“A head teacher of a leading primary school has said young children should not have best friends because it could leave others feeling ostracised and hurt. But are people programmed to have best friends?”
This is the kind of lunacy passed off as progressive / humanist philosophy that gives social conservatives a stick with which to beat progressive humanists. I can’t even begin to get on the same mental wavelength as the idiots who propound such facile notions. What kind of mind wakes up in the morning and thinks; “Eureka! We’ll save the lonely children from having hurt feelings by banning friendship and hugs among the children who are lucky enough to have discovered a friend.” A special kind of genius indeed..
My view is that this sort of rubbish comes from a defeated part of the wider “left” that gave up on all the important battles, but still wanted a few victories. It’s the same sort of rubbish that outlaws black as a colour for rubbish bins and is used to hold us all up to ridicule. I hate it, although not in the same way that Back Pussy Tamihere does.
Actually, if you look at the article, it comes from one published in the Daily Torygraph. The headmaster who suggested that best friends should be banned, is the head of a private prep school – hardly the bastion of left wing policy, I’d have thought. He said he’d support a policy against having best friends, as long as it was age appropriate: ie older kids could make up their own minds about it.
Actually, while I am totally happy with kids of any age choosing to have best friends, I think there’s a whole US-led thing that’s kind of institutionalised the whole best friends thing. They’ve made it seem almost compulsory.
I learned something about the US constitutional right to bear arms on Al Jazeera this morning, which gave a lot of times to the issue and the sanely mad gun lobby. It seems the 2nd amendment said that citizens have the right to bear arms as part of a well organised militia.
Well, it seems that is debated. However, the original intent of the amendment was relevant to the context of the time when the amendment was drawn up. At that time citizens’ militia were common because there wasn’t the organised military and National Guard that there is today.
Is that one of the problems of a written constitution? Seems like a good idea at the time and all makes sense but over the years it becomes so entrenced that changes are almost impossible and the Parlimentry process loses the capability to effect change.
America would be better off with fewer guns, most places are better of with fewer guns, but with the second amendment they always get stuck.
This is one of the things that concerns me about NZ creating a written constitution, who would write it? How would everyone ever agree? Will it still be relevant in 50 years? What would we be getting our great grand kids into? Will they spend all their time arguing that if the comma in paragraph seven of subsection 12a was placed four words to the left then nano heart valve replacement is a human right?
“This is one of the things that concerns me about NZ creating a written constitution, who would write it? How would everyone ever agree? Will it still be relevant in 50 years? “
Agree, Jane. The second amendment is the example I use of a problem with a written constitution. Unless it can be renegotiated to fit the times it will at some stage be inappropriate. And if it can be negotiated how is that any better than the lawmaking and judicial interpretation of laws that we have now?
We don’t need a constitution – it would be totally redundant in our mature, robust, flexible Westminster system. This is just the National Party’s thirty silver shekels to the Maori Party. And while the second amendment is an amendment, it has proven impossible for progressives to shift it. A constitution would just give conservatives and the right something to project on to.
We need something to act as a check on parliamentary supremacy, be it an upper house, an elected head of state with a right of veto or supreme law the courts can apply, I am uncomfortable with so much power in this country being concentrated in the hands of so few, especially with the civil liberties shenanigans in recent years such as the Search and Surveillance Act and the proposed changes to the GCSB legislation. It should be systematically impossible for lawmakers to override fundamental rights, not just a matter of trusting in them.
The NZ system doesn’t have any separation of powers, the executive and the legislative branches are the same people, and the judicial branch has a duty to the Crown which is common with the other two branches.
Also, the NZ system is not a constitutional monarchy.
New Zealand’s constitution is based on the principle of separation of powers between Parliament, executive government, and the judiciary through a series of constitutional safeguards, many of which are tacit. The Executive’s ability to carry out decisions often depends on the Legislature, which is elected under the Mixed Member Proportional system. This means the government is rarely a single party but a coalition of parties. The Judiciary is also free of government interference. If a series of judicial decisions result in an interpretation of the law which the Executive considers does not reflect the intention of the policy, the Executive can initiate changes to the legislation in question through the Legislature. The Executive cannot direct or request a judicial officer to revise or reconsider a decision;decisions are final. Should there be a dispute between the Executive and Judiciary, the Executive has no authority to direct the Judiciary, or its individual members and vice versa.
Yes, that’s what they tell the peasants, but it’s mostly bullshit.The separation of powers is a feature of Roman law called the triumvirate. The constitution is based on the unwritten constitution of England, which forms the basis of English common law and the law of the land in New Zealand. The civil law (originally Roman) and the common law (originally Judaic) are philosophically different systems, Roman law was the law of the empire and the predator, English law was the law of the land and the wellbeing of the people.
So basically you just said that New Zealand law is founded in English law and English law is “the law of the land and the wellbeing of the people”. Did you suffer whiplash with that confusing u-turn?
Which can and has been successfully challenged, often by means of an Ombudsman, the modern Tribune. And I can distinctly recall that even a total Nat like Chris Finlayson has actually performed his job as Attorney-General and told his party that a law they wanted to pass was unconstitutional.
In as much as we have MMP and other constitutional peculiarities unique to NZ, we still rely primarily on constitutional law (British model), not civil law (European model). We are still therefore a variation on the Westminster system.
Most people simply have no idea as to the extent and nature of the fraud committed by the state against the people of this country. The treaty was also a fraud, and the state misleads people about the nature of common law.
I really can’t be bothered trying to educate you on the various meanings of the word “civil”, but suffice to say “Civil Government” (general civility) doesn’t mean “Civil Law” (technical term for the European system of law making that evolved out of the Roman system)
Civil law (or civilian law) is a legal system originating in Western Europe, intellectualized within the framework of late Roman law, and whose most prevalent feature is that its core principles are codified into a referable system which serves as the primary source of law.
Written constitutions are good for constitutional lawyers. I’m happy with Te Tiriti, and would be happier with a stronger Bill of Rights, an Official Information Act with teeth, and a well funded and fiercely independent Ombudsman. The Soviet Union also had a wonderful constitution, and human rights were about as well protected there as they are in the US and A. The main danger of a Kiwi constitution is that it could be used to deny Te Tiriti and entrench pakeha ruling class privilege even further.
The framers of the constitution thought that a standing army would be a tool of oppression, given their experience of British troops before the Revolution. So they wanted to make provision for a militia. There is provision for a navy in the US Constitution, but no army.
The US Constitution was written by the rich and powerful behind closed doors. There is NOTHING moral or ethical about it.
Example: For purposes of representation in the House of Representatives, northern delegates said enslaved Negroes should not be counted as part of the population because they have no more rights than horses or dogs. The south wanted them counted as “voters” because in some areas slaves were 90% of the population. So the constitution says one slave is three-fifths of a voter!
The way to keep our laws and constitution contemporary is binding referendums which cannot be overturned by parliament.
So the constitution says one slave is three-fifths of a voter!
That’s what the 14th amendment is for.
Personally, I think the US constitution was ground breaking in its day in terms of assuring the rights of US citizens. Generally ignored now of course.
Orlov would say that the parallels between the USSR and the USA are now unmistakeable.
Without wanting to sound too much like a libertarian…in the last ten years Federal intrusion into the life of ordinary US citizens has become massive.
Some estimates say that the US has spent $700B beefing up internal surveillance and security on its own citizens since 9/11.
And in the wake of the Boston marathon bombing the talk is to ramp this up even further. Even though hundreds of CCTV cameras, police, bomb squad sweeps, email and social media scanning in the immediate area etc couldn’t prevent it.
Yeah, but it was the privacy intrusions that might have prevented another. That’s the security compromise.
I was in favour of heightened security post9/11, not to stop terrorists but to stop yahoos smuggling on weapons to take out terrorists. But they should have been short lived. Now domestic security is part of the military-industrial complex.
The scale of growth of the security services in the US – especially given the amounts going to security contractors as well to develop domestic security hardware & software – sounds staggering. I get the impression more and more Americans are becoming extremely uneasy at how much power US officialdom is getting to spy on them.
Yeah, but it was the privacy intrusions that might have prevented another.
I might have agreed with you once, but when you also consider the systematic attempts to suspend habeas corpus, legalising the state sponsored assassination of American citizens, militarisation of law enforcement, etc it looks more and more like something other than a war against terror. More like a war against your own citizens.
Yep, once you read the history behind the US constitution it becomes obvious that the framers weren’t out to produce a free country but to set up their own aristocracy. Unfortunately for them the people who’d just been doing all the fighting wanted something different and so they got a democracy but a democracy that could be controlled by the rich – representative democracy.
“Yep, once you read the history behind the US constitution it becomes obvious that the framers weren’t out to produce a free country but to set up their own aristocracy.”
Because when you set up an aristocracy the first thing you do is introduce laws against nobility and define term length, election laws as well as allowing any citizen to be president.
You need to read a little more history Contrarian. The framers of the Declaration of independence and American Constitution did not envisage a democratic republic with universal rights and suffrage as I understand it. One of the key contributors to the drafting of the constitution was James Madison. I don’t know the copy / paste rules but here is a selection from Wikipedia quoting Madison.
“In England, at this day, if elections were open to all classes of people, the property of landed proprietors would be insecure. An agrarian law would soon take place. If these observations be just, our government ought to secure the permanent interests of the country against innovation. Landholders ought to have a share in the government, to support these invaluable interests, and to balance and check the other. They ought to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority. The Senate, therefore, ought to be this body; and to answer these purposes, they ought to have permanency and stability.”
–James Madison, quoted in Notes of the Secret Debates of the Federal Convention of 1787
James Madison’s comments were but one of many. The Constitution, as written, offers no special protections to the rich or noble – despite the above quote.
If they were trying to set up their own aristocracy then they somehow manged to draft a document which did the exact opposite.
Perhaps you should go back and read what Draco (and I) actually said. We mentioned the original intentions and wishes of many of the landowning (and slave owning) oligarchical delegates. Yes, in the end after much debate a very interesting constitution was produced. A majority of delegates initially refused to sign it and full ratification by the States took quite some time. But it still didn’t grant full participatory democracy or universal suffrage. Here is an excerpt lifted from Wikipedia about Madison’s family background:
His father, James Madison, Sr. (1723–1801), was a tobacco planter who grew up on a plantation, then called Mount Pleasant, in Orange County, Virginia, which he had inherited upon reaching adulthood. He later acquired more property and slaves; with 5,000 acres (2,000 ha), he became the largest landowner and a leading citizen of Orange County, in the Piedmont. James Jr.’s mother, Nelly Conway Madison (1731–1829), was born at Port Conway, the daughter of a prominent planter and tobacco merchant and his wife. Madison’s parents were married on September 15, 1749.[6][7] In these years the southern colonies were becoming a slave society, in which slave labor powered the economy and slaveholders formed the political élite.[8]
Madison was not atypical of many of the founding fathers and I’m sure you’re aware that it took over one and a half centuries before universal suffrage and full rights as citizens before the law was extended to the whole population.
Please point to which part of the Constitution attempted to institute an aristocracy. States not ratifying it is like saying, hypothetically, because Auckland didn’t agree to be nuclear free 10 years after NZ law decided to be nuclear free means that law was designed to be nuclear friendly.
“We mentioned the original intentions and wishes of many of the landowning”
” I’m sure you’re aware that it took over one and a half centuries before universal suffrage and full rights as citizens before the law was extended to the whole population.”
You also forget that “the whole population” as it is now doesn’t represent the same population in historical perpetuity. For example, Alaska only became part of the union in 1959. Before that it wasn’t beholden to the Constitution so of course the adoption of the Constitution wasn’t extended to all the States.
