the second world war, there is a small group of people whose stories remain largely untold. These are the Muslim men and women who, while small in number, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kelly Saunders, PhD Candidate, University of Canberra There has been much analysis and praise of Justice Michael Lee’s recent judgement in Bruce Lehrmann’s defamation case against Channel Ten. Many people were openly relieved to read Lee’s “forensic” and “nuanced” application of law ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kathy Gibbs, Program Director for the Bachelor of Education, Griffith University zEdward_Indy/Shutterstock Around one in 20 people has attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). It’s one of the most common neurodevelopmental disorders in childhood and often continues into adulthood. ADHD is diagnosed ...
The Fairer Future coalition of anti-poverty groups say Whaikaha must be properly funded going forward, and that to argue that poor financial management of the new Ministry is a red herring by the Prime Minister. ...
The Taxpayers’ Union is today congratulating Hon. Paul Goldsmith on his appointment as Minister for Media and Communications and urges him to rule out state intervention in the private media sector. ...
Asia Pacific Report The West Papuan resistance OPM leader has condemned Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and US President Joe Biden, accusing their countries of “six decades of treachery” over Papuan independence. The open letter was released today by OPM chairman Jeffrey P Bomanak on the eve of ANZAC Day ...
Welcome to The Spinoff Books Confessional, in which we get to know the reading habits and quirks of New Zealanders at large. This week: writer and one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people of 2024, Lauren Groff.The book I wish I’d writtenIf I wish I’d written a ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Fechner, Research Fellow, Social Marketing, Griffith University mavo/Shutterstock Imagine having dinner at a restaurant. The menu offers plant-based meat alternatives made mostly from vegetables, mushrooms, legumes and wheat that mimic meat in taste, texture and smell. Despite being given that ...
“Three Strikes is a dead-end policy proposed by a dead-end government. The Three Strikes law ignores the causes of crime, instead just brutalising people already crushed by the cost of living.” ...
By Don Wiseman, RNZ Pacific senior journalist An Australian-born judge in Kiribati could well face deportation later this week after a tribunal ruling that he should be removed from his post. The tribunal’s report has just been tabled in the Kiribati Parliament and is due to be debated by MPs ...
With its clear mandate for police use, political nuances, and nuanced public trust, Denmark's insights provide valuable considerations for Australia and New Zealand. ...
Books editor Claire Mabey reviews poet Louise Wallace’s debut novel. A famous poet once said to me that he’s always suspicious when a poet publishes a novel. I never really understood why but maybe it’s something to do with cheating on your first form. Louise Wallace is a poet. She’s ...
For a few months at the turn of the millennium, TrueBliss burned bright as the biggest pop stars in the country. Alex Casey chats to two superfans who still hold the flame. During a humble backyard wedding in Nelson, 1999, one of the cordially invited guests had to excuse themselves ...
How will the recent wave of job cuts impact ethnic diversity in the media? In November last year, I was working a very busy day in the newsroom of a large online news site, interviewing whānau about their concerns over the imminent closure of one of the few puna reo ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ruth Knight, Researcher, Queensland University of Technology Have you ever felt sick at work? Perhaps you had food poisoning or the flu. Your belly hurt, or you felt tired, making it hard to concentrate and be productive. How likely would you be ...
Despite heavy criticism and an ongoing select committee process, the Police Minister says the Government will forge ahead with a ban on gang patches. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sam Whiting, Lecturer – Creative Industries, University of South Australia Shutterstock Everyone has a favourite band, or a favourite composer, or a favourite song. There is some music which speaks to you, deeply; and other music which might be the current ...
A new survey says ‘outlook not great’ for those charged with building infrastructure, while RMA changes delight farmers and depress environmentalists, 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. First RMA changes announced ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Olli Hellmann, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Waikato Getty Images When New Zealanders commemorate Anzac Day on April 25, it’s not only to honour the soldiers who lost their lives in World War I and subsequent conflicts, but also ...
A leaked document shows the Canterbury/Waitaha arm of health agency Te Whatu Ora is scurrying to save $13.3 million by July. The “financial sustainability target”, which was “allocated” to Waitaha, is consistent with what’s happening in other districts, says Sarah Dalton, executive director of the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists. ...
A look at the state of the previous government’s affordable housing scheme, and what could come next.Remind me: What’s KiwiBuild again?First announced in 2012, KiwiBuild was a flagship policy of the Labour Party heading into both its 2014 and 2017 election campaigns. With Jacinda Ardern as prime minister, ...
Labour in opposition will be shocked to learn which party had six years in power but squandered any chance to make real change. Grant Robertson’s valedictory speech was a predictably entertaining trip down memory lane. The acid-tongued incoming Otago University chancellor administered a sick burn to the coalition government. He ...
Opinion: It has been announced that nine percent of roles at Oranga Tamariki will be disestablished, presumably to help fund the tax cuts promised by the coalition Government. I am reminded of the graphics used to illustrate pandemic events, where five thousand people are standing in a field and then ...
After more than two sleepless days, running through savage terrain, Greig Hamilton didn’t know if he was going to finish one of the most gruelling psychological assaults in sport. He was metres away from the finish line, a yellow gate made famous in a Netflix documentary; a race he’d dreamed ...
Loading…(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){var ql=document.querySelectorAll('A[quiz],DIV[quiz],A[data-quiz],DIV[data-quiz]'); if(ql){if(ql.length){for(var k=0;k<ql.length;k++){ql[k].id='quiz-embed-'+k;ql[k].href="javascript:var i=document.getElementById('quiz-embed-"+k+"');try{qz.startQuiz(i)}catch(e){i.start=1;i.style.cursor='wait';i.style.opacity='0.5'};void(0);"}}};i['QP']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){(i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)})(window,document,'script','https://take.quiz-maker.com/3012/CDN/quiz-embed-v1.js','qp'); Got a good quiz question?Send Newsroom your questions. The post Newsroom daily quiz, Wednesday 24 April appeared first on Newsroom. ...
The following interview with former Green Party MP Sue Kedgley came about because she features in the new memoir Hine Toa by activist Ngāhuia te Awekōtuku; the two knew each other at the University of Auckland in the early 70s, when they were both took on leadership roles in the ...
Taiwan’s semiconductor industry is seen some as its ‘silicon shield’ against invasion – but how will overseas expansion affect that protection? The post The state of Taiwan’s silicon shield appeared first on Newsroom. ...
There’s relief for building owners bending under the weight of earthquake strengthening rules – and costs – that came into force seven years ago. Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk has announced a scheduled 2027 review of the earthquake-prone building regulations will now start this year. Owners will also get ...
COMMENTARY:By Murray Horton New Zealand needs to get tough with Israel. It’s not as if we haven’t done so before. When NZ authorities busted a Mossad operation in Auckland 20 years ago, the government didn’t say: “Oh well, Israel has the right to defend itself.” No, it arrested, prosecuted, ...
NEWSMAKERS:By Vijay Narayan, news director of FijiVillage Blessed to be part of the University of Fiji (UniFiji) faculty to continue to teach and mentor those who want to join our noble profession, and to stand for truth and justice for the people of the country. I was privileged to ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Martin, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University Three weeks from now, some of us will be presented with a mountain of budget papers, and just about all of us will get to hear about them on radio, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dan Lowry, Ice Sheet & Climate Modeller, GNS Science Hugh Chittock/Antarctica New Zealand, CC BY-SA As the climate warms and Antarctica’s glaciers and ice sheets melt, the resulting rise in sea level has the potential to displace hundreds of millions of ...
More from the glorious Galloway. This time on Brexit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p08tbeo3Y7E
Better late than never
Something that other developed nations, (including NZ, in 1938), delivered decades ago.
‘The Time for Medicare for All Has Come’
Visionary Bill to Remake US Healthcare System
Jake Johnson, staff writer,Jon Queally, staff writer – Common Dreams, February 27, 2019
Calling for a “complete transformation of our healthcare system,” Democratic congresswoman says what her legislation will mean is simple: “Everybody in, nobody out.”
The huge and entrenched US profit driven health care system in the is a travesty, no one can rightfully defend it. Yet it still exists. Built on the desperation of the ill and dying, the huge returns this system brings to wealthy investors and insurance companies, make sure it does.
Not only do American taxpayers pay more than most countries to subsidise their profit driven health system, they also pay exorbitant private insurance and up front costs before they can receive it. Keeping many millions of Americans who can’t afford it, from life saving care and needless suffering.
Bringing in single payer will cost the American people far less,.prevent needless suffering, and save countless lives.
It’s about time.
Better late than never
I’ll get right onto it.
