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.”
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: My top six things to note around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the week to July 27 were:1. The Minister for Ford Rangers strikes againTransport Minister Simeon Brown was again the busiest of the Cabinet ministers this week, announcing an ...
You got a fast carAnd I want a ticket to anywhereMaybe we make a dealMaybe together we can get somewhereAny place is betterYesterday’s newsletter, Trust In Me, on the report of abuse in state care, and by religious organisations, between 1950 and 2019, coupled with the hypocrisy of Christopher Luxon ...
New Zealand is again having to reconcile conflicting pressures from its military and its trade interests. Should we join Pillar Two of AUKUS and risk compromising our markets in China? For a century after New Zealand was founded in 1840, its external security arrangements and external economics arrangements were aligned. ...
The ‘50 Shades of Green’ farmers’ protest in 2019 was heavy on climate change denial, but five years on, scepticism and criticism about the idea that pine forests can save us is growing across the board. File photo: Lynn GrievesonTL;DR: Here’s the top six news items of note in climate ...
This morning the sky was bright.The birds, in their usual joyous bliss. Nature doesn’t seem to feel the heat of what might angst humans.Their calls are clear and beautiful.Just some random thoughts:MāoriPaul Goldsmith has announced his government will roll back the judiciary’s rulings on Māori Customary Marine Title, which recognises ...
In 2003, the Court of Appeal delivered its decision in Ngati Apa v Attorney-General, ruling that Māori customary title over the foreshore and seabed had not been universally extinguished, and that the Māori Land Court could determine claims and confirm title if the facts supported it. This kicked off the ...
Earlier this week at Parliament, Labour leader Chris Hipkins was applauded for saying that the response to the final report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care had to be “bigger than politics.” True, but the fine words, apologies and “we hear you” messages will soon ring ...
TL;DR: In news breaking this morning:The Ministry of Education is cutting $2 billion from its school building programme so the National-ACT-NZ First Coalition Government has enough money to deliver tax cuts; The Government has quietly lowered its child poverty reduction targets to make them easier to achieve;Te Whatu Ora-Health NZ’s ...
Kia ora. These are some stories that caught our eye this week – as always, feel free to share yours in the comments. Our header image this week (via Eke Panuku) shows the planned upgrade for the Karanga Plaza Tidal Swimming Steps. The week in Greater Auckland On ...
1. What's not to love about the way the Harris campaign is turning things around?a. Nothingb. Love all of itc. God what a reliefd. Not that it will be by any means easye. All of the above 2. Documents released by the Ministry of Health show Associate Health Minister Casey ...
Trust in me in all you doHave the faith I have in youLove will see us through, if only you trust in meWhy don't you, you trust me?In a week that saw the release of the 3,000 page Abuse in Care report Christopher Luxon was being asked about Boot Camps. ...
TL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers last night features co-hosts and talking about the Royal Commission Inquiry into Abuse in Carereport released this week, and with:The Kākā’s climate correspondent on a UN push to not recognise carbon offset markets and ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Friday, July 26, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Transport: Simeon Brown announced$802.9 million in funding for 18 new trains on the Wairarapa and Manawatū rail lines, which ...
The northern expressway extension from Warkworth to Whangarei is likely to require radical changes to legislation if it is going to be built within the foreseeable future. The Government’s powers to purchase land, the planning process and current restrictions on road tolling are all going to need to be changed ...
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedFirst they came for the doctors But I was confused by the numbers and costs So I didn't speak up Then they came for our police and nurses And I didn't think we could afford those costs anyway So I ...
Photo by Joshua J. Cotten on UnsplashWe’re back again after our mid-winter break. We’re still with the ‘new’ day of the week (Thursday rather than Friday) when we have our ‘hoon’ webinar with paying subscribers to The Kākā for an hour at 5 pm.Jump on this link on YouTube Livestream ...
Notes: This is a free article. Abuse in Care themes are mentioned. Video is at the bottom.BackgroundYesterday’s report into Abuse in Care revealed that at least 1 in 3 of all who went through state and faith based care were abused - often horrifically. At least, because not all survivors ...
Luxon speaks in Parliament yesterday about the Abuse in Care report. Photo: Hagen Hopkins/Getty ImagesTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:PM Christopher Luxon said yesterday in tabling the Abuse in Carereport in Parliament he wanted to ‘do the ...
About a decade ago I worked with a bloke called Steve. He was the grizzled veteran coder, a few years older than me, who knew where the bodies were buried - code wise. Despite his best efforts to be approachable and friendly he could be kind of gruff, through to ...
Some of the recent announcements from the government have reminded us of posts we’ve written in the past. Here’s one from early 2020. There were plenty of reactions to the government’s infrastructure announcement a few weeks ago which saw them fund a bunch of big roading projects. One of ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Thursday, July 25 are:News: Why Electric Kiwi is closing to new customers - and why it matters RNZ’s Susan EdmundsScoop: Government drops ...
Hi,I felt a small wet tongue snaking through one of the holes in my Crocs. It explored my big toe, darting down one side, then the other. “He’s looking for some toe cheese,” said the woman next to me, words that still haunt me to this day.Growing up in New ...
Yesterday I happily quoted the Prime Minister without fact-checking him and sure enough, it turns out his numbers were all to hell. It’s not four kg of Royal Commission report, it’s fourteen.My friend and one-time colleague-in-comms Hazel Phillips gently alerted me to my error almost as soon as I’d hit ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Thursday, July 25, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day were:The Abuse in Care Royal Commission of Inquirypublished its final report yesterday.PM Christopher Luxon and The Minister responsible for ...
