Open Mike 03/09/2016

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, September 3rd, 2016 - 72 comments
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72 comments on “Open Mike 03/09/2016 ”

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  1. Julia Schiller 1
    3 September 2016 at 7:08 am

    You may have heard that Wilson Security has decided being associated with rape & abuse is bad for their bottom line. Less than 48 hours before today’s Australia-wide & Newmarket protests and calls for boycott (they are part of Wilson Offshore Group, which also owns Wilson Parking), they announced that they won’t continue running Nauru and Manus Island detention centres once their existing sub-contract is up next October.

    Their announcement states they’ve been “professional” in fulfilling their duties and are “proud” of their performance.

    So our protest this afternoon goes on, as 13 more months of the status quo is simply unacceptable. These modern day concentration camps must be closed immediately.

    If you share my disgust at the degradation of New Zealand’s good reputation under Key, don’t wait until next year’s election to reclaim our moral leadership. Come along today and tell Australia to #CloseTheCamps Stand in solidarity with the members of Whistleblowers, Activists and Citizens Alliance (waca.net.au/Boycott_Wilson) And let’s challenge Wilson’s social license as I don’t want a corporation this unethical (they are also implicated in HK’s biggest bribery & corruption scandal, appear in the Panama Papers and haven’t been obeying Australian filing requirements) operating in New Zealand.

    Today
    Newmarket, Lumsden Green, Broadway and Khyber Pass
    1 PM
    http://bit.ly/2bai4UP

  2. Sirenia 2
    3 September 2016 at 8:58 am

    Now that Celia’s not standing she can be frank (and mostly astutely accurate) about the Wellington mayoral contenders. Not surprisingly, nice Justin Lester comes out top.

    http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/83803202/celias-choice-wadebrown-delivers-frank-assessment-of-capitals-mayoral-contenders

    • alwyn 2.1
      3 September 2016 at 9:21 am

      Did you read the comments that followed the article in the paper?
      I personally find Celia a very pleasant person but she was out of her depth as Mayor. The comments that follow the article are much more anti than I would be.
      However I think the Island Bay cycleway fiasco was the last straw. An excellent wide, safe road that is now too narrow for the buses and seems to have accidents every week. There are very few cyclists who use it and those who do don’t even use the cycle lanes most of the time. I think they find them too dangerous to ride along.
      Sorry Celia but it is time to go. Your term will not be remembered as a great one for the city.

      • Sirenia 2.1.1
        3 September 2016 at 10:00 am

        Celia was a very effective and largely consensus and mildly green mayor. The cycleway was a visionary attempt at making a wide street cycle friendly. Having the cycleway next to the footpath is the way it is done in cycle friendly cities. No reason why large cars need to park on both sides of any street. A blogger spent several hours driving up and down the cycleway a few weeks ago and found numerous children and families cycling or playing and counted over 600 driveways with no problems of people coming in or out. So a beat up by the very powerful car and driving brigade. Most mayoral candidates are also stuck on the addiction to driving a personal car without regard to the urgent needs of environmental survival. Light rail is only a possibility with one or two of them eg Justin Lester.

        • Bearded Git 2.1.1.1
          3 September 2016 at 10:05 am

          +1 well spoken Sirenia. The car lobby hates to be crossed. Good job Celia.

        • Stephanie Rodgers 2.1.1.2
          3 September 2016 at 10:30 am

          The hyperfocus on roads! roads! roads! by some of the Wellington mayoral candidates (especially Nick Leggett and Jo Coughlan) is bizarre. It’s just not an issue which dominates the narrative here the way it does in Auckland.

        • alwyn 2.1.1.3
          3 September 2016 at 1:43 pm

          I guess I have to ask.
          Do you live in Wellington?
          Have you actually seen, walked along and driven on the road concerned?
          Did you see it, walk on it and drive on it before they started putting in the cycle lane?
          If the said blogger thinks there are no problems how do they account for the string of accidents?
          Do you really think 87% of the Island Bay residents are stupid?
          http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/AK1603/S00268/switch-the-cycleway-back-island-bay-has-spoken.htm

          • Stephanie Rodgers 2.1.1.3.1
            3 September 2016 at 4:45 pm

            That survey is a joke. It was self-selected, offered no “don’t know” options, and was heavily promoted by an organisation which is openly anti-cycleway.