Thanks Gabby so good of you to help the USA. They need and appreciate our foreign aid the sad, blighted things. /sarc
There are two reasons that bill is going precisely nowhere. The first that everyone here should be aware of is the Repug-controlled Senate and Il Douche in the Oval Office.
The second and much more difficult obstacle is that the majority of Americans get their health insurance through their (or a family member’s) workplace where the employer pays the majority of the cost. In 2018 the average annual premium for an employer-sponsored family health plan was around $20,000. The employer paid on average around $15,000 of that.
So any proposal to transition the US to some kind of universal single-payer health system has to first persuade those currently covered by their employer-sponsored insurance that they’ll be better off with the proposed new system. That part should be easy given what an exorbitantly expensive clusterfuck the current system is, but won’t be given most people’s fear of change.
Second, the plan has to map out how the cost burden is going to change. If it’s just by expanding Medicare and paying for it by increasing the existing payroll taxes, then that’s going to be a massive and highly visible tax increase on wage-and-salary earners and a massive windfall cost reduction to employers that will go straight into owner profits. I didn’t spot anything in in the commondreams piece or the linked 10 page summary that even mentioned this aspect of it.
Better late than never
Something that other developed nations, (including NZ, in 1938), delivered decades ago.
The huge and entrenched US profit driven health care system is a travesty, no one can rightfully defend it. Yet it still exists. Built on the desperation of the ill and dying, the huge returns this system brings to wealthy investors and insurance companies, make sure it does.
Not only do American taxpayers pay more than most countries to subsidise their profit driven health system, they also pay exorbitant private insurance and up front costs before they can receive it. Preventing many millions of Americans who can’t afford private treatment, from receiving life saving care or undergoing needless suffering.
Bringing in single payer will cost the American people far less,.prevent needless suffering, and save countless lives.
It’s about time.
Better late than never
Why does it cost $32,093 just to give birth in America? ‘
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jan/16/why-does-it-cost-32093-just-to-give-birth-in-america
“America is the most expensive nation in the world to give birth. When things go wrong – – from pre-eclampsia to premature birth – costs can quickly spiral into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. While the data is limited, experts in medical debt say the costs of childbirth factor into thousands of family bankruptcies in America each year.
America is simultaneously the most expensive and one of the riskiest industrialized nations in which to have children.
as many as 56,000 families each year still go bankrupt from adding a new family member through birth or adoption.
“Why any society should let anyone be bankrupted by medical bills is beyond me, frankly,” said Woolhandler. “It just doesn’t happen in other western democracies.”
…………………………………………..
TPPA is a corporate attempt to export this usa disease ……….
TPPA (CPTPP) was not an attempt to export the US health system onto everyone else. That is an absurd argument against CPTPP.
People are suffering from trade war fatigue, BREXIT, TPP11 ect. Undeniably there is a desires for a conservative health system where the deserving and undeserving poor a denied the basics of life.
Wait until we get sued, for closing down a US owned private health provider.
The you will see what the TPPA, is all about.
But like the Neo- liberal failed experiment, the perpetrators will never take responsibility.
You fan boys were never able to produce an argument for it that added up, so don’t feign surprise when this incredibly lousy deal elicits speculation as to your motives for boosting it.
Whats absurd is listening to some-one who always leaves out half the information Wayne…………..
A leaked negotiating text shows what the US is demanding on behalf of its big drug companies (known as “Big Pharma”) and how the benefits New Zealanders enjoy under PHARMAC are threatened by the TPPA. Although PHARMAC itself will not be dismantled, under the leaked text PHARMAC would:
: not be able to negotiate a bulk discount for medicines
: have to give detailed reasons to the drug companies about every purchasing decision
: give pharmaceutical companies the right to appeal PHARMAC’s decisions
: publish the identities of all decision-makers around the purchasing of medicines.
If adopted, this text would strengthen Big Pharma’s leverage over PHARMAC. The drug companies’ would gain new rights and opportunities to lobby PHARMAC decision makers and challenge their credentials, demand reasons if PHARMAC rejects their ‘expert’ reports and data, and pressure its decisions by constant threats of appeal. The goal of the big pharmaceutical companies is to influence PHARMAC’s criteria and decisions in their favour at the expense of affordability for the public. If the leaked text is adopted then government would have to massively increase the health budget, reduce the availability of subsidised drugs, or increase the price paid by ordinary New Zealanders.” https://itsourfuture.org.nz/access-to-medicines/
The drug companies are some of the worst corporations around …. like rust and nationals incrimental privitization of our public health … those fuckers never sleep.
They profit gouge and dodge tax.
Apart from misrepresenting the corporate goals in regard to the TPPA …. your lack of comment and presumably concern for the cruelty of the usa health system is noted … “experts in medical debt say the costs of childbirth factor into thousands of family bankruptcies in America each year.”
To which I’d add there is a lot of the homeless people in the usa …. who have ended up that way after getting sick …. cancer treatments costing them their homes etc.
Dammit jenns, I said I’ll get right onto it.
And repeat.
And repeat, again Gabby.
And that isn’t pointing a finger at you Gabby, like your stuff. It’s the someone else that wants to drown us in a deluge from the usa piddling pool.
I think people need to remember that us and usa are two different peoples in different places and sizes. What a difference an ‘a’ makes.
And you will note that google drops the ‘A’ which designates them as being in America. The ‘United States’ is just an adjective and a noun, and perhaps not restricting it to a location is a subtle hint that the US authorities consider it is short for ‘The Planet’.
Gosman the flaming penis posts a lot of Gosyrrhea …. a cross between Gonorrhea and Diarrhea.
I’ve previously asked him for a yes / no response to; “The NZ economy would shit itself and die if we got the Venezuelan treatment from the u.s.a …
Apart from repeated usa coup participation ….He ignores and denies the economic siege / sanctions weapons being used ,,,, and their effects.
Two examples :…”the US government added further sanctions that prevent Venezuela from doing what governments routinely do with much of their debt, which is “roll it over” by borrowing again when a bond matures.”
and …. “Major financial institutions have delayed the processing of all financial transfers from Venezuelan entities, significantly hampering the ability of Venezuelan companies to do business in the United States.”
If the NZ Govt could not roll over and refinance the 80+ Billion dollar Govt debt National left us with ,,,,, and if our companies like Fonterra could not get paid and trade …. Then our economy would shit itself and die.
The Aussie economy …. , the british economy ,,,, and even the usa economy itself ,,,, they would all shit themselves and die …. if given the Venezuelan treatment.
Gooseman ignores all that … and tells usa lies about socialism being more to blame than the hostile actions of the usa …
He tells more usa lies about the Venezuelan elections.
The election before last was called the most free and fair in the world by Jimmy Carter ….
The last election was boycotted by an opposition which knew it would not win, they attacked approximately 100 polling stations to try and stop people voting.
However UN observers from over 50 countries declared the actual election fair and valid …. its the usa and its coup govt in waiting … and gooseman who are bullshitting with invalid claims …. Venezuelan elections are which are probably more legit than the usa ones …. the usa and its puppet do not want more fair elections …. without usa voter purges of the poor, they can not get into power the electoral way.
They want a military coup …… backed by the usa of course.
Regarding socialism …. I’ve twice challenged GooseStepper or other right wing trolls to put up or shut up ……..by showing me / us a capitalist country which improved the living standards / health / education for its people …. as qucikly as Libya did using socialism.
It went from one of the poorest impoverished countries in the world up to No 67 in the human development index…. all in little over a generation …
Libya was then of course destroyed by the usa / Nato …. its modern society replaced with a civil war hell hole, that has slave markets ,,, crucifixion of christians ,,, the Lynching of the usa ambassador ,,, kidnappings ,,, mass murders ,,, rapes etc etc.
The usa seems to be threatening the same treatment for Venezuela
Unlike Gosman I’m interested in what works around the world …. he’s an idealog and wants to silence evidence that contradicts his beliefs.
I’m certainly not saying NZ should copy Libya … as our circumstances and society are very different.
But we should be able to look at examples that work in the world …. and respond to problems like homelessness …without fear of the usa fucking us over.,,,
Now Imagine if the usa had declared the national party the winner in our last election and told NZ first they had to partner them ,,,,
Who out of our trolls / dickpicks would have gone along in this goose step direction ,,,, how about nact politicians ?
I’ll finish with a positive link to another good woman who makes judith collins look like grubby greedy trash
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKTmwu3ynOY
stop trying to incite a flamewar.
and stop personalusing your attacks.
be civil.
