It’s more than implied. And what’s the red flag got to do with it? It’s about caring and being inclusive, something Labour lies about still valuing. Just listen to the way Ardern talks about the poor. It’s all about “them”, “they” and “their”. She’s as bad as fucking Bennett.
The two ain’t mutually exclusive. How about talking about people? The way Bennett and Ardern refer to beneficiaries and low income earners (beneficiaries especially) as “them” and “they” is just repulsive, as if somehow people with a bit of cash or luck are in some way inferior to them.
Solidarity, sure, but the objection Mary has is to Ardern saying “They are living in cold houses with no food to eat” – and the alternative, “We live in cold houses with no food to eat” sounds either completely disingenuous or incredibly patronising.
Expressing solidarity – “I am here to stand with people who live in cold houses with no food to eat” – isn’t the same thing.
I thought Ardern actually did a really good job around election time when she did that TV spot going back to Murupara and saying “This is the neighbourhood I grew up in, and while I don’t live here now it’s obviously affected my beliefs and means I do actually understand poverty”. Solidarity without co-opting.
Of course it is, but that’s not the point, CV. The point is Mary has issues with Jacinda Ardern and Paula Bennett – two women on damn good pay – using the third person plural to refer to other people. I’m only trying to explain how using the first person plural would not be an improvement.
“Solidarity, sure, but the objection Mary has is to Ardern saying “They are living in cold houses with no food to eat” – and the alternative, “We live in cold houses with no food to eat” sounds either completely disingenuous or incredibly patronising.”
The comparison you make is wrong. There is no requirement for the speaker to align themselves with the subject in the way you’re suggesting by saying “We live in cold houses with no food to eat”, in the same way it’s not necessary to say “They are living in cold houses with no food to eat”. The answer, in relation to this particular example, is simply to say “People are living in cold houses with no food to eat”. You’re making things unnecessarily complicated.
Rubbish, Mary. You are. Sure, for one-sentence examples “people” works fine … but for extended speeches?
“People are poor and this means people can’t feed people’s children or keep people’s houses warm in winter. We want to support people so people can get jobs and people’s children don’t go to school hungry.”
WTF? Suddenly using ‘they’ to describe a group of people to which you are not a member is offensive? Unless you’re a beneficiary yourself using ‘we’ and ‘us’ to refer to beneficiaries is nothing but a creepy affectation.
And this is not doing anything to warm me to the current Labour leader:
But Mr Tamihere gets on well with Labour leader David Shearer and other Labour MPs said they would not object to his return.
And there’s this (who is not apparently in line for a change of shadow job?):
Meanwhile, Mr Shearer has confirmed he will go ahead with a reshuffle, either before or after the Christmas break, to give MPs just under two years to get to grips with their portfolios before the election.
“I did say a year ago I’d look at how the year went and fine-tuning what we’re doing and that is exactly what I’ll be doing.”
He would not discuss details, but MPs including Andrew Little and Chris Hipkins have performed well and Mr Little could pick up the employment spokesmanship from Sua William Sio – Labour has chosen jobs as one of its main prongs of attack.
Education is also likely to change hands – Nanaia Mahuta’s second child is due in December and it is possible Mr Shearer – a former teacher – could take the spokesmanship for himself at that stage or pass it on to Chris Hipkins.
Little has done some good things re his ACC spokesman role, though the Greens have often been sharper at getting points out there.
No way and no how! Besides the Waitakere Labour Party would revolt. They are determined that Carmel Sepuloni should have another go. She was a whisker from winning last time and with a slightly less antagonistic Green campaign would have won.
She ran a far better campaign than I’d expected when she stood for selection. By the election she’d quite evidently had worked up a pretty good team (always a good sign). I can’t see Tamihere being able to do anything similar.
Running against a sitting minister is always a hard slog. They get themselves entrenched if they don’t manage to personally screw up. Despite the slow descent of National, it is still going to be a hard slog to wrinkle Bennett out of that seat (depending on where the boundaries end up after the census).
Sepuloni can almost certainly do it. Tamihere is more likely to fall over his tongue.
Edit: ouch – nasty wee network drop then from orcon…
Agree about the possible boundary change. It could be with the loss of South Island population and Auckland growth and intensification that Mt Albert and New Lynn will move towards Downtown Auckland and New Lynn could lose the Titirangi Whatipu strip to Waitakere. There could then be a new urban seat out west and Waitakere could become more rural and less Labour friendly.
Carmel would be better off going for the new urban seat.
No way and no how! Besides the Waitakere Labour Party would revolt. They are determined that Carmel Sepuloni should have another go. She was a whisker from winning last time and with a slightly less antagonistic Green campaign would have won.
Is the left willing to talk about accommodations yet?
And, sorry micky, it’s never been the Greens who were unwilling to tango, as the seemingly eternal Ministerships of Peter Dunne and Winston Peters demonstrate.
Carmel lost to arguably the most revolting Nat there is. Bennett is a bully, she is vindictive, she is unleashing hell on the most vulnerable in society and she is proud of it all. She stands for everything that there is to despise in the National Party.
And guess what. She beat Carmel.
I am sorry but she shouldn’t get a second chance. To lose Waitakere to one of the most hard right politiciains there is, is a clear message that Carmel is the wrong person to be standing.
This should be a comfortable Labour seat. JT is not the man but surely someone better than Carmel can do the job.
Sorry EiE. I know the area very well. It is anything but a safe labour seat and the result was a testimonial to the local party’s efforts and Carmel’s qualities.
Letting an animal abusing, homophobic, tax dodging drunk driver represent Labour at the next election is about as dumb as it gets. After Tamihere took leave when the dishonest financial dealings in the Waipareira Trust came to light, he badly insulted a number of Labour MP’s… Some of them still work within the Labour party and I doubt it’s all just water under the bridge.
If Carmel Sepuloni isn’t available, what about Ewen Gilmour? At least we’d be laughing with and not at him.
Why should we vote for you? I represent the working class, I’m friendly, recognisable and approachable. I have an international reputation for making large groups of people from all walks of life happy. And I know how to deliver irony in a well-timed one liner.
What’s the biggest issue facing your area? Paid parking in Henderson, foothills in Swanson, acceptance of ethnic diversity, the meth (P) problem.
What’s your solution? Paid parking is just a trial. In the short term, removing your wiper blades will leave the parking warden nowhere to put the ticket. Foothills, sneak on to the foothills and plant natives, then someone will need resource consent before they can cut them down let alone develop. Ethnic diversity, food, music, dance and art festivals. Meth problem, I really don’t know, we could all listen to Pita Sharples for a start.
JT’s views on the provision of welfare, health and education services are pretty much aligned to National and ACT. His support of charter schools and his speech about welfare at the Knowledge Wave conference back in 01′ (remember that talkfest?), are exhibit A and B in that regard – he says he is opposed to dependency, but in reality, he wants to make the poor dependent on him.
He has a big bee in his bonnet about WFF, preferring tax cuts instead, even though that a tax cut would be far less than a WFF payment (he also joined the tax cut chorus).
He hates unions and supports the rollback of workers protections
He hate gays (not too sure why he has such an issue with people doing things in their own bedroom).
He supports private prisons and asset sales.
Not too sure why he would join Labour again?
Perhaps he should join National? He was linked to them a few years ago, plus they dont actually hate brown people anymore, just those who arent rich, or who refuse to join in the keeping up the the Jones’s arms race.
All of which makes me think this is just Tamihere’s imagination getting the better of him… With embellishments by the media in order to create a story.
he says he is opposed to dependency, but in reality, he wants to make the poor dependent on him.
That’s true of all people hungry for power. They say that they want to reduce peoples dependency upon the government but hide the fact that they want to make as many people as possible dependent upon them.
While he was standing
In prayer in the chamber,
The angels called unto him:
“Allah doth give thee
Glad tidings of Yahya`
Witnessing the truth
Of a word from Allah, and (be
Besides) noble, chaste,
And a prophet
Of the (goodly) company
Of the righteous”
Yep and when you snap at her she bites LOL. and at the end of the one missing bit was the Thank you it was just travel safe…. in other words why did you waste our time with this shite?
I didn’t really see Key “crack”. He just hit back quite hard, running the line that it would be wrong for him to tell the GCSB who to investigate – with a straight face making a claim for democratic leadership – is why he doesn’t need to know everything GCSB is doing before they do it.
Not a snap really. Rachel asked him if he thought that they should be “keeping him in the loop.” Mr Key twisted that to was she/they somehow recommending a “police state” and “should a PM be deciding who to prosecute or not prosecute.” Rubbish Mr Key. We think that it would be necessary for a PM to be “kept in the loop” by getting regular updates especially over issues that affect the international influences on NZ.
To not be in the loop is a dereliction of duty.
Exactly. Thanks for the links, Karol. Key was certainly not comfortable in that interview – but obviously looking forward to his visit with the Hollywood big boys. His relief at the end of the interview was laughable – seemed to think he had nailed it with his spin. Don’t think so.
there was a momentray bit from key where he almost snapped – the whole “NO!, if you have me on your show you have to hear me out” bit – never mind the he was interupting all over the place
interestingly – listening to the non-vocal responses from smalley reveals a lot
My word, I saw a very serious ‘banker’ advertisement on TV last night, the only inspiration I could draw from it was that maybe, just maybe banks are finally ‘getting’ the feeling of unrest at the ideals of capitalism around the world, surely why else would they produce such filthy propaganda.
Their angle is, the problem is not the money, but how the money is used (and it looks like individual money) I will have to see it again to understand its intent better. Though was rather reminded of the way in which women make men feel better about the size of their small penis by saying “its not about the size, its about how you use it” – the old quantity vs quality thang 🙂
Weird. But weirder is what was or is the intent of the ad? Have they lost the plot? Or have they done something incredibly stupid, and are going to have to own up about it.
Weird. But weirder is what was or is the intent of the ad?
They have been having ‘teasers’ for it, and when I saw them I thought it was about a coming attraction film! It looked interesting – now I am very disappointed.
They completely excuse the fact that it is about money, how you get the money, what it does to a person in the process of the getting and that playing at being “good” afterwards is just a band aid for a gusher of a social wound. In the past, money was often considered an avoidable social blight, it’s just that no one bothers to look at any history that isn’t white, doesn’t excuse the claims of the status quo and that would force people to face the reality they’ve created.
Rule #1 of Modern Life: If it’s on TV, it’s bollocks.
it’s just that no one bothers to look at any history that isn’t white,
Not just non-white people have regarding the getting (and spending) of money as an ‘avoidable social blight’. My Scots forebears felt the same way, or so my mother (the last of them) often said.
I saw a very serious ‘banker’ advertisement on TV last night, the only inspiration I could draw from it was that maybe, just maybe banks are finally ‘getting’ the feeling of unrest at the ideals of capitalism around the world, surely why else would they produce such filthy propaganda.
People are waking up to how banking operates with films such as Money Masters and Zeitgeist and websites such as http://www.positivemoney.org.nz/ to show the complete corruption of the present system. And then there’s Steve Keen and other heterodox economists starting to make an inroad into the MSM as neo-liberal economics shows that it’s complete bollocks.
Given all of that the banksters really do have to try to head off all the negative press that they’re getting. Hopefully, their propaganda will just help convince people that they’re lying.
“Damn this dry shingle country”,
Old Jack the swagger cried-
“The rutting hare beneath; above
the brown hawk in his pride;
And not one green gooseberry bush
To suck and lay beside.
“reminded of the way in which women make men feel better about the size of their small penis by saying “its not about the size, its about how you use it” – the old quantity vs quality thang ”
Or when a woman asks “Does my bum look too big in this?”
And a man will make her feel better about herself by replying with the white lie “Of course not honey, you look great!”. 🙂
Geez that’s a bit sad….I thought it was for pokerstars or whatever as I never hung in till the end to see NAB’s NZ division’s logo….I normally mute them anyway.
Never mind their gargantuan profits it’s really your fault, this just shows how disconnected and gullible they are as the agency pitch worked but it’s far from alone. I’m mean these clowns thought the pig’s were top drawer….banks & pigs, oh dear did they think kiddies all have piggy banks, they have ToyStory/madagascar/Ice Age etc etc now.
The new countdown ad is a bit sad also.
Then there’s telecom and the no sex for the AB’s campaign…..the old boyngirl network is just sooo not connected with reality,.
I would prefer to think it is a rumour (although I understand he has rejoined) and that the party is far too bright to even think about allowing Tamihere another run at Parliament.
Agreed. He is an silly loose cannon with half-formed opinions and a bad habit of being incredibly sloppy in his work. Not to mention just plain stupid – who would be daft enough to do an meeting with a live mike on the table….. Mmmm. Key and Banks. Ok, lets rephrase this – to do this with that doyen of journalist integrity and balance – Ian Wishart.
But if you think about it. The idiots in Wellington are probably unaware of how much of a useless pillock he is. After all they aren’t the ones looking at the quite apparent inability to do any serious campaigning in Auckland. He couldn’t get a working campaign team around him at any stage in the past – why do they expect him to do so now?
But the beltway idiots do have this tendency to get suckered into anyone with the gift of the gab.
Showing up on my browsers ok. That is odd – we don’t even store those, they come directly from gravator.com. I suppose that they could be being cached at cloudflare.com, but then I’d expect the problem to show on my browsers.
First time ive seen TS in all ‘win’ and it looks all weird, probably just me as I hate Internet Exploder. It took me 3 attempts to get it to TS on a first run I get a dumb window asking if I want to set it up with standard options Yeah right. Or wait, Wait. Then I paste the link into the address bar only to have fucking Bing pop up, with a window of options NON of which had TS on it Bloody rubbish. 3rd attempt it finally brought up TS but it just looked Odd.
And before I am asked Yes I use Ad Block and No Script Both of which are disabled for this site and ONLY this one.
[lprent: The JQuery is due to get removed on the next round of updates. But there is always going to be some javascript in here ]
It is a good article and one we should be taking seriously. Business interests really have been working to subvert democracy and they are winning in that regard. It’s why Shearer gets up to beneficiary bashing rather than laying the blame for our present problems where they lay – with business and the rich.
Wouldn’t it be funny if Draco and QofT got to run Labour’s next election campaign.
Shearer delivering speeches about “destroying the patriarchy and liberating Wymmin and Herstory” and “annihilating Capitalism and slaughtering the capitalist pigs, ushering in a Socialist utopia and the End of History!”
“P.S. “the End of History” was promulgated by Francis Fukuyama who was/is a neocon”
Actually he borrowed it from Marx’s Dialectical Materialism. He was being witty – the End of History was suppose to be a Socialist Utopia. But in the 1990s Communism was dead and buried and the neocons were at the height of their powers – thus this was a revised End of History.
Anyway 10 years later or so, Fukuyama was back peddling like crazy when the Yank neocons crashed and burned in Iraq.
KP’s use of Marxist is such broad application is no less different from others here use of ‘Tory’ as a blanket term to label anyone who disagrees with their own bug-bears.
You might have a point, if KP hadn’t gone on to mention “annihilating Capitalism and slaughtering the capitalist pigs, ushering in a Socialist utopia and the End of History!”.
Personally I reckon the use of the neocon term just shows what a moron KP is, either confusing it with the Communist “Synthesis” or simply playing “insert random big word here to sound smart”.
The eradication of capitalism and execution of holders of capital are specific objectives that are not what one would term “moderate” socialist objectives.
‘End of History’ isn’t a neocon term.
A (former) neocon invested it but it relates to liberal, free market, democracies as opposed to neo-conservatism which is more than the liberal free market as espoused by Fukuyama.
Interestingly though “End of History” was used by Marx in the sense of the final point in mans socio/political development.
So whether KP was right in his use is debatable depending on context.
I think you’ll find it was Hegel that coined the phrase and that Marx updated it. And there is no correlation between the use of Tory and the use of Marxist.
Tory refers to supporters of mainstream conservative politics, specifically in the UK and more generally in other commonwealth countries. It’s not a perjorative term per se and it’s representative of quite a broad group, whereas Marxist means a subsect of the left, and one not normally associated with the western parliamentary system. The left equivalant of Tory is probably the mildly derogative socialist, at least in the UK, though most labour parties these days of course prefer Social Democrat.
No surprise Kiwi Prometheus doesn’t get it though … KP’s nuts.
Yes, I was incorrect in the invention but Fukuyama definitely gave the term a reinvention in this modern era.
Tory is not a pejorative term per se however people use it frequently on The Standard in a pejorative and blanket sense which isn’t applicable to every disagreement.
Personally I reckon the use of the neocon term just shows what a moron KP is, either confusing it with the Communist “Synthesis” or simply playing “insert random big word here to sound smart”.
Thesis + Antithesis = Synthesis —> which contains another contradiction —> Thesis + Antithesis = Synthesis —> which contains another contradiction, and so on and so on and so till you get to the final Synthesis with no contradiction = End of History
Comes down through Hegel and his mystical inclinations to Marx. Synthesis is not ‘Communist’ its an element in a Philosophical argument.
“simply playing “insert random big word here to sound smart”.”
Pity it’s an aberration rather than your usual standard of fucktardedness. Although I’m not exactly sure where dtb stands on execution of the capitalist class.
Stretch a bow to the very full,
And you wish you had stopped in time;
Temper a sword-edge to its very sharpest,
And you will find it soon grows dull.
When bronze and jade fill your hall
It can no longer be guarded.
Wealth and place breed insolence
That brings ruin in its train.
When your work is done, then withdraw!
Such is Heaven’s Way (as opposed to the way of man)
In NZ the ‘Centre for Independent Studies’ (?) and the Business Round Table which was set up by arch-neoliberal Douglas Myers have the same function. They have articles in the MSM and probably tell John Key exactly what to do and when.
Right wing much better funded and more tightly organised and institutionally supported than the Left.
So of course they are winning. The only way for Labour to win is to be friendlier towards them and their ideas. I am glad that the beltway realise this.
Hey MickeySavage. Re yesterdays discussion on Open Mike around Helen Clark/Childfree Vs.Childless: Absolutely no need to apologise. I just wanted to point out the terminology, thats all.
I wasn’t being uppity towards you at all. I always like what you have to say.
To me he was like the socialist version of Edward Gibbons’ The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire – a guy who presumed to pattern history.
Or like a really lithe and magisterial version of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist.
He was the history version of Habermas for me – of a generation when the idea of being Left meant being able to imagine and enable the overturning fo the entire world.
Hobbsbawm for me recounted all the different epochs in recent history in which overturning the worst of the world was possible.
Certainly not a revolutionary. But really seenig the world my way, and having th time and devotion to really map the whole thing out as if the world could both be redeemed and made sense of at once.
Damn that makes me sad. I will drink to his memory tonight, from the top of Mt Eden, and survey the City as the supreme work of man, and rail against it all.
(Had a banner advertising the National Day of Action outside Avondale Market on Sunday 30 September 2012, and banners keeping the pressure on dodgy John Banks and shonky John Key 🙂
Press Statement: National Day of Action Against Welfare Reforms, 5th October 2012,
By Janet Robin, President, Waitemata Unite.
“The Waitemata Branch of the Unite Union supports the National Day of Action Against the Welfare Reforms this Friday October 5th.”
“We will be joining the protests at 12 noon at Henderson Square,
1pm at WINZ Henderson (36 Sel Peacock Drive) , and 2.30pm at Paula Bennett’s Office
(429 Great North Rd).”
“ We are appalled at the cruel, punitive, discriminatory and short-sighted measures the National Government is taking against poor families, youth, and the sick and disabled! ‘”
“Forcing small children and babies into childcare and their mothers onto the job market is wrong. Parenting is work and single parents are doing the work of two! They raise our future workers and tax -payers. Children are our taonga!” “ Parents must choose whether day care or paid work is right for their family.”
“Taking money from our poorest families is state violence against children.”
“It is not OK for 270,000 New Zealand children to live poverty. Kids are hungry!”
“It’s not OK to control parents by punishing their children.” “It is not OK to make the poor pay for the bankers’ and corporates’ crisis.” “Deliberate impoverishment of children contravenes the United Nation’s Rights of the Child!”
“Taking money from youth stops them being able to manage their own lives; and gives the control to private providers who do not know their needs.”
“Forcing the sick and disabled into work may spread disease, and cause worse illness or even death.”
The real welfare reform needed is to raise all benefits to a living income!” “Discrimination against families on benefits must stop! “Working for Families
Child tax credits and a Universal Child Benefit must be available for all families.”
“We call for full economic and social support for parents, carers, the sick and disabled.”
The government must create jobs; raise the minimum wage, and make tertiary education free! “It needs to build the welfare state not destroy it.”
“It must stop the privatisation of health, education, welfare and water, and return them to the people.”
“We call on workers, students, parents and beneficiaries to unite against these attacks!
Let’s build strong communities, support each other, and create a better society.”
so Kweewee is off to California ostensibly to have meetings with the Movie set.
Wow!
More drivel for the masses.
But I bet he has a secret meeting with someone in the US top secret establishment and gets hauled over the coals for being a monkey.
Had to go back to Bowalley Road to find the definition of that shadow construct. My conclusion is that he doesn’t exist in the form Chris trotter intended; his “woman” doesn’t either. Don’t know any women from the west of my age that would be attracted to John Key’s “…boyish charm…”. Does Chris know any people who live out West? In 2008, Waitakere Man would have to have been between the ages of 50 and 200 to carry the full wieght of the projection, and that would be a fairly small demographic with an awful lot of power if Labour reckon it was “him” who ended the Clark regime.
I wasted almost 6 hours untangling the boogy man. Found some interesting things, but nothing new. Of the people I knew, I could construct a Waitakere Man from fragments, but no one was him in and of themselves. No one mentioned anything using the words PC Bullshit or welfare bludger. Since the culture was watered down rural, everything was one side or the other, no need for fancy names; it was a simple nod or look, a refusal to help or a making of plans to be elsewhere; education was good, though free thinking was something you did in private.
That’s the trouble with projections and scapegoating, they’re simplified distortions. And why the West? The place has been officially scapegoated since at least the late eighties, when The Herald had a full page article on the definition of The Westie: Black clothing, angry dog, drives a Holden. What The Herald forgot, is that at that time, those people were a minority who had money. I was just a kid wearing free second hand clothes. Outrageous Fortune was a parody of a parody of a parody. But “westies” aren’t the reason the West is scapegoated. You have to go back further than that. The place has a nasty history, all prettied over with lies and inherited privilege. The thing is, that while the West has a past, there are numerous places in NZ that still live a present just like the West’s past and that’s an embarrasment not many can bear cold turkey. My shadow man lives on the North Shore; white, arrogant from over education, ignorant about life outside narrow social norms, concieted, a little narcisstic. I never knew him as a complete person, just clashed with some of his traits. I’m just about over him, but it’s taken several years.
