“Listen to John Key, he makes good business sense”
Is The Panel making us stupid?
Radio NZ National, Tuesday 2 April 2013
Noelle McCarthy, Graham Bell, Islay McLeod
“There are some people at the far extreme who you just have to say are idiots.”
—ISLAY McLEOD
The former television weather-presenter was talking about something else when she uttered those words at 4:15 p.m., but by chance she was presaging two upcoming guest appearances on today’s show: first the dismal Nevil “Breivik” Gibson, and then an even more dismal far right farmer-politician from the Far North.
First interview though was Christchurch East M.P. Lianne Dalziel, who was treated with a combination of ignorance, condescension and outright aggression, primarily by Graham Bell, operating in his default mode of bully-cop. Now of course, Lianne Dalziel is more than capable of looking after herself, and Bell is not smart enough to upset her; however, what he can do is trivialize and hijack a discussion, and that’s what he did. What will have concerned many listeners was the fact that Bell, who knows next to nothing about Christchurch, was allowed to take over that segment and effectively destroy it, silencing the voice of one of the most effective members of parliament.
After the 4:30 news, the Panelists vapored for a couple of excruciating minutes about pop music. It came as no surprise to this writer to learn that Graham Bell and Islay McLeod are both fans of the leather-lunged Australian belter John (AKA “Johnny”) Farnham. They then spoke about a few more of their musical preferences….
ISLAY McLEOD: And don’t forget Anika Moa and Lawrence Arabia. I’m loving his music at the moment! GRAHAM BELL: Our greatest singer-songwriters have to be Neil Finn and Dave Dobbyn. ISLAY McLEOD: Don McGlashan? GRAHAM BELL: Yes, he’s good. NOELLE McCARTHY: All right, time for the Soapbox, where we find out about what our Panelists have been thinking about. Islay, would you like to go first?
…[Unfortunately I missed every word Ms. McLeod uttered in this segment, due to my being interrupted by an unfortunate fellow trying to flog subscriptions to the New Zealand Herald. After telling him I would never pay a cent to any publication that employed Wynne “Sensible” Gray or Rod “Unfunny” Emmerson, I hurried back to the lounge to hear Graham Bell railing against people who had annoyed him over the Easter break on State Highway No. 2]…
GRAHAM BELL: Brickbats to those drivers who drove slowly and hesitantly and then sped up on the straights. Especially those pulling trailers and boats. Very frustrating! NOELLE McCARTHY:[tones of mock sympathy] Mmmmmm, mmmmm. GRAHAM BELL:[warming to his task] And one more thing! The murder of George Taiaroa. The investigation into this has been hindered by the media chasing rumors. It’s so frustrating. Very frustrating! It causes nothing but problems! NOELLE McCARTHY: Complicates things all round. GRAHAM BELL: YES IT DOES! Some of the stuff you see on some of these forums [sic]. Just such nonsense! But that’s the world we live in. ISLAY McLEOD: And, similarly, there have been all sorts of rumors about the bashing of Jesse Ryder. [She vents about the bail laws.] NOELLE McCARTHY: Islay McLeod and Graham Bell at a quarter to five. The Green Party says that, with the Rio Tinto stand-off over the electricity price, the Government has to stop the asset sales. BELL: Easy for the Opposition to criticize. But what would THEY do? McLEOD: We should call Rio Tinto’s bluff! BELL: Exactly! NOELLE McCARTHY:[unimpressed] Hmmm. Nevil Gibson is the editor of the National Business Review. He joins us now to discuss this. Good afternoon Nevil. BREIVIK GIBSON: Good afternoon Noelle!
[Breivik Gibson proceeds to talk sympathetically about the stance taken by Rio Tinto. Suddenly, at the end of his talk, he unleashes one of the funniest quotes of the year, albeit unwittingly, as he advises people to, well, just trust the Government…]
BREIVIK GIBSON:[with utmost gravitas] I would advise people not to listen to any political statements, and instead listen to what John Key is saying. What he says makes good business sense. NOELLE McCARTHY:[clearly horrified] What are the implications of the asset sales? BREIVIK GIBSON: Oh, NONE WHATSOEVER! The government will still be owning fifty-one per cent. NOELLE McCARTHY:[shaken and disturbed] Nevil Gibson, thank you.
The last few minutes of the program involve an interview with a lunatic named Ken Rintoul, a Kerikeri “farmer and businessman”, who has obviously never wasted any of his valuable time reading books. Mr Rintoul obviously knows nothing at all about economics, but that has not stopped him from forming a new party for doctor-bashers, grave-robbers and kiddie-thrashers…….….
NOELLE McCARTHY: Do you think we NEED a new right wing party? GRAHAM BELL:[slowly, with gravitas] Yes. I think so.
[At this point, Bell made what I think was a disparaging remark about Hone Harawira, but I was again interrupted by a door-knocker, who was also dispatched post-haste….]
NOELLE McCARTHY: Well, the party is called Focus New Zealand and its leader is Ken Rintoul. He’s a farmer from Kerikeri. Good afternoon. KEN RINTOUL: Good afternoon. NOELLE McCARTHY: Tell us about Focus New Zealand, your new party. KEN RINTOUL: Ummmm. Ahhhhh. Okay! [Mr Rintoul sets off on a wandery and confused speech making it clear to anybody with any common sense—not Graham Bell—that he is to the right of Genghis Khan, but lacks the astuteness of Rodney Hide, the charm of David Garrett or the electability of Don Brash. When he finishes his confused spiel, there is an awkward silence for several seconds.]
NOELLE McCARTHY: Islay, you wanted to say something. ISLAY McLEOD: It all just seems a little bit… fairytale to me. KEN RINTOUL: Oh, okay, ummm. NOELLE McCARTHY:[gently] Ken Rintoul, thank you.
Yes I was listening to that. Mr Bell also had his usual rant about the Greens
Can’t say that I am going to continue listening to the right wing rants on “afternoons” for too much longer
Poor old Nev used to sell Marxist papers as a young man, like our own ideologists here he stayed true to being an ideologue, merely changing horses. They are quite similar really.
@ Ennui.
Yep, I’ve come across quite a few of ‘them’ (half my vintage at Onslow College in fact).
I suspect Jim Mora is one of ‘them’ as well. I often wonder what causes the shift. The only thing I can think of is …… comfort, camplacency, laziness.
I think it is mainly lazy thinking and a lack of breadth on which to base rational argument. If you begin with a stance using rational thinking without examining the base you start from you can prove anything…really does not matter whether you are using the materialist dialectic of Marx or Freidmans greed is good….both are perfectly cogent and please lazy minds. Both are of course nonsensical fantasies.
>>NOELLE McCARTHY: [clearly horrified] What are the implications of the asset sales?
BREIVIK GIBSON: Oh, NONE WHATSOEVER! The government will still be owning fifty-one per cent.
EG Contact energy price fell 3% on the news that Rio might pull out.
Obviously Gibson doesn’t understand how the the market works.
When you look at some of Labours recent political statements it almost holds water.
They seem to be oppose no matter what, even if this in direct contridiction to policy. It does give the impression that they are talking rubbish to score cheap points or they don’t really believe in the policies they have… I can’t tell which…
I did watch Russel Norman on the tv3 this morning and he certainly comes across well and he was far from completely negative, instead talking about what the Greens would have done and why the Nat’s had gone about things the wrong way. Very engaging and beleivable IMHO
I seem to remember Key doing much the same thing though cricklewood. Everything Labour was doing was wrong and wrecking the economy. He was going to bring in policies to stop Kiwis leaving for Australia, raise income levels here to Australian levels, not increase GST and so on. Brighter future my ass. That’s what’s making things so difficult for the voters. Both the Nats and Labour will say anything to get elected but after that they turn out to have no idea of what they’re doing.
I agree, but I do think it looks ridiculous to send out press statements that directly contradict your own written policy. I would even say it is very poor strategy for an opposition party.
Whilst in 2008 National were negative they didn’t contradict their own policy (they didn’t actually have much just tax cuts and vacuous statements like those you mentioned) once in power they raised gst took a hit for it and managed to do a convincing enough job to deflect most of the blame.
All Labour are doing at present is opening themselves up for free hits…
Morrissey
A great report on the Panel. I wondered who that Islay McLeod was – Jim Mora doesn’t bother to tell us who his panellists are or their backgrounds. Talking about the weather authoritatively obviously would ensure great ability to talk about anything authoritatively. Everyone should know all these public figures who are his guests I suppose. I don’t spend much time with tv or Jim Mora so don’t know all the talking heads there. (Though John Campbell on tv sounds worth following.)
I was appalled at the way Lianne Dalziel was dismissed by the panel. She was asked what she would do differently and when she tried to answer was cut off.
“The Panel” is a hand picked lot by Mora and his staff, merely there to gossip drivel about topics, to make them look trivial and irrelevant. It is nothing much serious about “the panel”, and Mora seems to get the same mouthpieces again and again. Picking Farrar shows his own bias.
Farrar is clearly a propagandist operator for the Nats, and he makes no secret of it.
Similarly the “political commentators” that Kathryn Ryan picks for each Monday late morning debate are equally selected. Williams is not Labour as the members would like it, he is an establishment person. And Hooton and Off, yes, that speaks for itself. He is like Farrar just another propagandist for National. Political commentators should not have any party affiliation and should be independent journalists or whatever, NOT pollies or former pollies or their mouth pieces.
RNZ is at a sell out level and losing credit by the day.
Rather long but a brilliant summation of what neo liberalism has done to the housing market throughout the developed world. Never was there a stronger case for capital gains tax !
Want to have fun at a fancy dress party, and help protect the climate at the same time?
Then dress in medieval attire and come along to the Fisher & Paykel Lecture Theatre, Auckland University Business School at 6.30 pm, Friday April 5th.
On April Fools Day, climate change denier, Lord Christopher Monckton, begins a “Climate of Freedom” tour of NZ, with with the message that climate change isn’t a problem. Instead, he claims it is a hoax perpetrated by corrupt scientists who are conspiring with Green politicians to take over the world (sic).
In reality, Christopher Monckton has zero credibility regarding climate science. He has no scientific training or experience, but travels the world, apparently as a full-time propagandist for the fossil fuel and mining industries. His role seems to be to create controversy over the science and promote doubt as to the need for action to curtail greenhouse gas emissions.
