If its true that many people involved with suicide prevention discouraged Mike King and then didn’t attend his talk in Kaitaia I find that shocking. It would be like Kaikoura turning away some of the emergency services after the quake.
The depressing thing about stories like that is it brings out all the pompous jackasses who say people should do this, they should do that, it’s their own fault blah blah.
I wonder just how many suicides can be laid directly at the feet of uncaring Governments, politicians and bureaucrats. I suspect it’s in the thousands.
DH
When you hear the saying that pessimists are those who are most in touch with reality and being probably right, the wonder is that there aren’t more suicides.
We keep ourselves sane by having parallel consciousnesses going on at the same time I think. If so, then we are all split personalities, not quite bi-polar but balancing on a tipping point all the time. But we have to or we would not be able to handle stories of Syria, Australia, NZ, and happenings like the holocaust happening to many people over and over again, only in Germany using modern industrial methods. Still we must hope and try to encourage ourselves and others to be positive despite our human frailties.
I’m going all philosophical because we have to think about what we are, or we may as well lie down and let artificial intelligence and techno-advantages and its fellow travellers sell we humans out, with our own connivance. We need to turn one of our public holidays into extolling humans day! Seriously. Start doing it now before the grey and black people take us over like a zombie wave.
I get concerned about children taking on caring roles. It is good for youngsters to learn to be themselves first not be putting others first when they should be growing up and developing their own personalities and abilities.
Learning to be considerate and generous and respectful of others and understand one’s own behaviour, abilities and faults is the first task of a youngster. Those who live in dysfunctional households with unreliable parents or sick parents and have to take the parental role on may manage well or be heavily burdened. It is better if they can spend most of their time growing up, getting their education and personal skills, not taking on adult responsibilities.
Some manage well in becoming little parents, but I don’t like kids being burdened, and I don’t agree with them being encouraged to be little adults. (I’m thinking of clothing styles etc. here. Also entered into sports competitions and encouraged to be striving winners so that games just aren’t any more.) Balance is the thing needed.
” It is good for youngsters to learn to be themselves first not be putting others first when they should be growing up and developing their own personalities and abilities.”
You know, when I read that I immediately thought of the offspring of Our Leader Past. Growing up in stable privilege, having all care and support and no responsibility. Indulged.
Rosemary
If disabled people improved their conditions at the expense of young people becoming their carers it would not be a net improvement. And having time to grow up and get an education and mature inti a young adult does not mean that they will turn out like the spoilt children of isolated rich, people.
We won’t get any encouragement for the idea of thinking about others’ welfare from this cohort of pollies and probably never from the RW. However developers are working on help robots which will be of value. They may be as useful as washing machines which are popular programmable machines. We can hope that a caring and practical humanity will arise in sufficient numbers to return to us our world, much depleted, but with some use and wear left in it. In the meantime there are some improvements, not fast enough I am sure.
“If disabled people improved their conditions at the expense of young people becoming their carers it would not be a net improvement. ”
Sometimes, Greywarshark there is no other option…other than the horror of residential care, or unreliable and inconsistent care from ‘formal’ providers.
The reality is that there is an ever increasing expectation that family members will assume most or all of a disabled member’s care.
Families are usually made up of people who love and care about each other…emotions that successive governments of all leanings have exploited for those whose impairments are not covered by ACC.
It is nonsense to suggest that it would be the case that a person with a disability would choose to handicap the future of a young family member so that their own ‘conditions’ would be ‘improved’.
Likewise the concept that a robot could ever replace a human carer.
However….this topic is not about disability and the potential ruining of a young person’s prospects by them having to provide care.
This is about a young person volunteering to provide support to her PEERS.
A huge difference.
And who better to support young people who have been betrayed and abused by adults than another young person with an obviously caring heart and a willing, listening ear?
Who better to organise a group to tackle bullying in schools than other young people experiencing on a daily basis the competitive culture that exists in schools?
And who better to proactively seek to have a wider community discussion about YOUTH suicide than a young person who has experienced personal loss through suicide?
It does no harm whatsoever for these young people to take on these roles. Trying to be contributing members of their communities is as much a valuable a part of their education and maturation as taking selfies and inane facebook chatter.
Prime Minister Bill English will try to win favour with middle and lower income New Zealand with bold budget policies for social equity.
Jacinda Ardern will romp to victory in the Mt Albert by-election on 25 February.
Kingmaker Winston Peters strikes again. After the general election in September, Mr Peters will court Labour, but, given their Greens allegiance, he’ll likely go with National in exchange for a top job.
…
The economy will continue to grow, then hit a wall in the second half of the year as a Trump-style shock hits the global economy and concerns about the eurozone (specifically Italy) and China’s economic health pose a threat.
There will be a significant company failure.
The Commerce Commission will turn down one and possibly two major media mergers and find its decisions appealed in court.
…
Donald Trump will be inaugurated US President. He (and/or his picks for national security and budget directors) will cause at least one international crisis. The world will long for Barack Obama.
…
Climate change will spell another record hot year, including for New Zealand. More species will edge towards extinction, Arctic sea ice will melt in winter and more coral will die. There will be at least one megastorm.
…
Auckland house prices will keep marching upwards. Auckland’s Task Force on Housing will make recommendations on how to accelerate building, but the house shortage will continue to worsen.
…
Queenstown’s traffic woes will get some relief with the first stage of the $22 million eastern access road opening. Plans for a $60m publicly-funded convention centre will get dropped in favour of a private one by Remarkables Park Town Centre.
Otago will get a shockingly early – and an appallingly late – snow dumping.
Invercargill Mayor Tim Shadbolt will start riding a push-scooter to council meetings.
Myself, I rarely/usually can’t make predictions. I’m never quite certain what will happen next – except to expect some very unexpected happenings.
Though I do think Bling will try to get onside with middle and lower income Kiwis. The bits above about the economy and Auckland house prices seem very likely.
I have no idea about Shadbolt’s transport preferences.
Locals showing resistance to an old working class Melbourne suburb being turned into a lifestyle centre. http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/war-on-footscrays-harried-hipsters-gets-hairier-as-cafe-vandalism-turns-nasty-20170102-gtkqvt.html A cafe owner felt the need to stick a sign in his window saying that he had lived in the area for eight years, sent his kids to a local school and was renting. People really are getting sick of life-styles taking precedence over lives. At least the cafe owner, who comes across as quite decent, justified his presence on their terms rather than insisting that they give way to “progress” or move somewhere cheaper.
re RNZ Journalists. Wow ,their predictions are so conservative and “safe”. I guess that’s a reflection of what RNZ has become. The indomitable and much cherished Kim Hill is the only one left with any fire.
Yes. They are pretty superficial, and mostly focus on the pretty obvious.
Though, at least the housing crisis, the fragility of the NZ economy, and climate change are on their radar. And that is more than can be said for the Stuff predictions, which were all about the GAME of politics.
Kim Hill is not indomitable. She was hauled over the coals, deservedly so, by John Pilger in 2003. All of her extensive retinue of pouting, scowling and frowning did not save her…
You are correct Morrissey, Pilger did trounce her on that occasion. For some unknown reason she was not prepared well that day and was indeed quite ‘anti’. However I still rate her immensely. Nine to noon virtually died after Kim left it.
I share your high opinion of her, garibaldi. She’s certainly superior to anyone else on National Radio, with the exception of the excellent Phil Pennington.
But I have been disappointed by her on several occasions. Here’s another one:
Generally I agree. However Kim Hills view that Hilary should win, but didn’t …because she is a woman was, to my mind, breathtakingly stupid. And, speaking as a woman, pretty darned offensive.
Is it truly as simple as people for you and people against you CV ?
Is there not a tolerable amalgam somewhere CV ? Or has this all become weirdly egocentric or something ? Which would mean that the main players have not learned a thing.
Am very lucky to have a number of friends and their families come to stay with me this week.
We were chatting about politics last night, turns out one of my friends had Gerry Brownlee as a woodwork teacher. He said Gerry was not a good teacher, would spent most of his time in his office doing political stuff rather than teaching the lads, also said he was a nasty bully and bigger in size than he is now.
Another friend turns out he had gone to school with Bill English, apparently he had never met anyone so boring.
NZ is such a small world, and it appears not much has changed.
As I have said before, go back 20/30 years we used to sail our small boat on this lake and kids used to swim in it. Not now. Someone who has been in the engineering business, if I let the coolant oils from the machine tools leak or leach into the water table or drains I would have been heavily fined and told to fix or be closed down. Why is it then these arsoles are allowed to pollute the country with their large industrial dairy farms? I don’t want to hear the shit about “export earnings” as I know quite a few non-dairying companies just doing that, but are subject to the rules, Why is this sector allowed to get away with all this pollution of our so-called green and pure country.
Oh, I have just remembered it is all the bird shit in the lakes, not the cows causing the problems. sarc/
You could be right there BM, but I have been tipped out many a time and others as well, and taken the odd mouthful in the process. I don’t recall anybody getting sick I know I never did even if we were ignorant of the conditions of the lake. Visited Ngaroto the other day the lake colour is now RED something I have never seen in all the years I sailed there. Good reply mate but the only reason this lake is now red and highly toxic is through intensified dairying. You can come back with smart answers but you can’t get away from the fact that there are too many cows that are unsustainable and the numbers have got to be culled and get back to more manageable numbers the country can handle.
It is now bloody ridiculous, traditional sheep country in the SI are now being turned into dairying that can only be sustained by large irrigation systems which are well and truly stuffing up the local water supply. When you get the likes of Graham Sydney the artist voicing his concern about areas like the Maniototo Plain something has to be done like now if we are going to leave this country in a reasonable condition for the next generation.
Are you two telling me that all of a sudden it is caused by weather conditions and rotting peat? If so why not 20/30 years ago. I class those two comments as a Nick Smith comment, so you are both wrong, its all down to birdshit as Smith has already informed us.
Half crown, I must admit I haven’t seen Ngaroto for about 10 years now, but it always was brackish to me. Also Waikare was a cess pool many years ago. We used to spend half our summers immersed in the Hamilton lake when we were kids- wouldn’t hop in it now. I am just saying that not all deterioration has been caused by dairying, though it is a big factor.
Of course, both you & BM are right garibaldi (christ I am beginning to sound like Jones with Hooten.) I thought it was a good idea when the water slide was removed from Hamilton Lake. There was no way I would swim there, and the Waikato Lakes are known for the brackish colour because of the peat.
I am not an environmental nutter but I love this place and I would hope someone considers the long term effects this industrialised farming is having on NZ I would not like to see NZ end up like some of the cesspits we have all seen overseas.
I still sail on Hamilton Lake, and, away from shallows near the shore where measurements are often taken, find the water perfectly safe to swim in. But Hamilton, alone among the Waikato peat lakes, has no inflow from dairy farms, nor any of the dreaded Koi carp that infest all others. (These fish spread to all other lakes through farms’ irrigation/drainage channels – none are connected to Hamilton Lake.) The algae Hamilton Lake gets is a different one to all other lakes’ as well.
I agree that farming has to tidy up its act with all irrigation/drainage channels and shorelines, plus reduce usage of leaching phosphates, etc. What is happening to excellent lakes like Ngaroto is nothing short of criminal.
The internet is a public resource. It’s too valuable
to be entrusted to private entities like TradeMe.
Nearly one year ago, the caring and sharing folks at TradeMe announced that they were burying the Old Friends site. Their “justification” for this execution is a model of mealy-mouthed corporate blather….
Today we switched off oldfriends.co.nz. It wasn’t a decision we made lightly, and we really appreciate the support you’ve given Old Friends over the past 13 years.
We’ve got some good news about the publicly available information though (e.g. photos, lost & found, notices). We’ve been working with the team over at the National Library and they’re in the process of archiving this information via an annual process called a ‘web harvest’. This means that information will remain available even after Old Friends closes. If you have any questions about the web harvest, please get in touch with the National Library.
I visited a couple of times ( not really my thing) and did wonder how they coped with people who weren’t too interested in being put on the site by others. I suspect that not everyone wanted a named photo of themself in standard one posted on the net by that helpful old classmate. Or some one “sharing memories” that may have been very different from the other party’s memory.
That too. Overall I can’t say I would miss it’s existence but it’s there in the National Library along with “TheStandard” archive.
The big question is – do you let your children (& grandchildren) know about your standard blog handle -in your will?- for when they do the family history research? Most of us have only a vague idea of our forebear’s personality & character but a blog would give some colour to that.
I found ( courtesy of a WWI publicly funded project) a hand written note from a great uncle who subsequently died in the war. It was like touching a fragile hand from the past.
Goodness me, what a bunch of dim-witted low-life frequent Kiwiblog. Some of the adjectives used to describe ‘mickysavage’ are almost unprintable. Farrar’s posts, while hopelessly politically compromised, are at least readable but the level of commentary below them has the aura of an IQ level of around 30. Why would anyone bother to read them.
Btw to lprent: now you’re back on deck… I haven’t had any ‘replies’ function (right hand side) for yonks now. Have tried to log on but must be doing something wrong. Won’t work.