The Official Information Act has always been a battle between requesters seeking information, and governments seeking to control it. Information is power, so Ministers and government agencies want to manage what is released and when, for their own convenience, and legality and democracy be damned. Their most recent tactic for ...
TL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:Transport and Energy Minister Simeon Brown is accelerating plans to spend at least $10 billion through Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) to extend State Highway One as a four-lane ‘Expressway’ from Warkworth to Whangarei ...
I live my life (woo-ooh-ooh)With no control in my destinyYea-yeah, yea-yeah (woo-ooh-ooh)I can bleed when I want to bleedSo come on, come on (woo-ooh-ooh)You can bleed when you want to bleedYea-yeah, come on (woo-ooh-ooh)Everybody bleed when they want to bleedCome on and bleedGovernments face tough challenges. Selling unpopular decisions to ...
Please note:To skip directly to the- parliamentary footage in the video, scroll to 1:21 To skip to audio please click on the headphone iconon the left hand side of the screenThis video / audio section is under development. ...
Given the crackdown on wasteful government spending, it behooves me to point to a high profile example of spending by the Luxon government that looks like a big, fat waste of time and money. I’m talking about the deployment of NZDF personnel to support the US-led coalition in the Red ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:40 am on Wednesday, July 24 are:Deep Dive: Chipping away at the housing crisis, including my comments RNZ/Newsroom’s The DetailNews: Government softens on asset sales, ...
As I reported about the city centre, Auckland’s rail network is also going through a difficult and disruptive period which is rapidly approaching a culmination, this will result in a significant upgrade to the whole network. Hallelujah. Also like the city centre this is an upgrade predicated on the City ...
Today, a 4 kilogram report will be delivered to Parliament. We know this is what the report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State and Faith-based Care weighs, because our Prime Minister told us so.Some reporter had blindsided him by asking a question about something done by ...
TL;DR: As of 7:00 am on Wednesday, July 24, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Beehive:Transport Minister Simeon Brownannounced plans to use PPPs to fund, build and run a four-lane expressway between Auckland ...
NewstalkZB host Mike Hosking, who can usually be relied on to give Prime Minister Christopher Luxon an easy run, did not do so yesterday when he interviewed him about the HealthNZ deficit. Luxon is trying to use a deficit reported last year by HealthNZ as yet another example of the ...
Back in January a StatsNZ employee gave a speech at Rātana on behalf of tangata whenua in which he insulted and criticised the government. The speech clearly violated the principle of a neutral public service, and StatsNZ started an investigation. Part of that was getting an external consultant to examine ...
Renting for life: Shared ownership initiatives are unlikely to slow the slide in home ownership by much. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:A Deloittereport for Westpac has projected Aotearoa’s home-ownership rate will ...
You're broken down and tiredOf living life on a merry go roundAnd you can't find the fighterBut I see it in you so we gonna walk it outAnd move mountainsWe gonna walk it outAnd move mountainsAnd I'll rise upI'll rise like the dayI'll rise upI'll rise unafraidI'll rise upAnd I'll ...
There’s been a change in Myers Park. Down the steps from St. Kevin’s Arcade, past the grassy slopes, the children’s playground, the benches and that goat statue, there has been a transformation. The underpass for Mayoral Drive has gone from a barren, grey, concrete tunnel, to a place that thrums ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections Global society may have finally slammed on the brakes for climate-warming pollution released by human fossil fuel combustion. According to the Carbon Monitor Project, the total global climate pollution released between February and May 2024 declined slightly from the amount released during the same ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Tuesday, July 23 are:Deep Dive: Penlink: where tolling rhetoric meets reality BusinessDesk-$$$’sOliver LewisScoop:Te Pūkenga plans for regional polytechs leak out ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Tuesday, July 23, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Health: Shane Reti announcedthe Board of Te Whatu Ora-Health New Zealand was being replaced with Commissioner Lester Levy ...
Health NZ warned the Government at the end of March that it was running over Budget. But the reasons it gave were very different to those offered by the Prime Minister yesterday. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon blamed the “botched merger” of the 20 District Health Boards (DHBs) to create Health ...
Long ReadKey Summary: Although National increased the health budget by $1.4 billion in May, they used an old funding model to project health system costs, and never bothered to update their pre-election numbers. They were told during the Health Select Committees earlier in the year their budget amount was deficient, ...
As a momentous, historic weekend in US politics unfolded, analysts and commentators grasped for precedents and comparisons to help explain the significance and power of the choice Joe Biden had made. The 46th president had swept the Democratic party’s primaries but just over 100 days from the election had chosen ...
TL;DR: I’m casting around for new ideas and ways of thinking about Aotearoa’s political economy to find a few solutions to our cascading and self-reinforcing housing, poverty and climate crises.Associate Professor runs an online masters degree in the economics of sustainability at Torrens University in Australia and is organising ...
The Finance and Expenditure Committee has reported back on National's Local Government (Water Services Preliminary Arrangements) Bill. The bill sets up water for privatisation, and was introduced under urgency, then rammed through select committee with no time even for local councils to make a proper submission. Naturally, national's select committee ...
Some years ago, I bought a book at Dunedin’s Regent Booksale for $1.50. As one does. Vandrad the Viking (1898), by J. Storer Clouston, is an obscure book these days – I cannot find a proper online review – but soon it was sitting on my shelf, gathering dust alongside ...
