Open mike is your post. For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy). Step right up to the mike…
I see finally that questions are being asked of what Auckland City Counciller Cameron Brewer knew about the Len Brown affair. Are we expected as he makes out in this morning NZ Herald that in the immortal words of Sgt Schultz “I know nothing”
Er, is the Labour Party having a conference? Has David Cunliffe made an important speech indicating that great change lies ahead when Labour is elected?
The Herald seems to place more importance on the All Blacks defeat of Japan.
and stuff breathlessly reannounces something that was already news two weeks ago, just Bevan – oh no not the media and the publicity- Chuang has said it again in a new interview.
In March 2015, announce a high-powered working group to investigate the implementation of UBI in NZ – with the Big Kahuna as a starting point. Unlike National’s quickly-forgotten side-shows, this working group will act with the knowledge that their proposals will form a core of new Labour party policy, not a bunch of recommendations that the magpie government picks and chooses a few shiney gems from. New working groups and policy development/analysis groups can be kicked off as necessary to study particular areas in depth, eg the implications of UBI on the welfare system and UBI on pensions.
Labour and Greens campaign in the 2017 election for the introduction of UBI. Within the first 100 days of winning 2017, they begin to pass laws to implement UBI.
First nationwide UBI payment takes place no later than 1 July 2019.
This is one of the policies that a 4-year parliamentary term would make more achievable.
Instead of Labour looking at the disengaged, despairing poor and beneficiaries to turn out to vote for them, why don’t they seek voter support from the Nats that are dissatisfied with government handouts/hand ups to Big Corporates, SKY, Telecom, Rio Tinto, Bathurst, Fletcher, etc etc. I’m sure many Nats don’t like being spied on by their own boy JOHN Key. Or their pisstine rivers being shat in, overseen by a Government that turns a blind eye. Or their Public Broadcaster, TVNZ7 being killed by National. Or their youngsters leaving for Oz for a better life fighting fires. Surely, even some of the Nats might wake up to the fact that they are being done over. The superannuation issue is on Shonkey’s
favour though. Taxing working superanuitants more could be worth consideration. Or, if you work, no super. Someone’s gotta be upset folks. The revolution has begun, you just don’t realise it.
Hooten’s line is Labour is “far left, far left, far left, far left….” predictable stuff, this will be National’s constant attack line. Labour just need to fight back with the facts.
what was particularly gag-inducing was williams trying to excuse the clark govts’ nine long years of ignoring the poorest/child-poverty..
..while providing subsidies for companies/corporates whose business-plans/profits rely on paying a slave-wage..topped up by taxpayers….w.t.f..!..
..williams sneered at/washed his hands of that neglect-responsibilty by stigmatising those ignored poor..as a ‘stubborn rump’ of individuals..who you just couldn’t help..
..and for that vile/cynical/lying claim..i wd like to award williams a special ‘self-serving/apologist-revisionism award’..
phillip ure
I read your remarks about Williams and had to dig deep to find who you are talking about. More information please.
I thought it might be Jordon Williams but decided you were possibly talking about QandA of today which scoop shows as having Mike Williams amongst these people discussing – On the panel this week, political scientist Dr Claire Robinson from Massey University, former Labour Party president Mike Williams and political commentator Matthew Hooton.
are you unaware of the fact that the clark labour govt did nothing for those nine long years to undo the havoc wreaked on the poorest by shipley/richardson..?
..they turned their backs on the poorest/child-poverty..and just expanded employer-subsidies..?..(i.e..working for families..)
..and that the clark labour govt..at a time when williams was president of that party..
..were firmly in the poor-bashing/neo-randite/neo-lib consensus between the two major parties..
..which has brought us to our current sorry state of affairs/horror world-rankings..
..these are all facts/matters of historical-record/neglect..greywarbler..
..and this is what i was calling mike williams on..
..his cynical sneering at/stigmatising of those he/they so willfully ignored..
..kinda got my blood too near boiling-level..
..i couldn’t just let it pass..without comment/correction..
phillip u
You’re always or almost always, spot on. My point was which? Williams – I wanted a bit of extra information rounding off your thought so I can come onto the thread and pick up the point straight away.
I have heard Mike Williams on Radionz with Hooten. I occasionally listen to him and wonder where the Labour went. The cloak of leftie has got such big holes in it. He is a living example of an art installation about the shoddy, market degraded, leaky House version of Labour that their subversive neolib s.ds delivered to our doors with no right of return.
paul
I used to think that someone with experience would make a better politician, more effective. But now I’ve grown up and realised that is a foolish idea to apply in general . Now I think possibly some at some time, occasionally, perhaps. Even limited terms of service, with at least two terms out might be useful to give the best result for citizens. In the USA I have heard that some pollies manage to cling on to their jobs until they are almost fossilised.
Just heard on the radio that DOC is agreeing to 25 plane flights a day instead of present four to the glaciers. DOC is agreeing to a mountain bike track on the Auckland volcanic peaks such as Rangitoto . The tourist companies are going to swarm over the whole of the country invading the country so it won’t be able to be seen through the tourists, thick as ant colonies.
I don’t know what has been said at conference. I will have to try to find info but it is hard to get other things done and also keep up to date with the latest, often bad, news.
I once counted the number of times Williams said “I agree with you Mathew”, or “I’m inclined to agree with Mathew”.
I had to give up counting (I ran out of fingers).
If you, like the corporate press, are intending to divert the debate away from the most important issues ( jobs, housing, education) with another royalty discussion, please be aware that most people can see through such smoke and mirror tricks.
I’m delighted that the Labour Party is addressing this important aspect of our identity. Economic sovereignty, an independent foreign policy, a prosperous multi cultural modern society all need a supporting constitutional form.
I’ve no interest in discussing monarchy.
Cunliffe is talking about our future, not the past.
I understand your fear that silly issues distract us.
I ask you to see the positive and important aspects of the conversation David asked for.
….and agree Monarchy is not important…. in fact it gives legit to the Treaty of Waitangi ( monarchy issues are divisive side issue which the right wing would like to use to cause splits….especially from Winiie’s NZFirst…our British heritage is important ….we dont want to be rudderless on Chinese and USA manouverings South Pacific Seas)
…let Queeniie stay….she isnt a bad bastard ( she didnt like Thatcher)….and Charles is GREENIE
Chooky
Don’t get me wrong, we have to select our own Head of State. The constitutional conversation should focus on giving us a “form” that reflect who we are and how we want to position ourselves in the world.
I see the discussion at a level above and beyond the simple HoS v Monarch noise. That debate is usually at a soap-opera level. Cunliffe is asking for a positive debate that will shape the rest of this century.
Personally I find it incomprehensible that modern NZ have a London based hereditary figure as a monarch. I’m unable to become an NZ Citizen as swearing allegiance to that institution is a pre-condition to citizenship.
The only real worry I have about becoming a republic is that injustices such as David Bain, Arthur Thomas, and hopefully Teina Pora in the near future, have only been partially righted because of the Privy Council. It seems that our law makers and great legal minds are all to close to each other to pick up on mistakes within the family. I don’t see that we need to acknowledge a German family in England to be able to right these wrongs, but we do seem to need an outside option, at least for legal appeals.
Phil, sometimes it is a pain having to go thru your site to get to a link that you could have just put up here without the link to your site first.
The last person to keep doing this, is he who shall not be named.
At 12.11 pm today – RadioNZ on the 1913’s Great Strike in NZ –
there is a very interesting labour piece on Spectrum on Radionz today. Have a look at the photos on the summary on the link. (There is also a link to a piece with information on how to make a radio documentary.) http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/spectrum
There is a great audio piece of the daughter of one of the militia saying in well-bred tones that her father was set upon and had come home exclaiming that it was the French Revolution all over again.
Sunday 3 November 2013, with David Steemson, Deborah Nation, Jack Perkins & Lisa Thompson
Sunday, 3 November 2013
The War of Bricks and Batons
In October 1913, minor disputes in the Huntly mines and on Wellington’s wharves soon spread to engulf the country. The Great Strike of 1913 reflected union dissatisfaction with the arbitration system and a growing confidence in union power. Some believed that if enough workers could join together in a general strike, they could take over their workplaces and run them for themselves. By November 1913 about 16,000 watersiders, miners, labourers, drivers and others were on strike, mostly in Wellington, Auckland and Christchurch.
Also there is audio to 27 October piece on the demolishing of the excellent broadcasting house
by the neo lib National Government.
Audio from Sunday 27 October 2013
Spectrum for 27 October 2013 ( 26′ 21″ ) http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/spectrum/20131027
12:10 In 1963, Broadcasting House opened. It was the nerve centre of the country’s
radio networks and home to the Capital’s stations. Its Japanese-made technical equipment was state-of-the-art and its studios world-standard.
It was demolished in 1997 to make way for an extension of parliament that never happened.
In 1972, Spectrum’s Jack Perkins recorded a day’s activities in Broadcasting House. This rebroadcast of ‘Sound Around the Clock’ marks 50 years since the opening of Broadcasting House.
Gutter Oil, The Irish “Famine” and Why John “Smiling Assassin” Key Wanted New Zealand To Be Like Ireland. A compulsory Max And Stacey as far as I’m concerned
How long can this go on? Down the List, Radio NZ National, Sunday 3 November 2013
Written by Dave Armstrong
They’ve gotten rid of Bomber Bradbury and Gordon Campbell. So how come this series continues to escape the Richard Griffin axe? In this morning’s episode, an American character called General Mayhem [geddit?] comments about the United States regime’s illegal spying—even against New Zealand: “Ha! Why spy on those guys? That chap Key does everything we ask.”
This series is always funny, and mordantly accurate. Time for the Prime Minister’s bully-boys to step in, surely?
Morrissey Sssssh.
The nasties mightn’t have heard it yet, and Richard Griffin once had some stake in being regarded a wide-thinking commentator on politics. . Don’t put at risk the tiny bit of satire we have that is actually funny. We have to be careful that we don’t end up with bans on the media like a Bananarama republic.
Trav brilliant
Key was at the heart of the currency trading army that sold useless derivatives to Ireland as well as Key deeply involved with libor now JPMorgan is having to pay back all its I’ll gotten gains next on the block is Bof America
incorporating Merrill Lynch who will be prosecuted as well.
None of the players have had to face charges yet as the Republicans and Tories are cutting funding to the govt watch dogs so their corrupt mates don’t face charges.
Yep. The monarchy is not only widely popular, the constitutional relationship with the Crown also helps to serve the stability of the nation very well.
You’ve learned to talk like a parliamentarian, Tat. You’ll do well. Just make sure you stand up and speak out on the really important issues, though, will you? We need another Mike Moore like we need another John Key.
DTB
Thanks for the polling information. We need a debate like this just now as much as one about L Br’s peccadilloes or whatever. Let sleeping dogs lie till after the election.
Those on the Left who want to ditch the Monarchy are often of Irish Catholic extraction or sympathies
..if they want social justice they should sort out the sexism inherent in their own Irish Catholicism first….imo…(speaking as a feminist and also of Irish /Scottish Protestant extraction as well as English and Maori…also 3 ancestral witches burnt at the stake by the Inquisition….)
Paul
Because you don’t indicate the name you reply to it looks as if you are directing your comments at Chooky. I find it hard to follow the various threads when people don’t include the name.
Chooky
I hadn’t heard about that Irish Catholicism connection. Interesting.
I agree that Labour should leave it alone. Why muddy the waters more. There are so many issues, stick to the left and go straight on to the hoped for destination with a good load of policies. Not farting around with issues that are of not major importance and that people are not highly stressed about it.
I was reading an old Listener that rated NZs in importance and Cullen was Two to Helen Clark’s One. The item pointed out how he blotted his standing as Finance Minister with a tax cut of 67c that was labelled the bubblegum tax. It seems that Labour loses a sense of proportion at times, or gets sidetracked from its task by wanting to clean up every policy corner.
Interesting to see that the anti Irish Catholic bigotry of old is still alive and chooking. William Massey will be smiling in his grave.
Shame on you for bringing such shameful ignorant prejudice to these pages. Read a few history books and lift yourself up to a level that makes you fit to engage in dialogue with thoughtful people.
Bill Drees
You might be right in knowing all the relevant information and making a reasoned judgment. But you’re not right to come down so heavily on someone who raises questions. about matters that are historically pertinent. People who want to stifle comment are often more closed to reasoned discussion than someone they take offence to.
@ Bill Drees…(smirk)…..i have lots of friends of Irish Catholic ancestry..( and I love a good fight)……all my ancestors came to NZ in the mid to late 1860s plus I have an ancestor who signed the Treaty of Waitangi as a Maori Chief….so i dont have problems with the Monarchy …they have been good friends of the Maori!!!!..
..imo…the people who cant hack the monarchy are generally new immigrants who feel insecure in their own NZ identity and want to impose their own values/culture here
yes i do read history books and I am afraid that Catholicism has not been good for women anywhere……. let alone Ireland!….suggest you widen your reading ..re -contraception, abortion, employment , equal pay, work outside the family , self-determination, priest abuse , church abuse, homophobia, treatment of unmarried pregnant women, divorced women, separated women , adultery…..etc
(lol)”Shame on you for bringing such shameful ignorant prejudice to these pages. Read a few history books and lift yourself up to a level that makes you fit to engage in dialogue with thoughtful people.”….Get up to date with the 21st century and feminism!……as Christopher Hitchen said “Wherever you find Catholicism you find fascism!” (lol)
At least the monarchy allow / have a woman head …now where is that woman Pope?!
…seems to be commonsense that the Catholic Irish supported British Royalty as long as they were Catholic ….but when they became Protestant they did not
Personally i am not a Royal watcher or fan…and I am not a fan of the British class system…..but I respect the monarchy’s role in NZ history ….and I dont think it is wise to make it a Labour Party issue at this time….that is , if the objective is to win the 2014 General Election.
…well i cant find a citation but will this do?..ie .IRA blows up Lord Mountbatten….
No.
but I respect the monarchy’s role in NZ history
Stealing land, abusing Māori, and other injustices. Well, to be more precise I suppose, not stopping those injustices considering that they happened to be carried out in their name.
Yes, just sooo much to be respectful of.
and I dont think it is wise to make it a Labour Party issue at this time
Well, I want the discussion to start so that we can our time over it and get it right. That said, if the Labour Party want to start the discussion now then that would be up to the Labour Party membership.