It is a strange beast, carefully designed to provide the service without burdening the server.
The current incantation of that runs off the javascript in your browser. As the page loads, it looks at your client side cookies that maintain your reply details. If you have commented on your current client machine OR have logged in, you will have a cookie stored. It requests a limited number of replies using those details.
If your client browser or machine stops cookies or limits javascript jQuery too much (eg by closing TCP connections too fast), then it won’t work.
There are two possible results. It could be that you get a blank replies tab, in which case it is likely to be the javascript side (I’d have to peek at the code). Or you could just not get the tab. Maybe I should put some diagnostics into the tab and always have it present.
…but the level of commentary below them has the aura of an IQ level of about 25. Why would anyone bother to read them.
There was a reason that I refer to the comments section of KiwiBlog as “the sewer”. As far as I can tell a substantial portion of the regular commenters think with their genitalia. And very few of them have a clit to think with – so the drain of blood causes them to have a severely diminished cranial blood supply.
Thank-you for your prompt response to my problem lprent… most of which I don’t understand. 🙁
I take it then there’s nothing I can do about it? Guide me to the buttons I need to hit on my keyboard and I’ll be right. I get a blank replies tab. I think.
That’s how it started with me but then the replies tab went permanently blank.
Edit: geez, I tried one more time and its working like you say Andre but it hasn’t been doing it for yonks. I feel a fool. 😡 Maybe lprent has done something. As you were folks. 😳
Ok. That is just weird. That sounds like the javascript simply isn’t triggering from the front page. I can’t think of any way that could happen. It is triggered from inside the div on the right where it displays (I think).
I still get an empty reply tab when I first get on to the site. When I go to a second page it fills up then. From what you say it would seem that the javascript isn’t being fired on initial page load but works after that.
You have to use callbacks with javascript/jquery when doing asynchronous operations, it’s the only to make sure your code runs in the order you want it to.
Yeah of course. You wouldn’t believe how much I live in async when coding. My favourite c++ library is boost::asio and anyone who works with me will tell you how boring I can be on singing its praises.
The problem turned out that it wasn’t triggering because a dependency between a utils script and jquery hadn’t been set up in the wordpress codex. On Firefox (for some reason) it decided to launch the javascripts in a different order on the front page only.
I could be wrong but I think Draco has just started to get into coding..
Should complete my Bach in Comp Systems (Prog.) this year.
I actually had a similar problem with C# and although I was sure what the problem was the only info I could find on it was MS promise that it would all be loaded correctly at run time
I did the same degree 12 years ago. I wasn’t impressed with Unitec. Some of the papers highly dubious, the tutors not so good either. There was one unix paper; the tutor spent most of his time talking about gaming. The level 7 paper cost the equivalent of 3 normal papers and Unitec provided no softwear/ server for those using Unix languages. My tutor/mentor was absolutely useless suggesting I use Access as the database for the program I was using Perl for.
Annoying. Temporary inelegant fix by moving the function from utils.js to inline in the header. I have a bit too much code in my head right now to jump languages.
Just tried it on same version of firefox on linux (chrome and several other browsers worked fine). It picked up my cookies on the first display but only gave me a blank Replies tab. The replies showed up on a post screen.
Can’t see anything obvious except I can’t even see the query being launched.
Just tried it on same version of firefox on linux (chrome and several other browsers worked fine). It picked up my cookies on the first display but only gave me a blank Replies tab. The replies showed up on a post screen.
Can’t see anything obvious except I can’t even see the query being launched.
Ummm. That is triggered with this bit of code at the end of utils.js
(
function($)
{
$( document ).ready( load_replies() )
}
)(jQuery);
Ok. Just spotted the problem. It is loading utils before loading the jquery – so the statement is meaningless to your browser. I have no idea why this wouldn’t handle the same as it does on chrome and other browsers.
“Why don’t you sign on, Anne, and join the fun? See if you can beat my record of posts marked “Hidden due to low comment rating”….”
You must be joking Morrissey, you must consider Anne’s health.
As I was pointing out to BM @6.1.1 I would not sail on now a sewer known as Lake
Ngaroto as it is a danger to your health. kiwiblog is in the same category (grin)
FYI halfcrown – I still occasionally sail at Ngaroto despite the algae, and the club still has a good core of keen sailors. None of them have suffered the threatened dire consequences of making contact (or immersion!) with the water, but this is not a reason for not reducing the pollution. It remains one of Waikato’s best sailing venues for clear, steadier breezes than others.
Anne
Just from an observational point of view about the Replies, it seems to me that I don’t get access to them till I have, in the present, put a comment. It seemed that was necessary, but am unsure if it then works with or without a reply as my system isn’t working well. (I have to spend an hour so learning about it and tweaking.)
Hi GreyWarShark
Are your comments going straight through now? I did a tweak yesterday that should have diminished the effects of getting auto moderated.
lprent
You are tops. I wondered why going through faster. Can’t give definite timing but I can see them now quite soon. Appreciate your patience. I have had a taste of almost pure hatred from clique of techno-in-people on another supposedly friendly community site when I blundered into an in-depth discussion thread. So know how trying learners are. And unfortunately we are eternal learners, it is built into the system that there are constant changes and readjustments – all makes work for infrastructure engineers though.
No problem. I’m having a day of coding at home (mainly for work since I head back in the morning), so these are useful diversion/avoidance things while shifting from holiday to work mode.
A close examination of an old version of the site compared to the current showed a new option that appears to have been turned on automatically.
Wordfence free version already includes excellent comment spam filtering. If you are a premium customer, we provide an additional feature that does a further check to prevent comment spam. This feature does an additional check on the source IP of inbound comments and any URLs that are included. We have found this feature has a high likelihood of reducing spam that has been known to slip through traditional spam filters.
So I suspect that you or your ISP’s local area have made it onto a blacklist somewhere.
In this situation perhaps women should carry whistles or noise makers that erupt when they are pressed so that the occurrence cannot go unnoticed, and an effective instant control like the old-fashioned stocks be instituted where such men would be ridiculed. There will not be a lessening of this bad behaviour and attitudes while there is no punishment, no denunciation of it in public.
In any society if that happens then women are a subset of society, only accepted when they conform. It’s a hard one to change when in what are named shame-based societies, if a women reports a rape to the police and expects the miscreants to be named and punished, instead she is imprisoned for now being unchaste even though unwilling and unwitting, perhaps too trusting.
That’s just British colonial self-righteousness rearing its dusty head again. Who are these late on the scene white people who think that they are going to change 3000 years of Indian societal structure?
CV
I understand you but 3000 years must include much change. The present already includes effects of colonial change from past centuries, change, reaction, change, improvement, advantage taken, reaction, change etc. It’s all humans trying each other with the powerful being in the driving seats. Not just in India.
Anthropologists? have found that traditional, oral people have plastic memories.
Plastic as in being movable and changeable. At first visit to a new area, the moderns sang their modern song in reply to a traditional song. When visiting the same area a decade later, it was incorporated into their traditional music and they had no memory of it being of late inclusion. It had been absorbed and was now part of their historical repetoire. That’s how we are. We absorb and change to include or react against.
India and Russia are moving even closer together geopolitically; I expect that will mean that western media will have many more scathing remarks about India during this year.
What are R and I doing to move closer? A marriage of convenience? As part of BRIC? Are there shared borders in the north or buffer states both have interest in? Resources?
India has also recently signed a defense logistics agreement with the US, held joint training exercises with them, and a couple of years ago bought some US P8 sub-hunting aircraft (to replace Tupulovs, funnily enough).
It’s Pakistan that’s pivoting towards Russia, FWIW. Having burnt their bridges with the yanks.
Yeah, and Obama cleared India to have access to some US nuclear technologies.
Re: Pakistan afaik they still allow the US to run drone operations in their country and intelligence co-operation continues unhindered. Although diplomatic relations have cooled off.
Young people are dressing like westerners, which is the excuse for lack of police (western power structure) intervention that was given by the state (western power structure) minister (western parliamentary structure).
Yes, lots of older social structures still exist. But to argue that change is impossible is one of the dumber things you’ve written today (and you’ve written a lot).
Yes, lots of older social structures still exist. But to argue that change is impossible is one of the dumber things you’ve written today (and you’ve written a lot).
you may think change wrt to India’s rigid attitudes to women and class structures may be theoretically possible; I’m just telling you that it’s not going to happen this century and especially not due to western colonial tut tut tutting.
When you see the tut-tutting, I’m sure you’ll let us know.
In the meantime, I read a a Guardian report about how local Indian media and witnesses were speaking out about the incident and calling their own minister to account.
Look how far western society has moved in a century. Why do you think that Indian society won’t change as well?
“Once people like Clarence Beeby used to run New Zealand education;
now it’s been turned over to the likes of Rodney Hide and David Seymour.”
Credit where credit’s due – to Tolley and Parata.
The supporters of Hide and David Seymour think education needs jackboots tromping in and stomping all over the system. Kids’ learning needs something of ballet shoes.
With Parata they got shit covered gumboots down below a blindfolded myopic.
Our demise as a nation is nicely depicted by the difference between Beeby and the cretins of more recent times.
Pete
Parata is more likely to be inclined to ballet shoes I would think. That very self-oriented precise controlled traditional example of physical art. She may be very keen on kapa haka but she seems so crass, middle class and conservative in her thinking that she has no natural warmth in her for pakeha or Maori I think, although involved at a high level with Maori administrative roles herself or through her husband. Just my feelings and observations.
New Zealand had its own Donald Trump, three decades ago
In 1984, New Zealand was treated to an off-Broadway preview of the infamous Trump campaign of 2016. The Kiwi version of Trump was also vulgar, ungracious, sexist, racist, obscenely wealthy due to dodgy property speculation, and had enjoyed years of fawning media coverage.
Like Trump, he also had a way with glib phraseology. In the following clip he draws laughter from his glassy-eyed acolytes by calling Rob Muldoon “the Idi Amin of economics”….
Thanks for that Morrissey. I will say that Jones at least had a sense of humour. When someone was pestering him about what he would do if he became PM he retorted “What do you want me to do, come around and mow your lawns?
Trump has a very fast, very well developed New York sense of humour. Watch his SNL and world wrestling appearances, for instance. Also how he plays the crowd at political rallies.
I still get asked, very occasionally, for Bob Jones books, usually by young men who presumably are on the hunt for sage advice from ‘Bob’.. When I react with a ‘piff..we don’t sell those sorts of books’ they appear quite taken aback. Maybe its time to restock them for cheap laughs, like our fine Ayn Rand selection.
I wonder, Siobhan, how many requests you’ve had for these intellectual masterpieces…
I’ve Been Thinking by Richard Prebble (1996)
Free Thoughts by Jamie Whyte (2012). By the way: Jamie Whyte, cruelly nicknamed “The Kiwi Kierkegaard”, is renowned as a philosopher. He has achieved lasting fame in this country due to his advocacy of incest during that carefully thought out and brilliant 2014 campaign.
Mein Kampf by Donald Brash.
Feasting off the Smell of an Oily Rag by Muriel Newman (1997). This masterful handbook includes instructions on how to boil a pot of water.
It is now 15 years since the introduction of the pinnacle of European Integration – the Euro.
Yesterday’s anniversary comes at a moment of uncertainty for both the European Union (EU) and the Eurozone. The UK’s decision to leave the EU will see the first country exit since the signing of the Treaty of Rome. The Eurozone’s periphery is still in deep crisis, with unemployment rates ranging from 13% in Portugal to more than 20% in Spain and Greece. Populist, often nationalist, political movements are on the march across the continent.
The history of the Euro has been somewhat paradoxical: on the one hand, it was supposed to lead to further integration among the European people. On the other hand, it has divided the continent more than it has ever been since the end of World War Two.
The problem was that they used the wrong tools, the wrong ideology to try and bring about a convergence. It was never going to work. Instead of bringing about convergence among the nations it’s actually increased economic divisions.
Of course, a few people have got very much richer because of those policies.
Globalist agenda to disempower ordinary citizens, undermine democracy and wreck national sovereignty. The elite university educated lefty liberals love it all.
I read Stiglitz book on the Euro recently. As he argues the Euro was supposed to cause economic convergence between states but has caused divergence instead.
I put this down to its poor economic rationale, to its neoliberal economic arguments. I also put this as the basis for its persistence as a cause in the face of repeated and abject failure to deliver positive outcomes.
Other similar policies in NZ such as charter schools, the govts social statistics database, selling social housing and the cause of underfunding every area of public spending will have similar persistence beyond their failures to deliver.
While i am making guesses about the future. Bill English will deliver that blind persistence while mean time exuding a caring glow and ignoring these failures. Its in the nature of ideology.
I put this down to its poor economic rationale, to its neoliberal economic arguments. I also put this as the basis for its persistence as a cause in the face of repeated and abject failure to deliver positive outcomes.
Basically the same criticisms that were made in the 1980s and 1990s, and which those in authority blithely ignored because they knew better and because they could.
