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
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News that the Chinese ATP 40 cyber-hacking unit penetrated parliamentary internet networks in 2021 has renewed concerns about the PRC’s malign intentions in Aotearoa. But is the hack that significant given the length of time that has passed since its … Continue reading → ...
When Parliament passed the Intelligence and security Act in 2017, they assured us all that it was full of safeguards. Any intrusive surveillance of New Zealanders would be subject to a "triple lock", requiring the approval of the Minister and (supposedly independent) Commissioner of Intelligence Warrants, as well as post-facto ...
Eric Crampton writes – Richard Harman’s Politik newsletter provides a bit of the context that ought to have been showing up in other media reports on potential reductions in public service staffing. Media has been reporting on staffing cuts on the order of about 7%. Is that ...
Mike Grimshaw writes – It’s becoming increasingly apparent that many perceive free speech to have become the preserve of the politically right wing, the religiously conservative, the libertarian fringe, the anti-trans, the anti-Māori and…. well, just fill in with whatever groups or individuals you don’t like and don’t ...
Don Brash writes – As everybody who is not blind and deaf is aware, there is a huge political preoccupation with climate change at the moment, a widespread (though by no means unanimous) belief that global temperatures are rising mainly as a result of the greenhouse gases created ...
TL;DR: My six things to note in Aotearoa’s political economy on Wednesday, March 27 include:Chris Bishop laid out his vision for filling Aotearoa-NZ’s $100 billion infrastructure deficit in a speech yesterday, emphasising user pays and private funding, but failed to say how to achieve bipartisanship on population, public borrowing and ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Former Finance Minister Grant Robertson and former Prime Minister Chris Hipkins have been conveying how unhappy they are with the tax system. Last week in his valedictory speech, Robertson called for the introduction of a wealth or capital gains tax. And this week Hipkins ...
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 ...
Buzz from the Beehive China has loomed large in Beehive considerations over the past 24 hours, largely because of that country’s mischief-making in the cyber espionage department. Two media statements emerged on that subject hard on the heels of the PM baulking at questions put to him on RNZ’s Morning ...
Chris Trotter writes – WHY IS THE NATIONAL PARTY doing so much for landlords, property developers, trucking, and construction companies, and so little for everybody who isn’t already pretty well-off? It’s as if protecting landlords’ investments and building apartments and roads now constitute the whole of National’s ...
Bryce Edwards writes – When she was campaigning to be Minister of Finance last year, Nicola Willis pledged that she would resign from the job if she failed to deliver tax cuts in her first Budget. Now, it’s that pledge, along with Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s ...
Robert MacCulloch writes – The Reserve Bank has doubled staff numbers in five years to 510, with personnel costs rising to $80 million in 2023 from $32 million in 2018 – up by a whopping 150%. I guess when you print $50 billion and flood markets with liquidity, ...
The furore. In case you didn’t notice there was a controversy in the weekend involving dolphins in a little town off the South Island. Don’t panic, they haven’t declared independence and resumed whaling, this was simply a sailing event.The problem began when racing was cancelled on the opening day of ...
For 20 years or more, the case for a meaningful capital tax gains has been mulled over and analysed to death, including by the tax working group chaired by Sir Michael Cullen. More than once, the International Monetary Fund has said a CGT would be a good idea for New ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read: The Public Health Communications Centre (PHCC) call for urgent preventive action and a risk assessment survey of long covid in this briefing noteLocal scoop: NZ road deaths surpass OECD rates, so why is the govt reversing safety plans? ...
This story was originally published by Grist and is part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story. This story is part of a collaboration with Grist and WABE to demystify the Georgia Public Service Commission, the small but powerful state-elected board that makes critical decisions about everything from raising ...
This is a guest post from Robert McLachlan Global warming is accelerating; 2023 was off the charts. We need to stop burning fossil fuels. In New Zealand, transport accounts for half of all fossil fuels burnt. In the Emissions Reduction Plan, transport emissions fall 41% by 2035. As the ...
Labour productivity has been receding rapidly over the past two years, reversing a post-lockdown rise. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: My six things to note in Aotearoa’s political economy as at 6:26am on Tuesday, March 26 include:Workers have been treading water in output per hour worked for 12 years, ...
