Open mike 03/08/2012

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, August 3rd, 2012 - 39 comments
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Open mike is your post. For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose.

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39 comments on “Open mike 03/08/2012 ”

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  1. mickysavage 1
    3 August 2012 at 6:37 am

    Crusher Collins is now going to crush New Zealand’s Family Court system.  Instead of having six counseling  sessions where the causes of and the hurt caused by a relationship break up can be addressed they will now have to sort themselves out in one.  Then it is straight into rather expensive state imposed mediation.  I guess poor people will have to toughen up and sort themselves out because they will never be able to afford it.

    The justification is another lie, that the Family Court is inefficient and is bogged down by repeat applications.  This ignores the reality that 97% of cases are resolved by agreement. 

    Family Law is a very sophisticated and deeply sensitive regime that has evolved over the last 30 years.  Crusher will wreck it and not even care or understand what she is doing.

    Her proposals sound like something the Soviet Union would have imposed.  It is the ultimate in nanny state.

    • Draco T Bastard 1.1
      3 August 2012 at 9:49 am

      Tories always destroy the community and they do it through ignorance, stupidity and cutting costs so that they can cut taxes.

      • prism 1.1.1
        3 August 2012 at 11:37 am

        Law grinds the poor, and rich men rule the law.
        Oliver Goldsmith

        • aerobubble 1.1.1.1
          3 August 2012 at 2:38 pm

          Market failure, that now has gone global, occur as a direct consequence of the forced nature of market intervention by the private wealthy, to their own detriment. Communism is after all state planning restricting the market, now we have Private Capitalism (media-political-banking complex) restricting the market. The law ain’t the problem.

      • Colonial Viper 1.1.2
        3 August 2012 at 11:56 pm

        Tories always destroy the community and they do it through ignorance, stupidity and cutting costs so that they can cut taxes.

        Actually its the neoliberals and especially the neocons who are the problem.

        The old fashioned “wet tories” are quite OK to deal with.

    • prism 1.2
      3 August 2012 at 10:37 am

      ms 1
      Yes Crusher Collins is bringing her no-nonsense nanny persona to advance the authoritarian state.
      Pretending that the rich never have problems they have to sort out and that the poor who can’t have to take responsibility and pay up is operating on a low horizon on life just above the carpet.
      And the government exacerbates the problems that ordinary people have. One by opening our country and our exchange rates to the free market and losing the jobs in exchange for cheap trinkets and clothing. The other is by cynically bleeding lower income people through selling alcohol to them with increased depots for it, also the pokies with their ersatz entertainment and dreams of payouts.

      Now Collins comes out with one or two scenarios of people who have been allowed by the system to abuse Family Court processes to excess. So now the whole service has been put above the affordability of low income people who are struggling with life’s problems already.

      • Bored 1.2.1
        3 August 2012 at 1:30 pm

        The Nats were really excellent at portraying the “managerial” approach of the Clark government as “Nanny” state. I would suggest what we now have is the “Evil Stepmother” state.

    • Vicky32 1.3
      3 August 2012 at 11:42 pm

      Crusher Collins is now going to crush New Zealand’s Family Court system.

      More pointless change for change’s sake!

  2. BillODrees 2
    3 August 2012 at 7:24 am

    David Shearer is getting media training from Ian Fraser. Small stuff at one level, but serious stuff when it comes putting together the package that will get rid of Key ASAP and improve the lot of the PAYE worker.  Three observations. 
    One: during the leadership debates in Dec ’11 Shearer acknowledged his weakness in this area and said he would do something about it. Eight months later…WTF….no sense of urgency or criticality.
    Two: Ian Fraser is a dinosaur who made his bones in Muldoon’s time.  He was a cot case in TVNZ and a cringe case in the NZSO.  He is a total sycophant: that is how he got those gigs.  He will blow so much smoke up Shearer’s arse that he will increase his level of disconnection from some home truths.
    Three:  what type of twits are advising Shearer? Why has it taken so long? Why Fraser? Why publicise such a late and weak response to Shearer’s admitted weakness? 
    IT DOES NOT HAVE TO BE LIKE THIS.  WE ARE BETTER THAN THIS. 

     

    • Dr Terry 2.1
      3 August 2012 at 12:35 pm

      Well spoken Bill. It is very frustrating and we can only hang in there, avoid despair (as easy as that could be).

  3. just saying 3
    3 August 2012 at 8:06 am

    http://werewolf.co.nz/2012/08/rigging-it-for-romney/

    This month’s ‘Werewolf’ i-magazine is out. As always, it’s worth a read.