Sanctions are a big issue issue in Europe in that all there gas comes from Russia so to get around trading in dollars they’re giving up power and influence.
Also why the EU desperately want Assad gone so they can get a Qatari gas pipeline through Syria to Europe, and so dump Russia as their main gas supplier.
That does seem to be the way that it’s turned out. In fact, we could say that that seems to be the global target via the neo-liberal ideology of privatisation. Increased financial control by a very small clique.
China, Iran and Russia driven together to resist American monetary, economic and political hegemony
Iran, Russia and China have fully understood that union and cooperation are the only means for mutual reinforcement. The need to fight a common problem, represented by a growing American influence in domestic affairs, has forced Tehran, Beijing and Moscow to resolve their differences and embrace a unified strategy in the common interest of defending their sovereignty.
Events such as the war in Syria, the bombing of Libya, the overthrowing of the democratic order in Ukraine, sanctions against Iran, and the direct pressure applied to Beijing in the South China Sea, have accelerated integration among nations that in the early 1990s had very little in common.
NYT Op Ed: Obama’s war against whistleblowers and against journalists now gives Trump terrifying precedents to expand on
Criticism of Mr. Obama’s stance on press freedom, government transparency and secrecy is hotly disputed by the White House, but many journalism groups say the record is clear. Over the past eight years, the administration has prosecuted nine cases involving whistle-blowers and leakers, compared with only three by all previous administrations combined. It has repeatedly used the Espionage Act, a relic of World War I-era red-baiting, not to prosecute spies but to go after government officials who talked to journalists.
Too bad liberal lefties in the US gave Obama such a huge pass for all this authoritarian BS. I bet they will hypocritically turn on the Orangegruppenfuhrer if he does exactly the same as their favourite black President has done.
“Second, the legislation seeks to leverage expertise from outside government to create more adaptive and responsive U.S. strategy options. The legislation establishes a fund to help train local journalists and provide grants and contracts to NGOs, civil society organizations, think tanks, private sector companies, media organizations, and other experts outside the U.S. government with experience in identifying and analyzing the latest trends in foreign government disinformation techniques. This fund will complement and support the Center’s role by integrating capabilities and expertise available outside the U.S. government into the strategy-making process. It will also empower a decentralized network of private sector experts and integrate their expertise into the strategy-making process.” (my bolds)
Any organisation or individual who is funded from the US Military budget to expose ‘Fake News’ should be required to declare that publicly. And I can’t wait to see who will receive funding to expose fake news on Left wing Politicians like Bernie etc Protesters, Unions, Workers, the poor, any and all ethnic groups…
I believe that they want to expand on the following model, and funnel more tax payers money to the Ivy league educated sons and daughters of favoured associates:
Well, yeah, I guess ZeroHedge would be concerned at the prospect of people becoming better at spotting fake news and crackpot conspiracy theories – it might reduce their readership figures.
The reality is there are no fool proof sources any more, you have to read, reread and fact check as best you can, and my concerns are on issues proudly stated in the legislation. I would quote from The Guardian, but they seem to have missed this bit of News. Oh dear.
That’s an easy—and invalid—statement to make. Psycho Milt has been criticised trenchantly on this forum for his glib and nasty comments, and his Hosking-style denunciation of real journalists.
You can call me names too if you want to sink to his Paul Henry level.
Pretty templated from the CIA’s experience during the Cold War funding all kinds of arts organizations, infiltrating and then funding protest organizations, doing the full spectrum of buying the left, over-inflating their expectations, publishing their theories, agitating them towards violence and reaping the results for the flakiest and purest of the lefties.
Violence never wins anything for working people, except misery.
The state will do what the state has to do to survive, and it survives by having a virtual monopoly on violence. Any one who brings a gun to drone fight, is beyond foolish, they are cut off from reality in a very bad way.
Non-violent resistance is the only acceptable approach, and people should be active if they want any change at all, it feels like the survival of democracy rests upon non-violent protest.
Who would’ve guessed that liberal lefty Obama would persecute a record number of whistleblowers eh what an authoritarian deep state tool he turned out to be
I’m not sure it’s that likely. It would burn bridges with Putin’s useful idiots on the left, so there’d be a trade-off of that against the potential benefits from offering Trump a gift. The useful idiots probably don’t have any particular value beyond being unpaid propaganda distributors, but it’s not obvious that there’d be benefits from offering Trump a gift either, as he’s already a fan.
Still, I wouldn’t be sleeping well these days if I was Snowden.
Shit dude, the CIA has been after Snowden’s life since Day One. He knew that he would get this unimaginable amount of heat by revealing the truth to us.
That’s why Snowden is a great hero, and you’re just another lousy collaborator.
Becoming a better conspiracy analyst. Realise when you are being manipulated. Avoid “smart” technology. Don’t be a gullible schmuck. And why it’s time to give up on the mainstream.
Apart from their implacable opposition to gun control, subsequent political funding of Republicans and the inevitable consequences of your bright orange policies on inner cities, nothing at all.
For the last 12 years or so the Chigago Mayor has been closing public schools in order to start charter schools. But the charter schools don’t take the kids from the closed schools, they take the kids that will make them look good. So the kids from the closed schools have to travel to different communities which causes lots of friction between the different gangs (there are no opt out for these gangs, a kid is in a gang by where they live). Before the last round of school closings, everyone associated with schools said it was going to increase the violence once again and 5 years down the track it has.
Given that Trump is pro-charters and pro-privitisation, I don’t see him doing anything that will change the situation except close more neighbourhood schools and let private companies profit off tax meant for educating kids.
Hopeless-Changenothing came through the same route as Emanuel did—Chicago politics, the nastiest, most cynical and corrupt politics there is, outside of Japan.
He picked Emanuel because he gets things done. Character is of no concern, obviously, in U.S. politics.
Yep and very much part of Obama’s 2008 pre-Convention deal with the Clintons – after that any faint hope surrounding his capacity for real change flew swiftly out the window.
Extraordinary that such a huge mandate for change from the American electorate would immediately lead to a comprehensive merger between the Obama and Clinton camps, with the latter consistently awarded seniority. Basically, a third Bill Clinton term.
I know you and CV will be well aware of all this … but for the benefit of others (excepting, of course, our somewhat smug and wayward Clintonista chums) …
Obama allowed his inner circle – including his economic shadow cabinet – to be entirely taken over by the Clintonite entourage: not just the utterly corrupt Rahm Emanuel but also the likes of Lawrence Summers (good buddy of Dershowitz, of course), Robert Rubin, Jason Furman, Tom Donilon, Leon Panetta, John Podesta and dear old Hillary herself … in the process, willingly entangling himself in that whole seedy history of the Hamilton Project/Rubinomics and the notorious back door between the Clinton White House and big investment banks and money funds.
Stunning (economic and foreign policy) continuity with the old established Clintonian order … which naturally attracted more than a few admiring glances over the years from the usual Neo-Con suspects, while, at the same time, naturally enough alienating a whole swathe of working-class Democrat voters.
Swordfish, on your measurements you will always be let down.
Obama would be too, but only on the strength of his own campaign rhetoric. Not on how he governed.
You can look for all the micro-conspiracies and lack of revolution in the streets, but President Obama can be summed up like this: solved major crises, kept things steady, cleaned a number of things up, and left a pretty close to clean desk.
(1) What conspiracies ? Just business as usual for the US Establishment.
Some of the more astute Left-leaning commentators had been pretty sceptical about Obama’s capacity for real change right from the start (early stages of his 2008 Primary campaign). They cottoned on fairly early that he was essentially a narcissist / opportunist (wonderful soaring rhetoric, shame about the delivery).
(2) Revolution in the streets ??? You’re ‘avin’ a larf, ain’t ya, Gov ??? I’d be more than willing to settle for anything even vaguely resembling a move towards domestic social democracy and a less uber-aggressive foreign policy in the US.
Fact is: Obama unnecessarily made the decision to merge with the slimey, corrupt old Clinton camp, thereby killing any possibility of the sort of root and branch change Americans had voted for (no one was expecting it to happen overnight, incidentally).
Obama has:
1) Tried to fuck the incoming Trump Administration over Russia in these last few weeks by rapidly escalating political and diplomatic threats against Putin, including a massive expulsion of diplomats.
2) Tried to fuck the incoming Trump Administration over Syria in the last few weeks by agreeing to supply Syrian jihadists with advanced and heavy weaponry.
3) Tried to fuck the incoming Trump administration in the last few weeks by trying to delegitimise Trump’s victory in the mass media
4) Left the Dakota Access Pipeline mess for Trump to clean up
5) Left the Guantanamo Bay mess for Trump to clean up
6) Put $10 trillion dollars on the Federal debt for Trump to clean up
7) Attempted to box Trump in over Iran by signing big corporate deals with Tehran.
8) Left a mess of persecuted whistleblowers for Trump to clean up including Assange stuck in the Ecuadorian Embassy.
9) Left fucked up expensive out of control Pentagon projects for Trump to clean up including the F-35, the LCS, the Zumwalt class destroyers
10) Put thousands of new boots on Iraqi ground to try and sort out Mosul, a mess that Trump now has to clean up
11) Left more than half a dozen ongoing drone wars for Trump to clean up
12) Allowed China to build huge new military islands in the South China Sea for Trump to clean up
13) Allowed workforce participation rates to drop to the lowest levels in decades for Trump to clean up.
14) CO2 levels now up to 405ppm under Obama and rising
Kimberlee Downs is the latest in a lamentable list of sports know-nothings.
Trouble is, she’s been given the job of reporting on the ASB Tennis Open.
TV1 News, 6:40 p.m., Tuesday 3 December 2017
That Television New Zealand is fronting its sports news with people who know little or nothing about sports will come as no surprise to long-suffering viewers who have been obliged for decades to put up with the likes of Tony Veitch, Martin Devlin, Andrew Saveloy, and Jenny-May Coffin [1] making inane and ignorant comments before throwing to the weather or engaging in ten seconds of excruciating banter with Simon Dallow.
Certainly no one expects sports commentators to be rocket scientists, but surely we have the right to expect them to know at least SOMETHING about sports? On tonight’s sports round-up, something called Kimberlee Downs announced, with the cheerful certainty of the hopelessly ignorant, that Serena Williams is “the most famous tennis player to ever appear in Auckland.”
Now, New Zealand tennis fans will know that Auckland has hosted many, many famous players, many of them arguably at least as famous as Serena Williams. The New Zealand Open at Stanley Street has hosted, among others, Rod Laver, Pancho Gonzales, Tony Roche, Roy Emerson, Arthur Ashe, John Newcombe, Ken Rosewall, Bjorn Borg, Roger Federer (he lost in the first round in 2000), Ann Jones, Billie Jean King, Rosie Casals, Margaret Court, Evonne Goolagong, …. the list, full of people that Kimberlee Downs has no doubt never heard of, could go on for ages.
There will be lots of people at TVNZ who know at least something about tennis. So why is Kimberlee Downs, who obviously knows nothing, given the job?
I certainly have not forgotten when Anna Kournikova came here for the 2002 event. Thanks for the reminder, James.
The way she was treated here was a disgrace, from the dismal sexist marketing of her—a television ad showing porn-style slo-mo close-ups of her legs and breasts, interspersed with young males salivating—to the press conference which featured Television One’s Tony Veitch being manhandled out, giggling. That display of idiocy prompted sports commentator John Dybvig (one of the few in NZ with a discernible intellect) to remark: “Tony Veitch is nothing but an asshole.”
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Cancelling urgently needed new Cook Strait ferries and hiking the cost of public transport for many Kiwis so that National can announce the prospect of another tunnel for Wellington is not making good choices, Labour Transport Spokesperson Tangi Utikere said. ...
A laundry list of additional costs for Tāmaki Makarau Auckland shows the Minister for the city is not delivering for the people who live there, says Labour Auckland Issues spokesperson Shanan Halbert. ...
Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi, and Mema Paremata mō Tāmaki-Makaurau, Takutai Tarsh Kemp, will travel to the Gold Coast to strengthen ties with Māori in Australia next week (15-21 April). The visit, in the lead-up to the 9th Australian National Kapa haka Festival, will be an opportunity for both ...
The Green Party has today launched a step-by-step guide to help New Zealanders make their voice heard on the Government’s democracy dodging and anti-environment fast track legislation. ...
The National Government’s proposed changes to the Residential Tenancies Act will mean tenants can be turfed from their homes by landlords with little notice, Labour housing spokesperson Kieran McAnulty said. ...
Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson is calling on all parties to support a common-sense change that’s great for the planet and great for consumers after her member’s bill was drawn from the ballot today. ...
A significant milestone has been reached in the fight to strike an anti-Pasifika and unfair law from the country’s books after Teanau Tuiono’s members’ bill passed its first reading. ...
New Zealand has today missed the opportunity to uphold the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment, says James Shaw after his member’s bill was voted down in its first reading. ...
Today’s advice from the Climate Change Commission paints a sobering reality of the challenge we face in combating climate change, especially in light of recent Government policy announcements. ...