@ DTB…..Well I dont believe you that the Monarchy stole Maori land or abused Maori….”Stealing land, abusing Māori, and other injustices. Well, to be more precise I suppose, not stopping those injustices considering that they happened to be carried out in their name.”
…Sorry I dont think this abuse was carried out in the name of Queen Victoria
The Treaty of Waitangi signed by Queen Victoria with the NZ Maori Chiefs, of which my ancestor was one…..actually set a legal framework for Maori rights …Australian Aborigines have activists who have been very envious of this Treaty….and New Zealand Maori had a much better time of it than the Australian Aborigine without such a Treaty.
….This Treaty agreement is a founding document of New Zealand Law…. Sure it hasn’t always been adhered to. There were gross violations and land grabs and wars by the early British Christian colonialists before the Treaty was signed and in some cases after. However there is legal redress under the Treaty of Waitangi under the crown and enshrined in NZ law. There have been court cases and multi-million dollar claims and legal redress of sorts
… ( compare this situation with the annexing of land of Tibetans , the Palestinians, the American Indians and the Australian Aborigines)
Who stole Maori land?…..greedy property developers stole the land( dont they everywhere?)….and the missionaries and the Christian Churches, in many but not all cases, acted as colonialising agents…Maori lawyer Moana Jackson has spoken movingly of the devastating combined effects of colonialisation and spiritual conquest on the old Maori soul….’The Treaty and the Word:The Colonialisation of Maori Philosophy’
Don’t know about you but I’ve seen the law that was passed in December of 1863 that allowed for confiscation of Māori land if the tribe brought war against the crown. It was back-dated to 1st January 1863 and it was under that law that most Māori land was confiscated.
Now, under the circumstances that obtained at the time I’d have some trouble with the law (Māori did have legitimate complaints and they weren’t being addressed by the justice system) but by back-dating it nearly an entire year it becomes nothing more than legalised theft.
I am sure you can find quibbles…but I dont think throwing out the Treaty of Waitangi or blaming the monarchy is the way to go…..dont hear many Maori wanting to throw out The Treaty or the Monarchy….but I could be wrong…you may know better
Yes Labour Party membership is just one factor in winning the 2014 General Election….the other factor in is the New Zealand potential Labour Party voter…
….I am sure John Key and Nact would be delighted if the Labour Party voted for Republicanism and the getting rid of the monarchy!!!!!
……especially given that most New Zealanders support the monarchy and don’t want a Republic….you would be playing right into their hands
well Ok …have a referendum on whether to have a Republic and throw out the Monarchy ….if it makes you feel better….but will the surrounding publicity and spin by Nact and the right wing msm help the Labour Party win the 2014 election?
DTB…..You could be right!….. this referendum could be a great vote winner for Labour …..amongst working class New Zealanders , the 50% women vote and the Maori vote…and the 800,000+ who didnt vote last time
….maybe a referendum on whether to become a republic or not and ditch the monarchy is just what they have been praying for…..
Says a lot more about the state of the media on the country.
Your mates in the press are clearly determined to look for anything to keep this corrupt and traitorous government in power.
By the way, are you:
a) a disciple of neo-liberalism and so indoctrinated you believe in the cult of selfishness as proposed by Ayn Rand ..despite all the evidence now apparent.
b) a paid puppet of the corporates who write their spin.
c) a member of the 1% yourself who actually benefits from the present paradigm.
Just wondering what motivates you to write the rubbish you do.
Don’t be ridiculous, it is a simple political observation – though if you are going to accuse me of all that nastiness you might look to the neoliberal third way agendas of Labour in supporting the TPPA and the sale of energy and broadcasting infrastructure, you silly little man. The Left and Centre-Left are diverse and appear in many parties – just because someone disagrees with your particularly tin-eared politics doesn’t make them of the Right. I would like Labour to be elected – I just wish they wouldn’t make it so difficult for themselves a year out from an election.
From that stuff link
‘Cunliffe said Prime Minister John Key would invite the royal family to bring “its newest and cutest member here for a long series of photo ops in an election year”, referring to Prince William, wife Kate and their baby George.
“They should come. But will John Key dare take the Duke and Duchess back to McGehan Close? Will he take them to a closed sawmill in Rotorua or a boarded-up tannery in Shannon?”
What a lot of waffle. It trivialises the NZ labour problem by joining it with a criticism of Key and questioning his possible interest in having a photo op with Royals.
Cunliffe needs to separate the strands and discuss important things like unemployment and a poorly run economy in their own sound bite. Why is that sawmill running out of money and closing down? There is an interesting story there and I don’t know the details yet. But Cunliffe should and should be telling us that.
Many more important issues than the Monarchy which has the danger of splitting the Labour Party anyway….pushing people towards NZF…. and playing into the hands of John Key and Nact
….and who says the Queen likes John Key anyway?…my bet is that she doesnt….and Charles is a Greenie
think its exactly on the money. Key was happy to ride the ‘underclass’ BS for votes and the impression of centerism…but has made life worse for those at the bottom end of the scale and like the lady who was given a job in Jackie Blue’s office- they’ve been dumped and a long time ago…
“A man of middling talent and intellect”
Mediocrity Watch No. 7: PAUL LITTLE
In the late 1990s, after being removed from the editorship of Metro and then the Listener, one Paul Little became a “full-time writer”—which meant he lived off the earnings of his wife (Wendyl Nissen) while he tapped out instantly ignored bargain basement biographies of the likes of Aaron Cohen, Willie Apiata and Paul Henry. He was also granted a brief slot on Paul Holmes’ NewstalkZB show on Saturday mornings, straight after his wife Wendyl Nissen’s extended media review slot and before Grant Smithies’ extended music review slot.
Little was given less than three minutes to deliver his invariably anodyne reviews of one or two books, which Holmes had usually read himself anyway, and far more perceptively. As he also did with his hapless sports correspondents, Holmes seemed to take a mischievous delight in demonstrating how much more intelligent he was, and in lording his dominance of Little in the most humiliating fashion. He would make a point of flustering and harrying Little, resolutely refusing to laugh at his attempts at humor, before listening with ill-disguised impatience to Little’s opinion of the book, which he then had to categorize as either “Quick flick” or “Down the dunny”.
On one toe-curlingly embarrassing occasion, Little unwisely attempted to ingratiate himself by calling Holmes “Sir Paul”. (This was several years before Holmes received his knighthood.) Holmes, contemptuous of the display of self-abasement by an underling, sneered: “Oh yes, ha ha ha, you know what to say, don’t you.”
Recently, Little has formed his own publishing company as an outlet for his own books, the most recent one being GRUMPY OLD MEN: 47 KIWI BLOKES, WHO’VE BEEN AROUND LONG ENOUGH TO KNOW, TELL YOU WHAT’S WRONG WITH THE WORLD. The tone and quality of this opus can be caught quite clearly from the promotional blurb on the website: “They’re all irate about something, sounding off in Grumpy Old Men on alcohol, speed limits, education, jet-skis, nutritionists, pinot noir, small change, tee shirt labels and a whole lot of other things they’d like to shake a stick at”. Somehow Little also found the time to produce the magisterial 50 Shades of Key: The Unofficial John Key Joke Book, hailed by Paul Little as a “laugh-out-loud collection of photos that show the Prime Minister as you’ve never seen him before.” http://www.paullittlebooks.co.nz.hostbaby.com/home/
Another earner for this “full-time writer” is his Herald on Sunday column. You might have guessed by now that Paul Little’s byline on any article is a virtual guarantee that it’s going to be shoddy and third-rate. If so, you have guessed right.
For this morning’s instalment of his column, Paul Little has seen fit to add his voice to the pandemonium of abuse directed at comedian Russell Brand. Without showing the slightest sense of irony, Little damns Brand as “a man of middling talent and intellect” and claims, incorrectly, that some people have compared Brand to Socrates, Oscar Wilde and Gandhi. I suspect that Paul Little has not read anything written by any of them—although no doubt, as a dedicated television viewer, at some stage he’s caught a BBC version of The Importance of Being Earnest. He goes on to belabour Brand for his “mind-bending banality”, his “narcissism” and his “pontificating”, which has driven “the wittering classes into an orgiastic frenzy of enthusiasm”. Even worse, Brand is “petulant, ungracious and unfunny” and a “cut-rate Chomsky”.
Once again, I suspect that Paul Little has read little or nothing written by Noam Chomsky. A year or so ago, another third-rate columnist from the Herald stable, Paul Thomas indulged in some wandery and ill-informed comments about Chomsky; maybe Little remembered that spray. But I would bet Bill Clinton’s weekly whoring budget that Little has not actually read anything by Chomsky.
Meanwhile, despite getting rid of Little, the Listener, incredibly, was saddled with an editor even more lacklustre than Paul Little. After Pamela Stirling was appointed in 2004, circulation plummeted, and it continues to drop by the week, due to this kind of thing….. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/journalism/news/article.cfm?c_id=63&objectid=10504752&pnum=0
Mediocrity Watch aims to keep you informed of—or, to quote the epically mediocre Simon Dallow, to be “right across”—the shoddiest, least professional, most insulting journalism from all over the world, but especially New Zealand. It is produced by DeakerWatch®, a division of Daisycutter Sports Inc.
Check out these other third-raters….
No. 6: David Farrar: “Things were generally very relaxed in this area.” http://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-15092013/#comment-696521
No. 5: Jordan Williams: ““Capping rents seems like a recipe for disaster.” http://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-12092013/#comment-695426
No. 4: Prof. Robert Patman: “Hezbollah is “totally a creature of the Iranian regime.” http://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-11092013/#comment-694967
No. 3 Jeremy Wells: “What evidence is there that secondhand smoking does any harm? Where is the evidence? WHERE IS THE EVIDENCE?”
No. 2 Gavin Gray: “…never been any problems associated with the name King George.”
No. 1 Susie Ferguson: “If, as you say, this has all been done before, why do it all again?”
The assault on South American democracy continues:
Thousands of Venezuelan pro-government twitter accounts deleted Open Media Network, 2 November 2013
Around 7,000 Venezuelan Twitter accounts were deleted yesterday, including those of an elected state governor, three cabinet ministers, a radio station, a revolutionary daily newspaper, and the official accounts of ministries and other institutions. They all appear to have been pro-government accounts, and none of them of the opposition.
Twitter has been an effective means of communication for supporters of the Bolivarian revolution, since late President Hugo Chavez opened an account in 2010 and reached 4 million followers, making his the second most popular account globally for a political leader, after Barack Obama’s.
This appears to have been a coordinated, politically-motivated attack, but we don’t know yet how it happened. Twitter spokesman Nu Wexler has flatly refused to comment.
There are basically three ways it could have occurred. Large-scale coordinated hacking and deletion of accounts by opposition supporters is a possibility. It could also be that a similar campaign of reporting accounts for spam triggered an algorithm in Twitter which automatically blocked the accounts (I’m being generous to Twitter here!). Thirdly, and less likely in my opinion, it could be something much more sinister involving Twitter and for instance US Intelligence agencies.
As of this afternoon, some 50 accounts have been restored by Twitter, including those of Governor Aristobal Isturiz, which has 332,000 followers, and of Communications Minister Delcy Rodriguez. However most accounts have not been restored, for instance of Minister of the President’s Office Wilmer Barrientos and of the Women’s Ministry and the Bolivarian University of Venezuela.
It is important to set this attack in social and historical context. After….
and this is why we need to ban foreign ownership in NZ:
For staff of companies like Navman and The Hyperfactory it’s a familiar story. A hot NZ technology company is sold to offshore buyers, with its founder pledging jobs will stay in New Zealand – only for that promise to melt away as the new owners take control.
The latest casualty is NextWindow, a company whose revenue hit $60 million+ as it supplied touchscreen technology to PC makers like HP, Asus and Lenovo.
The recipient of a $6 million, no-strings government grant is gutting its local office, a source close to the situation tells NBR ONLINE.
I think we should have strings attached to that sort of money. Perhaps the government needs to get 80% of shares in return.
There was a patent suit against Next Window which they couldn’t afford to defend. Another way of harrassing creatives.
Costa Boda was being interviewed this morning on Radionz and said that the piracy against his work is so tough he can’t carry on as a small doco maker. Youtube has copies of things within a short time of release of the DVD. Sales soon stop. A showing in Canada of some of his works was cancelled when they advised that they had been copied and put up on youtube. And once on youtube they get copied by other pirates down the line.
Or they’ve asked their name to be withheld from the printed roll. Or they moved and forgot to get their mail forwarded so the re-enrolment forms bounced back ‘returned to sender’.
My own opinion is enough for me, and I claim the right to have it defended against any consensus, any majority, anywhere, anyplace, anytime. And anyone who disagrees with this can pick a number, get in line and kiss my ass.
….anyone who disagrees with this can pick a number, get in line and kiss my ass.
– Christopher Hitchens
That truculent defiance did him no good at all when he came up against a superior opponent. On different occasions, George Galloway, Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein and Tariq Ali all handed the arse of the self-styled “contrarian” back to him in the most humiliating fashion. (Humiliating for Hitchens, that is; his comically dyspeptic last book was full of bitter parting shots against Galloway and Chomsky in particular.)
…well Hitchens did make a splash!….he said it with style ….and he certainly wasn’t always right!
Hitchens was a callous liar and a bully. In his utterly risible, contemptible, idiotic final book, he indulged in a spurious attack on Chomsky, basing his critique on the tone of Chomsky’s voice. His systematic lying even extended to the captioning of the photographs—the most shameful being his labeling of Hugo Chávez as “the dictator”. And of course, after taking more than a few public hidings at the hands of George Galloway, he had to have an obligatory swipe at Galloway too. (He missed, as always.)
….but then again, nor is Saint Chomsky always right
Nobody has said that. Could you explain your frivolous reference to “Saint” Chomsky?
…..sometimes one can err by omission or by selectively ignoring issues
Are you trying to suggest that Chomsky has done that, or does that?
@ Morrissey….chill out!….no one is immune from criticism and no one is perfect
…..agree Chomsky is very good, if not doggedly (boringly) brilliant, on American Imperialism!…..and he does seem to have a cult following of those who would countenance no criticism of him..hence my “frivolous reference to “Saint” Chomsky” ….( naughty , naughty….)
