Sad that on top of the trickledown lie castigated by the author we are biddably complicit in a weird theism, centred on a sham Everyman who is donKey deep in the lie. Who yet himself never created a thing.
For the likes of SSLands and FizzyAnus, particularly FizzyAnus – your God is small change and small brained compared to this guy. Beware the pitchforks. If needs be they will penetrate the gated citadels of greed !
SS and Anus used to rile me, but as long as they abide by the site guidelines their babble will serve as a reminder for others.
Re North’s link; there have often been those (including third way Labourites) for whom the holy grail is capitalists behaving themselves. “rising tide floats all boats” and other variations. Good luck with that one.
I’m going to throw this one back to you Grey Warbler:
Your comment (which I agree with):
‘Why bother to make negative comment to a reasonable opinion even if overblown? The narky censorship and constant critiques of some people on this site stifle concerned opinion. People are being taken to task because they don’t think the same as the particular leftie-righteous who knows all and is so superior, and controlling. Picky, picky, and attacking in swarms at times and bloody officious.
If it isn’t blatant right wing bullshit, lies and left-hating stuff, leave it alone for pete’s sake.’
Now would you please explain why you take such a different stance toward TM’s comment than you did toward Stephanie’s (below)? Because I was about to write a very similar response to TM’s comment that you wrote to Stephanie’s.
I think North’s article makes a fair point and supports the type of issues that the left are pretty keen to address – i.e. addressing issues with a system that is not providing benefits to all people (or classes). Yet these days, it appears that noone can make a fair suggestion as to how to address these problems without a trite comment from a lefty of a slightly different view point undermining the intention.
There is nothing like working toward some sort of unity to get the focus required in order to get an aim achieved.
This is actually the core of the problem isn’t it? i.e. no system will work if the people in that system act in a short sighted manner and/or in bad faith. Please show me an example of any system that works without this qualification.
Sorry the problem with capitalism as it has been practiced for 200 years is that short sightedness and bad faith is explicitly rewarded with power, position and standing in society.
Actually CV, that is the problem with ‘purer’ forms of capitalism.
The purer the version of capitalism that is pursued – the more increasing numbers of people become disadvantaged – the more mixed version of capitalism we pursue the more increasing numbers of peoples’ interests are addressed.
Social democracy was going pretty well, as I understand it from history books – then it came to a glitch after the post-war boom died down – for which noone seemed to have any quick answers and this allowed some wacky and un-thought-through approaches to be aggressively pursued by persons who were most likely to be advantaged by them – these people marketed them well (ignoring some already established facts) and now it appears that social democracy nor its advantages ever existed – despite the fact that we continue to be advantaged by social democratic approaches in existence in our country and that we aren’t living under an entirely purely capitalist approach.
Please supply me with an example of a system where cheats aren’t advantaged; I would have thought this is the problem with cheating – it advantages the person cheating at the expense of everyone else.
Social democracy was going pretty well, as I understand it from history books – then it came to a glitch after the post-war boom died down
It reached Peak Internal Market. Essentially, productivity in the rich nations had made it so that everyone could actually afford to buy everything and everyone actually had (The same was actually happening in the poor nations as well). This meant that demand and thus profit were dropping while inflation was still going up meaning that the rich were becoming less rich. To combat this the rich got the politicians on side and spread the lie, helped by the rather stupid economists, that a free international market would make everyone richer.
So the politicians opened up the borders and dropped the protections that had built up the rich nations so that the rich could increase the size of the markets that they could sell to. This has, inevitably, dropped wages and living standards for the many in the rich countries as those people now compete with people in the poor countries for the same job. Has slowed down the development in many poor countries which now solely import high tech gear rather than seeking to make it themselves from their own resources and their resources are extracted at higher and higher rates to be shipped to the rich countries for less and less money and worsening working conditions.
Please supply me with an example of a system where cheats aren’t advantaged;
When cheats aren’t stopped and incarcerated then society pays and pays. When those same cheats are not only not incarcerated but are openly rewarded and celebrated as they are in our society today then society is fucked.
“The tendency for the rate of profit to fall” (over time and cycles), as Marx put it, is part of what is at the root of the capitalist systems inbuilt flaw. Many bourgeois economists have tried and failed to disprove this assertion.
Finance capital, the out of control once paper now digital money arm of capitalism is another major flaw. I was not having a go at North but at the subject of his link. It is interesting when capitalists do step back and observe.
Never thought you were TM. Taking the argument one step further it’s the mindless ‘theism’ attaching to the cheats mentioned by DTB and more particularly their political proxies which really worries. The ‘GodKey’ number for example. It’s a direct path to totalitarianism.
This is fairly well exactly the way I understood things had gone too and what you write fairly well points to the major problem in our society that appears to continue to be being majorly deflected from and effectively ignored; that the wealthy are not willing to drop their wealth a bit – drop their irrational need for more and more – so that society can continue to function healthily.
This is why I thought the letter North linked to had merit and is why I believe Tiger Mountain’s comment misses the mark in a big way.
What he says is nothing new and widely known – push more money into the hands of the lower incomes and the economy does better. This is the way to prosperity and healthy society. This whole wealth-creator, trickle-down idea is hocus-pocus.
What is new though is that a rich bastard is acknowledging it and doing something about it.
He’s entitled to do whatever he wants with his wealth (within reason) as are any wealthy people. If he wants to give it to the less fortunate good for him.
interesting lack of comment on the substantive points of his letter gosman… wonder why that would be? because he pierces your ridiculous ideas on how an economy needs to work perhaps?
Because it is full of the same extreme leftist spin that I have seen and responded to time and again. For a start he states inequality is getting worse all the time. There isn’t actually a lot of evidence supporting this view. Yes inequality rose greatly in the 1980’s and 1990’s but it has been pretty much consistent since then.
Gosman. The time that people will listen to the spin is coming to an end. What kind of end – well that billionaire Amazon.com foundation investor sees it coming to a very bad end for the elite.
He even makes a comment that when the brink comes there won’t be enough time to get on their private jets to head out to New Zealand.
(Although some clever ones like James Cameron took an early flight).
What tosh. Revoultions need certain conditions to be successful in the modern world. Two of these are effective revolutionary organisers and the second is broad based support or at least a significant section of society willing to overthrow the State. None of these currently exist in the US. When or more proababy if they do then the wealthy will have plenty of time to move away.
What tosh. Revoultions need certain conditions to be successful in the modern world. Two of these are effective revolutionary organisers and the second is broad based support or at least a significant section of society willing to overthrow the State. None of these currently exist in the US.
Yes they revolutions require certain pre-requisite conditions. The US fulfils most of them right now. (The two factors you list are facile and incorrect).
When or more proababy if they do then the wealthy will have plenty of time to move away.
Yes they are trying to build up the equivalent of their Versailles or Forbidden City to hideaway in. But history shows that only a small portion manage to get away in the end (how did it work out for Marie Antoinette and friends?).
How you deliberately and self-indulgently miss the point with your comment @1.2.1 Gosman. As you well know Hanauer doesn’t focus on questions of charity. His point is that exponentially advancing inequality being the result of the (neoliberal) capitalist economy as presently pursued will be its cancer and will precipitate uprising against it. The pitchfork metaphor makes his point very clear.
Do you agree or not ? And why, however you see it ?
Edit: just flicked over your comments above. The ultra-wealthy Hanauer entertains far-left, extremist dogma ? Are you mad ? Is reason not your bedfellow ?
Has it not occurred to any political journalist that the reason behind the latest MFAT stuff up, is the restructuring that McCully rammed through. Fewer staff=more pressure=inevitable mistakes. We’ve seen it at home, and over the China wharf fiasco. Yet no-one connects the dots.
Absolutely right nsg. One can only wonder what is happening in the rest of a once effective public service. Isn’t the figure of 8,000 the number of redundancies pushed through govt. departments since 2008 ?
Me too. The stuff ups with EQC in the early stages were because of gutting the Public Service. Mr McCulley didn’t do too well this morning and it is the first time that I can remember him being held to account.
I don’t remember any stuff ups when Winston was Foreign Minister?
Why bother to make negative comment to a reasonable opinion even if overblown? The narky censorship and constant critiques of some people on this site stifle concerned opinion. People are being taken to task because they don’t think the same as the particular leftie-righteous who knows all and is so superior, and controlling. Picky, picky, and attacking in swarms at times and bloody officious.
If it isn’t blatant right wing bullshit, lies and left-hating stuff, leave it alone for pete’s sake.
PS. And for the record Steph if you had bothered to go to the link you would read that the Passenger Pigeon numbers were also measured in the billions, but this didn’t save them.
(Over population’ may even be part of the puzzle of what condemned them. Lessons here for us maybe, that is if we care to look. It is possible that though overhunting is cited as the main reason for the demise if the Passenger Pigeon, problems of disease epidemic and famine that stalk unusually large populations under crisis conditions also played a role)
The primary difference between pigeons and humans is that humans constructively change their environment to suit their needs. Pigeons don’t.
Both humans and pigeons have a predilection to find patterns (ordered structures) in the world around them even when the patterns are incoherent eg (Gilovich 1993,chapter 2).
The tendency to impute order to ambiguous stimuli is simply built into the
cognitive machinery we use to apprehend the world. It may have been bred into us through evolution because of its general adaptiveness
The ritualistic behavior in Skinners superstitious pigeons (a response to chance events) is a good example.
it is also widely seen in money market brokers,who try to explain on the news wraps,variations in various indices when the variances are still well within the range of noise.
If 99.9% of humans were to die, there’d still be 7 million left.
Hardly ‘extinction’.
Lanthanide
Applying this same simplistic logic Lanth, there should be about 3 million passenger pigeons hiding about somewhere.
“The Passenger Pigeon”. Encyclopedia Smithsonian. Smithsonian Institution. March 2001. Retrieved February 28, 2012. estimated this species once constituted 25 to 40% of the total bird population of the United States. It is estimated that there were 3 billion to 5 billion Passenger Pigeons at the time Europeans discovered America.
And as you mention Lanth there is historical anecdotal evidence that Passenger Pigeon numbers oscillated wildly in response to their environment. This has been backed up by genetic evidence of something called Ne, a genetic marker of genetic variation of effective population size, the greater the amount of genetic variation the greater the chance say of surviving something like a runaway epidemic for instance. Unfortunately for us low Ne is a genetic characteristic shared by Passenger Pigeons and human beings, which indicates that these hugely abundant species were in recent evolutionary time scales quite small. Meaning we are more susceptible to black swan extinction events than one would suppose just by our numbers, especially in the event of the climate becoming so unstable that it does not allow agriculture capable of supporting a civilisation with the ability to support socialised mass public health care and the industrial scale production of vaccines.
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blockquote>These legendary North American birds’ flocks were so numerous that they blocked the sun from view for days when they flew over in the early and mid-1800s; yet less than 50 years later, they were gone.
“The passenger pigeon was once the most abundant bird in the world, and suddenly it disappeared totally from the Earth.”
Mind-boggling.
But how could this be possible? Why did these birds disappear? Was this event due solely the murderous efficiency of gun-toting humans, or were there underlying factors that contributed to the demise of this species?
These are more interesting questions than they may appear to be at first glance. On one hand, it’s obvious that rare species with small geographic distributions are more likely to go extinct than are abundant, widespread species. But on the other hand, passenger pigeons had clearly defied all logic. Perhaps there was something special happening to the super-abundant and widespread birds that made them especially vulnerable to extinction? Would it be possible for the researchers identify what that could have been?….
….The researchers sequenced the aDNA using high-throughput technologies and managed to piece together high-quality genomic sequences for the passenger pigeon — the longest genome sequence with the highest quality ever obtained for an extinct bird.
Co-author Pen-Jen Shaner, an assistant professor in the the department of Life Sciences at the National Taiwan Normal University, and her colleagues, Wei-Chung Liu and Te-Chin Chu, used two different mathematical approaches to estimate the passenger pigeon’s genetically effective population size (Ne). The genetically effective population size is an estimate of the total genetic variation found within a given population (doi:10.1017/S0016672300034455). Increased genetic variation is associated with a greater capacity to survive challenging circumstances. Genetic variation arises through mutation and recombination, whilst natural selection removes variation from a population.
Since the passenger pigeon’s census numbers were between 3 and 5 billion individuals in the mid-1800s, the researchers were surprised when they discovered that the passenger pigeon’s genetically effective population size (Ne) was remarkably small. The genetically effective population size Ne was just 3.3 × 105 (95% credible interval = 3.25–3.32 × 105), which is approximately 1/10,000 of the estimated number of individuals from the mid-1800s.
This small genetically effective population size suggests that passenger pigeons were not always super-abundant. Instead, their population changed by a thousand-fold over time, a situation seen under two circumstances. First, a low genetically effective population size is characteristic for species that experience wide population fluctuations that only occasionally number into the billions during an “outbreak” phase (doi:10.1017/S0016672300034455). For example, most people are familiar with several outbreak species, particularly lemmings, Lemmus lemmus, and snowshoe hares, Lepus americanus, in the Arctic, and Australian plague locusts, Chortoicetes terminifera.
But an alternative explanation for a low Ne is seen for species that historically had small numbers and only recently experienced a population explosion — a situation occurring in humans today.
Add to to the above what we should remember is that last year super Typhoon Haiyan or Yolander as it was called by the people of the Philippines, the strongest storm ever recorded over land, made 4 million people homeless overnight.
Just imagine recurring super storms like that all over the face of the earth, how long could civilisation as we know it survive that?
But this is what is predicted to happen if the planet hits 3 degrees. And on present emissions levels we are expected to blow past 4 degrees, when the IPCC says we should not go past 2.
I have mentioned black swan events like famine and epidemic and infrastructure collapse, any of which if severe enough under the right conditions could under the conditions of a severely degraded climate see off humanity.
There is one other I forgot: If forgot to mention, insurrection, violence, chaos.
WAR
Let us take the traditional accepted microcosm of human society facing a terminal crisis.
Take your ticket and board the Titanic
I am a first class passenger, should I take my place in a lifeboat, or give it up to others?
(some did)
I am crew, should I stay at my post to give everyone else a better chance to escape?
(most did)
I am captain, should I commit ritual suicide to atone for my inaction, should I go down with the ship?
(He did)
I am the bosun, should I order the 3rd class passengers be locked below decks to give the first class passengers better chance of escape?
(He did)
I am a third class passenger should I violently overthrow the bosun and his armed officers, locking me and my family below decks?
(knowing that this will not create any more life boats or greatly increase the overall survival rate, though it might make the cull fairer. Most didn’t and died in far greater numbers because of it. Much like climate change which is hitting the poorest nations hardest)
What if the 3rd class passengers had refused to accept their lot, and violently revolted. As the violence erupted, the professional crewmen needed to lower the lifeboats would have been scattered, or become involved in the fighting to beat back the 3rd class passengers trying to storm the lifeboats. No lifeboats would be lowered. In the ensuing chaos could anyone survive at all?
On a global scale as delta nations become flooded and super storms and heatwaves make the tropic regions uninhabitable, this fighting for survival will not be done with clubs and rifles but with every modern weapon to hand, napalm, high explosives, delivered by high level bombers or drones possibly even delivering gas, nuclear and even biological weapons to beat back the doomed millions locked in the worst affected areas and trying to bust out. There is even the possibility that some of these worst affected nations will have these weapons too.
If you accept the reality of climate change then you must accept the possibility of human extinction, whether by war, famine, or disease.
To us of course this is all academic, by the time things get this bad those of us writing and reading here will have faced our own individual personal extinctions. The point is, we are the ones who could prevent it getting that bad, those who come after us won’t have that luxury.
Should we do something about climate change is a moral question. We need to put it into terms we can understand on a human level. What if instead of in the future and happening to millions it was happening in the next room to only a handful, and only we safe and comfortable in our room, were the only ones with the means to stop it. Would we? Or would we not get involved because it doesn’t affect us?
Let us be the first ones to get up out of our armchair and say enough, this stops here. Let us be the ones that give a lead to the world. We could do it easily. Remove the $155 million subsidy to Solid Energy and distribute to the workers to start new lives outside the coal industry. Remove the super cheap secret subsidised price that Comalco pays for the electricity and their other tax payer subsidies. Let that electricity flow into the National grid allowing us to close down every fossil fuel generator tomorrow. Switch the millions ear marked for Roads of National Significance (ie motorways), into public transport. Cancel all plans for deep sea oil drilling, ban fracking, stop Denniston and Mangatangi and all other proposed new coal mines. Become the first country in the world to declare war on climate change, challenge all other nations to join us.
The most interesting point in that article is this:
shows the attack was discovered on the evening of May 22, when a systems engineer working on the $12.7 million FitzRoy supercomputer at Greta Point spotted an “anomaly”.
Action was taken to combat the attack, and analysis carried out to determine its impact.
Niwa – the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research – later said the unauthorised attempt to gain access was unsuccessful.
The Mana Party is softening its stance on marijuana and will support its decriminalisation, in spite of leader Hone Harawira’s staunch opposition to the drug.
and on another topic
He was still to speak with other left-wing parties about potential electoral accommodations though he planned to do so and he called for those parties not to criticise each other going into the election as they tried to form a bloc large enough to change the government.
‘Unaffordable homes and outsourcing community housing for the poor to a community that can’t house the poor’
By Martyn Bradbury / July 1, 2014 /
“So Massey University’s Home Affordability Report latest survey shows wages have risen $35 per week on average in the past year while house prices have jumped $38,000.
How a $35 wage increase per week is supposed to offset a $38 000 jump in housing prices hasn’t been explained by the Government and the media still seem to be hunting for magical bottles of $100 000 wine to bother challenging Key on his do nothing but sprawl urban planning.
A market with no capital gains tax to reign in domestic speculators and no restrictions for foreign speculators to buy property has created a housing bubble that is great for baby boomers and crap news for every other NZer.
While this Government robs two entire generations of any possibility of home ownership, they are also busy destroying beneficiaries in state housing.
Sweeping the problem of housing for the poor into the hands of religious charities is an abdication of political responsibility, it is the Government’s obligation to house the poor, not the bloody Church!
It is a sad day when the Prime Minister of NZ can own a Parnell Palace and a Hawaiian mansion while a vast chunk of that PM’s citizens can’t afford the deposit on one house.”
Professor Shambaugh was the keynote speaker at a conference hosted by Victoria University of Wellington’s New Zealand Contemporary China Research Centre on Wednesday 2 July, which contemplated the radical policy reforms that were proposed by the Communist Party of China’s Central Committee at the 2013 Third Plenum. His talk is titled: “New policies – has China done enough to secure its future? China at the crossroads.”
Despite the ‘polls’ Bearded it has always been my opinion that ”its all on” and has been so since the Slippery lead National Government barely slithered in for a second term…
Lolz, yeah that was definitely ‘laugh out loud’ stuff from David Cunliffe, i commented on it in yesterday’s Open Mike,
Worth pointing out again tho to David or His advisers that to save confusion among the Government Benches, all of them looking pretty much like ”johns” from where i sit, that it might be far less confusing should the need arise to just refer to Him as Slippery the Prime Minister thus leaving no-one in doubt to exactly who is being addressed,
Some might see this as a denigration of the Parliaments standards, i would suggest tho that Slippery Himself has already achieved this standard, aided and abetted by the Speaker of the House, with the constant use of ”Tricky” as an epithet repeatedly applied by the PM to David Cunliffe on the floor of the Parliament,
My view is that David Cunliffe need to take the fight to the PM on any level, gutter included, that the Prime Minister wishes to drag the Parliament down to…
PS, watch the Speaker suddenly find that such personal epithets, should the press begin to repeatedly use that which David Cunliffe applied to Slippery, are out of order…
How can Cunliffe do ‘much of anything’ for those struggling while in opposition?*
How does Cunliffe get to be in government when people are so happy to spread right-wing propaganda that “regardless who is in power noone does ‘much of anything’ for those struggling?”
_*Actually the way he is spreading the idea that everyone should get a share in the country’s wealth is a highly advantageous idea to have spread around our country – particularly for those struggling – and this is being done even while in opposition.
Tinfoil, you will have to expand upon that quite a bit to make it a point worth debating, ie: there is likely/unlikely to be gains for those on ”struggle street” by having David Cunliffe as the next Prime Minister simply because such a position will require Him to negotiate with any number of coalition partners who may be able to force those ”gains” as part of either coalition or confidence and supply arrangements,???…
Sorry Bad just alluding to the fact, or should I say my opinion that there ain’t too much difference between Key and Cunliffe (Nat and Lab) except at the very thin margin.
If a government of the left is to make much of a difference in NZ it is going to have to be very heavily influenced by the Greens and Mana otherwise it’s just going to be more of the same even if Labour/Cunliffe get to form the government.
To a certain extent i would agree with you Tinfoil, but, to make such a blanket assertion i would suggest is doing your argument a disservice,
Agree with you vis a vis Green/InternetMana, to make some real gains for those stuck out on the margins/marginalized it would be pretty much a given that we need a Labour/Green/InternatMana Government which if NZFirst is also included, seriously weakens any role NZFirst may have as ‘kingmaker’..
plus there is the newly extended voting period from September 3 through to September 20,
and the union “Get Out and Vote” campaign is now active http://www.getoutandvote.org.nz
and the anticipated IMP media campaign
and IMP is at 2.5% in such short time compared to ACT, Colon and Hairdo
and the TV debates and general mayhem
and a party for virtually everyone that can be engaged
the right wing dickheads, sheepshaggers, pud pullers and brown nosers don’t seem to even listen to their own dear leader who recently warned the tory faithful about complacency.
We only need around 50,000 of them to turn up and vote for parties that aren’t National or National proxies to turn NZ around. Key and his cronies only scraped in with a one seat majority last time and that majority disappeared with John Banks. Key goes into this election as lame a duck as Muldoon was in ’84.
Yes TRP, this election is finely balanced as anyone that has been paying attention and makes an effort to be informed knows, and Crosby Textor and the Hollowmen pay some of the closest attention of all.
The polls are somewhat true in their own habitat but not totally correct or absolutely predictive.
Yep, TM, all sorts of political insiders are acknowledging that it’s in the balance. It’s a shame that the likes of nakiman, gossie, srylands and the rest aren’t capable of agreeing that National is ahead in the polls at the moment but this election is going to be much, much tighter than many people realise.