History is not on the side of the centre-left, when Democratic presidents fall behind in the polls and choose not to run for re-election. On both previous occasions in the past 75 years (Harry Truman in 1952, Lyndon Johnson in 1968) the Democrats proceeded to then lose the White House ...
This is a free articleCoverageThis morning, US President Joe Biden announced his withdrawal from the Presidential race. And that is genuinely newsworthy. Thanks for your service, President Biden, and all the best to you and yours.However, the media in New Zealand, particularly the 1News nightly bulletin, has been breathlessly covering ...
A homeless person’s camp beside a blocked-off slipped damage walkway in Freeman’s Bay: we are chasing our tail on our worsening and inter-related housing, poverty and climate crises. Photo: Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy ...
What has happened to it all?Crazy, some'd sayWhere is the life that I recognise?(Gone away)But I won't cry for yesterdayThere's an ordinary worldSomehow I have to findAnd as I try to make my wayTo the ordinary worldYesterday morning began as many others - what to write about today? I began ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Monday, July 22 are:Today’s Must Read: Father and son live in a tent, and have done for four years, in a million ...
TL;DR: As of 7:00 am on Monday, July 22, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:US President Joe Biden announced via X this morning he would not stand for a second term.Multinational professional services firm ...
A listing of 32 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, July 14, 2024 thru Sat, July 20, 2024. Story of the week As reflected by preponderance of coverage, our Story of the Week is Project 2025. Until now traveling ...
This weekend, a friend pointed out someone who said they’d like to read my posts, but didn’t want to pay. And my first reaction was sympathy.I’ve already told folks that if they can’t comfortably subscribe, and would like to read, I’d be happy to offer free subscriptions. I don’t want ...
National: The Party of ‘Law and Order’ IntroductionThis weekend, the Government formally kicked off one of their flagship policy programs: a military style boot camp that New Zealand has experimented with over the past 50 years. Cartoon credit: Guy BodyIt’s very popular with the National Party’s Law and Orderimage, ...
Day one of the solo leg of my long journey home begins with my favourite sound: footfalls in an empty street. 5.00 am and it’s already light and already too warm, almost.If I can make the train that leaves Budapest later this hour I could be in Belgrade by nightfall; ...
Do you remember Y2K, the threat that hung over humanity in the closing days of the twentieth century? Horror scenarios of planes falling from the sky, electronic payments failing and ATMs refusing to dispense cash. As for your VCR following instructions and recording your favourite show - forget about it.All ...
Climate Change Minister Simon Watts being questioned by The Kākā’s Bernard Hickey.TL;DR: My top six things to note around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the week to July 20 were:1. A strategy that fails Zero Carbon Act & Paris targetsThe National-ACT-NZ First Coalition Government finally unveiled ...
Summary:As New Zealand loses at least 12 leaders in the public service space of health, climate, and pharmaceuticals, this month alone, directly in response to the Government’s policies and budget choices, what lies ahead may be darker than it appears. Tui examines some of those departures and draws a long ...
The Minister of Housing’s ambition is to reduce markedly the ratio of house prices to household incomes. If his strategy works it would transform the housing market, dramatically changing the prospects of housing as an investment.Leaving aside the Minister’s metaphor of ‘flooding the market’ I do not see how the ...
As previously noted, my historical fantasy piece, set in the fifth-century Mediterranean, was accepted for a Pirate Horror anthology, only for the anthology to later fall through. But in a good bit of news, it turned out that the story could indeed be re-marketed as sword and sorcery. As of ...
An employee of tobacco company Philip Morris International demonstrates a heated tobacco device. Photo: Getty ImagesTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy on Friday, July 19 are:At a time when the Coalition Government is cutting spending on health, infrastructure, education, housing ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 8:30 am on Friday, July 19 are:Scoop: NZ First Minister Casey Costello orders 50% cut to excise tax on heated tobacco products. The minister has ...
Kia ora, it’s time for another Friday roundup, in which we pull together some of the links and stories that caught our eye this week. Feel free to add more in the comments! Our header image this week shows a foggy day in Auckland town, captured by Patrick Reynolds. ...
TL;DR : Here’s the top six items climate news for Aotearoa this week, as selected by Bernard Hickey and The Kākā’s climate correspondent Cathrine Dyer. A discussion recorded yesterday is in the video above and the audio of that sent onto the podcast feed.The Government released its draft Emissions Reduction ...
Save some money, get rich and old, bring it back to Tobacco Road.Bring that dynamite and a crane, blow it up, start all over again.Roll up. Roll up. Or tailor made, if you prefer...Whether you’re selling ciggies, digging for gold, catching dolphins in your nets, or encouraging folks to flutter ...
Waiting In The Wings:For truly, if Trump is America’s un-assassinated Caesar, then J.D. Vance is America’s Octavian, the Republic’s youthful undertaker – and its first Emperor.DONALD TRUMP’S SELECTION of James D. Vance as his running-mate bodes ill for the American republic. A fervent supporter of Viktor Orban, the “illiberal” prime ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Friday, July 19, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:The PSAannounced the Employment Relations Authority (ERA) had ruled in the PSA’s favour in its case against the Ministry ...
Te Rangi e tu nei (The sky above us) Te Papa e takoto nei (The land beneath us) Tatou katoa te hunga ora (To us all the living) Tena koutou katoa (Greetings) ...