TL;DR: The key events to watch in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the week to April 2 include:Today, Parliament resumes sitting at 2pm for the second week of a two-week session. Officials for SIS and GCSB report their annual reviews in public to the Intelligence and Security Select Committee from 5.10pm.Tomorrow, ...
Faced with a barrage of criticism over the promised tax cuts from usually supportive commentators, Finance Minister Nicola Willis yesterday reaffirmed her intention to include them in this year’s Budget. The Government is up against it over the cuts just about every way it turns. Commentators like Fran O’Sullivan, Matthew ...
Here’s my pick of today’s substack posts as of 6:26pm on Monday, March 25: writes via his substack that Market-rate housing will make your city cheaper writes via his substack about the problems talking to double-cab ute (truck) drivers about their vehicles. today about moments of radicalisation in ...
Buzz from the Beehive Just before Christmas, Finance Minister Nicola Willis delivered something that was pitched as a mini-budget and brayed about the decisive action being taken to repair the Government books and support income tax relief in Budget 2024. In a statement headed Fiscal repair job underway. she introduced ...
My sister Belinda asked Dad yesterday what one word would describe Mum best. He said: vivacious.If you only knew her from the photos on the slideshow we've made for today,you might wonder about that, because the camera tended to lie with Mum.If ever she saw a camera pointed at her, she ...
There are two major public consultations closing in the next week, Auckland Council’s Long Term Plan (LTP), and the draft Government Policy Statement on Land Transport (GPS). Closing dates and times: LTP closes Thursday 28 February, at 11.59pm – a minute to midnight! GPS closes Tuesday 2 April, at 12pm noon – note that’s ...
From Kiwiblog’s David Farrar – Bryce Wilkinson writes: Senior Fellow Bryce Wilkinson’s analysis reveals that since March 2009, New Zealand has spent $158 billion more overseas than it has earned, but its NIIP has only fallen by $32 billion.Statistics New Zealand shows that receipts from overseas reinsurers have ...
Is she hinting that the Coalition Government will have to back down on key promises it made in Opposition? Brian Easton writes – The Minister of Finance, Nicola Willis, is telling an evolving story about her fiscal challenges. In Opposition she was confident that she could ...
Dear Nicola Willis,Right now you’ve probably got lots of competing demands coming at you. Ministers who’ve inherited quite a mess, or so you’ve told us, looking for money in the budget to improve things. I imagine that’s why they came to parliament - to make things better.You’ll have to make ...
The Local Government, Transport and Auckland Minister hasthreatened councils with intervention if they don’t merge water assets to take them off balance sheet, just as the now-repealed Three Waters plan directed. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: My six things of note this morning for Monday, March 25 include:Simeon ...
A listing of 36 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 17, 2024 thru Sat, March 23, 2024. Story of the week Thanks to John Mason having the stamina to sit down to watch "Climate - the Movie" ...
This morning the Q&A programme had Simeon Brown on to talk about National’s replacement for Three Waters. In case anyone’s forgotten the three are - drinking water, waste water, and sewerage. It’s quite important not to get them mixed up. In much the same way that you wouldn’t want to ...
Today’s newsletter comes with a mini-podcast conversation between me and my buddy Liv Tennet, talking about her time as a child actor in Lord of the Rings. It’s a conversation with a lot of giggles as she talks about falling off a horse, and becoming a meme. Read ...
The Desmog Climate Disinformation Database documents, "individuals and organisations that have helped to delay and distract the public and our elected leaders from taking needed action to reduce greenhouse gas pollution and fight global warming." It's a who's who of the organised climate change denial movement, in other words. In ...
Bob Edlin writes – A High Court judge has decided miscreants who have mana – or who claim to have mana – should be treated differently from miscreants who have none. It’s a ruling that suggests indigenous law-breakers have a better chance of securing a discharge without conviction ...
Welcome to the first, and possibly last, edition of Brickbats, Bouquets and Bull’s Wool. In which I’ll take a look at the events of the last week or so, and rate them.In such ratings the numbers usually have more to do with the opinions of the reviewer, than the actual ...
