Speaking of Dirty, question of the day. What happened to Dirty Politics and all the information left with Gower. Now I read Gower had his eye damaged and was in hospital but surely paddy has read it by now and can start spilling the dirt to take some of the gleam off national or was Raw Shark duped. If Raw Shark was duped by Gower I wonder if he will reappear if National and MSM continue there DP tactics which it appears they are.
I noticed everything went damn quiet on the Herald as soon as O’Sullivans name was implicated!!!
How was O’Sullivan’s name implicated. I understood there wasn’t a lot of stuff left that wasn’t already in the book or that had been posted by whaledump.
However, there’s plenty in all that, already public info for the MSM to be pursuing. They’ve just let the whole nasty mess drop. Instead, they are labeling anything a little bit attacking “dirty politics”, providing rear guard smoke and mirrors.
Slater was the one who instigated the injunctions. Worked a treat in closing down reporting of the issues before the election. Now Team Nat-Slater has far less to gain from pursuing the issues/case.
This issue is well traversed by Russell Brown et al on Hard News. You may find substantive comments there which address your concerns. Pundit also might help with the ‘It’s gotta be down to media conspiracy” meme.
MSM in NZ seems woefully weak and some commentators are clearly and shamefully partisan, but this anti-MSM reflex from the left is often counterfactual and deservedly Standard posters come in for some mockery because of it.
@ Galeandra this anti-MSM reflex from the left is often counterfactual and deservedly Standard posters come in for some mockery because of it.
You deserve mockery for your quaint, naive comments. In fact they are typical of the complacent, conformist, accepting sort of NZer we all were who allowed the present developments by embracing Rogernomics.
Now that a few people are trying to drag the majority from this destructive coma of acceptance, it shocks the addicted.
Don’t rock the boat, don’t criticise, don’t put your ideas forward, don’t demand better, who do you think you are making complaints. Follow those in charge without question, they know best, everything will be justified in the end, and those ends will be golden and worthy of the sacrifices caused by the means.
Jam tomorrow for some and, for the most, compliance or else is the true end – that is the wisdom that observation teaches, substantively.
What’s this MSM your talking about Galeandra? All I see is a corporate media, driven by the profit motivator. Fair enough, that’s their buzz. Just remember if your going to play the game in the interests of profit – you are open to criticism from a non-profit, or socialist perspective, also a green one, and/or a feminist perspective.
I think if you try thinking, you will find a few more perspectives the media, which uses as it base – the profit motivation – can be critiqued on.
To blame us for doing analysis and criticism of the media as it currently stands – is like blaming a fish for living in water.
@ Galeandra
Why if you are left do you spend your time criticising others who are left. And why if I disagree with you is it ad hominem comment? Why can you throw negatives around and then react against a spirited reply?
If you are so wise then you will know that one of the problems with the left is that they splinter into squabbling factions. If the idea is to get a strong left movement going, and you are wise, and informed and clever etc. then why wouldn’t you support the good ideas, then say why others are lacking and look to amalgamate the good ideas into a strong and yet flexible philosophy and entity?
Wikipedia ad hominem, is a form of criticism directed at something about the person one is criticizing, rather than something (potentially, at least) independent of that person.
@ phillip
I think that enough evidence of MSM dirty tricks and bias has been presented here to justify our criticisms. And you can have your own separate viewpoint but this does not diminish our findings when they are based on observation and fact. If they are not then you can present the source and your interpretation of what was said to justify your position and show TS commenters their error.
Well, well, well…… so having a ‘wrong’ opinion equates with “You deserve mockery for your quaint, naive comments” and references to my complacency and selfishness.
Just another shitty little attempt to shoot the messenger, which I think my original comment was about. Why don’t you follow up the sources I referenced before you let fly. Move out outside the truthy bubble, perhaps.
FYI, my inclination is harder left than most folks, and I used to spend quite a lot of time here but too many just want to interview their own keyboards. Labour still sucks but I try to support them even when the caucus let their politics of self-interest get in the way.
I don’t go in for ad hominums, I do grow tired of the faffing and whining that posters so liberally spray around, and sadly, I do read a lot of scathing posts elsewhere about “te Standard’ and the siege mentality that pervades its posts.
This issue is well traversed by Russell Brown et al on Hard News.
Some of us demand more sober sources than Public Address.
Pundit also might help with the ‘It’s gotta be down to media conspiracy” meme.
Pundit is an “establishment” blog written mostly by insiders. The last thing you are going to find there is genuinely critical analysis.
MSM in NZ seems woefully weak and some commentators are clearly and shamefully partisan.
That’s always been true. This time seems somewhat different to me and people in my social circle. Media bias is not new in New Zealand. Collusion between media and political parties of the kind exposed by Hager does seem to be something new, as was the relentless media campaign against Cunliffe by TV3, Stuff and the Herald. I’ve seen that done overseas, but never here.
Now if you want to claim that there was no relentless series of hit pieces on Cunliffe over the past year, I don’t think I have anything further to say to you. It was patently obvious to anyone watching, and denials just aren’t credible.
Holding the media solely responsible for the election result is hardly credible, but who is actually doing that? To say that the media had no role in it is equally silly. But that’s largely irrelevant – they didn’t do their job. The media in this election were poor and in many cases actively partisan. It doesn’t really help that most of them are stupid, but you’d think that they could make more of their admittedly meagre talents.
you could read a little wider here and find many on the left hold the Left responsible for its failures. it is you who chooses to characterise the comments here on the defeat as being
media bad
left hard done by
you stated Standard poters deserve the mockery, not some posters.
most people i read here commenting about the media have also commented on other aspects of Labours demise from internal squabbling, lack of connection to middle nz and much more.
you make such a bald statement as that and then shrink into a shell cos someone took umbrage?
I actually posted this on Open Mike yesterday, but it very much relates to what you are saying, and I think it’s an important issue…
.
“Leadership and policy are not the same thing. The parliamentary leader may well be the front man for party policy but does not get to create policy to suit themselves.
.
By extension then, does it really make sense to say that this leader took the party left, or that that leader would take it right etc?
.
Or is their solid evidence to suggest that I’m being naive?”
Quick disclosure: In future I will be dropping the handle HH (too evocative of Labour’s historic mana) and I will be posting under the name Cave Johnson.
[karol: thanks for letting people know. Flagging it to the moderators]
Yeah, that’s a good point and so the Labour people who want to go left need to ask where the policies are decided and why aren’t Labour’s policies the ones they want?
I recall the left saying that Labour had great policies and that the Nats had no policies. And now you are saying Labour either had no policies, or the ones they had were toxic.
I found your idiosyncratic writing style outrageously funny so I thought I’d have a crack at it.
It reminded me of someone who’s just hanging on to his bar stool (ergo the probably callous reference to our favourite tory opinionator). But then today I realized it has a striking resemblance to the diction of Rorschach (where Rawshark gets his name from) from the Watchmen. So now when I read your comments I hear Rorschach, which is pretty annoying.
Leadership campaign details are out. 14 meetings from 22 October (Wellington first) to South Auckland on November 11.
Voting results then announced November 18.
Seriously.. Labour should have kept the Goff-father after 2011. Probably would have won on Sept 20 but no… Let’s go all out internecine warfare in the public domain after every election loss.
Yes, Phil Goff should have stayed on as Labour leader for at least 6 months, to stabilise Labour after a big defeat. He was growing into the job as well. And Labour’s poor party vote performance could not simply be laid at Goff’s feet; there were many campaign management team decisions which led to a poor party vote campaign.
And FFS, this was a John Key Govt after just one term.
But Goff moved on after a lack of support from the pro-Robertson camp who was demanding change, and Goff didn’t have it in him to defend a bad election result. The thing they all had in common: none of them liked DC so the idea of installing David Shearer, with Grant Robertson as deputy, was born.
I agree. Goff was good. Still is. Now the Labour caucus members should put their egos/prejudices aside, get united and show their full loyal support to Cunliffe instead of spending heaps of cash on an unnecessary destabilising contest at this stage. Everything has some risk. Changing the leader now perhaps has the biggest risk of all.
CV, personally I put Goff in the Shearer category of too indecisive, can’t think on his feet, is a terrible orator.
As the leader gets the most press and announces the big things he’s got to have wits. The only time I’ve seen Cunliffe struggle was when Key set him up on the CGT for the family home. I believed DC’s reasoning, he was caught off guard there was not tax on family home or trust homes.
Robertson is a good orator too, Just doesn’t have the PM stature He’s short squat and can’t keep his shirt tucked in. At times Robertson looks like some random plucked off the sidewalk thrust into a suit he’s not fit to wear.
To me Goff clearly beats Shearer in the oratory and thinking on his feet stakes. That is not saying much – Goff does have a lot of experience to fall back on. But it’s not enough against John Key.
As for your description of Robertson. Yeah that laser guided bomb struck the designated target pretty hard.
Goff should have stayed long enough to hand over to Cunliffe and not a second more. In 1985 I was visiting various Labour MPs as part of a HART initiative to sound them out on the subsequently cancelled racist rugby tour. Goff was the only one who refused to see us. Helen Clark gave my friend and I more than half an hour.
Since that time, the only time I’ve had any respect for Goff was when he visited Yasser Arafat against the wishes of the Zionist regime.
Yeah I don’t think there are many people here that disagree with that, most people for better or for worse thought at the time that Goff should have stayed on.
This blog has to have the greatest comments sections I’ve come across, but I do get frustrated by a lot of the “What Labour needs to do is…” opinionating. Tho alongside that there are also quite a lot of insightful criticisms of the party.
It seems to me that a lot of commenters have done a lot of yards in political activism, but then there are a lot of armchair critics. and I seriously believe that praxis is intrinsic to socialism. So my point is, OK thanks for all your opinions, but what actually the fuck are you doing/have you done about anything?
I know it could be construed as snobby, but there’s an unreality about language that isn’t grounded in work or experience. Or as Marx said: “Philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.”
In my experience I have found it very hard to be *extremely* negative while I’m engaged in positive, constructive activism. So I take it as a sign of unhealthy disengagement when commenters reveal a kind of towering negativity about their subject.
The upside of the dairy price collapse, which after this monings Fonterra GDT auction drop ( http://www.globaldairytrade.info/en/product-results/whole-milk-powder/ ) is many of our environmental problems will be reduced. Because farming is about to become grass based as opposed to supplementary feed based, which will reduce output and reduce the nitrogen runoff into waterways.
Bank economists are arguing that it is cyclical, but it will be interesting to see if that proves correct…given what USA and Europe are doing this may be more structural, in which case many NZ dairy farmers will be forced off their farms with too much debt. This is scary times for our economy and the collapse of the national party’s key economic driver.
“..and of course soon we have the release of mufree….which is milk made from yeast..which looks/tastes/behaves the same as cow milk..(i.e..baking/cheese-making etc..)”
Put your astute observationalist punditry to the test and make a prediction in which year sales of genetically modified/engineered milk from a lab will out sell cows milk in NZ.
A. 2015
B. 2016-2020
C. 2020 – To absolutely never in a million years.
Where are you reading/hearing a market glut for 5 years. I have read it will balance out over 2015. Personally I think it will be longer than that but I am interested where you read 5 years?
“A record payout to New Zealand dairy farmers last year is setting the stage for a global milk glut that Goldman Sachs Group Inc. predicts will last half a decade.”
You’ll note that article (July 2014) was predicting a forecast price of NZ$7/kg milk solids. The latest forecast from Fonterra on 24 September was NZ$5.30 and now the ANZ has cut its forecast to $4.85 & Westpac to $4.80
And you’ll note that the second article states “This sits well below the average cost of production for farmers and will have a significant impact on discretionary spending,”
Agee PU. It is interesting that the Bloomberg article wasn’t picked up. TV3 news balmed the entire collapse of the dairy market on the unpredictable Russian ban on Dairy…not mentioning the very predictable oversupply from USA and Europe and drop in cost of cow feed (wheat) by 25% in USA.
Thanks: Yes that is interesting. It quotes Rabobank in there and it is Hayley Moinahan from Rabo NZ who is talking up some sort of recovery next year…which is really difficult to see happening given the over supply. To put things in contxt, for there to be oversupply then factories/dryers had to be built…they arnt going to de-commission new plant and equipment immediately, this is why commodities tend to do what they do…I was in the paper industry for a while and that industry is even worse than dairy. The big question is whether this downturn is cyclical or structural…if structural then we (NZ) is in the shit…so to speak.
Diversions can only work for some time.
The bribe of no CGT will wear thin as house prices stall and the economy tanks.
Key needs the TPP quickly to lock in the sale of the country to corporate interests and before enough people realise what’s happening.
if labour cannot acknowledge that they created pike river against public opposition.
if labour cannot acknowledge that the dismantled the mines safety regime against public opposition.
if labour cannot apologise to the families of the 29 miners
they should turn out the lights and shut the door on their way out!
1. Labour allowed Pike River to be investigated, National opened it up for commercial use
2. National dismantled mine safety in the 1990s, Labour was reviewing the legislation when National were elected in 2008 at which point National dropped the review
3. It’s National that should be apologising and coughing up the compensation
@ phillip
Labour was slow, weak, wet and deleterious in its duty to its constituents the workers in dangerous industries. (Other words for deleterious are injurious, destructive, prejudicial, ruinous. All are entirely appropriate. The free market gives you a choice – so feel free to choose freely.
(Also nocent is a synonym for destructive – what a great word for politician’s wrongdoing.)
Yes, they took too long to look at it but at the same time not everything can be done in a day and they did get round to looking at it. National stopped even the belated looking.
DTB. You are very kind to Labour. Fact of the matter is that they were far too slow and cautious, spent a lot of energy carefully straddling the centre and fending off dirty politics attacks (eg shower heads, speeding to rugby games).
Interesting to see quite a lot of political columnists presently bagging the Greens for not selling out on their principles. I conjecture that what has happened is the election results which saw the majority of voting New Zealanders ignoring the moral reasons for not supporting National/ACT/etc has created a new amoral political universe that said columnists feel the need to somehow drag the Green Party and its supporters into. Sorry mates, us non-National/ACT etc voters may have lost the election but we remain on the right side of the moral universe which feels good inside. You can takeaway our rights but you can’t buy our souls.
@Phillip ure…why did Labour not agree to a coalition deal with the Greens before the Election?….that is part of your answer
the Election showed many of the potential Left alliance coalition Parties worked for themselves and not in collaborative concert…this was their undoing!
personally i think what Labour did to Hone and Int/MANA was unforgivable too….there was the possibility of 4 Left MPS ruled out for a Left coalition in that stupid little manouvre
….and as for rejecting the Maori Party as a coalition partner before the Election…this was crazy
and agreed in hindsight the Green Party should have called off the candidate
They can’t afford to do that due to the increase in advertising spending that the electorate candidate represents. In other words, to get the party name in front of more people they need the electorate candidates.
Everyone keeps going on about parties not working well in MMP and part of that is that in FPP, which the electorates still are, there are only two possible choices. And those two choices effectively come down to National (or who they tell people to vote for) or Labour and it will stay that way until such time as we bring in preferential voting for electorates.
I really, really wish people would drop this specious argument about Ōhariu. All this discussion about tactical voting without any realistic understanding or analysis about when that tactical voting will work and when it won’t.