Just have to shake your head sometimes. If you think Gosmans a troll (I dont) ignore him dont spray shit about place. Essentially the post makes it look like Gosmans under you skin and has you beat. Sti’s the shits and a Nazi reference all in one post so classy.
Goose stepping is a long tradition of south American fascist regimes …. Nazis are indeed a subset of fascists.
modern history lesson History ….. south america was flooded by nazis using ratlines to escape from europe …. 50,000 to Argentina alone…… the generals / facists / juntas took over a large part of south america from the mid 60’s to the 1980’s….. with usa support.
The usa provided the computers and equipment behind ” operation condor ” ….. much like IBM provided computers to the Nazis to help them keep on top of the huge logistics in running their Jewish and Slavic mass killings / Holocaust.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Condor
The Gosman thing is interesting. He is extreme right wing as far as I’m concerned. As much was apparent yesterday when talking about 6000 Auckland houses and apartments being listed on the disruptive app, Airbnb.
This USA based app has introduced a major shift in the usage of secondary property in the last 2 to 3 years and obviously is having an impact on the number of available rentals for families in Auckland.
Gosman simply would not comprehend that houses were a scarce resource which must be utilised for working Kiwi families in the current shortage. He would not comprehend that secondary house owners had a duty to follow through on their reason for owning multiple properties which is to provide housing.
Gosman is an extreme right wing libertarian who simply refuses to play his part in a healthy society and has no concept of what stable communities look like because that sort of thing has never bothered him.
In fact I’m sure Gosman has no idea of what a healthy society looks like. His world view stops at the standard roses flourishing at his front door.
What the hell is going on here?
Are you claiming Gosman has been a giver of truth this whole time and not herpes?
Venezuela has become a religious talisman for the right. Finger the beads and repeat the immortal truths about the perfection of markets, and shut down the possibility of change by frothing about Satan/Venezuela.
I think you are a wasting your time arguing. Ignore them and move on.
The tendency is to choose a side. Left vs Right. I think an accurate view of Venezuelan woes lives somewhere between Reason and Gosman.
Meddling in a nation’s affairs gains easy traction when the regime is corrupt.
Which election reasy? The presidency or the national assembly? Or that constituent assembly end run?
What’s the reason for all this on the USA. I am sick of hearing and encountering stuff about the USA, is that you Jenny with a different monicker?
The trouble with the Maggie Barrys of this world, they have been allowed to get away with their bully girl tactics for so many years they think it is normal behaviour.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12208579
She no doubt sees herself as firm but fair, plain spoken and refreshingly honest and to the point. Of course woe betide anyone being plain spoken and refreshingly honest and to the point right back at her.
I was the target of a woman like that. She considered herself honest and always told the truth. In truth, she didn’t know the meaning of the word ‘truth’. She administered her own version of punishments for misdemeanours she believed her targets had committed except they hadn’t.
She was the “nutter” but she convinced herself other people were the nutters. She and Barry are two of a kind.
It must be time for gardening leave.
Right-wing women seem spectacularly horrid. Is that merely perception, or worse, misogyny? I have theories about this – but they are probably crap.
AB
I put up a comment about Margaret Thatcher piece from The Guardian which might add some perspective about right wing women.
Right-wing women seem spectacularly horrid.
Not all of them. Some are Just misguided.
But there’s a breed of right-wing women who are – as you say – spectacularly horrid. If my personal experiences of them are any guide, they have sociopathic tendencies and a total lack of empathy for anyone who has fallen on hard times. They are fundamentally racist and see themselves as a cut above everyone else. In reality they are just ignorant nobodies trying desperately to be somebodies.
Oh, and when you add a naturally spiteful streak they can also be quite dangerous.
They, not just the women, remind me of the admiring sycophants that followed the high school bully, who also happened to Captain the rugby team.
Inadequate people who will do anything to remain part of the “big boys club”.
Not noticing that their leader, only keeps them as “useful idiots, to be dumped the moment they are no longer useful.
I’m calling out gosman for his flaming posts…. he’s been shown evidence … so we know he;s dishonest ….. not ignorant.
How about being all wet on him ….
There is no verbal abuse which comes within a country mile of uncivilized barbarian actions leading to suffering or death….. or support for such actions.
Some things deserve rudeness and contempt ….. Like this usa guy promoted to do his stuff in Venezuela.
Being rude to him is out of order too ……….. tut tut
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tkDayM2Q_4
Seems they cant help themselves.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/01/justin-trudeau-disgrace-unicorn-political-scandal-canadian
I glad this guy didn’t get to president – yuck.
https://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/saturday/audio/2018684809/chris-christie-let-me-finish
Well, he might have been better than the one who did end up in the job. Or not.
Tell me. Suppose you had to choose between Christie and Trump to be President?
Which would you have chosen. Fleeing the country is not an option.
I personally would have fled the country, but I’m not going to allow you the easy way out. I thought the best qualified person actually running was John Kasich, the then Governor of Ohio.
Hmmm I see you present me with a Star Trek Kobayashi Maru no win scenario.
Ha I wouldn’t have voted for either! Ha ha I win again!!!
.
Agree.
Kasich would have been good.
Problem is, courage and fresh thinking are beyond the majority.
.
Earlier this month, Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) introduced a Green New Deal resolution laying out an ambitious set of goals and principles aimed at transforming and decarbonizing the US economy.
The release prompted a great deal of smart, insightful writing, but also a lot of knee-jerk and predictable cant. Conservatives called it socialist. Moderates called it extreme. Pundits called it unrealistic. Wonks scolded it over this or that omission. Political gossip columnists obsessed over missteps in the rollout.
What ties the latter reactions together, from my perspective, is that they seem oblivious to the historical moment, like thespians acting out an old, familiar play even as the theater goes up in flames around them.
To put it bluntly: This is not normal. We are not in an era of normal politics. There is no precedent for the climate crisis, its dangers or its opportunities. Above all, it calls for courage and fresh thinking.
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2019/2/23/18228142/green-new-deal-critics
Joe90
Thanks for that link. These are words that should be written in capitals in front of everyone’s workplace, whatever.
One thing leads to another …..
” So when Wayne Mapp says he doesn’t want our foreignpolicy to be subject to a UN veto, what he is really saying is that he wants to wage war in contravention of international law and the UN charter – in other words, he wants us to be a rogue nation, just like the US… ” https://norightturn.blogspot.com/search?q=mapp+%2B+war
Q : Where does a bad mapp take you .???
A: Lost in child killing territory ….. so lost ,,, that medals of valor are awarded for killing children and civilians.
If we were to present Wayne mapp in front of Fatimas mother ….. would she be justified in judging him as a reckless uncaring savage of a man? ….
Wayne was in the position to prevent the murder of this mothers three year old girl … but he lacked the guts and probably the will …. to stop our invaders attack on her home and village …
booting his non-decision upstairs we discovered one of the few true things about key …. he was was indeed a smiling assassin.
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/58bcc6ac893fc04255abbbcc/t/58cfb45a37c5819ccd2bfd50/1490014002150/?format=500w
Just to change to another foreign country. It is so much more interesting watching them than viewing our own disintegration. How do they do it, we must watch them so we can too only faster!
I was looking on TradeMe and saw the book Muldoon by Robert Muldoon, for $1.
Then there was a book on Thatcher for $12 and I wondered if the prices represented their political nous. I think we should be valuing Muldoon above $1.
I looked up the writer about Thatcher, Hugo Young. Besides his epitaph for her, he wrote a think piece on UK and the EU last century.* I thought Brexit followers might be interested in his opinions, which are Conservative I think. He tries to tap the zeitgeist of the people, and the politicians, and their divided sensibilities.
* • This is an extract trom This Blessed Plot: Britain and Europe from Churchill to Blair (1998), published by Macmillan
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/25/hugo-young-why-britain-never-sat-comfortably-in-europe
The island people were not only different but, mercifully, separate, housed behind their moat. They were also inestimably superior, as was shown by history both ancient and modern: by the resonance of the Empire on which the sun never set, but equally by the immediate circumstances out of which the new Europe was born, the war itself. In that war, there had been only one unambiguous victor among European peoples, and she was not to be found on the mainland. The defence of historic uniqueness, against contamination from across the silver sea, was one powerful explanation for the course the British took during these 50 years.
But the plot was also tortuous. Little in the story was very straight. The nation’s thinking about itself lurched between different destinies. Hanging on to the past, in the form of the post-imperial Commonwealth, seemed for a time to be the answer. Remaining constant to the Anglo-American relationship, the most powerful bond in the English-speaking world, was apparently another necessity, which would be fatally compromised by the lure of something called the European Community. The idea that these amounted to alternative choices, the one necessarily imperilling the other, afflicted the decision of all leaders from Churchill to Margaret Thatcher, if not beyond.
