Seamus is small, sleek, & black all over, apart from some white plumage on the front of the throat & his chin. He’s a Little Shag, according to NZ Birds Online.
We have a "mythical" cat according to friends who have never seen Mia, but observe her bed toys and bowl!!
An orchard born year old nervous native when she came to us, she disappears at extra people machinery or strange vehicles.
She is clean loving and plays like she always did, leaping and rolling in gay abandon even at 10 years. We enjoy your videos very much, keep them coming Cheers.
Thank you very much, Patricia. It’s lovely having all this free entertainment just over my back fence.
I recommend you call your cat the Invisible Cat. I can well imagine what she is like. My brother had one (of their three cats) who was invisible. She just didn’t like visitors & would also disappear. If you were lucky you see the tip of her tabby tail disappearing around a corner or into the bushes.
Spotted a very unusual bird in the stream this morning, but didn’t have my smartphone on me. By the time I got back to the fence it had moved upstream, foraging.
At least twice the size of some nearby mallard & mallard/grey hybrid drakes. Black feathers, with some flashes of white, & a very red thick beak (not a “bill”, like the ducks’). Wonder if it might be a black goose? Never seen one here before.
I have a couple of video clips of it some distance away. I’ll either run it through the zoom option of my movie-making program on my older laptop, or take a still frame or two & crop & enlarge them online. That should confirm it.
New Covid-19 modelling suggested that New Zealand could see up to 7000 Covid-19 deaths a year, even with a high proportion of the population jabbed. Explainer Editor Keith Lynch digs beneath the surface of those extremely worrying – and controversial – numbers.
and the person was allocated some 4-5 odd minutes, Person Russel, Other Person, and Male Human, are simply not a. paying attention, b. paying a modicum of respect, and
for what its worth, it appears that murderers and rapists in NZ – men who have committed crimes as men – are now in prision in NZ as Non Males.
These people are on the Government tit, have been for the most of their lifes on the government tit, for shame.
This is the Labour Party, and the Green Party, in its truest form.
That clip shows the true face of the parties involved in this removal of rigths from human beings that used to be known as 'women'. Btw, to any bloke who says this does not affect you? Do you have one of these humans at home? They might be your birthing partent, they might be your spouse, they might be your offspring, let me assure you in no uncertain terms this does affect you.
And btw, rest assured that there is nothing in my case that the Non Male Leader of the Labour Party could ever say in regards to this bill that would ever re-assure me or would sound even the slightest bit 'believable'. Ditto for the Non Male Co Leader of the Green Party.
Let's hope all, that we get the chance to vote in 2023, and let me assure you that my vote will go to whomever opposes this bullshit.
Start around 3:53 to hear the attempts to interrupt begin before he says at 4:00 "You've had your five minutes."
As for Deborah Russell MP:
Leave the camera on. We've all seen women stretch before, it's not a big deal. (Alternatively, tell the truth – Rex Landy rightfully identified your behaviour.)
she was the one that called small business owners 'losers' last year in April during he first lockdown. I did not think that that person could show herself even more callous than that, but good grief, this is a supposed MP of the Country. And this person lives of our taxes and hard work.
For shame Labour. For fucking shame.
I have a bottle of whiskey that i auctioned off the Non Male PM of this country many years ago, when Andrew Little was polling at 5% for preferred Leader of this country, and i am honestly thinking that the best to do with it is to flush it down the drains. As the Labour party should be flushed down the drain.
I will always vote on the left, and as a strategic voter, I will vote Labour or teh GP to keep National out of power. But the left is in for a big wake up call come the next election. Just like Māori, women have their own political perspectives, needs and positions that don't always align with the mainstream political left, this is true even for left wing women. If the NZ left wing parties aren't watching what is happening to Labour, the GP and the Libdems in the UK over this (and they're probably not except through an ID pol lens), then they deserve what they get.
Same, since the Values Party I've always voted for the planet and a fair deal, but seeing this and getting some idea of what its all about, unless they bring back the McGillicuddys I'll be refraining in future.
It is as if the inmates have taken over the asylum, Andrew Little with his steadfast adherence to reefer madness was already becoming impossible to support and in this clip he demonstrates why for a rational future its become necessary to vote Andrew out.
Women in prisons are being raped and inseminated – aka rendered pregnant – being offered abortions in prisons, because men who raped and killed can identify out of a male prison into a female prison and be given access to vulnerable persons who have no recourse, and have no right to privacy, bodily autonomy and safety.
LoL they are men. Forever. Can never erase that Y.
The only way to be a woman is to have been born a girl. And no, we are not clownfish/seahorses/plants. Intersex want nothing to do with your claims about identity of men in dresses. Intersex is not an identity.
I'm hoping what they deserve is to be seriously challenged on what they are doing, but still win the election. I would never wish National on this country especially in the form they are in now. There's no evidence that National will roll back any of the gender ID legislation anyway.
No, there is no way any of these people will get my vote. I might lose any right to bodily autonomy (and that is what this bill is imo), any right to even just go to a toilet and in peace urinate or defecate, lose my right to a 'born female' to touch my body after a rape, and so on and so forth,
but i will be damned if i vote for my subjugation, and put myself on the urinary leash all by myself.
This video demonstrates the absolute disregards these persons form the so called 'left' aka Labour/Green have for the concerns of presons/peoples/others/karens (karens of all colors and creeds).
If the left abandons what it stands for, is it then still the left?
I have asked this before, how can anyone on the left condone the doings of Labour and the Greens if the same thing would be abhorrent to them under a National and Act government. And how can anyone vote for this, and pretend that National Act could be worse.
And last but least, there are other alternatives to put a vote for then the FFP system that seems to still linger.
NACT would be worse because on top of this there would be all the other stuff NACT do – cut benefits, fuck with employment legislation, more dairy farms, much slower climate action and so on (pretty long list).
I'm not seeing any evidence that NACT will reverse or amend the gender ID laws.
if you have no more sex – and with that no more sex based rights, how would that affect
a. benefits for 'women' if they are sex based?
b. can a person with a functioning cervix/uterus be compelled by Winz to breed children for money as a career choice (Tamati Coffey atm is pushing for the commercialization of 'surrogacy')
c. can transmen be drafted should there be a requirement
d. can any case of 'sexual discrimination' be dismissed on the grounds of gender?
e. transwomen be 'women' and thus diversity in businesses/parties be achieved (two entire male transwomen in Germany got elected on the Womens Roll if the German Green Party, thus before the persons of Germany ever achieved parity in that Party)
f. can lactating persons be compelled to sell their human milk for money by Winz?
g. can people be compelled into sex work (a career choice to some prostitution positive genderists) by Winz
g. the climate is fucked and we need a better Green Party to change anything, at the moment the Green Party is not even able to understand basic biology, or at the very least is steadfastly refusing to admit biology in favour of 'self identity.
these are just a few things that come to my mind,
Sorry Weka, i know where you are coming from, and I voted for the Green Party in 2016 in honor of Metiria Turei. And unless something changes, and radically and quickly so, that was the last time i voted for them.
Tell me how not voting GP or Labour in 2023 will prevent any of that. When you’ve done that I’ll make the argument for how the non vote will make things worse.
It wont' prevent it because it is already decided. The clip above shows that this is just for show – bread and circus and hey the people in that clip are paid to be there. I guess they call that ‘work’.
Thus tell me how not voting for the Greens or Labour would make it worse for us?
I will not be part of my own demise Weka. I will not be part of the subjugation of us, I will not be part of the group that will remove the rights that our kin, has fought for, got beaten for.
And above all tell me how the removal or our rights, the commercialization of the female reproductive organs, the 'rendering invisible of biological women' it can be good for society and the environment.
I can't stop it with my vote, but i can refuse to rubberstamp it. I will not be an enabler, the turnkey, the jailor to my own prison.
Every time we have a nine years of a National led government we lose ground in so many areas. There's not evidence that National won't also carry on with the gender ID pathways. Our main hope of change for the better for women in regards to gender ideology is to push back. This is *way easier under centre left governments thand RW ones, because under RW ones a lot more of women's energy/time/resources are tied up in surviving. This is doubly so for working and underclass women, single mothers, Māori, disabled women and so on.
That's the same argument about most things eg climate change. Real change happens outside parliament and then parliament has to follow. But it's even more important here, because of how the many of the women in Labour and the GP are. Taking power from them basically leaves neoliberal conservatives in power and they're not going to be acting in the best interests of women on any level.
Agree weka.. I see this identity stuff as foolish and wrongheaded but feel that solidarity on economic injustice is more pressing, and that despite all their flaws the current government's efforts to undo the legacy of Rogernomics is a worthy project.
The cries of the poor have been ignored for too long.
how many of the poor are persons/people/others/karens and their children?
and does it matter that now we not only deny their existance, we remove a few rights, and they are still poor.
let me put it this way, the Non Male Leader of the Green and the Labour Party will never use a public toilet, they will have the keys to the executive suite, or maybe use the loo in the Korou lounge, you and i however will have no such luck, we will have to go into unisex toilets with urinals next to the handwash basins and the men will still have their mens.
This Genderquatsch will mostly – i would even go so far and say ONLY harm vulnerable and poor non males and their children.
And if taken to he extreme will sterilise and castrate the children of the poor, the neuro diverse, the ‘non conforming’ children.
I worry for my young nieces growing up in a deeply sexist, body-negative, gender-confused culture, weaponised by Instagram. There are some really bad stories coming out of Australia and Scotland about families being torn apart and women silenced.
Feel like we have to choose the lesser of two evils. Keeping the complete whack jobs of National and Act out of power is actually an existential demand for vulnerable NZers. Covid running rampant (as FJK etc are advocating) will kill thousands, mainly the poor, elderly, and people with other health problems. Housing will be made 10x worse. Inequality will be ignored. Health and education will be slashed and sold off. We will be distracted by massive rugby and sailing spectacles while all the problems are swept under the carpet.
I will vote for social credit, legalise aotearoa, or something like that.
but i will not vote for people that take rights away form us humans that were formerly known as women. Never. I will not be complicit in my own demise.
Let's get a women's party started. Te Paati Maori is TWAW. I didn't vote for them to tell me women have a penis and men get pregnant. GP DGAF about the environment. Virtue signaling to the max. 9 in James entourage, flying o/s. Not to mention the dreaded Covids. Labour has lost their way. Natscum. ACT blame the poor for being poor and are Hobson's Pledge type of folk. So what is left. All the GC ♀️ to ruin their ballot? I wholeheartedly agree. I will not be complicit in my erasure
We're always the first to suffer in times like this – however, this identity 'politics' is a $34 trillion industry, Big Pharma love the #LifeLongPatient model it affords. Whereas sex is observed at birth, matters regarding healthcare and spaces where both sexes deserve privacy.
There are currently 1200 girls waiting for radical double mastectomy/hormones/puberty blockers in our gender clinic currently…. this is taking healthy breasts away bc of a mental illness (it's in the DSM-V).
I understand that you must believe what you believe.
But i would like you again to look at the above clip, keep in mind the video of kerekere 'terfing' submitters, and tell me why again you think that these people will care.
Btw, I see no difference between Labour and National. Non of the raises in benefits have kept up with rising living costs and rental costs. No houses have been build, but the government has 'bought' houses of the market thus contributing to high house costs. Despite some crappy sandwiches in school – when school is actually on, child hood poverty is through the roof, because their parents are not keeping up with rising living costs and high rental costs/mortgages. Healthcare even without Covid was and still is a mess. Corrections a mess. Poor old people are still deciding if they should eat, have medication or heat as they still can't afford all of these things in one pay cycle.
You vote for the Green Party, go ahead, but so far you have not given me any reason to vote for them again. And the sad stage of the environment is not working anymore, no more then' national will be worse.
The last time national was having the reigns they did not try to put us back in to the 'seen but not heard box' that Labour and the Greens will put us in favor of the feelings for the generally het men with a fetish.
Also, can you explain to me if men are women, will they still be women when women have no longer rights, or will they revert back to men?
As i said, i will not be an enabler to the undoing of my sex, the few rights that i and those like me have, not even under the false premise that 'national will be worse' or that 'the greens will save the environment'. Not good enough.
Sabine, much of the foundation for SSID was laid under National / ACT governments. This has been happening since 1995. What's happening now in relation to BCs is the last card in the hand of formal and social rights needed to trump biological sex with the notion of gender identity.
I'm with you in relation to there being very important wider implications to the integrity of sex-based rights but when you suggest that a Labour government would force women to bear children, enter sex work, or sell breast milk etc, I'm afraid you lose me.
To me, the biggest threat in all of this comes from the generation of a socially conservative backlash – that will be surfed by crackpot extremist libertarians.
It happened already in England, during the Financial crisis some years ago where Jobcentres had job offers for Strippers and Lapdancers. Outrage ensued, and it was then banned in 2010, but it happened. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-10831614
So when i point to these scenarios it is not that Labour will do that or the Greens or National for that matter or any coalition, but that anyone could potentially use what ever legislation comes from it. Once it is legal, and sex is no longer protected, what then. What next.
Like for example, if men can get undressed (fully intact males) in the sauna, or spa area for women, then that would also lead to remove 'indecent exposure' for example, as clearly men do not have to undergo a gender re-assignement surgery in order to be women. So there will be huge legal changes as consequence of these changes.
So apart from the very obvious, these questions still stand, can and will people be compelled into these situations?
And so far, no one has given any assurance that it won't be irrespective of the colors of the government du jour.
I voted Labour or Green all my life. I am now politically homeless. I taught women’s and gender studies courses at university for more than thirty years. Sex and gender have been core and distinct concepts in sociology since the 1970s. Yet we are not ‘allowed’ to discuss these in political contexts unless we parrot ridiculous mantras like ‘trans women are women’ ( trans women are biological males with gender dysphoria). The role of a select committee is to hear and consider evidence. I am appalled by the behaviour of the BDMR select committee members – sneering at submitters they dislike and failing to give even the appearance of listening to groups like Speak Up for Women. Watch Deborah Russell and Elizabeth Kerekere during that and some other submissions. I left the Green Party this year when disagreement with gender self ID was termed hate speech. Im extremely unlikely to be able to vote Labour again after this mockery of democratic process. Ant vote NACT so looking for a leftie protest option.
The trouble is Weka, Labour and the Greens will see it as an endorsement of their policies if they do get back in.
We really don't have much leverage unless we collectively threaten to withdraw our votes .A huge fuss needs to be made so as to embarrass them and make them reconsider. It looks almost to me as well that Auckland is starting to come apart.Brazen non compliance and defiance of public health orders, what with that utter idiot Tamaki and the protest at the Domain today
Bang goes all the govt's covid credit if it falls apart.The restriction of our freedom in a public health emergency is the one scenario when community obedience is rational.That we can't even do that anymore gives me little hope of a spirit of collectivism to solve all our other problems
A huge fuss needs to be made so as to embarrass them and make them reconsider
Completely agree with this.
If women don't vote and NACT get in, do you believe that Labour and the GP will pin that on gender ID pol? I don't. The non-vote will disappear into the rest of the non-vote that no-one talks about and if the ideology is still strong in those parties, there will be a strong motivation to stay in denial (assuming the protest non-vote as any impact). And yes, way easier to blame on things like covid failures.
But hey ho, we should probably be talking strategy about what to do between now and then so it doesn't come to there.
why would you assume that we don't vote, by not voting for the 'supposed left' ?
MMP is the game in town, NZfirst, Maori Party, Legalise Aotearoa, Social Credits etc can all be voted for.
They might not make it in, but sometimes it is better to lose then to be complicit.
And the best thing that can happen to any of the more prominent parties is to be so small that they must go into a coalition. And that can't happen if people vote by default rather then on issues. And undoing womens rights, endangering womens in their daily lifes, work, and sport, are issues that are currently laughed out of the door by the Ministers of the Green Party and the Labour Party.
There is a media blackout on this issue unless it’s a ‘my beautiful trans kid’ story. Gender critical views don’t get published. I’m not part of Speak Up for Women, but any coverage they have had misrepresents their views. I attended one of their public meetings on the Bill and found a pleasant group of women providing a clear and accurate summary of the main points in the gender self ID clauses in it. Some transsexual women (ie medically transitioned male-to female people) were with them in support. I cannot and will not toerate the shutting down of women’s voices on this issue. I’ve been a feminist lol my adult life and, although we have often been ridiculed and misunderstood in the past, we have never been shut down or had our views banned until now. I can’t understand how this is happening. And I certainly won’t vote for a political party whose MPsinsulge in this kind of behaviour.
Bang goes all the govt's covid credit if it falls apart.The restriction of our freedom in a public health emergency is the one scenario when community obedience is rational.That we can't even do that anymore gives me little hope of a spirit of collectivism to solve all our other problems
Wanted to address this separately. This is why the GP vote will be important. What we are seeing is the divisions from decades of neoliberal ignoring of social unrest and poverty. If we get a Labour governent next time and the Greens are out of parliament, hands up who thinks that Labour will move left and address poverty or housing?
Is the Non Male Leader of the Green Party not some associate minister for the homeless and housing?
Why is then the Green Party wasting precious time and resources telling women that they are subcategory now of their own sex class so that men can pretend to be women and be given unfettered access to all and any spaces that used to be single sex, under the guise of inclusion of some while excluding those that came before. Colonisation is a good word for what the Greens and the Labour Party are currently doing. Colonising womens spaces for men.
And knowing that the Greens will enable the next Labour Government should the need arise, why are they not leveraging this knowledge now in regards to housing, homelessness and poverty? After all they have no issues working together in removing the sex based rights of Non Males in this country.
Has the green party released a statement in regards to the atrocious behavior of the Green Party members, such as KereKere and her 'terf' youtube video?
that right now is the only statement i would like to see, and also i would like to see that from the Labour Party.
A short, concise statement that will be clear that this attitude as evidenced in the video above, will not be tolerated, that the people who will make their statements will be treated with respect, fairly, and will not be spoken over or have their times cut short, and above all will not be insulted with the term 'terf' or called transphobic.
As for Deborah Russels tweet about not giving a fuck, well maybe someone in Labour Leadership should tell her that is is really not smart to admit to the public that while you like the wage you don't wanna do the work.