….but lets face it Chomsky does have his critics and not all are frivolous or ignorant …. some of them are heavy weight academics like Foucault
imo…one important criticism is: where is Chomsky’s hard hitting critique at home of the very powerful pro Israel Lobby in the USA?
…. this critique seems to be completely lacking in the USA, because it is framed as being Nazi or anti Semite… consequently the lobby gets away with aborting at the grassroots politician level any positive US led solution to the humanitarian crisis facing the Palestinians…and the Middle East
Tolkien’s clichés – elves ‘n’ dwarfs ‘n’ magic rings – have spread like viruses.
Might help to get a clue before commenting: they weren’t cliches when he wrote about them.
And someone who invests as much literary thought as Tolkien into creating whole languages, histories, and technically-brilliant poetry is hardly mollycoddling the reader.
imo…actually when I read Tolkien at age 14 or 15….I saw the hobbits as the humble working unpretentious peace loving proletariat….up against the dark invisible awesome forces of Fascism….which were actually looming in the 1930s as Tolkien was writing…..
Peter Jackson turned much that was subtle and atmospheric …filled with invisible menace …into an in- your- face cartoon of fast paced splatter , gore and monster violence..
Peter Jackson turned much that was subtle and atmospheric …filled with invisible menace …into an in- your- face cartoon of fast paced splatter , gore and monster violence..
Nah David Cunliffe in His next guise as Prime Minister should instead invite NZ on Air over to His office for a roasting where He can direct them to either pull all the NZ on Air funding for the hopelessly biased Media-Works or resign so He can find some heads that will…
FASCISM often has a habit of coming in through the backdoor in societies, and I sense it has been given access by the ones at the top of the Ministry of Social Development already. This is what I have been on about, and some have thought it may be a bit over the top or paranoid, but bit by bit we are getting a clearer picture, of where the journey is going with New Zealand welfare reforms under this government:
“Contractors to assess sick and disabled for work”
“Private contractors will be paid $650 an assessment to get thousands of New Zealand’s sick and disabled ready to return to work.”
“From February, Work and Income will pay private “medical assessors” to scrutinise sickness and disability beneficiaries who it believes can work.”
“The medical assessors will be paid $650 per assessment, which are expected to take about three hours, and are prompted to recommend lifestyle changes to help the beneficiary get a job, such as a “positive approach to life” and more time at the gym.”
“It is expected eventually 3000 disabled people a year will have to visit an assessor, who will judge their fitness for work and report back to Work and Income.
The scheme, revealed in a tender proposal, is part of the biggest welfare shake-up in decades, with the Government aiming to have 28,000 to 44,000 people off benefits by 2017, saving up to $1.6 billion.”
Comment:
Whosoever saw that lying, two faced Paula Bennett on Q+A today, may have realised what a mercenary she has become.
It is about to happen now, ATOS like assessments will start in February next year, and about 3,000 a year will make about 30,000 in ten years. Going at that rate, there will be few “sick” and “disabled” in New Zealand, either they will decide to opt out of their physical, mental and spiritual existence themselves, or will with bad backs, knees, or whatever ailments, or mentally ill fed with medication, be turned into submissive, obedient “slaves” as modern day “job-seekers”.
They do apparently at MSD and WINZ have NO faith in client’s own doctors anymore, hence this agenda now! If the “soft” approach does not work, it will be off to your WINZ HATCHET DOCTOR!
No more “slackers” in New Zealand, I suppose, there is no one too ill to not work, they will claim.
And while the Labour members will be celebrating their successful Conference 2013, where are their voices on this??? I dread the future in this country!!!
Lots of people on the sickness bene that shouldn’t be there, druggies, people with “depression”, people with “back injuries”.
It’s easy to settle into that sort of life style and just cruise through life bludging off other tax payers, if this more pro-active approach gets a few able bodied people off their arses and back into the work force I’d consider it money well spent.
Maybe this sort of approach will finally sort out the truly sick from the ones who are just taking the piss.
“New work assessments for the disabled and people with health conditions will impose ”unnecessary angst” and wrongly put the onus on clients rather than employers, CCS Disability Action Otago patron Donna-Rose McKay says.”
“Mrs McKay believed New Zealand was adopting the same ”flawed model” as Britain, where work-testing the disabled was highly controversial.”
”The process focuses on the person as having to overcome the barriers, but in reality for many people with impairment or many people who have an illness, the barriers are not with themselves; the barriers are with employment and other people’s attitudes.”
“Work and Income expects up to 1000 clients to be referred for a ”work ability assessment” between February and June next year, about 2000 in 2014-15, and about 3000 the next year, the proposal document said.
The provider would receive $650 (GST exclusive) for each completed assessment.”
“Dunedin disability researcher Chris Ford said the tests were likely to find most people able to perform some kind of work, taking no account of the wider economic situation.
In effect, this depressed wages in the employment market for everyone, he said.”
Once someone has been labelled an addict all emphasis should be on getting that person off their drug habit and back into society as a functioning contributing member.
Sometimes a bit of toughness is required to kick people into action.
Just leaving people to rot on a bene helps no one.
And the massive increase in spending that you’re advocating, treating all these drug addicts – who pays for that?
From what I’ve gathered you’re not keen on increasing taxes (although National have increased most of them, but that’s a whole other cognitive dissonance of yours for another day).
Hi Xtasy
This rubbish government are copying the Atos obscenity being perpetrated in the now despised scum country the U$K (Completely lost the plot with privatising the NHS and Royal Mail) which is fast going down the neoliberal plughole. Shame on this regime here for paying private mercenaries to harass sick and disabled people. SHAME ON PULLYA BENEFIT. BM illustrates The Standard has many aren’t we smart in the club wafflers who really don’t want to face the reality. There are simply not, not the jobs to employ all the able bodied let alone the ill and disabled. BM smears the majority due to a small minority of marginal cases.
This New Scientist article may be familiar to you, johnm, it shows that “austerity” and similarly “pressured”, draconian social conditions actually lead to ill health, rather than “help” people get well and work ready:
“In making deep budget cuts, politicians are experimenting with the health of nations, not just their wealth”
So I am sure that the “health” of the nation in the UK will down the line actually look a lot worse than what it may look like at present, given such scientific findings.
BM would not care, as he adheres to this kind of view:
Hi xtasy
Yes I’ve seen this report. Yes I’ve been poor at times and if you’re scrabbling and in addition being abused by the social system one’s intelligence can shut down just to cope until one is almost zombie like and proneness to depression increases greatly, if prolonged people sometimes never recover.
It’s like defeated soldiers in a war shuffling dejectedly to the work camps of their oppressors their faces blank with dejection and hopelessness.
People bullied and kicked down often stay that way all their lives, a vital spark of life has permanently died within them. That is the Atos obscenity of cruel harassment that this scum government want to copy.
With this contracting out, WINZ and MSD are apparently going onto totally new territory.
It appears that these will be assessments that are not just “medical”, they will be comprehensive assessments, looking at a wider range of health, social and other aspects, and that could well mean, the recommendations made WILL NOT fall under the provisions allowing clients of WINZ to appeal on MEDICAL grounds (to the Medical Board), as they presently can with disputed medical based recommendations and decisions!!!
So this is a serious softening up on the whole assessment criteria and regime, kind of going into murky territory.
As this will also mean recommendations will be made by non WINZ staff, it may be possible for WINZ to claim these are “independent” and outside assessments, that they can rely on, so decisions based on that may be more difficult to challenge by the usual process of reviews, of going to a kind of committee and to the Social Security Appeal Authority and so forth.
I fear that clients affected by this will face major problems challenging such supposedly “independent” assessments. Another issue will be, the contracted service providers will most likely not come under Official Information Act provisions. That will protect them from many queries about what they are up to.
In Berlin that hot bed of socialism the community are proposing to buy back their power companies, while down here in back water NZ we are selling ours.
That’s the local lines network they are talking about. Many are community owned in nz. Vector for instance, which continues to fight regulation of its prices and was convicted of unfair pricing practices a couple of years ago.
For those of you who may have missed it, last week a family from North Waziristan whose grandmother had been killed and the grandchildren and other cousins etc injured in a U.S. unmanned drone strike, went to Washington to put their case to Congress and try to get some answers as to why they were targetted. Only five members of the 430 person Congress showed up for the hearing.
The article linked above talks about the dramatically different responses to Malala Yousafzai (who was injured by the “right” people) and Nabila, the 9 year old girl who was injured by a United States drone. While it does LINK to articles highlighting the fact that Malala herself spoke out to President Obama urging him to stop the drone strikes and was also roundly ignored by him (that part of their conversation was omitted from the White House report of their meeting and, as far as I know, neither Obama nor the White House commented when she mentioned it herself) I don’t think it brings out strongly enough how only part of Malala’s message to the Taliban AND the west is being reported.
To add an extra level of irony to the whole thing, both the husband of the woman killed and their son (the one who came to Washington with two of his children) are or were school teachers, committed to bringing literacy and education to the people of their impoverished village. Not so different from Malala in their aspirations and efforts to help their community then…
Just what contribution to the social fabric does this lot do anyway?
Flash Harries making fast bucks on the backs of ordinary folk – and creating misery for many.
Every shipload of butter, lamb or kiwi fruit that leaves these shores involves a foreign currency transaction. Same for every barrel of oil coming in or container of computers. So yeah, creating misery all around.
Every shipload of butter, lamb or kiwi fruit that leaves these shores involves a foreign currency transaction.
Which is, more than likely, done by computer – really don’t need humans for that. The currency traders, on the other hand, are pure speculators buying and selling money solely to make a profit without them actually producing any wealth.
Outsider you lyingbor.
Tell me why nearly all the currency trading banks are having to pay billions of dollars back to those they have ripped off including NZ farmers!
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The Government is making short-sighted changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that will take away environmental protection in favour of short-term profits, Labour’s environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
Labour welcomes the release of the report into the North Island weather events and looks forward to working with the Government to ensure that New Zealand is as prepared as it can be for the next natural disaster. ...
The Labour Party has called for the New Zealand Government to recognise Palestine, as a material step towards progressing the two-State solution needed to achieve a lasting peace in the region. ...
Some of our country’s most important work, stopping the sexual exploitation of children and violent extremism could go along with staff on the frontline at ports and airports. ...
The Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill will give projects such as new coal mines a ‘get out of jail free’ card to wreak havoc on the environment, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The government's decision to reintroduce Three Strikes is a destructive and ineffective piece of law-making that will only exacerbate an inherently biased and racist criminal justice system, said Te Pāti Māori Justice Spokesperson, Tākuta Ferris, today. During the time Three Strikes was in place in Aotearoa, Māori and Pasifika received ...
Cuts to frontline hospital staff are not only a broken election promise, it shows the reckless tax cuts have well and truly hit the frontline of the health system, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
The Green Party has joined the call for public submissions on the fast-track legislation to be extended after the Ombudsman forced the Government to release the list of organisations invited to apply just hours before submissions close. ...
New Zealand’s good work at reducing climate emissions for three years in a row will be undone by the National government’s lack of ambition and scrapping programmes that were making a difference, Labour Party climate spokesperson Megan Woods said today. ...
More essential jobs could be on the chopping block, this time Ministry of Education staff on the school lunches team are set to find out whether they're in line to lose their jobs. ...
Te Pāti Māori is disgusted at the confirmation that hundreds are set to lose their jobs at Oranga Tamariki, and the disestablishment of the Treaty Response Unit. “This act of absolute carelessness and out of touch decision making is committing tamariki to state abuse.” Said Te Pāti Māori Oranga Tamariki ...
The Government is trying to bring in a law that will allow Ministers to cut corners and kill off native species, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said. ...
Cancelling urgently needed new Cook Strait ferries and hiking the cost of public transport for many Kiwis so that National can announce the prospect of another tunnel for Wellington is not making good choices, Labour Transport Spokesperson Tangi Utikere said. ...
A laundry list of additional costs for Tāmaki Makarau Auckland shows the Minister for the city is not delivering for the people who live there, says Labour Auckland Issues spokesperson Shanan Halbert. ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters discussed the need for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, and enhanced cooperation in the Pacific with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock during her first official visit to New Zealand today. "New Zealand and Germany enjoy shared interests and values, including the rule of law, democracy, respect for the international system ...
The Minister Responsible for RMA Reform, Chris Bishop today released his decision on four recommendations referred to him by the Western Bay of Plenty District Council, opening the door to housing growth in the area. The Council’s Plan Change 92 allows more homes to be built in existing and new ...
Thank you, John McKinnon and the New Zealand China Council for the invitation to speak to you today. Thank you too, all members of the China Council. Your effort has played an essential role in helping to build, shape, and grow a balanced and resilient relationship between our two ...
The Government is modernising insurance law to better protect Kiwis and provide security in the event of a disaster, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly announced today. “These reforms are long overdue. New Zealand’s insurance law is complicated and dated, some of which is more than 100 years old. ...
The coalition Government is refreshing its approach to supporting pay equity claims as time-limited funding for the Pay Equity Taskforce comes to an end, Public Service Minister Nicola Willis says. “Three years ago, the then-government introduced changes to the Equal Pay Act to support pay equity bargaining. The changes were ...
Structured literacy will change the way New Zealand children learn to read - improving achievement and setting students up for success, Education Minister Erica Stanford says. “Being able to read and write is a fundamental life skill that too many young people are missing out on. Recent data shows that ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay says Canada’s refusal to comply in full with a CPTPP trade dispute ruling in our favour over dairy trade is cynical and New Zealand has no intention of backing down. Mr McClay said he has asked for urgent legal advice in respect of our ‘next move’ ...
The rights of our children and young people will be enhanced by changes the coalition Government will make to strengthen oversight of the Oranga Tamariki system, including restoring a single Children’s Commissioner. “The Government is committed to delivering better public services that care for our most at-risk young people and ...
The Government is making it easier for minor changes to be made to a building consent so building a home is easier and more affordable, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “The coalition Government is focused on making it easier and cheaper to build homes so we can ...
New Zealand lost a true legend when internationally renowned disability advocate Sir Robert Martin (KNZM) passed away at his home in Whanganui last night, Disabilities Issues Minister Louise Upston says. “Our Government’s thoughts are with his wife Lynda, family and community, those he has worked with, the disability community in ...
