I for one am a bit tired of 'feelings' being ascribed to the rule breakers from a middle class background…….Dr Bloomfield has said several times that he 'imagines', or words to that effect, that those who did not self isolate would be feeling remorseful.
'When asked about Case M – the 21-year old-MIT student who visited several locations while symptomatic – Dr Bloomfield said: "I imagine he is extremely remorseful".'
I have advocated 'someone' getting alongside the rule breakers to talk them through what happened and more importantly to find out their views on what can be done to prevent future breaches. Unless Dr Bloomfield knows, from personal conversation or through reading feedback from a health professional who has had a personal conversation that they are remorseful, he should refrain from commenting. The actions in breaking self isolation speak louder than ascribed feelings, right from the mothers' meeting to the tripping round by Case M.
The question is why, seemingly, did things like self isolation not matter in these particular families? Until we know we cannot do anything much to improve things.
In the meantime we cannot go round ascribing to others how they may be feeling.
On a personal level I am always willing to give someone the benefit of the doubt but ascribing feelings that are not borne out by actions is pushing hard against our willingness and to me is a bit of fakery.
did anybody else notice the irony of an old, stale, out of date, media telling us this message. in the battle to remain relevant, our media need to constantly keep reminding themselves, that, they need to be more pro-active when it comes to reaching a younger audience. however, after a year of covid, there is NO excuse for any ignorance over staying home when sick, and as for going to the gym after a covid test, words fail me as to the stupidity of some. Do gyms have the stay home if sick message on their walls? it comes down to personal responsibility, and thats why cretins like seymour are dancing on the head of a pin, while going on about extra gov bed checks, and more gov intervention.. the associates of this particular family that has caused so much harm, must be aware of the family, and are probably giving them the cold shoulder.(?)
the associates of this particular family that has caused so much harm, must be aware of the family, and are probably giving them the cold shoulder.(?)
I don't think we can be sure of this at all and you are right to question it. Messages are being missed or people don't care, why? We need to find out from the rule breakers themselves – are they being influenced to disobey by their churches, because they do not know how to access support, because the messages are from 'da man' or 'old whitey' and should be automatically disregarded? Or……, or……..
There are as many excuses as anybody can master, how on earth could people by now not know what it means to be infected? I mean this was just the major news over a year now.
If I understand this correctly, the spreaders were in Managed Isolation. I sure as hell hope they have paid their bill. And to say that they didn't understand …pleeeeeese pull another one.
Your comment is valid and I agree with it. However, when you say they [“the spreaders”, plural] “were” in MIQ, it has a completely different meaning compared to the correct and accurate fact that they [Case M, singular, neutral] “had been” in/through MIQ.
It was particularly amusing on RNZ this morning to hear Patrick Strange the Chair of Ports of Auckland complaining that the government has no post-Covid strategy.
Lat year his company rolled out one of the largest failed strategies we've seen in recent NZ commercial life, and its commercial damage is still being felt across New Zealand.
One of the few good things about the pandemic is how the business establishment (the talking heads, not the people actually doing the work) have discredited themselves. Rather than the thrusting, agile, innovative, brilliant, independent wealth-creators of popular myth, they look and sound like third-rate, intellectually and morally vacuous scroungers looking for an impossible 'certainty'. Once we are out of the pandemic, it will be important to sustain our disdain for them, and not let them creep back into positions of undue influence
The general populace can but be beholden to government in this crisis, because they are both regulated to do so by public health edict and because they are utterly subsidised. So we allow state dependence for the general population.
But we don't allow that same state dependence for business.
And yet business and the population are as dependent on the state as the other.
We haven't had a state as interventionist as this since 1934. People are beginning to notice that the Ardern government doesn't know what to do with that once the crisis lessens back to level 1 in a few days.
The reasonable question is: is this really all a Team Of Five Million can do together?
Casual contact, casual plus contact, close contact or close plus contact?
Had a family bubble happened at the casual plus contact level a positive case would be more likely to have been contained.
The settings for the contact classifications, the testing and isolation need to be relooked at especially when it comes to not having a family bubble at a casual plus contact stage.
I do believe people when they say my family member is a casual plus contact and I was told not to isolate.
I am sick and tired of the fake headlines and moaning in the media and it's stuffed shirt talking heads. That piece in Stuff basically just allows their ghastly white guilt to be assuaged by letting the Maori party grandstand on their identity politics of victimhood and quotes exact one teenager – a Maori kid in Hawera – who doesn't even say what the headline claims. So who is saying what the headline claims, beyond politcially partisan people with a whole shedload of resentment axes to grind?
Luke Malpass has another "analysis" piece today in Stuff which isn't worth shit. He is a neoliberal horse race analyst who is based in Wellington. He knows fuck all about Auckland and even less than that about South Auckland. He his literally reflecting the opinion of his typewriter and some sort of received wisdom in the press gallery. I get sick and tired of the pompous pronouncements of blowhard journalists masquerading as analysis.
I get it that the media thrive on conflict and rarking people up for conflict. Like everyone else I saw how the sausage gets made with their pathetic gotcha lines of questioning last year, and it made me want to puke. Dogged stupidity is still stupidity. They've learnt nothing because they are arrogant sons of bitches who hold the public in distain. They desperately want to want to get back to playing court banter politics as imagined viziers to the public. I just don't want anymore of their bullshit. I got sick of it last year and nothing has changed.
So, you’re blowing your lid because of some headline somewhere in Stuff? Wow!
Have a lie down and a cup of tea.
As for the other unlinked piece in Stuff by Malpass, you flipped your lid again but nobody has a clue what the piece is/was about nor on what grounds you disagree with Mr Malpass other than he has the ‘wrong’ bumper sticker.
Sanctuary has what some might interpret as an inflammatory style of writing, but the basis of his complaint is correct. I, too am getting sick and tired of reading or listening to bullshit from tabloid journos who misquote, misjudge, misinterpret and generally screw up facts simply because they can… and get away with it under the guise of a supposed nuanced analysis.
I started to read one of HDPA's diatribes the other day and it was so full of conspiratorial nonsense I gave up in disgust. But its not just her… there's an industry of knee-jerk journalism growing up around the pandemic responses in particular. By all means be critical if there are grounds for it, but going troppo at every twist and turn is not only annoying… it creates more confusion.
Yes, there is some excellent and accurate journalism around but unfortunately they are not the ones who get the most publicity. It's the shock jocks and its time they were reined in.
A note on newspapers/news sites: Those who write the article do not write the headline. Headlines, subheads and captions are all written by subeditors not the journalists. This is why they can be sensationalistic/inaccurate.
What gets me is the amount of unsubstantiated reckons that pass as news – RNZ did a terrible job this morning with some bozo reporter perched above a South Auckland motorway interchange which he has probably never visited at that time of day before in his life saying there was "more traffic" on the road – and therefore implying widespread ignoring of level three restrictions, which then fed a preconceived attack line on the minister who was interviewed next and was supposed to rebut unsubstantiated nonsense.
Where I live the traffic was way down to almost level 4 amounts on St. Lukes road at times today – I could just as easily get on air and spout a bullshit reckon based on my unscientific, localised anecdotal observations and marvel at how strong Aucklanders are. Now, if that RNZ Bozo had traffic data or some facts to back up his view that people are disobeying the lockdown then please, please tell us. This the media has decided the narrative crap is downright fake news.
We have daily a 9am meeting for everyone in the team to briefly say what they are doing that day. In the office it takes 10 minutes to work around the team.
On Teams it takes twice as long, as you have to remind most people that they are on mute, someone drops out with a bad connection at home, or people talk over each other so you can hear anyone.
Unbiased and fair reporting from BBC, Reuters? Looking into these leaks (which unsurprisingly are receiving NO coverage from western MSM whatsoever ) it becomes apparent that both of those news organizations are toughly compromised and cannot be trusted with any news or reporting on Russia..which of course makes everything else they report suspect, as this has obviously put a big question mark around their journalistic integrity generally.
Both BBC and Reuters along with Bellingcat were actually bidding for lucrative contracts with the British UK FCO (Foreign and Commonwealth Office) to conduct covert programs of disinformation and also train Russian journalists in the art of spreading discontent inside Russia, the leaked documents reveal.
Interesting how after five years of investigation by the most well-funded investigators in the world come up with so little proof that Russia was involved in a large scale programme to undermine the US elections in 2016 that MSM won’t even allow a counter narrative EVER for fear of having their flimsy allegations fall apart live on air…yet here we are, presented with actual proof of that very thing happening against another country…wonder if there will be a flood of media outrage that two of their own have been proved to be so shamefully compromised?
Someone's done a Bellingcat type open source on Navalny
Turns out he was holidaying in Switzerland , working on the US funded Putin's Palace in the Black Forest , and according to a German report, holidaying in the Canary Islands .
All this while "recovering " or "in a coma"and thus unable to present in Russia in accordance with his suspended sentence
He just couldn't resist posting those Instagram photos
Bellingcat is open source, unlike the RT efforts, you can check yourself whether what they produce is real. You can even collect data for them.
RT has a massive hatefest on for Bellingcat after they proved Russia shot down Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 over the Ukraine, even discovering the Russian unit and operators responsible.
Russian journalism has had to contend with being obliged to print outright fabrications since the revolution. Under Putin the practice has been revived, and with the advent of the internet, extended.
I think its about the age of 3 to 5 that kids understand other people have an independent consciousness. So I have no idea what you heard on RT at the time of the Skripal poisoning.
Not to mention the airliner shot down over the Ukraine and the "satellite photos" suggesting it was aircraft that did it. But then RT also asserted numerous other explanations for how an airliner blew up in midair.
The objective of Maskrovka is to muddy the waters, not provide a plausible denial.
"circulating and repeating these carefully crafted pieces of disinformation is a public disservice on a par with repeating the broadcasts of Tokyo Rose or Lord Hawhaw"
You guys really have no problem getting into bed with all the enemies of the Left and their organizations to pursue your cold war Russian narrative… the FBI, the CIA, the most despicable US war hawks, war criminals ….and keep in mind I am not and have never defended Putin or his govt, no, I am just questioning the motives and truths that lay behind what is quite obviously a western elite power play against one particular segment of the Russian power structure over another (the 'other' it seems is more open to western participation in Russia)…something that maybe you guys might want to think about doing sometime.