So hell, I’m not going to tell you that Waitakere Man doesn’t exist if you need to kick him to cover NZ’s collective guilt. Wouldn’t want you to go into personal meltdown unnecesarily. As far as things go, he’s the least weep-worthy. He isn’t a woman, or gay, or an immigrant, or a man on his roof painting or cleaning, or a Maori, or an Afro/Native American or an Australian aborigine. He is mightily kick worthy. He’s the ultimate white man:
Stripped forests, dammed streams and poisoned rivers
Starved at least one tribe at the base of the Waitakere’s
appropriated land for his kind; took money for land that didn’t exist
abused his women and children with booze and patriarcy
enslaved himself and fellows for money
The list goes on and on. It’s not the done that’s makes Waitakere man so kick-worthy. It’s that he still lives in us all. It looked to me like Chris Trotter was attempting the difficult and dangerous task of trying to embrace the shadow man in himself – and crossing the line from careful observation into sympathy – when he said in 2009 that when the music stops the Waitakere Man should not be left standing, and later, that certain people couldn’t move on because they hated their own kind. Maybe he even highlighted the shadow man in the Left. Right now, we have a man leading Labour who is manipulating the shadow the Left won’t embrace.
So you’re feminist, but damn it, you’re middle class and white.
So you’re an indigenous activist, but your family is well placed.
So you’re a union leader, but earning much more than minimum wage.
So you believe in welfare, but only for the deserving, you’ll never need it yourself.
Yeah I can understand the tension of contradictions. I can’t tell you how to solve your problems, but I won’t hate who you tell me to hate and I’m pretty sure shifting the blame to phantoms is counterproductive.
While there is a big gap between saying the jig is up, honestly healing the scars of the past and reaching a future transition, creating new shadow players for our political landscape is a waste of time. We have the benefit bludger, we have the Waitakere Man, we have all sorts of drama triangles going on and none of it is leading anywhere remotely useful. We can’t chop bits from ourselves and banish them from the village as a scapegoat, or float them out to sea or down a river in a reed basket. Calling things as they, as opposed to constructing myths, exposes our part in it and if we’re awake, we might discover something of what all of us need.
I was born out West, lived and worked there till I was 22. I’m your evil Man, consumed with the “…ingrained mysogyny and cultural diffidence…” Chris says I am. Once apon a time I even had a trade. Couldn’t hold onto my stuff like Chris reckons, though, life is too complex for such simplicities. My family lived on a land lot that was once appropriated land. I’m white, privileged in the way white people are, no matter how poor and ruined they get. Before that my grandmother escaped the violence and drunken womanising of my great grandfather, she passed the problem to her daughter, she passed it to my Father, he passed it to me. I’ve done and been all kinds of things, I’ve seen enough of my own darkness to terrify myself. Which part, which place, which evil do you want me to atone for? Which role do you want me to play, to persecute another person for my wrongs? Will your projection fit me? What you going to do about it? Isn’t this fun, this study in dancing from victim to rescuer to persecutor? Wake the hell up, people.
If you want scapegoats to end, finish with your own first. Then we can move on to politics.
I also thought Chris was wrong and Carmel Sepuloni went within a whisker of proving this.
I commented at the time that I thought there are at least eight different Waitakere tribes. Cutting and pasting …
There is a good number of traditional pacifica and the children for who the traditional island way is less and less attractive.There is the green tribe, Labour and Green activists who are deeply concerned about environmental issues and whose activity and contribution to Labour and the Greens is a disproportionate one. They are incensed at this Government, at its desire to mine conservation areas, and at the attack it has made on the protection of the Waitakere Ranges heritage area.There is the traditional tribe, working class homeowners who are getting on in age and who generally stick to Labour. Some of them were persuaded by National’s “Labour lite”campaign of 2008 to vote for Key but many of them are now scratching their heads about how they could have been persuaded to do so.There is the superior tribe. They always believe they are better than the rest and think that voting National shows their superiority. It takes a lot to change them.There is the beneficiary tribe. It is often hard to get them to vote because they are trying to cope with many problems but if threatened they will do so. They will not vote for a benefit basher.There is the geriatric tribe. They used to be predictable in the way they voted but tend to be persuaded by self interest. Stephen Joyce’s threat to the gold card will not have gone done well with them.There is the ethnic tribe, primarily Chinese and Indian who network well and who respond to concepts of equality and fairness. They were sucked in last time by Law and Order issues but things have got worse under this Government and I suspect they are regretting their last choice.And there is the self employed tribe, the “Waitakere tribe” that Trotter talked about. They believe in fairness.
To win Waitakere you need to dominate about 6 tribes. But not all of them.
Well put, Mu=icky & Uturn. I have thought that the Henderson area, and wider Waitaks, is pretty diverse….. and I don’t think I know any of Trotters “Waitakere Men”.
Awesome stuff UTurn.
I’ve always found CT to be a tame ‘lefty’ trotted out to show the frogs that the MSM have ‘balance’ and yet another priviledged out of touch soul ranting on so the presenter muppets can nod sagely at his musings as if it’s food for thought .
Uturn.
onya m8.
now how about something on the complete lack of courage by Len Brown and his council when it comes to standing up to the malfeasance of Rodney Hide and the crew trying to steal POAL off the people of Auckland.
“These sorts of rumours start spreading when the authorities in Qatar simply refuse to release any information to the families, public and media about what actually happened,” he said today from San Francisco.
“Whether it is true or not I have no idea, [but] to stop these rumours the government needs to release the report.
“Rumors will always circulate to fill the void of real information.
The whole article is so poorly written, of course there will be no official report released, its obviously a total sham, and rumour as eluded too in the above extract – BS all the way!
Let’s just clear this up, we have Syria “responsible” for this fire, and Iran responsible for the DoS “attacks on the banking systems (helps with the executive order to regulate the internet too, you know the one which would not pass through any level, even in the corrupted houses in America)…All rather convenient isn’t it!
The White House’s computer system was targeted in a cyber attack, a senior administration official said on Monday, but no classified systems were breached.
There is no evidence that data was taken in the incident, the official said, adding that the attack was identified early and did not spread.
The Obama administration is preparing to issue an executive order that would direct federal agencies to develop new guidelines to shield computer networks from cyber attacks. The White House undertook the new rules after Congress failed earlier this year to pass a comprehensive cybersecurity bill.
It’s all getting far too transparent/predictable these days…
Before the milk could be tasted by humans, tested in clinical trials on humans or produced commercially, New Zealand’s genetic modification policies would need to change, McNabb said.
Currently New Zealand has restrictive policies, with strict rules on genetic modification including containment provisions for research.
“It’s going to come down to what this country decides. It’s more of a social issue than a scientific one.”
Argh I see, you come up with a GE situation which will pitt people against eachother (especially those with young children, so you get it really emotional), and you get them to scrap it out in the hope that this will open up our laws to open slather GE/GMO
Indeed Weka, that is certainly the question, although a cure this is not. Its the advancement of the unnatural over the natural, while trying to sell it to people as “progress”
Wonder who stands to gain the most from the “band-aides”
As I mentioned above Weka, this will serve multiple functions for the “stakeholders”, inevitably to not only make a profit, but to control chunks of the agri-farming industry.
But finding an issue which could potentially become devisive is crucial, and very little would be more divisive than combining childrens health, and GMO products.
If you are against the use of “chemical milk”, then you are against “my child”, but with our current state of non GMO labelling, it would seem that being for “chemical milk”, potentially means that you are putting your childs allergies, ahead of not only other peoples children, but also against adults as well….
As DTB noted – Stop drinking cows milk, its not designed for humans anyway!
“It’s probably just more known about now than in the past”
You think a hundred years ago people weren’t capable of noticing bad effects in their body from eating a certain food?
More likely is that environmental factors have changed. In no particular order of relevance – pasteurisation and homogenisation of milk, increase in multiple assaults to the immune system (including from food allergens), a shift to high carb diets, changes in the breed of cows being used for dairy, changes in the way that milk is drunk and eaten, increasing multigenerational susceptibility to all those things etc.
Actually, water buffalo, yak, horse, cow, sheep and goats milks has been used long enough in Europe, ME, Russia-Central Asia, India and Africa that there’s very high penetration of alleles that allow for lactose digestion. Particularly within cultures that depended heavily on cattle. And domestication of some of those milk producing species actually dates back to the early neolithic with the emergence of agricultural cultures.
i.e. teh wiki is your friend, check first if unsure instead of looking foolish by saying ignorant stuff.
And on allergic reactions – there’s been a rise in allergies for some time, part of it is down to environmental factors, such as healthier environments and less parasites (hygiene hypothesis). Otherwise the spread of health service availability, has made allergies more visible and survivable/treatable, and the advent of the petrol motor and refrigeration has made fresh milk a lot more available. Most people before that would get their dairy products as butter and cheeses.
So taking these factors into consideration, milk allergy presentation within modern populations is actually a bit more complex than your argument.
And in this particular case is linked to a protein found only in cows milk, (rather than lactose intolerance) so teh hygiene hypothesis probably comes into play here.
One theory says that homogenisation alters the proteins and this is what causes problems in the gut. Another theory says that pasteurisation kills the beneficial microbes as well as the pathogenic ones (and possibly changes the proteins) and this also causes problems in the gut. People with problems who drink raw milk instead often report an improvement in their health, sometimes a marked improvement or complete remission of symptoms.
Milk is for calves not humans. Surely this GE rubbish will put overseas people off buying New Zealand products, many still believe the myth that we are clean and green.
I’ve never really understood the milk is for calves not humans argument. We might as well say that eating beef isn’t for humans. Or mutton, or any meat that we couldn’t kill and eat when we were still living in the trees. In fact, if we all came from near the equator originally, why not say we should only be eating tropical food?
A Fonterra rep may appear soon! I just find cow milk a revolting product.
Humans are omnivores that these days have a lot of choices from industrial food production. If city dwellers had to slaughter, gut and butcher a beast to get their meat rather than buy it on a styrofoam tray there would be way more vegetarians.
There is enough research to say that eating meat isnt for humans. Surely we have evolved to a stage where we can admit there is no justification for the cruelty involved in the killing of animals. It is just not necessary. It is possible to find delicious vegetarian food to take the place of cruelly obtained meat and dairy.
belladonna, that’s a moral argument (and one that is easily refuted if you really want to go there) not a biological one. Humans have been eating meat and milk for tens of thousands of years and been healthy with it for the most part.
There is enough research to say that eating meat isn’t for humans…
[Citation Needed]
While we can survive off veges, fundamentally meats are very efficient and easy to digest (once cooked/cured/smoked) source of protein, which is why the genus Homo learnt to exploit wild sources and eventually work out how to farm animals for meat. And unfortunately we’re also hardwired to love the taste, so it will probably take a global disaster or price issues to make us less dependant on it.
Of the clinically significant type, with teh controls/deep info stuff to get a better picture so we don’t get false positives/negatives.
Also, mostly the proteins are denatured, in the particular case of β-Lactoglobulin however, both before and after pasteurisation it seems to trigger an immune system response. So pasteurisation probably isn’t to blame.
Anyhow, the heat treatment thing case further implications vis human diets due to the fact we tend to cook _everything_ we can get our hands on. Which denatures proteins, which are then ripped apart in the stomach via proteases (protein digesting enzymes). So working out if pasteurisation is the causative factor is actually kind of “complex” /cough
Are the proteins actually changed? Or is it a simple matter of the tiny fat particles being able to penetrate the gut wall directly, taking undigested dairy proteins and other matter into the body for the immune system to react against?
Generally though food temps get at or above 100 degrees (bar slow cooking, which carries with it certain risks) which for all but proteins with a large number of disulfide bonds, pretty much denatures proteins fully.
As for the raw milk thing, to work out what’s going on we’d need to see a clinical trial or at least full reporting which takes into account null results in order to see if there’s any thing actually going on. i.e. is it merely the placebo effect or something more significant?
And a little more detail: the immune system usually recognises only small-ish polymers sequences, so usually we can design vaccines using only a relatively small protein sequence (depending on protein’s 3d structure) or merely a single protein. However, given the 3d structure of proteins + any sugar coatings (polysaccharides) or if they’re a glycoprotein, an antigen (thing that triggers immune response) may actually comprise a small area of the 3d structure. Rather than a linear protein sequence.
Which is generally disrupted by pasteurisation and cooking 😛
@CV – one word “bile” 😛
i.e. that stuff that breaks apart fat and oil globules during digestion so gut bacteria can break up the fats and proteases get at any proteins.
And antibodies are found outside of cells 😛
derp (4 hours or less of sleep here) so with milk allergies, what’s generally happening is antibody recognition during ingestion and digestion of dairy products of short protein sequences that happens with both raw and pasteurised milk. And yes, it does happen with raw milk, because that’s what you purify certain milk proteins from for part of allergy testing.
Actually, water buffalo, yak, horse, cow, sheep and goats milks has been used long enough in Europe, ME, Russia-Central Asia, India and Africa that there’s very high penetration of alleles that allow for lactose digestion.
*Sigh*
Did you hear me mention lactose, or did you assume?
Did you see me suggest that what I wrote was the complete explanation, or did you assume?
Are you suggesting that sheep’s milk and yak’s milk and cow’s milk are somehow all equivalent? Or did you assume?
So taking these factors into consideration, milk allergy presentation within modern populations is actually a bit more complex than your argument.
I really tire of academics who think they know shit, but finally when you drill down, it turns out that the shit they know is nothing but a really deep but really narrow shit which can help fuck all people.
And if you’d bothered thinking, you might have picked up on something I alluded to in there, that was a consequence of the emergence of lactose tolerance in human populations. i.e. there was evolutionary pressures on human populations to exploit available milk sources, which also would have made milk allergies less prevalent. Admittedly I should have made the clearer (I <3 crap sleep) though.
I really tire of academics who think they know shit, but finally when you drill down, it turns out that the shit they know is nothing but a really deep but really narrow shit which can help fuck all people.
🙄
Then stop using the fruits of it, I hear alt-med will so totes cure all cancers 😎
Funny thing though, vaccines = science, green revolution = science, etc etc, then there’s the whole methodology of science (I tend towards more systems-based approaches), which is fundamentally a very useful set of tools for sanity checking truth claims, and avoiding stupidity (though being human…). So frankly, you appear to be full of shit.
Pesticide residues = lack of knowledge + political stupidity over chemical controls (i.e. no precautionary principle…). Heck, up until the 60’s we still didn’t have a good grasp on cancer causation and were just starting to understand how hormones worked and thus the potential impact of stuff that was chemically similar to hormones.
Land Degradation/Soil loss = poor farming techniques, argicultural scientists have been hammering on it being a problem for decades upon decades, but the costs have never been apparent enough (despite being rather real and expensive) for corporate and small farmers to alter their farming systems to deal with it sadly 🙁 So it’s not so much a failure of the green revolution, but of cultural stupidity.
Loss of biodiversity = again, farming techniques issues, heck until recently biodiversity hasn’t had intrinsic value, so it was usually ignored. Only in the last 2 decades really have we started to nut out empirical costs of biodiversity losses and force the anti-conservation/greenie crowd to see the true costs of their ignorance. Sadly a little too late perhaps 🙁 Though with carbon pricing, we should see greater emphasis on biodiversity as a carbon sink tool.
Anyhow, mainly the green revolution was the application of evolutionary theory to crop breeding, allowing for the emergence of highly fertile crops and ironically involved very primitive genetic modification via mutagens to increase selectable variation. Without this, even the advent of cheap fertilizers probably wouldn’t have avoided global hunger issues* and revolutionised yields and nutrition for many farmers in the developing world. Although the push for monoculture crops is coming back to haunt us, and we will likely see major development of newer crop cultivares via selective breeding and use of better suited farming techniques.
Of course, the annoyance is a lot of the negative issues with the green revolution were predictable, particularly the use of monocultures and pesticide/herbicide resistance via evolutionary theory (tools already in place, Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher did the grunt work vis maths+ stats tools). And I’d have to go a history hunting (not a small project at all and I’m too disabled by depression at present) to understand why this happened. Whether it was a failure to research this stuff or a political/economic issue in which warnings were ignored.
____________________________
*main ones today aren’t so much production limitations, but rather price and distribution, with poverty and political instability + climatic variation and the effects of climate change being presently lesser causes.
Most mammals normally become lactose intolerant after weaning, but some human populations have developed lactase persistence, in which lactase production continues into adulthood.
And thanks to loads of insidious corporate advertising, we are (no doubt) drinking vastly more milk and consuming more milk containing products today than 50 years ago.
I go back to my original point then – people were just as capable of understanding when something they ate made them sick before the advent of mass media. If lots of people were getting sick from drinking milk, they would have known about it.
People talked to each other about their health before TV. Books were written on health too. Obviously alot of things have changed, and mass media has a big influence. But it doesn’t follow from that that allergies haven’t increased.
I did french, german, and latin – and remember nothing of them. However I am currently literate in at least 30 other current languages – to a coding standard. C++ is always the favourite though. I forget how many I have forgotten (snobol anyone). I seem to have several types of assembler and innumerabe libraries embedded..
The only way to learn and remember languages is to use them constantly. IMO, people who say that they aren’t good at languages just aren’t in the right environment to maintain those languages that they don’t know. Put them in the right environment and I’m pretty sure that they’ll pick them up pretty quick.
Well, I would like to agree with you but I spent 2 months trying to learn Spanish followed by 3 months traveling through South America and picked up nothing expect how to ask for beer and coffee.
Good link DTB, surprised by how many I know, in Far North Māori population is around 45% and bi–culturalism is a numbers game reality rather than a construct.
In a nut shell – they’re ignorant bloody fucking idiots. 5 second search on google for β-Lactoglobulin function reveals it has no role in developmental biology, any probably serves as a protein source and carrier protein for hydrophobic molecules, like fatty acids. In fact, if it had any critical role in developmental biology, the calf wouldn’t have made it to term, let alone be healthy enough for AgResearch to go “success!”.
And by the elder things, the rhetoric they’re using is just so damn stupid and illustrates even further how little they understand the fucking science involved. Which from the little there’s revealed in the news is actually pretty neat and involves using micro RNAs to target gene expression patterns. Which in this case leads to the organism expressing a lot less β-Lactoglobulin, rather than a knockout mutation that disables the gene or it’s relevant expression mechanisms. In theory, because it’s a lot more straight forward (due to it being a lot more specific) there was probably a much higher success rate. But until the paper comes out, probably wont know exactly how it was done.
Also, NZ GMO laws vis large transgenic animals definitely need work, unlike a mouse or a plant, escape risk is very, very low. Although the calf being abducted/”euthanised” by anti-GE nuts is probably quite high…
Yeah you scientist types have regularly been right about this stuff, until new research turns up in 20 years time showing that you weren’t aware of something critical.
Differentiate between technology and science mate.
Further, there have been plenty of major fuck ups in the development of internet technology as well. IE6 and AOL for starters.
Science progresses the environment, not the people.
What is this idea of “progress” you talk about? Shinier stuff with better screens and nicer pictures? That’s the measure of progress in our civilisation is it?
science provides the difference between an airfield control tower and a cargo cult. And the difference between a new heart valve being inserted and bleeding a fever victim to realign their humours.
Just think, somewhere like a billion people are in a position to read your railing against science within seconds of you pressing “submit comment”. That happened due to a range of sciences. People live longer and are more able for more of their lives. Pity that science hasn’t figured out how to make people more grateful for their blessings.
Sorry McFlock, unless you are willing to count fitter turners, test technicians, and software developers as scientists, you are suffering from a huge amount of scientism based overreach,
science provides the difference between an airfield control tower and a cargo cult.
Bull shit. Science is one ingredient of the above mate, not the whole cake, and not necessarily the biggest or most important ingredient.
For instance – are you trying to class the Wright brothers as scientists now too? How big a role did they play in the development of what you mention? How about huge? Again your comment is overly influenced by an over reaching faith in science.
As for the cargo cult, they merely observed a pattern and deduced a conclusion. A good use of scientific process.
Given that the Wright Brothers drew on the research of George Cayley, a founding member of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, yeah, science was essential for the Wright Brothers achieving controlled flight. I never said “science is all you need”, I just think we’d be fucked without it.
Yeah you scientist types have regularly been right about this stuff, until new research turns up in 20 years time showing that you weren’t aware of something critical.
is not the same as
Science is just one ingredient. And only a minority of the problems which trouble society can be solved with it.
In flight, scientists did not make the breakthrough application.
In medicine, flight of meaningful distances and speeds, logistics, navigation (sea/air/land), communication, energy generation (and the identification of its resulting hazards), agriculture, nutrition, water supply, computing, etc etc etc… on the other hand, scientists can, did, and still do create breakthrough applications and more importantly push the limits of knowledge to enable others to do the same.
And the only problems that scientists can’t contribute to the solutions thereof are social problems. For those you need Arts majors.
The other faith you seem to have is that having more people who are more highly qualified (whether in the sciences or arts or whatever) increases the tendency for problems to be solved, not created.
Well, I’m reading at night, eating clean and safe food with a plentiful supply of clean water and a reliable and safe source of heat should the elements turn.
Oh, and arguing with someone hundreds of miles away while having immediate access to much of the world’s knowledge even if it’s stored thousands of miles away. And not just the big stuff – I can look for the experience of others who might have the same interest as me be it gardening, carving, knitting, surviving in the wild, amateur astronomy, or how to tie a bow tie.
Definite progress compared with, say, the 14th Century. By that measure I’d be dead by now. No shit. Gotta love scientific medicine.
Scientific medicine. What an oxymoron. Stochastic medicine I’ll accept. Also, perhaps 75% of our increased life expectancy has come from other sources. Increased income and education levels etc. As I have already described.
Wait, what?
The Wright Brothers had to draw on many scientific advancements to achieve flight.
Aerodynamics, velocity, fucking gravity.
Did that make them scientists? Possibly not but without the scientific disciplines of those before them they wouldn’t have made such an achievement. The Wright Brothers stood on the shoulders of giants
” How big a role did they play in the development of what you mention?”
Huge, because we furtherance out understanding into flight and how it might be achieved.
“Again your comment is overly influenced by an over reaching faith in science.”
Science requires no faith. Faith is the antithesis of science
And yet it and other forms of empiricism have been stunningly successful verses theology and anything else which ignores reality in favour of myths and assumptions about how the world works.
There’s an interesting and blurred transition from doctors as priests to doctors as scientists, but the reason we don’t try to balance the humours now is science. Major steps like Harvey, Snow, Pasteur, and so on were due to science, not faith or luck.
Sure mate, as I discussed earlier this is known as “progress”. Our state of scientific knowledge is so damn good and you must believe in it, until…it’s not.
One of the funniest scenes I remember from Star Trek was Bones McCoy telling a modern, late 20th century doctor that he wasn’t going to allow any witch doctors to work on his patient. “It’s a wonder anyone made it out of the 20th century alive” he smirked.
Show me any pre-science birth control with a <1% failure rate after a month of use.
Yes, science is a late-comer to human existence. And look how far we’ve come in a few hundred years. Yes, new and serious problems have emerged – but where social problems don’t rule the roost we’re usually healthy, strong and long-lived.
This western based scientific rule has barely lasted 500 atomic blasted years yet you think its the best thing that human kind has ever achieved in 50,000 years. Gimme a break. The arrogance.
Show me any pre-science birth control with a <1% failure rate after a month of use.
Its out there mate.
And I’m unavoidably amused that you are using this as an example of one of the greatest triumphs of modern science.
Modern contraception is very useful, sure, but it’s trash grade futility mate in the final analysis. You know, once the final sums are tallied up. Humans spent 50,000 years with fewer than 2B of us on the whole planet.