A Monckton performance is a tour-de-farce of pseudoscientific claims, half-truths, misrepresentations of scientific research and personal attacks. He is amusing, urbane, vicious, and extraordinarily dishonest.
He does, however, have a fatal flaw – he takes himself far too seriously, thus
HEAR YE, HEAR YE, HEAR YE!
The Grand Wizard of the NZ Flat Earth Society, Nathaniel Pipe-Blower, has called on his flock and their friends to give Lord Monckton a rousing welcome to Auckland at Monckton’s public lecture at the University Business School, 7 – 9 pm on April 5th.
As we Flat Earthers have endured centuries of oppression and ridicule from scientists with their so-called “evidence” that the Earth is round, we sympathise with Lord Monckton’s struggle, and wish to offer our support and friendship.
Just to be clear, this is not a traditional protest; we want to be FRIENDS with Lord Monckton and WORK TOGETHER TO BATTLE THE CONSPIRACY between the Corrupt Scientists and the Evil Greens.
We will be handing out a “scroll” with our message, engaging in courtly conversation with members of the public, and expressing fulsome admiration for the Great Man himself (after all, he says he is a Nobel laureate who has found a cure for AIDS).
Now for the fun part: Flat Earthers often dress in medieval garb, e.g. as damsels, knights, lords & ladies, priests, peasants, jesters, wizards and wenches.
Flat Earthers also love music and entertainment, so it would be great to have pipers / minstrels / jugglers or clowns.
Most of all, Flat Earthers know how to MAKE MERRY! Feel free to let your hair down.
We will be meeting in the quad outside the Fisher and Paykel Lecture Theatre at 6.30 pm (or in the foyer, if wet).
The (free) lecture starts at 7 pm; Flat Earthers will likely be so impressed by Monckton’s performance that they will clap and cheer the brilliance of his thought.
Finally, for some light relief, there are those who suspect that Monckton is actually Sacha Baron Cohen in disguise…
“Dr James E Hansen has been the head of the Goddard Institute for Space Research since 1981.
He is sometimes called the “father of global warming” for his early warnings about the impacts of rising levels of greenhouse gases.
But some critics say he has hampered the cause by overstating the risk.”
ms
That is amusing and I think will be the most effective way of assisting Monckton towards his just desserts, which could well be a cheerio pie in the face.
Yep the clip is really really funny and the theory that Monckton is Sasha Baron Cohen in disguise is the only rational explanation for Monckton’s insanity …
Is not climate change he most important existential issue humanity has ever faced?
The climate has always changed, our sun is one of class of stars called variable stars. It’s simply the political motivator of the day.
NASA is now reporting that atmospheric carbon dioxide acts as a coolant, which is obviously problematic for the “settled science” which says that it is a greenhouse gas.
[lprent: if you want to start a new topic, then use OpenMike. Don’t use top level in a post on a different topic. Moved.
BTW: the post you linked to was written by someone who is so ignorant of the science of the world we live in, that they appear to have failed to understand that without an atmosphere we would be living in the rough equivalent of a operating microwave oven. Perhaps they should look at the effect that O3 has compared to CO2 in the troposphere. There is a hell of a lot more of it and it does the same reflection of energy at a vastly high efficiency.
“NASA’s Langley Research Center has collated data proving that “greenhouse gases” actually block up to 95 percent of harmful solar rays from reaching our planet, thus reducing the heating impact of the sun.”
I thought it was a given that most solar radiation doesn’t reach the earth, otherwise we would be fried.
Irrespective of that, the NASA article doesn’t say wht PRI is saying it says. The NASA article is about solar flares and how much energy they have in them. It’s not about some NEW discovery that the atmosphere keeps heat out in ways we didn’t already know. In fact the PSI article appears to be such a classic example of how to misrepresent science that it should be used as a teaching tool.
As for the idea that any of this proves anything against CC theory… isn’t a thermal layer acting in both directions? eg the insulation in my ceiling keeps heat out and heat in at the same time.
Colonial Weka, you’re right about the misrepresentation.
While NASA did acknowledge that CO2 can act as a coolant, the role isn’t part of the standard greenhouse model.
From NASA:
Infrared radiation from CO2 and NO, the two most efficient coolants in the thermosphere, re-radiated 95% of that total back into space.
“Unfortunately, there’s no practical way to harness this kind of energy,” says Mlynczak. “It’s so diffuse and out of reach high above Earth’s surface. Plus, the majority of it has been sent back into space by the action of CO2 and NO.”
Yeah, well, you might want to try being more critical of your sources too. Needless to say, having read that one article from them, I wouldn’t trust anything on the PSI site ever.
I suspect climate scientists have some idea that there’s other stuff in the atmosphere besides oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide. Their models also take methane into account, for example. I myself am beginning to suspect that the worst threat as far as global warming goes is the hot air spewed out to deny its existence.
…the role isn’t part of the standard greenhouse model.
Of course it is. The same ability to trap active energy that is an issue for greenhouse effects in the lower atmosphere is pretty damn useful in the upper atmosphere.
The trick is to think about relative path lengths for energy to travel as its energy drops down in frequency. When an energetic electron (or for that matter most energetic particles) strikes the top of the atmosphere, they start running into molecules. Each impact causes the energy to reduce in the particle and to be partially imparted to whatever they strike. The impacts usually cause changes in vectors as well, so it increases the effective path length for the particle between upper atmosphere and the lower atmosphere.
Eventually most of the energy winds up as heat, which because there is relatively little atmosphere spacewards tends to radiate in that direction because going the other way means it gets sucked up in making air molecules dance more. Obviously the converse is true. When heat is trapped in the morass molecules in the lower atmosphere it is like having a big heat retaining blanket between the heat radiation and space. So we remain warm even when the sun disappears for an average of 12 hours each day and stops adding heat to the lower atmosphere.
That is all factored into the climate change models and always has been. Since the scientific moron in your link has clearly never read anything about them, it is pretty clear that what he was really saying was “I can wank stupidly in public”
It’s not about what is good policy for Labour – It’s about being popular… Sadly the muppets think that all they need to do is oppose the government and they will be popular.
Nice comment Burt, so true. Cromwell might well have addressed them “You have sat too long, for Gods sake be gone for all the good that you have done”.
Except they have done no good, merely sat, which as you imply in a nutshell is to their shame and damnation.
So who is surprised to read that John Key continues to spout ABSOLUTE BULLSHIT AND OUTRIGHT LIES…
It transpires he phoned the GCSB boss, his old school mate, and encouraged him to apply for the position. Fletcher subsequently applied and was the only interviewee.
I no longer want a compulsive liar for our Prime Minister. It is impossible to believe a single word he says. He should piss of back to where bullshit artists and lies live – the money trading trickery world. Arsehole.
You obviously respect and fight for the truth….what you are witnessing is straight out of the Goebbels school of propaganda, tell a lie, repeat and repeat until it is accepted as the truth. Makes you mad enough to type in capitals.
“The board and the panel knew. I didn’t undertake the recruitment, that was fully done by the State Services Commission, so you really have to say, in a small country like New Zealand … would the criteria be that no-one could get hired because I might know them?,”
He is certainly telling fibs by omission and if you think that him ringing Fletcher and suggesting that he applies for the job is taking part in the recruitment he is lying by commission.
Look around the world. Key is simply a bankster following standard bankster protocol, hiring cronies and mates into high government positions. It’s what any good friend would do. In fact, when you’re this self confident, who even needs to put up the appearance of impartial due process?
He is lying deliberately and by commission. He can’t help himself and is doing more harm to our political bodies than anyone preceding him. He should be up before the Privileges Committee, but I won’t be holding my breath.
Yes. An amazing revelation. I have been looking at that news, and wondering if another author was in the process of writing a post on it. I expect so. [edit: Yep “Croynism” just up.]
And so Key has an old crony as top spy, and knew nothing about Kim Dotcom?
This sort of revelation doesn’t surprise me in the least – pretty sure lots of wheeling and dealing was done like this at Merrill Lynch.
What surprises me is how OK ordinary Kiwis are with this: It’s a small country, everyone knows everyone, what difference does it make, blah blah.
It’s a bit like the All Blacks: When they’re winning there’s nothing but support, and when they’re looking shakey there’s a rush to defend them – it was the ref’s fault, etc etc. Similar here, it seems.
It’s all a bit like having Nick Leeson as Proim Munsta. In my experience, the harder they rise, the harder they fall. I keep telling myself that anyway as I look at various countries’ immigration requirements.
Why is the working class forgotten? The Guardian comments section produces four unrelated explanations, but it would be interesting to see them connected:
We know most of them, but number 10 is well-worded:
The attack on our welfare state is hitting a whole range of services – privatising the NHS, winding up legal aid for people in debt and closing SureStart centres and libraries. All this will make life poorer for every community. Some call these myths. I call them lies. We are being told lies about who caused this crisis and lied to about the best way out of it. But I know one thing to be true: this government’s polices will make millions of people poorer and more afraid. To do that when you do not have to, when there are other options, is obscene. That’s why I’m backing union Unite’sOurWelfareWorks campaign in its efforts to help highlight the truth about our welfare state.
Language is important. The shift to using the word ‘welfare’ changes the way most people think about other people on benefits – are they welfare dependent, sucking up our money? Or do they receive social security – a public insurance that they have paid into through taxes to use when they fall on hard times and in all likelihood most will pay into in the future?
If you’re Probably someone from outside your electorate and with a middle class background. They don’t have your interests at heart, They don’t live in the streets you do, work in similar jobs, nor have they been on a low wage. In Britain at least, the job of a parliamentarian is a stepping stone to big money jobs. How ‘our’ representatives going to defend our interests when they are planning on working for organisations and companies that are the very ones that we’re in conflict with? Just four percent of British MPs can claim a manual work background – the same percentage as went to Eton. I wonder how NZ parliamentarians stack up?