Hence the civil war
Contrarian: Sigh. For Pete’s sake do some reading. Madison was far from being a lone voice. The delegate’s went in having been expected to carry out a limited job by the States that appointed them, decided off their own bat to increase their own mandate and initially many of them envisaged something that fell far short of representative democracy with universal suffrage. This is (with certain license for the sake of brevity), historical fact. If you doubt it DO THE READING>>
As for universal suffrage: All males regardless of race or land ownership was 1870 (15th amendment, nearly 100 years after the constitution was drafted) but many southern states effectively barred most blacks from voting through such things as literacy tests. The 19th amendment gave women the vote in 1920. I can’t remember where I read it but I believe some Indian tribe/s in some states didn’t get the vote until the early to mid 1970’s.
“Near full enfranchisement was realized in 1965 with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the ratification of the 24th Amendment in 1964” Wikipedia.
“In England, at this day, if elections were open to all classes of people, the property of landed proprietors would be insecure.
And that is the sole reason why we have representative democracy rather than participatory democracy. It’s not a fear of Mob Rule but the fear of the rich that the people would take back their wealth.
As YOU understand it, from the benefit from over two hundred years of social progress and a radically different worldview. Try reading it in the context of a former British colony in the late eighteenth century and it’s as progressive and democratic as fuck. What you just said was the equivalent of saying that Fifth Century BC Athens wasn’t a democracy because their society didn’t recognise women or slaves as citizens while completely failing to acknowledge it was the most progressive state in the region because all authority wasn’t in the hands of a single tyrant.
I think the point is that the the framers were well aware of, for example Athens. They understood ‘democracy’ and ‘republic’ very well. they deliberately opted for the latter with democratic aspects.
The house of reps is the most democratic part of the infrastructure, and the weakest. that’s not a coincidence, it was by design.
Which isn’t to say it isn’t a fine document given its time, but to claim it as progressive as all fuck, given what we know they knew and decided to do, is just daft.
Napoleon was arguably more ‘progressive’ than the US framers. Inasmuch as ‘progressive’ means anything.
The point that Draco was making and I was backing him up over was about what some, perhaps a majority, of the delegates first envisaged at the beginning of the process. It is indeed remarkable that given the time in which they lived and class from which many of them came that they eventually produced (after lengthy and heated debate) the document which became the constitution. You would have to be totally unread and or delusional however to believe that all of the lovely words about the rights of man etc were intended by all the delegates to mean all men and all women and all races in all states of the union at all times from the moment the constitution was signed and ratified. It most certainly wasn’t and I gave some examples above of ways in which it wasn’t.
Not in quite so many words perhaps but Contrarians vehement “What utter crap”, in response to Draco’s assertion that many of the founding fathers were essentially oligarchs looking to preserve their privileged status against the non land owning and essentially inferior (in the case of women and non-whites) was the next best thing.
So you agree that it was in fact a very limited form of democratic republicanism which reserved many rights for a privileged class?
Funny, I thought that was precisely what Draco and I were saying.
I actually said several times it was very advanced for it’s day and laid a foundation for some powerful ideas about human and civil rights which have evolved over the last two centuries, but I’m not going to say it was a document which stood for the equal civil rights of the “common man” regardless of social station just to please The Contrarian and yourself, because I don’t believe those things to be true based on my reading of the history.
What was being contested was the suggestion that the constitution was deliberately framed to create an aritsocracy in anything but name. Given that the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are, at least in their language, virtually identical to many anarchist AND libertarian manifestos. Hence the sharp intake of breath as I paused over my port and stilton at the suggestion.
The right to bear arms as part a well organised militia is still a crucial test of citizenship.
I’d like to see Al Jazeera spend less time on the gun lobby in the US and more examing the implications of that principle in Bahrain. But I’m not holding my breath.
did ppl queue up ever? i been voting for 20 years & i have never seen that, i always thought a plus in our voting system was the whole process took about 10-15 minutes, i dont ever recall ppl queueing, but just am asking was it common once in nz for there to be queues of ppl waiting to vote?
i think alot of ‘older’ guys have to go rark up some of the young at the next election, motivate them to vote. young cousins, neices, nephews, service workers, etc…just bring it up all the time, closer to the time.
Never has been long queues while I’ve been around. Longest I ever had was about 15 minutes in Ponsonby after I moved back to Auckland from back up from Dunedin and had to do a special vote because I hadn’t told the electoral commission. There was someone in front of me that had changed their name
The day we go to computer voting is the day we lose all hope of peaceful political change.
Volumes have been written about the blatant corruption of America’s computer voting systems. Once it’s in, you’ll never get rid of it. The people who hack it for their own purposes won’t let you.
I figure that an electronic system could be as secure as a paper system. In fact, I think it may be more so if done correctly. But it must be done correctly and the US system isn’t – the US system has been done to funnel wealth into the hands of business.
Also we don’t need the friend of a brother of an MP getting the tender/shouldertap for organising the leadup, the ballot and the counting and dissemination of end results.
You have to be very trusting, to the point of infantile to not realise the vast field for finagling and carefully managed sharp practices to be loaded into the system. It is possible though that many adults do have this infantile tendency – a bit of brain missing such as in John Cleese saying ‘Madam is this a pea, or is it part of your brain’. They’d say check it out on-line, the computer can’t lie.
I agree Draco, there’s no reason on the face of it that an electronic system can’t be secure and trustworthy. It would definitely require open source code available to anyone who requested it; I guess the tricky part is that you have to prove the source code you’re looking at is the same source code that is being run on the machine.
Nope. No system is unhackable – none. The only unhackable machine is one that’s switched off, unplugged, and buried in a lead-lined safe in a Farraday Cage in a concrete vault….
Of course, Pop, the point is that you ensure the program that is running on the machine is the one that was scrutinised, and do everything possible to stop other programs from being run on it. I expect this would mean some sort of ‘trusted computing’ situation, where the HW will only run software that is signed with the appropriate authentication certificate, similar to how Blu-Ray and PS3 worked for only running trusted discs/games. That would mean even if someone plugged in a USB drive to try and load SW onto it, the SW wouldn’t execute unless they could sign it with the proper encryption key. You could potentially go even further, and write SW that is vetted by experts for exploits etc (using Formal Methods I guess?), and then translate that into a fixed HW circuit, so that the machine was physically incapable of doing anything other than run the specified program – this would be a very expensive route to take though.
In the US case, it seems the program being run on it wasn’t scrutinised and itself was rigged, rather than someone else coming along later and hacking it.
The problem is that all that requires specialist checking.
Whereas any mumpty on the street can see that army officers stuffing ballot boxes is a bit dodgey.
Yep, and that includes the paper system we use today. It’s difficult to do but not impossible. The same applies to electronic voting – just need to put in place the correct protocols. Username, 16 character alpha-numeric password and a security token and the chances of the system being hacked drop to minuscule.
CV
I decided to buy something on ebay and spent what seemed like hours negotiating the system as I couldn’t remember my password or id.
Got through in the end because I just got determined and bloody minded and I knew if I succeeded I would get what I personally wanted.
Unlike voting, where you hope that the crowd you vote for will succeed to get the numbers and then will deliver the good policies. But I can’t have as much faith in that as I have in my parcel being delivered from the United States.
“The next election has to be mainly about one thing .. turnout, turnout, turnout .. ”
That is correct.
However, speaking as a Labour member where L stands first for Loyalty, with things as they are at the moment, the current leader and deputy are a turnoff, turnoff, turnoff ..
The public evisceration of Happy Gilmore continues. Last night Campbell live did a scathing review of Gilmore’s past difficulties and his blown up sense of worth …
The question is raised, if Lianne Dalziel retires to have a crack at the Christchurch Mayoralty what will National do? Gilmore was the candidate in Christchurch East for the past two elections. If he stood in the by election he could be the most memorial since Melissa Lee …
An odd comment at the end of a Gilmore piece, about:
“Prime Minister John Key is under pressure to discipline shamed MP Aaron Gilmore over allegations of sleazy conduct towards a woman at his infamous boozy dinner. ”
……”A spokeswoman for Mr Key said his office had not been made aware of allegations of an inappropriate advance….”
Wonder what that means? http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/8631499/PM-facing-calls-to-deal-to-MP
Also incredibly easy to believe. I get pretty sick of executive types slobbering over my wife on the odd occasion we have to deal with them. One idiot even suggested she remove her clothes and do a samba on a restaurant table, apparently finding this appropriate because she’s Brazilian. Years back I had a girlfriend who did some work at some sort of NAct convention. She told me some pretty appalling stories about their sleazy conduct.
MO
I remember hearing a story about an IRD party back near the day when a bloke was writing about them in a book called ‘Be Very Afraid’. I’m not sure whether he was the one who committed suicide because of the burden of their relentless compound penalty interest.
The story goes that one of the young bloods got filled up with some liquid then stood on a table dropped his trousers and turned round as fast as he could, emulating a lawn sprayer.
Could be wrong but what an imagination to think up a story like that, if it was made up. It sounds possible because there was a tide of uncontrollable hubris then.
Years ago there were classrooms set up to develop the kids ability to self manage learning. Kids responded with intensity. But parents were uneasy. The learning did not look packaged and formal. So “projects” were born to counteract the misconceptions. Sadly Projects became a return to teacher managed learning.
It is said that if a teacher from 100 years ago appeared in a modern classroom, he would easily identify what was happening today. The tools have changed but the process has not. Prescribed learning and all that.
Interesting. Have just pulled my son out of mainstream education and we are going for a democratic school (don’t really like that term but whatever). There are choices out there and some of those choices are designed for the children rather than the state or factories. I am constantly amazed by how some people disrespect children and treat them like idiots – they aren’t, they are people with individual attributes and deserve respect and support so they can grow into thinkers and lifelong learners.
Presumably the present state system can’t because it’s based on certain quite functional principles of standardised learning, socialisation, and economy of scale. For choice there are a range of private schools, religious schools, Montessori schools, Steiner schools, Democratic schools, Te Reo immersion schools etc – the only difference between them and charter schools being that the others are held to a state monotored standard with professional teachers. Were Charter Schools to be held to the same standards, I wouldn’t have a problem with it.
Ah, when I started out in education, deschooling was a big topic in the training colleges and amongst educationists. I was majorly into Summerhill kind of school, deschooling, etc in the 70s – found them inspiring….. then along came Thatcher et al..
I’ve only ever taught professionally at the university level, but I try to impose as little structure on the process as possible. Perhaps the most important thing I can get across is that they need to develop an ability to evaluate their own answers. The second is that there is more than one way to skin a cat. By and large, I get excellent feedback, but none of my lectures since 2000 have had more than about 35 students, and I would generally have one or two tutors to help. I have a real admiration for school teachers who do it by themselves with the class sizes they have, and a government which encourages people to abuse them.
A revealing article on Stuff about Tikorangi – ” the most heavily explored and developed oil and gas area in New Zealand”
key spoke to 100 in Inglewood
“On Thursday he told an audience that the amount of wealth that exploration could release meant it was in everyones best interests to build respectful relationships with the oil companies.”
Some interesting factoids from the article
On Tuesday the council’s request to the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment that urban areas and land near New Plymouth Airport to be excluded from future oil exploration was turned down flat.
Greymouth has stated it is drilling just one well but has applied to drill eight. It has also bought 30 hectares of land despite only needing 1.4ha.
Like so many other media-shy companies, Greymouth requires questions in writing which are answered in kind.