            Yes, there are issues with the cycleway, and yes, a lot of people are angry about it, but the anti-cycleway lobby only make themselves look ridiculous using such shabby “data” to support their case.

        • mauī 2.1.1.4
          3 September 2016 at 6:57 pm

          Yep it would be interesting to see how the candidates promoting $1 billion of new roading marry that up with the impending incineration of Africa from climate change.

  3. Colonial Viper 3
    3 September 2016 at 9:14 am

    Seems that none of a roughly dozen Blackberries that Clinton used while Sec State can be found. How odd.

    • Ad 3.1
      3 September 2016 at 10:19 am

      Key destroys his every week and gets a fresh one.

    • Lanthanide 3.2
      3 September 2016 at 11:19 am

      Sounds like they’ve been professionally disposed of. So what’s the problem?

      • Sabine 3.2.1
        3 September 2016 at 11:33 am

        Hilary is the problem.

        • reason 3.2.1.2
          3 September 2016 at 10:24 pm

          [lprent: A warning to readers in the same style as this pointless conspiracy dipshit.

          ‘reason’ appears to be a dickless wonder who appears to think he has something important to say. However that reason appears to be invisible unless you too happen to be a obsessed misogynist fuckwit quite obviously with a skull riven with syphilitic holes.

          On reading ‘his’ material it appears that the only thing he has is claims that are of as a dubious provenance as his implied claims of intellectual power. But of course the pathetic dimwit manages to read trash like the bloody awful UK Daily Mirror.

          Be warned. ]

          Killary Clinton is a blood thirsty woman who often when I look at her eyes, or hear her brittle forced laugh, or see her pain-full insincere forced smiles, appears to me more than a little crazy ……..

          I fear Bill sticking his dick in quite a few women and the worldwide exposure of this could be deadly …..

          Humiliated repeatedly by Bill …. the world talking and sniggering about it …..we could all burn for this …..

          More seriously though……… she supported the illegal invasion of Iraq ….. and still seems to believe the American game plan of George Bush, rumsfield etc to go to war and change the governments of 7 nations in the middle east region ( Iraq, Lebbanon, Syria, Libiya, Sudan, Somallia, Iran ) ………….. after the great success of Afghanistan.

          It was all supposed to take 5 years ……. and not involve millions of refugees flooding Europe.

          But back to Hillary ……… I’ve recently watched the short doco ,.. “Hillary Clinton’s Business of Corporate Shilling & War Making (2016) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUeHZMfQ-Uc

          In it she claims,….. as an excuse,…. that she voted for the illegal Iraq invasion because Bush offered her $20 Billion for New York city ………… it’s at the 19 minute mark ….

          It just got me wondering what price crazy horse Wayne Mapp and the pony tail perv had in mind for our blood money ……https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COuQfs0VSs8

          http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/banksy-new-york-horses-night-vision-2369375

          [lprent: Yep, I think I got the style of ‘reason’ about right – but I couldn’t quite descend to the level of stupidity. But I guess that journos at the mirror know their audience. ]

          • Stephanie Rodgers 3.2.1.2.1
            3 September 2016 at 10:47 pm

            This is just vicious, nasty personal bullshit. I’ve said it once and will apparently keep saying it until 8 November (if not 8 November 2024): there are more than enough real, serious things to criticise Hilary Clinton for. This endless stream of “she’s a crazy illuminati sex-starved bitch” misogynist conspiracy theorising just makes her critics look ridiculous.

          • reason 3.2.1.2.2
            4 September 2016 at 9:34 am

            Gosh ….Sorry Stephenie and Lprent ………….. let me mansplain and try to dig my way out.

            First of all I blame Bill for being a selfish randy dick…….. no partner should be disrespectful like that…. casual indiscretions are a form of relationship and mental abuse imo.