This debasement of our politics starts early, with the exorbitant cost of being selected as a candidate. As Peter Watt, former Labour general secretary, recently wrote about his party’s selection procedure: “If you can’t afford to take a couple of months off work, pay for accommodation and travel, abandon your family and pay for your own materials you are screwed. In other words you need to be a political insider whose boss is supporting them; a trade union official or very rich.” And that’s before you even run for a seat, the bill for which can easily top £10,000. If Cameron, Miliband and Clegg want to fulfil their promises to make their parties more diverse, they can start by funding those on low incomes to become candidates. The Labour Diversity Fund calls for 5% of all party donations to go towards such a cause. It’s a small enough step that all the main sides could and should do it.
The closing gender pay gap for professional women masks inequalities in the position of unskilled workers, where differences between men and women are significantly higher than differences for professional groups. Lower pay, more difficult child care choices and less family-friendly workplaces leave working class women left behind in the story of closing the gender pay gap.
What we are seeing is an attack on the most vulnerable, clouded and reframed as fairness, through the use of deceit and fear. The idea it’s based on – “skiver v striver” – is an entirely false dichotomy: a picture of the economy and the people in it that doesn’t exist
“Language is important. The shift to using the word ‘welfare’ changes the way most people think about other people on benefits – are they welfare dependent, sucking up our money? Or do they receive social security – a public insurance that they have paid into through taxes to use when they fall on hard times and in all likelihood most will pay into in the future?”
I don’t know the history of the lnaguage in NZ, but I have no problem with the word welfare – it is after all about the wellbeing (welfare) of vulnerable people.
The idea that welfare/social security is a public insurance that people have paid into in case they get into touble themselves smacks of 1980s neoliberalism – it’s all about the individual. Some people in need of social security have never paid tax.
The point of the welfare state is to take responsibility for all the people in our communities that need assistance, not just those that have contributed via the tax take. That responsibility is based on compassion and acknowledgement that we are interdependent. It’s also based on the idea that without general wellbeing in society, it can’t function properly.
“The idea that welfare/social security is a public insurance that people have paid into in case they get into touble themselves smacks of 1980s neoliberalism “
I don’t see it at all that way – the focus is on each paying into the ‘pot’ according to ability and receiving according to need. I suppose that concept works better with progressive taxation. To me, the social security idea is that we all accept that we may be in a position that we need society to fall back on, whereas ‘welfare’ has become associated with the patently absurd idea of inter-generational dependency and ‘ripping off’ the taxpayer, with no concept that anybody could have unemployment, ill-health and the like befall them.
I see welfare as a deliberate attempt to remove the safety net of the social security and implement U.S. style reforms.
I do not think enough people see how dangerous this situation is. When you incrementally deny people the necessities of life while systematically vilifying them and at the same time demanding they be responsible for themselves this can only end in unthinkable horror, unless someone finds a way of putting the brakes on. One can see an example of the propaganda that keeps this going in the report of the Philpott case, in which it is claimed that the man had not washed for 12 weeks, which surely has nothing to do with his guilt or innocence. It does however, fuel the underclass myth in a timely fashion. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10875044
“I do not think enough people see how dangerous this situation is. When you incrementally deny people the necessities of life while systematically vilifying them and at the same time demanding they be responsible for themselves this can only end in unthinkable horror, unless someone finds a way of putting the brakes on.”
+1 on on that!
Interesting re the Philpott case. The Daily Bigot (oops, Mail) has used this as an opportunity to rail against benefits and inform little England that the ‘welfare state created this evil’. that’s as far as it’s analysis goes.
Nothing ever, of course, about the people who die because they can’t actually survive on no money and no care Even in Britain.
Of course there is nothing to admire in the reports of the former soldier and his wife driven to suicide after their benefits were cut, or the child starved to death in Westminster, or the 32 sick and disabled people dying every week after failing new, stringent disability tests that found them “fit to work”.
btw I was surprised it took so long for Monbiot to champion universal income and land tax. Great that he has though.
Yes, I am glad he has come to it as well. Now all that’s needed is for people who can make things happen to listen. I am hoping these people get frightened by what they are creating before it ends in mayhem. It took a couple of wars to wake them up in the 20th century.
Has feminism failed working class women? Sure, in many ways. But that article misses the core issue, which is that feminism has never had a free run. The gains at the top have always been compromised gains (you can have some power as long as you don’t rock the boat too much and make an effort to fit in). The structures that oppress working class women, also prevent feminism from achieving its aims. And those structures aren’t something feminism created or has had much control over.
To what extent feminism can be criticised for not trying harder to sort out class issues I don’t know. It’s not really a secret that middle and professional class women don’t have a good understanding of working class issues, and certainly feminism has had to struggle with its own internal class and structural issues. Some criticism is warranted, but I think this from the article is a fail –
“While feminism has delivered for some professional women, other women have been left behind. Many of the advances for women at the top have masked inequality at the bottom.”
The implication being that feminism had the power to change the conditions of working class women, but didn’t. That’s not true.
“New research reveals that advances for women at the top have not been matched by progress for those at the bottom”
New research, but hardly news for anyone that’s been paying attention.
Well said, weka. I was involved in the women’s movement in London in the late 70s and early 80s. It was strongly left wing, and interconnected with other left wing organisations and activities. It was always about social justice, and a fair society for all women. I had working class friends who were part of the women’s movement as a whole, but who also part of some working class women’s groups.
One of the things about the movement in the UK, was that, the left wing approach was for a network of groups and against the promoting of “star” feminists, unlike the US. The movement never got a very good press from the MSM. Then, Thatcherism started to bite with her targeting of grassroots left wing organisations that weakened the grassroots women’s movement.
This was at the same time as the Murdochisation of the MSM. It tended to promote “sexy” middleclass women and appropriated aspects of feminism that suited their neoliberal agenda.
The power of the wealthy elites is not to be under-estimated.
I don’t know if feminism has failed working class women: it is a very good question.
What I can do is reflect on my lifetime and the changes that have occurred. My grandmother worked all her life, including in service and factories. Only in the 1950s could she throttle back and live off my grandfathers wages. My mother worked by choice, we children were expected to do housework etc from an early age. No sexism there, we were both boys, my mother did not buy the concept of “women’s work”. She was unusual in that during the 50s, 60s and early 70s women (it was not the acceptable norm for men) were able to raise and nurture children because wage rates were high enough for a single income to support the average family. My friends thought it rather unusual my mother worked full time. My own wife chose to stay home with the children only because I earned plenty, it could easily have been her out doing the earning as she is far more competent than me.
Come the 70s newly arrived feminism coincided with erosion of the wage packet through out the western world. Which meant working class women in particular were caught in the unenviable position of being expected to raise families, and find extra money. The implication is that the influx of women into the workforce again depressed labour rates for both men and women: I dont know if this is the case. My suspicion is that the aspirations of women raised by feminism, coinciding with consumerism, neo liberalism, de unionism etc etc created a perfect storm which capital has taken advantage of to depress wages.
On that basis you could say feminism was a factor in the impoverishment of working class women, BUT certainly not the cause, and certainly not intentionally.
Large numbers of working class women have always had to work – whether it was in the organised workforce, or by taking in washing etc in the informal economy.
But that article misses the core issue, which is that feminism has never had a free run. The gains at the top have always been compromised gains “
Yep. This was probably the article that prompted me to think about how these different ideas on working class issues cannot be seen in isolation. Why has feminism not delivered for working class women? As Karol notes, Thatcherism is at the heart. This, at the very least, marks a divergence between working class and professional women’s interests.
The decline in organised Labour almost certainly has had an impact on the chances of women keeping pace with men’s wage rates (I guess though, there’s another story about organised labour and fear of women taking men’s jobs).
It would be interesting to link this with the article about David Miliband and look at who exactly represents working class women’s interests in government, in local bodies and labour organisations (not just the top level, but at the workplace level). A few more working class women in government in NZ would have swamped the one who seems to have forgotten where she came from.
Ms. Parks admitted to Mr. Hyde that she was one of seven teachers — nicknamed “the chosen” — who sat in a locked windowless room every afternoon during the week of state testing, raising students’ scores by erasing wrong answers and making them right.
A parade of Atlanta educators trooped to the county jail beginning in the early hours of Tuesday morning and surrendered to officials on criminal charges stemming what is believed to be the biggest testing scandal in American education.
By early morning, at least four of the 35 teachers, principals and school officials had turned themselves in and were expected to post bonds ranging from hundreds of thousands of dollars to more than $1 million.
Some of today’s bad news. In Brazil, three taxibus operators forced passengers off their vehicle so they could rape a young woman who was travelling with a boyfriend. It sounds like a copycat version of the Indian one. We seem to be scraping the bottom of our social morals bucket. What next? And what can be done to change this trend?
“We seem to be scraping the bottom of our social morals bucket”
Sorry prism, but for me it looks like business as usual. It’s just there is a shift happening in public awareness and media reporting. That will probably turn out to be a good thing, time will tell.
When I was living in Rio a woman was raped near the entrance to one of the local favelas. The perpetrator was found by people early the next morning outside the favela, impaled on a broken broomstick. Street justice over there can be pretty brutal.
Woooo, yeah, let’s be glib about crimes against women because we don’t want to take any time to engage with the discussion on how to make people take rape seriously, woooooo.
Meanwhile, CW’s comment above yours demonstrates how us silly little feminists talking about silly concepts might just have actually forced people to start taking incidents like this more seriously. God, we’re so ineffective with our silly talking.
You think that’s bad, try the Saudi cleric who recently raped, mutilated & murdered his 5yr old daughter. His punishment was a $50,000 fine. That’s about as sick as it comes and yet we heard very little about it from the media.
Yeah its a funny thing (in a not actually funny at all way) because the idea is we’re supposed to be tolerant and accepting of other cultures which seems to be driven by mostly middle to upper class men and women (sickly white liberals)
Yet I have no problem stating that the western democratic 1st world system (for lack of a better description) of laws and morals is superior to any other
I’m not saying its perfect, far from it in fact but when you look at whats happening in other parts of the world I’m just glad I was born in NZ
Yet I have no problem stating that the western democratic 1st world system (for lack of a better description) of laws and morals is superior to any other
That would just prove how ignorant you are. The increasing poverty forced upon the world by Western Colonialism shows a distinct lack of morals.
you want to know who removed it?
sure CW, i’ll just get that name for you
ahh hang on a minute … you got me good, you’re funny
interpret as: how the hell would i know? stuff gets removed from the web all the time
sometimes for an hour sometimes for good. If you deny that as well, you are a crazy person.
and if for some reason your ability to read has tragically vanished in a puff of retro-logic, the address of the site is in the address of the pdf, wow, what will these interweb folk think of next http://www.benthamscience.com
before you start I am not offering any opinion on the site as a valid source, I am not a scientist and have no input as to what the scientific community think. But it chose to publish the paper and it is a paper most journals run from because facts often have a way of interfering with funding.