I’m not even going to link to my original comment – I’m just going to paste it here, again! 😡
“I think people are too easily seduced by the 900+ vote majority in Ōhariu into thinking Ginny Andersen could have won.
Look at the party vote distribution – 16,686 out of 32,698 voted National (leaving aside the 977 Conservative votes, 222 ACT & 241 United Future). The combined Green/Lab Party vote was 12,306. If there had been any hint of an accomodation between the Greens & Labour at the candidate level then the 5,000+ National voters who voted for Hudson would have simply switched to keep Dunne in. (If there’s one thing National voters know it’s how to follow directions from “Dear Leader”).
Ōhariu is not the old Onslow seat, its not even Ohariu-Belmont. It’s now a firmly National seat. Dunne has simply moved right as his seat has moved right. When the Hairdo retires it will return a National member (unless they stitch up some deal with the Conservatives to coattail the Conservative vote).
I’m not saying that tactical voting isn’t important – and that the Left needs to work out when it is important and when it isn’t (and that also means that sometimes Labour is going to have to surrender an electorate seat to someone else on the Left – oh I don’t know – say a seat like TTT!).”
Congratulations to David Farrar. Kiwiblog has been accepted as a member of the Online Media Standards Authority.
It doesn’t mean that I like the blog. At the very best it is a personal blog, and he openly stands for “mischief”. I see the mischief in the way that he reports “accurately” but too often uses “facts” out of context, to suggest a conclusion that suits National. In other words it is a National propaganda blog, rather than a blog of the right, even if he periodically highlights a minor issue he personally disagrees with. And nothing of course stops selective reporting
Another issue that is worth noting is that there have been many criticisms of media standards, with regard to political reporting over this last election, that I think have a lot of justification. Main stream media will be quick to claim that they are neutral, and criticisms are made by all “sides” of politics, simply because they do not like negative publicity. This is partly true, but it’s also partly simply an excuse to ignore criticism. The main concerns I have is the open bias that is now accepted from people generally considered in the past to be reporting news. I have no concerns about people providing opinion, when that is clearly their role. But when others are given anchor roles in “news” type programmes, and are permitted to be openly political, I’m much more concerned. I’ll single out Mike Hosking, for an example of the worst of the worst. I’m less concerned about obvious subtle bias from a lot of others on the left, and the right.
Regardless, I’ll still say that I am pleased that Farrar has taken the action that he has. It’s a step in the right direction, and as the first blog to take this action, he deserves some accolades.
Farrar himself does not claim to be a journalist, distinguishing blogs from MSM. It’s a wise distinction. And he also openly says his blog is from the “right”. Open biases are less of a concern than hidden biases. Those on the “left” of the political spectrum, would be foolish not to periodically, and regularly understand what is being written on right leaning blogs.
I presume his joining means that standards will be maintained from the 1st October. It’s a pity that the example of Dirty politics from kiwiblog, exposed on this site, in the last week, is not subject to his “new” standards.
Refer to: Dirty Kiwiblog, 26 Sept 2014
“.I presume his joining means that standards will be maintained from the 1st October. It’s a pity that the example of Dirty politics from kiwiblog, exposed on this site, in the last week, is not subject to his “new” standards….”
he could have had better standards without joining a group. its hard to avoid the notion its a new way to make himlook reasonable… just another strategy.
The new “standards” don’t cover anything like the two track strategy or abuse of power as exposed by Hager. Where it does focus on accuracy, etc,, they are pretty weak:
PART A – STANDARDS THAT RELATE TO THE INFORMATION PUBLISHED
Standard 1 Accuracy
Publishers should make reasonable efforts to ensure that news and current affairs content is accurate and/or does not mislead in relation to all material points of fact.
Guidelines
1a. Comment or opinion (to which this standard does not apply) must be clearly distinguished from factual content.
1b. If the content is edited publishers should take care to ensure that the extracts and abridgments used are not a distortion of the original event or the overall views expressed.
Standard 2 Balance on Controversial Issues
Taking account of the Context in which the content is published publishers should make reasonable efforts to ensure that where the content deals with controversial issues of public importance it makes due reference to a reasonable range of significant viewpoints on the issue.
Guidelines
2a. In determining whether there has been due reference to a reasonable range of significant viewpoints the publisher will consider:
the opportunities provided for those with significant viewpoints to contribute to the content;
whether the issue or topic is clearly presented from a particular perspective
So, not much different from what is done on most blogs and/or in the MSM… which still manages to be pretty inaccurate in its biases.
The rest of the standards are just about things like issues related to matters of sex and violence, for the most part, defamation, etc… most of it already covered by laws.
No doubt DPF will use it as a badge of not doing ‘Dirty Politics” of manipulation and deception, feeding such to the MSM, etc….. but it ain’t necessarily so in reality. There are clauses about not doing deception…. but ….?
Selling out our sovereignty – NZ data sent overseas, law enforcement processes, data matching, privacy intrusion – all conducted by foreign nationals in a foreign data centre now. All automatically sucked up by the NSA – where/when you go in your car/how long you stay there/who was in your vehicle with you etc.
“My hope is that we will be able to pull it back. It is important to me that I leave my personal brand, which is reasonably statesman-like, and I’m not into any form of gutter politics. I’m distraught that this has occurred.”
– A statesman is usually a politician, diplomat or other notable public figure who has had a long and respected career at the national or international level.
– “The greasy little fulla in the blue suit”
Labours gift to National would be a Cunliffe win 🙂
A message to the Darling of Ilam, James Dann – you say if David Cunliffe wins the leadership race you will leave the Labour Party. And you demand that if David Cunliffe loses the race, he should leave Parliament altogether. Well, to be absolutely consistent and even-handed how about this? If Grant Robertson loses the race, HE should have to leave Parliament too!! Fairness above all surely, James! Or is that not the way you roll?
I see John Armstrong in the Herald is once again telling David Cunliffe to give up and go away. Ground hog day. Can anybody do a timeline showing the number of times that Armstrong and others at the Herald have called for Cunliffe’s resignation in the year since he became leader? – It feels like I have read the same article a hundred times. Hope he continues to disobey them.
Here we go .. Monsanto’s GMO pressure on NZ farmers .. look at this loon on return from his free and no doubt well- sponsored trip. If this is released into NZ, it won’t matter who the leader of any party is .. we will be rendered useless by Monsanto.
Dirty Monsanto tricks makes Dirty Polltics look like a Peanuts cartoon.
Watch this space and oppose it when and where you can, please …. imo it is the BIGGEST issue we face.
Yup. NZ under Key’s TPPA. Read it and weep for what ‘clean and green’ used to mean.
The loss of safe food and total desecration of our environment by glyphosate and then glyphosate-resistant weeds will be Key’s legacy if this is permitted through.
Glorious leader John, too stupid, thick and pig-ignorant to know any better. But so well-paid ….
Oh FFS mate the real risk of GMO food isn’t to individual human health, it is the systemic and potentially catastrophic threat that GMOs pose to the global ecosystem.
Exactly right but I’m not suggesting we should just accept full instigation of GMO’s but what I am saying is that GMO research, as a science, could give real benefit to mankind so we should be using it where safe – such as with Golden Rice as a prime example.
GMO, the science, is sound and well tested and studied and long should it continue to be so.
Take a look at the credentials of that site, Contrarian.
Their team consists of journalists, not scientists and a quick search (Sourcewatch) indicates that that site could be politically motivated (while I have already found online articles by them accusing real scientists of having ‘political motivations’).
Just from a very, very brief search, I find that website suspicious.
I’m not talking about the site, but the studies (the site I linked to aggregates them hence my linking to it). The vast, overwhelming, majority of studies into GMO’s and human health have found them to be completely safe. Very very few studies have highlighted serious problems and many that have done have been shown to be lacking in scientific rigor.
I am not suggesting GMO’s are always safe and should be used with impunity rather I am saying that test after test they have been shown to be effective and they should continue to rigorously tested for safety in an ongoing manner as we do currently to ensure their safety.
I really haven’t got the time to go and check all those links in that dodgy GLP website, nor your other links.
These types of checks require finding out the funding of the sites too – that GLP site ‘said’ they weren’t funded by large companies but I just happened to do a reasonable search, to discover they are strongly linked with a dodgy train of funding.
I’d rather stick to Union of Concerned Scientists, who acknowledge the problem with big money affecting science from the outset. Thanks for providing the links, though just the same, perhaps others will read them 🙂
My main problem with what you said was ‘ but GM food has been proven to be extremely safe for human consumption.’
I really don’t think scientists have established that GM food has been proven ‘extremely safe,’ yet and suggest to you that exaggerating facts, and making sweeping statements in the current climate of pseudo-scientific arguments that ‘Merchants of Doubt’ detailed, is a really, really, bad idea if you wish to be persuasive.
The reason children are deficient in Vitamin A is because of POVERTY. In India there is plenty of food with vitamin A, namely papaya, but poor people can’t afford to buy it.
So how will poor people afford golden rice?
Maybe Monsanto ( is it them who make it) will subsidise it as a publicity stunt
Sure – but barring an overnight miracle which will eradicate poverty and ensure everyone worldwide has enough good food to eat starting today, Golden Rice offers a safe and easily accessible alternative while the world sorts its shit out.
heh -the old vitamin A argument still got legs has it?
And prior to industrial mono-culture supplanting traditional farming techniques, do you think that just maybe (say) avocados would have been interspersed with whatever other main variety of crop was being grown, and that people could have satisfied their vitamin A needs through the simple act of growing and eating some foods rich in vitamin A?
That’s great but given we are in a post industrial mono-culture supplanting traditional farming techniques culture what do you say we make use of immediately available substances until such a time as we can return to an era of traditional farming?
Those without power are always provided, by those with power, with the ‘worst option’ and also the ‘best option’ – one leads them to instant destruction; the other leads them deeper and deeper into the bowels of the prison/ the workhouse/ the labour camp.
I’m being a bit dramatic but hopefully you get my point.
The solution is to regain power – real power. Not over others, but over one’s own life.
Back when we were nomadic we had a much more varied diet. As that was true of most of our evolution that means that we’ve evolved to have a varied diet. The problem now is that we don’t have such a varied diet.
The answer isn’t GMOs which really don’t produce anything more than the natural ecosystem – that’s another physical impossibility sown as the answer that the rich pour upon us. The answer is to massively vary our diet again. Our farms* to be turned into food forests because they have that variety and are also sustainable.
* I also include the vertical forests that can be grown in cities
Until we have participatory democratic control of the state, we should have nothing to do with GM food. In the meantime, the safety or otherwise is basically irrelevant. We need to maintain our food sovereignty, not hand it over to corporations.
This NZ Fed Farmers farmer who travelled on Monsanto’s ticket is too dense to understand the run-off ramifications of thousands of tonnes of poisonous glyphosate into our water ways. omfg
Competition for Jim Mora, Danny Watson and Larry “Lackwit” Williams:
RadioLIVE has an equally crap afternoon chat show
Thursday 2 October 2014, 2:15p.m.
By chance, I strayed on to RadioLIVE this afternoon and heard this asinine banter. It took only a minute or so, but I fear it never got any better. I doubt it could have gotten any worse. The only interesting thing in it is how Rodney “Perk Taker” Hide unwittingly reveals just how ignorant and right wing he really is…..
RODNEY “PERK TAKER” HIDE: You can’t respect a leader who cries when he loses! You might cry in wartime, when the Russians are coming for you!
WILLIE JACKSON: Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
CHRIS TROTTER: Haw haw haw!
WILLIE JACKSON: Yeah, I remember Roger Federer crying after he lost a match to Nadal. It made me want to S-S-S-SPEW.
CHRIS TROTTER:[pompously and condescendingly] Haw haw haw! Rodney, you are indulging in what the Germans call schadenfreude, which means taking delight in the misfortune of others. And I would be doing just the same as you if the boot was on the other foot. Haw haw haw!
WILLIE JACKSON: Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
ALISON MAU: So does the Labour Party need a knuckle-dragging neanderthal to lead it, as these guys seem to think? Tell us what YOU think after the break…..
At this point I could take no more, and stopped listening.
Well of course you stopped listening, I don’t blame you I mean Radiolive is very popular so listening to them might mean you get an idea of what the majority of Kiwis are thinking
A hapless, ill-informed pogue unwisely attempted to defend the indefensible….
Well of course you stopped listening, I don’t blame you I mean Radiolive is very popular
Errrr, no it’s not. Its audience share is extremely low. Possibly the choice of their cutting-edge management to sound exactly like NewstalkZBigotry was not the smartest move.
….so listening to them might mean you get an idea of what the majority of Kiwis are thinking
So Willie Jackson, Perk Taker Hide and Lord Haw Haw Trotter are representative of “the majority of Kiwis”, are they? What are you smoking today? I hope you’re not going to try to drive a car any time soon.
and that we can’t have that
Sarcasm is never an effective tactic, my muddleheaded friend.
About the only thing I agree with there is this bit:
People with terrible judgement were once shunned and mocked but now New Zealand’s business, entertainment and media communities are proudly led by gibbering, empty-headed morons.
In a most unusual step, I had Tim Barnett, Labours general secretary, request that I remove the Clayton Cosgrove post.
Rather than make this leadership issue more corrosive than it already is and because I am sometimes moderately cooperative to polite requests. I have removed it from public view. It will be restored back to being visible after the election is completed.
Unfortunately Tim tried to ring me (always a bad idea when I am working), so I only noted that he’d emailed when I pulled my head out of some code and hooked out to home for mail. If anyone ever does want to get hold of me, I’d suggest txting. I look at those every few hours.
Having been offline for the past 5 days, I was just in the process of catching up what I had missed seeing when the Clayton Cosgrove post disappeared.
What was Tim Barnett’s actual stated reason lprent?
Last week I asked the following question on this site:
Could someone please tell me who are the Labour MPs responsible for leaking confidential caucus information to the media? Let them be named and shamed.
I’m grateful to Karen Price for her twitter comment because I suspect she has inadvertently confirmed the chief culprits are Clayton Cosgrove and Trevor Mallard. Since it has been going on for a very long time, I consider them to be traitors and they should be removed from parliament.
“While aware of the motivations behind the piece. I am firmly of the view that it has the potential to damage the Party.”
Personally I think that what Cosgrove was doing was somewhat more dangerous longer term (as my post was demonstrating, I literally copied his tactics in the Herald and made them somewhat more extreme).
However I’m always a sucker for a request from a party organisation of the left (less so for politicians).
Yes. Not in the beltway though. In the beltway there is only pain. Pain and revenge. Pain and revenge and perks. Ok, pain, revenge, salaries, and perks, and that’s it.
Duncan Garner also confirms who the ABCers are. But the conclusions he goes on to draw from that and recent developments, totally ignores the role of Labour Party members – it’s all Thorndon Bubble for Garner. I guess that’s where he lives.
He ends totally putting the boot into the Labour Party.
He begins supporting Karen Price:
But, Karen Price is actually right: The ABC club never died when Cunliffe became leader – they just retired to the corner and got more bitter and twisted. It’s no secret who they are: Trevor Mallard is the life president, Clayton Cosgrove, chief plotter, David Shearer, general-secretary, Stuart Nash, head of communications, Annette King, camp mother, Grant Robertson the uncle, Phil Goff, kaumatua, and the errant ABC kids are Jacinda Ardern, Chris Hipkins and Kris Faafoi.