Ummm… who states we can’t acknowledge that. I have stated here that I’m surprised that National is leading by as much as they are given the last election result and the election result will be close when it really shouldn’t even be a contest. Labour should be a show in. The fact they are not speaks volumes.
Fair enough, but I’d disagree that National is leading. Key is leading, National are nowhere. That much was made clear at the conference on the weekend.
“Don’t forget the missing million who will all pop up on election day dressed in red.”
and green and purple and black and white but blue with those yellow streaks? probably not so much
So the Lou Vincent disaster continues. Listen to the interview with Tony Vietch.
Vincent is pretty explicit about his “hero” being involved to a very high degree. The threat he says, of the bat threatening over his head sounds compelling. He does not name his “hero” as the police are still investigating. But not hard to join the dots. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/video.cfm?c_id=1&gal_cid=1&gallery_id=143949
It still amazes me he was returned to a job in broadcasting. His victims life in tatters and business as usual for him – a further injustice to the victim on top of what she had already been through.
Can’t do it ianmac, he’s tainted meat, and even if I wanted to ignore him, the rot smell in pervasive.
On the cheat Vincent’s claims, if he went public and named the ‘hero’, would the ‘hero’ take up a libel action? And ultimately, who would the court believe?
True ianmac, you were discussing Lou Vincent, not Tony Veitch.
But it’s kind of hard to ignore that Veitch is there, in his job, as if nothing happened. How can people listen to him? What kind of a society thinks its ok for a violent abuser to retain his privileged position in broadcasting?
First time I’ve seen you take a pro-stance on rehabilitating violent offenders. From your comments I take it you’re in favour of in-community rehab for privileged white male violent offenders.
As opposed to a privileged brown male multiple offender like the Maori Kings son who got discharged without conviction today as it might hurt his “career” prospects?
And his fellow thieves all got discharged without conviction in Gisborne the other day too.
It pays to go thieving with the Maori Kings son……..
I am not commenting here on the Veitch situation as I do not know the details of his sentence as well as I know others.
But I have a couple of questions for you tinfoilhat, do you believe that just because a person has done time they are rehabilitated and deserve to be completely forgiven for their wrongdoing?
When a person refuses all rehab programmes, violence prevention programmes, literacy programmes, psychological therapy assistance and other offers of rehabilitation when inside, yet still get paroled, would you call that justice for the victim?
” Do you believe that just because a person has done time they are rehabilitated and deserve to be completely forgiven for their wrongdoing?”
No
“When a person refuses all rehab programmes, violence prevention programmes, literacy programmes, psychological therapy assistance and other offers of rehabilitation when inside, yet still get paroled, would you call that justice for the victim?”
A far more difficult question and certainly might depend on the particular circumstances of a specific case but if you are looking for a simple yes or no I would veer towards a No.
Exactly Lanth. And that is the point here. The victim has the rest of her life to deal with this while Veitch has his little stint in the wilderness, the it is back to BAU.
I believe in rehabilitation when the perpetrator shows remorse and changes his actions. Vietch doesn’t appear to have done either. IIRC, he actually got rather snarky about it at the time of the trial.
I was wondering how long it would take for someone to put the rehab word up. Condemning his actions and questioning the wisdom in reinstating Veitch in his former role does not automatically equate to “don’t believe in rehabilitation for criminals”.
There’s a big leap from a restorative justice type process where the criminal begins to understand and fully own the consequences of their actions and the community enabling and supporting them through changing their behaviours TO brushing the victims experience aside and allowing some one guilty of committing violent crime (who, apart from crocodile tears, seems to have shown little remorse) back into a public facing role. Can you put yourself in the victims shoes? Her life changed forever, her abuser’s life, business as usual.
I get quite sick of the double standards we appear to have in our country. On one hand you have a group like the sensible sentencing trust who constantly demonstrate appalling ignorance around the complexities of crime and have a simple mantra “lock em up and throw away the key”. A revenge/punishment type orientation is promoted over rehabilitation.
On the other hand, sporting personalities, and I’m including Veitch as a broadcaster here, seem to have excuses made for their behaviour by the media and their peers and the harm to the victim is minimised. Guildford and Savea come to mind as rugby players who, perversely, get sympathy after complaints are made to police about their behaviour. The situation is quickly forgotten, brushed under the carpet, so they can get back to the important business of being heroic rugby players.
To emphasize your point Rosie, http://www.nzherald.co.nz/rugby/news/article.cfm?c_id=80&objectid=11286426
I refuse to accept there is a single youth with a licence in this country who can claim to be unaware that if they drink they cannot drive. Especially when the youth concerned is a member of such a well structured organisation as the Blues.
What are the odds I wonder that a conviction will not be entered ?
Wow. Drink driving = minor misdemeanour. Not so much if he has killed someone. It was just “lucky” he didn’t. A good example freedom of how the sports professions close ranks and protect badly behaved players from criticism and fall out. Their status seems to exclude them receiving the same treatment as regular folks would.
PS: Hope you’re doing ok after last weeks ignorance attack from King Kong. I did leave a message of support for yourself and Nick S, (as a reply to Nick), but I was a bit late to see the conversation develop and hence my response was delayed.
Thank you Rosie. It was not a great week and I sincerely appreciated your words of support, as I appreciate it every time I see Standardistas support each other.
I should have replied there and then but didn’t really know what to say. I do not enjoy exposing people to those events and withheld the more disturbing details of the attack but KK’s ignorance certainly warranted the reply, abridged as it was. We all have a past and mine is no more special than anyone else’s despite the Tarantino like aspects, but every now and then a little truth can shed a lot of light. And without light we do kind of stay in the dark. 🙂
I kind of wondered if even someone like him, like KK, after reading of your experience, may have gone away and reconsidered his lack of understanding and the harm that expressing such ignorance can do. It wouldn’t be deep thoughts, more a “holy crap” sobering kind of reflection. He may have learnt something from what you said. We can only hope. I’m just sorry you had to go through a difficult time because of him
No need to have replied either _ I wasn’t expecting you to. I think sometimes comments can be left for others, after a long or tiring discussion that can just be left at that. Not every comment needs a reply and I get the feeling that most people do follow up and read responses, but don’t always require a further response in return.
Seems our weather observations here on TS a few weeks back were on the mark. Warmest June since records began in 1909 – with 9 of those warmest years being post 1970, and 5 of them post 2000
Yeah Rosie, even yesterdays ‘polar blast’ lacked the blast bit, a normal Wellington Winter usually delivers up a series of three day events but so far this year these are happily lacking,
i fear tho for my garden at the start of Spring when the crop gets to experience the great outdoors for the first time,
Normally i plant in the first week of November and if last years conditions are likely to repeat again this year i am thinking that i might better serve my babies by delaying that planting for a week…
Edit: Perhaps in global terms the retreat of the ice sheet and the growth in depth/volume of the East Antarctic ice pack are what is lessening the frequency/ferocity of the Southerly blasts we get to feel here…
Probably means that getting the seeds growing indoors first week of September for planting Labour Day won’t be too far off the mark as summer 2015 should probably be drought ridden.
“Normally i plant in the first week of November and if last years conditions are likely to repeat again this year i am thinking that i might better serve my babies by delaying that planting for a week…”
Might be a good idea bad. Last summer was definitely the windiest I remember in Wgtn, and as James Thrace points out below we have the El Nino pattern predicted for summer (I thought we were in it already). I saw on the telly that it will most likely be windier on the west coast and dryer and hotter on the east coast. So get set for some more summer winds. Everything we grew last summer failed but the plants that survived are now thriving in our warm still winter………..
And yeah, that “polar blast” was a pretender of a polar blast yesterday. A poor effort for Wellington.
Random thought, but one that has nagged me for a while (not my wife, btw).
Arguably, the two most successful business/performance entities on the global stage from NZ are Fonterra and the All Blacks.
I saw a pie chart somewhere around here the other day which showed that NZ (read Fonterra) produced, by volume of dairy products, 26.1% of global dairy trade. More than the whole of Europe and significantly more than the USA. I know there are valid eggs-in-one-basket concerns that this trade relies too heavily on one market and that focus has been drawn away from our developing of other export technologies but nonetheless, generating over a quarter of the world’s dairy trade is quite a statistic from a nation as small as ours.
The All Blacks are the undisputed pinnacle of all rugby on the planet both historically and, more importantly for the purposes of this discussion, currently. Overall they have a 76% winning percentage, and I would say higher than that since the game went professional in 1996. They have lost just the one game since the end of August 2011, three years ago. They have held the IRB number one ranking continuously since November 2009, nearly five years ago. It appears they are only getting stronger. All this again from a nation of just 4 million.
Now, I know not everyone is into rugby and I know some are concerned with dairy farmers’ attitude to the NZ environment but it’s occurred to me that the business models of these two NZ success stories are collective and dare I say it, communist. I say “communist” as a political/business lay person (it’s a heavily weighted description with a lot of baggage) and am happy to be corrected there.
But, it’s hard to escape the irony that in an increasingly capitalist world, Fonterra, a farmers’ collective, and the NZRU with it’s central contract system, are killing it on the world stage right now.
Interestingly skycity wont release its plans for the convention centre until after the election. Of interest is the traffic chaos IF The rail loop goes ahead on schedule. Could explain the govt attempts to stall the rail loop…
So, auckland, chchch, wellington, queenstown all building international convention centres…just what we need.
” Fairfax Media understands final design plans for the NZICC are expected to be publicly unveiled later this year, likely to be after the September 20 General Election, with applications for resource consents to follow.
The agreement between the Government and SkyCity calls for construction of the NZICC to be completed by September 30, 2017.
Disruption for Auckland commuters from the NZICC construction project could combine with more traffic chaos if the City Rail Link project starts early, as is being pushed for by the Auckland Council.
The CRL would require the entire city block opposite the Britomart transport centre to be demolished and rebuilt from scratch in order to allow the digging of tunnels.
Steven Wallace could have used one eh when Constable Abbot dispensed some lead poisoning in your neck of the woods Nakiman.
Checked out Batemans and some other New Zealand History sources and it appears the Taranaki has the highest count of WWI memorials and one of the worst track records on relations with Māori. Nothing to be proud of.
Constable Abbot is a good man and did what he had to do, I hope he got good support and councilling so it doesn’t affect him negatively for the rest of his life
Because no one was ever tested we’ll never know who was half cut when they arrived at the scene or if someone under the influence of alcohol decided to settle an old score. Will we?.
What we know can lead to conclusions. Such as: “police resources are worse than useless when inadequate”, and “stop arming agents of the state with anything more powerful than harsh language and pepper spray” and a whole-of-government-approach, as opposed to putting public servants into positions where they feel there is no alternative.
“Wallace rampaged like a man possessed. Leaving golf clubs at various scenes he smashed and beat windows and cars. 3 cars were damaged. A taxi with passengers, a private car with 6 youths in it, the third car was a police patrol car. It has been said that night Wallace was intent on killing either himself or someone else and that the Senior Constable was an unwitting pawn in his game.
Collecting his pistol from the police station, Senior Constable Keith Abbott arrived at the scene of destruction. Beaten cars and 140 smashed windows a testimony of the Suspects State of mind. Steven Wallace began to aggressively advance on Abbott armed with a golf club and a baseball bat. Negotiation with the man proved fruitless. Wallace was warned that the policeman was armed and a warning shot was fired. With still no sign of the danger of the attack lessening Abbott withdrew 50m but was circled by Wallace and was cut off. When he reached 20m away Wallace threw the golf club at the Constables head causing him to duck and continued advancing with the softball bat. Abbott shot four shots before the man fell at 5-6m from the constable.”
At the end of the day feral scum always blame the police for there fuckups.
The only good thing about this is no innocent people where hurt.
People more objective than Nakiman might like to read some of the cross examination records from Abbott’s murder trial.
I make no apology for choosing a piece framed by a writer critical of Abbott who had options available other than lethal force that he chose not to take. The IPCA and other arse covering documents on this case are too nausea inducing to present here.
I read your link, I was appalled that they called the police officer the killer.
There should never have been a court case and trying to wind people up by playing the race card is a disgrace, how does that work when they are both Maori.
Must keep an eye on their facebook page to see when the roadshow reaches Wellington, might be a good chance to have a talk with Hone about growing the presence of the Mana movement here in the capital…
Ever the optimist Phillip, i am calling 4%, should they poll higher than the 2.5% of the recent Morgan Poll tho i will adjust my calculation accordingly…
(admittedly tho, such a calculation does not include the likes of something like the ‘worm phenomena’ occurring, taking everyone by surprise)…
September 3rd to 20th for voting! How can anyone believe that dragging out the time like this is going to be better for this most important event for NZ. Do it at your leisure, at your convenience! Don’t put yourself out.
Over three-four days maybe with weekend in the middle. Special votes for special people not able to make it. But then finish and we have a count and something definitive, not with something that drags on and in which all sorts of compromising mischief can be carried out.
It demeans our big election and our decision-making into an easy peasy might get round to it thing. This is a disgraceful move and no ‘reasons’ can support it.
i see nothing disgraceful about ensuring that as many people as possible can get to vote considering that we all have different lives,
There could be any number of reasons for an individual not being able to cast their votes on a specific day and there could be any number of reasons why an individual might not know in a given time frame that they cannot cast those votes on a given day,
Has postal voting ever been compromised in this country, if not i see no reason why postal voting should not be included in the individuals ability to participate in the General election just as i see no reason, IF security of the vote can be assured, that voting via the internet should not be included as a means of casting our votes…
A lot of people still do not know that you can go on the unpublished roll if you are worried about someone tracking you down for whatever reason (use your imagination), or that an employer must give you reasonable paid time off to vote on the main advertised day.
The extended early voting is to try and engage more people to vote. The final printed roll date is a bit of a spanner in the works as I understand it, but there should still be a clear week at least for unions and others to organise special polling booths in areas of reasonable concentration of voters.
Some of the permutations are for the future maybe-like the ban on prisoners voting and online voting is a really leap, but even paper forms are not perfect given the hanging chads of Florida thing from 2000 that the Supreme court allowed Dubya in on. And I often wonder about some of the old tory cows that seem to get the sweet little earner every three years and misguide people on casting special votes if they are not on the printed roll. (Basically if you are not in the system, even if late, your special vote may be wasted).
The commission used to allow voters to stay in their home electorate. No-one bothered me for 12 years about being enrolled where my parents lived, despite not living there since I left school. I liked the connection with home through making a special vote, and not being on the roll in the same place I worked. But after 2011 I was told I would be removed from it if I didn’t confirm where I lived. Breaches do not seem to be prosecuted, and I wonder how many people have dropped off the roll in the past couple of years since this was tightened up.
the thing about a successful breach is that it wouldn’t have been detected.
Nuclear facilities are probably as well protected as anything, and stuxnet still got in to trigger its payload.
So you’re not looking for assurance but a guarantee. No system can be guaranteed. And the chances are that the actions leading up to a possible breach could be detected, as they were in this case, and the breach stopped.
Stuxnet was introduced to a targeted network by USB flash drive and not a breach through the internet. Of course it’s still a concern but adequate processes and security software should keep that possibility to a minimum as well.
A vector is a vector is a vector. USB or internet or a stolen drive with the voter database.
And yes, when it comes to the very essence of democracy – one person, one vote – I want a little more than an “assurance“. I want to know that the new system is as safe as, or an improvement on, the old one.
I’m sure each of those examples was preceeded by an “assurance” of security.
Well, you won’t find me in favour of either voting machines (because they’re too open to abuse from the manufacturers) or postal voting (because it’s just too easy for the vote to be lost or forgotten) and I’m sure that online voting can be made as secure or better than the present system of going into a polling station.
And, yes, a vector is a vector and the present system has it’s own vectors. Some vectors are more easily monitored than others.
and I’m sure that online voting can be made as secure or better than the present system of going into a polling station.
Fucking stupid idea mate as I have said so before and I’ll fight you every inch of the way on this.
It’s almost like you haven’t read any of Edward Snowden’s revelations on security compromises embedded in every level of networks and PCs (from the microcode used in Intel PC and server CPUs on up), and you haven’t watched a single presentation Jacob Appelbaum has made on how PCs, networks and the internet can be attacked and compromised.
some vectora also enable thousands of ballots to be added, changed, or discarded.
Whereas one’s ability to do that with paper ballots and booths to a similar scale requires massive resources and us usually painfully obvious.
And online voting is as vulnerableas electronic voting machings, only more so because the fraudster has complete control over their hardware, without oversight.
The Tor network is somewhat inefficient because a) every PC on the network has to become a server and b) most PCs on the network are connected via low speed asynchronous connections. The latter is the big problem.
But still, the big problem exists – the storage of essential data. We really do need to be able to determine that the person voting actually has the right to vote (we can’t have a few thousand people come in from out of country to vote in our elections). We do need to be able to ensure that, though they have the right to vote, that they’re not voting twice or voting in the wrong place. Access to that data is the problem but that data can be accessed through the corruption of the present systems. The Liu saga and how the PM knew weeks beforehand that it was coming out and how the letter was released with, essentially, no warning to Cunliffe shows that quite clearly.
The Tor Project doesn’t address any of that because it fails in to accept that you cannot be anonymous within a society. In fact, I’d say that anonymity allows and even encourages criminal activity.
revelations on security compromises embedded in every level of networks and PCs (from the microcode used in Intel PC and server CPUs on up),
Then we build the stuff here and make sure that the NSA (or our own GCSB) don’t get their sticky hands on it.
some vectora also enable thousands of ballots to be added, changed, or discarded.
What a load of bollocks. Didn’t you notice that such attempts on computers are easily found out?
Such an attempt as the one you linked to would be picked up even easier. It would, in fact, be automatic rather than relying upon anyone realising that an address was cropping up a bit too often.
And online voting is as vulnerable as electronic voting machings, only more so because the fraudster has complete control over their hardware, without oversight.
The fraudster does have control over their hardware – they don’t have any control over the server. Now, if the fraudster managed to get control of thousands of machines (security set up so that it would require a Man in the Middle attack) as they’re voting and change the vote to be what they want it to be then we’d have a problem – except that the person would actually be informed as to how they voted and that they have a right to change it if it was recorded incorrectly. Such a request would have an automatic investigation attached to it.
some vectora also enable thousands of ballots to be added, changed, or discarded.
What a load of bollocks. Didn’t you notice that such attempts on computers are easily found out?
more handwaving. Heartbleed.
Previously-assured and well-respected security had vulnerability, extent of compromises not known unless hacker did something obvious, and included weakening Tor nodes.
And hackers also like to change log files and rollback states to hidetheir activities, just FYI.
Such an attempt as the one you linked to would be picked up even easier. It would, in fact, be automatic rather than relying upon anyone realising that an address was cropping up a bit too often.
And online voting is as vulnerable as electronic voting machings, only more so because the fraudster has complete control over their hardware, without oversight.
The fraudster does have control over their hardware – they don’t have any control over the server. Now, if the fraudster managed to get control of thousands of machines (security set up so that it would require a Man in the Middle attack) as they’re voting and change the vote to be what they want it to be then we’d have a problem – except that the person would actually be informed as to how they voted and that they have a right to change it if it was recorded incorrectly. Such a request would have an automatic investigation attached to it.
lol because “I’m right and the computer is wrong” arguments are funny. And it also reduces “secret ballot” to “secret until telecom yahoo accounts get hacked again”.
Seriously, we’re talking about secure online voting when the government can’t even ensure that kiosks in winz offices don’t compromise sensitive personal information, or departments email thousands of details to members of the public.
When you say “security set up so that it would require a Man in the Middle attack” you’re looking at it from a viewpoint doomed to failure, and probably guided by google.
There is no such assurance that says “the only way to attack this system is MitM”. It’s one tactic. There are many, including paying someone to drop off a USB or compromise in some other way. Any e-voting system needs to demonstrate it’s as secure as or better than ballots and booths. And that will not happen until people plausibly exploit ballots and booths in as effective way as IT is frequenty compromised.
Yes online voting is a solution lacking a problem. Well strictly speaking, it’s not a solution at all, its a quagmire of total predictable fail from the very start. Big bucks for some big consulting/IT firm though.
Not sure why you used TOR as an example Draco. The anonymity network is a crucial anti-surveillance tool despite you bagging it for no good reason. Its also not an example of what Appelbaum has talked about via Snowden’s releases which has relevance to online voting. You don’t want or need an anonymity network with regards to online voting. You need to know who everyone is, when and how they voted in online voting.
This de Spiegel article reveals more useful info. To summarise:
the NSA has defeated the security architectures and firewalls on nearly all the network hardware made by the big players CISCO, Huawei, Juniper, as well as network hardware by big players like Dell.
This opens the network door wide open for other malicious programmes, exploits and special applications to be loaded up on to the target system.
This malware can survive through multiple reboots, operating system re-installs, hard drives replaced, etc. A compromised BIOS is often key to this.
Data to and from network devices, computers, servers and even smart phones can be diverted, re-directed or even altered before reaching their intended destination. (Nothing like your vote being changed between you casting it and it being counted, right).
Hardware like rigged monitor cables, rigged keyboards etc, can let the NSA see everything typed by users or network admins managing online voting infrastructure.
The NSA specialise in creating tailor made programmes which operate invisibly to virus detection and security scanning software.
Many of these software exploits are “remotely installable.” If your online voting hardware has to be linked to the internet to receive votes, it can be easily exploited and compromised from overseas.
The de Spiegel revelations are from 2008 and they believe the technology has advanced significantly since those days.
The Tor Project doesn’t address any of that because it fails in to accept that you cannot be anonymous within a society. In fact, I’d say that anonymity allows and even encourages criminal activity.
That’s a line straight from NSA or GCHQ PR. That is: that only terrorists, criminals and dangerous people with something to hide would want privacy and use security tools like encryption, TOR, etc.
Yes online voting is a solution lacking a problem.
The problem is the lack of democracy. Or perhaps you prefer living in an elected dictatorship that answers only to the rich?
Not sure why you used TOR as an example Draco.
I used Tor because it’s a way to get around network sniffing. In other words it’s negates the NSA’s grab bag tactics. They’d have to work directly with the server or the client. But it also brings it’s own problems.
That is: that only terrorists, criminals and dangerous people with something to hide would want privacy and use security tools like encryption, TOR, etc.
You said that, not me. I said it allowed and encouraged criminal activity and provided an example.