But in just 100 years this number will quadruple. Such is the power of 99% effective contraception.
Yeah, and how well would you do in a cave? Like I say, I’d probably be already dead. And that’s not including infant mortality and infanticide of the weak, just some conditions I’ve had in the past.
“Its out there, mate”
Should be easy to show me, then. Thanks to Archaeology. And the interwebz, of course.
Perhaps your ancestors in Western Europe were living in caves 10,000 years ago but a lot of civilisations around the world had already moved on from that mate.
Seriously, the arrogance.
The absence of western science =! living in caves.
Don’t worry about civilisations, they’re overrated and they never last. There were definitely sophisticated human cultures 10,000 years ago. Australian aboriginal cultures go back at least 5 times that.
Nasty, brutish and short is something that was made up by the English 😉
Utter shit. The ancient Greeks were doing science based upon the scientific method some 2500 years ago. They discovered mathematics principles such as trigonometry which is still in use today and discovered planets and knew the earth was round, even coming within a hairs breadth of accurately measuring the earths size.
500 years? you idiot. Modern science has been built on 1000’s of years of discovery – we stand on the shoulders of giants.
Utter shit. The ancient Greeks were doing science based upon the scientific method some 2500 years ago. They discovered mathematics principles such as trigonometry which is still in use today and discovered planets and knew the earth was round, even coming within a hairs breadth of accurately measuring the earths size.
Nope, dig around in philosophy and history of science some more* 😛
While yes, classical Greek philosophers did get some of the basic science stuff, ultimately when we examine their writings we find that they weren’t so much aiming to understand what they saw, but rather to model it. What they did also lacked the whole internal heavy criticism and peer review thing modern science developed during the 1700’s in Europe.
500 years? you idiot. Modern science has been built on 1000′s of years of discovery – we stand on the shoulders of giants.
Ah, more we stand on population growth, and the false starts of older cultures philosophers 😛
______________________________________
*Note: this unit is very tired and last did science history stuff a long time ago
“Sure mate, as I discussed earlier this is known as “progress”.”
Progress?
Development of calculus > Development of theory of gravity > Velocity > Aerodynamics > flight.
Science.
“Our state of scientific knowledge is so damn good and you must believe in it, until…it’s not.”
Science is self-correcting and science never pretends to have all the answers…which is why we always learn. Science demands learning, demands revision, demands re-correction. Always.
There’s an interesting and blurred transition from doctors as priests to doctors as scientists, but the reason we don’t try to balance the humours now is science. Major steps like Harvey, Snow, Pasteur, and so on were due to science, not faith or luck.
The doctors in the 1800s using bloodletting were most definitely not priests. They were medically trained (in the scientific tradition) practitioners of the day.
William Harvey disproved the basis of the practice in 1628, and the introduction of scientific medicine,la méthode numérique, allowed Pierre Charles Alexandre Louis to demonstrate that phlebotomy was entirely ineffective in the treatment of pneumonia and various fevers in the 1830s. Nevertheless, in 1840, a lecturer at the Royal College of Physicians would still state that “blood-letting is a remedy which, when judiciously employed, it is hardly possible to estimate too highly”,[13] and Louis was dogged by the sanguinary Broussais, who could recommend leeches fifty at a time.
You can of course argue that those doctors weren’t practicing true science, in which case this piece of history demonstrates the gulf between science theory and how it gets practiced in the real world.
Science of the day makes lots of mistakes. It does interesting useful things too, but there are lots of downsides. We should be honest about that.
And little more than a hundred years later antibiotics, blood transfusions and sterilisation were reliably saving lives. That’s science for you.
In fact in some areas we’re back to leeches – for a limited number of conditions based on firm scientific understanding of the causes of the condition and the leech life-cycle.
and in a mere few decades we’ve squandered many of the advantages we gained from antibiotics, through sheer stupidity in part fueled by faith in science.
You seem to be arguing that science has been overwhelmingly good, and you seem unwilling to acknowledge the massive downsides of science.
Climate change, peak oil, overpopulation, colonisation, environmental destruction, rapid species extinction, soil loss leading to imminent mass starvation, syndrome x, radiation poisoning….
I’m glad you have an appreciation of your life, and what science gives you, but your science-granted life comes at a cost, a massive cost. Let’s just be honest about that.
And whether how long science will continue to afford some of the individuals on the planet such a luxurious life remains to be seen.
I love 20 km range artillery munitions which after firing can be guided in flight and deploying over their target area, can direct multiple independent top penetrating submunitions downwards, destroying entire tank companys or multiple enemy troop positions.
I’m arguing that society is better off with science than without it, using myself as an example.
Medicine is just one example. When the world is back to a billion people with life expectancy in the low/mid double digits, and usually live entirely inside a 5 mile radius, I’ll agree with you.
“I’m arguing that society is better off with science than without it, using myself as an example.”
Yes, and sorry to be rude, but that’s just selfish. Are you willing to acknowledge the cost to other humans and the rest of life?
We are now truly in the realm of believe and faith. I don’t have the faith you do in science, I don’t believe that we will migrate off planet, and I honestly hope we don’t. We don’t deserve to go, and we’ll just fuck it up like we have here.
Not to mention that I’m seriously under-impressed by science right this very moment because my mobile broadband is so crap I have to restart it every other minute to get the connection back 😉
It’s like corporate PR for science isn’t it. You always emphasise the upsides, the benefits, the good feeling, the smiling faces; and you always downplay or deny the costs, the damage, the scarcity, the mass consumption, the resulting unhappiness.
Climate change, peak oil, overpopulation, colonisation, environmental destruction, rapid species extinction, soil loss leading to imminent mass starvation, syndrome x, radiation poisoning….
Those aren’t downsides of science but of our society which missuses science.
“Oh yeah we sent a probe to Mars. Sorta like the 1970′s except instead of a lander, we got something which can roll around at maybe 5km/h.
40 years of progress eh.”
Ummm, no. Unlike a lander the rover didn’t crash land but descended slowly into the atmosphere using high drag parachute which then detached leaving behind a rocket boosted , self-driving robotic sky crane which slowly winched the one ton rover to the martian surface before flying off so as not to crash land itself into the rover.
Unlike a lander the rover can move, take soil samples, test the atmosphere, take high resolution photographs and has a fucking laser on board which can burn into rocks and ‘sniff’ the resulting smoke/steam to note to composition.
And unlike most of the landers/rovers – this one successfully landed a mere 200 meters for it’s designated landig point intact and operational.
CV – you are so fucking scientifically illiterate that even my 3 year niece understands science better than.
“That’s not science, that’s just progress” you scoff.
…idiot…
We can argue politics sure, and I can very wrong, but one thing I know is science. science is my ‘thing’ you might even say and your total dismissal and misunderstanding couched in your false sense of superiority is not only totally misguided but also offensive.
Yeah you scientist types have regularly been right about this stuff, until new research turns up in 20 years time showing that you weren’t aware of something critical.
Then you call it “progress”.
Translation: DEEEEEEEERP
And I’m too tired, need to dig up old cluebatting of Andrei dealing with this particular “but science was wrongzors!” meme fully.
But anyhow, that’s the fucking nature of science, as we lack perfect knowledge there is always new stuff to be found that was missed in prior work (techniques/tools needed to be invented usually), that could overturn older assumptions and truths if there’s enough evidence. In many respects this flexibility to be wrong is what allows science to work in the first place. As we don;t have to wait for old scholars and their followers to die off, or be forced to cling to written texts as revealed, holy truths. Thus treating this as a negative just indicates possibly your own conservatism when it comes to change and uncertainty.
Looky see what the ANZ’s been up to in between getting rid of NZ jobs and those pesky marginal retail customers by ditching the black horse.
“The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) today announced the filing and simultaneous settlement of charges against Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. (ANZ), an Australia-based financial services company, for exceeding speculative position limits in wheat and cotton futures contracts in trading on the Chicago Board of Trade and the Intercontinental Exchange US (ICE Futures US). The CFTC order requires ANZ to pay a $350,000 civil monetary penalty and cease and desist from further violations of the position limits provisions of the Commodity Exchange Act and CFTC regulations.”
That would be an investment banking activity, not retail or commercial. JP Morgan got a 600k slap also.
Is it possible that thanks to modern medicine that those with intolerances who would have previously died at a very young age, i.e less than 5, and therefore exited the gene pool with their genetic disabilities have survived and thrived whereas up to 100 years ago the birth and early mortality rate was horrific, with some families losing 90% or even all of their progeny.
Modern medicine plays some role, but not the major one I suggest.
– Meals with sufficient calories in a day
– As much clean water as you can use
– Sewerage systems
– Increasing household incomes
– Decent heating, shelter, and power
– Schooling for all children
– An end to child labour
Have accounted for 75% or more of the modern gain in life expectancy.
I’m puttin this one here coz I don’t want to flood the GSCB review article …
“Due diligence” is a term used for a number of concepts involving either an investigation of a business or person prior to signing a contract, or an act with a certain standard of care. It can be a legal obligation, but the term will more commonly apply to voluntary investigations. A common example of due diligence in various industries is the process through which a potential acquirer evaluates a target company or its assets for acquisition
HAS DUE DILIGENCE BEEN FOLLOWED BILL ENGLISH
It looks too me like America did it’s Due Diligence BILL, do they own us BILL?
Luckily they don’t want us that bad AYE BILL!
Selling Mighty River Woul’ve given us another 3 months max,
THEN WHAT BILL?
Why’d they call you morons JOHN, and tell ya ta read it again JOHN YA LISTENING?
While the “why” is interesting and clearly deserves a lot of analysis and attention, I think the most compelling element to this discussion are the implications of a future where traffic growth simply doesn’t happen.
Wow! Another extraordinary session on Campbell Live tonight over the Christchurch School Closures challenge.
They visited several schools where the data used by the Ministry is wildly in error.
Of 5 clusters of about 15 ? all schools had every building recorded as earthquake damaged – totally untrue.
One school had their jumping pit labelled as liquafaction.
One school is recorded with 50 buildings – has 5. Another 10 but have 15. Wrong rolls and trends in most.
John Campbell used the Ministry’s own documents to interview Parata but she wouldn’t front.
The CEO from the Ministry Mrs Longstone did front, and set sail on loud denial, deflection, over talk, avoidance and straight out mis-speak.
For those who want to get the measure of Mrs Longstone and school closures, this is a must.
Will link when available.
Yes, it was very good legwork journalism. The kind Campbell Live often does, and Son Of Close-Up won’t do, alas.
I wouldn’t be too hard on Longstone – she should never have been put in that position by Hekia Parata. It’s shameful when Ministers hide behind officials … and National have been doing it more and more.
If people want to know why National are losing votes, ask thousands of parents in Christchurch.
Some believe that Longstone was appointed over a year ago with her previous experience at introducing Charter Schools in Britain and the intent to do the same here. She is a hard nut who, like politicians, can deflect and obscure with the best of them. (Can’t spell obscurfate?)
I have no sympathy for her.
Minister hides, viewers take aim at the distraction instead, job done.
Try not to do exactly what National want you to do. Focus on the people we can remove at the ballot box. The generals are in the bunker, not on the front line.
I caught a bit of it – and winced at the thought of being in that position.
But then I remembered that this is exactly what happens when you fire “back office” “bean counters” and boo-row-krats. Data gets crunched badly, and overworked staff either don’t notice or realise it’s not their problem if it’s crap and they have other shit to do. Fuck ’em – you reap what you sow.
Actually, what she should have done was have the corrected data handy. Or at the very least said it’s being redone, and there is a window for the corrected data to be taken into account prior to the amalgamation/closing process being finalised. Even if in reality the decisions wouldn’t be affected.
Not sit there like a gimp insisting that it was valid.
Do you remember that turd that was interviewed over the leaky buildings in schools on close up some years ago during Hosking’s time and just sat there tittering like some kind of lobotomised chimp.
Jailed for two years in Russia for an anti Putin rap performed in a Christian orthodox cathedral. Pussy Riot are a Russian women band notorious for their defiance of authority and for covering their faces with ski masks.
Will French Islammist rapper, Mélanie Georgiades become the West’s version of ‘Pussy Riot’?
Mélanie Georgiades has in open defiance of French anti-hijab laws made an appearance on French TV station TF1 dressed in the hijab.
I think you are confusing two things here Jenny (actually the 2nd link also confuses it). She appeared on television wearing a hijab (headscarf) for which there is no law against wearing in public.
There is one that restricts it’s use in schools (passed in 2004): Loi en application du principe de laïcité, le port de signes ou de tenues manifestant une appartenance religieuse dans les écoles, collèges et lycées publics (An Act, as an application of the principle of the separation of church and state, on the wearing of symbols or garb which show religious affiliation in public primary and secondary schools).
Perhaps you are thinking of the recently (2010) passed law: Loi interdisant la dissimulation du visage dans l’espace public (An Act prohibiting concealment of the face in public space) which includes, amongst other things, the niqab (face veil) and the burqa (full body covering if it includes a face covering/veil).
I’m not sure I would describe her as an Islamist which has quite specific political overtones.
We are very pleased to publish this submission is from Lucinda Stoan. She is a social justice activist, mother, and educator, based in Washington State in the US. This detailed and comprehensive source-linked overview of trans issues and what is at stake will be useful for many people, especially in ...
New Zealand's Underarm Banker: It bears recalling that the “independence” of the Reserve Bank Governor was for decades held up by neoliberal capitalists as the most compelling justification for passing the Reserve Bank Act. Interesting, is it not, how the ruling class’s support for the Bank’s independence lasted no longer than ...
Rubbish In, Rubbish Out: Put all this together, and it’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that anyone who responds positively to a pollster’s request to “answer a few questions” is just ever-so-slightly weird. Desperately lonely? Some sort of psephological train-spotter? Political party member primed to skew the poll for or against ...
“Free at last, Free at last, Thank God almighty we are free at last.” ― Martin Luther King Jr. A long and bitter court feud between former Conservative Party leader Colin Craig and Jordan Williams has been settled, with an apology and compensation from Williams. On Tuesday, Craig sent out ...
Some people seem to want to close down any critical discussion of the current research into the relationship between water fluoride and child IQ. They appear to argue that claims made by researchers should not be open to critical review and that the claims be accepted without proper consideration ...
The government has been congratulating itself over the passage of the Zero Carbon Act, which sets out long-term emissions targets. Meanwhile, Climate Action Tracker has the shameful reality: those targets are insufficient:While New Zealand is showing leadership by having passed the world’s second-ever Zero Carbon Act in November 2019, under ...
The government introduced a Racing Industry Bill today. As an urban who horse racing as pointless-to-cruel, and gambling as a tax on stupidity and/or hope, this isn't normally a bill which would interest me in the slightest, beyond grumpiness at more government money for a dying industry. But there is ...
Check. Check. One, two, three, four. Is this thing ON? Hello readers, I logged in last night (yeah, it’s been a while) to mark THE END of the landmark legal case, Jordan Williams v Colin Craig, which (gulp) reached The Supreme Court, in which New Zealand’s most-defamed man was suing the politician he ...
Before The Birth: Israel’s most fervent supporters set their clocks ticking in Biblical times. They cite the kingdoms of David and Solomon as proof that, in the words of the Exodus movie’s theme-song: “This land is mine.” The majority of Israel’s backers, however, start their clocks in 1933 – the year Adolf ...
In an unreliable, strange and confusing world, Public Address is proud to present a measure of comfort and stability by annually asking everyone what words or phrases sum up the year that's been – and then giving some of them consumer goods as prizes for being clever or simply lucky.Well, ...
Both my parents are pretty handy – and they seem to have the right tools for most jobs in the garage and they know how to fix practically anything. A similar story could be told about their generation’s experience in the workforce – being a generalist was not unusual and ...
When it was revealed that NZ First had tried to enrich itself from public office via the Provoncial Growth Fund, the Prime Minister assured us that everything was OK as Shane Jones, the Minister responsible for the fund, had recused himself. Except it seems that that recusal came very late ...
Today is a Member's Day, and probably the last one of the year. After the marathon of the End of Life Choice Act, most of the bills up for debate today are uncontentious. First up is the second reading of Chlöe Swarbrick's Election Access Fund Bill. This will be followed ...
The Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee has reported back on the government's odious and tyrannical control orders bill. As expected, the fraudulent select committee process has made no significant changes (partly because they couldn't agree, but mostly because it was a stitch-up from the start, with no intention of ...
Yesterday, the government released its draft Cannabis Legalisation and Control Bill, which will be put to a non-binding referendum at the next election. I'm not a drug policy expert, but Russell Brown is, and he thinks its pretty good. And pretty obviously, it will be a massive improvement on the ...
As you're probably aware, the draft bill outlining the proposed legal cannabis regime to be put to a referendum late next year was published yesterday, and has already attracted a flurry of comment. It's notable that a good deal of the comment is about proposals that aren't actually new.A minimum ...
One of the big problems in New Zealand climate change policy is the government working at cross-purposes with itself. It wants to reduce fossil fuel use, but encourages oil and gas exploration. It wants to reduce transport emissions, but then builds enormous new roads. The problem could be avoided if ...
Climate Explained is a collaboration between The Conversation, Stuff and the New Zealand Science Media Centre to answer your questions about climate change.If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, please send it to climate.change@stuff.co.nzAccording to the United Nations, food shortages are a threat ...
Last year, the government announced it was ending offshore oil exploration by no longer issuing new permits. The idea was that the industry would then die off as permits expired. Except almost immediately the government revealed its bad faith, by saying they would extend permits and alter conditions to keep ...
The government introduced the Education and Training Bill to Parliament yesterday. Its a massive bill, which replaces both existing Education Acts, as well as various other bits of legislation (including some which are still proceeding through the House). I'll leave the serious analysis to teachers and people who actually know ...
Amelia SharmanThere’s no one-size-fits-all when it comes to micro-credentials, those bits of bite-sized learning that can help workers stay on top of technological change. What’s a micro-credential? While definitions vary, micro-credentials can be understood as short courses that allow people to learn new skills or have an existing competency recognised. ...
All Smiles Now: Claire Szabo is taking up her presidential role after serving as the CEO of Habitat For Humanity. Which is absolutely perfect! After KiwiBuild was so comprehensively mismanaged by Phil Twyford, the party has not only elected a new president from a thoroughly respectable not-for-profit, but one who ...
While much of the NZ left has transitioned to postmodern and identity politics in relation to transgender ideology, there are some very good articles about that deploy Marxist methodology in relation to this subject. The one below is from the British marxist group Counterfire and appeared on their site here ...
by Daphna Whitmore At Golden Oaks, a luxurious country retreat in the Hudson Valley, pregnant women have the best care money can buy. From the organic food, personalised exercise programmes, private yoga instruction and daily massages Golden Oaks looks like a country lodge for the upper class. Set some time ...
When Labour was running for election in 2017, it felt it needed to demonstrate "fiscal responsibility" and signed itself up to masochistic "budget responsibility rules". It was a fool's errand: the sorts of voters who demand fiscal responsibility are also the sorts of voters who believe that labour can never ...
Writing in Stuff, Joel MacManus looks at what we need to do to meet the Zero Carbon Act's targets. The core of it:1. Convert 85 per cent of vehicles on the road to electric. 2. Eliminate fossil fuels from all industrial heating up to 300 degrees Celsius. 3. Double our ...
Professors Janet Hoek and Richard Edwards, Emeritus Professor Phil Gendall, Jude Ball, Dr Judith McCool, Anaru Waa, Dr Becky FreemanRecent media reports have presented conflicting evidence on youth vaping in NZ. While some NZ school principals report concerns about increasing vaping on school grounds and confiscating vapes, ASH Year ...
“America the Beautiful!”, staunch defender of democracy, freedom and… a whole lot of despotic tyrants that play nice with what is called “the Washington Consensus.” America is indeed capable of immense good, but like any Nation, and most assuredly any aspirant to the mantle of Empire, great, immense evil. All ...
Image credit:The beginner’s guide to blogging I notice a few regulars no longer allow public access to the site counters. This may happen accidentally when the blog format is altered. If your blog is ...
1080 is used to control pests in NZ. Its use is contested by a noisy few. A new report claims high levels of 1080 in rats washed up on a beach. Flora and Fauna of Aotearoa (F&F) won’t name the laboratory that did their testing. It has sparked a hunt ...
What Kind Of Empire? The thing for Kiwis to decide is what kind of empire they want to belong to. The kind that, while offering its own citizens democratic rights, demands absolute obedience from its “friends”? Or, the kind that, while authoritarian at home, takes a relaxed attitude to the ...
It hasn't been a good week for the Conservatives, pollwise. All major recent polls are showing their lead shrinking.Comparing each pollster's current (between 29/11 and 22/11) and previous most recent poll.Com Res - Conservative lead down 3 points.You Gov - Conservative lead down 1 point.Kantar - Conservative lead down 4 ...
Within quick succession, Countdown maths wizard and twitterer Rachel Riley, alleged comedian David Baddiel and prominent lawyer Andrew Julius have all expressed very similar opinions / ideas:
These #3billboards are going round London today, organised by ex-Labour people, horrified by what their party has become. Their principles haven’t changed, they’re ...
So, there have been a bunch of bad polls out for Labour, and even the Leftie's friend, Survation, have recently given the Conservatives a rip-snorting 11% lead. You Gov's much vaunted MRP poll - which pretty much nailed the result in 2015 - is currently predicting a comfortable majority for ...
The European Parliament has voted overwhelmingly to declare a climate emergency:The European parliament has declared a global “climate and environmental emergency” as it urged all EU countries to commit to net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The vote came as scientists warned that the world may have already crossed ...
Pure Fear: Worse than Heroin, this drug’s addictive power was terrifying. People under its influence didn’t drift off to Elysium. Nor did it persuade inadequate individuals that they could conquer the world. No, this drug – pure crystal methamphetamine, “P” for short – unlocked the gates of Hell itself. It ...
As the rate of measles infection, and of deaths, continues to climb in Samoa, antivaccination activists infectious disease proponents seem intent on doubling down on their claims about vaccination. (Check pretty much any news-media FB post about measles & you’ll see exactly what I mean.) Unfortunately, some of them have ...
Samoa are experiencing a devastating measles epidemic. It is possible that 2-3% of the population will ultimately be infected by the time it is over. Hopefully the mass immunisation campaign currently under way can mitigate some of this, for many it is too late. The first question many people ask ...
Meghan Murphy is a Canadian writer and journalist She runs the Feminist Current website which she founded in 2012. She was a keynote speaker for the Feminism2020 conference in Wellington this month. When Massey University cancelled the original venue booking Feminism2020 was hosted in Parliament by MP David Seymour. Meghan ...
Text and photos by Gearóid Ó Loingsigh Colombia has lived through one week of protests against the economic measures taken by president Duque. What looked like a protest that would fizzle out after its first day on November 21st is still going strong. Part of the reason for the continuance ...
Around a million billion pass through you each second, almost all originating from our sun, but few of them are likely to interact with you enroute. I was reading in a physics magazine earlier in the week about the nature of neutrinos. These are extremely numerous elementary particles, but only ...