The Bellingcat research collective: War propaganda masquerading as “citizen journalism”
"The Bellingcat “research collective” is a web site established in July 2014 by Eliot Higgins. Originally from Leicester in the UK, Higgins is, as of February, a senior fellow in the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab and Future Europe Initiative."
The Ukrainian oligarch run Burisma Holdings donated $100,000 per year for three years to the Atlantic Council starting in 2016. The full list of financial sponsors includes many military, financial, and corporate concerns. The leading donors in 2018 were Facebook and the British government.
Yes, that would be the Belling-shat that appears to weigh in on all sorts of highly contentious, highly political, geopolitical events for the public good?? Can anyone say Syria chemical attack?
I guess they have no shame in using any source they can to prove Russia is bad…
You really have bought the whole bill of goods, haven't you?
Bellingcat are a perfectly ordinary and truthful, organisation. As such they are an existential threat to chronic liars and disinformation peddlers like the Putin kleptocracy.
People less susceptible to fake news, like the air accident inspectors that investigated MH17, found that Bellingcat had been entirely truthful. The same could not be said of Russian sources, who went so far as to produce and present fake video of an attacking Ukrainian fighter as their official explanation. As the investigator noted, the wreckage of an airliner shot down by a fighter would be full of bullet holes, which the wreckage lacked.
I wonder at your motivations, frankly, for constantly trying to make Putin's lies the leading narrative.
Pootsie has already killed him via personally injecting novichok into his toothpaste , or was it the elastic of his underpants , or was it the airport cup of tea, or hang on , it was the evening cocktail, Navalny said it did taste funny, no, thats right ,it was the water bottle
There's been a big coverup, and RT is just pretending he's been sent to a penal colony
Also, China is refusing to let the 737-max become operational in its airspace again. Such things are often diplomatic petulance – mate of mine who works logistics has stories about the US turning away produce imports on the basis of stickers being slightly out of alignment for "safety" grounds (read "import protections in a supposedly low-protection relationship") – but in this case, toss a coin. It might be that the problems have been fixed and the plane is good to go, like the "Comet" was after the fatigue problem was sorted. But equally, the software fix for the 737-max is a bodge to fix the bodge to fix the original fundamental design problem.
Or China recognises the perils of bean counters running the engineering.
The Long-Forgotten Flight That Sent Boeing Off Course
A company once driven by engineers became driven by finance.
[…]
The isolation was deliberate. “When the headquarters is located in proximity to a principal business—as ours was in Seattle—the corporate center is inevitably drawn into day-to-day business operations,” Condit explained at the time. And that statement, more than anything, captures a cardinal truth about the aerospace giant. The present 737 Max disaster can be traced back two decades—to the moment Boeing’s leadership decided to divorce itself from the firm’s own culture.
For about 80 years, Boeing basically functioned as an association of engineers. Its executives held patents, designed wings, spoke the language of engineering and safety as a mother tongue. Finance wasn’t a primary language. Even Boeing’s bean counters didn’t act the part. As late as the mid-’90s, the company’s chief financial officer had minimal contact with Wall Street and answered colleagues’ requests for basic financial data with a curt “Tell them not to worry.”
It's no wonder they're called pigs because that's what they've been for decades.
We need good people in the police, and the only way that can happen is to have extremely tight recruitment rules. Anyone with even a sniff of a jock mentality are told no. Only the truly wholesome should be let in.
It's pretty weird to realise that in no alternative universe can I imagine either our Prime Minister or Minister of Finance coming out so explicitly about the necessity of union membership and fighting against corporations as Biden does here.
All mainstream media, and the AFL-CIO, and all the business journals fully get what Biden just did. In reality that collected perspective is more valid than what you posted.
You'll probably be able to point to another President that has explicitly supported the right of workers to unionise. You have to go a fair way back.
In the US political context this is the left's equivalent of Trump telling the racists to "stand back and stand by".
We have made great strides toward the objectives of the National Industrial Recovery Act, for not only have several millions of our unemployed been restored to work, but industry is organizing itself with a greater understanding that reasonable profits can be earned while at the same time protection can be assured to guarantee to labor adequate pay and proper conditions of work. Child labor is abolished. Uniform standards of hours and wages apply today to 95 percent of industrial employment within the field of the National Industrial Recovery Act. We seek the definite end of preventing combinations in furtherance of monopoly and in restraint of trade, while at the same time we seek to prevent ruinous rivalries within industrial groups which in many cases resemble the gang wars of the underworld and in which the real victim in every case is the public itself.
Under the authority of this Congress, we have brought the component parts of each industry together around a common table, just as we have brought problems affecting labor to a common meeting ground. Though the machinery, hurriedly devised, may need readjustment from time to time, nevertheless I think you will agree with me that we have created a permanent feature of our modernized industrial structure and that it will continue under the supervision but not the arbitrary dictation of Government itself.
The protection of the right of workers to organize into unions and to bargain collectively is the firm and permanent policy of the Eisenhower Administration. In 1954, 1955 and again in 1956, President Eisenhower recommended constructive amendments to this Act.
Joe Biden’s comments were more than I expected when taken in context of Presidents that were either openly anti union (ex union member Reagan), or pretty much silent on US workers organising i.e. most of the rest that I can recall, there was an approving speech on Union membership one time from DW. Eisenhower also.
But then, there are unions, and there are bent unions in the USA. So it pays not to generalise too much. The AFL-CIO has a mixed record too. But a member led unionised site within Amazon would be a mighty advance for workers everywhere regardless of all that. Logistics workers serving the online economy in supposedly liberal Europe get a hard time too, and have to battle for basic rights like breaks these days.
Amazon workers will be voting till the end of March and need 6000 YES votes. They had to fight and appeal even to be able to use postal voting too!–in the middle of a pandemic. The company sent out letters advising each employee to vote NO and do it now! A UPS mail box had mysteriously appeared on site at the Bessemer Alabama giant warehouse.
So yes, Biden’s remarks were not red hot, but they will be clearly understood by other employers too, and might just help tip the balance and start an Amazon wide union drive.
Yeah, Bidens all about the workers and their struggles…seriously though…the pro union headlines are a great way to distract from what is actually happening to workers in America ..and unfortunately some of the Unions are more interested in being self serving than helping the American worker.
Twitter (and Facebook/YouTube) become more and more an unaccountable censors of public discourse….silence from our media.
Glenn Greenwald: It took [twitter] only two years to go from disappearing Milo and Alex Jones to banning content said to "amplify narratives that undermine faith in NATO." Imagine where the line will be two years from now.
The narratives that were being artificially amplified had an objective of "undermining faith in NATO", but it was the amplifying that incurred the ban, not the objective:
You can’t artificially amplify or disrupt conversations through the use of multiple accounts or by coordinating with others to violate the Twitter Rules. This includes:
overlapping accounts – operating multiple accounts with overlapping use cases, such as identical or similar personas or substantially similar content;
mutually interacting accounts – operating multiple accounts that interact with one another in order to inflate or manipulate the prominence of specific Tweets or accounts; and
coordination – creating multiple accounts to post duplicative content or create fake engagement, including:
posting identical or substantially similar Tweets or hashtags from multiple accounts you operate;
engaging (Retweets, Likes, mentions, Twitter Poll votes) repeatedly with the same Tweets or accounts from multiple accounts that you operate;
coordinating with or compensating others to engage in artificial engagement or amplification, even if the people involved use only one account; and
coordinating with others to engage in or promote violations of the Twitter Rules, including violations of our abusive behavior policy.
Going down the link hole from the original comment:
“The 373 associated accounts across the four networks were permanently suspended from Twitter for violations of our platform manipulation policies,” the company said in a blog post.
"We could undo the global economic arrangements that systematically and intentionally funnel wealth to some countries while intensifying poverty in others."
Which country has poverty intensified as a result of wealth being funneled to another country?
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
NZ's terms of trade has generally been positive and our current account balance has been relatively consistent for much of our recent history. Outside the issues with housing affordability poverty has been static or even falling for the past 25 years.
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
Sam Stubbs, founder of KiwiSaver provider Simplicity, said banks were taking advantage of their dominant market position to extract unreasonable profits.
"The ANZ will make more profit this year than Fonterra, Spark, Fletcher Building, Warehouse, Air NZ and all the supermarkets combined did last year. It's one bank, yet its profits are almost twice that of the top seven power companies combined. And it all goes back to Aussie."
Following your logic NZ is poorer today than it was in 1840. Please explain how that is possible?
The fact is it is not poorer. It is very much richer. The reason is because the capital that these foreign owned banks brought in to the county enabled many people to develop profitable businesses that would not have been possible otherwise.
And Offshore banks have only been in the domestic market for less than 40 years.
False – offshore banks started operating in NZ not long after european settlers arrived. The Bank of New South Wales was effectively NZ's central bank by the 1860's.
Strictly speaking not….the offshore financial institutions (not necessarily retail banks) had a very small proportion of NZs market pre 1980s reforms
"Prior to the rapid deregulation in the mid-1980s, the variety of different types of financial institutions largely reflected the restrictions placed by statute or regulation on the types of business each institution could undertake. These constraints and protected niches all quickly disappeared, and over the next few years savings banks and building societies were progressively absorbed into or taken over by big commercial banks. As a result, many institutions were purchased by foreign entities. ANZ purchased the privatised Postbank. Commonwealth Bank of Australia purchased ASB Bank (one of the trustee savings banks). More recently, WestpacTrust took over Trustbank, formed from all the other trustee savings banks (with the exception of TSB Bank, which remains an independent entity). Private savings banks, which had previously been set up by parents to undertake certain types of lending, were wound back into the parent. The BNZ itself was fully privatised and sold to National Australia Bank in the early 1990s and Countrywide Bank, formed from several building societies, was taken over by National Bank later in the decade. It was during this time that the share of foreignowned banks began to increase to the high levels seen today"
"The government’s ownership of the BNZ, and use of it as its banker, allowed it to become the largest trading bank. It was fully nationalised in 1945.
An 1865 law which established the Post Office Savings Bank also curbed the rights of other savings banks and enabled it to absorb competitors. By the mid-1950s the Post Office Savings Bank controlled around 80% of the personal savings market."
Interesting data point in your link (which is from 2017):
…handled by the Banking Ombudsman, which dealt with 2704 cases and complaints. About 77 percent of those cases related to the Australian banks.
Australian-owned banks make up roughly 85% of the banking market. That means they're actually a bit better at resolving issues and not driving customers into the complaint process as often as the (mostly NZ-owned) other banks.