The de Spiegel revelations are from 2008 and they believe the technology has advanced significantly since those days.
So has the countering technology.
(Nothing like your vote being changed between you casting it and it being counted, right).
Except that you can see what your vote is and change it. Kinda defeats the purpose of changing the vote en-route.
If your online voting hardware has to be linked to the internet to receive votes, it can be easily exploited and compromised from overseas.
Except that you can see what your vote is and change it. Kinda defeats the purpose of changing the vote en-route.
What are your web app skills like Draco? Mine are non-existent. But even I know that you can programme someone’s local web browser to remember what they actually voted on the web voting form. When that user queries for confirmation of how their vote was registered by the electoral system, you can simply send the voter what they expect to see based on what is stored as a local record. Which doesn’t have to match what was recorded in the ballot box voting database at all.
Now of course that’s a clutzy way of providing a voter with a false record/confirmation. Someone who actually knew what they were doing could do it a million times better.
My point – you are advocating for a system which is nothing less than a cannery for worms, which is going to cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and which is going to undermine our democracy at every level.
The problem is the lack of democracy. Or perhaps you prefer living in an elected dictatorship that answers only to the rich?
It seems that according to you, it would be impossible to operate a true democracy in the 1960s, 1970s or 1980s i.e. before the age of the world wide web.
Has postal voting ever been compromised in this country,
almost.
If they’d done it smarter it might have worked, or at least it might not have been traceable to them.
Say put mailboxes up on vacant lots, or registered one or two “voters” each on a bunch of rental properties over the three year period, so it gets lost in the short-term rental churn. Then downloaded the forms somewhere public.
Basically, it might be traceable on IP address that 500 people all used the library free wifi to download their forms, but it would take a bit more effort to detect fraud.
Yes But, if we all are issued with a specific number as an enrolled voter then it should be easy to design a program that identifies if two votes sets of votes have been cast using the same voter identifying number, or, if votes have been cast using a false voter identifying number,
The Auckland Council election incident tho didn’t seem to have specifically compromised the postal voting system per se,
The General electoral system is open to such a compromise where if i can provide an address in say Hone’s electorate, without ever having lived there befor, i can conceivably vote in that electorate,(i would obviously have to know someone who lived at the address, or, rent a PO box, so as to receive information that i was enrolled)…
You just need to know the basic details of a non-voter.
And provide a plausible address and phone number (I think the auckland guy pinged the EC sonar because all the names were registered at one address). But if you own a block of flats you can say “previous tenant, I’ll forward it”.
The thing about giving everyone a number is that it’s great for indexing, but lousy for fraud detection.
Mac, Re: fraud detection, a personal voting number tho could only be used for fraud if the perpetrator of the fraud were to know that the rightful user of the number was not going to vote???,
A mass fraud would then require the perpetrator to know of 100’s or 1000’s who were not going to vote???…
Depends.
First step is the issuing of the number – is it as difficult as currently enrolling? If so, then it’s a pointless exercise.
Second step is how easy it is to go “oooo I’ve forgotten it, how do I reenroll online without it?”
Third step is how easy is it to find out.
And then lastly, the flipside is what we saw in the US: how many voters of the other side can we turn away if the hoops are too onerous to jump through? Or if we add a double vote to a legitimate voter, would both be declined?
And that’s before we get into “errors” or hacking of voting software/hardware.
The thing about voting in person is that if the same person turns up fifty times to vote, a scrutineer or polling official will probably notice. Not so much online or through the mail.
God Mac, that all sounds so fraught i am off to hide under my bed, the present system tho can be easily gamed if you have knowledge of a registered voter who will not vote and that voters details,
The multiple votes need only be cast in multiple booths to avoid the scrutiny of scrutineers,
Lolz, i had better stop this or sooner or later i will be forced to recommend that voter identification occur as a matter of having bar-codes tattooed on the foreheads of the individual…
As you pointed out, it’d be a massive effort to try and rig 1000 votes this way. With an online voting system, altering 100,000 votes to change an election result is a piece of cake and requires only keystrokes.
the real art would be in skewing the votes at a smaller number in different electorates, over several elections, so it wouldn’t even raise any stats flags.
Yes I suppose the contractors used would have to earn their pay 🙂
Also Draco makes a serious error saying that intrusions or interference in a computer system is easy to detect. It might be, it might not be.
But imagine what would happen if after an election day, forensic evidence of widespread computerised vote rigging was found which had likely altered the result of the election 6 months previously. Utter pandemonium and chaos. Basically why would you even go there.
(There might not even have been any vote rigging on election – the “evidence” could have been constructed and introduced into systems later on to make it look like it had simply to cause scandal and chaos).
When DRO for about 12 of our elections I worked on the principle that if you turned up, not on the roll I gave a Special vote instead. The bosses would sort out after the election if it was valid or not.
In NZ every vote is checked off the Electoral Roll after the Election. This throws up any duplicate or multiple votes from one individual. The name on the roll is visited and any crime is discovered. Foolproof when using paper polls.
Well Draco. Imagine the team of astroturfers and the trolls with down time so since they are being paid to work they must fill in time by being the many false followers of Mr Key.
it takes something like 20 miles for a supertanker to even respond to the wheel but I do believe I see a swing coming.
John Keys thought he was being smart calling an early election but the people have already seen what a fraud he is and he will be gone soon like an evil spirit that has been exorcised or a boil removed off the body politic.
Anyone notice a new column just up, by Jared Savage showing that Damien O’Connor “intervened” in the Liu application? Not sure what that shows as it is official and above board I think. Everyone knew Liu was granted residency against advice. And what has the 2005 Election got to do with it?
A former Labour Minister intervened three times in the immigration bid of Donghua Liu including waiving the English language requirement for the millionaire businessman.
Damien O’Connor, in his role as the associate Immigration Minister, wrote three letters to Liu’s advisor Warren Kyd – the former National Party MP – before deciding to grant residency against the advice of officials the day before the 2005 election. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11287104
Breaking News: We have just discovered something that is common knowledge and of no importance!
Everyone knows Damien O’Connor granted Liu residency against official advice. No one knows why, and the Herald has not found an answer. They haven’t even really found a question yet, but they keep on trying.
I’m not sure how they will convert this non-story into a call for David Cunliffe to resign, but if they put John Armstrong on the case I’m sure we’ll be enlightened in no time.
but now the other questions can be asked, here are some starters
Why was a former National MP lobbying so hard on behalf of Mr Liu ?
Is the former National MP, Warren Kyd, still the advisor for Mr Liu?
Is the former National MP, involved in any of Mr Liu’s businesses?
How did Mr Liu meet the former National MP, Warren Kyd?
Despite a tradition that sitting MPs are not challenged if they seek re-selection, Kyd was defeated by newcomer Judith Collins, with allegations being made that controversial party president Michelle Boag played a part in the decision.
Under pressure???, Slippery the Prime Minister yesterday physically removed a RadioNZ National reporter from in front of Him, first saying ”get out of my way” and then pushing the reporter from His path as the reporter attempted to ask questions surrounding the PM’s involvement in the removal from New Zealand of the Malaysian diplomat,
Bet we see nothing of this on our TV’s tonight,but, expect more of the same from the PM as the pressure goes on leading into the election…
Definitely BM, why don’t you dial up the Lair in Chief and suggest He do just that, it will be perfect having the PM being investigated for assault leading into the election…
I happen to know Felix in the flesh and I really like him as a human being and as a man who knows how to stand his ground intellectually like no other on this blog. I don’t know you but playing at being the tough guy on a public blog threatening violence is, as far as I am concerned, the path of the LOOSER.
So if I where you I’d pull my head in because when push comes to shove (Oh pun! 😆 ) Felix commands a lot of respect here and that means you just upset a lot of people.
Here is what comes a bit lower in the same comment:
24.2.2
5 June 2014 at 8:11 pm
Travellerev advocates violence against convicted criminals. I didn’t get to read Naki Moran’s response but I’ll wager he was just lashing out like a person with a severely limited understanding of personal responsibility 😈
Reply
travellerev 24.2.2.1
6 June 2014 at 8:53 am
” Actually I advocate state sanctioned violence against the worst offenders. It worked wonders for moral during the French revolution.”
Not the same as threatening to beat someones teeth out of his mouth just because you don’t like what he says. Dickhead.
Were you there Ennui, at the court hearing that is, if you were a young man attending University who made a number of stupid errors of judgment and wound up befor the court it is just as likely that you would have been granted the same leniency as occurred here,
In fact, statistics would suggest that had this particular youth been Pakeha instead of Maori he would not have appeared befor the court at all, instead being offered diversion…
Yes, the court and justice system are racially and class biased big time, thats a fact. Here I am giving them shit for the reasons the Prime news reported for the non conviction…royalty and race. Read below.
As you commented the other day Phil ” .and we were smoking poisonously strong weed..and i was ripped off my tits..as was my practice. seems your brains fried from the practice.
It seems like the judge is giving this young man a chance to sort his shit out and it appears that he has strong support to deal with all of the issues a 19 year old has – with a baby coming I really hope he gets the alcohol sorted and doesn’t become another nz statistic of shame – in jail or the grave.
Mars, the judge got it 100% right with the young men, that is exactly how it should be dealt with, including the heir to the Maori “throne’. If we are to believe the news media and Tuku on the news that’s not the case with this lad. The excuse was that “if he were convicted he would not be able to ascend the throne” and that “a Maori King has to be purer than pure”…….
Now maybe I am very Bored but I hate with a passion hereditary title and any claim to it. And the concept that a Maori (or any other) kings purity was something special. The excuse is just lame bollocks. And perhaps I am more than a little jaded with that part of the establishment which fawns and slips into supplication to things Maori in a most PC manner when it suits their ends. I see that as just privileged gits teaming up, just look at the Maori Party and National wiping one another’s arses. You wont see any of them them doing anything for the under-privileged and needy be they white, brown, Martian or what ever. And that is what pissed me off most !
Fair enough. I only read the comments but they seemed to be designed for a future audience. I went to a seminar the other night about protecting children from abuse – physical, emotional and sexual and it really hit home that night how this digital culture we have really means that nothing is lost and everything will come back and haunt them once it is up on the net. That was where my head was at. I agree with you about helping the under-privileged and needy whatever ethnicity or apparent skin colour.
I had a search for discharge without conviction. The main people awarded such seem to be sportsmen for drink driving offences – because it might ruin their sporting careers by being barred from going to certain countries.
Another shocker for Fisiani, stuck like a cracked record parroting that which is of little consequence considering the pollster’s ability to have National 4–5% above the actual vote on the day…
Labour voters are too busy making ends meet to answer the phone. National voters sit by the phone waiting for pollsters to ring. It’s the highlight of their day.
Seriously though. We know there will be a swing to Labour and away from National on the day. That coupled with a “yes we can” type campaign should see a welcome change of government.
Fabulous optimism there sir. National are quaking and know they will lose. The Cunliffe will easily win all the televised debates. The GOTV will easily get out 1,000,000 extra votes. All the signs are showing that JK has just 79 days left. What on earth are you drinking?
Meanwhile, the political scene in the United States is primed for an explosion. One of my regular readers—tip of the archdruid’s hat to Andy Brown—is a research anthropologist who recently spent ten weeks traveling around the United States asking people about their opinions and feelings concerning government. What he found was that, straight across geographical, political, and economic dividing lines, everyone he interviewed described the US government as the corrupt sock puppet of wealthy interests. He noted that he couldn’t recall ever encountering so broad a consensus on any political subject, much less one as explosive as this.
I suppose we are still running a few years behind the states – perhaps when they hit the wall we will bang into them because we are following so closely.
The States is beset by massive internal culture wars which the elite have used as a distraction to take attention away from the class war that they have been waging on the 95%.
But it’s not working any more. And people are pissed off. And many of them have guns. And combat experience in Iraq or Afghanistan.
Thing in NZ – we have this massive advantage – our culture wars are piddly and although there are a million guns in this country, we hardly ever kill people with them.
if you saw Keys on the telly tonight you would know that he knows the game is up.
His government hasn’t really been a government at all.
Just a rabble sorting through the books to see what they could get their hands on.
begone foul spirits.
For those who facebook – check out the group ‘barry jenkin saved my life’ – some great bands, tunes and memories, like this one – it seems very apt for the gnats and keyworld
“This is the happy house, we’re happy here in the happy house
Oh, it’s such fun, fun, fun
We’ve come to play in the happy house
And waste a day in the happy house, it never rains, never rains
We’ve come to scream in the happy house
We’re in a dream in the happy house
We’re all quite sane, sane, sane
This is the happy house-we’re happy here
There’s room for you if you say “I do”
But don’t say no or you’ll have to go
We’ve done no wrong with our blinkers on
It’s safe and calm if you sing along, sing along, sing along
This is the happy house, we’re happy here in the happy house
To forget ourselves and pretend all’s well
There is no hell
I’m looking through your window
I’m looking through your window”
Does National have any chance of winning the election in September? It’s looking very unlikely, especially after National’s change of leadership hasn’t exactly produced Mullermania in the first two weeks. Quite the opposite, in fact, as I summarised in Tuesday’s Political Roundup column: Todd Muller’s torrid start as National leader. ...
Another study comparing effect in children from nonendemic areas (Dagang) and endemic fluorosis area (Jinghai) about 80km apart in the Tianjin area of China. Hardly sampling the same population. Anti-fluoride campaigners still use studies from ...
George Thomson, Nick Wilson, Richard EdwardsThis blog discusses the passing of the Smoke-free Environments (Prohibiting Smoking in Motor Vehicles Carrying Children) Amendment Act last week. We briefly review some lessons from this legislation’s long journey and explore future smokefree possibilities in Aotearoa / New Zealand. A law ...
Last month I noted that the public policy debate was all about how we deal with covid-19. That’s changing now, and will change more over the next couple of months as the buffering impact of the wage subsidy disappears and we see starkly the economic hole out of which we ...
The mission of the New Zealand Police is to make this country the safest nation in the world. To achieve that aim, there is one important step the police need to take at the end of this month. When the evaluation of the Armed Response Teams’ trial is completed, the ...
The right of employees to strike is an internationally recognised employment right that has been a feature of New Zealand’s industrial relations system for over a century, albeit with different constraints and limitations at different times. Although more restricted, this right even continued under the anti-union Employment Contracts Act (1993-2000). ...
Bernard Hickey is one of New Zealand’s leading financial journalists. His latest article, published by Newsroom, lays bare the cruel treatment of hundreds of thousands of workers stranded since the lockdown. Our Prime Minister is lauded overseas for her compassion, but her Cabinet is refusing to properly support tens of ...
For a good part of my adult life I have studied civil-military relations. I have studied authoritarian and democratic variants, and I have studied them across countries and regions. I have also worked in and with several US security agencies and have lectured on the theme at a number of ...
Climate Explained is a collaboration between The Conversation, Stuff and the New Zealand Science Media Centre to answer your questions about climate change.If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, please send it to climate.change@stuff.co.nzIf we stopped oil, gas and coal extraction immediately – ...
by The Spark “The system is broken”—the words of a young black man in Minneapolis watching flames destroy a police precinct demonstrators had torched. Broken? Yes, it is! What else could you say about a system whose police for nine minutes casually knelt on a black man’s neck, watching until ...
The latest opinion poll is out, and it’s more bad news for the National Party, with Roy Morgan putting them on only 26.5% support, against Labour’s 56.5%. You can see the details here: Roy Morgan May opinion poll. Roy Morgan is regarded as less accurate than other polling companies, and the ...
When miners pillage conservation land, they are typically required to "rehabilitate" it afterwards. Its not much compared to the damage they do, but its something. But apparently even that is now too much to expect. NZG Limited, a company owned by Oravida directors James Blackwell, Julia Jiyan Xu, Stone Shi, ...
Like everyone else, I've spent too much of the weekend watching the protests in America, and the increasingly brutal response to them. The overwhelming impression is of a nationwide police riot, as people speaking out against a murder and demanding change are beaten, gassed and shot by racist, militarised thugs ...
In mid-April, as New Zealand entered its fourth week of alert level 4, the Prime Minister warned us not to make comparisons with other countries over our Covid-19 pandemic response. This extraordinary advice came after Simon Bridges had urged the government to adopt a less-stringent lockdown similar to those in ...
Wales has lowered the voting age to 16: 16 and 17 year olds can now officially vote in Wales for Senedd elections. Votes at 16 & 17 come into force on Monday, as part of the Senedd and Elections (Wales) Act 2020. Next year’s Senedd elections will ...
The government announced more changes to the ETS today, including to the emissions budget for 2021 - 2025. The overall budget for that period will stay at 354 million tons of CO2-equivalent. But the ETS component of that - stockpile reduction, free allocation, and credits to be auctioned - budget ...
The new National Party leader, Todd Muller, had been at pains to portray himself as a solid, serious, safe pair of hands, in contrast to the increasingly Trumpian leanings of Simon Bridges, who Muller deposed in a leadership coup last Friday. But after an uneventful, if uninspiring, first press conference, ...
Minneapolis Police StationIf you’ve been keeping an eye on recent events in the United States, you’ll likely understand why there’s so much anger on the streets at the moment. Not only did police officers murder another black man; it is patently obvious that authorities initially attempted to cover up George ...
Becoming the leader of a political party is a bit like having a baby. Not so much the screaming and sleepless nights, as the fact that you’ve waited and hope and planned for something and it’s finally here. And when that wonderful gift finally arrives, you want to be ready, ...
The US appears to be headed towards what Antonio Gramsci and other Italian political theorists call an “organic crisis of the State.” It involves the simultaneous and compounded fractures of economy, society and politics, which together constitute a tipping point in a nation’s history. Social contradictions are exacerbated, class and ...
Like the rest of the world, I have been aghast at what I have seen of, and read and heard about, what is happening currently in the United States. It seems incredible that a once great country should be suffering the worst effects and the highest number of deaths worldwide ...
Story of the Week... Toon of the Week... Coming Soon on SkS... Climate Feedback Claim Review... SkS Week in Review... Poster of the Week... Story of the Week...
Climate concerns as Siberia experiences record-breaking heatHeat wave sparks concerns about devastating wildfire season and melting permafrost.Satellite ...
A chronological listing of news articles linked to on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week: Sun, May 24 through Sat, May 30, 2020Editor's ChoiceAntarctic Ocean Reveals New Signs of Rapid Melt of Ancient Ice, Clues About Future Sea Level RiseA study of seafloor ripples ...
It’s almost painful to watch. Let’s be honest, maybe a pleasure too, in some quarters, but painful nonetheless. Because the fact is, for a democracy to function properly, any sitting Government does need honest and proper Opposition so that it doesn’t get ahead of itself. That’s what we should ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Karin Kirk A banner on the International Energy Agency website spells it out in bold font: “The global oil industry is experiencing a shock like no other in its history.” As the response to the coronavirus pandemic upends the lives of billions of ...
The ownership of newspapers and televison channels is in turmoil, and they want to redisorganise public broadcasting. *Three years ago, I expressed concern in a column about the future of the (traditional) media. Nothing has happened since to reduce the concern. It was based on an earlier column which ...
Australia's High Court has ruled that the "palace letters" between the queen and then-Governor-General John Kerr are public records rather than private papers: Historian Jenny Hocking has won her High Court bid to access the letters exchanged between then governor-general Sir John Kerr and the Queen around the time of ...
SATURDAY MAY 30Six60: Live at Western Springs 2020 (TVNZ 1, 8.45pm). Remember live concerts? The day will come again, friends, when we will be able to stand shoulder-to-shoulder in an uncomfortable sweaty venue with people we don’t know. It will happen. Sometimes the sound of concerts drifts over to the ...
New Zealand and its prime minister Jacinda Ardern have received international attention and praise, rightly so, for decisive leadership, clear communication and scientific management of the coronavirus pandemic. Observers point out that the nation has been through multiple crises under Ardern’s leadership – such as the Christchurch terrorist attack and ...
…a lot of things unrelated to the pandemic were happening. Relatively little attention was given to some major events on the global stage, so I thought I would do a quick recap of some of the high (or low) -lights, starting with something familiar. The common theme throughout is human ...
Labour's talk of gutting the RMA to push through "shovel ready" projects to boost employment after the pandemic predictably has every half-arsed pipe-dream crawling out of the woodwork demanding special treatment. Today, it's the West Coast inbreds, who are demanding a host of laws be rescinded so they can dig ...
"I can't breathe, Mama. I'm dying." - Last words of George Floyd.LOOK HARD at this image. Think about what it depicts. Ask yourself how one human-being could behave so brutally when so many eye-witnesses – and very soon millions of people online around the world – were there to watch ...
Since the government announced its pandemic wage subsidy, there have been regular stories about companies taking it and then sacking or refusing to pay their workers - essentially committing fraud. But how often does this happen? The Minister just doesn't want to know: Government ministers are not receiving up to ...
"You call that a conservative?Nah, this is a conservative!" New Zealanders are in the market for a quiet and reassuring small-c conservative political centrist. The critical question, however, is which politician is currently playing that role? Who has mastered the art of relaxed, informal and intimate political communication? Who ...
I’VE OFTEN WONDERED if South African immigrants passing through towns like Kerikeri and Kaikohe ever wonder how we do it. In their homeland, through the bitter years of Apartheid, keeping the races segregated required pass laws, Alsatian dogs, tear gas, rubber bullets and, all-too-often, live rounds. Not here. Not in ...
Below is the list of gender-critical material which appeared on Redline from July 31, 2019 to September 30, 2019. Sports categories must be by sex, not gender identity Queer theory glossary Woke misogyny and homophobia: a gay critique of trans ideology Another unfortunate experiment? New Zealand’s transgender health policy and ...
Smart Energy Europe: A Plan to provide 100% of ALL ENERGY using Renewable Energy to EuropeIntroductionAll Energy renewable energy systems are often commented on here at Skeptical Science. Many comments suggest that it will be difficult, expensive or impossible to use renewable energy to power the world. To ...
The government released its Action for Healthy Waterways package today, ostensibly with the goal of cleaning up our rivers and making them swimmable within a generation. Doing that, of course, requires confronting the cow in the room: the dairy industry which causes most of the pollution. But while they've imposed ...
Climate Explained is a collaboration between The Conversation, Stuff and the New Zealand Science Media Centre to answer your questions about climate change.If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, please send it to climate.change@stuff.co.nzI would like to know if New Zealand’s carbon emissions ...
