Could be an entire new ministry will be required to build sea-walls?
Naish said vulnerable places in Auckland included the waterfront around the bays, Tamaki Drive, the Viaduct, areas around the Northwestern Motorway at Point Chevalier, St Heliers and Mission Bay.
He said many of these places already have issues during king tides, are close to sea level, and are sinking.
At the Viaduct the land is sinking about about 2.5mm a year. "That almost doubles the rate of expected sea-level rise and halves the time you have. The city council, [and] the port authority are all going to have to start looking closely in terms of their future activities at this new information."
He said in many parts of Auckland the sea-level would rise 30 to 50 percent faster than what was previously thought.
The switch is due to discovery of land dropping. The scientists have mapped it nationwide and provided an interactive website so you can check out how it affects your neighbourhood.
The new advice combines data about where land is sinking with the latest international sea-level rise projections. It will be an major new tool for councils, businesses and homeowners to assess risk from erosion and floods… The information is timely, coming hot on the heels of the climate change draft adaptation plan released last week. It asks for public input on the plans, and on so-called ''managed retreat'" – abandoning areas where it is not possible or financially viable to live any longer.
First consideration is if councils can cope with providing new defensive infrastructure. If not, how does the govt do the job – within the ministry of climate change or the ministry of transport?
As Ashley Bloomfield's star fades, new messiahs arise with missionary zeal. I don't think I will be buying their T-Shirts.
In the clip below, Napier Airport was given as an example of land sinking . Of course, Napier Airport is build on land pushed up by an earthquake.
Richard Levy and Tim Naish have done what seems like excellent research followed by predictions based on that research. All that's needed now is for nature to follow those linear time lines they have set out.
All that's needed now is for nature to follow those linear time lines they have set out.
Normally humans survive by reacting to a threat to their survival. Are you trying to suggest Nats are sub-human? If so, spit the dummy & say so. If not, tell us why they ought to do nothing except wait for nature to produce disaster.
Oh wait, you mean the Nats would actually do politics on the basis of science instead of ignoring it? They just need a little time to digest the science? Fair enough. Not everyone's a fast learner.
''Normally humans survive by reacting to a threat to their survival.''
Correct. If you come towards me in a threatening manner I straight away compensate with a remedial defensive action.
''Are you trying to suggest Nats are sub-human? If so, spit the dummy & say so.''
I don't know what that means because I don't care one iota what National think, or don't, about climate change. I doubt they have a clue themselves.
''If not, tell us why they ought to do nothing except wait for nature to produce disaster.''
It's not a matter of doing nothing. It's about a gamble costing billions either way. Are we prepared to accept that on research that is yet to be peer reviewed. Or are we prepared to sit tight and hope for the best? Play the cards.
You seem to have forgotten our dire economic situation thanks to Labour's largesse for all squeaky wheels and ideological itches.
"As Ashley Bloomfield's star fades, new messiahs arise with missionary zeal."
Uncalled for. Inferring Bloomfield was some crazy who set himself up as a messiah but no-one listens to him anymore? He happened to be Director General of Health when Covid arrived and it was his job to lead the health response to the pandemic in NZ.
It was more a statement about hero worship. We in New Zealand have a dearth of glitzy stars to idolise. Therefore we tend to admire the more mundane. Ruud Kleinpaste, the bug man, for example.
''He happened to be Director General of Health when Covid arrived and it was his job to lead the health response to the pandemic in NZ.''
Exactly – it was his job.
But he morphed into something larger with his regular appearances on the ''Pulpit Of Truth.'' Adulation and t-shirts followed.
I'm betting Richard Levy and Tim Naish are about to become media darlings. Their word will be gospel, and God help any fuckwit who says otherwise.
''You're a dork Blade.''
That's unkind. But, in my opinion, you have always come across as a shallow thinker.
You forgot the waste of taxpayer money. Truancy has nothing to do with school attendance… it has more to do with cultural values. And in Maoridom, education isn't a high priority with many. Mana on the rugby field and in a fight rate very high.
From Jester’s link:
''The package also included $11.2m for a positive behaviour and learning programme and $7.75m specifically for Māori and Pasifika communities, where there are large discrepancies.''
[You are in Pre-Moderation until you correct the following statement or provide links to support it:
And in Maoridom, education isn’t a high priority with many. Mana on the rugby field and in a fight rate very high.
You have one shot at it, to avoid numerous time-wasting comments going to & from, and one day – Incognito]
Even a ‘mere opinion’ doesn’t come out of the blue and stands alone in isolation in a referential vacuum without some framework to form and sustain (aka confirm) it.
Blade doesn't shy away from a challenge so he's never going to walk that back. I'm expecting genetic evidence and a full history of the heritage of the infamous Rugby gene will be forthcoming.
Can be difficult to know when you’re on “safer ground” – is nothing sacred?
Racism starts small. Sometimes it lives in everyday actions and comments that we laugh off, nod in agreement to, excuse, and therefore accept. But we don’t have to. We can stop casual racism from growing into something more extreme. We can give it no encouragement. No respect. No place. No power. We can give it nothing. http://www.givenothing.co.nz
Taika needs to stop doing doing Marvel movies, stop hiring Tessa Thompson (although I guess there are other reasons) and more movies like Jojo or What We Do In The Shadows etc
All humans have to some extent with an in-group preference. It expresses itself in sexual selection and family bonding. It would be a very strange thing indeed if we did not have an unconscious bias toward people we feel genetically and culturally connected with.
This selectivity and tribalism is an exceedingly common behaviour across almost all of the higher mammals I can immediately think of. It should be no surprise or even controversial that humans share this trait as well.
But remarkably we also have the capacity to overlay this trait with a broader abstraction around the universality of humanity. We can take the idea that all humans stand equal before their Maker and expand our ethical horizon to ultimately include all 7.5b people on the planet. We can formulate intellectually the idea that 'the earth is but one planet and mankind its citizens'. This is the root motivation that demands we condemn the wrong idea that some human races are genetically superior to others. Racism was founded in a mistaken interpretation of why some cultures and societies came to dominate while others were overrun all throughout history. We now should understand that it had nothing to do with genetics and almost everything with technology and institutional development.
But to then argue this means there is no difference between any of the cultures and societies is wrong as well. That is nothing more than an attempt to cancel out one stupid mistake with another. It is the reason why the woke left claims that all differences in outcomes can only be explained by racism. And if they cannot find any significant examples of personal racist anima, nor any institutional laws or policies to explain differences – then untestable concepts such as 'unconscious bias' and 'institutional racism' are trotted out to fill the gap.
Yet as I suggested above – all humans have an intrinsic unconscious bias, yet invoking this explains everything and nothing at the same time. Nor does pointing to institutional bias explain much either, it would be very surprising if the dominant culture anywhere did not organise their public life to suit themselves. Why would they not? This is the very stuff of culture and diversity is it not?
Human diversity and selectivity is innate and instinctively enduring. We would not want it to be otherwise. But skin colour and the land of our birth are but accidents; they are the least important aspect of who we are and tell us nothing of our character, competency and potential for achievement.
Because our long, agonising history tells another far more inspiring story of how we have learned to expand our moral horizons painfully and progressively, embracing ever larger groups of peoples and cultures – culminating now in a universal recognition of our common humanity, dignity and right to justice.
And for me that is a battle worth having – against those who would divide us yet again.
I have absolutely no problem saying Western Democratic cultures are superior to anything else we have and we all know it yet, to some, thats borderline, if not outright, racist
One of the most interesting papers I did at Uni was a paper on Social Psychology where that sort of stuff was covered.
Ingroup and outgroup biases and the like. In short, it is nearly impossible for any of us not to have some degree of bias or prejudice, whether that be conscious or unconscious bias.
The best way to break down those prejudices is by setting superordinate goals that require groups to work together to solve the issues.
I guess a great example would be the situation in Ukraine. Prior to the war there would likely have been lots of divisions over all sorts of matters. But when they are all focusing on the goal of defeating the Russians those sort of divisions are forgotten and people are united behind the common cause.
Propaganda and fake news usually also contain snippets of truth, so not being “completely wrong” doesn’t make it/him right either – it’s a nonsensical thing to say. The assertion was about Māoridom, not about gangs. So, perhaps I should ask you to explain why you put up this diversion.
I did, but you didn't listen because you didn't want to hear it because you don't want to answer it. Did you really think it was a rhetorical question? Perhaps you realise that you have enough rope to get tangled up in knots or worse. A commenter cannot force another commenter to answer, least of all to answer in a certain way, but a Mod can force some response if there are good grounds for this. You were and still are following the clear signpost to those grounds.
'Did you really think it was a rhetorical question?'
Yes I did.
'So, perhaps I should ask you to explain why you put up this diversion.'
The perhaps makes what could have been a simple question into something ambiguous:
Perhaps you’ll ask me a question or perhaps not.
I thought you were just jumping in with your usual sort of subtlety, like your use of the Spanish Archer, which I first thought was some sort of obscure sexual position (like the reverse cowgirl)
Try this instead:
'So I'll ask you to explain why you put up this diversion.'
That makes basically the same question clear and unambiguous.
So to your question, my response was to Nic the NZers response to Blade.
I thought Nic was over the top in his reply so I replied to Nic with an example that I thought would further expand on Blades point.
The “perhaps” was intended to leave you with a clear choice: either put up or shut up. Maybe that was too subtle for you – I forgot I was dealing with a simpleton.
You decided to run interference with moderation, in which case you may be treated as such and end up in Pre-Moderation too, or you could simply stay out of it – the choice is yours, still, but not for much longer.
Unless you can read Blade’s mind or you are in communication with Brother Blade you were only adding your own reckons, which were not helpful in the slightest.
'Maybe that was too subtle for you – I forgot I was dealing with a simpleton.'
Perhaps you're not as clever as you think you are, perhaps you jump into discussions when you don't need to and perhaps you feel a little inadequate since you're clearly not as experienced as the other moderators and so, perhaps, you feel you need to make up for it in other ways.
Have you tried asking the other moderators for advice?
I know when I've been over my head and out of my depth (like you are now) that asking for advice from other better, more experienced people can be a little hard on the ego but is generally always worth it in the long run.
[You’re now also in Pre-Moderation until you also have finished and completed Blade’s homework in your own words and with your own links – no cheating this time. Same terms and conditions apply as for Blade. Bye now – Incognito]
“I also told the Minister that, with all due respect, teaching prison inmates Te Kāinga Maori will not lessen incarceration rates. They are not in prison because they lack Te Kāinga Maori, they are there because of bad parenting. The same applies to white people in jail … again that is largely due to bad parenting, a lack of education and a failure to instil values. That is what I want to get across.''
''Tribal groups might seek to fight others to increase tribal or personal mana.''
''Traditionally the mana or prestige of a tribe and its members was all important. Tribes and their rangatira could increase mana by triumphing over other tribal groups.''
In Māori society rugby has come to be viewed as a platform to maintain an indigenous model of masculinity as well as one of the main sites for the achievement of prestige. National and international representations of the Māori man as a rugby player—a present-day version of the Māori warrior
[You’ve got a bonus try for your effort, which fell way short.
As a Māori you know that you do not and cannot speak for all Māoridom – with personal opinions one can only speak for oneself. You made a specific assertions, which you were asked to correct or support, and so far you’ve done much less than half of the task.
I fail to see how Alan Duff’s quote of his personal views on teaching prison inmates Te Kāinga Māori supports your assertions about Māoridom. Ironically, the article starts with Duff’s “desire to use the written word to influence those behind bars to lead better lives”.
Why do simpletons such as you and Puckish Rogue tend to use Māoridom, gangs & crime, and prison population almost synonymously? Are distinctions, nuances, and context too hard for you or are you keener on pushing a certain narrative?
Similarly, the quote about traditional Māori warfare has little bearing on your assertions about present-day Māoridom.
The special status conferred to Māori men playing rugby again doesn’t support your assertions about how Māoridom values and prioritises education.
No more bonus tries after this one – Incognito]
[You didn’t correct or support your assertions about Māoridom, as you were asked to do and I don’t want to waste anymore of my time on this. Take 10 days off and don’t pretend to be a spokesperson for or an expert on Māoridom when you get back because you’re clearly neither – Incognito]
Every culture has its dark side and blind spots. But I think you’ll find that the dismal statistics for Maori also correlate with relative economic privilege. There is a reason for all the targeted government programmes — as a people they have been subjected to systematic violence by the colonial settler state, and while the rest of us sit around arguing on blogs & sipping cappuccinos, our wealth is based on massive theft from 17% of the population.
Hmm. It's difficult to tell exactly where the money is going – but it sounds like bureaucracy. I can't conceive that "$11.2m for a positive behaviour and learning programme" is going to achieve much.
If there are behaviour issues (and, according to my teacher friends, these are order-of-magnitude more severe than pre-Covid), then schools need support to deal with these right now – not in 2 years time when the 'programme' has been designed.
What schools actually need is the funding for additional classroom support for these kids – whether that looks like additional teachers in existing classrooms, or small group coaching, or even non-standard classes (if teens are working shelf-stacking [as quoted in the article], then perhaps concentrate on the key NCEA subjects when they're at school – and at least get them the core qualifications – you need NCEA L2 English and Maths for most apprenticeships).
I don't see how developing a programme (which the schools won't have the funding to carry out) – is going to do anything except keep bureaucrats employed.
The PBL program has been around for ages. It was in my daughter's primary school and she's now 20. It's a whole school approach with incentives and rewards for positive behaviour – it does teach some kids to suck-up to the teachers though. With the new funding, it should be able to get into more schools.
It's like most anything a government does (regardless of who is in) and that's throw money at the situation
At best it'll do something positive (rarely), usually no change will happen (but the government can say we've done something) and occasionally it'll make the problem even worse
You're right in what would help the problem, targeted support to those that need it but it needs to start with the vulnerable families while the mother is pregnant not years later at school
I agree with the earlier support — but it has to be AND ALSO rather than pick one or the other.
Absent a time machine, we can't fix the early years of kids now at school. Yes, we need to intervene now to prevent the next tranche arriving with preventable issues – but we also need to work with the kids now in school (or missing from school) and put solutions to those issues in place.
I mean you can and should do both but rather than have two different programs running concurrently there should be only one program starting before the child is born which older children can be entered into
The more programs you run means more costs and more chances of kids falling through the cracks
Goodness gracious me! This issue has been popping up to the surface every few years since before my offspring began school. Another study and another initiative and more targeted funding and 'special' funding for those groups with 'discrepancies'. And it only gets worse.
How about we chuck all that aside and go and speak with the families living in overcrowded homes, juggling four or five jobs, living from hand to mouth and generally ticking all the 'most at risk' boxes but whose children are attending school and are succeeding?
As always we focus on the causes of failures and not on how many families in similar circumstances make it work for their children.
The first two drivers would be (if we asked them) that these parents realise education is the key to a more secure job and a better future, and these parents genuinely want their children to have a better life than than they had.
"How about we chuck all that aside and go and speak with the families living in overcrowded homes, juggling four or five jobs, living from hand to mouth and generally ticking all the 'most at risk' boxes but whose children are attending school and are succeeding?"
A suggestion that is based on existing solutions, and grassroots perspectives?
Then what'll happen to all the consultants ready to advise?
I'm not saying that they make up a significant number of the 60% absent…but could it be that some of those being counted as truant are actually being home schooled?
More than 10,000 students in New Zealand are now learning from home, but there is growing concern their learning methods aren’t being scrutinised.
But some want the reviews reinstated as applications for home schooling grow.
There have been 5,000 new applications in the last year.
Kaitaia Primary School’s Principal, Brendon Morrissey, says “that’s a big number.”
It is quite possible that some parents do not realise you have to apply to home school and have simply pulled their kids out of mainstream education.
Homeschool reviews were initially reduced, and then eliminated because in terms of expense vs negative homeschool reviews, the ERO decided it was a budgetary save.
Despite once being a committee member on a National Home Ed organisation, I only ever viewed Home Ed as another choice, as opposed to a universally better one. The approach of families and engagement of children are as diverse as the population. Quite a few with exemptions were not part of any group.
My addition to your sensible suggestion re: truancy.
Make the school experience better. Because if that doesn't change, all that's been achieved is returning a child to where they don't want to be.
How's that help with encouraging a love of learning? Disruption in the classroom to indicate pushback, would be expected at the least.
Okay, granted it was a different time…and technologywise might as well be a different universe…do you think that there might have been certain elements of the 'old' school environment that was more conducive to attending and engaging than today's?
I heard today that a newish school in the Waikato, designed and built to encompass all the very latest in modern learning has removed practically all the non- fiction books from the Library. (Library is deliberately capitalised, as befitting it's importance.) The learners don't need all those dusty dog eared reference books… the world's knowledge is all there on Goggle and Wiki.