I believe many of this crew ran electorate campaigns, so they could get back in and nail Cunliffe should he lose. They wanted to stack the caucus with ABCers, that’s also why they were desperate for Kelvin Davis to win in the north. He’s no fan of Cunliffe either.
But, after saying all that, defying logic, Garner then says Cunliffe should resign.
I’ve said it before and I’m saying it again: Labour has been heading this way for some time. The powder keg has blown. Cunliffe does not have the support of his caucus. They do not want him; neither do Kiwi voters.
He should have seen all this last week and gone quietly for the good of the party, and the cause, but he has chosen to hit the nuclear option. It is his own personal revenge at the ABCers. It’s breathtakingly arrogant. Which part of election spanking does he not understand?
What part of letting the LP members and affiliates have a say, does Garner not understand?
You do wonder what Slater and his mates have on these media folk.
Hager said at one of the meetings he spoke at that many of the media came up to him and asked if the files he’d seen included anything on them.
unfortunately most journalists are owned in that they are paid by a msm corporation and they have editors to make sure they stay in line
this is why we need a Left owned radio station ( and tv channel)
…the crap that my son comes home with from listening all day to commercial radio while driving is disturbing….people need alternative Left radio and real education …especially young people…but all people… young and old and middle aged
Nice of Garner to name the ABCs but he misses the whole point. Labour isn’t split between people who like Cunliffe and those that can’t stand him. It’s split between neoliberals and lefties. Funny you forgot to mention that Duncan, given it’s the reason the ABCs exist.
Does this mean no free discussion on the ABCs role in undermining the democratic will of Labour members can be discussed on this site?
And no discussion of which Labour MPs have been leaking to the media and what they have been leaking?
Sad to see debate closed down.
After Vance wrote a column that was critical of Cunliffe, responding to a tweet which said the column “sums everything up extremely well”, Ms Price tweeted: “No it sums up Andrea Vance very well. She’s unidimensional and unbalanced. Grant’s been feeding her for years.”
South Korea looks to implement an interesting plan to stimulate the economy:
Mr Choi’s scheme, submitted to South Korea’s parliament this week, will tax companies’ cash piles on the grounds that corporate stinginess is holding the country back.
“These summits have failed for the same reason that the banks have failed,” Monbiot explains. “Political systems that were supposed to represent everyone now return governments of millionaires, financed by and acting on behalf of billionaires.”
Expecting these governments to protect the biosphere, Monbiot adds, makes no more sense than “expecting a lion to live on gazpacho.”
Why should that be the case? Over recent decades, analysts and activists have made all sorts of links between the increasing degradation of our global environment and the increasing concentration of our global wealth.
The super rich, for starters, stomp out a huge carbon footprint. The best symbol of this stomping? That may be the private jet.
More and more evidence that we just cannot afford the rich.
I left the You Tube file to run while doing the dishes after dinner. And then had to sit down and watch most of it. Thanks for pointing this out. There are lots of useful stuff there to develop for discussion.
Very very useful stuff…his point that there is more inequality in the top 1% to 2% than in the bottom 98% was utterly telling; also the idea that more equality would actually greatly help most of those in the top 10% by stopping the 1% and the 0.1% from racing away from them.
New Zealand is again having to reconcile conflicting pressures from its military and its trade interests. Should we join Pillar Two of AUKUS and risk compromising our markets in China? For a century after New Zealand was founded in 1840, its external security arrangements and external economics arrangements were aligned. ...
The ‘50 Shades of Green’ farmers’ protest in 2019 was heavy on climate change denial, but five years on, scepticism and criticism about the idea that pine forests can save us is growing across the board. File photo: Lynn GrievesonTL;DR: Here’s the top six news items of note in climate ...
This morning the sky was bright.The birds, in their usual joyous bliss. Nature doesn’t seem to feel the heat of what might angst humans.Their calls are clear and beautiful.Just some random thoughts:MāoriPaul Goldsmith has announced his government will roll back the judiciary’s rulings on Māori Customary Marine Title, which recognises ...
In 2003, the Court of Appeal delivered its decision in Ngati Apa v Attorney-General, ruling that Māori customary title over the foreshore and seabed had not been universally extinguished, and that the Māori Land Court could determine claims and confirm title if the facts supported it. This kicked off the ...
Earlier this week at Parliament, Labour leader Chris Hipkins was applauded for saying that the response to the final report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care had to be “bigger than politics.” True, but the fine words, apologies and “we hear you” messages will soon ring ...
TL;DR: In news breaking this morning:The Ministry of Education is cutting $2 billion from its school building programme so the National-ACT-NZ First Coalition Government has enough money to deliver tax cuts; The Government has quietly lowered its child poverty reduction targets to make them easier to achieve;Te Whatu Ora-Health NZ’s ...
Kia ora. These are some stories that caught our eye this week – as always, feel free to share yours in the comments. Our header image this week (via Eke Panuku) shows the planned upgrade for the Karanga Plaza Tidal Swimming Steps. The week in Greater Auckland On ...
1. What's not to love about the way the Harris campaign is turning things around?a. Nothingb. Love all of itc. God what a reliefd. Not that it will be by any means easye. All of the above 2. Documents released by the Ministry of Health show Associate Health Minister Casey ...
Trust in me in all you doHave the faith I have in youLove will see us through, if only you trust in meWhy don't you, you trust me?In a week that saw the release of the 3,000 page Abuse in Care report Christopher Luxon was being asked about Boot Camps. ...
TL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers last night features co-hosts and talking about the Royal Commission Inquiry into Abuse in Carereport released this week, and with:The Kākā’s climate correspondent on a UN push to not recognise carbon offset markets and ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Friday, July 26, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Transport: Simeon Brown announced$802.9 million in funding for 18 new trains on the Wairarapa and Manawatū rail lines, which ...
The northern expressway extension from Warkworth to Whangarei is likely to require radical changes to legislation if it is going to be built within the foreseeable future. The Government’s powers to purchase land, the planning process and current restrictions on road tolling are all going to need to be changed ...
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedFirst they came for the doctors But I was confused by the numbers and costs So I didn't speak up Then they came for our police and nurses And I didn't think we could afford those costs anyway So I ...
Photo by Joshua J. Cotten on UnsplashWe’re back again after our mid-winter break. We’re still with the ‘new’ day of the week (Thursday rather than Friday) when we have our ‘hoon’ webinar with paying subscribers to The Kākā for an hour at 5 pm.Jump on this link on YouTube Livestream ...
Notes: This is a free article. Abuse in Care themes are mentioned. Video is at the bottom.BackgroundYesterday’s report into Abuse in Care revealed that at least 1 in 3 of all who went through state and faith based care were abused - often horrifically. At least, because not all survivors ...
Luxon speaks in Parliament yesterday about the Abuse in Care report. Photo: Hagen Hopkins/Getty ImagesTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:PM Christopher Luxon said yesterday in tabling the Abuse in Carereport in Parliament he wanted to ‘do the ...
About a decade ago I worked with a bloke called Steve. He was the grizzled veteran coder, a few years older than me, who knew where the bodies were buried - code wise. Despite his best efforts to be approachable and friendly he could be kind of gruff, through to ...
Some of the recent announcements from the government have reminded us of posts we’ve written in the past. Here’s one from early 2020. There were plenty of reactions to the government’s infrastructure announcement a few weeks ago which saw them fund a bunch of big roading projects. One of ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Thursday, July 25 are:News: Why Electric Kiwi is closing to new customers - and why it matters RNZ’s Susan EdmundsScoop: Government drops ...
Hi,I felt a small wet tongue snaking through one of the holes in my Crocs. It explored my big toe, darting down one side, then the other. “He’s looking for some toe cheese,” said the woman next to me, words that still haunt me to this day.Growing up in New ...
Yesterday I happily quoted the Prime Minister without fact-checking him and sure enough, it turns out his numbers were all to hell. It’s not four kg of Royal Commission report, it’s fourteen.My friend and one-time colleague-in-comms Hazel Phillips gently alerted me to my error almost as soon as I’d hit ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Thursday, July 25, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day were:The Abuse in Care Royal Commission of Inquirypublished its final report yesterday.PM Christopher Luxon and The Minister responsible for ...
The Official Information Act has always been a battle between requesters seeking information, and governments seeking to control it. Information is power, so Ministers and government agencies want to manage what is released and when, for their own convenience, and legality and democracy be damned. Their most recent tactic for ...
TL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:Transport and Energy Minister Simeon Brown is accelerating plans to spend at least $10 billion through Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) to extend State Highway One as a four-lane ‘Expressway’ from Warkworth to Whangarei ...
I live my life (woo-ooh-ooh)With no control in my destinyYea-yeah, yea-yeah (woo-ooh-ooh)I can bleed when I want to bleedSo come on, come on (woo-ooh-ooh)You can bleed when you want to bleedYea-yeah, come on (woo-ooh-ooh)Everybody bleed when they want to bleedCome on and bleedGovernments face tough challenges. Selling unpopular decisions to ...
Please note:To skip directly to the- parliamentary footage in the video, scroll to 1:21 To skip to audio please click on the headphone iconon the left hand side of the screenThis video / audio section is under development. ...
Given the crackdown on wasteful government spending, it behooves me to point to a high profile example of spending by the Luxon government that looks like a big, fat waste of time and money. I’m talking about the deployment of NZDF personnel to support the US-led coalition in the Red ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:40 am on Wednesday, July 24 are:Deep Dive: Chipping away at the housing crisis, including my comments RNZ/Newsroom’s The DetailNews: Government softens on asset sales, ...
As I reported about the city centre, Auckland’s rail network is also going through a difficult and disruptive period which is rapidly approaching a culmination, this will result in a significant upgrade to the whole network. Hallelujah. Also like the city centre this is an upgrade predicated on the City ...
Today, a 4 kilogram report will be delivered to Parliament. We know this is what the report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State and Faith-based Care weighs, because our Prime Minister told us so.Some reporter had blindsided him by asking a question about something done by ...
TL;DR: As of 7:00 am on Wednesday, July 24, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Beehive:Transport Minister Simeon Brownannounced plans to use PPPs to fund, build and run a four-lane expressway between Auckland ...
NewstalkZB host Mike Hosking, who can usually be relied on to give Prime Minister Christopher Luxon an easy run, did not do so yesterday when he interviewed him about the HealthNZ deficit. Luxon is trying to use a deficit reported last year by HealthNZ as yet another example of the ...
Back in January a StatsNZ employee gave a speech at Rātana on behalf of tangata whenua in which he insulted and criticised the government. The speech clearly violated the principle of a neutral public service, and StatsNZ started an investigation. Part of that was getting an external consultant to examine ...
Renting for life: Shared ownership initiatives are unlikely to slow the slide in home ownership by much. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:A Deloittereport for Westpac has projected Aotearoa’s home-ownership rate will ...
You're broken down and tiredOf living life on a merry go roundAnd you can't find the fighterBut I see it in you so we gonna walk it outAnd move mountainsWe gonna walk it outAnd move mountainsAnd I'll rise upI'll rise like the dayI'll rise upI'll rise unafraidI'll rise upAnd I'll ...
There’s been a change in Myers Park. Down the steps from St. Kevin’s Arcade, past the grassy slopes, the children’s playground, the benches and that goat statue, there has been a transformation. The underpass for Mayoral Drive has gone from a barren, grey, concrete tunnel, to a place that thrums ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections Global society may have finally slammed on the brakes for climate-warming pollution released by human fossil fuel combustion. According to the Carbon Monitor Project, the total global climate pollution released between February and May 2024 declined slightly from the amount released during the same ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Tuesday, July 23 are:Deep Dive: Penlink: where tolling rhetoric meets reality BusinessDesk-$$$’sOliver LewisScoop:Te Pūkenga plans for regional polytechs leak out ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Tuesday, July 23, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Health: Shane Reti announcedthe Board of Te Whatu Ora-Health New Zealand was being replaced with Commissioner Lester Levy ...
Health NZ warned the Government at the end of March that it was running over Budget. But the reasons it gave were very different to those offered by the Prime Minister yesterday. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon blamed the “botched merger” of the 20 District Health Boards (DHBs) to create Health ...
Long ReadKey Summary: Although National increased the health budget by $1.4 billion in May, they used an old funding model to project health system costs, and never bothered to update their pre-election numbers. They were told during the Health Select Committees earlier in the year their budget amount was deficient, ...
As a momentous, historic weekend in US politics unfolded, analysts and commentators grasped for precedents and comparisons to help explain the significance and power of the choice Joe Biden had made. The 46th president had swept the Democratic party’s primaries but just over 100 days from the election had chosen ...
TL;DR: I’m casting around for new ideas and ways of thinking about Aotearoa’s political economy to find a few solutions to our cascading and self-reinforcing housing, poverty and climate crises.Associate Professor runs an online masters degree in the economics of sustainability at Torrens University in Australia and is organising ...
The Finance and Expenditure Committee has reported back on National's Local Government (Water Services Preliminary Arrangements) Bill. The bill sets up water for privatisation, and was introduced under urgency, then rammed through select committee with no time even for local councils to make a proper submission. Naturally, national's select committee ...
Some years ago, I bought a book at Dunedin’s Regent Booksale for $1.50. As one does. Vandrad the Viking (1898), by J. Storer Clouston, is an obscure book these days – I cannot find a proper online review – but soon it was sitting on my shelf, gathering dust alongside ...
History is not on the side of the centre-left, when Democratic presidents fall behind in the polls and choose not to run for re-election. On both previous occasions in the past 75 years (Harry Truman in 1952, Lyndon Johnson in 1968) the Democrats proceeded to then lose the White House ...
This is a free articleCoverageThis morning, US President Joe Biden announced his withdrawal from the Presidential race. And that is genuinely newsworthy. Thanks for your service, President Biden, and all the best to you and yours.However, the media in New Zealand, particularly the 1News nightly bulletin, has been breathlessly covering ...
A homeless person’s camp beside a blocked-off slipped damage walkway in Freeman’s Bay: we are chasing our tail on our worsening and inter-related housing, poverty and climate crises. Photo: Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy ...
What has happened to it all?Crazy, some'd sayWhere is the life that I recognise?(Gone away)But I won't cry for yesterdayThere's an ordinary worldSomehow I have to findAnd as I try to make my wayTo the ordinary worldYesterday morning began as many others - what to write about today? I began ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Monday, July 22 are:Today’s Must Read: Father and son live in a tent, and have done for four years, in a million ...
TL;DR: As of 7:00 am on Monday, July 22, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:US President Joe Biden announced via X this morning he would not stand for a second term.Multinational professional services firm ...
A listing of 32 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, July 14, 2024 thru Sat, July 20, 2024. Story of the week As reflected by preponderance of coverage, our Story of the Week is Project 2025. Until now traveling ...
This weekend, a friend pointed out someone who said they’d like to read my posts, but didn’t want to pay. And my first reaction was sympathy.I’ve already told folks that if they can’t comfortably subscribe, and would like to read, I’d be happy to offer free subscriptions. I don’t want ...
National: The Party of ‘Law and Order’ IntroductionThis weekend, the Government formally kicked off one of their flagship policy programs: a military style boot camp that New Zealand has experimented with over the past 50 years. Cartoon credit: Guy BodyIt’s very popular with the National Party’s Law and Orderimage, ...