Simon Lamb, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington and Timothy Stern, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of WellingtonBack in the 1970s, scientists came up with a revolutionary idea about how Earth’s deep interior works. They proposed it is slowly churning like a lava lamp, with buoyant ...
Remember KiwiBuild? Previously the government's flagship policy, it was supposed to build thousands of new homes every year for kiwi families. But instead of flooding the market, we've got a pathetic dribble: The Government's former flagship housing policy is so far behind schedule it will take more than 400 years ...
Don Franks Now Covid-19 restrictions allow gatherings of a hundred, an urgent hui needs calling. A special conference of the Council of Trade Unions. Today, workers face the greatest attack on employment, pay and conditions since the depression, we need a strong united union voice. As it stands now, organised ...
George Henderson New Zealand schools have introduced a climate change resource that suggests children “eat less meat and dairy”, even though teachers will not know how much meat or dairy any child in their care has eaten. Opinion pieces in the papers have called for the reduction of meat and ...
Questioning the number of district health boards in New Zealand has got to the extent that “too many DHBs” has become a perceived truth requiring no further elaboration. It is rarely challenged by policy advisers, academics, and journalists. But when one drills down further it becomes clear that the number ...
The emergence of a new National party leader, seemingly out of nowhere, has – not surprisingly – raised a number of questions as to who Todd Mulller actually is and what makes him tick. He has been an MP for some time but seems to have hidden his light under ...
Costa Rica has become the first country in Central America to recognise same-sex marriage: The first same-sex weddings have taken place in Costa Rica, the first Central American country to equalise its marriage legislation. A lesbian couple became the first to tie the knot in a ceremony that took ...
There's a new twist in the Winston Peters secret donation story. It appears that a significant chunk of NZ First's secret laundered donations goes straight into the pockets of the people administering the scheme: Tens of thousands in donor's funds given to the New Zealand First Foundation were spent paying ...
Is Todd Muller the Ned Flanders of the National Party? This is how he’s been characterised by political commentator Gordon Campbell, who suggests the change in leadership is, in Simpsons terms, akin to swapping the scary and cruel Monty Burns for Homer Simpson’s compassionate but conservative neighbour. There’s almost a ...
We all know that many so-called journalists and political commentators in New Zealand work directly or indirectly for political parties or for certain political factions. This was obviously the case when pundit for hire Matthew Hooton launched a campaign against then National Party leader, Simon Bridges, over their numerous polling ...
Let's Roll! The easy victory over a Bridges-led National Party which the Left had every cause to anticipate just a few days ago is no longer in the offing. Our enemy’s position has changed. His numbers are swelling. A rapid thrust to the left, followed by an audacious outflanking manoeuvre ...
New National Party leader Todd Muller has been interviewed about his policies, and has promised to restart offshore fossil fuel exploration if elected: The Bay of Plenty MP rolled former leader Simon Bridges last week, but says the party has not changed its stance on previous promises. "That is ...
Anyone who keeps an eye on evidence around cannabis and public health will be familiar with the Christchurch Health and Development Study. It's one of two local longitudinal studies frequently cited with respect to cannabis and youth development. But in a new article in the New Zealand Medical Journal, it is ...
In the age of covid we are Jacinda’s team of five million, except for some. There has rarely been a more blatant case of discrimination against beneficiaries than Grant Robertson’s announcement yesterday that people who have lost their jobs because of the coronavirus will receive weekly payments of $490 per week for 12 weeks and $250 per week for part time ...
It was 75 years ago this month that Germany surrendered and the Allies celebrated VE (Victory in Europe) Day. Millions of people around the world had been killed and many more injured or captured. It was an end to war not just for Europeans, but their allies too, in countries across Africa. But its impact is ...
Well, we are out of lockdown, essentially. I did end up getting the wage subsidy while we were on levels 3 and 4 but I would have been fine if we didn’t. The first day of level 2, the Thursday, the office opened again for the people who weren’t able ...
Watching Todd Muller make his first speech as the newly minted Leader of the Opposition after Simon Bridges’ defenestration on Friday brought to mind a headmaster addressing a school assembly. He showed no particular desire to ingratiate himself with his audience although the occasional flash of self-deprecating humour indicated a ...
The government has announced another income support scheme for people affected by the economic aftershocks of the pandemic: a $490 a week tax-free payment for the newly unemployed, which you can get even if you have a working partner. Which is great, because its supporting people who need help, but ...
The Greens have released their party list, and it contains a few surprises. The one that's getting all the news is that the membership are clearly fans of Chlöe Swarbrick, and she has worked hard to earn that. But they've also favoured incumbent protection over new blood, and in the ...
age credit:Science and Politics – Skeptically.org It seems impossible to keep politics out of science. It’s a pity because politics can end up forcing science to produce the results desired by ...
Prof Nick Wilson, Dr Matthew Parry, Dr Ayesha Verrall, Prof Michael Baker, Prof Martin Eichner (author details*)This blog details a recent modelling study we conducted. In it we estimated that it would take between 27 and 33 days of no new detected cases of COVID-19 for there to be ...
The 2015 Schol Bio paper included a question about a group of birds known as honeycreepers, specifically, the 56 species endemic to the Hawaiian islands. (Or, were endemic: 18, or perhaps 19, are still living; the others are extinct.) Students who’ve already had a look at this paper as part of ...
Story of the Week... Toon of the Week... Climate Feedback Article Review... Coming Soon on SkS... Climate Feedback Claim Review... SkS Week in Review... Poster of the Week... Story of the Week... What a Week’s Disasters Tell Us About Climate and the PandemicExtreme weather presents an even bigger threat ...
Todd Muller has made a good start to his leadership, though it would obviously be pretty stupid to extrapolate too much from the first couple of days. Nevertheless, as a matter of speculation, it is interesting to think what success on his part might say about the preferences of the ...
A guest post by Hamish Price.“A leader is a dealer in hope.”— Napoléon BonaparteCatholics have a name for potential successors to a dead pope. Papabile. The small coterie of distinguished cardinals who have what it takes to step up. Todd Muller has always been one.I first met Muller at a National ...
Defence Minister Ron Mark has announced that new Lockheed Martin Super Hercules aircraft would replace the outdated and costly 1960s Hercules fleet. The $1.521b project will include a flight simulator for staff training and other supporting infrastructure. "This fleet will ensure the Defence Force can continue to support New Zealand's ...
The Green Party is urging the New Zealand Police to rule out the use of Armed Response Teams, following their recent trial in communities around Aotearoa. ...
New Zealand First leader Winston Peters has described Labour's original COVID-19 commercial rent dispute proposal as "poorly targeted". Justice Minister Andrew Little hasannounced a temporary law changeto force commercial landlords and renters to consider COVID-19 in disputes over rent issues, almost two months after the Government first floated the idea. But ...
Rt Hon Winston Peters, Leader of New Zealand First New Zealand First acknowledges that some small businesses have been struggling to meet fixed costs due to the loss of revenue by COVID-19. We also know some businesses are at greater risk of insolvency when they cannot come to a reasonable ...
Rt Hon Winston Peters, Leader of New Zealand First New Zealand First is disappointed that the removal of the spousal deductions has had to be delayed by the Ministry fo Social Development, due to COVID19 workload pressures. “New Zealand First has always stood for fairness when it comes to superannuation ...
Rt Hon Winston Peters, Leader of New Zealand First On the steps of Parliament today the Leader of New Zealand First, Rt Hon Winston Peters received a petition from registered nurse Anna Maria Coervers, requesting an amendment to the Protection for First Responders Bill which will ensure the legislation also include registered ...
It's been a busy seven days as we start to rebuild New Zealand together. From delivering extra support for small businesses, to investing in our artists and arts organisations, to cutting red tape on home DIY projects, we're rolling out our plan to get the economy and New Zealand moving ...
Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters says alert level 2 restrictions have to be discussed during today's Cabinet meeting. Thousands gathered across the country, including at Parliament, yesterday forBlack Lives Matter marcheswhere social distancing and mass gathering rules were flouted. Mr Peters said the breaching of Alert Level 2 rules at ...
Rt Hon Winston Peters, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of State Owned Enterprises KiwiRail’s Northland rail upgrade steps up another gear today and will help Northland recover from the impacts of COVID-19, State Owned Enterprises Minister Winston Peters says. The Government is investing $204.5 million through the Provincial Growth Fund to ...
“Today and every day we stand in solidarity with George Floyd’s family, friends and community who feel pain and fear about his untimely death at the hands of Minneapolis police”, said Green Party Co-leader and Māori Development spokesperson Marama Davidson. ...
Fletcher Tabuteau, Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Regional Economic Development Hon Eugenie Sage, Minister of Conservation The West Coast forests of Mount Te Kinga at Kotuku Whakaoho/Lake Brunner are the latest predator free project to receive Government funding, announced Minister of Conservation Eugenie Sage and Under Secretary for Regional Economic Development Fletcher ...
The Green Party says major freshwater reforms announced today provide the strongest ever protections of our waterways, to help ensure the next generation can swim in the rivers of Aotearoa. ...
The Green Party has begun the process for a Select Committee inquiry into student accommodation, which has been exposed during COVID-19 as an under-regulated sector that straddles students with unfair debt. ...
Rt Hon Winston Peters, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Foreign Affairs Hon Megan Woods, Minister of Research, Science and Innovation Hon Dr David Clark, Minister of Health Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters, Research, Science and Innovation Minister Megan Woods, and Health Minister David Clark today announced a COVID-19 vaccine strategy, ...
Budget 2020 is about rebuilding together, supporting jobs, getting business moving and the books back into the black. It’s an integral part of our COVID-19 economic response, and our plan to grow our economy and get New Zealand moving again.Here’s a quick look at the five top things you ...
The Green Party is pleased to reveal its candidate list for the upcoming election. With a mix of familiar faces and fresh new talent, this exceptional group of candidates are ready to lead the Greens back into Government. ...
The Coalition Government has approved $206 million in essential upgrades at Ōhakea Air Base. Defence Minister Ron Mark said the money would be spent on improving old infrastructure. He said safety issues would be addressed, as well as upgrades to taxiways, accommodation and fresh, storm and waste water systems. "This ...
Rt Hon Winston Peters, Leader of New Zealand First “I am not persisting with this case just for myself, but for all people who have had their privacy breached. Privacy of information is a cornerstone of our country’s democracy. Without it our society truly faces a bleak future. We now ...
Forestry Minister Shane Jones has introduced a Bill to Parliament that he says will "force more transparency, integrity and respect" for the domestic wood-processing sector through the registration of log traders and practice standards. The Forests (Regulation of Log Traders and Forestry Advisers) Amendment Bill had its first reading in ...
Green MP Golriz Ghahraman is joining over 300 lawmakers from around the world in calling on the big banks and the IMF to forgive the debt of developing countries, in the wake of the COVID crisis. ...
Forestry Minister Shane Jones says concerns that carbon foresters are planting pine trees that will never be harvested are the result of "misinformation". "The billion tree strategy is an excellent idea, unfortunately from time to time it's tainted by misinformation spread by the National Party or their grandees, hiding in scattered ...
Extra 40,000 businesses to be eligible for wage subsidy extension Small business cashflow support application period extended The Government is today announcing further support for businesses that continue to be affected by the global COVID-19 pandemic, as the broader economy becomes one of the most open in the world following ...
The Coalition Government has confirmed five Lockheed Martin C-130J-30 Super Hercules transport aircraft will be purchased to replace the existing fleet, Defence Minister Ron Mark announced today. “Last year, Cabinet selected these aircraft as the preferred option to replace the current Hercules fleet. Procurement of the Super Hercules has been ...
The Minister of Conservation Eugenie Sage is celebrating World Environment Day with an announcement of a major step towards Wairarapa Moana being recognised as an internationally significant wetland. “Wairarapa Moana is an ecosystem of 10,000 hectares of wetland and open water that provides a home for indigenous fish, birds and ...
A new-look Police graduation ceremony to take account of COVID19 health rules has marked the completion of training for 57 new constables. Police Minister Stuart Nash attended this afternoon's ceremony, where officers of Recruit Wing 337 were formally sworn in at the Royal New Zealand Police College without the normal support of ...
Mobile traders and truck shops must adhere to responsible lending requirements Interest rate cap on high-cost loans Lenders prohibited from offering further credit to an applicant who has taken two high-cost loans in the past 90 days The Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs, Kris Faafoi, has signalled an end ...
94% of firms say wage subsidy had positive impact on cashflow 62% of firms say support helped to manage non-wage costs like rent A survey of business that have received the Government’s wage subsidy show it has played a significant role in saving jobs, and freed up cash flow to ...
New legislation introduced to Parliament today will support growth and assist businesses on the road to economic recovery, said Revenue Minister Stuart Nash. “The Taxation (Annual Rates for 2020-21, Feasibility Expenditure, and Remedial Matters) Bill proposes that businesses can get tax deductions for ‘feasibility expenditure’ on new investments,” said Mr ...
Sport and Recreation Minister Grant Robertson has welcomed the first release of funds from the $265 million Sport Recovery Package announced as part of Budget 2020. Sport NZ has announced that $4.6 million in funding will go to the Wellington Phoenix, NZ Warriors, Super Rugby teams and the ANZ Premiership ...
An iconic New Zealand tourism attraction and the country’s 31 Regional Tourism Organisations are the first recipients of support from the $400 million Tourism Sector Recovery Plan, to help position the sector for recovery from COVID-19, Tourism Minister Kelvin Davis announced today. The plan includes a Strategic Tourism Assets Protection ...
The Government will legislate to ensure businesses that suffered as a result of the COVID-19 response will get help to resolve disputes over commercial rent issues, Justice Minister Andrew Little announced today. A temporary amendment to the Property Law Act will insert a clause in commercial leases requiring a fair ...
The Minister for Small Business says new data from Xero highlights the urgency of prompt payment practices to small and medium enterprises as we move into economic recovery. Last month Government ministers wrote to significant private enterprises and the banking industry to request they join efforts by government agencies to ...
Young people in Waikato will be the first to have free access to period products in schools in another step to support children and young people in poverty,” Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said. During term 3, the Ministry of Education will begin providing free period products to schools following the ...
The Minister of Police Stuart Nash has issued the following statement in response to charges filed against three Police officers this morning in the New Plymouth District Court. “Any incident involving a loss of life in Police custody is taken very seriously. The charges today reflect the gravity of the ...
$196 million for Crown Research Institutes $150 million for R&D loan scheme $33 million for Māori research and development opportunities $12 million for the Nationally Significant Collections and Databases $10 million to help maintain in-house capability at Callaghan Innovation New Zealand’s entrepreneurs, innovators and crown researchers will benefit from a ...
Further temporary changes to NCEA and University Entrance (UE) will support senior secondary school students whose teaching and learning have been disrupted by COVID-19. “The wellbeing of students and teachers is a priority. As we are all aware, COVID-19 has created massive disruption to the school system, and the Government ...
Minister for Racing Winston Peters today announced that the terms for the directors of the Racing Industry Transition Agency (RITA) have been extended to 30 June 2021. Due to the COVID-19 crisis the transition period has been extended to ensure that the Racing Industry Bill can complete its progress through ...
The deadline for landlords to include detailed information in their tenancy agreements about how their property meets the Healthy Homes Standards, so tenants can see the home they are renting is compliant, has been extended from 1 July 2020 to 1 December 2020. The Healthy Homes Standards became law on 1 July 2019. The Standards are ...
Justice Minister Andrew Little today announced details of further appointments to the Criminal Cases Review Commission. “I am pleased to announce Paula Rose QSO OStJ as Deputy Chief Commissioner for a term of five years commencing on 15 June 2020,” said Andrew Little. “I am also pleased to announce the ...
The Targeted Training and Apprenticeships Fund (TTAF) will pay costs of learners of all ages to undertake vocational education and training The fund will target support for areas of study and training that will give learners better employment prospects as New Zealand recovers from COVID-19 Apprentices working in all industries ...
The Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) will finally start to cut New Zealand’s greenhouse gas pollution as it was originally intended to, because of changes announced today by the Minister for Climate Change, James Shaw. The changes include a limit on the total emissions allowed within the ETS, rules to ensure ...
Minister for Pacific Peoples Aupito William Sio says the Queen’s Birthday 2020 Honours List provides an abundance of examples that Pacific people’s leadership capability is unquestionable in Aotearoa. “The work and the individuals we acknowledge this year highlights the kind of visionary examples and dedicated community leadership that we need ...
The Government is backing a new $27 million project aimed at boosting sustainable horticulture production and New Zealand’s COVID-19 recovery efforts, says Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor. “Our horticulture sector has long been one of New Zealand’s export star performers, contributing around $6 billion a year to our economy. During and ...
Applications have opened for 2021 Ngā Karahipi Uru Rākau – Forestry Scholarships, which will support more Māori and women to pursue careers in forestry science, says Forestry Minister Shane Jones. “I’m delighted Te Uru Rākau is offering Ngā Karahipi Uru Rākau – Forestry Scholarships for the third year running. These ...
The Queen’s Birthday 2020 Honours List once again highlights the dedication by many to looking after our native plants and wildlife, including incredible work to restore the populations of critically endangered birds says Minister of Conservation Eugenie Sage. Anne Richardson of Hororata has been made an Officer of the New ...
The Government will invest $10 million from the One Billion Trees Fund for large-scale planting to provide jobs in communities and improve the environment, Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor and Forestry Minister Shane Jones have announced. New, more flexible funding criteria for applications will help up to 10 catchment groups plant ...
Organisations that support women are invited to apply to a new $1,000,000 fund as part of the Government’s COVID-19 response. “We know women, and organisations that support women, have been affected by COVID-19. This new money will ensure funding for groups that support women and women’s rights,” said Minister for ...
Healthier waterways are front and centre in a new project involving more than 300 King Country sheep, beef and dairy farmers. The Government is investing $844,000 in King Country River Care, a group that helps farmers to lift freshwater quality and farming practice, Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor announced today. “Yesterday ...
A major funding package for libraries will allow them to play a far greater role in supporting their communities and people seeking jobs as part of the economic recovery from COVID-19. “Budget 2020 contains over $60 million of funding to protect library services and to protect jobs,” says Internal Affairs ...
A jobseekers programme for the creative sector and four new funds have been set up by the Government to help our arts and music industry recover from the blow of COVID-19. Thousands of jobs will be supported through today’s $175 million package in a crucial economic boost to support the ...
Minister for Veterans Ron Mark has welcomed the First Reading of a Bill that will make legislative changes to further improve the veterans’ support system. The Veterans’ Support Amendment Bill No 2, which will amend the Veterans’ Support Act 2014, passed First Reading today. The bill addresses a number of ...
Views sought on Order in Council to help fast track the reinstatement of the Christ Church Cathedral The Associate Minister for Greater Christchurch Regeneration, Hon Poto Williams, will be seeking public written comment, following Cabinet approving the drafting of an Order in Council aimed at fast-tracking the reinstatement of the ...
The law setting out New Zealanders’ basic civil and human rights is today one step towards being strengthened following the first reading of a Bill that requires Parliament to take action if a court says a statute undermines those rights. At present, a senior court can issue a ‘declaration of ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters today reiterated the deep concern of the New Zealand Government following confirmation by China’s National People’s Congress of national security legislation relating to Hong Kong. “New Zealand shares the international community’s significant and long-standing stake in Hong Kong’s prosperity and stability,” Mr Peters said. “New Zealand ...
Thousands of artists and creatives at hundreds of cultural and heritage organisations have been given much-needed support to recover from the impact of COVID-19, Prime Minister and Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage Jacinda Ardern announced today. “The cultural sector was amongst the worst hit by the global pandemic,” Jacinda ...
Key New Zealand assets will be better protected from being sold to overseas owners in a way contrary to the national interest, with the passage of the Overseas Investment (Urgent Measures) Bill. The Bill, which passed its third reading in Parliament today, also cuts unnecessary red tape to help attract ...
Setting higher health standards at swimming spots Requiring urban waterways to be cleaned up and new protections for urban streams Putting controls on higher-risk farm practices such as winter grazing and feed lots Setting stricter controls on nitrogen pollution and new bottom lines on other measures of waterway health Ensuring ...
The Government is on the verge of reaching its target of state sector boards and committees made up of at least 50 percent women, says Minister for Women Julie Anne Genter and Minister for Ethnic Communities Jenny Salesa. For the first time, the Government stocktake measures the number of Māori, ...
The Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister and Broadcasting, Communications and Digital Media Minister, Kris Faafoi, has today announced the appointment of Tristan Gilbertson as the new Telecommunications Commissioner and member of the Commerce Commission. “Mr Gilbertson has considerable experience in the telecommunications industry and a strong reputation amongst his peers,” ...
The Ministry of Education and NZEI Te Riu Roa have agreed to settle the pay equity claim for teacher aides, Education Minister Chris Hipkins announced today. This will see more than 22,000 teacher aides, mostly women, being valued and paid fairly for the work they do. “Teacher aides are frontline ...
Subcontractors will have greater certainty, more cashflow support and job security with new changes to retention payments under the Construction Contracts Act says Minister for Building and Construction, Jenny Salesa. A recent review of the retentions money regime showed that most of the building and construction sector is complying with ...
The Herald reported this morning that MediaWorks was on the verge of selling its TV assets to US TV giant Discovery – but an internal email and senior source suggest the story may have been premature.A senior MediaWorks source has emphatically denied a report in the NZ Herald that a ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gery Karantzas, Associate professor in Social Psychology / Relationship Science, Deakin University Life in lockdown has been tough on many relationships. But negotiating the transition back to “normal” as restrictions continue to lift could also be a challenge for couples. So what ...
A slight bounce in the economy is brightening the outlook as the country heads into the winter months, Radio NZ reports. Retail spending is up and NZ shares rose on Thursday for a third day running. Key indicators have led some economists to point to a faster recovery than expected. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Geoff Hanmer, Adjunct Professor of Architecture, University of Adelaide HomeBuilder is a good idea gone bad. It is possibly the most complex and least equitable program the government could have devised to deliver construction jobs. It gives $25,000 to people who already ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Keller, Professor of Cognitive Science, Western Sydney University The coronavirus pandemic has silenced the world’s concert halls and opera theatres. Organisations specialising in live performance face an existential crisis under current restrictions on social gatherings, with up to 75% of people ...