  4. freedom 4
    3 August 2012 at 10:13 am

    Lprent, there is a problem with the site via the phone.

    As of yesterday the phone version of the standard seems to be stuck on a permanent reload. I use a Samsung S2 android and am not having this issue on any other site or service. When i go to thestandard.org.nz the main page loads, then keeps reloading. Even if i try to go through to an article it loads automatically back to the main page and keeps on doing it. Bascially making the site unusable.

    Is anyone else having problems or just lucky me. As mentioned, no other site or service is currently an issue, just this one 🙁

    • lprent 4.1
      3 August 2012 at 3:31 pm

      Odd. I have a HTC one V running android 4 (icecream sandwich). It is running fine.

      As of yesterday…

      There were no site updates since Monday and up until about 10 minutes ago.

      The most likely reason is that it has collected a lousy javascript and cached it locally on your phone. In that case you’ll need to do something like (read ahead first)

      In the browser menu go into settings, and then into privacy and security, and into clear cache.

      But it could also be in the cloud. So I just reset the cloud caches. Try again before clearing your local cache. Tell me which one (if any) fixed the problem.

      • freedom 4.1.1
        3 August 2012 at 6:08 pm

        LPrent, ok, have access to a machine again ( for a few minutes anyway, looking forward to a new pc in a few weeks, TradeMe permitting)

        i cleared the browser cache on my phone and this appeared to work for the first load then it all went to la la land again. Earlier today, whilst enjoying an amber liquid with an increasingly disgruntled i-phone user, i presented the issue and as they watched my phone reload page after page after page they tried loading the standard on their phone and had the same issue. All a bit odd really. ( i have also administered stern words questioning why the standard was not already bookmarked on their phone 🙂 )

        Will not have much of a chance the next few days to check progress but will let you know on Monday if things have improved

        thanks for the advice though

        • gareth 4.1.1.1
          3 August 2012 at 7:30 pm

          Yeah I’ve always had problems commenting on android (gingerbread) in mobile version. Worked ok using web view. Admittedly using a defy which has it’s kinks….

  5. joe90 5
    3 August 2012 at 11:35 am

    Some chart pRon: 31 economic indicators that are all breaking down.

    The charts in this series all depict different aspects of the economic inflection point. Most of the charts are presented in year over year percent change format to illustrate how the nominal highs that many indexes have made recently have been generated by steadily decreasing rates of growth.

  6. fender 6
    3 August 2012 at 2:26 pm

    Not content with stealing wealth from the country this predator gets some hero worshiper to write a book about his luck

  7. aerobubble 7
    3 August 2012 at 2:26 pm

    Prosecution and Defense lawyer haggle over evidence, so they agreed to drop some evidence about other offending of the accused in the Scott Guy murder. Now some idiot goes on TV and suggests that the verdict would have been guilty had all the evidence been put up. Well let’s see, this person who did all these other nasty despicable things to others, would have made some enemies, who might have mistaken the two brothers-and-law, or thought they were in it together, so killed the wrong brother in law. so I ask you why would the sensible sentencing trust believe, a.) that someone is guilty until proven innocent, b.) that evidence contested over makes trials unfair, c.) that this particular evidence would not have given defense an even stronger defense, i.e. more people in the frame. I wish TV would stop before it gives this imbecile from the SST tv time, and hope the SST is smart enough to choose a better front man.

    • Te Reo Putake 7.1
      3 August 2012 at 2:32 pm

      I think you may have the SST’s position on presumed innocence wrong there, aerobubble. It’s guilty until proven white.

    • bad12 7.2
      3 August 2012 at 3:27 pm

      Yeah a very good point you make there, my understanding,(and correct me if i am wrong),is that McDonald had been ‘narked’ on already to at least one neighbour who had lost stock to one of McDonald’s little missions,

      There appears to be far far more to this story than what the Crown presented at the trial,(as there usually is),and i wonder in light of Guy seniors evidence that there was some discussion of McDonald leaving the farm to manage another property given at the trial whether or not any of the Guy’s had any inkling of McDonald’s bizaare little prediliction,

      The whole sorry saga,(complete with the bits not shown/known at the trial) would make a grand NZ Hillbilly’s movie…

      • bad12 7.2.1
        3 August 2012 at 4:27 pm

        Related to your comment was one i either read in the Granny-Herald ot heard on RadioNZ’s Nine to noon,

        The gist of it was that the Head of the Fed Farmers Gang up Fielding way was astonished that ‘one of their own’ could have engaged in such acts of stock slaughter and sabotage of a farmer by draining His milk vat,

        The bloke from the Fed went on to say that He ‘thought’ such acts could have only been committed by some unemployed person who had never worked a day in their life,

        At the time i thought of giving His comments an airing here with the attachment of ”welcome to the real world buckwheat and since when have the Fed managed to ever have a logical thought about anything except the breeding habits of sheep in conjunction with other mammalian species”,

        That plonker should spend more of His obviously limited intellectual ability keeping His brains outta His Skellerup’s and His fly firmly fixed in place…

      • prism 7.2.2
        3 August 2012 at 4:34 pm

        Hillbillys but with NZ dark over shadow.