Thatcher’s epitaph – ‘Days before he died in 2003, Guardian columnist and Thatcher biographer Hugo Young wrote an epitaph for the prime minister [died 8 April 2013 aged 87 years] who changed Britain forever.’
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/apr/08/margaret-thatcher-hugo-young
Thatcher is remembered for her achievements, but more for a presence, which was wrapped up with being a woman. Several strong women on the continent have risen to the top, but this British woman, in Britain of all places, became a phenomenon, first, through her gender.
The woman, however, changed. The gender remained, its artefacts deployed with calculation. But it was overlaid by the supposedly masculine virtues, sometimes more manly than the men could ever assemble….
Thatcher became a supremely self-confident leader. No gloves, or hats, except for royalty or at funerals, but feet on the table, whisky glass at hand, into the small hours of solitude, for want of male cronies in the masculine world she dominated for all her 11 years in power…
One also can’t forget what happened to the agency that made Thatcher world‑famous: the Conservative party, of which she seemed such an improbable leader. Without it, she would have been nothing. It chose her in a fit of desperation, hats and all – though it quite liked the hats. It got over a deep, instinctive hostility to women at the top of anything, and put her there. Yet her long-term effect seems to have been to destroy it. The party she led three times to electoral triumph became unelectable for a generation.
There are many reasons for this. But Thatcher was a naturally, perhaps incurably, divisive figure. It was part of her conspicuous virtue, her indifference to familiar political conventions. It came to a head over her most egregious policy failure, Europe. She lost seven cabinet ministers on the Europe question, a record that permeated the party for years afterwards. It still does. So the woman I met in Curzon Street, dimpling elegantly, can now be seen in history with an unexpected achievement to her credit. She wrecked her own party, while promoting, via many a tortuous turn, Labour’s resurrection.
The last time I met her was after all this was over. We had had a strange relationship. She continued for some reason to consider me worth talking to. Yet I wrote columns of pretty unremitting hostility to most of what she did. It became obvious that, while granting that I had “convictions”, she never read a word of my stuff.
Compared to what we admire in Ms Ardern, Thatcher was very different. In being different Hugo Thomas says, she wrecked her own Party. She went further than they ever would. Steely conviction that she knew best. I don’t think Ms Ardern thinks like that. Should she veer towards it more? And Trump. Is he wrecking the Republicans as well as the USA?
“The party she led three times to electoral triumph became unelectable for a generation.”.
They certainly seem to have very short generations in Britain, at least according to Mr Young.
Maggie Thatcher left office in 1990. She was succeeded by John Major as Leader of the Conservative Party and PM who then won the election of 1992 and remained PM until 1997. When Thatcher quit the party was obviously not “unelectable” was it?
Labor then became the Government from 1997 until 2010. That is 13 years which seems to be the shortest “generation” I have ever heard of. I would think of a generation as being about 25 years.
The Conservatives then resumed office in 2010 and are still there.
Mr Young also seems to think that, because Thatcher continued to talk to him even though he wrote columns of unremitting hostility about her she must not have read what he wrote. What Rubbish. Thatcher lasted 11 years as PM. Having someone say nasty things about her would not have bothered her in the slightest. She would have had skin like a battleship’s armour plate.
As for comparing her with Ardern. You must be joking. Arderrn will be remembered as a person who was totally out of her depth as PM and left office after a very short termterm with nothing memorable to how for her time in office.
“…with nothing memorable to how for her time in office.”
Other than large numbers of working groups. Oh, and a baby.
Having a crack at the Prime Minister for having a baby now? You do realise some poor woman had to give birth to you at some point in the distant past. I bet she regrets that now! 🤣
If you read what I wrote, you would have seen I listed it as an achievement. One of few, but an achievement none the less.
Your misogynist hatred blinds you.
But that’s ok because the bulk of voters will not agree with you. Initially the Nats weren’t going to touch Ardern on being a young mother because it would be political poison.
Now they (you) are so desperate you’ve decided to attack her on just that.
Good luck in 2026.
The idea that most men are women haters, when in reality they spend most of their lives trying to work out how to please the ones in their lives … remains an enduring mystery to me 🙂
You are the only one saying that ‘most men are women haters’ – why did you say that? Why is that idea in your head?
Well given how it’s a label that’s readily attached to ANY man with whom some women disagree with …
Don’t get me wrong here, misogyny is real and it exists, but it irks me to see it used so lazily as substitute for discussion.
I think you’re projecting.
@ marty
There may be some truth in that, we all project from our experiences to some degree.
“The idea that most men are women haters…”
That line is incendiary, unnecessary, incorrect and irrelevant to the discussion.
It is sad that that is what you think.
Well given that both of us agree that most men are not women haters, then why does the ‘misogyny’ word get used so frequently?
We don’t both agree on this stuff as you know – I find most often I disagree with your take, based on your experience, of gender politics and sexuality. I have learned this through numerous arguments with you on this forum. I’m pretty sure you really don’t want to go there so just back away slowly, as will I.
That’s ok. I’m happy for you to have a different view, and I don’t see this as personal.
RL
What sized foot do you have? Rather large I think, because you manage often to put your foot in something when you talk about women. Even when you are being quite innocent of any miss-demeanour it comes out wrong. Better to stay away from the subject while on the blog. You may intermingle and comment as you wish in other places without let or hindrance.
Do you disagree with my proposition above?
Implicitly I was commenting on the use of the word ‘misogyny’ which has a strong and powerful meaning, in contexts like this where I don’t see it as warranted.
In my experience most men do spend their lives trying to please the women in their lives, they often love them beyond all reason and sacrifice much of their adult lives to provide and protect for them and their children. That doesn’t feel like any kind of ‘hatred’ to me.
What does seem to be happening is the word has taken on a political meaning that denotes ‘anyone who does not identify as a third-wave feminist or agree with it’s dogma’. Yet a quick search shows that typically less than 20% of Western populations self-identify as ‘feminist’; that’s an awful lot of potential ‘political misogynists’ out there.
It impresses me that you should find this simple logic so disconcerting.
Raising a child and being Prime Minister are both exceptionally demanding roles. That Adern is undertaking both at the same time, with both aplomb and dignity, is something I can only admire. I wish her and her family the best with this.
And probably not a smart topic to use for cheap shots around here.
Also, we were assured by opponents of the government that the PM would use her baby for self promotion and for the promotion of the government. It would be grossly unfair, they said, for the government to have such an asset with which to woo voters.
But guess what, Ardern and Gayford have studiously keep their family life private. This is in stark contrast to the leader of the opposition who has indulged in multiple women’s magazine shoots, shopping his family around the country via cheap ink on cheap paper stock all in the name of self-promotion.
And his popularity is still plummeting!
I’m sure she’s doing a great job as a mum. As a PM, not so much.
Do you scale? Your entire body of comments here are in question. Now your entire reason for being here is clear. Your agenda is to discredit The Prime Minister is New Zealand based on a series of comments that are fascile and ideological, I just debuncked your tax agenda, now you’re ducking. So before you continue along your agenda. What’s the Strongest Politician living past or present that can beat Jacinda in a straight up election. The conditions are equal MMP states. Labour42.5%, National42.5%, NZFirst5%, Greens5%, ACT5%. Economy steady @3%, unemployment 5%, inflation 3%. Who beats Jacinda and why?
“Your agenda is to discredit The Prime Minister is New Zealand based on…”
No, it isn’t. But if it was, I wouldn’t really have to try too hard. She’s doing a good job of discrediting herself without my assistance. I do have some sympathy for her, however. She became leader of Labour only out of the party’s utter desperation, and then only became PM by virtue of a bitter, but admittedly wily, old fox. She is and was woefully unqualified in terms of life experience, and it’s showing. Day after day.
What do you scale?
I know the idea of actually consulting with the public, listening to experts and thinking carefully about policy, is a foreign concept to the “Masters of the Universe”.
Who prefer the peasants are just told what to do.
It is the sign of a good leader, to consider and reason.
The sign of a good leader is the ability to make good quality, timely decisions. Listening and consulting is important, if it is in order to inform a decision. When it is simply to kick decisions down the road, that is a sign of weakness.
But I’m quite happy for her to keep listening, because the decisions she has made so far haven’t been great.
In your, somewhat self interested and biased opinion.
I am not even a Labour supporter, but so far she is heading in the right direction. Difficult as it is with ignorant greedy arseholes, like yourself, making any progress an uphill battle.
ignorant greedy arseholes, like yourself,
There is zero requirement to agree with him, but so far Shadrach has generally engaged here in good faith and presented his case with reasoned argument and data.