Finance Minister Grant Robertson, wearing his Sport and Recreation ministerial hat, can show he can be a big spender and draw voters’ attention to his largess each time he dispenses money from the funds under his control – or the control of an agency within his ministerial bailiwick. Yesterday he ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Pi-Shen Seet, Professor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Edith Cowan University Scott Morrison wants to overhaul the skills workforce to ensure a better post-COVID-19 recovery. But there may not be enough people with the necessary skills to do so. And travel restrictions, which ...
As we transition out of a Covid-focused world and prepare for what comes next, New Zealand’s ICT industry is gearing towards growth.From app development helping track the Covid-19 virus to website engineering keeping businesses in touch and online, ICT knowledge has been crucial to keeping New Zealand working over the ...
Analysis: As New Zealand eases restrictions, it no longer has international precedent to look towards and must decide on its own how to reopen the economy while reducing the risk of a second wave of infections, Marc Daalder reports While most of the country eagerly awaits a likely move to ...
Ten days is too long. That from insurance claimant advocate, Ali Jones. EQC has today made contact with homeowners via email after accidentally releasing confidential details of 8000 insurance claims on May 26. Jones says although she has not received ...
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 Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo (Penguin Classics, $24)Winner of the 2019 Booker Prize. The other day, ...
Simon Day discovers how the voluntary carbon market allows both individuals and companies to offset their emissions at the same time as investing in native forest regeneration.When Celia Wade-Brown sold her first batch of carbon credits earned from the native forest on her Wairarapa farm, she had two customers: Z ...
Simon Day discovers how the voluntary carbon market allows both individuals and companies to offset their emissions at the same time as investing in native forest regeneration.When Celia Wade-Brown sold her first batch of carbon credits earned from the native forest on her Wairarapa farm, she had two customers: Z ...
Analysis by Keith Rankin. Keith Rankin. The conversation around the 2020 covid19 pandemic has been widely framed as ‘health versus the economy’. It has been quite political, with people leaning to the left emphasising ‘health’, and people leaning to the right emphasising ‘the economy’. A couple of weeks ago ...
Sam Brooks pays tribute to Alex Rider, and the new TV series that (finally) captures the spirit of the books.“What if James Bond was a teenager?”The concept for Anthony Horowitz’s Alex Rider series is so simple but so brilliant. There’s a reason why the franchise has managed to sustain 12 ...
Analysis - The PM resists pressure to move immediately to level 1, Winston Peters' tactics play into the hands of the Opposition and the government at last works out a commercial rent solution, writes Peter Wilson. ...
Source: Council on Hemispheric Affairs – Analysis-Reportage By COHAFrom Washington DC Federal charges against the four protectors of the Venezuelan Embassy, who defended the building in Washington DC against violent opposition crowds for several weeks between April 10 and May 16 of 2019, were completely dropped in a case that ...
Source: Council on Hemispheric Affairs – Analysis-Reportage By COHA Editorial TeamFrom Washington DC The Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA) joins the Black Alliance for Peace[1] and other pro-democracy organizations throughout the world in calling for the United Nations to address the systemic violations of human rights by the police and ...
Being shot by police had a profound, transformational effect on Rob Mokaraka’s life in more ways than you’d expect. A new documentary, airing on Māori TV at 7.30pm on Sunday, explores the work he’s done to heal his own mind and to ensure nobody has to go through the same ...
Human rights watchdog TAPOL has condemned the demand by Indonesian prosecutors seeking 17 and five years imprisonment for West Papuan activists Buchtar Tabuni and Irwanus Uropmabin. On June 2, the Jayapura District Prosecutor’s Office issued 33 pages containing charges against the defendant Irwanus Uropmabin. In the document, the Public Prosecutor ...
The arrival of Dan Carter is far from the first time the ever-struggling Auckland team has hoped to turn around its fortunes with a star signing, writes Jamie Wall.New Zealand rugby Twitter is a generally desolate place, especially lately given that there’s been nothing to talk about ever since the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robyn J. Whitaker, Senior Lecturer in New Testament, Pilgrim Theological College, University of Divinity US President Donald Trump delivered an address this week in which he threatened military action on the nation. Then he walked to the nearby St John’s Episcopal Church ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Vincent Ho, Senior Lecturer and clinical academic gastroenterologist, Western Sydney University Why do we burp? We sometimes also burp before meals, why does this happen? — Ahaana, age 7 That is a really interesting question, Ahaana! There ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Justine Bell-James, Associate Professor, TC Beirne School of Law, The University of Queensland After years of litigation, Australia’s highest court will today make a major decision on the fate of the controversial proposed expansion to the New Acland Coal mine in Queensland. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicholas Williams, Associate Professor in Urban Ecology and Urban Horticulture, University of Melbourne Tomorrow is the first World Green Roof Day. Cities around the world will celebrate the well-documented environmental, economic and social benefits of green roofs. New ground-level green spaces are ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elise Klein, Senior Lecturer, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University Robodebt isn’t the only measure the government should consider withdrawing. Late last Friday, after a long press conference from the prime minister which avoided any mention of the topic, the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard Holden, Professor of Economics, UNSW Harvard University’s Alberto Alesina died suddenly of a heart attack on May 23. He was 63. His long-time colleague and friend Larry Summers wrote that before him, “there was no academic field of political economy. Today, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Julian Meyrick, Professor of Creative Arts, Griffith University What keeps democracies together? As America burns, Brazilians die and Europe braces for another wave of the coronavirus, the question assumes an alarming immediacy. If the answer is complicated in one way, it is ...
For all The Spinoff’s latest coverage of Covid-19 see here. Read Siouxsie Wiles’s work here. New Zealand is currently in alert level two – read The Spinoff’s giant explainer about what that means here. For official government advice, see here.The Spinoff’s coverage of the Covid-19 outbreak is made possible thanks to donations from Spinoff Members. ...
Good morning and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Millions of dollars divvied up by Sport NZ, MSD’s problem with wrongly denied payments grows, and internal coalition battles emerge in time for election.It’s Friday, and there hasn’t been a lot of it recently, so we’re going to start with ...
The Government picks Waitomo caves as 'strategic tourism asset' and grants $4m to Tourism Holdings, boosting shares another 7.8 percent. Facebook staff and alumni revolt over Zuckerberg's inaction on Trump ...
This week's biggest-selling New Zealand books, as recorded by the Nielsen BookScan NZ bestseller list and described by ReadingRoom literary editor Steve Braunias.NON-FICTION 1 Vegful by Nadia Lim (Nude Food, $55) 2 Stop Surviving Start Fighting by Jazz Thornton (Penguin Random House, $38) 3 So Delish! by Simone Anderson ...
Anomalies in the policy for superannuitants with overseas pensions are an indictment on the justice process in New Zealand, write Susan St John and Dr Claire Dale Along with many others, the Retirement Policy and Research Centre has worked assiduously for more than a decade to alert the public, policy-makers ...
A new study indicates native plants, despite their tendency to grow more slowly than exotic species like Pinus Radiata, are better at storing carbon in the soil for longer periods of time. ...
Systemic white violence against black Americans is alive and well, and it's white violence that sustains white supremacy Current scenes from the United States are both familiar and shocking. George Floyd’s life being brutally snuffed out by Minneapolis police, followed by peaceful protests of Floyd’s murder as well as legitimate ...
The US isn't the only country with a broken criminal justice system that works to criminalise and destroy the lives of black and brown families. Dylan Asafo puts forward two ways NZ could lead in dismantling systems of white supremacy. If you were to imagine a society without racial oppression, ...
The British Tribe Next Door attracted over 60 complaints of racist themes from viewers when it first aired in the UK. Now TVNZ is streaming it on its OnDemand service attracting concerns from members of Aotearoa’s African community and a letter from race relations commissioner Meng Foon.When The British Tribe ...
When approached by The Spinoff Jeanette Wilson denied having told participants in an online session that the product ‘lined the lungs’, despite clear evidence to the contrary.The Covid-19 crisis has sparked misinformation in every corner of the world. In New Zealand, a “psychic healer” whose fixations read like a conspiracy ...
The union movement launched a push earlier this week to double the legal minimum of sick leave from five days a year to 10. Is a change likely?What’s all this then?In light of the recent global pandemic putting the focus on health in the workplace, unions have called for changes ...
An African American pastor from George Floyd's community gives The Detail a special insight into what's happening there - and gives us hope for the future. “Nobody in America wants to be a racist.” David Hill is a pastor in the Third Ward neighbourhood of Houston where George Floyd grew ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra When Ken Wyatt, the Minister for Indigenous Australians, last week effectively pronounced dead the prospect of a referendum on indigenous recognition being put to the people this parliamentary term, the demise of his hoped-for timetable ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra The Morrison government will significantly strengthen its scrutiny of foreign investment to protect sensitive national security technology and information and further ring fence the nation’s critical infrastructure. It will insert a new “national security test” ...
Analysis by Dr Bryce Edwards. Political scientist, Dr Bryce Edwards. Does National have any chance of winning the election in September? It’s looking very unlikely, especially after National’s change of leadership hasn’t exactly produced Mullermania in the first two weeks. Quite the opposite, in fact, as I summarised in ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Denis Muller, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Advancing Journalism, University of Melbourne When a newspaper with the authority of The New York Times chooses to publish a party-political essay calculated to further inflame the violence wracking cities across America, serious questions arise. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michael Plank, Professor in Mathematics, University of Canterbury There is now a 95% chance COVID-19 has been eliminated in New Zealand, according to our modelling, based on official Ministry of Health data. As of June 4, New Zealand has had 20 consecutive ...
In 2014, Duncan Greive was invited to interview Dan Carter on the back of the All Black’s spokesmodelling gig for Jockey underwear – a meeting that would eventually lead to Greive co-writing Carter’s autobiography, My Story. To celebrate today’s big Dan Carter news, we republish that original Metro story here.In ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brendan Coates, Program Director, Household Finances, Grattan Institute Scott Morrison’s new housing stimulus package is straight-out retail politics. HomeBuilder offers homeowners (including first home buyers) a grant of A$25,000 to build a new home worth less than $750,000 or to spend between ...
Business is Boring is a weekly podcast series presented by The Spinoff in association with Callaghan Innovation. Host Simon Pound speaks with innovators and commentators focused on the future of New Zealand. This week he talks to Rachel Taulelei, CEO of Kono.Demand for New Zealand produce overseas is currently up. ...
By Moch. Fiqih Prawira Adjie in Jakarta A panel of judges at the Jakarta State Administrative Court (PTUN) has granted a lawsuit filed by civil society groups against the Indonesian government’s decision to impose an internet blackout during weeks of protests in Papua and West Papua provinces last year, declaring ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Brett Mitchell, Professor of Nursing, University of Newcastle With coronavirus restrictions gradually lifting across the country, we’re now able to resume many of our regular activities. A lot of us might have been particularly keen to get back to the gym, which ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Perhaps at no point in Australia’s history has the demand for real-time figures been stronger than during the coronavirus crisis. The Australian Bureau of Statistics has stepped up its efforts to get data fast, to ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bree Hurst, Senior Lecturer, QUT Business School, Queensland University of Technology If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jolynna Sinanan, Research Fellow in Digital Media and Ethnography, University of Sydney Earlier this week, you might have seen your social media taken over by a stream of posts showing simple images of a black square. These posts, often tagged with #BlackoutTuesday, ...
A strong vote for sustainability would make the resulting Labour-Greens government a confident and ambitious reformer, having shed its NZ First handbrake ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Patrick White, PhD Candidate in History and Politics, James Cook University Australia’s local governments breathed new life into embattled regional communities after the second world war. Today, this history reminds us of the role local councils and communities should play in plans ...
This bill proposes to provide for enhanced information disclosure requirements for the gas market and to ensure that settings around enforcement and penalties are suitably robust. The Gas (Information Disclosure and Penalties) Amendment Bill would do this ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mick Broderick, Associate Professor of Media Analysis, Murdoch University Over successive Sunday nights, the ABC has premiered two important television programs recounting the history of nuclear testing in Australia – the documentary Maralinga Tjuratja and a six-drama series Operation Buffalo. Both explore ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marisa Paterson, Centre for Social Research and Methods, Australian National University When the COVID-19 restrictions came into force more than two months ago, it meant lights out for the country’s 200,000 poker machines. Now, the pokies are slowly turning on again across ...
With roughly 97% of New Zealand enterprises categorised as small businesses – that is, 20 or fewer employees – accounting software platform Xero’s newly released analysis provides a stark picture of the severe impact of Covid-19 throughout the sector.What exactly does the data show?Essentially, the data shows that year-on-year revenue ...
This week, on 1 June 2020, an interest rate cap on high-cost loans (over 50% interest per annum) was finally introduced in New Zealand. The introduction of an interest rate cap will help borrowers, like Sarah Newham, who presented to Select Committee ...
After hammering out a deal over commercial rents with Labour, New Zealand First is now publicly criticising some of the measures its coalition partner had been pushing for. ...
After hammering out a deal over commercial rents with Labour, New Zealand First is now publicly criticising some of the measures its coalition partner had been pushing for. ...
After hammering out a deal over commercial rents with Labour, New Zealand First is now publicly criticising some of the measures its coalition partner had been pushing for. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Lee, Associate Professor of History , UNSW The Conversation is running a series of explainers on key figures in Australian political history, looking at the way they changed the nature of debate, its impact then, and it relevance to politics today. ...
Labour-hire workers are falling between the cracks because neither the agencies they are employed by nor the host companies they work for want to take responsibility for them, FIRST Union said today. Dozens of agency workers have been contacting the ...
Open mike 03/07/2014 
Open mike is your post.
One of the safeguards built into the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act 2020 was automatic expiry. The law must be renewed by Parliament every 90 days, or it is automatically repealed. Orders made under the law are automatically revoked unless confirmed by Parliament within 10 sitting days, or 60 calendar ...1 hour ago
Does National have any chance of winning the election in September? It’s looking very unlikely, especially after National’s change of leadership hasn’t exactly produced Mullermania in the first two weeks. Quite the opposite, in fact, as I summarised in Tuesday’s Political Roundup column: Todd Muller’s torrid start as National leader. ...22 hours ago
Another study comparing effect in children from nonendemic areas (Dagang) and endemic fluorosis area (Jinghai) about 80km apart in the Tianjin area of China. Hardly sampling the same population. Anti-fluoride campaigners still use studies from ... 1 day ago
George Thomson, Nick Wilson, Richard Edwards This blog discusses the passing of the Smoke-free Environments (Prohibiting Smoking in Motor Vehicles Carrying Children) Amendment Act last week. We briefly review some lessons from this legislation’s long journey and explore future smokefree possibilities in Aotearoa / New Zealand. A law ...1 day ago
74 Articles Physical science of global warming & effects Surface-Energy-Balance Closure over Land: A Review (open access) Observations & observational methods of global warming & effects Human influence has intensified extreme precipitation in North America (open access) Observation-derived ice growth curves show patterns and trends in maximum ice thickness and ...2 days ago
Last month I noted that the public policy debate was all about how we deal with covid-19. That’s changing now, and will change more over the next couple of months as the buffering impact of the wage subsidy disappears and we see starkly the economic hole out of which we ...2 days ago
Bernard Hickey is one of New Zealand’s leading financial journalists. His latest article, published by Newsroom, lays bare the cruel treatment of hundreds of thousands of workers stranded since the lockdown. Our Prime Minister is lauded overseas for her compassion, but her Cabinet is refusing to properly support tens of ...2 days ago
For a good part of my adult life I have studied civil-military relations. I have studied authoritarian and democratic variants, and I have studied them across countries and regions. I have also worked in and with several US security agencies and have lectured on the theme at a number of ...2 days ago
by The Spark “The system is broken”—the words of a young black man in Minneapolis watching flames destroy a police precinct demonstrators had torched. Broken? Yes, it is! What else could you say about a system whose police for nine minutes casually knelt on a black man’s neck, watching until ...3 days ago
Minneapolis Police StationIf you’ve been keeping an eye on recent events in the United States, you’ll likely understand why there’s so much anger on the streets at the moment. Not only did police officers murder another black man; it is patently obvious that authorities initially attempted to cover up George ...3 days ago
Like the rest of the world, I have been aghast at what I have seen of, and read and heard about, what is happening currently in the United States. It seems incredible that a once great country should be suffering the worst effects and the highest number of deaths worldwide ...4 days ago
Image credit: Writing an Article vs. Writing a Blog Post: What’s the Difference? I notice a few regulars no longer allow public access to the site counters. This may happen accidentally when the blog format is ... 4 days ago
It’s almost painful to watch. Let’s be honest, maybe a pleasure too, in some quarters, but painful nonetheless. Because the fact is, for a democracy to function properly, any sitting Government does need honest and proper Opposition so that it doesn’t get ahead of itself. That’s what we should ...6 days ago
SATURDAY MAY 30Six60: Live at Western Springs 2020 (TVNZ 1, 8.45pm). Remember live concerts? The day will come again, friends, when we will be able to stand shoulder-to-shoulder in an uncomfortable sweaty venue with people we don’t know. It will happen. Sometimes the sound of concerts drifts over to the ...1 week ago
1 week ago
Well, we are out of lockdown, essentially. I did end up getting the wage subsidy while we were on levels 3 and 4 but I would have been fine if we didn’t. The first day of level 2, the Thursday, the office opened again for the people who weren’t able ...2 weeks ago
age credit: Science and Politics – Skeptically.org It seems impossible to keep politics out of science. It’s a pity because politics can end up forcing science to produce the results desired by ... 2 weeks ago
Defence Minister Ron Mark has announced that new Lockheed Martin Super Hercules aircraft would replace the outdated and costly 1960s Hercules fleet. The $1.521b project will include a flight simulator for staff training and other supporting infrastructure. "This fleet will ensure the Defence Force can continue to support New Zealand's ...1 hour ago
The Green Party is urging the New Zealand Police to rule out the use of Armed Response Teams, following their recent trial in communities around Aotearoa. ...7 hours ago
It's been a busy seven days as we start to rebuild New Zealand together. From delivering extra support for small businesses, to investing in our artists and arts organisations, to cutting red tape on home DIY projects, we're rolling out our plan to get the economy and New Zealand moving ...3 days ago
Extra 40,000 businesses to be eligible for wage subsidy extension Small business cashflow support application period extended The Government is today announcing further support for businesses that continue to be affected by the global COVID-19 pandemic, as the broader economy becomes one of the most open in the world following ...1 hour ago
The Herald reported this morning that MediaWorks was on the verge of selling its TV assets to US TV giant Discovery – but an internal email and senior source suggest the story may have been premature.A senior MediaWorks source has emphatically denied a report in the NZ Herald that a ...26 mins ago
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gery Karantzas, Associate professor in Social Psychology / Relationship Science, Deakin University Life in lockdown has been tough on many relationships. But negotiating the transition back to “normal” as restrictions continue to lift could also be a challenge for couples. So what ...36 mins ago
A slight bounce in the economy is brightening the outlook as the country heads into the winter months, Radio NZ reports. Retail spending is up and NZ shares rose on Thursday for a third day running. Key indicators have led some economists to point to a faster recovery than expected. ...1 hour ago
Finance Minister Grant Robertson, wearing his Sport and Recreation ministerial hat, can show he can be a big spender and draw voters’ attention to his largess each time he dispenses money from the funds under his control – or the control of an agency within his ministerial bailiwick. Yesterday he ...1 hour ago
The National Party says it will create a multi-million dollar fund for projects to boost the struggling tourism sector if elected this year. ...2 hours ago
Analysis: As New Zealand eases restrictions, it no longer has international precedent to look towards and must decide on its own how to reopen the economy while reducing the risk of a second wave of infections, Marc Daalder reports While most of the country eagerly awaits a likely move to ...2 hours ago
Ten days is too long. That from insurance claimant advocate, Ali Jones. EQC has today made contact with homeowners via email after accidentally releasing confidential details of 8000 insurance claims on May 26. Jones says although she has not received ...2 hours ago
The Government picks Waitomo caves as 'strategic tourism asset' and grants $4m to Tourism Holdings, boosting shares another 7.8 percent. Facebook staff and alumni revolt over Zuckerberg's inaction on Trump ...9 hours ago
This week's biggest-selling New Zealand books, as recorded by the Nielsen BookScan NZ bestseller list and described by ReadingRoom literary editor Steve Braunias. NON-FICTION 1 Vegful by Nadia Lim (Nude Food, $55) 2 Stop Surviving Start Fighting by Jazz Thornton (Penguin Random House, $38) 3 So Delish! by Simone Anderson ...10 hours ago
Anomalies in the policy for superannuitants with overseas pensions are an indictment on the justice process in New Zealand, write Susan St John and Dr Claire Dale Along with many others, the Retirement Policy and Research Centre has worked assiduously for more than a decade to alert the public, policy-makers ...10 hours ago
A new study indicates native plants, despite their tendency to grow more slowly than exotic species like Pinus Radiata, are better at storing carbon in the soil for longer periods of time. ...10 hours ago
NZTA is allegedly exploring options for its $1b road to be built with a different set of builders. ...10 hours ago
Systemic white violence against black Americans is alive and well, and it's white violence that sustains white supremacy Current scenes from the United States are both familiar and shocking. George Floyd’s life being brutally snuffed out by Minneapolis police, followed by peaceful protests of Floyd’s murder as well as legitimate ...10 hours ago
The US isn't the only country with a broken criminal justice system that works to criminalise and destroy the lives of black and brown families. Dylan Asafo puts forward two ways NZ could lead in dismantling systems of white supremacy. If you were to imagine a society without racial oppression, ...10 hours ago
An African American pastor from George Floyd's community gives The Detail a special insight into what's happening there - and gives us hope for the future. “Nobody in America wants to be a racist.” David Hill is a pastor in the Third Ward neighbourhood of Houston where George Floyd grew ...10 hours ago
A strong vote for sustainability would make the resulting Labour-Greens government a confident and ambitious reformer, having shed its NZ First handbrake ...21 hours ago
http://topinfopost.com/2014/06/30/ultra-rich-mans-letter-to-my-fellow-filthy-rich-americans-the-pitchforks-are-coming
An eye-opening read. Set aside 15 minutes.
Sad that on top of the trickledown lie castigated by the author we are biddably complicit in a weird theism, centred on a sham Everyman who is donKey deep in the lie. Who yet himself never created a thing.