Thing is, you ask Goggle or Wiki a specific question and voilla, the answer is delivered instantaneously. The old way, you'd wander down through the rows looking for the book about Space or Deserts and along the way be sidetracked by books about Ancient Civilizations or WWII.
Maybe the Young People have been conditioned to expect everything to be delivered at the push of the enter key or the swipe of a screen. Even the littlies have their iPads. Attention spans are practically non- existent.
Many years ago there were Truancy Officers, and from memory for a period there were also Visiting Teachers (both in primary schools; secondary may have had somebody doing some work on truancy). The jobs overlapped to a certain extent; I think the Truancy Officers were eliminated first, then later the Visiting Teachers. Talking to those whose children are already attending would seem to be less important than talking to the parents of children that do not attend.
For many years they were called Visiting Teachers, in the 70's and 80's. They visited the homes and helped with problems which were contributing…. Children going with Parents to interpret, for example.
Things going from bad to worse for the Keystone-cops Russian military in Ukraine.
Now their General in charge of the war Gerasimov has been evacuated to Belgorod due to shrapnel injuries from a Ukrainian attack.
According to this twitter thread there was a Ukrainian attack against a meeting of high ranking officers at a Russian command headquarters in the Russian-held area of Izyum in Ukraine. It appears that 20 may have been killed and up to 40 injured.
Not only that, there was just another huge fire in Belgorod. Judging by all the secondary explosions, it looks like it was a weapons depot.
According to this twitter thread and video, helicopters were circling the area 30 minutes prior to the explosion suggesting a VIP was about to arrive. Joining the dots, it seems likely that the Russians were securing the area waiting for Gerasimov to arrive.
So, it looks like the poor guy would have had quite a greeting when he arrived to the sound of a massive explosion at an arms depot in the area.
Here's a succinct look at how his famous Gerasimov Doctrine (all instruments of state deployed carefully and accurately to achieve victory) supports broader strategy within the Russian state:
Agreed. Not that I feel particularly sorry for him given his past form. Karma is a wonderful thing.
But this horrendous attrition of their top leadership must be becoming very problematic for the Russian war effort. They tend to have a very top down military structure, and those in the lower-down ranks don't have much of a clue what to do.
The Ukrainians must be getting some good intel on the whereabouts of senior officers in Ukraine.
It could be the US intelligence service. Or maybe the Russians are still using unsecured communications despite all the trouble that has caused them so far. Or maybe it is the Russian military themselves feeding info back given that a lot of them don’t particularly like their senior officers and don’t particularly want to be there. Or it could be a combination of all the above.
For as long as it suits Xi, and not a smidgen longer. Xi can yank Putin's chain anytime. That he's been keeping quiet for so long tells us he likes what's happening. Not a threat to Belt & Road, apparently…
The longer the war continues the more likely is Russia will win it. And there is no mechanism for reflection – or regime change – in the Putin regime.
For example Valery Gerasimov was sent to the Ukraine by Putin last week, and was apparently wounded yesterday by a Ukrainian MLRS strike on the CP (Command Post) of Maj. Gen. Andrei Simonov who was killed in the attack. Siminov was the ninth Russian general to die in this war and was killed near the city of Izyum – the fulcrum of the supposed northern spear head of the Russian Donbas offensive.
As an aside, Siminov was the senior officer commanding all Russia's electronic warfare units and the targeting information for this Ukrainian strike almost certainly came from an U.S. RC-135 "Rivet Joint" signals intelligence surveillance aircraft that has been operating over the Black Sea. Make what you will of how provocative that knowledge must be to the Russians.
The fate of Gerasimov (the closest of Putin confidantes) – fall from favour, disappearance from public view, sent to the front to get things moving or find salvation in death on the battlefield – is in the finest of totalitarian traditions (the fact he was only wounded and has fled the front will have Field Marshal Paulus chuckling in his grave) and should tell us all we need to know about the ability of Russia to find a way out of this war that doesn't involve a bloody victory.
I think the longer it goes on, the more it favours the Ukrainians. That is because a long war becomes a war of attrition, and a war of attrition favours the side that can replace its losses.
Ukraine doesn't have this problem with the west committing to supply their military needs for as long as required. For instance, it looks like the US will be committing another $33 billion to Ukraine alone. Plus all the gear coming in from Britain and the rest of Europe.
Most of this isn't even in the field yet. When the Ukrainians are trained on all that, and they are able to get it into the field imagine how much damage they will be able to do to the Russian army compared to what they are doing now. Even as it stands at the moment, Ukraine is giving the Russians a lot of trouble just using the equipment they have. And that is going to get progressively worse for the Russians.
I think that is a reason the Russians attacked a lot earlier than they probably wanted to given the muddy conditions that is confining Russian forces to the road. Ideally, it would suit the Russian armour advantage to be on the open ground that is to their advantage in the Donbas. But that isn't really possible at the moment.
There was the May 9th deadline from Putin. But I think also, the Russians probably rightly concluded that if they held off until conditions favoured them, the Ukrainians would have got a lot stronger by that time.
Excepting of course that Russia could choose deploy weapons that would essentially 'win' the war in a matter of minutes. The longer it drags out the closer we get to that outcome I suspect.
That would be the temptation. However, I believe that NATO have stated that their response to such action would be proportionate, though not not necessarily the same.
So, for instance, NATO might bite the bullet and completely cut gas imports from Russia, which would completely deplete the Russian war effort nearly immediately.
Also, even China might be compelled to condemn such an action, and may not want to be seen giving tacit support to such action.
Things going from bad to worse for the Keystone-cops Russian military in Ukraine
Morale must be in the shitter.
Our briefing this week sets out just how rotten the army has been. Russia’s defence budget, of over $250bn at purchasing power, is about three times that of Britain or France, but much of it is squandered or stolen. Mr Putin and his top commanders kept their invasion plans from senior officers, reflecting a crippling lack of trust. Disaffected troops, fed on out-of-date rations, have deserted their vehicles. Units have tortured, raped and murdered only to be honoured by the Kremlin. Russia has failed to win control of the skies or combine air power with tanks, artillery and infantry. Wallowing in corruption, unable to foster initiative or learn from their mistakes, its frustrated generals abandoned advanced military doctrine and fell back on flattening cities and terrorising civilians.
And the Ukrainians still haven't got into service all the good stuff the west is sending so I understand.
So, it looks like they are giving the Russians a hard time with the stuff they are using already. Doesn't bode well for the Russians once all the western heavy artillery etc gets into the field.
All they are doing is backing the Ukrainian's own willingness to fight for their country. A bit different to Afghanistan that folded like a pack of cards when the Western military left, despite all the investment there in helping them become self-sufficient militarily.
Seems more likely that Putin is fighting to the last Russian from what I can see. It reminds me of something from "The Walking Dead" where the Russian soldiers are like the zombies that keep coming and keep getting wiped out.
Whether they are going to have enough to win by force of numbers with that strategy seems unlikely given that this is a "special military operation'', not a war, according to the Russians, which limits their ability to call up reservists or launch a major draft. Even if they did that, it is going to take a long time before those forces can be brought into the combat. Also, equipping new forces will be an issue for the Russians given the attrition of their equipment and the difficulties in them replacing it.
So, the Russians are pretty much stuck with what they have got at the moment.
On the other hand, the Ukrainians have no such constraints and are training up as many as possible for the fight.
Probably all printed money. There is an endless supply of that.
But, I think the Ukrainians would be fighting with or without international support. They would likely be under a lot more Russian control by now. But they probably would go to more of an insurgency type war.
So, the US and Europe are just backing the Ukrainians in a fight they intend to have any way.
This stuff from the Russians about them fighting NATO or whatever is ridiculous. At the moment it is the might of the Russian army against the might of NATO’s little finger.
All that NATO has given the Ukrainians up until recently is basically some anti-tank and anti-aircraft gear, and some old Soviet stuff that the NATO nations wanted to get rid of for better stuff anyway.
'This stuff from the Russians about them fighting NATO or whatever is ridiculous. At the moment it is the might of the Russian army against the might of NATO’s little finger'
Oh really!You might be interested to know that the U.S.A is a member of NATO…and has a rather large….'finger'.
I did say "at the moment''. But that is certainly starting to change. Hence while Russia is trying to do as much as they can while they have the chance.
That they are. But remember, it is not like they are supporting Ukraine to invade Russia. Ukraine never asked to be invaded, and Russia can end this any time they want to by withdrawing.
The Ukrainian's outstanding combat performance will only degrade as their best units are chewed up in attritional positional warfare in the Donbas, whereas for the Russians the only way is up. At some point in the short to medium term a convergence in combat performance will occur. Already reports are the remaining Russian are fighting a lot better. This is why the Ukrainians are desperate for artillery, a type of weapon whose lethality is almost independent of the skill of the infantry. In this sense, the fighting in the Donbas is analogous to most 20th century warfare. For example the Somme in 1916, where the huge losses of Kitcheners ill-trained "new armies" was of less military importance than the destruction of Germany's best pre-war infantry, with Ludendorff lamenting the conversion of the German army into a militia. Subsequent to the Somme as the Allies armies improved the Germans were forced to retreat to the Hindenburg Line & adopt an elastic defense based on concrete and a cadre of elite machines gunners. Or perhaps more relevant the huge losses of the Red army in 1941-42 were of less importance than the massive and irresplaceable attrition of the Germans in the same period. By the time of the post-Kursk counter-offensives the Red Army still wasn't very good but it had killed enough of the very good Germans of 1941 for it not to matter anymore.
Another thing not being covered in the media is the crippling fuel crisis engulfing the Ukrainian army. Don’t be seduced by propaganda, the Russians are not stupid. All Ukrainian refining capacity was destroyed early on in this war and much of the subsequent Russian cruise missile attacks have been on the fuel storage and transport net, particularly railways, which has basically starved the Ukrainians of fuel for their still powerful tank brigades. Almost all imagery of Ukrainian heavy armour I've seen recently is showing it dug in, with probably only enough fuel for emegency use.
All in all, the fate of the Ukraine will probably be decided in the next 2 weeks. If the Russians can't achieve a clean breakthough and surround the Donbas salient – and there is good reason to suppose they lack the combat power for this – then Putin will either declare war on or after the May Day parades and simply use brute force and numbers to overwhelm the Ukraine or someone will have to come up with a face-saving Russian "victory" with a ceasefire along the current battlelines – again if we were to look to history the Finnish defeat in the 1939 Winter war might be a good guideline. I know Zelensky will vehemently oppose any ceding of land but if that is what the US and Russia and China can cook up and the bulk of the Ukraine retains it's independence then that might be what he'll have little choice but to accept.
I think the Russian artillery are good at attacking civilian cities where they can't really miss. But I think their targeting ability is not as good as the Ukrainians.
Fuel is definitely an issue. But at the moment, the Ukrainians don't need to move around as much as the Russians. The Ukrainians are able to maintain more defensive positions, and Putin has put the onus on the Russians to do the attacking.
But fuel supply is something they definitely will need to solve when they start more counter-offensives. They have a similar problem to the Russians at the start of the war, in terms of long supply lines. They may need to start sending out fuel trucks from Poland or similar.
If the Ukrainians are able to, now would be a good time for them to counter attack, while the Russians are low on leadership, and don't want to waste their own ammo and fuel due to their own logistical problems.
Declaring war is an option for Putin to increase the soldiers available, which is a major lack at the moment. But those soldiers aren’t magicked up over night. They have to be trained, equipped, and incorporated into the existing forces.
Given the attrition rate on Russian equipment, and the difficulty of replacing it, this is going to be problematic for Russia, even if a state of war is declared.
And, how much does Russia really want to weaken its armed forces over this conflict? They are just playing into the stated objectives of the US who want a weakened Russia.
Thre is no indication I have seen that the Ukrainians have sufficient combat power to conduct anything more than local counter-attacks. I think a counter offensive is completely beyond them and anyway, no armoured offensive has had any chance of succeeding if the enemy has air superority since 1940.
The Russians will keep up a methodical, Great War style artillery dominated postional warfare to seize and hold limited objectives ('Artillery conquers, infantry occupies' to quote JFC Fuller) and using western artillery the Ukrainians will then counter-attack. The Russian will suffer hugely going in, and the Ukrainians will suffer hugely throwing them out again. This fighting will be almost exactly like the Western Front in 1917. IMHO, the war in the Ukraine will most likely develop into a version of Passchendaele.
I understand they have quite a good counter-offensive going around Kharkiv at the moment. That may be where the attack on Belgorod came from, as the Ukrainians are quite close to that border. And they are also threatening to cut off Russian supply lines from there.
I understand their counter-attack around Kherson has come to a bit of a halt atm. But, from what I have read, the Russians have had to send a lot more forces back there to hold the ground. So, that removes Russian forces from attacking elsewhere.
From what I have read, it looks like a lot of the Russian battle groups are very undermanned due to losses they have taken and are not really fully functional. For instance, apparently, some of their APCs are going out with only a couple of people in them rather than 8 or whatever the ideal number is.
It sounds like their biggest problem is really not having enough infantry. I think this is in part due to their war strategy and also massive attrition. But it makes it very hard for them to hold ground and go forward. The problem being that, as they go forward, they have to leave troops behind to hold taken ground. This thins their forces out further as they continue to advance.
So, where the Ukrainians have retreated, it often is strategic, going back to strong defensive positions and inviting the Russians to keep coming. Continually attacking defensive positions results in very high attrition, which is what we are seeing at the moment.
The big mistake the Russians made at the start was to attack on too many fronts. So, the Ukrainians don't want to repeat the same mistake, and should focus their counter-attacks where they can have good effect.
No links for the above sorry as it would take ages to find all the stuff I have looked at. As you can see, this is a bit of an obsession for me atm!!
Good comments from both of you. I can well understand how absorbing these events are. To my mind the Ukrainian agony makes so many of the other 'outrage de jour' seem like petty, narcissistic distractions.
On the point of the fuel shortages for the Ukrainians, one thing they have in their advantage is the use of drone technology. This stuff is a lot more portable, and less fuel intensive than heavy armour. The Russians don't seem to be up with that so much.
Obviously the TB2 Turkish drone that has been well publicised. But also the US switchblade kamakaze drones. And they are also utilising hobby drones and converting them for munitions use. Including using 3D printers to customise tail fins etc so that are fitted to common, cheap munitions they have.
It must be really unsettling as a soldier knowing that sort of thing can happen out of the blue. It must cause the sort of effect on morale that snipers cause.
Apparently they are customising armour-piercing munitions to be dropped from hobby drones on the likes of tanks and APCs. The cost-benefit of that equation is staggering. The cost of the drone plus munition is less than $1000, and they can take out a piece of equipment that might be worth $3/4 of a million or more.
If sea level rise was Labour-Greens' opening panic story to introduce their Zero Carbon strategy, starting a debate about sea walls, insurance stripping away location-specific premiums to zero coverage, the great Westport tombstone, and Canute-like 'heroic' resistance, we should probably expect a related panic theme every week coming out from Shaw and Roberston.
The gist from Newshub's breaking story last night was that it was driven by a new scientific discovery. Neither Shaw nor Robertson seem to do panic. Shaw does pragmatic response (usually too understated) and Robertson does complacent ignorance (I've never noticed him personally addressing the climate crisis).
If they were to collaborate, it'd be a good thing. Watch for any specific climate-change framing in his budget speech, huh? If you can cite it here, I'll applaud. If not, he'll prove me right.
They have a lot of levers with Queenstown Lakes. They own much of the Queenstown CBD where QLDC resides. They are a JV partner on a couple of properties with them. They are one of the largest tourism operators in QLDC, in a city that runs on tourism. They are partners in Queenstown and Wanaka Kiwibuild. They are signatories on the NZTA-QLDC roading alliance that rebuilt the town centre and is now building the bypass SH1 road. They will also be one of the largest governance beneficiaries of 3 Waters.
The local government elections are going to be very interesting. I'd expect that, if the Council has moved to supporting 3 waters, the anti-group will be looking to topple them. There's a strong swell of popular opinion against 3 waters (in the way that it's currently been packaged) – which all local body reps will be eyeing with concern….
In 3 Waters there are now so many safeguards against privatisation that they forgot that the 50% iwi ownership is pretty close to privatisation itself.
There's not even a 49-51% split that John Key did for the electricity generator selloff.
While this government clearly sees a rationality in renationalising health and tertiary education, the state is forming a structure for water in which Ministers (and hence voters) get the least possible influence.
I bet if Labour proposed to National that the regional and co-governance model was dumped and they simply set up a nationwide water asset owner, it would go the same was as the National+Labour+Act vote that the Carbon legislation got: enduring Parliamentary mandate.