Todd Energy, the other big player in Tikorangi oil and gas and operator of the massive Mangahewa C production site, has started issuing full-colour community updates.
Featuring pictures of smiling rig workers and the top-echelon management team casually splayed out on a grass bank at Womad…
“The fact of the matter is the easy oil is gone, and now exploration is being brought closer to humans,” Todd Energy operations general manager Mr Clennett says.
“Our main focus is how we can build a sustainable operation within the community. Because the skills we are building here, we want to be able to use in other places.”
Mr Clennett’s frankness, the printed updates, the millions in funding to the Len Lye Centre and support for other community projects have another bottom-line benefit for Todd. In a world market scrapping over a limited supply of oil and gas experts, reputation is money.
key and these companies are singing from the same songsheet and they are raising their voices in a cacophony of manipulation designed to drown out opposition to their exploitation, but it won’t work because they ignore people.
“This doesn’t feel like home anymore,” he told his parents Clare and Alan.
“The noise. The rigs. The powerlines. All the lights. It’s taken away the night sky. It’s pretty sad really.”
Expect plenty of glossy brochures and smiling pictures to come because that is all they have got to counter the truth of their activities.
I would say, ” I think you’ve missed the Vienna loaf” or similar. I tend to point it out when I notice that I have been charged incorrectly or given the incorrect change. I do not want to put a shop assistant onto the back foot with her employer, and I do not want to be hostage to petty, grasping instincts either.
A polite curious enquiry might help. “Why doesn’t the money go in the till?” Might be a good reason for this.
It is said that the $3.99 or $19.99 was to force the till to be opened to give change rather than make the cost seem less.
Interesting point re the .99 , and we worry about a few $$ that a few beneficiaries over claim, whilst such actions from business owners and trades go unabated and almost condoned or accepted as being part of the game of being in business. Pity most do not see cashies and these actions are stealing from the public purse.
I still recall a wife of a builder complaining how hard it was to spend $30 k of cashies that he earned on a job and for it not to be noticed, and we worry about feeding and housing those less fortunate. Many here do not appreciate how hard it is for the rich to live and operate & the problems they have to live under!!!!
I think I might have misunderstood your question, Herodotus. I took you to mean that the price of your purchase did not register. However, on reading ianmac’s post, it seems that you paid but the shop assistant didn’t put the money in the till. In that case I would say nothing, since it would seem to me to be busy-bodying. Perhaps she/he put that money to one side to pop across the road and buy something that the shop had just run out of, like milk for instance.
It is going on a lot and is called the black economy. No taxes paid, cash in the bag. I personally would not visit the shop anymore as one has to put the money where the mouth is -literally. My taxes are being deducted and I have no say, it seems hat a shop owner who does not pay taxes can choose. So here are some of the dollars that are missing in the social net structure.
Great article but it does not deal wit the cash and/or barter economy that runs parallel to the taxed one.
There are (business)people who seem to belief that they are entitled to cheat the “system”. By boasting that they have got away avoiding tax and giving that rort a revolutionary name such as “system” “government” “taxman” etc it tends to get the nod because of the wide held belief that these people are cleverer then your average punter who has to suck it up. The very same punters have yet to cotton on to the fact that they admire a cheat who has their hand in the wrong pocket and smile at you whilst robbing you blind. Of cause the “government” and the “taxman” will now ask more of the ordinary punter to cover the shortfall.
There is or was, actually a barter system for businesses that is quite widespread, and this would enable trading to be done without exchanging cash. So what is thought about that.
I belonged to a green dollars group and that is how that operated but we were just ordinary wage earners or beneficiaries, not business people.
Excuse me but i need to have a little rant about this
Not one of you have a skerrick of any wrongdoing, that includes Herodotus who only witnessed cash going somewhere other than the till in a bakery shop. Herodotus later tells us it is money going to the owner no less. Mon dieu, imagine that, a business owner taking money for a sale and doing with it what they wish. What is the world coming to? If Herodotus had a genuine concern of inappropriate activity why did he not say something? If he had, at least he would have fact based reasons for a discussion instead of a swagbag of supposition.
May I recommend to mind your own business, or are the cries of tax evasion and corruption meant to lead to louder calls for the boarding up of the premises and subsequently dragging the owner through the streets by his own scrotum? What business is it of anyone’s, except the IRD, how daily cash handling is done in a private business? By subsequent comments from Herodotus it looks like a bit of a staged discussion anyway.
In one cafe I used to work we had a ‘need change to get another coffee?’ bowl that was a tipn’share bowl. It lived on the counter and cash was constantly going in and out depending on what people needed. Not every business does, or can run, an over- invoiced receipt-driven use the right suppositry code type of operation. Life is messy and for the self employed and small businesses it is getting messier by the day. I do wonder why exactly Herodotus mentioned it, if it was’t to voice his obvious suspicion of fraud or such.
The last time you bought a new car or boat or whatever it is well off people pick up on the weekend, you did what? Handed over a credit card or similar, what account did the money go into? Are you sure it did ? How about that lawyer’s account that your trust management fees went into? You know for a fact that money is being dealt with legitmately?
Next time Herodotus, just ask the person concerned if it is such a worry, and stop casting aspersions on the characters of others, because that is exactly the sort of weak lipped snakeoil that is killing this country faster than all the fraud and theft and greed put together.
Get into the real world as someone who deals day to day in admin accounting I can see when a 2nd till operates. On your ventures out just take a look to see how often such an experience that I described occurs. Why then as I spent $8 why the $2 change came out of a 2nd tin the same as my $10 entered. There was no reason i could come up with why the till on the counter was not used and my transaction was at least not rung up. And as I mentioned before that I was serviced by the owner.
I was interested how others here would have reacted to this.
Not staged from my experiences I come across quite a few instances of tax avoidance in what I considered involving large amounts, perhaps in your world you are more fortunate in the people you deal.
H, what happens to the cash after you have paid for the product you selected, is just none of your business. The banks? maybe, regulatory agencies, possibly, tax man certainly, but unless this shop is a client of yours, it is nothing to do with you. Instead of taking aside the owner and privately voicing whatever ill-focused concerns you may have, you preferred to spend the day involved in the escalation of theoretical wrongdoings.
I believe for every malfeasance you have imagined that the owner is involved in, others could come up with a reasonable and real world alternative that is not judging someone based on nothing but your own expeiriences collected whilst scooping and bagging the effluent of your own career choices.
Get off your high horse. 15% of what we hand over to retailers is tax (GST) that we’re paying and we’ve got every right to expect it to go to the taxman. What they do with their income is their business, GST is our business because it’s our taxes not their income.
Maybe the till wasn’t working and the money was being kept separate so it could be rung up later when it was fixed.
Maybe it ran out of paper.
Maybe they were having a contest to see which staff member could sell the most donuts.
Maybe they were testing out a new piggy bank.
Maybe it was a hidden camera show.
Who the fuck knows? You can keep your money in a tin if you want to. What of it?
The Gormless Fool formerly known as Oleolebiscuitbarrell 9.4.1.3.1
“White House warned on imminent Arctic ice death spiral
National security officials worried by rapid loss of Arctic summer sea ice overlook threat of permanent global food shortages”
“as the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projected in 2007. He said:
“The Arctic situation is snowballing: dangerous changes in the Arctic derived from accumulated anthropogenic green house gases lead to more activities conducive to further greenhouse gas emissions. This situation has the momentum of a runaway train.”
” phenomenon of “Arctic amplification”, where:
“The loss of Arctic summer sea ice and the rapid warming of the Far North are altering the jet stream over North America, Europe, and Russia. Scientists are now just beginning to understand how these profound shifts may be increasing the likelihood of more persistent and extreme weather.”
There’s a satellite video of ice in the Alaskan Beaufort sea already breaking up (First time ever so early in the spring) indicating a summer ice free Arctic this year or next with a consequent greater loss of the albedo effect and further entrapment of heat in the Earth’s climate system.
From Comments section of article…
“The fossil fuels you burn are directly contributing to killing people in the future.
None of which alters the bottom line – nature will step in and correct our numbers and consumption for us. We have proven incapable of doing either. You might not like it. You might not be one of the very few with even a small chance of making it. But that is the bottom line and the outcome the richer and more powerful members of our species have voted for in continuing business as usual for so long.”
“This is a visualization of the decline in minimum volumes that makes it very clear that the Arctic will be ice free in summer soon. This is significant because it will mark the boundary of a change in state, and the effects on the Northern Hemisphere climate that we are already seeing will intensify.
It is just staggering that we are actually witnessing an event of geologic-time proportions in the space of one generation.”
The new lands, that have been unseen for millenia, were not hidden from the eyes in the sky and are probably mapped in detail and scheduled for stripping. There are shots in the film where you can almost hear them coming for the raw meat of the glacier’s wounds.
1.The normal UK weather pattern (changeable ,sunshine and some showers etc. ) in the UK has been in turmoil for the last several years. Those who spend their working lives outdoors ( Farmers etc.) spotted something was wrong immediately . It started several years ago with almost monsoon like rainstorms in mid summer and has continued in that vain ever since , whereby our weather now resembles something akin to what must go on inside a washing machine come tumble drier ! i.e. constant rain/water and almost gale force like winds. This is because the Arctic is melting at a massive rate and all the freezing air is drifting south and it is enveloping the UK , whereby in the summer it is causing abnormally cold tempratures and constant deluges of rain and high winds ! …. People who live and work in the countryside have known this for several years , however seemingly not the met office or the government, I wonder why ?
2 .Sorry, but I don’t agree , that nothing has happened that hasn’t happened before. My relatives are farmers ( doing it for several generations) and they tell me a different story. They also say that over the same period( last several years) is when the UK’s weather went into turmoil , that the strength of the Sun ( UV rays?) has also seen a dramatic change , whereby it is now impossible to go outside in mid summer for any length of time without your skin beginning to burn very quickly and where people are now being publically warned to wear sun cream/block. This all points to either a mass thinning or an actual hole in the Ozone layer over the Arctic and extending down as far as the UK , which would explain the increased strength of the Sun (UV rays?) and why the Arctic is melting at such an alarming rate.
3. Amazing isn’t it, we will get to see something that hasn’t happened for at least 700,000 years.
4. Been following this issue a long time, no surprises here. Been shouting and shouting “food and water” for years now. This is real brothers and sisters, brace for impact.
I spent a lot of time outdoors in the UK in the really hot summer of 2008, and I certainly didn’t burn. I actually ended up with a light tan which I certainly couldn’t do in NZ.
And while I don’t doubt for a minute doubt climate change, anthropogenic and otherwise, the relatively mild British weather of which you speak has actually been an anomaly that started approximately 200 years ago. Prior to that, surviving accounts show British weather to have been much more severe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age
Absence of sunspots for a couple of centuries. They were surprised as hell when they started reappearing. But it didn’t have much effect outside of Europe.
North western Europe is a canary area as far as climate goes. It is only habitable for a large community because of the gulf stream dropping heat so far north. It responds either through that heat load, or from the jetstream from the arctic to every change in the planetary heat balance.
The strangest thing is that the Brits generally aren’t aware how weird it is having one of the largest concentrations of computing power in the world to predict their weather.