            Personally if I had a political career path that meant I had to stay with a serial cheater to attain my ambition ……such a toxic arrangement would make me angry and twisted…. there would be no warm fluffy s and it would all be cold prickly s and sad campers ….

            Being gender specific it should be common knowledge and recognized that it is most often men who ‘end the world’ when they can not control their partner or they feel that their love has been ‘betrayed’ ….

            familicide and murder suicides that result from relationship psychosis is most often done by men …

            Threats to kill are most often an abusive mans tools of control ……..

            Women may get bitter over an unhappy relationship …… but its men who most often go psychotic and kill …

            My bad taste joke of Hillary being a bitter woman and ready to nuke the world and emasculate Putin all because of Bills very public blow jobs is irrelevant to my honest view of her being a dangerous psychopath …….. In the Thatcher or Albright mold …,

            “Leslie Stahl said to Albright, “We have heard that a half-million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And — and, you know, is the price worth it?”
            Madeleine Albright replied, “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price — we think the price is worth it.”…..

            Trump strikes me as a rich bullying Archie Bunker …. with his racist sexist bigotry and sweeping white american stereotypes .

            Joe Aprio, guns and chain gangs seem to be part of the Trump vision for ‘making america great again’…..

            This is a good documentry on the con that is the Donald …. and it reveals amongst other things that he raped his wife Ivana when their marriage was breaking up …and it insinuates he paid her so his attack would not have legal or criminal consequences . Documentary The Mad World of Donald Trump (Full). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8M08RYheIuI…

            It’s also an interesting doco when you think that the bottom of the gene pool white trash racist rednecks on display in support of Trump are fearful gun nuts ……….

            Its impossible for me to know out of Hillary and Donald which ones dishonesty will be the worst for the world and the usa should they win …

            I’d guess Trump internally and Hillary externally

            I suspect Hillary will drop more bombs and kill more people than Trump if she gets to be the commander in charge of their military industrial complex…..

            I’d also expect more death squads and Killings in South America Kissenger style under Hillary with her support for the Honduras coup being a recent example…

            “Earlier this week, the former secretary of state publicly defended her role in the 2009 coup in Honduras that ousted democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya. Since the coup, Honduras has become one of the most violent places in the world. “http://www.democracynow.org/2016/4/13/hear_hillary_clinton_defend_her_role

            http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/gonzalez-clinton-policy-latin-american-crime-story-article-1.2598456

            “bloodshed reigns supreme in Honduras today, not only in terms of its astronomically high murder rate, but also for activists, LGBT persons, journalists and indigenous leaders. At least 174 LGBT persons have been killed in Honduras since 2009. According to Global Witness, 101 environmental activists were murdered between 2010 and 2014, including Berta Cáceres, a fearless environmentalist who fought for indigenous land rights”

            https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2016/04/19/hillary-clintons-dodgy-answers-on-honduras-coup/?utm_term=.858fde411cd6

            • reason 3.2.1.2.2.1
              4 September 2016 at 10:42 am

              p.p.s I put ‘the mirror ‘ link up for people on limited bandwith who did not want to watch a video ….. I selected it from a random google search of ‘banksy+crazyhorse and liked the big colorful photos showing the artwork and the related story seemed accurate on a skim read.

              It’s not a site I usually visit….and I’ve make a mental note that it can make people madder than Whaleoil

              At least I ad blocked the tory? house of mirrors in my 30 seconds there

    • McFlock 3.3
      3 September 2016 at 8:32 pm

      A bit like trumps tax returns…

  4. Paul 4
    3 September 2016 at 9:39 am

    Sad to hear Waatea 5th Estate has finished.

  5. Pasupial 5
    3 September 2016 at 12:46 pm

    [edit; this fixed itself as soon as I posted, but it’s unusual not to be able to see comments until you make one yourself] It’s past noon and OM has no visible comments – is this a glitch, or is there some huge event on that I’ve totally missed?