As it happens this morning I found out an old colleague of mine is working in a leadership role in just this space, and I think I have made it clear I am fully supportive of major water industry consolidation for any number of good technical reasons.
But caucus seems to have conflated it with another agenda altogether that looks for all practical purposes indistinguishable from 'separate development'. And some of us might recall where that led to.
The SuperCity was initially Labour’s idea but when National won in 2008 it became the plaything of ACT and Rodney Hide forced through breaking changes in unseemly haste, way outside of the transition plan, and the resulting beast was not what the royal commission envisaged. The RW tried to fuck up Auckland by turning the main council services into corporate CCO’s that mostly ignore democracy. Luckily Aucklanders were wise to the gNats asset-stripping ways and have tried to elect left wing Councillors ever since.
There was a swell of opposition to 3 Waters. That swell is rapidly being reduced, by strategic manoeuverings, to a harmless ripple. There will be no community up-rising to topple councillors who support 3 Waters.
So the pop culture wars currently being played out on our screens, books, comics and games are certainly getting interesting.
I get the feeling that the current woke/intersectional/garbage is slowly, but surely, turning.
The BBC, finally, realized that the 13th Doctor (or Doctor Karen if you prefer) was poorly written and was greatly disliked (not because shes a woman but because the scripts were garbage) and so Russel T Davies has returned and we're all now waiting for the death of Doctor Karen and who will be the new Doctor
To bring back the audiences I see no better option than David Tennant and Billie Piper (though I think Christopher Eccleston was best) coming back for a limited run and then handing off to the new Doctor
Batwoman finally cancelled, this show basically epitomised all that was bad about woke culture:
Amazon have made a major boo boo with the Rings of Power, heres a reuploaded clip that Amazon put out of 'superfans' talking about the trailer and then Amazon removed it because of how bad it was received
Comedians and actors are now starting to speak out, Bill Maher has certainly seen which way the wind is blowing.
Disney is haemorrhaging money, Netflix loses over 50 billion and subscriptions for the first time
Get woke go broke is now starting to become mainstream
We've still got a long way to go but at least theres a distant light at the end of the tunnel
However there are still many, many problems and this isn't just a left right issue but a good entertainment issue, heres a list of best picture winners and nominees form today back, have a look at the movies this decade and compare them to previous decades
Movies from decades past used to be both critically acclaimed and popular with audiences, look at the movies on the list and look at some of the movies that were nominated and didn't win and compare them to today
What that means is movies are going backwards and we're suffering for it.
I think he really did come across like an alien (not that I've met an alien) and while Billies chemistry with David was off the charts Christopher is still the best Doctor
Hopefully hes got his mental illnesses under control because he was really not doing well at all not so long ago
Eccleston was a great way to reboot the franchise but to me, Tennant was the most watchable Doctor, even the canonical Dr Who. He brought humour and zany energy. The downside was an unfortunate tendency to be a foppish nerd and talk a lots of BS rather than take action. I blame the writers for that. Tennant is a great actor
Enjoyed the "BatWoman" trailer — at least they use the word "Woman" simply and clearly. Never watched the show.
As for the Amazon show, it's based on the appendices to LOTR, they don't have rights to the real stories from the Silmarillion or Lost Tales, so it's doomed to be weak. I don't mind a different take on Middle Earth. (The Last Ringbearer by Kirill Yeskov was great). But I am worried that they won't be telling the great stories we hope for.
Different takes are fine, some of those really into the books don't like the movies and thats fine.
The problem is they're using Tolkiens name and leeching off the movies (as much as they can) but also are trying to erase Tolkien as much as possible and rewrite his works for 'todays' audiences
Its almost as if they've forgotten that the books have been translated into over 30 (nearly 40) languages so other cultures seem to be fine with what Tolkien wrote or that the movies made nearly 3 billion dollars world wide (nearly 6 if you count The Hobbit film series)
So people all over the world were happy with the books and happy with the films yet these producers have decided their must be Hobbits Harfoots, black beardless female dwarves, black elves with short hair, Galadriel must be shown in armour and swinging a sword (because being top three most powerful beings in the third age just isn't enough)
You want to make movie or a series with black elves then go for it, beardless dwarves is aok with me
Bezos has reportedly spent a billion dollars (money acquired by notoriously exploiting his workers) trying to get this thing to the screen. Will enjoy the schadenfreude if it fails. And I agree it does look to be a travesty against Tolkien’s vision, because too many millennial writers are making it into their own political ego trip.
But on the other hand, Middle Earth is such an amazing place & I love to see it brought to life.
The end times are nigh. The war in the police hierarchy between progressive commanders and fascists has entered the attrition phase. As the numbers turn against him, the police director of the national organised crime group, Greg Williams, wrote in an email that it “makes my head hurt".
Stuff requested under the OIA any correspondence between the district commanders and Police National Headquarters over the proposal.
The emails from last year reveal that many district commanders felt the national operation was a poor use of resources and was a distraction from action against organised crime, guns and methamphetamine.
Of the 12 police districts, only three – Tasman in the South Island, and Central and Eastern in the North Island – expressed support for conducting aerial cannabis search and destroy operations.
Waikato police district commander superintendent Bruce Bird criticised an official report into the national operation. He said the initiative had failed to make cannabis any more expensive, suggesting that supply had not been dramatically affected. “This paper is full of assumptions and speculation, but lacks any evidence,” he said. “There is also evidence that the price for a tinny [a small amount of cannabis] never changes – that is an impact on supply and demand.”
He seems to mean the evidence shows no impact on supply and demand – but the words got scrambled in his head and came out wrong.
Canterbury district commander John Price wrote in an email in September that they had not run aerial operations “for a few years”. “The intelligence is not there to support the benefit realisation".
Intelligence not being there has never been a problem for cops in the past, so looks like radical progress is happening.
Waitematā district commander Naila Hassan wrote in an email in September that she did not support the plan. “In Waitematā we don’t see any worthwhile benefit to this operation being run in our district.” Bay of Plenty district commander Andy McGregor also wrote that he did not support a national operation.
Gosh, it's almost as if there's been an outbreak of common sense. No wonder the crime ringleader dude got spooked.
Wellington district crime services manager John van den Heuvel summarised feedback from staff in the capital in another email last September. “With benefit not obvious, the proposed annual NCCO may be viewed as an operation for the sake of an operation,’’ one bullet point in the email stated.
The feedback was sent to police director of national organised crime group, Greg Williams, who replied in an email that it was not productive.
Who would expect a fascist to notice when a feedback process produced a consensus? They don't get training in how to spot a consensus, so can't blame them.
Green Party MP Chlöe Swarbrick: "the price of a tinny has not been impacted." Word on the street? Part of the hip younger generation, so I guess she gets it. Anyway, price stability is the goal of the RB, neoliberalism, and our parliamentary bipartisan consensus, so it's win/win/win all around. Except for the fascists.
Small question of hyperbole here. "Fascism : a way of organizing a society in which a government ruled by a dictator controls the lives of the people and in which people are not allowed to disagree with the government." Can you marry this definition of fascism with your depiction of some police commanders as 'fascists' who are still seeing air surveillance of marijuana growing as worthwhile? I get you don't agree but really…. fascist?
Let's keep that word for those to whom it really applies.
good post. have had personal experience with a couple of those places, high tides co-inciding with inland rainfall can be devastating, and its getting common. I think that most sea-protection happens where the land is worth more, somewhere there is a correlation between not believing climate change, and demanding that something be done about something you dont believe in, the nth shore springs to mind. there will be neighbourhood valuation groups meeting and discussing what can be done to stop rising waters, and lowering values…
Had you made some decent attempt to explain your thinking and referenced what it is in the post you think frames economy vs climate, I might have let this go. I’ve told you many times now that you don’t understand my position, and I’ve asked you to stop misrepresenting it. In the post I said that Labour should be helping coal mining communities to transition to other livelihoods. That’s the economy and climate action. I’m not willing to have people continually making shit up about what I write so please stay out of my posts for the rest of the month.
But having moved this to OM I can now say what I really think. The Greens everywhere have for decades vociferously stifled the one technology that would have prevented this crisis – yet even now when the failure is blatantly obvious – you still cannot tolerate anyone talking about it.
As I said – your OP on the other thread framed the problem as a false choice between coal and the industries on which our economy depends.
In the post I said that Labour should be helping coal mining communities to transition to other livelihoods.
Without specifying even in the broadest outline how you think this can be done – this is a pretty meaningless claim. My problem with all of these de-power schemes is that while they might look superficially appealing, once you start to dig into the complex energy, material and technology linkages involved in everything you take for granted about the modern world – they start to look less pretty.
You once argued there was no reason why we could not go back to living something like we did in the 1950's. Sure – but there is no reason to think that would be any more a stable state than it was back then. Moreover you would also have to accept that a population of 8b is not going to survive with the food production we had then. No computers, no internet, no medical tech – so many things we take for granted in 2022, are just not possible in a 1950 context.
Nor would I suggest that a second wave feminism would have happened. The opportunity for women to access the workforce in very large numbers was largely possible to the elimination of a lot of physical labour with automation for instance. All of this tech is inter-woven in ways most people do not see – and you generally either get the whole enchilada or none at all. There is not much scope for picking the things you want to have in 1950, like mRNA vaccines, but not computers mining bitcoin.
The point I have made many times – but you refuse to acknowledge – is that technology drives social change. If you deconstruct and regress the technology, the same will likely happen with the social conditions – only in ways you will probably not really like. Indeed if you want to see what would likely happen – consider the lives of the very poorest women on earth, still living in absolute poverty. These people are wonderfully de-powered, yet you would find their living conditions intolerable.
There is of course scope for us to trim excess and waste – and we keep doing this all the time. But the idea we can happily regress backward in time to a previous era that was somehow better and safer is dishonest, unadulterated rose-tint as far as I am concerned.
Below is an excerpt of a talk by journalist Karl du Fresne given at Victoria University on 28 April 2022 for the Free Speech Union. Here he examines the trends that are undermining a free press. [F]ree speech goes hand in hand with a free press – but it’s now ...
Braking And Entering: The CCTV recording of the ram-raid against Auckland’s Ormiston Mall is so disturbing, so inspiring of dread and rage, that no amount of rational commentary will make the slightest difference. It confirms in the most powerful fashion the stories so many New Zealanders have been telling themselves: ...
The Author of this Dorset Eye article, Ukraine – a beginner’s guide, says: “In 2014, the journalist and writer John Pilger wrote an article for The Guardian newspaper entitled ‘In Ukraine the US is dragging us towards war with Russia’.[i] Eight years later, in 2022, this prediction came true when ...
What's better than some Cranky Uncle cartoons scattered around here or there? A collection of them, cross-referenced with the fallacies they depict, of course! And this is what we highlight in this blog post. John Cook had made these cartoons available for download on his Cranky Uncle website in March 2021 ...
For decades now we've known that climate change will cause sea-level rise. In Aotearoa, the projections so far have been for 30cm by 2050, and 1m by 2100 - a level which is catastrophic to low-lying areas and coastal infrastructure and which is going to cost us billions of dollars ...
Losses to Australian teams over the weekend by both the Crusaders and Hurricanes have been greeted with shock and surprise by New Zealand rugby fans. Yet, an at least partial explanation is available; the two losses were both set in motion early in each match by a play that is ...
One of the more infuriating aspects of the current political debate is the way the National Party says it would be more rigorous, and more thriftily efficient in running social programmes that – left to its own devices – a National government would never have funded at all in the ...
On Friday the Government made some announcements about their Three Waters programme that were meant to assuage public concerns about the reforms. Instead, the announcements merely reinforced that Local Government Minister Nanaia Mahuta is determined to push the reforms through in the face of strong public opposition. The gist of ...
Unfortunately it looks like we’re going through a spate of ram raids in this country. Predictably, there comes the natural political rejoinder: “Alas, the youth are out of control in this country…” in various flavours of vitriol, and thus the Reckons. Those who were armchair epidemiologists concerning the ...
2022 is turning out to be a crap year – George Orwell would have been shocked. I guess reality is always different to predictions. Wars, economic and financial mayhem, and widespread censorship are now our lot. And on top of the censorship, there is disinformation and fake news. How ...
Completed reads for April: The Saga of Hervör and HeithrekThe Saga of Hromund GreipssonThe Tháttr of NornagestIphigenia among the Taurians, by EuripidesIphigenia at Aulis, by EuripidesRhesus, by Euripides?The Body in the Library, by Agatha ChristieWhy Didn’t They Ask Evans?, by Agatha ChristiePoirot Investigates, by Agatha ChristieThe Secret of Chimneys, ...
One thing is abundantly clear: the way we understand the world is largely a matter of narrative management. It is through the strength of narratives we frame concepts around politics, life, and our consequent approach to it. Personally. As Nations. Too often, we don’t even realise where these come ...
Stuff's Henry Cooke reports that the government is planning a significant increase in proactive release of official information, with plans to proactively release almost all advice to ministers. Which is an idea I love, and want to happen, but at the same time fear, because under this government it is ...
A few weeks ago it emerged that NZ Minister of Defence Peeni Henare had asked cabinet for approval to donate surplus NZDF Light Armoured Vehicles (LAVs) to Ukraine as part of the multilateral efforts to support the Ukrainian defence of its homeland against the Russian invasion that is now into ...
Reductions in effective productivity, largely as a result of events overseas, require reductions in real incomes. Ignore that and you cannot defeat inflation. What would you think of a doctor who treated only the symptoms and never tried to identify the causes? A quack? Skilled quacks will have accounts about ...
In an opinion piece in the Herald Bryce Edwards looks at rising inflation and the huge transfer of wealth to the rich under this Labour government. Some excerpts below detail the growing poverty gap. Business profitability is currently very high – banking profits were up 48 per cent last year, ...
The media's "honeymoon" with National's leader, Christopher Luxon, ended abruptly on 21 March when on Kerre McIvor's NewstalkZB show, he uttered these astonishing words:“If you want to have a go, and you want to make something of yourself -- we don't just do bottom feeding and just focus on the ...
Not Forgotten, Or Forgiven: At this moment our television screens are filled with stories featuring Ukrainians and Russians. Over the course of the past century, both of these peoples have endured almost unbelievable levels of pain, rage and guilt. The statue pictured above, entitled The Bitter Memory of Childhood is ...
A Dangerous Moment: Given the intense preparation which has gone into raising Māori expectations of co-governance, it would now be extremely dangerous for any political party to bring its institutional evolution to a halt. That said, the lack of any serious preparation of the non-Māori population for the revolutionary implications ...
Obviously not true for everyone. But it is amazing how many people take up a strong, emotional stance on the war in Ukraine despite being completely ignorant about what has been happening there. This short video does a great job of condensing the history of Ukraine – and presents ...
This month I finished working my way through the surviving corpus of Ancient Greek Drama (in translation). For those keeping track at home, that is forty-six plays – seven by Aeschylus, seven by ...
by Daphna Whitmore The Auckland University of Technology has just deplatformed a talk on cancel culture. Yes, you read that right. The cancellation was instigated by an “Inclusion Officer” (of course it was). A bit Orwellian isn’t it? I was invited to give a lecture at a Free Speech Union meeting ...
We can't go on like this Past and future warming – direct comparison on multi-century timescales walks us through the improvements in methods between the IPCC AR5 and AR6 leading to the latest report's startling conclusion about our rapid, ongoing effect on global mean temperature. Unleashing the fossil hydrocarbon genie has ...
As of yesterday, I can report that the 2022 SpecFicNZ anthology, Aftermath: Tales of Survival in Aotearoa New Zealand, was released: https://specfic.nz/2022/04/27/aftermath-tales-of-survival-in-aotearoa-new-zealand/ It features The Night of Parmenides, my take on a post-apocalyptic Dunedin. Also notable for referencing Scribes, the much-missed second-hand bookshop of North Dunedin. ...
The current cost of living crisis in the New Zealand economy could yet have severe political consequences. Warning signs could be seen in Monday’s French presidential election result – in which the nationalist-populist Marine Le Pen upset the status quo by getting through to the second round and winning an ...
Such is our devotion to the ordinary Kiwi battler, we ruthlessly tax the wages they earn and the stuff they buy, while letting people who amass wealth from speculative investment (and stash it in trusts) to go on their merry way, largely untroubled by the tax department. In the latest ...
Karl Marx’s Capital remains the most important theoretical work explaining the capitalist mode of production from a working class and socialist perspective. The Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice (CSSGJ) is pleased to be hosting a series of monthly lectures introducing each part of Volume 1 by Andy Higginbottom, ...
I have always taken a dim view of entrenching the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 (NZBORA). In contrast to certain other online commentators, I consider subjecting parliamentary statutes to judicial review ...