Minister for Disability Issues Penny Simmonds appears to have delayed a report back to Cabinet on the progress New Zealand is making against international obligations for disabled New Zealanders. ...
Hundreds of New Zealand families affected by Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) will benefit from a new Government focus on prevention and treatment, says Health Minister Dr Shane Reti. “We know FASD is a leading cause of preventable intellectual and neurodevelopmental disability in New Zealand,” Dr Reti says. “Every day, ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones today attended the official opening of Kaikohe’s new $14.7 million sports complex. “The completion of the Kaikohe Multi Sports Complex is a fantastic achievement for the Far North,” Mr Jones says. “This facility not only fulfils a long-held dream for local athletes, but also creates ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters’ engagements in Türkiye this week underlined the importance of diplomacy to meet growing global challenges. “Returning to the Gallipoli Peninsula to represent New Zealand at Anzac commemorations was a sombre reminder of the critical importance of diplomacy for de-escalating conflicts and easing tensions,” Mr Peters ...
Ambassador Millar, Burgemeester, Vandepitte, Excellencies, military representatives, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen – good morning and welcome to this sacred Anzac Day dawn service. It is an honour to be here on behalf of the Government and people of New Zealand at Buttes New British Cemetery, Polygon Wood – a deeply ...
Distinguished guests - It is an honour to return once again to this site which, as the resting place for so many of our war-dead, has become a sacred place for generations of New Zealanders. Our presence here and at the other special spaces of Gallipoli is made ...
Mai ia tawhiti pamamao, te moana nui a Kiwa, kua tae whakaiti mai matou, ki to koutou papa whenua. No koutou te tapuwae, no matou te tapuwae, kua honoa pumautia. Ko nga toa kua hinga nei, o te Waipounamu, o te Ika a Maui, he okioki tahi me o ...
Paul Goldsmith will take on responsibility for the Media and Communications portfolio, while Louise Upston will pick up the Disability Issues portfolio, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announced today. “Our Government is relentlessly focused on getting New Zealand back on track. As issues change in prominence, I plan to adjust Ministerial ...
Recreational catch limits will be reduced in areas of Fiordland and the Chatham Islands to help keep those fisheries healthy and sustainable, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. The lower recreational daily catch limits for a range of finfish and shellfish species caught in the Fiordland Marine Area and ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has welcomed an important milestone in New Zealand’s hydrogen future, with the opening of the country’s first network of hydrogen refuelling stations in Wiri. “I want to congratulate the team at Hiringa Energy and its partners K one W one (K1W1), Mitsui & Co New Zealand ...
The coalition Government is delivering on its commitment to improve resource management laws and give greater certainty to consent applicants, with a Bill to amend the Resource Management Act (RMA) expected to be introduced to Parliament next month. RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop has today outlined the first RMA Amendment ...
Overseas models for regulating the oil and gas sector, including their decommissioning regimes, are being carefully scrutinised as a potential template for New Zealand’s own sector, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. The Coalition Government is focused on rebuilding investor confidence in New Zealand’s energy sector as it looks to strengthen ...
Emergency Management and Recovery Minister Mark Mitchell has today released the Report of the Government Inquiry into the response to the North Island Severe Weather Events. “The report shows that New Zealand’s emergency management system is not fit-for-purpose and there are some significant gaps we need to address,” Mr Mitchell ...
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith is today travelling to Europe where he’ll update the United Nations Human Rights Council on the Government’s work to restore law and order. “Attending the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva provides us with an opportunity to present New Zealand’s human rights progress, priorities, and challenges, while ...
Associate Agriculture Minister, Mark Patterson, formally reopened the world’s largest wool processing facility today in Awatoto, Napier, following a $50 million rebuild and refurbishment project. “The reopening of this facility will significantly lift the economic opportunities available to New Zealand’s wool sector, which already accounts for 20 per cent of ...
Hon Andrew Bayly, Minister for Small Business and Manufacturing At the Southland Otago Regional Engineering Collective (SOREC) Summit, 18 April, Dunedin Ngā mihi nui, Ko Andrew Bayly aho, Ko Whanganui aho Good Afternoon and thank you for inviting me to open your summit today. I am delighted ...
The Government is delivering on its commitment to bring back the Three Strikes legislation, Associate Justice Minister Nicole McKee announced today. “Our Government is committed to restoring law and order and enforcing appropriate consequences on criminals. We are making it clear that repeat serious violent or sexual offending is not ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has today announced four new diplomatic appointments for New Zealand’s overseas missions. “Our diplomats have a vital role in maintaining and protecting New Zealand’s interests around the world,” Mr Peters says. “I am pleased to announce the appointment of these senior diplomats from the ...
New Zealand is contributing NZ$7 million to support communities affected by severe food insecurity and other urgent humanitarian needs in Ethiopia and Somalia, Foreign Minister Rt Hon Winston Peters announced today. “Over 21 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance across Ethiopia, with a further 6.9 million people ...
Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage Paul Goldsmith is congratulating Mataaho Collective for winning the Golden Lion for best participant in the main exhibition at the Venice Biennale. "Congratulations to the Mataaho Collective for winning one of the world's most prestigious art prizes at the Venice Biennale. “It is good ...
The Government is reforming financial services to improve access to home loans and other lending, and strengthen customer protections, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly and Housing Minister Chris Bishop announced today. “Our coalition Government is committed to rebuilding the economy and making life simpler by cutting red tape. We are ...
“China remains a strong commercial opportunity for Kiwi exporters as Chinese businesses and consumers continue to value our high-quality safe produce,” Trade and Agriculture Minister Todd McClay says. Mr McClay has returned to New Zealand following visits to Beijing, Harbin and Shanghai where he met ministers, governors and mayors and engaged in trade and agricultural events with the New ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has completed a successful trip to Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines, deepening relationships and capitalising on opportunities. Mr Luxon was accompanied by a business delegation and says the choice of countries represents the priority the New Zealand Government places on South East Asia, and our relationships in ...
New Zealand is demonstrating its commitment to reducing global greenhouse emissions, and supporting clean energy transition in South East Asia, through a contribution of NZ$41 million (US$25 million) in climate finance to the Asian Development Bank (ADB)-led Energy Transition Mechanism (ETM). Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Climate Change Minister Simon Watts announced ...
The Government is today releasing a list of organisations who received letters about the Fast-track applications process, says RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop. “Recently Ministers and agencies have received a series of OIA requests for a list of organisations to whom I wrote with information on applying to have a ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins today announced the appointment of Wellington Barrister David Jonathan Boldt as a Judge of the High Court, and the Honourable Justice Matthew Palmer as a Judge of the Court of Appeal. Justice Boldt graduated with an LLB from Victoria University of Wellington in 1990, and also holds ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford will lead the New Zealand delegation at the 2024 International Summit on the Teaching Profession (ISTP) held in Singapore. The delegation includes representatives from the Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) Te Wehengarua and the New Zealand Educational Institute (NZEI) Te Riu Roa. The summit is co-hosted ...
A stopbank upgrade project in Tairawhiti partly funded by the Government has increased flood resilience for around 7000ha of residential and horticultural land so far, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones today attended a dawn service in Gisborne to mark the end of the first stage of the ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters will represent the Government at Anzac Day commemorations on the Gallipoli Peninsula next week and engage with senior representatives of the Turkish government in Istanbul. “The Gallipoli campaign is a defining event in our history. It will be a privilege to share the occasion ...
Science, Innovation and Technology and Defence Minister Judith Collins will next week attend the OECD Science and Technology Ministerial conference in Paris and Anzac Day commemorations in Belgium. “Science, innovation and technology have a major role to play in rebuilding our economy and achieving better health, environmental and social outcomes ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon held a bilateral meeting today with the President of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The Prime Minister was accompanied by MP Paulo Garcia, the first Filipino to be elected to a legislature outside the Philippines. During today’s meeting, Prime Minister Luxon and President Marcos Jr discussed opportunities to ...
The Government has announced that $20 million in funding will be made available to Westport to fund much needed flood protection around the town. This measure will significantly improve the resilience of the community, says Local Government Minister Simeon Brown. “The Westport community has already been allocated almost $3 million ...
The Government is proud to support the first ever Repco Supercars Championship event in Taupō as up to 70,000 motorsport fans attend the Taupō International Motorsport Park this weekend, says Economic Development Minister Melissa Lee. “Anticipation for the ITM Taupō Super400 is huge, with tickets and accommodation selling out weeks ...
Local Government Minister Simeon Brown has announced an increase to the Rates Rebate Scheme, putting money back into the pockets of low-income homeowners. “The coalition Government is committed to bringing down the cost of living for New Zealanders. That includes targeted support for those Kiwis who are doing things tough, such ...
The Coalition Government is investing in a project to boost survival rates of New Zealand mussels and grow the industry, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones has announced. “This project seeks to increase the resilience of our mussels and significantly boost the sector’s productivity,” Mr Jones says. “The project - ...
Benefit figures released today underscore the importance of the Government’s plan to rebuild the economy and have 50,000 fewer people on Jobseeker Support, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. “Benefit numbers are still significantly higher than when National was last in government, when there was about 70,000 fewer ...
The Government’s commitment to doubling New Zealand’s renewable energy capacity is backed by new data showing that clean energy has helped the country reach its lowest annual gross emissions since 1999, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. New Zealand’s latest Greenhouse Gas Inventory (1990-2022) published today, shows gross emissions fell ...
The Government is bringing the earthquake-prone building review forward, with work to start immediately, and extending the deadline for remediations by four years, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “Our Government is focused on rebuilding the economy. A key part of our plan is to cut red tape that ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and his Thai counterpart, Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin, have today agreed that New Zealand and the Kingdom of Thailand will upgrade the bilateral relationship to a Strategic Partnership by 2026. “New Zealand and Thailand have a lot to offer each other. We have a strong mutual desire to build ...
RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop and Transport Minister Simeon Brown have today announced the Coalition Government’s intention to extend port coastal permits for a further 20 years, providing port operators with certainty to continue their operations. “The introduction of the Resource Management Act in 1991 required ports to obtain coastal ...
Today’s announcement that inflation is down to 4 per cent is encouraging news for Kiwis, but there is more work to be done - underlining the importance of the Government’s plan to get the economy back on track, acting Finance Minister Chris Bishop says. “Inflation is now at 4 per ...
Asia Pacific Report From France to Australia, university pro-Palestine protests in the United States have now spread to several countries with students pitching on-campus camps. And students at Columbia and other US universities remain defiant as campuses have witnessed the biggest protests since the anti-Vietnam war and anti-apartheid eras in ...
Analysis by Dr Bryce Edwards, Democracy Project (https://democracyproject.nz)New Zealand Government’s Fast Track legislation. Many criticisms are being made of the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill, including by this writer. But as with everything in politics, every story has two sides, and both deserve attention. It’s important to understand what the Government ...
Tara Ward talks to presenter Naomi Toilalo about the new TV show that turns food waste into a three course feast. Naomi Toilalo is standing in the warehouse at Good Neighbour Tauranga, helping unpack the two-and-a-half tonnes of rejected food that will arrive at the community support hub that day. ...
Scout is our latest Dog of the Month. This feature was offered as a reward during our What’s Eating Aotearoa PledgeMe campaign. Thank you to Scout’s human, Avril, for her support. Dog name: Scout (named after the little girl in To Kill a Mockingbird – she inherited the independent spirit ...
Megan Alatini takes us through her life in TV, including ‘terrible’ daytime TV, the class of Carol Hirschfeld and her most embarrassing TrueBliss moment. When she responded to a vague newspaper ad asking “do you have what it takes to be a popstar?” 25 years ago, Megan Alatini never guessed ...
A new exhibition in Wellington showcases the faces behind your local goods and services. Back in 1977, when I was a fine arts student at the University of Canterbury, I took a series of photographs of Christchurch shopkeepers. The photos were for a calendar – a project for my end ...
Toomaj and his resistance to tyranny through his songs have become an icon for the youth of Iran, so his sentence has hit the nation hard. Toomaj Salehi is not the first artist to pay the price for standing with the people. ...
My cousin Dylan and I spotted these big eels under the bridge that summer. We watched them lounging under the dark weed, facing into the flow of water, their mouths frozen open. Dylan and I couldn’t stop thinking about those eels. The night we went down to the creek, we ...
Newsroom, home of satire. My long-running weekly satirical series The Secret Diary has moved to Newsroom and will appear every Saturday, with Victor Billot’s wildly popular satirical Odes continuing to appear every Sunday. Diaries, Odes – while serious political columnists toil at meaningful opinions and stroke their chins to an ...
Tara Ward unravels the many nuanced layers of a cartoon about talking dogs.This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. It’s not often an episode of a children’s cartoon has adults sobbing into their sleeves, but that’s exactly what happened this week when ...
Working as a doctor in developing countries to help communities achieve better health outcomes is nothing short of a life goal for Jessica Tater. The University of Otago medical student has her sights firmly set on joining the international humanitarian organisation Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) when she qualifies ...