By Pallab GhoshThere’s value in covering new research advances, even when the underlying science is unsettled. But there are also risks.The recent announcement that scientists discovered water on the planet K2-18b, 110 light years away, prompted a media swoon. News stories, including a piece written by me, billed ...
I wrote this review a couple of years ago when I was still in the process of getting my head around the politics of transgenderism, and specifically the claim that intersex conditions lend support to the notion that sex is ‘socially constructed’. Since writing this review I have come across ...
Climate Explained is a collaboration between The Conversation, Stuff and the New Zealand Science Media Centre to answer your questions about climate change.If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, please send it to climate.change@stuff.co.nzHow much does our use of air travel contribute to the ...
Minor planet/asteroid (2309) Mr. Spock is named not for the character in Star Trek, but for a cat that was itself imperturbable, logical, intelligent and had pointed ears. In a preceding blog post I introduced one of my favourite asteroids, (2472) Bradman, and also mentioned (6581) Sobers amongst a few ...
Today the death toll from measles in Samoa rose to 32. All but four of the dead were less than 5 years old. Absolutely terrible, heartbreaking, news. That statistic alone should be enough to give the lie to the common claim by antivaccination activists plague enthusiasts that “measles is a ...
by Gearóid Ó Loingsigh It is late here in Bogotá, almost 11.30pm on Monday the 25th of November as I write this. The day began full of hope with yet more massive marches throughout the country, a mix of the International Day of Non-Violence Against Women and the National Strike. ...
Anti-fluoride activists are rubbing their hands in glee over what they claim is “yet another study” showing fluoride harms the brains of children. But their promotion relies on IQ relationships which the paper’s authors acknowledge disappearing when outliers or other factors are considered. And they completely ignore other relationships ...
The feature below is the conclusion of A History of Economic Thought, whose author was a leading Marxist economist in Russia in the early 20th century, Isaac Ilyich Rubin. The book arose from a course he ran at Moscow University following the Russian Revolution. First published in Russian in 1929, ...
There are many thousands of asteroids with formal names, some humdrum but other more noteworthy (depending on your predilections). One of my favourites, the name of which I was involved in suggesting, is (2472) Bradman, named for the Australian cricketing great. As a minor planet (synonym: asteroid) spotter, I have ...
Tory manifesto: big on austerity, low on promise, non-existent on delivery. The Tories: the party so big on ambition they couldn't be arsed writing a manifesto. MLK: "I have a dream!"BJ: "I'll just have a nap." Labour: Broadband!Tories: Narrow minds! Labour have hope, dreams and ambition. The Tories will save ...
The Ministry of Health has announced that “people under the age of 50 travelling from New Zealand to Samoa, Tonga, Philippines and Fiji” are now on the list of national priorities for MMR vaccination. Given the outbreaks of measles in Samoa, Tonga, Philippines and Fiji, the Ministry of Health is ...
Hong Kong has been protesting for six months for, demanding democracy, human rights, and an end to police violence. Today, they went to the polls in district council elections - a low-level of government with virtually no power, similar to community boards in New Zealand. But while the positions themselves ...
Text and photos by Gearóid Ó Loingsigh On Friday 22nd of November a curfew came into effect and troops were deployed on the streets, here in Bogota. It was the first time since September 1977 that a curfew had been imposed on the city. The decision was a cynical pre-planned ...
Meanwhile, while the government is planning to restore voting rights to prisoners, National is promising to turn our prisons into US-style slave-labour camps:The Opposition is proposing compulsory education, training or employment for prisoners who are serving sentences of two years or more. [...] On Sunday, National Party Leader Simon Bridges ...
Excerpts from Being and Being Bought, by Kajsa Ekis Ekman Spinifex Press, 2013. Ekman, a Swedish journalist and critic, brings together a Marxist and feminist analysis of prostitution and surrogacy in this groundbreaking book. This is the second part of a synopsis and brief commentary of the book by Daphna ...
Dalmeet Singh ChawlaIn 2008, psychologists proposed that when humans are shown an unfamiliar face, they judge it on two main dimensions: trustworthiness and physical strength. These form the basis of first impressions, which may help people make important social decisions, from who to vote for to how long a ...
Claas Kirchhelle, University of Oxford; Adam Roberts, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, and Andrew Singer, Centre for Ecology & HydrologyAntibiotics are among the most important medicines known to humankind, but we are running out of this crucial resource. Decisive action is needed if we are to retain access to ...
Things That Make You Go - Hmmmm: “All right. Let me come at this another way. I’m guessing that what you’ve got in that box contains names, dates, bank account numbers – all the details you need to put Winston Peters and Jacinda Ardern squarely in the cross-hairs. So, the first ...
Coasters Turn Out In Droves: It’s precisely the widening gulf between those with actual experience of things like guns, chainsaws and drilling machines, and those who regulate their use, that accounts for the angry crowd at Greymouth’s Messenger Park on Sunday, 17 November 2019. In the rarefied atmosphere where decisions ...
There are perennial arguments about the circumstances of the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963, and in particular whether more than one shooter is required by the evidence (such as the Zapruder film). Those who know little about physics frequently claim that the sharp backwards motion of JFK’s head as ...
Apparently, some people enjoy washing their cars. Each to his or her own, I suppose. I mean, some people like duck shooting, some people follow Coronation Street, and some people’s idea of a good day out is to sit on a grass bank at Seddon Park and watch cricket all ...
Last week we learned that New Zealand First had apparently tried to enrich itself from public office, with a dodgy forestry company linked to a number of NZ First figures sticking its hand out repeatedly for government money. Today in Question Time Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones had his ...
Finally, governments seem slowly to be beginning to act on climate change. But its not enough. While they're publicly signing up to targets, they're planning to destroy the world by continuing fossil fuel extraction:The world’s nations are on track to produce more than twice as much coal, oil and gas ...
Stuff has begun interviewing NZ First's secret donors, and it turns out that its as bad as we expected. They start with racing industry figure Garry Chittick, who is predictably grumpy about NZ First's coalition choices. Meanwhile, I'm looking at the list of pork NZ First has effectively given its ...
Stag At Bay: Twelve years ago, Winston Peters was still robust enough to come back from the political crucifixion which his political and media enemies had prepared for him. In his seventies now, the chances of a second resurrection are slim. We should, therefore, prepare for the last gasp of ...
Satellites pass over NZ all the time (literally). Here I focus on the 187 Planet Labs ‘Dove’ Earth-imaging satellites, and I show that one can determine in advance where they will be, enabling scientists on the ground to correlate their environmental and other data collection with opportunities to get imaging ...
The Council of Disobedient Women has learned that the Prefect of Aro Valley has been promoted to a new role with the blessing of the Pope of Wellington. Softy Jejune Parson has been appointed Mother Superior of Woke Wellington for the work she has been doing calling out heretics, ...
Mark Patterson, Spokesperson for Primary Industries New Zealand First spokesperson for Primary Industries, Mark Patterson, has called for awareness to be raised and more stringent biosecurity checks to be put in place for African Swine Fever (ASF), a widespread virus that is uncontrolled in most of Asia and a serious ...
Jenny Marcroft MP, Spokesperson for Human Rights A critical step has been taken to end gender based violence against women and girls in Parliament this evening. New Zealand First Spokesperson for Human Rights Jenny Marcroft MP has welcomed the passing of the first reading of the Crimes (Definition of Female ...
New Zealand First MP Shane Jones says it's time to recognise market forces haven't led to the expected reduction in Māori smoking rates and try a new approach. The Party had recently invoked the agree to disagree clause in their Coalition Agreement with the Labour Party, and will not support ...
Live from the Whanganui Opera House, on the final day of the 2019 Labour Party Conference, Jacinda Ardern announced the largest investment in school property in 25 years. ...
The Coalition Government will be banning foreign donations to political parties and candidates, ahead of next year’s general elections. Legislation will be introduced to Parliament and passed under urgency – emphasising the need for such restrictions to safeguard our democracy. The bill introduces a new requirement that party secretaries and ...
Associate Transport Minister Shane Jones opened Taipā's $19 million bridge recently, improving transport infrastructure in the Northland region. The two-lane bridge is 107m long with a 2.5m-wide shared walking and cycling path, and will reduce the congestion that the old one-lane bridge was notorious for. The project had also included ...
The Overseas Investment Office have rejected the application of Mercury Agriculture LP, which is 92 per cent controlled by Canadian interests, to purchase more than 2000 hectares of South Canterbury and Otago land. Mercury wanted to buy 2000ha at Rangitata, 1494ha near Ashburton, 816ha near Cromwell and 212ha near Temuka. ...
This weekend was Labour's 103rd Party Conference! We welcomed over 500 of our Labour whānau in red to Whanganui, where we reflected on the last two years in Government, and looked ahead to 2020 and beyond. We know the long-term challenges facing New Zealand won't be tackled overnight, but we're making ...
Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones announced that the Provincial Growth Fund will invest $9.6 million to seal the final unsealed section of State Highway 43 from Stratford to Taumarunui. The Minister said sealing the 12-kilometre gravel section of the highway – also called the “Forgotten World Highway” - through ...
Former Finance Minister and former chair of the Tax Working Group, Sir Michael Cullen, has voiced his support for New Zealand First’s decision to oppose the planned increase in tobacco excise tax. In an interview with The Weekend Collective, he said that increasing the price was no longer effective in ...
Māori are natural storytellers. On the marae we use stories to tell our history, to teach the next generation life lessons and to let people know, in our most creative of ways, who we are and where we have come from. ...
Rt Hon Winston Peters, New Zealand First Leader New Zealand First has invoked the ‘Agree to Disagree’ provisions of the Coalition Agreement because it cannot support the announced 11.46 percent increase in the tobacco excise from 1 January 2020. “Studies show that the automatic tobacco excise increases are having less effect ...
Taupō-based company Geo40 has made a breakthrough in extracting near battery-grade lithium from geothermal fluid which its says could be a gamechanger. Its chief executive John Worth said the earth mineral was highly prized, with battery-grade lithium selling for US$10,000 (NZ$15,600) a tonne. Geo40 was founded in 2010 to find ...
Crown research institute AgResearch Ltd, as part of its Future Footprint plan, had intended to relocate top scientists and support staff — particularly those focused on sheep genetics and genomics — from Invermay to Lincoln. However, those plans seem to have been shelved at the request of the Coalition Government. ...
Ten engineering firms in Southland are receiving a total of $2.13 million in Provincial Growth Fund funding to lift productivity and create new jobs. Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones announced in Invercargill that the 10 engineering and manufacturing firms would receive funding to assist them with buying equipment that ...
The number of new residents to New Zealand is the lowest it has been in nearly two decades and it has earned the ire of the immigration industry. The industry alleges that 'Trump-style extreme vetting' is being put in place aimed at keeping a lid on immigration numbers. June Ranson, ...
The Royal New Zealand Air Force is one step closer to modernising its fleet after the United States State Department recently approved the sale of five new C-130J Hercules aircraft to New Zealand. Arms manufacturer Lockheed Martin, in Fort Worth, Texas, will provide the aircraft, but as a "foreign military ...
Forestry Minister Shane Jones wants to create a log barging facility at Hicks Bay and turn the area into a Special Economic Zone. The move would be part of protecting New Zealand's forests from being depleted by India and China, he said. It follows his announcement last week to strengthen ...
New Zealand First supports the changes recommended by the Winter Grazing Taskforce to improve animal welfare outcomes through the winter months, and the establishment of a pan-sector action group to implement them. New Zealand First Primary Industries Spokesperson Mark Patterson says the report highlights areas of concern about the animal ...
Former prime ministers Helen Clark and Sir John Key, formerly from the Labour and National parties respectively, have joined forces in support of New Zealand First’s plan to relocate Auckland's port to Whangārei. While Ms Clark and Sir John spent their political careers on opposite sides of the political divide, ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters is in Japan for the Foreign Ministers' meeting of the G20 grouping of countries as one of nine "invited" countries. He has used the opportunity to cast a spotlight on the plight of Pacific countries, calling out countries which still offered subsidies or Government assistance to ...
It's been a great week of progress: we've celebrated Children's Day, we've made communities safer with 1800 new police, and we've seen almost 90% of eligible schools take up Government funding to scrap school donations - taking pressure off the families of more than 416,000 students. ...
Hon Shane Jones, Minister of Forestry The Government will further strengthen New Zealand’s wood processing sector as part of our focus on ‘value over volume’ in our forestry industry, Forestry Minister Shane Jones says. Minister Jones will today meet with forestry representatives in Northland to signal new measures to help the ...
New Zealand First are celebrating the announcement of an investment of $3.5 million into five new trapping devices. These are a range of bait and trap devices, all designed to be left unattended for long periods of time. NZ First conservation spokesperson Jenny Marcroft says that this latest development will ...
Jenny Marcroft, Spokesperson for Conservation New Zealand First is proud to announce the Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) has allocated $3.5 million to develop innovative predator control approaches which will reduce the need for repeated 1080 use. $19.5 million of PGF funding was announced for Predator Free 2050 Limited in February ...
Darroch Ball, Spokesperson for Police New Zealand First is proud to have delivered on a key Coalition Agreement commitment to adding 1800 new frontline police, with the graduation of Recruit Wing 332 in Porirua today. Law and Order Spokesperson Darroch Ball says increasing police numbers and boosting their resources was one ...
Clayton Mitchell, Spokesperson for Consumer Affairs The ‘wheel clamping’ Bill that will cap clamper fees to $100 passed its third readinginParliament today. New Zealand First welcomes The Land Transport (Wheel Clamping) Amendment Bill to combat predatory wheel clamping behaviour in what is currently a largely unregulated business. Cowboy clampers are: gouging ...
Jenny Marcroft, Spokesperson for Health New Zealand First welcomes the passage of the Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission Bill through its first reading in Parliament. “Today’s progress takes serious action on the mental health and addiction crisis the country is facing,” says New Zealand First Health Spokesperson Jenny Marcroft. “The re-establishment ...
Mark Patterson, Spokesperson for Primary Industries Today the Government announced the delivery of the promise to protect New Zealand interests by applying a new National Interest Test to the sales of our most sensitive and high risk assets to overseas buyers. This further strengthening of the Overseas Investment Act will ...
Rt Hon Winston Peters, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Foreign Affairs Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters has announced further support as the Government of Samoa responds to a serious measles outbreak. “New Zealand will deploy a further 18 vaccination nurses, bringing the total to 30 working in Samoa over the next ...
The Coalition Government is delivering on its promise to protect New Zealanders’ interests by applying a new national interest test to the sales of our most sensitive and high-risk assets to overseas buyers. Under current Overseas Investment Act (OIA) rules, assets such as ports and airports, telecommunications infrastructure, electricity and ...
Rt Winston Peters, Leader of New Zealand First Allegations raised this morning by Stuff Limited / Fairfax concern a party matter but I am confident that New Zealand First has operated within electoral laws, now and for the last 27 years. Declarable donations were declared to the Electoral Commission. Our ...
The chairman of the Upper North Island Supply Chain Strategy (UNISCS) working group, Wayne Brown, has hit back at critics of his group’s recommendations to relocate the Ports of Auckland cargo operations to Whangarei’s deepwater port of Northport. The working group's recommendation to close Auckland waterfront to all but cruise ...
Health Minister Dr David Clark says new appointments to DHBs represent a significant changing of the guard, with 13 new chairs including four Māori chairs. Today 76 appointments have been announced to complement elected board members, as well as eight elected members appointed as either chair or deputy chair. Four ...
Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Fletcher Tabuteau, is travelling to Germany, Poland, Austria, and Spain next week to bolster New Zealand’s political and trade relationships in Europe. While in Spain, Mr Tabuteau will represent New Zealand at the 14th Asia-Europe (ASEM) Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in Madrid. “New Zealand strongly supports ...
“I’ve spoken to Minister Faafoi, who has apologised for his poor handling of this issue,” Jacinda Ardern said. “I have confidence in Kris as a hardworking and effective Minister, but this should have been dealt with in a much clearer manner, and I’ve made my views on that very clear ...
Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters met with Tongan Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Pohiva Tu'i'onetoa in Wellington today. The pair signed a Statement of Partnership setting out joint priorities for cooperation out to 2023. “We welcomed Prime Minister Tu'i'onetoa on his first visit to New Zealand as Prime Minister. Tonga ...
The Minister of Police Stuart Nash says his sympathies are with the family of a man who died after being shot by Police in Kurow. “Initial reports are that Police were called by a family member to help the man who was threatening to harm himself,” Mr Nash says. “However ...
Healthier waterways, better productivity and farmer wellbeing are front and centre in a new project involving more than 1000 Southland farmers and growers. Minister of Agriculture Damien O’Connor today announced that the Thriving Southland Change and Innovation Project is the first region-wide extension programme supported by the $229 million Sustainable ...
Work to look after nature and restore freshwater quality in Te Hoiere/Pelorus River catchment is getting a significant boost, thanks to new Government funding support Minister for Conservation Eugenie Sage announced in Canvastown today. “Every New Zealander should be able to swim in their local river without getting sick, and ...
Eight Queen’s Counsel have been appointed under a process that includes the new criterion of a commitment to improving access to justice, Attorney-General David Parker announced today. “The new criterion was included this year. It emphasises that excellence and leadership in the profession can be seen through a wider, community ...
Onslow College in Wellington will get 20 new classrooms for more than 400 students, Education Minister Chris Hipkins announced today. The much-needed investment will relieve growth pressure the school has been experiencing for some time. Seven existing classrooms which have deteriorated over time will also be replaced, bringing the total ...
More than 250 young New Zealanders will add international experience to their education, thanks to the latest Prime Minister’s Scholarships for Asia (PMSA) and Latin America (PMSLA), Education Minister Chris Hipkins announced today. This round of scholarships supports 252 recent graduates or current students to undertake study, research or internships ...
Consumers will benefit from a more competitive, transparent retail fuel market as a result of changes the Government will be making in response to the findings of the Commerce Commission’s study of the fuel sector. “We accept the Commission’s findings and, as the Prime Minister has said, we’re ready to ...
Five new cancer medicines have now been funded this year, meaning thousands of people have more treatment options PHARMAC has today announced that it has approved two new medicines for funding – fulvestrant for breast cancer and olaparib for ovarian cancer. This follows earlier decisions on advanced lung cancer treatment alectinib, ...
The Minister of Local Government, Hon Nanaia Mahuta says the Government will consider making changes to local electoral legislation before the 2022 elections to fix the problems that have arisen where elections are settled by a coin toss. The Minister says the recount process in the Murupara- Galatea ward at ...
New Zealand will sign up to new international maritime regulations to reduce ship emissions and lift air quality around ports and harbours, Associate Transport Minister Julie Anne Genter announced today. Subject to completion of the Parliamentary treaty examination process, New Zealand will sign up to Annex VI of MARPOL, an ...
New legislation to transform our urban areas and create sustainable, inclusive and thriving communities will tomorrow be introduced to Parliament, Urban Development Minister Phil Twyford said. “The Urban Development Bill gives Kāinga Ora-Homes and Communities the tools it needs to partner with councils, communities, mana whenua and private developers to ...
Today’s launch of He taonga te Tamaiti: Every child a taonga: The Early Learning Action Plan 2019-2029 provides the foundation for long-lasting changes to early learning, Education Minister Chris Hipkins says. “Early learning will be one of the Government’s top education priorities going into 2020,” Chris Hipkins said. ...
Major decisions made by the Government will now be considered under a climate change lens, Minister for Climate Change James Shaw announced today. “Cabinet routinely considers the effects of its decisions on human rights, the Treaty of Waitangi, rural communities, the disability community, and gender – now climate change will ...
Education Minister Chris Hipkins today announced the appointment of Māori education specialist Dr Wayne Ngata and Business NZ head Kirk Hope to the Board of the Tertiary Education Commission (TEC). Dr Alastair MacCormick has been reappointed for another term. “Wayne Ngata, Kirk Hope and Alastair MacCormick bring a great deal ...
The next phase of the Pike River Re-entry project is underway, Minister Responsible for Pike River Re-entry Andrew Little says. “Fresh air will be pumped into the Pike River Mine drift this week, following acceptance of the plan for re-entry beyond the 170m barrier by New Zealand’s independent health and ...
New Zealand consumers will have greater certainty about their insurance cover when they need to make claims as a result of proposed government changes. “Insurance is vitally important in supporting consumers and businesses to be financially resilient when unexpected events happen,” Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs Kris Faafoi said. ...
The Crown is providing an opportunity for the hapu of Ngāpuhi to rebuild its framework from the ground up for collective negotiations to deal with its historical Treaty claims, Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations Andrew Little and Minister for Māori Development Nanaia Mahuta announced today. The Crown is also ...
A Bill enabling referendums to be held with the 2020 General Election has passed its third reading. Justice Minister Andrew Little says the Act is important for upholding the integrity of New Zealand’s electoral process. “The Government has committed to holding a referendum on legalising recreational cannabis at the next ...
The first release of public information on the two referendums to be held at next year’s General Election was made today with an informative new Government website going live. Additionally, the draft Cannabis Legalisation and Control Bill has been released, showing the strict controls on cannabis that will apply if ...
The Government is taking action to protect New Zealand from foreign interference in our elections by banning foreign donations to political parties and candidates, Justice Minister Andrew Little announced today. Legislation will be introduced to Parliament this afternoon and passed under urgency. “There’s no need for anyone other than New ...
Governments and tech companies are holding a two-day workshop, hosted by YouTube/Google in Wellington, to test the Christchurch Call Shared Crisis Response Protocol. The workshop aims to refine and strengthen the response in the event of a terrorist attack with online implications. Companies, governments, civil society experts and NGOs will ...
The new independent Cancer Control Agency has formally opened today, delivering on the Government’s plan to improve cancer care in New Zealand. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Minister of Health David Clark marked the occasion by announcing the membership of the Advisory Council that will be supporting ...
Small businesses who deal with government departments are set to be paid faster and have improved cash flow as a result, under a new strategy released today. The Government is backing recommendations from the Small Business Council (SBC) and has agreed to implement three initiatives immediately to support business and ...
The Education and Training Bill 2019, introduced in Parliament today, proposes the biggest education changes in decades and is an important step towards improving success for all our learners, Education Minister Chris Hipkins said. “The Bill’s rewrite of education legislation is long overdue. Indeed one Education Act, parts of which ...
Minister for Pacific Peoples Aupito William Sio will travel to Bali to represent New Zealand at the 12th Bali Democracy Forum that will be held on the 5-6 December. “The Forum is a valuable opportunity for Asia-Pacific countries to share experiences and best practice in building home-grown democracy and fostering ...
A package of new and expanded technology and other tools will encourage responsible camping and help communities and local councils better manage freedom camping this summer, Tourism Minister Kelvin Davis announced today. “Our Government has been investing to improve the freedom camping experience for everyone because we want to support ...
The government is laying the groundwork to understanding our genes – work that can help us tackle some of our biggest health challenges, like heart disease and diabetes, says Research, Science and Innovation Minister Megan Woods. $4.7 million has been invested in the Genomics Aotearoa Rakeiora programme. The programme will ...
Nearly every state schools will receive a capital injection next year valued at $693 per student to bring forward urgent school property improvements, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Education Minister Chris Hipkins announced today. The one-off cash injection is the first project to be announced from the Government’s infrastructure package ...