There were two elections over the weekend. In France, neo-liberal Emmanuel Macro managed to defeat neo-fascist Marine Le Pen, which should be a relief to everyone (especially given what a le Pen victory would have meant for Ukraine). But its hardly a particularly inspiring choice, effectively just a question of ...
Aotearoa has an inequality problem. The top 1% own 20% of the wealth, and nearly half our total wealth is owned by the top 5% (and as that paper notes, it likely understates the problem, as wealthy individuals are poorly captured by the Household Economic Survey on which it is ...
National truly is the party of aspiration. Any centre-right voter who watched their champion’s trainwreck interview with Jack Tame on last Sunday’s Q & A programme would have to conclude that if Christopher Luxon can lead National to victory in 2023, any wealthy white man in a suit can do ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Dennis Laich, Larry Wilkerson, and Erik Edstrom The US military is about to find itself committed to yet another unwinnable mission costing trillions of dollars. No, we are not referring to the possibility of American escalation in Russia’s brutal war against Ukraine: ...
There are currently twenty DHB's servicing Aotearoa - a country with five million people. A population that would fit comfortably in eightyone cities around the world.The fragmented system has twenty CEOs; twenty Boards (with up to eleven members each); twenty IT systems (to be confirmed); twenty HR departments; twenty payroll ...
An interesting piece of news out of Fellowship of Fans today. Not one that we were realistically expecting (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmc3sY0GQ0g) The news is that prior to his death in January 2020, Christopher Tolkien made some requests of Amazon, with regards to their impending Second Age adaptation, now called The Rings ...
https://freespeech.buzzsprout.com/370355/10486710-special-report-aut-cancel-a-free-speech-union-meeting The Free Speech Union has had a speaking event canceled by AUT. In the first public talk in what was to kick off a nationwide lecture series, Free Speech Union member Daphna Whitmore was to talk about (ironically) her experiences with women’s rights group ‘Speak Up For Women’ and ...
It’s a truism that the first casualty in war is the truth. But a close second is rational thought. We face this now where partisanship, wishful thinking and disinformation dominate what we read about the Ukraine-Russia war in our media. So, it is refreshing to come across an informed ...
A subject doing the rounds at the moment is the question of Tolkienian Canon. On one hand, there are the passionate Purists, for whom fidelity to Tolkien’s text is paramount in assessing Adaptations in general and The Rings of Power in particular. On the other, one finds discussions such ...
We do not go to war for free; we need to factor its economic costs and its consequences into public discussions.Wars are costly. People die, life is disrupted while wars divert resources to war use and wantonly destroy. We are currently involved in two major wars: the war against the ...
The Herald reports that a man who recoded a violent rant calling for genocide of Māori has been convicted for hate speech: Richard Jacobs, 44, filmed a video from his Pāpāmoa home in May last year where he called for the killing of Māori. The video was uploaded to ...
The Solomon Islands and PRC have signed a bilateral security pact. The news of the pact was leaked a month ago and in the last week the governments of both countries have confirmed the deal. However, few details have been released. What we do know is that Chinese police trainers ...
The Ministry of Education is currently attempting to decolonise the New Zealand schooling system, using some radical innovations. In this article, Prof Elizabeth Rata challenges some of the ideological underpinnings and practical outcomes of this agenda. Prof Rata welcomes debate on this issue, and the Democracy Project welcomes further submissions ...
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Inflation at 6.9% is a bad sign of the rising cost of living, and hidden within the headline numbers are some even grislier figures. As CTU economist Craig Renney has pointed out: Food prices rose nearly 7%, led by fruit and vegetables which rose 17%. Meat rose 7.2%. The price ...
Making Ourselves Heard: Is participatory democracy really that important? Yes, it is, because without returning effective political power to the people, there is no possibility of also returning their resources. No one involved in the management of local government will have failed to notice the fake subsidiarity of neoliberalism: making ...
Tony Simpson writes in a Newsroom article about a major shortcoming of the new history curriculum. Here’s an excerpt: I don’t disagree at all with what the Committee have come up with which is largely about Māori indigenous culture, where it came from and how it has responded to incomers ...
OK, this is a bit controversial as it is an interview of a surrendered combatant. Mind you he did personally ask for the interview (and specifically asked that fellow Brit Graham Phillips carry out the interview) as a chance to appeal for a prisoner exchange. He is technically a ...
Water packing heat: it's not only the oceans It's often remarked that we don't directly notice or feel most global warming because most excess energy being retained by the planet is ending up "stored" in Earth's oceans. Given its high specific heat capacity, liquid water is an effective sponge for ...
Co-governance is currently the most polarising issue in New Zealand politics. There’s something of a culture war over the concept of giving Māori voters or leaders a mandated equal political influence in public affairs. It’s an issue that has the potential to be socially explosive as plans are being developed ...
Mike Hosking continues to deliver what his paymasters pay him for, if today’s Herald is anything to go by. No surprise there – Hosking has always been under no illusion as to what it is that he has to sell. What is worth remarking on, however, is the evident emotional ...
PHOTO (cropped): Japan Meteorological Agency, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=114321094 Jenny Stein, Resilience to Nature’s Challenges National Science ChallengeFollowing a volcanic eruption, local communities understandably have more pressing concerns than ensuring a sample of ash gets sent to a lab. But that sample will provide crucial insight into the extent ...
This is a re-post from Carbon Brief by Ella Gilbert, John King, and Ian Renfrew Scientists know the surface of the Larsen C ice shelf in Antarctica is melting, making it vulnerable to collapse. For the first time, we can rank the most important causes of melting over the recent past. ...
There are four types of bills that Parliament considers: most bills are government bills, but there are also members bills, private bills and local bills. Members bills are relatively well know (some important ones have passed over the last few years), but these latter three types are often grouped together. ...
The Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee has reported back on the Digital Identity Services Trust Framework Bill. The bill is one of those boring administrative ones, establishing a regulatory framework for providers of "digital identity services" - people who validate your identity online. Which normally isn't the sort of ...
A major, nation-wide challenge to our national well-being, such as the coronavirus pandemic, is not necessarily bad news for everybody. The government of the day has no choice but to take it on the chin, but opposition politicians, and other critics of the government, can have a field day; they ...
One word has largely been missing from the coverage of the MoH advice about MIQ: Omicron. The relevant memo was written in November. It was referring to the Delta outbreak and to the relative incidence of the Delta variant in the community as opposed to it coming over the border, ...
SpecFicNZ’s new post-apocalyptic themed anthology will be out soon, with Yours Truly providing one of the stories (specifically a Dunedin-centric piece titled The Night of Parmenides). Here’s a list of the other contributors, plus a look at the cover:
I recently read a critique of the market-oriented economic theory known as “neoliberalism” and decided to add some of my thoughts about it in a series of short messages on a social media platform dedicated to providing an outlet for short messaging. I have decided to expand upon those messages ...
Dane Giraud for the Free Speech Union interviews Don Franks. Don is a writer and editor for Redline. He talks to Dane about his involvement in Left-wing activism since the 1960s (starting with his opposition to the Vietnam War). Don is a published author and professional musician. He was a ...
I have always been opposed to virtue-signalling. It seems an easy way of supporting the current narrative and opposing any thoughtful opposition to it. And it does not require any exertion – of the mind, muscle, or (usually) wallet.Of course, these days the virtue signaler simply blocks ...
International analyst Geoffrey Miller examines the motivations behind Jacinda Ardern’s first foreign trip since February 2020 – and says her tour of Japan and Singapore is about much more than trade This is far from Jacinda Ardern’s first foreign trip – but it almost feels like one. Ardern’s tour of ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Kristen Pope Hundreds of researchers from around the globe took turns collecting data in the Arctic aboard the German icebreaker RV Polarstern on an expedition that lasted over a year. Now, this data is rewarding the researchers with important and surprising insights about this ...
Exit Stage Right: If the next round of opinion polls reveal a level of Labour support beginning with a “2”, what would happen then?WHAT DOES THE LATESTRoy Morgan poll tell us about the future of the Sixth Labour Government? Technically speaking, it tells us nothing. All it describes, statistically, ...
As the Christian world began its Easter rituals, Ukraine marked 50 days since Russian troops crossed its borders and began the first European war in decades. But Ukraine - a country where at least three-quarters of the population describe themselves as Christian remains trapped in a Good Friday world of ...
The Human Rights Commission inquiry into housing quality confirms what the Green Party has been calling for - a rental Warrant of Fitness and a register of landlords and property managers. ...
The Green Party welcomes the next steps towards implementing the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) in Aotearoa, and calls on the Government to get on with the mahi of upholding Tangata Whenua rights. ...
Our economic recovery is gaining momentum and the latest figures show that the Government’s focus on jobs is working. We’ve delivered a record low unemployment rate as well as a steady fall in the number of New Zealanders receiving a main benefit. ...
The Green Party welcomes the release of the implementation plan for Te Mana o te Taiao Aotearoa New Zealand Biodiversity Strategy and calls on the Government to act faster to protect our oceans. ...
After weeks of advocacy by Green MPs, Immigration New Zealand has given assurances that West Papuan students whose scholarships were cancelled by the Indonesian Government will not be deported - and that a team will now be formed to assess the future needs of the students. ...
The release today of Environment Aotearoa 2022 is a sobering reminder of what is at stake if the Government does not step up and take urgent action to protect Aotearoa New Zealand’s native plants, wildlife, habitats and ecosystems. ...
The release today of Environment Aotearoa 2022 is a sobering reminder of what is at stake if the Government does not step up and take urgent action to protect Aotearoa New Zealand’s native plants, wildlife, habitats and ecosystems. ...
Throughout the pandemic, we’ve worked hard to protect lives and livelihoods – and thanks to these efforts, our economy is now recovering faster than almost anywhere else in the world. ...
Stats NZ’s monthly rental and food price indexes released today continue to show that over the last 12 months the essentials have gotten increasingly expensive for thousands of New Zealanders. ...
We’re celebrating a big milestone this week – the return of international visitors. New Zealand is open for business and our tourism destinations are among the world’s best. ...
I want to thank Rabobank for hosting us this morning, and all of you for making it along for an early start. Yesterday, New Zealand opened its borders again to tourists and business visitors from around 60 visa waiver countries as we continue our reconnection with the world. The resumption ...
Surpluses will be kept within a band of zero to two percent of GDP to ensure new day‑to‑day spending is not adding to debt. A new debt measure to be introduced to bring New Zealand closer in line with other countries. A debt ceiling will ensure New Zealand maintains some ...
The Government has welcomed Te Waihanga/New Zealand Infrastructure Commission’s first infrastructure strategy as a major milestone in building a more prosperous, resilient and sustainable future for all New Zealanders. Rautaki Hanganga o Aotearoa – New Zealand Infrastructure Strategy 2022–2052 set out the infrastructure challenges and opportunities facing New Zealand ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Nanaia Mahuta has today announced further sanctions on Russian politicians and defence entities supporting Putin’s actions in Ukraine, as part of the Government’s ongoing response to the war. “Through these sanctions, we are demonstrating our intention to continue going after those who are responsible for Russia’s invasion ...
Introduction Kia ora koutou katoa, Today is a significant day for infrastructure in New Zealand. And that means it is a significant day for our productivity, our environment, our wellbeing and connections as people. That is because good quality infrastructure is core to improving all of those things. Today we ...
Ringitia mai, waetia mai Tuhi tuhia mai e Kei te manawa tonu te aroha me te whakapono Can I please acknowledge our co-chairs today Fran O’Sullivan and Michael Barnett. US Ambassador to New Zealand Tom Udall. The Minister for Trade and Export Growth Damien O’Connor. And the really excellent ...
New Zealand is back on the world map for international tourism and business travellers as the country opens up to visitors from around 60 visa-waiver countries who enjoy freer travel here from today. Tourism Minister Stuart Nash and Immigration Minister Kris Faafoi say the welcome mat is out for citizens ...
The Government is committed to improving student attendance at school and kura, Education Minister Chris Hipkins and Associate Education Minister Jan Tinetti said in a pre-Budget announcement today. “It’s clear that young people need to be at school, and yet attendance rates haven’t been good for a long time. It’s ...
Essential workers sent a clear message today that they no longer want to see their pay and conditions set through a race to the bottom, and that they support fair, good faith bargaining with employers through Fair Pay Agreements. On International Workers’ Day, Minister of Workplace Relations and Safety Michael ...
The Government is partnering with Air New Zealand to trial an innovative new COVID-19 testing solution that uses Loop-Mediated Isothermal Amplification (LAMP) technology, Associate Minister for COVID-19 Response Dr Ayesha Verrall announced today. “As New Zealand reconnects with the world, we are exploring innovative COVID-19 testing technology to help keep ...
A warmer winter is on the horizon for over 1 million New Zealanders receiving either a main benefit or New Zealand Superannuation as the Winter Energy Payment begins today. “When we first came into office, we introduced the Winter Energy Payment as part of our Government’s December 2017 Families Package. ...
World-class Ultra-Fast Broadband (UFB) is now available in Haast, one of New Zealand’s most remote West Coast towns, Minister for the Digital Economy and Communications, David Clark announced today. “A reliable, fast and secure internet connection is an important asset in the digital economy and that is why this Government ...
Associate Minister of Health Dr Ayesha Verrall launched ‘Smokefree May’ today at an event at Manurewa Marae. This new campaign, developed with Hāpai Te Hauora, supports the Government’s plan to make New Zealand smokefree by 2025. At the event, a new brand was also unveiled for the Smokefree 2025 Action ...
Minister of Housing Hon Dr Megan Woods and Associate Minister of Housing (Māori Housing) Peeni Henare have today announced a new investment partnership with Ka Uruora to build up to 172 new homes for whānau who need them most. Ministers Henare and Jackson joined partners Ka Uruora at an event ...
Local councils ownership of water entities confirmed and new shareholding structure put in place Local community and council voice further strengthened in Regional Representative Groups with the majority of Working Group recommendations accepted Co-governance on the board of the four water entities ruled out by Local Government Minister with board ...
A new Pacific Business Village that will grow Pacific businesses, fundamental to our COVID-19 recovery, was launched by the Minister for Pacific Peoples Aupito William Sio in Tauranga today. “The Government wants the Village used as a strategic framework for any long-term economic development work in our regions for Pacific ...
Health Minister Andrew Little says New Zealanders who contract COVID-19 now have access to six medicines proven to safely prevent the most severe and life-threatening symptoms of the virus. Andrew Little was in Auckland this afternoon to see the first shipment of molnupiravir, the second oral anti-viral COVID-19 medicine to ...
Changes to intensive winter grazing rules will make them more practical for farmers and effective in lifting environmental outcomes, Environment Minister David Parker and Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor announced today. “For New Zealand, our economy depends on our environment. Cleaning up our winter grazing practices protects our freshwater resources, the welfare of our animals, ...
Five Auckland suburbs to get improved infrastructure to boost supply of new housing, and support existing homes Up to 16,000 new homes enabled on crown-owned land including public, affordable and market homes Capacity created for an extra 11,000 homes on surrounding privately owned land. Projects include water main renewal, sewage ...
The health and safety practices at our nation’s ports will be investigated as part of a range of actions taken by the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety in response to two deaths in the space of a week. “All New Zealanders should return from work safe and unharmed. Recently ...
Supporting older people to stay in the workforce and transition their skills as they age and their circumstances change is a key part of the new Older Workers Employment Action Plan, Minister for Social Development and Employment Carmel Sepuloni and Minister for Seniors Dr Ayesha Verrall announced today. “The Government ...
An initiative that has provided tourism workers with alternative employment into the lead up to New Zealand’s borders reopening is being extended to ensure staff are retained, Conservation Minister Kiri Allan says. It is one of two projects in the Waikato-Maniapoto to receive funding through the Government’s Jobs for Nature ...
From today New Zealanders can have their say on a proposed National Adaptation Plan to help communities across the country adapt to the unavoidable impacts of climate change. “Aotearoa will soon have a plan to bring down our emissions and help prevent the worst effects of climate change, but we ...
Wetlands expert and advocate Dr Beverley Clarkson was today presented with New Zealand’s most prestigious conservation award, the Loder Cup by Minister of Conservation Kiri Allan. Dr Clarkson is a plant ecologist based at Manaaki Whenua Landcare Research in Hamilton. She is nationally renowned for her knowledge and championing of ...
People who have genuine reasons for not being able to wear a face mask can access a new personalised exemption card from the end of May, Minister for COVID-19 Response Chris Hipkins and Minister for Disability Issues Carmel Sepuloni announced today. “We know that face masks are a crucial part ...