    There’s a good piece on the Corbyn campaign over on TDB by Keith Locke (which I don’t have open just now). For those who avoid the site, this link regarding the “rampacked” train is enlightening:

    http://www.beyondtheheadlines.co.uk/2016/08/23/the-london-to-newcastle-virgin-train-was-ram-packed/

    TLDR is that the “empty” seats were reserved rather than vacant. So, even though the Labour leader probably could’ve grabbed one and been shielded by his status, he instead chose to sit with those who would’ve been chucked off if they’d tried that.

    These included a mother with baby. At which point I have to wonder about those other passengers who had seats but let her remain: “…on the floor between the carriages because there wasn’t enough room for me and my two children to get seats…”. You can’t blame all of that on Virgin’s mismanagement, even if that’s where it started.

    • save nz 5.1
      3 September 2016 at 1:20 pm

      Yes Keith Locke’s piece is great on Corbyn.

      “If the YouGov poll is accurate Jeremy Corbyn will easily be re-elected as British Labour leader. He polls 62% to his opponent Owen Smith’s 38% and leads in every region and age group.

      Corbyn’s opponents have tried every trick in the book to dent the Labour leader’s support.

      The party’s national executive, then with an anti-Corbyn majority, voted to exclude 130,000 new members from voting. That only seems to have riled those longer-term members who could vote.

      Then Labour deputy leader Tom Watson tried red-baiting, claiming the party was being taken over by hard-left “Troskyist entryists”. Jeremy Corbyn responded by asking Watson to “do the maths – 300,000 people have joined the Labour Party. At no stage in anyone’s most vivid imagination are there 300,000 sectarian extremists at large in the country who have suddenly descended on the Labour Party.”

      Corbyn’s supporters have also been accused of nastiness towards Owen Smith, yet Smith himself has called Corbyn a lunatic.

      The almost daily mass media scandal-mongering about Corbyn has fallen flat. They thought they’d finally nailed the Labour leader when Richard Branson released a video appearing to disprove Corbyn’s claim that he couldn’t get a seat on one of Branson’s over-crowded trains. Corbyn had been photographed sitting on the floor. It transpired that Corbyn had witnesses to testify the seats were taken or reserved. The net result was more publicity for Corbyn’s campaign to re-nationalise Britain’s broken rail system.

      At bottom it’s Corbyn’s policies that so frighten the Labour Right. ”

      http://thedailyblog.co.nz/2016/09/03/dirty-tricks-against-corbyn-not-working/

    • Paul 5.2
      3 September 2016 at 1:22 pm

      To follow the news about Corbyn without the media bias, follow the Canary.

      http://www.thecanary.co/

  6. save nz 6
    3 September 2016 at 1:36 pm

    This is interesting – home ownership world statistics. Australia are ahead of us, as are Romania (no 1), Cuba, Singapore, India, Russia, Mexico, Finland, Israel, etc etc

    We are 37th.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_home_ownership_rate

    • Olwyn 6.1
      3 September 2016 at 1:56 pm

      The problem with us, at 37, is that we treat home-ownership as the norm, and renting as something you do until you get around to buying. As home-ownership gets further and further out of reach, renting continues to be treated as something casual and temporary. Many of the countries lower on the list have stable, long-term renting as a central feature of their housing policies. We have embraced the worst of both worlds – a home-owning culture whose homes are unaffordable.

      • save nz 6.1.1
        3 September 2016 at 2:14 pm

        That is why I think NZ should be aiming for the top of home ownership or at least as high as some of the other countries – i mean if Finland and India can do it – you have to wonder about NZ.

        People who are vulnerable should have access to State houses, and those that don’t need a permanent home such as students and families on contracts etc should be the private rentals which are well run.

        While some lefties advocate renting for life like Germany, the reality is, you are reliant on the government and with a change in government such as in NZ in the 1980’s and beyond, government ideology can affect you so much more than if you could control housing yourself.

        • Olwyn 6.1.1.1
          3 September 2016 at 2:58 pm

          I can see your point, especially given the way governments that are backed by the powerful can get away with almost anything. In my eyes, either model would be better than the worst features of both models harnessed together.