Roger Partridge writes – My earlier column this month, New Zealand’s highest court could be facing a turning point, prompted a flood of feedback from business readers and lawyers alike. A common query was what Parliament can do to restrain an overreaching judiciary. This week I discuss two steps Parliament ...
TL;DR: In today’s ‘six-stack’ of substacks at 6.16pm on Friday, March 22: writes about New Zealand's Building Boom—And What the World Must Learn From It over at his substack. challenges the Auckland Council’s use of a 3.8 degrees of warming forecast to oppose a wave-park and data centre project ...
Is she hinting that the Coalition Government will have to back down on key promises it made in Opposition?The Minister of Finance, Nicola Willis, is telling an evolving story about her fiscal challenges. In Opposition she was confident that she could deliver her promised income tax cuts. Appointed minister, she ...
Buzz from the Beehive Ministers of the Crown have drawn attention to one sector of the science sector which is unlikely to be subjected to heavy spending cuts, a state-funded broadcaster which is doing nicely, thank you, and a sporting event that had $5.4 million from the public purse puffed ...
Abbott’s Freestyle Libre sensors allow continuous glucose monitoring (CGM). The sensor is applied to the back of the patient’s arm, with a thin filament under the skin measuring glucose levels constantly. But it costs around $100 per sensor and must be replaced once every 14 days. Photo by BSIP/Universal Images ...
The Inspector General of Intelligence and Security (IGIS) recently released a report in which he exposes the existence of a foreign intelligence partner-controlled technological “capability” inside the headquarters of the GCSB, NZ’s 5 Eyes-affiliated signals intelligence collection and analysis agency. … Continue reading → ...
Peter Dunne writes – Nearly three decades after the introduction of MMP and multiparty governments there should be a greater level of understanding about their finer points than often appears to be the case. The reaction to the despicable outburst from the Deputy Prime Minister at the weekend highlights ...
The sweet kisses from fruit of summerHave slowly been turning dullerYou say, "those times"And "remember the daysWhen we went outside and there still was the shade?"Taking no reason into play…Autumn. Clear, blue days shortening to longer nights, growing colder. Aotearoa.That’s us. The temperature dropping, the looming car crash - so ...
Bryce Edwards writes – “It is often said that behind every great man is a great woman”. This is the pitch by the National Party Botany electorate branch to attend their “Ladies Afternoon Tea with Amanda Luxon”. For $110 including GST, you can turn up on Saturday 20 April ...
David Farrar writes – The Electoral Commission has published the expense returns for political parties for the 2023 election. I’ve put them in a table with how many votes a party got so we can see the spend per vote. National only spent $3.34 for every vote they got, almost ...
Winston Peters’ headline-making actions over the past week may have been a show of political power intended to strengthen his hand in Budget negotiations. It was no accident that his State of the Nation speech was as it was. He made it as New Zealand First Leader, not as Deputy ...
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The five things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about via The Kākā and elsewhere for paying subscribers in the last week included:Former Labour Finance Minister Grant Robertson bowed out of politics this week, giving a series of exit ...
Graham Adams writes — If you love the law or sausages, as the saying goes, best not to look too closely at how they are made. And after watching the orgy of self-pity when Newshub’s closure was announced on February 28, television journalism should definitely be added to the list of those ...
Venerable New Zealand political commentator, Chris Trotter (https://bowalleyroad.blogspot.com/), is a sad creature these days. Once one of the most reliable Leftist writers out there – Economic Left at that – Trotter seems to have absorbed the worldview of Auckland culture-war obsessives. It is not for me to categorise what he ...
The cruelty of short-term memory loss is that each time you ask where she is, you get the fresh shock and grief of the news. That was Dad's day yesterday.Comfortingly, it seems to be less so today. Last night he looked crumpled, today he seems more settled. There's a card ...
The Coalition Government’s plan to ‘get Auckland moving’ is a cuts cover-up that will ultimately cost Aucklanders more to move around the city, says Labour Auckland Issues spokesperson Shanan Halbert. ...
Slashing the Ministry of Pacific Peoples by 40% will have a devastating impact on pacific communities and further highlights how little this government cares about anything other than cutting taxes for the wealthiest few. ...