Day one of the solo leg of my long journey home begins with my favourite sound: footfalls in an empty street. 5.00 am and it’s already light and already too warm, almost.If I can make the train that leaves Budapest later this hour I could be in Belgrade by nightfall; ...
Do you remember Y2K, the threat that hung over humanity in the closing days of the twentieth century? Horror scenarios of planes falling from the sky, electronic payments failing and ATMs refusing to dispense cash. As for your VCR following instructions and recording your favourite show - forget about it.All ...
Climate Change Minister Simon Watts being questioned by The Kākā’s Bernard Hickey.TL;DR: My top six things to note around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the week to July 20 were:1. A strategy that fails Zero Carbon Act & Paris targetsThe National-ACT-NZ First Coalition Government finally unveiled ...
Summary:As New Zealand loses at least 12 leaders in the public service space of health, climate, and pharmaceuticals, this month alone, directly in response to the Government’s policies and budget choices, what lies ahead may be darker than it appears. Tui examines some of those departures and draws a long ...
The Minister of Housing’s ambition is to reduce markedly the ratio of house prices to household incomes. If his strategy works it would transform the housing market, dramatically changing the prospects of housing as an investment.Leaving aside the Minister’s metaphor of ‘flooding the market’ I do not see how the ...
As previously noted, my historical fantasy piece, set in the fifth-century Mediterranean, was accepted for a Pirate Horror anthology, only for the anthology to later fall through. But in a good bit of news, it turned out that the story could indeed be re-marketed as sword and sorcery. As of ...
An employee of tobacco company Philip Morris International demonstrates a heated tobacco device. Photo: Getty ImagesTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy on Friday, July 19 are:At a time when the Coalition Government is cutting spending on health, infrastructure, education, housing ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 8:30 am on Friday, July 19 are:Scoop: NZ First Minister Casey Costello orders 50% cut to excise tax on heated tobacco products. The minister has ...
Kia ora, it’s time for another Friday roundup, in which we pull together some of the links and stories that caught our eye this week. Feel free to add more in the comments! Our header image this week shows a foggy day in Auckland town, captured by Patrick Reynolds. ...
TL;DR : Here’s the top six items climate news for Aotearoa this week, as selected by Bernard Hickey and The Kākā’s climate correspondent Cathrine Dyer. A discussion recorded yesterday is in the video above and the audio of that sent onto the podcast feed.The Government released its draft Emissions Reduction ...
Save some money, get rich and old, bring it back to Tobacco Road.Bring that dynamite and a crane, blow it up, start all over again.Roll up. Roll up. Or tailor made, if you prefer...Whether you’re selling ciggies, digging for gold, catching dolphins in your nets, or encouraging folks to flutter ...
Waiting In The Wings:For truly, if Trump is America’s un-assassinated Caesar, then J.D. Vance is America’s Octavian, the Republic’s youthful undertaker – and its first Emperor.DONALD TRUMP’S SELECTION of James D. Vance as his running-mate bodes ill for the American republic. A fervent supporter of Viktor Orban, the “illiberal” prime ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Friday, July 19, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:The PSAannounced the Employment Relations Authority (ERA) had ruled in the PSA’s favour in its case against the Ministry ...
TL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers last night features co-hosts and talking with:The Kākā’s climate correspondent talking about the National-ACT-NZ First Government’s release of its first Emissions Reduction Plan;University of Otago Foreign Relations Professor and special guest Dr Karin von ...
Open access notablesImproving global temperature datasets to better account for non-uniform warming, Calvert, Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society:To better account for spatial non-uniform trends in warming, a new GITD [global instrumental temperature dataset] was created that used maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) to combine the land surface ...
A late change to charter school legislation will cheat educators out of fair pay and negotiating power proving charter schools are just a vehicle to make profit out of our education system. ...
In 2004 te iwi Māori rallied against the Crown’s attempt to confiscate our coastlines and moana with the Foreshore and Seabed Act. This led to the largest hīkoi of a generation and the birth of Te Pāti Māori. 20 years later, history is repeating itself. Today the government has announced ...
It has been five and a half years since the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care was established to investigate the abuse of children, young people, and vulnerable adults within state and faith-based institutions. Yesterday, the final report - Whanaketia through pain and trauma, from darkness to light ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to take action off the back of the International Court of Justice ruling on Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine. ...
On Friday the International Court of Justice reaffirmed what Palestinian’s have been telling us for decades: that the occupation and colonisation of Palestinian lands by Israel is illegal and must end immediately. They also called for reparations for Palestinian’s who have lived under Israeli occupation since it began in 1967. ...
Labour calls on the Government to act after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian Territories is illegal. ...
The 53.7 percent rise in benefit sanctions over the last year is more proof of this Government’s disdain for our communities most in need of support. ...
Aotearoa could be a country where every child grows up feeling safe, loved and with a sense of belonging in their whānau and community. But for some of our children, this is far from reality. Instead, they are trapped in a maze of intergenerational harm that they can’t escape on ...
Te Pāti Māori are calling for David Seymour to resign as Associate Health Minister in response to his call for Pharmac to ignore the Treaty of Waitangi. “This announcement is just another example of the government’s anti-Tiriti, anti-Māori agenda.” Said Co-leader and spokesperson for health, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. “Seymour thinks it ...
The soaring price of renting is driving the rise of inflation in this country - with latest figures from Stats NZ showing rents are up 4.8 per cent on average while annual inflation is at 3.3 per cent. ...
National’s Emissions Reduction Plan will take New Zealand further from the economy we need to ensure the next generation has a stable climate and secure livelihoods. ...
Following consultation with named parties and thorough consideration of privacy interests, the Green Party is in a position to release the Executive Summary of the final report from the independent investigation into Darleen Tana. ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon should be asking serious questions of his Minister for Resources Shane Jones now it’s been revealed he misled the public about a dinner with mining companies that he didn’t declare and said wasn’t pre-arranged. ...
Te Pāti Māori have submitted to the Justice Select Committee against the Sentencing (Reinstating Three Strikes) Amendment Bill. The bill will further entrench racism in our justice system and fails to focus on rehabilitation. “Reinstating Three Strikes will empower a systematically racist system and exacerbate the overrepresentation of Māori in ...
The Transport and Infrastructure Committee is set to make a determination on the Residential Tenancies Amendment (RTA) Bill in the coming weeks. “This legislation will give landlords the power to kick our whānau out onto the street for no reason” said Housing spokesperson, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “Their solution to the housing ...
“National’s campaign was about tackling crime and the best they can do is a two-year long Ministerial Advisory Group,” Labour justice spokesperson Duncan Webb said. ...
“There are more examples of charter schools failing their students than there are success stories. The coalition Government is driving to dismantle our public school system and instead promote a privatised, competitive structure that puts profits before kids,” Jan Tinetti said. ...
“This government is choosing to deliberately mislead and withhold information, keeping our people in the dark about this government’s agenda and the future of our mokopuna,” said co-leader and spokesperson for Health, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. The call comes after the demand from the Chief Ombudsman that Associate Minister of Health, Casey ...
“Today’s climate announcement by Simon Watts makes clear the National Government is simply paying lip service to meeting its climate change targets,” Megan Woods said. ...
National is choosing to make life harder for workers by taking away the rights our communities have fought hard for. Here's how they’re taking workers backwards. ...
Australia, Canada and New Zealand today issued the following statement on the need for an urgent ceasefire in Gaza and the risk of expanded conflict between Hizballah and Israel. The situation in Gaza is catastrophic. The human suffering is unacceptable. It cannot continue. We remain unequivocal in our condemnation of ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins today reminded all State and faith-based institutions of their legal obligation to preserve records relevant to the safety and wellbeing of those in its care. “The Abuse in Care Inquiry’s report has found cases where records of the most vulnerable people in State and faith‑based institutions were ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says the Government’s online safety website for children and young people has reached one million page views. “It is great to see so many young people and their families accessing the site Keep It Real Online to learn how to stay safe online, and manage ...
Tēnā tātou katoa, Ngā mihi te rangi, ngā mihi te whenua, ngā mihi ki a koutou, kia ora mai koutou. Thank you for the opportunity to be here and the invitation to speak at this 50th anniversary conference. I acknowledge all those who have gone before us and paved the ...
New Zealand’s payroll providers have successfully prepared to ensure 3.5 million individuals will, from Wednesday next week, be able to keep more of what they earn each pay, says Finance Minister Nicola Willis and Revenue Minister Simon Watts. “The Government's tax policy changes are legally effective from Wednesday. Delivering this tax ...
An experimental vineyard which will help futureproof the wine sector has been opened in Blenheim by Associate Regional Development Minister Mark Patterson. The covered vineyard, based at the New Zealand Wine Centre – Te Pokapū Wāina o Aotearoa, enables controlled environmental conditions. “The research that will be produced at the Experimental ...
The Coalition Government has confirmed the indicative regional breakdown of North Island Weather Event (NIWE) funding for state highway recovery projects funded through Budget 2024, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Regions in the North Island suffered extensive and devastating damage from Cyclone Gabrielle and the 2023 Auckland Anniversary Floods, and ...
Indonesia’s Foreign Minister, Retno Marsudi, will visit New Zealand next week, Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced. “Indonesia is important to New Zealand’s security and economic interests and is our closest South East Asian neighbour,” says Mr Peters, who is currently in Laos to engage with South East Asian partners. ...
He aha te kai a te rangatira? He kōrero, he kōrero, he kōrero. The government has reaffirmed its commitment to supporting the aspirations of Ngāti Maniapoto, Minister for Māori Development Tama Potaka says. “My thanks to Te Nehenehenui Trust – Ngāti Maniapoto for bringing their important kōrero to a ministerial ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has thanked outgoing Chair of the Civil Aviation Authority, Janice Fredric, for her service to the board.“I have received Ms Fredric’s resignation from the role of Chair of the Civil Aviation Authority,” Mr Brown says.“On behalf of the Government, I want to thank Ms Fredric for ...
The Government is proposing legislation to overturn a Court of Appeal decision and amend the Marine and Coastal Area Act in order to restore Parliament’s test for Customary Marine Title, Treaty Negotiations Minister Paul Goldsmith says. “Section 58 required an applicant group to prove they have exclusively used and occupied ...
Regulation Minister David Seymour says that opposition parties have united in bad faith, opposing what they claim are ‘dangerous changes’ to the Early Childhood Education sector, despite no changes even being proposed yet. “Issues with affordability and availability of early childhood education, and the complexity of its regulation, has led ...
After receiving more than 740 submissions in the first 20 days, Regulation Minister David Seymour is asking the Ministry for Regulation to extend engagement on the early childhood education regulation review by an extra two weeks. “The level of interest has been very high, and from the conversations I’ve been ...
The Coalition Government is investing $802.9 million into the Wairarapa and Manawatū rail lines as part of a funding agreement with the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA), KiwiRail, and the Greater Wellington and Horizons Regional Councils to deliver more reliable services for commuters in the lower North Island, Transport Minister Simeon ...
Local Government Minister Simeon Brown has announced his intention to appoint a Crown Manager to both Hawke’s Bay Regional and Wairoa District Councils to speed up the delivery of flood protection work in Wairoa."Recent severe weather events in Wairoa this year, combined with damage from Cyclone Gabrielle in 2023 have ...
Mr Speaker, this is a day that many New Zealanders who were abused in State care never thought would come. It’s the day that this Parliament accepts, with deep sorrow and regret, the Report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care. At the heart of this report are the ...
For the first time, the Government is formally acknowledging some children and young people at Lake Alice Psychiatric Hospital experienced torture. The final report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State and Faith-based Care “Whanaketia – through pain and trauma, from darkness to light,” was tabled in Parliament ...
The Government has acknowledged the nearly 2,400 courageous survivors who shared their experiences during the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Historical Abuse in State and Faith-Based Care. The final report from the largest and most complex public inquiry ever held in New Zealand, the Royal Commission Inquiry “Whanaketia – through ...
With a week to go before hard-working New Zealanders see personal income tax relief for the first time in fourteen years, 513,000 people have used the Budget tax calculator to see how much they will benefit, says Finance Minister Nicola Willis. “Tax relief is long overdue. From next Wednesday, personal income ...
Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden says a bill that has passed its first reading will improve parental leave settings and give non-biological parents more flexibility as primary carer for their child. The Regulatory Systems Amendment Bill (No3), passed its first reading this morning. “It includes a change ...
Two Bills designed to improve regulation and make it easier to do business have passed their first reading in Parliament, says Economic Development Minister Melissa Lee. The Regulatory Systems (Economic Development) Amendment Bill and Regulatory Systems (Immigration and Workforce) Amendment Bill make key changes to legislation administered by the Ministry ...
New legislation paves the way for greater competition in sectors such as banking and electricity, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly says. “Competitive markets boost productivity, create employment opportunities and lift living standards. To support competition, we need good quality regulation but, unfortunately, a recent OECD report ranked New ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says lotteries for charitable purposes, such as those run by the Heart Foundation, Coastguard NZ, and local hospices, will soon be allowed to operate online permanently. “Under current laws, these fundraising lotteries are only allowed to operate online until October 2024, after which ...
The Coalition Government is accelerating work on the new four-lane expressway between Auckland and Whangārei as part of its Roads of National Significance programme, with an accelerated delivery model to deliver this project faster and more efficiently, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “For too long, the lack of resilient transport connections ...
Sir Don McKinnon will travel to Viet Nam this week as a Special Envoy of the Government, Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced. “It is important that the Government give due recognition to the significant contributions that General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong made to New Zealand-Viet Nam relations,” Mr ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says newly appointed Commissioner, Grant Illingworth KC, will help deliver the report for the first phase of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into COVID-19 Lessons, due on 28 November 2024. “I am pleased to announce that Mr Illingworth will commence his appointment as ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters travels to Laos this week to participate in a series of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)-led Ministerial meetings in Vientiane. “ASEAN plays an important role in supporting a peaceful, stable and prosperous Indo-Pacific,” Mr Peters says. “This will be our third visit to ...
Construction of a new mental health facility at Te Nikau Grey Hospital in Greymouth is today one step closer, Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey says. “This $27 million facility shows this Government is delivering on its promise to boost mental health care and improve front line services,” Mr Doocey says. ...
New Zealand is committing nearly $50 million to a package supporting sustainable Pacific fisheries development over the next four years, Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones announced today. “This support consisting of a range of initiatives demonstrates New Zealand’s commitment to assisting our Pacific partners ...
Associate Education Minister David Seymour says proposed changes to the Education and Training Amendment Bill will ensure charter schools have more flexibility to negotiate employment agreements and are equipped with the right teaching resources. “Cabinet has agreed to progress an amendment which means unions will not be able to initiate ...
In response to serious concerns around oversight, overspend and a significant deterioration in financial outlook, the Board of Health New Zealand will be replaced with a Commissioner, Health Minister Dr Shane Reti announced today. “The previous government’s botched health reforms have created significant financial challenges at Health NZ that, without ...
Minister for Space and Science, Innovation and Technology Judith Collins will travel to Adelaide tomorrow for space and science engagements, including speaking at the Australian Space Forum. While there she will also have meetings and visits with a focus on space, biotechnology and innovation. “New Zealand has a thriving space ...