The Government intends to amend the Dairy Industry Restructuring Act 2001 (DIRA) to support Fonterra’s move to a new capital structure, Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor announced today. “The Fonterra cooperative is a key part of New Zealand’s world-leading dairy industry and a major export earner for our economy, sending product ...
Victoria University 26 April, 2022 Those coming here expecting announcements of new tax policy will be disappointed. None are being made. We have no secret plan to introduce a CGT nor a wealth tax or a deemed income tax, nor others. The IRD is not doing any work ...
Auckland harbour ferries are set to get quieter, cleaner and greener, thanks to two new fully-electric ferries for commuters and sightseers to travel on, Minister for Energy and Resources Dr Megan Woods announced today. Auckland Transport will operate the two electric fast ferries across all major inner and mid-harbour services, ...
New Zealand’s apples and pears industry is aiming to become spray-free by 2050 through a new Government-backed programme focused on world-leading sustainable production practices, Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor announced today. The Government is investing in a seven-year programme through the Ministry for Primary Industries’ (MPI) Sustainable Food and Fibre Futures ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Nanaia Mahuta and Defence Minister Peeni Henare today announced that the Government has extended New Zealand’s commitment to three peace support deployments to the Middle East and Africa – the United Nations Truce Supervision Organisation (UNTSO), the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) and the Multinational ...
Backing 15 big businesses to move away from fossil fuels in their production processes Equal to taking 14,400 cars off the road $13 million of Government funding matched by $32.66 million from industry Achieves a total of 900,631 t of carbon emissions saved over the project lifetimes The Government is ...
More than 50 jobs are being created across Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland with the launch of three new Government-backed initiatives, Conservation Minister Kiri Allan says. “Tāmaki Makaurau has taken quite a hit over the past two years, with the region experiencing longer lockdown restrictions than anywhere else in the country. “Jobs for ...
The opening of the 2022-23 Great Walks booking season next week heralds 30 years of epic adventures in our backyard throughout the country, says Minister of Conservation Kiri Allan. Speaking from the Tongariro Northern Circuit,, the Minister acknowledged the importance of the Great Walks for conservation, recreation and tourism in ...
Let me start by saying how wonderful it is to see people up and down the country gathering together in person again this year, in commemoration of Anzac Day. At a time when the global pandemic has so often cancelled public gatherings, it is all the more precious to be ...
The shared nineteenth-century histories of Aotearoa-New Zealand have come to life with the official opening today of one of the most culturally significant sites of the 1860s New Zealand Wars. The Government-financed rebuild of the Rangiriri Pa Trenches complex in Waikato is the first project completed from a special ...
Japan and New Zealand’s strong partnership is built on a long tradition of official and industry engagement, underpinned by our natural complementarities and strong business relationships. Both countries share many similarities. Japan and New Zealand are island nations in the Pacific with rich soils and climates suited to temperate agriculture. Agriculture, ...
Local Government Minister Nanaia Mahuta today announced the reappointment of four commissioners to the Tauranga City Council. “As the Council continues to face substantial infrastructure and funding challenges, it is clear that ensuring certainty for Tauranga is more important than ever,” Nanaia Mahuta said. “The reappointment of the current Tauranga ...
“We’ve now completed the first stage of the two-step engagement process to develop a Declaration Plan. This has provided us with valuable feedback to help with drafting a Declaration Plan that we will then take out to wider consultation,” Willie Jackson said. “Almost 70 targeted engagement workshops were held mainly ...
The Minister for Broadcasting and Media has confirmed the nine-member Establishment Board to lead the work on creating a new public media entity in New Zealand. “The Establishment Board will oversee the detailed design of the new entity and the change required to create it,” Kris Faafoi said. “The make-up ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern had a productive meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in Tokyo today. “Japan is one of New Zealand’s closest and most important partners in the Indo-Pacific region. We have a strong trade relationship, common values and a shared commitment to an open, inclusive, stable and ...
It is unacceptable the government has pushed ahead with its three waters reforms before checking if the numbers stack up on debt financing, opposition parties say. ...
The petition is supported by leading animal organisations New Zealand Animal Law Association (NZALA), Helping You Help Animals (HUHA) and the New Zealand Anti-vivisection Society (NZAVS). Other groups are expected to add their support in time. The Animal ...
Most New Zealanders believe that government funding for private media companies undermines media independence, reveals a new poll commissioned by the New Zealand Taxpayers' Union . The scientific poll of 1,000 New Zealanders was carried out by ...
The Treasury has published a summary paper that outlines its advice on the new fiscal rules announced by Finance Minister Hon Grant Robertson. In a speech today, Hon Grant Robertson said that the Government will adopt two new fiscal rules: an operating ...
Health and climate change will be key spending areas, and there would be a new rule requiring governments to try to maintain a small surplus, the Finance Minister said. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Yuanming Wang, PhD student, University of Sydney Artist’s impression of the PSR J0523-7125 in the Large Magellanic Cloud. Carl Knox, ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery (OzGrav), Author provided When a star explodes and dies in a supernova, it ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Susan Harris Rimmer, Professor and Director of the Policy Innovation Hub, Griffith Business School, Griffith University Clive Palmer has had a tough run leading up to the 2022 election campaign. He faced COVID-19 without the protection of vaccination in March, tripped at ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jacinta Douglas, Professor of Acquired Brain Injury, La Trobe University SDA tenant, Tom, in his accessible apartment.Housing Hub, Author provided The federal government has been warning that the rising cost of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) is unsustainable. More than ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Newman, Professor of Sustainability, Curtin University Shutterstock When you think of an electric vehicle, chances are you’ll picture a car. But there’s a quiet revolution going on in transport. It turns out electrification can work wonders for almost all ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hugh Saddler, Honorary Associate Professor, Centre for Climate Economics and Policy, Australian National University shutterstocShutterstock “Power prices are going up”, shadow treasurer Jim Chalmers declared last week. But according to energy minister Angus Taylor, “No one’s household power prices have gone ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Terry Goldsworthy, Associate Professor in Criminal Justice and Criminology, Bond University IMDB HBO’s new show Our Flag Means Death has brought the Golden Age of Piracy to life on TV, chronicling the life of the bumbling gentleman pirate, Stede Bonnet. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Susan Hazel, Senior Lecturer, School of Animal and Veterinary Science, University of Adelaide Shutterstock Australia Post workers are suffering more dog attacks than before with 1,170 incidents so far this financial year — up 400 on the same time in ...
A new round of sanctions imposed by the government on Russian politicians and defence entities targets 170 members of the upper house of Russia's parliament, known as the Federation Council, as well as six companies and organisations in the defence sec ...
ANALYSIS:By Michael Kabuni and Stephen Howes Central to the selection of the prime minister in Papua New Guinea following a general election is Section 63 of PNG’s Organic Law on Integrity of Political Parties and Candidates (OLIPPAC), which was passed in 2001 (and then amended in 2003). Section 63 ...
By Lian Buan in Manila The retraction of Kerwin Espinosa, one of the main accusers in the Philippines Bilibid drug trade allegations, has drummed up calls from different sectors to free jailed opposition senator Leila De Lima, but the Department of Justice (DOJ) is not budging. The difficulty with this ...
By Wata Shaw in Suva The University of the South Pacific’s latest international ranking is a “testament to the excellence” that pervades the university, says USP vice-chancellor and president Professor Pal Ahluwalia. He said this in a statement confirming USP had been ranked 401-600 out of 1406 institutions, with an ...
SPECIAL REPORT:By Hamish Cardwell, RNZ News climate reporter Explosive new data shows the sea level is rising twice as fast as previously thought in some parts of Aotearoa, massively reducing the amount of time authorities have to respond. The major new projections show infrastructure and homes in Auckland and ...
RNZ News For the first time in more than two years, New Zealand’s border will reopen to international visitors at midnight tonight. On 19 March 2020, New Zealand snapped its border shut to anyone without citizenship or residency, before any covid-19-related deaths were recorded. It was the first time in ...
PNG Post-Courier A former election manager for Papua New Guinea’s National Capital District (NCD) who was charged with election fraud for corruptly receiving a large sum of money from a candidate during the 2017 election has been sentenced to seven years in prison by the National Court at Waigani. National ...
As the border opens to 60 visa waiver countries, there has already been an uptick in spending since New Zealand began welcoming Australian tourists two weeks ago, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says. ...
Energy Resources Aotearoa has cautiously welcomed the release of the New Zealand Infrastructure Strategy but says that it overlooks the important role that the Emissions Trading Scheme and natural gas will play through and beyond the transition to a lower ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katharine Kemp, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Law & Justice, UNSW, UNSW Sydney Shutterstock Consumers using online retail marketplaces such as eBay and Amazon “have little effective choice in the amount of data they share”, according to the latest report of ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Crowley, Adjunct Associate Professor, Public and Environmental Policy, University of Tasmania Russell Freeman/AAP A major poll published yesterday suggests the Greens are set to grow as a political force at this month’s election, showing its primary vote has risen ...
The New Zealand Taxpayers' Union will launch a wide-scale "Protect Your Savings" campaign if Labour decides to introduce a wealth tax. Union spokesman Louis Houlbrooke says, "This morning on The AM Show Jacinda Ardern was given multiple opportunities ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Oliver Frank, Senior Research Fellow, Discipline of General Practice, and Specialist General Practitioner, University of Adelaide Shutterstock When you go to your usual GP, you probably sit down, tell her your health-care needs or problems, and she advises and discusses ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rachel Ong ViforJ, ARC Future Fellow & Professor of Economics, Curtin University Shutterstock Each side is offering something for first homebuyers this election, but the nature of the support is quite different. The Coalition’s Home Guarantee The Coalition is promising ...
The BusinessNZ Energy Council (BEC) says it’s encouraging to see long-term infrastructure planning from the Government, and agrees that more of the same simply won’t cut it. The New Zealand Infrastructure Commission has released New Zealand’s first ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jo Caust, Associate Professor and Principal Fellow (Hon), School of Culture and Communication, The University of Melbourne Frankie Cordoba/Unsplash While artists struggle to get noticed in the Australian political arena, particularly in the lead up to an election, other ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne AAP/Lukas Coch This week’s Newspoll, conducted April 27-30 from a sample of 1,538, gave Labor a 53-47 lead, unchanged since last week. Primary votes were 38% Labor ...
Now that it has set about implementing a de-colonialising curriculum on subjects such as science and history, the government is determined to get more kids into classes to lap up the new doctrine. ...
Explosive new sea level rise data released on the weekend highlights the urgency of acting on climate pollution from New Zealand’s intensive dairy industry, says Greenpeace Aotearoa. The modeling by NZ SeaRise shows sea level rise could be twice ...
The Government is forging ahead with its Three Waters reform process. Comments from the Government over recent months meant that its announcement last Friday was unfortunately predictable. The door was left open on governance and accountability for the Government-appointed ...
LGNZ President Stuart Crosby says the new Infrastructure Strategy is an important step towards addressing the critical issues affecting our communities. “Reliable infrastructure is the backbone to creating healthy, thriving communities and a resilient ...
The Office of the Children’s Commissioner supports the call of The Fairer Future group to adopt a seven-point plan of action to support low-income New Zealanders facing the high cost of living. The Seven Steps for Fairer Future report can be accessed ...
A major manufacturer of waterjets for boats fears it could miss out on millions of dollars worth of contracts if the government does not address urgent skilled worker shortages. ...
MBIE has opened consultation on proposed changes to the Building Code acceptable solutions and verification methods which cover plumbing and drainage, protection from fire, and structural stability of hollow-core floors. “As New Zealand’s ...
- New Zealand’s first-ever long-term infrastructure strategy - Strategy makes 68 recommendations to transform New Zealand The New Zealand Infrastructure Commission, Te Waihanga says New Zealand’s first long-term Infrastructure Strategy, sets a ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says while there will be no cap on the number of tourists allowed into New Zealand, tourism operators need to offer a quality experience with low environmental impact. ...
New Zealand’s leading animal welfare charity is celebrating a major milestone, as SPCA marks 150 years of improving the lives of vulnerable animals in Aotearoa. Since the charity’s formation in Canterbury in 1872, SPCA has rescued millions ...
Electricity generation, water services and responding to sea level rise are some of the priority investments identified in the Infrastructure Commission's first strategy. ...
Political Roundup is entirely subscriber-funded. The ethos behind this public service is to help foster a robust and informed public debate, with a great diversity of perspectives. If you appreciate what we are doing in providing non-partisan analysis and information about politics, economy, and society, please consider helping us keep ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lukas Wesemann, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, The University of Melbourne Shutterstock Infectious diseases such as malaria remain a leading cause of death in many regions. This is partly because people there don’t have access to medical diagnostic tools that can detect ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Geoff Cockfield, Honorary Professor in Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development, University of Southern Queensland Dominic Giannini/AAP While the Liberal and Labor parties each face several nail-biting contests, the Nationals have fewer immediate concerns in this federal election. The party ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kun Zhao, Research fellow, BehaviourWorks Australia, Monash Sustainable Development Institute, Monash University As Australians across the country prepare to vote, many will be reflecting on what can help build a prosperous and inclusive society. Over the last five years, we have been ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicholas Fuller, Charles Perkins Centre Research Program Leader, University of Sydney Shutterstock We’re a society obsessed with numbers, and no more so than when managing our health. We use smartwatches to count steps and track our daily activity, creating scores ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Eleanor Holroyd, Associate Dean International & Engagement, Auckland University of Technology GettyImages Aotearoa New Zealand’s community nurses and home and community care assistants have played a crucial yet largely invisible role in the country’s response to the global pandemic. Across ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Daniel Harris, Senior Lecturer in Geography, The University of Queensland Flinders Beach has been growing since the 1950sKevin Welsh, Author provided In a warmer world, rising sea levels could render many coastlines, beaches, and reef islands uninhabitable, or destroy them altogether. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Steven Hail, Adjunct Associate Professor, Torrens University Australia Japan Ministry of Finance/Shutterstock. The Reserve Bank’s cash rate is in the news, and in an unwelcome way for the first time in 11 years. After a decade in which Australia’s central ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lisa Portolan, PhD student, Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University Mateus Campos Felipe/Unsplash The term “high-maintenance” is part of everyday speech, and usually refers to a woman who places a high value on her personal image, wants ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Labor’s confidence will be boosted by two polls showing it holding a strong lead, as Anthony Albanese carried off a well-orchestrated party launch in Perth on Sunday. Newspoll, published in Monday’s Australian, has Labor ahead ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Anthony Albanese has pledged a Labor government would make gender pay equity an objective of the Fair Work Act and strengthen the Fair Work Commission’s powers to order pay rises for workers in low paid ...
Sam Uffindell has been selected by local party members as National’s candidate in the upcoming Tauranga by-election. Mr Uffindell is currently the Head of Financial Economic Crime for Rabobank and owns a small agribusiness based in the Bay of Plenty. ...
The New Nation Party (NNP) has announced the selection of Andrew Hollis as their candidate in the Tauranga by-election. Born and bred in Tauranga, Andrew Hollis is a 50 year old proud father of four who has worked to build several businesses in ...
Almost 60,000 students are missing at least 3 days of school every and nearly 40 percent of students are not attending regularly, says a teachers union, as the government announces funding to combat the problem. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Allegra Spender/Facebook; Dave Sharma/Facebook At the campaign’s halfway point in the highly contested seat of Wentworth, ‘teal’ candidate Allegra Spender has shifted – but polarised – soft voters’ views about her. Fewer of ...
A company commissioned by the government has been monitoring social media comments about the Covid-19 response for almost two years, reporting back every four days. ...
National is accusing the government of wasting money by securing prime office space for Auckland's cycle bridge staff, weeks before cancelling the project. ...
ACT Party Leader David Seymour, Deputy Leader Brooke van Velden and ACT Tauranga candidate Cameron Luxton have today unveiled the party’s campaign bus. “ACT is a serious contender in this race. We’re aiming to send a message to Wellington ...
Podcast - The threat of new Covid-19 variants has health officials working on a plan for restrictions and surveillance testing. Political Reporter Katie Scotcher investigates. ...
RNZ Pacific The French Pacific territories have shown their support for President Emmanuel Macron at the polls, but with a much lower voter turnout than has been usual. Macron captured 61 percent of New Caledonia’s votes overall in the presidential election final stage last Sunday, while far-right candidate Marine Le ...
Asia Pacific Report newsdesk Plans to establish “food estates” were announced by the Indonesian government at the beginning of the covid-19 pandemic because, it said, it wanted to ensure Indonesia’s food security. But as AwasMIFEE! and TAPOL show in their new report released today, Pandemic Power Grabs: Who benefits from ...
Political Roundup is entirely subscriber-funded. The ethos behind this public service is to help foster a robust and informed public debate, with a great diversity of perspectives. If you appreciate what we are doing in providing non-partisan analysis and information about politics, economy, and society, please consider helping us keep ...