The Government has decided to bring forward major investments in New Zealand’s infrastructure to future proof the economy. “Cabinet has agreed to a significant boost to infrastructure investment. I have directed the Treasury to help bring together a package of projects that can be brought into the Government’s short and ...
It is a great pleasure to be with you today in Whanganui. Like the Prime Minister I grew up with the TV clip of Selwyn Toogood booming “What do you say Whanganui, the money or the bag?” to an unsuspecting ‘It’s in the Bag’ audience. For those under the age ...
New Zealand’s newest Great Walk, the Paparoa Track, was officially opened in Blackball today by the Minister of Conservation Eugenie Sage alongside the family members of the Pike 29 and Ngāti Waewae. Local mayors and MP for the West Coast Hon Damien O’Connor were also in attendance. “Paparoa National Park ...
Minister of Defence Ron Mark turned the first sod of earth on the infrastructure works for the new P-8A Poseidon fleet at RNZAF Base Ohakea today. “The Coalition Government’s investment in Ohakea will ensure the Royal New Zealand Air Force can manage, maintain and task the new fleet efficiently ahead ...
Civil Defence Minister Hon Peeni Henare today announced the establishment of the new National Emergency Management Agency from 1 December 2019. The National Emergency Management Agency will replace the Ministry of Civil Defence & Emergency Management. It will be an autonomous departmental agency, hosted by the Department of the Prime ...
New Zealand tertiary students with top grades and a passion for space will once again be offered the opportunity to work with the world’s best and brightest at NASA, Economic Development Minister Phil Twyford announced today. Recipients of the New Zealand Space Scholarship are nominated by the Ministry of Business, ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced further support to Samoa in the wake of an ongoing measles outbreak in the country. Additional medical supplies and personnel, including a third rotation of New Zealand’s emergency medical assistance team (NZMAT), further nurse vaccinators, intensive care (ICU) specialists and Samoan-speaking medical professionals, will ...
Health Minister Dr David Clark says new data showing a sharp drop in the number of people who can’t afford to visit their GP is a sign of real progress. One year after the Government made it cheaper for about 600,000 Kiwis to visit their doctor, results of the New ...
Hell’s bells it’s Gone By Lunchtime, with Annabelle Lee, Ben Thomas and Toby Manhire shooting the breeze on Kris Faafoi, Jason Kerrison, Winston Peters, NZ First donations, a cannabis referendum, and the year to come.Just when you thought politics was tucking under the duvet for Christmas, along comes the guy ...
Tis the season for hangovers, so we convinced some of New Zealand’s most experienced consumers of food and/or drink (OK, Spinoff staff and a bunch of chefs/hospo people) to share their tried-and-true culinary remedies.A hangover is a very individual thing. For some, it manifests as a splitting headache and extreme ...
Before Britain’s Got Talent: Champions hits our screens tonight, let’s take a fond look back at some of the show’s weirdest and most wonderful acts.Place your hands on your Golden Buzzer, because Britain’s Got Talent: The Champions kicks off this weekend. Champions is BGT bigger and better than it’s been before, ...
Following the raging success of the 2018 non-goat ethical Christmas gift guide, here for you today – responsibly wrapped in reusable gift wrap – is the 2019 list of ethical, sustainable, socially conscious, or charitable gift ideas to satisfy all kinds of family members and budgets.Budget Category: ‘Can we pay ...
Lime brought e-scooters to Auckland and changed the way we travel in less than a year. Now, the council is replacing it and Wave with three new contenders. Josie Adams goes to the Lime warehouse to say goodbye to the original scooters.In a warehouse in Eden Terrace, almost a thousand ...
Analysis - The government's first crack at cannabis legislation runs into trouble, a foreign donations bill is rammed through Parliament and a select committee refuses to listen to former NZ First officeholders. ...
Dr Ben Jansen is Oceania's leading prescriber of cannabis medicines, and a co-founder of the Hemp Foundation.org.nz “I’d like to thank the Labour Party and Chris Woodney. Thanks to his policy remit at Labours national conference, and Labours full support, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hannah Soong, Senior Lecturer in Teacher Education Practice, School of Education, University of South Australia Australian 15 year olds were around three and a half years behind their counterparts in China in maths, according to the OECD’s latest results for education systems ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dimitri Perrin, Senior Lecturer, Queensland University of Technology More than a year ago, the world was shocked by Chinese biophysicist He Jiankui’s attempt to use CRISPR technology to modify human embryos and make them resistant to HIV, which led to the birth ...
Cabinet minister Kris Faafoi has apologised to the Prime Minister for his messages to Jason Kerrison regarding an immigration case, but will not lose his job. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julian Meyrick, Professor of Creative Arts, Flinders University The decision to merge the Department of Communications and the Arts with Transport, Infrastructure and Regional development (dropping the “Arts” entirely) ends a year in which Australian politics has been deeply confused over its ...
A historic referendum on independence has been completed in Bougainville. Johnny Blades of RNZ was there. People in the autonomous Papua New Guinea region of Bougainville have voted in an historic independence referendum. The long-anticipated referendum is the ultimate provision of 2001’s Bougainville Peace Agreement, which followed a brutal, protracted ...
Dairy farmers had some Xmas cheer this week, as dairy giant Fonterra told them the forecast payout would be the fourth-highest-ever, at the mid-point of its farmgate milk price range. The $7.30kg/ms means the cash payout for the season will reach $11.2bn, a rise of about $400m from the earlier forecast. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Caitlin Syme, PhD in Vertebrate Palaeontology, The University of Queensland When you find dinosaur skeletons, how can you tell how old the dinosaur was? Like, if the skeleton is from a child dinosaur or an adult dinosaur? – Henry, aged 8. ...
The Council of Licenced Firearms Owners (COLFO) has had to clarify the law with Police and receive their reassurance that while the amnesty for ammunition was not extended to 20 December, Police will act as if it has been. ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1 We Are Here: An Atlas of Aotearoa by Chris McDowall & Tim Denee (Massey University Press, $70)Superlative ...
This week a petition with more than 15,000 signatures was presented at parliament to Nicola Willis, MP and opposition spokesperson for Early Childhood Education. Also attending were Green MP Chlöe Swarbrick and Hon Nikki Kaye. ...
It’s that time of year again when, for the third year running, a new A Christmas Prince movie is released. Sam Brooks was in front of a TV screen for the latest instalment’s debut on Netflix last night, and here catalogues the many stupid, wild, and wildly stupid things he ...
One of the most highly rated members of Jacinda Ardern’s Cabinet is under pressure over assurances given in relation to an immigration case. How bad could it get, asks Toby Manhire.There has never been a New Zealand prime minister more engaged with contemporary homegrown music than Jacinda Ardern. She’s forever ...
Kris Faafoi, Minister of Broadcasting, Communications and Digital Media; Minister ofCommerce and Consumer Affairs;Minister of Government Digital Services; Associate Minister forHousing; MP for Mana.The latest allegations of a corruption scandal involving a Cabinet minister suggests this government is far too loose when it comes to providing access to power ...
The National Party cannot credibly critique the Government’s hikes to fuel tax while it refuses to commit to reversing these hikes, says the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union. Taxpayers’ Union spokesman Louis Houlbrooke says, “Simon Bridges has lambasted ...
Newspaper staff were among those to express dismay and fury during the frenzy of denunciations that followed publication of an ill-considered cartoon about Samoa and the measles epidemic. The Spinoffrecorded their reactions under the heading ODT cartoonist infuriates his colleagues with Sāmoa measles epidemic ‘joke’. It also reproduced the ...
New Zealand Police Association condemns comments made by People Against Prisons Aotearoa following the fatal police shooting of an armed man who had made threats of suicide. ...
A new poem by Harry Ricketts. The Writing Life You want to write.You want to be published.You want to be read. You want to be a cult figure.You want to be reviewed.You want to write. You want to win prizes.You want to be anthologised.You want to be read. You want to be taught in schools ...
As Christmas is near, it’s time to set the record straight on some of the most commonly misunderstood aspects of employment law that apply to the festive season. ...
Editor’s Note: Here below is a list of the main issues currently under discussion in New Zealand and links to media coverage.New Zealand Parliament Buildings, Wellington, New Zealand.Kris Faafoi immigration case Fiona Connor and Tova O’Brien (Newshub): ‘I’m on it bro’: Messages show Kris Faafoi offering help to ...
The Minister of Local Government Nanaia Mahuta has announced changes to prevent Māori wards being voted down by referendums are off the table, saying she believes such a change is not possible within the coalition. ...
It’s officially the festive season, and what does that mean? An office Secret Santa with a budget of $20 and you’ve picked your boss. Instead of settling for a bottle of average wine and a ribbon, follow our essential guide on what to get those unique workmates.At last year’s Secret ...
The shooting of a suicidal man in Southland shows that police armament is dangerous, says criminal justice group People Against Prisons Aotearoa. The shooting comes just over a month into the controversial trial of heavily armed police teams in 3 regions ...
The Prime Minister should deal urgently with reports Cabinet Minister Kris Faafoi offered to help a friend over an immigration case, National Party leader Simon Bridges says. ...
The families of top former All Blacks are likely to donate their loved ones’ brains to research so the effect of head impacts in sport can be studied. ...
A woman who went on a Tinder date with the man who murdered Grace Millane tells her story, and issues a warning to other women to trust their instincts when something doesn’t feel right.First published on Newshub.co.nzI went on a date with Grace Millane’s killer while her body lay in ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gottfried Lechner, Associate Professor and Director of the Institute for Telecommunications Research, University of South Australia, University of South Australia Satellites are becoming increasingly important in our lives, as they help us meet a demand for more data, exchanged at higher speeds. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Terry Goldsworthy, Associate Professor in Criminology, Bond University According to the latest figures, homicides in Australia are at historic lows and compare well against international trends. So what do the trends tell us and why is the homicide rate in Australia declining? ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Timothy O’Rourke, Senior Lecturer, School of Architecture, The University of Queensland Welcome to the next article in our Designing Hospitals series, where we explore how architecture and design shape our hospitals and medical centres. Today, we look at what Indigenous people tell ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard Holden, Professor of Economics, UNSW The latest Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) results are bad news for Australian students, parents, employers and policymakers. Pretty much everyone. Australian 15-year-olds are now below the OECD average in mathematics, and our results in ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Danielle Clode, Senior Research Fellow in Creative Writing, Flinders University It is only mid-November but we have to walk early to avoid the heat. A northerly wind picks up clouds of dust and pollen, sending dirty billows across the paddocks. The long ...
Good morning and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Changes coming to fuel market, anti-vaxxer arrested in Samoa, and banks told to hold more capital.New recommendations to increase competition in the fuel market have been made by the Commerce Commission, reports the NZ Herald. Their conclusion is that it isn’t competitive ...
This week's biggest-selling New Zealand books, as recorded by the Nielsen BookScan New Zealand bestseller list and described by ReadingRoom literary editor Steve Braunias. ...
An alliance of top researchers is trying to keep New Zealand ahead of complex health challenges from overuse of antibiotics, threats to freshwater quality and emerging infectious diseases. ...
The birthplace of the Labour Party is once again at the forefront of a new movement, this time harnessing the power of the collective to step away from coal towards a low carbon future.Blackball is a small place with a huge history. This week the town, 29 kilometres from Greymouth, ...
Life expectancy is increasing all the time, and now actuaries and retirement experts say young people need far more information on what they’ll need to do with their money if they live to 100. Don’t worry, we’re here to help. The message from the Retirement Income Interest Group of the New ...
German politician Joschka Fischer has had a remarkable career. From street violence and helping to set up the Green party, he matured into the foreign minister and vice-chancellor of a united Germany, serving until 2005. His understanding of power politics led him to support the use of force in the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Scott Morrison said it with a straight face, and repetition for emphasis. “I’m very pleased, very pleased, with the performance of all of my ministers,” he declared on Thursday. This ringing if unconvincing universal endorsement ...
PARENTS AROUND THE WORLD PLEA FOR URGENT CLIMATE ACTION 222 parents groups from 27 countries have released a heartfelt joint plea calling on negotiators at this year’s UN climate summit – COP25 – in Madrid to push for ambitious and urgent ...
Government proposals to overhaul insurance contract laws should make the whole process of taking out insurance easier and simpler to understand for consumers, says Financial Advice New Zealand. ...
Despite New Zealand First lobbying hard at the Cabinet table, the Finance Minister says the case to move Auckland's port operations north has not yet been made. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jane Tomnay, Assoc. Professor / Director of Centre for Excellence in Rural Sexual Health, University of Melbourne Around one in six Australian women have had an abortion by their mid-30s. These women come from all age groups and demographics: some are mothers ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Roslyn Petelin, Course coordinator, The University of Queensland Reports this week about the demise of the Apostrophe Protection Society may have been greatly exaggerated. The Apostrophe Protection Society was set up in 2001 in the UK by retired journalist John Richards with ...
Today the Court of Appeal released their decision to allow Helen Milner (The Black Widow) to have the last remaining body samples of the husband she murdered, in an attempt to prove her innocence by trying to see if he had an underlying heart condition. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rebecca Pearse, Lecturer, Department of Political Economy, University of Sydney Federal Labor this week commemorated a dubious anniversary – a decade of climate policy failure. And it pointed the finger of blame squarely at the Greens. Labor claimed that had the Greens ...
The recent statement by Simon Tyler on behalf of the National Provident Fund and the Government Superannuation Fund, that environmental and social goals must be balanced with financial risk and reward, displays conceptual confusion about the role of ethical ...
A bill designed to deal with terrorists returning from overseas has hit its latest speed bump as human rights groups raise concerns that it could be used to stifle press freedom. ...
Open mike 02/10/2012 
We are very pleased to publish this submission is from Lucinda Stoan. She is a social justice activist, mother, and educator, based in Washington State in the US. This detailed and comprehensive source-linked overview of trans issues and what is at stake will be useful for many people, especially in ...17 hours ago
Newshub last night reported that Broadcasting Minister Kris Faafoi had apparently promised to help out a mate with an immigration issue. While its normal for people to approach MPs for assistance in this area, when you're a Minister, the rules are different: as the Cabinet Manual says, Ministers must "at ...21 hours ago
New Zealand's Underarm Banker: It bears recalling that the “independence” of the Reserve Bank Governor was for decades held up by neoliberal capitalists as the most compelling justification for passing the Reserve Bank Act. Interesting, is it not, how the ruling class’s support for the Bank’s independence lasted no longer than ...1 day ago
“Free at last, Free at last, Thank God almighty we are free at last.” ― Martin Luther King Jr. A long and bitter court feud between former Conservative Party leader Colin Craig and Jordan Williams has been settled, with an apology and compensation from Williams. On Tuesday, Craig sent out ...2 days ago
Some people seem to want to close down any critical discussion of the current research into the relationship between water fluoride and child IQ. They appear to argue that claims made by researchers should not be open to critical review and that the claims be accepted without proper consideration ...2 days ago
In an unreliable, strange and confusing world, Public Address is proud to present a measure of comfort and stability by annually asking everyone what words or phrases sum up the year that's been – and then giving some of them consumer goods as prizes for being clever or simply lucky.Well, ...2 days ago
Both my parents are pretty handy – and they seem to have the right tools for most jobs in the garage and they know how to fix practically anything. A similar story could be told about their generation’s experience in the workforce – being a generalist was not unusual and ...2 days ago
While much of the NZ left has transitioned to postmodern and identity politics in relation to transgender ideology, there are some very good articles about that deploy Marxist methodology in relation to this subject. The one below is from the British marxist group Counterfire and appeared on their site here ...4 days ago
“America the Beautiful!”, staunch defender of democracy, freedom and… a whole lot of despotic tyrants that play nice with what is called “the Washington Consensus.” America is indeed capable of immense good, but like any Nation, and most assuredly any aspirant to the mantle of Empire, great, immense evil. All ...6 days ago
Image credit: The beginner’s guide to blogging I notice a few regulars no longer allow public access to the site counters. This may happen accidentally when the blog format is altered. If your blog is ... 6 days ago
It hasn't been a good week for the Conservatives, pollwise. All major recent polls are showing their lead shrinking.Comparing each pollster's current (between 29/11 and 22/11) and previous most recent poll.Com Res - Conservative lead down 3 points.You Gov - Conservative lead down 1 point.Kantar - Conservative lead down 4 ...7 days ago
The Council of Disobedient Women has learned that the Prefect of Aro Valley has been promoted to a new role with the blessing of the Pope of Wellington. Softy Jejune Parson has been appointed Mother Superior of Woke Wellington for the work she has been doing calling out heretics, ...2 weeks ago
Mark Patterson, Spokesperson for Primary Industries New Zealand First spokesperson for Primary Industries, Mark Patterson, has called for awareness to be raised and more stringent biosecurity checks to be put in place for African Swine Fever (ASF), a widespread virus that is uncontrolled in most of Asia and a serious ...2 days ago
Live from the Whanganui Opera House, on the final day of the 2019 Labour Party Conference, Jacinda Ardern announced the largest investment in school property in 25 years. ...4 days ago
Health Minister Dr David Clark says new appointments to DHBs represent a significant changing of the guard, with 13 new chairs including four Māori chairs. Today 76 appointments have been announced to complement elected board members, as well as eight elected members appointed as either chair or deputy chair. Four ...3 hours ago
Hell’s bells it’s Gone By Lunchtime, with Annabelle Lee, Ben Thomas and Toby Manhire shooting the breeze on Kris Faafoi, Jason Kerrison, Winston Peters, NZ First donations, a cannabis referendum, and the year to come.Just when you thought politics was tucking under the duvet for Christmas, along comes the guy ...35 mins ago
"The neighbour takes my hand and walks me over the concrete to my parent’s back door": a look inside Hell by Alisha Tyson. ...3 hours ago
Analysis - The government's first crack at cannabis legislation runs into trouble, a foreign donations bill is rammed through Parliament and a select committee refuses to listen to former NZ First officeholders. ...14 hours ago
Dr Ben Jansen is Oceania's leading prescriber of cannabis medicines, and a co-founder of the Hemp Foundation.org.nz “I’d like to thank the Labour Party and Chris Woodney. Thanks to his policy remit at Labours national conference, and Labours full support, ...15 hours ago
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hannah Soong, Senior Lecturer in Teacher Education Practice, School of Education, University of South Australia Australian 15 year olds were around three and a half years behind their counterparts in China in maths, according to the OECD’s latest results for education systems ...16 hours ago
Dairy farmers had some Xmas cheer this week, as dairy giant Fonterra told them the forecast payout would be the fourth-highest-ever, at the mid-point of its farmgate milk price range. The $7.30kg/ms means the cash payout for the season will reach $11.2bn, a rise of about $400m from the earlier forecast. ...17 hours ago
The Government is investing up to $9 million in a project that it says will help Southland farmers use their land more sustainably. ...21 hours ago
Donation legislation, the infinite monkey theory and the angriest man in NZ politics. Not to mention Paula Bennett's black-market oregano. ...21 hours ago
Newspaper staff were among those to express dismay and fury during the frenzy of denunciations that followed publication of an ill-considered cartoon about Samoa and the measles epidemic. The Spinoff recorded their reactions under the heading ODT cartoonist infuriates his colleagues with Sāmoa measles epidemic ‘joke’. It also reproduced the ...22 hours ago
You do not have to sacrifice short term returns in order to invest sustainably. ...23 hours ago
Winston Peters says the NZ First foundation is similar to the National Party’s foundation. Here’s how it isn’t. ...1 day ago
The families of top former All Blacks are likely to donate their loved ones’ brains to research so the effect of head impacts in sport can be studied. ...1 day ago
The Finance Minister Grant Robertson won’t be drawn on how much new capital requirements for banks will hit consumers. ...1 day ago
Yet again, NZ schools have received a 'fail' when it comes to bullying but there could be an evidence-based solution. ...1 day ago
This week's biggest-selling New Zealand books, as recorded by the Nielsen BookScan New Zealand bestseller list and described by ReadingRoom literary editor Steve Braunias. ...1 day ago
An alliance of top researchers is trying to keep New Zealand ahead of complex health challenges from overuse of antibiotics, threats to freshwater quality and emerging infectious diseases. ...1 day ago
Sky Sport News presenter Kate King previews a massive weekend for Kiwi sportswomen ...1 day ago
A handy guide to all you need to know about impeachment. ...1 day ago
NZ is seeing an increasing number of retail 'events' imported from overseas - how long before our spending is exhausted? ...1 day ago
German politician Joschka Fischer has had a remarkable career. From street violence and helping to set up the Green party, he matured into the foreign minister and vice-chancellor of a united Germany, serving until 2005. His understanding of power politics led him to support the use of force in the ...1 day ago
Despite New Zealand First lobbying hard at the Cabinet table, the Finance Minister says the case to move Auckland's port operations north has not yet been made. ...2 days ago
The year has provided tests for the PM's party, government, and the country as a whole - but she is confident 2020 will bring success. ...2 days ago
ACC is failing to live by the climate principles it proclaims. ...2 days ago
A bill designed to deal with terrorists returning from overseas has hit its latest speed bump as human rights groups raise concerns that it could be used to stifle press freedom. ...2 days ago
John Tamihere to make a comeback? (NZ Herald today)
No thanks.
Thoughts?
Agreed. No thanks.
What, on the Conservative list?
Exactly Felix. Labour will lose my vote, and that of many other women, if he pops up anywhere on the Labour list.
Labour lost my vote long ago and I don’t think it’s possible they’ll ever get it back.
perhaps a bit more implied bene bashing will make you feel warmer towards the Red Flag?
It’s more than implied. And what’s the red flag got to do with it? It’s about caring and being inclusive, something Labour lies about still valuing. Just listen to the way Ardern talks about the poor. It’s all about “them”, “they” and “their”. She’s as bad as fucking Bennett.
On an MP’s salary it’d be grossly hypocritical to refer to “we” or “us” when discussing poverty …
The two ain’t mutually exclusive. How about talking about people? The way Bennett and Ardern refer to beneficiaries and low income earners (beneficiaries especially) as “them” and “they” is just repulsive, as if somehow people with a bit of cash or luck are in some way inferior to them.
I don’t really agree. The appropriate socialist concept (not sure if it is found in feminist identity politics) is that of solidarity.
On the union picket line the shift supervisor on $75,000 pa stands right next to the apprentice starting at $27,000.
Nothing hypocritical about that. From a socialist perspective, that is.
Solidarity, sure, but the objection Mary has is to Ardern saying “They are living in cold houses with no food to eat” – and the alternative, “We live in cold houses with no food to eat” sounds either completely disingenuous or incredibly patronising.
Expressing solidarity – “I am here to stand with people who live in cold houses with no food to eat” – isn’t the same thing.
I thought Ardern actually did a really good job around election time when she did that TV spot going back to Murupara and saying “This is the neighbourhood I grew up in, and while I don’t live here now it’s obviously affected my beliefs and means I do actually understand poverty”. Solidarity without co-opting.
OK. Expressing solidarity authentically does take a little bit more than doing a find and replace of “they” with “we”. I’m hoping to see it.