All I know is that the pdf IS the paper that was written by Niels H. Harrit, Jeffrey Farrer Steven E. Jones, Kevin R. Ryan, Frank M. Legge, Daniel Farnsworth, Gregg Roberts, James R. Gourley, and Bradley R. Larsen
It has NOT been seen by many people who often ask for more raw data in the ongoing WTC discussion and I am confident that those with a functioning brain cell can seperate the article’s contents from the location of its discovery. The internet is not a place for squabbles on the proprietary nature of published material that its authors have stated are a public resource.
Oh yeah, my bad. See I thought you were meaning that people put the information on the internet, and other people, who don’t own it, take it off. The former being good reliable people, and the latter being nasty secret govt types.
But now I see that I actually have no idea what the fuck you are on about, except that when I make a reasonable request for clarification I get an insulting rant.
“stuff gets removed from the web all the time
sometimes for an hour sometimes for good. If you deny that as well, you are a crazy person.”
Yes, it’s just most of us don’t believe that everytime something disappears from the internet that it’s a nefarious act. If that’s not what you meant, please do say because otherwise I’ve completely missed your point.
that’s good CW, make sure attention is diverted from the data. An irrelevant perceived slight is far more important. – and Felix, stop smirking 🙂
Anyhoo, I never claimed any ‘nefarious acts’ had taken place regarding the file’s accessibility. I simply stated the fact, that the file is sometimes not found at the places it occassionally resides. More importantly, to call the above an insulting rant is an insult to insulting rants everywhere. If you have never done so i recommend looking through the file. It is very interesting, even to a layman like me. Have a nice day.
freedom, I really do think your link would have been taken more seriously with the SHOUTING at the start, and without the ambiguous assertion of things going missing off the internet.
I’m guessing lots of things fall off the internet because of copyright issues and people failing to pay their yearly domain name or hosting fee.
Someone in RL said something to me the other day about a website having been removed from the internet, the implication being that this was nefarious, but when I queried them they hadn’t really considered other reasons.
The most obvious bullshit disappearance I’m aware of is the Te Ao Cafe site that got stolen by the police during the Tuhoe Raids. I don’t know if it was ever returned, but it’s not been seen since. The most serious bit of that is that it’s not even evident in the wayback machine (which I assume means that the Internet Archive people have arrangements with various governments).
umm CW my link goes to a full pdf of the paper in question including all images, your link goes to a link promo page that links to nothing but a dead page,
this really is not a pissing contest but how is your link better?
or you were you just being a tad sardonic ?
and you are corect there was no need for shouty first line of original post
Sorry, didn’t follow the link. I just thought an explanation of what the PDF was was useful. The PDF itself is fairly daunting without that. No, not a pissing contest.
Seeing the dead link, it looks to me like that science publisher just doesn’t use permanent links. Sorry if I misinterpreted your original comment, but in that context it did come across as paranoid.
An american national, one of the head of the department, has contracted with the DoD among other well known US entities, states his position as being – The towers were, *blown up*!
Worked for the DoD, does not believe they were involved per se, but is certain that there were state/corporate sponsors. He does not buy into the OBL myth, he knows the history, having worked for the DoD!
“look, I’ll just play with my apparently empty revolver why Archduke Ferdinand and his wife drive past in downtown Sarajevo. What’s the worst that can happen?”
[4 years pass]
“Who knew?”
I was thinking about the education of our politicians and why some are so comfortable with pushing education around – and our children’s futures and our own too. I thought about two ex-teachers I know of Trevor Mallard and Gerry Brownlee. Both confident know-alls.
I don’t know how many ex-teachers there are in government, it seems well-stocked with farmers. Brownlee was a teacher, in technical subjects which involve work with physical materials not abstract ideas or facts. Mallard is also another one with physical skills, and both with verbal skills rather than in rationality or intellectual analysis. I think they have found that working as a politician forcing their ideas on the public is easier than teaching, helping and inspiring children through their learning process.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10411294
Trevor Mallard – Minister for controversy
He’s been called a few names, including bully, but he says he doesn’t think he’s a bully, “I think I’m a gentle lamb.” So why all the bully labels? Why the perception that he does Labour’s dirty work in Parliament, such as making the Brash/Foreman comments?
Mallard didn’t like accounting and went into teaching. He didn’t last long. He loved coaching sports and working with children, but doesn’t think he was a very good teacher. He found himself getting a bit bored in the classroom and almost by accident became an MP.
He stood for Hamilton West, pretty much on the understanding that he would not win. He did. It was a pleasant surprise but six years later, in 1990, he found himself voted out.
An obscure, to me, comment by Claire Trevett. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10792072 The idea that only people with higher learning should become MPs is worrying given the relevance of higher learning to both MPs’ jobs and to real life.
Gerry Brownlee bio
Born in Christchurch, Brownlee has lived there ever since. After leaving high school, he worked in his family’s timber business, and received training in carpentry. Later he qualified as a teacher. He then taught woodwork and crafts at high-school level at Ellesmere College, and later at St Bede’s College (which he himself had attended as a pupil). At St Bede’s he taught woodwork and graphics.
Socrete was not a christian, he died for reason by taken hemlock. The central focus of a court, where laws are tested and emerge, is the confrontation between reasoned sides of the case.
So when a lawyer on RNZ says christianity should be thank for our law, I was incredulous.
Our Law didn’t get off the ground until the papest central authorities were given the boot.
Our laws would never stand up if they were based on faith.
Our laws have more basis in the Ancient Greeks of individualism and reason.
Hell, even the Pope was elected by a pagan democracy means.
I ask you how is the weakness of Christianity a strength, that’s just spin.
How lazy, how stupid can a commentator be? Well, have a look at this….
Jim Mora reckons Giuliani “cleaned up” New York
The Panel, Radio NZ National, Wednesday 3 April 2013
Jim Mora, Liz Bowen Cluely, David Farrar
In the course of a discussion about police apprehension of criminals in New Zealand, Jim Mora casually commented that the notoriously corrupt former mayor of New York Rudolph Giuliani had “cleaned up New York.”
Flabbergasted at such glibness and lack of seriousness, I quickly dashed off the following response….
Dear Jim,
Giuliani did not “clean up” New York
You claimed that Rudolph Giuliani “cleaned up” New York. In fact his regime was utterly corrupt. Giuliani’s first Police Commissioner, Bernard Kerik, was found guilty of conspiracy, mail fraud, wire fraud, and lying to the Internal Revenue Service. In February 2010, Kerik was sentenced to four years in federal prison.
Kerik’s successor Raymond Kelly was even more controversial; his officers were involved in many killings of “undesirables” in the New York suburbs.
Killing New York “low-life” is one way of “cleaning up” the city; the Gestapo “cleaned up” Berlin, and so did those South African policemen caught on tape a couple of weeks ago dragging a young man to his death along a city road.
Please think carefully before you praise rotten, corrupt politicians in future.
Mora is very shallow, hollow and gossiping wishy washy jabbering nonsense all the time. He turns me off RNZ. Sometimes it is worth to listen to 9 to noon, and certainly to Checkpoint, perhaps (at times) Morning Report and so, but the standards are getting lowered, given we have a government that pulls some strings behind the scenes.
So tonight, more BS on “3rd degree”, stories for heart breaks and from overseas, rather than raising issues about what goes on and affects hundreds of thousands inside NZ! NO mention of welfare reforms, NO mention of GCSB scandal, NO mention of asset sales, NO mention of Rio Tinto and the Tiwai Point smelter, is this damned “current affairs” or “current distraction” Msrs Garner and Espinner. Yes “spinners” and “garners” that is what the show is about, no real current affairs reporting and no investigative journalism. Keep NZers dumb, dumber and the dumbest, it is what the dictatorship of Aotearoa NZ demands, coming from High Command, John Key and Steven Joyce!
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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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. ...
“Listen to John Key, he makes good business sense”
Is The Panel making us stupid?
Radio NZ National, Tuesday 2 April 2013
Noelle McCarthy, Graham Bell, Islay McLeod
“There are some people at the far extreme who you just have to say are idiots.”
—ISLAY McLEOD
The former television weather-presenter was talking about something else when she uttered those words at 4:15 p.m., but by chance she was presaging two upcoming guest appearances on today’s show: first the dismal Nevil “Breivik” Gibson, and then an even more dismal far right farmer-politician from the Far North.
First interview though was Christchurch East M.P. Lianne Dalziel, who was treated with a combination of ignorance, condescension and outright aggression, primarily by Graham Bell, operating in his default mode of bully-cop. Now of course, Lianne Dalziel is more than capable of looking after herself, and Bell is not smart enough to upset her; however, what he can do is trivialize and hijack a discussion, and that’s what he did. What will have concerned many listeners was the fact that Bell, who knows next to nothing about Christchurch, was allowed to take over that segment and effectively destroy it, silencing the voice of one of the most effective members of parliament.
After the 4:30 news, the Panelists vapored for a couple of excruciating minutes about pop music. It came as no surprise to this writer to learn that Graham Bell and Islay McLeod are both fans of the leather-lunged Australian belter John (AKA “Johnny”) Farnham. They then spoke about a few more of their musical preferences….
ISLAY McLEOD: And don’t forget Anika Moa and Lawrence Arabia. I’m loving his music at the moment!
GRAHAM BELL: Our greatest singer-songwriters have to be Neil Finn and Dave Dobbyn.
ISLAY McLEOD: Don McGlashan?
GRAHAM BELL: Yes, he’s good.
NOELLE McCARTHY: All right, time for the Soapbox, where we find out about what our Panelists have been thinking about. Islay, would you like to go first?