Opposition parties should commit to protecting against privatising water assets, and front up with alternatives if they don't like the three waters reform, the government says. ...
So we have a new crisis:
Could be an entire new ministry will be required to build sea-walls?
The switch is due to discovery of land dropping. The scientists have mapped it nationwide and provided an interactive website so you can check out how it affects your neighbourhood.
First consideration is if councils can cope with providing new defensive infrastructure. If not, how does the govt do the job – within the ministry of climate change or the ministry of transport?
Tamaki Drive got rebuilt with an 80cm lift last year.
State Highway 17 to Auckland's west was pushed up over a metre after the SH20 tunnels were built.
SH1 Kaikoura was lifted and rebuilt together with the earthquake rebuild.
Mission Bay has a pretty good seawall already.
Wellington rail and Lower Hutt have massive rebuilds underway.
The places I would focus on would be:
– Awanui, Taipa and Kaeo in the far north
– State highway from Haast to Fox Glacier
– Westport. Looking forward to the West Coast Regional Chairman Allan Birchfield telling Westport not to worry. Again.
West Coast councillor continues denying sea level rise | RNZ News
– Eastborne and Days Bay in Wellington
– Christchurch estuary settlements
– Hauraki Plains including Thames and Paeroa
– Invercargill east and south including airport
As Ashley Bloomfield's star fades, new messiahs arise with missionary zeal. I don't think I will be buying their T-Shirts.
In the clip below, Napier Airport was given as an example of land sinking . Of course, Napier Airport is build on land pushed up by an earthquake.
Richard Levy and Tim Naish have done what seems like excellent research followed by predictions based on that research. All that's needed now is for nature to follow those linear time lines they have set out.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2022/05/alarming-new-statistics-reveal-new-zealand-s-sea-level-could-rise-30cm-in-next-10-to-20-years.html
All that's needed now is for nature to follow those linear time lines they have set out.
Normally humans survive by reacting to a threat to their survival. Are you trying to suggest Nats are sub-human? If so, spit the dummy & say so. If not, tell us why they ought to do nothing except wait for nature to produce disaster.
Oh wait, you mean the Nats would actually do politics on the basis of science instead of ignoring it? They just need a little time to digest the science? Fair enough. Not everyone's a fast learner.
''Normally humans survive by reacting to a threat to their survival.''
Correct. If you come towards me in a threatening manner I straight away compensate with a remedial defensive action.
''Are you trying to suggest Nats are sub-human? If so, spit the dummy & say so.''
I don't know what that means because I don't care one iota what National think, or don't, about climate change. I doubt they have a clue themselves.
''If not, tell us why they ought to do nothing except wait for nature to produce disaster.''
It's not a matter of doing nothing. It's about a gamble costing billions either way. Are we prepared to accept that on research that is yet to be peer reviewed. Or are we prepared to sit tight and hope for the best? Play the cards.
You seem to have forgotten our dire economic situation thanks to Labour's largesse for all squeaky wheels and ideological itches.
"As Ashley Bloomfield's star fades, new messiahs arise with missionary zeal."
Uncalled for. Inferring Bloomfield was some crazy who set himself up as a messiah but no-one listens to him anymore? He happened to be Director General of Health when Covid arrived and it was his job to lead the health response to the pandemic in NZ.
You're a dork Blade.
Thank you Anne, the petty bitterness is strong in the likes of Blade and a few others here. Relentlessly negative and relentlessly boring.
It was more a statement about hero worship. We in New Zealand have a dearth of glitzy stars to idolise. Therefore we tend to admire the more mundane. Ruud Kleinpaste, the bug man, for example.
''He happened to be Director General of Health when Covid arrived and it was his job to lead the health response to the pandemic in NZ.''
Exactly – it was his job.
But he morphed into something larger with his regular appearances on the ''Pulpit Of Truth.'' Adulation and t-shirts followed.
I'm betting Richard Levy and Tim Naish are about to become media darlings. Their word will be gospel, and God help any fuckwit who says otherwise.
''You're a dork Blade.''
That's unkind. But, in my opinion, you have always come across as a shallow thinker.
I see "ferals" – How often do you see them? – All the time. They're everywhere.
Now this is no silver bullet but a good move by Labour.
Budget 2022: School attendance, truancy focus of $88 million funding package and strategy – NZ Herald
Sounds like a recipe for more committees, consultants, advisors, meetings and lots of tick box exercises. Yep, that'll do it.
You forgot the waste of taxpayer money. Truancy has nothing to do with school attendance… it has more to do with cultural values. And in Maoridom, education isn't a high priority with many. Mana on the rugby field and in a fight rate very high.
From Jester’s link:
''The package also included $11.2m for a positive behaviour and learning programme and $7.75m specifically for Māori and Pasifika communities, where there are large discrepancies.''
[You are in Pre-Moderation until you correct the following statement or provide links to support it:
You have one shot at it, to avoid numerous time-wasting comments going to & from, and one day – Incognito]
"Mana on the rugby field and in a fight rate very high."
Untrue and offensive.
As bizzare as it is.
Mere opinion?
Even a ‘mere opinion’ doesn’t come out of the blue and stands alone in isolation in a referential vacuum without some framework to form and sustain (aka confirm) it.
Mod note
Blade doesn't shy away from a challenge so he's never going to walk that back. I'm expecting genetic evidence and a full history of the heritage of the infamous Rugby gene will be forthcoming.
He's not completely wrong, especially with the added "with many" bit
Gangs especially respect sports prowess, size and violence and education can be seen as a negative "you think you're smart don't you"
Unfortunately the media being what it is it'll glorify the gangs and ignore those with their heads down getting on with it
Your thinking of having a go at the pre-mod challenge too?
Yes PR would be on much safer ground just sticking to telling us how racist white people are.
Can be difficult to know when you’re on “safer ground” – is nothing sacred?
Racism starts small. Sometimes it lives in everyday actions and comments that we laugh off, nod in agreement to, excuse, and therefore accept. But we don’t have to. We can stop casual racism from growing into something more extreme. We can give it no encouragement. No respect. No place. No power. We can give it nothing. http://www.givenothing.co.nz
See – very safe ground. No pre-mod for the uber woke.
Yep, doubt Taika will be cancelled anytime soon. He can read a room.
Taika needs to stop doing doing Marvel movies, stop hiring Tessa Thompson (although I guess there are other reasons) and more movies like Jojo or What We Do In The Shadows etc
I think a clip from a popular Tony Award winning, Broadway and West End play might just be applicable to this situation:
All humans have to some extent with an in-group preference. It expresses itself in sexual selection and family bonding. It would be a very strange thing indeed if we did not have an unconscious bias toward people we feel genetically and culturally connected with.
This selectivity and tribalism is an exceedingly common behaviour across almost all of the higher mammals I can immediately think of. It should be no surprise or even controversial that humans share this trait as well.
But remarkably we also have the capacity to overlay this trait with a broader abstraction around the universality of humanity. We can take the idea that all humans stand equal before their Maker and expand our ethical horizon to ultimately include all 7.5b people on the planet. We can formulate intellectually the idea that 'the earth is but one planet and mankind its citizens'. This is the root motivation that demands we condemn the wrong idea that some human races are genetically superior to others. Racism was founded in a mistaken interpretation of why some cultures and societies came to dominate while others were overrun all throughout history. We now should understand that it had nothing to do with genetics and almost everything with technology and institutional development.
But to then argue this means there is no difference between any of the cultures and societies is wrong as well. That is nothing more than an attempt to cancel out one stupid mistake with another. It is the reason why the woke left claims that all differences in outcomes can only be explained by racism. And if they cannot find any significant examples of personal racist anima, nor any institutional laws or policies to explain differences – then untestable concepts such as 'unconscious bias' and 'institutional racism' are trotted out to fill the gap.
Yet as I suggested above – all humans have an intrinsic unconscious bias, yet invoking this explains everything and nothing at the same time. Nor does pointing to institutional bias explain much either, it would be very surprising if the dominant culture anywhere did not organise their public life to suit themselves. Why would they not? This is the very stuff of culture and diversity is it not?
Human diversity and selectivity is innate and instinctively enduring. We would not want it to be otherwise. But skin colour and the land of our birth are but accidents; they are the least important aspect of who we are and tell us nothing of our character, competency and potential for achievement.
Because our long, agonising history tells another far more inspiring story of how we have learned to expand our moral horizons painfully and progressively, embracing ever larger groups of peoples and cultures – culminating now in a universal recognition of our common humanity, dignity and right to justice.
And for me that is a battle worth having – against those who would divide us yet again.
Agreed.
I have absolutely no problem saying Western Democratic cultures are superior to anything else we have and we all know it yet, to some, thats borderline, if not outright, racist
One of the most interesting papers I did at Uni was a paper on Social Psychology where that sort of stuff was covered.
Ingroup and outgroup biases and the like. In short, it is nearly impossible for any of us not to have some degree of bias or prejudice, whether that be conscious or unconscious bias.
The best way to break down those prejudices is by setting superordinate goals that require groups to work together to solve the issues.
I guess a great example would be the situation in Ukraine. Prior to the war there would likely have been lots of divisions over all sorts of matters. But when they are all focusing on the goal of defeating the Russians those sort of divisions are forgotten and people are united behind the common cause.
I didn't think his range was up to re-inventing the racist prison guard trope just yet. I will have to defer to your faith in his abilities of course.
Propaganda and fake news usually also contain snippets of truth, so not being “completely wrong” doesn’t make it/him right either – it’s a nonsensical thing to say. The assertion was about Māoridom, not about gangs. So, perhaps I should ask you to explain why you put up this diversion.
Have you received my reply with the information and links I provided?
Yes, and it was no good.
If you want to ask me a question ask it
I did, but you didn't listen because you didn't want to hear it because you don't want to answer it. Did you really think it was a rhetorical question? Perhaps you realise that you have enough rope to get tangled up in knots or worse. A commenter cannot force another commenter to answer, least of all to answer in a certain way, but a Mod can force some response if there are good grounds for this. You were and still are following the clear signpost to those grounds.
'Did you really think it was a rhetorical question?'
Yes I did.
'So, perhaps I should ask you to explain why you put up this diversion.'
The perhaps makes what could have been a simple question into something ambiguous:
Perhaps you’ll ask me a question or perhaps not.
I thought you were just jumping in with your usual sort of subtlety, like your use of the Spanish Archer, which I first thought was some sort of obscure sexual position (like the reverse cowgirl)
Try this instead:
'So I'll ask you to explain why you put up this diversion.'
That makes basically the same question clear and unambiguous.
So to your question, my response was to Nic the NZers response to Blade.
I thought Nic was over the top in his reply so I replied to Nic with an example that I thought would further expand on Blades point.
I thought my reply was over the top as well, until Blade decided to defend his comments.
The “perhaps” was intended to leave you with a clear choice: either put up or shut up. Maybe that was too subtle for you – I forgot I was dealing with a simpleton.
You decided to run interference with moderation, in which case you may be treated as such and end up in Pre-Moderation too, or you could simply stay out of it – the choice is yours, still, but not for much longer.
Unless you can read Blade’s mind or you are in communication with Brother Blade you were only adding your own reckons, which were not helpful in the slightest.
'Maybe that was too subtle for you – I forgot I was dealing with a simpleton.'
Perhaps you're not as clever as you think you are, perhaps you jump into discussions when you don't need to and perhaps you feel a little inadequate since you're clearly not as experienced as the other moderators and so, perhaps, you feel you need to make up for it in other ways.
Have you tried asking the other moderators for advice?
I know when I've been over my head and out of my depth (like you are now) that asking for advice from other better, more experienced people can be a little hard on the ego but is generally always worth it in the long run.
[You’re now also in Pre-Moderation until you also have finished and completed Blade’s homework in your own words and with your own links – no cheating this time. Same terms and conditions apply as for Blade. Bye now – Incognito]
Mod note
Nope.
Not playing your silly game, no matter what I link to it won't be enough.
[As you wish; you’ve used enough rope to hang yourself out to dry for 3 weeks. Bye – Incognito]
Mod note
Of course he's completely wrong. Blade claimed, "truancy has nothing to do with school attendance". But here is the definition of the word:
I wasn't commenting on the truancy aspect
Yes, you were commenting on the accuracy of the claim that education isn't a high priority for many Maori.
Perhaps your view of Maori has been affected by your professional life?
So what was the point of adding in the truancy if you knew what I posted wasn't about truancy?
I had to re-read that crap, unfortunately. Came to the same conclusion. The comment is completely wrong on all counts.
l'm a Maori. I think that gives me some insight into myself and my fellow Maori.
https://www.cambridgenews.nz/2019/09/alan-duffs-cambridge-conversation/
Quote:
“I also told the Minister that, with all due respect, teaching prison inmates Te Kāinga Maori will not lessen incarceration rates. They are not in prison because they lack Te Kāinga Maori, they are there because of bad parenting. The same applies to white people in jail … again that is largely due to bad parenting, a lack of education and a failure to instil values. That is what I want to get across.''
https://teara.govt.nz/en/riri-traditional-maori-warfare/page-2
Quote:
''Tribal groups might seek to fight others to increase tribal or personal mana.''
''Traditionally the mana or prestige of a tribe and its members was all important. Tribes and their rangatira could increase mana by triumphing over other tribal groups.''
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14442213.2016.1191530
Quote:
In Māori society rugby has come to be viewed as a platform to maintain an indigenous model of masculinity as well as one of the main sites for the achievement of prestige. National and international representations of the Māori man as a rugby player—a present-day version of the Māori warrior
[You’ve got a bonus try for your effort, which fell way short.
As a Māori you know that you do not and cannot speak for all Māoridom – with personal opinions one can only speak for oneself. You made a specific assertions, which you were asked to correct or support, and so far you’ve done much less than half of the task.
I fail to see how Alan Duff’s quote of his personal views on teaching prison inmates Te Kāinga Māori supports your assertions about Māoridom. Ironically, the article starts with Duff’s “desire to use the written word to influence those behind bars to lead better lives”.
Why do simpletons such as you and Puckish Rogue tend to use Māoridom, gangs & crime, and prison population almost synonymously? Are distinctions, nuances, and context too hard for you or are you keener on pushing a certain narrative?
Similarly, the quote about traditional Māori warfare has little bearing on your assertions about present-day Māoridom.
The special status conferred to Māori men playing rugby again doesn’t support your assertions about how Māoridom values and prioritises education.
No more bonus tries after this one – Incognito]
[You didn’t correct or support your assertions about Māoridom, as you were asked to do and I don’t want to waste anymore of my time on this. Take 10 days off and don’t pretend to be a spokesperson for or an expert on Māoridom when you get back because you’re clearly neither – Incognito]
Mod note
I may, or may not, be a simpleton but at least I know how to use perhaps in a sentence clearly and unambiguously.
Unlike you.
Living dangerously, Puck!
I come from a culture where if you dish it out you're expected to take it and if you can't handle it then don't start it.
Nice irony 😀
Every culture has its dark side and blind spots. But I think you’ll find that the dismal statistics for Maori also correlate with relative economic privilege. There is a reason for all the targeted government programmes — as a people they have been subjected to systematic violence by the colonial settler state, and while the rest of us sit around arguing on blogs & sipping cappuccinos, our wealth is based on massive theft from 17% of the population.
Mod note #2
Hmm. It's difficult to tell exactly where the money is going – but it sounds like bureaucracy. I can't conceive that "$11.2m for a positive behaviour and learning programme" is going to achieve much.
If there are behaviour issues (and, according to my teacher friends, these are order-of-magnitude more severe than pre-Covid), then schools need support to deal with these right now – not in 2 years time when the 'programme' has been designed.
What schools actually need is the funding for additional classroom support for these kids – whether that looks like additional teachers in existing classrooms, or small group coaching, or even non-standard classes (if teens are working shelf-stacking [as quoted in the article], then perhaps concentrate on the key NCEA subjects when they're at school – and at least get them the core qualifications – you need NCEA L2 English and Maths for most apprenticeships).
I don't see how developing a programme (which the schools won't have the funding to carry out) – is going to do anything except keep bureaucrats employed.
The PBL program has been around for ages. It was in my daughter's primary school and she's now 20. It's a whole school approach with incentives and rewards for positive behaviour – it does teach some kids to suck-up to the teachers though. With the new funding, it should be able to get into more schools.
It's like most anything a government does (regardless of who is in) and that's throw money at the situation
At best it'll do something positive (rarely), usually no change will happen (but the government can say we've done something) and occasionally it'll make the problem even worse
You're right in what would help the problem, targeted support to those that need it but it needs to start with the vulnerable families while the mother is pregnant not years later at school
I agree with the earlier support — but it has to be AND ALSO rather than pick one or the other.