  7. Reddelusion 7
    3 September 2016 at 2:40 pm

    Who decides who is vulnerable, the line between individual accountability and hand up vs hand out, not rewarding stupidity or laziness. So only the truly vulnerable are looked after The problem with most comment here is. you just want to dish it out willy nilly and throw others people’s money at every perceived problem or inequity and assume if you do so all will be well with no unintended consequences in respect of how economic actors will react to such signals. As such demonstrated in many so called socialist experiments

    • Paul 7.1
      3 September 2016 at 2:51 pm

      New Zealand is not suffering from a socialist experiment.
      It is suffering from a neoliberal experiment.

      New Zealand was fundamentally a socialist country from 1935 to 1984.
      Since the Douglas led coup d’état, employment, the country’s wealth and independence have all declined.
      Inequality, poverty, obesity, crime, rates of imprisonment, drug abuse, and foreign ownership have all surged.
      Trust, home ownership and a sense of community have all declined.

      32 years on and the experiment has become a nightmare for most New Zealanders.

      • Reddelusion 7.1.1
        3 September 2016 at 6:09 pm

        The rose tinted glasses are strong on you Paul

        • One Anonymous Bloke 7.1.1.1
          3 September 2016 at 7:23 pm

          Paul can take them off, but there’s nothing you can do about your grossly distended amygdala, nor your propensity to lie and smear.

    • Gangnam Style 7.2
      3 September 2016 at 2:51 pm

      Jeez lighten up Red, the sun is shining, etc….

    • One Anonymous Bloke 7.3
      3 September 2016 at 7:20 pm

      Who decides?

      Not you, that’s for sure: there are plenty of appropriate measures and you’ve rote-learned rejection of all of them.

      National are fucked if you outlaw “rewarding stupidity or laziness”.

      you just want to dish it out willy nilly

      Flaccid smears are the best you can do: cf: appropriate measures.

      others people’s money

      My taxes are not your money, shithead.

      We know exactly how “economic actors” respond to left wing policy because unemployment fell to its lowest level since the 1970s in 2007. Meanwhile, you have some rote-learned smears to dribble.

      Your arguments aren’t arguments, your opinions aren’t yours. Choke on it.

    • Stephanie Rodgers 7.4
      3 September 2016 at 10:51 pm

      It’s interesting how the Right always demand we draw “a line” between the “really” deserving and the evil disgusting bludgers who are apparently waiting around every corner.

      When they get into power, that line gets drawn shorter and shorter until eventually everyone’s on the wrong side of it.

      Me? I care about people. So if a few people get a bit extra, in order to ensure everyone has the basics covered? That’s the margin of error for having a heart.

  8. Paul 8
    3 September 2016 at 2:48 pm

    The Herald fails again.
    Reports on the P epidemic.
    Fails to make any connection with the country’s embrace of neoliberalism and consequential exponential growth in inequality.
    Pity there are no journalists at the Herald, who might have heard of the Spirit Level.

    http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spirit_Level:_Why_More_Equal_Societies_Almost_Always_Do_Better

    http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vxetq4u2bK4

    • Reddelusion 8.1
      3 September 2016 at 6:02 pm

      Why do you keep reading the herald when you outlined all those wonderful publication the other day that agree with your world view. Stop punishing yourself unless self flagellation is your thing

    • Chuck 8.2
      3 September 2016 at 6:03 pm

      Well that’s a first…blaming the P issue on neoliberalism!

      Heck maybe the Headhunters and Hells Angels etc…all embrace neoliberalism?

      • Colonial Viper 8.2.1
        3 September 2016 at 6:24 pm

        The free market at its best

      • mauī 8.2.2
        3 September 2016 at 6:36 pm

        They’re a symptom, have you not been following that the Government blames everything on the gangs too. A convenient scapegoat.

      • save nz 8.2.3
        3 September 2016 at 10:33 pm

        Well Chuck you have to wonder how all that P gets into NZ, we are an island after all. Great that MAF etc have their funding cut so less staff to patrol the borders and we welcome anyone into this country no questions asked.