Visiting my mother-in law last Saturday. I went to watch rugby at the Taieri rugby club(Mosgiel) . An incident involving a Pasifika player ensued. He was sent off. The home crowd then proceeded to slur the player with “get back on the banana boat ” the usual “thick coconut ” a a few true scumbags screaming “N word” . Fucking disgraceful. Racism is alive and well at this club. I’ve never seen such appalling behaviour at club level. I’d appreciate this getting passed round, I don’t want this in my game.
nothing has changed much then – I remember their horror when during the Tour I wore my anti-tour badge to the club – oh dear didn’t get to play for them much after that, not that I wanted to of course lol
Agreed, disgraceful, Blue. I’d like to tell another story which gives me hope. The provincial Boys’ College which I used to teach at, this year for the first time elected a Pasifika student as Head Boy. When this appointment was announced to the senior student’s assembly, after input from both students and staff, the entire assembly I am told broke out into spontaneous standing applause, an unprecedented event.
He’s also the 1st XV captain and an outstanding young man, with qualities which the whole senior student body recognised. Such a tale gives me hope for our society.
What I know is the members have had no say in who is Leader and I think they should and if we stay with Shearer we are very much looking like we are walking to another election defeat.
This won’t go down well but Labour could do worse than Shane Jones, hes always impressed me with his ability to be able to talk to everyone and comes across as intelligent
Sure there are some past issues to consider but nothing insurmountable…
“I guess we wont be getting a post from Mike Smith on how wonderful Mr Shearer is”
Quite simply, there is no need for outsourcee Mike Smith to tell us how wonderful Mr Shearer but we want the outsourcer himself saying the real thing and showing that to us.
Remember when Shanghai Pengxin attempted to buy 8000ha of dairy farmland and all hell broke loose and nobody on the left was being the least bit xenophobic? Well, anybody care to note the reaction Dairy Farms Partnership (an investment company owned by Harvard University) buying 1300ha of farmland to add to the farmland in NZ it already owns?
I started looking into that, yesterday. I started saving links on a word document and was intending to do more research on the issue before putting a post together.
eg I have some links to articles about the Harvard Uni investment fund “land grab” in Africa and the potential negative impact. I was wondering what such land grabs have to do with the role of Universities? Part of the neoliberalisation of higher education?
Harvard runs one of the absolute smartest long vision investment funds on the planet.
Mouths increasing, arable land decreasing, land productivity flat, useless paper wealth expanding exponentially
Farm land is where you want to have your investments. And these guys back it up with big money. Last I heard, a NZer ran this side of their asset classes for them.
I thought that many of our neo lib pollies and uncivil servants went to Harvard to study and learn.. Seems that they don’t learn all the good long term structural planning stuff, only the free market and lazy butts and deadhead dads sort of stuff. How to sneer, find fault, and feel superior enough to be worth millions per year in salary, or at least aspire to that.
I guess when we are all labelled okay they can work out an algorithm how to deal with us most efficiently, and whether it’s more cost effective to ensure that there is reasonable accommodation and food for all or to leave us living on the streets.
I’ll say the same thing now as I did then. Selling our land to foreign owners is bad for NZers and bad for our economy. It quite literally turns us into serfs for foreign owners.
My first response was more like Draco’s. I’m not very keen at all, esepcially given Harvard is such an elite US institution. But I want to look into it and think about it a bit more.
“Smart long term investment” on whose behalf?
Certainly US unis like Harvard have come into some criticism for “land grabbing” in Africa. froma a 2011 Guardian article:
Harvard and other major American universities are working through British hedge funds and European financial speculators to buy or lease vast areas of African farmland in deals, some of which may force many thousands of people off their land, according to a new study.
Researchers say foreign investors are profiting from “land grabs” that often fail to deliver the promised benefits of jobs and economic development, and can lead to environmental and social problems in the poorest countries in the world. …
Much of the money is said to be channelled through London-based Emergent asset management, which runs one of Africa’s largest land acquisition funds, run by former JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs currency dealers. …
Oakland said investors overstated the benefits of the deals for the communities involved. “Companies have been able to create complex layers of companies and subsidiaries to avert the gaze of weak regulatory authorities. Analysis of the contracts reveal that many of the deals will provide few jobs and will force many thousands of people off the land,” said Anuradha Mittal, Oakland’s director.
Harvard is elite in the sense that it is the best, it also has one of the most extensive and well funded scholarship and aid programmes in the world, increased every two or three years by about US $10 million. Please kindly check your confirmation bias.
You do realise that elite or “ivy league” education establishments that offer funding for some who can’t afford the fees, don’t necessarily do anything to change the elite dominated hierarchy, don’t you? It’s the kind of “charity” that is used to justify the dominance of elites?
Again I think that’s your confirmation bias which insists on reinforcing the idea that people that experience social mobility somehow equate to being a class traitor. The notion that “it’s the kind of “charity” that is used to justify the dominance of elites” is inherently silly and an artifact of a narrative that insists on demonising an entire group of people as a single stereotype cliche of fat cat capitalists in top hats. Bill Gates gives away almost all of his billions to better the less fortunate. J K Rowling gave away so much of her money that she is no longer on the rich list. George Soros gave away over $8 billion to human rights, public health, and education causes. Such charity is an appropriate response by people who realise the important role society has played in their success and is a valuable adjunct to state funding.
Yes, fuck them for not wandering around in sack cloth and ashes with dogs licking their sores. Bastards. You silly cartoon Marxist.
One would presume (well, a normal person would presume, so perhaps you are excused) that a considerable amount of Harvard’s endowment would also go toward funding research, paying staff, and supplying the amazing resources that make it a place to want to study at in the first place. But you can do the math. As of 2012, Harvard University had a total financial aid reserve of $158.725 million for students, and a Pell Grant reserve of $4.093 million available for disbursement out of $30.7 billion.
“Well fuck me Pop, I didn’t realise your spurious comparisons were beyond questioning.
0.5% Bit of context sheds some light eh?
Cock.”
Look, Felix, I realise you’re probably a bit special in the touched in the head sense, but obviously the top university in the world with the best facilities, resources and teachers is going to be expensive to run. And guess what, poor kids can get in and take advantage of all that on merit. Wow. I always get the impression from you that you are some nasty bitter little person who hates achievement and talent in others and just burns to drag everyone and everything in the world down to your level of mediocrity rather boosting deserving people with talent. Me, I’ve always thought socialism was about lifting people up, not dragging them down.
You tried to say that Harvard, by spending 0.5% of it’s income on allowing poor kids to attend, is comparable to Bill Gates giving away “almost all” of his money.
What a crock of shit.
ps your assessments of me are hilarious. Bit of self-reflection mate.
“You tried to say that Harvard, by spending 0.5% of it’s income on allowing poor kids to attend, is comparable to Bill Gates giving away “almost all” of his money.”
As I didn’t make that comparison at all, you sad little numpty, you’re projecting. I gave Bill Gates et al as examples of really rich people giving back to the comunity as a counterexample to the assertion that all such charity is a method of control. And I’ve said my bit about how much it costs to fund Harvard’s facilities. I’m not going to argue with your pathology any more except to say Harvard’s provision for disadvantaged students is better than any state university anywhere in the world you can name.
“I’m not going to argue with your pathology any more except to say Harvard’s provision for disadvantaged students is better than any state university anywhere in the world you can name.”
Well I guess that knocks out another argument I didn’t make. 🙄
“Well I guess that knocks out another argument I didn’t make.”
Who knows, Felix, you don’t specialise in arguments, just gibberish and invective. I have attempted to respond to your froth and spittal as best as one can.
I also don’t think xenophobia should be bandied about if the information on the Harvard buy was not publicised as the Crafar farce was. Accusing the media of building xenophobia by reporting unevenly may be more accurate, but even then the publicity around the Shanghai Pengxin bid came in on the back of publicity around fraud, bankruptcies and other apparent dodgy dealings and an imagery of six farms rather than an a more difficult to imagine x-hectares.
From the heavy handed new Greenpeace ads, you would actually begin to wonder if they weren’t secretly working for the government to secretly promote anti sea protest legislation. All they’ve done is strung together a bunch of footage that reinforces all the stereotypes about stupid, dangerous, gung-ho behaviour.
I have a T.V. and watch very little of free to air TV as the programmes are so vapid. I don’t own SKY. When I occasionally do watch a specific programme I mute the ads the moment they come on and usually go do something instead.
Anyway, to the video clip. Great to see Greenpeace getting the message over on mainstream TV as an antidote to all the “buy me buy me” ads. I did not get the same impression as you from the ad.
By the way, I do gain the impression from your comment that you approve of our right to protest being removed. No doubt you were also one of those grumbling about nanny state a few years ago.
You obviously prefer ‘big brother’ state.
I just don’t understand how someone (who I assume is just a regular citizen) having views such as these. What is your motivation?
The right to protest is sacrosanct, but I don’t support naive people risking severe injury or injuring others through their actions on the high seas. The ocean is not the place to be playing silly buggers.
Increasingly rough compared to the 1632 deaths worldwide that were related to the oil and gas industry in November of 2009 alone… I think you and the government have your priorities all wrong!
Comparing activism that has resulted in no deaths and is largely being outlawed by the government with an industry that kills thousands and is being promoted isn’t a false dichotomy… You may as well just write “dog poos” if that’s the extent of your argument Populuxe1.
the seafarers who engage in this kind of activity don’t need you looking after them, and unlike the unsafe foreign fishing vessels which operate out of NZ I’m not aware of any Greenpeace vessel needing NZ tax payers to fork out for a rescue.
Basically you’re making a lot of noise about fuck all. And it doesn’t seem to me like you believe the right to protest is paramount. Just the right to protest in ways that you believe convenient and appropriate.
If by “convenient and appropriate” you mean not acting in a manner that may potentially harm themselves or others, then yes. Your argument is pretty much that of NRA lobbiests in the US. What are you, a Libertarian? I don’t agree with the form of the law as it stands, but I don’t agree with boarding vessles or chucking projectiles etc and that goes for all parties involved.
Don’t be disingenuous. The law isn’t being changed to protect protestors from themselves or for “public safety”. It is being changed to prevent protestors from obstructing prospectors, drill rig operators, whoever..
It is a law against civil disobedience and in the end it won’t work because New Zealanders have repeatedly proven that when their principles are at stake they are quite prepared to collect some convictions and even jail time in defence of causes they believe are just. What’s more, in most cases, history has sided with the protestors and against the established order. Can you name a case where this wasn’t true? I can’t think of any off the top of my head.
I’m well aware of that, but a slightly different law would have some contingency. Here is my reasoning. I’m not so concerned with Greenpeace (basically these days a commercial exercise, little more than a greenwashed Outward Bound so that privileged, predominantly white people can moralise to a developing world painfully aware of its own environmental shortcomings, and with little concern for the effects of their antics on ordinary people) and Sea Shepherd (another pack of showboating privileged wankers who manipulate the naive to get media attention and then hang them out to dry once the dirty work is done).
New Zealand has a vast coastline and the general public have incredible access to boats and the sea. There are also a lot of passionate numpties out there who don’t have the kind of seamanship to be safe in that kind of melee. Also while I am anti-whaling and deeply concerned by oil and mineral prospecting ships in our waters, as long as they are operating within whatever weak and flawed laws we have, no one should be making physical contact with them, board them, or attempt to block their path – all of which are in violation of the Law of the Sea. If protest ships waht to lurk visably nearby with all loudspeakers blasting, I think they should be able to.
Well aren’t you a nice well behaved little boy. Using that logic, if you were old enough to protest in 1981 you would have done so from the safety of your Nana’s lounge room.
“Well aren’t you a nice well behaved little boy. Using that logic, if you were old enough to protest in 1981 you would have done so from the safety of your Nana’s lounge room.”
Oh don’t be so fucking ridiculous. The Molesworth Street batoning was a horrific example of police brutality and it is a national shame that the LAW did not protect those protestors. Though marching on the police was a stupid thing to do too. You are a thoroughly nasty little man.