Labour has proposed an urgent inquiry to investigate the ever-increasing profits of supermarkets, aiming to lower costs for shoppers and food producers alike, says Labour Spokesperson for Commerce and Consumer Affairs Arena Williams and Primary Production Spokesperson Cushla Tangaere-Manuel. ...
With 14% of jobs on the line at the Ministry for Ethnic Communities, the responsible Minister Melissa Lee is failing to stand up for the very communities she’s meant to be representing. ...
COURT OF APPEAL: TRIFECTA OF VICTORY FOR NZ FIRST, TRIFECTA OF FAILURE FOR OPPONENTS For the third time since April 2020, New Zealand First has defeated the Serious Fraud Office and all those complicit in a malicious attack against a political party going about its lawful business in a lawful ...
The Green Party stands with people who live in public housing, people in dire housing need, experts and advocates in demanding better than the Government’s archaic approach to housing those who need our support the most. ...
New Zealand has recently lost the hosting rights of some major international sporting events including the America’s Cup, the Rugby Championship, Netball World Cup, and the Wellington Sevens. We are now at a huge risk of losing SailGP as well. And it won’t stop there. The recent issues with SailGP ...
A Member’s Bill drawn this week would modernise insurance law and make things fairer and more transparent for consumers, Christchurch Central MP Duncan Webb said. ...
The Minister for Disability Issues has confirmed she was aware of funding issues in mid-December and did nothing to stop it. On 14 March, she signed off on changes that were announced and implemented on 18 March without any consultation with disability communities. ...
Green Party MP Julie Anne Genter says her members' bill is an opportunity for the coalition government to plug the gap in electric vehicle incentives. ...
The National Government continues to talk about irresponsible tax cuts that will only drive up inflation, despite the country entering a technical recession. ...
The Minister for Disability Issues must act urgently to reinstate flexibility around the funding for disability support and apologise to disabled carers. ...
This story has been initiated by a leftie shill reporter who proactively sought to call a member of a former band, which disbanded twelve years ago, give their biased appraisal of what was said in my speech, and concocted a ham-fisted attempt at a story that does nothing but show ...
The Government has accepted Labour’s change to the Road User Charge (RUC) discount for hybrid vehicles, meaning there will still be some incentive for people to buy greener vehicles. ...
Many in the mainstream media have taken what was said in New Zealand First’s State of the Nation Speech in Palmerston North on Sunday and deliberately, deceitfully, and ignorantly misrepresented what I said and why I said it. The headlines and commentary on the news stated that I compared ‘co-governance ...
Kicking the most vulnerable people out of state housing and pushing them towards homelessness will result in a proliferation of poverty and trauma across our most vulnerable communities. ...
Te Pāti Māori co-leader and MP for Waiariki, Rawiri Waititi has penned a letter asking MPs to support his members bill to remove GST from all food. The bill is expected to go through its first reading in parliament this Wednesday. “I’m calling on all political parties to support my ...
Good afternoon. Thank you for, in your very busy lives, turning up to this meeting today. On October 14th last year New Zealanders overwhelmingly voted for change. That is exactly what this new government is bringing. New Zealand First campaigned to ‘take back our country’ and stop the disastrous economic ...
This year is about getting real with Kiwis and discussing the tough issues, as the National Government exacerbates inequality and divides New Zealand, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said ...
The Government adding Significant Natural Areas (SNAs) to its already roaring environmental policy bonfire is an assault on the future of wildlife that makes Aotearoa unique. ...
After 12 years of fighting to protect our moana we are finding ourselves back at square one and back at court. Today, the Environmental Protection Agency is sitting in Hawera to reconsider an application from Trans-Tasman Resources to dig up 50 million tonnes of the seabed in South Taranaki. This ...
Minister Shane Jones’ decision to step away from a seabed mining project is evidence of the murky waters surrounding the Government’s fast-track legislation. ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The Coalition Government’s miscalculation saga continues as it has forgotten an eyewatering $90 million gap in its interest deductibility cost figures, say Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds and Revenue Spokesperson Deborah Russell. ...