Time to start a left women's party. Who knows how to do this. Let's start one. What do we need to make this a reality? I'm keen. I'll join. Let's get it started
Personally I'd rather see a coalition of flax roots organisations arise first, strong and stable. Several years of those doing media work, public meetings, submissions and so on might change things.
I'm impressed with the groups that have been submitting this round. Bodes well. Am also very impressed with the rise of grass roots feminism in the UK.
what a fucking shambles. If SCs are normally like this, I'm even more shocked. And then people wonder why most people don't bother with engaging with government.
The cynic in me thinks they would by now be tech-savvy enough to ensure the video was off first, but they didn't because they wanted to show a public rebuff after the submitter was no longer on screen.
He's got to have some cromulent excuse as to why I'm not in favour of children being sterilised, or the $34 trillion Big Pharma medical industrial complex medicalising people for profit. 😉
Jennifer Bilek has written extensively on this. #LifelongPatients once you have the kids, see.
LMFAO you can fuck off all the way with 'Christian Right'. I was raped by a priest at the age of four with Catholic maths (35 DOES go into 4) so if you think I have anything to do with the Whore of Rome you can think again. Or any Xian bs.
I'm still laughing as I type – google me and you will find the dozens of OIA requests and 'footprint' you believe I've had scrubbed away… I'm a professional nobody, have complex mental health needs and damage after my childhood rape – not every outcome has been good for me, see? Can't put my finger on it, but after four years old, it was a mixed bag. They DID give me a fabulous education though so that's a bonus. 😉 Not my shame to carry, so I'll just put it out there straight away, bro. LMAO.
Can you please provide a link to substantiate your claim?
A lot of people in this country are religious. Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Sikhs, all sorts of different Christian denominations, and certainly a few more that i am forgetting.
Are you saying that if a person has issues with being delegated to the dustbin of history and stripped of their rights they must be a supporter of the Christian right? Really?
And Rex is a manly name too? Damn her, being so gender non conform.
Maybe she should identify as a male and run for the Male Co Leadership of the Green Party?
If you are right, and you may well be, but you have no evidence that you are… What you have in front of you, is her submission. And what you are able to comment on, is the content of her submission.
To pass judgement on this person, on a posit of possibility when you know nothing else but what she says here, is a way of dismissing what she says without addressing it.
(This does not hold true for public figures however, where we hold many examples of their behaviour and speech. But Rex Landry is not, AFAIK, a public figure and your reference to their non-existent Google history equating to be taken in by the Christian Right is a bad conjecture to make.)
See what happens when you make stupid, partisan assumptions in a political forum.
Lefties, men in particular, might want to ask themselves why they find it so hard to believe or accept that left wing women have their own strong politics when it comes to gender/sex. The connection between GC women/feminists with the religious right is a bullshit line run by gender identity activists. It won't work on TS because there are too many left wing women here, long term Standardistas, who are informed and highly politicised on the issue.
Probably because in the USA opposition to transgender rights is one taken up by the political right – GOP, which has strong Christian conservative connotations (and connection to their historic position in rights for same sex people).
It’s not the only issue in which there is a coalition of diverse groups.
The biggest grouping of gender critical feminists is in the UK, and this is far more relevant to NZ than the US. Gender ID activists call the UK Terf Island. It's not a secret. Anyone who says that those women are allied to the religious right are either willfully ignorant or lying.
The US is a different situation, but how on earth Millsy made a connection between that and this Wahine Māori is beyond me.
Sure the GOP's conservative females are not at the centre of feminist discourse.
But I wonder if some on the liberal left are not being misled by this, as maybe millsy is, and not thinking the issue through a little more.
For example I was on side with some on the inclusion of transgender concerns at the Auckland event, but this does not inform my position on fair competition in sport or women’s safety.
In the perception that concern about the proposed legislation comes from the conservatives who resisted equal place for those of same sex attraction in society (and recognition of their relationships).
The attitude of the Labour and Green MP's (support for proposed legislation) on the SC is indicative that they see the transgender issue as one of inclusion of society diversity within the civil liberties/human rights orbit. Thus they see any resistance to the legislation as coming from those on the wrong side of history.
Thus nuance is lost for the sake of political conformity to established liberal (open to socially progressive change) vs conservative (resistance to such change until it is normalised/accepted by the mainstream) positioning.
The hilarious* thing is, this self-determination ID has been (wilfully?) misused. It's a piece of international law that applies to PEOPLE, as in A PEOPLE the right to self determination. The international human rights lawyer Rosa Freedman submitted on it. It is a glorious, erudite and composed laying out of the law. Nicola Grigg was paying attention and writing things down; I heard her murmur 'that was important'.
I'm hoping to do a post on the submissions, making them very accessible to people with links and time stamps so people can pick out the ones they want to read/watch. Even just finding them has been hard going. Looking forward to watching Rosa (one of my favourite GCFs) and getting up to speed with that particular issue.
I get it's difficult to countenance a woman filled with fury 😉 LoLz. I know if he's looked at my video he knows I'm a woman and he is a bit of a korero tutae. Thanks bro.
The Government has confirmed it is scrapping plans for a $785 million cycle bridge across Auckland's Harbour in response to public pressure, and will instead use the money on projects such as speeding up the Eastern Busway.
In early August, the NZ Herald reported the cycle bridge was poised to be scrapped after strong public opposition to the cost of it and revelations the benefit to cost ratio was very low.
Transport Minister Michael Wood has now confirmed the controversial Northern Pathway will not go ahead. "It did not get the public support needed for a project of its scale, and we acknowledge that."
Insanity, building ever more motorways, has prevailed over a piece of infrastructure which would have reduced carbon emissions for the next 80 years.
Sanity has not prevailed.
It shows the problem with building carbon reducing infrastructure, when there is a chorus of unthinking protest, against spending even a fraction of the billions spent on motorways.
Mis information and utter bullshit has prevailed. As it does to often, spread by our wilfully ignorant and self opinionated media egged on by a right wing that would rather our country fails, than lose power.
A busway in highly populated areas is a better investment then a bike bridge.
Free public transport would be a good investment, but it will not happen.
The real insanity however is that it seems people believe that we can shove even more poeple into AKL and that they all need to go downtown to earn their pennies.
As Covid right now shows us, Don't put all your eggs in one basket.
I have been saying for a long long time now, that government should incentivize businesses to settle elsewhere and thus take the workers with them. this would actually revive some areas of this country, relieve the pressure on Auckland and maybe even lead to a better and healthier usage of our environment.
In the meantime tho, 1.6 odd million people are on Home D with one hour of outdoor exercise, permitted take away and 'work from home' or under severe restriction go to town and office/shop.
And no this bridge was not only disliked by the rightwing. I think you will see that polling showed labour that even lefties (and not all lefties are labour supporters ) just saw this as a diversion and pipe dream.
And fwiw, we need cycle ways. Lots of them. And in this case i would say, that the first step to get people to cycle over the bridge is to liberate a lane or two for cyclists. Permanently.
NZTA has ruled out a dedicated cycle lane on the Auckland Harbour Bridge.
If the Minister turns public transport infrastructure into a popularity contest, nothing will happen except building more roads because that's what people want.
Where that leads is to continue NZ as one of the most car-polluted, unsafe, car-addicted countries on earth.
well, fear not Ad, soon there will only be electric cars, for those that can afford electric cars. The rest will walk, cycle, skateboard or use the bus.
NZTA needs to pull its fingers out of the proverbial and liberate a lane, and if only to actually gauge the real usage of that lane and thus be able in the future to build a dedicated cycle over that harbour.
But frankly it is easier for central town people to take a ferry with their bikes across the harbour than it would be for people on the outer edges of auckland to get into town with a car.
FWIW, I’ve decided it’s time to trade in my 16 year-old Mitsubishi Colt Plus, & I’m about to start researching which similarly-sized hybrid petrol/electric vehicle to replace it with.
I’m not going with an EV. The nation-wide charging infrastructure’s not sufficiently built yet.
Also, I’ve heard murmurs that disposing of old electric batteries is very problematic, & a cuz-in-law who’s an AA patrolman also told me just yesterday that he was told the amount of carbon released in the construction of EVs far exceeds that of the building + several years’ running of an efficient, standard petrol-powered auto.
(And do you have to get a charging station installed in your own home garage, anyone know?)
I never had a car to begin with, even while living in Auckland for 20 odd years and i worked downtown, newmarket and other places. Always got where ever i wanted to on public transport, cycling and walking. It can be done if the infrastructure is there.
Gezza we have a 2006 Toyota Ractis. We are keeping it as it is 1350hp, and easy to get in and out.. seats are high. The back seats are able to lie flat to take a wheelchair walker etc. It is an economical automatic. We are awaiting a comparable model. Still waiting.
Actually I kinda rate the Ractis. A couple of family members have been looking for small city runabouts and we settled on a Ractis as being the best answer for what was needed and wanted. And as a bonus, they actually go OK on the open road, too.
If you are seriously thinking about going electric, it looks to me like holding off for a year or two would be a good move. The electric choice right now is really limited and expensive, but there's a lot of chatter about things in the pipeline that might arrive in the next year or two that really are big improvements on what's available now and probably cheaper.
sigh someone with a vested interest in internal combustion engines repeats some oil industry misinformation talking points and all of a sudden it's gospel …
Yes, producing a battery electric vehicle does produce more emissions that producing an ICE vehicle, but how much more really depends on the electricity supply of where it's produced. If a battery electric vehicle were produced then used somewhere like Poland where close to 100% of the electricity supply is coal-fired, then it would take somewhere around 8 to 10 years to be lower lifetime emissions than an ICE. If it were produced and run using 100% zero-emissions electricity, the battery electric electric would have lower lifetime emissions than an ICE in less than a year. Personally, I'd work off of two years as a rough estimate for a BEV produced overseas and used in New Zealand.
There's plenty of attention and interest in electric vehicle battery recycling, starting with simply repurposing them to stationary storage when they're no longer good enough for the extreme demands of EV use. For example, Nissan Leaf batteries getting used in Nissan factories:
Then there's plenty of efforts going into direct recycling. Such as Redwood Materials, founded by J.B. Straubel, one of Tesla's founders. Their initial feedstock was rejects from Tesla battery production, which was really the only regular large quantity supply of batteries for recycling. There simply haven't been enough electric vehicles produced yet for there to really be enough end-of-life batteries to be recyled for anyone to make a business out of it, but there's plenty of companies gearing up to take that really valuable "waste" stream and turn it back into useful raw material. A simple google search on electric vehicle battery recycling will get you tons of info.
If you're looking for a Colt-sized EV with useful range and a palatable price, there really aren't any here in NZ, yet. Closest might be a Renault Zoe or Peugeot e-208, both somewhere on the wrong side of $60k after the Clean Car rebate.
But BYD are making noises about maybe releasing their EA1 (Dolphin) into NZ maybe next year, which would likely be somewhere around the $40k mark. There's a few others on the horizon as well.
Home charging can be done from a regular 240V outlet. Figure on adding 15km of range for every hour of charge. The next common option is a 7kW charger that most houses could cope with with boosting the house supply. Dunno about pricing, but if you forced me to guess I'd guess somewhere around the $3k mark installed.
Cost-wise, there's the potential imposition of Road User Charges that electric vehicles would have to pay starting March 2024 IIRC. Right RUC are 7.6 cents per km, which is just a tiny bit less than I pay for petrol for my Honda Fit hybrid. For me, that bit of transport policy stupidity would be a real obstacle to get over were I in the market for wheels right now.
But if my Fit hybrid were to be written off in a crash, I'd seriously think about a Prius plug-in hybrid. The first generation plug-in (3rd generation Prius body) gets somewhere around 15km pure-electric range, pricing starts from around $13k, while the second generation plug-in gets around 50km pure electric range, prices start around $35k. Most hybrids use Atkinson cycle engines, which basically give diesel levels of fuel efficiency without the diesel exhaust nasties.
Colt-size hybrids are mostly limited to the Toyota Aqua (everyone will think you're an Uber Eats driver) or Honda Fit. I bought my Fit hybrid in April this year, because on my test-drives it just suited me better than the Aqua. But that's just me.
My current car is a 1.5 L Mitsi Colt Plus. It’s got an extended back boot, lots more space with the rear sets flat, quite a bit bigger than a standard Mitsi Colt.
The real insanity however is that it seems people believe that we can shove even more poeple into AKL and that they all need to go downtown to earn their pennies.
The city largely lies on a isthmus is between two harbours and two oceans. The city spreads way past the two ends of the isthmus.
The harbour bridge is currently the only short in distance and time route between major population and employment centres (areas in and near to the Auckland isthmus and those on the North shore) – unless you want to go 30+kms around SH16/SH18 on the upper harbour.
It has nothing to do with adding more people into Auckland – it simply has to do with being able to connect the existing people with their existing employment.
The centre of Auckland is also a major centre for concentrated employment because it is equally accessible to people from the North, South, East, and West of Auckland because it is at the isthmus and the transport links that centre there. It can draw on the skills of the whole city.
Just as an aside to that, I recently turned down permanent jobs in the North Shore both up towards Albany/Rosedale. That was simply because the transport situation was so much of an issue. I live up by the Ponsonby/K Rd intersection – right by the motorways and with good access to all public transport except for rail (at least until the CRL is completed).
On a good pandemic run, it would take me 18-20 minutes by car to get to those jobs. When I tracked the actual times on google that I'd normally travel. It would take between 30 minutes to 90 minutes by car. In the past it has taken me up to 120 minutes when I worked out there for a few years – and I got badly hit by other cars twice over 2 years. Driving a car is pure dead time. Doing it for 15 hours a week on top of actual work is just a waste of my time.
By bus it was about 75 minutes each way. Not a complete waste of time – I can read a book in a bus. I can even sort of play on the blogs – albeit rather painfully. 12 hours or so a week would be just irritating.
By e-bike it would be around 85 minutes if I took a ferry – where the ferry timings was the main time constraint. If there was a bridge crossing it would take about 60 minutes – because the whole route is much more direct and less hilly than landing at at Bayswater road. At least that would have taken care of my exercise – something else a car or a bus simply doesn’t do. However I’m not sure that I’m interested in that much exercise each day.
A busway in highly populated areas…
The eastern suburbs are actually a reasonably lightly populated part of Auckland becasue there is not that much depth in the surrounding suburbs.
If you wanted to put a busway into a highly populated area, then you'd fast track the one up the existing North-western motorway, and put a busway and cycle lane up the existing Southern Motorway. Both of those have large population catchment areas, and far far significiant employment opportunities. Both would benefit from a busway (and cycle ways) far more than the south eastern suburb corridors.
The only reason that they are putting one into the eastern area is because they are currently upgrading the arterial roads out that way to cope with a relatively small population increase in density. I also looked at a job out towards East Tamaki. The public transport sucked, and there are no safe bikeways.
I have been saying for a long long time now, that government should incentivize businesses to settle elsewhere and thus take the workers with them.
That is a pipe-dream. I thought that may have been possible when I was looking at it in the 1990s. Experience has taught me that it almost certainly isn’t possible for most people employed in productive private businesses – even the ones that I work in who are primarily focused offshore. Quite simply there are reasons that make it preferable to live in larger centres, and I don’t have to move somewhere to work there. I can increasingly remote into the jobs in smaller centres.
Eventually I took a job in Hamilton – and I don't have to settle there. Mostly remote working from Auckland. I'm not even working at home – I'm renting a local workspace 300m from home. That is because two of us working on different jobs in a smallish apartment is just too irritating. When I'm trying to get a concentrated bit of work done, my partner is on a long and loud conversation with her gig-job employers in New York or Invercargill, or where ever. Or talking to a Indian distributor or chasing down supplies. She says that my standup conversations about work with whomever I'm working with (also worldwide) are just as irritating.
Whenever the lockdowns cease, I'll be in Hamilton 2 days a week for a while. By car that is about 85 minutes each way and a airBnB overnight. If the Te Huia train went from Auckland to Hamilton in the morning and came back in the evening (rather than the other way around), I'd use that. It might take 150 minutes each way – but I can work on a train.
However I'm unlikely to move to Hamilton. As a skilled worker, that would be employment and financial suicide.
In Auckland in the private sector there are at least several hundred firms that I could work for, in person or remote, with my current skills. In Hamilton where I went to uni, even with its current rapid expansion, then are probably 30-40. In Dunedin where I also went to university, maybe 20. Smaller cities like Rotorua or Palmerston North – there would only be a couple.
The choice as an employee, the choice is so much smaller because I have a smaller selection if I need to be there in person. And most employers would prefer you to be there in person. Despite spending a lot of my working life working remotely, I prefer working at a workplace – provided i don’t have to waste much of own hours getting to and from that workplace.
Being close to large urban areas give more choice about where you work locally, what you can work on, and who you work for. From the choices of employers to the quality of your transport and data links.
This doesn't apply just to the excessively skilled like me. If you're a worker at almost anything beyond retail work these days, you're increasingly skilled and more specialised than anything in the past. The idea of moving people around and training them like identical dominoes has gone the way of conscription – for exactly the same reason. All enterprises rely on their skilled staff and their skilled staff will move between companies multiple times during their working life.
Doing the remote work internationally is much the same. The work may be done over a data link. But those are much much more reliable in urban centres – I only have to look at the quality of links of people in zoom or google meet to know that.
Being able to pop down to Jaycar or PBTech and lay your hands on gear immediately is far easier than having to wait for increasingly erratic deliveries (or whatever your working needs are) is worth its weight in gold for productivity.
Basically, I'll probably move out of Auckland when I retire. It is the minimum that I can get away with. Ideally I should have moved offshore decades ago – but I prefer living here rather than in Austin Texas or Silicon Valley or the Silicon Slopes. And I'm in one of the more transportable professions.
I do agree with you, i myself chose Auckland for reasons of work when i moved to NZ.
But is that not the issue now, that AKL can't build up fast enough and can't get enough public transport now to move those people that move in. And that will not get any better in the future.
I pretty much lived my whole life in big towns, but living in Holland actually opened my eyes a bit what can be done if Government works with businesses.