A late change to charter school legislation will cheat educators out of fair pay and negotiating power proving charter schools are just a vehicle to make profit out of our education system. ...
In 2004 te iwi Māori rallied against the Crown’s attempt to confiscate our coastlines and moana with the Foreshore and Seabed Act. This led to the largest hīkoi of a generation and the birth of Te Pāti Māori. 20 years later, history is repeating itself. Today the government has announced ...
It has been five and a half years since the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care was established to investigate the abuse of children, young people, and vulnerable adults within state and faith-based institutions. Yesterday, the final report - Whanaketia through pain and trauma, from darkness to light ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to take action off the back of the International Court of Justice ruling on Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine. ...
On Friday the International Court of Justice reaffirmed what Palestinian’s have been telling us for decades: that the occupation and colonisation of Palestinian lands by Israel is illegal and must end immediately. They also called for reparations for Palestinian’s who have lived under Israeli occupation since it began in 1967. ...
Labour calls on the Government to act after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian Territories is illegal. ...
The 53.7 percent rise in benefit sanctions over the last year is more proof of this Government’s disdain for our communities most in need of support. ...
Aotearoa could be a country where every child grows up feeling safe, loved and with a sense of belonging in their whānau and community. But for some of our children, this is far from reality. Instead, they are trapped in a maze of intergenerational harm that they can’t escape on ...
Te Pāti Māori are calling for David Seymour to resign as Associate Health Minister in response to his call for Pharmac to ignore the Treaty of Waitangi. “This announcement is just another example of the government’s anti-Tiriti, anti-Māori agenda.” Said Co-leader and spokesperson for health, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. “Seymour thinks it ...
The soaring price of renting is driving the rise of inflation in this country - with latest figures from Stats NZ showing rents are up 4.8 per cent on average while annual inflation is at 3.3 per cent. ...
National’s Emissions Reduction Plan will take New Zealand further from the economy we need to ensure the next generation has a stable climate and secure livelihoods. ...
Following consultation with named parties and thorough consideration of privacy interests, the Green Party is in a position to release the Executive Summary of the final report from the independent investigation into Darleen Tana. ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon should be asking serious questions of his Minister for Resources Shane Jones now it’s been revealed he misled the public about a dinner with mining companies that he didn’t declare and said wasn’t pre-arranged. ...
Te Pāti Māori have submitted to the Justice Select Committee against the Sentencing (Reinstating Three Strikes) Amendment Bill. The bill will further entrench racism in our justice system and fails to focus on rehabilitation. “Reinstating Three Strikes will empower a systematically racist system and exacerbate the overrepresentation of Māori in ...
The Transport and Infrastructure Committee is set to make a determination on the Residential Tenancies Amendment (RTA) Bill in the coming weeks. “This legislation will give landlords the power to kick our whānau out onto the street for no reason” said Housing spokesperson, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “Their solution to the housing ...
“National’s campaign was about tackling crime and the best they can do is a two-year long Ministerial Advisory Group,” Labour justice spokesperson Duncan Webb said. ...
“There are more examples of charter schools failing their students than there are success stories. The coalition Government is driving to dismantle our public school system and instead promote a privatised, competitive structure that puts profits before kids,” Jan Tinetti said. ...
“This government is choosing to deliberately mislead and withhold information, keeping our people in the dark about this government’s agenda and the future of our mokopuna,” said co-leader and spokesperson for Health, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. The call comes after the demand from the Chief Ombudsman that Associate Minister of Health, Casey ...
“Today’s climate announcement by Simon Watts makes clear the National Government is simply paying lip service to meeting its climate change targets,” Megan Woods said. ...
National is choosing to make life harder for workers by taking away the rights our communities have fought hard for. Here's how they’re taking workers backwards. ...
Australia, Canada and New Zealand today issued the following statement on the need for an urgent ceasefire in Gaza and the risk of expanded conflict between Hizballah and Israel. The situation in Gaza is catastrophic. The human suffering is unacceptable. It cannot continue. We remain unequivocal in our condemnation of ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins today reminded all State and faith-based institutions of their legal obligation to preserve records relevant to the safety and wellbeing of those in its care. “The Abuse in Care Inquiry’s report has found cases where records of the most vulnerable people in State and faith‑based institutions were ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says the Government’s online safety website for children and young people has reached one million page views. “It is great to see so many young people and their families accessing the site Keep It Real Online to learn how to stay safe online, and manage ...
Tēnā tātou katoa, Ngā mihi te rangi, ngā mihi te whenua, ngā mihi ki a koutou, kia ora mai koutou. Thank you for the opportunity to be here and the invitation to speak at this 50th anniversary conference. I acknowledge all those who have gone before us and paved the ...
New Zealand’s payroll providers have successfully prepared to ensure 3.5 million individuals will, from Wednesday next week, be able to keep more of what they earn each pay, says Finance Minister Nicola Willis and Revenue Minister Simon Watts. “The Government's tax policy changes are legally effective from Wednesday. Delivering this tax ...
An experimental vineyard which will help futureproof the wine sector has been opened in Blenheim by Associate Regional Development Minister Mark Patterson. The covered vineyard, based at the New Zealand Wine Centre – Te Pokapū Wāina o Aotearoa, enables controlled environmental conditions. “The research that will be produced at the Experimental ...
The Coalition Government has confirmed the indicative regional breakdown of North Island Weather Event (NIWE) funding for state highway recovery projects funded through Budget 2024, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Regions in the North Island suffered extensive and devastating damage from Cyclone Gabrielle and the 2023 Auckland Anniversary Floods, and ...