…[Unfortunately I missed every word Ms. McLeod uttered in this segment, due to my being interrupted by an unfortunate fellow trying to flog subscriptions to the New Zealand Herald. After telling him I would never pay a cent to any publication that employed Wynne “Sensible” Gray or Rod “Unfunny” Emmerson, I hurried back to the lounge to hear Graham Bell railing against people who had annoyed him over the Easter break on State Highway No. 2]…
GRAHAM BELL: Brickbats to those drivers who drove slowly and hesitantly and then sped up on the straights. Especially those pulling trailers and boats. Very frustrating!
NOELLE McCARTHY: [tones of mock sympathy] Mmmmmm, mmmmm.
GRAHAM BELL: [warming to his task] And one more thing! The murder of George Taiaroa. The investigation into this has been hindered by the media chasing rumors. It’s so frustrating. Very frustrating! It causes nothing but problems!
NOELLE McCARTHY: Complicates things all round.
GRAHAM BELL: YES IT DOES! Some of the stuff you see on some of these forums [sic]. Just such nonsense! But that’s the world we live in.
ISLAY McLEOD: And, similarly, there have been all sorts of rumors about the bashing of Jesse Ryder. [She vents about the bail laws.]
NOELLE McCARTHY: Islay McLeod and Graham Bell at a quarter to five. The Green Party says that, with the Rio Tinto stand-off over the electricity price, the Government has to stop the asset sales.
BELL: Easy for the Opposition to criticize. But what would THEY do?
McLEOD: We should call Rio Tinto’s bluff!
BELL: Exactly!
NOELLE McCARTHY: [unimpressed] Hmmm. Nevil Gibson is the editor of the National Business Review. He joins us now to discuss this. Good afternoon Nevil.
BREIVIK GIBSON: Good afternoon Noelle!
[Breivik Gibson proceeds to talk sympathetically about the stance taken by Rio Tinto. Suddenly, at the end of his talk, he unleashes one of the funniest quotes of the year, albeit unwittingly, as he advises people to, well, just trust the Government…]
BREIVIK GIBSON: [with utmost gravitas] I would advise people not to listen to any political statements, and instead listen to what John Key is saying. What he says makes good business sense.
NOELLE McCARTHY: [clearly horrified] What are the implications of the asset sales?
BREIVIK GIBSON: Oh, NONE WHATSOEVER! The government will still be owning fifty-one per cent.
NOELLE McCARTHY: [shaken and disturbed] Nevil Gibson, thank you.
The last few minutes of the program involve an interview with a lunatic named Ken Rintoul, a Kerikeri “farmer and businessman”, who has obviously never wasted any of his valuable time reading books. Mr Rintoul obviously knows nothing at all about economics, but that has not stopped him from forming a new party for doctor-bashers, grave-robbers and kiddie-thrashers…….….
NOELLE McCARTHY: Do you think we NEED a new right wing party?
GRAHAM BELL: [slowly, with gravitas] Yes. I think so.
[At this point, Bell made what I think was a disparaging remark about Hone Harawira, but I was again interrupted by a door-knocker, who was also dispatched post-haste….]
NOELLE McCARTHY: Well, the party is called Focus New Zealand and its leader is Ken Rintoul. He’s a farmer from Kerikeri. Good afternoon.
KEN RINTOUL: Good afternoon.
NOELLE McCARTHY: Tell us about Focus New Zealand, your new party.
KEN RINTOUL: Ummmm. Ahhhhh. Okay! [Mr Rintoul sets off on a wandery and confused speech making it clear to anybody with any common sense—not Graham Bell—that he is to the right of Genghis Khan, but lacks the astuteness of Rodney Hide, the charm of David Garrett or the electability of Don Brash. When he finishes his confused spiel, there is an awkward silence for several seconds.]
NOELLE McCARTHY: Islay, you wanted to say something.
ISLAY McLEOD: It all just seems a little bit… fairytale to me.
KEN RINTOUL: Oh, okay, ummm.
NOELLE McCARTHY: [gently] Ken Rintoul, thank you.
Yes I was listening to that. Mr Bell also had his usual rant about the Greens
Can’t say that I am going to continue listening to the right wing rants on “afternoons” for too much longer
Agreed.
“I would advise people not to listen to any political statements, and instead listen to what John Key is saying.”
Just about stabbed myself in the eye when I heard that.
You have to admire the ironic beauty of the statement though. Classic.
Yep, Gibson went down a whole bunch of notches at that utterance, in mine own eye…
Poor old Nev used to sell Marxist papers as a young man, like our own ideologists here he stayed true to being an ideologue, merely changing horses. They are quite similar really.
@ Ennui.
Yep, I’ve come across quite a few of ‘them’ (half my vintage at Onslow College in fact).
I suspect Jim Mora is one of ‘them’ as well. I often wonder what causes the shift. The only thing I can think of is …… comfort, camplacency, laziness.
I think it is mainly lazy thinking and a lack of breadth on which to base rational argument. If you begin with a stance using rational thinking without examining the base you start from you can prove anything…really does not matter whether you are using the materialist dialectic of Marx or Freidmans greed is good….both are perfectly cogent and please lazy minds. Both are of course nonsensical fantasies.
>>NOELLE McCARTHY: [clearly horrified] What are the implications of the asset sales?
BREIVIK GIBSON: Oh, NONE WHATSOEVER! The government will still be owning fifty-one per cent.
EG Contact energy price fell 3% on the news that Rio might pull out.
Obviously Gibson doesn’t understand how the the market works.
When you look at some of Labours recent political statements it almost holds water.
They seem to be oppose no matter what, even if this in direct contridiction to policy. It does give the impression that they are talking rubbish to score cheap points or they don’t really believe in the policies they have… I can’t tell which…
I did watch Russel Norman on the tv3 this morning and he certainly comes across well and he was far from completely negative, instead talking about what the Greens would have done and why the Nat’s had gone about things the wrong way. Very engaging and beleivable IMHO
I seem to remember Key doing much the same thing though cricklewood. Everything Labour was doing was wrong and wrecking the economy. He was going to bring in policies to stop Kiwis leaving for Australia, raise income levels here to Australian levels, not increase GST and so on. Brighter future my ass. That’s what’s making things so difficult for the voters. Both the Nats and Labour will say anything to get elected but after that they turn out to have no idea of what they’re doing.
I agree, but I do think it looks ridiculous to send out press statements that directly contradict your own written policy. I would even say it is very poor strategy for an opposition party.
Whilst in 2008 National were negative they didn’t contradict their own policy (they didn’t actually have much just tax cuts and vacuous statements like those you mentioned) once in power they raised gst took a hit for it and managed to do a convincing enough job to deflect most of the blame.
All Labour are doing at present is opening themselves up for free hits…
Morrissey
A great report on the Panel. I wondered who that Islay McLeod was – Jim Mora doesn’t bother to tell us who his panellists are or their backgrounds. Talking about the weather authoritatively obviously would ensure great ability to talk about anything authoritatively. Everyone should know all these public figures who are his guests I suppose. I don’t spend much time with tv or Jim Mora so don’t know all the talking heads there. (Though John Campbell on tv sounds worth following.)
I was appalled at the way Lianne Dalziel was dismissed by the panel. She was asked what she would do differently and when she tried to answer was cut off.
“The Panel” is a hand picked lot by Mora and his staff, merely there to gossip drivel about topics, to make them look trivial and irrelevant. It is nothing much serious about “the panel”, and Mora seems to get the same mouthpieces again and again. Picking Farrar shows his own bias.
Farrar is clearly a propagandist operator for the Nats, and he makes no secret of it.
Similarly the “political commentators” that Kathryn Ryan picks for each Monday late morning debate are equally selected. Williams is not Labour as the members would like it, he is an establishment person. And Hooton and Off, yes, that speaks for itself. He is like Farrar just another propagandist for National. Political commentators should not have any party affiliation and should be independent journalists or whatever, NOT pollies or former pollies or their mouth pieces.
RNZ is at a sell out level and losing credit by the day.
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/newint/~3/RRqu1DtmEtc/
Rather long but a brilliant summation of what neo liberalism has done to the housing market throughout the developed world. Never was there a stronger case for capital gains tax !
From an email sent by a friend …
Want to have fun at a fancy dress party, and help protect the climate at the same time?
Then dress in medieval attire and come along to the Fisher & Paykel Lecture Theatre, Auckland University Business School at 6.30 pm, Friday April 5th.
On April Fools Day, climate change denier, Lord Christopher Monckton, begins a “Climate of Freedom” tour of NZ, with with the message that climate change isn’t a problem. Instead, he claims it is a hoax perpetrated by corrupt scientists who are conspiring with Green politicians to take over the world (sic).
In reality, Christopher Monckton has zero credibility regarding climate science. He has no scientific training or experience, but travels the world, apparently as a full-time propagandist for the fossil fuel and mining industries. His role seems to be to create controversy over the science and promote doubt as to the need for action to curtail greenhouse gas emissions.
A Monckton performance is a tour-de-farce of pseudoscientific claims, half-truths, misrepresentations of scientific research and personal attacks. He is amusing, urbane, vicious, and extraordinarily dishonest.
He does, however, have a fatal flaw – he takes himself far too seriously, thus
HEAR YE, HEAR YE, HEAR YE!
The Grand Wizard of the NZ Flat Earth Society, Nathaniel Pipe-Blower, has called on his flock and their friends to give Lord Monckton a rousing welcome to Auckland at Monckton’s public lecture at the University Business School, 7 – 9 pm on April 5th.
As we Flat Earthers have endured centuries of oppression and ridicule from scientists with their so-called “evidence” that the Earth is round, we sympathise with Lord Monckton’s struggle, and wish to offer our support and friendship.
Just to be clear, this is not a traditional protest; we want to be FRIENDS with Lord Monckton and WORK TOGETHER TO BATTLE THE CONSPIRACY between the Corrupt Scientists and the Evil Greens.
We will be handing out a “scroll” with our message, engaging in courtly conversation with members of the public, and expressing fulsome admiration for the Great Man himself (after all, he says he is a Nobel laureate who has found a cure for AIDS).
Now for the fun part: Flat Earthers often dress in medieval garb, e.g. as damsels, knights, lords & ladies, priests, peasants, jesters, wizards and wenches.