I.e. Hilversum, a medium sized town 35 km from A-dam and 15 km away from Utrecht. When Nike closed their individual houses in the various european countries to open a Europen Headquaters in Holland, they were 'directed' to Hilversum rather then say A-dam, Rotterdam, etc. They were granted 600 carparks for something like 1800 people plus visitors and sales people that would come and go. But the government also provided extra trains to Hilversum, more train arrivals and departures, and a new trainstop across from the Office building to make up for the lack of carparks. Train tickets are tax refundable as a business expense, and thus were at the time paid for by Nike. Why? Any extra carpark that Nike wanted to build after the 600 granted would have come at an extra cost.
Sometimes it feels as if we had tried nothing really and now are out of option. And again, i am not even against a cycling bridge, i cycled in Auckland in 1998 – lol when there were no cycle roads.
I just believe that putting all of our economy in one town is a sure way to disaster if something happens. Like Covid.
And i only left Auckland as Virgil got offered a job as an IT person here in Rotorua, otherwise i would still be there, for pretty much all the reasons you mentioned.
Many, if not most, of them are related to a council with a business (with a small b) focus that ran the cities and region for decades. Plus a central government that kept hoping Auckland would get smaller if they didn't put money into it. They put money mostly into regions where their voters were.
More recently, it has had a central government interested in raking in immigration money and then dispersing it not in infrastructure or realistic housing development – but into tax cuts. It meant that most of the immigration wound up in Auckland (for the reasons I outlined), but a minimum of things required to grow.
But even if they tried to, there is another problem. One that makes it difficult for even try to push things towards dispersal rather than Auckland getting bigger.
The problem is that NZ is made up of small companies – there are no Nikes. Almost all of them are small by any international standards. Just consider this statement from stats nz in 2018.
less than 1 percent of enterprises (2,560) had 100 or more employees, but they engaged 48 percent of all employees in New Zealand
The stats tend to cut off at 100 employees. If you look for a definition of mid-sized businesses in NZ, you tend to find statements like this.
The definition of mid-size businesses varies from country to
country. It’s important to note that there is no official definition
for a MSB in New Zealand. Across the world mid-size businesses
tend to be defined as having between 20 and 200 employees.
However, New Zealand has a much smaller economy and
population than most comparable highly-developed market
economies.
With this in mind, for the purposes of our research New
Zealand’s mid-size businesses have been defined as having
revenue between $5m and $30m, and/or employing between
20 and 99 people.
If you dig around the stats for what the larger employee company sizes are, you’ll find that they are also small to mid sized enterprises. They might have thousands of employees – but they are scattered in little pockets throughout the country – like banking, supermarkets, reale state, or even Fonterra. We don’t have many single enterprise sites the size of the Nike operation you mention. They are in fact multiple small or mid-sized companies.
So those companies don’t draw staff to them. They go to where they can get staff or customers. They have little to no interest in drawing either towards them because they simply don't have the scale to do it. Even our larger companies are below the scale of Nike. That is why virtually every government push to move people out of the larger cities has failed.
The ones that have succeeded over the long term were those that were based around raw materials, natural advantages or scenery – electricity for the smelter, oil and gas for New Plymouth, tourism for Rotorua and Queenstown. The port for Tauranga. Even then most of them only managed to stave off relative population decreases.
Company towns like Tokoroa started drying again as a their business changed. The only new company town I know of is that mattress company who are trying to build in the Waikato.
Meanwhile a city like Auckland which only has a harbour as a natural asset has to develop despite a historically lacklustre set of councils and National governments who, mainly for electoral reasons, wished it didn't exist.
Climate change mitigation is not justification for this proposal.
Not all alternative transport systems are the same in regards to that.
That is not to say that planning should not include as a matter of course, recreational cycleways, walkable neighbourhoods etc. The immense value to users of mental and physical wellbeing, and improved social cohesion have been researched and validated.
However, it is the alternative transport systems available to commuters that will get the most people out of cars. The provision of affordable, reliable, efficient public transport systems that enable people to get to work, study, services, sports is the climate change mitigator. Not a bridge crossing that is an addition to the already successful alternatives for the harbour crossing that include the Northern Busway and ferries. The inner city community is already well served in that respect.
This is a choice of assessing the inequality that has come from very bad city and transport planning in the past, and making future choices that do not increase that inequality further.
Would this money have come from the Auckland fuel tax? I'd be interested to know.
However, even if it didn't… isn't there something fundamentally wrong with ignoring the fact that it is the lower income households that have to move further and further out of Auckland, travel further to get to work, school etc and therefore pay more of their income on this fuel tax than those that have the privilege to be able to live and work in close proximity? (and are more likely to have travel costs included as an employment benefit
Shouldn't we be spending on improving services for the wider Auckland population before giving an expensive additional harbour crossing for the recreational benefit of an already well-serviced community?
I cannot think of the last time a Minister had the balls to take the credit for failure on the scale and spin it so that he's just doing what the public wants.
Wrong all round, Alan. For years (since Rogernomics) we have been importing far more cars than we need, making them far too cheap, and no matter how many roads we build, we end up with ever-increasing gridlock. We never take off the roads more cars than we put on.
I think the tide is now changing. We are going to have a difficult future; we will soon be importing fewer cars, and eventually the roads we already have will be more than we need or want to maintain.
The only major transport projects this government will complete in two terms will be motorways. Enormous fuck-off motorways. Northland, Waikato, Wellington.
CRL was started under National and is heading for 2025
Auckland's Glen Innes-Downtown cycleway won't be complete this term or next
Eastern Busway has over 1 political term to go
Light rail will be at least a further 2 terms
Electric car strategy rejected by industry and importers and of course the rural community
Auckland rail track repair and slower speeds will now last a decade
Car fleet rapidly ageing and turning hard against the (still undecided) transport climate goals
Transport emissions continue to accelerate faster than our comparator countries
In NZ's major public transport projects you can fill a phonebooth with people trying to make it happen, and easily fill a stadium with people trying to stop it. And in the stands is this government.
Because the Greens are promoting the gender identification clause in the Births and Deaths Bill, the Greens are also incompetent in climate change policy. Now sometimes I'm tough on the Greens, but I've never tried that kind of comparison before. Are you sure you're not writing for TheOnion?
No, but if we are to trust science, does that include biology?
we are bodies – biological entietys, we breathe, we need water, we need shelter etc and if that is not a given we die. That is basic science and biology.
We can agree to disagree on various aspects of the Gender ID bill, but can we really pretend that biology – male / female – reproduction etc does not exists and if we don't like it we can just wish, hormon treat it, surgically remove it away? I doubt. Underlining the body is what it is, irrespective of the outwardly expression of anyone. Thus a transman can be a birthing parent, due to the invisible female (reproductive organs)
biology inside their body.
If these people can not accept that you can not 'change sex' then sorry mate, i don't trust them with fixing anything.
And btw, that whole 'change the sex' and be what ever you want is something that i expect from the Onion, but sadly as the video clip above showed, is standard operating procedure for the Green and the Labour Party.
Neither one of these parties will do anything to stem misery that will come with the raise in temperatures in the next few years.
Trust science, but only the science that we like and that we approve of. Vote Labour/Green 2023.
Here's a positive transport story from today Ad. 40,000 truck movements removed using rail instead. If you could be bothered to look you would find others.
Why you fall for this bullshit is beyond me. The headline is all about climate change while killing off a major public transport project.
Then we go from that to somehow shifting the rail hub in Ashburton, which will not change our climate impact one iota. It's not even a useful urban renewal project. On top of that, it's $2m – barely worth a contract variation.
The light rail team have just announced that they have three options to present to the government. So that’s: more options, then studies, then costings, then evaluation, then business case, then Cabinet, then network evaluation and integration into AIAL Kainga Ora AT and AC, then design and detailed design, then consultation, then land acquisition, then procurement, then construction, then operation. Unless there’s a change of government.
It would be great to defend this government on transport if it were defensible.
That's a stretch. The cycle bridge was a daft idea, the timing of the announcement was incredibly bad, and no-one believed it was going to end up costing under $1bn.
I will never ever understand why the UK elected a buffoon like Boris.
But I notice at the recent UK Labour Party conference that Starmer came out against PR. So the Labour Party continues to be run by dinosaurs who simply do not understand that without PR, and where there is a split vote between the Greens, Liberals and Labour, and with and Boris's fixing of the electoral system https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/oct/01/boris-johnson-rigging-the-system-power-courts-protest-elections, they are unlikely ever to get back into power.
They are valid reasons. The conservatives won seats right through the 'red wall' because their position on Brexit was clear and in favour. Corbyn was and is unelectable.
Without constant life support from the Murdoch press, and the Israeli antisemitism lie, England would have had Corbyn – and ten of thousands less Covid casualties as a result.
It is the Blairites that doom Labour, depriving it of its function: representing the interests of working people.
And, absent Covid, NZ’s current government would already be on its way out – failure to engage with housing costs and the like – so off task they're chasing chimerae like gender when there are substantial issues unaddressed.
a sordid history of cuddling up to terrorists *citation required
Corbyn was and remains a better leader of Britain than any of the tragic procession of conservative hacks Murdoch media anointed. Starmer is just another quisling – Labour will go nowhere under him – which is of course exactly what you and Murdoch want.
"Corbyn was and remains a better leader of Britain "
Corbyn is and was an unelectable nutter, he was the most unpopular opposition leader in British history, and led Labour to it's worst defeat since 1935.
Ah yes – recirculating more Israel based agitprop.
Corbyn is an activist with a lifetime of serious engagement directed at finding peaceful solutions to difficult conflicts including Northern Ireland and Israel/Palestine. This has required that he talk to both sides. That bad faith opponents try to exploit that for their own political ends says more about them than him.
Corbyn is and was an unelectable nutter
I think we can safely regard you as an unreliable source – a hysterical hater of the Left with nothing to boast of but your empty prejudices.
Dianne Abbott was Corbyn's pick for Home Secretary. Not only does she think on balance Mao did more good than harm, she has huge problems with numbers.
"Corbyn is an activist with a lifetime of serious engagement directed at finding peaceful solutions to difficult conflicts including Northern Ireland and Israel/Palestine."
There's nothing obviously unsuitable about her – the fact that she seems to incense far-right bigots like yourself counts rather in her favour.
But come on – no words on Boris? – a clown so stupid he not only presided over 137 000 Covid deaths, he did his best to join them – a man whose follies now compare with the late stage Soviets – empty supermarkets – but not a peep from you, you're too busy trying to smear someone you figure you can then use to smear Corbyn.
You're grasping at straws – grow up and give it up – you've got nothing.
Every party has its share of unsuitable fools. But in a country with a PM as manifestly unsuitable as Boris, you're busy nitpicking Corbyn's opposition appointments?
Your priorities are bent completely out of shape by your irrational hatred of the Left.
You praised Corbyn's leadership. Picking an obviously unsuitable individual to be your shadow home secretary suggests either his leadership qualities are not what you claim, or she is up there with the best in Labour. Which is it?
Under MMP Corbyn would have been PM in 2017 AND 2019.
It was a freak result in Scotland in 2017, where the Conservatives did much better than expected under a very popular leader, that stopped Corbyn from being PM.
"Under MMP Corbyn would have been PM in 2017 AND 2019."
That is by no means certain. Labour woukld have needed the LibDems, and given that Jo Swinson lost her own seat, who knows. You'd also be assuming the major parties would run FFP campaigns under MMP, which is nonsense.
Welcome to the Church of Suicidal
We'll have a sermon and a wonderful recital
But before we go on there's something I must mention
An important message I must bring to your attention
I was in meditation and prayer last night
I was awakened by a shining bright light
Overhead a glorious spirit
He gave me a message and you all need to hear it
Send me your money
That's what he said, he said to
Send me your money
All Tamaki wanted was a Pepsi, and Ardern wouldn’t give it to him
All he wanted was a Pepsi, just one Pepsi, and she wouldn’t give it to him
Just a Pepsi
Given rumour still has it the Pope when elected still has to be carried over the other religious weirdos in a seat with a hole in it to show he isn't a chick again, nothing surprises me.
[Take the weekend off for your vile lie, which is easily neutered with a quick & simple fact check. You were doing reasonably well contributing to discussion, but you cannot help yourself, can you? This fucking stupid comment did not add anything useful and can only be seen as a sad attempt at a sick joke, which ridicules the whole topic thread.
Enjoy your time off in Wellington while others are still being cooped up in Level 3 – Incognito]
[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.]
Tell me what “rumour” means, and what you’d call someone who intentionally and deliberately spreads “rumours” that are vile and wrong and denigrating a large number of people because of their religion in one fell swoop? I can make all sorts of allegations and accusations under the excuse of “rumour” or a ‘friend of a friend of my brother’s girlfriend saw it somewhere on social media’ AKA hearsay. Is “religious weirdos” a fucking “rumour” too?
If you had at least made some political point that we could discuss you would have received (yet another) warning and (yet again) waste my time. As it is, there was nothing redeeming in your comment and you had long run out of warnings, as your recent diversion trolling under this Post (https://thestandard.org.nz/keys-baaaack/) and before that in another Post show all too well; you only barely escaped a one-week ban the other day too and came back with a cheeky reply in Daily Review.
IMO as Moderator, you’re a sly disingenuous troll far too often here, i.e. you have form with saying “sorry, but …”, “forgive me, but …”, and “rumour has it …”, etc., so that you think you can get away with saying whatever you like whenever you like. It won’t wash with me.
BTW, anything that you post here and that I can read in the Back End could make things worse for you.
Shifted the site server up from the linux kernel 5.4.0.x to the 5.11.0.x. There have been some odd crashes and automatic restarts on this system recently. I tracked one of them down and found that there had a been a kernel patch that fixed it the problem, and that it wasn’t likely to be backported to 5.4 any time soon..
I've been running 5.11 on my laptop on ongoing development towards ubuntu 21.10 and it is rock stable at the low levels (the KDE gui has lots of holes). The recent release version of ubuntu 20.04.03 installer 5.11 when it hits unknown hardware. So it seems like a good bet that it isn't going to cause issues with the server.
I have tried arch a few times. It is a fast way to learn how to fix linux issues.
I recently spent a 18 months building linux images with yocto. That is not only educational – but it also gives you an appreciation for how complex linux is, as well as showing just how long you can run computers at 100% CPU over all cores for hours.
In several browsers I can access this feature by right clicking on the page and finding the option to view page source. This shows you the markup as well as the text on the page, so it shows you the page without formatting.
Apparently the herald pay-wall is optional in the sense that all the article is always there, its just hidden by the formatting. However I suggest not viewing source on herald articles as its usually a waste of time reading anything they put behind the pay-wall anyway. I think they just use the paywall to discipline staff who attract a large audience.
It should run on Mac or Linux, but not Windows. Uses a few command line tools (curl, xmllint, perl, fmt) to grab a webpage then spit out some readable text. The above example isn't the exact command I used, as the comment box formatter is a bit tricky and I messed up one or two characters.
Well admittedly it is quite a geeky solution. There are other ways to mess about with web pages & paywalls using browser extensions, but for some reason (an annoying browser redirect script that I couldn’t squash) the "bypass paywalls" trick didn't work for one article I wanted to read. So it was a fun exercise to see if I could come up with an alternative. Result!
I know only too well how it comes across. My Dad hates computers but I always "got" them.
Some things are a fun technical challenge or a puzzle to solve. Sometimes you either get it or you don't.
I've been doing this for a long time now so the command line tools are not scary at all. In fact I see the CLI as a more logical way to work than the ADHD-inducing madness of modern GUIs.
I feel very sorry for the (majority) of Auckland Maori who are actually complying with the fight against Covid. The country is literally being held hostage by a handful of muppets.
A couple of thousand numbskulls gather at the Cenotaph, Auckland. Few masks, no distancing. Afterwards, the gang riders traversed Auckland (some of them spent 2 hrs roaring around the streets of Devonport and presumably Takapuna) doing wheelies, riding on the wrong side of the road and generally disturbing the peace. I presume they were thumbing their noses at the rest of us.
And where were the police? Nowhere as far as I can tell. Its already been declared a probable super-spreader event, so I suppose we can kiss good bye to any chance of coming out of L3 now.
Lets be clear. This Destiny Church crowd are just another gang masquerading as a church. If the govt. and the police don't move on them, I suspect some members of the public will take matters into their own hands. That could spell even more Covid outbreaks that we are now going to see because of their behaviour.
Different groups re the motorbikes, I ran into the group you spoke of in Auckland Central this morning mostly trail bikes…
I actually wandered down for look since it was close to home tbh from what I could see masks were pretty wide spread seemed more people than they had said on the news…
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Buzz from the Beehive Waves of rain are set to lash much of the North Island during Easter Weekend as a low-pressure system forms east of New Zealand, according to a weather forecast published in the past day or so. Niwa was warning of a “moisture-laden” long weekend, with rain expected ...
Look around us…Nicola Willis’ promises of balancing the books, of cutting spending without reducing services, and of delivering game changing tax cuts are disappearing before her eyes.Everyday we see stories of violent crime ending in horrific injuries, or worse. The cost of living worsens, whereas the PM claimed renters would ...
TL;DR: My top six news of note on the morning of Thursday, March 28 include:The Government will have to borrow between $10 billion to $15 billion more than previously expected in order to make up for a slowing economy and to pay for $14.9 billion of tax cuts, according to ...
This story by Naveena Sadasivam and Kate Yoder was originally published by Grist and is part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story. The long-awaited jobs board for the American Climate Corps, promised early in the Biden administration, will open next month, according to details shared exclusively ...
Should landlords be able to deduct the interest on the loans they take out to bankroll their property speculation? The US Senate Budget Committee and Bloomberg News don’t think this is a good idea, for reasons set out below. Regardless, our coalition government has been burning through a ton of ...
Treasury’s first report on the economy since the change of government presents a damning indictment of Labour’s economic management. The problem for National is that it is so damning that logically, coupled with a rapidly slowing economy, Finance Minister Nicola Willis should respond to it by postponing or even cancelling ...
Budget tensions are becoming evident within the Coalition Government. Winston Peters made numerous political points in his speech to the NZF annual conference. But the attack on his own government’s fiscal policies raised issues of substance. ‘Today in the Sunday Star Times, journalist and former advisor to the Labour ...
Buzz from the Beehive The media – sure enough – have been binging on Finance Minister Nicola Willis’ release of the Budget Policy Statement and a statement headed Government announces Budget priorities This assures us – or rather, this parrots the Luxon team mantra – that the Budget “will deliver ...