Some commentator I was listening to recently came up with a description of the present economic hegemony as being ‘corporate feudalism’ – the rich are trying to find more ways of making money from investing their excess, and will apply their minds to squeezing the people more. If that was the case there will be an inevitable slide back to the situation as in Victorian-type dramas of the poor woman and her child being thrust into the snow by a vicious landlord.
Father, dear father, come home with me now,
The clock in the steeple strikes one;
You said you were coming right home from the shop
As soon as your day’s work was done;
Our fire has gone out, our house is all dark,
And mother’s been watching since tea,
With poor brother Benny so sick in her arms
And no one to help her but me,
Come home! come home! come home!
Please father, dear father, come home.
It is so pathetic it almost seems like lampooning the situation but a read of books detailing the privations is sobering, despite the funny side of the Python’s skit about who had the worst childhood.
A bright moment this morning about something good and clever happening out in NZ enterprise fields, was Kim Hill and Doug Avery a farmer, talking about the value of altering long-held practices of pasture grass types. Farmers can gain extra value if they have suitable conditions to grow lucerne which will help them through droughts.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/saturday
09:45
Doug Avery: farming and drought
South Island Farmer of the year 2010, who manages Bonavaree Farm at Grassmere, South Marlborough, using a sustainable farming system that is resilient in extreme weather and variability. (14′11″)
Download: Ogg Vorbis MP3 | Embed
First off, congrats to Nicky Hagar for getting the facts together. His division of attitudes into popular peacekeeping vs the empire/alliance is right on the money.
The most important point is that the PM is not the Commander in Chief. The fact that military operational policy was not aligned with Clark’s policy is a consequence of the nature of the civil system, which has it’s roots in the Roman empire.
“Well aren’t you a nice well behaved little boy. Using that logic, if you were old enough to protest in 1981 you would have done so from the safety of your Nana’s lounge room.”
“”Oh don’t be so fucking ridiculous. The Molesworth Street batoning was a horrific example of police brutality and it is a national shame that the LAW did not protect those protestors. Though marching on the police was a stupid thing to do too. You are a thoroughly nasty little man.””
I seem to have rattled someones cage. Are you running out of coherent arguments? Are you trying to say that you were on Molesworth street and got batoned? If so your method of doing so is rather cryptic and also beside the point. I’m talking about the right to protest and the tension between the LEGAL right to protest in a tidy way from a safe distance and the MORAL right to commit yourself to civil disobedience in a cause which has superior ethical weighting than that protected by the law.
For example: Which matters most, the right to watch a game of rugby undisturbed, or the right for a black majority to have civil rights in their own land? Which matters most, the right of a motorist to cruise up a Wellington street without disruption, or the right not to wind up dead in a South African police station?
For all your talk about the right to protest being sacrosanct blah blah blah…. I think I sniff a social conservative who will take the safe path of bowing to the will of the establishment rather than putting himself at risk in the service of a just cause for the greater good. Or maybe you used to be a radical but the fire has cooled in your belly as the arthritis set into the knees?
” I don’t idealise rashness and violence as being a solution to anything.”
Where did I or anyone else say we see violence as being a solution to anything. Obstruction in and of itself is not violence.
And by the way, as you make it quite clear you’re not the protesting type, that you do not believe in confronting authority, why does the fact that I suggested that your preferred method of protesting would probably be at some considerable remove from the action make me a “nasty little man”.
The debate is about the role of the State in the defense of citizens rights and how it balances, ethically and philosophically speaking, the small issues like laws against obstruction against the large issues like civil and human rights. The ultimate question is, does the State have a MORAL right to criminalize people who are breaking small laws in the defense of large causes. Gandhi for example.
This would be the same Gandhi who practised PASSIVE RESISTANCE? Although admittedly he rationalised that in the knowledge that with a population that size a few million dead here and there wouldn’t matter in the long run.
I suspect you’re making shit up. I’d like a citation showing that Gandhi ever made any such calculation. In the end the people who followed him did so freely because they were prepared to risk whatever actions the state (British Empire) took against them because they found that existing under the yoke of that Empire worse than death. Unlike you some people are prepared to risk their lives for great causes.
“Unlike you some people are prepared to risk their lives for great causes.”
Well aren’t you a romantic delusional arsehat, red for the blood of the martyrs. Oh how amusing you are. Dead people don’t really get to make changes, silly. Better a live dog than a dead lion.
“If I were a Jew and were born in Germany and earned my livelihood there, I would claim Germany as my home even as the tallest Gentile German might, and challenge him to shoot me or cast me in the dungeon; I would refuse to be expelled or to submit to discriminating treatment. And for doing this I should not wait for the fellow Jews to join me in civil resistance, but would have confidence that in the end the rest were bound to follow my example. If one Jew or all the Jews were to accept the prescription here offered, he or they cannot be worse off than now. And suffering voluntarily undergone will bring them an inner strength and joy […] the calculated violence of Hitler may even result in a general massacre of the Jews by way of his first answer to the declaration of such hostilities. But if the Jewish mind could be prepared for voluntary suffering, even the massacre I have imagined could be turned into a day of thanksgiving and joy that Jehovah had wrought deliverance of the race even at the hands of the tyrant. For to the God-fearing, death has no terror.”
Gandhi, M.K. “The Jews” Harijan 26 November 1938 (The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi vol. 74, p. 240)
“…there should be unadulterated non-violent non-cooperation, and if the whole of India responded and unanimously offered it, I should show that, without shedding a single drop of blood, Japanese arms – or any combination of arms – can be sterilized. That involves the determination of India not to give quarter on any point whatsoever and to be ready to risk loss of several million lives. But I would consider that cost very cheap and victory won at that cost glorious. That India may not be ready to pay that price may be true. I hope it is not true, but some such price must be paid by any country that wants to retain its independence. After all, the sacrifice made by the Russians and the Chinese is enormous, and they are ready to risk all. The same could be said of the other countries also, whether aggressors or defenders. The cost is enormous. Therefore, in the non-violent technique I am asking India to risk no more than other countries are risking and which India would have to risk even if she offered armed resistance.”
Gandhi, M.K. “Non-violent Non-cooperation” Harijan 24 May 1942, p. 167 (The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi vol. 82, p. 286; interview conducted 16 May 1942)
If people like me are arsehats and Gandhi is a calculating monster by your reckoning, Populuxe, then I’m happy to side with Gandhi. I’ll also have to concede that any similarity between yourself and a fully functioning moral human being is just a coincidence. Good night and good luck. Keep re-reading the Gandhi. You might come to understand him eventually.
You have a nasty habit of putting words in people’s mouths that they never said and attributing ideas to them which they never thought. It is really most unattractive. In fact you seem to be one of those people who believes in nothing much other than personal preservation and not rocking the boat. News flash, the world will only change for the better if some people are prepared to take risks to make it happen. How many times have you left the herd and taken a risk for a matter of principle Pop? Is there any principle you’d risk it all for?
Well aren’t you a sad old throwback. The reality is positive change will only happen with education and freely given cooperation, not theatrics that will probably alienate more people than it will convert.
I will go before you and make the crooked paths straight;
I will break in pieces the gates of bronze and cut the bars of iron
-Isaiah 45:2
For I will contend with him
who contends with you
-Isaiah 49:25
For all who live by the sword…
Blessed are the meek for they shall…(game theory)
For what greater thing can a man do than to…
Not a nationalist myself, who would be in this day and age! (although I understand Inglorious Bastards).
and the nation that endured the greatest number of fatalities during the Second World War was…
(I’m half-way through that book on the 24th)
…before H.Rel. I would have just kept my head down and soldiered on too. Love the author’s (Armin Bottger) attitude.
The amount of death that the USSR saw during that war is simply staggering.
One in eight Ukranians, dead. And Stalin, well it seemed like losing 200K Red Army soldiers here, losing another 200K over there and yet another 200K further on, was just par for the course.
Mind you, 4 out of every 5 German divisions which were ultimately destroyed in WWII were destroyed by the Soviet Union, not by the Allies. That’s a lot of heavy lifting by the Reds.
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Reprinted from Jacobinmag by Jane Slaughter and Chris Brooks Almost 50,000 UAW workers are on strike against GM and a two-tier labor system that undermines worker solidarity. But members may need to wage a battle on two fronts — against the company, but also against their own union leadership. Forty-nine ...
Before Jacingrant There Was Gracinda: Grant Robertson and his 2014 running mate, Jacinda Ardern. She stood at his side: loyal and obliging, as she had ever been. The media dubbed this duo “Gracinda” – a sort of political “Brangelina”. The other young people who worked alongside Robertson were also ambitious ...
. . Just when you thought Simon Bridges couldn’t sink any lower – he has. After the March 15th Christchurch terror attack, the (current) Leader of the National Party issued strong committments to support urgently needed gun law reform; “We will be ready and prepared to be constructive and to ...
We all know that bad parents simply don’t care about their children’s education. Most truants have loser parents, and grow up to be involved with crime, or in low paid employment usually like their parents. The nonsense so-called “climate strike” coming up will be attended mostly by the least intelligent ...
Is the terrorist Organisation Greenpeace and the loony Green parties around the World hiring professional internet trolls? I have noticed a trend lately where if you post research, news articles or even comments that show the manmade climate change scam to be just that, you are immediately attacked, often within ...
Today is the first day of the global climate strike. Led by schoolkids, people all around the world are going to protest to demand action on climate change. New Zealand isn't doing it till next Friday (join us!), but if you want to get active early, there's plenty to do ...
The Herald has a story today about the 400 MW of wind power currently under construction. Good news, right? Except that none of it is being driven by policy (instead, its about replacing Contact Energy's Taranaki Combined Cycle gas-fired power plant, due to shut down in 2022), and most of ...
To Protect and Serve: When the Prime Minister finds herself enmeshed in the coils of a full-blown political scandal, her colleagues and party comrades have only one priority: to release her as swiftly – and with as little lasting injury – as possible. Is this what Jacinda Ardern’s colleagues and ...
When military leaders cover up and lie to elected civilian authorities, the foundation of democratic civil-military relations is undermined because it is those authorities who are entrusted to hold the military accountable to the public that they mutually serve. But this is only true if civilian political authorities take their ...
The Make It 16 campaign to lower the voting age is launching this afternoon, and they have already announced plans to challenge the law in court:The campaign, named "Make it 16" will launch at Parliament on Friday, with plans to take their case to the High Court, testing the rights ...
by Daphna Whitmore The long years of Netanyahu’s reign are drawing to an end. For years he has epitomized reactionary zionism as he oversaw hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers seize land in the West Bank. There are now 700,000 settlers, putting an end to the myth that Israel was ...
BP, Z and Mobil all insist that petrol price hikes are temporary, “in a very literal sense.” The nation’s major petrol providers are trying to allay customer fears over prices, promising that they’ll move to lower them again “immediately” when the Middle East is returned to its formerly peaceful state. ...
South African coach Rassie Erasmus says he has no idea what they’re going to do about the boat. In a highly anticipated press conference this afternoon, All Blacks coach Steve Hansen has finally unveiled the team’s boat for its Rugby World Cup 2019 campaign. In a press conference that went ...
The Operation Burnham inquiry continued to question senior NZDF staff today, and their shoddy coverup over their knowledge of civilian casualties continue to fall apart. If you recall, first, we were asked to believe that it was all a series of "mistakes and errors": a senior officer with multiple degrees ...
The Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill (No 2) had part of its committee stage yesterday. its a generally tedious bill about the nitty-gritty of local government reorganisation. But it includes a clause making the Local Government Commission subject to the Ombudsmen Act, and hence the OIA. Great! Except of ...