Flat Earthers also love music and entertainment, so it would be great to have pipers / minstrels / jugglers or clowns.
Most of all, Flat Earthers know how to MAKE MERRY! Feel free to let your hair down.
We will be meeting in the quad outside the Fisher and Paykel Lecture Theatre at 6.30 pm (or in the foyer, if wet).
The (free) lecture starts at 7 pm; Flat Earthers will likely be so impressed by Monckton’s performance that they will clap and cheer the brilliance of his thought.
Finally, for some light relief, there are those who suspect that Monckton is actually Sacha Baron Cohen in disguise…
Nasa’s James Hansen retires to pursue climate fight
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22000810
“Dr James E Hansen has been the head of the Goddard Institute for Space Research since 1981.
He is sometimes called the “father of global warming” for his early warnings about the impacts of rising levels of greenhouse gases.
But some critics say he has hampered the cause by overstating the risk.”
Overstating the risk, apparently not.
ms
That is amusing and I think will be the most effective way of assisting Monckton towards his just desserts, which could well be a cheerio pie in the face.
Yep the clip is really really funny and the theory that Monckton is Sasha Baron Cohen in disguise is the only rational explanation for Monckton’s insanity …
Shhhhh, don’t give Morissey ammo…
The climate has always changed, our sun is one of class of stars called variable stars. It’s simply the political motivator of the day.
NASA is now reporting that atmospheric carbon dioxide acts as a coolant, which is obviously problematic for the “settled science” which says that it is a greenhouse gas.
http://principia-scientific.org/supportnews/latest-news/163-new-discovery-nasa-study-proves-carbon-dioxide-cools-atmosphere.html
[lprent: if you want to start a new topic, then use OpenMike. Don’t use top level in a post on a different topic. Moved.
BTW: the post you linked to was written by someone who is so ignorant of the science of the world we live in, that they appear to have failed to understand that without an atmosphere we would be living in the rough equivalent of a operating microwave oven. Perhaps they should look at the effect that O3 has compared to CO2 in the troposphere. There is a hell of a lot more of it and it does the same reflection of energy at a vastly high efficiency.
Lord protect me from ignorant fools… ]
The Dunning-Kruger Effect is strong in this one.
So what do you think the mistake was?
This is no mistake – But lets hear the *science experts* talk around it!
Misrepresenation:
“NASA’s Langley Research Center has collated data proving that “greenhouse gases” actually block up to 95 percent of harmful solar rays from reaching our planet, thus reducing the heating impact of the sun.”
I thought it was a given that most solar radiation doesn’t reach the earth, otherwise we would be fried.
Irrespective of that, the NASA article doesn’t say wht PRI is saying it says. The NASA article is about solar flares and how much energy they have in them. It’s not about some NEW discovery that the atmosphere keeps heat out in ways we didn’t already know. In fact the PSI article appears to be such a classic example of how to misrepresent science that it should be used as a teaching tool.
As for the idea that any of this proves anything against CC theory… isn’t a thermal layer acting in both directions? eg the insulation in my ceiling keeps heat out and heat in at the same time.
“Misrepresenation”
Not by me. I said that NASA was reporting it, not that it proved anything.
Colonial Weka, you’re right about the misrepresentation.
While NASA did acknowledge that CO2 can act as a coolant, the role isn’t part of the standard greenhouse model.
From NASA:
Infrared radiation from CO2 and NO, the two most efficient coolants in the thermosphere, re-radiated 95% of that total back into space.
“Unfortunately, there’s no practical way to harness this kind of energy,” says Mlynczak. “It’s so diffuse and out of reach high above Earth’s surface. Plus, the majority of it has been sent back into space by the action of CO2 and NO.”
My bad for not checking the story first.
Yeah, well, you might want to try being more critical of your sources too. Needless to say, having read that one article from them, I wouldn’t trust anything on the PSI site ever.
That was my thought after I read it.
Where is the thermosphere?
Now what effect would CO2 have in lower altitudes?
With the amount of chemical pollutants, at all levels, how would any calculations/measurements be meaningful, is a more relevant question!
and yet the ones on climate change over the last thirty years have been reasonably accurate. Go figure.
I suspect climate scientists have some idea that there’s other stuff in the atmosphere besides oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide. Their models also take methane into account, for example. I myself am beginning to suspect that the worst threat as far as global warming goes is the hot air spewed out to deny its existence.
Of course it is. The same ability to trap active energy that is an issue for greenhouse effects in the lower atmosphere is pretty damn useful in the upper atmosphere.
The trick is to think about relative path lengths for energy to travel as its energy drops down in frequency. When an energetic electron (or for that matter most energetic particles) strikes the top of the atmosphere, they start running into molecules. Each impact causes the energy to reduce in the particle and to be partially imparted to whatever they strike. The impacts usually cause changes in vectors as well, so it increases the effective path length for the particle between upper atmosphere and the lower atmosphere.
Eventually most of the energy winds up as heat, which because there is relatively little atmosphere spacewards tends to radiate in that direction because going the other way means it gets sucked up in making air molecules dance more. Obviously the converse is true. When heat is trapped in the morass molecules in the lower atmosphere it is like having a big heat retaining blanket between the heat radiation and space. So we remain warm even when the sun disappears for an average of 12 hours each day and stops adding heat to the lower atmosphere.
That is all factored into the climate change models and always has been. Since the scientific moron in your link has clearly never read anything about them, it is pretty clear that what he was really saying was “I can wank stupidly in public”
burt 8.1
2 April 2013 at 3:26 pm
It’s not about what is good policy for Labour – It’s about being popular… Sadly the muppets think that all they need to do is oppose the government and they will be popular.
Nice comment Burt, so true. Cromwell might well have addressed them “You have sat too long, for Gods sake be gone for all the good that you have done”.
Except they have done no good, merely sat, which as you imply in a nutshell is to their shame and damnation.
So who is surprised to read that John Key continues to spout ABSOLUTE BULLSHIT AND OUTRIGHT LIES…
It transpires he phoned the GCSB boss, his old school mate, and encouraged him to apply for the position. Fletcher subsequently applied and was the only interviewee.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/8500613/Spy-boss-got-job-after-call-from-PM
Fuck John Key.
I no longer want a compulsive liar for our Prime Minister. It is impossible to believe a single word he says. He should piss of back to where bullshit artists and lies live – the money trading trickery world. Arsehole.
liar
liar
liar
liar
liar
liar
liar
liar
liar
You obviously respect and fight for the truth….what you are witnessing is straight out of the Goebbels school of propaganda, tell a lie, repeat and repeat until it is accepted as the truth. Makes you mad enough to type in capitals.
[lprent: please DON’T ]
Yep a week ago Key said:
“The board and the panel knew. I didn’t undertake the recruitment, that was fully done by the State Services Commission, so you really have to say, in a small country like New Zealand … would the criteria be that no-one could get hired because I might know them?,”
He is certainly telling fibs by omission and if you think that him ringing Fletcher and suggesting that he applies for the job is taking part in the recruitment he is lying by commission.
Link is at http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/8485154/Key-Green-MP-needs-to-pull-his-head-in
Look around the world. Key is simply a bankster following standard bankster protocol, hiring cronies and mates into high government positions. It’s what any good friend would do. In fact, when you’re this self confident, who even needs to put up the appearance of impartial due process?
He is lying deliberately and by commission. He can’t help himself and is doing more harm to our political bodies than anyone preceding him. He should be up before the Privileges Committee, but I won’t be holding my breath.
Yes. An amazing revelation. I have been looking at that news, and wondering if another author was in the process of writing a post on it. I expect so. [edit: Yep “Croynism” just up.]
And so Key has an old crony as top spy, and knew nothing about Kim Dotcom?
This sort of revelation doesn’t surprise me in the least – pretty sure lots of wheeling and dealing was done like this at Merrill Lynch.
What surprises me is how OK ordinary Kiwis are with this: It’s a small country, everyone knows everyone, what difference does it make, blah blah.
It’s a bit like the All Blacks: When they’re winning there’s nothing but support, and when they’re looking shakey there’s a rush to defend them – it was the ref’s fault, etc etc. Similar here, it seems.
It’s all a bit like having Nick Leeson as Proim Munsta. In my experience, the harder they rise, the harder they fall. I keep telling myself that anyway as I look at various countries’ immigration requirements.
Not just a liar, but a hopelessly bad one.
Why is the working class forgotten? The Guardian comments section produces four unrelated explanations, but it would be interesting to see them connected:
1. Ten lies we’re told about the benefit cuts. Ricky Tomlinson
We know most of them, but number 10 is well-worded:
2. How the language of welfare poisoned our social security
Language is important. The shift to using the word ‘welfare’ changes the way most people think about other people on benefits – are they welfare dependent, sucking up our money? Or do they receive social security – a public insurance that they have paid into through taxes to use when they fall on hard times and in all likelihood most will pay into in the future?
3. Who represents you?
If you’re Probably someone from outside your electorate and with a middle class background. They don’t have your interests at heart, They don’t live in the streets you do, work in similar jobs, nor have they been on a low wage. In Britain at least, the job of a parliamentarian is a stepping stone to big money jobs. How ‘our’ representatives going to defend our interests when they are planning on working for organisations and companies that are the very ones that we’re in conflict with? Just four percent of British MPs can claim a manual work background – the same percentage as went to Eton. I wonder how NZ parliamentarians stack up?
4. Has feminism failed the working class
The closing gender pay gap for professional women masks inequalities in the position of unskilled workers, where differences between men and women are significantly higher than differences for professional groups. Lower pay, more difficult child care choices and less family-friendly workplaces leave working class women left behind in the story of closing the gender pay gap.
And then there’s the way the information is presented to the public….
“Language is important. The shift to using the word ‘welfare’ changes the way most people think about other people on benefits – are they welfare dependent, sucking up our money? Or do they receive social security – a public insurance that they have paid into through taxes to use when they fall on hard times and in all likelihood most will pay into in the future?”
I don’t know the history of the lnaguage in NZ, but I have no problem with the word welfare – it is after all about the wellbeing (welfare) of vulnerable people.