The Ides of March brought me COVID followed by a bereavement. No wonder they tell you to be careful of them.I’m home now and have resumed the interrupted recuperation. Very much looking forward to getting back to regular things. Meanwhile, some thoughts…OneThis new Prime Minister guy just keeps getting more dire. ...
News that the Chinese ATP 40 cyber-hacking unit penetrated parliamentary internet networks in 2021 has renewed concerns about the PRC’s malign intentions in Aotearoa. But is the hack that significant given the length of time that has passed since its … Continue reading → ...
When Parliament passed the Intelligence and security Act in 2017, they assured us all that it was full of safeguards. Any intrusive surveillance of New Zealanders would be subject to a "triple lock", requiring the approval of the Minister and (supposedly independent) Commissioner of Intelligence Warrants, as well as post-facto ...
Eric Crampton writes – Richard Harman’s Politik newsletter provides a bit of the context that ought to have been showing up in other media reports on potential reductions in public service staffing. Media has been reporting on staffing cuts on the order of about 7%. Is that ...
Mike Grimshaw writes – It’s becoming increasingly apparent that many perceive free speech to have become the preserve of the politically right wing, the religiously conservative, the libertarian fringe, the anti-trans, the anti-Māori and…. well, just fill in with whatever groups or individuals you don’t like and don’t ...
Don Brash writes – As everybody who is not blind and deaf is aware, there is a huge political preoccupation with climate change at the moment, a widespread (though by no means unanimous) belief that global temperatures are rising mainly as a result of the greenhouse gases created ...
TL;DR: My six things to note in Aotearoa’s political economy on Wednesday, March 27 include:Chris Bishop laid out his vision for filling Aotearoa-NZ’s $100 billion infrastructure deficit in a speech yesterday, emphasising user pays and private funding, but failed to say how to achieve bipartisanship on population, public borrowing and ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Former Finance Minister Grant Robertson and former Prime Minister Chris Hipkins have been conveying how unhappy they are with the tax system. Last week in his valedictory speech, Robertson called for the introduction of a wealth or capital gains tax. And this week Hipkins ...
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a ...
Buzz from the Beehive China has loomed large in Beehive considerations over the past 24 hours, largely because of that country’s mischief-making in the cyber espionage department. Two media statements emerged on that subject hard on the heels of the PM baulking at questions put to him on RNZ’s Morning ...
Chris Trotter writes – WHY IS THE NATIONAL PARTY doing so much for landlords, property developers, trucking, and construction companies, and so little for everybody who isn’t already pretty well-off? It’s as if protecting landlords’ investments and building apartments and roads now constitute the whole of National’s ...
Bryce Edwards writes – When she was campaigning to be Minister of Finance last year, Nicola Willis pledged that she would resign from the job if she failed to deliver tax cuts in her first Budget. Now, it’s that pledge, along with Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s ...
Robert MacCulloch writes – The Reserve Bank has doubled staff numbers in five years to 510, with personnel costs rising to $80 million in 2023 from $32 million in 2018 – up by a whopping 150%. I guess when you print $50 billion and flood markets with liquidity, ...
The furore. In case you didn’t notice there was a controversy in the weekend involving dolphins in a little town off the South Island. Don’t panic, they haven’t declared independence and resumed whaling, this was simply a sailing event.The problem began when racing was cancelled on the opening day of ...
For 20 years or more, the case for a meaningful capital tax gains has been mulled over and analysed to death, including by the tax working group chaired by Sir Michael Cullen. More than once, the International Monetary Fund has said a CGT would be a good idea for New ...
TL;DR: My top 10 news and analysis links this morning include:Today’s must-read: The Public Health Communications Centre (PHCC) call for urgent preventive action and a risk assessment survey of long covid in this briefing noteLocal scoop: NZ road deaths surpass OECD rates, so why is the govt reversing safety plans? ...
This story was originally published by Grist and is part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story. This story is part of a collaboration with Grist and WABE to demystify the Georgia Public Service Commission, the small but powerful state-elected board that makes critical decisions about everything from raising ...
This is a guest post from Robert McLachlan Global warming is accelerating; 2023 was off the charts. We need to stop burning fossil fuels. In New Zealand, transport accounts for half of all fossil fuels burnt. In the Emissions Reduction Plan, transport emissions fall 41% by 2035. As the ...
Labour productivity has been receding rapidly over the past two years, reversing a post-lockdown rise. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: My six things to note in Aotearoa’s political economy as at 6:26am on Tuesday, March 26 include:Workers have been treading water in output per hour worked for 12 years, ...
TL;DR: The key events to watch in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the week to April 2 include:Today, Parliament resumes sitting at 2pm for the second week of a two-week session. Officials for SIS and GCSB report their annual reviews in public to the Intelligence and Security Select Committee from 5.10pm.Tomorrow, ...
Faced with a barrage of criticism over the promised tax cuts from usually supportive commentators, Finance Minister Nicola Willis yesterday reaffirmed her intention to include them in this year’s Budget. The Government is up against it over the cuts just about every way it turns. Commentators like Fran O’Sullivan, Matthew ...
Here’s my pick of today’s substack posts as of 6:26pm on Monday, March 25: writes via his substack that Market-rate housing will make your city cheaper writes via his substack about the problems talking to double-cab ute (truck) drivers about their vehicles. today about moments of radicalisation in ...
Buzz from the Beehive Just before Christmas, Finance Minister Nicola Willis delivered something that was pitched as a mini-budget and brayed about the decisive action being taken to repair the Government books and support income tax relief in Budget 2024. In a statement headed Fiscal repair job underway. she introduced ...
My sister Belinda asked Dad yesterday what one word would describe Mum best. He said: vivacious.If you only knew her from the photos on the slideshow we've made for today,you might wonder about that, because the camera tended to lie with Mum.If ever she saw a camera pointed at her, she ...
There are two major public consultations closing in the next week, Auckland Council’s Long Term Plan (LTP), and the draft Government Policy Statement on Land Transport (GPS). Closing dates and times: LTP closes Thursday 28 February, at 11.59pm – a minute to midnight! GPS closes Tuesday 2 April, at 12pm noon – note that’s ...
From Kiwiblog’s David Farrar – Bryce Wilkinson writes: Senior Fellow Bryce Wilkinson’s analysis reveals that since March 2009, New Zealand has spent $158 billion more overseas than it has earned, but its NIIP has only fallen by $32 billion.Statistics New Zealand shows that receipts from overseas reinsurers have ...
Is she hinting that the Coalition Government will have to back down on key promises it made in Opposition? Brian Easton writes – The Minister of Finance, Nicola Willis, is telling an evolving story about her fiscal challenges. In Opposition she was confident that she could ...
Dear Nicola Willis,Right now you’ve probably got lots of competing demands coming at you. Ministers who’ve inherited quite a mess, or so you’ve told us, looking for money in the budget to improve things. I imagine that’s why they came to parliament - to make things better.You’ll have to make ...
The Local Government, Transport and Auckland Minister hasthreatened councils with intervention if they don’t merge water assets to take them off balance sheet, just as the now-repealed Three Waters plan directed. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: My six things of note this morning for Monday, March 25 include:Simeon ...
A listing of 36 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 17, 2024 thru Sat, March 23, 2024. Story of the week Thanks to John Mason having the stamina to sit down to watch "Climate - the Movie" ...
This morning the Q&A programme had Simeon Brown on to talk about National’s replacement for Three Waters. In case anyone’s forgotten the three are - drinking water, waste water, and sewerage. It’s quite important not to get them mixed up. In much the same way that you wouldn’t want to ...
Today’s newsletter comes with a mini-podcast conversation between me and my buddy Liv Tennet, talking about her time as a child actor in Lord of the Rings. It’s a conversation with a lot of giggles as she talks about falling off a horse, and becoming a meme. Read ...
The Desmog Climate Disinformation Database documents, "individuals and organisations that have helped to delay and distract the public and our elected leaders from taking needed action to reduce greenhouse gas pollution and fight global warming." It's a who's who of the organised climate change denial movement, in other words. In ...
Bob Edlin writes – A High Court judge has decided miscreants who have mana – or who claim to have mana – should be treated differently from miscreants who have none. It’s a ruling that suggests indigenous law-breakers have a better chance of securing a discharge without conviction ...
Welcome to the first, and possibly last, edition of Brickbats, Bouquets and Bull’s Wool. In which I’ll take a look at the events of the last week or so, and rate them.In such ratings the numbers usually have more to do with the opinions of the reviewer, than the actual ...
Roger Partridge writes – My earlier column this month, New Zealand’s highest court could be facing a turning point, prompted a flood of feedback from business readers and lawyers alike. A common query was what Parliament can do to restrain an overreaching judiciary. This week I discuss two steps Parliament ...
TL;DR: In today’s ‘six-stack’ of substacks at 6.16pm on Friday, March 22: writes about New Zealand's Building Boom—And What the World Must Learn From It over at his substack. challenges the Auckland Council’s use of a 3.8 degrees of warming forecast to oppose a wave-park and data centre project ...
Is she hinting that the Coalition Government will have to back down on key promises it made in Opposition?The Minister of Finance, Nicola Willis, is telling an evolving story about her fiscal challenges. In Opposition she was confident that she could deliver her promised income tax cuts. Appointed minister, she ...
Buzz from the Beehive Ministers of the Crown have drawn attention to one sector of the science sector which is unlikely to be subjected to heavy spending cuts, a state-funded broadcaster which is doing nicely, thank you, and a sporting event that had $5.4 million from the public purse puffed ...
Abbott’s Freestyle Libre sensors allow continuous glucose monitoring (CGM). The sensor is applied to the back of the patient’s arm, with a thin filament under the skin measuring glucose levels constantly. But it costs around $100 per sensor and must be replaced once every 14 days. Photo by BSIP/Universal Images ...
The Inspector General of Intelligence and Security (IGIS) recently released a report in which he exposes the existence of a foreign intelligence partner-controlled technological “capability” inside the headquarters of the GCSB, NZ’s 5 Eyes-affiliated signals intelligence collection and analysis agency. … Continue reading → ...
Peter Dunne writes – Nearly three decades after the introduction of MMP and multiparty governments there should be a greater level of understanding about their finer points than often appears to be the case. The reaction to the despicable outburst from the Deputy Prime Minister at the weekend highlights ...
The sweet kisses from fruit of summerHave slowly been turning dullerYou say, "those times"And "remember the daysWhen we went outside and there still was the shade?"Taking no reason into play…Autumn. Clear, blue days shortening to longer nights, growing colder. Aotearoa.That’s us. The temperature dropping, the looming car crash - so ...
Bryce Edwards writes – “It is often said that behind every great man is a great woman”. This is the pitch by the National Party Botany electorate branch to attend their “Ladies Afternoon Tea with Amanda Luxon”. For $110 including GST, you can turn up on Saturday 20 April ...
David Farrar writes – The Electoral Commission has published the expense returns for political parties for the 2023 election. I’ve put them in a table with how many votes a party got so we can see the spend per vote. National only spent $3.34 for every vote they got, almost ...
Winston Peters’ headline-making actions over the past week may have been a show of political power intended to strengthen his hand in Budget negotiations. It was no accident that his State of the Nation speech was as it was. He made it as New Zealand First Leader, not as Deputy ...
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The five things that mattered in Aotearoa’s political economy that we wrote and spoke about via The Kākā and elsewhere for paying subscribers in the last week included:Former Labour Finance Minister Grant Robertson bowed out of politics this week, giving a series of exit ...
Graham Adams writes — If you love the law or sausages, as the saying goes, best not to look too closely at how they are made. And after watching the orgy of self-pity when Newshub’s closure was announced on February 28, television journalism should definitely be added to the list of those ...
Venerable New Zealand political commentator, Chris Trotter (https://bowalleyroad.blogspot.com/), is a sad creature these days. Once one of the most reliable Leftist writers out there – Economic Left at that – Trotter seems to have absorbed the worldview of Auckland culture-war obsessives. It is not for me to categorise what he ...
The cruelty of short-term memory loss is that each time you ask where she is, you get the fresh shock and grief of the news. That was Dad's day yesterday.Comfortingly, it seems to be less so today. Last night he looked crumpled, today he seems more settled. There's a card ...
Photo by Alvan Nee on UnsplashIt’s that new day of the week (Thursday rather than Friday) when and I co-host our ‘hoon’ webinar with paying subscribers to The Kākā for an hour at 5 pm. Jump on this link on YouTube Livestream for our chat about the week’s news ...
Buzz from the Beehive One minister is talking tough while a colleague – whose ministry had acted tough and drawn a barrage of flak – has shown an official softening. Some ministers are doing what Labour was good at, which is distributing public funds to causes regarded as worthy or ...
A ballot for 4 Member's Bills was held today, and the following bills were drawn: Insurance Contracts Bill (Duncan Webb) Income Tax (Clean Transport FBT Exclusion) Amendment Bill (Julie Anne Genter) Crimes (Increased Penalties for Slavery Offences) Amendment Bill (Greg Fleming) Pae Ora (Healthy Futures) ...
One of the strongest narratives about "our" spy agencies is that they are basically institutional traitors, working for foreign powers (or just themselves), without any control or oversight by the elected government. And today, we have yet another report from the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security which explicitly confirms this. ...
The Coalition Government’s plan to ‘get Auckland moving’ is a cuts cover-up that will ultimately cost Aucklanders more to move around the city, says Labour Auckland Issues spokesperson Shanan Halbert. ...
Slashing the Ministry of Pacific Peoples by 40% will have a devastating impact on pacific communities and further highlights how little this government cares about anything other than cutting taxes for the wealthiest few. ...
Labour has proposed an urgent inquiry to investigate the ever-increasing profits of supermarkets, aiming to lower costs for shoppers and food producers alike, says Labour Spokesperson for Commerce and Consumer Affairs Arena Williams and Primary Production Spokesperson Cushla Tangaere-Manuel. ...
With 14% of jobs on the line at the Ministry for Ethnic Communities, the responsible Minister Melissa Lee is failing to stand up for the very communities she’s meant to be representing. ...
COURT OF APPEAL: TRIFECTA OF VICTORY FOR NZ FIRST, TRIFECTA OF FAILURE FOR OPPONENTS For the third time since April 2020, New Zealand First has defeated the Serious Fraud Office and all those complicit in a malicious attack against a political party going about its lawful business in a lawful ...
The Green Party stands with people who live in public housing, people in dire housing need, experts and advocates in demanding better than the Government’s archaic approach to housing those who need our support the most. ...
New Zealand has recently lost the hosting rights of some major international sporting events including the America’s Cup, the Rugby Championship, Netball World Cup, and the Wellington Sevens. We are now at a huge risk of losing SailGP as well. And it won’t stop there. The recent issues with SailGP ...
A Member’s Bill drawn this week would modernise insurance law and make things fairer and more transparent for consumers, Christchurch Central MP Duncan Webb said. ...
The Minister for Disability Issues has confirmed she was aware of funding issues in mid-December and did nothing to stop it. On 14 March, she signed off on changes that were announced and implemented on 18 March without any consultation with disability communities. ...
Green Party MP Julie Anne Genter says her members' bill is an opportunity for the coalition government to plug the gap in electric vehicle incentives. ...
The National Government continues to talk about irresponsible tax cuts that will only drive up inflation, despite the country entering a technical recession. ...
The Minister for Disability Issues must act urgently to reinstate flexibility around the funding for disability support and apologise to disabled carers. ...
This story has been initiated by a leftie shill reporter who proactively sought to call a member of a former band, which disbanded twelve years ago, give their biased appraisal of what was said in my speech, and concocted a ham-fisted attempt at a story that does nothing but show ...
The Government has accepted Labour’s change to the Road User Charge (RUC) discount for hybrid vehicles, meaning there will still be some incentive for people to buy greener vehicles. ...
Many in the mainstream media have taken what was said in New Zealand First’s State of the Nation Speech in Palmerston North on Sunday and deliberately, deceitfully, and ignorantly misrepresented what I said and why I said it. The headlines and commentary on the news stated that I compared ‘co-governance ...
Kicking the most vulnerable people out of state housing and pushing them towards homelessness will result in a proliferation of poverty and trauma across our most vulnerable communities. ...
Te Pāti Māori co-leader and MP for Waiariki, Rawiri Waititi has penned a letter asking MPs to support his members bill to remove GST from all food. The bill is expected to go through its first reading in parliament this Wednesday. “I’m calling on all political parties to support my ...
Good afternoon. Thank you for, in your very busy lives, turning up to this meeting today. On October 14th last year New Zealanders overwhelmingly voted for change. That is exactly what this new government is bringing. New Zealand First campaigned to ‘take back our country’ and stop the disastrous economic ...
This year is about getting real with Kiwis and discussing the tough issues, as the National Government exacerbates inequality and divides New Zealand, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said ...
The Government adding Significant Natural Areas (SNAs) to its already roaring environmental policy bonfire is an assault on the future of wildlife that makes Aotearoa unique. ...
After 12 years of fighting to protect our moana we are finding ourselves back at square one and back at court. Today, the Environmental Protection Agency is sitting in Hawera to reconsider an application from Trans-Tasman Resources to dig up 50 million tonnes of the seabed in South Taranaki. This ...
Minister Shane Jones’ decision to step away from a seabed mining project is evidence of the murky waters surrounding the Government’s fast-track legislation. ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The growth of Treaty of Waitangi clauses in legislation caused so much worry that a special oversight group was set up by the last government in a bid to get greater coherence in the publicservice on Treaty matters. When ministers first considered the need for tighter oversight in 2021, there ...
The Coalition Government’s miscalculation saga continues as it has forgotten an eyewatering $90 million gap in its interest deductibility cost figures, say Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds and Revenue Spokesperson Deborah Russell. ...
He Pou a Rangi Climate Change Commission has today released advice that says if the Government doesn’t act now New Zealand is at risk of not meeting its climate goals. ...
The Coalition Government has today confirmed it is abandoning first home buyers who are struggling to get ahead, says Labour Finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds. ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has welcomed the passing of legislation to move light electric vehicles (EVs) and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) into the road user charges system from 1 April. “It was always intended that EVs and PHEVs would be exempt from road user charges until they reached two ...