Of course it is, but that’s not the point, CV. The point is Mary has issues with Jacinda Ardern and Paula Bennett – two women on damn good pay – using the third person plural to refer to other people. I’m only trying to explain how using the first person plural would not be an improvement.
“Solidarity, sure, but the objection Mary has is to Ardern saying “They are living in cold houses with no food to eat” – and the alternative, “We live in cold houses with no food to eat” sounds either completely disingenuous or incredibly patronising.”
The comparison you make is wrong. There is no requirement for the speaker to align themselves with the subject in the way you’re suggesting by saying “We live in cold houses with no food to eat”, in the same way it’s not necessary to say “They are living in cold houses with no food to eat”. The answer, in relation to this particular example, is simply to say “People are living in cold houses with no food to eat”. You’re making things unnecessarily complicated.
People
You’re making things unnecessarily complicated.
Rubbish, Mary. You are. Sure, for one-sentence examples “people” works fine … but for extended speeches?
“People are poor and this means people can’t feed people’s children or keep people’s houses warm in winter. We want to support people so people can get jobs and people’s children don’t go to school hungry.”
Yes, how very compelling.
Better a poor man whose walk is blameless
than a rich man whose ways are perverse.
-Pr 28:6
Smooth dude 🙂
WTF? Suddenly using ‘they’ to describe a group of people to which you are not a member is offensive? Unless you’re a beneficiary yourself using ‘we’ and ‘us’ to refer to beneficiaries is nothing but a creepy affectation.
helpful teachers Viper
*sigh* – Waitakere man?
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10837809
And this is not doing anything to warm me to the current Labour leader:
And there’s this (who is not apparently in line for a change of shadow job?):
Little has done some good things re his ACC spokesman role, though the Greens have often been sharper at getting points out there.
No way and no how! Besides the Waitakere Labour Party would revolt. They are determined that Carmel Sepuloni should have another go. She was a whisker from winning last time and with a slightly less antagonistic Green campaign would have won.
She ran a far better campaign than I’d expected when she stood for selection. By the election she’d quite evidently had worked up a pretty good team (always a good sign). I can’t see Tamihere being able to do anything similar.
Running against a sitting minister is always a hard slog. They get themselves entrenched if they don’t manage to personally screw up. Despite the slow descent of National, it is still going to be a hard slog to wrinkle Bennett out of that seat (depending on where the boundaries end up after the census).
Sepuloni can almost certainly do it. Tamihere is more likely to fall over his tongue.
Edit: ouch – nasty wee network drop then from orcon…
Agree about the possible boundary change. It could be with the loss of South Island population and Auckland growth and intensification that Mt Albert and New Lynn will move towards Downtown Auckland and New Lynn could lose the Titirangi Whatipu strip to Waitakere. There could then be a new urban seat out west and Waitakere could become more rural and less Labour friendly.
Carmel would be better off going for the new urban seat.
No way and no how! Besides the Waitakere Labour Party would revolt. They are determined that Carmel Sepuloni should have another go. She was a whisker from winning last time and with a slightly less antagonistic Green campaign would have won.
Is the left willing to talk about accommodations yet?
You would have to ask the greens!
It takes two to tango 😉
And, sorry micky, it’s never been the Greens who were unwilling to tango, as the seemingly eternal Ministerships of Peter Dunne and Winston Peters demonstrate.
Carmel lost to arguably the most revolting Nat there is. Bennett is a bully, she is vindictive, she is unleashing hell on the most vulnerable in society and she is proud of it all. She stands for everything that there is to despise in the National Party.
And guess what. She beat Carmel.
I am sorry but she shouldn’t get a second chance. To lose Waitakere to one of the most hard right politiciains there is, is a clear message that Carmel is the wrong person to be standing.
This should be a comfortable Labour seat. JT is not the man but surely someone better than Carmel can do the job.
Sorry EiE. I know the area very well. It is anything but a safe labour seat and the result was a testimonial to the local party’s efforts and Carmel’s qualities.
The Waitakere Labour Party are “revolting” now……
ummm No, The National MP for Waitakere is revolting though.
Fuck no.
John Tamihere… You’ve got to be kidding me?
Letting an animal abusing, homophobic, tax dodging drunk driver represent Labour at the next election is about as dumb as it gets. After Tamihere took leave when the dishonest financial dealings in the Waipareira Trust came to light, he badly insulted a number of Labour MP’s… Some of them still work within the Labour party and I doubt it’s all just water under the bridge.
If Carmel Sepuloni isn’t available, what about Ewen Gilmour? At least we’d be laughing with and not at him.
🙂
Just when you thought it was safe….
JT’s views on the provision of welfare, health and education services are pretty much aligned to National and ACT. His support of charter schools and his speech about welfare at the Knowledge Wave conference back in 01′ (remember that talkfest?), are exhibit A and B in that regard – he says he is opposed to dependency, but in reality, he wants to make the poor dependent on him.
He has a big bee in his bonnet about WFF, preferring tax cuts instead, even though that a tax cut would be far less than a WFF payment (he also joined the tax cut chorus).
He hates unions and supports the rollback of workers protections
He hate gays (not too sure why he has such an issue with people doing things in their own bedroom).
He supports private prisons and asset sales.
Not too sure why he would join Labour again?
Perhaps he should join National? He was linked to them a few years ago, plus they dont actually hate brown people anymore, just those who arent rich, or who refuse to join in the keeping up the the Jones’s arms race.
Perhaps the Maori Party is a better fit for him?
All of which makes me think this is just Tamihere’s imagination getting the better of him… With embellishments by the media in order to create a story.
That’s true of all people hungry for power. They say that they want to reduce peoples dependency upon the government but hide the fact that they want to make as many people as possible dependent upon them.
While he was standing
In prayer in the chamber,
The angels called unto him:
“Allah doth give thee
Glad tidings of Yahya`
Witnessing the truth
Of a word from Allah, and (be
Besides) noble, chaste,
And a prophet
Of the (goodly) company
Of the righteous”
Surah 3: 39
I will be a cold day in hell before Tamhere is allowed back into the Labour Party
He would make a fantastic candidate by joining other political rejects in an appropriate political party that Brash and Banks would know very well.
Key just cracked on TV3, under gentle questioning from Rachel Smalley on illegal Spying.
He is feeling the heat of the falling polls.
Yep and when you snap at her she bites LOL. and at the end of the one missing bit was the Thank you it was just travel safe…. in other words why did you waste our time with this shite?
Thanks for the tip. Will try to catch it on plus1.
Is there a link?
Watching now on plus1 – interesting use of split screen.
Is this it:
http://www.3news.co.nz/TVShows/Firstline.aspx
http://www.3news.co.nz/Dotcoms-lawyer-Opposition-question-Keys-Hollywood-trip/tabid/1607/articleID/271149/Default.aspx
I didn’t really see Key “crack”. He just hit back quite hard, running the line that it would be wrong for him to tell the GCSB who to investigate – with a straight face making a claim for democratic leadership – is why he doesn’t need to know everything GCSB is doing before they do it.
Not a snap really. Rachel asked him if he thought that they should be “keeping him in the loop.” Mr Key twisted that to was she/they somehow recommending a “police state” and “should a PM be deciding who to prosecute or not prosecute.” Rubbish Mr Key. We think that it would be necessary for a PM to be “kept in the loop” by getting regular updates especially over issues that affect the international influences on NZ.
To not be in the loop is a dereliction of duty.
To not be in the loop is a dereliction of duty.
Exactly. Thanks for the links, Karol. Key was certainly not comfortable in that interview – but obviously looking forward to his visit with the Hollywood big boys. His relief at the end of the interview was laughable – seemed to think he had nailed it with his spin. Don’t think so.
there was a momentray bit from key where he almost snapped – the whole “NO!, if you have me on your show you have to hear me out” bit – never mind the he was interupting all over the place
interestingly – listening to the non-vocal responses from smalley reveals a lot
Are you talking about this film?
My word, I saw a very serious ‘banker’ advertisement on TV last night, the only inspiration I could draw from it was that maybe, just maybe banks are finally ‘getting’ the feeling of unrest at the ideals of capitalism around the world, surely why else would they produce such filthy propaganda.
Their angle is, the problem is not the money, but how the money is used (and it looks like individual money) I will have to see it again to understand its intent better. Though was rather reminded of the way in which women make men feel better about the size of their small penis by saying “its not about the size, its about how you use it” – the old quantity vs quality thang 🙂
Yeah. This is one to keep an eye on. Also I think BNZ senior management and their advertising firm have jointly lost the plot.
This. The ad is unbelievably strange.
Weird. But weirder is what was or is the intent of the ad? Have they lost the plot? Or have they done something incredibly stupid, and are going to have to own up about it.
The ad campaign would have been approved in Oz. Who owns the BNZ nowadays? Commonwealth Bank of Oz?
The ad looks like it’s been made in Oz too.
National Australia Bank actually.
The Commonwealth owns ASB.
Not that it matters very much.
Cheers.
They have been having ‘teasers’ for it, and when I saw them I thought it was about a coming attraction film! It looked interesting – now I am very disappointed.
The ad in itself is a tease. It will no doubt lead into a range of more detailed ‘discussion’ ads on subjects, if it follows the ad man play book.
They completely excuse the fact that it is about money, how you get the money, what it does to a person in the process of the getting and that playing at being “good” afterwards is just a band aid for a gusher of a social wound. In the past, money was often considered an avoidable social blight, it’s just that no one bothers to look at any history that isn’t white, doesn’t excuse the claims of the status quo and that would force people to face the reality they’ve created.
Rule #1 of Modern Life: If it’s on TV, it’s bollocks.
QFT
Although I think I’d go for If it’s in the MSM, it’s bollocks
Not just non-white people have regarding the getting (and spending) of money as an ‘avoidable social blight’. My Scots forebears felt the same way, or so my mother (the last of them) often said.
People are waking up to how banking operates with films such as Money Masters and Zeitgeist and websites such as http://www.positivemoney.org.nz/ to show the complete corruption of the present system. And then there’s Steve Keen and other heterodox economists starting to make an inroad into the MSM as neo-liberal economics shows that it’s complete bollocks.
Given all of that the banksters really do have to try to head off all the negative press that they’re getting. Hopefully, their propaganda will just help convince people that they’re lying.
“Damn this dry shingle country”,
Old Jack the swagger cried-
“The rutting hare beneath; above
the brown hawk in his pride;
And not one green gooseberry bush
To suck and lay beside.
-J.K.B.
“reminded of the way in which women make men feel better about the size of their small penis by saying “its not about the size, its about how you use it” – the old quantity vs quality thang ”
Or when a woman asks “Does my bum look too big in this?”
And a man will make her feel better about herself by replying with the white lie “Of course not honey, you look great!”. 🙂
Is this it?
Geez that’s a bit sad….I thought it was for pokerstars or whatever as I never hung in till the end to see NAB’s NZ division’s logo….I normally mute them anyway.
Never mind their gargantuan profits it’s really your fault, this just shows how disconnected and gullible they are as the agency pitch worked but it’s far from alone. I’m mean these clowns thought the pig’s were top drawer….banks & pigs, oh dear did they think kiddies all have piggy banks, they have ToyStory/madagascar/Ice Age etc etc now.
The new countdown ad is a bit sad also.
Then there’s telecom and the no sex for the AB’s campaign…..the old boyngirl network is just sooo not connected with reality,.
Tamihere to rejoin Labour?
Surely this is just a vicious lie… or could the Labour Leadership really be that stupid?
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10837809
I would prefer to think it is a rumour (although I understand he has rejoined) and that the party is far too bright to even think about allowing Tamihere another run at Parliament.
Agreed. He is an silly loose cannon with half-formed opinions and a bad habit of being incredibly sloppy in his work. Not to mention just plain stupid – who would be daft enough to do an meeting with a live mike on the table….. Mmmm. Key and Banks. Ok, lets rephrase this – to do this with that doyen of journalist integrity and balance – Ian Wishart.
But if you think about it. The idiots in Wellington are probably unaware of how much of a useless pillock he is. After all they aren’t the ones looking at the quite apparent inability to do any serious campaigning in Auckland. He couldn’t get a working campaign team around him at any stage in the past – why do they expect him to do so now?
But the beltway idiots do have this tendency to get suckered into anyone with the gift of the gab.
beltway idiots do have this tendency to get suckered into anyone with the gift of the gab
too true
And those without it. Do I have to say who that could possibly be?
From what I’ve seen, the Labour leadership really could be that stupid.
Quack Quack
Anyone else having issues with gravatar not working here? It hasn’t been working for me since last night, but it’s working on other sites 🙁
Showing up on my browsers ok. That is odd – we don’t even store those, they come directly from gravator.com. I suppose that they could be being cached at cloudflare.com, but then I’d expect the problem to show on my browsers.
I’ve had it happen a couple of times but a refresh (ctrl-f5) brings them back.
Hmmn, they’re working in google Chrome okay. Could be an update to the firefox adblock plugin that’s messed things up…
[edit] And for some reason gravatar.com was in the adblock list /puzzled look
Nope working fine here FF on win 7 And IE9.
First time ive seen TS in all ‘win’ and it looks all weird, probably just me as I hate Internet Exploder. It took me 3 attempts to get it to TS on a first run I get a dumb window asking if I want to set it up with standard options Yeah right. Or wait, Wait. Then I paste the link into the address bar only to have fucking Bing pop up, with a window of options NON of which had TS on it Bloody rubbish. 3rd attempt it finally brought up TS but it just looked Odd.
And before I am asked Yes I use Ad Block and No Script Both of which are disabled for this site and ONLY this one.
[lprent: The JQuery is due to get removed on the next round of updates. But there is always going to be some javascript in here ]
Good article from George Monbiot on the subversion of democracy by the rich. A couple of obvious parallels here in NZ.
It is a good article and one we should be taking seriously. Business interests really have been working to subvert democracy and they are winning in that regard. It’s why Shearer gets up to beneficiary bashing rather than laying the blame for our present problems where they lay – with business and the rich.
A clarification I would make. Many SMEs are split 50/50 between Labour and National. The big corporates and banks all swing just one way however.
I think Draco T Bastard is a die hard Marxist.
Wouldn’t it be funny if Draco and QofT got to run Labour’s next election campaign.
Shearer delivering speeches about “destroying the patriarchy and liberating Wymmin and Herstory” and “annihilating Capitalism and slaughtering the capitalist pigs, ushering in a Socialist utopia and the End of History!”
I’m sure the NZ public would lap it up.
lol
“I think Draco T Bastard is a die hard Marxist.”
He is more one of the Zeitgeist Movement/Venus Project fanboys.
P.S. “the End of History” was promulgated by Francis Fukuyama who was/is a neocon
Should ban that Pete George for life M8!
“P.S. “the End of History” was promulgated by Francis Fukuyama who was/is a neocon”
Actually he borrowed it from Marx’s Dialectical Materialism. He was being witty – the End of History was suppose to be a Socialist Utopia. But in the 1990s Communism was dead and buried and the neocons were at the height of their powers – thus this was a revised End of History.
Anyway 10 years later or so, Fukuyama was back peddling like crazy when the Yank neocons crashed and burned in Iraq.
Jah, see my comments below
Those who dispute about the Signs of Allah
Without any authority (of their own)
Bestowed upon them-there is
Nothing in their breasts
Surah 40.56
I haven’t seen you show any capability of thought.
…die hard Marxist
Says more about your lack of political acumen and general level of stupidity than anything else.
KP’s use of Marxist is such broad application is no less different from others here use of ‘Tory’ as a blanket term to label anyone who disagrees with their own bug-bears.
You might have a point, if KP hadn’t gone on to mention “annihilating Capitalism and slaughtering the capitalist pigs, ushering in a Socialist utopia and the End of History!”.
Personally I reckon the use of the neocon term just shows what a moron KP is, either confusing it with the Communist “Synthesis” or simply playing “insert random big word here to sound smart”.
The eradication of capitalism and execution of holders of capital are specific objectives that are not what one would term “moderate” socialist objectives.
‘End of History’ isn’t a neocon term.
A (former) neocon invested it but it relates to liberal, free market, democracies as opposed to neo-conservatism which is more than the liberal free market as espoused by Fukuyama.
Interestingly though “End of History” was used by Marx in the sense of the final point in mans socio/political development.
So whether KP was right in his use is debatable depending on context.
I think you’ll find it was Hegel that coined the phrase and that Marx updated it. And there is no correlation between the use of Tory and the use of Marxist.
Tory refers to supporters of mainstream conservative politics, specifically in the UK and more generally in other commonwealth countries. It’s not a perjorative term per se and it’s representative of quite a broad group, whereas Marxist means a subsect of the left, and one not normally associated with the western parliamentary system. The left equivalant of Tory is probably the mildly derogative socialist, at least in the UK, though most labour parties these days of course prefer Social Democrat.
No surprise Kiwi Prometheus doesn’t get it though … KP’s nuts.
Yes, I was incorrect in the invention but Fukuyama definitely gave the term a reinvention in this modern era.
Tory is not a pejorative term per se however people use it frequently on The Standard in a pejorative and blanket sense which isn’t applicable to every disagreement.
Personally I reckon the use of the neocon term just shows what a moron KP is, either confusing it with the Communist “Synthesis” or simply playing “insert random big word here to sound smart”.
End Of History:
Hegel’s Dialectical Idealism -> Marx’s Dialectical Materialism -> Fukuyama’s neoliberal witticism.
Got it, moron?
“confusing it with the Communist “Synthesis””
You are confused. Let me help you:
Thesis + Antithesis = Synthesis —> which contains another contradiction —> Thesis + Antithesis = Synthesis —> which contains another contradiction, and so on and so on and so till you get to the final Synthesis with no contradiction = End of History
Comes down through Hegel and his mystical inclinations to Marx. Synthesis is not ‘Communist’ its an element in a Philosophical argument.
“simply playing “insert random big word here to sound smart”.”
Anytime you want to argue Philosophy let me know.
Yeah fair cop dude.
Pity it’s an aberration rather than your usual standard of fucktardedness. Although I’m not exactly sure where dtb stands on execution of the capitalist class.
Stretch a bow to the very full,
And you wish you had stopped in time;
Temper a sword-edge to its very sharpest,
And you will find it soon grows dull.
When bronze and jade fill your hall
It can no longer be guarded.
Wealth and place breed insolence
That brings ruin in its train.
When your work is done, then withdraw!
Such is Heaven’s Way (as opposed to the way of man)
Chapter 9
yeah, fair cop on that one, too 🙂
I didn’t know Draco was known for posting about “wymmin” and “herstory”.
I’ve stamped on K_P’s bigotry a time or two so he’s obviously decided that that puts me in with the RadFem Man haters.
What bigotry is that?
I stamped on the Feminist gender bigotry.
[citation needed]
In NZ the ‘Centre for Independent Studies’ (?) and the Business Round Table which was set up by arch-neoliberal Douglas Myers have the same function. They have articles in the MSM and probably tell John Key exactly what to do and when.
Right wing much better funded and more tightly organised and institutionally supported than the Left.
So of course they are winning. The only way for Labour to win is to be friendlier towards them and their ideas. I am glad that the beltway realise this.
Hey MickeySavage. Re yesterdays discussion on Open Mike around Helen Clark/Childfree Vs.Childless: Absolutely no need to apologise. I just wanted to point out the terminology, thats all.
I wasn’t being uppity towards you at all. I always like what you have to say.
Eric John Ernest Hobsbawm
9/7/1917 -1/10/2012
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Hobsbawm
I remember having Age of Extremes as the textbook for my twentieth century history paper in 1997. He wrote very well.
Crikey I missed that. Incredibly sad.
To me he was like the socialist version of Edward Gibbons’ The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire – a guy who presumed to pattern history.
Or like a really lithe and magisterial version of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist.
He was the history version of Habermas for me – of a generation when the idea of being Left meant being able to imagine and enable the overturning fo the entire world.
Hobbsbawm for me recounted all the different epochs in recent history in which overturning the worst of the world was possible.
Certainly not a revolutionary. But really seenig the world my way, and having th time and devotion to really map the whole thing out as if the world could both be redeemed and made sense of at once.
Damn that makes me sad. I will drink to his memory tonight, from the top of Mt Eden, and survey the City as the supreme work of man, and rail against it all.
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
-Thomas
( ‘cos i’m being followed by a moonshadow…moonshadow..moonshadow)
That is a big loss, a true thinker.
Thanks for that Joe.
🙁
Seen this?
(Had a banner advertising the National Day of Action outside Avondale Market on Sunday 30 September 2012, and banners keeping the pressure on dodgy John Banks and shonky John Key 🙂
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.4420436667353.184705.1182019755&type=1
Press Statement: National Day of Action Against Welfare Reforms, 5th October 2012,
By Janet Robin, President, Waitemata Unite.
“The Waitemata Branch of the Unite Union supports the National Day of Action Against the Welfare Reforms this Friday October 5th.”
“We will be joining the protests at 12 noon at Henderson Square,
1pm at WINZ Henderson (36 Sel Peacock Drive) , and 2.30pm at Paula Bennett’s Office
(429 Great North Rd).”
“ We are appalled at the cruel, punitive, discriminatory and short-sighted measures the National Government is taking against poor families, youth, and the sick and disabled! ‘”
“Forcing small children and babies into childcare and their mothers onto the job market is wrong. Parenting is work and single parents are doing the work of two! They raise our future workers and tax -payers. Children are our taonga!” “ Parents must choose whether day care or paid work is right for their family.”
“Taking money from our poorest families is state violence against children.”
“It is not OK for 270,000 New Zealand children to live poverty. Kids are hungry!”
“It’s not OK to control parents by punishing their children.” “It is not OK to make the poor pay for the bankers’ and corporates’ crisis.” “Deliberate impoverishment of children contravenes the United Nation’s Rights of the Child!”
“Taking money from youth stops them being able to manage their own lives; and gives the control to private providers who do not know their needs.”
“Forcing the sick and disabled into work may spread disease, and cause worse illness or even death.”
The real welfare reform needed is to raise all benefits to a living income!” “Discrimination against families on benefits must stop! “Working for Families
Child tax credits and a Universal Child Benefit must be available for all families.”
“We call for full economic and social support for parents, carers, the sick and disabled.”
The government must create jobs; raise the minimum wage, and make tertiary education free! “It needs to build the welfare state not destroy it.”
“It must stop the privatisation of health, education, welfare and water, and return them to the people.”
“We call on workers, students, parents and beneficiaries to unite against these attacks!
Let’s build strong communities, support each other, and create a better society.”
unitewaitemata@gmail.com http://waitemataunite.blogspot.co.nz
8369104 ; 8177470 ; 0272800080
so Kweewee is off to California ostensibly to have meetings with the Movie set.
Wow!
More drivel for the masses.
But I bet he has a secret meeting with someone in the US top secret establishment and gets hauled over the coals for being a monkey.
Helen Kelly talks about it very sensibly here:
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/checkpoint/audio/2534217/ctu-fears-more-deals-to-undermine-labour-laws-with-key-visit
Waitakere Man.