Good evening – Before discussing the challenges and opportunities facing New Zealand’s foreign policy, we’d like to first acknowledge the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. You have contributed to debates about New Zealand foreign policy over a long period of time, and we thank you for hosting us. ...
From today, passengers travelling internationally from Auckland Airport will be able to keep laptops and liquids in their carry-on bags for security screening thanks to new technology, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Creating a more efficient and seamless travel experience is important for holidaymakers and businesses, enabling faster movement through ...
People with an interest in the health of Northland’s marine ecosystems are invited to a public meeting to discuss how to deal with kina barrens, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones will lead the discussion, which will take place on Friday, 10 May, at Awanui Hotel in ...
Kiwi exporters are $100 million better off today with the NZ EU FTA entering into force says Trade Minister Todd McClay. “This is all part of our plan to grow the economy. New Zealand's prosperity depends on international trade, making up 60 per cent of the country’s total economic activity. ...
There are heartening signs that the extractive sector is once again becoming an attractive prospect for investors and a source of economic prosperity for New Zealand, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. “The beginnings of a resurgence in extractive industries are apparent in media reports of the sector in the past ...
The return of the historic Ō-Rākau battle site to the descendants of those who fought there moved one step closer today with the first reading of Te Pire mō Ō-Rākau, Te Pae o Maumahara / The Ō-Rākau Remembrance Bill. The Bill will entrust the 9.7-hectare battle site, five kilometres west ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has announced 25 new high-speed EV charging hubs along key routes between major urban centres and outlined the Government’s plan to supercharge New Zealand’s EV infrastructure. The hubs will each have several chargers and be capable of charging at least four – and up to 10 ...
The coalition Government will not proceed with the previous Government’s plans to regulate residential property managers, Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. “I have written to the Chairperson of the Social Services and Community Committee to inform him that the Government does not intend to support the Residential Property Managers Bill ...
The Government has announced an independent review into the disability support system funded by the Ministry of Disabled People – Whaikaha. Disability Issues Minister Louise Upston says the review will look at what can be done to strengthen the long-term sustainability of Disability Support Services to provide disabled people and ...
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith has attended the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva and outlined the Government’s plan to restore law and order. “Speaking to the United Nations Human Rights Council provided us with an opportunity to present New Zealand’s human rights progress, priorities, and challenges, while responding to issues and ...
The Government and Rotorua Lakes Council are committed to working closely together to end the use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua. Associate Minister of Housing (Social Housing) Tama Potaka says the Government remains committed to ending the long-term use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua by the ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay heads overseas today for high-level trade talks in the Gulf region, and a key OECD meeting in Paris. Mr McClay will travel to Riyadh to meet with counterparts from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). “New Zealand’s goods and services exports to the Gulf region ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford has outlined six education priorities to deliver a world-leading education system that sets Kiwi kids up for future success. “I’m putting ambition, achievement and outcomes at the heart of our education system. I want every child to be inspired and engaged in their learning so they ...
The new NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) App is a secure ‘one stop shop’ to provide the services drivers need, Transport Minister Simeon Brown and Digitising Government Minister Judith Collins say. “The NZTA App will enable an easier way for Kiwis to pay for Vehicle Registration and Road User Charges (RUC). ...
Whānau with tamariki growing up in emergency housing motels will be prioritised for social housing starting this week, says Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka. “Giving these whānau a better opportunity to build healthy stable lives for themselves and future generations is an essential part of the Government’s goal of reducing ...
Racing Minister Winston Peters has paid tribute to an icon of the industry with the recent passing of Dave O’Sullivan (OBE). “Our sympathies are with the O’Sullivan family with the sad news of Dave O’Sullivan’s recent passing,” Mr Peters says. “His contribution to racing, initially as a jockey and then ...
Assalaamu alaikum, greetings to you all. Eid Mubarak, everyone! I want to extend my warmest wishes to you and everyone celebrating this joyous occasion. It is a pleasure to be here. I have enjoyed Eid celebrations at Parliament before, but this is my first time joining you as the Minister ...
Associate Health Minister David Seymour has announced Pharmac’s largest ever budget of $6.294 billion over four years, fixing a $1.774 billion fiscal cliff. “Access to medicines is a crucial part of many Kiwis’ lives. We’ve committed to a budget allocation of $1.774 billion over four years so Kiwis are ...
Hon Paula Bennett has been appointed as member and chair of the Pharmac board, Associate Health Minister David Seymour announced today. "Pharmac is a critical part of New Zealand's health system and plays a significant role in ensuring that Kiwis have the best possible access to medicines,” says Mr Seymour. ...
Hundreds of New Zealand families affected by Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) will benefit from a new Government focus on prevention and treatment, says Health Minister Dr Shane Reti. “We know FASD is a leading cause of preventable intellectual and neurodevelopmental disability in New Zealand,” Dr Reti says. “Every day, ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones today attended the official opening of Kaikohe’s new $14.7 million sports complex. “The completion of the Kaikohe Multi Sports Complex is a fantastic achievement for the Far North,” Mr Jones says. “This facility not only fulfils a long-held dream for local athletes, but also creates ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters’ engagements in Türkiye this week underlined the importance of diplomacy to meet growing global challenges. “Returning to the Gallipoli Peninsula to represent New Zealand at Anzac commemorations was a sombre reminder of the critical importance of diplomacy for de-escalating conflicts and easing tensions,” Mr Peters ...
Ambassador Millar, Burgemeester, Vandepitte, Excellencies, military representatives, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen – good morning and welcome to this sacred Anzac Day dawn service. It is an honour to be here on behalf of the Government and people of New Zealand at Buttes New British Cemetery, Polygon Wood – a deeply ...
Distinguished guests - It is an honour to return once again to this site which, as the resting place for so many of our war-dead, has become a sacred place for generations of New Zealanders. Our presence here and at the other special spaces of Gallipoli is made ...
Mai ia tawhiti pamamao, te moana nui a Kiwa, kua tae whakaiti mai matou, ki to koutou papa whenua. No koutou te tapuwae, no matou te tapuwae, kua honoa pumautia. Ko nga toa kua hinga nei, o te Waipounamu, o te Ika a Maui, he okioki tahi me o ...
Paul Goldsmith will take on responsibility for the Media and Communications portfolio, while Louise Upston will pick up the Disability Issues portfolio, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announced today. “Our Government is relentlessly focused on getting New Zealand back on track. As issues change in prominence, I plan to adjust Ministerial ...
Recreational catch limits will be reduced in areas of Fiordland and the Chatham Islands to help keep those fisheries healthy and sustainable, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. The lower recreational daily catch limits for a range of finfish and shellfish species caught in the Fiordland Marine Area and ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has welcomed an important milestone in New Zealand’s hydrogen future, with the opening of the country’s first network of hydrogen refuelling stations in Wiri. “I want to congratulate the team at Hiringa Energy and its partners K one W one (K1W1), Mitsui & Co New Zealand ...
The coalition Government is delivering on its commitment to improve resource management laws and give greater certainty to consent applicants, with a Bill to amend the Resource Management Act (RMA) expected to be introduced to Parliament next month. RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop has today outlined the first RMA Amendment ...
Overseas models for regulating the oil and gas sector, including their decommissioning regimes, are being carefully scrutinised as a potential template for New Zealand’s own sector, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. The Coalition Government is focused on rebuilding investor confidence in New Zealand’s energy sector as it looks to strengthen ...
Comment: Almost half the world is voting in national elections this year and artificial intelligence is the elephant in the room. There are genuine fears AI-generated or AI-edited deepfakes will potentially manipulate election outcomes not just in the US and UK, but critically in countries such as India. For that ...
Ahead of the reality franchise’s return to New Zealand, allow us to introduce the eight brides and grooms. Chuck on a veil and tie back your man bun, because it’s time to say “I do” to a new season of Married at First Sight NZ. The reality TV “social experiment” ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Norton, Professor in the Practice of Higher Education Policy, Australian National University Every year on June 1, student debt in Australia is indexed to inflation. In 2023, high inflation pushed the indexation rate to 7.1%, the highest since 1990. This ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Changes in the May 14 budget will cut the student debt of more than three million people, wiping more than $3 billion from what people owe. The government will cap the HELP indexation rate ...
Asia Pacific Report The prosecutor’s office at the International Criminal Court (ICC) has appealed for an end to what it calls intimidation of its staff, saying such threats could constitute an offence against the “administration of justice” by the world’s permanent war crimes court. The Hague-based office of ICC Prosecutor ...
By Patrick Decloitre, RNZ Pacific correspondent French Pacific desk A women’s union in New Caledonia has staged a sit-in protest this week to support senior Kanak indigenous journalist Thérèse Waia, who works for public broadcaster Nouvelle-Calédonie la Première, after a smear attack by critics. The peaceful demonstration was held on ...
New Zealand Food Safety is monitoring overseas recalls of Indian packaged spice products manufactured by MDH and Everest due to concerns over a cancer-causing pesticide. ...
By Stephen Wright and Stefan Armbruster of BenarNews Fiji’s ranking in a global press freedom index has jumped into the top tier of countries with free or mostly free media after its government last year repealed a draconian law that threatened journalists with prison for doing their jobs. Fiji’s improvement ...
We might be in Invercargill but all anyone can talk about is Gore. Specifically, Salford Street. That’s where three-year-old Lachlan Jones lived, south of the centre of town, between the A&P Showgrounds and the Mataura River. Roughly 1.2 km away from the single level home he lived in with his ...
MONDAY I lined up the latest round of civil servants from city hall against the wall, and signalled for the firing squad to drop their rifles. I stepped up onto a wooden crate to look at the office workers in the eye. But that didn’t feel right, so I found ...
Keen hiker and second-year MSc student Liam Hewson wears two hats when he’s in the great outdoors. “The scientist in me appreciates nature and goes, ‘Oh, there’s that thing and there’s another thing,’ but then the tramper and the outdoorsy person in me thinks, ‘Cool bush.’” Born and bred in ...
After a long and illustrious career as a goal kicker, Dan Carter’s favourite way to unwind is… kicking goals. Why can’t he get enough of it? And what it’s like to watch him do it for an hour straight? A semicircle of people wielding cameras and phones has formed in ...
Dame Susan Devoy takes us through her life in television, including late night ER debriefs, her proudest CTI moment and the show she watches in secret. Quite aside from her four world champion squash titles, Dame Susan Devoy will likely go down in history as one of the best Celebrity ...
Hera Lindsay Bird reveals the best places in Ōtepoti to score more for your apocalypse-prep book hoard.Sometimes I get the feeling I’ve been killed in a car crash, and this second half of my life is just the brain unspooling itself, like one of those episodes of a hospital ...
ThreeNow’s new murder mystery series takes us on a dark, damp journey into the Australian wilderness.This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. High Country is ThreeNow’s new Australian eight-part crime drama, set in a remote part of the Victorian highlands. It tells ...
Introducing a new way to read The Spinoff every weekend. After nearly 10 years of being an online magazine, we’re finally embracing the weekend liftout. Despite our best efforts to convince you otherwise, writers and editors at The Spinoff don’t work weekend. It is through the sheer power of technology ...
Tip one: let yourself be nurtured by this big old man. Tip two: don’t ask him to adopt you. So, you’ve arrived at your first session with a new therapist. He tells you to make yourself comfortable and you opt for the tweed armchair, hoping it makes you look like ...
I didn’t know books could open you back up; that there were books that stayed with you, where reading was like a chemical event. I knew nothing.The Sunday Essay is made possible thanks to the support of Creative New Zealand.Not too long ago, I was listening to the American ...
Former Olympic swimmer James Magnussen has already started training for the Enhanced games, though says he won’t start taking performance enhancing substances until about nine months out from the competition. The Australian world champion was the first athlete to be announced by Enhanced, but he says the organisation has had ...
Everyone thinks he’s dead. Every day they expect his body to be washed up along the coast. Most likely up Karitane way, the way the tide’s running. But nobody’ll be too surprised if his body’s never found. Even in death he wouldn’t have wished for such attention. He would have ...
Council members voted 21 to 4 in favour of Ahluwalia returning to the Laucala campus following a much-awaited meeting in Vanuatu this week. It comes as USP and its two unions — the Association of the University of the South Pacific Staff (AUSPS) and the Administration and Support Staff Union ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicola Henry, Professor & Australian Research Council Future Fellow, Social and Global Studies Centre, RMIT University Shutterstock Following an emergency meeting of the National Cabinet this week, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has announced a raft of measures to tackle the problem ...
Analysis - A poll showing the opposition is more popular than the government raises questions, politicians go through their 'trial by pay rise' and a Green MP loses her cool in the debating chamber. ...
The entire stretch of Tokomaru Bay on the East Coast will be subject to a joint customary marine title for two hapū, and extending up to four miles out to sea. A High Court judge has found the two groups, who during the case settled a dispute over boundaries for ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Hall, Lecturer, Media & Cultural Studies, Edith Cowan University A longstanding feud between TikTok and Universal Music Group seems to have finally reached an end, with both parties signing a deal that will see Universal-backed music returned to the social media ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Siobhan O’Dean, Postdoctoral Research Associate, The Matilda Centre for Research in Mental Health and Substance Use, University of Sydney After several highly publicised alleged murders of women in Australia, the Albanese government this week pledged more than A$925 million over five years ...
Political parties have now fully disclosed the donations they received last year - with National getting more than double the cash of any other party. ...
A Pacific regionalism expert has called out New Zealand's Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters for withholding information from the public on AUKUS military pact. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard de Grijs, Professor of Astrophysics, Macquarie University Bruno Scramgnon/Pexels All systems are “go” for tonight’s launch of China’s next step in a carefully planned lunar exploration program. Placed on top of a powerful Long March 5 rocket, the Chang’e 6 ...
National returned a massive donation the day after a Newsroom story linked the donors to a property being investigated for operating unlawfully as a migrant workers’ hostel. The party’s 2023 donation filings, released on Friday, show it returned a $200,000 donation from Buen Holdings on August 23. That was the ...
Pacific Media Watch New Zealand has slumped to an unprecedented 19th place in the annual Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index survey released today on World Press Freedom Day — May 3. This was a drop of six places from 13th last year when it slipped out of its ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joshua Black, Political Historian and Administrator Officer, Australian Historical Association, Australian National University Australia has had its fair share of public record-keeping controversies in recent years. Some have been mere farce, as in the case of two formerly government-owned filing cabinets (containing ...