Indonesia’s Foreign Minister, Retno Marsudi, will visit New Zealand next week, Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced. “Indonesia is important to New Zealand’s security and economic interests and is our closest South East Asian neighbour,” says Mr Peters, who is currently in Laos to engage with South East Asian partners. ...
He aha te kai a te rangatira? He kōrero, he kōrero, he kōrero. The government has reaffirmed its commitment to supporting the aspirations of Ngāti Maniapoto, Minister for Māori Development Tama Potaka says. “My thanks to Te Nehenehenui Trust – Ngāti Maniapoto for bringing their important kōrero to a ministerial ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has thanked outgoing Chair of the Civil Aviation Authority, Janice Fredric, for her service to the board.“I have received Ms Fredric’s resignation from the role of Chair of the Civil Aviation Authority,” Mr Brown says.“On behalf of the Government, I want to thank Ms Fredric for ...
The Government is proposing legislation to overturn a Court of Appeal decision and amend the Marine and Coastal Area Act in order to restore Parliament’s test for Customary Marine Title, Treaty Negotiations Minister Paul Goldsmith says. “Section 58 required an applicant group to prove they have exclusively used and occupied ...
Regulation Minister David Seymour says that opposition parties have united in bad faith, opposing what they claim are ‘dangerous changes’ to the Early Childhood Education sector, despite no changes even being proposed yet. “Issues with affordability and availability of early childhood education, and the complexity of its regulation, has led ...
After receiving more than 740 submissions in the first 20 days, Regulation Minister David Seymour is asking the Ministry for Regulation to extend engagement on the early childhood education regulation review by an extra two weeks. “The level of interest has been very high, and from the conversations I’ve been ...
The Coalition Government is investing $802.9 million into the Wairarapa and Manawatū rail lines as part of a funding agreement with the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA), KiwiRail, and the Greater Wellington and Horizons Regional Councils to deliver more reliable services for commuters in the lower North Island, Transport Minister Simeon ...
Local Government Minister Simeon Brown has announced his intention to appoint a Crown Manager to both Hawke’s Bay Regional and Wairoa District Councils to speed up the delivery of flood protection work in Wairoa."Recent severe weather events in Wairoa this year, combined with damage from Cyclone Gabrielle in 2023 have ...
Mr Speaker, this is a day that many New Zealanders who were abused in State care never thought would come. It’s the day that this Parliament accepts, with deep sorrow and regret, the Report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care. At the heart of this report are the ...
For the first time, the Government is formally acknowledging some children and young people at Lake Alice Psychiatric Hospital experienced torture. The final report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State and Faith-based Care “Whanaketia – through pain and trauma, from darkness to light,” was tabled in Parliament ...
The Government has acknowledged the nearly 2,400 courageous survivors who shared their experiences during the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Historical Abuse in State and Faith-Based Care. The final report from the largest and most complex public inquiry ever held in New Zealand, the Royal Commission Inquiry “Whanaketia – through ...
With a week to go before hard-working New Zealanders see personal income tax relief for the first time in fourteen years, 513,000 people have used the Budget tax calculator to see how much they will benefit, says Finance Minister Nicola Willis. “Tax relief is long overdue. From next Wednesday, personal income ...
Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden says a bill that has passed its first reading will improve parental leave settings and give non-biological parents more flexibility as primary carer for their child. The Regulatory Systems Amendment Bill (No3), passed its first reading this morning. “It includes a change ...
Two Bills designed to improve regulation and make it easier to do business have passed their first reading in Parliament, says Economic Development Minister Melissa Lee. The Regulatory Systems (Economic Development) Amendment Bill and Regulatory Systems (Immigration and Workforce) Amendment Bill make key changes to legislation administered by the Ministry ...
New legislation paves the way for greater competition in sectors such as banking and electricity, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly says. “Competitive markets boost productivity, create employment opportunities and lift living standards. To support competition, we need good quality regulation but, unfortunately, a recent OECD report ranked New ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says lotteries for charitable purposes, such as those run by the Heart Foundation, Coastguard NZ, and local hospices, will soon be allowed to operate online permanently. “Under current laws, these fundraising lotteries are only allowed to operate online until October 2024, after which ...
The Coalition Government is accelerating work on the new four-lane expressway between Auckland and Whangārei as part of its Roads of National Significance programme, with an accelerated delivery model to deliver this project faster and more efficiently, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “For too long, the lack of resilient transport connections ...
Sir Don McKinnon will travel to Viet Nam this week as a Special Envoy of the Government, Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced. “It is important that the Government give due recognition to the significant contributions that General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong made to New Zealand-Viet Nam relations,” Mr ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says newly appointed Commissioner, Grant Illingworth KC, will help deliver the report for the first phase of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into COVID-19 Lessons, due on 28 November 2024. “I am pleased to announce that Mr Illingworth will commence his appointment as ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters travels to Laos this week to participate in a series of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)-led Ministerial meetings in Vientiane. “ASEAN plays an important role in supporting a peaceful, stable and prosperous Indo-Pacific,” Mr Peters says. “This will be our third visit to ...
Construction of a new mental health facility at Te Nikau Grey Hospital in Greymouth is today one step closer, Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey says. “This $27 million facility shows this Government is delivering on its promise to boost mental health care and improve front line services,” Mr Doocey says. ...