There’s an island in the far reaches of Auckland’s territory, sitting off the tip of the Coromandel Peninsula, 30 minutes by air from the city or four hours on the slow boat. Aotea Great Barrier is off-grid, it has a population of fewer than a thousand people … and most ...
Asia Pacific Report An Australian author and advocate, Jim Aubrey, today led a national symbolic one minute’s silence to mark the “blood debt” owed to Papuan allies during the Second World War indigenous resistance against the invading Japanese forces. “A promise to most people is a promise,” Aubrey said in ...
Asia Pacific Report The Freedom Flotilla is ready to sail to Gaza, reports Kia Ora Gaza. All the required paperwork has been submitted to the port authority, and the cargo has been loaded and prepared for the humanitarian trip to the besieged enclave. However, organisers received word of an “administrative ...
Pacific Media Watch Palestine solidarity protesters today demonstrated at the Auckland headquarters of Television New Zealand, accusing the country’s major TV network of broadcasting “propaganda” backing Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. About 50 protesters targeted the main entrance to the TVNZ building near Sky Tower and also picketed a side ...
Opinion by Lynley Hood. Forty years on from my 1985 Fulbright Grant, my disquiet over the war in Gaza evoked some troubling questions. The answer to my first question – What is the primary purpose of the Fulbright Programme? – was on the Fulbright NZ website. It says: US Senator, ...
The ministers responsible for green-lighting major projects need to be open about potential conflicts of interest, says Transparency International. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anastasia Powell, Professor, Family and Sexual Violence, RMIT University It has been a particularly distressing start to the year. There is little that can ease the current grief of individuals, families and communities who have needlessly lost a loved one to men’s ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gregory Moore, Senior Research Associate, School of Ecosystem and Forest Sciences, The University of Melbourne Lichen, the first described example of symbiosis.AdeJ Artventure/Shutterstock Once known only to those studying biology, the word symbiosis is now widely used. Symbiosis is the intimate ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kim Hemsley, Head, Childhood Dementia Research Group, Flinders Health and Medical Research Institute, College of Medicine and Public Health, Flinders University Olena Ivanova/Shutterstock “Childhood” and “dementia” are two words we wish we didn’t have to use together. But sadly, around 1,400 ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Whiteford, Professor, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University The government’s Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee has just published its second report. It was set up by Treasurer Jim Chalmers and Minister for Social Services Amanda Rishworth in 2022 to provide: ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Beaumont, Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne The Queensland state election will be held in October. A YouGov poll for The Courier Mail, conducted April 9–17 from a sample ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amin Naeni, PhD candidate at Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University There’s been much talk in recent months about what a possible second Donald Trump presidency in the United States could mean for Europe, Russia’s war in Ukraine, the ...
A brief round-up of submissions on the controversial proposed law. This is an excerpt from our weekly environmental newsletter Future Proof. Sign up here. Last week, submissions on the controversial Fast-track Approvals Bill closed just hours after the government released a list of stakeholder organisations who were sent letters advising how they could ...
A poem from Robin Peace’s new collection Detritus of Empire: feather / grass / rock. Cereal giving I see a woman’s hands, see her curious hands break a stalk as she walks through the tall prairie, the savannah, the steppe, wherever it was. See her idly bite the grass that ...
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 Hemingway’s Goblet by Dermot Ross (Mary Egan Publishing, $38)A handsomely produced (debossed cover, lovely ...
The Commissioner's decision validates the longstanding efforts of the local community and ensures that Awataha Marae will be managed to serve the needs of the local community, particularly for hosting tangihanga. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tristan Salles, Associate professor, University of Sydney Examples of Australian landscapes.Unsplash Seventy thousand years ago, the sea level was much lower than today. Australia, along with New Guinea and Tasmania, formed a connected landmass known as Sahul. Around this time – ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Felicity Castagna, Lecturer, Creative Writing, Western Sydney University Day Day Market, ParramattaPhoto: Garry Trinh I live on the edge of Parramatta, Australia’s fastest-growing city, on the kind of old-fashioned suburban street that has 1950s fibros constructed in the post-war housing boom, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Ryan, Teaching Fellow in Economics, University of Waikato GettyImagesfatido/Getty Images There is an ongoing global debate over whether the high inflation seen in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic can be lowered without a recession. New Zealand is not ...
The ‘Wicked Game’ heartthrob is in his late 60s now. That didn’t stop him putting on a lively, goofy and very sparkly show. Apart from ‘Wicked Game’, which graces a sultry playlist of mine simply called 💋, my last sustained Chris Isaak listening session took place when I was about ...
Analysis - Two ministers were stripped of portfolios in a warning to Cabinet, drama broke out at the Waitangi Tribunal, and the gang patch ban bill ran into opposition. ...
Tara Ward makes an impassioned plea for some vital pop culture merch. In April 1999, I became obsessed with a new reality television show called Popstars. Every Tuesday night, five strangers transformed into music royalty before my very eyes as Joe, Keri, Carly, Erika and Megan were chosen to form ...
PNG Post-Courier In the early hours of ANZAC Day, aerial photographs captured an impressive gathering of Australians and Papua New Guineans at Isurava in the Northern (Oro) Province. The solemn dawn service yesterday was held at a site steeped in history, where some of the fiercest battles of World War ...
The PSA is shocked that Oranga Tamariki has used the cost cutting drive to downgrade its commitment to Te Ao Māori and remove many specialist Māori roles. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Kemish, Adjunct Professor, School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry, The University of Queensland There can be no more powerful symbol of the relationship between Australia and Papua New Guinea than the prime ministers of these neighbouring countries walking together on the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sharon Robinson, Distinguished Professor and Deputy Director of ARC Securing Antarctica’s Environmental Future (SAEF), University of Wollongong, University of Wollongong Andrew Netherwood Over the last 25 years, the ozone hole which forming over Antarctica each spring has started to shrink. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Viktoria Kahui, Senior Lecturer in Environmental Economics, University of Otago Getty Images/Amy Toensing Biodiversity is declining at rates unprecedented in human history. This suggests the ways we currently use to manage our natural environment are failing. One emerging concept focuses on ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Timothy Colin Bednall, Associate Professor in Management, Swinburne University of Technology marvent/Shutterstock Finding the best person to fill a position can be tough, from drafting a job ad to producing a shortlist of top interview candidates. Employers typically consider information from ...
Wondering where to host your next BYO? Whether its a small gathering or a massive party, we’ve got some recommendations. I was first introduced to the concept of BYOs at Dunedin’s India Gardens, a legendary but sadly defunct establishment, which purveyed enormous quantities of mango chicken to Aotearoa’s drunkest future ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julien Cooper, Honorary Lecturer, Department of History and Archaeology, Macquarie University Julien Cooper The hyper-arid desert of Eastern Sudan, the Atbai Desert, seems like an unlikely place to find evidence of ancient cattle herders. But in this dry environment, my new ...
The sector says it’s hopeful her replacement Paul Goldsmith will be able to throw it a lifeline, after six months with a minister deemed missing in action, writes Catherine McGregor in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign ...
The government can't just rely on axing public sector jobs and has to do more to cut spending, says the chief economist at a free market think tank. ...
Rock The Vote NZ, known for its advocacy for minor party unity and its role within the Freedoms NZ Coalition during the 2023 General Election, celebrates this merger as a strategic enhancement of its operational strength and outreach. ...
Nearly everyone has experienced the frustration of something you use breaking and being difficult or expensive to fix. Proposed legislation could change that. It’s been raining on and off all Sunday afternoon but people are lining up outside a building in a corner of Gribblehirst Park in Sandringham, Auckland. In ...
What does a forever relationship look like when you don’t believe in marriage? And how do you celebrate it? This essay is part of our Sunday Essay series, made possible thanks to the support of Creative New Zealand.I’m going to do it, right now. I’m going to say ...
It’s not that long ago Eliza McCartney was seriously wondering if the Paris Olympics would be her pole vaulting swansong. After years of being hounded by injury after injury, the Rio Olympics bronze medallist was still confident she would compete at her second Olympics in Paris in July, unless something ...
FICTION 1 Take Two by Danielle Hawkins (Allen & Unwin, $36.99) There’s commercial fiction, like this book, and then there’s quality fiction, quality writers, quality literature; the forthcoming Auckland Writers Festival is full of quality, and ReadingRoom has two tickets to give away to the following events: Paul Lynch (Dublin ...
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You can’t have missed the Gallipoli story as the movies, documentaries, essays and books capture what it was like for New Zealand troops in their eight-month campaign on the Peninsula. But this Anzac Day the Auckland War Memorial Museum has published a book that sheds light on a little-known aspect of the ...
The Prime Minister has committed to resuming direct flights to Thailand. But it’s not a promise he will be able to deliver on anytime soon. The post Prime Minister jumps the gun in Thailand appeared first on Newsroom. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra In the free-for-all between the Australian government and Big Tech boss Elon Musk this week, the government had to be on a winner. Most people would have little sympathy with Musk’s vociferous opposition to ...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/02/beautiful-and-doomed-new-zealands-capital-begins-the-fight-of-its-life
If its true that many people involved with suicide prevention discouraged Mike King and then didn’t attend his talk in Kaitaia I find that shocking. It would be like Kaikoura turning away some of the emergency services after the quake.
The depressing thing about stories like that is it brings out all the pompous jackasses who say people should do this, they should do that, it’s their own fault blah blah.
I wonder just how many suicides can be laid directly at the feet of uncaring Governments, politicians and bureaucrats. I suspect it’s in the thousands.
DH
When you hear the saying that pessimists are those who are most in touch with reality and being probably right, the wonder is that there aren’t more suicides.
We keep ourselves sane by having parallel consciousnesses going on at the same time I think. If so, then we are all split personalities, not quite bi-polar but balancing on a tipping point all the time. But we have to or we would not be able to handle stories of Syria, Australia, NZ, and happenings like the holocaust happening to many people over and over again, only in Germany using modern industrial methods. Still we must hope and try to encourage ourselves and others to be positive despite our human frailties.
I’m going all philosophical because we have to think about what we are, or we may as well lie down and let artificial intelligence and techno-advantages and its fellow travellers sell we humans out, with our own connivance. We need to turn one of our public holidays into extolling humans day! Seriously. Start doing it now before the grey and black people take us over like a zombie wave.
“Still we must hope and try to encourage ourselves and others to be positive despite our human frailties.”
Like this young lassie…http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11773844
Nina Griffiths, 18, People’s Choice The Hits New Zealander of the Year.
Began her work by supporting (as a 13 year old) abused youngsters at Pamapuria School…
With Young People like this coming along…maybe there is hope.
I get concerned about children taking on caring roles. It is good for youngsters to learn to be themselves first not be putting others first when they should be growing up and developing their own personalities and abilities.
Learning to be considerate and generous and respectful of others and understand one’s own behaviour, abilities and faults is the first task of a youngster. Those who live in dysfunctional households with unreliable parents or sick parents and have to take the parental role on may manage well or be heavily burdened. It is better if they can spend most of their time growing up, getting their education and personal skills, not taking on adult responsibilities.
Some manage well in becoming little parents, but I don’t like kids being burdened, and I don’t agree with them being encouraged to be little adults. (I’m thinking of clothing styles etc. here. Also entered into sports competitions and encouraged to be striving winners so that games just aren’t any more.) Balance is the thing needed.
” It is good for youngsters to learn to be themselves first not be putting others first when they should be growing up and developing their own personalities and abilities.”
You know, when I read that I immediately thought of the offspring of Our Leader Past. Growing up in stable privilege, having all care and support and no responsibility. Indulged.
Imagine the planet populated by their ilk.
Rosemary
If disabled people improved their conditions at the expense of young people becoming their carers it would not be a net improvement. And having time to grow up and get an education and mature inti a young adult does not mean that they will turn out like the spoilt children of isolated rich, people.
We won’t get any encouragement for the idea of thinking about others’ welfare from this cohort of pollies and probably never from the RW. However developers are working on help robots which will be of value. They may be as useful as washing machines which are popular programmable machines. We can hope that a caring and practical humanity will arise in sufficient numbers to return to us our world, much depleted, but with some use and wear left in it. In the meantime there are some improvements, not fast enough I am sure.
“If disabled people improved their conditions at the expense of young people becoming their carers it would not be a net improvement. ”
Sometimes, Greywarshark there is no other option…other than the horror of residential care, or unreliable and inconsistent care from ‘formal’ providers.
The reality is that there is an ever increasing expectation that family members will assume most or all of a disabled member’s care.
Families are usually made up of people who love and care about each other…emotions that successive governments of all leanings have exploited for those whose impairments are not covered by ACC.
It is nonsense to suggest that it would be the case that a person with a disability would choose to handicap the future of a young family member so that their own ‘conditions’ would be ‘improved’.
Likewise the concept that a robot could ever replace a human carer.
However….this topic is not about disability and the potential ruining of a young person’s prospects by them having to provide care.
This is about a young person volunteering to provide support to her PEERS.
A huge difference.
And who better to support young people who have been betrayed and abused by adults than another young person with an obviously caring heart and a willing, listening ear?