Heavenly Culture, World Peace, Restoration of Light (HWPL), a United Nations-affiliated organization dedicated to fostering peace through civilian-led initiatives, has issued a statement in response to the escalating conflict between Israel and Iran. ...
A poem by Tessa Keenan, from AUP New Poets 10. Mātou These days we are a photograph; one of a farm strewn with cows that used to be bright harakeke or swamp. The kids point at it and say the sun sits behind a smudge (left by someone at Christmas); ...
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 Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan (Faber & Faber, $25)The masterful Irish writer ...
Marriage and civil union statistics record the number of marriages and civil unions registered in New Zealand each year, and divorce statistics record the number of divorces granted in New Zealand each year. Key facts Marriages and civil unions In ...
Marriage and civil union statistics record the number of marriages and civil unions registered in New Zealand each year, and divorce statistics record the number of divorces granted in New Zealand each year. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lennon Y.C. Chang, Associate Professor of Cyber Risk and Policy, Deakin University Taiwan stands out as a beacon of democracy, innovation and resilience in an increasingly autocratic region. But this is under growing threat. In recent years, China has used a variety ...
In this excerpt from her new memoir, Dame Susan Devoy remembers her turn as star contestant on the 2022 season of Celebrity Treasure Island. The most anxious time of every day was pre-elimination, when you knew this could be your final day on the show. I felt such contradictory emotions, ...
A week that began in triumph ended in an all-too-familiar disaster for the Green Party. Duncan Greive asks if there’s something in the mission that breaks its best and brightest. A long, strange week for the Green party began with a fantastic poll result. On one level this is hardly ...
By Lydia Lewis, RNZ Pacific journalist Vanuatu’s former prime minister and opposition MP Ishmael Kalsakau has stepped down — just two days after he confirmed he was the rightful opposition leader. Kalsakau, MP for Port Vila, confirmed to ABC’s Pacific Beat, and the Vanuatu Daily Post on Thursday that he ...
What’s to blame for the coalition’s choppy start? Six months in, and the mojo meter is in the doldrums. A new poll would put National out of power and sees its leader, Chris Luxon, sliding in popularity. How much is it about policy, how much coalition management and a perception ...
The striking report goes far beyond the proposed repeal of the Oranga Tamariki Act’s Treaty of Waitangi provision, and its impact should be felt far beyond the unique circumstances of the claim it addresses. Earlier this week, the Waitangi Tribunal released an interim report on the government’s proposed repeal of ...
The world has been experiencing a productivity slowdown, from which New Zealand has not been exempt. COVID-19 temporarily boosted labour productivity, but more recently, productivity has retreated. The overall trend since 2007 has been one of slow productivity ...
What’s more wasteful than spending $315k on syrup and machine maintenance? Trying to drum up a controversy about it.Cast your mind back to the pre-pandemic idylls of 2019. A “rat” was a disgusting rodent and not a self-administered plague test; the sixth Labour government was in power; and the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Fitz-Gibbon, Professor of Social Sciences, Faculty of Arts, Monash University, Monash University Ken stocker/Shutterstock In the wake of numerous killings of women allegedly by men’s violence in 2024, thousands of Australians have joined rallies across the country to demand action ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Henry Cutler, Professor and Director, Macquarie University Centre for the Health Economy, Macquarie University Oleg Ivanov IL/Shutterstock Waiting times for public hospital elective surgery have been in the news ahead of this year’s federal budget. That’s the type of non-emergency surgery ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Konstantine Panegyres, McKenzie Postdoctoral Fellow, Historical and Philosophical Studies, The University of Melbourne Amna Artist/Shutterstock One of the earliest descriptions of someone with cancer comes from the fourth century BC. Satyrus, tyrant of the city of Heracleia on the Black Sea, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Rose, Professor of Sustainable Future Transport, University of Sydney LanaElcova/Shutterstock Electric vehicles are often seen as the panacea to cutting emissions – and air pollution – from transport. Is this view correct? Yes – but only once uptake accelerates. Despite the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Giselle Natassia Woodley, Researcher and Phd Candidate, Edith Cowan University There is widespread agreement Australia needs to do better when it comes to gender-based violence. Anger and frustration at the numbers of women being killed saw national rallies over the weekend and ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Graham, Lecturer in Economics, University of Sydney Mark and Anna Photography/Shutterstock As home ownership moves further out of reach for many Australians, “rentvesting” is being touted as a lifesaver. Rentvesting is the practice of renting one property to live ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sukhmani Khorana, Associate Professor, Faculty of Arts, Design and Architecture, UNSW Sydney Netflix The new season of Heartbreak High is garnering mixed reviews. Critics are writing about the racy story lines, comparing it to other coming-of-age series about teenage relationships and ...
Bob Carr intends to launch legal action against Winston Peters and Julie Anne Genter is facing a second allegation of bullying. Both sucked the air out of an announcement on education, writes Anna Rawhiti-Connell in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in ...
In 1995, Sally Clark went out on her own in a bold and unorthodox attempt to join an illustrious group of equestrian riders conquering the world. In the days of glovebox road maps, brick cell phones, and the hit song How Bizarre, Clark refused to follow Sir Mark Todd, Blyth ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ben Beaglehole, Senior Lecturer, Department of Psychological Medicine, University of Otago niphon/Getty Images The number of people accessing medication for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in Aotearoa New Zealand increased significantly between 2006 and 2022. But the disorder is still under-diagnosed and ...
To celebrate the start of New Zealand music month, we look back at the best local tuneage that managed to weasel its way into Hollywood productions. There’s nothing quite like the thrilling zap of recognition when New Zealand weasels its way into a glamorous Hollywood production. Crack open a Tui ...
People trust other people more than institutions. So how can the media gain that trust through journalists without losing what’s important about the institution? Anna Rawhiti-Connell reflects on two years of curating the news for The Bulletin.Amonth ago, armed cops descended on my neighbourhood as calls to “lock your ...
John Key’s New Zealand.
A Playground for the international corporate elite.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11150595
The corporates want the entire world to be their playground and no one else is allowed to play.
I see finally that questions are being asked of what Auckland City Counciller Cameron Brewer knew about the Len Brown affair. Are we expected as he makes out in this morning NZ Herald that in the immortal words of Sgt Schultz “I know nothing”
It looks to me like someones trying to talk up Brewer’s chances of becoming mayor, while the failed Rodney Hide tries to keep the smear on Brown.
What is Hyde trying to smear Brown with now ?
Facts and common sense.
Neither of which Hide could recognise if he tripped over them.
and fell face down in them.
Latest Gower revelations stun Labour
The Labour leadership is already on the rocks with Patrick Gower revealing that David Cunliffe is about to launch a leadership coup, on himself.
Gotta watch that Gower…. Next he will be making up stories about himself.
Yeah next he will deny that Shrek is his father…
i call him/my nickname for him is ‘smeeg’..(neo-dickensian..?..urban dictionary has a different take on the word..)
….and i feel he should wear a high collar..
..and a bowler-hat..
..and sit at his work on a high stool..
..and i am sure he does a good turn in handwringing..
..that smeeg…
..phillip ure.
Er, is the Labour Party having a conference? Has David Cunliffe made an important speech indicating that great change lies ahead when Labour is elected?
The Herald seems to place more importance on the All Blacks defeat of Japan.
“The Herald seems to place more importance on the All Blacks defeat of Japan.”
Yeah, it would be nice if the spinners for the right stopped saying the left is wrong for accusing granny of a bias against Labour now, ta.
Yeah and after reading Armstrong. I had to ask if his Alzheimer’s medicine had run out.
and stuff breathlessly reannounces something that was already news two weeks ago, just Bevan – oh no not the media and the publicity- Chuang has said it again in a new interview.
yes Len Brown gave her a reference, we knew that.
My vision for the first Labour-Greens government:
In March 2015, announce a high-powered working group to investigate the implementation of UBI in NZ – with the Big Kahuna as a starting point. Unlike National’s quickly-forgotten side-shows, this working group will act with the knowledge that their proposals will form a core of new Labour party policy, not a bunch of recommendations that the magpie government picks and chooses a few shiney gems from. New working groups and policy development/analysis groups can be kicked off as necessary to study particular areas in depth, eg the implications of UBI on the welfare system and UBI on pensions.
Labour and Greens campaign in the 2017 election for the introduction of UBI. Within the first 100 days of winning 2017, they begin to pass laws to implement UBI.
First nationwide UBI payment takes place no later than 1 July 2019.
This is one of the policies that a 4-year parliamentary term would make more achievable.
Lanthanide +1
One of the aspects of UBI is NZ citizens would need bank accounts to accept the money into.
So KiwiBank can be the default option for those that don’t have bank accounts…
q&a have 2 extreme right wingers on the panel…???
Will be interested to see how these two view Labour conf/announcements???
Instead of Labour looking at the disengaged, despairing poor and beneficiaries to turn out to vote for them, why don’t they seek voter support from the Nats that are dissatisfied with government handouts/hand ups to Big Corporates, SKY, Telecom, Rio Tinto, Bathurst, Fletcher, etc etc. I’m sure many Nats don’t like being spied on by their own boy JOHN Key. Or their pisstine rivers being shat in, overseen by a Government that turns a blind eye. Or their Public Broadcaster, TVNZ7 being killed by National. Or their youngsters leaving for Oz for a better life fighting fires. Surely, even some of the Nats might wake up to the fact that they are being done over. The superannuation issue is on Shonkey’s
favour though. Taxing working superanuitants more could be worth consideration. Or, if you work, no super. Someone’s gotta be upset folks. The revolution has begun, you just don’t realise it.
phil
Some paragraphs please. It’s hard to sort out your ideas.
cunnliffe just gave a good performance on Q & A..
(heh..!..and hooten is panicking..!..)
phillip ure..
Hooten’s line is Labour is “far left, far left, far left, far left….” predictable stuff, this will be National’s constant attack line. Labour just need to fight back with the facts.
Now for Bullshit Benett
What about that panel aye?? A real bright bunch of ex this, thats, and wanna be’s.
You can’t have a functioning democracy without a free press.
We are a corporatocracy.
what was particularly gag-inducing was williams trying to excuse the clark govts’ nine long years of ignoring the poorest/child-poverty..
..while providing subsidies for companies/corporates whose business-plans/profits rely on paying a slave-wage..topped up by taxpayers….w.t.f..!..
..williams sneered at/washed his hands of that neglect-responsibilty by stigmatising those ignored poor..as a ‘stubborn rump’ of individuals..who you just couldn’t help..
..and for that vile/cynical/lying claim..i wd like to award williams a special ‘self-serving/apologist-revisionism award’..
..and cd someone pass the vomit-bucket..plse..
..phillip ure..
the funny thing about the disconnect that williams has running..
..is that he still clearly does not see himself..
..as being/having been part of the problem..
..in his role in the neo-lib consensus that has blighted new zealand for far too long..
..and his continued refusal to recognise this..
..only confirms that williams-disconnect..
..phillip ure..
phillip ure
I read your remarks about Williams and had to dig deep to find who you are talking about. More information please.
I thought it might be Jordon Williams but decided you were possibly talking about QandA of today which scoop shows as having Mike Williams amongst these people discussing –
On the panel this week, political scientist Dr Claire Robinson from Massey University, former Labour Party president Mike Williams and political commentator Matthew Hooton.
@ greywarbler..
are you unaware of the fact that the clark labour govt did nothing for those nine long years to undo the havoc wreaked on the poorest by shipley/richardson..?
..they turned their backs on the poorest/child-poverty..and just expanded employer-subsidies..?..(i.e..working for families..)
..and that the clark labour govt..at a time when williams was president of that party..
..were firmly in the poor-bashing/neo-randite/neo-lib consensus between the two major parties..
..which has brought us to our current sorry state of affairs/horror world-rankings..
..these are all facts/matters of historical-record/neglect..greywarbler..
..and this is what i was calling mike williams on..
..his cynical sneering at/stigmatising of those he/they so willfully ignored..
..kinda got my blood too near boiling-level..
..i couldn’t just let it pass..without comment/correction..
..phillip ure..
phillip u
You’re always or almost always, spot on. My point was which? Williams – I wanted a bit of extra information rounding off your thought so I can come onto the thread and pick up the point straight away.
I have heard Mike Williams on Radionz with Hooten. I occasionally listen to him and wonder where the Labour went. The cloak of leftie has got such big holes in it. He is a living example of an art installation about the shoddy, market degraded, leaky House version of Labour that their subversive neolib s.ds delivered to our doors with no right of return.
And an example of why career politicians can’t be trusted
paul
I used to think that someone with experience would make a better politician, more effective. But now I’ve grown up and realised that is a foolish idea to apply in general . Now I think possibly some at some time, occasionally, perhaps. Even limited terms of service, with at least two terms out might be useful to give the best result for citizens. In the USA I have heard that some pollies manage to cling on to their jobs until they are almost fossilised.
Just heard on the radio that DOC is agreeing to 25 plane flights a day instead of present four to the glaciers. DOC is agreeing to a mountain bike track on the Auckland volcanic peaks such as Rangitoto . The tourist companies are going to swarm over the whole of the country invading the country so it won’t be able to be seen through the tourists, thick as ant colonies.
I don’t know what has been said at conference. I will have to try to find info but it is hard to get other things done and also keep up to date with the latest, often bad, news.
@ greywarbler..i think even hooten is getting embarrased by williams’ ‘i agree with matthew’s..
..last time williams trotted out that standard..
..hooten commented:.(sotto-voiced) .’that’s always nice when that happens’..
..phillip ure..
I once counted the number of times Williams said “I agree with you Mathew”, or “I’m inclined to agree with Mathew”.
I had to give up counting (I ran out of fingers).
“We will invite New Zealanders to participate in a constitutional conversation to help us towards a mature, stable constitutional form.”
David Cunliffe identified himself as a REPUBLICAN a long time ago.
This sentence from his speech yesterday is the first step on that road.
If you, like the corporate press, are intending to divert the debate away from the most important issues ( jobs, housing, education) with another royalty discussion, please be aware that most people can see through such smoke and mirror tricks.
I’m delighted that the Labour Party is addressing this important aspect of our identity. Economic sovereignty, an independent foreign policy, a prosperous multi cultural modern society all need a supporting constitutional form.
I’ve no interest in discussing monarchy.
Cunliffe is talking about our future, not the past.