Climate Change Minister Simon Watts will travel to China on Saturday to attend the Ministerial on Climate Action meeting held in Wuhan. “Attending the Ministerial on Climate Action is an opportunity to advocate for New Zealand climate priorities and engage with our key partners on climate action,” Mr Watts says. ...
Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones is travelling to the Solomon Islands tomorrow for meetings with his counterparts from around the Pacific supporting collective management of the region’s fisheries. The 23rd Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Committee and the 5th Regional Fisheries Ministers’ Meeting in Honiara from 23 to 26 July ...
The Government today launched the Military Style Academy Pilot at Te Au rere a te Tonga Youth Justice residence in Palmerston North, an important part of the Government’s plan to crackdown on youth crime and getting youth offenders back on track, Minister for Children, Karen Chhour said today. “On the ...
The Government has welcomed news the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) has begun work to replace nine priority bridges across the country to ensure our state highway network remains resilient, reliable, and efficient for road users, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says.“Increasing productivity and economic growth is a key priority for the ...
Acting Prime Minister David Seymour has been in contact throughout the evening with senior officials who have coordinated a whole of government response to the global IT outage and can provide an update. The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet has designated the National Emergency Management Agency as the ...
New Zealand and Japan will continue to step up their shared engagement with the Pacific, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “New Zealand and Japan have a strong, shared interest in a free, open and stable Pacific Islands region,” Mr Peters says. “We are pleased to be finding more ways ...
New developments in the heart of North Island forestry country will reinvigorate their communities and boost economic development, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones visited Kaingaroa and Kawerau in Bay of Plenty today to open a landmark community centre in the former and a new connecting road in ...
President Adeang, fellow Ministers, honourable Diet Member Horii, Ambassadors, distinguished guests. Minasama, konnichiwa, and good afternoon, everyone. Distinguished guests, it’s a pleasure to be here with you today to talk about New Zealand’s foreign policy reset, the reasons for it, the values that underpin it, and how it ...
Last summer when Matairangi burned, Ginny and Tom stood at the window of their lounge, watching kākā shoot skyward from the burning trees. From the distance, they looked to Ginny like pages torn from books and thrown into a bonfire. It was Tom, voice tight, who told her it was ...
Opinion: The Canadian short story writer Alice Munro – winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013 – died in May at the age of 92. Her work was about “the damage people inflict on one another in the name of love”, Deborah Treisman wrote in the New Yorker. ...
This month marks two years since the most powerful telescope ever built sent its first pictures back to earth. From its lofty vantage point, beyond the moon in orbit around the sun, the James Webb Space Telescope was tuned to observe the first stars and galaxies being born soon after ...
Comment: After Climate Change Minister Simon Watts’ preview several weeks ago, I had some optimism about the Government’s emissions reduction plan. Now I’ve read the discussion document, that hope has been dashed. How can the Government propose a plan that wants to take New Zealand taxpayers’ hard-earned money, and spend ...
Christopher Luxon: hurdles The little man from National jumps hurdles in his sleep. He’s quite good at it in his dreams and even though the reality doesn’t quite match up you have to give him credit for getting up every morning and crashing into the very first hurdle of the ...
Comment: It was a good two hours into the conversation when Tyrone Marks raised the most basic of questions when I first spoke to him in 2017. “They didn’t explain the things they did to me. They never told me why. And they still haven’t. There’s no explanation for it. ...
Madeleine Chapman rounds out Death Week on The Spinoff with a final recommendation. You can read all of our Death Week coverage here. Nothing forces you to reflect on your life and relationships quite like proximity to death. For those whose nearest and dearest have died, there are reasonably obvious ...
Whitney Greene takes us through her life in television, including the TV character she’d like to plan a funeral for and her cow lung catastrophe on The Traitors NZ. “If the phone rings, I have to answer it,” Whitney Greene from The Traitors NZ warns as we begin our My ...
Maddie Ballard reviews the debut essay collection of Pōneke writer Flora Feltham.In ‘The Raw Material’, the longest essay in Flora Feltham’s dazzling debut collection, the author heads out for a run after hours of weaving and sees the world turn to textile. “Pounding along the Parade, I saw the ...
Andy Christiansen, one half of the experimental rock-pop duo TRiPS, shares the tunes inspiring the band’s perfect weekend and new release. “Good speakers, good food, good music, no distractions”: that’s all you need to enjoy the psychedelic stylings of TRiPS, a new band formed by Fly My Pretties’ Barnaby Weir ...
Celebrating our quadrennial opportunity to become experts in a bunch of sports we never normally watch.The games of the XXXIII Olympiad are upon us. Paris will host this year’s showcase of sporting and athletic prowess, which means some late-night and early-morning viewing for us in Aotearoa.But what sports ...
The photograph is striking and beautiful, but also disturbing – a reminder that my love for John was often entangled in shame.The Sunday Essay is made possible thanks to the support of Creative New Zealand.In the spring of 1980, in Dunedin, shortly before his death, someone took a photograph ...
Get to know Babushka, our latest Dog of the Month. This feature was offered as a reward during our What’s Eating Aotearoa PledgeMe campaign. Thank you to Babu’s humans, Jo and Isabel, for their support. Dog name: Babushka (Babu for short) Age: 2Breed: Border Collie X poodleIf rescued, ...
Pacific Media Watch A Lebanese photojournalist who was severely wounded during an Israeli air strike in south Lebanon carried the Olympic torch in Paris this week in honour of her peers who have been wounded and killed in the field — especially in Gaza and Lebanon. Christina Assi of Agence ...
The first report in a five-part web series focused on the 15th Triennial Conference of Pacific Women taking place in the Marshall Islands this week.SPECIAL REPORT:By Netani Rika in Majuro Women continue to fight for justice 70 years after the first nuclear tests by the United States caused ...
Christopher Luxon has joined with Australia and Canada's leaders in voicing support for US President Joe Biden's ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra The 2022 election brought the “teal wave” into parliament. The next election will test whether teals, who occupy what were Liberal seats, and other independents can maintain their momentum. Joining us on the Podcast ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Musgrave, Senior lecturer in Pharmacology, University of Adelaide Pixavri/Shutterstock A major Federal Court class action has been dismissed this week after Justice Michael Lee ruled there was not enough evidence to prove the weedkiller Roundup causes cancer. Plaintiff Kelvin ...
In The Week in Politics: politicians have to decide what to do about child abuse, Health NZ is booked in for major surgery and Darleen Tana returns. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Clare Corbould, Associate Professor, Contemporary Histories Research Group, Deakin University Mainstream media are surprisingly muted at the prospect of the world’s most powerful nation being led for the first time by a woman – specifically a woman of colour, Vice President Kamala ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rebecca Bennett, PhD Student, Associate Research Fellow, Deakin University Last week, a drone delivery company called Wing (owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet) started operating in Melbourne. Some 250,000 residents in parts of the city’s eastern suburbs can now order food from ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonathan Foo, Lecturer, Physiotherapy, Monash University pikselstock/Shutterstock In the next 40 years in Australia, it’s predicted the number of Australians aged 65 and over will more than double, while the number of people aged 85 and over will more than triple. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katrina Grant, Research Associate, Power Institute for Arts and Visual Culture, University of Sydney Jonas Åkerström’s 1790 work, Session of the Accademia dell’Arcadia on August 17 1788.Nationalmuseum/Cecilia Heisser Ever wondered whether you’d have a better chance at winning an Olympic gold ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexandra Jones, Program Lead, Food Governance, George Institute for Global Health wavebreakmedia/Shutterstock On Thursday, Australian and New Zealand food ministers at state, federal and national levels met to thrash out what’s next for health star ratings on packaged foods. Now, after ...
The Abuse in Care report found many Pacific survivors lost their connections to their culture and language, resulting in trauma that has been carried from generation to generation. ...
In the regulatory review, ECC intends to suggest that ERO focus on curriculum delivery reviews rather than the Ministry, because it’s not efficient or effective to have two agencies with radically different approaches climbing over each other. ...
Te Rūnanga Nui o Ngā Kura Kaupapa Māori invites the current government to work in partnership with them to develop a pathway forward, including the development of a parallel pathway and meaningful policy and strategy for Kura Kaupapa Māori ...
If you haven’t started watching yet, Tara Ward begs you to reconsider. This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. In the world of New Zealand reality television, we have many gems in our crown. There’s the delicious second season of the Celebrity Treasure ...
A new poem by Fiona Kidman. The clothes of the dead I did not keep my mother’s furry red beret for long nor the stringy scarves that adorned the necks of my aunts, although I have kept tag ends of gold, the rings and trinkets they wore, the brooches no ...
The government’s announcement that it will re-open the foreshore and seabed controversy by changing the rules on recognising centuries-old Māori customary title for a third time goes against the rule of law and New Zealand values,” Mr Tipa says. ...
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 Lioness by Emily Perkins (Bloomsbury, $25) Roarrrr! Perkins’ brilliant, award-winning, Marian-Keyes anointed, darkly funny, long ...
The 2004 Act vested ownership of the foreshore and seabed in the Crown, extinguishing any Māori claims to ownership and causing widespread outrage and protests among Māori communities. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Antje Deckert, Associate Professor (Criminology), Auckland University of Technology Getty Images Despite the connection between institutional harm and gang membership made clear in this week’s mammoth royal commission abuse-in care report, the government seems unlikely to soften its “get tough on ...
From Lewis Clareburt in the swimming to the start of the rowing – the first seven days of Paris 2024 promise to be big for New Zealand. There are few events that bring the country together quite like an Olympic Games. Nothing quite matches the excitement of getting up in ...
Groundbreaking local science just showed up in the most surprising of places: the season finale of The Kardashians. In the season five finale of The Kardashians last night, several members of the family gathered together in one of their signature empty, cream-coloured rooms to hear test results that had been ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amin Saikal, Emeritus professor of Middle Eastern and Central Asian Studies, Australian National University The Middle East is on the brink of a possibly devastating regional war, with hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah reaching an extremely dangerous level. Washington has engaged in ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laura Elizabeth Eades, Rheumatologist, Monash University Lupus is an inflammatory autoimmune illness, where the body’s immune system mistakenly attacks itself. Lupus can affect virtually any part of the body, although it most commonly affects the skin, joints and kidneys. The symptoms ...
A law firm that specialises in working with survivors of abuse in State care is disappointed that the Government fails to recognise that its boot camps can be directly compared to previous boot camps from the 1990s and 2000s. ...
Dying is a natural part of life, like updating your Wof or seeing your hairdresser, but without the word-of-mouth recs that help guarantee a good service. What if we changed that? Dying Reviews received by The Spinoff have had the names of organisations redacted while Hospice NZ collects further data. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonti Horner, Professor (Astrophysics), University of Southern Queensland Mike Lewinski/Flickr, CC BY On any clear night, if you gaze skywards long enough, chances are you’ll see a meteor streaking through the sky. Some nights, however, are better than others. At ...
Despite having no bars or other designated spaces for lesbians, Auckland boasts a small but mighty lesbian museum. So how did it get here? The past 18 months has brought increasing hostility towards the queer community across Aotearoa. Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull’s anti-trans rally in Tamaki Makaurau last March led to a ...
Poneke Antifascist Coalition has invited Wellingtonians to stand in solidarity with the Kanak people at 12pm today outside the French Embassy in Wellington. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Layton, Visiting Fellow, Strategic Studies, Griffith University Drones are the signature technology of the Ukraine war. A few miniature aircraft designs were used in the war’s early days, but an incredible array of drones have now evolved. There are different types, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Slee, Associate Professor, Clinical Academic Neurologist, Flinders University Francisco Gonzelez/Unsplash Migraine is many things, but one thing it’s not is “just a headache”. “Migraine” comes from the Greek word “hemicrania”, referring to the common experience of migraine being predominantly ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lee White, Senior Lecturer and Horizon Fellow, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Sydney Australia was slow to introduce minimum building standards for energy efficiency. The Nationwide House Energy Rating Scheme (NatHERS) only came into force in 2003. Older homes ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Steven Sherwood, Professor of Atmospheric Sciences, Climate Change Research Centre, UNSW Sydney The past century of human-induced warming has increased rainfall variability over 75% of the Earth’s land area – particularly over Australia, Europe and eastern North America, new research shows. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tony Heynen, Program Coordinator, Sustainable Energy, The University of Queensland A temporary stadium in the Champ-de-Mars, ParisEkaterina Pokrovsky/Shutterstock As Paris prepares to host the Olympic and Paralympic Games, the sustainability of the event is coming under scrutiny. The organisers have promoted ...
A night of karaoke and community in a pub that feels like a memory. You’d barely even notice it, unless you knew to look. Tucked away behind a liquor store on busy Constable Street is the capital’s last great pub. Newtown Sports Bar is an emblem of the pub culture ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Wright, Professor in Marine Geology, University of Canterbury Louise Corcoran/Getty Images The decline in the number of doctoral candidates at New Zealand universities is a worrying sign for the country’s effort to build a knowledge-based economy. Aotearoa New Zealand’s ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laurie Berg, Associate Professor, University of Technology Sydney defotoberg/Shutterstock Migrant worker exploitation is entrenched in workplaces across Australia. Tragically, a deep fear of immigration consequences means most unlawful employer conduct goes unreported. On Wednesday, however, the government officially launched a ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Vaughan Cruickshank, Senior Lecturer in Health and Physical Education, University of Tasmania Paris is about to host its third summer Olympics. While we don’t yet know what the legacy of this year’s games will be, let’s take the opportunity to reflect on ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hugh Breakey, Deputy Director, Institute for Ethics, Governance & Law, Griffith University In the wake of the assassination attempt on former US President Donald Trump, there were calls from bothsides of US politics, as well as internationally, to reduce the brutal, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Keith Rathbone, Senior Lecturer, Modern European History and Sports History, Macquarie University Two high-profile assaults on Australians in Paris have raised concerns about security ahead of the Olympic Games. On Saturday evening, a young woman was allegedly sexually assaulted by a ...
Dying is inevitable and, so it seems, is it costing a lot, writes Stewart Sowman-Lund in today’s extract from The Bulletin. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here.The cost of dying ...
The government took Joyce Harris's first baby and sent her off to a girls' home. Half a century on - and out of oceans of hurt - it asked her to be a mother figure. ...
It’s the deadliest fictional town in the country, but which death has been the most bonkers? Alex Casey looks back at 10 seasons of The Brokenwood Mysteries to find out. Warning: The following ranking story contains famous New Zealand actors appearing to be dead (not alive). The Spinoff has been ...
Water cremation is the biggest thing to happen to the death industry in the last 100 years. Alex Casey meets the people trying to bring it to Aotearoa. Through a set of mirrored doors down the industrial end of Christchurch’s St Asaph Street, death is getting a new lease on ...
Speaking of Dirty, question of the day. What happened to Dirty Politics and all the information left with Gower. Now I read Gower had his eye damaged and was in hospital but surely paddy has read it by now and can start spilling the dirt to take some of the gleam off national or was Raw Shark duped. If Raw Shark was duped by Gower I wonder if he will reappear if National and MSM continue there DP tactics which it appears they are.
I noticed everything went damn quiet on the Herald as soon as O’Sullivans name was implicated!!!