Most of the satisfaction with NZ owned banks is perception not reality. Most people will say they prefer NZ owned banks even if the service provided is of a lower quality.
You're probably right Phil – nevertheless from time-to-time NZ Consumer and other organisations survey bank customers, and NZ-owned banks always top the customer satisfaction rankings.
But then I’ve been a happy TSB customer for some 20 years (after ditching Westpac), so of course I would say that.
from time-to-time NZ Consumer and other organisations survey bank customers, and NZ-owned banks always top the customer satisfaction rankings.
Yeah, I don't dispute that the NZ banks produce higher customer satisfaction ratings in those surveys, but the glaringly obvious fact is that the revealed preference of the vast majority of NZ'ers (85-ish percent of us) is that we're entirely comfortable banking with one or more of the aussie owned big-4.
Yeah, I don't dispute that the majority of NZers bank with Aussie-owned banks. Just not sure if "entirely comfortable" accurately captures the feelings of all NZ customers of Aussie-owned banks. But if it does, then presumably (based on customer satisfaction surveys), it would be fair to describe customers of NZ-owned banks as being 'more than entirely comfortable' with the service(s) provided.
Personally, after 20 years as a satisfied TSB customer, I can't imagine what might cause me to switch back to Westpac.
The issue is greater than that….consider the similarity and interconnectivity of the NZ and Australian economies….we are almost a single market that is exposed to the same threats, if their banks fall over so do ours and vice versa
Perhaps a better way to put it would be that the vast majority of New Zealanders are sufficiently satisfied with their Aus-owned banks that they don't feel a need to shift to a different institution. 🙂
Banking with Aussie-owned banks is unquestionably the most popular choice for New Zealanders, just as it's crystal clear that customers of NZ-owned banks are on average more satisfied with bank service(s).
It would be interesting to tease out why banking with a NZ-owned bank not a popular choice in NZ, given that their customers apparently enjoy a greater degree of satisfaction.
Perhaps there's a perception that switching banks is a hassle, particularly if you've got a mortgage or other debt.
Switching banks is safe, easy and fast. Your new bank can take care of everything in five working days. It’s the fastest switching in the world.
This process also links recurring payments, such as direct debits and automatic payments, to your new bank account number. Your new bank can do all that for you, through a single form.
Kiwibank does not have the infrastructure in place to support business banking in any meaningful way. Their IT systems are limiting their growth and they have failed a number of times to upgrade them.
The ANZ will make more profit this year than Fonterra, Spark, Fletcher Building, Warehouse, Air NZ and all the supermarkets combined did last year. It's one bank, yet its profits are almost twice that of the top seven power companies combined.
ANZ's NZ balance sheet is $179 billion dollars. Fonterra's is, conveniently for this analysis, $17.9b, so ANZ is 10 times as large as Fonterra.
In 2020 ANZ made just under $1.4b in profit, while Fonterra made $830m.
Ten times larger, but only making (slightly less than) twice the profits. Huh, it's almost like people will take every opportunity to bash the Australian owned banks without putting in any thought or effort.
Either amount, the profit still leaves the local economy, this is funneling wealth to out of the country leaving us poorer, which was the point. That it is not as much in 2020 compared to 2018 is irrelevant.
I’m not sure this counts as ‘bashing’ but I’m sure ANZ are glad you’re here to support them.
Some of the profit MAY leave the economy. Not all of it does. Regardless the capital that ANZ provides to the NZ economy provides the basis for investments in the productive areas of the economy which leads to economic growth.
You were asking about wealth funnelling and you think that this has something to do with our current account balance!? Are you for real? They are completely different things. You’re so ignorant that there is clearly no point discussing this with you.
Oh, yes, besides that pesky little housing ‘crisis’ all is well in Aotearoa.
You’re simply trolling here and you’ve already been moved to OM, twice. I think you should go for the trifecta.
Well as you are a known stanch defender of the Liberal Free Market status quo, obviously not you….but people who advocate for actual progressive change around the world will be getting very concerned.
there are a few billion people on this planet that don't have twitter, don't go on twitter, and could not be bothered.
As for GG, has he mentioned Reality Winner lately? Or is that unpolite. I hear she was cancelled, err locked up for leaking information to he Intercept and will be uncancelled in Nov 21 after 5 years in the slammer.
Oh that is not a cancellation that is important. Or maybe GG just has nothing to say about that cause it ain't sexy or something?
I dont' care about the liberal market any more then you do, but GG is a wanker and "twitter" is a private business that can do as it pleases. Anyone else can just abstain and not validate it.
Same as with FB, Gab, Parler, and any of the other social medias.
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Last week Transport Minster Simeon Brown and Mayor Wayne Brown opened the new Auckland Rail Operations Centre. The new train control centre will see teams from KiwiRail, Auckland Transport and Auckland One Rail working more closely together to improve train services across the city. The Auckland Rail Operations Centre in ...
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: Retiring former Labour Finance Minister Grant Robertson said in an exit interview with Q+A yesterday the Government can and should sustain more debt to invest in infrastructure for future generations. Elsewhere in the news in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 6:36am: Read more ...
Timing is everything. And from China’s perspective, this week’s visit by its foreign minister to New Zealand could be coming at just the right moment. The visit by Wang Yi to Wellington will be his first since 2017. Anniversaries are important to Beijing. It is more than just a happy ...
TL;DR: The key events to watch in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the week to March 18 include:China’s Foreign Minister visiting Wellington today;A post-cabinet news conference this afternoon; the resumption of Parliament on Tuesday for two weeks before Easter;retiring former Labour Finance Minister Grant Robertson gives his valedictory speech in Parliament; ...
New Zealand First Leader Winston Peters’s state-of-the-nation speech on Sunday was really a state-of-Winston-First speech. He barely mentioned any of the Government’s key policies and could not even wholly endorse its signature income tax cuts. Instead, he rehearsed all of his complaints about the Ardern Government, including an extraordinary claim ...
A listing of 35 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 10, 2024 thru Sat, March 16, 2024. Story of the week This week we'll give you a little glimpse into how we collect links to share and ...
A listing of 35 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 10, 2024 thru Sat, March 16, 2024. Story of the week This week we'll give you a little glimpse into how we collect links to share and ...
“I’ve been internalising a really complicated situation in my head.”When they kept telling us we should wait until we get to know him, were they taking the piss? Was it a case of, if you think this is bad, wait till you get to know the real Christopher, after the ...
Happy fourth anniversary, Pandemic That Upended Bloody Everything. I have been observing it by enjoying my second bout of COVID. It’s 5.30 on Sunday morning and only now are lights turning back on for me.Allow me to copy and paste what I told reader Sara yesterday:Depleted, fogged and crappy. Resting, ...
Happy fourth anniversary, Pandemic That Upended Bloody Everything. I have been observing it by enjoying my second bout of COVID. It’s 5.30 on Sunday morning and only now are lights turning back on for me.Allow me to copy and paste what I told reader Sara yesterday:Depleted, fogged and crappy. Resting, ...
Happy fourth anniversary, Pandemic That Upended Bloody Everything. I have been observing it by enjoying my second bout of COVID. It’s 5.30 on Sunday morning and only now are lights turning back on for me.Allow me to copy and paste what I told reader Sara yesterday:Depleted, fogged and crappy. Resting, ...
.“$10 and a target that bleeds” - Bleeding Targets for Under $10!.Thanks for reading Frankly Speaking ! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.This government appears hell-bent on either scrapping life-saving legislation or reintroducing things that - frustrated critics insist - will be dangerous and likely ...
“It hardly strikes me as fair to criticise a government for doing exactly what it said it was going to do. For actually keeping its promises.”THUNDER WAS PLAYING TAG with lightning flashes amongst the distant peaks. Its rolling cadences interrupted by the here-I-come-here-I-go Doppler effect of the occasional passing car. ...
Subversive & Disruptive Technologies: Just as happened with that other great regulator of the masses, the Medieval Church, the advent of a new and hard-to-control technology – the Internet – is weakening the ties that bind. Then, and now, those who enjoy a monopoly on the dissemination of lies, cannot and will ...
Been Here Before: To find the precedents for what this Coalition Government is proposing, it is necessary to return to the “glory days” of Muldoonism.THE COALITION GOVERNMENT has celebrated its first 100 days in office by checking-off the last of its listed commitments. It remains, however, an angry government. It ...
Bob Edlin writes – And what is the world watching today…? The email newsletter from Associated Press which landed in our mailbox early this morning advised: In the news today: The father of a school shooter has been found guilty of involuntary manslaughter; prosecutors in Trump’s hush-money case ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Is another Green MP on their way out? And are the Greens severely tarnished by another integrity scandal? For the second time in three months, the Green Party has secretly suspended an MP over integrity issues. Mystery is surrounding the party’s decision to ...
For the last few years, the Green Party has been the party that has managed to avoid the plague of multiple scandals that have beleaguered other political parties. It appears that their luck has run out with a second scandal which, unfortunately for them, coincided with Golraz Ghahraman, the focus ...
TL;DR: The six newsey things that stood out to me as of 6:46am on Saturday, March 16.Andy Foster has accidentally allowed a Labour/Green amendment to cut road user chargers for plug-in hybrid vehicles, which the Government might accept; NZ HeraldThomas CoughlanSimeon Brown has rejected a plea from Westport ...
What seemed a booming success a couple of years ago has collapsed into fraud convictions.I looked at the crash of FTX (short for ‘Futures Exchange’) in November 2022 to see whether it would impact on the financial system as a whole. Fortunately there was barely a ripple, probably because it ...
Anybody following the situation in Ukraine and Russia would probably have been amused by a recent Tweet on X NATO seems to be putting in an awful lot of effort to influence what is, at least according to them, a sham election in an autocracy.When do the Ukrainians go to ...
TL;DR:Shaun Baker on Wynyard Quarter's transformation. Magdalene Taylor on the problem with smart phones. How private equity are now all over reinsurance. Dylan Cleaver on rugby and CTE. Emily Atkin on ‘Big Meat’ looking like ‘Big Oil’.Bernard’s six-stack of substacks at 6pm on March 15Photo by Jeppe Hove Jensen ...
Buzz from the Beehive Finance Minister Nicola Willis had plenty to say when addressing the Auckland Business Chamber on the economic growth that (she tells us) is flagging more than we thought. But the government intends to put new life into it: We want our country to be a ...