New Zealand is committing nearly $50 million to a package supporting sustainable Pacific fisheries development over the next four years, Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones announced today. “This support consisting of a range of initiatives demonstrates New Zealand’s commitment to assisting our Pacific partners ...
Associate Education Minister David Seymour says proposed changes to the Education and Training Amendment Bill will ensure charter schools have more flexibility to negotiate employment agreements and are equipped with the right teaching resources. “Cabinet has agreed to progress an amendment which means unions will not be able to initiate ...
In response to serious concerns around oversight, overspend and a significant deterioration in financial outlook, the Board of Health New Zealand will be replaced with a Commissioner, Health Minister Dr Shane Reti announced today. “The previous government’s botched health reforms have created significant financial challenges at Health NZ that, without ...
Minister for Space and Science, Innovation and Technology Judith Collins will travel to Adelaide tomorrow for space and science engagements, including speaking at the Australian Space Forum. While there she will also have meetings and visits with a focus on space, biotechnology and innovation. “New Zealand has a thriving space ...
Climate Change Minister Simon Watts will travel to China on Saturday to attend the Ministerial on Climate Action meeting held in Wuhan. “Attending the Ministerial on Climate Action is an opportunity to advocate for New Zealand climate priorities and engage with our key partners on climate action,” Mr Watts says. ...
Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones is travelling to the Solomon Islands tomorrow for meetings with his counterparts from around the Pacific supporting collective management of the region’s fisheries. The 23rd Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Committee and the 5th Regional Fisheries Ministers’ Meeting in Honiara from 23 to 26 July ...
The Government today launched the Military Style Academy Pilot at Te Au rere a te Tonga Youth Justice residence in Palmerston North, an important part of the Government’s plan to crackdown on youth crime and getting youth offenders back on track, Minister for Children, Karen Chhour said today. “On the ...
The Government has welcomed news the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) has begun work to replace nine priority bridges across the country to ensure our state highway network remains resilient, reliable, and efficient for road users, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says.“Increasing productivity and economic growth is a key priority for the ...
Acting Prime Minister David Seymour has been in contact throughout the evening with senior officials who have coordinated a whole of government response to the global IT outage and can provide an update. The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet has designated the National Emergency Management Agency as the ...
New Zealand and Japan will continue to step up their shared engagement with the Pacific, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “New Zealand and Japan have a strong, shared interest in a free, open and stable Pacific Islands region,” Mr Peters says. “We are pleased to be finding more ways ...
New developments in the heart of North Island forestry country will reinvigorate their communities and boost economic development, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones visited Kaingaroa and Kawerau in Bay of Plenty today to open a landmark community centre in the former and a new connecting road in ...
President Adeang, fellow Ministers, honourable Diet Member Horii, Ambassadors, distinguished guests. Minasama, konnichiwa, and good afternoon, everyone. Distinguished guests, it’s a pleasure to be here with you today to talk about New Zealand’s foreign policy reset, the reasons for it, the values that underpin it, and how it ...
Last summer when Matairangi burned, Ginny and Tom stood at the window of their lounge, watching kākā shoot skyward from the burning trees. From the distance, they looked to Ginny like pages torn from books and thrown into a bonfire. It was Tom, voice tight, who told her it was ...
Opinion: The Canadian short story writer Alice Munro – winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013 – died in May at the age of 92. Her work was about “the damage people inflict on one another in the name of love”, Deborah Treisman wrote in the New Yorker. ...
This month marks two years since the most powerful telescope ever built sent its first pictures back to earth. From its lofty vantage point, beyond the moon in orbit around the sun, the James Webb Space Telescope was tuned to observe the first stars and galaxies being born soon after ...
Comment: After Climate Change Minister Simon Watts’ preview several weeks ago, I had some optimism about the Government’s emissions reduction plan. Now I’ve read the discussion document, that hope has been dashed. How can the Government propose a plan that wants to take New Zealand taxpayers’ hard-earned money, and spend ...
Christopher Luxon: hurdles The little man from National jumps hurdles in his sleep. He’s quite good at it in his dreams and even though the reality doesn’t quite match up you have to give him credit for getting up every morning and crashing into the very first hurdle of the ...
Comment: It was a good two hours into the conversation when Tyrone Marks raised the most basic of questions when I first spoke to him in 2017. “They didn’t explain the things they did to me. They never told me why. And they still haven’t. There’s no explanation for it. ...
Madeleine Chapman rounds out Death Week on The Spinoff with a final recommendation. You can read all of our Death Week coverage here. Nothing forces you to reflect on your life and relationships quite like proximity to death. For those whose nearest and dearest have died, there are reasonably obvious ...
Whitney Greene takes us through her life in television, including the TV character she’d like to plan a funeral for and her cow lung catastrophe on The Traitors NZ. “If the phone rings, I have to answer it,” Whitney Greene from The Traitors NZ warns as we begin our My ...
Maddie Ballard reviews the debut essay collection of Pōneke writer Flora Feltham.In ‘The Raw Material’, the longest essay in Flora Feltham’s dazzling debut collection, the author heads out for a run after hours of weaving and sees the world turn to textile. “Pounding along the Parade, I saw the ...
Andy Christiansen, one half of the experimental rock-pop duo TRiPS, shares the tunes inspiring the band’s perfect weekend and new release. “Good speakers, good food, good music, no distractions”: that’s all you need to enjoy the psychedelic stylings of TRiPS, a new band formed by Fly My Pretties’ Barnaby Weir ...