Absent a time machine, we can't fix the early years of kids now at school. Yes, we need to intervene now to prevent the next tranche arriving with preventable issues – but we also need to work with the kids now in school (or missing from school) and put solutions to those issues in place.
Yeah sorry I wasn't too clear in what I meant.
I mean you can and should do both but rather than have two different programs running concurrently there should be only one program starting before the child is born which older children can be entered into
The more programs you run means more costs and more chances of kids falling through the cracks
Goodness gracious me! This issue has been popping up to the surface every few years since before my offspring began school. Another study and another initiative and more targeted funding and 'special' funding for those groups with 'discrepancies'. And it only gets worse.
How about we chuck all that aside and go and speak with the families living in overcrowded homes, juggling four or five jobs, living from hand to mouth and generally ticking all the 'most at risk' boxes but whose children are attending school and are succeeding?
As always we focus on the causes of failures and not on how many families in similar circumstances make it work for their children.
The first two drivers would be (if we asked them) that these parents realise education is the key to a more secure job and a better future, and these parents genuinely want their children to have a better life than than they had.
"How about we chuck all that aside and go and speak with the families living in overcrowded homes, juggling four or five jobs, living from hand to mouth and generally ticking all the 'most at risk' boxes but whose children are attending school and are succeeding?"
A suggestion that is based on existing solutions, and grassroots perspectives?
Then what'll happen to all the consultants ready to advise?
I'm not saying that they make up a significant number of the 60% absent…but could it be that some of those being counted as truant are actually being home schooled?
More than 10,000 students in New Zealand are now learning from home, but there is growing concern their learning methods aren’t being scrutinised.
But some want the reviews reinstated as applications for home schooling grow.
There have been 5,000 new applications in the last year.
Kaitaia Primary School’s Principal, Brendon Morrissey, says “that’s a big number.”
It is quite possible that some parents do not realise you have to apply to home school and have simply pulled their kids out of mainstream education.
A private Christian school in Mosgiel has quadrupled its roll by offering a mixed model of teaching where home schooled kids are offered 'distance support''.
Homeschool reviews were initially reduced, and then eliminated because in terms of expense vs negative homeschool reviews, the ERO decided it was a budgetary save.
Despite once being a committee member on a National Home Ed organisation, I only ever viewed Home Ed as another choice, as opposed to a universally better one. The approach of families and engagement of children are as diverse as the population. Quite a few with exemptions were not part of any group.
My addition to your sensible suggestion re: truancy.
Make the school experience better. Because if that doesn't change, all that's been achieved is returning a child to where they don't want to be.
How's that help with encouraging a love of learning? Disruption in the classroom to indicate pushback, would be expected at the least.
Make the school experience better.
Okay, granted it was a different time…and technologywise might as well be a different universe…do you think that there might have been certain elements of the 'old' school environment that was more conducive to attending and engaging than today's?
I heard today that a newish school in the Waikato, designed and built to encompass all the very latest in modern learning has removed practically all the non- fiction books from the Library. (Library is deliberately capitalised, as befitting it's importance.) The learners don't need all those dusty dog eared reference books… the world's knowledge is all there on Goggle and Wiki.
Thing is, you ask Goggle or Wiki a specific question and voilla, the answer is delivered instantaneously. The old way, you'd wander down through the rows looking for the book about Space or Deserts and along the way be sidetracked by books about Ancient Civilizations or WWII.
Maybe the Young People have been conditioned to expect everything to be delivered at the push of the enter key or the swipe of a screen. Even the littlies have their iPads. Attention spans are practically non- existent.
Maybe I'm just old.
Many years ago there were Truancy Officers, and from memory for a period there were also Visiting Teachers (both in primary schools; secondary may have had somebody doing some work on truancy). The jobs overlapped to a certain extent; I think the Truancy Officers were eliminated first, then later the Visiting Teachers. Talking to those whose children are already attending would seem to be less important than talking to the parents of children that do not attend.
They're call attendance officers now.
http://www.papamoacollege.school.nz/vdb/document/931
For many years they were called Visiting Teachers, in the 70's and 80's. They visited the homes and helped with problems which were contributing…. Children going with Parents to interpret, for example.
Things going from bad to worse for the Keystone-cops Russian military in Ukraine.
Now their General in charge of the war Gerasimov has been evacuated to Belgorod due to shrapnel injuries from a Ukrainian attack.
According to this twitter thread there was a Ukrainian attack against a meeting of high ranking officers at a Russian command headquarters in the Russian-held area of Izyum in Ukraine. It appears that 20 may have been killed and up to 40 injured.
Not only that, there was just another huge fire in Belgorod. Judging by all the secondary explosions, it looks like it was a weapons depot.
According to this twitter thread and video, helicopters were circling the area 30 minutes prior to the explosion suggesting a VIP was about to arrive. Joining the dots, it seems likely that the Russians were securing the area waiting for Gerasimov to arrive.
So, it looks like the poor guy would have had quite a greeting when he arrived to the sound of a massive explosion at an arms depot in the area.
I guess we all have days like that sometimes….
Here's a succinct look at how his famous Gerasimov Doctrine (all instruments of state deployed carefully and accurately to achieve victory) supports broader strategy within the Russian state:
The Primakov (Not Gerasimov) Doctrine in Action – Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Putin needs this guy alive.
Agreed. Not that I feel particularly sorry for him given his past form. Karma is a wonderful thing.
But this horrendous attrition of their top leadership must be becoming very problematic for the Russian war effort. They tend to have a very top down military structure, and those in the lower-down ranks don't have much of a clue what to do.
The Ukrainians must be getting some good intel on the whereabouts of senior officers in Ukraine.
It could be the US intelligence service. Or maybe the Russians are still using unsecured communications despite all the trouble that has caused them so far. Or maybe it is the Russian military themselves feeding info back given that a lot of them don’t particularly like their senior officers and don’t particularly want to be there. Or it could be a combination of all the above.
Yes,the U.S commanders have alot more recent experience in conducting…war.
How long can this war go on?
Both the U.S and Russia seem so determined to….achieve their aims.
How long can this war go on?
For as long as it suits Xi, and not a smidgen longer. Xi can yank Putin's chain anytime. That he's been keeping quiet for so long tells us he likes what's happening. Not a threat to Belt & Road, apparently…
Interesting.
The BRIC countries seem keen on alternatives to the dominance of the $U.S in international commerce,but China does hold alot of U.S paper.
The strengthening of the U.S dollar is a two edged sword.
If the status of the U.S dollar is undermined ,America loses its huge leverage over the rest of the world.
It doesn't give me any sense of optimism for Ukraine though.
If it sets into a war of attrition that will favour Ukraine.
Due to the sanctions, Russia is unable to replace a lot of their military equipment. On the other hand, Ukraine has heaps pouring in from the west.
In a war of attrition, the advantage is to the side that can replace their losses. In this case, it looks very much like Ukraine.
The longer the war continues the more likely is Russia will win it. And there is no mechanism for reflection – or regime change – in the Putin regime.
For example Valery Gerasimov was sent to the Ukraine by Putin last week, and was apparently wounded yesterday by a Ukrainian MLRS strike on the CP (Command Post) of Maj. Gen. Andrei Simonov who was killed in the attack. Siminov was the ninth Russian general to die in this war and was killed near the city of Izyum – the fulcrum of the supposed northern spear head of the Russian Donbas offensive.
As an aside, Siminov was the senior officer commanding all Russia's electronic warfare units and the targeting information for this Ukrainian strike almost certainly came from an U.S. RC-135 "Rivet Joint" signals intelligence surveillance aircraft that has been operating over the Black Sea. Make what you will of how provocative that knowledge must be to the Russians.
The fate of Gerasimov (the closest of Putin confidantes) – fall from favour, disappearance from public view, sent to the front to get things moving or find salvation in death on the battlefield – is in the finest of totalitarian traditions (the fact he was only wounded and has fled the front will have Field Marshal Paulus chuckling in his grave) and should tell us all we need to know about the ability of Russia to find a way out of this war that doesn't involve a bloody victory.
I don't agree.
I think the longer it goes on, the more it favours the Ukrainians. That is because a long war becomes a war of attrition, and a war of attrition favours the side that can replace its losses.
As mentioned in another post, the Russians are having major problems with replacing equipment at the moment. For instance, Russia is having major difficulties with tank production. And a lot of their equipment depends on imported parts which are affected by sanctions.
Ukraine doesn't have this problem with the west committing to supply their military needs for as long as required. For instance, it looks like the US will be committing another $33 billion to Ukraine alone. Plus all the gear coming in from Britain and the rest of Europe.
Most of this isn't even in the field yet. When the Ukrainians are trained on all that, and they are able to get it into the field imagine how much damage they will be able to do to the Russian army compared to what they are doing now. Even as it stands at the moment, Ukraine is giving the Russians a lot of trouble just using the equipment they have. And that is going to get progressively worse for the Russians.
I think that is a reason the Russians attacked a lot earlier than they probably wanted to given the muddy conditions that is confining Russian forces to the road. Ideally, it would suit the Russian armour advantage to be on the open ground that is to their advantage in the Donbas. But that isn't really possible at the moment.
There was the May 9th deadline from Putin. But I think also, the Russians probably rightly concluded that if they held off until conditions favoured them, the Ukrainians would have got a lot stronger by that time.
Excepting of course that Russia could choose deploy weapons that would essentially 'win' the war in a matter of minutes. The longer it drags out the closer we get to that outcome I suspect.
That would be the temptation. However, I believe that NATO have stated that their response to such action would be proportionate, though not not necessarily the same.
So, for instance, NATO might bite the bullet and completely cut gas imports from Russia, which would completely deplete the Russian war effort nearly immediately.
Also, even China might be compelled to condemn such an action, and may not want to be seen giving tacit support to such action.
Also, Ukraine gave up its own nukes on the basis of a security guarantee from the US in case of nuclear attack.
So, there is a bit for Russia to weigh up in deciding whether such action is worth the consequences.
A happy little gathering of nuclear subs in Scotland.
If this isn't sending a not so subtle message to Vlad, I don't what the picnics all about!
Morale must be in the shitter.
Our briefing this week sets out just how rotten the army has been. Russia’s defence budget, of over $250bn at purchasing power, is about three times that of Britain or France, but much of it is squandered or stolen. Mr Putin and his top commanders kept their invasion plans from senior officers, reflecting a crippling lack of trust. Disaffected troops, fed on out-of-date rations, have deserted their vehicles. Units have tortured, raped and murdered only to be honoured by the Kremlin. Russia has failed to win control of the skies or combine air power with tanks, artillery and infantry. Wallowing in corruption, unable to foster initiative or learn from their mistakes, its frustrated generals abandoned advanced military doctrine and fell back on flattening cities and terrorising civilians.
https://archive.ph/JJYWh
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2022/04/30/how-rotten-is-russias-army
And the Ukrainians still haven't got into service all the good stuff the west is sending so I understand.
So, it looks like they are giving the Russians a hard time with the stuff they are using already. Doesn't bode well for the Russians once all the western heavy artillery etc gets into the field.
Yes the West is sending all the 'good stuff'….they will fight to the last Ukrainian.
Russia has more to lose than just this….conflict.
All they are doing is backing the Ukrainian's own willingness to fight for their country. A bit different to Afghanistan that folded like a pack of cards when the Western military left, despite all the investment there in helping them become self-sufficient militarily.
Seems more likely that Putin is fighting to the last Russian from what I can see. It reminds me of something from "The Walking Dead" where the Russian soldiers are like the zombies that keep coming and keep getting wiped out.
Whether they are going to have enough to win by force of numbers with that strategy seems unlikely given that this is a "special military operation'', not a war, according to the Russians, which limits their ability to call up reservists or launch a major draft. Even if they did that, it is going to take a long time before those forces can be brought into the combat. Also, equipping new forces will be an issue for the Russians given the attrition of their equipment and the difficulties in them replacing it.
So, the Russians are pretty much stuck with what they have got at the moment.
On the other hand, the Ukrainians have no such constraints and are training up as many as possible for the fight.
Afghanistan lasted 20 years and cost $2trillion .
Biden is asking Congress for another 33billion for the Ukraine.
I do wonder if merkins think what good 33billion could do ,regarding all the homeless people in U.S cities.
I guess having a bought and paid for strategic pawn on Russias border is more valuable to the U.S….longterm.
Probably all printed money. There is an endless supply of that.
But, I think the Ukrainians would be fighting with or without international support. They would likely be under a lot more Russian control by now. But they probably would go to more of an insurgency type war.
So, the US and Europe are just backing the Ukrainians in a fight they intend to have any way.
This stuff from the Russians about them fighting NATO or whatever is ridiculous. At the moment it is the might of the Russian army against the might of NATO’s little finger.
All that NATO has given the Ukrainians up until recently is basically some anti-tank and anti-aircraft gear, and some old Soviet stuff that the NATO nations wanted to get rid of for better stuff anyway.
'This stuff from the Russians about them fighting NATO or whatever is ridiculous. At the moment it is the might of the Russian army against the might of NATO’s little finger'
Oh really!You might be interested to know that the U.S.A is a member of NATO…and has a rather large….'finger'.
I did say "at the moment''. But that is certainly starting to change. Hence while Russia is trying to do as much as they can while they have the chance.
'at the moment',the U.S(NATO=member) is up to their eyeballs in it without actually deploying official boots on…the ground.
That they are. But remember, it is not like they are supporting Ukraine to invade Russia. Ukraine never asked to be invaded, and Russia can end this any time they want to by withdrawing.
The Ukrainian's outstanding combat performance will only degrade as their best units are chewed up in attritional positional warfare in the Donbas, whereas for the Russians the only way is up. At some point in the short to medium term a convergence in combat performance will occur. Already reports are the remaining Russian are fighting a lot better. This is why the Ukrainians are desperate for artillery, a type of weapon whose lethality is almost independent of the skill of the infantry. In this sense, the fighting in the Donbas is analogous to most 20th century warfare. For example the Somme in 1916, where the huge losses of Kitcheners ill-trained "new armies" was of less military importance than the destruction of Germany's best pre-war infantry, with Ludendorff lamenting the conversion of the German army into a militia. Subsequent to the Somme as the Allies armies improved the Germans were forced to retreat to the Hindenburg Line & adopt an elastic defense based on concrete and a cadre of elite machines gunners. Or perhaps more relevant the huge losses of the Red army in 1941-42 were of less importance than the massive and irresplaceable attrition of the Germans in the same period. By the time of the post-Kursk counter-offensives the Red Army still wasn't very good but it had killed enough of the very good Germans of 1941 for it not to matter anymore.
Another thing not being covered in the media is the crippling fuel crisis engulfing the Ukrainian army. Don’t be seduced by propaganda, the Russians are not stupid. All Ukrainian refining capacity was destroyed early on in this war and much of the subsequent Russian cruise missile attacks have been on the fuel storage and transport net, particularly railways, which has basically starved the Ukrainians of fuel for their still powerful tank brigades. Almost all imagery of Ukrainian heavy armour I've seen recently is showing it dug in, with probably only enough fuel for emegency use.
All in all, the fate of the Ukraine will probably be decided in the next 2 weeks. If the Russians can't achieve a clean breakthough and surround the Donbas salient – and there is good reason to suppose they lack the combat power for this – then Putin will either declare war on or after the May Day parades and simply use brute force and numbers to overwhelm the Ukraine or someone will have to come up with a face-saving Russian "victory" with a ceasefire along the current battlelines – again if we were to look to history the Finnish defeat in the 1939 Winter war might be a good guideline. I know Zelensky will vehemently oppose any ceding of land but if that is what the US and Russia and China can cook up and the bulk of the Ukraine retains it's independence then that might be what he'll have little choice but to accept.
Here is some nice artillery work by the Ukrainians that may be the attack referred to in my post. But you can see they are very accurate.
I think the Russian artillery are good at attacking civilian cities where they can't really miss. But I think their targeting ability is not as good as the Ukrainians.
Fuel is definitely an issue. But at the moment, the Ukrainians don't need to move around as much as the Russians. The Ukrainians are able to maintain more defensive positions, and Putin has put the onus on the Russians to do the attacking.
But fuel supply is something they definitely will need to solve when they start more counter-offensives. They have a similar problem to the Russians at the start of the war, in terms of long supply lines. They may need to start sending out fuel trucks from Poland or similar.
Also, logistics continue to be a big problem for the Russians. Not only did the Ukrainians take out an arms depot, they have also just taken out several Russian railway bridges essential to supplying the Russian army.