The Transport and Infrastructure Committee has reported back on the Road User Charges (Light Electric RUC Vehicles) Amendment Bill, basicly rubberstamping it. While there was widespread support among submitters for the principle that EV and PHEV drivers should pay their fair share for the roads, they also overwhelmingly disagreed with ...
Peter Dunne writes – This week’s government bailout – the fifth in the last eighteen months – of the financially troubled Ruapehu Alpine Lifts company would have pleased many in the central North Island ski industry. The government’s stated rationale for the $7 million funding was that it ...
See if you can spot the difference. An Iranian born female MP from a progressive party is accused of serial shoplifting. Her name is leaked to the media, which goes into a pack frenzy even before the Police launch an … Continue reading → ...
Ele Ludemann writes – The government is omitting general Treaty references from 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 public service on Treaty ...
What was that judge thinking?Peter Williams writes – That Golriz Ghahraman and District Court Judge Maria Pecotic were once lawyer colleagues is incontrovertible. There is published evidence that they took at least one case to the Court of Appeal together. There was a report on ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read:Climate Scorpion – the sting is in the tail. Introducing planetary solvency. A paper via the University of Exeter’s Institute and Faculty of Actuaries.Local scoop:Kāinga Ora starts pulling out of its Auckland projects and selling land RNZ ...
Wellington’s massively upzoned District Plan adds the opportunity for tens of thousands of new homes not just in the central city (such as these Webb St new builds) but also close to the CBD and public transport links. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: Wellington gave itself the chance of ...
It’s Friday and we’re halfway through March Madness. Here’s some of the things that caught our attention this week. This Week in Greater Auckland On Monday Matt asked how we can get better event trains and an option for grade separating Morningside Dr. On Tuesday Matt looked into ...
Something you might not know about me is that I’m quite a stubborn person. No, really. I don’t much care for criticism I think’s unfair or that I disagree with. Few of us do I suppose.Back when I was a drinker I’d sometimes respond defensively, even angrily. There are things ...
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:PM Christopher Luxon said the reversal of interest deductibility for landlords was done to help renters, who ...
It was not so much the Labour Party but really the Chris Hipkins party yesterday at Labour’s caucus retreat in Martinborough. The former Prime Minister was more or less consistent on wealth tax, which he was at best equivocal about, and social insurance, which he was not willing to revisit. ...
Buzz from the BeehiveThe text reproduced above appears on a page which records all the media statements and speeches posted on the government’s official website by Melissa Lee as Minister of Media and Communications and/or by Jenny Marcroft, her Parliamentary Under-secretary. It can be quickly analysed ...
For forty years, Robert Muldoon has been a dirty word in our politics. His style of government was so repulsive and authoritarian that the backlash to it helped set and entrench our constitutional norms. His pig-headedness over forcing through Think Big eventually gave us the RMA, with its participation and ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Is the new government reducing tax on rental properties to benefit landlords or to cut the cost of rents? That’s the big question this week, after Associate Finance Minister David Seymour announced on Sunday that the Government would be reversing the Labour Government’s removal ...
Saudi Arabia is rarely far from the international spotlight. The war in Gaza has brought new scrutiny to Saudi plans to normalise relations with Israel, while the fifth anniversary of the controversial killing of Jamal Khashoggi was marked shortly before the war began on October 7. And as the home ...
Questions need to be asked on both sides of the worldPeter Williams writes – The NRL Judiciary hands down an eight week suspension to Sydney Roosters forward Spencer Leniu , an Auckland-born Samoan, after he calls Ezra Mam, Sydney-orn but of Aboriginal and Torres Strait ...
Ele Ludemann writes – Contrary to what many headlines and news stories are saying, residential landlords are not getting a tax break. The government is simply restoring to them the tax deductibility of interest they had until the previous government removed it. There is no logical reason ...
I can't remember when it was goodMoments of happiness in bloomMaybe I just misunderstoodAll of the love we left behindWatching our flashbacks intertwineMemories I will never findIn spite of whatever you becomeForget that reckless thing turned onI think our lives have just begunI think our lives have just begunDoes anyone ...
Michael Bassett writes – At first reading, a front-page story in the New Zealand Herald on 13 March was bizarre. A group of severely intellectually limited teenagers, with little understanding of the law, have been pleading to the Justice Select Committee not to pass a bill dealing with ram ...
How much political capital is Christopher Luxon willing to burn through in order to deliver his $2.9 billion gift to landlords? Evidently, Luxon is: (a) unable to cost the policy accurately. As Anna Burns-Francis pointed out to him on Breakfast TV, the original ”rock solid” $2.1 billion cost he was ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read:Jonathon Porritt calling bullshit in his own blog post on mainstream climate science as ‘The New Denialism’.Local scoop:The Wellington City Council’s list of proposed changes to the IHP recommendations to be debated later today was leaked this ...
TL;DR:Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said yesterday tenants should be grateful for the reinstatement of interest deductibility because landlords would pass on their lower tax costs in the form of lower rents. That would be true if landlords were regulated monopolies such as Transpower or Auckland Airport1, but they’re not, ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Tom Toro Tom Toro is a cartoonist and author. He has published over 200 cartoons in The New Yorker since 2010. His cartoons appear in Playboy, the Paris Review, the New York Times, American Bystander, and elsewhere. Related: What 10 EV lovers ...
The business section of the NZ Herald is full of opinion. Among the more opinionated of all is the ex-Minister of Transport, ex-Minister of Railways, ex MP for Auckland Central (1975-93, Labour), Wellington Central (1996-99, ACT, then list-2005), ex-leader of the ACT Party, uncle to actor Antonia, the veritable granddaddy ...
Hi,Just quickly — I’m blown away by the stories you’ve shared with me over the last week since I put out the ‘Gary’ podcast, where I told you about the time my friend’s flatmate killed the neighbour.And you keep telling me stories — in the comments section, and in my ...
The first season of Rings of Power was not awful. It was thoroughly underwhelming, yes, and left a lingering sense of disappointment, but it was more expensive mediocrity than catastrophe. I wrote at length about the series as it came out (see the Review section of the blog, and go ...
Buzz from the Beehive Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden told Auckland Business Chamber members they were the first audience to hear her priorities as a minister in a government committed to cutting red tape and regulations. She brandished her liberalising credentials, saying Flexible labour markets are the ...
Chris Trotter writes – TO UNDERSTAND WHY NEWSHUB FAILED, it is necessary to understand how TVNZ changed. Up until 1989, the state broadcaster had been funded by a broadcasting licence fee, collected from every citizen in possession of a television set, supplemented by a relatively modest (compared ...
Bob Edlin writes – The Māori Party has been busy issuing a mix of warnings and threats as its expresses its opposition to interest deductibility for landlords and the plans of seabed miners. It remains to be seen whether they follow the example of indigenous litigants in Australia, ...
Every year, in the Budget, Parliament forks out money to government agencies to do certain things. And every year, as part of the annual review cycle, those agencies are meant to report on whether they have done the things Parliament gave them that money for. Agencies which consistently fail to ...
Mike Grimshaw writes – Recent events in American universities point to an underlying crisis of coherent thinking, an issue that increasingly affects the progressive left across the Western world. This of course is nothing new as anyone who can either remember or has read of the late ...
The thing about life’s little victories is that they can be followed by a defeat.Reader Darryl told me on Monday night:Test again Dave. My “head cold” last week became COVID within 24 hours, and is still with me. I hear the new variants take a bit longer to show up ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read:Angus Deaton on rethinking his economics IMFLocal scoop: The people behind Tamarind, the firm that left a $500m cleanup bill for taxpayers at Taranaki’s Tui oil well, are back operating in Taranaki under a different company name. Jonathan ...
Normally when we talk about accessing public transport it’s about improving how easy it is to get to, such as how easy is it to cross roads in a station/stop’s walking catchment, is it possible to cycle to safely, do bus connections work, or even if are there new routes/connections ...
Politicians are not renowned for telling the truth. Some tell us things that are verifiably not true. They offer statements that omit critical pieces of information. Gloss over risks, preferring to offer the best case scenario.Some not truths are quite small, others amusing in their transparency. There are those repeated ...
The pressure is mounting on the Government as it finalises its Budget Policy Statement, but yet more predicted revenue ‘goes missing’. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The Climate Commission has delivered another funding blow to the National-ACT-NZ First coalition Government’s tax-cutting plans, potentially carving $1.4 billion off the ‘climate ...
The Government now faces the prospect of having to watch another tax raise the price of petrol when, only six days ago, it abolished the Auckland Regional Fuel tax. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon argued that the regional fuel tax imposed costs on lower-income people with less fuel-efficient vehicles and that ...
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 ...
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. ...
The New Zealand public voted for a change in direction at the 2023 general election and that is exactly what this coalition government has been delivering in its first 100 days. There was an immediate focus on the economy, easing the cost of living, cracking down on law and order ...
The Government has left the health system as an afterthought, announcing half-baked targets at the last minute of their 100-day plan, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
The National Government has spent its first 100 days stopping, cutting and reversing. They have scrapped stuff for stuff for the sake of it, without putting up any solutions of their own – and it’s hardworking New Zealanders who will pay for it. ...
Kiwis are still waiting for their promised cost of living support after 100 days of a National Government that is taking us backwards, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
100 days of National taking NZ backwardsThe National Government has spent its first 100 days stopping, cutting and reversing. They have scrapped stuff for stuff for the sake of it, without putting up any solutions of their own – and it’s hardworking New Zealanders who will pay for it. ...
The Government must commit to funding free and healthy school lunches, as thousands of people sign the petition to keep them, education spokesperson Jan Tinetti says. ...
If the Government was serious about moving families into public housing, they would build more houses so there is actually somewhere for people to go. ...
The free and healthy school lunches programme feeds our kids, helps them to learn, and saves families money – but it is at risk under this Government, education spokesperson Jan Tinetti said. ...
The Government’s proposed changes to Firearms Prohibition Orders (FPO) add almost nothing new and are merely an attempt to distract from its plans to loosen gun laws, police spokesperson Ginny Andersen and justice spokesperson Dr Duncan Webb said. ...
The great Victorian era English politician Lord Macauley stood in the British House of Parliament and said, "The gallery in which the reporters sit has become a fourth estate of the realm".He understood and outlined even way back then, the significant role and influence media have in a democracy. ...
The government’s attack on Māori health this week is committing tangata-whenua to a premature death, says Te Pāti Māori. “The government have begun their onslaught on Māori health with the abolishment of the Māori Health Authority and smokefree laws in the same day” said health spokesperson and co-leader, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. ...