How was O’Sullivan’s name implicated. I understood there wasn’t a lot of stuff left that wasn’t already in the book or that had been posted by whaledump.
However, there’s plenty in all that, already public info for the MSM to be pursuing. They’ve just let the whole nasty mess drop. Instead, they are labeling anything a little bit attacking “dirty politics”, providing rear guard smoke and mirrors.
@ karol..
..unused material was given to apn..fairfax..and tv3..
..this is what the court-case/injunctions have been all about..
..so we should see it rolling out soon/when all the ducks are in a row/oia’s answered..
Rawshark said all the most important stuff was already public, when he disappeared. Hager said something similar.
There’s plenty of issues to be pursued on the already-public stuff… OIA’s and other investigations.
oh well..!..one of us will be correct..
..as i think there is lots still to come..
..so you really think this big/expensive legal-battle..
..that fairfax/apn/tv3 have been involved in..
..trying to get injunctions against publication lifted..
..has been over nothing..?
Slater was the one who instigated the injunctions. Worked a treat in closing down reporting of the issues before the election. Now Team Nat-Slater has far less to gain from pursuing the issues/case.
This issue is well traversed by Russell Brown et al on Hard News. You may find substantive comments there which address your concerns. Pundit also might help with the ‘It’s gotta be down to media conspiracy” meme.
MSM in NZ seems woefully weak and some commentators are clearly and shamefully partisan, but this anti-MSM reflex from the left is often counterfactual and deservedly Standard posters come in for some mockery because of it.
+1
@ Galeandra
this anti-MSM reflex from the left is often counterfactual and deservedly Standard posters come in for some mockery because of it.
You deserve mockery for your quaint, naive comments. In fact they are typical of the complacent, conformist, accepting sort of NZer we all were who allowed the present developments by embracing Rogernomics.
Now that a few people are trying to drag the majority from this destructive coma of acceptance, it shocks the addicted.
Don’t rock the boat, don’t criticise, don’t put your ideas forward, don’t demand better, who do you think you are making complaints. Follow those in charge without question, they know best, everything will be justified in the end, and those ends will be golden and worthy of the sacrifices caused by the means.
Jam tomorrow for some and, for the most, compliance or else is the true end – that is the wisdom that observation teaches, substantively.
fair do’s warbles..
..i pour as much shit on the corporate media as anyone..
..and there is more than enough material to be getting on with..
..each and every day..
..so i see no need to make shit up about them..
..and of course they have not been able to publish..
..because of injunctions..etc..
..claiming it is part of a supression-conspiracy (favouring key/national) on their part..
..is just ridiculous..
..and i think this is all that galeandra is saying/pointing out..
What’s this MSM your talking about Galeandra? All I see is a corporate media, driven by the profit motivator. Fair enough, that’s their buzz. Just remember if your going to play the game in the interests of profit – you are open to criticism from a non-profit, or socialist perspective, also a green one, and/or a feminist perspective.
I think if you try thinking, you will find a few more perspectives the media, which uses as it base – the profit motivation – can be critiqued on.
To blame us for doing analysis and criticism of the media as it currently stands – is like blaming a fish for living in water.
@ Galeandra
Why if you are left do you spend your time criticising others who are left. And why if I disagree with you is it ad hominem comment? Why can you throw negatives around and then react against a spirited reply?
If you are so wise then you will know that one of the problems with the left is that they splinter into squabbling factions. If the idea is to get a strong left movement going, and you are wise, and informed and clever etc. then why wouldn’t you support the good ideas, then say why others are lacking and look to amalgamate the good ideas into a strong and yet flexible philosophy and entity?
Wikipedia
ad hominem, is a form of criticism directed at something about the person one is criticizing, rather than something (potentially, at least) independent of that person.
@ phillip
I think that enough evidence of MSM dirty tricks and bias has been presented here to justify our criticisms. And you can have your own separate viewpoint but this does not diminish our findings when they are based on observation and fact. If they are not then you can present the source and your interpretation of what was said to justify your position and show TS commenters their error.
Well, well, well…… so having a ‘wrong’ opinion equates with “You deserve mockery for your quaint, naive comments” and references to my complacency and selfishness.
Just another shitty little attempt to shoot the messenger, which I think my original comment was about. Why don’t you follow up the sources I referenced before you let fly. Move out outside the truthy bubble, perhaps.
FYI, my inclination is harder left than most folks, and I used to spend quite a lot of time here but too many just want to interview their own keyboards. Labour still sucks but I try to support them even when the caucus let their politics of self-interest get in the way.
I don’t go in for ad hominums, I do grow tired of the faffing and whining that posters so liberally spray around, and sadly, I do read a lot of scathing posts elsewhere about “te Standard’ and the siege mentality that pervades its posts.
Thanks you for concern. Have a good day.
Comes in, makes a contentious statement, throws toys and takes off in a sook once challenged.
Claims to be of the “harder left” variety.
With skin that thin, no wonder we are losing 😀
Some of us demand more sober sources than Public Address.
Pundit is an “establishment” blog written mostly by insiders. The last thing you are going to find there is genuinely critical analysis.
That’s always been true. This time seems somewhat different to me and people in my social circle. Media bias is not new in New Zealand. Collusion between media and political parties of the kind exposed by Hager does seem to be something new, as was the relentless media campaign against Cunliffe by TV3, Stuff and the Herald. I’ve seen that done overseas, but never here.
Now if you want to claim that there was no relentless series of hit pieces on Cunliffe over the past year, I don’t think I have anything further to say to you. It was patently obvious to anyone watching, and denials just aren’t credible.
Holding the media solely responsible for the election result is hardly credible, but who is actually doing that? To say that the media had no role in it is equally silly. But that’s largely irrelevant – they didn’t do their job. The media in this election were poor and in many cases actively partisan. It doesn’t really help that most of them are stupid, but you’d think that they could make more of their admittedly meagre talents.
you could read a little wider here and find many on the left hold the Left responsible for its failures. it is you who chooses to characterise the comments here on the defeat as being
media bad
left hard done by
you stated Standard poters deserve the mockery, not some posters.
most people i read here commenting about the media have also commented on other aspects of Labours demise from internal squabbling, lack of connection to middle nz and much more.
you make such a bald statement as that and then shrink into a shell cos someone took umbrage?
yes it did. defending himself in another case cos he says he has no, oney but a QC for the injunction… mission accomplished.
“Gower had his eye damaged” What by, or who by are the questions
the abc’ers have a lot to answer for..
..not only did they undermine cunliffe from day one..
..their control of the policy-process..
..ensured that cunliffe was sent to campaign with an empty-policy satchel..
..with nothing for those people he was talking to/inspiring..
..when labour were polling at 35-37%..
..plus there was parkers’ vote-killing brainfart…the raise the pension-age clanger..
..that went down like a cup of cold sick…
..had cunliffe been given policies that backed that 35%-37% rhetoric..
..cunliffe wd now be prime minister..
..and the abc’ers stopped those policies..
..it is easy to conclude the abc’ers cost labour/progressives the election..
..and those same bastards now trying to blame cunliffe for the poor result..
..is kinda puke-inducing..
..and a bunch of lies..
I actually posted this on Open Mike yesterday, but it very much relates to what you are saying, and I think it’s an important issue…
.
“Leadership and policy are not the same thing. The parliamentary leader may well be the front man for party policy but does not get to create policy to suit themselves.
.
By extension then, does it really make sense to say that this leader took the party left, or that that leader would take it right etc?
.
Or is their solid evidence to suggest that I’m being naive?”
Quick disclosure: In future I will be dropping the handle HH (too evocative of Labour’s historic mana) and I will be posting under the name Cave Johnson.
[karol: thanks for letting people know. Flagging it to the moderators]
Yeah, that’s a good point and so the Labour people who want to go left need to ask where the policies are decided and why aren’t Labour’s policies the ones they want?
you’re too fucking gnomic.
…. if you
… wanted ….
to…
be…
…more hooton…
…than hoot..o…n…
………
…… why not
just be terse instead?
Phil U – 100% agree !
Phillip Ure …your analysis is spot on….and now they want to elect a Leader before the Election analysis is out!
…it is almost corrupting the process of the leadership debate and selection
…especially if DC cops all the blame and loses to Robertson ( who is absolutely a Labour Party Election disaster imo)
Writing the same points over and over again is easy.
Have you got anything else we haven’t read 30 times since yesterday?
i don’t think i’ve seen anyone else argue the empty-policy-satchel case..
..(and no..i am not commencing a dialogue with you..i am just pointing that out..)
Fact check your rants bruv – Daily often repeated claims = Empty head of a one trick pony.
..Fucken..Bo(a)re…eh..?..
Speaking of one trick ponies, are you going to have a go at Mr Ure today?
Hang on you lot 🙂
I recall the left saying that Labour had great policies and that the Nats had no policies. And now you are saying Labour either had no policies, or the ones they had were toxic.
So were the policies great, or were they toxic?
@ Allen …some things bear much repetition ….talking to children and talking politics
( besides which I thought you were talking to me until I realised you were talking to Phil….who actually does have interesting stuff to say)
michael parkin gives a very good impersonation of an empty-headed fool..
..(and he calls cosgrove ‘cosy’..chuckling about ‘cosy’ making up shit about the cunliffes..)
..he really is piece of fucken work..
…………………..if…..
you….
have…
a …..
drinking……
….problem…..
get…..
…..help…..
i don’t use alcohol..dear boy…
..far too declasse..eh…?
and the newest benchmark of/for declasse..is clayton cosgrove..
.(.or ‘cosy’ as tvone sock-puppet michael parkin calls him..)
..for just making stuff up about the cunliffes..
..or just ‘having a go”..
as sock-puppet parkin admiringly sneered this morn…
..(and hopefully this is the nadir in this relentless anti-cunliffe campaign being waged..
..i think cosgrove has taken it as low as it can go..)
lol…agree about Cosgrove
i’ve also noticed that alcohol use..especially the longer it goes on..
..dulls the brain of the user..
..have you noticed that in yrslf..?
Thanks for your concern.
I found your idiosyncratic writing style outrageously funny so I thought I’d have a crack at it.
It reminded me of someone who’s just hanging on to his bar stool (ergo the probably callous reference to our favourite tory opinionator). But then today I realized it has a striking resemblance to the diction of Rorschach (where Rawshark gets his name from) from the Watchmen. So now when I read your comments I hear Rorschach, which is pretty annoying.
“..I found your idiosyncratic writing style outrageously funny so I thought I’d have a crack at it. .”
..harder than it looks..?
Leadership campaign details are out. 14 meetings from 22 October (Wellington first) to South Auckland on November 11.
Voting results then announced November 18.
Seriously.. Labour should have kept the Goff-father after 2011. Probably would have won on Sept 20 but no… Let’s go all out internecine warfare in the public domain after every election loss.
Ffs.
Yes, Phil Goff should have stayed on as Labour leader for at least 6 months, to stabilise Labour after a big defeat. He was growing into the job as well. And Labour’s poor party vote performance could not simply be laid at Goff’s feet; there were many campaign management team decisions which led to a poor party vote campaign.
And FFS, this was a John Key Govt after just one term.
But Goff moved on after a lack of support from the pro-Robertson camp who was demanding change, and Goff didn’t have it in him to defend a bad election result. The thing they all had in common: none of them liked DC so the idea of installing David Shearer, with Grant Robertson as deputy, was born.
I agree. Goff was good. Still is. Now the Labour caucus members should put their egos/prejudices aside, get united and show their full loyal support to Cunliffe instead of spending heaps of cash on an unnecessary destabilising contest at this stage. Everything has some risk. Changing the leader now perhaps has the biggest risk of all.
CV, personally I put Goff in the Shearer category of too indecisive, can’t think on his feet, is a terrible orator.
As the leader gets the most press and announces the big things he’s got to have wits. The only time I’ve seen Cunliffe struggle was when Key set him up on the CGT for the family home. I believed DC’s reasoning, he was caught off guard there was not tax on family home or trust homes.
Robertson is a good orator too, Just doesn’t have the PM stature He’s short squat and can’t keep his shirt tucked in. At times Robertson looks like some random plucked off the sidewalk thrust into a suit he’s not fit to wear.
To me Goff clearly beats Shearer in the oratory and thinking on his feet stakes. That is not saying much – Goff does have a lot of experience to fall back on. But it’s not enough against John Key.
As for your description of Robertson. Yeah that laser guided bomb struck the designated target pretty hard.
Goff should have stayed long enough to hand over to Cunliffe and not a second more. In 1985 I was visiting various Labour MPs as part of a HART initiative to sound them out on the subsequently cancelled racist rugby tour. Goff was the only one who refused to see us. Helen Clark gave my friend and I more than half an hour.
Since that time, the only time I’ve had any respect for Goff was when he visited Yasser Arafat against the wishes of the Zionist regime.
Ahhh that’s informative, Murray.
Yeah I don’t think there are many people here that disagree with that, most people for better or for worse thought at the time that Goff should have stayed on.
Labour should – – –
I do – – — —
can you decode that?
@ chooky..
..psst..!..(hic!)…i think he has alcohol-issues…
Yeah sorry for being unhelpfully terse.
This blog has to have the greatest comments sections I’ve come across, but I do get frustrated by a lot of the “What Labour needs to do is…” opinionating. Tho alongside that there are also quite a lot of insightful criticisms of the party.
It seems to me that a lot of commenters have done a lot of yards in political activism, but then there are a lot of armchair critics. and I seriously believe that praxis is intrinsic to socialism. So my point is, OK thanks for all your opinions, but what actually the fuck are you doing/have you done about anything?
I know it could be construed as snobby, but there’s an unreality about language that isn’t grounded in work or experience. Or as Marx said: “Philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.”
In my experience I have found it very hard to be *extremely* negative while I’m engaged in positive, constructive activism. So I take it as a sign of unhealthy disengagement when commenters reveal a kind of towering negativity about their subject.
The upside of the dairy price collapse, which after this monings Fonterra GDT auction drop ( http://www.globaldairytrade.info/en/product-results/whole-milk-powder/ ) is many of our environmental problems will be reduced. Because farming is about to become grass based as opposed to supplementary feed based, which will reduce output and reduce the nitrogen runoff into waterways.
Bank economists are arguing that it is cyclical, but it will be interesting to see if that proves correct…given what USA and Europe are doing this may be more structural, in which case many NZ dairy farmers will be forced off their farms with too much debt. This is scary times for our economy and the collapse of the national party’s key economic driver.
@ saarbo..
..there is a market-glut predicted for the next five years..
..which will continue to drive prices down..(fonterras’ latest price-predictions are laughably optimistic..)
..and of course soon we have the release of mufree..
..which is milk made from yeast..which looks/tastes/behaves the same as cow milk..(i.e..baking/cheese-making etc..)
..this is made with minimal environmental-footprint..(no dirty rivers..)..
..will be much cheaper that cow-milk..
..and will not need to be chilled..(it does not ‘go off’..)
..these twin-storms mean that longterm the dairy industry is pretty much fucked..
..and what concerns me is how so many iwi are pouring their treaty-settlement money into an industry –
– that could be compared with bridle-makers/stable-owners..
..just before the advent of the motor-car..