Had to go back to Bowalley Road to find the definition of that shadow construct. My conclusion is that he doesn’t exist in the form Chris trotter intended; his “woman” doesn’t either. Don’t know any women from the west of my age that would be attracted to John Key’s “…boyish charm…”. Does Chris know any people who live out West? In 2008, Waitakere Man would have to have been between the ages of 50 and 200 to carry the full wieght of the projection, and that would be a fairly small demographic with an awful lot of power if Labour reckon it was “him” who ended the Clark regime.
I wasted almost 6 hours untangling the boogy man. Found some interesting things, but nothing new. Of the people I knew, I could construct a Waitakere Man from fragments, but no one was him in and of themselves. No one mentioned anything using the words PC Bullshit or welfare bludger. Since the culture was watered down rural, everything was one side or the other, no need for fancy names; it was a simple nod or look, a refusal to help or a making of plans to be elsewhere; education was good, though free thinking was something you did in private.
That’s the trouble with projections and scapegoating, they’re simplified distortions. And why the West? The place has been officially scapegoated since at least the late eighties, when The Herald had a full page article on the definition of The Westie: Black clothing, angry dog, drives a Holden. What The Herald forgot, is that at that time, those people were a minority who had money. I was just a kid wearing free second hand clothes. Outrageous Fortune was a parody of a parody of a parody. But “westies” aren’t the reason the West is scapegoated. You have to go back further than that. The place has a nasty history, all prettied over with lies and inherited privilege. The thing is, that while the West has a past, there are numerous places in NZ that still live a present just like the West’s past and that’s an embarrasment not many can bear cold turkey. My shadow man lives on the North Shore; white, arrogant from over education, ignorant about life outside narrow social norms, concieted, a little narcisstic. I never knew him as a complete person, just clashed with some of his traits. I’m just about over him, but it’s taken several years.
So hell, I’m not going to tell you that Waitakere Man doesn’t exist if you need to kick him to cover NZ’s collective guilt. Wouldn’t want you to go into personal meltdown unnecesarily. As far as things go, he’s the least weep-worthy. He isn’t a woman, or gay, or an immigrant, or a man on his roof painting or cleaning, or a Maori, or an Afro/Native American or an Australian aborigine. He is mightily kick worthy. He’s the ultimate white man:
Stripped forests, dammed streams and poisoned rivers
Starved at least one tribe at the base of the Waitakere’s
appropriated land for his kind; took money for land that didn’t exist
abused his women and children with booze and patriarcy
enslaved himself and fellows for money
The list goes on and on. It’s not the done that’s makes Waitakere man so kick-worthy. It’s that he still lives in us all. It looked to me like Chris Trotter was attempting the difficult and dangerous task of trying to embrace the shadow man in himself – and crossing the line from careful observation into sympathy – when he said in 2009 that when the music stops the Waitakere Man should not be left standing, and later, that certain people couldn’t move on because they hated their own kind. Maybe he even highlighted the shadow man in the Left. Right now, we have a man leading Labour who is manipulating the shadow the Left won’t embrace.
So you’re feminist, but damn it, you’re middle class and white.
So you’re an indigenous activist, but your family is well placed.
So you’re a union leader, but earning much more than minimum wage.
So you believe in welfare, but only for the deserving, you’ll never need it yourself.
Yeah I can understand the tension of contradictions. I can’t tell you how to solve your problems, but I won’t hate who you tell me to hate and I’m pretty sure shifting the blame to phantoms is counterproductive.
While there is a big gap between saying the jig is up, honestly healing the scars of the past and reaching a future transition, creating new shadow players for our political landscape is a waste of time. We have the benefit bludger, we have the Waitakere Man, we have all sorts of drama triangles going on and none of it is leading anywhere remotely useful. We can’t chop bits from ourselves and banish them from the village as a scapegoat, or float them out to sea or down a river in a reed basket. Calling things as they, as opposed to constructing myths, exposes our part in it and if we’re awake, we might discover something of what all of us need.
I was born out West, lived and worked there till I was 22. I’m your evil Man, consumed with the “…ingrained mysogyny and cultural diffidence…” Chris says I am. Once apon a time I even had a trade. Couldn’t hold onto my stuff like Chris reckons, though, life is too complex for such simplicities. My family lived on a land lot that was once appropriated land. I’m white, privileged in the way white people are, no matter how poor and ruined they get. Before that my grandmother escaped the violence and drunken womanising of my great grandfather, she passed the problem to her daughter, she passed it to my Father, he passed it to me. I’ve done and been all kinds of things, I’ve seen enough of my own darkness to terrify myself. Which part, which place, which evil do you want me to atone for? Which role do you want me to play, to persecute another person for my wrongs? Will your projection fit me? What you going to do about it? Isn’t this fun, this study in dancing from victim to rescuer to persecutor? Wake the hell up, people.
If you want scapegoats to end, finish with your own first. Then we can move on to politics.
This is a frakkin’ feast of a post in its own right. Get it to the top of The Standard mate.
Great stuff Uturn. Made the day worthwhile. Cheers!
Good description fellow westie.
Once a westie always a westie!
I also thought Chris was wrong and Carmel Sepuloni went within a whisker of proving this.
I commented at the time that I thought there are at least eight different Waitakere tribes. Cutting and pasting …
There is a good number of traditional pacifica and the children for who the traditional island way is less and less attractive.There is the green tribe, Labour and Green activists who are deeply concerned about environmental issues and whose activity and contribution to Labour and the Greens is a disproportionate one. They are incensed at this Government, at its desire to mine conservation areas, and at the attack it has made on the protection of the Waitakere Ranges heritage area.There is the traditional tribe, working class homeowners who are getting on in age and who generally stick to Labour. Some of them were persuaded by National’s “Labour lite”campaign of 2008 to vote for Key but many of them are now scratching their heads about how they could have been persuaded to do so.There is the superior tribe. They always believe they are better than the rest and think that voting National shows their superiority. It takes a lot to change them.There is the beneficiary tribe. It is often hard to get them to vote because they are trying to cope with many problems but if threatened they will do so. They will not vote for a benefit basher.There is the geriatric tribe. They used to be predictable in the way they voted but tend to be persuaded by self interest. Stephen Joyce’s threat to the gold card will not have gone done well with them.There is the ethnic tribe, primarily Chinese and Indian who network well and who respond to concepts of equality and fairness. They were sucked in last time by Law and Order issues but things have got worse under this Government and I suspect they are regretting their last choice.And there is the self employed tribe, the “Waitakere tribe” that Trotter talked about. They believe in fairness.
To win Waitakere you need to dominate about 6 tribes. But not all of them.
Well put, Mu=icky & Uturn. I have thought that the Henderson area, and wider Waitaks, is pretty diverse….. and I don’t think I know any of Trotters “Waitakere Men”.
Awesome stuff UTurn.
I’ve always found CT to be a tame ‘lefty’ trotted out to show the frogs that the MSM have ‘balance’ and yet another priviledged out of touch soul ranting on so the presenter muppets can nod sagely at his musings as if it’s food for thought .
U- 🙂 (the disciple he loved)
M- 🙂
Uturn.
onya m8.
now how about something on the complete lack of courage by Len Brown and his council when it comes to standing up to the malfeasance of Rodney Hide and the crew trying to steal POAL off the people of Auckland.
LB is too busy seeking to close down libararies…
But Saudi-based news organisation Al Arabiya says it has been given documents which show the fire was intentional and Syria’s Assad regime was behind it.
The whole article is so poorly written, of course there will be no official report released, its obviously a total sham, and rumour as eluded too in the above extract – BS all the way!
Let’s just clear this up, we have Syria “responsible” for this fire, and Iran responsible for the DoS “attacks on the banking systems (helps with the executive order to regulate the internet too, you know the one which would not pass through any level, even in the corrupted houses in America)…All rather convenient isn’t it!
Carry on!
And, as if I have a crystal ball of some sort, this from today’s propaganda desk…
White House targeted in cyber attack
It’s all getting far too transparent/predictable these days…
To judge by the way they keep hammering away at it, 3 News are very excited about the allegation and believe it all the way.
Allergy-free milk for children is a step closer after New Zealand scientists made a world-first breakthrough using a genetically-modified cloned cow.
So we have modified cows then – Oh look, just like in China – http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/agriculture/geneticmodification/8423536/Genetically-modified-cows-produce-human-milk.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/9335762/Cows-genetically-modified-to-produce-healthier-milk.html
Argh I see, you come up with a GE situation which will pitt people against eachother (especially those with young children, so you get it really emotional), and you get them to scrap it out in the hope that this will open up our laws to open slather GE/GMO
Why are so many people allergic to milk now compared to the past? How about we look at prevention rather than cure?
Indeed Weka, that is certainly the question, although a cure this is not. Its the advancement of the unnatural over the natural, while trying to sell it to people as “progress”
Wonder who stands to gain the most from the “band-aides”
Call me cynical, but gee let’s use child health as a reason to promote a risky, dangerous use of science in order to make shit loads of money.
As I mentioned above Weka, this will serve multiple functions for the “stakeholders”, inevitably to not only make a profit, but to control chunks of the agri-farming industry.
But finding an issue which could potentially become devisive is crucial, and very little would be more divisive than combining childrens health, and GMO products.
If you are against the use of “chemical milk”, then you are against “my child”, but with our current state of non GMO labelling, it would seem that being for “chemical milk”, potentially means that you are putting your childs allergies, ahead of not only other peoples children, but also against adults as well….
As DTB noted – Stop drinking cows milk, its not designed for humans anyway!
Yeah its feeling like we been in this game too long and seen the same thing too many times.
It’s probably just more known about now than in the past.
That’s easy – don’t drink cow milk.
“It’s probably just more known about now than in the past”
You think a hundred years ago people weren’t capable of noticing bad effects in their body from eating a certain food?
More likely is that environmental factors have changed. In no particular order of relevance – pasteurisation and homogenisation of milk, increase in multiple assaults to the immune system (including from food allergens), a shift to high carb diets, changes in the breed of cows being used for dairy, changes in the way that milk is drunk and eaten, increasing multigenerational susceptibility to all those things etc.
The human gut has hardly had any time to adapt to cows milk. Cows havent been used as domestic farm animals for more than a few thousand years.
And as weka suggests, most people who grew up drinking milk on farms a couple of decades ago find the store bought milk today a complete imitation.
/sigh
Actually, water buffalo, yak, horse, cow, sheep and goats milks has been used long enough in Europe, ME, Russia-Central Asia, India and Africa that there’s very high penetration of alleles that allow for lactose digestion. Particularly within cultures that depended heavily on cattle. And domestication of some of those milk producing species actually dates back to the early neolithic with the emergence of agricultural cultures.
i.e. teh wiki is your friend, check first if unsure instead of looking foolish by saying ignorant stuff.
And on allergic reactions – there’s been a rise in allergies for some time, part of it is down to environmental factors, such as healthier environments and less parasites (hygiene hypothesis). Otherwise the spread of health service availability, has made allergies more visible and survivable/treatable, and the advent of the petrol motor and refrigeration has made fresh milk a lot more available. Most people before that would get their dairy products as butter and cheeses.
So taking these factors into consideration, milk allergy presentation within modern populations is actually a bit more complex than your argument.
And in this particular case is linked to a protein found only in cows milk, (rather than lactose intolerance) so teh hygiene hypothesis probably comes into play here.
Personal taste too, grass passed through a cows multiple stomachs and digestive juices does not do it for me as a beverage.
One theory says that homogenisation alters the proteins and this is what causes problems in the gut. Another theory says that pasteurisation kills the beneficial microbes as well as the pathogenic ones (and possibly changes the proteins) and this also causes problems in the gut. People with problems who drink raw milk instead often report an improvement in their health, sometimes a marked improvement or complete remission of symptoms.
Milk is for calves not humans. Surely this GE rubbish will put overseas people off buying New Zealand products, many still believe the myth that we are clean and green.
I’ve never really understood the milk is for calves not humans argument. We might as well say that eating beef isn’t for humans. Or mutton, or any meat that we couldn’t kill and eat when we were still living in the trees. In fact, if we all came from near the equator originally, why not say we should only be eating tropical food?
A Fonterra rep may appear soon! I just find cow milk a revolting product.
Humans are omnivores that these days have a lot of choices from industrial food production. If city dwellers had to slaughter, gut and butcher a beast to get their meat rather than buy it on a styrofoam tray there would be way more vegetarians.
There is enough research to say that eating meat isnt for humans. Surely we have evolved to a stage where we can admit there is no justification for the cruelty involved in the killing of animals. It is just not necessary. It is possible to find delicious vegetarian food to take the place of cruelly obtained meat and dairy.
belladonna, that’s a moral argument (and one that is easily refuted if you really want to go there) not a biological one. Humans have been eating meat and milk for tens of thousands of years and been healthy with it for the most part.
B- Well, that’s my vision of hell. Next you’ll suggest I live without hard liquor and tobacco, too.
It is possible to find delicious vegetarian food to take the place of cruelly obtained meat and dairy.
[citation needed]
Sorry, belladonna. I’ve often considered veg*nism in the past, and it just ain’t the thing for me. Bacon and eggs 4 lyfe.
@Tiger
I like my grass feed meat 😛
And be perfectly fine with how it’s killed.
@belladona
[Citation Needed]
While we can survive off veges, fundamentally meats are very efficient and easy to digest (once cooked/cured/smoked) source of protein, which is why the genus Homo learnt to exploit wild sources and eventually work out how to farm animals for meat. And unfortunately we’re also hardwired to love the taste, so it will probably take a global disaster or price issues to make us less dependant on it.
And both don’t have a lot of evidence 😛
Of the clinically significant type, with teh controls/deep info stuff to get a better picture so we don’t get false positives/negatives.
Also, mostly the proteins are denatured, in the particular case of β-Lactoglobulin however, both before and after pasteurisation it seems to trigger an immune system response. So pasteurisation probably isn’t to blame.
Anyhow, the heat treatment thing case further implications vis human diets due to the fact we tend to cook _everything_ we can get our hands on. Which denatures proteins, which are then ripped apart in the stomach via proteases (protein digesting enzymes). So working out if pasteurisation is the causative factor is actually kind of “complex” /cough
Annoyingly complex.
How about homogenisation (which is the main theory about protein change)?
And how do you account for the numbers of people who claim their health improves on switching from pasteurised to raw (unhomogenised) milk?
btw, pasteurisation and cooking are not the same thing. And you can cook foods in quite different ways and render them more or less digestible.
Are the proteins actually changed? Or is it a simple matter of the tiny fat particles being able to penetrate the gut wall directly, taking undigested dairy proteins and other matter into the body for the immune system to react against?
Generally though food temps get at or above 100 degrees (bar slow cooking, which carries with it certain risks) which for all but proteins with a large number of disulfide bonds, pretty much denatures proteins fully.
As for the raw milk thing, to work out what’s going on we’d need to see a clinical trial or at least full reporting which takes into account null results in order to see if there’s any thing actually going on. i.e. is it merely the placebo effect or something more significant?
And a little more detail: the immune system usually recognises only small-ish polymers sequences, so usually we can design vaccines using only a relatively small protein sequence (depending on protein’s 3d structure) or merely a single protein. However, given the 3d structure of proteins + any sugar coatings (polysaccharides) or if they’re a glycoprotein, an antigen (thing that triggers immune response) may actually comprise a small area of the 3d structure. Rather than a linear protein sequence.
Which is generally disrupted by pasteurisation and cooking 😛
@CV – one word “bile” 😛
i.e. that stuff that breaks apart fat and oil globules during digestion so gut bacteria can break up the fats and proteases get at any proteins.
And antibodies are found outside of cells 😛
derp (4 hours or less of sleep here) so with milk allergies, what’s generally happening is antibody recognition during ingestion and digestion of dairy products of short protein sequences that happens with both raw and pasteurised milk. And yes, it does happen with raw milk, because that’s what you purify certain milk proteins from for part of allergy testing.
*Sigh*
Did you hear me mention lactose, or did you assume?
Did you see me suggest that what I wrote was the complete explanation, or did you assume?
Are you suggesting that sheep’s milk and yak’s milk and cow’s milk are somehow all equivalent? Or did you assume?
I really tire of academics who think they know shit, but finally when you drill down, it turns out that the shit they know is nothing but a really deep but really narrow shit which can help fuck all people.
🙄
And if you’d bothered thinking, you might have picked up on something I alluded to in there, that was a consequence of the emergence of lactose tolerance in human populations. i.e. there was evolutionary pressures on human populations to exploit available milk sources, which also would have made milk allergies less prevalent. Admittedly I should have made the clearer (I <3 crap sleep) though.
🙄
Then stop using the fruits of it, I hear alt-med will so totes cure all cancers 😎
Funny thing though, vaccines = science, green revolution = science, etc etc, then there’s the whole methodology of science (I tend towards more systems-based approaches), which is fundamentally a very useful set of tools for sanity checking truth claims, and avoiding stupidity (though being human…). So frankly, you appear to be full of shit.
oh fuck, don’t start the vaccine bullshit again 🙂
lolz
Hopefully you know what doesn’t spot it, I haz work tomorrow and chilli’s to get started 😛
“green revolution = science”
The green revolution that bought us pesticide residues (and poor health), land degradation, loss of biodiversity, soil loss etc?
Pesticide residues = lack of knowledge + political stupidity over chemical controls (i.e. no precautionary principle…). Heck, up until the 60’s we still didn’t have a good grasp on cancer causation and were just starting to understand how hormones worked and thus the potential impact of stuff that was chemically similar to hormones.
Land Degradation/Soil loss = poor farming techniques, argicultural scientists have been hammering on it being a problem for decades upon decades, but the costs have never been apparent enough (despite being rather real and expensive) for corporate and small farmers to alter their farming systems to deal with it sadly 🙁 So it’s not so much a failure of the green revolution, but of cultural stupidity.
Loss of biodiversity = again, farming techniques issues, heck until recently biodiversity hasn’t had intrinsic value, so it was usually ignored. Only in the last 2 decades really have we started to nut out empirical costs of biodiversity losses and force the anti-conservation/greenie crowd to see the true costs of their ignorance. Sadly a little too late perhaps 🙁 Though with carbon pricing, we should see greater emphasis on biodiversity as a carbon sink tool.
Anyhow, mainly the green revolution was the application of evolutionary theory to crop breeding, allowing for the emergence of highly fertile crops and ironically involved very primitive genetic modification via mutagens to increase selectable variation. Without this, even the advent of cheap fertilizers probably wouldn’t have avoided global hunger issues* and revolutionised yields and nutrition for many farmers in the developing world. Although the push for monoculture crops is coming back to haunt us, and we will likely see major development of newer crop cultivares via selective breeding and use of better suited farming techniques.
Of course, the annoyance is a lot of the negative issues with the green revolution were predictable, particularly the use of monocultures and pesticide/herbicide resistance via evolutionary theory (tools already in place, Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher did the grunt work vis maths+ stats tools). And I’d have to go a history hunting (not a small project at all and I’m too disabled by depression at present) to understand why this happened. Whether it was a failure to research this stuff or a political/economic issue in which warnings were ignored.
____________________________
*main ones today aren’t so much production limitations, but rather price and distribution, with poverty and political instability + climatic variation and the effects of climate change being presently lesser causes.
Whoops, forgot to add in:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sewall_Wright
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J.B.S._Haldane
Who also provided a lot of the maths and stats tools we still use today for evolutionary bio stuff /me-need-sleeeeeeeeeep
No, I’m thinking that 100 years ago we didn’t have TV, Radio or the internet for it to be as widely published as today.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactose_intolerance
Not following that. Did you mean that the incidence of milk allergy is no greater, but we are just more aware of it?
Yes.
And thanks to loads of insidious corporate advertising, we are (no doubt) drinking vastly more milk and consuming more milk containing products today than 50 years ago.
Damn those corporations! Making me drink all that horrible milk!
They are one clever campaign away from making me drink cooper sulfate.
Always easiest to keep the prisoners who think themselves free.
Kill the cows (and thereby f*#k the greedy shareholders) – preserve the waterways, the ozone layer, the roads and the breastfed babies.
Grow the sheep, fertilise the earth, maximise the breastfeeders – buy cheaper lamb (mmmm, yum)
“Yes”
I go back to my original point then – people were just as capable of understanding when something they ate made them sick before the advent of mass media. If lots of people were getting sick from drinking milk, they would have known about it.
And if it’s only mild so that they don’t actually say anything about it? And it’s not broadcast for everyone to see?
You’re trying to say that nothing has changed even though many things have.
People talked to each other about their health before TV. Books were written on health too. Obviously alot of things have changed, and mass media has a big influence. But it doesn’t follow from that that allergies haven’t increased.
You’ve also got to take into account the hygiene hypothesis too weka 😛
Yes, I am. I’m saying that allergies are increasing, due to environmental changes (including the hygiene issues).
100 Māori words every New Zealander should know
While it all seems like a nice idea some NZer’s are a) not interested in learning any language because b) they are absolutely rubbish at it.
Most managed to learn at least one language though. We should be teaching te reo in schools, starting with pre-school.
I tried and failed with German, Latin and Spanish and remember only a few words of Maori.
Meh, I’m just not one of those people that pick up languages well nor do I have any interest in it.
I was meaning English 😉
I did french, german, and latin – and remember nothing of them. However I am currently literate in at least 30 other current languages – to a coding standard. C++ is always the favourite though. I forget how many I have forgotten (snobol anyone). I seem to have several types of assembler and innumerabe libraries embedded..
Although my written English still needs work.
The only way to learn and remember languages is to use them constantly. IMO, people who say that they aren’t good at languages just aren’t in the right environment to maintain those languages that they don’t know. Put them in the right environment and I’m pretty sure that they’ll pick them up pretty quick.
Well, I would like to agree with you but I spent 2 months trying to learn Spanish followed by 3 months traveling through South America and picked up nothing expect how to ask for beer and coffee.
My wife though, she was a natural.
Good link DTB, surprised by how many I know, in Far North Māori population is around 45% and bi–culturalism is a numbers game reality rather than a construct.
/facepalm
Could GE Free NZ possibly sound any more downright stupid?:
http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/low-allergy-milk-frightening-ge-free-5110649
In a nut shell – they’re ignorant bloody fucking idiots. 5 second search on google for β-Lactoglobulin function reveals it has no role in developmental biology, any probably serves as a protein source and carrier protein for hydrophobic molecules, like fatty acids. In fact, if it had any critical role in developmental biology, the calf wouldn’t have made it to term, let alone be healthy enough for AgResearch to go “success!”.
And by the elder things, the rhetoric they’re using is just so damn stupid and illustrates even further how little they understand the fucking science involved. Which from the little there’s revealed in the news is actually pretty neat and involves using micro RNAs to target gene expression patterns. Which in this case leads to the organism expressing a lot less β-Lactoglobulin, rather than a knockout mutation that disables the gene or it’s relevant expression mechanisms. In theory, because it’s a lot more straight forward (due to it being a lot more specific) there was probably a much higher success rate. But until the paper comes out, probably wont know exactly how it was done.
Also, NZ GMO laws vis large transgenic animals definitely need work, unlike a mouse or a plant, escape risk is very, very low. Although the calf being abducted/”euthanised” by anti-GE nuts is probably quite high…
Yeah you scientist types have regularly been right about this stuff, until new research turns up in 20 years time showing that you weren’t aware of something critical.