Who better to organise a group to tackle bullying in schools than other young people experiencing on a daily basis the competitive culture that exists in schools?
And who better to proactively seek to have a wider community discussion about YOUTH suicide than a young person who has experienced personal loss through suicide?
It does no harm whatsoever for these young people to take on these roles. Trying to be contributing members of their communities is as much a valuable a part of their education and maturation as taking selfies and inane facebook chatter.
RNZs predictions for 2017. Always interesting too see what is on journalists’ radar.
Includes:
Myself, I rarely/usually can’t make predictions. I’m never quite certain what will happen next – except to expect some very unexpected happenings.
Though I do think Bling will try to get onside with middle and lower income Kiwis. The bits above about the economy and Auckland house prices seem very likely.
I have no idea about Shadbolt’s transport preferences.
Locals showing resistance to an old working class Melbourne suburb being turned into a lifestyle centre. http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/war-on-footscrays-harried-hipsters-gets-hairier-as-cafe-vandalism-turns-nasty-20170102-gtkqvt.html A cafe owner felt the need to stick a sign in his window saying that he had lived in the area for eight years, sent his kids to a local school and was renting. People really are getting sick of life-styles taking precedence over lives. At least the cafe owner, who comes across as quite decent, justified his presence on their terms rather than insisting that they give way to “progress” or move somewhere cheaper.
re RNZ Journalists. Wow ,their predictions are so conservative and “safe”. I guess that’s a reflection of what RNZ has become. The indomitable and much cherished Kim Hill is the only one left with any fire.
Yes. They are pretty superficial, and mostly focus on the pretty obvious.
Though, at least the housing crisis, the fragility of the NZ economy, and climate change are on their radar. And that is more than can be said for the Stuff predictions, which were all about the GAME of politics.
Kim Hill is not indomitable. She was hauled over the coals, deservedly so, by John Pilger in 2003. All of her extensive retinue of pouting, scowling and frowning did not save her…
https://www.nzonscreen.com/title/face-to-face-with-kim-hill-john-pilger-2003
You are correct Morrissey, Pilger did trounce her on that occasion. For some unknown reason she was not prepared well that day and was indeed quite ‘anti’. However I still rate her immensely. Nine to noon virtually died after Kim left it.
I share your high opinion of her, garibaldi. She’s certainly superior to anyone else on National Radio, with the exception of the excellent Phil Pennington.
But I have been disappointed by her on several occasions. Here’s another one:
https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-03102015-2/#comment-1077820
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/nz.general/F1pNZ8Zdxtg
Don’t forget Simon, or you won’t get a T-shirt!
Good on you for pointing out the violence level of the President.
Oh yes, Simon and Phil. Legends, both of them.
Chris Bourke is also brilliant. And Nick Bollinger.
Generally I agree. However Kim Hills view that Hilary should win, but didn’t …because she is a woman was, to my mind, breathtakingly stupid. And, speaking as a woman, pretty darned offensive.
Fair enough Siobhan. I did not realize that, and I agree that was a stupid attitude(common as it was) to have.
But it was HER TURN!!!
Monica, and THEN Hillary
Hey CV, a belated welcome back and seasons greetings to you.
Have missed yr view on things.
Liking the illiberal liberal tag, it’s gonna get used by me.
Hi gsays, thanks so much for your support now and while I was benched, much appreciated 🙂
Is it truly as simple as people for you and people against you CV ?
Is there not a tolerable amalgam somewhere CV ? Or has this all become weirdly egocentric or something ? Which would mean that the main players have not learned a thing.
Simply showing my appreciation for a kind comment, North.
Am very lucky to have a number of friends and their families come to stay with me this week.
We were chatting about politics last night, turns out one of my friends had Gerry Brownlee as a woodwork teacher. He said Gerry was not a good teacher, would spent most of his time in his office doing political stuff rather than teaching the lads, also said he was a nasty bully and bigger in size than he is now.
Another friend turns out he had gone to school with Bill English, apparently he had never met anyone so boring.
NZ is such a small world, and it appears not much has changed.
As I have said before, go back 20/30 years we used to sail our small boat on this lake and kids used to swim in it. Not now. Someone who has been in the engineering business, if I let the coolant oils from the machine tools leak or leach into the water table or drains I would have been heavily fined and told to fix or be closed down. Why is it then these arsoles are allowed to pollute the country with their large industrial dairy farms? I don’t want to hear the shit about “export earnings” as I know quite a few non-dairying companies just doing that, but are subject to the rules, Why is this sector allowed to get away with all this pollution of our so-called green and pure country.
Oh, I have just remembered it is all the bird shit in the lakes, not the cows causing the problems. sarc/
https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/health-warning-issued-waikato-lakes
As I have said before, go back 20/30 years we used to sail our small boat on this lake and kids used to swim in it
That was probably more to do with ignorance than anything else, if it didn’t kill you, it was all good.
Back then I doubt people would have had any idea if the lakes were full of faecal matter or cyanobacteria.
You could be right there BM, but I have been tipped out many a time and others as well, and taken the odd mouthful in the process. I don’t recall anybody getting sick I know I never did even if we were ignorant of the conditions of the lake. Visited Ngaroto the other day the lake colour is now RED something I have never seen in all the years I sailed there. Good reply mate but the only reason this lake is now red and highly toxic is through intensified dairying. You can come back with smart answers but you can’t get away from the fact that there are too many cows that are unsustainable and the numbers have got to be culled and get back to more manageable numbers the country can handle.
It is now bloody ridiculous, traditional sheep country in the SI are now being turned into dairying that can only be sustained by large irrigation systems which are well and truly stuffing up the local water supply. When you get the likes of Graham Sydney the artist voicing his concern about areas like the Maniototo Plain something has to be done like now if we are going to leave this country in a reasonable condition for the next generation.
Shallow lake, warmer weather – there are other factors at play as well as dairying in these ‘swamp’ lakes in the Waikato.
Yep, Ngaroto it’s a rotting peat bog lake so it’s always going to have naturally high nutrient levels.
Are you two telling me that all of a sudden it is caused by weather conditions and rotting peat? If so why not 20/30 years ago. I class those two comments as a Nick Smith comment, so you are both wrong, its all down to birdshit as Smith has already informed us.
Half crown, I must admit I haven’t seen Ngaroto for about 10 years now, but it always was brackish to me. Also Waikare was a cess pool many years ago. We used to spend half our summers immersed in the Hamilton lake when we were kids- wouldn’t hop in it now. I am just saying that not all deterioration has been caused by dairying, though it is a big factor.
Of course, both you & BM are right garibaldi (christ I am beginning to sound like Jones with Hooten.) I thought it was a good idea when the water slide was removed from Hamilton Lake. There was no way I would swim there, and the Waikato Lakes are known for the brackish colour because of the peat.
I am not an environmental nutter but I love this place and I would hope someone considers the long term effects this industrialised farming is having on NZ I would not like to see NZ end up like some of the cesspits we have all seen overseas.
I still sail on Hamilton Lake, and, away from shallows near the shore where measurements are often taken, find the water perfectly safe to swim in. But Hamilton, alone among the Waikato peat lakes, has no inflow from dairy farms, nor any of the dreaded Koi carp that infest all others. (These fish spread to all other lakes through farms’ irrigation/drainage channels – none are connected to Hamilton Lake.) The algae Hamilton Lake gets is a different one to all other lakes’ as well.
I agree that farming has to tidy up its act with all irrigation/drainage channels and shorelines, plus reduce usage of leaching phosphates, etc. What is happening to excellent lakes like Ngaroto is nothing short of criminal.
The internet is a public resource. It’s too valuable
to be entrusted to private entities like TradeMe.
Nearly one year ago, the caring and sharing folks at TradeMe announced that they were burying the Old Friends site. Their “justification” for this execution is a model of mealy-mouthed corporate blather….
http://www.trademe.co.nz/community/announcements/post/1454/old-friends-has-closed-down
I visited a couple of times ( not really my thing) and did wonder how they coped with people who weren’t too interested in being put on the site by others. I suspect that not everyone wanted a named photo of themself in standard one posted on the net by that helpful old classmate. Or some one “sharing memories” that may have been very different from the other party’s memory.
I agree. I also used to wonder what people thought about being labeled “Unknown” by their ex-classmates!
That too. Overall I can’t say I would miss it’s existence but it’s there in the National Library along with “TheStandard” archive.
The big question is – do you let your children (& grandchildren) know about your standard blog handle -in your will?- for when they do the family history research? Most of us have only a vague idea of our forebear’s personality & character but a blog would give some colour to that.
I found ( courtesy of a WWI publicly funded project) a hand written note from a great uncle who subsequently died in the war. It was like touching a fragile hand from the past.
I have the criminal records of one of my fathers uncles from the 19th century to go on 😈
My sister has been researching our ancestry and traced some of the family back to the late 1400s. The available information is… interesting.
Goodness me, what a bunch of dim-witted low-life frequent Kiwiblog. Some of the adjectives used to describe ‘mickysavage’ are almost unprintable. Farrar’s posts, while hopelessly politically compromised, are at least readable but the level of commentary below them has the aura of an IQ level of around 30. Why would anyone bother to read them.
Btw to lprent: now you’re back on deck… I haven’t had any ‘replies’ function (right hand side) for yonks now. Have tried to log on but must be doing something wrong. Won’t work.
It is a strange beast, carefully designed to provide the service without burdening the server.
The current incantation of that runs off the javascript in your browser. As the page loads, it looks at your client side cookies that maintain your reply details. If you have commented on your current client machine OR have logged in, you will have a cookie stored. It requests a limited number of replies using those details.
If your client browser or machine stops cookies or limits javascript jQuery too much (eg by closing TCP connections too fast), then it won’t work.
There are two possible results. It could be that you get a blank replies tab, in which case it is likely to be the javascript side (I’d have to peek at the code). Or you could just not get the tab. Maybe I should put some diagnostics into the tab and always have it present.
There was a reason that I refer to the comments section of KiwiBlog as “the sewer”. As far as I can tell a substantial portion of the regular commenters think with their genitalia. And very few of them have a clit to think with – so the drain of blood causes them to have a severely diminished cranial blood supply.
Thank-you for your prompt response to my problem lprent… most of which I don’t understand. 🙁
I take it then there’s nothing I can do about it? Guide me to the buttons I need to hit on my keyboard and I’ll be right. I get a blank replies tab. I think.
My replies tab is blank on The Standard front page, but then when I go to any of the posts, my replies show up.
That’s how it started with me but then the replies tab went permanently blank.
Edit: geez, I tried one more time and its working like you say Andre but it hasn’t been doing it for yonks. I feel a fool. 😡 Maybe lprent has done something. As you were folks. 😳
[lprent: Not me. ]
Ok. That is just weird. That sounds like the javascript simply isn’t triggering from the front page. I can’t think of any way that could happen. It is triggered from inside the div on the right where it displays (I think).
Ok. That means you are getting a javascript timeout. It detected a cookie, tried the request, but didn’t get a response.
I still get an empty reply tab when I first get on to the site. When I go to a second page it fills up then. From what you say it would seem that the javascript isn’t being fired on initial page load but works after that.
You have to use callbacks with javascript/jquery when doing asynchronous operations, it’s the only to make sure your code runs in the order you want it to.
http://www.w3schools.com/jquery/jquery_callback.asp
Thanks for the assistance folks. Ahhh BM, that looks a bit too complicated for me but will check it out later. 🙂
(That’s a programming discussion, Anne – best ignored by most of us)
Yeah of course. You wouldn’t believe how much I live in async when coding. My favourite c++ library is boost::asio and anyone who works with me will tell you how boring I can be on singing its praises.
The problem turned out that it wasn’t triggering because a dependency between a utils script and jquery hadn’t been set up in the wordpress codex. On Firefox (for some reason) it decided to launch the javascripts in a different order on the front page only.
I knew you’d know, I could be wrong but I think Draco has just started to get into coding..
Thought I’d share that bit of info, can be a bit of a head scratcher for people just starting out.
Reply tab is working on chrome, unfortunately it’s now throwing an error
std_read_cookie is not defined
at (index):2007
Should complete my Bach in Comp Systems (Prog.) this year.
I actually had a similar problem with C# and although I was sure what the problem was the only info I could find on it was MS promise that it would all be loaded correctly at run time
This one here?
http://www.unitec.ac.nz/career-and-study-options/computing-and-information-technology/bachelor-of-computing-systems
Do you spend much time on coding? or is it more of an intro?
Yep, that one. I’ve spent most of my time on coding but there’s the compulsory stuff outside of that as well.
I did the same degree 12 years ago. I wasn’t impressed with Unitec. Some of the papers highly dubious, the tutors not so good either. There was one unix paper; the tutor spent most of his time talking about gaming. The level 7 paper cost the equivalent of 3 normal papers and Unitec provided no softwear/ server for those using Unix languages. My tutor/mentor was absolutely useless suggesting I use Access as the database for the program I was using Perl for.