The idea that welfare/social security is a public insurance that people have paid into in case they get into touble themselves smacks of 1980s neoliberalism – it’s all about the individual. Some people in need of social security have never paid tax.
The point of the welfare state is to take responsibility for all the people in our communities that need assistance, not just those that have contributed via the tax take. That responsibility is based on compassion and acknowledgement that we are interdependent. It’s also based on the idea that without general wellbeing in society, it can’t function properly.
“The idea that welfare/social security is a public insurance that people have paid into in case they get into touble themselves smacks of 1980s neoliberalism “
I don’t see it at all that way – the focus is on each paying into the ‘pot’ according to ability and receiving according to need. I suppose that concept works better with progressive taxation. To me, the social security idea is that we all accept that we may be in a position that we need society to fall back on, whereas ‘welfare’ has become associated with the patently absurd idea of inter-generational dependency and ‘ripping off’ the taxpayer, with no concept that anybody could have unemployment, ill-health and the like befall them.
I see welfare as a deliberate attempt to remove the safety net of the social security and implement U.S. style reforms.
@ Rosy: here is Monbiot, also responding to the latest cuts. He sees hope in a UBI and a land value tax. http://www.monbiot.com/2013/04/01/the-spark-of-hope/
A few days ago, Sanctuary said, “After the fall of the USSR across the Anglosphere the capitalist ruling elites first lost their fear then (with the opening of China, that totalitarian corporate capitalist nirvana) lost their use for the bulk of their domestic populations.” http://thestandard.org.nz/how-austerity-is-destroying-britain-coming-soon-near-you/#comment-612317
I do not think enough people see how dangerous this situation is. When you incrementally deny people the necessities of life while systematically vilifying them and at the same time demanding they be responsible for themselves this can only end in unthinkable horror, unless someone finds a way of putting the brakes on. One can see an example of the propaganda that keeps this going in the report of the Philpott case, in which it is claimed that the man had not washed for 12 weeks, which surely has nothing to do with his guilt or innocence. It does however, fuel the underclass myth in a timely fashion. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10875044
“I do not think enough people see how dangerous this situation is. When you incrementally deny people the necessities of life while systematically vilifying them and at the same time demanding they be responsible for themselves this can only end in unthinkable horror, unless someone finds a way of putting the brakes on.”
+1 on on that!
Interesting re the Philpott case. The Daily Bigot (oops, Mail) has used this as an opportunity to rail against benefits and inform little England that the ‘welfare state created this evil’. that’s as far as it’s analysis goes.
Nothing ever, of course, about the people who die because they can’t actually survive on no money and no care Even in Britain.
btw I was surprised it took so long for Monbiot to champion universal income and land tax. Great that he has though.
Yes, I am glad he has come to it as well. Now all that’s needed is for people who can make things happen to listen. I am hoping these people get frightened by what they are creating before it ends in mayhem. It took a couple of wars to wake them up in the 20th century.
Has feminism failed working class women? Sure, in many ways. But that article misses the core issue, which is that feminism has never had a free run. The gains at the top have always been compromised gains (you can have some power as long as you don’t rock the boat too much and make an effort to fit in). The structures that oppress working class women, also prevent feminism from achieving its aims. And those structures aren’t something feminism created or has had much control over.
To what extent feminism can be criticised for not trying harder to sort out class issues I don’t know. It’s not really a secret that middle and professional class women don’t have a good understanding of working class issues, and certainly feminism has had to struggle with its own internal class and structural issues. Some criticism is warranted, but I think this from the article is a fail –
“While feminism has delivered for some professional women, other women have been left behind. Many of the advances for women at the top have masked inequality at the bottom.”
The implication being that feminism had the power to change the conditions of working class women, but didn’t. That’s not true.
“New research reveals that advances for women at the top have not been matched by progress for those at the bottom”
New research, but hardly news for anyone that’s been paying attention.
Well said, weka. I was involved in the women’s movement in London in the late 70s and early 80s. It was strongly left wing, and interconnected with other left wing organisations and activities. It was always about social justice, and a fair society for all women. I had working class friends who were part of the women’s movement as a whole, but who also part of some working class women’s groups.
One of the things about the movement in the UK, was that, the left wing approach was for a network of groups and against the promoting of “star” feminists, unlike the US. The movement never got a very good press from the MSM. Then, Thatcherism started to bite with her targeting of grassroots left wing organisations that weakened the grassroots women’s movement.
This was at the same time as the Murdochisation of the MSM. It tended to promote “sexy” middleclass women and appropriated aspects of feminism that suited their neoliberal agenda.
The power of the wealthy elites is not to be under-estimated.
I don’t know if feminism has failed working class women: it is a very good question.
What I can do is reflect on my lifetime and the changes that have occurred. My grandmother worked all her life, including in service and factories. Only in the 1950s could she throttle back and live off my grandfathers wages. My mother worked by choice, we children were expected to do housework etc from an early age. No sexism there, we were both boys, my mother did not buy the concept of “women’s work”. She was unusual in that during the 50s, 60s and early 70s women (it was not the acceptable norm for men) were able to raise and nurture children because wage rates were high enough for a single income to support the average family. My friends thought it rather unusual my mother worked full time. My own wife chose to stay home with the children only because I earned plenty, it could easily have been her out doing the earning as she is far more competent than me.
Come the 70s newly arrived feminism coincided with erosion of the wage packet through out the western world. Which meant working class women in particular were caught in the unenviable position of being expected to raise families, and find extra money. The implication is that the influx of women into the workforce again depressed labour rates for both men and women: I dont know if this is the case. My suspicion is that the aspirations of women raised by feminism, coinciding with consumerism, neo liberalism, de unionism etc etc created a perfect storm which capital has taken advantage of to depress wages.
On that basis you could say feminism was a factor in the impoverishment of working class women, BUT certainly not the cause, and certainly not intentionally.
Large numbers of working class women have always had to work – whether it was in the organised workforce, or by taking in washing etc in the informal economy.
Very true, what I was driving at was the failure of the single income family scenario that we managed to achieve in the 50s 60s.
But that article misses the core issue, which is that feminism has never had a free run. The gains at the top have always been compromised gains “
Yep. This was probably the article that prompted me to think about how these different ideas on working class issues cannot be seen in isolation. Why has feminism not delivered for working class women? As Karol notes, Thatcherism is at the heart. This, at the very least, marks a divergence between working class and professional women’s interests.
The decline in organised Labour almost certainly has had an impact on the chances of women keeping pace with men’s wage rates (I guess though, there’s another story about organised labour and fear of women taking men’s jobs).
It would be interesting to link this with the article about David Miliband and look at who exactly represents working class women’s interests in government, in local bodies and labour organisations (not just the top level, but at the workplace level). A few more working class women in government in NZ would have swamped the one who seems to have forgotten where she came from.
Another Max Keiser classic rant: How banksters scapegoat granny after stealing your money
Teaching to the test.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/30/us/former-school-chief-in-atlanta-indicted-in-cheating-scandal.html?pagewanted=all&_r=2&
Ms. Parks admitted to Mr. Hyde that she was one of seven teachers — nicknamed “the chosen” — who sat in a locked windowless room every afternoon during the week of state testing, raising students’ scores by erasing wrong answers and making them right.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-educators-surrender-atlanta-testing-scandal-20130402,0,595854.story
A parade of Atlanta educators trooped to the county jail beginning in the early hours of Tuesday morning and surrendered to officials on criminal charges stemming what is believed to be the biggest testing scandal in American education.
By early morning, at least four of the 35 teachers, principals and school officials had turned themselves in and were expected to post bonds ranging from hundreds of thousands of dollars to more than $1 million.
Remember the ’90’s?
The Macarena, Jonah Lomu, ‘Friends’, Tamagotchis, ‘The End of History’?
National slashing and burning their way through the health system, privatising large parts of it and charging for the rest?
Looks like Treasury put out a report that recommended that the government charges for more health services.
Phony Tony slapped down the idea of more charges, but am finding it hard to believe him.
Not that there is anythin fucked up about USian gun culture or anything!
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=10875095
That made me feel sick.
Sorry, I really should have put a trigger warning on it.
Ba dum tsssh
ouch
soz
Oh they’re sick alright, they’re living it.
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2013/03/28/1791361/men-with-loaded-rifles-intimidate-moms-gathered-at-gun-safety-rally/
They’re dicks and they’re doing nothing to help the debate about what needs to be done.
Some of today’s bad news. In Brazil, three taxibus operators forced passengers off their vehicle so they could rape a young woman who was travelling with a boyfriend. It sounds like a copycat version of the Indian one. We seem to be scraping the bottom of our social morals bucket. What next? And what can be done to change this trend?
“We seem to be scraping the bottom of our social morals bucket”
Sorry prism, but for me it looks like business as usual. It’s just there is a shift happening in public awareness and media reporting. That will probably turn out to be a good thing, time will tell.
When I was living in Rio a woman was raped near the entrance to one of the local favelas. The perpetrator was found by people early the next morning outside the favela, impaled on a broken broomstick. Street justice over there can be pretty brutal.
carnaval do broomstick, I suppose, with a nasty taste.
I’ve been told that the answer is to fight rape culture in all its many permutations. Hope that gives you some ideas.
One needs to understand what rape culture is in order to fight it 🙂
Thanks CV I feel better now.
So not really that interested in what to do about rape? or did I misunderstand the question?
Woooo, yeah, let’s be glib about crimes against women because we don’t want to take any time to engage with the discussion on how to make people take rape seriously, woooooo.
Meanwhile, CW’s comment above yours demonstrates how us silly little feminists talking about silly concepts might just have actually forced people to start taking incidents like this more seriously. God, we’re so ineffective with our silly talking.
Yes.
Belief that seemingly decent men care about women’s well-being has just gone down another notch or two.
You think that’s bad, try the Saudi cleric who recently raped, mutilated & murdered his 5yr old daughter. His punishment was a $50,000 fine. That’s about as sick as it comes and yet we heard very little about it from the media.
Yeah its a funny thing (in a not actually funny at all way) because the idea is we’re supposed to be tolerant and accepting of other cultures which seems to be driven by mostly middle to upper class men and women (sickly white liberals)
Yet I have no problem stating that the western democratic 1st world system (for lack of a better description) of laws and morals is superior to any other
I’m not saying its perfect, far from it in fact but when you look at whats happening in other parts of the world I’m just glad I was born in NZ
Nia Glassie.