Then you call it “progress”.
Well, forty years ago you’d have been writing that sentiment in a letter to a newspaper. Science progresses the environment, not the people.
Differentiate between technology and science mate.
Further, there have been plenty of major fuck ups in the development of internet technology as well. IE6 and AOL for starters.
What is this idea of “progress” you talk about? Shinier stuff with better screens and nicer pictures? That’s the measure of progress in our civilisation is it?
Shiner stuff that still ends up in the landfill, and at a faster and faster rate 🙁 We can blame business for that though 😉
science provides the difference between an airfield control tower and a cargo cult. And the difference between a new heart valve being inserted and bleeding a fever victim to realign their humours.
Just think, somewhere like a billion people are in a position to read your railing against science within seconds of you pressing “submit comment”. That happened due to a range of sciences. People live longer and are more able for more of their lives. Pity that science hasn’t figured out how to make people more grateful for their blessings.
Sorry McFlock, unless you are willing to count fitter turners, test technicians, and software developers as scientists, you are suffering from a huge amount of scientism based overreach,
Bull shit. Science is one ingredient of the above mate, not the whole cake, and not necessarily the biggest or most important ingredient.
For instance – are you trying to class the Wright brothers as scientists now too? How big a role did they play in the development of what you mention? How about huge? Again your comment is overly influenced by an over reaching faith in science.
As for the cargo cult, they merely observed a pattern and deduced a conclusion. A good use of scientific process.
What a load of shit.
Given that the Wright Brothers drew on the research of George Cayley, a founding member of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, yeah, science was essential for the Wright Brothers achieving controlled flight. I never said “science is all you need”, I just think we’d be fucked without it.
Necessary, not sufficient.
That’s my point. Science is just one ingredient. And only a minority of the problems which trouble society can be solved with it.
Science contributed but didn’t make the breakthrough application. Others had to do that. Science isn’t everything. It’s simply a bit.
is not the same as
In flight, scientists did not make the breakthrough application.
In medicine, flight of meaningful distances and speeds, logistics, navigation (sea/air/land), communication, energy generation (and the identification of its resulting hazards), agriculture, nutrition, water supply, computing, etc etc etc… on the other hand, scientists can, did, and still do create breakthrough applications and more importantly push the limits of knowledge to enable others to do the same.
And the only problems that scientists can’t contribute to the solutions thereof are social problems. For those you need Arts majors.
Particularly Arts majors that also know how to use statistical tools properly 😉
The other faith you seem to have is that having more people who are more highly qualified (whether in the sciences or arts or whatever) increases the tendency for problems to be solved, not created.
Well, I’m reading at night, eating clean and safe food with a plentiful supply of clean water and a reliable and safe source of heat should the elements turn.
Oh, and arguing with someone hundreds of miles away while having immediate access to much of the world’s knowledge even if it’s stored thousands of miles away. And not just the big stuff – I can look for the experience of others who might have the same interest as me be it gardening, carving, knitting, surviving in the wild, amateur astronomy, or how to tie a bow tie.
Definite progress compared with, say, the 14th Century. By that measure I’d be dead by now. No shit. Gotta love scientific medicine.
Scientific medicine. What an oxymoron. Stochastic medicine I’ll accept. Also, perhaps 75% of our increased life expectancy has come from other sources. Increased income and education levels etc. As I have already described.
Wait, what?
The Wright Brothers had to draw on many scientific advancements to achieve flight.
Aerodynamics, velocity, fucking gravity.
Did that make them scientists? Possibly not but without the scientific disciplines of those before them they wouldn’t have made such an achievement. The Wright Brothers stood on the shoulders of giants
” How big a role did they play in the development of what you mention?”
Huge, because we furtherance out understanding into flight and how it might be achieved.
“Again your comment is overly influenced by an over reaching faith in science.”
Science requires no faith. Faith is the antithesis of science
There was no such thing as “aerodynamics”, “velocity” and “fucking gravity” before science came along?
Someone please tell all the hummingbirds in the world.
BS. Science is only one way of knowing and gaining knowledge, and a limited one at that.
🙄
And yet it and other forms of empiricism have been stunningly successful verses theology and anything else which ignores reality in favour of myths and assumptions about how the world works.
Yeah mate you can choose the universe you inhabit.
You chaps should watch some of Han’s Roslings work.
lolwut?
“There was no such thing as “aerodynamics”, “velocity” and “fucking gravity” before science came along?”
/facepalm
Of course they existed but science helped man discover them, understand them and use them.
“BS. Science is only one way of knowing and gaining knowledge, and a limited one at that.”
Yeah because understanding other ways of knowing put us on the moon, vaccinated us from polio, built the computer you are using etc etc etc etc etc….
“And the difference between a new heart valve being inserted and bleeding a fever victim to realign their humours.”
I think you will find that it was the scientists of the day (doctors) who used bleeding as a treatment.
There’s an interesting and blurred transition from doctors as priests to doctors as scientists, but the reason we don’t try to balance the humours now is science. Major steps like Harvey, Snow, Pasteur, and so on were due to science, not faith or luck.
There will soon be no more priests.
Their work is done..Every man shall be his own priest.
-Walt Whitman
lol
Sure mate, as I discussed earlier this is known as “progress”. Our state of scientific knowledge is so damn good and you must believe in it, until…it’s not.
One of the funniest scenes I remember from Star Trek was Bones McCoy telling a modern, late 20th century doctor that he wasn’t going to allow any witch doctors to work on his patient. “It’s a wonder anyone made it out of the 20th century alive” he smirked.
How many of your siblings or classmates were dead before the age of ten?
That’s fucking progress.
Yeah mate…progress up to 8B humans…9B humans…10B humans…11B humans…12B humans…
better than living in muck next to the graves of your dead siblings.
Oh, and science invented effective birth control.
Frak me mate, western science is a fucking late comer to 50,000 years of extensive human civilisation and human cities.
That’s hardly true.
Show me any pre-science birth control with a <1% failure rate after a month of use.
Yes, science is a late-comer to human existence. And look how far we’ve come in a few hundred years. Yes, new and serious problems have emerged – but where social problems don’t rule the roost we’re usually healthy, strong and long-lived.
You sound like an American.
This western based scientific rule has barely lasted 500 atomic blasted years yet you think its the best thing that human kind has ever achieved in 50,000 years. Gimme a break. The arrogance.
Its out there mate.
And I’m unavoidably amused that you are using this as an example of one of the greatest triumphs of modern science.
Modern contraception is very useful, sure, but it’s trash grade futility mate in the final analysis. You know, once the final sums are tallied up. Humans spent 50,000 years with fewer than 2B of us on the whole planet.
But in just 100 years this number will quadruple. Such is the power of 99% effective contraception.
The march of Progress!
Yeah, and how well would you do in a cave? Like I say, I’d probably be already dead. And that’s not including infant mortality and infanticide of the weak, just some conditions I’ve had in the past.
“Its out there, mate”
Should be easy to show me, then. Thanks to Archaeology. And the interwebz, of course.
Perhaps your ancestors in Western Europe were living in caves 10,000 years ago but a lot of civilisations around the world had already moved on from that mate.
Seriously, the arrogance.
The absence of western science =! living in caves.
True dat.
What major civs were about 10,000 years ago, again? Refresh my mind…
So what’s this <1% failure ancient birth control method?
Well, I might have been exaggerating on the 10,000 year thing. Maybe I should say 5,000-10,000 years ago?
Don’t worry about civilisations, they’re overrated and they never last. There were definitely sophisticated human cultures 10,000 years ago. Australian aboriginal cultures go back at least 5 times that.
Nasty, brutish and short is something that was made up by the English 😉
Definitely short – see my comment of a few minutes ago.
Nasty and brutish are up to individual taste.
Its good now, longer life spans, more seasons of Next Top Model, the opportunity to buy the iPhone31. Like I said, it’s real progress.
More seriously, its not that ancient people didn’t live to 60, 70, 80, etc. Its just that far fewer people made it that far.
Now you’re channeling Robert Atack.
Anyway, I’m off to me warm comfy sheltered bed. Have a good one. And try to find a link to that <1% ancient birth control, just to future reference.
Has been barely around for 500 years?
Utter shit. The ancient Greeks were doing science based upon the scientific method some 2500 years ago. They discovered mathematics principles such as trigonometry which is still in use today and discovered planets and knew the earth was round, even coming within a hairs breadth of accurately measuring the earths size.
500 years? you idiot. Modern science has been built on 1000’s of years of discovery – we stand on the shoulders of giants.
@TC
Nope, dig around in philosophy and history of science some more* 😛
While yes, classical Greek philosophers did get some of the basic science stuff, ultimately when we examine their writings we find that they weren’t so much aiming to understand what they saw, but rather to model it. What they did also lacked the whole internal heavy criticism and peer review thing modern science developed during the 1700’s in Europe.
Ah, more we stand on population growth, and the false starts of older cultures philosophers 😛
______________________________________
*Note: this unit is very tired and last did science history stuff a long time ago
“Sure mate, as I discussed earlier this is known as “progress”.”
Progress?
Development of calculus > Development of theory of gravity > Velocity > Aerodynamics > flight.
Science.
“Our state of scientific knowledge is so damn good and you must believe in it, until…it’s not.”
Science is self-correcting and science never pretends to have all the answers…which is why we always learn. Science demands learning, demands revision, demands re-correction. Always.
“How science dwindles, and how volumes swell,
How commentators each dark passage shun,
And hold their farthing candle to the sun.”
-Young
“I am the Walrus,
I am the egg-man”
precisely
There’s an interesting and blurred transition from doctors as priests to doctors as scientists, but the reason we don’t try to balance the humours now is science. Major steps like Harvey, Snow, Pasteur, and so on were due to science, not faith or luck.
The doctors in the 1800s using bloodletting were most definitely not priests. They were medically trained (in the scientific tradition) practitioners of the day.
William Harvey disproved the basis of the practice in 1628, and the introduction of scientific medicine,la méthode numérique, allowed Pierre Charles Alexandre Louis to demonstrate that phlebotomy was entirely ineffective in the treatment of pneumonia and various fevers in the 1830s. Nevertheless, in 1840, a lecturer at the Royal College of Physicians would still state that “blood-letting is a remedy which, when judiciously employed, it is hardly possible to estimate too highly”,[13] and Louis was dogged by the sanguinary Broussais, who could recommend leeches fifty at a time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloodletting
You can of course argue that those doctors weren’t practicing true science, in which case this piece of history demonstrates the gulf between science theory and how it gets practiced in the real world.
Science of the day makes lots of mistakes. It does interesting useful things too, but there are lots of downsides. We should be honest about that.
And little more than a hundred years later antibiotics, blood transfusions and sterilisation were reliably saving lives. That’s science for you.
In fact in some areas we’re back to leeches – for a limited number of conditions based on firm scientific understanding of the causes of the condition and the leech life-cycle.
and in a mere few decades we’ve squandered many of the advantages we gained from antibiotics, through sheer stupidity in part fueled by faith in science.
You seem to be arguing that science has been overwhelmingly good, and you seem unwilling to acknowledge the massive downsides of science.
Climate change, peak oil, overpopulation, colonisation, environmental destruction, rapid species extinction, soil loss leading to imminent mass starvation, syndrome x, radiation poisoning….
I’m glad you have an appreciation of your life, and what science gives you, but your science-granted life comes at a cost, a massive cost. Let’s just be honest about that.
And whether how long science will continue to afford some of the individuals on the planet such a luxurious life remains to be seen.
I love 20 km range artillery munitions which after firing can be guided in flight and deploying over their target area, can direct multiple independent top penetrating submunitions downwards, destroying entire tank companys or multiple enemy troop positions.
The scientific achievement gives me the shivers.
I’m arguing that society is better off with science than without it, using myself as an example.
Medicine is just one example. When the world is back to a billion people with life expectancy in the low/mid double digits, and usually live entirely inside a 5 mile radius, I’ll agree with you.
@CV: I love that we can send a robot to mars. Might even live there, eventually.
Do you really believe that? I don’t think we’ll make it there, because I think we have truly started the long descent.
I’m more than happy to bet you $10 inflation adjusted dollars that no mission will land a human on Mars by 2030. Edit – no human mission that is 😈
Oh yeah we sent a probe to Mars. Sorta like the 1970’s except instead of a lander, we got something which can roll around at maybe 5km/h.
40 years of progress eh.
More of a chance than the Romans had.
Sure, we might miss it due to our own stupidity, but the opportunity is there.
“I’m arguing that society is better off with science than without it, using myself as an example.”
Yes, and sorry to be rude, but that’s just selfish. Are you willing to acknowledge the cost to other humans and the rest of life?
We are now truly in the realm of believe and faith. I don’t have the faith you do in science, I don’t believe that we will migrate off planet, and I honestly hope we don’t. We don’t deserve to go, and we’ll just fuck it up like we have here.
Not to mention that I’m seriously under-impressed by science right this very moment because my mobile broadband is so crap I have to restart it every other minute to get the connection back 😉
I’m sure that the rest of the planet which on average lives roughly twice as long as a couple of hundred years ago is better off, too.
And yeah, I do think life is a bonus for the population.
Night night
Denial is also a form of faith.
It’s like corporate PR for science isn’t it. You always emphasise the upsides, the benefits, the good feeling, the smiling faces; and you always downplay or deny the costs, the damage, the scarcity, the mass consumption, the resulting unhappiness.
Those aren’t downsides of science but of our society which missuses science.
“Oh yeah we sent a probe to Mars. Sorta like the 1970′s except instead of a lander, we got something which can roll around at maybe 5km/h.
40 years of progress eh.”
Ummm, no. Unlike a lander the rover didn’t crash land but descended slowly into the atmosphere using high drag parachute which then detached leaving behind a rocket boosted , self-driving robotic sky crane which slowly winched the one ton rover to the martian surface before flying off so as not to crash land itself into the rover.
Unlike a lander the rover can move, take soil samples, test the atmosphere, take high resolution photographs and has a fucking laser on board which can burn into rocks and ‘sniff’ the resulting smoke/steam to note to composition.
And unlike most of the landers/rovers – this one successfully landed a mere 200 meters for it’s designated landig point intact and operational.
CV – you are so fucking scientifically illiterate that even my 3 year niece understands science better than.
“That’s not science, that’s just progress” you scoff.
…idiot…
We can argue politics sure, and I can very wrong, but one thing I know is science. science is my ‘thing’ you might even say and your total dismissal and misunderstanding couched in your false sense of superiority is not only totally misguided but also offensive.
Translation: DEEEEEEEERP
And I’m too tired, need to dig up old cluebatting of Andrei dealing with this particular “but science was wrongzors!” meme fully.
But anyhow, that’s the fucking nature of science, as we lack perfect knowledge there is always new stuff to be found that was missed in prior work (techniques/tools needed to be invented usually), that could overturn older assumptions and truths if there’s enough evidence. In many respects this flexibility to be wrong is what allows science to work in the first place. As we don;t have to wait for old scholars and their followers to die off, or be forced to cling to written texts as revealed, holy truths. Thus treating this as a negative just indicates possibly your own conservatism when it comes to change and uncertainty.
Meh. The arrogance of scientism.
🙄
And CV hath reached unto the depths of PG territory.
This accusation coming from the classy DEEEEERP Man himself.
Translation: DEEEEEEEERP
Please translate your translation…do you mean (sarcastically) deep? or derp? What??????
Looky see what the ANZ’s been up to in between getting rid of NZ jobs and those pesky marginal retail customers by ditching the black horse.
“The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) today announced the filing and simultaneous settlement of charges against Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. (ANZ), an Australia-based financial services company, for exceeding speculative position limits in wheat and cotton futures contracts in trading on the Chicago Board of Trade and the Intercontinental Exchange US (ICE Futures US). The CFTC order requires ANZ to pay a $350,000 civil monetary penalty and cease and desist from further violations of the position limits provisions of the Commodity Exchange Act and CFTC regulations.”
That would be an investment banking activity, not retail or commercial. JP Morgan got a 600k slap also.
Australian reserve bank cut interest rates by 0.25 pc,NZ up on all currencies around1/2 cent against aus
Lowered interest rates punish savers and boost speculators. This is financial repression in action.
Indeed reward the wasters,punish the savers ,
The RBA cites the RISK in the labour market despite 5.1% unemployment,and is out to protect exporters due to the economic outlook.
http://www.smh.com.au/
I am becoming more convinced that the Troika ( Key ,English ,and Joyce) have no clue,and no plan B.
Fonterra is forecasting a payout of 5.25kg at which level 20% of Farmers will be unable to repay capital.
The only light at the end of the tunnel is that the Kim Dotcom saga will become their Alan Jones moment.
but the damage would already be done.
The Rba governor is quite succinct
The fine judgement came down on the side of the engine needing some stoking now in an effort to build up a head of steam.
The only plan that lot have is to sell off NZ and that’s hit a few bumps due to most people being against it.
Is it possible that thanks to modern medicine that those with intolerances who would have previously died at a very young age, i.e less than 5, and therefore exited the gene pool with their genetic disabilities have survived and thrived whereas up to 100 years ago the birth and early mortality rate was horrific, with some families losing 90% or even all of their progeny.
Modern medicine plays some role, but not the major one I suggest.
– Meals with sufficient calories in a day
– As much clean water as you can use
– Sewerage systems
– Increasing household incomes
– Decent heating, shelter, and power
– Schooling for all children
– An end to child labour
Have accounted for 75% or more of the modern gain in life expectancy.
Wow CV’s human afterall, Welcome M8! 😛
“Have accounted for 75% or more of the modern gain in life expectancy.”
And none were based on modern medical science? Science is how we figure these things out dude.
Yeah, no.
I was talking about the specific discipline of medical treatments here, not science in general.
I’m puttin this one here coz I don’t want to flood the GSCB review article …
“Due diligence” is a term used for a number of concepts involving either an investigation of a business or person prior to signing a contract, or an act with a certain standard of care. It can be a legal obligation, but the term will more commonly apply to voluntary investigations. A common example of due diligence in various industries is the process through which a potential acquirer evaluates a target company or its assets for acquisition
HAS DUE DILIGENCE BEEN FOLLOWED BILL ENGLISH
It looks too me like America did it’s Due Diligence BILL, do they own us BILL?
Luckily they don’t want us that bad AYE BILL!
Selling Mighty River Woul’ve given us another 3 months max,
THEN WHAT BILL?
Why’d they call you morons JOHN, and tell ya ta read it again JOHN YA LISTENING?
Bless ya Bill English for letting me put ya thoughts up here.
I’m nuts by the way.
Another death knell for the RoNS.
Wonder if NACT will hear it?
Wow! Another extraordinary session on Campbell Live tonight over the Christchurch School Closures challenge.
They visited several schools where the data used by the Ministry is wildly in error.
Of 5 clusters of about 15 ? all schools had every building recorded as earthquake damaged – totally untrue.
One school had their jumping pit labelled as liquafaction.
One school is recorded with 50 buildings – has 5. Another 10 but have 15. Wrong rolls and trends in most.
John Campbell used the Ministry’s own documents to interview Parata but she wouldn’t front.
The CEO from the Ministry Mrs Longstone did front, and set sail on loud denial, deflection, over talk, avoidance and straight out mis-speak.
For those who want to get the measure of Mrs Longstone and school closures, this is a must.
Will link when available.
Yes, it was very good legwork journalism. The kind Campbell Live often does, and Son Of Close-Up won’t do, alas.
I wouldn’t be too hard on Longstone – she should never have been put in that position by Hekia Parata. It’s shameful when Ministers hide behind officials … and National have been doing it more and more.
If people want to know why National are losing votes, ask thousands of parents in Christchurch.
Some believe that Longstone was appointed over a year ago with her previous experience at introducing Charter Schools in Britain and the intent to do the same here. She is a hard nut who, like politicians, can deflect and obscure with the best of them. (Can’t spell obscurfate?)
I have no sympathy for her.
National’s spin doctors will be pleased.
Minister hides, viewers take aim at the distraction instead, job done.
Try not to do exactly what National want you to do. Focus on the people we can remove at the ballot box. The generals are in the bunker, not on the front line.
I caught a bit of it – and winced at the thought of being in that position.
But then I remembered that this is exactly what happens when you fire “back office” “bean counters” and boo-row-krats. Data gets crunched badly, and overworked staff either don’t notice or realise it’s not their problem if it’s crap and they have other shit to do. Fuck ’em – you reap what you sow.
BUT she should be able to defend the data on the school. That is fundemental.
They don’t believe in accountability and transparency mate, just their own agendas.
Actually, what she should have done was have the corrected data handy. Or at the very least said it’s being redone, and there is a window for the corrected data to be taken into account prior to the amalgamation/closing process being finalised. Even if in reality the decisions wouldn’t be affected.
Not sit there like a gimp insisting that it was valid.
Nothing seems to change at the Ministry of Ed.
Do you remember that turd that was interviewed over the leaky buildings in schools on close up some years ago during Hosking’s time and just sat there tittering like some kind of lobotomised chimp.
Campbell Live Tuesday. Background first.
Interview with Longstone starts about 10:40
http://ondemand.tv3.co.nz/Campbell-Live-Tuesday-October-2-2012/tabid/119/articleID/8281/MCat/73/Default.aspx
Spanish police may have used under cover provocateurs to start protest violence
As decline deepens, a return to old times.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/sep/29/spain-riot-police
Faith is the state of being ultimately concerned.
-Paul Tillich
Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the soul of soulless conditions, the heart of a heartless world.
Karl Marx.
A scientific world doesn’t require any of this sentimental clap trap, according to the scientism faithful.
🙄
I love the smell of burning strawman in the evening…
Know what you believe and have faith in mate.
🙄
😈
“now we’re gettin’ somewhere”-Finn
synthesize away
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10837744
Jailed for two years in Russia for an anti Putin rap performed in a Christian orthodox cathedral. Pussy Riot are a Russian women band notorious for their defiance of authority and for covering their faces with ski masks.
Will French Islammist rapper, Mélanie Georgiades become the West’s version of ‘Pussy Riot’?
Mélanie Georgiades has in open defiance of French anti-hijab laws made an appearance on French TV station TF1 dressed in the hijab.
http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/10/01/241253.html
Will the authorities charge this celebrity for openly defying France’s recently passed anti-hijab laws?
http://www.styleite.com/media/french-muslim-women-hijab-fine/
I think you are confusing two things here Jenny (actually the 2nd link also confuses it). She appeared on television wearing a hijab (headscarf) for which there is no law against wearing in public.
There is one that restricts it’s use in schools (passed in 2004): Loi en application du principe de laïcité, le port de signes ou de tenues manifestant une appartenance religieuse dans les écoles, collèges et lycées publics (An Act, as an application of the principle of the separation of church and state, on the wearing of symbols or garb which show religious affiliation in public primary and secondary schools).
Perhaps you are thinking of the recently (2010) passed law: Loi interdisant la dissimulation du visage dans l’espace public (An Act prohibiting concealment of the face in public space) which includes, amongst other things, the niqab (face veil) and the burqa (full body covering if it includes a face covering/veil).
I’m not sure I would describe her as an Islamist which has quite specific political overtones.
We should have started part b of science vs life down here 😉