Yesterday Ihumātao's mana whenua reached a consensus that they would like their land back, and asked the government to negotiate with Fletcher's for its return. The government's response? Try and undermine that consensus, while talking about how doing anything would undermine existing Treaty settlements. The first is just more bad ...
Its Suffrage Day, the 126th anniversary of women winning the right to vote (but not stand in elections) in New Zealand. And to celebrate, the government has bought Kate Sheppard's house in Christchurch:The government has bought Kate Sheppard's former home in Christchurch for more than $4 million. The Ilam villa ...
The UN climate summit is happening in new York next week, and unlike previous years, coal-burners and denier-states are not being invited to speak:Leading economies such as Japan and Australia will not be invited to speak at next week’s crunch UN climate change summit, as their continued support for coal ...
Get Back Jojo! The elation in Mayor Phil Goff’s camp may be easily imagined as they watched social media light up in indignation at challenger John Tamihere’s "Sieg Heil to that" quip. Just when JT’s notoriously right-wing, sexist and homophobic stains were beginning to fade back into his ‘colourful’ past, ...
Patrick Gower is good value when he's high. Not that I've ever, you know, got stoned with him. But in the second part of his documentary Patrick Gower on Weed, he does what you'd expect in a modern weed documentary and immerses himself – first with a doctor, then a ...
We surveyed candidates on their attitudes to issues facing the Western Bay Region, find out what they think: “Closing the Gap” Tauranga, one of the area groups of Income Equality Aotearoa NZ Inc., has surveyed all candidates in the three local body elections to discover attitudes to some basic issues ...
Please spread widely, and sign, to support science and rationalism over the new irrationalism sweeping universities and institutions. PROJECT NETTIE Sexual reproduction, the generation of offspring by fusion of genetic material from two different individuals, evolved over 1 billion years ago. It is the reproductive strategy of all higher animals ...
Just when I was thinking that Palmerston North's mayoral race (which includes a convicted child molester / public wanker and a convicted child beater) was the worst in the country, Auckland mayoral candidate John Tamihere opened his mouth:Auckland mayoral candidate John Tamihere is being slammed for using the words "sieg ...
We reprint below an article from the excellent website the Economics of Imperialism by Tony Norfield This is an update of the statistics for my Index of Power, using data for 2018-19 and discussing what a country’s ranking reflects. The major change is that China’s rank has shifted up and ...
The All Blacks have been, for more than a century, arguably the most successful International sports team in the world. But they are more than that; even for those Kiwis who are immune to the charms of rugby (and there are more than a few), the All Blacks are ambassadors ...
Alone, Alone, All, All, Alone: To argue that the Prime Minister is the victim of her advisers’ failure to keep her informed may offer Jacinda some measure of exoneration – but only at the cost of casting her as a hopeless political ingénue. A star-dusted muppet, whose only purpose is to ...
In times of hysteria about the “World coming to an end” and “rising sea levels” so-called ‘Journalists’ who can barely spell words longer than four letters are having a ball! Though the majority of the Public have worked out that manmade climate change is nothing short of pseudo-science, and the ...
I don't want to give pblicity to certain parts of the internet that are better left to fester in their own irrelevance (I know, a bit like this place) but the listing of Chris Trotter as a 'author' on Cameron Slater's spinoff website, the BFD requires some explanation.Now, I don't ...
The text below is a Twitter thread by Heather Heying that explains the essence of sexual reproduction and it long evolutionary history. She is an evolutionary biologist and a “professor-in-exile” after she and her husband, Bret Weinstein, stood up to supporters of an enforced “Day of Absence” for white staff and teachers ...
With crunch time for new Zealand climate policy approaching, most of the New Zealand media have got on board with a global reporting effort to cover the issue. There's one strand of stories today about polling and what it shows about changing public attitudes to the crisis, but the strand ...
Dangerous Foes: For those readers of Bowalley Road who feel disposed to dismiss any prospect of an Israeli destabilisation of New Zealand politics, the example of the United Kingdom repays close attention. Ever since the election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the British Labour Party, the Israelis have sanctioned, funded and ...
Make It 16, the youth-led campaign to lower New Zealand's voting age, is holding an official campaign launch at Parliament this Friday from 16:30. If you'd like to attend, you can register using EventBrite here. ...
by Don Franks It was a lovely sunny Wellington afternoon with blue skies above the beaches. In Courtenay Place, political activists packed out a stuffy upstairs room for an important meeting. The assembled pacifists, anarchists, communists and independent young radicals of Peace Action Wellington felt the need for a mission ...
Current and former NZDF top brass are being publicly grilled this week by the hit and run inquiry over their public responses to allegations of civilian casualties. Previously, they've claimed there were no casualties, a position which led them to lie to Ministers and to the public. Now, they're saying ...
by Rafael D. Quiles (gender-critical gay man from Puerto Rico) The writing on the wall is right in people’s faces and people just don’t see it or don’t want to. What could actually possess a heterosexual male to want to feminize himself and claim that he is a lesbian? Because ...
From the Wall Street Journal:Inside a room of the ornately decorated Hotel du Palais during last month’s Group of Seven summit in Biarritz, France, President Trump awaited a meeting with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi. Mr. Trump looked over a gathering of American and Egyptian officials and called out in ...
by the Redline blog collective At Redline we are very saddened to hear of the death of Magdalen Burns who passed away on the morning of Friday, September 13 (British time). Magdalen was a great fighter for the rights of women in general and lesbian women in particular, a defender ...
The Brexit issue has certainly brought with it a series of apparently difficult constitutional issues, many of them concerning the respective roles of the executive and parliament. Most of them arise because of the unwillingness of MPs, despite their professions to the contrary, to be bound by a constitutional rarity ...
. . This blogpost is different to my usual format of reporting on issues… Since July 1011, I have blogged on a variety of political issues; near always political and/or environmental; mostly highly critical of the previous National Government. Other issues included Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands and repression of ...
Those close to the Police Minister believe the initiative may be the result of Nash “seeing a great deal” on AliExpress. In a move that comes seemingly out of nowhere, Police Minister Stuart Nash announced this afternoon that he expects all frontline staff to don bearskin hats, famously worn by ...
The government has released its Arms Legislation Bill, containing the second tranche of changes to gun laws following the March 15 massacre. And it all looks quite sensible: a national gun register, higher penalties for illegal possession and dealing, tighter restrictions on arms dealers and shooting clubs, and a shorter ...
Private prisons are a stain on humanity. Prison operators explicitly profit from human misery, then lobby for longer prisons terms so they can keep on profiting. And in the US, prison companies run not only local and state prisons, but also Donald Trump's immigration concentration camps. Faced with this moral ...
When National was in power, they were very keen on Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) - basicly, using private companies to finance public infrastructure as a way of hiding debt from the public. They were keen on using them for everything - roads, schools, hospitals. But as the UK shows, that "service" ...
Moving And Shaking: There was a time when people spoke matter-of-factly about the “labour movement” – a political phenomenon understood to embrace much more than the Labour Party. Included within the term’s definition was the whole trade union movement – many of whose members looked upon the Labour Party as ...
by Philip Ferguson Much of the left, even people who formally identify as marxists, have collapsed politically in the face of postmodern gender theory of the sort pioneered by American philosopher Judith Butler. For Butler even biological sex is socially constructed. “If the immutable character of sex is contested, perhaps ...
The media is reporting that the (alleged) Labour party sexual assaulter has resigned from their job at Parliament, which means hopefully he won't be turning up there making people feel unsafe in future. Good. But as with everything about this scandal, it just raises other questions. Most significantly: why the ...
By Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern I am every bit as angry as you are. I am every bit as disappointed as you must be. The people with power, oversight and the ability to do something about these processes within the Labour Party should be ashamed. Whoever those people are, I ...
Property developers think there is an "oversupply" of houses in Auckland:High turnover rates and falling prices may be a sign that there are too many new houses going in to some parts of Auckland, commentators say. [...] Property developer David Whitburn said there was a "bit of an oversupply" in ...
Labour Party president Nigel Haworth resigned yesterday over the party's sexual assault scandal. But while that's good news, its unlikely to take away the stench of a coverup. Because according to Paula Bennett in Parliament yesterday, pretty much everyone in the Prime Minister's office was involved as well:I have been ...
Two-Faced? Labour insiders' commitment to the neoliberal status quo puts them at odds with their party’s membership; its trade union affiliates; and a majority of Labour voters, but this only serves to strengthen the perception they have of themselves as a special elite. Among the lesser breeds, they’ll talk up a ...
There has been a lot of talk about Boris Johnson wanting an election, and he has blustered with great gusto about 'chicken' Jeremy Corbyn refusing one, but I think there are many reasons why he is secretly glad he has been refused the opportunity:The Tories are an utter rabble,tearing themselves ...
Scottish appeal court judges have declared that Boris Johnson’s decision to suspend parliament in the run-up to the October Brexit deadline is unlawful. The three judges, chaired by Lord Carloway, Scotland’s most senior judge, overturned an earlier ruling that the courts did not have the powers to interfere in the prime ...
By Simon Bridges. The following is a press release from the office of Simon Bridges, leader of The National Party. Key ora, New Zealand. Happy Maori Language Week. Look, I’m writing to you today because I want to clear something up. There’s been a lot of kerfuffle around some things ...
I understand there's some stuff going round about how the SIS "was removed from the list of public offices covered by the Public Records Act in 2017". The context of course being their records derived from US torture, which will be disposed of or sealed. The good news is that ...
Dr. Christopher Labos and Jonathan Jarry discuss the recent Canadian fluoride/IQ research. They provide an expert analysis of the paper and its problems. Click on image to go to podcast. The critical debate about the recent ...
Australia is burning down again, and meanwhile its natural disaster minister is denying climate change:Australia’s minister responsible for drought and natural disasters, David Littleproud, has said that he doesn’t “know if climate change is manmade”. Clarifying earlier comments that the question is “irrelevant” when considering the Coalition government’s response to ...
Auckland Philippines Solidarity is excited to host Professor Judy Taguiwalo for a speaking tour of NZ in September. She is a well-known activist in the Philippines and was a political prisoner under the Marcos dictatorship. Professor Taguiwalo briefly served as a Cabinet member under President Duterte but was forced from ...
This open letter to the Green Party was penned after an opinion piece by Jill Abigail, a feminist and founding member of the party, was censored by the Greens’ leadership. (Redline has reprinted her article here).The intolerance of the Green Party leaders and their acceptance of the misogyny of gender ...
Today is a Member's day, and David Seymour's End of Life Choice Bill continues its slow crawl through its committee stage. They're spending the whole day on it today, though the first hour is likely to be spent on voting left over from last time. After that they'll move on ...
An ambitious plan to fly to Los Angeles petered out into a brief sight-seeing trip and a desire to return home and get some sleep before work tomorrow. Air New Zealand has confirmed a flight to Los Angeles last night was turned back about a quarter of the way into ...
There appears to be consensus – by omission – that the concept of indigenous futures should be accepted at face value. So I scavenged the internet to see if I could locate an academic descriptor or a framework around how we think about it as a concept, and whether it ...
Here’s another novelty chocolate to shove in your gob, New Zealand Cadbury could be seeking to make itself great again with a rumoured new release: Pineapple Trumps, a spin on its classic chocolate-encased pineapple treat and do-it-yourself tooth remover. The global confectionery manufacturer and bumbling “before” character in an infomercial, ...