Delcelia Witika
That would just prove how ignorant you are. The increasing poverty forced upon the world by Western Colonialism shows a distinct lack of morals.
NOT THE START OF A DISCUSSION
just sharing a little data because it happens to be available again and many have never seen it.
this is the article on thermitic material in WTC dust. The article regularly gets removed so just sharing whilst i can. http://www.benthamscience.com/open/tocpj/articles/V002/7TOCPJ.pdf
“The article regularly gets removed so just sharing whilst i can”
By whom, from where?
you want to know who removed it?
sure CW, i’ll just get that name for you
ahh hang on a minute … you got me good, you’re funny
interpret as: how the hell would i know? stuff gets removed from the web all the time
sometimes for an hour sometimes for good. If you deny that as well, you are a crazy person.
and if for some reason your ability to read has tragically vanished in a puff of retro-logic, the address of the site is in the address of the pdf, wow, what will these interweb folk think of next
http://www.benthamscience.com
before you start I am not offering any opinion on the site as a valid source, I am not a scientist and have no input as to what the scientific community think. But it chose to publish the paper and it is a paper most journals run from because facts often have a way of interfering with funding.
All I know is that the pdf IS the paper that was written by Niels H. Harrit, Jeffrey Farrer Steven E. Jones, Kevin R. Ryan, Frank M. Legge, Daniel Farnsworth, Gregg Roberts, James R. Gourley, and Bradley R. Larsen
It has NOT been seen by many people who often ask for more raw data in the ongoing WTC discussion and I am confident that those with a functioning brain cell can seperate the article’s contents from the location of its discovery. The internet is not a place for squabbles on the proprietary nature of published material that its authors have stated are a public resource.
Oh yeah, my bad. See I thought you were meaning that people put the information on the internet, and other people, who don’t own it, take it off. The former being good reliable people, and the latter being nasty secret govt types.
But now I see that I actually have no idea what the fuck you are on about, except that when I make a reasonable request for clarification I get an insulting rant.
“stuff gets removed from the web all the time
sometimes for an hour sometimes for good. If you deny that as well, you are a crazy person.”
Yes, it’s just most of us don’t believe that everytime something disappears from the internet that it’s a nefarious act. If that’s not what you meant, please do say because otherwise I’ve completely missed your point.
that’s good CW, make sure attention is diverted from the data. An irrelevant perceived slight is far more important. – and Felix, stop smirking 🙂
Anyhoo, I never claimed any ‘nefarious acts’ had taken place regarding the file’s accessibility. I simply stated the fact, that the file is sometimes not found at the places it occassionally resides. More importantly, to call the above an insulting rant is an insult to insulting rants everywhere. If you have never done so i recommend looking through the file. It is very interesting, even to a layman like me. Have a nice day.
Here’s a better link. It contains the PDF link, but also the full abstract plus some excerpts.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/active-thermitic-material-discovered-in-dust-from-the-9-11-world-trade-center-catastrophe/13049
freedom, I really do think your link would have been taken more seriously with the SHOUTING at the start, and without the ambiguous assertion of things going missing off the internet.
I have noticed that ‘Derailing for Dummies’ is very hard to find too – if anyone has a solid link I’d appreciate it.
http://birdofparadox.wordpress.com/derailing-for-dummies-google-cache-reconstruction/ 😉
I’m guessing lots of things fall off the internet because of copyright issues and people failing to pay their yearly domain name or hosting fee.
Someone in RL said something to me the other day about a website having been removed from the internet, the implication being that this was nefarious, but when I queried them they hadn’t really considered other reasons.
The most obvious bullshit disappearance I’m aware of is the Te Ao Cafe site that got stolen by the police during the Tuhoe Raids. I don’t know if it was ever returned, but it’s not been seen since. The most serious bit of that is that it’s not even evident in the wayback machine (which I assume means that the Internet Archive people have arrangements with various governments).
Thanks Weka
umm CW my link goes to a full pdf of the paper in question including all images, your link goes to a link promo page that links to nothing but a dead page,
this really is not a pissing contest but how is your link better?
or you were you just being a tad sardonic ?
and you are corect there was no need for shouty first line of original post
Sorry, didn’t follow the link. I just thought an explanation of what the PDF was was useful. The PDF itself is fairly daunting without that. No, not a pissing contest.
Seeing the dead link, it looks to me like that science publisher just doesn’t use permanent links. Sorry if I misinterpreted your original comment, but in that context it did come across as paranoid.
An american national, one of the head of the department, has contracted with the DoD among other well known US entities, states his position as being – The towers were, *blown up*!
Worked for the DoD, does not believe they were involved per se, but is certain that there were state/corporate sponsors. He does not buy into the OBL myth, he knows the history, having worked for the DoD!
“NOT THE START OF A DISCUSSION”
lolz
It’s ongoing apparently. Who knew?
lol
“look, I’ll just play with my apparently empty revolver why Archduke Ferdinand and his wife drive past in downtown Sarajevo. What’s the worst that can happen?”
[4 years pass]
“Who knew?”
I was thinking about the education of our politicians and why some are so comfortable with pushing education around – and our children’s futures and our own too. I thought about two ex-teachers I know of Trevor Mallard and Gerry Brownlee. Both confident know-alls.
I don’t know how many ex-teachers there are in government, it seems well-stocked with farmers. Brownlee was a teacher, in technical subjects which involve work with physical materials not abstract ideas or facts. Mallard is also another one with physical skills, and both with verbal skills rather than in rationality or intellectual analysis. I think they have found that working as a politician forcing their ideas on the public is easier than teaching, helping and inspiring children through their learning process.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10411294
Trevor Mallard – Minister for controversy
He’s been called a few names, including bully, but he says he doesn’t think he’s a bully, “I think I’m a gentle lamb.” So why all the bully labels? Why the perception that he does Labour’s dirty work in Parliament, such as making the Brash/Foreman comments?
Mallard didn’t like accounting and went into teaching. He didn’t last long. He loved coaching sports and working with children, but doesn’t think he was a very good teacher. He found himself getting a bit bored in the classroom and almost by accident became an MP.
He stood for Hamilton West, pretty much on the understanding that he would not win. He did. It was a pleasant surprise but six years later, in 1990, he found himself voted out.
An obscure, to me, comment by Claire Trevett.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10792072
The idea that only people with higher learning should become MPs is worrying given the relevance of higher learning to both MPs’ jobs and to real life.
Gerry Brownlee bio
Born in Christchurch, Brownlee has lived there ever since. After leaving high school, he worked in his family’s timber business, and received training in carpentry. Later he qualified as a teacher. He then taught woodwork and crafts at high-school level at Ellesmere College, and later at St Bede’s College (which he himself had attended as a pupil). At St Bede’s he taught woodwork and graphics.
Socrete was not a christian, he died for reason by taken hemlock. The central focus of a court, where laws are tested and emerge, is the confrontation between reasoned sides of the case.
So when a lawyer on RNZ says christianity should be thank for our law, I was incredulous.
Our Law didn’t get off the ground until the papest central authorities were given the boot.
Our laws would never stand up if they were based on faith.
Our laws have more basis in the Ancient Greeks of individualism and reason.
Hell, even the Pope was elected by a pagan democracy means.
I ask you how is the weakness of Christianity a strength, that’s just spin.
If the witch drowned, she was innocent, if she lived, she was clearly a witch and burnt at the stake.
You can’t say that’s not a fair and balanced trial.
Reptilian overlords….
http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2013/04/conspiracy-theory-poll-results-.html
4% of voters say they believe “lizard people” control our societies by gaining political power
V
How lazy, how stupid can a commentator be? Well, have a look at this….
Jim Mora reckons Giuliani “cleaned up” New York
The Panel, Radio NZ National, Wednesday 3 April 2013
Jim Mora, Liz Bowen Cluely, David Farrar
In the course of a discussion about police apprehension of criminals in New Zealand, Jim Mora casually commented that the notoriously corrupt former mayor of New York Rudolph Giuliani had “cleaned up New York.”
Flabbergasted at such glibness and lack of seriousness, I quickly dashed off the following response….
Dear Jim,
Giuliani did not “clean up” New York
You claimed that Rudolph Giuliani “cleaned up” New York. In fact his regime was utterly corrupt. Giuliani’s first Police Commissioner, Bernard Kerik, was found guilty of conspiracy, mail fraud, wire fraud, and lying to the Internal Revenue Service. In February 2010, Kerik was sentenced to four years in federal prison.
Kerik’s successor Raymond Kelly was even more controversial; his officers were involved in many killings of “undesirables” in the New York suburbs.
Killing New York “low-life” is one way of “cleaning up” the city; the Gestapo “cleaned up” Berlin, and so did those South African policemen caught on tape a couple of weeks ago dragging a young man to his death along a city road.
Please think carefully before you praise rotten, corrupt politicians in future.
Yours sincerely,
Morrissey Breen
Northcote Point
————————-
So far, no response from the great communicator….
Mora is very shallow, hollow and gossiping wishy washy jabbering nonsense all the time. He turns me off RNZ. Sometimes it is worth to listen to 9 to noon, and certainly to Checkpoint, perhaps (at times) Morning Report and so, but the standards are getting lowered, given we have a government that pulls some strings behind the scenes.
.
jeez jim
where’s the wood?
So tonight, more BS on “3rd degree”, stories for heart breaks and from overseas, rather than raising issues about what goes on and affects hundreds of thousands inside NZ! NO mention of welfare reforms, NO mention of GCSB scandal, NO mention of asset sales, NO mention of Rio Tinto and the Tiwai Point smelter, is this damned “current affairs” or “current distraction” Msrs Garner and Espinner. Yes “spinners” and “garners” that is what the show is about, no real current affairs reporting and no investigative journalism. Keep NZers dumb, dumber and the dumbest, it is what the dictatorship of Aotearoa NZ demands, coming from High Command, John Key and Steven Joyce!
There was a short interview with Mr Key and Espiner at the end re Afghanistan and a mention right at the end over spy non-scandal.
Missed that, seems not a great miss there.