Today marks a tragic milestone for New Zealanders as the Coalition Government side with big tobacco to repeal the Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products (Smoked Tobacco) Amendment Act 2022, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins and Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall said. ...
New Zealand’s social workers are qualified, experienced, and more representative of the communities they serve, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. “I want to acknowledge and applaud New Zealand’s social workers for the hard work they do, providing invaluable support for our most vulnerable. “To coincide with World ...
Cabinet has agreed to a reduced road user charge (RUC) rate for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. Owners of PHEVs will be eligible for a reduced rate of $38 per 1,000km once all light electric vehicles (EVs) move into the RUC system from 1 April. ...
Minister of Agriculture and Trade, Todd McClay, says that today’s opening of Riverland Foods manufacturing plant in Christchurch is a great example of how trade access to overseas markets creates jobs in New Zealand. Speaking at the official opening of this state-of-the-art pet food factory the Minister noted that exports ...
Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Wellington today. “It was a pleasure to host Foreign Minister Wang Yi during his first official visit to New Zealand since 2017. Our discussions were wide-ranging and enabled engagement on many facets of New Zealand’s relationship with China, including trade, ...
Kāinga Ora – Homes & Communities has been instructed to end the Sustaining Tenancies Framework and take stronger measures against persistent antisocial behaviour by tenants, says Housing Minister Chris Bishop. “Earlier today Finance Minister Nicola Willis and I sent an interim Letter of Expectations to the Board of Kāinga Ora. ...
Tēna koutou katoa. Greetings everyone. Thank you to the Auckland Chamber of Commerce and the Honourable Simon Bridges for hosting this address today. I acknowledge the business leaders in this room, the leaders and governors, the employers, the entrepreneurs, the investors, and the wealth creators. The coalition Government shares your ...
Minister Winston Peters completed the final leg of his visit to South and South East Asia in Singapore today, where he focused on enhancing one of New Zealand’s indispensable strategic partnerships. “Singapore is our most important defence partner in South East Asia, our fourth-largest trading partner and a ...
Minister of Internal Affairs and Workplace Relations and Safety, Hon. Brooke van Velden, will travel to the Republic of Korea to represent New Zealand at the Third Summit for Democracy on 18 March. The summit, hosted by the Republic of Korea, was first convened by the United States in 2021, ...
ICNZ Speech 7 March 2024, Auckland Acknowledgements and opening Mōrena, ngā mihi nui. Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Nor Whanganui aho. Good morning, it’s a privilege to be here to open the ICNZ annual conference, thank you to Mark for the Mihi Whakatau My thanks to Tim Grafton for inviting me ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Lead Coordination Minister Judith Collins have expressed their deepest sympathy on the five-year anniversary of the Christchurch terror attacks. “March 15, 2019, was a day when families, communities and the country came together both in sorrow and solidarity,” Mr Luxon says. “Today we pay our respects to the 51 shuhada ...
Speech for Financial Advice NZ Conference 5 March 2024 Acknowledgements and opening Morena, Nga Mihi Nui. Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Nor Whanganui aho. Thanks Nate for your Mihi Whakatau Good morning. It’s a pleasure to formally open your conference this morning. What a lovely day in Wellington, What a great ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters held discussions in Jakarta today about the future of relations between New Zealand and South East Asia’s most populous country. “We are in Jakarta so early in our new government’s term to reflect the huge importance we place on our relationship with Indonesia and South ...
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters has announced that the Foreign Minister of China, Wang Yi, will visit New Zealand next week. “We look forward to re-engaging with Foreign Minister Wang Yi and discussing the full breadth of the bilateral relationship, which is one of New Zealand’s ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has today opened the new Auckland Rail Operations Centre, which will bring together KiwiRail, Auckland Transport, and Auckland One Rail to improve service reliability for Aucklanders. “The recent train disruptions in Auckland have highlighted how important it is KiwiRail and Auckland’s rail agencies work together to ...
The Government is proud to support the 10th edition of Crankworx Rotorua as the Crankworx World Tour returns to Rotorua from 16-24 March 2024, says Minister for Economic Development Melissa Lee. “Over the past 10 years as Crankworx Rotorua has grown, so too have the economic and social benefits that ...
Legislation implementing coalition Government tax commitments and addressing long-standing tax anomalies will be progressed in Parliament next week, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The legislation is contained in an Amendment Paper to the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023–24, Multinational Tax, and Remedial Matters) Bill issued today. “The Amendment Paper represents ...
Associate Environment Minister Andrew Hoggard has today announced that the Government has agreed to suspend the requirement for councils to comply with the Significant Natural Areas (SNA) provisions of the National Policy Statement for Indigenous Biodiversity for three years, while it replaces the Resource Management Act (RMA).“As it stands, SNAs ...
Agriculture Minister Todd McClay has classified the drought conditions in the Marlborough, Tasman, and Nelson districts as a medium-scale adverse event, acknowledging the challenging conditions facing farmers and growers in the district. “Parts of Marlborough, Tasman, and Nelson districts are in the grip of an intense dry spell. I know ...
The Government is helping farmers eradicate the significant impact of facial eczema (FE) in pastoral animals, Agriculture Minister Todd McClay announced. “A $20 million partnership jointly funded by Beef + Lamb NZ, the Government, and the primary sector will save farmers an estimated NZD$332 million per year, and aims to ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has completed a successful visit to India, saying it was an important step in taking the relationship between the two countries to the next level. “We have laid a strong foundation for the Coalition Government’s priority of enhancing New Zealand-India relations to generate significant future benefit for both countries,” says Mr Peters, ...
Cabinet has agreed to provide $7 million to ensure the 2024 ski season can go ahead on the Whakapapa ski field in the central North Island but has told the operator Ruapehu Alpine Lifts it is the last financial support it will receive from taxpayers. Cabinet also agreed to provide ...
Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says the launch of a new mobile breast screening unit in Counties Manukau reinforces the coalition Government’s commitment to drive better cancer services for all New Zealanders. Speaking at the launch of the new mobile clinic, Dr Reti says it’s a great example of taking ...
Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says the launch of a new mobile breast screening unit in Counties Manukau reinforces the coalition Government’s commitment to drive better cancer services for all New Zealanders. Speaking at the launch of the new mobile clinic, Dr Reti says it’s a great example of taking ...
Unlocking economic growth and land for housing are critical elements of the Government’s plan for our transport network, and planned upgrades to State Highway 29 (SH29) near Tauriko will deliver strongly on those priorities, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “The SH29 upgrades near Tauriko will improve safety at the intersections ...
Unlocking economic growth and land for housing are critical elements of the Government’s plan for our transport network, and planned upgrades to State Highway 29 (SH29) near Tauriko will deliver strongly on those priorities, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “The SH29 upgrades near Tauriko will improve safety at the intersections ...
Lower fruit and vegetable prices are welcome news for New Zealanders who have been doing it tough at the supermarket, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. Stats NZ reported today the price of fruit and vegetables has dropped 9.3 percent in the 12 months to February 2024. “Lower fruit and vege ...
Tēnā koutou katoa and greetings to you all. Chair, I am honoured to address the sixty-eighth session of the Commission on the Status of Women. I acknowledge the many crises impacting the rights of women and girls. Heightened global tensions, war, climate related and humanitarian disasters, and price inflation all ...
Tēnā koutou katoa and greetings to you all. Chair, I am honoured to address the 68th session of the Commission on the Status of Women. I acknowledge the many crises impacting the rights of women and girls. Heightened global tensions, war, climate related and humanitarian disasters, and price inflation all ...
The coalition Government is supporting farmers to enhance land management practices by investing $3.3 million in locally led catchment groups, Agriculture Minister Todd McClay announced. “Farmers and growers deliver significant prosperity for New Zealand and it’s vital their ongoing efforts to improve land management practices and water quality are supported,” ...
Good evening everyone and thank you for that lovely introduction. Thank you also to the Honourable Simon Bridges for the invitation to address your members. Since being sworn in, this coalition Government has hit the ground running with our 100-day plan, delivering the changes that New Zealanders expect of us. ...
Recommendations from the Climate Change Commission for New Zealand on the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) auction and unit limit settings for the next five years have been tabled in Parliament, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. “The Commission provides advice on the ETS annually. This is the third time the ...
The coalition Government is beginning its fight to lower building costs and reduce red tape by exempting minor building work from paying the building levy, says Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk. “Currently, any building project worth $20,444 including GST or more is subject to the building levy which is ...
Proposed changes to tax legislation to prevent the over-taxation of low-earning trusts are welcome, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The changes have been recommended by Parliament’s Finance and Expenditure Committee following consideration of submissions on the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023–24, Multinational Tax, and Remedial Matters) Bill. “One of the ...
Assalaamu alaikum. السَّلَام عليكم In light of the holy month of Ramadan, I want to extend my warmest wishes to our Muslim community in New Zealand. Ramadan is a time for spiritual reflection, renewed devotion, perseverance, generosity, and forgiveness. It’s a time to strengthen our bonds and appreciate the diversity ...
Former Transport Minister and CEO of the Auckland Business Chamber Hon Simon Bridges has been appointed as the new Board Chair of the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) for a three-year term, Transport Minister Simeon Brown announced today. “Simon brings extensive experience and knowledge in transport policy and governance to the role. He will ...
Good morning all, it is a pleasure to be here as Minister of Science, Innovation and Technology. It is fantastic to see how connected and collaborative the life science and biotechnology industry is here in New Zealand. I would like to thank BioTechNZ and NZTech for the invitation to address ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says he is looking forward to the day when three key water projects in Northland are up and running, unlocking the full potential of land in the region. Mr Jones attended a community event at the site of the Otawere reservoir near Kerikeri on Friday. ...
Associate Finance Minister David Seymour has today announced that the Government has agreed to restore deductibility for mortgage interest on residential investment properties. “Help is on the way for landlords and renters alike. The Government’s restoration of interest deductibility will ease pressure on rents and simplify the tax code,” says ...
Sport and Recreation Minister Chris Bishop will travel to Switzerland today to attend an Executive Committee meeting and Symposium of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). Mr Bishop will then travel on to London where he will attend a series of meetings in his capacity as Infrastructure Minister. “New Zealanders believe ...
This year’s Pacific Language Weeks celebrate regional unity and the contribution of Pacific communities to New Zealand culture, says Minister for Pacific Peoples Dr Shane Reti. Dr Reti announced dates for the 2024 Pacific Language Weeks during a visit to the Pasifika festival in Auckland today and says there’s so ...