During my time in the Pentagon I had the privilege of sitting down with military leaders and defence and security officials from a variety of Latin American nations. Sometimes I was present as a subordinate assistant to a senior US defence department official, sometimes as part of a delegation that ...
Kia ora, Aotearoa. It’s that magical time of year. Te Wiki o te Reo Māori. In English, the week that frightens talk radio. As you probably know by now, all your favourite media outlets are participating, some more successfully than others. Stuff has changed its name to Puna for the ...
International Day of Older Persons is a day to celebrate older people – to highlight the value of all older people and to promote dignity and respect. The 2019 international theme is “The Journey to Age Equality“. ...
One in six New Zealanders did not complete the 2018 Census - a result which has already led to the resignation of the Government's chief statistician. ...
The New Zealand Maori Council has cautioned the nation and policy makers on the 2018 Census figures released today and indicated that while some work has been done the fact that Maori remained unrepresented as a national figure in the tally on the day ...
A ground-breaking study which looks at how Māori and Samoan peoples describe their experience of youth justice across three different but comparable countries is calling for participants. ...
New Zealand’s 34th Census of Population and Dwellings was held on 6 March 2018. We combined data from the census forms with administrative data to create the 2018 Census dataset, which meets Stats NZ’s quality criteria for population structure ...
Results from the 2018 Census show New Zealand’s cultural make-up is becoming more diverse after high population growth in the past five years, Stats NZ said today. ...
Population growth since 2013 has resulted in one new general electorate in the North Island but no change to the number of Māori electorates for the next general election, Stats NZ said today. ...
As the public submissions process draws to a close, and with more than 900 submissions received to date, the Royal Commission is still urging people to come forward if they have information which may help with its inquiries. “We have twice extended ...
Amending the rules on black hole expenditure and loss continuity shows excellent judgment from the Government, says the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union . ...
If we want New Zealand to be the best place in the world to be a child, the Government needs to increase benefits, remove sanctions, individualise benefits, and fix abatement rates now, says Child Poverty Action Group and ActionStation . ...
Today the we have another chance to do the right thing to really lift incomes for thousands of people in this country who are missing out, says The Salvation Army Te Ope Whakaora. ...
Saving the ocean’s environment continues tomorrow as Ngati Ruanui Iwi takes on Trans-Tasman Resources (TTR) who wish to mine iron sand off the South Taranaki Bight in the Tasman Sea in what has been a five-year battle. ...
Wellington - 23 September 2019 -- Kiwis Against Seabed Mining (KASM) and Greenpeace are in the Court of Appeal in Wellington this week, defending last year’s High Court ruling that quashed Trans-Tasman Resources’ (TTR) consent to mine the South ...
“Climate change is here - we all need to do our part.” Monday 23rd September 2019. Press Release: Citizens Environmental Advocacy Centre Climate change is happening. CEAC – compendium facts tribute to ‘Climate Change Week’ https://www.stuff.co.nz/science/115098866/exceptionally-rare-warming-above-antarctica-may-be-affecting-nzs-weather ...
Criminal law changes are now increasingly being used by politicians as a vote gathering tool pandering to lynch mob special interest groups. To look tough against crime, govts constantly increase penalties, create new crimes, and make it harder to get ...
It has been two years since Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern called climate change her generation's nuclear free moment. And on Monday, against a backdrop of global climate protest, she will give the opening speech at the United Nation's climate ...
Finance Minister Grant Robertson is under intense scrutiny. New figures show economic growth has slowed to levels not seen for six years. And he has chosen not to answer questions about when he heard about serious allegations of a sexual assault cover-up ...
NZDF Attends Commemorations to Mark International Mission in East Timor A New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) contingent participated today in the 20th anniversary commemorations of the International Force East Timor (INTERFET) mission in Dili. The commemoration ...
They’ve only been up and running for a few months, but a New Zealand not-for-profit has already made a big impact on period poverty in New Zealand. ...
The allocation of money for publicly funded broadcasting for election campaigns should be turned on it's head according to Massey University professor of communication design Claire Robinson. ...
Disappointment expressed by Fletcher Building CEO, Ross Taylor, reflects the increasing frustration held by many with this Government’s failure to protect private property rights.[1] ...
The independent Interim Climate Change Committee today launched an eight-week, nationwide call for evidence on options available to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. ...
Social Credit has lodged a complaint with the Ombudsman over the way the Overseas Investment Office is handling its official information request for disclosure of documents on the sale of Westland Milk Products to Chinese company Inner Mongolian ...
This Friday in Solidarity with the Global Climate Strike All of the SodaStream’s e-commerce platforms and head office operations will be closed to kick-off the week-long event, and employees will march the #CLIMATESTRIKE in Auckland on 27 September. ...
Federated Farmers congratulates the Auditor-General’s office on its release today of its report Managing Freshwater Quality: Challenges and Opportunities. ...
Growth has now slowed to a 6-year low, and downside risks are dominating. June quarter GDP growth came in at 0.5%qoq, in line with our expectation, and slightly above consensus. Although there were a few sensational reports of the chance of a negative print. ...
Local Government New Zealand (LGNZ) is calling the release of the National Climate Change Risk Assessment (NCCRA) framework a good first step in balancing New Zealand’s response to climate change. ...
Family First NZ says that a new Colorado report compiled by the Rocky Mountain High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area finds marijuana-positive traffic fatalities, hospitalisations, marijuana use, and illegal market activity have exploded since marijuana legalization. ...
This year’s Ratepayers’ Report , local government league tables released yesterday, reveals which local councils owe the most and which owe the least. ...
Rachel MacGregor welcomes the decision released today by Justice Hinton. The key issue on which all the various litigation has been based is the question, did Colin Craig sexually harass Rachel. That question has been answered – he did. Justice ...
The Rail and Maritime Transport Union (RMTU) has today ratified a ground breaking pay deal with Dunedin Railways which will see all union members being paid a living wage and the lowest paid receiving an 18% wage increase. Higher paid RMTU members ...
Inclusion for trans women/men and non-binary peoples has today been announced as the cornerstone of a new resolution for the National Council of Women New Zealand (NCWNZ). ...
It took a testy Morning Report interview this week to remind me that Simon Bridges was still the Leader of the Opposition. Until then, he had been largely invisible as the events of recent weeks unfolded. ...
The National Council of Women NZ has today welcomed the news that the Government has purchased Kate Sheppard’s house in Christchurch, the base for the NZ suffrage campaign. ...
The Māori Party supports mana whenua of Ihumātao and acknowledges their coming together to reach consensus on the future of their whenua. “We also acknowledge the leadership of the Kīngitanga who have played an important role in supporting ...
The New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union is questioning why, for the second time, Jacinda Ardern has appointed a Crown-owned company Chief Executive to Chair her “Business Advisory Council”, following her announcement that Mercury CEO Fraser Whineray ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marcus Luigi Spiller, Associate Professor (Urban Planning) – honorary , University of Melbourne Labor’s Rudd-era National Rental Affordability Scheme (NRAS) has come under attack just when it might be needed. The Abbott government stopped funding new deals under the scheme in 2014, ...
It’s Spinoff Youth Voting Week, where old people aren’t allowed to vote*. To celebrate, Tamsyn Matchett has written on a civics education programme giving teenagers a first sweet taste of local democracy before they’re legally permitted to vote for real.The Spinoff local election coverage is entirely funded by The Spinoff ...
Carla van Zon, former artistic director of the Auckland Arts Festival, issues a call for artists to make their voices heard in the battle against climate change.I am passionate about the arts and believe art can change lives, attitudes and even the world, individual by individual. I also believe that ...
Christchurch City Councillor Deon Swiggs has identified himself as the person at the centre of a complaint of inappropriate behaviour, but denies he has done anything wrong. ...
Reporters have been denied any access to the prime minister's meeting with US President Donald Trump tomorrow, but Jacinda Ardern says it wasn't her decision. ...
New Zealand businesses will benefit from tax breaks worth at least $80 million over five years, to encourage them to spend more on research and innovation. ...
Nerds, rejoice. The day of reckoning is finally upon us, with the release of the data from the 2018 census. So what are some of the interesting facts and figures?Forget about how badly this Census was botched. Forget about how there are concerns over how accurate the response data is, ...
A perfectly preserved set of Big Fresh Animatronic Fruit and Veges went on sale this week. Hayden Donnell delivers an exclusive update on their fate.Everyone remembers their first encounter with Junk & Disorderly’s set of Big Fresh Animatronic Fruit & Veges. There’s something overpowering about the experience. The Butter looms ...
In our latest local elections 2019 race briefing (read the rest here), Don Rowe looks at the two horse race to control the tourism capital of New Zealand.The Spinoff local election coverage is entirely funded by The Spinoff Members. For more about becoming a member and supporting The Spinoff’s journalism click here.Where?Queenstown, ...
Editor’s Note: Here below is a list of the main issues currently under discussion in New Zealand and links to media coverage.New Zealand Parliament Buildings, Wellington, New Zealand.Today’s content by Dr Bryce Edwards.Foreign affairs and trade Derek Cheng (Herald): Jacinda Ardern to take climate change stage in ...
The Government has included two small tax changes with its 32 page 'Economic Plan' that paints a big picture for economic and wellbeing transformation. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Simone Casey, Research Associate, Future Social Service Institute, RMIT University In all Australia’s capital cities, average share-house rents in the inner suburbs (where jobs are concentrated) leave people without enough money for food and other basics, new research shows. This research, for ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Liam Lenten, Senior Lecturer, Department of Economics and Finance, La Trobe University Tonight is the AFL’s annual night of nights, the red-carpet spectacular known as the Brownlow Medal vote count. The Brownlow is awarded to the season’s “fairest and best” player. But ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Gianluca Demartini, Associate professor, The University of Queensland The information we encounter online everyday can be misleading, incomplete or fabricated. Being exposed to “fake news” on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter can influence our thoughts and decisions. We’ve already ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Howard Manns, Lecturer in Linguistics, Monash University Not to put a damper on things, but Australian food hasn’t always made us happy little Vegemites. One needn’t look further than the humble meat pie to see how our love/hate relationship with Aussie tucker ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kirrie J Ballard, Professor, Speech Pathology, University of Sydney Sam is a high school drama teacher — articulate, funny, smart. It’s an ordinary day and she isn’t feeling great, but pushes through. At morning tea, she spills coffee down her shirt; at ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Penelope Carroll, Researcher in Public Health, Massey University Our research project explored the everyday lives of disabled young people, aged from 12 to 25 years, with mobility, vision and hearing impairments. We measured and asked them about factors that enabled or constrained ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jagannath Adhikari, Sessional Lecturer, UNSW Reducing emissions from deforestation and farming is an urgent global priority if we want to control climate change. However, like many climate change problems, the solution is complicated. Cutting down forests to plant edible crops feeds some ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Margaret Kristin Merga, Senior Lecturer in Education, Edith Cowan University Reading aloud can help young children learn about new words and how to sound them. There’s great value too in providing opportunities for children to enjoy regular silent reading, which is sustained ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lili Pâquet, Lecturer in Writing, University of New England In Dervla McTiernan’s book, The Scholar, published earlier this year, women are consistently used as the “fall guys” for men with high aspirations. Two young women are killed when they uncover fraud. Another ...
Good morning, and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Indonesia to send contaminated recycling back to NZ, LAWA report shows water quality dropping at more sites than not, and Spark Sport suffers harsh weekend.Shipping containers full of contaminated recycling could be shipped back to New Zealand, Anna Whyte from One News reported ...
Solomon Islands and Kiribati last week dramatically switched diplomatic allegiances from Taiwan to China, a shift with possibly wide-ranging implications writes Stephen Hoadley of the University of Auckland. ...