“..and of course soon we have the release of mufree….which is milk made from yeast..which looks/tastes/behaves the same as cow milk..(i.e..baking/cheese-making etc..)”
Put your astute observationalist punditry to the test and make a prediction in which year sales of genetically modified/engineered milk from a lab will out sell cows milk in NZ.
A. 2015
B. 2016-2020
C. 2020 – To absolutely never in a million years.
f.g.i. (for general information..)
..i understand mufree is not genetically-modified..gm..
..apparantly the manufacturing system is remarkably similar to the one used to make insulin..
Or D. About the same time Quorn replaces the bacon in my sandwich.
@phillip ure
Where are you reading/hearing a market glut for 5 years. I have read it will balance out over 2015. Personally I think it will be longer than that but I am interested where you read 5 years?
@ saarbo..it was in a reputable int publication..(sorry..can’t remember which..)
..a couple of months ago..
..they pointed out that the white-gold rush into dairy has happened globally..
..and there are big operations coming on-stream..on top of what is already there..
..and the prediction was this wd all lead to a glut lasting at least five yrs..
..which is pretty grim news for the nz economy…
I have vague recollections of reading it .. and found it in my history folder:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-07-11/milk-output-expansion-poised-to-spur-5-year-world-surplus.html
By Phoebe Sedgman Jul 12, 2014 5:09 AM GMT+1200
“A record payout to New Zealand dairy farmers last year is setting the stage for a global milk glut that Goldman Sachs Group Inc. predicts will last half a decade.”
chrs kiwiri..
it’s a shame our corporate media doesn’t cover the important stories/’stuff’….
..i wonder what faff/nonsense they were headlining on july 12 th..?
Thanks Kiwiri.
You’ll note that article (July 2014) was predicting a forecast price of NZ$7/kg milk solids. The latest forecast from Fonterra on 24 September was NZ$5.30 and now the ANZ has cut its forecast to $4.85 & Westpac to $4.80
And you’ll note that the second article states “This sits well below the average cost of production for farmers and will have a significant impact on discretionary spending,”
shit..!..that is serious..
..and should our corporate media be covering this..?
..hell no..!..they’re busy..they have cunliiffe stories/dire-predictions to dream up..
And the ANZ/Westpac forecasts were on the basis that “assuming a modest bounce back in global prices.”
Agee PU. It is interesting that the Bloomberg article wasn’t picked up. TV3 news balmed the entire collapse of the dairy market on the unpredictable Russian ban on Dairy…not mentioning the very predictable oversupply from USA and Europe and drop in cost of cow feed (wheat) by 25% in USA.
‘coming up in the news at 10.30..
..patrick gower asks again..
..the question everyone wants the answer to..
..’is this the final nail in david cunliffes’ coffin..?’
..we have pictures of the nail..!..
..and paddy interviews the coffin..’..
Thanks: Yes that is interesting. It quotes Rabobank in there and it is Hayley Moinahan from Rabo NZ who is talking up some sort of recovery next year…which is really difficult to see happening given the over supply. To put things in contxt, for there to be oversupply then factories/dryers had to be built…they arnt going to de-commission new plant and equipment immediately, this is why commodities tend to do what they do…I was in the paper industry for a while and that industry is even worse than dairy. The big question is whether this downturn is cyclical or structural…if structural then we (NZ) is in the shit…so to speak.
+100 Saarbo
Dairy price drop.
How the government handles this will be interesting.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11334946
have you heard about the flag referendum…
Diversions can only work for some time.
The bribe of no CGT will wear thin as house prices stall and the economy tanks.
Key needs the TPP quickly to lock in the sale of the country to corporate interests and before enough people realise what’s happening.
if labour cannot acknowledge that they created pike river against public opposition.
if labour cannot acknowledge that the dismantled the mines safety regime against public opposition.
if labour cannot apologise to the families of the 29 miners
they should turn out the lights and shut the door on their way out!
1. Labour allowed Pike River to be investigated, National opened it up for commercial use
2. National dismantled mine safety in the 1990s, Labour was reviewing the legislation when National were elected in 2008 at which point National dropped the review
3. It’s National that should be apologising and coughing up the compensation
+1
nine yrs not long enough for labour to fix that..?
..that is one long ‘review’…
@ phillip
Labour was slow, weak, wet and deleterious in its duty to its constituents the workers in dangerous industries. (Other words for deleterious are injurious, destructive, prejudicial, ruinous. All are entirely appropriate. The free market gives you a choice – so feel free to choose freely.
(Also nocent is a synonym for destructive – what a great word for politician’s wrongdoing.)
Yes, they took too long to look at it but at the same time not everything can be done in a day and they did get round to looking at it. National stopped even the belated looking.
i guess if you wanted to try to retrieve a shard of credibility..
..(‘heyy!..c’mon..!…we were looking..!..)
..you cd try that on..
..but yeah..nah..eh..?
..and nine years is quite a bit longer than ‘a day’..eh..?
..who was the minister then..?
..which of these abc’ers was it..?
..labour and national are both guilty of criminal neglect..
that’s the thing with those abc’ers..
..they’ve all got so much baggage to lug around..
..they almost need permanent porters..
Even nine years isn’t long enough to do everything.
Really, you’re the one with credibility issues.
but definitely long enough to do something..
They did do something, quite a bit in fact – they just hadn’t gotten around to doing that.
DTB. You are very kind to Labour. Fact of the matter is that they were far too slow and cautious, spent a lot of energy carefully straddling the centre and fending off dirty politics attacks (eg shower heads, speeding to rugby games).
Interesting to see quite a lot of political columnists presently bagging the Greens for not selling out on their principles. I conjecture that what has happened is the election results which saw the majority of voting New Zealanders ignoring the moral reasons for not supporting National/ACT/etc has created a new amoral political universe that said columnists feel the need to somehow drag the Green Party and its supporters into. Sorry mates, us non-National/ACT etc voters may have lost the election but we remain on the right side of the moral universe which feels good inside. You can takeaway our rights but you can’t buy our souls.
ah..!..a green..!..a talking one..!..(rare in these parts..it seems..)
..care to tell us why you greens gifted peter dunne his 11th term in parliament..?
..much as you have also gifted him his seat in the elections before..
..cd you explain for us just how exactly your doing that..
..is in any shape or form..’on the right side of the moral universe’..
..eh..?
..i’m having difficulty seeing that..myself..
..what you did there may make you ‘feel good inside.’..
..it makes me feel like puking..
..i mean..was it even discussed/debated..?
..what the inevitable outcome of yr vote-splitting wd be..?
..and honestly..!..i have also had an irony-o.d. over this one..
..as dunne is the man who kept the green party out of office..way back when..eh..?
(..and this is how you repay him..?..as they say..)
..you could have taken dunne out at the election..
..why the hell didn’t you..?
..and..how he must laugh…eh..?
..at you..
@Phillip ure…why did Labour not agree to a coalition deal with the Greens before the Election?….that is part of your answer
the Election showed many of the potential Left alliance coalition Parties worked for themselves and not in collaborative concert…this was their undoing!
personally i think what Labour did to Hone and Int/MANA was unforgivable too….there was the possibility of 4 Left MPS ruled out for a Left coalition in that stupid little manouvre
….and as for rejecting the Maori Party as a coalition partner before the Election…this was crazy
i feel the greens should have had the nous to make a unilateral decision not to stand a candidate in ohariu..
..had they not..dunne wd be gone..
..dunne won by 900+ votes..
..the green candidate got 2,400+ electorate votes..
..how..in any way..can this not be braindead on the part of the greens..?
Bingo
…yes well maybe there are some dumb Greens?.
..and agreed in hindsight the Green Party should have called off the candidate
…but as I say there are extenuating circumstances
….and maybe the Green vote in that Electorate surprised everyone
in ohariiu there are 2,400+ of them..
..yes..the greens should have not stood a candidate..that much is pretty much unarguable..
..what ‘extenuating circumstances’ cd there possibly be..
..no..this has happened election after election..
..dunne is there/been able to do all the damage he did..
..because the green party split the vote..
,.and thus serially gift him the seat…
They can’t afford to do that due to the increase in advertising spending that the electorate candidate represents. In other words, to get the party name in front of more people they need the electorate candidates.
Everyone keeps going on about parties not working well in MMP and part of that is that in FPP, which the electorates still are, there are only two possible choices. And those two choices effectively come down to National (or who they tell people to vote for) or Labour and it will stay that way until such time as we bring in preferential voting for electorates.
thinks:..’hmm..!..some advertising revenue..?
..or get rid of peter dunne..?
..let’s go with the revenue..!..eh..?’
Do you know the difference between spending and revenue?
I really, really wish people would drop this specious argument about Ōhariu. All this discussion about tactical voting without any realistic understanding or analysis about when that tactical voting will work and when it won’t.
I’m not even going to link to my original comment – I’m just going to paste it here, again! 😡
“I think people are too easily seduced by the 900+ vote majority in Ōhariu into thinking Ginny Andersen could have won.
Look at the party vote distribution – 16,686 out of 32,698 voted National (leaving aside the 977 Conservative votes, 222 ACT & 241 United Future). The combined Green/Lab Party vote was 12,306. If there had been any hint of an accomodation between the Greens & Labour at the candidate level then the 5,000+ National voters who voted for Hudson would have simply switched to keep Dunne in. (If there’s one thing National voters know it’s how to follow directions from “Dear Leader”).
Ōhariu is not the old Onslow seat, its not even Ohariu-Belmont. It’s now a firmly National seat. Dunne has simply moved right as his seat has moved right. When the Hairdo retires it will return a National member (unless they stitch up some deal with the Conservatives to coattail the Conservative vote).
I’m not saying that tactical voting isn’t important – and that the Left needs to work out when it is important and when it isn’t (and that also means that sometimes Labour is going to have to surrender an electorate seat to someone else on the Left – oh I don’t know – say a seat like TTT!).”
Hi Phillip – I too would have been in favour of the Greens not having a candidate stand against Dunne.
chrs for answering..fambo..
..was it even discussed..?
..do you know why they didn’t make that decision not to stand a candidate..?
..the thought-processes behind that fascinate me..
..what on earth cd the ‘we must stand!’ case have been..?
+100 fambo
Congratulations to David Farrar. Kiwiblog has been accepted as a member of the Online Media Standards Authority.
It doesn’t mean that I like the blog. At the very best it is a personal blog, and he openly stands for “mischief”. I see the mischief in the way that he reports “accurately” but too often uses “facts” out of context, to suggest a conclusion that suits National. In other words it is a National propaganda blog, rather than a blog of the right, even if he periodically highlights a minor issue he personally disagrees with. And nothing of course stops selective reporting
Another issue that is worth noting is that there have been many criticisms of media standards, with regard to political reporting over this last election, that I think have a lot of justification. Main stream media will be quick to claim that they are neutral, and criticisms are made by all “sides” of politics, simply because they do not like negative publicity. This is partly true, but it’s also partly simply an excuse to ignore criticism. The main concerns I have is the open bias that is now accepted from people generally considered in the past to be reporting news. I have no concerns about people providing opinion, when that is clearly their role. But when others are given anchor roles in “news” type programmes, and are permitted to be openly political, I’m much more concerned. I’ll single out Mike Hosking, for an example of the worst of the worst. I’m less concerned about obvious subtle bias from a lot of others on the left, and the right.
Regardless, I’ll still say that I am pleased that Farrar has taken the action that he has. It’s a step in the right direction, and as the first blog to take this action, he deserves some accolades.
Farrar himself does not claim to be a journalist, distinguishing blogs from MSM. It’s a wise distinction. And he also openly says his blog is from the “right”. Open biases are less of a concern than hidden biases. Those on the “left” of the political spectrum, would be foolish not to periodically, and regularly understand what is being written on right leaning blogs.
I presume his joining means that standards will be maintained from the 1st October. It’s a pity that the example of Dirty politics from kiwiblog, exposed on this site, in the last week, is not subject to his “new” standards.
Refer to: Dirty Kiwiblog, 26 Sept 2014
“.I presume his joining means that standards will be maintained from the 1st October. It’s a pity that the example of Dirty politics from kiwiblog, exposed on this site, in the last week, is not subject to his “new” standards….”
he could have had better standards without joining a group. its hard to avoid the notion its a new way to make himlook reasonable… just another strategy.
The new “standards” don’t cover anything like the two track strategy or abuse of power as exposed by Hager. Where it does focus on accuracy, etc,, they are pretty weak:
So, not much different from what is done on most blogs and/or in the MSM… which still manages to be pretty inaccurate in its biases.
The rest of the standards are just about things like issues related to matters of sex and violence, for the most part, defamation, etc… most of it already covered by laws.
No doubt DPF will use it as a badge of not doing ‘Dirty Politics” of manipulation and deception, feeding such to the MSM, etc….. but it ain’t necessarily so in reality. There are clauses about not doing deception…. but ….?
https://www.facebook.com/cunliffeforleader
If you haven’t already signed this, and you support DC for leader, please click!
So Auckland city is about to come under a “mass surveillance” program after a contract awarded to HP????
Is this worse than the GCSB issue?
It seems more “personal” which is a worry?
and reported as a shiny new IT innovation.
Selling out our sovereignty – NZ data sent overseas, law enforcement processes, data matching, privacy intrusion – all conducted by foreign nationals in a foreign data centre now. All automatically sucked up by the NSA – where/when you go in your car/how long you stay there/who was in your vehicle with you etc.
aside from ‘who was in car with you?’..
..i-phones already do all that..
You can choose not to buy an iphone.
indeed..i just thought that many current i-phone owners wd not know that..
..it was more a public-service announcement/warning to them..
“My hope is that we will be able to pull it back. It is important to me that I leave my personal brand, which is reasonably statesman-like, and I’m not into any form of gutter politics. I’m distraught that this has occurred.”
– A statesman is usually a politician, diplomat or other notable public figure who has had a long and respected career at the national or international level.
– “The greasy little fulla in the blue suit”
Labours gift to National would be a Cunliffe win 🙂
You talking John Key or DPF there?
A message to the Darling of Ilam, James Dann – you say if David Cunliffe wins the leadership race you will leave the Labour Party. And you demand that if David Cunliffe loses the race, he should leave Parliament altogether. Well, to be absolutely consistent and even-handed how about this? If Grant Robertson loses the race, HE should have to leave Parliament too!! Fairness above all surely, James! Or is that not the way you roll?
Choices, choices! Is it OK if just James Dann leaves? Like, now?
Like yesterday, preferably.
ah, but where is he going?
you raised this yesterday? It’s a good question. I don’t think the guy has thought that far ahead.
In case you missed it – the truth is out the right wing hate the poor.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/conservative-party-conference-david-cameron-accidentally-says-tories-resent-the-poor-9768106.html
Now the British PM admits it.
The NZ Labour Party has had more than 2000 new members join in the last week…Vote David Cunliffe 🙂
How brill is that, Barfly?? So David Cunliffe is SO SO unpopular is he?
I see John Armstrong in the Herald is once again telling David Cunliffe to give up and go away. Ground hog day. Can anybody do a timeline showing the number of times that Armstrong and others at the Herald have called for Cunliffe’s resignation in the year since he became leader? – It feels like I have read the same article a hundred times. Hope he continues to disobey them.
@ westiechick..
..heh..!..it is becoming farcical..
..you could almost build a drinking game around every time gower says..