For the likes of SSLands and FizzyAnus, particularly FizzyAnus – your God is small change and small brained compared to this guy. Beware the pitchforks. If needs be they will penetrate the gated citadels of greed !
SS and Anus used to rile me, but as long as they abide by the site guidelines their babble will serve as a reminder for others.
Re North’s link; there have often been those (including third way Labourites) for whom the holy grail is capitalists behaving themselves. “rising tide floats all boats” and other variations. Good luck with that one.
@ Tiger Mountain
+1
I’m going to throw this one back to you Grey Warbler:
Your comment (which I agree with):
‘Why bother to make negative comment to a reasonable opinion even if overblown? The narky censorship and constant critiques of some people on this site stifle concerned opinion. People are being taken to task because they don’t think the same as the particular leftie-righteous who knows all and is so superior, and controlling. Picky, picky, and attacking in swarms at times and bloody officious.
If it isn’t blatant right wing bullshit, lies and left-hating stuff, leave it alone for pete’s sake.’
Now would you please explain why you take such a different stance toward TM’s comment than you did toward Stephanie’s (below)? Because I was about to write a very similar response to TM’s comment that you wrote to Stephanie’s.
I think North’s article makes a fair point and supports the type of issues that the left are pretty keen to address – i.e. addressing issues with a system that is not providing benefits to all people (or classes). Yet these days, it appears that noone can make a fair suggestion as to how to address these problems without a trite comment from a lefty of a slightly different view point undermining the intention.
There is nothing like working toward some sort of unity to get the focus required in order to get an aim achieved.
Tiger Mountain,
This is actually the core of the problem isn’t it? i.e. no system will work if the people in that system act in a short sighted manner and/or in bad faith. Please show me an example of any system that works without this qualification.
Good luck with that one
Sorry the problem with capitalism as it has been practiced for 200 years is that short sightedness and bad faith is explicitly rewarded with power, position and standing in society.
Actually CV, that is the problem with ‘purer’ forms of capitalism.
The purer the version of capitalism that is pursued – the more increasing numbers of people become disadvantaged – the more mixed version of capitalism we pursue the more increasing numbers of peoples’ interests are addressed.
Social democracy was going pretty well, as I understand it from history books – then it came to a glitch after the post-war boom died down – for which noone seemed to have any quick answers and this allowed some wacky and un-thought-through approaches to be aggressively pursued by persons who were most likely to be advantaged by them – these people marketed them well (ignoring some already established facts) and now it appears that social democracy nor its advantages ever existed – despite the fact that we continue to be advantaged by social democratic approaches in existence in our country and that we aren’t living under an entirely purely capitalist approach.
Please supply me with an example of a system where cheats aren’t advantaged; I would have thought this is the problem with cheating – it advantages the person cheating at the expense of everyone else.
It reached Peak Internal Market. Essentially, productivity in the rich nations had made it so that everyone could actually afford to buy everything and everyone actually had (The same was actually happening in the poor nations as well). This meant that demand and thus profit were dropping while inflation was still going up meaning that the rich were becoming less rich. To combat this the rich got the politicians on side and spread the lie, helped by the rather stupid economists, that a free international market would make everyone richer.
So the politicians opened up the borders and dropped the protections that had built up the rich nations so that the rich could increase the size of the markets that they could sell to. This has, inevitably, dropped wages and living standards for the many in the rich countries as those people now compete with people in the poor countries for the same job. Has slowed down the development in many poor countries which now solely import high tech gear rather than seeking to make it themselves from their own resources and their resources are extracted at higher and higher rates to be shipped to the rich countries for less and less money and worsening working conditions.
When cheats aren’t stopped and incarcerated then society pays and pays. When those same cheats are not only not incarcerated but are openly rewarded and celebrated as they are in our society today then society is fucked.
“The tendency for the rate of profit to fall” (over time and cycles), as Marx put it, is part of what is at the root of the capitalist systems inbuilt flaw. Many bourgeois economists have tried and failed to disprove this assertion.
Finance capital, the out of control once paper now digital money arm of capitalism is another major flaw. I was not having a go at North but at the subject of his link. It is interesting when capitalists do step back and observe.
Never thought you were TM. Taking the argument one step further it’s the mindless ‘theism’ attaching to the cheats mentioned by DTB and more particularly their political proxies which really worries. The ‘GodKey’ number for example. It’s a direct path to totalitarianism.
+1 DTB,
This is fairly well exactly the way I understood things had gone too and what you write fairly well points to the major problem in our society that appears to continue to be being majorly deflected from and effectively ignored; that the wealthy are not willing to drop their wealth a bit – drop their irrational need for more and more – so that society can continue to function healthily.
This is why I thought the letter North linked to had merit and is why I believe Tiger Mountain’s comment misses the mark in a big way.
Exactly.
What he says is nothing new and widely known – push more money into the hands of the lower incomes and the economy does better. This is the way to prosperity and healthy society. This whole wealth-creator, trickle-down idea is hocus-pocus.
What is new though is that a rich bastard is acknowledging it and doing something about it.
Great stuff.
He’s entitled to do whatever he wants with his wealth (within reason) as are any wealthy people. If he wants to give it to the less fortunate good for him.
interesting lack of comment on the substantive points of his letter gosman… wonder why that would be? because he pierces your ridiculous ideas on how an economy needs to work perhaps?
Because it is full of the same extreme leftist spin that I have seen and responded to time and again. For a start he states inequality is getting worse all the time. There isn’t actually a lot of evidence supporting this view. Yes inequality rose greatly in the 1980’s and 1990’s but it has been pretty much consistent since then.
Gosman. The time that people will listen to the spin is coming to an end. What kind of end – well that billionaire Amazon.com foundation investor sees it coming to a very bad end for the elite.
He even makes a comment that when the brink comes there won’t be enough time to get on their private jets to head out to New Zealand.
(Although some clever ones like James Cameron took an early flight).
What tosh. Revoultions need certain conditions to be successful in the modern world. Two of these are effective revolutionary organisers and the second is broad based support or at least a significant section of society willing to overthrow the State. None of these currently exist in the US. When or more proababy if they do then the wealthy will have plenty of time to move away.
the hubris is strong in that one…
..very late-stage edwardian..
What was the catalyst for revolution after the period in question you mention?
i was referring more to yr certainties..
‘how could this ever change..?’..the edwardians mused…
Yes they revolutions require certain pre-requisite conditions. The US fulfils most of them right now. (The two factors you list are facile and incorrect).
Yes they are trying to build up the equivalent of their Versailles or Forbidden City to hideaway in. But history shows that only a small portion manage to get away in the end (how did it work out for Marie Antoinette and friends?).
History shows the opposite.
How you deliberately and self-indulgently miss the point with your comment @1.2.1 Gosman. As you well know Hanauer doesn’t focus on questions of charity. His point is that exponentially advancing inequality being the result of the (neoliberal) capitalist economy as presently pursued will be its cancer and will precipitate uprising against it. The pitchfork metaphor makes his point very clear.
Do you agree or not ? And why, however you see it ?
Edit: just flicked over your comments above. The ultra-wealthy Hanauer entertains far-left, extremist dogma ? Are you mad ? Is reason not your bedfellow ?
Nobody is entitled.
Wealth is underwritten by everyone.
We all work together to make a efficient society.
Following the road rules keeps roads efficient for society.
Obeying the Law keeps retaliation and revenge from overtaking us.
And progressive taxation keeps the wealth in their place.
yeah..that’s a recommend-read..
North, the author Nick Hanauer is the one who gave the supposedly “banned” TED Talk: Rich People Don’t Create Jobs.
A five minute watch.
that also is highly recommended..
..i put that up you-know-where way back when it happened..
..and how about that you-know-where..!..eh..?
..always first with the best..
labour deserves ‘ups’ for their school-donation policy..
..the principal of a low-decile school says currently they only collect $3,000 per yr in donations..because parents ‘can’t afford them’..
..this policy means the school will not only be able to stop putting poor parents thru that ongoing humiliation/added-stress..
..but that the funding they will receive from this will be $20,000 per yr..
..(which..as the principal pointed out..will mean ‘a huge’ difference’ to what they will be able to offer their pupils..)
..hard to fault the policy on any level..really..
..labours’ best yet..
Yep agreed Phil, very clever policy striking a chord.
Has it not occurred to any political journalist that the reason behind the latest MFAT stuff up, is the restructuring that McCully rammed through. Fewer staff=more pressure=inevitable mistakes. We’ve seen it at home, and over the China wharf fiasco. Yet no-one connects the dots.
Absolutely right nsg. One can only wonder what is happening in the rest of a once effective public service. Isn’t the figure of 8,000 the number of redundancies pushed through govt. departments since 2008 ?
Me too. The stuff ups with EQC in the early stages were because of gutting the Public Service. Mr McCulley didn’t do too well this morning and it is the first time that I can remember him being held to account.
I don’t remember any stuff ups when Winston was Foreign Minister?
Can a successful and abundant species whose numbers measure in the millions be put on the endangered list?
Yes
Passenger Pigeon
Tricolor Blackbird
Emporer Penguin
Time to take drastic action before we have to add another numerous and successful species to the endangered list?
(for those who can’t get the hint, I am talking about Sapiens sapiens, the worlds most successful and abundant primate)
False equivocation. There aren’t just “millions” of humans.
Why bother to make negative comment to a reasonable opinion even if overblown? The narky censorship and constant critiques of some people on this site stifle concerned opinion. People are being taken to task because they don’t think the same as the particular leftie-righteous who knows all and is so superior, and controlling. Picky, picky, and attacking in swarms at times and bloody officious.
If it isn’t blatant right wing bullshit, lies and left-hating stuff, leave it alone for pete’s sake.
Nicely put Warbs. Onya.
Thankyou ‘Grey’
I get what you’re saying Stephanie, human numbers are measured in the billions, so no matter how appalling the slaughter gets, some should survive.
Hmm?
Long as it is not you or your family, eh Steph.
PS. And for the record Steph if you had bothered to go to the link you would read that the Passenger Pigeon numbers were also measured in the billions, but this didn’t save them.
(Over population’ may even be part of the puzzle of what condemned them. Lessons here for us maybe, that is if we care to look. It is possible that though overhunting is cited as the main reason for the demise if the Passenger Pigeon, problems of disease epidemic and famine that stalk unusually large populations under crisis conditions also played a role)
Historical evidence suggests that passenger pigeon numbers oscillated wildly in response to changes in their environment.
The primary difference between pigeons and humans is that humans constructively change their environment to suit their needs. Pigeons don’t.
The primary difference between pigeons and humans is that humans constructively change their environment to suit their needs. Pigeons don’t.
Both humans and pigeons have a predilection to find patterns (ordered structures) in the world around them even when the patterns are incoherent eg (Gilovich 1993,chapter 2).
The tendency to impute order to ambiguous stimuli is simply built into the
cognitive machinery we use to apprehend the world. It may have been bred into us through evolution because of its general adaptiveness
The ritualistic behavior in Skinners superstitious pigeons (a response to chance events) is a good example.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B._F._Skinner#Superstitious_pigeons
it is also widely seen in money market brokers,who try to explain on the news wraps,variations in various indices when the variances are still well within the range of noise.
If 99.9% of humans were to die, there’d still be 7 million left.
Hardly ‘extinction’.
Applying this same simplistic logic Lanth, there should be about 3 million passenger pigeons hiding about somewhere.
And as you mention Lanth there is historical anecdotal evidence that Passenger Pigeon numbers oscillated wildly in response to their environment. This has been backed up by genetic evidence of something called Ne, a genetic marker of genetic variation of effective population size, the greater the amount of genetic variation the greater the chance say of surviving something like a runaway epidemic for instance. Unfortunately for us low Ne is a genetic characteristic shared by Passenger Pigeons and human beings, which indicates that these hugely abundant species were in recent evolutionary time scales quite small. Meaning we are more susceptible to black swan extinction events than one would suppose just by our numbers, especially in the event of the climate becoming so unstable that it does not allow agriculture capable of supporting a civilisation with the ability to support socialised mass public health care and the industrial scale production of vaccines.
<
blockquote>These legendary North American birds’ flocks were so numerous that they blocked the sun from view for days when they flew over in the early and mid-1800s; yet less than 50 years later, they were gone.
“The passenger pigeon was once the most abundant bird in the world, and suddenly it disappeared totally from the Earth.”
Mind-boggling.
But how could this be possible? Why did these birds disappear? Was this event due solely the murderous efficiency of gun-toting humans, or were there underlying factors that contributed to the demise of this species?
These are more interesting questions than they may appear to be at first glance. On one hand, it’s obvious that rare species with small geographic distributions are more likely to go extinct than are abundant, widespread species. But on the other hand, passenger pigeons had clearly defied all logic. Perhaps there was something special happening to the super-abundant and widespread birds that made them especially vulnerable to extinction? Would it be possible for the researchers identify what that could have been?….
….The researchers sequenced the aDNA using high-throughput technologies and managed to piece together high-quality genomic sequences for the passenger pigeon — the longest genome sequence with the highest quality ever obtained for an extinct bird.
Co-author Pen-Jen Shaner, an assistant professor in the the department of Life Sciences at the National Taiwan Normal University, and her colleagues, Wei-Chung Liu and Te-Chin Chu, used two different mathematical approaches to estimate the passenger pigeon’s genetically effective population size (Ne). The genetically effective population size is an estimate of the total genetic variation found within a given population (doi:10.1017/S0016672300034455). Increased genetic variation is associated with a greater capacity to survive challenging circumstances. Genetic variation arises through mutation and recombination, whilst natural selection removes variation from a population.
Since the passenger pigeon’s census numbers were between 3 and 5 billion individuals in the mid-1800s, the researchers were surprised when they discovered that the passenger pigeon’s genetically effective population size (Ne) was remarkably small. The genetically effective population size Ne was just 3.3 × 105 (95% credible interval = 3.25–3.32 × 105), which is approximately 1/10,000 of the estimated number of individuals from the mid-1800s.
This small genetically effective population size suggests that passenger pigeons were not always super-abundant. Instead, their population changed by a thousand-fold over time, a situation seen under two circumstances. First, a low genetically effective population size is characteristic for species that experience wide population fluctuations that only occasionally number into the billions during an “outbreak” phase (doi:10.1017/S0016672300034455). For example, most people are familiar with several outbreak species, particularly lemmings, Lemmus lemmus, and snowshoe hares, Lepus americanus, in the Arctic, and Australian plague locusts, Chortoicetes terminifera.
But an alternative explanation for a low Ne is seen for species that historically had small numbers and only recently experienced a population explosion — a situation occurring in humans today.
http://www.scilogs.com/maniraptora/journal-club-passenger-pigeon-extinction-its-complicated/
Add to to the above what we should remember is that last year super Typhoon Haiyan or Yolander as it was called by the people of the Philippines, the strongest storm ever recorded over land, made 4 million people homeless overnight.
Just imagine recurring super storms like that all over the face of the earth, how long could civilisation as we know it survive that?
But this is what is predicted to happen if the planet hits 3 degrees. And on present emissions levels we are expected to blow past 4 degrees, when the IPCC says we should not go past 2.
‘
Over 18,700 and climbing
Add your vote
I have mentioned black swan events like famine and epidemic and infrastructure collapse, any of which if severe enough under the right conditions could under the conditions of a severely degraded climate see off humanity.
There is one other I forgot: If forgot to mention, insurrection, violence, chaos.
WAR
Let us take the traditional accepted microcosm of human society facing a terminal crisis.
Take your ticket and board the Titanic
I am a first class passenger, should I take my place in a lifeboat, or give it up to others?
(some did)
I am crew, should I stay at my post to give everyone else a better chance to escape?
(most did)
I am captain, should I commit ritual suicide to atone for my inaction, should I go down with the ship?
(He did)
I am the bosun, should I order the 3rd class passengers be locked below decks to give the first class passengers better chance of escape?
(He did)
I am a third class passenger should I violently overthrow the bosun and his armed officers, locking me and my family below decks?
(knowing that this will not create any more life boats or greatly increase the overall survival rate, though it might make the cull fairer. Most didn’t and died in far greater numbers because of it. Much like climate change which is hitting the poorest nations hardest)
What if the 3rd class passengers had refused to accept their lot, and violently revolted. As the violence erupted, the professional crewmen needed to lower the lifeboats would have been scattered, or become involved in the fighting to beat back the 3rd class passengers trying to storm the lifeboats. No lifeboats would be lowered. In the ensuing chaos could anyone survive at all?
On a global scale as delta nations become flooded and super storms and heatwaves make the tropic regions uninhabitable, this fighting for survival will not be done with clubs and rifles but with every modern weapon to hand, napalm, high explosives, delivered by high level bombers or drones possibly even delivering gas, nuclear and even biological weapons to beat back the doomed millions locked in the worst affected areas and trying to bust out. There is even the possibility that some of these worst affected nations will have these weapons too.
If you accept the reality of climate change then you must accept the possibility of human extinction, whether by war, famine, or disease.
To us of course this is all academic, by the time things get this bad those of us writing and reading here will have faced our own individual personal extinctions. The point is, we are the ones who could prevent it getting that bad, those who come after us won’t have that luxury.
Should we do something about climate change is a moral question. We need to put it into terms we can understand on a human level. What if instead of in the future and happening to millions it was happening in the next room to only a handful, and only we safe and comfortable in our room, were the only ones with the means to stop it. Would we? Or would we not get involved because it doesn’t affect us?
Let us be the first ones to get up out of our armchair and say enough, this stops here. Let us be the ones that give a lead to the world. We could do it easily. Remove the $155 million subsidy to Solid Energy and distribute to the workers to start new lives outside the coal industry. Remove the super cheap secret subsidised price that Comalco pays for the electricity and their other tax payer subsidies. Let that electricity flow into the National grid allowing us to close down every fossil fuel generator tomorrow. Switch the millions ear marked for Roads of National Significance (ie motorways), into public transport. Cancel all plans for deep sea oil drilling, ban fracking, stop Denniston and Mangatangi and all other proposed new coal mines. Become the first country in the world to declare war on climate change, challenge all other nations to join us.
The Prime Minister is a big-noting lightweight fool.
….. and look at the comments section of the 7 so far. Alert alert alert @ Gosman, Fizz, Srylands and co – action needed on Stuff.co.nz
The most interesting point in that article is this:
polling released today in pennsylvania shows 84% support for legalising medical-marijuana..
(and i will repeat my contention that should the internet party come out with a colorado-model of legalisation/regulation/taxation of cannabis..
..that they will take votes from labour..from the greens..and from the soft national underbelly…
..and anyone doubting the potential for soft national votes..
..should recall the recent poll showing that 45% of national party supporters support ending prohibition..
..and given the seachanges in public opinion on this issue over recent years..
..and the galloping legalisations in america/globally..
..i am puzzled that labour so shy away from the issue..
..and the greens are so shy about promoting their medical-marijuana policies..
..there are all those votes up for grabs..(?)
..and it looks like they are there for the taking..
..by the internet party..
and of course the mana party has a medical-marijuana policy..
..so there will be no policy-clash/friction there…
Mana have said this
and on another topic
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/10227887/Mana-supports-decriminalising-marijuana
This shows the mana of Hone and the fact that Mana isn’t a one man band. Changing the government is the focus – they have to go!!!
‘Unaffordable homes and outsourcing community housing for the poor to a community that can’t house the poor’
By Martyn Bradbury / July 1, 2014 /
“So Massey University’s Home Affordability Report latest survey shows wages have risen $35 per week on average in the past year while house prices have jumped $38,000.
How a $35 wage increase per week is supposed to offset a $38 000 jump in housing prices hasn’t been explained by the Government and the media still seem to be hunting for magical bottles of $100 000 wine to bother challenging Key on his do nothing but sprawl urban planning.
A market with no capital gains tax to reign in domestic speculators and no restrictions for foreign speculators to buy property has created a housing bubble that is great for baby boomers and crap news for every other NZer.
While this Government robs two entire generations of any possibility of home ownership, they are also busy destroying beneficiaries in state housing.
Sweeping the problem of housing for the poor into the hands of religious charities is an abdication of political responsibility, it is the Government’s obligation to house the poor, not the bloody Church!
It is a sad day when the Prime Minister of NZ can own a Parnell Palace and a Hawaiian mansion while a vast chunk of that PM’s citizens can’t afford the deposit on one house.”
Coming up soon on Radionz.
Professor Shambaugh was the keynote speaker at a conference hosted by Victoria University of Wellington’s New Zealand Contemporary China Research Centre on Wednesday 2 July, which contemplated the radical policy reforms that were proposed by the Communist Party of China’s Central Committee at the 2013 Third Plenum. His talk is titled: “New policies – has China done enough to secure its future? China at the crossroads.”
So Labour stuck in the high 20s, that’ll be a concern for those on the list.
Yes but I am sure its just another rogue poll besides there is still plenty of time until the election.
Latest Roy Morgan: Lab/Green/IMP 42.5% Nats 48% (down from 52.5 a month ago).
After McCully, school donations policy and the Congress it will be 44% v 46%.
It’s all on for the campaign.
Despite the ‘polls’ Bearded it has always been my opinion that ”its all on” and has been so since the Slippery lead National Government barely slithered in for a second term…
Yep Bad agreed: what I liked in parliament yesterday was that when Key called Cunliffe “tricky” Cunliffe came straight back at him with “slippery”.
Lolz, yeah that was definitely ‘laugh out loud’ stuff from David Cunliffe, i commented on it in yesterday’s Open Mike,
Worth pointing out again tho to David or His advisers that to save confusion among the Government Benches, all of them looking pretty much like ”johns” from where i sit, that it might be far less confusing should the need arise to just refer to Him as Slippery the Prime Minister thus leaving no-one in doubt to exactly who is being addressed,
Some might see this as a denigration of the Parliaments standards, i would suggest tho that Slippery Himself has already achieved this standard, aided and abetted by the Speaker of the House, with the constant use of ”Tricky” as an epithet repeatedly applied by the PM to David Cunliffe on the floor of the Parliament,
My view is that David Cunliffe need to take the fight to the PM on any level, gutter included, that the Prime Minister wishes to drag the Parliament down to…
PS, watch the Speaker suddenly find that such personal epithets, should the press begin to repeatedly use that which David Cunliffe applied to Slippery, are out of order…
Key calling Cunliffe tricky… Cunliffe calling Key slippery…. pity neither of them do much of anything for those in NZ on struggle street.