Celebrating our quadrennial opportunity to become experts in a bunch of sports we never normally watch.The games of the XXXIII Olympiad are upon us. Paris will host this year’s showcase of sporting and athletic prowess, which means some late-night and early-morning viewing for us in Aotearoa.But what sports ...
The photograph is striking and beautiful, but also disturbing – a reminder that my love for John was often entangled in shame.The Sunday Essay is made possible thanks to the support of Creative New Zealand.In the spring of 1980, in Dunedin, shortly before his death, someone took a photograph ...
Get to know Babushka, our latest Dog of the Month. This feature was offered as a reward during our What’s Eating Aotearoa PledgeMe campaign. Thank you to Babu’s humans, Jo and Isabel, for their support. Dog name: Babushka (Babu for short) Age: 2Breed: Border Collie X poodleIf rescued, ...
Pacific Media Watch A Lebanese photojournalist who was severely wounded during an Israeli air strike in south Lebanon carried the Olympic torch in Paris this week in honour of her peers who have been wounded and killed in the field — especially in Gaza and Lebanon. Christina Assi of Agence ...
The first report in a five-part web series focused on the 15th Triennial Conference of Pacific Women taking place in the Marshall Islands this week.SPECIAL REPORT:By Netani Rika in Majuro Women continue to fight for justice 70 years after the first nuclear tests by the United States caused ...
Christopher Luxon has joined with Australia and Canada's leaders in voicing support for US President Joe Biden's ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra The 2022 election brought the “teal wave” into parliament. The next election will test whether teals, who occupy what were Liberal seats, and other independents can maintain their momentum. Joining us on the Podcast ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Musgrave, Senior lecturer in Pharmacology, University of Adelaide Pixavri/Shutterstock A major Federal Court class action has been dismissed this week after Justice Michael Lee ruled there was not enough evidence to prove the weedkiller Roundup causes cancer. Plaintiff Kelvin ...
In The Week in Politics: politicians have to decide what to do about child abuse, Health NZ is booked in for major surgery and Darleen Tana returns. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Clare Corbould, Associate Professor, Contemporary Histories Research Group, Deakin University Mainstream media are surprisingly muted at the prospect of the world’s most powerful nation being led for the first time by a woman – specifically a woman of colour, Vice President Kamala ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rebecca Bennett, PhD Student, Associate Research Fellow, Deakin University Last week, a drone delivery company called Wing (owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet) started operating in Melbourne. Some 250,000 residents in parts of the city’s eastern suburbs can now order food from ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonathan Foo, Lecturer, Physiotherapy, Monash University pikselstock/Shutterstock In the next 40 years in Australia, it’s predicted the number of Australians aged 65 and over will more than double, while the number of people aged 85 and over will more than triple. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katrina Grant, Research Associate, Power Institute for Arts and Visual Culture, University of Sydney Jonas Åkerström’s 1790 work, Session of the Accademia dell’Arcadia on August 17 1788.Nationalmuseum/Cecilia Heisser Ever wondered whether you’d have a better chance at winning an Olympic gold ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexandra Jones, Program Lead, Food Governance, George Institute for Global Health wavebreakmedia/Shutterstock On Thursday, Australian and New Zealand food ministers at state, federal and national levels met to thrash out what’s next for health star ratings on packaged foods. Now, after ...
The Abuse in Care report found many Pacific survivors lost their connections to their culture and language, resulting in trauma that has been carried from generation to generation. ...
In the regulatory review, ECC intends to suggest that ERO focus on curriculum delivery reviews rather than the Ministry, because it’s not efficient or effective to have two agencies with radically different approaches climbing over each other. ...
Te Rūnanga Nui o Ngā Kura Kaupapa Māori invites the current government to work in partnership with them to develop a pathway forward, including the development of a parallel pathway and meaningful policy and strategy for Kura Kaupapa Māori ...
If you haven’t started watching yet, Tara Ward begs you to reconsider. This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. In the world of New Zealand reality television, we have many gems in our crown. There’s the delicious second season of the Celebrity Treasure ...
A new poem by Fiona Kidman. The clothes of the dead I did not keep my mother’s furry red beret for long nor the stringy scarves that adorned the necks of my aunts, although I have kept tag ends of gold, the rings and trinkets they wore, the brooches no ...
The government’s announcement that it will re-open the foreshore and seabed controversy by changing the rules on recognising centuries-old Māori customary title for a third time goes against the rule of law and New Zealand values,” Mr Tipa says. ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1 Lioness by Emily Perkins (Bloomsbury, $25) Roarrrr! Perkins’ brilliant, award-winning, Marian-Keyes anointed, darkly funny, long ...
The 2004 Act vested ownership of the foreshore and seabed in the Crown, extinguishing any Māori claims to ownership and causing widespread outrage and protests among Māori communities. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Antje Deckert, Associate Professor (Criminology), Auckland University of Technology Getty Images Despite the connection between institutional harm and gang membership made clear in this week’s mammoth royal commission abuse-in care report, the government seems unlikely to soften its “get tough on ...
From Lewis Clareburt in the swimming to the start of the rowing – the first seven days of Paris 2024 promise to be big for New Zealand. There are few events that bring the country together quite like an Olympic Games. Nothing quite matches the excitement of getting up in ...