If the Ukrainians are able to, now would be a good time for them to counter attack, while the Russians are low on leadership, and don't want to waste their own ammo and fuel due to their own logistical problems.
Declaring war is an option for Putin to increase the soldiers available, which is a major lack at the moment. But those soldiers aren’t magicked up over night. They have to be trained, equipped, and incorporated into the existing forces.
Given the attrition rate on Russian equipment, and the difficulty of replacing it, this is going to be problematic for Russia, even if a state of war is declared.
And, how much does Russia really want to weaken its armed forces over this conflict? They are just playing into the stated objectives of the US who want a weakened Russia.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-61214176
Thre is no indication I have seen that the Ukrainians have sufficient combat power to conduct anything more than local counter-attacks. I think a counter offensive is completely beyond them and anyway, no armoured offensive has had any chance of succeeding if the enemy has air superority since 1940.
The Russians will keep up a methodical, Great War style artillery dominated postional warfare to seize and hold limited objectives ('Artillery conquers, infantry occupies' to quote JFC Fuller) and using western artillery the Ukrainians will then counter-attack. The Russian will suffer hugely going in, and the Ukrainians will suffer hugely throwing them out again. This fighting will be almost exactly like the Western Front in 1917. IMHO, the war in the Ukraine will most likely develop into a version of Passchendaele.
I understand they have quite a good counter-offensive going around Kharkiv at the moment. That may be where the attack on Belgorod came from, as the Ukrainians are quite close to that border. And they are also threatening to cut off Russian supply lines from there.
I understand their counter-attack around Kherson has come to a bit of a halt atm. But, from what I have read, the Russians have had to send a lot more forces back there to hold the ground. So, that removes Russian forces from attacking elsewhere.
From what I have read, it looks like a lot of the Russian battle groups are very undermanned due to losses they have taken and are not really fully functional. For instance, apparently, some of their APCs are going out with only a couple of people in them rather than 8 or whatever the ideal number is.
It sounds like their biggest problem is really not having enough infantry. I think this is in part due to their war strategy and also massive attrition. But it makes it very hard for them to hold ground and go forward. The problem being that, as they go forward, they have to leave troops behind to hold taken ground. This thins their forces out further as they continue to advance.
So, where the Ukrainians have retreated, it often is strategic, going back to strong defensive positions and inviting the Russians to keep coming. Continually attacking defensive positions results in very high attrition, which is what we are seeing at the moment.
The big mistake the Russians made at the start was to attack on too many fronts. So, the Ukrainians don't want to repeat the same mistake, and should focus their counter-attacks where they can have good effect.
No links for the above sorry as it would take ages to find all the stuff I have looked at. As you can see, this is a bit of an obsession for me atm!!
Good comments from both of you. I can well understand how absorbing these events are. To my mind the Ukrainian agony makes so many of the other 'outrage de jour' seem like petty, narcissistic distractions.
Thanks for that Red.
On the point of the fuel shortages for the Ukrainians, one thing they have in their advantage is the use of drone technology. This stuff is a lot more portable, and less fuel intensive than heavy armour. The Russians don't seem to be up with that so much.
Obviously the TB2 Turkish drone that has been well publicised. But also the US switchblade kamakaze drones. And they are also utilising hobby drones and converting them for munitions use. Including using 3D printers to customise tail fins etc so that are fitted to common, cheap munitions they have.
Here is an example of bombs being dropped from a hobby drone. That was a nice effort, dropping the bomb right through a car sunroof. Nothing but net!
Note: Trigger warning. That video does contain real war footage that some may find distressing.
That is no fake trigger warning.
It must be really unsettling as a soldier knowing that sort of thing can happen out of the blue. It must cause the sort of effect on morale that snipers cause.
Apparently they are customising armour-piercing munitions to be dropped from hobby drones on the likes of tanks and APCs. The cost-benefit of that equation is staggering. The cost of the drone plus munition is less than $1000, and they can take out a piece of equipment that might be worth $3/4 of a million or more.
Btw, I put the wrong link into the first link of my first post today.
Here is the link I meant to put in:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10772727/Putins-military-commander-Valery-Gerasimov-wounded-forced-evacuate-war-zone.html
If sea level rise was Labour-Greens' opening panic story to introduce their Zero Carbon strategy, starting a debate about sea walls, insurance stripping away location-specific premiums to zero coverage, the great Westport tombstone, and Canute-like 'heroic' resistance, we should probably expect a related panic theme every week coming out from Shaw and Roberston.
The gist from Newshub's breaking story last night was that it was driven by a new scientific discovery. Neither Shaw nor Robertson seem to do panic. Shaw does pragmatic response (usually too understated) and Robertson does complacent ignorance (I've never noticed him personally addressing the climate crisis).
If they were to collaborate, it'd be a good thing. Watch for any specific climate-change framing in his budget speech, huh? If you can cite it here, I'll applaud. If not, he'll prove me right.
The story was designed as a precursor to the Carbon Zero announcement coming up in a couple of weeks.
The carbon farming in the budget has been well telegraphed for months.
It's the first and last time the Greens will get to shine this term.
The narrative is clear as they rolled out the draft adaption plan first,then a model,then the CC initiatives,then the budget.
Great to see Ngai Tahu focusing the minds of Queenstown Lakes District Council and getting a total pullout of that Councils' opposition to 3 Waters.
Council flips on Three Waters | Otago Daily Times Online News (odt.co.nz)
This follows Dunedin City Council and Central Otago also seeing the light.
Who else is going to crumble?
Seems Ngai Tahu already have an influential governance stake. What pressure will they have put on the council?
They have a lot of levers with Queenstown Lakes. They own much of the Queenstown CBD where QLDC resides. They are a JV partner on a couple of properties with them. They are one of the largest tourism operators in QLDC, in a city that runs on tourism. They are partners in Queenstown and Wanaka Kiwibuild. They are signatories on the NZTA-QLDC roading alliance that rebuilt the town centre and is now building the bypass SH1 road. They will also be one of the largest governance beneficiaries of 3 Waters.
The local government elections are going to be very interesting. I'd expect that, if the Council has moved to supporting 3 waters, the anti-group will be looking to topple them. There's a strong swell of popular opinion against 3 waters (in the way that it's currently been packaged) – which all local body reps will be eyeing with concern….
But then without water, and with less and less say in transport, what power does any local government really hold anymore?
The Nat-proxies may well storm the castle at the local elections to find that it now has only one tall and very thin tower to defend.
The local government kingdom has been lost.
Next the hated colonial central government. No more of that nasty democratic tyranny of the majority anymore.
In 3 Waters there are now so many safeguards against privatisation that they forgot that the 50% iwi ownership is pretty close to privatisation itself.
There's not even a 49-51% split that John Key did for the electricity generator selloff.
While this government clearly sees a rationality in renationalising health and tertiary education, the state is forming a structure for water in which Ministers (and hence voters) get the least possible influence.
I bet if Labour proposed to National that the regional and co-governance model was dumped and they simply set up a nationwide water asset owner, it would go the same was as the National+Labour+Act vote that the Carbon legislation got: enduring Parliamentary mandate.
As it happens this morning I found out an old colleague of mine is working in a leadership role in just this space, and I think I have made it clear I am fully supportive of major water industry consolidation for any number of good technical reasons.
But caucus seems to have conflated it with another agenda altogether that looks for all practical purposes indistinguishable from 'separate development'. And some of us might recall where that led to.
The Natz were not too concerned about the locals when it came to the …. Auckland Supercity.
The touted synergies and savings proved to be ….b/s.
Tru dat. Anyone expecting cheaper water bills after 3 Waters?
The SuperCity was initially Labour’s idea but when National won in 2008 it became the plaything of ACT and Rodney Hide forced through breaking changes in unseemly haste, way outside of the transition plan, and the resulting beast was not what the royal commission envisaged. The RW tried to fuck up Auckland by turning the main council services into corporate CCO’s that mostly ignore democracy. Luckily Aucklanders were wise to the gNats asset-stripping ways and have tried to elect left wing Councillors ever since.
There was a swell of opposition to 3 Waters. That swell is rapidly being reduced, by strategic manoeuverings, to a harmless ripple. There will be no community up-rising to topple councillors who support 3 Waters.
Today and tomorrow there is an electrical generation imbalance,where demand can exceed supply at ant time.
https://nzgb.redspider.co.nz/
So the pop culture wars currently being played out on our screens, books, comics and games are certainly getting interesting.
I get the feeling that the current woke/intersectional/garbage is slowly, but surely, turning.
The BBC, finally, realized that the 13th Doctor (or Doctor Karen if you prefer) was poorly written and was greatly disliked (not because shes a woman but because the scripts were garbage) and so Russel T Davies has returned and we're all now waiting for the death of Doctor Karen and who will be the new Doctor
To bring back the audiences I see no better option than David Tennant and Billie Piper (though I think Christopher Eccleston was best) coming back for a limited run and then handing off to the new Doctor
Batwoman finally cancelled, this show basically epitomised all that was bad about woke culture:
Amazon have made a major boo boo with the Rings of Power, heres a reuploaded clip that Amazon put out of 'superfans' talking about the trailer and then Amazon removed it because of how bad it was received
Comedians and actors are now starting to speak out, Bill Maher has certainly seen which way the wind is blowing.
Disney is haemorrhaging money, Netflix loses over 50 billion and subscriptions for the first time
Get woke go broke is now starting to become mainstream
We've still got a long way to go but at least theres a distant light at the end of the tunnel
However there are still many, many problems and this isn't just a left right issue but a good entertainment issue, heres a list of best picture winners and nominees form today back, have a look at the movies this decade and compare them to previous decades
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academy_Award_for_Best_Picture#2020s
Movies from decades past used to be both critically acclaimed and popular with audiences, look at the movies on the list and look at some of the movies that were nominated and didn't win and compare them to today
What that means is movies are going backwards and we're suffering for it.
Christopher Eccleston was great. He is still doing good work – as well as appearing at places like the Manchester Working Class Movement Library.
I think he really did come across like an alien (not that I've met an alien) and while Billies chemistry with David was off the charts Christopher is still the best Doctor
Hopefully hes got his mental illnesses under control because he was really not doing well at all not so long ago
Eccleston was a great way to reboot the franchise but to me, Tennant was the most watchable Doctor, even the canonical Dr Who. He brought humour and zany energy. The downside was an unfortunate tendency to be a foppish nerd and talk a lots of BS rather than take action. I blame the writers for that. Tennant is a great actor
Enjoyed the "BatWoman" trailer — at least they use the word "Woman" simply and clearly. Never watched the show.
As for the Amazon show, it's based on the appendices to LOTR, they don't have rights to the real stories from the Silmarillion or Lost Tales, so it's doomed to be weak. I don't mind a different take on Middle Earth. (The Last Ringbearer by Kirill Yeskov was great). But I am worried that they won't be telling the great stories we hope for.
Different takes are fine, some of those really into the books don't like the movies and thats fine.
The problem is they're using Tolkiens name and leeching off the movies (as much as they can) but also are trying to erase Tolkien as much as possible and rewrite his works for 'todays' audiences
Its almost as if they've forgotten that the books have been translated into over 30 (nearly 40) languages so other cultures seem to be fine with what Tolkien wrote or that the movies made nearly 3 billion dollars world wide (nearly 6 if you count The Hobbit film series)
So people all over the world were happy with the books and happy with the films yet these producers have decided their must be
HobbitsHarfoots, black beardless female dwarves, black elves with short hair, Galadriel must be shown in armour and swinging a sword (because being top three most powerful beings in the third age just isn't enough)You want to make movie or a series with black elves then go for it, beardless dwarves is aok with me
Just don't say its Tolkien
Bezos has reportedly spent a billion dollars (money acquired by notoriously exploiting his workers) trying to get this thing to the screen. Will enjoy the schadenfreude if it fails. And I agree it does look to be a travesty against Tolkien’s vision, because too many millennial writers are making it into their own political ego trip.
But on the other hand, Middle Earth is such an amazing place & I love to see it brought to life.
(Correction: “Unfinished Tales” not “Lost Tales”)
The end times are nigh. The war in the police hierarchy between progressive commanders and fascists has entered the attrition phase. As the numbers turn against him, the police director of the national organised crime group, Greg Williams, wrote in an email that it “makes my head hurt".
He seems to mean the evidence shows no impact on supply and demand – but the words got scrambled in his head and came out wrong.
Intelligence not being there has never been a problem for cops in the past, so looks like radical progress is happening.
Gosh, it's almost as if there's been an outbreak of common sense. No wonder the crime ringleader dude got spooked.
Who would expect a fascist to notice when a feedback process produced a consensus? They don't get training in how to spot a consensus, so can't blame them.
Green Party MP Chlöe Swarbrick: "the price of a tinny has not been impacted." Word on the street? Part of the hip younger generation, so I guess she gets it. Anyway, price stability is the goal of the RB, neoliberalism, and our parliamentary bipartisan consensus, so it's win/win/win all around. Except for the fascists.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/128504777/police-division-over-controversial-cannabis-operation-revealed
Small question of hyperbole here. "Fascism : a way of organizing a society in which a government ruled by a dictator controls the lives of the people and in which people are not allowed to disagree with the government." Can you marry this definition of fascism with your depiction of some police commanders as 'fascists' who are still seeing air surveillance of marijuana growing as worthwhile? I get you don't agree but really…. fascist?
Let's keep that word for those to whom it really applies.
Sorry, should be a reply addressed to Dennis Frank at #8.
good post. have had personal experience with a couple of those places, high tides co-inciding with inland rainfall can be devastating, and its getting common. I think that most sea-protection happens where the land is worth more, somewhere there is a correlation between not believing climate change, and demanding that something be done about something you dont believe in, the nth shore springs to mind. there will be neighbourhood valuation groups meeting and discussing what can be done to stop rising waters, and lowering values…
The plot thickens. Is the PM going to break her promise about no wealth tax this term? What about in the future should Labour be re elected?
She wont' say. Maybe because she is set to move on?
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2022/05/prime-minister-jacinda-ardern-says-parts-of-nz-s-tax-system-are-unfair-refuses-to-rule-out-wealth-tax.html
David Parker also seems to be chomping at the bit to get stuck into these rich pricks given his utterances on the issue lately.
Bring it on.
See how the choice in the OP is framed between climate or the economy. Not allowed both.
[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.]
Had you made some decent attempt to explain your thinking and referenced what it is in the post you think frames economy vs climate, I might have let this go. I’ve told you many times now that you don’t understand my position, and I’ve asked you to stop misrepresenting it. In the post I said that Labour should be helping coal mining communities to transition to other livelihoods. That’s the economy and climate action. I’m not willing to have people continually making shit up about what I write so please stay out of my posts for the rest of the month.
Just giving you the chance to keep your arm in.
But having moved this to OM I can now say what I really think. The Greens everywhere have for decades vociferously stifled the one technology that would have prevented this crisis – yet even now when the failure is blatantly obvious – you still cannot tolerate anyone talking about it.
As I said – your OP on the other thread framed the problem as a false choice between coal and the industries on which our economy depends.
Presumably you've seen 2067.
It's very Australian.
(2) CHRONICAL: 2067 Official Trailer (2020) SciFi – YouTube
ooo I like it.
In the post I said that Labour should be helping coal mining communities to transition to other livelihoods.
Without specifying even in the broadest outline how you think this can be done – this is a pretty meaningless claim. My problem with all of these de-power schemes is that while they might look superficially appealing, once you start to dig into the complex energy, material and technology linkages involved in everything you take for granted about the modern world – they start to look less pretty.
You once argued there was no reason why we could not go back to living something like we did in the 1950's. Sure – but there is no reason to think that would be any more a stable state than it was back then. Moreover you would also have to accept that a population of 8b is not going to survive with the food production we had then. No computers, no internet, no medical tech – so many things we take for granted in 2022, are just not possible in a 1950 context.
Nor would I suggest that a second wave feminism would have happened. The opportunity for women to access the workforce in very large numbers was largely possible to the elimination of a lot of physical labour with automation for instance. All of this tech is inter-woven in ways most people do not see – and you generally either get the whole enchilada or none at all. There is not much scope for picking the things you want to have in 1950, like mRNA vaccines, but not computers mining bitcoin.
The point I have made many times – but you refuse to acknowledge – is that technology drives social change. If you deconstruct and regress the technology, the same will likely happen with the social conditions – only in ways you will probably not really like. Indeed if you want to see what would likely happen – consider the lives of the very poorest women on earth, still living in absolute poverty. These people are wonderfully de-powered, yet you would find their living conditions intolerable.
There is of course scope for us to trim excess and waste – and we keep doing this all the time. But the idea we can happily regress backward in time to a previous era that was somehow better and safer is dishonest, unadulterated rose-tint as far as I am concerned.