I understand your fear that silly issues distract us.
I ask you to see the positive and important aspects of the conversation David asked for.
Bill Drees +100
….and agree Monarchy is not important…. in fact it gives legit to the Treaty of Waitangi ( monarchy issues are divisive side issue which the right wing would like to use to cause splits….especially from Winiie’s NZFirst…our British heritage is important ….we dont want to be rudderless on Chinese and USA manouverings South Pacific Seas)
…let Queeniie stay….she isnt a bad bastard ( she didnt like Thatcher)….and Charles is GREENIE
Chooky
Don’t get me wrong, we have to select our own Head of State. The constitutional conversation should focus on giving us a “form” that reflect who we are and how we want to position ourselves in the world.
I see the discussion at a level above and beyond the simple HoS v Monarch noise. That debate is usually at a soap-opera level. Cunliffe is asking for a positive debate that will shape the rest of this century.
Personally I find it incomprehensible that modern NZ have a London based hereditary figure as a monarch. I’m unable to become an NZ Citizen as swearing allegiance to that institution is a pre-condition to citizenship.
The only real worry I have about becoming a republic is that injustices such as David Bain, Arthur Thomas, and hopefully Teina Pora in the near future, have only been partially righted because of the Privy Council. It seems that our law makers and great legal minds are all to close to each other to pick up on mistakes within the family. I don’t see that we need to acknowledge a German family in England to be able to right these wrongs, but we do seem to need an outside option, at least for legal appeals.
an american-focused takedown of t.p.p..
..revealing it to be the corporate/compliant-politician driven scam on the rest of us..
..that it is..
http://whoar.co.nz/2013/bill-moyers-the-corporate-plot-that-obama-and-corporate-lobbyists-dont-want-you-to-know-about/
phillip ure..
@Phillip Ure.
Phil, sometimes it is a pain having to go thru your site to get to a link that you could have just put up here without the link to your site first.
The last person to keep doing this, is he who shall not be named.
@ david h..that was in error..if i have something to say..i link to me..if just linking..i usually post direct-link..
..here you go..
http://www.alternet.org/economy/bill-moyers-corporate-plot-obama-and-corporate-lobbyists-dont-want-you-know-about
..r.s.i..?..or slow internet connection..?
..the nano-seconds/click-numbers just seem to add up..eh..?..
..a first world problem..?..d’yareckon..?
..phillip ure..
At 12.11 pm today – RadioNZ on the 1913’s Great Strike in NZ –
there is a very interesting labour piece on Spectrum on Radionz today. Have a look at the photos on the summary on the link. (There is also a link to a piece with information on how to make a radio documentary.)
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/spectrum
There is a great audio piece of the daughter of one of the militia saying in well-bred tones that her father was set upon and had come home exclaiming that it was the French Revolution all over again.
Sunday 3 November 2013, with David Steemson, Deborah Nation, Jack Perkins & Lisa Thompson
Sunday, 3 November 2013
The War of Bricks and Batons
In October 1913, minor disputes in the Huntly mines and on Wellington’s wharves soon spread to engulf the country. The Great Strike of 1913 reflected union dissatisfaction with the arbitration system and a growing confidence in union power. Some believed that if enough workers could join together in a general strike, they could take over their workplaces and run them for themselves. By November 1913 about 16,000 watersiders, miners, labourers, drivers and others were on strike, mostly in Wellington, Auckland and Christchurch.
Also there is audio to 27 October piece on the demolishing of the excellent broadcasting house
by the neo lib National Government.
Audio from Sunday 27 October 2013
Spectrum for 27 October 2013 ( 26′ 21″ )
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/spectrum/20131027
12:10 In 1963, Broadcasting House opened. It was the nerve centre of the country’s
radio networks and home to the Capital’s stations. Its Japanese-made technical equipment was state-of-the-art and its studios world-standard.
It was demolished in 1997 to make way for an extension of parliament that never happened.
In 1972, Spectrum’s Jack Perkins recorded a day’s activities in Broadcasting House. This rebroadcast of ‘Sound Around the Clock’ marks 50 years since the opening of Broadcasting House.
Gutter Oil, The Irish “Famine” and Why John “Smiling Assassin” Key Wanted New Zealand To Be Like Ireland. A compulsory Max And Stacey as far as I’m concerned
How long can this go on?
Down the List, Radio NZ National, Sunday 3 November 2013
Written by Dave Armstrong
They’ve gotten rid of Bomber Bradbury and Gordon Campbell. So how come this series continues to escape the Richard Griffin axe? In this morning’s episode, an American character called General Mayhem [geddit?] comments about the United States regime’s illegal spying—even against New Zealand: “Ha! Why spy on those guys? That chap Key does everything we ask.”
This series is always funny, and mordantly accurate. Time for the Prime Minister’s bully-boys to step in, surely?
Morrissey Sssssh.
The nasties mightn’t have heard it yet, and Richard Griffin once had some stake in being regarded a wide-thinking commentator on politics. . Don’t put at risk the tiny bit of satire we have that is actually funny. We have to be careful that we don’t end up with bans on the media like a Bananarama republic.
Trav brilliant
Key was at the heart of the currency trading army that sold useless derivatives to Ireland as well as Key deeply involved with libor now JPMorgan is having to pay back all its I’ll gotten gains next on the block is Bof America
incorporating Merrill Lynch who will be prosecuted as well.
None of the players have had to face charges yet as the Republicans and Tories are cutting funding to the govt watch dogs so their corrupt mates don’t face charges.
Labour seems alsmost determined not to get elected
http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/9356811/Labour-votes-on-Queen
Yes, thoughtful, serious debate. What a travesty.
Hardly all that thoughtful if they failed to notice that at last measure support for the monarchy among New Zealanders was between 50 and 70%
Yep. The monarchy is not only widely popular, the constitutional relationship with the Crown also helps to serve the stability of the nation very well.
And because Presidential Republics work so well, just look at America.
That is no sort of an argument. Are you a member of ACT, perchance?
Nope.
Perhaps you didn’t sense my sarcasm.
With you on this one. Constitutional republics just don’t tend to last very well.
Constitutional republics just don’t tend to last very well.
?!!!????
Perhaps you could share that brilliant insight next time you talk to someone from the USA, France, Ireland, Switzerland, Iran or South Africa.
Being a republic doesn’t mean the head of state has to be elected by the public.
You’ve learned to talk like a parliamentarian, Tat. You’ll do well. Just make sure you stand up and speak out on the really important issues, though, will you? We need another Mike Moore like we need another John Key.
+1 TL CV…spot on as usual !
http://www.republic.org.nz/polling
The trend is downwards and so we need to have the debate.
DTB
Thanks for the polling information. We need a debate like this just now as much as one about L Br’s peccadilloes or whatever. Let sleeping dogs lie till after the election.
Actually the support for the monarchy looks broadly flat there. There has been a modest conversion from “don’t know” to “republic” though.
Actually, no it isn’t. The support for monarchy is eroding slowly while the support for becoming a republic is increasing at a greater rate.
You can draw a straight line for Monarchy support from 1990 through to 2012, which cuts off a couple of very big peaks of support in the middle.
To me, the clearest trends is Dont Know is declining, Monarchy is broadly flat and Republic is increasing.
Yep, it slopes downwards.
Those on the Left who want to ditch the Monarchy are often of Irish Catholic extraction or sympathies
..if they want social justice they should sort out the sexism inherent in their own Irish Catholicism first….imo…(speaking as a feminist and also of Irish /Scottish Protestant extraction as well as English and Maori…also 3 ancestral witches burnt at the stake by the Inquisition….)
The Labour Party goes here at its peril!
Paul
Because you don’t indicate the name you reply to it looks as if you are directing your comments at Chooky. I find it hard to follow the various threads when people don’t include the name.
Chooky
I hadn’t heard about that Irish Catholicism connection. Interesting.
I agree that Labour should leave it alone. Why muddy the waters more. There are so many issues, stick to the left and go straight on to the hoped for destination with a good load of policies. Not farting around with issues that are of not major importance and that people are not highly stressed about it.
I was reading an old Listener that rated NZs in importance and Cullen was Two to Helen Clark’s One. The item pointed out how he blotted his standing as Finance Minister with a tax cut of 67c that was labelled the bubblegum tax. It seems that Labour loses a sense of proportion at times, or gets sidetracked from its task by wanting to clean up every policy corner.
Interesting to see that the anti Irish Catholic bigotry of old is still alive and chooking. William Massey will be smiling in his grave.
Shame on you for bringing such shameful ignorant prejudice to these pages. Read a few history books and lift yourself up to a level that makes you fit to engage in dialogue with thoughtful people.
Bill Drees
You might be right in knowing all the relevant information and making a reasoned judgment. But you’re not right to come down so heavily on someone who raises questions. about matters that are historically pertinent. People who want to stifle comment are often more closed to reasoned discussion than someone they take offence to.
@ Bill Drees…(smirk)…..i have lots of friends of Irish Catholic ancestry..( and I love a good fight)……all my ancestors came to NZ in the mid to late 1860s plus I have an ancestor who signed the Treaty of Waitangi as a Maori Chief….so i dont have problems with the Monarchy …they have been good friends of the Maori!!!!..
..imo…the people who cant hack the monarchy are generally new immigrants who feel insecure in their own NZ identity and want to impose their own values/culture here
yes i do read history books and I am afraid that Catholicism has not been good for women anywhere……. let alone Ireland!….suggest you widen your reading ..re -contraception, abortion, employment , equal pay, work outside the family , self-determination, priest abuse , church abuse, homophobia, treatment of unmarried pregnant women, divorced women, separated women , adultery…..etc
(lol)”Shame on you for bringing such shameful ignorant prejudice to these pages. Read a few history books and lift yourself up to a level that makes you fit to engage in dialogue with thoughtful people.”….Get up to date with the 21st century and feminism!……as Christopher Hitchen said “Wherever you find Catholicism you find fascism!” (lol)
At least the monarchy allow / have a woman head …now where is that woman Pope?!
[citation needed]
…well i cant find a citation but will this do?..ie .IRA blows up Lord Mountbatten….
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Mountbatten,_1st_Earl_Mountbatten_of_Burma
…seems to be commonsense that the Catholic Irish supported British Royalty as long as they were Catholic ….but when they became Protestant they did not
Personally i am not a Royal watcher or fan…and I am not a fan of the British class system…..but I respect the monarchy’s role in NZ history ….and I dont think it is wise to make it a Labour Party issue at this time….that is , if the objective is to win the 2014 General Election.
No.
Stealing land, abusing Māori, and other injustices. Well, to be more precise I suppose, not stopping those injustices considering that they happened to be carried out in their name.
Yes, just sooo much to be respectful of.
Well, I want the discussion to start so that we can our time over it and get it right. That said, if the Labour Party want to start the discussion now then that would be up to the Labour Party membership.
@ DTB…..Well I dont believe you that the Monarchy stole Maori land or abused Maori….”Stealing land, abusing Māori, and other injustices. Well, to be more precise I suppose, not stopping those injustices considering that they happened to be carried out in their name.”
…Sorry I dont think this abuse was carried out in the name of Queen Victoria
The Treaty of Waitangi signed by Queen Victoria with the NZ Maori Chiefs, of which my ancestor was one…..actually set a legal framework for Maori rights …Australian Aborigines have activists who have been very envious of this Treaty….and New Zealand Maori had a much better time of it than the Australian Aborigine without such a Treaty.
….This Treaty agreement is a founding document of New Zealand Law…. Sure it hasn’t always been adhered to. There were gross violations and land grabs and wars by the early British Christian colonialists before the Treaty was signed and in some cases after. However there is legal redress under the Treaty of Waitangi under the crown and enshrined in NZ law. There have been court cases and multi-million dollar claims and legal redress of sorts
… ( compare this situation with the annexing of land of Tibetans , the Palestinians, the American Indians and the Australian Aborigines)
Who stole Maori land?…..greedy property developers stole the land( dont they everywhere?)….and the missionaries and the Christian Churches, in many but not all cases, acted as colonialising agents…Maori lawyer Moana Jackson has spoken movingly of the devastating combined effects of colonialisation and spiritual conquest on the old Maori soul….’The Treaty and the Word:The Colonialisation of Maori Philosophy’
Don’t know about you but I’ve seen the law that was passed in December of 1863 that allowed for confiscation of Māori land if the tribe brought war against the crown. It was back-dated to 1st January 1863 and it was under that law that most Māori land was confiscated.
Now, under the circumstances that obtained at the time I’d have some trouble with the law (Māori did have legitimate complaints and they weren’t being addressed by the justice system) but by back-dating it nearly an entire year it becomes nothing more than legalised theft.
I am sure you can find quibbles…but I dont think throwing out the Treaty of Waitangi or blaming the monarchy is the way to go…..dont hear many Maori wanting to throw out The Treaty or the Monarchy….but I could be wrong…you may know better
@ DTB…
Yes Labour Party membership is just one factor in winning the 2014 General Election….the other factor in is the New Zealand potential Labour Party voter…
….I am sure John Key and Nact would be delighted if the Labour Party voted for Republicanism and the getting rid of the monarchy!!!!!
……especially given that most New Zealanders support the monarchy and don’t want a Republic….you would be playing right into their hands
They’re not voting on becoming a republic but on holding a referendum and, according to the article:
Even those supportive of the monarchy should be in favour of a referendum on the matter. After all, according to you, they’ll win.
well Ok …have a referendum on whether to have a Republic and throw out the Monarchy ….if it makes you feel better….but will the surrounding publicity and spin by Nact and the right wing msm help the Labour Party win the 2014 election?
DTB…..You could be right!….. this referendum could be a great vote winner for Labour …..amongst working class New Zealanders , the 50% women vote and the Maori vote…and the 800,000+ who didnt vote last time
….maybe a referendum on whether to become a republic or not and ditch the monarchy is just what they have been praying for…..
Says a lot more about the state of the media on the country.
Your mates in the press are clearly determined to look for anything to keep this corrupt and traitorous government in power.
By the way, are you:
a) a disciple of neo-liberalism and so indoctrinated you believe in the cult of selfishness as proposed by Ayn Rand ..despite all the evidence now apparent.
b) a paid puppet of the corporates who write their spin.
c) a member of the 1% yourself who actually benefits from the present paradigm.
Just wondering what motivates you to write the rubbish you do.