New Zealand is strengthening its ability to combat illegal fishing outside its domestic waters and beef up regulation for its own commercial fishers in international waters through a Bill which had its first reading in Parliament today. The Fisheries (International Fishing and Other Matters) Amendment Bill 2023 sets out stronger ...
Economists Carl Hansen and Professor Prasanna Gai have been appointed to the Reserve Bank Monetary Policy Committee, Finance Minister Nicola Willis announced today. The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) is the independent decision-making body that sets the Official Cash Rate which determines interest rates. Carl Hansen, the executive director of Capital ...
Apartment owners and buyers will soon have greater protections as further changes to the law on unit titles come into effect, Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. “The Unit Titles (Strengthening Body Corporate Governance and Other Matters) Amendment Act had already introduced some changes in December 2022 and May 2023, and ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters will travel to Egypt and Europe from this weekend. “This travel will focus on a range of New Zealand’s traditional diplomatic and security partnerships while enabling broad engagement on the urgent situation in Gaza,” Mr Peters says. Mr Peters will attend the NATO Foreign ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown is encouraging all road users to stay safe, plan their journeys ahead of time, and be patient with other drivers while travelling around this Easter long weekend. “Road safety is a responsibility we all share, and with increased traffic on our roads expected this Easter we ...
About 1.4 million New Zealanders will receive cost of living relief through increased government assistance from April 1 909,000 pensioners get a boost to Superannuation, including 5000 veterans 371,000 working-age beneficiaries will get higher payments 45,000 students will see an increase in their allowance Over a quarter of New Zealanders ...
Ensuring social housing is being provided to those with the greatest needs is front of mind as the Government restarts social housing tenancy reviews, Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka says. “Our relentless focus on building a strong economy is to ensure we can deliver better public services such as social ...
The Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary will not go ahead, with Cabinet deciding to stop work on the proposed reserve and remove the Bill that would have established it from Parliament’s order paper. “The Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary Bill would have created a 620,000 sq km economic no-go zone,” Oceans and Fisheries Minister ...
Dam safety regulations are being amended so that smaller dams won’t be subject to excessive compliance costs, Minister for Building and Construction Chris Penk says. “The coalition Government is focused on reducing costs and removing unnecessary red tape so we can get the economy back on track. “Dam safety regulations ...
The coalition Government is expanding the medium-scale adverse event classification to parts of the North Island as dry weather conditions persist, Agriculture Minister Todd McClay announced today. “I have made the decision to expand the medium-scale adverse event classification already in place for parts of the South Island to also cover the ...
The passing of legislation giving effect to coalition Government tax commitments has been welcomed by Finance Minister Nicola Willis. “The Taxation (Annual Rates for 2023–24, Multinational Tax, and Remedial Matters) Bill will help place New Zealand on a more secure economic footing, improve outcomes for New Zealanders, and make our tax system ...
Science, Innovation and Technology Minister Judith Collins and Tertiary Education and Skills Minister Penny Simmonds today announced plans to transform our science and university sectors to boost the economy. Two advisory groups, chaired by Professor Sir Peter Gluckman, will advise the Government on how these sectors can play a greater ...
The Budget will deliver urgently-needed tax relief to hard-working New Zealanders while putting the government’s finances back on a sustainable track, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The Finance Minister made the comments at the release of the Budget Policy Statement setting out the Government’s Budget objectives. “The coalition Government intends ...
The coalition Government will look at options to address a zoning issue that limits how much financial support Queenstown residents can get for accommodation. Cabinet has agreed on a response to the Petitions Committee, which had recommended the geographic information MSD uses to determine how much accommodation supplement can be ...
Cabinet has agreed to a short extension to the final reporting timeframe for the Royal Commission into Abuse in Care from 28 March 2024 to 26 June 2024, Internal Affairs Minister Brooke van Velden says. “The Royal Commission wrote to me on 16 February 2024, requesting that I consider an ...
The coalition Government is delivering an $18 million boost to New Zealanders needing to travel for specialist health treatment, Health Minister Dr Shane Reti says. “These changes are long overdue – the National Travel Assistance (NTA) scheme saw its last increase to mileage and accommodation rates way back in 2009. ...
The Government is recognising the innovative and rising talent in New Zealand’s growing space sector, with the Prime Minister and Space Minister Judith Collins announcing the new Prime Minister’s Prizes for Space today. “New Zealand has a growing reputation as a high-value partner for space missions and research. I am ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has confirmed New Zealand’s concerns about cyber activity have been conveyed directly to the Chinese Government. “The Prime Minister and Minister Collins have expressed concerns today about malicious cyber activity, attributed to groups sponsored by the Chinese Government, targeting democratic institutions in both New ...
Independent Reviewers appointed for School Property Inquiry Education Minister Erica Stanford today announced the appointment of three independent reviewers to lead the Ministerial Inquiry into the Ministry of Education’s School Property Function. The Inquiry will be led by former Minister of Foreign Affairs Murray McCully. “There is a clear need ...
State Highway 1 across the Brynderwyns will be open for Easter weekend, with work currently underway to ensure the resilience of this critical route being paused for Easter Weekend to allow holiday makers to travel north, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Today I visited the Brynderwyn Hills construction site, where ...
Introduction Good morning to you all, and thanks for having me bright and early today. I am absolutely delighted to be the Minister for Infrastructure alongside the Minister of Housing and Resource Management Reform. I know the Prime Minister sees the three roles as closely connected and he wants me ...
New Zealand stands with the United Kingdom in its condemnation of People’s Republic of China (PRC) state-backed malicious cyber activity impacting its Electoral Commission and targeting Members of the UK Parliament. “The use of cyber-enabled espionage operations to interfere with democratic institutions and processes anywhere is unacceptable,” Minister Responsible for ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Defence Minister Judith Collins today announced New Zealand will provide logistics support for the upcoming Solomon Islands election. “We’re sending a team of New Zealand Defence Force personnel and two NH90 helicopters to provide logistics support for the election on 17 April, at the request ...
The European Union Free Trade Agreement Legislation Amendment Bill received Royal Assent today, completing the process for New Zealand’s ratification of its free trade agreement with the European Union. “I am pleased to announce that today, in a small ceremony at the Beehive, New Zealand notified the European Union ...
Public consultation on the terms of reference for the Royal Commission into COVID-19 Lessons has concluded, Internal Affairs Minister Hon Brooke van Velden says. “I have been advised that there were over 11,000 submissions made through the Royal Commission’s online consultation portal.” Expanding the scope of the Royal Commission of ...
Hardworking families are set to benefit from a new credit to help them meet their early childcare education (ECE) costs, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. From 1 July, parents and caregivers of young children will be supported to manage the rising cost of living with a partial reimbursement of their ...
A specialised Independent Technical Advisory Group (ITAG) tasked with preparing and publishing independent non-binding advice on the design of a "green" (sustainable finance) taxonomy rulebook is being established, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. “Comprising experts and market participants, the ITAG's primary goal is to deliver comprehensive recommendations to the ...
Defence Minister Judith Collins has thanked the Chief of Army, Major General John Boswell, DSD, for his service as he leaves the Army after 40 years. “I would like to thank Major General Boswell for his contribution to the Army and the wider New Zealand Defence Force, undertaking many different ...
25 March 2024 Minister to meet Australian counterparts and Manufacturing Industry Leaders Small Business, Manufacturing, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly will travel to Australia for a series of bi-lateral meetings and manufacturing visits. During the visit, Minister Bayly will meet with his Australian counterparts, Senator Tim Ayres, Ed ...
Government commits almost $3 million for period products in schools The Coalition Government has committed $2.9 million to ensure intermediate and secondary schools continue providing period products to those who need them, Minister of Education Erica Stanford announced today. “This is an issue of dignity and ensuring young women don’t ...
Good morning, it’s great to be here. First, I would like to acknowledge the New Zealand Institute of Building Surveyors and thank you for the opportunity to be here this morning. I would like to use this opportunity to outline the Government’s ambitious plan and what we hope to ...
Minister for Pacific Peoples Dr Shane Reti has announced the Government’s commitment to the Auckland Secondary Schools Māori and Pacific Islands Cultural Festival, more commonly known as Polyfest. “The Ministry for Pacific Peoples is a longtime supporter of Polyfest and, as it celebrates 49 years in 2024, I’m proud to ...
Before moving onto the substance of today’s address, I want to recognise the very significant and ongoing contribution the Breast Cancer Foundation makes to support the lives of New Zealand women and their families living with breast cancer. I very much enjoy working with you. I also want to recognise ...
New Zealand has notched up a first with the launch of University of Canterbury research to the International Space Station, Science, Innovation and Technology and Space Minister Judith Collins says. The hardware, developed by Dr Sarah Kessans, is designed to operate autonomously in orbit, allowing scientists on Earth to study ...
Introduction Thank you for inviting me to speak with you today and I’m sorry I can’t be there in person. Yesterday I started in Wellington for Breakfast TV, spoke to a property conference in Auckland, and finished the day speaking to local government in Christchurch, so it would have been ...
The Coalition Government is contributing more than $1 million to support the establishment of an emergency multi-agency coordination centre in Northland. Emergency Management and Recovery Minister Mark Mitchell announced the contribution today during a visit of the Whangārei site where the facility will be constructed. “Northland has faced a number ...
New Zealanders have enjoyed a broader range of voices telling the story of Aotearoa thanks to the creation of Whakaata Māori 20 years ago, says Māori Development Minister Tama Potaka. The minister spoke at a celebration marking the national indigenous media organisation’s 20th anniversary at their studio in Auckland on ...
Commercial catch limits for some fisheries have been increased following a review showing stocks are healthy and abundant, Ocean and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. The changes, along with some other catch limit changes and management settings, begin coming into effect from 1 April 2024. "Regular biannual reviews of fish ...
Jesus had dinner with his 12 disciples right before he died. Noted historian Madeleine Chapman finds out who really deserved to be there.First published in 2018 but let’s be honest, the subject is timeless. As you sit on your couch this Easter Sunday, eating a chocolate egg you know ...
The newly-promoted Northern League club is on a mission to return to the National League for the first time in two decades. Plenty about domestic football in New Zealand has changed in that time – but the sense that this amateur competition is not an entirely level playing field remains. ...
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For mary
Seamus Shag
Seamus is small, sleek, & black all over, apart from some white plumage on the front of the throat & his chin. He’s a Little Shag, according to NZ Birds Online.
https://i.imgur.com/FN3HECU.gif
Love the names Gezza. Very entertaining.
We have a "mythical" cat according to friends who have never seen Mia, but observe her bed toys and bowl!!
An orchard born year old nervous native when she came to us, she disappears at extra people machinery or strange vehicles.
She is clean loving and plays like she always did, leaping and rolling in gay abandon even at 10 years. We enjoy your videos very much, keep them coming Cheers.
Thank you very much, Patricia. It’s lovely having all this free entertainment just over my back fence.
I recommend you call your cat the Invisible Cat. I can well imagine what she is like. My brother had one (of their three cats) who was invisible. She just didn’t like visitors & would also disappear. If you were lucky you see the tip of her tabby tail disappearing around a corner or into the bushes.
Spotted a very unusual bird in the stream this morning, but didn’t have my smartphone on me. By the time I got back to the fence it had moved upstream, foraging.
At least twice the size of some nearby mallard & mallard/grey hybrid drakes. Black feathers, with some flashes of white, & a very red thick beak (not a “bill”, like the ducks’). Wonder if it might be a black goose? Never seen one here before.
In Australia they have moorehens. There are some here I believe.
Bingo! (I think.)
Thanks Patricia, I’m pretty sure it’s a common moorhen. The dark colour& white flashes look right:
https://nzbirdsonline.org.nz/species/common-moorhen
I have a couple of video clips of it some distance away. I’ll either run it through the zoom option of my movie-making program on my older laptop, or take a still frame or two & crop & enlarge them online. That should confirm it.
Oh I hope so. It is so frustrating when that happens. Good luck with the enlargement.
Seamus Shag is a very busy little fella and delightful to watch. Thanks again Gezza, much appreciated.
Morning must read:
A submission is being made,
and the person was allocated some 4-5 odd minutes, Person Russel, Other Person, and Male Human, are simply not a. paying attention, b. paying a modicum of respect, and
for what its worth, it appears that murderers and rapists in NZ – men who have committed crimes as men – are now in prision in NZ as Non Males.
These people are on the Government tit, have been for the most of their lifes on the government tit, for shame.
This is the Labour Party, and the Green Party, in its truest form.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1qJXUBdimM
That clip shows the true face of the parties involved in this removal of rigths from human beings that used to be known as 'women'. Btw, to any bloke who says this does not affect you? Do you have one of these humans at home? They might be your birthing partent, they might be your spouse, they might be your offspring, let me assure you in no uncertain terms this does affect you.
And btw, rest assured that there is nothing in my case that the Non Male Leader of the Labour Party could ever say in regards to this bill that would ever re-assure me or would sound even the slightest bit 'believable'. Ditto for the Non Male Co Leader of the Green Party.
Let's hope all, that we get the chance to vote in 2023, and let me assure you that my vote will go to whomever opposes this bullshit.
Labour/Greens – Never! Again!
Good on Rex! A wahine toa indeed.
Let's not ignore the abysmal time-keeping.
Start around 3:53 to hear the attempts to interrupt begin before he says at 4:00 "You've had your five minutes."
As for Deborah Russell MP:
Leave the camera on. We've all seen women stretch before, it's not a big deal. (Alternatively, tell the truth – Rex Landy rightfully identified your behaviour.)
she was the one that called small business owners 'losers' last year in April during he first lockdown. I did not think that that person could show herself even more callous than that, but good grief, this is a supposed MP of the Country. And this person lives of our taxes and hard work.
For shame Labour. For fucking shame.
I have a bottle of whiskey that i auctioned off the Non Male PM of this country many years ago, when Andrew Little was polling at 5% for preferred Leader of this country, and i am honestly thinking that the best to do with it is to flush it down the drains. As the Labour party should be flushed down the drain.
I will always vote on the left, and as a strategic voter, I will vote Labour or teh GP to keep National out of power. But the left is in for a big wake up call come the next election. Just like Māori, women have their own political perspectives, needs and positions that don't always align with the mainstream political left, this is true even for left wing women. If the NZ left wing parties aren't watching what is happening to Labour, the GP and the Libdems in the UK over this (and they're probably not except through an ID pol lens), then they deserve what they get.
Same, since the Values Party I've always voted for the planet and a fair deal, but seeing this and getting some idea of what its all about, unless they bring back the McGillicuddys I'll be refraining in future.
It is as if the inmates have taken over the asylum, Andrew Little with his steadfast adherence to reefer madness was already becoming impossible to support and in this clip he demonstrates why for a rational future its become necessary to vote Andrew out.
That's not Little in the video.
I've voted GP for as long as they've been around, so it's a pretty big deal for me too.
They may get what they deserve but do the people of NZ deserve it – especially the economically vulnerable.
Women in prisons are being raped and inseminated – aka rendered pregnant – being offered abortions in prisons, because men who raped and killed can identify out of a male prison into a female prison and be given access to vulnerable persons who have no recourse, and have no right to privacy, bodily autonomy and safety.
But then, its just some pesky non males. Right?
Oh please, if, and it's a big if, this is happening, then it sure as hell isn't being done by any trans woman.
LoL they are men. Forever. Can never erase that Y.
The only way to be a woman is to have been born a girl. And no, we are not clownfish/seahorses/plants. Intersex want nothing to do with your claims about identity of men in dresses. Intersex is not an identity.
http://www.womenarehuman.com
Check #ThisNeverHappens 😉
I'm hoping what they deserve is to be seriously challenged on what they are doing, but still win the election. I would never wish National on this country especially in the form they are in now. There's no evidence that National will roll back any of the gender ID legislation anyway.
No, there is no way any of these people will get my vote. I might lose any right to bodily autonomy (and that is what this bill is imo), any right to even just go to a toilet and in peace urinate or defecate, lose my right to a 'born female' to touch my body after a rape, and so on and so forth,
but i will be damned if i vote for my subjugation, and put myself on the urinary leash all by myself.
This video demonstrates the absolute disregards these persons form the so called 'left' aka Labour/Green have for the concerns of presons/peoples/others/karens (karens of all colors and creeds).
If the left abandons what it stands for, is it then still the left?
I have asked this before, how can anyone on the left condone the doings of Labour and the Greens if the same thing would be abhorrent to them under a National and Act government. And how can anyone vote for this, and pretend that National Act could be worse.
And last but least, there are other alternatives to put a vote for then the FFP system that seems to still linger.
This then is not a democracy, it is a demockery.
NACT would be worse because on top of this there would be all the other stuff NACT do – cut benefits, fuck with employment legislation, more dairy farms, much slower climate action and so on (pretty long list).
I'm not seeing any evidence that NACT will reverse or amend the gender ID laws.
Does anyone know the Mp positioning?
if you have no more sex – and with that no more sex based rights, how would that affect
a. benefits for 'women' if they are sex based?
b. can a person with a functioning cervix/uterus be compelled by Winz to breed children for money as a career choice (Tamati Coffey atm is pushing for the commercialization of 'surrogacy')
c. can transmen be drafted should there be a requirement
d. can any case of 'sexual discrimination' be dismissed on the grounds of gender?
e. transwomen be 'women' and thus diversity in businesses/parties be achieved (two entire male transwomen in Germany got elected on the Womens Roll if the German Green Party, thus before the persons of Germany ever achieved parity in that Party)
f. can lactating persons be compelled to sell their human milk for money by Winz?
g. can people be compelled into sex work (a career choice to some prostitution positive genderists) by Winz
g. the climate is fucked and we need a better Green Party to change anything, at the moment the Green Party is not even able to understand basic biology, or at the very least is steadfastly refusing to admit biology in favour of 'self identity.
these are just a few things that come to my mind,
Sorry Weka, i know where you are coming from, and I voted for the Green Party in 2016 in honor of Metiria Turei. And unless something changes, and radically and quickly so, that was the last time i voted for them.
Tell me how not voting GP or Labour in 2023 will prevent any of that. When you’ve done that I’ll make the argument for how the non vote will make things worse.