He Pou a Rangi Climate Change Commission has today released advice that says if the Government doesn’t act now New Zealand is at risk of not meeting its climate goals. ...
The Coalition Government has today confirmed it is abandoning first home buyers who are struggling to get ahead, says Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds. ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has welcomed the passing of legislation to move light electric vehicles (EVs) and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) into the road user charges system from 1 April. “It was always intended that EVs and PHEVs would be exempt from road user charges until they reached two ...
New Zealand is strengthening its ability to combat illegal fishing outside its domestic waters and beef up regulation for its own commercial fishers in international waters through a Bill which had its first reading in Parliament today. The Fisheries (International Fishing and Other Matters) Amendment Bill 2023 sets out stronger ...
Economists Carl Hansen and Professor Prasanna Gai have been appointed to the Reserve Bank Monetary Policy Committee, Finance Minister Nicola Willis announced today. The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) is the independent decision-making body that sets the Official Cash Rate which determines interest rates. Carl Hansen, the executive director of Capital ...
Apartment owners and buyers will soon have greater protections as further changes to the law on unit titles come into effect, Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. “The Unit Titles (Strengthening Body Corporate Governance and Other Matters) Amendment Act had already introduced some changes in December 2022 and May 2023, and ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters will travel to Egypt and Europe from this weekend. “This travel will focus on a range of New Zealand’s traditional diplomatic and security partnerships while enabling broad engagement on the urgent situation in Gaza,” Mr Peters says. Mr Peters will attend the NATO Foreign ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown is encouraging all road users to stay safe, plan their journeys ahead of time, and be patient with other drivers while travelling around this Easter long weekend. “Road safety is a responsibility we all share, and with increased traffic on our roads expected this Easter we ...
About 1.4 million New Zealanders will receive cost of living relief through increased government assistance from April 1 909,000 pensioners get a boost to Superannuation, including 5000 veterans 371,000 working-age beneficiaries will get higher payments 45,000 students will see an increase in their allowance Over a quarter of New Zealanders ...
Ensuring social housing is being provided to those with the greatest needs is front of mind as the Government restarts social housing tenancy reviews, Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka says. “Our relentless focus on building a strong economy is to ensure we can deliver better public services such as social ...
The Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary will not go ahead, with Cabinet deciding to stop work on the proposed reserve and remove the Bill that would have established it from Parliament’s order paper. “The Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary Bill would have created a 620,000 sq km economic no-go zone,” Oceans and Fisheries Minister ...
Dam safety regulations are being amended so that smaller dams won’t be subject to excessive compliance costs, Minister for Building and Construction Chris Penk says. “The coalition Government is focused on reducing costs and removing unnecessary red tape so we can get the economy back on track. “Dam safety regulations ...
The coalition Government is expanding the medium-scale adverse event classification to parts of the North Island as dry weather conditions persist, Agriculture Minister Todd McClay announced today. “I have made the decision to expand the medium-scale adverse event classification already in place for parts of the South Island to also cover the ...
The passing of legislation giving effect to coalition Government tax commitments has been welcomed by Finance Minister Nicola Willis. “The Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023–24, Multinational Tax, and Remedial Matters) Bill will help place New Zealand on a more secure economic footing, improve outcomes for New Zealanders, and make our tax system ...
Science, Innovation and Technology Minister Judith Collins and Tertiary Education and Skills Minister Penny Simmonds today announced plans to transform our science and university sectors to boost the economy. Two advisory groups, chaired by Professor Sir Peter Gluckman, will advise the Government on how these sectors can play a greater ...
The Budget will deliver urgently-needed tax relief to hard-working New Zealanders while putting the government’s finances back on a sustainable track, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The Finance Minister made the comments at the release of the Budget Policy Statement setting out the Government’s Budget objectives. “The coalition Government intends ...
The coalition Government will look at options to address a zoning issue that limits how much financial support Queenstown residents can get for accommodation. Cabinet has agreed on a response to the Petitions Committee, which had recommended the geographic information MSD uses to determine how much accommodation supplement can be ...