Groundbreaking local science just showed up in the most surprising of places: the season finale of The Kardashians. In the season five finale of The Kardashians last night, several members of the family gathered together in one of their signature empty, cream-coloured rooms to hear test results that had been ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amin Saikal, Emeritus professor of Middle Eastern and Central Asian Studies, Australian National University The Middle East is on the brink of a possibly devastating regional war, with hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah reaching an extremely dangerous level. Washington has engaged in ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laura Elizabeth Eades, Rheumatologist, Monash University Lupus is an inflammatory autoimmune illness, where the body’s immune system mistakenly attacks itself. Lupus can affect virtually any part of the body, although it most commonly affects the skin, joints and kidneys. The symptoms ...
A law firm that specialises in working with survivors of abuse in State care is disappointed that the Government fails to recognise that its boot camps can be directly compared to previous boot camps from the 1990s and 2000s. ...
Dying is a natural part of life, like updating your Wof or seeing your hairdresser, but without the word-of-mouth recs that help guarantee a good service. What if we changed that? Dying Reviews received by The Spinoff have had the names of organisations redacted while Hospice NZ collects further data. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonti Horner, Professor (Astrophysics), University of Southern Queensland Mike Lewinski/Flickr, CC BY On any clear night, if you gaze skywards long enough, chances are you’ll see a meteor streaking through the sky. Some nights, however, are better than others. At ...
Despite having no bars or other designated spaces for lesbians, Auckland boasts a small but mighty lesbian museum. So how did it get here? The past 18 months has brought increasing hostility towards the queer community across Aotearoa. Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull’s anti-trans rally in Tamaki Makaurau last March led to a ...
Poneke Antifascist Coalition has invited Wellingtonians to stand in solidarity with the Kanak people at 12pm today outside the French Embassy in Wellington. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Layton, Visiting Fellow, Strategic Studies, Griffith University Drones are the signature technology of the Ukraine war. A few miniature aircraft designs were used in the war’s early days, but an incredible array of drones have now evolved. There are different types, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Slee, Associate Professor, Clinical Academic Neurologist, Flinders University Francisco Gonzelez/Unsplash Migraine is many things, but one thing it’s not is “just a headache”. “Migraine” comes from the Greek word “hemicrania”, referring to the common experience of migraine being predominantly ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lee White, Senior Lecturer and Horizon Fellow, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Sydney Australia was slow to introduce minimum building standards for energy efficiency. The Nationwide House Energy Rating Scheme (NatHERS) only came into force in 2003. Older homes ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Steven Sherwood, Professor of Atmospheric Sciences, Climate Change Research Centre, UNSW Sydney The past century of human-induced warming has increased rainfall variability over 75% of the Earth’s land area – particularly over Australia, Europe and eastern North America, new research shows. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tony Heynen, Program Coordinator, Sustainable Energy, The University of Queensland A temporary stadium in the Champ-de-Mars, ParisEkaterina Pokrovsky/Shutterstock As Paris prepares to host the Olympic and Paralympic Games, the sustainability of the event is coming under scrutiny. The organisers have promoted ...
A night of karaoke and community in a pub that feels like a memory. You’d barely even notice it, unless you knew to look. Tucked away behind a liquor store on busy Constable Street is the capital’s last great pub. Newtown Sports Bar is an emblem of the pub culture ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Wright, Professor in Marine Geology, University of Canterbury Louise Corcoran/Getty Images The decline in the number of doctoral candidates at New Zealand universities is a worrying sign for the country’s effort to build a knowledge-based economy. Aotearoa New Zealand’s ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laurie Berg, Associate Professor, University of Technology Sydney defotoberg/Shutterstock Migrant worker exploitation is entrenched in workplaces across Australia. Tragically, a deep fear of immigration consequences means most unlawful employer conduct goes unreported. On Wednesday, however, the government officially launched a ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Vaughan Cruickshank, Senior Lecturer in Health and Physical Education, University of Tasmania Paris is about to host its third summer Olympics. While we don’t yet know what the legacy of this year’s games will be, let’s take the opportunity to reflect on ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hugh Breakey, Deputy Director, Institute for Ethics, Governance & Law, Griffith University In the wake of the assassination attempt on former US President Donald Trump, there were calls from bothsides of US politics, as well as internationally, to reduce the brutal, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Keith Rathbone, Senior Lecturer, Modern European History and Sports History, Macquarie University Two high-profile assaults on Australians in Paris have raised concerns about security ahead of the Olympic Games. On Saturday evening, a young woman was allegedly sexually assaulted by a ...
Dying is inevitable and, so it seems, is it costing a lot, writes Stewart Sowman-Lund in today’s extract from The Bulletin. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here.The cost of dying ...
The government took Joyce Harris's first baby and sent her off to a girls' home. Half a century on - and out of oceans of hurt - it asked her to be a mother figure. ...
It’s the deadliest fictional town in the country, but which death has been the most bonkers? Alex Casey looks back at 10 seasons of The Brokenwood Mysteries to find out. Warning: The following ranking story contains famous New Zealand actors appearing to be dead (not alive). The Spinoff has been ...
Water cremation is the biggest thing to happen to the death industry in the last 100 years. Alex Casey meets the people trying to bring it to Aotearoa. Through a set of mirrored doors down the industrial end of Christchurch’s St Asaph Street, death is getting a new lease on ...
Opinion: New Health NZ commissioner Lester Levy is authorised to assume operational leadership – chief executive Margie Apa is effectively relegated to his operational deputy The post All-powerful Levy is feudal baron of a $28b fiefdom appeared first on Newsroom. ...
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.
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