How can Cunliffe do ‘much of anything’ for those struggling while in opposition?*
How does Cunliffe get to be in government when people are so happy to spread right-wing propaganda that “regardless who is in power noone does ‘much of anything’ for those struggling?”
_*Actually the way he is spreading the idea that everyone should get a share in the country’s wealth is a highly advantageous idea to have spread around our country – particularly for those struggling – and this is being done even while in opposition.
Tinfoil, you will have to expand upon that quite a bit to make it a point worth debating, ie: there is likely/unlikely to be gains for those on ”struggle street” by having David Cunliffe as the next Prime Minister simply because such a position will require Him to negotiate with any number of coalition partners who may be able to force those ”gains” as part of either coalition or confidence and supply arrangements,???…
Sorry Bad just alluding to the fact, or should I say my opinion that there ain’t too much difference between Key and Cunliffe (Nat and Lab) except at the very thin margin.
If a government of the left is to make much of a difference in NZ it is going to have to be very heavily influenced by the Greens and Mana otherwise it’s just going to be more of the same even if Labour/Cunliffe get to form the government.
To a certain extent i would agree with you Tinfoil, but, to make such a blanket assertion i would suggest is doing your argument a disservice,
Agree with you vis a vis Green/InternetMana, to make some real gains for those stuck out on the margins/marginalized it would be pretty much a given that we need a Labour/Green/InternatMana Government which if NZFirst is also included, seriously weakens any role NZFirst may have as ‘kingmaker’..
yes Bearded Git…
plus there is the newly extended voting period from September 3 through to September 20,
and the union “Get Out and Vote” campaign is now active http://www.getoutandvote.org.nz
and the anticipated IMP media campaign
and IMP is at 2.5% in such short time compared to ACT, Colon and Hairdo
and the TV debates and general mayhem
and a party for virtually everyone that can be engaged
the right wing dickheads, sheepshaggers, pud pullers and brown nosers don’t seem to even listen to their own dear leader who recently warned the tory faithful about complacency.
Don’t forget the missing million who will all pop up on election day dressed in red.
We only need around 50,000 of them to turn up and vote for parties that aren’t National or National proxies to turn NZ around. Key and his cronies only scraped in with a one seat majority last time and that majority disappeared with John Banks. Key goes into this election as lame a duck as Muldoon was in ’84.
http://www.roymorgan.com/findings/5664-new-zealand-roy-morgan-poll-july-2-2014-201407020558
Yes TRP, this election is finely balanced as anyone that has been paying attention and makes an effort to be informed knows, and Crosby Textor and the Hollowmen pay some of the closest attention of all.
The polls are somewhat true in their own habitat but not totally correct or absolutely predictive.
Yep, TM, all sorts of political insiders are acknowledging that it’s in the balance. It’s a shame that the likes of nakiman, gossie, srylands and the rest aren’t capable of agreeing that National is ahead in the polls at the moment but this election is going to be much, much tighter than many people realise.
Ummm… who states we can’t acknowledge that. I have stated here that I’m surprised that National is leading by as much as they are given the last election result and the election result will be close when it really shouldn’t even be a contest. Labour should be a show in. The fact they are not speaks volumes.
Fair enough, but I’d disagree that National is leading. Key is leading, National are nowhere. That much was made clear at the conference on the weekend.
Agree with TRP
The Nats have so touched lucky with Key up till recently, “nobody knows where love goes but when its gone; its gone gone gone”.
brilliant
Really?
I agree that National is ahead in the polls at the moment but this election is going to be much, much tighter than many people realise.
And here you have it, even a broken clock can be right twice a day
“Don’t forget the missing million who will all pop up on election day dressed in red.”
and green and purple and black and white
but blue with those yellow streaks? probably not so much
So the Lou Vincent disaster continues. Listen to the interview with Tony Vietch.
Vincent is pretty explicit about his “hero” being involved to a very high degree. The threat he says, of the bat threatening over his head sounds compelling. He does not name his “hero” as the police are still investigating. But not hard to join the dots.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/video.cfm?c_id=1&gal_cid=1&gallery_id=143949
Kicked her so hard he put her in a wheelchair. Thanks but no thanks to the listen to woman beater Vietch.
It still amazes me he was returned to a job in broadcasting. His victims life in tatters and business as usual for him – a further injustice to the victim on top of what she had already been through.
Tony Veitch is not the story here. Ignore him.
Can’t do it ianmac, he’s tainted meat, and even if I wanted to ignore him, the rot smell in pervasive.
On the cheat Vincent’s claims, if he went public and named the ‘hero’, would the ‘hero’ take up a libel action? And ultimately, who would the court believe?
True ianmac, you were discussing Lou Vincent, not Tony Veitch.
But it’s kind of hard to ignore that Veitch is there, in his job, as if nothing happened. How can people listen to him? What kind of a society thinks its ok for a violent abuser to retain his privileged position in broadcasting?
For goodness sake Rosie do we on the left believe in rehabilitation for offenders or don’t we.
“do we on the left believe in rehabilitation for offenders or don’t we.”
Feel free to let him date your daughter, sister or mother.
So that’s a no from you then.
First time I’ve seen you take a pro-stance on rehabilitating violent offenders. From your comments I take it you’re in favour of in-community rehab for privileged white male violent offenders.
I’m in favour of rehabilitation of any and all offenders, otherwise we’ll continue to reap the cycle of repeat and even intergenerational offending.
As opposed to a privileged brown male multiple offender like the Maori Kings son who got discharged without conviction today as it might hurt his “career” prospects?
And his fellow thieves all got discharged without conviction in Gisborne the other day too.
It pays to go thieving with the Maori Kings son……..
I am not commenting here on the Veitch situation as I do not know the details of his sentence as well as I know others.
But I have a couple of questions for you tinfoilhat, do you believe that just because a person has done time they are rehabilitated and deserve to be completely forgiven for their wrongdoing?
When a person refuses all rehab programmes, violence prevention programmes, literacy programmes, psychological therapy assistance and other offers of rehabilitation when inside, yet still get paroled, would you call that justice for the victim?
” Do you believe that just because a person has done time they are rehabilitated and deserve to be completely forgiven for their wrongdoing?”
No
“When a person refuses all rehab programmes, violence prevention programmes, literacy programmes, psychological therapy assistance and other offers of rehabilitation when inside, yet still get paroled, would you call that justice for the victim?”
A far more difficult question and certainly might depend on the particular circumstances of a specific case but if you are looking for a simple yes or no I would veer towards a No.
so what do you believe “we on the left” need to do?
Not sure that Veitch ever really showed guilt or remorse for what happened, or suffered too much in the way of penalty for it.
Exactly Lanth. And that is the point here. The victim has the rest of her life to deal with this while Veitch has his little stint in the wilderness, the it is back to BAU.
And a no from you.
I believe in rehabilitation when the perpetrator shows remorse and changes his actions. Vietch doesn’t appear to have done either. IIRC, he actually got rather snarky about it at the time of the trial.
Sorry mate you can’t have special favours for your mates and call that “rehab”
In this case with Veitch it looks more like a consequence free ride with no payment of his dues to society or his victim.
agreed, lanth. I seem to recall he did the crying-on-tv thing, but it mostly revolved around the effect his offending had had on him.
Rehabilitation varies from offender to offender.
I was wondering how long it would take for someone to put the rehab word up. Condemning his actions and questioning the wisdom in reinstating Veitch in his former role does not automatically equate to “don’t believe in rehabilitation for criminals”.
There’s a big leap from a restorative justice type process where the criminal begins to understand and fully own the consequences of their actions and the community enabling and supporting them through changing their behaviours TO brushing the victims experience aside and allowing some one guilty of committing violent crime (who, apart from crocodile tears, seems to have shown little remorse) back into a public facing role. Can you put yourself in the victims shoes? Her life changed forever, her abuser’s life, business as usual.
I get quite sick of the double standards we appear to have in our country. On one hand you have a group like the sensible sentencing trust who constantly demonstrate appalling ignorance around the complexities of crime and have a simple mantra “lock em up and throw away the key”. A revenge/punishment type orientation is promoted over rehabilitation.
On the other hand, sporting personalities, and I’m including Veitch as a broadcaster here, seem to have excuses made for their behaviour by the media and their peers and the harm to the victim is minimised. Guildford and Savea come to mind as rugby players who, perversely, get sympathy after complaints are made to police about their behaviour. The situation is quickly forgotten, brushed under the carpet, so they can get back to the important business of being heroic rugby players.
To emphasize your point Rosie,
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/rugby/news/article.cfm?c_id=80&objectid=11286426
I refuse to accept there is a single youth with a licence in this country who can claim to be unaware that if they drink they cannot drive. Especially when the youth concerned is a member of such a well structured organisation as the Blues.
What are the odds I wonder that a conviction will not be entered ?
The Blues do look after their boys
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/driving-offences/news/article.cfm?c_id=179&objectid=10902579
“He was pulled over on Auckland’s southwest motorway in April, on his way to a Blues team appointment.
Saili had only just received a notice that he had been suspended from driving for 28 days after racking up too many demerit points.”
Unfortunately, very high. Getting sick of seeing a few people treated differently from the rest of us because of their profession/wealth.
Wow. Drink driving = minor misdemeanour. Not so much if he has killed someone. It was just “lucky” he didn’t. A good example freedom of how the sports professions close ranks and protect badly behaved players from criticism and fall out. Their status seems to exclude them receiving the same treatment as regular folks would.
PS: Hope you’re doing ok after last weeks ignorance attack from King Kong. I did leave a message of support for yourself and Nick S, (as a reply to Nick), but I was a bit late to see the conversation develop and hence my response was delayed.
Thank you Rosie. It was not a great week and I sincerely appreciated your words of support, as I appreciate it every time I see Standardistas support each other.
I should have replied there and then but didn’t really know what to say. I do not enjoy exposing people to those events and withheld the more disturbing details of the attack but KK’s ignorance certainly warranted the reply, abridged as it was. We all have a past and mine is no more special than anyone else’s despite the Tarantino like aspects, but every now and then a little truth can shed a lot of light. And without light we do kind of stay in the dark. 🙂
I kind of wondered if even someone like him, like KK, after reading of your experience, may have gone away and reconsidered his lack of understanding and the harm that expressing such ignorance can do. It wouldn’t be deep thoughts, more a “holy crap” sobering kind of reflection. He may have learnt something from what you said. We can only hope. I’m just sorry you had to go through a difficult time because of him
No need to have replied either _ I wasn’t expecting you to. I think sometimes comments can be left for others, after a long or tiring discussion that can just be left at that. Not every comment needs a reply and I get the feeling that most people do follow up and read responses, but don’t always require a further response in return.
Hope this week is shaping up better. Take care.
I guess the carefully constructed tearful mea culpa and persistent advocacy from Deaker didn’t help.
Seems our weather observations here on TS a few weeks back were on the mark. Warmest June since records began in 1909 – with 9 of those warmest years being post 1970, and 5 of them post 2000
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/SC1407/S00007/june-climate-summary-warmest-june-on-record.htm
Yeah Rosie, even yesterdays ‘polar blast’ lacked the blast bit, a normal Wellington Winter usually delivers up a series of three day events but so far this year these are happily lacking,
i fear tho for my garden at the start of Spring when the crop gets to experience the great outdoors for the first time,
Normally i plant in the first week of November and if last years conditions are likely to repeat again this year i am thinking that i might better serve my babies by delaying that planting for a week…
Edit: Perhaps in global terms the retreat of the ice sheet and the growth in depth/volume of the East Antarctic ice pack are what is lessening the frequency/ferocity of the Southerly blasts we get to feel here…
El Nino prediction for 2014 Bad.
Probably means that getting the seeds growing indoors first week of September for planting Labour Day won’t be too far off the mark as summer 2015 should probably be drought ridden.
“Normally i plant in the first week of November and if last years conditions are likely to repeat again this year i am thinking that i might better serve my babies by delaying that planting for a week…”
Might be a good idea bad. Last summer was definitely the windiest I remember in Wgtn, and as James Thrace points out below we have the El Nino pattern predicted for summer (I thought we were in it already). I saw on the telly that it will most likely be windier on the west coast and dryer and hotter on the east coast. So get set for some more summer winds. Everything we grew last summer failed but the plants that survived are now thriving in our warm still winter………..
And yeah, that “polar blast” was a pretender of a polar blast yesterday. A poor effort for Wellington.
Random thought, but one that has nagged me for a while (not my wife, btw).
Arguably, the two most successful business/performance entities on the global stage from NZ are Fonterra and the All Blacks.
I saw a pie chart somewhere around here the other day which showed that NZ (read Fonterra) produced, by volume of dairy products, 26.1% of global dairy trade. More than the whole of Europe and significantly more than the USA. I know there are valid eggs-in-one-basket concerns that this trade relies too heavily on one market and that focus has been drawn away from our developing of other export technologies but nonetheless, generating over a quarter of the world’s dairy trade is quite a statistic from a nation as small as ours.
The All Blacks are the undisputed pinnacle of all rugby on the planet both historically and, more importantly for the purposes of this discussion, currently. Overall they have a 76% winning percentage, and I would say higher than that since the game went professional in 1996. They have lost just the one game since the end of August 2011, three years ago. They have held the IRB number one ranking continuously since November 2009, nearly five years ago. It appears they are only getting stronger. All this again from a nation of just 4 million.
Now, I know not everyone is into rugby and I know some are concerned with dairy farmers’ attitude to the NZ environment but it’s occurred to me that the business models of these two NZ success stories are collective and dare I say it, communist. I say “communist” as a political/business lay person (it’s a heavily weighted description with a lot of baggage) and am happy to be corrected there.
But, it’s hard to escape the irony that in an increasingly capitalist world, Fonterra, a farmers’ collective, and the NZRU with it’s central contract system, are killing it on the world stage right now.
Do collective arrangements work better?
Yes they do especially when they’re backed by the entire community as both the NZRU and Fonterra are.
Interestingly skycity wont release its plans for the convention centre until after the election. Of interest is the traffic chaos IF The rail loop goes ahead on schedule. Could explain the govt attempts to stall the rail loop…
So, auckland, chchch, wellington, queenstown all building international convention centres…just what we need.
” Fairfax Media understands final design plans for the NZICC are expected to be publicly unveiled later this year, likely to be after the September 20 General Election, with applications for resource consents to follow.
The agreement between the Government and SkyCity calls for construction of the NZICC to be completed by September 30, 2017.
Disruption for Auckland commuters from the NZICC construction project could combine with more traffic chaos if the City Rail Link project starts early, as is being pushed for by the Auckland Council.
The CRL would require the entire city block opposite the Britomart transport centre to be demolished and rebuilt from scratch in order to allow the digging of tunnels.
Stuff
”
Internet Mana road trip in Far North, starts July 15 in Kaitaia.
https://www.facebook.com/InternetPartyNZ
Do you think they will wear bullet proof vests?
You’re quite the coward, nakiman.
“Coward” How would Hone wearing a bullet proof vest make me a coward?
Will the fat German fraudster be there or will he be in court?
Nothing to do with Hone, nakiman. You’re a snivelling, gutless creep.
Hook line and sinker
Oh well, at least this one owns up to just being a shit stirring troll just for shitstirring’s sake. Yawn!
This comment Nakahi man simply says that you are trawling ‘Open Mike’ looking to start a flame…
Steven Wallace could have used one eh when Constable Abbot dispensed some lead poisoning in your neck of the woods Nakiman.
Checked out Batemans and some other New Zealand History sources and it appears the Taranaki has the highest count of WWI memorials and one of the worst track records on relations with Māori. Nothing to be proud of.
I was in waitara early the following morning before they had opened the road.
Abbot was also a neighbour of mine a few years earlier.
Hope you didn’t practice your short game in the back yard.
Constable Abbot is a good man and did what he had to do, I hope he got good support and councilling so it doesn’t affect him negatively for the rest of his life
Yeah, if he hadn’t have shot him Wallace might have smashed even more windows. Good call, that man.
Or he might have killed someone else we’ll never know but what we do know is Abbot was on the scene and made the call
Because no one was ever tested we’ll never know who was half cut when they arrived at the scene or if someone under the influence of alcohol decided to settle an old score. Will we?.
What we know can lead to conclusions. Such as: “police resources are worse than useless when inadequate”, and “stop arming agents of the state with anything more powerful than harsh language and pepper spray” and a whole-of-government-approach, as opposed to putting public servants into positions where they feel there is no alternative.
I think the only window Abbot would have been worried about was the windscreen of his car as the golf club came through it towards his head.
‘cept that didn’t happen. Abbott wasn’t in the police car, he arrived separately, in his own vehicle. Doofus.
Reality’s Liberal bias strikes again.
“Wallace rampaged like a man possessed. Leaving golf clubs at various scenes he smashed and beat windows and cars. 3 cars were damaged. A taxi with passengers, a private car with 6 youths in it, the third car was a police patrol car. It has been said that night Wallace was intent on killing either himself or someone else and that the Senior Constable was an unwitting pawn in his game.
Collecting his pistol from the police station, Senior Constable Keith Abbott arrived at the scene of destruction. Beaten cars and 140 smashed windows a testimony of the Suspects State of mind. Steven Wallace began to aggressively advance on Abbott armed with a golf club and a baseball bat. Negotiation with the man proved fruitless. Wallace was warned that the policeman was armed and a warning shot was fired. With still no sign of the danger of the attack lessening Abbott withdrew 50m but was circled by Wallace and was cut off. When he reached 20m away Wallace threw the golf club at the Constables head causing him to duck and continued advancing with the softball bat. Abbott shot four shots before the man fell at 5-6m from the constable.”
At the end of the day feral scum always blame the police for there fuckups.
The only good thing about this is no innocent people where hurt.
People more objective than Nakiman might like to read some of the cross examination records from Abbott’s murder trial.
I make no apology for choosing a piece framed by a writer critical of Abbott who had options available other than lethal force that he chose not to take. The IPCA and other arse covering documents on this case are too nausea inducing to present here.
http://murderpedia.org/male.A/a/abbott-keith.htm
And Nakiman, your comments on Hone Harawira are despicable.
I read your link, I was appalled that they called the police officer the killer.
There should never have been a court case and trying to wind people up by playing the race card is a disgrace, how does that work when they are both Maori.
Usually when one person kills another, the one who does the killing is called the killer. That’s just how the English language works.
You went to Auckland Grammar, nakiman. You ought to have learned some of these basics.
“Do you think they will wear bullet proof vests?”
Incredibly callous and insensitive remark there. Shame on you GoNaddy Man.
Must keep an eye on their facebook page to see when the roadshow reaches Wellington, might be a good chance to have a talk with Hone about growing the presence of the Mana movement here in the capital…
that is a good idea…
..the internet/mana voter-drive/election-campaign is going to kick-arse…
..and will be a multi-pronged beast..
..awesome to behold..
..i’m still calling sub-10% (just.!.)..and feeling conservative with that..
..stand aside..!..coming thru..!..
Ever the optimist Phillip, i am calling 4%, should they poll higher than the 2.5% of the recent Morgan Poll tho i will adjust my calculation accordingly…
(admittedly tho, such a calculation does not include the likes of something like the ‘worm phenomena’ occurring, taking everyone by surprise)…
September 3rd to 20th for voting! How can anyone believe that dragging out the time like this is going to be better for this most important event for NZ. Do it at your leisure, at your convenience! Don’t put yourself out.
Over three-four days maybe with weekend in the middle. Special votes for special people not able to make it. But then finish and we have a count and something definitive, not with something that drags on and in which all sorts of compromising mischief can be carried out.
It demeans our big election and our decision-making into an easy peasy might get round to it thing. This is a disgraceful move and no ‘reasons’ can support it.
i see nothing disgraceful about ensuring that as many people as possible can get to vote considering that we all have different lives,
There could be any number of reasons for an individual not being able to cast their votes on a specific day and there could be any number of reasons why an individual might not know in a given time frame that they cannot cast those votes on a given day,
Has postal voting ever been compromised in this country, if not i see no reason why postal voting should not be included in the individuals ability to participate in the General election just as i see no reason, IF security of the vote can be assured, that voting via the internet should not be included as a means of casting our votes…
A lot of people still do not know that you can go on the unpublished roll if you are worried about someone tracking you down for whatever reason (use your imagination), or that an employer must give you reasonable paid time off to vote on the main advertised day.
The extended early voting is to try and engage more people to vote. The final printed roll date is a bit of a spanner in the works as I understand it, but there should still be a clear week at least for unions and others to organise special polling booths in areas of reasonable concentration of voters.
Some of the permutations are for the future maybe-like the ban on prisoners voting and online voting is a really leap, but even paper forms are not perfect given the hanging chads of Florida thing from 2000 that the Supreme court allowed Dubya in on. And I often wonder about some of the old tory cows that seem to get the sweet little earner every three years and misguide people on casting special votes if they are not on the printed roll. (Basically if you are not in the system, even if late, your special vote may be wasted).
‘A lot of people still do not know that you can go on the unpublished roll if you are worried about someone tracking you down for whatever reason (use your imagination),’
There appears quite a high threshold for acceptance: http://www.elections.org.nz/voters/get-ready-enrol-and-vote/unpublished-roll
The commission used to allow voters to stay in their home electorate. No-one bothered me for 12 years about being enrolled where my parents lived, despite not living there since I left school. I liked the connection with home through making a special vote, and not being on the roll in the same place I worked. But after 2011 I was told I would be removed from it if I didn’t confirm where I lived. Breaches do not seem to be prosecuted, and I wonder how many people have dropped off the roll in the past couple of years since this was tightened up.
See above.
And your point is Draco,???…
That it’s obvious that such security can be assured.
the thing about a successful breach is that it wouldn’t have been detected.
Nuclear facilities are probably as well protected as anything, and stuxnet still got in to trigger its payload.
So you’re not looking for assurance but a guarantee. No system can be guaranteed. And the chances are that the actions leading up to a possible breach could be detected, as they were in this case, and the breach stopped.
Stuxnet was introduced to a targeted network by USB flash drive and not a breach through the internet. Of course it’s still a concern but adequate processes and security software should keep that possibility to a minimum as well.
A vector is a vector is a vector. USB or internet or a stolen drive with the voter database.
And yes, when it comes to the very essence of democracy – one person, one vote – I want a little more than an “assurance“. I want to know that the new system is as safe as, or an improvement on, the old one.