Cabinet has agreed to a short extension to the final reporting timeframe for the Royal Commission into Abuse in Care from 28 March 2024 to 26 June 2024, Internal Affairs Minister Brooke van Velden says. “The Royal Commission wrote to me on 16 February 2024, requesting that I consider an ...
The coalition Government is delivering an $18 million boost to New Zealanders needing to travel for specialist health treatment, Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says. “These changes are long overdue – the National Travel Assistance (NTA) scheme saw its last increase to mileage and accommodation rates way back in 2009. ...
The Government is recognising the innovative and rising talent in New Zealand’s growing space sector, with the Prime Minister and Space Minister Judith Collins announcing the new Prime Minister’s Prizes for Space today. “New Zealand has a growing reputation as a high-value partner for space missions and research. I am ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has confirmed New Zealand’s concerns about cyber activity have been conveyed directly to the Chinese Government. “The Prime Minister and Minister Collins have expressed concerns today about malicious cyber activity, attributed to groups sponsored by the Chinese Government, targeting democratic institutions in both New ...
Independent Reviewers appointed for School Property Inquiry Education Minister Erica Stanford today announced the appointment of three independent reviewers to lead the Ministerial Inquiry into the Ministry of Education’s School Property Function. The Inquiry will be led by former Minister of Foreign Affairs Murray McCully. “There is a clear need ...
State Highway 1 across the Brynderwyns will be open for Easter weekend, with work currently underway to ensure the resilience of this critical route being paused for Easter Weekend to allow holiday makers to travel north, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Today I visited the Brynderwyn Hills construction site, where ...
Introduction Good morning to you all, and thanks for having me bright and early today. I am absolutely delighted to be the Minister for Infrastructure alongside the Minister of Housing and Resource Management Reform. I know the Prime Minister sees the three roles as closely connected and he wants me ...
New Zealand stands with the United Kingdom in its condemnation of People’s Republic of China (PRC) state-backed malicious cyber activity impacting its Electoral Commission and targeting Members of the UK Parliament. “The use of cyber-enabled espionage operations to interfere with democratic institutions and processes anywhere is unacceptable,” Minister Responsible for ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Defence Minister Judith Collins today announced New Zealand will provide logistics support for the upcoming Solomon Islands election. “We’re sending a team of New Zealand Defence Force personnel and two NH90 helicopters to provide logistics support for the election on 17 April, at the request ...
The European Union Free Trade Agreement Legislation Amendment Bill received Royal Assent today, completing the process for New Zealand’s ratification of its free trade agreement with the European Union. “I am pleased to announce that today, in a small ceremony at the Beehive, New Zealand notified the European Union ...
Public consultation on the terms of reference for the Royal Commission into COVID-19 Lessons has concluded, Internal Affairs Minister Hon Brooke van Velden says. “I have been advised that there were over 11,000 submissions made through the Royal Commission’s online consultation portal.” Expanding the scope of the Royal Commission of ...
Hardworking families are set to benefit from a new credit to help them meet their early childcare education (ECE) costs, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. From 1 July, parents and caregivers of young children will be supported to manage the rising cost of living with a partial reimbursement of their ...
A specialised Independent Technical Advisory Group (ITAG) tasked with preparing and publishing independent non-binding advice on the design of a "green" (sustainable finance) taxonomy rulebook is being established, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. “Comprising experts and market participants, the ITAG's primary goal is to deliver comprehensive recommendations to the ...
Defence Minister Judith Collins has thanked the Chief of Army, Major General John Boswell, DSD, for his service as he leaves the Army after 40 years. “I would like to thank Major General Boswell for his contribution to the Army and the wider New Zealand Defence Force, undertaking many different ...
25 March 2024 Minister to meet Australian counterparts and Manufacturing Industry Leaders Small Business, Manufacturing, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly will travel to Australia for a series of bi-lateral meetings and manufacturing visits. During the visit, Minister Bayly will meet with his Australian counterparts, Senator Tim Ayres, Ed ...
Government commits almost $3 million for period products in schools The Coalition Government has committed $2.9 million to ensure intermediate and secondary schools continue providing period products to those who need them, Minister of Education Erica Stanford announced today. “This is an issue of dignity and ensuring young women don’t ...