It wont' prevent it because it is already decided. The clip above shows that this is just for show – bread and circus and hey the people in that clip are paid to be there. I guess they call that ‘work’.
Thus tell me how not voting for the Greens or Labour would make it worse for us?
I will not be part of my own demise Weka. I will not be part of the subjugation of us, I will not be part of the group that will remove the rights that our kin, has fought for, got beaten for.
And above all tell me how the removal or our rights, the commercialization of the female reproductive organs, the 'rendering invisible of biological women' it can be good for society and the environment.
I can't stop it with my vote, but i can refuse to rubberstamp it. I will not be an enabler, the turnkey, the jailor to my own prison.
Every time we have a nine years of a National led government we lose ground in so many areas. There's not evidence that National won't also carry on with the gender ID pathways. Our main hope of change for the better for women in regards to gender ideology is to push back. This is *way easier under centre left governments thand RW ones, because under RW ones a lot more of women's energy/time/resources are tied up in surviving. This is doubly so for working and underclass women, single mothers, Māori, disabled women and so on.
That's the same argument about most things eg climate change. Real change happens outside parliament and then parliament has to follow. But it's even more important here, because of how the many of the women in Labour and the GP are. Taking power from them basically leaves neoliberal conservatives in power and they're not going to be acting in the best interests of women on any level.
Agree weka.. I see this identity stuff as foolish and wrongheaded but feel that solidarity on economic injustice is more pressing, and that despite all their flaws the current government's efforts to undo the legacy of Rogernomics is a worthy project.
The cries of the poor have been ignored for too long.
how many of the poor are persons/people/others/karens and their children?
and does it matter that now we not only deny their existance, we remove a few rights, and they are still poor.
let me put it this way, the Non Male Leader of the Green and the Labour Party will never use a public toilet, they will have the keys to the executive suite, or maybe use the loo in the Korou lounge, you and i however will have no such luck, we will have to go into unisex toilets with urinals next to the handwash basins and the men will still have their mens.
This Genderquatsch will mostly – i would even go so far and say ONLY harm vulnerable and poor non males and their children.
And if taken to he extreme will sterilise and castrate the children of the poor, the neuro diverse, the ‘non conforming’ children.
I worry for my young nieces growing up in a deeply sexist, body-negative, gender-confused culture, weaponised by Instagram. There are some really bad stories coming out of Australia and Scotland about families being torn apart and women silenced.
Feel like we have to choose the lesser of two evils. Keeping the complete whack jobs of National and Act out of power is actually an existential demand for vulnerable NZers. Covid running rampant (as FJK etc are advocating) will kill thousands, mainly the poor, elderly, and people with other health problems. Housing will be made 10x worse. Inequality will be ignored. Health and education will be slashed and sold off. We will be distracted by massive rugby and sailing spectacles while all the problems are swept under the carpet.
Hold your nose and vote Left.
I will vote for social credit, legalise aotearoa, or something like that.
but i will not vote for people that take rights away form us humans that were formerly known as women. Never. I will not be complicit in my own demise.
Let's get a women's party started. Te Paati Maori is TWAW. I didn't vote for them to tell me women have a penis and men get pregnant. GP DGAF about the environment. Virtue signaling to the max. 9 in James entourage, flying o/s. Not to mention the dreaded Covids. Labour has lost their way. Natscum. ACT blame the poor for being poor and are Hobson's Pledge type of folk. So what is left. All the GC ♀️ to ruin their ballot? I wholeheartedly agree. I will not be complicit in my erasure
We're always the first to suffer in times like this – however, this identity 'politics' is a $34 trillion industry, Big Pharma love the #LifeLongPatient model it affords. Whereas sex is observed at birth, matters regarding healthcare and spaces where both sexes deserve privacy.
There are currently 1200 girls waiting for radical double mastectomy/hormones/puberty blockers in our gender clinic currently…. this is taking healthy breasts away bc of a mental illness (it's in the DSM-V).
I understand that you must believe what you believe.
But i would like you again to look at the above clip, keep in mind the video of kerekere 'terfing' submitters, and tell me why again you think that these people will care.
Btw, I see no difference between Labour and National. Non of the raises in benefits have kept up with rising living costs and rental costs. No houses have been build, but the government has 'bought' houses of the market thus contributing to high house costs. Despite some crappy sandwiches in school – when school is actually on, child hood poverty is through the roof, because their parents are not keeping up with rising living costs and high rental costs/mortgages. Healthcare even without Covid was and still is a mess. Corrections a mess. Poor old people are still deciding if they should eat, have medication or heat as they still can't afford all of these things in one pay cycle.
You vote for the Green Party, go ahead, but so far you have not given me any reason to vote for them again. And the sad stage of the environment is not working anymore, no more then' national will be worse.
The last time national was having the reigns they did not try to put us back in to the 'seen but not heard box' that Labour and the Greens will put us in favor of the feelings for the generally het men with a fetish.
Also, can you explain to me if men are women, will they still be women when women have no longer rights, or will they revert back to men?
As i said, i will not be an enabler to the undoing of my sex, the few rights that i and those like me have, not even under the false premise that 'national will be worse' or that 'the greens will save the environment'. Not good enough.
Sabine, much of the foundation for SSID was laid under National / ACT governments. This has been happening since 1995. What's happening now in relation to BCs is the last card in the hand of formal and social rights needed to trump biological sex with the notion of gender identity.
I'm with you in relation to there being very important wider implications to the integrity of sex-based rights but when you suggest that a Labour government would force women to bear children, enter sex work, or sell breast milk etc, I'm afraid you lose me.
To me, the biggest threat in all of this comes from the generation of a socially conservative backlash – that will be surfed by crackpot extremist libertarians.
@TeWhareWhero
It happened already in England, during the Financial crisis some years ago where Jobcentres had job offers for Strippers and Lapdancers. Outrage ensued, and it was then banned in 2010, but it happened. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-10831614
So when i point to these scenarios it is not that Labour will do that or the Greens or National for that matter or any coalition, but that anyone could potentially use what ever legislation comes from it. Once it is legal, and sex is no longer protected, what then. What next.
Like for example, if men can get undressed (fully intact males) in the sauna, or spa area for women, then that would also lead to remove 'indecent exposure' for example, as clearly men do not have to undergo a gender re-assignement surgery in order to be women. So there will be huge legal changes as consequence of these changes.
So apart from the very obvious, these questions still stand, can and will people be compelled into these situations?
And so far, no one has given any assurance that it won't be irrespective of the colors of the government du jour.
I voted Labour or Green all my life. I am now politically homeless. I taught women’s and gender studies courses at university for more than thirty years. Sex and gender have been core and distinct concepts in sociology since the 1970s. Yet we are not ‘allowed’ to discuss these in political contexts unless we parrot ridiculous mantras like ‘trans women are women’ ( trans women are biological males with gender dysphoria). The role of a select committee is to hear and consider evidence. I am appalled by the behaviour of the BDMR select committee members – sneering at submitters they dislike and failing to give even the appearance of listening to groups like Speak Up for Women. Watch Deborah Russell and Elizabeth Kerekere during that and some other submissions. I left the Green Party this year when disagreement with gender self ID was termed hate speech. Im extremely unlikely to be able to vote Labour again after this mockery of democratic process. Ant vote NACT so looking for a leftie protest option.
great to see you here Sue. Your submission was heartening and inspiring. So wonderful to know FOWL are organising around this.
The trouble is Weka, Labour and the Greens will see it as an endorsement of their policies if they do get back in.
We really don't have much leverage unless we collectively threaten to withdraw our votes .A huge fuss needs to be made so as to embarrass them and make them reconsider. It looks almost to me as well that Auckland is starting to come apart.Brazen non compliance and defiance of public health orders, what with that utter idiot Tamaki and the protest at the Domain today
Bang goes all the govt's covid credit if it falls apart.The restriction of our freedom in a public health emergency is the one scenario when community obedience is rational.That we can't even do that anymore gives me little hope of a spirit of collectivism to solve all our other problems
Completely agree with this.
If women don't vote and NACT get in, do you believe that Labour and the GP will pin that on gender ID pol? I don't. The non-vote will disappear into the rest of the non-vote that no-one talks about and if the ideology is still strong in those parties, there will be a strong motivation to stay in denial (assuming the protest non-vote as any impact). And yes, way easier to blame on things like covid failures.
But hey ho, we should probably be talking strategy about what to do between now and then so it doesn't come to there.
why would you assume that we don't vote, by not voting for the 'supposed left' ?
MMP is the game in town, NZfirst, Maori Party, Legalise Aotearoa, Social Credits etc can all be voted for.
They might not make it in, but sometimes it is better to lose then to be complicit.
And the best thing that can happen to any of the more prominent parties is to be so small that they must go into a coalition. And that can't happen if people vote by default rather then on issues. And undoing womens rights, endangering womens in their daily lifes, work, and sport, are issues that are currently laughed out of the door by the Ministers of the Green Party and the Labour Party.
So what do you think
amplifying the issue on social media ?
(which I keep far away from)
Letter writing to MP's? local papers and the Listener
Discussing at branch level ? Contacting local Green candidate.
I think they need to be warned , because they will lose heaps of women voters
There is a media blackout on this issue unless it’s a ‘my beautiful trans kid’ story. Gender critical views don’t get published. I’m not part of Speak Up for Women, but any coverage they have had misrepresents their views. I attended one of their public meetings on the Bill and found a pleasant group of women providing a clear and accurate summary of the main points in the gender self ID clauses in it. Some transsexual women (ie medically transitioned male-to female people) were with them in support. I cannot and will not toerate the shutting down of women’s voices on this issue. I’ve been a feminist lol my adult life and, although we have often been ridiculed and misunderstood in the past, we have never been shut down or had our views banned until now. I can’t understand how this is happening. And I certainly won’t vote for a political party whose MPsinsulge in this kind of behaviour.
Wanted to address this separately. This is why the GP vote will be important. What we are seeing is the divisions from decades of neoliberal ignoring of social unrest and poverty. If we get a Labour governent next time and the Greens are out of parliament, hands up who thinks that Labour will move left and address poverty or housing?
Is the Non Male Leader of the Green Party not some associate minister for the homeless and housing?
Why is then the Green Party wasting precious time and resources telling women that they are subcategory now of their own sex class so that men can pretend to be women and be given unfettered access to all and any spaces that used to be single sex, under the guise of inclusion of some while excluding those that came before. Colonisation is a good word for what the Greens and the Labour Party are currently doing. Colonising womens spaces for men.
And knowing that the Greens will enable the next Labour Government should the need arise, why are they not leveraging this knowledge now in regards to housing, homelessness and poverty? After all they have no issues working together in removing the sex based rights of Non Males in this country.
Half the left want them to go harder on socioeconomics, the other half want them to stop and focus solely on the environment 🤷♀️
Genter today on transport, urban development and climate, in case anyone criticising the Greens wants to know what they are actually doing.
https://twitter.com/JulieAnneGenter/status/1444072679489748993
@ Weka,
Has the green party released a statement in regards to the atrocious behavior of the Green Party members, such as KereKere and her 'terf' youtube video?
that right now is the only statement i would like to see, and also i would like to see that from the Labour Party.
A short, concise statement that will be clear that this attitude as evidenced in the video above, will not be tolerated, that the people who will make their statements will be treated with respect, fairly, and will not be spoken over or have their times cut short, and above all will not be insulted with the term 'terf' or called transphobic.
As for Deborah Russels tweet about not giving a fuck, well maybe someone in Labour Leadership should tell her that is is really not smart to admit to the public that while you like the wage you don't wanna do the work.
Time to start a left women's party. Who knows how to do this. Let's start one. What do we need to make this a reality? I'm keen. I'll join. Let's get it started
Personally I'd rather see a coalition of flax roots organisations arise first, strong and stable. Several years of those doing media work, public meetings, submissions and so on might change things.
I'm impressed with the groups that have been submitting this round. Bodes well. Am also very impressed with the rise of grass roots feminism in the UK.
what a fucking shambles. If SCs are normally like this, I'm even more shocked. And then people wonder why most people don't bother with engaging with government.
I believe it was obvious Russell wasn't listening.
A person with a modicum of respect would have waited till the presenter had finished her submission, a matter of minutes, to 'stretch her back'
And once Rex had been unceremoniously been shut down, they then all had a jolly good laugh.
They disgust me.
yes, that last bit was where they showed their true faces.
Did the man say "Don't worry Deborah, you got away with it"
then they all had a good laugh
yes it seems like he did.
That's what I heard too.
The cynic in me thinks they would by now be tech-savvy enough to ensure the video was off first, but they didn't because they wanted to show a public rebuff after the submitter was no longer on screen.
Unprofessional, cowardly or both.
If you dig deep enough, you will find that Rex (typically a male name?) is probably having her chain jerked by the Christian Right.
See seems to have scrubbed her Google history? Perhaps she doesnt want people to find out what she really thinks?
Eh?
How did you come to that conclusion?
How does one scrub ones google history?
He's got to have some cromulent excuse as to why I'm not in favour of children being sterilised, or the $34 trillion Big Pharma medical industrial complex medicalising people for profit. 😉
Jennifer Bilek has written extensively on this. #LifelongPatients once you have the kids, see.
Follow the $
soap and hot water does wonders i hear.
LMFAO you can fuck off all the way with 'Christian Right'. I was raped by a priest at the age of four with Catholic maths (35 DOES go into 4) so if you think I have anything to do with the Whore of Rome you can think again. Or any Xian bs.
I'm still laughing as I type – google me and you will find the dozens of OIA requests and 'footprint' you believe I've had scrubbed away… I'm a professional nobody, have complex mental health needs and damage after my childhood rape – not every outcome has been good for me, see? Can't put my finger on it, but after four years old, it was a mixed bag. They DID give me a fabulous education though so that's a bonus. 😉 Not my shame to carry, so I'll just put it out there straight away, bro. LMAO.
Good for you Rex.It was a great submission and you spoke so well!
Gratitude and respect
what a racist and sexist comment. as if a mana wahine does not have her own opinion.
Can you please provide a link to substantiate your claim?
A lot of people in this country are religious. Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Sikhs, all sorts of different Christian denominations, and certainly a few more that i am forgetting.
Are you saying that if a person has issues with being delegated to the dustbin of history and stripped of their rights they must be a supporter of the Christian right? Really?
And Rex is a manly name too? Damn her, being so gender non conform.
Maybe she should identify as a male and run for the Male Co Leadership of the Green Party?
😆😆people who can't believe hell have no fury like a ♀️.
I can assure you Rex is all woman and pulling her own chain. How far are you gonna dig to believe your own ears?
If you are right, and you may well be, but you have no evidence that you are… What you have in front of you, is her submission. And what you are able to comment on, is the content of her submission.
To pass judgement on this person, on a posit of possibility when you know nothing else but what she says here, is a way of dismissing what she says without addressing it.
(This does not hold true for public figures however, where we hold many examples of their behaviour and speech. But Rex Landry is not, AFAIK, a public figure and your reference to their non-existent Google history equating to be taken in by the Christian Right is a bad conjecture to make.)
See what happens when you make stupid, partisan assumptions in a political forum.
Lefties, men in particular, might want to ask themselves why they find it so hard to believe or accept that left wing women have their own strong politics when it comes to gender/sex. The connection between GC women/feminists with the religious right is a bullshit line run by gender identity activists. It won't work on TS because there are too many left wing women here, long term Standardistas, who are informed and highly politicised on the issue.
Probably because in the USA opposition to transgender rights is one taken up by the political right – GOP, which has strong Christian conservative connotations (and connection to their historic position in rights for same sex people).
It’s not the only issue in which there is a coalition of diverse groups.
The biggest grouping of gender critical feminists is in the UK, and this is far more relevant to NZ than the US. Gender ID activists call the UK Terf Island. It's not a secret. Anyone who says that those women are allied to the religious right are either willfully ignorant or lying.
The US is a different situation, but how on earth Millsy made a connection between that and this Wahine Māori is beyond me.
Sure the GOP's conservative females are not at the centre of feminist discourse.
But I wonder if some on the liberal left are not being misled by this, as maybe millsy is, and not thinking the issue through a little more.
For example I was on side with some on the inclusion of transgender concerns at the Auckland event, but this does not inform my position on fair competition in sport or women’s safety.
How so? Who are the liberal left in this context?
In the perception that concern about the proposed legislation comes from the conservatives who resisted equal place for those of same sex attraction in society (and recognition of their relationships).
The attitude of the Labour and Green MP's (support for proposed legislation) on the SC is indicative that they see the transgender issue as one of inclusion of society diversity within the civil liberties/human rights orbit. Thus they see any resistance to the legislation as coming from those on the wrong side of history.
Thus nuance is lost for the sake of political conformity to established liberal (open to socially progressive change) vs conservative (resistance to such change until it is normalised/accepted by the mainstream) positioning.
The hilarious* thing is, this self-determination ID has been (wilfully?) misused. It's a piece of international law that applies to PEOPLE, as in A PEOPLE the right to self determination. The international human rights lawyer Rosa Freedman submitted on it. It is a glorious, erudite and composed laying out of the law. Nicola Grigg was paying attention and writing things down; I heard her murmur 'that was important'.
I'm hoping to do a post on the submissions, making them very accessible to people with links and time stamps so people can pick out the ones they want to read/watch. Even just finding them has been hard going. Looking forward to watching Rosa (one of my favourite GCFs) and getting up to speed with that particular issue.
thanks for clarifying SPC. That makes sense and is similar to how I see it.
Best to ignore Millsy he's got a long history of making up shit about people… tbh I'm suprised moderation hant had a word about the reckons on Rex…
I get it's difficult to countenance a woman filled with fury 😉 LoLz. I know if he's looked at my video he knows I'm a woman and he is a bit of a korero tutae. Thanks bro.
AUCKLAND HARBOUR CYCLE BRIDGE SCRAPPED
Thank goodness. Sanity has prevailed !
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/government-scraps-785m-auckland-harbour-cycle-bridge-eastern-busway-the-winner/3FHI5GTQWJ2MFCR5Y7DMCAQARM/
That bridge was never gonna be build in the first place, and well some knew and some others….believed.
It was a little exercise in divide and conquer, smoke screen building and kerfuffle to not actually discuss the matters that matter.
But hey, for a while people believed that they would get a golden bridge to nowhere.