Personal attacks like this invariably say more about the person making them …
Duck clap. That’s at least the secound time Iv seen you say that. Didn’t work the first time, what makes you think it will work a secound, Mr Logic?
In my book a blatant insult deserves a blatant insult. Shaddy maybe using sophisticated insults but they are insults. As long as health and education resources are equal to demand there isn’t a bad thing any one can say about Jacinda.
It’s the only way to teach EQ.
An hour ago you were saying that commenter was taking cheap shots.
Make up your mind, please.
@ Muttonbird
Maybe both of them were cheap shots ….
@ Sam
In my book a blatant insult deserves a blatant insult.
OK … in my book it doesn’t; wrestle with a pig and you will come up as dirty as the pig.
Also Mathew 5:44
You know the problem with agnoring insults is it doesn’t work on those who aren’t payed to grab your attention or are just trying to grab your attention like journalist. Want to harm them then ignore them and reduce self deception and bullshit.
Praying on the other hand is the gospel of the weak and downtrodden. There’s something strange about preying I public.
In my view, a person is Christian if they says theyre Christian. Anything else leads to unending arguments over who is a “true Christian” and who isn’t, because there’s no objective standard to determine who is and who isn’t a true believer.
Don’t get over anxious on my account Sam, I’ve participated in literally thousands of conversation here in the past decade and I’ve developed some idea what works for me. For what it’s worth I tapered off on the ‘insult for insult’ approach at least five years back, given that it seemed counterproductive more often than not.
But you’d be wrong if you think I’m incapable of them.
Nor am I specifically a Christian either, although I’d like to think I can recognise wisdom regardless of what costume she’s wearing on the day.
Safe travels.
You think.
Shadrack has so far spent hundreds of words trying to justify why, he shouldn’t pay tax on his income like the rest of us.
I am being kind. There are much worse words for people who are happy to get rich by causing homelessness and poverty.
“There are much worse words for people who are happy to get rich by causing homelessness and poverty.“
I am a landlord. I provide housing. That was not one of your more lucid comments, and that’s saying something.
…and about the paucity of any argument they may have.
I was a builder. I, provided houses.
You. Just make money from them.
And of course you sold those houses you built at cost, didn’t you.
A sobering and brutally honest column from Steve Braunias today. Quite hard to read because it reminds us we are only a short distance from fragility and loneliness – especially as we grow older.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/news/article.cfm?c_id=6&objectid=12205688
Look after yourselves, people.
What’s so special about that Steve Braunias. We are all on the same journey or parallel; at different stages. Like the ‘Spain’s Camino de Santiago ‘.* I’ve put the link down the bottom as it might be something to concentrate on doing while you reorient yourself.
Come and write here. Give us lessons on angst and how to market it. Everything is business these days – how to call out for other’s attention, successfully. We are not succeeding. Or are we; perhaps we get the attention of someone who takes a point from our writing that was not our intention. Can’t people out there concentrate on trying to understand, not go to the trouble of telling you that no-one says ‘whom’ these days! Tell me how you feel about my use of semi-colons Steve. Are they naff; too frequent?
Join the club Steve, perhaps there is already one formed for people who are trying, but find that others just regard them as very trying. We can laugh at ourselves ironically. We may not be getting far even slowly, but we are moving forward – that’s so ‘in’ these days. At the end of the day it is irony that brings some steel into your life,
and gives you strength to stagger on!
https://www.planetjanettravels.com/walking-spain-camino-going-back-for-more/
P>S> Tom Scott has drawn a cartoon showing himself in apparent safari shirt and shorts and giving an impression of leaving. Says something about a book and heroes. Probably like Muldoon he is going to write about himself. Both of them are heroes in their own ways. You too Steve.
Keep us fizzing you heroes – we’ll try to keep the water flowing, and perhaps turning it into wine if we have that special power, and you put the bubbles in. Okay? Deal?
Canada – the reporter in this Guardian article (thanks Guardian i must give you a donation regularly), says that watching Trudeau front up to behaviour below par is like watching a unicorn being run over! Such wonderful hyperbole.
To recap, Wilson-Raybould [former Attorney-General and Justice Minister]
was demoted to the position of veterans affairs minister in a cabinet shuffle earlier this year. Shortly thereafter, reports emerged that she and her staff had been subjected to a “sustained” campaign by the prime minister’s office over the handling of corruption charges against SNC-Lavalin, a Montreal-based engineering giant accused of bribing Libyan officials. It happens to be a large employer in Quebec, Trudeau’s home state – the prime minister’s office made sure to remind her of that, the job losses such charges might cause and the fact that it was an election year. There was a string of increasingly irate calls, texts and emails. Still, Wilson-Raybould held her ground. The prime minister lost the battle. Then she was demoted.
When the story broke, Trudeau denied any connection between the standoff and Raybould-Wilson’s political punishment. He denied having done anything inappropriate or wrong. The press and public howled. His principle secretary, Gerald Butts, who has been his bestie since their halcyon days in the 90s at McGill University, tried to take one for the team by resigning last week. But it was already too late. Now, Canada’s Tory opposition and many respected commentators are calling for Trudeau’s resignation. It’s a political bloodbath, Canadian style
Simplifying the Mainzeal collapse into one word: reckless.
Jenny Shipley is, was, and always will be reckless. She was leader of a reckless party, the National Party. Subsequent leaders have also been reckless – it is in their very nature.
The recklessness of John Key’s term is plain for all see. A housing crisis, corruption in the education sector, underfunding of health and infrastructure, poor immigration management, and worse environmental management.
These two and all their colleagues are cut from the same cloth and I hope people can finally see that truth.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=12208418
Does reckless include the meanings – irresponsible and delinquent?
If delinquent includes lacking in compassion and ethics, then yes
I was thinking about the word, “reckless” the other night and realised that it stems from “reckon”, that is, thought/thinking/reckoning, therefore, I reasoned, “reckless” means acting without reckoning.
Thanks momo for the sleepless night,
Because of the momo paranoia and coverage, it’s been popping up on the kids screens as it’s ‘trending’. It’s only popped up on their feeds in the last couple of days… https://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/parenting/110953249/momo-challenge-everything-you-need-to-know
Nek minute nightmares at , 11pm, 12.20am, 4.30am, 6.23am. Tired grumpy kids are hard work. No devices today girls, mum needs a full nights sleep so she can be a good parent.
On the upside it could be a good way to explain to the girls how much social media trending fake news (momo ain’t real) can influence someone and change a persons thinking.
Better arm myself with some bad dream spray tonight, (perfume, air freshner, waving around some incense, what ever i can find at the time lolz) worked a treat on me when I was a kid lmao.
Hellooooo coffee 🙂 It’s a beautiful day here today.
Momo thing that was reported on Radionz looked nasty and frightening, was worse when I read about it.
China has a grip and is tightening it via ‘social credit’ passes.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/01/china-bans-23m-discredited-citizens-from-buying-travel-tickets-social-credit-system
The social credit system aims to incentivise “trustworthy” behaviour through penalties as well as rewards. According to a government document about the system dating from 2014, the aim is to “allow the trustworthy to roam everywhere under heaven while making it hard for the discredited to take a single step.”
Social credit offences range from not paying individual taxes or fines to spreading false information and taking drugs. More minor violations include using expired tickets, smoking on a train or not walking a dog on a leash.
One thinks of Gilbert and Sullivan, and the line about the punishment fitting the crime!The chorus from a 2012 version of the Mikado which is Japanese but will carry the similar sentiments of this Chinese edict:
Mikado:
A more humane Mikado never
Did in Japan exist,
To nobodys second,
I’m certainly reckoned
A true philanthropist.
It is my very humane endeavour
To make, to some extent,
Each evil liver
A running river
Of harmless merriment.
My object all sublime
I shall achieve in time —
To let the punishment fit the crime —
The punishment fit the crime;
And make each prisoner pent
Unwillingly represent
A source of innocent merriment!
Of innocent merriment!
I wonder if anyone has anecdotes of what it was like to live in Singapore where they introduced draconian rules post WW2 that sound similar to those in China.
Meanwhile our Christchurch police are arming themselves and a stray shot from a recent ‘episode’ went through a window in a nearby building, where there were a number of people felling terrified, as you would.
Two horrible truck fatalities over the last three days.