Don’t be ridiculous, it is a simple political observation – though if you are going to accuse me of all that nastiness you might look to the neoliberal third way agendas of Labour in supporting the TPPA and the sale of energy and broadcasting infrastructure, you silly little man. The Left and Centre-Left are diverse and appear in many parties – just because someone disagrees with your particularly tin-eared politics doesn’t make them of the Right. I would like Labour to be elected – I just wish they wouldn’t make it so difficult for themselves a year out from an election.
From that stuff link
‘Cunliffe said Prime Minister John Key would invite the royal family to bring “its newest and cutest member here for a long series of photo ops in an election year”, referring to Prince William, wife Kate and their baby George.
“They should come. But will John Key dare take the Duke and Duchess back to McGehan Close? Will he take them to a closed sawmill in Rotorua or a boarded-up tannery in Shannon?”
What a lot of waffle. It trivialises the NZ labour problem by joining it with a criticism of Key and questioning his possible interest in having a photo op with Royals.
Cunliffe needs to separate the strands and discuss important things like unemployment and a poorly run economy in their own sound bite. Why is that sawmill running out of money and closing down? There is an interesting story there and I don’t know the details yet. But Cunliffe should and should be telling us that.
Exactly. There are far more urgent poverty-related issues to worry about
Plenty of the substantive is coming out; doesn’t hurt to have a few good stylish sound bites too.
greywarbler+1
Many more important issues than the Monarchy which has the danger of splitting the Labour Party anyway….pushing people towards NZF…. and playing into the hands of John Key and Nact
….and who says the Queen likes John Key anyway?…my bet is that she doesnt….and Charles is a Greenie
think its exactly on the money. Key was happy to ride the ‘underclass’ BS for votes and the impression of centerism…but has made life worse for those at the bottom end of the scale and like the lady who was given a job in Jackie Blue’s office- they’ve been dumped and a long time ago…
“A man of middling talent and intellect”
Mediocrity Watch No. 7: PAUL LITTLE
In the late 1990s, after being removed from the editorship of Metro and then the Listener, one Paul Little became a “full-time writer”—which meant he lived off the earnings of his wife (Wendyl Nissen) while he tapped out instantly ignored bargain basement biographies of the likes of Aaron Cohen, Willie Apiata and Paul Henry. He was also granted a brief slot on Paul Holmes’ NewstalkZB show on Saturday mornings, straight after his wife Wendyl Nissen’s extended media review slot and before Grant Smithies’ extended music review slot.
Little was given less than three minutes to deliver his invariably anodyne reviews of one or two books, which Holmes had usually read himself anyway, and far more perceptively. As he also did with his hapless sports correspondents, Holmes seemed to take a mischievous delight in demonstrating how much more intelligent he was, and in lording his dominance of Little in the most humiliating fashion. He would make a point of flustering and harrying Little, resolutely refusing to laugh at his attempts at humor, before listening with ill-disguised impatience to Little’s opinion of the book, which he then had to categorize as either “Quick flick” or “Down the dunny”.
On one toe-curlingly embarrassing occasion, Little unwisely attempted to ingratiate himself by calling Holmes “Sir Paul”. (This was several years before Holmes received his knighthood.) Holmes, contemptuous of the display of self-abasement by an underling, sneered: “Oh yes, ha ha ha, you know what to say, don’t you.”
Recently, Little has formed his own publishing company as an outlet for his own books, the most recent one being GRUMPY OLD MEN: 47 KIWI BLOKES, WHO’VE BEEN AROUND LONG ENOUGH TO KNOW, TELL YOU WHAT’S WRONG WITH THE WORLD. The tone and quality of this opus can be caught quite clearly from the promotional blurb on the website: “They’re all irate about something, sounding off in Grumpy Old Men on alcohol, speed limits, education, jet-skis, nutritionists, pinot noir, small change, tee shirt labels and a whole lot of other things they’d like to shake a stick at”. Somehow Little also found the time to produce the magisterial 50 Shades of Key: The Unofficial John Key Joke Book, hailed by Paul Little as a “laugh-out-loud collection of photos that show the Prime Minister as you’ve never seen him before.”
http://www.paullittlebooks.co.nz.hostbaby.com/home/
Another earner for this “full-time writer” is his Herald on Sunday column. You might have guessed by now that Paul Little’s byline on any article is a virtual guarantee that it’s going to be shoddy and third-rate. If so, you have guessed right.
For this morning’s instalment of his column, Paul Little has seen fit to add his voice to the pandemonium of abuse directed at comedian Russell Brand. Without showing the slightest sense of irony, Little damns Brand as “a man of middling talent and intellect” and claims, incorrectly, that some people have compared Brand to Socrates, Oscar Wilde and Gandhi. I suspect that Paul Little has not read anything written by any of them—although no doubt, as a dedicated television viewer, at some stage he’s caught a BBC version of The Importance of Being Earnest. He goes on to belabour Brand for his “mind-bending banality”, his “narcissism” and his “pontificating”, which has driven “the wittering classes into an orgiastic frenzy of enthusiasm”. Even worse, Brand is “petulant, ungracious and unfunny” and a “cut-rate Chomsky”.
Once again, I suspect that Paul Little has read little or nothing written by Noam Chomsky. A year or so ago, another third-rate columnist from the Herald stable, Paul Thomas indulged in some wandery and ill-informed comments about Chomsky; maybe Little remembered that spray. But I would bet Bill Clinton’s weekly whoring budget that Little has not actually read anything by Chomsky.
If you can bear the unedifying spectacle of “wretchedness o’ercharg’d”, here’s the offending item….
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/paul-little/news/article.cfm?a_id=732&objectid=11150592
Little is also a reliable attack-dog against the poor….
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=10852783
and the unjustly imprisoned….
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/paul-little/news/article.cfm?a_id=732&objectid=11146911
Meanwhile, despite getting rid of Little, the Listener, incredibly, was saddled with an editor even more lacklustre than Paul Little. After Pamela Stirling was appointed in 2004, circulation plummeted, and it continues to drop by the week, due to this kind of thing…..
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/journalism/news/article.cfm?c_id=63&objectid=10504752&pnum=0
Mediocrity Watch aims to keep you informed of—or, to quote the epically mediocre Simon Dallow, to be “right across”—the shoddiest, least professional, most insulting journalism from all over the world, but especially New Zealand. It is produced by DeakerWatch®, a division of Daisycutter Sports Inc.
Check out these other third-raters….
No. 6: David Farrar: “Things were generally very relaxed in this area.”
http://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-15092013/#comment-696521
No. 5: Jordan Williams: ““Capping rents seems like a recipe for disaster.”
http://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-12092013/#comment-695426
No. 4: Prof. Robert Patman: “Hezbollah is “totally a creature of the Iranian regime.”
http://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-11092013/#comment-694967
No. 3 Jeremy Wells: “What evidence is there that secondhand smoking does any harm? Where is the evidence? WHERE IS THE EVIDENCE?”
No. 2 Gavin Gray: “…never been any problems associated with the name King George.”
No. 1 Susie Ferguson: “If, as you say, this has all been done before, why do it all again?”
Goff and several other MPs just spoke passionately for withholding support for the TPPA. With bottom lines of protecting Pharmac, etc.
Pleasantly surprised, to be honest.
Excellent!
+100….Great news
The assault on South American democracy continues:
Thousands of Venezuelan pro-government twitter accounts deleted
Open Media Network, 2 November 2013
Around 7,000 Venezuelan Twitter accounts were deleted yesterday, including those of an elected state governor, three cabinet ministers, a radio station, a revolutionary daily newspaper, and the official accounts of ministries and other institutions. They all appear to have been pro-government accounts, and none of them of the opposition.
Twitter has been an effective means of communication for supporters of the Bolivarian revolution, since late President Hugo Chavez opened an account in 2010 and reached 4 million followers, making his the second most popular account globally for a political leader, after Barack Obama’s.
This appears to have been a coordinated, politically-motivated attack, but we don’t know yet how it happened. Twitter spokesman Nu Wexler has flatly refused to comment.
There are basically three ways it could have occurred. Large-scale coordinated hacking and deletion of accounts by opposition supporters is a possibility. It could also be that a similar campaign of reporting accounts for spam triggered an algorithm in Twitter which automatically blocked the accounts (I’m being generous to Twitter here!). Thirdly, and less likely in my opinion, it could be something much more sinister involving Twitter and for instance US Intelligence agencies.
As of this afternoon, some 50 accounts have been restored by Twitter, including those of Governor Aristobal Isturiz, which has 332,000 followers, and of Communications Minister Delcy Rodriguez. However most accounts have not been restored, for instance of Minister of the President’s Office Wilmer Barrientos and of the Women’s Ministry and the Bolivarian University of Venezuela.
It is important to set this attack in social and historical context. After….
Read more….
http://t.co/zFCFlCaBez
See also….
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/10139
Chile and a left wing government.
http://www.herinst.org/BusinessManagedDemocracy/government/international/Chile.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_intervention_in_Chile
Venzuela and a left wing gov….
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/716
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States–Venezuela_relations
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overseas_interventions_of_the_United_States
and this is why we need to ban foreign ownership in NZ:
Grabbed the government subsidy and run.
I think we should have strings attached to that sort of money. Perhaps the government needs to get 80% of shares in return.
There was a patent suit against Next Window which they couldn’t afford to defend. Another way of harrassing creatives.
Costa Boda was being interviewed this morning on Radionz and said that the piracy against his work is so tough he can’t carry on as a small doco maker. Youtube has copies of things within a short time of release of the DVD. Sales soon stop. A showing in Canada of some of his works was cancelled when they advised that they had been copied and put up on youtube. And once on youtube they get copied by other pirates down the line.
Person was on the electoral roll last year, but are not this year in any electorate.
Am I right to assume that they are dead or that they are living overseas because they are not on the electoral roll?
Or they’ve asked their name to be withheld from the printed roll. Or they moved and forgot to get their mail forwarded so the re-enrolment forms bounced back ‘returned to sender’.
Arrested Development
+1 lol
My own opinion is enough for me, and I claim the right to have it defended against any consensus, any majority, anywhere, anyplace, anytime. And anyone who disagrees with this can pick a number, get in line and kiss my ass.
– Christopher Hitchens
….anyone who disagrees with this can pick a number, get in line and kiss my ass.
– Christopher Hitchens
That truculent defiance did him no good at all when he came up against a superior opponent. On different occasions, George Galloway, Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein and Tariq Ali all handed the arse of the self-styled “contrarian” back to him in the most humiliating fashion. (Humiliating for Hitchens, that is; his comically dyspeptic last book was full of bitter parting shots against Galloway and Chomsky in particular.)
…well Hitchens did make a splash!….he said it with style ….and he certainly wasn’t always right!
….but then again, nor is Saint Chomsky always right
…..sometimes one can err by omission or by selectively ignoring issues
…well Hitchens did make a splash!….he said it with style ….and he certainly wasn’t always right!
Hitchens was a callous liar and a bully. In his utterly risible, contemptible, idiotic final book, he indulged in a spurious attack on Chomsky, basing his critique on the tone of Chomsky’s voice. His systematic lying even extended to the captioning of the photographs—the most shameful being his labeling of Hugo Chávez as “the dictator”. And of course, after taking more than a few public hidings at the hands of George Galloway, he had to have an obligatory swipe at Galloway too. (He missed, as always.)
….but then again, nor is Saint Chomsky always right
Nobody has said that. Could you explain your frivolous reference to “Saint” Chomsky?
…..sometimes one can err by omission or by selectively ignoring issues
Are you trying to suggest that Chomsky has done that, or does that?
Here’s what a first rate thinker, and a genuinely brave man (as opposed to a shallow “contrarian”) had to say about the pet dog of the American extreme right…..
http://normanfinkelstein.com/2011/a-brief-comment-on-the-passing-of-christopher-hitchens/
@ Morrissey….chill out!….no one is immune from criticism and no one is perfect
…..agree Chomsky is very good, if not doggedly (boringly) brilliant, on American Imperialism!…..and he does seem to have a cult following of those who would countenance no criticism of him..hence my “frivolous reference to “Saint” Chomsky” ….( naughty , naughty….)
….but lets face it Chomsky does have his critics and not all are frivolous or ignorant …. some of them are heavy weight academics like Foucault
imo…one important criticism is: where is Chomsky’s hard hitting critique at home of the very powerful pro Israel Lobby in the USA?
…. this critique seems to be completely lacking in the USA, because it is framed as being Nazi or anti Semite… consequently the lobby gets away with aborting at the grassroots politician level any positive US led solution to the humanitarian crisis facing the Palestinians…and the Middle East
http://petras.lahaine.org/?p=7
http://petras.lahaine.org/?page_id=4
1.) “…..agree Chomsky is very good, if not doggedly (boringly) brilliant”
“Boring”? How so? You sound like Hitchens.
2.) “a cult following of those who would countenance no criticism of him”
Again, you sound like Hitchens. Your comments lack any substance.
3.) “…heavy weight academics like Foucault…”
So you think Foucault is a heavyweight. That confirms my suspicion: you are a fool.
@ Professor Longhair..(.your comments speak volumes for yourself and your own agenda…).
1.) Sometimes people are BORING (while nevertheless “brilliant” at subterfuge)…when they are not genuinely and passionately engaged in dialectic
2.)…and they are more interested in fobbing off with pat analysis
3.)…giving formulaic answers
4.)…. avoiding the real core questions which would make a genuine existential /moral/political difference
5.)..interested in indoctrination…..ie warping peoples thinking to their own power and ego agendas
6.) abusing, and ridiculing anyone who dares to genuinely question
I note neither you nor Morrissey have dared answer the questions and issues put by Professor Petras in his critique of Chomsky
http://petras.lahaine.org/?p=7
http://petras.lahaine.org/?page_id=4
does anyone else dislike the bloated-ramblings of tolkien as much as i do..?
..(and i do mean ‘ramblings’..all the/that walking..!..lordy..!..all the/that walking..!..)
http://boingboing.net/2003/11/02/mieville-on-tolkien.html
“..Tolkien is the wen on the arse of fantasy literature.
His oeuvre is massive and contagious –
– you can’t ignore it – so don’t even try.
The best you can do is consciously try to lance the boil.