Next smokescreen please.
Insanity, building ever more motorways, has prevailed over a piece of infrastructure which would have reduced carbon emissions for the next 80 years.
Sanity has not prevailed.
It shows the problem with building carbon reducing infrastructure, when there is a chorus of unthinking protest, against spending even a fraction of the billions spent on motorways.
Mis information and utter bullshit has prevailed. As it does to often, spread by our wilfully ignorant and self opinionated media egged on by a right wing that would rather our country fails, than lose power.
A busway in highly populated areas is a better investment then a bike bridge.
Free public transport would be a good investment, but it will not happen.
The real insanity however is that it seems people believe that we can shove even more poeple into AKL and that they all need to go downtown to earn their pennies.
As Covid right now shows us, Don't put all your eggs in one basket.
I have been saying for a long long time now, that government should incentivize businesses to settle elsewhere and thus take the workers with them. this would actually revive some areas of this country, relieve the pressure on Auckland and maybe even lead to a better and healthier usage of our environment.
In the meantime tho, 1.6 odd million people are on Home D with one hour of outdoor exercise, permitted take away and 'work from home' or under severe restriction go to town and office/shop.
And no this bridge was not only disliked by the rightwing. I think you will see that polling showed labour that even lefties (and not all lefties are labour supporters ) just saw this as a diversion and pipe dream.
And fwiw, we need cycle ways. Lots of them. And in this case i would say, that the first step to get people to cycle over the bridge is to liberate a lane or two for cyclists. Permanently.
Agree.
One day, Sabine, it'd be nice to meet.
ditto.
we should organize such a meeting. I would happily host.
Cool. Let's revisit this at some point when Covid allows movement.
yes, sounds like a great idea.
NZTA has ruled out a dedicated cycle lane on the Auckland Harbour Bridge.
If the Minister turns public transport infrastructure into a popularity contest, nothing will happen except building more roads because that's what people want.
Where that leads is to continue NZ as one of the most car-polluted, unsafe, car-addicted countries on earth.
well, fear not Ad, soon there will only be electric cars, for those that can afford electric cars. The rest will walk, cycle, skateboard or use the bus.
NZTA needs to pull its fingers out of the proverbial and liberate a lane, and if only to actually gauge the real usage of that lane and thus be able in the future to build a dedicated cycle over that harbour.
But frankly it is easier for central town people to take a ferry with their bikes across the harbour than it would be for people on the outer edges of auckland to get into town with a car.
FWIW, I’ve decided it’s time to trade in my 16 year-old Mitsubishi Colt Plus, & I’m about to start researching which similarly-sized hybrid petrol/electric vehicle to replace it with.
I’m not going with an EV. The nation-wide charging infrastructure’s not sufficiently built yet.
Also, I’ve heard murmurs that disposing of old electric batteries is very problematic, & a cuz-in-law who’s an AA patrolman also told me just yesterday that he was told the amount of carbon released in the construction of EVs far exceeds that of the building + several years’ running of an efficient, standard petrol-powered auto.
(And do you have to get a charging station installed in your own home garage, anyone know?)
I never had a car to begin with, even while living in Auckland for 20 odd years and i worked downtown, newmarket and other places. Always got where ever i wanted to on public transport, cycling and walking. It can be done if the infrastructure is there.
Gezza we have a 2006 Toyota Ractis. We are keeping it as it is 1350hp, and easy to get in and out.. seats are high. The back seats are able to lie flat to take a wheelchair walker etc. It is an economical automatic. We are awaiting a comparable model. Still waiting.
1350hp out of a Ractis ???!!!?
Jaeeezzuss, you must really be the deadly granny sleeper-car at track days. How do you get that much power down to the ground?
Lol My bad Andre, not hp should be 1.5L
Actually I kinda rate the Ractis. A couple of family members have been looking for small city runabouts and we settled on a Ractis as being the best answer for what was needed and wanted. And as a bonus, they actually go OK on the open road, too.
If you are seriously thinking about going electric, it looks to me like holding off for a year or two would be a good move. The electric choice right now is really limited and expensive, but there's a lot of chatter about things in the pipeline that might arrive in the next year or two that really are big improvements on what's available now and probably cheaper.
sigh someone with a vested interest in internal combustion engines repeats some oil industry misinformation talking points and all of a sudden it's gospel …
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/may/11/viral-image/producing-electric-cars-battery-does-not-emit-same/
Yes, producing a battery electric vehicle does produce more emissions that producing an ICE vehicle, but how much more really depends on the electricity supply of where it's produced. If a battery electric vehicle were produced then used somewhere like Poland where close to 100% of the electricity supply is coal-fired, then it would take somewhere around 8 to 10 years to be lower lifetime emissions than an ICE. If it were produced and run using 100% zero-emissions electricity, the battery electric electric would have lower lifetime emissions than an ICE in less than a year. Personally, I'd work off of two years as a rough estimate for a BEV produced overseas and used in New Zealand.
There's plenty of attention and interest in electric vehicle battery recycling, starting with simply repurposing them to stationary storage when they're no longer good enough for the extreme demands of EV use. For example, Nissan Leaf batteries getting used in Nissan factories:
https://uk.nissannews.com/en-GB/releases/release-abe1d9572c0dbf098bf54c66e9451201-the-leafs-lithium-ion-batteries-find-a-home-in-nissans-automated-guided-vehicles
Then there's plenty of efforts going into direct recycling. Such as Redwood Materials, founded by J.B. Straubel, one of Tesla's founders. Their initial feedstock was rejects from Tesla battery production, which was really the only regular large quantity supply of batteries for recycling. There simply haven't been enough electric vehicles produced yet for there to really be enough end-of-life batteries to be recyled for anyone to make a business out of it, but there's plenty of companies gearing up to take that really valuable "waste" stream and turn it back into useful raw material. A simple google search on electric vehicle battery recycling will get you tons of info.
If you're looking for a Colt-sized EV with useful range and a palatable price, there really aren't any here in NZ, yet. Closest might be a Renault Zoe or Peugeot e-208, both somewhere on the wrong side of $60k after the Clean Car rebate.
But BYD are making noises about maybe releasing their EA1 (Dolphin) into NZ maybe next year, which would likely be somewhere around the $40k mark. There's a few others on the horizon as well.
Home charging can be done from a regular 240V outlet. Figure on adding 15km of range for every hour of charge. The next common option is a 7kW charger that most houses could cope with with boosting the house supply. Dunno about pricing, but if you forced me to guess I'd guess somewhere around the $3k mark installed.
Cost-wise, there's the potential imposition of Road User Charges that electric vehicles would have to pay starting March 2024 IIRC. Right RUC are 7.6 cents per km, which is just a tiny bit less than I pay for petrol for my Honda Fit hybrid. For me, that bit of transport policy stupidity would be a real obstacle to get over were I in the market for wheels right now.
But if my Fit hybrid were to be written off in a crash, I'd seriously think about a Prius plug-in hybrid. The first generation plug-in (3rd generation Prius body) gets somewhere around 15km pure-electric range, pricing starts from around $13k, while the second generation plug-in gets around 50km pure electric range, prices start around $35k. Most hybrids use Atkinson cycle engines, which basically give diesel levels of fuel efficiency without the diesel exhaust nasties.
Colt-size hybrids are mostly limited to the Toyota Aqua (everyone will think you're an Uber Eats driver) or Honda Fit. I bought my Fit hybrid in April this year, because on my test-drives it just suited me better than the Aqua. But that's just me.
Thanks for all this info, Andre. 👍🏼
Bloody awesome.
My current car is a 1.5 L Mitsi Colt Plus. It’s got an extended back boot, lots more space with the rear sets flat, quite a bit bigger than a standard Mitsi Colt.
Ah, I'd missed that a Colt plus was longer than a regular Colt.
There's the Shuttle version of the Honda Fit that's pretty much the same idea. Available in hybrid and regular drivetrains as used Jap imports.
A Prius is still quite a jump up in size, about 65mm wider and 150 to 300mm longer than your Colt plus.
The city largely lies on a isthmus is between two harbours and two oceans. The city spreads way past the two ends of the isthmus.
The harbour bridge is currently the only short in distance and time route between major population and employment centres (areas in and near to the Auckland isthmus and those on the North shore) – unless you want to go 30+kms around SH16/SH18 on the upper harbour.
It has nothing to do with adding more people into Auckland – it simply has to do with being able to connect the existing people with their existing employment.
The centre of Auckland is also a major centre for concentrated employment because it is equally accessible to people from the North, South, East, and West of Auckland because it is at the isthmus and the transport links that centre there. It can draw on the skills of the whole city.
Just as an aside to that, I recently turned down permanent jobs in the North Shore both up towards Albany/Rosedale. That was simply because the transport situation was so much of an issue. I live up by the Ponsonby/K Rd intersection – right by the motorways and with good access to all public transport except for rail (at least until the CRL is completed).
On a good pandemic run, it would take me 18-20 minutes by car to get to those jobs. When I tracked the actual times on google that I'd normally travel. It would take between 30 minutes to 90 minutes by car. In the past it has taken me up to 120 minutes when I worked out there for a few years – and I got badly hit by other cars twice over 2 years. Driving a car is pure dead time. Doing it for 15 hours a week on top of actual work is just a waste of my time.
By bus it was about 75 minutes each way. Not a complete waste of time – I can read a book in a bus. I can even sort of play on the blogs – albeit rather painfully. 12 hours or so a week would be just irritating.
By e-bike it would be around 85 minutes if I took a ferry – where the ferry timings was the main time constraint. If there was a bridge crossing it would take about 60 minutes – because the whole route is much more direct and less hilly than landing at at Bayswater road. At least that would have taken care of my exercise – something else a car or a bus simply doesn’t do. However I’m not sure that I’m interested in that much exercise each day.
The eastern suburbs are actually a reasonably lightly populated part of Auckland becasue there is not that much depth in the surrounding suburbs.
If you wanted to put a busway into a highly populated area, then you'd fast track the one up the existing North-western motorway, and put a busway and cycle lane up the existing Southern Motorway. Both of those have large population catchment areas, and far far significiant employment opportunities. Both would benefit from a busway (and cycle ways) far more than the south eastern suburb corridors.
The only reason that they are putting one into the eastern area is because they are currently upgrading the arterial roads out that way to cope with a relatively small population increase in density. I also looked at a job out towards East Tamaki. The public transport sucked, and there are no safe bikeways.
That is a pipe-dream. I thought that may have been possible when I was looking at it in the 1990s. Experience has taught me that it almost certainly isn’t possible for most people employed in productive private businesses – even the ones that I work in who are primarily focused offshore. Quite simply there are reasons that make it preferable to live in larger centres, and I don’t have to move somewhere to work there. I can increasingly remote into the jobs in smaller centres.
Eventually I took a job in Hamilton – and I don't have to settle there. Mostly remote working from Auckland. I'm not even working at home – I'm renting a local workspace 300m from home. That is because two of us working on different jobs in a smallish apartment is just too irritating. When I'm trying to get a concentrated bit of work done, my partner is on a long and loud conversation with her gig-job employers in New York or Invercargill, or where ever. Or talking to a Indian distributor or chasing down supplies. She says that my standup conversations about work with whomever I'm working with (also worldwide) are just as irritating.
Whenever the lockdowns cease, I'll be in Hamilton 2 days a week for a while. By car that is about 85 minutes each way and a airBnB overnight. If the Te Huia train went from Auckland to Hamilton in the morning and came back in the evening (rather than the other way around), I'd use that. It might take 150 minutes each way – but I can work on a train.
However I'm unlikely to move to Hamilton. As a skilled worker, that would be employment and financial suicide.
In Auckland in the private sector there are at least several hundred firms that I could work for, in person or remote, with my current skills. In Hamilton where I went to uni, even with its current rapid expansion, then are probably 30-40. In Dunedin where I also went to university, maybe 20. Smaller cities like Rotorua or Palmerston North – there would only be a couple.
The choice as an employee, the choice is so much smaller because I have a smaller selection if I need to be there in person. And most employers would prefer you to be there in person. Despite spending a lot of my working life working remotely, I prefer working at a workplace – provided i don’t have to waste much of own hours getting to and from that workplace.
Being close to large urban areas give more choice about where you work locally, what you can work on, and who you work for. From the choices of employers to the quality of your transport and data links.
This doesn't apply just to the excessively skilled like me. If you're a worker at almost anything beyond retail work these days, you're increasingly skilled and more specialised than anything in the past. The idea of moving people around and training them like identical dominoes has gone the way of conscription – for exactly the same reason. All enterprises rely on their skilled staff and their skilled staff will move between companies multiple times during their working life.
Doing the remote work internationally is much the same. The work may be done over a data link. But those are much much more reliable in urban centres – I only have to look at the quality of links of people in zoom or google meet to know that.
Being able to pop down to Jaycar or PBTech and lay your hands on gear immediately is far easier than having to wait for increasingly erratic deliveries (or whatever your working needs are) is worth its weight in gold for productivity.
Basically, I'll probably move out of Auckland when I retire. It is the minimum that I can get away with. Ideally I should have moved offshore decades ago – but I prefer living here rather than in Austin Texas or Silicon Valley or the Silicon Slopes. And I'm in one of the more transportable professions.
I do agree with you, i myself chose Auckland for reasons of work when i moved to NZ.
But is that not the issue now, that AKL can't build up fast enough and can't get enough public transport now to move those people that move in. And that will not get any better in the future.
I pretty much lived my whole life in big towns, but living in Holland actually opened my eyes a bit what can be done if Government works with businesses.
I.e. Hilversum, a medium sized town 35 km from A-dam and 15 km away from Utrecht. When Nike closed their individual houses in the various european countries to open a Europen Headquaters in Holland, they were 'directed' to Hilversum rather then say A-dam, Rotterdam, etc. They were granted 600 carparks for something like 1800 people plus visitors and sales people that would come and go. But the government also provided extra trains to Hilversum, more train arrivals and departures, and a new trainstop across from the Office building to make up for the lack of carparks. Train tickets are tax refundable as a business expense, and thus were at the time paid for by Nike. Why? Any extra carpark that Nike wanted to build after the 600 granted would have come at an extra cost.
Sometimes it feels as if we had tried nothing really and now are out of option. And again, i am not even against a cycling bridge, i cycled in Auckland in 1998 – lol when there were no cycle roads.
I just believe that putting all of our economy in one town is a sure way to disaster if something happens. Like Covid.
And i only left Auckland as Virgil got offered a job as an IT person here in Rotorua, otherwise i would still be there, for pretty much all the reasons you mentioned.
Yeah Auckland has issues.
Many, if not most, of them are related to a council with a business (with a small b) focus that ran the cities and region for decades. Plus a central government that kept hoping Auckland would get smaller if they didn't put money into it. They put money mostly into regions where their voters were.
More recently, it has had a central government interested in raking in immigration money and then dispersing it not in infrastructure or realistic housing development – but into tax cuts. It meant that most of the immigration wound up in Auckland (for the reasons I outlined), but a minimum of things required to grow.
But even if they tried to, there is another problem. One that makes it difficult for even try to push things towards dispersal rather than Auckland getting bigger.
The problem is that NZ is made up of small companies – there are no Nikes. Almost all of them are small by any international standards. Just consider this statement from stats nz in 2018.
The stats tend to cut off at 100 employees. If you look for a definition of mid-sized businesses in NZ, you tend to find statements like this.
If you dig around the stats for what the larger employee company sizes are, you’ll find that they are also small to mid sized enterprises. They might have thousands of employees – but they are scattered in little pockets throughout the country – like banking, supermarkets, reale state, or even Fonterra. We don’t have many single enterprise sites the size of the Nike operation you mention. They are in fact multiple small or mid-sized companies.
So those companies don’t draw staff to them. They go to where they can get staff or customers. They have little to no interest in drawing either towards them because they simply don't have the scale to do it. Even our larger companies are below the scale of Nike. That is why virtually every government push to move people out of the larger cities has failed.
The ones that have succeeded over the long term were those that were based around raw materials, natural advantages or scenery – electricity for the smelter, oil and gas for New Plymouth, tourism for Rotorua and Queenstown. The port for Tauranga. Even then most of them only managed to stave off relative population decreases.
Company towns like Tokoroa started drying again as a their business changed. The only new company town I know of is that mattress company who are trying to build in the Waikato.
Meanwhile a city like Auckland which only has a harbour as a natural asset has to develop despite a historically lacklustre set of councils and National governments who, mainly for electoral reasons, wished it didn't exist.
Climate change mitigation is not justification for this proposal.
Not all alternative transport systems are the same in regards to that.
That is not to say that planning should not include as a matter of course, recreational cycleways, walkable neighbourhoods etc. The immense value to users of mental and physical wellbeing, and improved social cohesion have been researched and validated.
However, it is the alternative transport systems available to commuters that will get the most people out of cars. The provision of affordable, reliable, efficient public transport systems that enable people to get to work, study, services, sports is the climate change mitigator. Not a bridge crossing that is an addition to the already successful alternatives for the harbour crossing that include the Northern Busway and ferries. The inner city community is already well served in that respect.
This is a choice of assessing the inequality that has come from very bad city and transport planning in the past, and making future choices that do not increase that inequality further.
Would this money have come from the Auckland fuel tax? I'd be interested to know.
However, even if it didn't… isn't there something fundamentally wrong with ignoring the fact that it is the lower income households that have to move further and further out of Auckland, travel further to get to work, school etc and therefore pay more of their income on this fuel tax than those that have the privilege to be able to live and work in close proximity? (and are more likely to have travel costs included as an employment benefit
Shouldn't we be spending on improving services for the wider Auckland population before giving an expensive additional harbour crossing for the recreational benefit of an already well-serviced community?
The short answer is Yes.
I cannot think of the last time a Minister had the balls to take the credit for failure on the scale and spin it so that he's just doing what the public wants.
so many public relations workers earning their keep.
They generally do. Two decades worth of growth in consultation requirements in our legislation have propelled it.
we will have a non polluting electric or hydrogen fleet of vehicles very soon, but they will need something to drive on, do you not see that?
What's your evidence for that claim that "we will have a non-polluting electric or hydrogen fleet of vehicles very soon"?