Trucks are now gridlocked on NZ roads causing higher casualties than Australia now. Back in 2017 it was bad but we now have had according to NZTA an 8% a year increase in trucks.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/97785078/new-zealands-road-toll-in-five-charts
NZ road fatalities has 70 people die per Million and Australia has just 50 die per million.
New Zealand’s road toll in five charts
Andy Fyers 09:55, Oct 12 2017
“There have been 297 fatalities on New Zealand’s roads so far this year.
The country’s road toll has been declining for years, but after a series of horror crashes it is set to soar.
After a crash north of Taupō in which four people were killed, this year’s grim toll climbed to 297.
That’s already above than the toll for each of the past six calendar years and there are still more than two months to go.
Of course, the population has also been growing, but the per capita road toll has also been increasing in recent years and the ratio of fatalities to vehicles on the road has flatlined after declining almost every year since 2000.”
Here were the two latest fatal truck crashes last week.
• Last friday morning another truck and a car accident on Highway 1 near Turangi and Taupo.
• The day before three died in a four vehicle accident involving three trucks on highway 2 near Matata near Whakatane.
Rail would have saved four lives that NZTA cost each life lost at $3.4 million.
So rail would have saved us all almost $14 million.
Sorry if I am dominating the Open Mike. I will leave it to reason and Jenny-How.
Here we go, peeps. Natural possum control, no more 1080. Check this out, fresh from Peru.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/spider-tarantula-eats-opossum_n_5c772d95e4b010e7c563bb06
Ewwwwwwww!
Simon Bridges driving around in a car, telling dad jokes and talking gibberish.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12207256
NZ needs a better opposition leader than this clown.
Don’t know if anyone one has posted this.
Great interview with Vernon Tava, very clever switched on guy.
if given coverage by the media, I can see the sustainable party doing very well in 2020.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/shows/2019/03/vernon-tava-shooting-for-10-percent-of-2020-vote.html
Yeah, saw that last night and almost wrote a post on that but it was too getting too late. I’ll see how I go this weekend as there’s good fodder there to write about. Maybe you’d like to have a go at a Guest Post here?
Thanks the offer, but writings not really my strong point, there are far more talented people here who could do justice to this topic
I’d get crucified for my poor grammar, sentence structure, etc and any points I was trying to make would be lost.
No worries. I’m writing the post right now and I’m no good at writing either. In any case, people who disagree with your points but who have no real counter argument or simply can’t be bothered often resort to nit-picking about grammar, sentence structure (syntax), punctuation, and most of all semantics.
There’s so much wrong with what Tava said.
Looking forward to a post and a chance to straighten out the bendy thinking.
In what way, I think he speaks a lot of sense.
A proper green party should always be part of a government in an MMP environment, the fact the current Greens can’t work with anyone but Labour rules themselves out of that role.
Hopefully, Tava can develop and grow the Sustainable party into a position where the can take over from the current Greens and fullfill that role.
Another one who thinks a sustainable environment can be separated from a sustainable society.
Blue/Greens cannot fulfill that role because their entire ideology depends on growth. Which is not compatible with an environment.
Yet at the same time the elimination of poverty and meeting the technical challenge of climate change both demand innovation and growth.
Take away ‘growth’, collapse our global economy back to the pre-Industrial, pre-capitalist era and not only will we entirely lack the tools to meet these challenges, we will have 7 billion mouths to feed and no obvious means to do so.
Unless you have some unspecified plan in mind …
I’m not so sure about growth.
Take food, for example. Say we waste 30% of food globally. Someone innovates and halves that wastage. If we maintain production, people are better off. If we reduce production by 5%, actual consumed food still increases significantly. But how would that affect the food component of “growth”? You’d get an increase of GDP from the food that’s ploughed back into fields for whatever reason, but the food sent back to the restaurant kitchen, or that expires on the pantry shelf? Reducing that won’t affect GDP at all. Might even reduce it.
I’m not so sure about ‘growth’ either. KJT uses the word in a distinctively prerogative frame, yet this cannot be the whole story.
In part you’re absolutely correct about efficiency; there is so much we could and should do to minimise our existing resource use, just within our current technological framework.
On the face of it the simple notion of unlimited resource consumption on a fundamentally limited planet is absurd. Everyone understands this at some level. Yet as they say the Stone Age did not end because they ran out of stones; instead we developed Bronze which turned out to be a far more efficient use of the very limited energy resources available to us at the time.
Through a series of major stages we’ve progressed through the Iron Age, the Coal Age, and the Oil Age, In this sense ‘growth’ has a far more constructive meaning; it’s about how efficiently we utilise the energy and physical resources available to us.
Right now we are hard up against the limits of fossil carbon burning, and potentially some metals. Our agricultural systems consume too much land and our raping of the oceans is an abomination. Don’t mis-characterise me, I’m as vividly aware of the potential for total eco-collapse as the deepest shade of Greenie.
The only solution we know that will work is to progress beyond the limits of our current technologies, and leap once again up the efficiency ladder into completely new industrial forms. Forms perhaps dominated by solar, solid state lithium storage, fusion cells, new exotic materials like graphene and the like. There is a massive amount of R&D happening globally in all these areas; it only take a small fraction of it to make it from the lab to commercial products to utterly transform the world.
I don’t propose any guarantee this plan will work, but it is the only ethical bet in town.
“On the face of it the simple notion of unlimited resource consumption on a fundamentally limited planet is absurd.”
You understand the absurdity of continual growth, yet you argue for it to continue.
We talk about the “magic of compounding interest”. And, in a world capable of infinite expansion, yes.
In a finite world, infinitely compounding growth required for exponentially expanding returns, is a total impossibility.
Simple maths.
Then. The technological fix. We cannot even get the idiots to agree to a stop to oil drilling, in thirty years time.
Haven’t you seen the resistance to the current technological solutions. Vested interests are fighting alternative energy, public transport and reduced energy use, tooth and nail.
If the idiots had any ethics, we will have a chance. But they would rather the world end, than lose any money. They still have the delusion they can load all the costs on the already poor.
We are not in the bronze age.
We are at the same stage as the Easter Islanders.
It appears to me you missapply the term growth in this context when what you actually mean is improvement/progress….although synonyms they are not the same .
Yes.
Who the hell said anything about collapsing back to the pre industrial era.
As for growth. Continued using up of the environment simply cannot happen.
Or this argument will be moot, as a few desperate remnants of humanity cling onto an environment incompatible with human life.
Late stage Capitalism, has meant a huge amount of waste and mis -directed resources. The “competition” with Polytechnics, and ports, is but one small example.
The only hope, is that we stop spending our efforts into finding ever more elaborate ways of ripping other people off, which is the aim of the majority of businesses these days, and co-operate in solutions.
Those who are making plenty of money from business as usual have shown they will fight every step of the way.
The infinite growth required for our current system of finance, economy and social organization to continue, is an absurdity.
Yeah great for those who are keen on electing a cross between Elon Mush and Maggie Barry into Parliament…
Arundhati Roy on Kashmir.
Modi has internationalised the Kashmir dispute. He has demonstrated to the world that Kashmir is potentially the most dangerous place on earth, the flash-point for nuclear war. Every person, country, and organisation that worries about the prospect of nuclear war has the right to intervene and do everything in its power to prevent it.
[…]
The attack that killed at least 40 men was yet another hideous chapter in the unfolding tragedy of Kashmir. Since 1990, more than 70,000 people have been killed in the conflict, thousands have “disappeared,” tens of thousands have been tortured and hundreds of young people maimed and blinded by pellet guns. The death toll over the last 12 months has been the highest since 2009. The Associated Press reports that almost 570 people have lost their lives, 260 of them militants, 160 civilians and 150 Indian armed personnel who died in the line of duty.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/our-captured-wounded-hearts-arundhati-roy-on-balakot-kashmir-and-india_n_5c78d592e4b0de0c3fbf82bf
i hate these forced birthers with a passion i can hardly put in words
how fucked up do you have to be to refuse an abortion to an 11 year old girl who was raped by the 65 year old partner of her grandmother on the grounds of your personal believes.
Like how fucked up do you have to be in your believes to force an 11 year old girl to carry a pregnancy to terms?
how fucked up do you have to be to ‘consider the mothers consent to the abortion not enough’ and yet request the ‘grandmothers consent as she lived with her grandmother, even tho she got raped at her grandmothers’, so that eventually the girl is over 20 weeks along, and you need a ‘cesarian’ to cut the baby out.
How fucked up, how mean, how petty and how cruel do you have to be to force an 11 year old girl through a pregnancy, and please fucking leave god out of it, cause if that is ok by god, then god is a fucking sadist and ok with baby rapists.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-47400819
“The girl became pregnant after being raped by her grandmother’s 65-year-old partner and had requested an abortion.