By Lydia Lewis, RNZ Pacific journalist Food rationing is underway in remote areas in Papua New Guinea’s Highlands following torrential rain and flash flooding. More than 20 people have been reported dead in Chimbu Province. In nearby Enga Province, the centre of last month’s massacre, a 15-year-old boy has been ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Hughes, Lecturer, Research School of Management, Australian National University After months of debate and intrigue, the AFL’s 19th and newest team, the Tasmania Devils, finally launched its jumper, logo and colours in Devonport this week. The Devils will wear green, ...
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If you have had a covid test and are waiting on the result, surely you do not go out to the gym or the shops etc! How simpler can the message be?
Covid-19: Young people to Government – 'your message is too old, too stale and way too long' | Stuff.co.nz
Apparently it was the walk by adults which was the trigger. This journalist is being selective with his facts to support his political narrative.
I for one am a bit tired of 'feelings' being ascribed to the rule breakers from a middle class background…….Dr Bloomfield has said several times that he 'imagines', or words to that effect, that those who did not self isolate would be feeling remorseful.
'When asked about Case M – the 21-year old-MIT student who visited several locations while symptomatic – Dr Bloomfield said: "I imagine he is extremely remorseful".'
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2021/03/covid-19-live-updates-latest-on-auckland-community-outbreak-tuesday-march-2.html
I have advocated 'someone' getting alongside the rule breakers to talk them through what happened and more importantly to find out their views on what can be done to prevent future breaches. Unless Dr Bloomfield knows, from personal conversation or through reading feedback from a health professional who has had a personal conversation that they are remorseful, he should refrain from commenting. The actions in breaking self isolation speak louder than ascribed feelings, right from the mothers' meeting to the tripping round by Case M.
The question is why, seemingly, did things like self isolation not matter in these particular families? Until we know we cannot do anything much to improve things.
In the meantime we cannot go round ascribing to others how they may be feeling.
On a personal level I am always willing to give someone the benefit of the doubt but ascribing feelings that are not borne out by actions is pushing hard against our willingness and to me is a bit of fakery.
did anybody else notice the irony of an old, stale, out of date, media telling us this message. in the battle to remain relevant, our media need to constantly keep reminding themselves, that, they need to be more pro-active when it comes to reaching a younger audience. however, after a year of covid, there is NO excuse for any ignorance over staying home when sick, and as for going to the gym after a covid test, words fail me as to the stupidity of some. Do gyms have the stay home if sick message on their walls? it comes down to personal responsibility, and thats why cretins like seymour are dancing on the head of a pin, while going on about extra gov bed checks, and more gov intervention.. the associates of this particular family that has caused so much harm, must be aware of the family, and are probably giving them the cold shoulder.(?)
I don't think we can be sure of this at all and you are right to question it. Messages are being missed or people don't care, why? We need to find out from the rule breakers themselves – are they being influenced to disobey by their churches, because they do not know how to access support, because the messages are from 'da man' or 'old whitey' and should be automatically disregarded? Or……, or……..
How about the simple message that the cost of a lockdown, if caused by you will be $250million. How soon would you be able to pay off the debt?
There are as many excuses as anybody can master, how on earth could people by now not know what it means to be infected? I mean this was just the major news over a year now.
If I understand this correctly, the spreaders were in Managed Isolation. I sure as hell hope they have paid their bill. And to say that they didn't understand …pleeeeeese pull another one.
When it comes to being infected it seems to be about the contact classifications falling into risk categories.
Low risk at casual contact level does not mean no risk.
Your comment is valid and I agree with it. However, when you say they [“the spreaders”, plural] “were” in MIQ, it has a completely different meaning compared to the correct and accurate fact that they [Case M, singular, neutral] “had been” in/through MIQ.
no, it means that they KNOW what to do, and what NOT to do. running around, splitting hairs to make a point is a sideshow.
Sigh
Yes, we know and I agreed. How many times do you want it repeated here and agreed upon? Do you want to be a parrot in an echo chamber?
After all that running around I had to have a cup of tea and a lie down but I’m good now, thanks.
What was the “point” I was making, according to you?
It was particularly amusing on RNZ this morning to hear Patrick Strange the Chair of Ports of Auckland complaining that the government has no post-Covid strategy.
Lat year his company rolled out one of the largest failed strategies we've seen in recent NZ commercial life, and its commercial damage is still being felt across New Zealand.
He should shut up.
Hah! I thought the same thing. Pompous ass.
Did he say when post covid starts?
One of the few good things about the pandemic is how the business establishment (the talking heads, not the people actually doing the work) have discredited themselves. Rather than the thrusting, agile, innovative, brilliant, independent wealth-creators of popular myth, they look and sound like third-rate, intellectually and morally vacuous scroungers looking for an impossible 'certainty'. Once we are out of the pandemic, it will be important to sustain our disdain for them, and not let them creep back into positions of undue influence
It's a bad double moment.
The general populace can but be beholden to government in this crisis, because they are both regulated to do so by public health edict and because they are utterly subsidised. So we allow state dependence for the general population.
But we don't allow that same state dependence for business.
And yet business and the population are as dependent on the state as the other.
We haven't had a state as interventionist as this since 1934. People are beginning to notice that the Ardern government doesn't know what to do with that once the crisis lessens back to level 1 in a few days.
The reasonable question is: is this really all a Team Of Five Million can do together?
So, you don’t like what he’s saying and/or him personally?
Work your way down the list and knock yourself out.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/300242228/business-leaders-ask-whats-the-longterm-covid-strategy
At what point should a family bubble begin?
Casual contact, casual plus contact, close contact or close plus contact?
Had a family bubble happened at the casual plus contact level a positive case would be more likely to have been contained.
The settings for the contact classifications, the testing and isolation need to be relooked at especially when it comes to not having a family bubble at a casual plus contact stage.
I do believe people when they say my family member is a casual plus contact and I was told not to isolate.
https://www.health.govt.nz/system/files/documents/pages/guidance-for-casual-plus-contacts-25feb21.pdf
I am sick and tired of the fake headlines and moaning in the media and it's stuffed shirt talking heads. That piece in Stuff basically just allows their ghastly white guilt to be assuaged by letting the Maori party grandstand on their identity politics of victimhood and quotes exact one teenager – a Maori kid in Hawera – who doesn't even say what the headline claims. So who is saying what the headline claims, beyond politcially partisan people with a whole shedload of resentment axes to grind?
Luke Malpass has another "analysis" piece today in Stuff which isn't worth shit. He is a neoliberal horse race analyst who is based in Wellington. He knows fuck all about Auckland and even less than that about South Auckland. He his literally reflecting the opinion of his typewriter and some sort of received wisdom in the press gallery. I get sick and tired of the pompous pronouncements of blowhard journalists masquerading as analysis.
I get it that the media thrive on conflict and rarking people up for conflict. Like everyone else I saw how the sausage gets made with their pathetic gotcha lines of questioning last year, and it made me want to puke. Dogged stupidity is still stupidity. They've learnt nothing because they are arrogant sons of bitches who hold the public in distain. They desperately want to want to get back to playing court banter politics as imagined viziers to the public. I just don't want anymore of their bullshit. I got sick of it last year and nothing has changed.
So, you’re blowing your lid because of some headline somewhere in Stuff? Wow!
Have a lie down and a cup of tea.
As for the other unlinked piece in Stuff by Malpass, you flipped your lid again but nobody has a clue what the piece is/was about nor on what grounds you disagree with Mr Malpass other than he has the ‘wrong’ bumper sticker.
Have a lie down and a cup of tea.
Sanctuary has what some might interpret as an inflammatory style of writing, but the basis of his complaint is correct. I, too am getting sick and tired of reading or listening to bullshit from tabloid journos who misquote, misjudge, misinterpret and generally screw up facts simply because they can… and get away with it under the guise of a supposed nuanced analysis.
I started to read one of HDPA's diatribes the other day and it was so full of conspiratorial nonsense I gave up in disgust. But its not just her… there's an industry of knee-jerk journalism growing up around the pandemic responses in particular. By all means be critical if there are grounds for it, but going troppo at every twist and turn is not only annoying… it creates more confusion.
Yes, there is some excellent and accurate journalism around but unfortunately they are not the ones who get the most publicity. It's the shock jocks and its time they were reined in.
A note on newspapers/news sites: Those who write the article do not write the headline. Headlines, subheads and captions are all written by subeditors not the journalists. This is why they can be sensationalistic/inaccurate.
Yes that is true, but its the substance I'm talking about not the headlines.
Oh and btw Incognito, I’ve already had three cups of tea in the last hour. 😉
So we can take then that most subeditors are fully paid up members of the National Party then. Just a thought.
Outrage is a powerful motivator to click. Just saying.
+100 sanctuary
On average we write better posts than they do.
We could easily just replace the entire sports section of TV news with Social Impact news that's a whole bunch more penetrating than 7 Sharp.
In fact a daily scorecard of most popular non-MSM posts would be more useful than sports team scores.
What gets me is the amount of unsubstantiated reckons that pass as news – RNZ did a terrible job this morning with some bozo reporter perched above a South Auckland motorway interchange which he has probably never visited at that time of day before in his life saying there was "more traffic" on the road – and therefore implying widespread ignoring of level three restrictions, which then fed a preconceived attack line on the minister who was interviewed next and was supposed to rebut unsubstantiated nonsense.
Where I live the traffic was way down to almost level 4 amounts on St. Lukes road at times today – I could just as easily get on air and spout a bullshit reckon based on my unscientific, localised anecdotal observations and marvel at how strong Aucklanders are. Now, if that RNZ Bozo had traffic data or some facts to back up his view that people are disobeying the lockdown then please, please tell us. This the media has decided the narrative crap is downright fake news.
It's not like ANZ doesn't publish their truckometer data.
Y'all forget, the purpose of the 'news hour and a half' is to sell advertising.
Nothing more, nothing less.
Is anyone yet prepared to admit that we are far more efficient in meetings on Teams at home than we are at work in offices?
Absolutely not!
No way.
We have daily a 9am meeting for everyone in the team to briefly say what they are doing that day. In the office it takes 10 minutes to work around the team.
On Teams it takes twice as long, as you have to remind most people that they are on mute, someone drops out with a bad connection at home, or people talk over each other so you can hear anyone.
The office wins everytime for me.