Wrong all round, Alan. For years (since Rogernomics) we have been importing far more cars than we need, making them far too cheap, and no matter how many roads we build, we end up with ever-increasing gridlock. We never take off the roads more cars than we put on.
I think the tide is now changing. We are going to have a difficult future; we will soon be importing fewer cars, and eventually the roads we already have will be more than we need or want to maintain.
Why add more roads?
The only major transport projects this government will complete in two terms will be motorways. Enormous fuck-off motorways. Northland, Waikato, Wellington.
In NZ's major public transport projects you can fill a phonebooth with people trying to make it happen, and easily fill a stadium with people trying to stop it. And in the stands is this government.
Vote Green and some of the transport things you want might just happen Ad. The problem with this government is that it is 100% Labour.
From memory this government did scrap many of the RONS Joyce was so fanatical about.
Last term we had Greens as Associate Transport Minister and even less happened.
This time the Green leader is the Minister for Climate Change and he's just a kite floating in a storm.
Successful politicians don't get re-elected by what they stop.
If James Shaw stopped climate change, he'd get re-elected alright! Deified even!
Deified? I think that would be going too far. And he’d have to go off & create his own universe.
Possibly canonised? 😇
How can the Greens stop climate change if they can not even accept basic biology?
That's the best policy segue I've ever seen.
Because the Greens are promoting the gender identification clause in the Births and Deaths Bill, the Greens are also incompetent in climate change policy. Now sometimes I'm tough on the Greens, but I've never tried that kind of comparison before. Are you sure you're not writing for TheOnion?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpzVc7s-_e8
No, but if we are to trust science, does that include biology?
we are bodies – biological entietys, we breathe, we need water, we need shelter etc and if that is not a given we die. That is basic science and biology.
We can agree to disagree on various aspects of the Gender ID bill, but can we really pretend that biology – male / female – reproduction etc does not exists and if we don't like it we can just wish, hormon treat it, surgically remove it away? I doubt. Underlining the body is what it is, irrespective of the outwardly expression of anyone. Thus a transman can be a birthing parent, due to the invisible female (reproductive organs)
biology inside their body.
If these people can not accept that you can not 'change sex' then sorry mate, i don't trust them with fixing anything.
And btw, that whole 'change the sex' and be what ever you want is something that i expect from the Onion, but sadly as the video clip above showed, is standard operating procedure for the Green and the Labour Party.
Neither one of these parties will do anything to stem misery that will come with the raise in temperatures in the next few years.
Trust science, but only the science that we like and that we approve of. Vote Labour/Green 2023.
Possibly, but not after he’s been crucified first.
Here's a positive transport story from today Ad. 40,000 truck movements removed using rail instead. If you could be bothered to look you would find others.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/126562888/climate-and-congestion-at-forefront-as-government-funds-ashburton-rail-hub
Why you fall for this bullshit is beyond me. The headline is all about climate change while killing off a major public transport project.
Then we go from that to somehow shifting the rail hub in Ashburton, which will not change our climate impact one iota. It's not even a useful urban renewal project. On top of that, it's $2m – barely worth a contract variation.
The light rail team have just announced that they have three options to present to the government. So that’s: more options, then studies, then costings, then evaluation, then business case, then Cabinet, then network evaluation and integration into AIAL Kainga Ora AT and AC, then design and detailed design, then consultation, then land acquisition, then procurement, then construction, then operation. Unless there’s a change of government.
It would be great to defend this government on transport if it were defensible.
The question should be – how did this madness get as far as it did?
It started when National killed off trams and public transport and addicted Auckland to motorways instead starting in the mid-1950s.
And then was enabled further up by any other government and mayor of Auckland that did nothing and even furthered the idiocy.
The transport mess, the housing misery, all of that is the result of decades of 'cant' be bothered' by both National and Labour.
That's a stretch. The cycle bridge was a daft idea, the timing of the announcement was incredibly bad, and no-one believed it was going to end up costing under $1bn.
Re the cycle way
Build a cycle park, and run a free bus/shutle
if cost 1m$ then got 700 years
I will never ever understand why the UK elected a buffoon like Boris.
But I notice at the recent UK Labour Party conference that Starmer came out against PR. So the Labour Party continues to be run by dinosaurs who simply do not understand that without PR, and where there is a split vote between the Greens, Liberals and Labour, and with and Boris's fixing of the electoral system https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/oct/01/boris-johnson-rigging-the-system-power-courts-protest-elections, they are unlikely ever to get back into power.
"I will never ever understand why the UK elected a buffoon like Boris."
There are many reasons, but I'll give you two:
1. Brexit
2. Jeremy Corbyn
Gypsy…now give me some valid reasons.
They are valid reasons. The conservatives won seats right through the 'red wall' because their position on Brexit was clear and in favour. Corbyn was and is unelectable.
“The takeover of the Labour party by the far left turned it into a glorified protest movement with cult trimmings, utterly incapable of being a credible government,”
Tony Blair
Rubbish.
Without constant life support from the Murdoch press, and the Israeli antisemitism lie, England would have had Corbyn – and ten of thousands less Covid casualties as a result.
It is the Blairites that doom Labour, depriving it of its function: representing the interests of working people.
And, absent Covid, NZ’s current government would already be on its way out – failure to engage with housing costs and the like – so off task they're chasing chimerae like gender when there are substantial issues unaddressed.
UK Labour was riddled with anti-semitism. And Corbyn indulged it, at the very least. That he has a sordid history of cuddling up to terrorists didn't help.
Labour doomed itself, as would any party with the likes of Diane Abbott, Rebecca Long-Bailey and Angela Rayner.
The Israeli intelligence op against Corbyn is well documented Israel running campaign against Jeremy Corbyn | The Electronic Intifada
Exclusive: Israel lobby infiltrates UK student movement | Politics News | Al Jazeera
a sordid history of cuddling up to terrorists *citation required
Corbyn was and remains a better leader of Britain than any of the tragic procession of conservative hacks Murdoch media anointed. Starmer is just another quisling – Labour will go nowhere under him – which is of course exactly what you and Murdoch want.
The Israeli intelligence op against Corbyn is well documented
Well he gave them plenty of material.
a sordid history of cuddling up to terrorists *citation required
https://news.sky.com/story/corbyn-and-johnson-in-row-over-early-release-of-london-bridge-killer-11875070
https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/10/03/jeremy-corbyn-has-a-soft-spot-for-extremists-ira-hamas-hezbollah-britain-labour/
https://www.economist.com/britain/2019/11/09/security-questions-for-jeremy-corbyn
There's loads more if you want.
"Corbyn was and remains a better leader of Britain "
Corbyn is and was an unelectable nutter, he was the most unpopular opposition leader in British history, and led Labour to it's worst defeat since 1935.
Finally, if you have any doubt, this is the woman he wanted to be Home Secretary.
Ah yes – recirculating more Israel based agitprop.
Corbyn is an activist with a lifetime of serious engagement directed at finding peaceful solutions to difficult conflicts including Northern Ireland and Israel/Palestine. This has required that he talk to both sides. That bad faith opponents try to exploit that for their own political ends says more about them than him.
Corbyn is and was an unelectable nutter
I think we can safely regard you as an unreliable source – a hysterical hater of the Left with nothing to boast of but your empty prejudices.
Dianne Abbott was Corbyn's pick for Home Secretary. Not only does she think on balance Mao did more good than harm, she has huge problems with numbers.
"Corbyn is an activist with a lifetime of serious engagement directed at finding peaceful solutions to difficult conflicts including Northern Ireland and Israel/Palestine."
Sniff.
There's nothing obviously unsuitable about her – the fact that she seems to incense far-right bigots like yourself counts rather in her favour.
But come on – no words on Boris? – a clown so stupid he not only presided over 137 000 Covid deaths, he did his best to join them – a man whose follies now compare with the late stage Soviets – empty supermarkets – but not a peep from you, you're too busy trying to smear someone you figure you can then use to smear Corbyn.
You're grasping at straws – grow up and give it up – you've got nothing.
Dianne Abbott was …
Every party has its share of unsuitable fools. But in a country with a PM as manifestly unsuitable as Boris, you're busy nitpicking Corbyn's opposition appointments?
Your priorities are bent completely out of shape by your irrational hatred of the Left.
You praised Corbyn's leadership. Picking an obviously unsuitable individual to be your shadow home secretary suggests either his leadership qualities are not what you claim, or she is up there with the best in Labour. Which is it?
Under MMP Corbyn would have been PM in 2017 AND 2019.
It was a freak result in Scotland in 2017, where the Conservatives did much better than expected under a very popular leader, that stopped Corbyn from being PM.
"Under MMP Corbyn would have been PM in 2017 AND 2019."
That is by no means certain. Labour woukld have needed the LibDems, and given that Jo Swinson lost her own seat, who knows. You'd also be assuming the major parties would run FFP campaigns under MMP, which is nonsense.
In the end the Conservatives won handsomely.
Everyones trying to stop me
Arrest the pulpit pimp.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/covid-19-delta-outbreak-up-to-2000-protesters-at-domain-brian-tamaki-warned-over-lockdown-rally/H4J5F42V3AF6UMDWLCWDE5XJPQ/
Welcome to the Church of Suicidal
We'll have a sermon and a wonderful recital
But before we go on there's something I must mention
An important message I must bring to your attention
I was in meditation and prayer last night
I was awakened by a shining bright light
Overhead a glorious spirit
He gave me a message and you all need to hear it
Send me your money
That's what he said, he said to
Send me your money
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tC2QAryqI-g
All Tamaki wanted was a Pepsi, and Ardern wouldn’t give it to him
All he wanted was a Pepsi, just one Pepsi, and she wouldn’t give it to him
Just a Pepsi
He should be Institutionalized
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoF_a0-7xVQ
Judging by the signs displayed at this Auckland protest, their agenda is
1. We hate Jacinda 2. We don't have anything else in common 3. But we really hate Jacinda.
Apartheid, vaccines, women and farms, apparently.
Interesting how Apostle Bishop Brian only comes out of the woodwork when Labour is in government.
Not when NACTional are in power and selling off public housing, persecuting beneficiaries, and enriching themselves.
Almost like he has something in common with the corrupt gNat shysters.
Given rumour still has it the Pope when elected still has to be carried over the other religious weirdos in a seat with a hole in it to show he isn't a chick again, nothing surprises me.
[Take the weekend off for your vile lie, which is easily neutered with a quick & simple fact check. You were doing reasonably well contributing to discussion, but you cannot help yourself, can you? This fucking stupid comment did not add anything useful and can only be seen as a sad attempt at a sick joke, which ridicules the whole topic thread.
Enjoy your time off in Wellington while others are still being cooped up in Level 3 – Incognito]
[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.]
See my Moderation note @ 12:34 pm.
Tell me what “rumour” means, and what you’d call someone who intentionally and deliberately spreads “rumours” that are vile and wrong and denigrating a large number of people because of their religion in one fell swoop? I can make all sorts of allegations and accusations under the excuse of “rumour” or a ‘friend of a friend of my brother’s girlfriend saw it somewhere on social media’ AKA hearsay. Is “religious weirdos” a fucking “rumour” too?
If you had at least made some political point that we could discuss you would have received (yet another) warning and (yet again) waste my time. As it is, there was nothing redeeming in your comment and you had long run out of warnings, as your recent diversion trolling under this Post (https://thestandard.org.nz/keys-baaaack/) and before that in another Post show all too well; you only barely escaped a one-week ban the other day too and came back with a cheeky reply in Daily Review.
IMO as Moderator, you’re a sly disingenuous troll far too often here, i.e. you have form with saying “sorry, but …”, “forgive me, but …”, and “rumour has it …”, etc., so that you think you can get away with saying whatever you like whenever you like. It won’t wash with me.
BTW, anything that you post here and that I can read in the Back End could make things worse for you.
The Bridge is dead, long live the Bridge!
Chucked in the "too hard" basket. So much for CC being our "nuclear moment" or whatever. Moar roadz FTW
Shifted the site server up from the linux kernel 5.4.0.x to the 5.11.0.x. There have been some odd crashes and automatic restarts on this system recently. I tracked one of them down and found that there had a been a kernel patch that fixed it the problem, and that it wasn’t likely to be backported to 5.4 any time soon..
I've been running 5.11 on my laptop on ongoing development towards ubuntu 21.10 and it is rock stable at the low levels (the KDE gui has lots of holes). The recent release version of ubuntu 20.04.03 installer 5.11 when it hits unknown hardware. So it seems like a good bet that it isn't going to cause issues with the server.
Lets find out shall we 🙂
Good luck; just don't mess around with Arch or Fedora unless you want even more bugs 😛
I have tried arch a few times. It is a fast way to learn how to fix linux issues.
I recently spent a 18 months building linux images with yocto. That is not only educational – but it also gives you an appreciation for how complex linux is, as well as showing just how long you can run computers at 100% CPU over all cores for hours.
100% ?!! You bully!
Here's a gnarly wee trick for reading stuff from behind the Herald's joke "paywall" 🏴☠️ 💩 😈
curl -s https://{herald-link-url-goes-here} > herald.htm
xmllint --html --format herald.htm --nowarning --xpath "//p" 2>/dev/null | perl -pe 's|<p.*?>||g;s|<span.?>||g;s|</.*?>|\n|g' | fmt -p -s | perl -pe 's|<strong>||ig;s|. |.\n\n|g' | fmt -p -w80
can you translate that into plain english! 🙂
You can see the whole article if you use the view source feature implemented in most browsers.
hahahah, i understand the words, but what must i do?
In several browsers I can access this feature by right clicking on the page and finding the option to view page source. This shows you the markup as well as the text on the page, so it shows you the page without formatting.
Apparently the herald pay-wall is optional in the sense that all the article is always there, its just hidden by the formatting. However I suggest not viewing source on herald articles as its usually a waste of time reading anything they put behind the pay-wall anyway. I think they just use the paywall to discipline staff who attract a large audience.
Yeah, all the above code does is strip out all the HTML stuff so you just get the article in plain text.
Plain english is what it does.
It should run on Mac or Linux, but not Windows. Uses a few command line tools (curl, xmllint, perl, fmt) to grab a webpage then spit out some readable text. The above example isn't the exact command I used, as the comment box formatter is a bit tricky and I messed up one or two characters.
A more accurate copy is here.
out of curiosity, do you realise that most non-geeks won't know what you just said?
Well admittedly it is quite a geeky solution. There are other ways to mess about with web pages & paywalls using browser extensions, but for some reason (an annoying browser redirect script that I couldn’t squash) the "bypass paywalls" trick didn't work for one article I wanted to read. So it was a fun exercise to see if I could come up with an alternative. Result!
lol the Github one is for geeks too.
I'm always curious how geeks see their explanations landing with non-geeks, whether you get that it's not accessible.
(but well done! I wish there were more regular attempts. I use archive.is mostly but it hasn't worked for the Herald).
Added a comment to my gist – – if you know how to use the uBlock Origin extension, these filters work pretty well to demolish walls
– – –
! http://www.nzherald.co.nz/arc/subs/p.js
! http://www.nzherald.co.nz##.article-offer:style(display: none !important; visibility: hidden !important;)
! http://www.nzherald.co.nz##.paywall:style(display: block !important;)
! http://www.nzherald.co.nz##.pb-f-article-body #article-content.premium-content:before:style(background-image:linear-gradient(rgba(255,255,255,0),rgba(255,255,255,0)) !important;)
I know only too well how it comes across. My Dad hates computers but I always "got" them.
Some things are a fun technical challenge or a puzzle to solve. Sometimes you either get it or you don't.
I've been doing this for a long time now so the command line tools are not scary at all. In fact I see the CLI as a more logical way to work than the ADHD-inducing madness of modern GUIs.
Cool trick. That is worth writing a cpython.
Does it keep the paragraphs?
Not really, it just adds a line break after every sentence.
Haha, must be like breaking into a bank vault only to find it full of dog shit.
Yeah especially if it's from Matthew Hooton.
Destiny Church it seems has been in receipt of upwards of $128,000 in COVID wage subsidies!
https://services.workandincome.govt.nz/eps/search
you will need to type “Destiny Church” into the search box–only takes a second–as linked result would not paste here.
So what do you think
amplifying the issue on social media ?
(which I keep far away from)
Letter writing to MP's? local papers and the Listener
Discussing at branch level ? Contacting local Green candidate.
I think they need to be warned , because they will lose heaps of women voters
I can't travel to Northland because I can't transit through Auckland airport.
If I take Brian Tamaki and a mob with me will I be able to wangle a way through?
I feel very sorry for the (majority) of Auckland Maori who are actually complying with the fight against Covid. The country is literally being held hostage by a handful of muppets.
Alexei Sayle's podcast (started late 2020).
This is not comedy as such, just communism with a sense of the absurd.
Recommended.
https://audioboom.com/posts/7736438-keir-starmer-establishment-tool
https://audioboom.com/posts/7948459-more-hope-please-with-jeremy-corbyn
What the hell!
A couple of thousand numbskulls gather at the Cenotaph, Auckland. Few masks, no distancing. Afterwards, the gang riders traversed Auckland (some of them spent 2 hrs roaring around the streets of Devonport and presumably Takapuna) doing wheelies, riding on the wrong side of the road and generally disturbing the peace. I presume they were thumbing their noses at the rest of us.
And where were the police? Nowhere as far as I can tell. Its already been declared a probable super-spreader event, so I suppose we can kiss good bye to any chance of coming out of L3 now.
Lets be clear. This Destiny Church crowd are just another gang masquerading as a church. If the govt. and the police don't move on them, I suspect some members of the public will take matters into their own hands. That could spell even more Covid outbreaks that we are now going to see because of their behaviour.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2021/10/new-zealanders-react-with-rage-after-brian-tamaki-holds-anti-lockdown-protest.html
Yes the police were just there observing again. But then I guess they have to treat them the same as the funeral in west Auckland yesterday.
Different groups re the motorbikes, I ran into the group you spoke of in Auckland Central this morning mostly trail bikes…
I actually wandered down for look since it was close to home tbh from what I could see masks were pretty wide spread seemed more people than they had said on the news…
politicsWell lets hope it doesn't get out of Auckland.
Covid-19: Burger King and BP stops added as locations of interest on Auckland truck driver's Palmerston North trip | Stuff.co.nz