And there’s a lot to dislike –
– his cod-Wagnerian pomposity –
– his boys-own-adventure glorying in war –
– his small-minded and reactionary love for hierarchical status-quos –
– his belief in absolute morality that blurs moral and political complexity.
Tolkien’s clichés – elves ‘n’ dwarfs ‘n’ magic rings – have spread like viruses.
He wrote that the function of fantasy was ‘consolation’-
– thereby making it an article of policy that a fantasy writer should mollycoddle the reader..”
..phillip ure..
Well some would say..
http://www.home.no/choklit/tion/plag1.html
I assume that site is a piss-take?
Probably. I read it when I was younger but I can’t say I actually liked it.
Over the last few years I’ve come to understand that most fantasy books are like that. See it quite a bit in science fiction as well.
“does anyone else dislike the bloated-ramblings of tolkien as much as i do..?”
Yes and crap called Game of Thrones which is a bigger heap of shit than Bored with the Rings.
Hey but it has tits and arse…
Didn’t even make halfway through the first book. Didn’t even bother with the TV series.
Tolkien’s clichés – elves ‘n’ dwarfs ‘n’ magic rings – have spread like viruses.
Might help to get a clue before commenting: they weren’t cliches when he wrote about them.
And someone who invests as much literary thought as Tolkien into creating whole languages, histories, and technically-brilliant poetry is hardly mollycoddling the reader.
“they weren’t cliches when he wrote about them”
So you say.
SO YOU SAY!!!
I expect next thing you’ll be trying to defend that Robert Louis Stevenson and his fucking parroty pirate clichés
Elves have been around since the 10th century
Dwarves, not quite as long. Only since about the 13th century.
I think ~1000 years is long enough for them to become cliches.
I like Tolkien but I don’t like Peter Jackson’s films of his works
…….mind you I was about 15 when I read them
imo…actually when I read Tolkien at age 14 or 15….I saw the hobbits as the humble working unpretentious peace loving proletariat….up against the dark invisible awesome forces of Fascism….which were actually looming in the 1930s as Tolkien was writing…..
Peter Jackson turned much that was subtle and atmospheric …filled with invisible menace …into an in- your- face cartoon of fast paced splatter , gore and monster violence..
And it still took too long 😈
TV3’s coverage.
Have to say, not particularly positive, think Cunners may need to invite the press gallery up to his Herne Bay mansion for a BBQ and some beers.
A bit of bridge building may be in order.
BBQ at Trevs !
Nah David Cunliffe in His next guise as Prime Minister should instead invite NZ on Air over to His office for a roasting where He can direct them to either pull all the NZ on Air funding for the hopelessly biased Media-Works or resign so He can find some heads that will…
FASCISM often has a habit of coming in through the backdoor in societies, and I sense it has been given access by the ones at the top of the Ministry of Social Development already. This is what I have been on about, and some have thought it may be a bit over the top or paranoid, but bit by bit we are getting a clearer picture, of where the journey is going with New Zealand welfare reforms under this government:
“Contractors to assess sick and disabled for work”
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/9356043/Contractors-to-assess-sick-and-disabled-for-work
Excerpts:
“Private contractors will be paid $650 an assessment to get thousands of New Zealand’s sick and disabled ready to return to work.”
“From February, Work and Income will pay private “medical assessors” to scrutinise sickness and disability beneficiaries who it believes can work.”
“The medical assessors will be paid $650 per assessment, which are expected to take about three hours, and are prompted to recommend lifestyle changes to help the beneficiary get a job, such as a “positive approach to life” and more time at the gym.”
“It is expected eventually 3000 disabled people a year will have to visit an assessor, who will judge their fitness for work and report back to Work and Income.
The scheme, revealed in a tender proposal, is part of the biggest welfare shake-up in decades, with the Government aiming to have 28,000 to 44,000 people off benefits by 2017, saving up to $1.6 billion.”
Comment:
Whosoever saw that lying, two faced Paula Bennett on Q+A today, may have realised what a mercenary she has become.
It is about to happen now, ATOS like assessments will start in February next year, and about 3,000 a year will make about 30,000 in ten years. Going at that rate, there will be few “sick” and “disabled” in New Zealand, either they will decide to opt out of their physical, mental and spiritual existence themselves, or will with bad backs, knees, or whatever ailments, or mentally ill fed with medication, be turned into submissive, obedient “slaves” as modern day “job-seekers”.
They do apparently at MSD and WINZ have NO faith in client’s own doctors anymore, hence this agenda now! If the “soft” approach does not work, it will be off to your WINZ HATCHET DOCTOR!
No more “slackers” in New Zealand, I suppose, there is no one too ill to not work, they will claim.
And while the Labour members will be celebrating their successful Conference 2013, where are their voices on this??? I dread the future in this country!!!
I don’t see the problem.
You would not, and nobody is surprised about your ridiculous comment, as you love “brown ideology”, right?!
Lots of people on the sickness bene that shouldn’t be there, druggies, people with “depression”, people with “back injuries”.
It’s easy to settle into that sort of life style and just cruise through life bludging off other tax payers, if this more pro-active approach gets a few able bodied people off their arses and back into the work force I’d consider it money well spent.
Maybe this sort of approach will finally sort out the truly sick from the ones who are just taking the piss.
Maybe you may fall on hard times and become one of those ‘bludgers’ and then you may just have to change your petty, nasty little mind.
I’ve been through hard times, I’ve been on the bones of my arse.
Only you can really get yourself out of that hole, it’s up to you to make that effort, in the past a lot of people just had to do it alone.
From what I see here, National’s actually extending an arm and giving people a hand, that’s to be encouraged not derided.
The trouble with you BM is you think everyone is just like you or they should be.
The Otago Daily Times already wrote about this on 25 October:
“Tests for disabled ‘flawed model”
http://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/278489/tests-disabled-flawed-model
Quoted extracts from the article:
“New work assessments for the disabled and people with health conditions will impose ”unnecessary angst” and wrongly put the onus on clients rather than employers, CCS Disability Action Otago patron Donna-Rose McKay says.”
“Mrs McKay believed New Zealand was adopting the same ”flawed model” as Britain, where work-testing the disabled was highly controversial.”
”The process focuses on the person as having to overcome the barriers, but in reality for many people with impairment or many people who have an illness, the barriers are not with themselves; the barriers are with employment and other people’s attitudes.”
“Work and Income expects up to 1000 clients to be referred for a ”work ability assessment” between February and June next year, about 2000 in 2014-15, and about 3000 the next year, the proposal document said.
The provider would receive $650 (GST exclusive) for each completed assessment.”
“Dunedin disability researcher Chris Ford said the tests were likely to find most people able to perform some kind of work, taking no account of the wider economic situation.
In effect, this depressed wages in the employment market for everyone, he said.”
“Lots of people on the sickness bene that shouldn’t be there, druggies, people with “depression”, people with “back injuries”.”
Let’s ignore for now the back injuries and depression as I can’t be bothered unpicking the quote marks from the words.
How would you prefer drug addicts be financially supported if not by some sort of benefit?
They shouldn’t be there long term.
Once someone has been labelled an addict all emphasis should be on getting that person off their drug habit and back into society as a functioning contributing member.
Sometimes a bit of toughness is required to kick people into action.
Just leaving people to rot on a bene helps no one.
And the massive increase in spending that you’re advocating, treating all these drug addicts – who pays for that?
From what I’ve gathered you’re not keen on increasing taxes (although National have increased most of them, but that’s a whole other cognitive dissonance of yours for another day).
If not taxes, then where?
Drilling, mining.
Hardly, bm.
NZ will get a tiny percentage because this government has sold itself out; the vast majority will go to the massive corporates overseas.
What Paul said.
The money from mining goes to the companies doing the mining. How are you going to get them to fund your drug programs?
http://www.pepanz.com/news-and-issues/issues/economic-contribution-to-nz/
That’s nice BM. The oil and gas companies are doing very well.
But I really would like to know where the money to pay for your massive welfare expansion is going to come from.
The thing is BM, this assessment system doesn’t work – it just costs more.
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/jul/22/work-capability-assessments-criticism
Hi Xtasy
This rubbish government are copying the Atos obscenity being perpetrated in the now despised scum country the U$K (Completely lost the plot with privatising the NHS and Royal Mail) which is fast going down the neoliberal plughole. Shame on this regime here for paying private mercenaries to harass sick and disabled people. SHAME ON PULLYA BENEFIT. BM illustrates The Standard has many aren’t we smart in the club wafflers who really don’t want to face the reality. There are simply not, not the jobs to employ all the able bodied let alone the ill and disabled. BM smears the majority due to a small minority of marginal cases.
+!00 Xtasy and Johanm…..it is disgraceful the way the most vulnerable in New Zealand are being treated!!!!!
……..the unemployed , disabled and youth …and those who are struggling on low incomes
….I add to this, university students who are being saddled with horrendous lifelong debts around their necks…..
…concentrating on these issues should be the Labour Party’s priorities!
Hi Chooky
+100 right!
Sure seen them doing just that at the Conference, right…
great!….just so long as Labour doesn’t get side-tracked, way laid , undermined by the Republican anti monarchists …..
This New Scientist article may be familiar to you, johnm, it shows that “austerity” and similarly “pressured”, draconian social conditions actually lead to ill health, rather than “help” people get well and work ready:
“The hidden costs of austerity”
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21829122.800-the-hidden-costs-of-austerity.html#.UnXvPFOiaky
“In making deep budget cuts, politicians are experimenting with the health of nations, not just their wealth”
So I am sure that the “health” of the nation in the UK will down the line actually look a lot worse than what it may look like at present, given such scientific findings.
BM would not care, as he adheres to this kind of view:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbeit_macht_frei
http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2012/aug/13/dailymail-twitter
Hi xtasy
Yes I’ve seen this report. Yes I’ve been poor at times and if you’re scrabbling and in addition being abused by the social system one’s intelligence can shut down just to cope until one is almost zombie like and proneness to depression increases greatly, if prolonged people sometimes never recover.
It’s like defeated soldiers in a war shuffling dejectedly to the work camps of their oppressors their faces blank with dejection and hopelessness.
People bullied and kicked down often stay that way all their lives, a vital spark of life has permanently died within them. That is the Atos obscenity of cruel harassment that this scum government want to copy.
With this contracting out, WINZ and MSD are apparently going onto totally new territory.
It appears that these will be assessments that are not just “medical”, they will be comprehensive assessments, looking at a wider range of health, social and other aspects, and that could well mean, the recommendations made WILL NOT fall under the provisions allowing clients of WINZ to appeal on MEDICAL grounds (to the Medical Board), as they presently can with disputed medical based recommendations and decisions!!!
So this is a serious softening up on the whole assessment criteria and regime, kind of going into murky territory.
As this will also mean recommendations will be made by non WINZ staff, it may be possible for WINZ to claim these are “independent” and outside assessments, that they can rely on, so decisions based on that may be more difficult to challenge by the usual process of reviews, of going to a kind of committee and to the Social Security Appeal Authority and so forth.
I fear that clients affected by this will face major problems challenging such supposedly “independent” assessments. Another issue will be, the contracted service providers will most likely not come under Official Information Act provisions. That will protect them from many queries about what they are up to.
This is dangerous stuff coming up!
In Berlin that hot bed of socialism the community are proposing to buy back their power companies, while down here in back water NZ we are selling ours.
“Such protests have transpired to something much more radical for the local energy market. If neither the state nor the private sector can be trusted with public services, community ownership and governance must be the answer. So runs the logic for citizens in Berlin.”
http://power-to-the-people.net/2013/08/citizens-bid-to-buy-back-the-grid-lessons-from-germany/
http://euobserver.com/regions/121957
That’s the local lines network they are talking about. Many are community owned in nz. Vector for instance, which continues to fight regulation of its prices and was convicted of unfair pricing practices a couple of years ago.
Malala and Nabila: Worlds apart
Posted on Media Lens Message Board by JMC on November 3, 2013, 2:10 am
http://members5.boardhost.com/medialens/msg/1383448221.html
For those of you who may have missed it, last week a family from North Waziristan whose grandmother had been killed and the grandchildren and other cousins etc injured in a U.S. unmanned drone strike, went to Washington to put their case to Congress and try to get some answers as to why they were targetted. Only five members of the 430 person Congress showed up for the hearing.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/11/02-5
The article linked above talks about the dramatically different responses to Malala Yousafzai (who was injured by the “right” people) and Nabila, the 9 year old girl who was injured by a United States drone. While it does LINK to articles highlighting the fact that Malala herself spoke out to President Obama urging him to stop the drone strikes and was also roundly ignored by him (that part of their conversation was omitted from the White House report of their meeting and, as far as I know, neither Obama nor the White House commented when she mentioned it herself) I don’t think it brings out strongly enough how only part of Malala’s message to the Taliban AND the west is being reported.
See my post from October 17th for some additional background on Malala….
http://members5.boardhost.com/medialens/msg/1382002002.html
Nabila and family were also interviewed on Democracy Now!….. http://www.democracynow.org/2013/10/31/too_scared_to_go_outside_family
and there is a blog about their story here….
http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2013/10/31/the_rising_resistance_to_obamas_drone_wars
To add an extra level of irony to the whole thing, both the husband of the woman killed and their son (the one who came to Washington with two of his children) are or were school teachers, committed to bringing literacy and education to the people of their impoverished village. Not so different from Malala in their aspirations and efforts to help their community then…
https://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/10/25-7
Barclays suspends currency traders.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24773173
Just what contribution to the social fabric does this lot do anyway?
Flash Harries making fast bucks on the backs of ordinary folk – and creating misery for many.
Every shipload of butter, lamb or kiwi fruit that leaves these shores involves a foreign currency transaction. Same for every barrel of oil coming in or container of computers. So yeah, creating misery all around.
Yeah that’s what John Key used to do isn’t it, facilitate butter and fruit sales 🙄
Merchants selling their wares in international markets does not need currency speculators …
That’s right, they can use that new invention bartering, just like we did with the Russians. We got ladas. What a deal that was.
How long are you intending to pretend you don’t know the difference between international trade and currency speculation?
Also, this you lying piece of shit.
Which is, more than likely, done by computer – really don’t need humans for that. The currency traders, on the other hand, are pure speculators buying and selling money solely to make a profit without them actually producing any wealth.
Outsider you lyingbor.
Tell me why nearly all the currency trading banks are having to pay billions of dollars back to those they have ripped off including NZ farmers!