        Apparently its a tie up made in Heaven between the well organised Head Hunters joining forces with the Chinese Triads who bring in the raw ingredients.

        Not sure what happened to the war on P that John Key was waging.

        He seems to be more interested in getting ideal P making conditions – globalism at work.

      • Draco T Bastard 8.2.4
        4 September 2016 at 12:49 pm

        Heck maybe the Headhunters and Hells Angels etc…all embrace neoliberalism?

        Top down hierarchical societies?

        Yep, pure bloody capitalism.

  9. b waghorn 9
    3 September 2016 at 4:42 pm

    this is what comes up when i opened my standard link Lprent then i clicked home and it came to the site.

    • lprent 9.1
      3 September 2016 at 6:18 pm

      Should be fixed now. There was a plugin with a very bad habit..

      Amongst other things it removed the CSS (cascading style sheets) which are what makes the site look the way it does. What you saw was the naked site showing the top menus.

      • Anne 9.1.1
        3 September 2016 at 6:32 pm

        Umm… it’s still happening. Got to hit ‘home’ to get to home page. And the individual gravatars have gone.

        • Francis G 9.1.1.1
          3 September 2016 at 9:14 pm

          I see the same thing. Not sure if it helps, but this is the error I get for most of the images on the page:

          cdn.thestandard.org.nz uses an invalid security certificate.

          The certificate is only valid for the following names:
          cloudfront.net, *.cloudfront.net

          Error code: SSL_ERROR_BAD_CERT_DOMAIN

        • lprent 9.1.1.2
          3 September 2016 at 9:36 pm

          Off seeing my parents offshore (again).

          Will look at it again when I get home.

  10. Sabine 10
    3 September 2016 at 6:16 pm

    interesting times

    http://www.bbc.com/news/business-37241727

    “With South Korea’s biggest shipping company filing for bankruptcy protection, the vessels, sailors and cargo of Hanjin Shipping are stuck in limbo, stranded at sea.
    Ports, fearing they will not get paid, refuse to let them dock or unload.
    That means the ships are forced to wait for Hanjin, its creditors or partners to find a solution.
    It’s a case of unprecedented scale, with experts expecting the deadlock to last for weeks, if not months.
    “[It is] a major disaster for the shipping companies and for the companies that own the goods in those containers,” Greg Knowler, maritime and trade analyst with IHS Markit, told the BBC from Hong Kong.”Quote end.

  12. Chris 12
    3 September 2016 at 11:16 pm

    Joyce dealing to these students is ridiculous and unnecessary.

    Interesting, though, that it’s the Migrant Workers Association that’s taking up their cases.

    http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/83854095/indian-community-blames-nz-authorities-schools-for-student-deportations

    Maybe the unions in NZ could take a leaf out of the association’s book and widen its catchment to include representing the interests of the unemployed? The unemployed would benefit from the support that unions can provide (on a whole bunch of levels from practical to cultural), and the unions get to be relevant again in the face of changing employment patterns/values. It’d be a win/win. Heck, in these changing times the unions – while they mightn’t currently know it – need the unemployed more than ever. They should get to work.

    • save nz 12.1
      4 September 2016 at 9:13 am

      That’s not a bad idea. How about an unemployed person’s union?? Sound’s like with what is going on with WINZ it is the most needed unions for it’s clients. I mean $1000 motel bills for emergency housing, being chucked out of your state house due to ‘p’ levels that are the same as bank notes, being put in prison for apparently being in a relationship while on the DPB, having your benefit constantly stopped or being overpaid or underpaid. Do the unemployed need a union??? Hell Yeah!!!

  13. Chris 13
    4 September 2016 at 11:47 am

    I’m suggesting more along the lines of the existing unions making that work part of their core business. There are already beneficiary advocacy groups like the Auckland Action Against Poverty and there are beneficiary advocacy services in other places like Napier and Gisborne and no doubt other places. But the power the unions would give the unemployed would be massive. A mandate for that happening would be the changing labour market, the need for a UBI etc etc.

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