Cool. Always nice to have more coders around. It is more fun once you get out and find a place to put the code together.
Annoying. Temporary inelegant fix by moving the function from utils.js to inline in the header. I have a bit too much code in my head right now to jump languages.
Odd. What OS/Browser?
NTS: I really should make that show on the superadmin pages so I don’t have to keep asking that.
OS: Win10
Browser: Firefox 50.1.0
Just tried it on same version of firefox on linux (chrome and several other browsers worked fine). It picked up my cookies on the first display but only gave me a blank Replies tab. The replies showed up on a post screen.
Can’t see anything obvious except I can’t even see the query being launched.
Just tried it on same version of firefox on linux (chrome and several other browsers worked fine). It picked up my cookies on the first display but only gave me a blank Replies tab. The replies showed up on a post screen.
Can’t see anything obvious except I can’t even see the query being launched.
Ummm. That is triggered with this bit of code at the end of utils.js
(
function($)
{
$( document ).ready( load_replies() )
}
)(jQuery);
Ok. Just spotted the problem. It is loading utils before loading the jquery – so the statement is meaningless to your browser. I have no idea why this wouldn’t handle the same as it does on chrome and other browsers.
Fixed. I just needed to register utils to load with a jquery dependency
Thanks, that Replies tab glitch was ‘bugging’ me too 😀 (FF50/macOS). All OK now 👍🏽
Thanks
Why don’t you sign on, Anne, and join the fun? See if you can beat my record of posts marked “Hidden due to low comment rating”….
http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2016/12/general_debate_20_december_2016.html/comment-page-1#comment-1840721
By the way, there’s a major event coming up there soon….
http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2016/12/general_debate_20_december_2016.html/comment-page-1#comment-1840994
Why don’t you sign on, Anne, and join the fun.
Very tempting, but I spend too much time at the keyboard as it is.
Fair enough. Be sure to tune in for my 1,000th though!
“Why don’t you sign on, Anne, and join the fun? See if you can beat my record of posts marked “Hidden due to low comment rating”….”
You must be joking Morrissey, you must consider Anne’s health.
As I was pointing out to BM @6.1.1 I would not sail on now a sewer known as Lake
Ngaroto as it is a danger to your health. kiwiblog is in the same category (grin)
Nice analogy, halfcrown.
FYI halfcrown – I still occasionally sail at Ngaroto despite the algae, and the club still has a good core of keen sailors. None of them have suffered the threatened dire consequences of making contact (or immersion!) with the water, but this is not a reason for not reducing the pollution. It remains one of Waikato’s best sailing venues for clear, steadier breezes than others.
Anne
Just from an observational point of view about the Replies, it seems to me that I don’t get access to them till I have, in the present, put a comment. It seemed that was necessary, but am unsure if it then works with or without a reply as my system isn’t working well. (I have to spend an hour so learning about it and tweaking.)
Hi GreyWarShark
Are your comments going straight through now? I did a tweak yesterday that should have diminished the effects of getting auto moderated.
lprent
You are tops. I wondered why going through faster. Can’t give definite timing but I can see them now quite soon. Appreciate your patience. I have had a taste of almost pure hatred from clique of techno-in-people on another supposedly friendly community site when I blundered into an in-depth discussion thread. So know how trying learners are. And unfortunately we are eternal learners, it is built into the system that there are constant changes and readjustments – all makes work for infrastructure engineers though.
No problem. I’m having a day of coding at home (mainly for work since I head back in the morning), so these are useful diversion/avoidance things while shifting from holiday to work mode.
A close examination of an old version of the site compared to the current showed a new option that appears to have been turned on automatically.
So I suspect that you or your ISP’s local area have made it onto a blacklist somewhere.
Oh dear…. now I have to sign in every time I wish to leave a comment. (sigh)
“The aura of an IQ level of about 30.” Sounds about right for them.
India and its attitudes to women. When there are rigid limitations on women and, if not adhered to, then to men in a society that discriminates and disparages women that is a sign that a majority of men can then abandon social controls and treat the person as a thing to be played with, abused.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/02/mass-molestation-bangalore-blamed-on-indians-copying-west
In this situation perhaps women should carry whistles or noise makers that erupt when they are pressed so that the occurrence cannot go unnoticed, and an effective instant control like the old-fashioned stocks be instituted where such men would be ridiculed. There will not be a lessening of this bad behaviour and attitudes while there is no punishment, no denunciation of it in public.
In any society if that happens then women are a subset of society, only accepted when they conform. It’s a hard one to change when in what are named shame-based societies, if a women reports a rape to the police and expects the miscreants to be named and punished, instead she is imprisoned for now being unchaste even though unwilling and unwitting, perhaps too trusting.
That’s just British colonial self-righteousness rearing its dusty head again. Who are these late on the scene white people who think that they are going to change 3000 years of Indian societal structure?
CV
I understand you but 3000 years must include much change. The present already includes effects of colonial change from past centuries, change, reaction, change, improvement, advantage taken, reaction, change etc. It’s all humans trying each other with the powerful being in the driving seats. Not just in India.
Anthropologists? have found that traditional, oral people have plastic memories.
Plastic as in being movable and changeable. At first visit to a new area, the moderns sang their modern song in reply to a traditional song. When visiting the same area a decade later, it was incorporated into their traditional music and they had no memory of it being of late inclusion. It had been absorbed and was now part of their historical repetoire. That’s how we are. We absorb and change to include or react against.
India and Russia are moving even closer together geopolitically; I expect that will mean that western media will have many more scathing remarks about India during this year.
What are R and I doing to move closer? A marriage of convenience? As part of BRIC? Are there shared borders in the north or buffer states both have interest in? Resources?
As part of BRICS: engineering, economic and military co-operation without the strings attached that the US requires.
As well as reducing reliance on the US dollar and safeguarding their military and nuclear capabilities from any future US sanctions.
eg. India to lease a second modernised Aukla class nuclear attack submarine from Russia
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/double-trouble-india-lease-second-russian-nuclear-attack-18094
India has also recently signed a defense logistics agreement with the US, held joint training exercises with them, and a couple of years ago bought some US P8 sub-hunting aircraft (to replace Tupulovs, funnily enough).
It’s Pakistan that’s pivoting towards Russia, FWIW. Having burnt their bridges with the yanks.
Yeah, and Obama cleared India to have access to some US nuclear technologies.
Re: Pakistan afaik they still allow the US to run drone operations in their country and intelligence co-operation continues unhindered. Although diplomatic relations have cooled off.
Lol
Young people are dressing like westerners, which is the excuse for lack of police (western power structure) intervention that was given by the state (western power structure) minister (western parliamentary structure).
Yes, lots of older social structures still exist. But to argue that change is impossible is one of the dumber things you’ve written today (and you’ve written a lot).
you may think change wrt to India’s rigid attitudes to women and class structures may be theoretically possible; I’m just telling you that it’s not going to happen this century and especially not due to western colonial tut tut tutting.
When you see the tut-tutting, I’m sure you’ll let us know.
In the meantime, I read a a Guardian report about how local Indian media and witnesses were speaking out about the incident and calling their own minister to account.
Look how far western society has moved in a century. Why do you think that Indian society won’t change as well?
Happy to have this conversation with you again in 25 years and you can show me all the progress.
You’ll be too busy by then, having been globally lauded as The Man Who Knows Everything.
Once people like Clarence Beeby used to run New Zealand education;
now it’s been turned over to the likes of Rodney Hide and David Seymour.
If you aren’t filled with despair and rage after watching this documentary, you are a member of the ACT cult…
https://www.nzonscreen.com/title/a-civilised-society-2006
“Once people like Clarence Beeby used to run New Zealand education;
now it’s been turned over to the likes of Rodney Hide and David Seymour.”
Credit where credit’s due – to Tolley and Parata.
The supporters of Hide and David Seymour think education needs jackboots tromping in and stomping all over the system. Kids’ learning needs something of ballet shoes.
With Parata they got shit covered gumboots down below a blindfolded myopic.
Our demise as a nation is nicely depicted by the difference between Beeby and the cretins of more recent times.
Pete
Parata is more likely to be inclined to ballet shoes I would think. That very self-oriented precise controlled traditional example of physical art. She may be very keen on kapa haka but she seems so crass, middle class and conservative in her thinking that she has no natural warmth in her for pakeha or Maori I think, although involved at a high level with Maori administrative roles herself or through her husband. Just my feelings and observations.
New Zealand had its own Donald Trump, three decades ago
In 1984, New Zealand was treated to an off-Broadway preview of the infamous Trump campaign of 2016. The Kiwi version of Trump was also vulgar, ungracious, sexist, racist, obscenely wealthy due to dodgy property speculation, and had enjoyed years of fawning media coverage.
Like Trump, he also had a way with glib phraseology. In the following clip he draws laughter from his glassy-eyed acolytes by calling Rob Muldoon “the Idi Amin of economics”….
https://www.nzonscreen.com/title/bob-jones
Thanks for that Morrissey. I will say that Jones at least had a sense of humour. When someone was pestering him about what he would do if he became PM he retorted “What do you want me to do, come around and mow your lawns?
Trump has a very fast, very well developed New York sense of humour. Watch his SNL and world wrestling appearances, for instance. Also how he plays the crowd at political rallies.
I still get asked, very occasionally, for Bob Jones books, usually by young men who presumably are on the hunt for sage advice from ‘Bob’.. When I react with a ‘piff..we don’t sell those sorts of books’ they appear quite taken aback. Maybe its time to restock them for cheap laughs, like our fine Ayn Rand selection.
Do you file the Rands in your Fantasy section? 🙂
Might belong in the “pornography for pyromaniacs” section?
I wonder, Siobhan, how many requests you’ve had for these intellectual masterpieces…
I’ve Been Thinking by Richard Prebble (1996)
Free Thoughts by Jamie Whyte (2012). By the way: Jamie Whyte, cruelly nicknamed “The Kiwi Kierkegaard”, is renowned as a philosopher. He has achieved lasting fame in this country due to his advocacy of incest during that carefully thought out and brilliant 2014 campaign.
Mein Kampf by Donald Brash.
Feasting off the Smell of an Oily Rag by Muriel Newman (1997). This masterful handbook includes instructions on how to boil a pot of water.
http://www.fishpond.co.nz/Books/Feasting-Off-Smell-of-Oily-Rag-Frank-Newman-Dr-Muriel-Newman/9780958217040
What Next for the Euro?
The problem was that they used the wrong tools, the wrong ideology to try and bring about a convergence. It was never going to work. Instead of bringing about convergence among the nations it’s actually increased economic divisions.
Of course, a few people have got very much richer because of those policies.
Globalist agenda to disempower ordinary citizens, undermine democracy and wreck national sovereignty. The elite university educated lefty liberals love it all.
I read Stiglitz book on the Euro recently. As he argues the Euro was supposed to cause economic convergence between states but has caused divergence instead.
I put this down to its poor economic rationale, to its neoliberal economic arguments. I also put this as the basis for its persistence as a cause in the face of repeated and abject failure to deliver positive outcomes.
Other similar policies in NZ such as charter schools, the govts social statistics database, selling social housing and the cause of underfunding every area of public spending will have similar persistence beyond their failures to deliver.
While i am making guesses about the future. Bill English will deliver that blind persistence while mean time exuding a caring glow and ignoring these failures. Its in the nature of ideology.
Basically the same criticisms that were made in the 1980s and 1990s, and which those in authority blithely ignored because they knew better and because they could.
Sanctions are a big issue issue in Europe in that all there gas comes from Russia so to get around trading in dollars they’re giving up power and influence.
Also why the EU desperately want Assad gone so they can get a Qatari gas pipeline through Syria to Europe, and so dump Russia as their main gas supplier.
Complete German control of Europe, all without a shot being fired.
That does seem to be the way that it’s turned out. In fact, we could say that that seems to be the global target via the neo-liberal ideology of privatisation. Increased financial control by a very small clique.
China, Iran and Russia driven together to resist American monetary, economic and political hegemony
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-01-01/how-united-iran-russia-china-are-changing-world
NYT Op Ed: Obama’s war against whistleblowers and against journalists now gives Trump terrifying precedents to expand on
Too bad liberal lefties in the US gave Obama such a huge pass for all this authoritarian BS. I bet they will hypocritically turn on the Orangegruppenfuhrer if he does exactly the same as their favourite black President has done.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-01-02/if-donald-trump-targets-journalists-thank-obama
I’m still trying to digest the implications of this
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-12-24/obama-signs-countering-disinformation-and-propaganda-act-law
“Second, the legislation seeks to leverage expertise from outside government to create more adaptive and responsive U.S. strategy options. The legislation establishes a fund to help train local journalists and provide grants and contracts to NGOs, civil society organizations, think tanks, private sector companies, media organizations, and other experts outside the U.S. government with experience in identifying and analyzing the latest trends in foreign government disinformation techniques. This fund will complement and support the Center’s role by integrating capabilities and expertise available outside the U.S. government into the strategy-making process. It will also empower a decentralized network of private sector experts and integrate their expertise into the strategy-making process.” (my bolds)
Any organisation or individual who is funded from the US Military budget to expose ‘Fake News’ should be required to declare that publicly. And I can’t wait to see who will receive funding to expose fake news on Left wing Politicians like Bernie etc Protesters, Unions, Workers, the poor, any and all ethnic groups…
I believe that they want to expand on the following model, and funnel more tax payers money to the Ivy league educated sons and daughters of favoured associates:
http://www.salon.com/2016/10/03/u-s-paid-p-r-firm-540-million-to-make-fake-al-qaida-videos-in-iraq-propaganda-program/
Well, yeah, I guess ZeroHedge would be concerned at the prospect of people becoming better at spotting fake news and crackpot conspiracy theories – it might reduce their readership figures.