However, her request was delayed by almost five weeks, and some doctors refused to carry out the procedure.
Eventually doctors carried out a C-section instead, arguing it would have been too risky to perform the abortion.
The baby is alive but doctors say it has little chance of surviving.
The girl was 23 weeks pregnant when – after several delays – she was to have the abortion.”
” Local media report that the girl had been clear from the beginning that she wanted to terminate her pregnancy, telling officials: “I want this thing the old man put inside me taken out.””
just how fucked up does one have to be to not simply see all that is wrong with the forced birther crowd. For the unborn, and to hell with those born and ‘potential hosts’.
We’ve often disagreed in the past Sabine, but on this I share your anger. This is what happens when absolutists go mad.
It’s quite striking how attitudes toward abortion vary dramatically around the world; in many parts of Asia it’s virtually seen as a routine method of contraception, while parts Latin America, as in this horrible story, hold to the opposite extreme. In the West we tend to hover around the middle, generally accepting it as an unfortunate necessity, a last resort when all other better options have been exhausted.
Personally I’ve never engaged with the debate preferring to see it available, lightly regulated and a matter of personal conscience.
As the old saying goes, “if it bleeds, it breeds”. To me, those that refuse these procedures on grounds of morals simply refuse to see women and girls for that matter as nothing more as hosts, vessels, this is gods plan, blablabla.
fact is this girl could have/ would have been seriously damaged physically trying to carry this pregnancy to term, birth would have been potentially only possible via cesarean.
to give her the run around, completely and utterly ignoring her needs, her physical welfare, her mental welfare and simply not giving a fuck about the ‘host’, cause the morals only apply to the ‘unborn’. Once born, both the host and the unborn are on their own, and can you image the stigma of being a 15 year old with a three year old kid. Morals, no, this is not about morals, this is about putting this girl firmly in its place. Single, unmarried, with child. On your own.
and we have these people here, Bill English and Simon Bridges seem to have morals when it comes to abortion. It is a criminal in NZ, and at the very best one must declare oneself mentally ill in order to have access to an abortion. Think of that.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2018/12/sir-bill-english-joins-anti-abortion-activists-in-march-through-wellington.html
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/104255007/simon-bridges-opposed-to-taking-abortion-out-of-the-crimes-act
not sure if anything other then paying lipservices is gonna happen.
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/jacinda-ardern-committed-abortion-law-reform-but-nationals-leadership-candidates-all-object
We are the same, we just pretend to be more caring. Youngest in NZ, thirteen.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11953393
calling women ‘body hosts’ https://www.orlandoweekly.com/Blogs/archives/2019/03/01/florida-house-speaker-jose-oliva-called-pregnant-women-host-bodies-5-times-in-interview-on-anti-abortion-bill
look away from the act, and tell me how anyone can pretend that this stuff simply does not serve to dehumanize the women or girl in question. Be they pregnant by choice or wanting an abortion, all hosts.
Suffer, little children.
http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1883598,00.html
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2014/apr/04/sengalese-law-bans-rape-survivor-aborting-twins
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/rape-victim-14-dies-childbirth-forced-paraguay-abortion-rights-a8270131.html
suffer the little girls.
morals. yeah, right. tui.
We are set in the farming mould here in NZ. The jelly mould, and women must have their jellybabies. The farming types can’t decide whether women are like breeding stock and have an owner or whether they should be allowed to run free and graze on the long acre eking out a life. If they want to provide a secure family life with a role model of a capable, intelligent good mother and afford to provide things that other children have, the mother trying to get training will be made to jump through hoops. So perhaps unmarried women are sort of like circus animals.
We had an education fairly recently about the, all to common, attitude to young mothers. Especially brown ones.
To me it seems totally creepy.
I’ve been listening to this evening. Quite a fascinating and vivid discussion on depression with deep political implications. Warning, quite long at 1:25
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hfl3Yh7fS4g
Kia ora R & R whanau ora is just cyps rebranded with a Maori name. I say Bill set it up so his wife could setup a company to milk the people and the system it’s was not about fixing the problems that this raciest system has on minority culture.
I have seen no evidence that whanau ora is s delivering better our comes for our Mokopunas with LOST parents. The extended whanau is still there to look after the tamariki. I say we need a Maori approach to fixing our tamariki with parents lost to the system. But the real people in control of the system don’t want to give Maori any Mana if you pay good money you will get good carers pay peanuts and you get – – -. Ka kite ano P.S invest good money and have a simple system that holds people accountable for there actions if they don’t improve the tamariki lives
Kia ora The Hui it does not matter that difference age groups have a slightly different opinion on the main subject it’s democracy and the people have been educated on the truths of how the system operates and they have spoken to stop this system of harvesting Maoris into the justice system that provides jobs for old white men and legalise weed. 75%,is a good majority. I say a 18 year old ban is what is needed some people will consume it when they are younger but as people are like sheep the majority will obey the LAW. Correct it won’t fix the unjustice system but it is a start on the road to reforms of the unjustice system. Ka kite ano
Kia or a R & R People cannot predict Papatuanuku. But I’m pretty sure she will give plenty of warnings when a volcano is about to erupt it’s up to the rulers that these Waring be heard IE re tangata is education correctly . LOOK at climate change that is a way Bigger threat to Aotearoa than a volcanic eruption and the climate change deniers have that topic suppressed and we are talking about volcanoes just distracting tactics from the oil barons control MEDIA Ka kite Ano P.S were,s the concomedian GLOBAL WARMING IS WHAT WE SHOULD BE TAKING ABOUT
STRIKE FOR OUR CHILDREDS RIGHT TO BE LEFT A GOOD CLIMATE 15 MARCH .
Could everyone who cares about our mokopunas futures strike to kia kaha we will let the oil barrons know its no JOKE
Here you go WHANAU back to the Real issue the is going to make or BREAK our mokopunas futures not Volcanos .
Climate crisis and a betrayed generation
Activists behind recent youth-led climate protests say their views are being ignored in the debate about global warmin
We, the young, are deeply concerned about our future. Humanity is currently causing the sixth mass extinction of species and the global climate system is at the brink of a catastrophic crisis. Its devastating impacts are already felt by millions of people around the globe. Yet we are far from reaching the goals of the Paris agreement.
Young people make up more than half of the global population. Our generation grew up with the climate crisis and we will have to deal with it for the rest of our lives. Despite that fact, most of us are not included in the local and global decision-making process. We are the voiceless future of humanity.
We will no longer accept this injustice. We demand justice for all past, current and future victims of the climate crisis, and so we are rising up. Thousands of us have taken to the streets in the past weeks all around the world. Now we will make our voices heard. On 15 March, we will protest on every continent.
We finally need to treat the climate crisis as a crisis. It is the biggest threat in human history and we will not accept the world’s decision-makers’ inaction that threatens our entire civilisation. We will not accept a life in fear and devastation. We have the right to live our dreams and hopes. Climate change is already happening. People did die, are dying and will die because of it, but we can and will stop this madness.
We, the young, have started to move. We are going to change the fate of humanity, whether you like it or not. United we will rise until we see climate justice. We demand the world’s decision-makers take responsibility and solve this crisis.
You have failed us in the past. If you continue failing us in the future, we, the young people, will make change happen by ourselves. The youth of this world has started to move and we will not rest again.
The global coordination group of the youth-led climate strike.
Links Below ka kite ano
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/mar/01/youth-climate-change-strikers-open-letter-to-world-leaders
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/mar/01/youth-climate-strikers-we-are-going-to-change-the-fate-of-humanity
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDBJMqZ6lWI
I thought I would giving another on SUGAR as I seen one story blaming the bad effects of sugar on Pacific peoples genitics big companys control OUR media hence the truth about the bad thing in ones life are suppressed
Your Teeth
You probably rolled your eyes at age 12, but your mother was right: Candy can rot your teeth. Bacteria that cause cavities love to eat sugar lingering in your mouth after you eat something sweet.
Your Joints
If you have joint pain, here’s more reason to lay off the candy: Eating lots of sweets has been shown to worsen joint pain because of the inflammation they cause in the body. Plus, studies show that sugar consumption can increase your risk of developing rheumatoid arthritis.
Your Skin
Another side effect of inflammation: It may make your skin age faster. Sugar attaches to proteins in your bloodstream and creates harmful molecules called “AGEs,” or advanced glycation end products. These molecules do exactly what they sound like they do: age your skin. They have been shown to damage collagen and elastin in your skin — protein fibers that keep your skin firm and youthful. The result? Wrinkles and saggy skin.