      • aerobubble 7.2.3
        11 August 2012 at 11:03 am

        This is why we have courts, who have the power to introduce evidence or ignore it.
        And why the spokesperson for SST, and those two dipstick older journalists on the Nation,
        are complete dorks for believing that the extra evidence of Mcdonalds offending would
        have necessarily led to a murder offense when it provides such an obvious B gambit by
        the defence.

        Mcdonald could have easily disturbed a weed crop, and likely givne his predilection, have
        rubbed the wrong people up the wrong way, who do not tell police. so it follows that
        having the extra evidence would have actually harmed the prosecution case.

        What a bunch of idiots at the SST, and those old journalists on the Nation, they undermine
        the court process to say something staggeringly stupid.

  8. joe90 8
    3 August 2012 at 4:20 pm

    Despite their water grab drilling operators in the US have been actively competing with agriculture for water but the current drought conditions have forced some operators to suspend their fracking.

    It appears fracking isn’t quite as benign as many would have us believe.

  9. Colonial Viper 9
    3 August 2012 at 4:20 pm

    Irony: rail proves highly capable at shipping crude oil

    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/guest-post-rail-may-hold-its-own-against-pipelines

  10. Pascal's bookie 10
    3 August 2012 at 5:00 pm

    Paul Henry fan:

    http://mariekehardy.com/blog/post/circle-of-life/

    Hearsay has it that Ten even tried to handball Henry off to be the face of panel show Can of Worms but those involved threw a grade-A shitfit, and like a scabies-addled pound dog nobody wants to claim Henry was shunted back to the poorly-conceived hosting position from whence he came.

  11. Pascal's bookie 11
    3 August 2012 at 5:05 pm

    Sam Morgan on this govt and IT:

    https://twitter.com/samfromwgtn/status/231250182539472898

  12. Southern Limits 12
    3 August 2012 at 5:21 pm

    So you all know how Monbiot did a u-turn on peak oil due to Maugeri’s Harvard paper? Well it turns out Maugeri fudged his calculations:

    “After interviewing Mr Maugeri at some length, I am still not much the wiser about exactly how he went about his calculations, but it is quite clear they are full of holes, and I am convinced his predicted glut is fantasy. Roger Bentley, another of the UKERC authors, sums up more bluntly: “Mr Maugeri’s report misrepresents the decline rates established by major studies, it contains glaring mathematical errors, and now he says he meant the opposite of what he wrote. I am astonished Harvard published it.””

    http://www.davidstrahan.com/blog/?p=1570

    • Draco T Bastard 12.1
      3 August 2012 at 7:59 pm

      “Mr Maugeri’s report misrepresents the decline rates established by major studies, it contains glaring mathematical errors, and now he says he meant the opposite of what he wrote. I am astonished Harvard published it.”

      I’m not, it was from an authority figure who was assumed to know WTF he was talking about.

  13. Logie97 13
    4 August 2012 at 12:19 am

    A statement that is repeatedly made today is “those whom the education system has failed”.
    For a government that espouses personal responsibility, suddenly it is the system that is at fault.
    Do the universities get the blame for the top enders who fail to make the grade?
    Secretly, I suspect there will be many school’s who will be glad that Mr Banks will be taking responsibility for the “bottom enders”.

    However in reality it is Banks’ cynical shallow opportunism and personal ego which is playing a dirty trick that is going to raise so many false hopes, and Parata has to support him. Shame on them.

  14. Tom 14
    5 August 2012 at 10:00 am

    “Wipeout” provides a relief from the current orgy of Corporate Olympism (TV3 on Saturday night). With currently dismal international socio-economic prognoses it valorises the struggles of everyman and woman, and provides recurring examples of dignity under adverse conditions.

    It recognised that not everyone can win, and provides role models for people facing lifes absurdities.
    It shows how to behave when things are stacked against you, and the virtues of grit and resilience in aiding success.

    It deflates show-ponies.

    It could be a useful exercise for Labour candidates in the coming election.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wipeout_(2008_U.S._game_show)

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