Good morning, it’s great to be here. First, I would like to acknowledge the New Zealand Institute of Building Surveyors and thank you for the opportunity to be here this morning. I would like to use this opportunity to outline the Government’s ambitious plan and what we hope to ...
Minister for Pacific Peoples Dr Shane Reti has announced the Government’s commitment to the Auckland Secondary Schools Māori and Pacific Islands Cultural Festival, more commonly known as Polyfest. “The Ministry for Pacific Peoples is a longtime supporter of Polyfest and, as it celebrates 49 years in 2024, I’m proud to ...
Before moving onto the substance of today’s address, I want to recognise the very significant and ongoing contribution the Breast Cancer Foundation makes to support the lives of New Zealand women and their families living with breast cancer. I very much enjoy working with you. I also want to recognise ...
New Zealand has notched up a first with the launch of University of Canterbury research to the International Space Station, Science, Innovation and Technology and Space Minister Judith Collins says. The hardware, developed by Dr Sarah Kessans, is designed to operate autonomously in orbit, allowing scientists on Earth to study ...
Introduction Thank you for inviting me to speak with you today and I’m sorry I can’t be there in person. Yesterday I started in Wellington for Breakfast TV, spoke to a property conference in Auckland, and finished the day speaking to local government in Christchurch, so it would have been ...
The Coalition Government is contributing more than $1 million to support the establishment of an emergency multi-agency coordination centre in Northland. Emergency Management and Recovery Minister Mark Mitchell announced the contribution today during a visit of the Whangārei site where the facility will be constructed. “Northland has faced a number ...
New Zealanders have enjoyed a broader range of voices telling the story of Aotearoa thanks to the creation of Whakaata Māori 20 years ago, says Māori Development Minister Tama Potaka. The minister spoke at a celebration marking the national indigenous media organisation’s 20th anniversary at their studio in Auckland on ...
Commercial catch limits for some fisheries have been increased following a review showing stocks are healthy and abundant, Ocean and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. The changes, along with some other catch limit changes and management settings, begin coming into effect from 1 April 2024. "Regular biannual reviews of fish ...
Opposition MPs and unions are criticising a proposal by New Zealand’s Ministry of Pacific Peoples to cut staff by 40 percent. The country’s largest trade union — The Public Service Association — says the ministry has informed staff that it is looking to shed 63 of 156 positions. Opposition MPs ...
A poem by Poetry Aotearoa Yearbook 2024 featured poet Carin Smeaton. Daughtr of the 90s when she gets promoted to usherette a baby blu eel carries her all the way up to mothership she’s hovering high she lets the underaged in to see keanu reeves she lets the only lonely ...
Analysis by Keith Rankin. Keith Rankin, trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand. My earlier article – Can ‘Good’ be the Greater Evil? – looked at the issue of how wars should end, and how Good versus Evil ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1 AMMA by Saraid de Silva (Moa Press, $38)A stunning debut novel reviewed by Brannavan ...
From Steve Martin to Ricky Stanicky, a pick’n’mix of things worth watching and listening to this long weekend. This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. If you’re at a loss for something to occupy yourself with this Easter, don’t panic: The Spinoff’s got ...
Jesus had dinner with his 12 disciples right before he died. Noted historian Madeleine Chapman finds out who really deserved to be there.First published in 2018 but let’s be honest, the subject is timeless. As you sit on your couch this Easter Sunday, eating a chocolate egg you know ...
The newly-promoted Northern League club is on a mission to return to the National League for the first time in two decades. Plenty about domestic football in New Zealand has changed in that time – but the sense that this amateur competition is not an entirely level playing field remains. ...
Comment: Every year on February 2, a dozen men in tuxedos and top hats approach the burrow of a groundhog in Gobbler’s Knob, Pennsylvania and entice the beaver-like rodent to emerge and predict the weather. If the groundhog, named Punxsutawney Phil, sees its own shadow when it is summoned, legend ...
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Auckland Council has put a deadline on new weather-impacted property owners applying for categorisation as government funding looks set to run out. Councillors have voted to support a deadline of September 30 for property owners who haven’t accessed support to come forward and engage with the council’s recovery office. It ...
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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