I’m sure each of those examples was preceeded by an “assurance” of security.
Well, you won’t find me in favour of either voting machines (because they’re too open to abuse from the manufacturers) or postal voting (because it’s just too easy for the vote to be lost or forgotten) and I’m sure that online voting can be made as secure or better than the present system of going into a polling station.
And, yes, a vector is a vector and the present system has it’s own vectors. Some vectors are more easily monitored than others.
Fucking stupid idea mate as I have said so before and I’ll fight you every inch of the way on this.
It’s almost like you haven’t read any of Edward Snowden’s revelations on security compromises embedded in every level of networks and PCs (from the microcode used in Intel PC and server CPUs on up), and you haven’t watched a single presentation Jacob Appelbaum has made on how PCs, networks and the internet can be attacked and compromised.
some vectora also enable thousands of ballots to be added, changed, or discarded.
Whereas one’s ability to do that with paper ballots and booths to a similar scale requires massive resources and us usually painfully obvious.
And online voting is as vulnerableas electronic voting machings, only more so because the fraudster has complete control over their hardware, without oversight.
Appelbaum on the Tor Project
Not Even the NSA Can Crack the State Dept’s Favorite Anonymous Network
The Tor network is somewhat inefficient because a) every PC on the network has to become a server and b) most PCs on the network are connected via low speed asynchronous connections. The latter is the big problem.
But still, the big problem exists – the storage of essential data. We really do need to be able to determine that the person voting actually has the right to vote (we can’t have a few thousand people come in from out of country to vote in our elections). We do need to be able to ensure that, though they have the right to vote, that they’re not voting twice or voting in the wrong place. Access to that data is the problem but that data can be accessed through the corruption of the present systems. The Liu saga and how the PM knew weeks beforehand that it was coming out and how the letter was released with, essentially, no warning to Cunliffe shows that quite clearly.
The Tor Project doesn’t address any of that because it fails in to accept that you cannot be anonymous within a society. In fact, I’d say that anonymity allows and even encourages criminal activity.
Then we build the stuff here and make sure that the NSA (or our own GCSB) don’t get their sticky hands on it.
if we build te stuff here, we’re at the mercy of whomever we trust to provide security “assurance”.
the penalty for failure is just too great when you’re talking about elections.
“the present system has it’s own vectors”
What are the vectors in the present system that justify changing to a less secure system?
What a load of bollocks. Didn’t you notice that such attempts on computers are easily found out?
Such an attempt as the one you linked to would be picked up even easier. It would, in fact, be automatic rather than relying upon anyone realising that an address was cropping up a bit too often.
The fraudster does have control over their hardware – they don’t have any control over the server. Now, if the fraudster managed to get control of thousands of machines (security set up so that it would require a Man in the Middle attack) as they’re voting and change the vote to be what they want it to be then we’d have a problem – except that the person would actually be informed as to how they voted and that they have a right to change it if it was recorded incorrectly. Such a request would have an automatic investigation attached to it.
more handwaving.
Heartbleed.
Previously-assured and well-respected security had vulnerability, extent of compromises not known unless hacker did something obvious, and included weakening Tor nodes.
And hackers also like to change log files and rollback states to hidetheir activities, just FYI.
lol because “I’m right and the computer is wrong” arguments are funny. And it also reduces “secret ballot” to “secret until telecom yahoo accounts get hacked again”.
Seriously, we’re talking about secure online voting when the government can’t even ensure that kiosks in winz offices don’t compromise sensitive personal information, or departments email thousands of details to members of the public.
When you say “security set up so that it would require a Man in the Middle attack” you’re looking at it from a viewpoint doomed to failure, and probably guided by google.
There is no such assurance that says “the only way to attack this system is MitM”. It’s one tactic. There are many, including paying someone to drop off a USB or compromise in some other way. Any e-voting system needs to demonstrate it’s as secure as or better than ballots and booths. And that will not happen until people plausibly exploit ballots and booths in as effective way as IT is frequenty compromised.
Yes online voting is a solution lacking a problem. Well strictly speaking, it’s not a solution at all, its a quagmire of total predictable fail from the very start. Big bucks for some big consulting/IT firm though.
Not sure why you used TOR as an example Draco. The anonymity network is a crucial anti-surveillance tool despite you bagging it for no good reason. Its also not an example of what Appelbaum has talked about via Snowden’s releases which has relevance to online voting. You don’t want or need an anonymity network with regards to online voting. You need to know who everyone is, when and how they voted in online voting.
This de Spiegel article reveals more useful info. To summarise:
That’s a line straight from NSA or GCHQ PR. That is: that only terrorists, criminals and dangerous people with something to hide would want privacy and use security tools like encryption, TOR, etc.
With all due respect Draco, you are a fool.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/catalog-reveals-nsa-has-back-doors-for-numerous-devices-a-940994.html
The problem is the lack of democracy. Or perhaps you prefer living in an elected dictatorship that answers only to the rich?
I used Tor because it’s a way to get around network sniffing. In other words it’s negates the NSA’s grab bag tactics. They’d have to work directly with the server or the client. But it also brings it’s own problems.
You said that, not me. I said it allowed and encouraged criminal activity and provided an example.
So has the countering technology.
Except that you can see what your vote is and change it. Kinda defeats the purpose of changing the vote en-route.
That’s up for debate and I don’t think it’s as easy as some believe.
What are your web app skills like Draco? Mine are non-existent. But even I know that you can programme someone’s local web browser to remember what they actually voted on the web voting form. When that user queries for confirmation of how their vote was registered by the electoral system, you can simply send the voter what they expect to see based on what is stored as a local record. Which doesn’t have to match what was recorded in the ballot box voting database at all.
Now of course that’s a clutzy way of providing a voter with a false record/confirmation. Someone who actually knew what they were doing could do it a million times better.
My point – you are advocating for a system which is nothing less than a cannery for worms, which is going to cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and which is going to undermine our democracy at every level.
It seems that according to you, it would be impossible to operate a true democracy in the 1960s, 1970s or 1980s i.e. before the age of the world wide web.
Totally false dichotomy.
almost.
If they’d done it smarter it might have worked, or at least it might not have been traceable to them.
Say put mailboxes up on vacant lots, or registered one or two “voters” each on a bunch of rental properties over the three year period, so it gets lost in the short-term rental churn. Then downloaded the forms somewhere public.
Basically, it might be traceable on IP address that 500 people all used the library free wifi to download their forms, but it would take a bit more effort to detect fraud.
Yes But, if we all are issued with a specific number as an enrolled voter then it should be easy to design a program that identifies if two votes sets of votes have been cast using the same voter identifying number, or, if votes have been cast using a false voter identifying number,
The Auckland Council election incident tho didn’t seem to have specifically compromised the postal voting system per se,
The General electoral system is open to such a compromise where if i can provide an address in say Hone’s electorate, without ever having lived there befor, i can conceivably vote in that electorate,(i would obviously have to know someone who lived at the address, or, rent a PO box, so as to receive information that i was enrolled)…
You just need to know the basic details of a non-voter.
And provide a plausible address and phone number (I think the auckland guy pinged the EC sonar because all the names were registered at one address). But if you own a block of flats you can say “previous tenant, I’ll forward it”.
The thing about giving everyone a number is that it’s great for indexing, but lousy for fraud detection.
Mac, Re: fraud detection, a personal voting number tho could only be used for fraud if the perpetrator of the fraud were to know that the rightful user of the number was not going to vote???,
A mass fraud would then require the perpetrator to know of 100’s or 1000’s who were not going to vote???…
Depends.
First step is the issuing of the number – is it as difficult as currently enrolling? If so, then it’s a pointless exercise.
Second step is how easy it is to go “oooo I’ve forgotten it, how do I reenroll online without it?”
Third step is how easy is it to find out.
And then lastly, the flipside is what we saw in the US: how many voters of the other side can we turn away if the hoops are too onerous to jump through? Or if we add a double vote to a legitimate voter, would both be declined?
And that’s before we get into “errors” or hacking of voting software/hardware.
The thing about voting in person is that if the same person turns up fifty times to vote, a scrutineer or polling official will probably notice. Not so much online or through the mail.
God Mac, that all sounds so fraught i am off to hide under my bed, the present system tho can be easily gamed if you have knowledge of a registered voter who will not vote and that voters details,
The multiple votes need only be cast in multiple booths to avoid the scrutiny of scrutineers,
Lolz, i had better stop this or sooner or later i will be forced to recommend that voter identification occur as a matter of having bar-codes tattooed on the foreheads of the individual…
lol
As you pointed out, it’d be a massive effort to try and rig 1000 votes this way. With an online voting system, altering 100,000 votes to change an election result is a piece of cake and requires only keystrokes.
the real art would be in skewing the votes at a smaller number in different electorates, over several elections, so it wouldn’t even raise any stats flags.
Yes I suppose the contractors used would have to earn their pay 🙂
Also Draco makes a serious error saying that intrusions or interference in a computer system is easy to detect. It might be, it might not be.
But imagine what would happen if after an election day, forensic evidence of widespread computerised vote rigging was found which had likely altered the result of the election 6 months previously. Utter pandemonium and chaos. Basically why would you even go there.
(There might not even have been any vote rigging on election – the “evidence” could have been constructed and introduced into systems later on to make it look like it had simply to cause scandal and chaos).
When DRO for about 12 of our elections I worked on the principle that if you turned up, not on the roll I gave a Special vote instead. The bosses would sort out after the election if it was valid or not.
In NZ every vote is checked off the Electoral Roll after the Election. This throws up any duplicate or multiple votes from one individual. The name on the roll is visited and any crime is discovered. Foolproof when using paper polls.
In reaction to the five people fined for not or partially filling in their census form up in North land this week the following musings: On Census Forms, The Right To Remain Silent And Boiling Frogs. Enjoy!
Fifty six percent of John Key’s followers found to be fake.
lol. (Not very) dedicated followers of (outdated) fashion.
Well Draco. Imagine the team of astroturfers and the trolls with down time so since they are being paid to work they must fill in time by being the many false followers of Mr Key.
it takes something like 20 miles for a supertanker to even respond to the wheel but I do believe I see a swing coming.
John Keys thought he was being smart calling an early election but the people have already seen what a fraud he is and he will be gone soon like an evil spirit that has been exorcised or a boil removed off the body politic.
Anyone notice a new column just up, by Jared Savage showing that Damien O’Connor “intervened” in the Liu application? Not sure what that shows as it is official and above board I think. Everyone knew Liu was granted residency against advice. And what has the 2005 Election got to do with it?
A former Labour Minister intervened three times in the immigration bid of Donghua Liu including waiving the English language requirement for the millionaire businessman.
Damien O’Connor, in his role as the associate Immigration Minister, wrote three letters to Liu’s advisor Warren Kyd – the former National Party MP – before deciding to grant residency against the advice of officials the day before the 2005 election.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11287104
Hi Ianmac,
Whilst I am sure you will not be falling over in surprise over this; it looks to me that Mr J Savage is doing the National Party’s bidding:
West-Coast Tasman is one of the electorates that the National Party intend to target in this year’s election.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11284798
(Note the ‘marvelous’ choice of photo they chose…)
Breaking News: We have just discovered something that is common knowledge and of no importance!
Everyone knows Damien O’Connor granted Liu residency against official advice. No one knows why, and the Herald has not found an answer. They haven’t even really found a question yet, but they keep on trying.
I’m not sure how they will convert this non-story into a call for David Cunliffe to resign, but if they put John Armstrong on the case I’m sure we’ll be enlightened in no time.
Everyone knows why, the amount of money he promised to invest outweighed the english language requirement.
I wonder if the letters of support from national mps have been released yet?
but now the other questions can be asked, here are some starters
Why was a former National MP lobbying so hard on behalf of Mr Liu ?
Is the former National MP, Warren Kyd, still the advisor for Mr Liu?
Is the former National MP, involved in any of Mr Liu’s businesses?
How did Mr Liu meet the former National MP, Warren Kyd?
That does raise questions on Mr Kyd’s involvement.
Will Jared release the name of his informant? Doubt it.
maybe he just did 😉
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Kyd
Something went badly wrong didn’t it.
Nicely timed eh Herald? Another round of Labour /Liu hysteria designed to reach its peak this coming week-end?
Labour’s Annual Conference (called Congress in election year) is this coming week-end.
w.t.f. is seymour from act doing taking part in that celebs sleeping rough thing 2nite..?
..how deeply cynical is that..?
..when acts’ policies/core-beliefs are to tear away support from the weakest/poorest/sickest..
..fucken rand-ite scum that they are..
..i hope to fuck someone calls him out 2nite..
..and asks him:..’w.t.f. r u doing here..?..’
I bet you Goldsmith aint there …
i’ve heard tell goldsmith is a hologram..
..apparantly yr hands can pass right thru him..
I see what you mean Freedom. I expect that Mr Kyd is away on some safe holiday somewhere – like Hawaii perhaps?
Obviously Jared has been instructed to rewind the Dong Liu Saga, to take the heat of the Malaysian Sex Scandal.
Under pressure???, Slippery the Prime Minister yesterday physically removed a RadioNZ National reporter from in front of Him, first saying ”get out of my way” and then pushing the reporter from His path as the reporter attempted to ask questions surrounding the PM’s involvement in the removal from New Zealand of the Malaysian diplomat,
Bet we see nothing of this on our TV’s tonight,but, expect more of the same from the PM as the pressure goes on leading into the election…
Should have gone Bob Jones on his arse.
Definitely BM, why don’t you dial up the Lair in Chief and suggest He do just that, it will be perfect having the PM being investigated for assault leading into the election…
It’s why I’m not in politics, I just don’t have the patience for that sort of bullshit.
You get a warning ,if you don’t comply, you’re picking up your teeth.
BM, that’s just wankers talk…
Hone wouldn’t agree.
Duck,dive, divert right BM…
“You get a warning ,if you don’t comply, you’re picking up your teeth.”
Bahaha you dick. You think people have to “comply” with you?
Absolutely, if you were here right in front of me, [Come on BM you can do better than this – MS]
Ok tough guy.
that’s what you tell your mates at the
pubwine bar, anyway…Wine bar, LOL, I don’t think there’s been a wine bar in NZ in 20+ years.
Anyway, better things to do than drink at the pub.
“Come on BM you can do better than this – MS”
[citation needed]
I happen to know Felix in the flesh and I really like him as a human being and as a man who knows how to stand his ground intellectually like no other on this blog. I don’t know you but playing at being the tough guy on a public blog threatening violence is, as far as I am concerned, the path of the LOOSER.
So if I where you I’d pull my head in because when push comes to shove (Oh pun! 😆 ) Felix commands a lot of respect here and that means you just upset a lot of people.
LOOSER.
It’s loser, you loser.
LOOOOOOSER! ROFL and that would be loseress to you.
“I don’t know you but playing at being the tough guy on a public blog threatening violence is, as far as I am concerned, the path of the LOOSER.”
Wow, I’m flattered!!
Here is what comes a bit lower in the same comment:
24.2.2
5 June 2014 at 8:11 pm
Travellerev advocates violence against convicted criminals. I didn’t get to read Naki Moran’s response but I’ll wager he was just lashing out like a person with a severely limited understanding of personal responsibility 😈
Reply
travellerev 24.2.2.1
6 June 2014 at 8:53 am
” Actually I advocate state sanctioned violence against the worst offenders. It worked wonders for moral during the French revolution.”
Not the same as threatening to beat someones teeth out of his mouth just because you don’t like what he says. Dickhead.
You’re too kind 😀
My pleasure F
Yeah I always suspected BM meant Big Man in your little brain.
“It’s why I’m not in politics”
HAHA, there’s more than that preventing you, fuckwit.
Did Mr Key use the immortal words, “Get out of my way. Don’t you know who I am?”
Lolz ianmac, i only heard the ”get out of my way”, i would have to assume that the ”intent” was there tho…
no..he said:..’i’m not ‘relaxed’ about this!’..
The Maori Kings boy escapes conviction because he is “royal” and “Maori”.
So if it were me? White. Commoner!
I fekken hate this racist divine right crap.
Were you there Ennui, at the court hearing that is, if you were a young man attending University who made a number of stupid errors of judgment and wound up befor the court it is just as likely that you would have been granted the same leniency as occurred here,
In fact, statistics would suggest that had this particular youth been Pakeha instead of Maori he would not have appeared befor the court at all, instead being offered diversion…
Yes, the court and justice system are racially and class biased big time, thats a fact. Here I am giving them shit for the reasons the Prime news reported for the non conviction…royalty and race. Read below.
putting yr heavy-breathing to one side..
..the stats will show that ‘white/commoner’ has a far better chance of discharge without conviction..
..than brown/commoner..
..so if u were thinking of using this as a racism-trampoline..
..as in ‘po’ white-boy!”..’
..you really wd b just full of it..eh..?
and of course the most famous ‘white/commoner’ currently angling for one of them..
.. is john ‘what helicopter-ride?’ banks..
..i wonder how he’ll get on with that promise..?
As you commented the other day Phil ” .and we were smoking poisonously strong weed..and i was ripped off my tits..as was my practice. seems your brains fried from the practice.
but bored
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/10229216/Maori-Kings-son-avoids-conviction
were they also ‘royal’?
It seems like the judge is giving this young man a chance to sort his shit out and it appears that he has strong support to deal with all of the issues a 19 year old has – with a baby coming I really hope he gets the alcohol sorted and doesn’t become another nz statistic of shame – in jail or the grave.
Mars, the judge got it 100% right with the young men, that is exactly how it should be dealt with, including the heir to the Maori “throne’. If we are to believe the news media and Tuku on the news that’s not the case with this lad. The excuse was that “if he were convicted he would not be able to ascend the throne” and that “a Maori King has to be purer than pure”…….
Now maybe I am very Bored but I hate with a passion hereditary title and any claim to it. And the concept that a Maori (or any other) kings purity was something special. The excuse is just lame bollocks. And perhaps I am more than a little jaded with that part of the establishment which fawns and slips into supplication to things Maori in a most PC manner when it suits their ends. I see that as just privileged gits teaming up, just look at the Maori Party and National wiping one another’s arses. You wont see any of them them doing anything for the under-privileged and needy be they white, brown, Martian or what ever. And that is what pissed me off most !
Fair enough. I only read the comments but they seemed to be designed for a future audience. I went to a seminar the other night about protecting children from abuse – physical, emotional and sexual and it really hit home that night how this digital culture we have really means that nothing is lost and everything will come back and haunt them once it is up on the net. That was where my head was at. I agree with you about helping the under-privileged and needy whatever ethnicity or apparent skin colour.
Thanks, I should have said about the excuse first up, I’d just watched Tuku and wanted to re arrange his visage (metaphorically of course).
I had a search for discharge without conviction. The main people awarded such seem to be sportsmen for drink driving offences – because it might ruin their sporting careers by being barred from going to certain countries.
Another Roy Morgan shocker for Labour. Stuck in the 20’s
Another shocker for Fisiani, stuck like a cracked record parroting that which is of little consequence considering the pollster’s ability to have National 4–5% above the actual vote on the day…
Labour voters are too busy making ends meet to answer the phone. National voters sit by the phone waiting for pollsters to ring. It’s the highlight of their day.
Seriously though. We know there will be a swing to Labour and away from National on the day. That coupled with a “yes we can” type campaign should see a welcome change of government.
Fabulous optimism there sir. National are quaking and know they will lose. The Cunliffe will easily win all the televised debates. The GOTV will easily get out 1,000,000 extra votes. All the signs are showing that JK has just 79 days left. What on earth are you drinking?
I certainly hope so. This country deserves better.
JMG, as usual, is excellent
http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.co.nz/2014/07/in-handful-of-dust.html
I suppose we are still running a few years behind the states – perhaps when they hit the wall we will bang into them because we are following so closely.
The States is beset by massive internal culture wars which the elite have used as a distraction to take attention away from the class war that they have been waging on the 95%.
But it’s not working any more. And people are pissed off. And many of them have guns. And combat experience in Iraq or Afghanistan.
Thing in NZ – we have this massive advantage – our culture wars are piddly and although there are a million guns in this country, we hardly ever kill people with them.
if you saw Keys on the telly tonight you would know that he knows the game is up.
His government hasn’t really been a government at all.
Just a rabble sorting through the books to see what they could get their hands on.
begone foul spirits.
For those who facebook – check out the group ‘barry jenkin saved my life’ – some great bands, tunes and memories, like this one – it seems very apt for the gnats and keyworld
“This is the happy house, we’re happy here in the happy house
Oh, it’s such fun, fun, fun
We’ve come to play in the happy house
And waste a day in the happy house, it never rains, never rains
We’ve come to scream in the happy house
We’re in a dream in the happy house
We’re all quite sane, sane, sane
This is the happy house-we’re happy here
There’s room for you if you say “I do”
But don’t say no or you’ll have to go
We’ve done no wrong with our blinkers on
It’s safe and calm if you sing along, sing along, sing along
This is the happy house, we’re happy here in the happy house
To forget ourselves and pretend all’s well
There is no hell
I’m looking through your window
I’m looking through your window”
Anyone having trouble loading/sending comments or is just my Firefox?
https://www.national.org.nz/news/news/media-releases/detail/2014/07/01/chief-victims-advisor-underpins-package-to-prevent-family-violence
Another example of working for New Zealand from Team Key
You mean after all the cuts in funding to women’s refuges under the watch of Team Key?
Another ambulance at the bottom of the cliff, you mean.
Where is the commitment to tackling the causes? Why does this government persist in treating symptoms and passing it off as policy?
to PREVENT family violence is NOT ambulance Duh!
cluebat for the local moron:
when all seven of the bullet-point actions in your link involve “sentencing” or “victims”, it’s not “prevention”.
If it was genuinely about “prevention” there would be no “victims” and no need for “sentencing”.
Oh look. The Herald has another Liu story. What’s the bet that one of their hacks calls for another Labour resignation whilst defending McCully?
NZ Herald – John Key edition
I’ve just posted the Fairfax-Ipsos Preferred PM breakdowns by Party Support here…http://sub-z-p.blogspot.co.nz/
Still have other demographics to do, though.
Chur dude having a read now 🙂
Very interesting swordfish. That huge proportion of undecided are ripe for picking/persuading.
Crystal clear format thanks swordfish.