‘..’is this the last nail in cunliffes’ coffin?’..
..they are all fucken hysterical..bordering on demented..
..i am up early in the morning finding stories for whoar..
..and christie always starts his morning with a cunliffe-moan…
Here we go .. Monsanto’s GMO pressure on NZ farmers .. look at this loon on return from his free and no doubt well- sponsored trip. If this is released into NZ, it won’t matter who the leader of any party is .. we will be rendered useless by Monsanto.
Dirty Monsanto tricks makes Dirty Polltics look like a Peanuts cartoon.
Watch this space and oppose it when and where you can, please …. imo it is the BIGGEST issue we face.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/farming/agribusiness/10555565/Farmer-calls-for-debate-on-GM-potential
Bully boy tactics ahead.
http://www.salon.com/2013/09/04/a_battle_in_paradise_how_gmos_are_tearing_a_tropical_utopia_apart/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/14/kauai-anti-gmo-lawsuit_n_4593043.html
Yup. NZ under Key’s TPPA. Read it and weep for what ‘clean and green’ used to mean.
The loss of safe food and total desecration of our environment by glyphosate and then glyphosate-resistant weeds will be Key’s legacy if this is permitted through.
Glorious leader John, too stupid, thick and pig-ignorant to know any better. But so well-paid ….
I’m no fan of Monsanto but GM food has been proven to be extremely safe for human consumption and beneficial in a lot of ways.
Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water etc.
‘proven to be extremely safe for human consumption’
Where do you get your info from?
http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/our-failing-food-system/genetic-engineering/risks-of-genetic-engineering.html#.VCzRChZAYt4
http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/our-failing-food-system/genetic-engineering/risks-of-genetic-engineering.html#.VCzRChZAYt4
http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2013/07/30/the-intensifying-debate-over-genetically-modified-foods/
I think you are missing the point I am getting at here – particularly when it comes to “Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water etc”
Golden Rice is a GE product which is safe from human consumption and beneficial to children who have Vit A deficient diets.
Also I get my information from the vast majority of scientific literature.
http://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2013/10/08/with-2000-global-studies-confirming-safety-gm-foods-among-most-analyzed-subject-in-science/
Oh FFS mate the real risk of GMO food isn’t to individual human health, it is the systemic and potentially catastrophic threat that GMOs pose to the global ecosystem.
Exactly right but I’m not suggesting we should just accept full instigation of GMO’s but what I am saying is that GMO research, as a science, could give real benefit to mankind so we should be using it where safe – such as with Golden Rice as a prime example.
GMO, the science, is sound and well tested and studied and long should it continue to be so.
WTF.
Take a look at the credentials of that site, Contrarian.
Their team consists of journalists, not scientists and a quick search (Sourcewatch) indicates that that site could be politically motivated (while I have already found online articles by them accusing real scientists of having ‘political motivations’).
Just from a very, very brief search, I find that website suspicious.
Check out the book ‘Merchants of Doubt’.
I’m not talking about the site, but the studies (the site I linked to aggregates them hence my linking to it). The vast, overwhelming, majority of studies into GMO’s and human health have found them to be completely safe. Very very few studies have highlighted serious problems and many that have done have been shown to be lacking in scientific rigor.
Here are some more (42):
http://www.agbioworld.org/biotech-info/articles/biotech-art/peer-reviewed-pubs.html
And more (600 in total I believe):
http://genera.biofortified.org/viewall.php
I am not suggesting GMO’s are always safe and should be used with impunity rather I am saying that test after test they have been shown to be effective and they should continue to rigorously tested for safety in an ongoing manner as we do currently to ensure their safety.
I really haven’t got the time to go and check all those links in that dodgy GLP website, nor your other links.
These types of checks require finding out the funding of the sites too – that GLP site ‘said’ they weren’t funded by large companies but I just happened to do a reasonable search, to discover they are strongly linked with a dodgy train of funding.
I’d rather stick to Union of Concerned Scientists, who acknowledge the problem with big money affecting science from the outset. Thanks for providing the links, though just the same, perhaps others will read them 🙂
My main problem with what you said was ‘ but GM food has been proven to be extremely safe for human consumption.’
I really don’t think scientists have established that GM food has been proven ‘extremely safe,’ yet and suggest to you that exaggerating facts, and making sweeping statements in the current climate of pseudo-scientific arguments that ‘Merchants of Doubt’ detailed, is a really, really, bad idea if you wish to be persuasive.
+ 100 Blue Leopard
The reason children are deficient in Vitamin A is because of POVERTY. In India there is plenty of food with vitamin A, namely papaya, but poor people can’t afford to buy it.
So how will poor people afford golden rice?
Maybe Monsanto ( is it them who make it) will subsidise it as a publicity stunt
Sure – but barring an overnight miracle which will eradicate poverty and ensure everyone worldwide has enough good food to eat starting today, Golden Rice offers a safe and easily accessible alternative while the world sorts its shit out.
(as far as “how can they afford it” it is given away almost for free as humanitarian aid – see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_rice#Distribution and http://www.goldenrice.org/Content1-Who/who.php)
heh -the old vitamin A argument still got legs has it?
And prior to industrial mono-culture supplanting traditional farming techniques, do you think that just maybe (say) avocados would have been interspersed with whatever other main variety of crop was being grown, and that people could have satisfied their vitamin A needs through the simple act of growing and eating some foods rich in vitamin A?
That’s great but given we are in a post industrial mono-culture supplanting traditional farming techniques culture what do you say we make use of immediately available substances until such a time as we can return to an era of traditional farming?
The means are the ends, TheContrarian.
Those without power are always provided, by those with power, with the ‘worst option’ and also the ‘best option’ – one leads them to instant destruction; the other leads them deeper and deeper into the bowels of the prison/ the workhouse/ the labour camp.
I’m being a bit dramatic but hopefully you get my point.
The solution is to regain power – real power. Not over others, but over one’s own life.
Ah well fuck it then
Not at all.
By all means use ‘Golden Rice’ for Vitamin A.
Just don’t be under the illusion that it comes along as a ‘free lunch’. Know what’s being lost.
The trade-off between life/security and freedom has always been around.
So has the tendency for people to take advantage of other people who are at a disadvantage – and to set the frame in which those others operate.
Back when we were nomadic we had a much more varied diet. As that was true of most of our evolution that means that we’ve evolved to have a varied diet. The problem now is that we don’t have such a varied diet.
The answer isn’t GMOs which really don’t produce anything more than the natural ecosystem – that’s another physical impossibility sown as the answer that the rich pour upon us. The answer is to massively vary our diet again. Our farms* to be turned into food forests because they have that variety and are also sustainable.
* I also include the vertical forests that can be grown in cities
The naïveté is cute.
Until we have participatory democratic control of the state, we should have nothing to do with GM food. In the meantime, the safety or otherwise is basically irrelevant. We need to maintain our food sovereignty, not hand it over to corporations.
This NZ Fed Farmers farmer who travelled on Monsanto’s ticket is too dense to understand the run-off ramifications of thousands of tonnes of poisonous glyphosate into our water ways. omfg
Sad to Simon Cunliffe quit. Only been in the job a year and had a heckuva time.
Really nice guy, used to be my cricket coach.
Competition for Jim Mora, Danny Watson and Larry “Lackwit” Williams:
RadioLIVE has an equally crap afternoon chat show
Thursday 2 October 2014, 2:15p.m.
By chance, I strayed on to RadioLIVE this afternoon and heard this asinine banter. It took only a minute or so, but I fear it never got any better. I doubt it could have gotten any worse. The only interesting thing in it is how Rodney “Perk Taker” Hide unwittingly reveals just how ignorant and right wing he really is…..
RODNEY “PERK TAKER” HIDE: You can’t respect a leader who cries when he loses! You might cry in wartime, when the Russians are coming for you!
WILLIE JACKSON: Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
CHRIS TROTTER: Haw haw haw!
WILLIE JACKSON: Yeah, I remember Roger Federer crying after he lost a match to Nadal. It made me want to S-S-S-SPEW.
CHRIS TROTTER: [pompously and condescendingly] Haw haw haw! Rodney, you are indulging in what the Germans call schadenfreude, which means taking delight in the misfortune of others. And I would be doing just the same as you if the boot was on the other foot. Haw haw haw!
WILLIE JACKSON: Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
ALISON MAU: So does the Labour Party need a knuckle-dragging neanderthal to lead it, as these guys seem to think? Tell us what YOU think after the break…..
At this point I could take no more, and stopped listening.
Well of course you stopped listening, I don’t blame you I mean Radiolive is very popular so listening to them might mean you get an idea of what the majority of Kiwis are thinking
and that we can’t have that
A hapless, ill-informed pogue unwisely attempted to defend the indefensible….
Well of course you stopped listening, I don’t blame you I mean Radiolive is very popular
Errrr, no it’s not. Its audience share is extremely low. Possibly the choice of their cutting-edge management to sound exactly like NewstalkZBigotry was not the smartest move.
….so listening to them might mean you get an idea of what the majority of Kiwis are thinking
So Willie Jackson, Perk Taker Hide and Lord Haw Haw Trotter are representative of “the majority of Kiwis”, are they? What are you smoking today? I hope you’re not going to try to drive a car any time soon.
and that we can’t have that
Sarcasm is never an effective tactic, my muddleheaded friend.
Missing your regular takes on Mora’s panel.
Always enjoy your reviews.
Interesting article from Pheobe Fletcher (Punditt) , on DC and the PR shortcomings of the labour Party. http://www.pundit.co.nz/content/how-david-cunliffe-is-like-scarlett-johansson
Interesting article from Pheobe Fletcher (Punditt) , on DC and the PR shortcomings of the labour Party. http://www.pundit.co.nz/content/how-david-cunliffe-is-like-scarlett-johansson
http://dimpost.wordpress.com/2014/10/01/is-new-zealand-ready-for-an-openly-inane-prime-minister/
– Are we ready?
About the only thing I agree with there is this bit:
Because it actually happens to be true.
In a most unusual step, I had Tim Barnett, Labours general secretary, request that I remove the Clayton Cosgrove post.
Rather than make this leadership issue more corrosive than it already is and because I am sometimes moderately cooperative to polite requests. I have removed it from public view. It will be restored back to being visible after the election is completed.
Unfortunately Tim tried to ring me (always a bad idea when I am working), so I only noted that he’d emailed when I pulled my head out of some code and hooked out to home for mail. If anyone ever does want to get hold of me, I’d suggest txting. I look at those every few hours.
Having been offline for the past 5 days, I was just in the process of catching up what I had missed seeing when the Clayton Cosgrove post disappeared.
What was Tim Barnett’s actual stated reason lprent?
Last week I asked the following question on this site:
Could someone please tell me who are the Labour MPs responsible for leaking confidential caucus information to the media? Let them be named and shamed.
I’m grateful to Karen Price for her twitter comment because I suspect she has inadvertently confirmed the chief culprits are Clayton Cosgrove and Trevor Mallard. Since it has been going on for a very long time, I consider them to be traitors and they should be removed from parliament.
“While aware of the motivations behind the piece. I am firmly of the view that it has the potential to damage the Party.”
Personally I think that what Cosgrove was doing was somewhat more dangerous longer term (as my post was demonstrating, I literally copied his tactics in the Herald and made them somewhat more extreme).
However I’m always a sucker for a request from a party organisation of the left (less so for politicians).
BTW: There is life offline?
There is life offline?
Yes. Not in the beltway though. In the beltway there is only pain. Pain and revenge. Pain and revenge and perks. Ok, pain, revenge, salaries, and perks, and that’s it.
Ah the Collins experience
The plaque on the wall behind the gimp suit, abandon hope all ye who enter here. Collins……
I need a long bath to get that out of my head. Maybe a psychiatric recluse for a while.
Damn you.
Was there another Rawshark dump?
Political careers begin with smiles but tend to end in tears …
Indeed there is, but I must confess to having had some withdrawal symptoms.
Edit: OMG I’ve just seen it. Geez… I’m floored!!!
+100 Anne….”I’m grateful to Karen Price for her twitter comment ….I consider them to be traitors and they should be removed from parliament”.
Duncan Garner also confirms who the ABCers are. But the conclusions he goes on to draw from that and recent developments, totally ignores the role of Labour Party members – it’s all Thorndon Bubble for Garner. I guess that’s where he lives.
He ends totally putting the boot into the Labour Party.
He begins supporting Karen Price:
But, after saying all that, defying logic, Garner then says Cunliffe should resign.
What part of letting the LP members and affiliates have a say, does Garner not understand?
i like the first part.!!!!
…the second part he is hedging his bets and talking crap for his masters…he is a halfway good journalist
You do wonder what Slater and his mates have on these media folk.
Hager said at one of the meetings he spoke at that many of the media came up to him and asked if the files he’d seen included anything on them.
Our owned media.
unfortunately most journalists are owned in that they are paid by a msm corporation and they have editors to make sure they stay in line
this is why we need a Left owned radio station ( and tv channel)
…the crap that my son comes home with from listening all day to commercial radio while driving is disturbing….people need alternative Left radio and real education …especially young people…but all people… young and old and middle aged
….where is Dotcom?
Nice of Garner to name the ABCs but he misses the whole point. Labour isn’t split between people who like Cunliffe and those that can’t stand him. It’s split between neoliberals and lefties. Funny you forgot to mention that Duncan, given it’s the reason the ABCs exist.
I just knew it was a cold day in hell.
I should have never wholly agree with you Iprent.
Great read whilst it lasted.
Does this mean no free discussion on the ABCs role in undermining the democratic will of Labour members can be discussed on this site?
And no discussion of which Labour MPs have been leaking to the media and what they have been leaking?
Sad to see debate closed down.
have you seen such discussion being shut down? I haven’t.
Interesting that Vance in Robertson’s attack dog.
After Vance wrote a column that was critical of Cunliffe, responding to a tweet which said the column “sums everything up extremely well”, Ms Price tweeted: “No it sums up Andrea Vance very well. She’s unidimensional and unbalanced. Grant’s been feeding her for years.”
Thoughts?
That abuse of power rewards corrupt journalists?
That Vance is so stained by her own filth that nothing she writes has any intrinsic worth?
That Nicky Hager was wrong to not publicly expose the treacherous hacks of the so-called fourth estate?
That Price is simply pointing out that Vance has no clothes?
That Price is way too honest to ever become a politician ?
That Vance, like most of the MSM, don’t do any actual journalism just act as a conduit for others messages ?
+100 tc
South Korea looks to implement an interesting plan to stimulate the economy:
Yep, looking to tax large stockpiles of money.
Communism by stealth! Oh, the Humanity!
RSA Replay: Inequality and the 1%
Seems I’m not the only one who realises that we can’t afford the rich.
Why an Unequal Planet Can Never Be Green
More and more evidence that we just cannot afford the rich.
I left the You Tube file to run while doing the dishes after dinner. And then had to sit down and watch most of it. Thanks for pointing this out. There are lots of useful stuff there to develop for discussion.
Very very useful stuff…his point that there is more inequality in the top 1% to 2% than in the bottom 98% was utterly telling; also the idea that more equality would actually greatly help most of those in the top 10% by stopping the 1% and the 0.1% from racing away from them.
.
Leunig, perhaps referring to Dirty Politics
lol…great cartoon