Your Liver
An abundance of added sugar may cause your liver to become resistant to insulin, an important hormone that helps turn sugar in your bloodstream into energy. This means your body isn’t able to control your blood sugar levels as well, which can lead to type 2 diabetes.
Your Kidneys
If you have diabetes, too much sugar can lead to kidney damage. The kidneys play an important role in filtering your blood sugar. Once blood sugar levels reach a certain amount, the kidneys start to let excess sugar into your urine. If left uncontrolled, diabetes can damage the kidneys, which prevents them from doing their job in filtering out waste in your blood. This can lead to kidney failure.
Your Body Weight
This probably isn’t news to you, but the more sugar you eat, the more you’ll weigh. Research shows that people who drink sugar-sweetened beverages tend to weigh more — and be at higher risk for type 2 diabetes — than those who don’t. One study even found that people who increased their sugar intake gained about 1.7 pounds in less than 2 months.
Your Sexual Health
You may want to skip the dessert on date night: Sugar may impact the chain of events needed for an erection. “One common side effect of chronically high levels of sugar in the bloodstream is that it can make men impotent,” explains Brunilda Nazario, MD, WebMD’s associate medical editor. This is because it affects your circulatory system, which controls the blood flow throughout your body and needs to be working properly to get and keep an erection.
Ka kite ano links below.
https://www.webmd.com/diabetes/features/how-sugar-affects-your-body
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbOHU9s6V5E
Kia ora Newshub Lighting strikes caused fires in Australia it must be dry there they would laugh at our droughts.
Some in the retirement industry don’t show the retired people the respect they deserve.
Yes democracy needed to be protected and all donations to political parties needed to be declared.
I won’t say who I am backing in the Auckland mayor race but you can work it out quite easily. It’s cool that lady is making dolls specially for children with disabilities that will lift there spirits.
Ka kite ano
Kia ora The AM Show The Green Party has a better grasp of reality than the 2 neanderthal climate change denier. Adults YEA RIGHT.
national ran schools broke so they could have a private education system that only the rich could afford to get a decent education you know how it is its easier to CON a uneducated society than a education one. (O we don’t KNOW what is the main cause of obesity) .
Sitting on the fence.
If it was not for the POWER of social media our realitys would be buried under pile of oil barrons $$$$$$. Climate change has taken 30 years to get through that pile.
The youth should be heard as it is there futures we are SHITTING ON at the minute. Social media gives them the power for their VOICES to be heard. That’s the big picture leave Papatuanukue with a better or similar condition as we received it most people want their children to be better off than they have.
There you go kicking the poor people not everyone that is in prison is a big criminal minor crimes like being Maori and unpaid fines and the ujustice system will stich you up like they are trying to do to Me.
This same phenomenon happened other times Labour was in power strikes.
Well I tryed to use the unjustice system to stop my reputation being SHIT on but everyone now knows that the rich make the laws of our society to serve them and lock up the common poor people you need $20.000 to get a fair deal out of the system.
Im just going to ignore the new joke on the block give it no oxygen and it will disappear. Ka kite ano P.S LoL
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAB6aXOfUmU
I see the TROLLS are jumping all over Maori Mana once again blaming us for the Toheroa not recovering from that westen Thing of stipping a resorce untill it collapeses look at the Crafish in Auckland the Orange Roughy that fisheries started when I was a in my teens and it only lasted 10 to 15 years do you blame te Maori for this to fools . At Wai tahi spit there was heaps of Pipis now its skint blame those Maoris . For one a shellfish wont last long with a one ton car driving ontop of it two we know that all shellfish need clean water as the filter wai to get there food they are the filters of Tangaroa the person who wrote this story talks shit saying that he does not know the link between dirty water and the decline of the Toheroa YEA RIGHT just another put down of Maori Cultures . 3 THE ANONMOUS informants are most likley Kehuas Gost made up + just to give credibality to this persons bullshit story 4 I have never seen Toheroa at a Marae
Decades of fishing bans have not rescued seafood delicacy toheroa
Toheroa was a favourite NZ seafood delicacy of the 1900s. It was vastly over-harvested and collecting was banned in the 1970s. In the decades since, it has not recovered. Why not? Will Harvie reports.
It would probably appal Kiwis who feasted on toheroa in the last century that the seafood delicacy is now almost forgotten.
Until the 1960s, toheroa was New Zealand’s “great contribution to the epicurean world”.
The kai moana was “highly esteemed by the most fastidious gourmet” and a “gift of nature … that has done much to advertise the Dominion all over the world”, according to the NZ Railways Magazine in 1936.
Toheroa thrived on the western beaches of the North Island – Ninety Mile, Ripiro and Muriwai. It abounded on the beaches of Kāpiti-Horowhenua near Wellington. Mysteriously, it thrived on Oreti and Te Waewae beaches in Southland. There were pockets elsewhere.
The surf clam was a staple of the Māori diet for centuries. In the 20th century, it seemed to be an “almost inexhaustible resource” to many.
From 1928-69, Northland factories canned about 20 tonnes of toheroa a year. In 1940, they canned 77 tonnes, the record
In almost all discussions of the customary harvests of toheroa, words such as “limited” and “restricted” are used to indicate these are minor events.
But there’s evidence and testimony that customary catches of toheroa are neither.
“Based on our observations and communications with kaitiaki, honorary fisheries officers and residents at Ripiro, and to a lesser extent at other locations, it would appear that the levels of human harvesting are significant,” wrote Ross and co-authors in the main paper on toheroa to come out of the Marsden funding.
“Illegal harvesting is common,” they wrote.
“Poaching events range in size from residents or visitors just getting a feed every now and then – which may be once a year or once a week – to large-scale illegal harvesting for the black market
Fresh water comes up often. There’s both evidence and knowledge that toheroa probably need clean, fresh water coming onto beaches from inland. It probably cools them and they probably get nutrients from it.
In Northland, where many streams and seeps have dried up, there are questions from locals whether this has contributed to the decline.
“There are also accounts from elders of streams ‘running black’ after logging operations and this coinciding with the disappearance of the toheroa bed at the end of that particular stream,” he wrote in an email.
“There is clearly a relationship between toheroa and streams, we just don’t understand it yet. Which makes it difficult to advise land and environment managers. We are working on it.”
Across many North Island iwi, toheroa is closely tied to the dune grass pingao. There are several stories from Māori lore on the connection and Ross thinks the association is worth investigating further. Ka kite ano links below
https://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/110671140/decades-of-fishing-bans-have-not-rescued-seafood-delicacy-toheroa
Is this a factor to the destruction of the Toheroa carbon in sea water O no blame those savage Maoris
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYatjltUX2w
Some Eco Maori Music for the minute
https://youtu.be/34Na4j8AVgA
Well its about time some more money was invested into Waka building look at all the flash yacth clubs the flash rowing clubs thanks anyway ka pai try getting funding like that for Maori cultures out of national they would SQUEAL like they were shitting bricks lol
$ 4.6m grant to make Sir Hek’s waka dream a reality
The government is to invest nearly $8 million in two major Far North projects, including a long-held dream of waka tohunga
he told the Waitangi Tribunal three years ago he would not be around forever, and his dearest wish was for the funding for a navigation school so that the traditional techniques of Pacific voyaging could be passed on to a younger generation.
“Sir Hek is truly an icon of the Far North,” Mr Davis said.
“The Kupe Waka centre will see his knowledge preserved and also bring people to the area from New Zealand and overseas to this incredible part of our country.”
The government is also investing $3m in a multi-use sports centre in Kaitaia. Participation in sport and fitness was a key part of maintaining a healthy lifestyle and improving the wellbeing of whānau and communities, Mr Davis said.
“This facility will create jobs, attract people to live here and help retain workers, young people and athletes in Kaitaia.”
The investment package also includes support for three iwi: Te Aupōuri, Ngāti Kahu and Te Rarawa, to make progress on major projects.
https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/te-manu-korihi/383515/dollar4-6m-grant-to-make-sir-hek-s-waka-dream-a-reality
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_7l0jLqGyw
https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/te-manu-korihi/383515/dollar4-6m-grant-to-make-sir-hek-s-waka-dream-a-reality
They include investigations into a water storage project for horticulture and exploring the potential for a barge to transport logs to Northport in Whangārei.
The package announced today is worth $8.2m, but the government has tagged more than $90m from the Provincial Growth Fund for Northland projects from Kaipara to the Far North. Ka kite ano links below
Some Eco Maori Music for the minute most of the wife,s whanau are working with the sandflys. Poukokohuia,s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgVVG5EknuI