The MSM can’t hold their false narratives and fake news together boo-hoo hey what about that Vermont power grid being hacked by Russians?
I could get the exact same quote from here
http://www.portman.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=F973E46B-AA8C-4F3E-91B4-8EC0FC7F2F3E
Is that more to your taste??
Good ole Portman
http://www.ontheissues.org/OH/Rob_Portman.htm
The reality is there are no fool proof sources any more, you have to read, reread and fact check as best you can, and my concerns are on issues proudly stated in the legislation. I would quote from The Guardian, but they seem to have missed this bit of News. Oh dear.
Psycho Milt, you’re an ass. That would be okay if you weren’t such a pompous and unpleasant ass.
Projection, much?
That’s an easy—and invalid—statement to make. Psycho Milt has been criticised trenchantly on this forum for his glib and nasty comments, and his Hosking-style denunciation of real journalists.
You can call me names too if you want to sink to his Paul Henry level.
“You can call me names too…”
Nah. No need. Your reply illustrates my point just fine, thanks.
You’re not clever enough to get into an exchange like this, my friend. I advise you to desist.
Oh, that was so funny. Thank you to both the witting and unwitting contributors.
Chess with a pigeon can have it’s pleasures. As long as you stop at the right time.
https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-01012017/#comment-1281360
Quod erat demonstrandum.
As I counselled you yesterday, you should stop now. You’re not high enough in the pecking order to engage in any sort of conflict.
Our more astute readers will of course appreciate the allusion to pigeons….
🙂
Pretty templated from the CIA’s experience during the Cold War funding all kinds of arts organizations, infiltrating and then funding protest organizations, doing the full spectrum of buying the left, over-inflating their expectations, publishing their theories, agitating them towards violence and reaping the results for the flakiest and purest of the lefties.
Only those who want to disrupt, talk violence.
Violence never wins anything for working people, except misery.
The state will do what the state has to do to survive, and it survives by having a virtual monopoly on violence. Any one who brings a gun to drone fight, is beyond foolish, they are cut off from reality in a very bad way.
Non-violent resistance is the only acceptable approach, and people should be active if they want any change at all, it feels like the survival of democracy rests upon non-violent protest.
Siobhan I just thought it was an updated/add-on to the
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Espionage_Act_of_1917
No wait, what do we call it now Homeland Security.
Same crap from the democrats over, and over, and over…
Who thinks Putin will hand over Snowden as a good will gesture to Trump?
Yep, just in time for Trump to pin a Congressional Medal of Honour on him.
This will happen about a month after Trump commutes Chelsea Manning’s harsh Obama handed sentence to home arrest.
Yeah right.
Who would’ve guessed that liberal lefty Obama would persecute a record number of whistleblowers eh what an authoritarian deep state tool he turned out to be
I’m not sure it’s that likely. It would burn bridges with Putin’s useful idiots on the left, so there’d be a trade-off of that against the potential benefits from offering Trump a gift. The useful idiots probably don’t have any particular value beyond being unpaid propaganda distributors, but it’s not obvious that there’d be benefits from offering Trump a gift either, as he’s already a fan.
Still, I wouldn’t be sleeping well these days if I was Snowden.
I love the illiberal liberal left.
Shit dude, the CIA has been after Snowden’s life since Day One. He knew that he would get this unimaginable amount of heat by revealing the truth to us.
That’s why Snowden is a great hero, and you’re just another lousy collaborator.
Er, yes, Snowden is a great hero. Putin and Trump, on the hand, are anything but and he ought to be worried.
The latest Lionel from Lionel Nation:
Becoming a better conspiracy analyst. Realise when you are being manipulated. Avoid “smart” technology. Don’t be a gullible schmuck. And why it’s time to give up on the mainstream.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_4QzMD9gnE
Test message
Donald Trump, greatest American President since Reagan, puts Chicago Mayor on notice:
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/815973752785793024
Chicago, a Democrat run US city with more killings than a low intensity war zone.
Parroting the NRA makes a change from RT.
Chicago homicide rate is equivalent to 110 murders per month in NZ.
It’s mostly blacks killing blacks in a continuous low intensity war.
The NRA has nothing to do with it.
Apart from their implacable opposition to gun control, subsequent political funding of Republicans and the inevitable consequences of your bright orange policies on inner cities, nothing at all.
For the last 12 years or so the Chigago Mayor has been closing public schools in order to start charter schools. But the charter schools don’t take the kids from the closed schools, they take the kids that will make them look good. So the kids from the closed schools have to travel to different communities which causes lots of friction between the different gangs (there are no opt out for these gangs, a kid is in a gang by where they live). Before the last round of school closings, everyone associated with schools said it was going to increase the violence once again and 5 years down the track it has.
Given that Trump is pro-charters and pro-privitisation, I don’t see him doing anything that will change the situation except close more neighbourhood schools and let private companies profit off tax meant for educating kids.
You mean the Democratic Mayor of Chicago, Barack Obama’s former Chief of Staff, has been doing this? But liberals!!! REEEEEEE
He’s not a liberal. He’s a fascist. Really. And his father is even worse….
http://swampland.time.com/2008/11/13/rahm-emanuels-father-problem/
But why would Barack Obama chose a fascist as his Chief of Staff, and then support a fascist as Mayor of Chicago?
Hopeless-Changenothing came through the same route as Emanuel did—Chicago politics, the nastiest, most cynical and corrupt politics there is, outside of Japan.
He picked Emanuel because he gets things done. Character is of no concern, obviously, in U.S. politics.
Yep and very much part of Obama’s 2008 pre-Convention deal with the Clintons – after that any faint hope surrounding his capacity for real change flew swiftly out the window.
Extraordinary that such a huge mandate for change from the American electorate would immediately lead to a comprehensive merger between the Obama and Clinton camps, with the latter consistently awarded seniority. Basically, a third Bill Clinton term.
I know you and CV will be well aware of all this … but for the benefit of others (excepting, of course, our somewhat smug and wayward Clintonista chums) …
Obama allowed his inner circle – including his economic shadow cabinet – to be entirely taken over by the Clintonite entourage: not just the utterly corrupt Rahm Emanuel but also the likes of Lawrence Summers (good buddy of Dershowitz, of course), Robert Rubin, Jason Furman, Tom Donilon, Leon Panetta, John Podesta and dear old Hillary herself … in the process, willingly entangling himself in that whole seedy history of the Hamilton Project/Rubinomics and the notorious back door between the Clinton White House and big investment banks and money funds.
Stunning (economic and foreign policy) continuity with the old established Clintonian order … which naturally attracted more than a few admiring glances over the years from the usual Neo-Con suspects, while, at the same time, naturally enough alienating a whole swathe of working-class Democrat voters.
Swordfish, on your measurements you will always be let down.
Obama would be too, but only on the strength of his own campaign rhetoric. Not on how he governed.
You can look for all the micro-conspiracies and lack of revolution in the streets, but President Obama can be summed up like this: solved major crises, kept things steady, cleaned a number of things up, and left a pretty close to clean desk.
(1) What conspiracies ? Just business as usual for the US Establishment.
Some of the more astute Left-leaning commentators had been pretty sceptical about Obama’s capacity for real change right from the start (early stages of his 2008 Primary campaign). They cottoned on fairly early that he was essentially a narcissist / opportunist (wonderful soaring rhetoric, shame about the delivery).
(2) Revolution in the streets ??? You’re ‘avin’ a larf, ain’t ya, Gov ??? I’d be more than willing to settle for anything even vaguely resembling a move towards domestic social democracy and a less uber-aggressive foreign policy in the US.
Fact is: Obama unnecessarily made the decision to merge with the slimey, corrupt old Clinton camp, thereby killing any possibility of the sort of root and branch change Americans had voted for (no one was expecting it to happen overnight, incidentally).
Obama has:
1) Tried to fuck the incoming Trump Administration over Russia in these last few weeks by rapidly escalating political and diplomatic threats against Putin, including a massive expulsion of diplomats.
2) Tried to fuck the incoming Trump Administration over Syria in the last few weeks by agreeing to supply Syrian jihadists with advanced and heavy weaponry.
3) Tried to fuck the incoming Trump administration in the last few weeks by trying to delegitimise Trump’s victory in the mass media
4) Left the Dakota Access Pipeline mess for Trump to clean up
5) Left the Guantanamo Bay mess for Trump to clean up
6) Put $10 trillion dollars on the Federal debt for Trump to clean up
7) Attempted to box Trump in over Iran by signing big corporate deals with Tehran.
8) Left a mess of persecuted whistleblowers for Trump to clean up including Assange stuck in the Ecuadorian Embassy.
9) Left fucked up expensive out of control Pentagon projects for Trump to clean up including the F-35, the LCS, the Zumwalt class destroyers
10) Put thousands of new boots on Iraqi ground to try and sort out Mosul, a mess that Trump now has to clean up
11) Left more than half a dozen ongoing drone wars for Trump to clean up
12) Allowed China to build huge new military islands in the South China Sea for Trump to clean up
13) Allowed workforce participation rates to drop to the lowest levels in decades for Trump to clean up.
14) CO2 levels now up to 405ppm under Obama and rising
etc
etc
etc
radionz this afternoon alexei sayle – the mouthpiece for today.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEcSImbUAtE
Coz it xmas Driverless car chases cyclist
and
Ghosts of Xmas, Past, Present, and Future, refuse to Haunt Donald Trump. Agent C.J.H. Dickens explains.
Kimberlee Downs is the latest in a lamentable list of sports know-nothings.
Trouble is, she’s been given the job of reporting on the ASB Tennis Open.
TV1 News, 6:40 p.m., Tuesday 3 December 2017
That Television New Zealand is fronting its sports news with people who know little or nothing about sports will come as no surprise to long-suffering viewers who have been obliged for decades to put up with the likes of Tony Veitch, Martin Devlin, Andrew Saveloy, and Jenny-May Coffin [1] making inane and ignorant comments before throwing to the weather or engaging in ten seconds of excruciating banter with Simon Dallow.
Certainly no one expects sports commentators to be rocket scientists, but surely we have the right to expect them to know at least SOMETHING about sports? On tonight’s sports round-up, something called Kimberlee Downs announced, with the cheerful certainty of the hopelessly ignorant, that Serena Williams is “the most famous tennis player to ever appear in Auckland.”
Now, New Zealand tennis fans will know that Auckland has hosted many, many famous players, many of them arguably at least as famous as Serena Williams. The New Zealand Open at Stanley Street has hosted, among others, Rod Laver, Pancho Gonzales, Tony Roche, Roy Emerson, Arthur Ashe, John Newcombe, Ken Rosewall, Bjorn Borg, Roger Federer (he lost in the first round in 2000), Ann Jones, Billie Jean King, Rosie Casals, Margaret Court, Evonne Goolagong, …. the list, full of people that Kimberlee Downs has no doubt never heard of, could go on for ages.
There will be lots of people at TVNZ who know at least something about tennis. So why is Kimberlee Downs, who obviously knows nothing, given the job?
[1] https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-26072015/#comment-1049930
You forgot Anna Kournikova.
Probably the most famous tennis player ever.
The breathless proclamations of the young are lost on the old.
Williams is the most famous, now.
Kournikova was in the same position in 2002 when she was here.
In 2028 it’ll be someone else who will be “the most famous” which will be estatically stated by a completely different young thing on the TV news.
If TV news even still exists in 2028.
It barely exists in 2017
I certainly have not forgotten when Anna Kournikova came here for the 2002 event. Thanks for the reminder, James.
The way she was treated here was a disgrace, from the dismal sexist marketing of her—a television ad showing porn-style slo-mo close-ups of her legs and breasts, interspersed with young males salivating—to the press conference which featured Television One’s Tony Veitch being manhandled out, giggling. That display of idiocy prompted sports commentator John Dybvig (one of the few in NZ with a discernible intellect) to remark: “Tony Veitch is nothing but an asshole.”
take a look at this chart from the telegraph nz tops the list for most expensive houses
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/01/02/fears-massive-global-property-price-crash-amid-dangerous-conditions/
this repeated this afternoon on RNZ Great Encounters…well worth a listen if haven’t already
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon/audio/201816970/crash-predictor-ann-pettifor-'we're-no-longer-citizens-we're-customers‘
i wonder how many over leveraged home owners are going to start howling about there debts