Depends on what the meeting is for, but mostly yes as long as the attendees can observe Teams etiquette.
Unbiased and fair reporting from BBC, Reuters? Looking into these leaks (which unsurprisingly are receiving NO coverage from western MSM whatsoever ) it becomes apparent that both of those news organizations are toughly compromised and cannot be trusted with any news or reporting on Russia..which of course makes everything else they report suspect, as this has obviously put a big question mark around their journalistic integrity generally.
Both BBC and Reuters along with Bellingcat were actually bidding for lucrative contracts with the British UK FCO (Foreign and Commonwealth Office) to conduct covert programs of disinformation and also train Russian journalists in the art of spreading discontent inside Russia, the leaked documents reveal.
Interesting how after five years of investigation by the most well-funded investigators in the world come up with so little proof that Russia was involved in a large scale programme to undermine the US elections in 2016 that MSM won’t even allow a counter narrative EVER for fear of having their flimsy allegations fall apart live on air…yet here we are, presented with actual proof of that very thing happening against another country…wonder if there will be a flood of media outrage that two of their own have been proved to be so shamefully compromised?
Leaked Docs Reveal UK Funded Reuters, BBC, Bellingcat For Covert Regime Change In Russia To Topple Putin
https://greatgameindia.com/bbc-regime-change-russia/
Reuters, BBC participated in UK FCO's project to weaken Russia: report
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2021-02-25/Reuters-BBC-participated-in-UK-FCO-s-project-to-weaken-Russia-report-Ya0X5PBHTq/index.html
Reuters, BBC, and Bellingcat participated in covert UK Foreign Office-funded programs to “weaken Russia,” leaked docs reveal
https://thegrayzone.com/2021/02/20/reuters-bbc-uk-foreign-office-russian-media/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ8mycEVgGQ
Someone's done a Bellingcat type open source on Navalny
Turns out he was holidaying in Switzerland , working on the US funded Putin's Palace in the Black Forest , and according to a German report, holidaying in the Canary Islands .
All this while "recovering " or "in a coma"and thus unable to present in Russia in accordance with his suspended sentence
He just couldn't resist posting those Instagram photos
http://johnhelmer.net/alexei-navalnys-waldeinsamkeit-thats-german-for-spiritual-forest-walking-surrounded-by-100-german-secret-service-agents/#more-45946
done a Bellingcat
You really have swallowed the RT line without chewing haven't you.
So what is it Bellingcat does, if its not putting these kinds of reports together and releasing them, then?
Bellingcat is open source, unlike the RT efforts, you can check yourself whether what they produce is real. You can even collect data for them.
RT has a massive hatefest on for Bellingcat after they proved Russia shot down Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 over the Ukraine, even discovering the Russian unit and operators responsible.
Russian journalism has had to contend with being obliged to print outright fabrications since the revolution. Under Putin the practice has been revived, and with the advent of the internet, extended.
You can find some explanation here: Active Measures — inside the history of disinformation | Financial Times (ft.com) Of course, circulating and repeating these carefully crafted pieces of disinformation is a public disservice on a par with repeating the broadcasts of Tokyo Rose or Lord Hawhaw.
By gum your absolutely right, RT doesn't do anything like that.
Cast your mind back to their reporting of the Skripal poisonings.
None of RT's allegations or explanations have been borne out – they simply lied.
For they are Russian state media. "There's no truth in The News and no news in The Truth."
I think its about the age of 3 to 5 that kids understand other people have an independent consciousness. So I have no idea what you heard on RT at the time of the Skripal poisoning.
Salisbury novichok suspects say they were only visiting cathedral | UK news | The Guardian
for a start
Now hang on there, now your posting a Guardian article relaying that story second hand from RT. Just how deep does this disinformation network go?
Not to mention the airliner shot down over the Ukraine and the "satellite photos" suggesting it was aircraft that did it. But then RT also asserted numerous other explanations for how an airliner blew up in midair.
The objective of Maskrovka is to muddy the waters, not provide a plausible denial.
"Bellingcat is open source"
"circulating and repeating these carefully crafted pieces of disinformation is a public disservice on a par with repeating the broadcasts of Tokyo Rose or Lord Hawhaw"
fify
Poor child – you're too broken to fix anything.
You guys really have no problem getting into bed with all the enemies of the Left and their organizations to pursue your cold war Russian narrative… the FBI, the CIA, the most despicable US war hawks, war criminals ….and keep in mind I am not and have never defended Putin or his govt, no, I am just questioning the motives and truths that lay behind what is quite obviously a western elite power play against one particular segment of the Russian power structure over another (the 'other' it seems is more open to western participation in Russia)…something that maybe you guys might want to think about doing sometime.
The Bellingcat research collective: War propaganda masquerading as “citizen journalism”
"The Bellingcat “research collective” is a web site established in July 2014 by Eliot Higgins. Originally from Leicester in the UK, Higgins is, as of February, a senior fellow in the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab and Future Europe Initiative."
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/10/13/bell-o13.html
Atlantic Council
The Ukrainian oligarch run Burisma Holdings donated $100,000 per year for three years to the Atlantic Council starting in 2016. The full list of financial sponsors includes many military, financial, and corporate concerns. The leading donors in 2018 were Facebook and the British government.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_Council#:~:text=The%20Ukrainian%20oligarch%20run%20Burisma,Facebook%20and%20the%20British%20govern
Think Tank Watch
http://www.thinktankwatch.com/2015/11/the-donors-of-atlantic-council.html
Yes, that would be the Belling-shat that appears to weigh in on all sorts of highly contentious, highly political, geopolitical events for the public good?? Can anyone say Syria chemical attack?
I guess they have no shame in using any source they can to prove Russia is bad…
https://mronline.org/2020/09/28/war-propaganda-firm-bellingcat-continues-lying-about-syria/
You really have bought the whole bill of goods, haven't you?
Bellingcat are a perfectly ordinary and truthful, organisation. As such they are an existential threat to chronic liars and disinformation peddlers like the Putin kleptocracy.
People less susceptible to fake news, like the air accident inspectors that investigated MH17, found that Bellingcat had been entirely truthful. The same could not be said of Russian sources, who went so far as to produce and present fake video of an attacking Ukrainian fighter as their official explanation. As the investigator noted, the wreckage of an airliner shot down by a fighter would be full of bullet holes, which the wreckage lacked.
I wonder at your motivations, frankly, for constantly trying to make Putin's lies the leading narrative.
well its all good tho, he is off to the work camp to atone for his sins.
Thats what you think Sabine
Pootsie has already killed him via personally injecting novichok into his toothpaste , or was it the elastic of his underpants , or was it the airport cup of tea, or hang on , it was the evening cocktail, Navalny said it did taste funny, no, thats right ,it was the water bottle
There's been a big coverup, and RT is just pretending he's been sent to a penal colony
Couple of items I found interesting on Stuff:
NZ cops have a bullying problem to the degree that even senior officers are afraid to speak up. Including the old faithful of officers not providing backup when requested. Be part of the "blue wall" or you're on your own out there is the lesson for anyone who doesn't like the police culture.
I'll be interested to see if anything changes.
Also, China is refusing to let the 737-max become operational in its airspace again. Such things are often diplomatic petulance – mate of mine who works logistics has stories about the US turning away produce imports on the basis of stickers being slightly out of alignment for "safety" grounds (read "import protections in a supposedly low-protection relationship") – but in this case, toss a coin. It might be that the problems have been fixed and the plane is good to go, like the "Comet" was after the fatigue problem was sorted. But equally, the software fix for the 737-max is a bodge to fix the bodge to fix the original fundamental design problem.
Or China recognises the perils of bean counters running the engineering.
The Long-Forgotten Flight That Sent Boeing Off Course
A company once driven by engineers became driven by finance.
[…]
The isolation was deliberate. “When the headquarters is located in proximity to a principal business—as ours was in Seattle—the corporate center is inevitably drawn into day-to-day business operations,” Condit explained at the time. And that statement, more than anything, captures a cardinal truth about the aerospace giant. The present 737 Max disaster can be traced back two decades—to the moment Boeing’s leadership decided to divorce itself from the firm’s own culture.
For about 80 years, Boeing basically functioned as an association of engineers. Its executives held patents, designed wings, spoke the language of engineering and safety as a mother tongue. Finance wasn’t a primary language. Even Boeing’s bean counters didn’t act the part. As late as the mid-’90s, the company’s chief financial officer had minimal contact with Wall Street and answered colleagues’ requests for basic financial data with a curt “Tell them not to worry.”
https://archive.li/8ks2w (The Atlantic)
It's no wonder they're called pigs because that's what they've been for decades.
We need good people in the police, and the only way that can happen is to have extremely tight recruitment rules. Anyone with even a sniff of a jock mentality are told no. Only the truly wholesome should be let in.
Etna's have a moment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4xzQ1Oa9KY&feature=youtu.be
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2p8ynY3yTA&feature=youtu.be
Joe Biden goes strong for unions, and against Amazon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-KApLDOY2U
It's pretty weird to realise that in no alternative universe can I imagine either our Prime Minister or Minister of Finance coming out so explicitly about the necessity of union membership and fighting against corporations as Biden does here.
Or seen from another perspective….
Biden Issues LUKEWARM Support For Amazon Union Workers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gY03pqDuTUc
All mainstream media, and the AFL-CIO, and all the business journals fully get what Biden just did. In reality that collected perspective is more valid than what you posted.
You'll probably be able to point to another President that has explicitly supported the right of workers to unionise. You have to go a fair way back.
In the US political context this is the left's equivalent of Trump telling the racists to "stand back and stand by".
Yup!
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1934
Eisenhower, too.
The protection of the right of workers to organize into unions and to bargain collectively is the firm and permanent policy of the Eisenhower Administration. In 1954, 1955 and again in 1956, President Eisenhower recommended constructive amendments to this Act.
https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/republican-party-platform-1956
So only 65 years as opposed to 87, haha. Still a fair way back.
Kennedy, LBJ and Nixon.
https://www.flra.gov/50th_Anniversary_EO10988
Joe and Arkie; exactly. 90+ and 70+ years respectively.
Joe Biden’s comments were more than I expected when taken in context of Presidents that were either openly anti union (ex union member Reagan), or pretty much silent on US workers organising i.e. most of the rest that I can recall, there was an approving speech on Union membership one time from DW. Eisenhower also.
But then, there are unions, and there are bent unions in the USA. So it pays not to generalise too much. The AFL-CIO has a mixed record too. But a member led unionised site within Amazon would be a mighty advance for workers everywhere regardless of all that. Logistics workers serving the online economy in supposedly liberal Europe get a hard time too, and have to battle for basic rights like breaks these days.
Amazon workers will be voting till the end of March and need 6000 YES votes. They had to fight and appeal even to be able to use postal voting too!–in the middle of a pandemic. The company sent out letters advising each employee to vote NO and do it now! A UPS mail box had mysteriously appeared on site at the Bessemer Alabama giant warehouse.
So yes, Biden’s remarks were not red hot, but they will be clearly understood by other employers too, and might just help tip the balance and start an Amazon wide union drive.
Yeah, Bidens all about the workers and their struggles…seriously though…the pro union headlines are a great way to distract from what is actually happening to workers in America ..and unfortunately some of the Unions are more interested in being self serving than helping the American worker.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/mar/01/joe-biden-minimum-wage-democrats
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/02/joe-biden-is-no-friend-of-unions
That LBJ Medicare comparison is very apt.
Twitter (and Facebook/YouTube) become more and more an unaccountable censors of public discourse….silence from our media.
Glenn Greenwald: It took [twitter] only two years to go from disappearing Milo and Alex Jones to banning content said to "amplify narratives that undermine faith in NATO." Imagine where the line will be two years from now.
https://www.reddit.com/r/stupidpol/comments/lrjfce/glenn_greenwald_it_took_twitter_only_two_years_to/
Twitter bans state accounts for “undermining faith in NATO” and targeted the US and EU
https://reclaimthenet.org/twitter-bans-state-accounts-for-undermining-faith-in-nato-and-targeted-the-us-and-eu/
poor thing.
who cares?
It's even more boring than that.
The narratives that were being artificially amplified had an objective of "undermining faith in NATO", but it was the amplifying that incurred the ban, not the objective:
Going down the link hole from the original comment:
"We could undo the global economic arrangements that systematically and intentionally funnel wealth to some countries while intensifying poverty in others."
Which country has poverty intensified as a result of wealth being funneled to another country?
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
It is a tiny second-world country you probably have never heard of: Aotearoa.
NZ's terms of trade has generally been positive and our current account balance has been relatively consistent for much of our recent history. Outside the issues with housing affordability poverty has been static or even falling for the past 25 years.
[TheStandard: A moderator moved this comment to Open Mike as being off topic or irrelevant in the post it was made in. Be more careful in future.]
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/108241472/anz-makes-almost-2b-from-new-zealand-banking
How is a single largely overseas owned organisation's profit impacting our wealth and increasing poverty?
You don't care, you're here to derail.
No. I'm here to burst your self reinforcing confirmation bubble by asking difficult questions.
NZ's economy was built on foreign capital imported by foreign banks. The NZ Banking sector has been dominated by overseas owned entities since 1840.
And since then the profits (see wealth) leaves the local economy leaving us poorer (see poverty/growing inequality)
You aren't actually asking difficult questions, you're doing your usual JAQing off and changing your arguement with every 'question'.
It's bad faith, and not interesting.
Following your logic NZ is poorer today than it was in 1840. Please explain how that is possible?
The fact is it is not poorer. It is very much richer. The reason is because the capital that these foreign owned banks brought in to the county enabled many people to develop profitable businesses that would not have been possible otherwise.
Is NZ richer?…the water is poorer, the soil is poorer, our timber stocks are poorer in both quality and quantity….the list is long.
And Offshore banks have only been in the domestic market for less than 40 years.
Yeah it is. If you want to pretend NZ was wealthier in 1840 I can't help you.
I guess it depends on how you define wealth….is a stranded asset wealth? printed plastic? numbers on a screen?
And Offshore banks have only been in the domestic market for less than 40 years.
False – offshore banks started operating in NZ not long after european settlers arrived. The Bank of New South Wales was effectively NZ's central bank by the 1860's.
Strictly speaking not….the offshore financial institutions (not necessarily retail banks) had a very small proportion of NZs market pre 1980s reforms
"Prior to the rapid deregulation in the mid-1980s, the variety of different types of financial institutions largely reflected the restrictions placed by statute or regulation on the types of business each institution could undertake. These constraints and protected niches all quickly disappeared, and over the next few years savings banks and building societies were progressively absorbed into or taken over by big commercial banks. As a result, many institutions were purchased by foreign entities. ANZ purchased the privatised Postbank. Commonwealth Bank of Australia purchased ASB Bank (one of the trustee savings banks). More recently, WestpacTrust took over Trustbank, formed from all the other trustee savings banks (with the exception of TSB Bank, which remains an independent entity). Private savings banks, which had previously been set up by parents to undertake certain types of lending, were wound back into the parent. The BNZ itself was fully privatised and sold to National Australia Bank in the early 1990s and Countrywide Bank, formed from several building societies, was taken over by National Bank later in the decade. It was during this time that the share of foreignowned banks began to increase to the high levels seen today"
https://www.rbnz.govt.nz/-/media/ReserveBank/Files/Publications/Discussion%20papers/2002/dp02-05.pdf?revision=6da1b297-321d-4e54-8644-443bafc281bd
"The government’s ownership of the BNZ, and use of it as its banker, allowed it to become the largest trading bank. It was fully nationalised in 1945.
An 1865 law which established the Post Office Savings Bank also curbed the rights of other savings banks and enabled it to absorb competitors. By the mid-1950s the Post Office Savings Bank controlled around 80% of the personal savings market."
https://teara.govt.nz/en/banking-and-finance/page-1
Nothing in what you said was related to the post. Stop derailing.
Wouldn't use an Aussie-owned bank if you paid me – there are NZ alternatives.
Interesting data point in your link (which is from 2017):
…handled by the Banking Ombudsman, which dealt with 2704 cases and complaints. About 77 percent of those cases related to the Australian banks.
Australian-owned banks make up roughly 85% of the banking market. That means they're actually a bit better at resolving issues and not driving customers into the complaint process as often as the (mostly NZ-owned) other banks.
Most of the satisfaction with NZ owned banks is perception not reality. Most people will say they prefer NZ owned banks even if the service provided is of a lower quality.
You're probably right Phil – nevertheless from time-to-time NZ Consumer and other organisations survey bank customers, and NZ-owned banks always top the customer satisfaction rankings.
But then I’ve been a happy TSB customer for some 20 years (after ditching Westpac), so of course I would say that.
https://www.canstar.co.nz/banking-satisfaction/
https://www.canstar.co.nz/star-rating-reports/msc-home-loans-provider-award/
from time-to-time NZ Consumer and other organisations survey bank customers, and NZ-owned banks always top the customer satisfaction rankings.
Yeah, I don't dispute that the NZ banks produce higher customer satisfaction ratings in those surveys, but the glaringly obvious fact is that the revealed preference of the vast majority of NZ'ers (85-ish percent of us) is that we're entirely comfortable banking with one or more of the aussie owned big-4.
Yeah, I don't dispute that the majority of NZers bank with Aussie-owned banks. Just not sure if "entirely comfortable" accurately captures the feelings of all NZ customers of Aussie-owned banks. But if it does, then presumably (based on customer satisfaction surveys), it would be fair to describe customers of NZ-owned banks as being 'more than entirely comfortable' with the service(s) provided.
Personally, after 20 years as a satisfied TSB customer, I can't imagine what might cause me to switch back to Westpac.
The issue is greater than that….consider the similarity and interconnectivity of the NZ and Australian economies….we are almost a single market that is exposed to the same threats, if their banks fall over so do ours and vice versa
Perhaps a better way to put it would be that the vast majority of New Zealanders are sufficiently satisfied with their Aus-owned banks that they don't feel a need to shift to a different institution. 🙂
Banking with Aussie-owned banks is unquestionably the most popular choice for New Zealanders, just as it's crystal clear that customers of NZ-owned banks are on average more satisfied with bank service(s).
It would be interesting to tease out why banking with a NZ-owned bank not a popular choice in NZ, given that their customers apparently enjoy a greater degree of satisfaction.
Perhaps there's a perception that switching banks is a hassle, particularly if you've got a mortgage or other debt.
Kiwibank does not have the infrastructure in place to support business banking in any meaningful way. Their IT systems are limiting their growth and they have failed a number of times to upgrade them.
Re: your 2018 link
The ANZ will make more profit this year than Fonterra, Spark, Fletcher Building, Warehouse, Air NZ and all the supermarkets combined did last year. It's one bank, yet its profits are almost twice that of the top seven power companies combined.
ANZ's NZ balance sheet is $179 billion dollars. Fonterra's is, conveniently for this analysis, $17.9b, so ANZ is 10 times as large as Fonterra.
In 2020 ANZ made just under $1.4b in profit, while Fonterra made $830m.
Ten times larger, but only making (slightly less than) twice the profits. Huh, it's almost like people will take every opportunity to bash the Australian owned banks without putting in any thought or effort.
Either amount, the profit still leaves the local economy, this is funneling wealth to out of the country leaving us poorer, which was the point. That it is not as much in 2020 compared to 2018 is irrelevant.
I’m not sure this counts as ‘bashing’ but I’m sure ANZ are glad you’re here to support them.
Some of the profit MAY leave the economy. Not all of it does. Regardless the capital that ANZ provides to the NZ economy provides the basis for investments in the productive areas of the economy which leads to economic growth.
You were asking about wealth funnelling and you think that this has something to do with our current account balance!? Are you for real? They are completely different things. You’re so ignorant that there is clearly no point discussing this with you.
Oh, yes, besides that pesky little housing ‘crisis’ all is well in Aotearoa.
You’re simply trolling here and you’ve already been moved to OM, twice. I think you should go for the trifecta.
Well as you are a known stanch defender of the Liberal Free Market status quo, obviously not you….but people who advocate for actual progressive change around the world will be getting very concerned.
there are a few billion people on this planet that don't have twitter, don't go on twitter, and could not be bothered.
As for GG, has he mentioned Reality Winner lately? Or is that unpolite. I hear she was cancelled, err locked up for leaking information to he Intercept and will be uncancelled in Nov 21 after 5 years in the slammer.
Oh that is not a cancellation that is important. Or maybe GG just has nothing to say about that cause it ain't sexy or something?
I dont' care about the liberal market any more then you do, but GG is a wanker and "twitter" is a private business that can do as it pleases. Anyone else can just abstain and not validate it.
Same as with FB, Gab, Parler, and any of the other social medias.