Jacinda Ardern has a busy agenda for her second trip to the annual leaders' week, not least a high-profile sit-down with US President Donald Trump. ...
An Auckland mayoral candidate has reacted furiously to an advertising approach from Māori Television, which he says was a pay-for-play offer of coverage. Alex Braae reports. Craig Lord, a long-shot candidate for the Auckland mayoralty, has described an advertising offer from Māori Television as inappropriate, and close to “extortion.”In an email ...
Two important World Cup contests played out on Saturday night; one of which has consequences not just for this tournament in Japan, but possibly the next one in France, too. ...
Until our mental health system gets its promised overhaul, we need to find cost-effective and creative ways for mental health professionals to increase their awareness across all areas of diversity. ...
Two important World Cup contests played out on Saturday night; one of which has consequences not just for this tournament in Japan, but possibly the next one in France, too. ...
Assessing the fallout – for better and for worse – of Spark’s dismal RWC debut.The worst fears of Spark came true over the weekend, as issues impacted its stream of the All Blacks’ pivotal matchup with South Africa, leading to it transferring the livestream to TVNZ’s Duke. The following day ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Scott Morrison was frank, when quizzed at a news conference during his visit to Washington, on whether he would be seeking to travel to China in the next year. “Well, you have to be invited ...
By Michael Andrew Social media and tech industries have been replicating the ugliest aspects of capitalism from the 1800s, according to an AUT computer science lecturer. Associate Professor Tony Clear says that social media and tech executives are taking advantage of unregulated markets in a similar way as wealthy ...
Covering Climate Now: There’s a range of dairy-free ice creams available these days, but it’s a fair bet none will be as delicious – or satisfying – as making your own. The Spinoff’s participation in Covering Climate Now is made possible thanks to Spinoff Members. Join us here!If the latest stats ...
Covering Climate Action: Ahead of the UN’s Climate Action Summit, artist Joseph Michael and composer Rhian Sheehan teamed up to create Voices For The Future, a 30-minute installation projected onto the UN buildings.The Spinoff’s participation in Covering Climate Now is made possible thanks to Spinoff Members. Join us here!Joseph Michael is ...
New Zealand banning Huawei’s 5G network equipment won’t impact you nearly as much as the US’s recent moves against Huawei phones, writes Henry Burrell. Twenty years ago, you would have shown off your flash new Ericsson or Nokia. How times change. Now, those two entities exist only to provide mobile network ...
Op-Ed by Kaveh Zahedi, Deputy Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP)Kaveh Zahedi is Deputy Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP).In less than ten days world leaders will be ...
Grant McDougall reviews Kilgour’s new solo album, Bobbie’s A Girl, which sees him reflecting on the deaths of his friend and former bandmate, Peter Gutteridge and his own mother, Helen Kilgour. There is a passage in Shayne Carter’s excellent recent autobiography, Dead People I Have Known, in which he describes ...
New Zealand painter-poet Gregory O’Brien has just published a new collection of essays and art; pitched as a “field notebook … my whale survey”, Always Song in the Water drifts from his own front lawn in Hataitai, up to Northland and way, way across the Pacific. It’s the sort of ...
Ruby Porterlooks into New Zealand’s future when the sea level rises 10, 25 and 80 metres, and finds out how much of Auckland will be left.I grew up in Ponsonby, but the only bay I knew around here was Cox’s. It’s fed by a creek which was once a mahinga ...
Opening up a skid pad, create more housing for single people and make the central city dog friendly: policies from Christchurch's lesser-known mayoral candidates. ...
Josie Adams, Hayden Donnell, and Alice Webb-Liddall read thousands of policy statements to find the climate change deniers, fudgers, prevaricators (and believers) running in our local elections.The Spinoff local election coverage is made possible thanks to The SpinoffMembers. For more about becoming a member and supporting The Spinoff’s journalism click here.One of the problems ...
The paintings of Colin McCahon convey dissonance and uncertainty, writes Shannon Te Ao. So what does this say about us? And why are we maintaining this Pākehā male narrative at the expense of more inclusive representation?Colin McCahon would have turned 100 on August the 1st. If you keep one eye ...
Open mike 04/05/2013 
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Get Back Jojo! The elation in Mayor Phil Goff’s camp may be easily imagined as they watched social media light up in indignation at challenger John Tamihere’s "Sieg Heil to that" quip. Just when JT’s notoriously right-wing, sexist and homophobic stains were beginning to fade back into his ‘colourful’ past, ...4 days ago
Patrick Gower is good value when he's high. Not that I've ever, you know, got stoned with him. But in the second part of his documentary Patrick Gower on Weed, he does what you'd expect in a modern weed documentary and immerses himself – first with a doctor, then a ...5 days ago
We surveyed candidates on their attitudes to issues facing the Western Bay Region, find out what they think: “Closing the Gap” Tauranga, one of the area groups of Income Equality Aotearoa NZ Inc., has surveyed all candidates in the three local body elections to discover attitudes to some basic issues ...5 days ago
Why is New Zealand climate change policy so crap? The Herald this morning has a long article on the twists and turns of climate change policy in New Zealand [paywalled / depaywall script], which shows where we've been. The short version is that the government first began worrying about this ...5 days ago
The All Blacks have been, for more than a century, arguably the most successful International sports team in the world. But they are more than that; even for those Kiwis who are immune to the charms of rugby (and there are more than a few), the All Blacks are ambassadors ...5 days ago
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Dangerous Foes: For those readers of Bowalley Road who feel disposed to dismiss any prospect of an Israeli destabilisation of New Zealand politics, the example of the United Kingdom repays close attention. Ever since the election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the British Labour Party, the Israelis have sanctioned, funded and ...1 week ago
Make It 16, the youth-led campaign to lower New Zealand's voting age, is holding an official campaign launch at Parliament this Friday from 16:30. If you'd like to attend, you can register using EventBrite here. ...1 week ago
by Don Franks It was a lovely sunny Wellington afternoon with blue skies above the beaches. In Courtenay Place, political activists packed out a stuffy upstairs room for an important meeting. The assembled pacifists, anarchists, communists and independent young radicals of Peace Action Wellington felt the need for a mission ...1 week ago
From the Wall Street Journal:Inside a room of the ornately decorated Hotel du Palais during last month’s Group of Seven summit in Biarritz, France, President Trump awaited a meeting with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi. Mr. Trump looked over a gathering of American and Egyptian officials and called out in ...1 week ago
Those close to the Police Minister believe the initiative may be the result of Nash “seeing a great deal” on AliExpress. In a move that comes seemingly out of nowhere, Police Minister Stuart Nash announced this afternoon that he expects all frontline staff to don bearskin hats, famously worn by ...1 week ago
Moving And Shaking: There was a time when people spoke matter-of-factly about the “labour movement” – a political phenomenon understood to embrace much more than the Labour Party. Included within the term’s definition was the whole trade union movement – many of whose members looked upon the Labour Party as ...1 week ago
By Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern I am every bit as angry as you are. I am every bit as disappointed as you must be. The people with power, oversight and the ability to do something about these processes within the Labour Party should be ashamed. Whoever those people are, I ...2 weeks ago
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By Simon Bridges. The following is a press release from the office of Simon Bridges, leader of The National Party. Key ora, New Zealand. Happy Maori Language Week. Look, I’m writing to you today because I want to clear something up. There’s been a lot of kerfuffle around some things ...2 weeks ago
Dr. Christopher Labos and Jonathan Jarry discuss the recent Canadian fluoride/IQ research. They provide an expert analysis of the paper and its problems. Click on image to go to podcast. The critical debate about the recent ... 2 weeks ago
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There appears to be consensus – by omission – that the concept of indigenous futures should be accepted at face value. So I scavenged the internet to see if I could locate an academic descriptor or a framework around how we think about it as a concept, and whether it ...2 weeks ago
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An essay and review by Russell Brown in response to a newly-published guide to the future: medical cannabis. ...5 hours ago
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Op-Ed by Kaveh Zahedi, Deputy Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP)
Grant McDougall reviews Kilgour’s new solo album, Bobbie’s A Girl, which sees him reflecting on the deaths of his friend and former bandmate, Peter Gutteridge and his own mother, Helen Kilgour. There is a passage in Shayne Carter’s excellent recent autobiography, Dead People I Have Known, in which he describes ...1 day ago
New Zealand painter-poet Gregory O’Brien has just published a new collection of essays and art; pitched as a “field notebook … my whale survey”, Always Song in the Water drifts from his own front lawn in Hataitai, up to Northland and way, way across the Pacific. It’s the sort of ...1 day ago
Ruby Porter looks into New Zealand’s future when the sea level rises 10, 25 and 80 metres, and finds out how much of Auckland will be left.I grew up in Ponsonby, but the only bay I knew around here was Cox’s. It’s fed by a creek which was once a mahinga ...1 day ago
The paintings of Colin McCahon convey dissonance and uncertainty, writes Shannon Te Ao. So what does this say about us? And why are we maintaining this Pākehā male narrative at the expense of more inclusive representation?Colin McCahon would have turned 100 on August the 1st. If you keep one eye ...2 days ago
“A head teacher of a leading primary school has said young children should not have best friends because it could leave others feeling ostracised and hurt. But are people programmed to have best friends?”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22383453
Al1en no mates says what?
This is the kind of lunacy passed off as progressive / humanist philosophy that gives social conservatives a stick with which to beat progressive humanists. I can’t even begin to get on the same mental wavelength as the idiots who propound such facile notions. What kind of mind wakes up in the morning and thinks; “Eureka! We’ll save the lonely children from having hurt feelings by banning friendship and hugs among the children who are lucky enough to have discovered a friend.” A special kind of genius indeed..
My view is that this sort of rubbish comes from a defeated part of the wider “left” that gave up on all the important battles, but still wanted a few victories. It’s the same sort of rubbish that outlaws black as a colour for rubbish bins and is used to hold us all up to ridicule. I hate it, although not in the same way that Back Pussy Tamihere does.
Good analysis
But please, no more gender biased language, the fairer sex might get offended
Actually, if you look at the article, it comes from one published in the Daily Torygraph. The headmaster who suggested that best friends should be banned, is the head of a private prep school – hardly the bastion of left wing policy, I’d have thought. He said he’d support a policy against having best friends, as long as it was age appropriate: ie older kids could make up their own minds about it.
Actually, while I am totally happy with kids of any age choosing to have best friends, I think there’s a whole US-led thing that’s kind of institutionalised the whole best friends thing. They’ve made it seem almost compulsory.
I learned something about the US constitutional right to bear arms on Al Jazeera this morning, which gave a lot of times to the issue and the sanely mad gun lobby. It seems the 2nd amendment said that citizens have the right to bear arms as part of a well organised militia.
Well, it seems that is debated. However, the original intent of the amendment was relevant to the context of the time when the amendment was drawn up. At that time citizens’ militia were common because there wasn’t the organised military and National Guard that there is today.
Is that one of the problems of a written constitution? Seems like a good idea at the time and all makes sense but over the years it becomes so entrenced that changes are almost impossible and the Parlimentry process loses the capability to effect change.
America would be better off with fewer guns, most places are better of with fewer guns, but with the second amendment they always get stuck.
This is one of the things that concerns me about NZ creating a written constitution, who would write it? How would everyone ever agree? Will it still be relevant in 50 years? What would we be getting our great grand kids into? Will they spend all their time arguing that if the comma in paragraph seven of subsection 12a was placed four words to the left then nano heart valve replacement is a human right?
“This is one of the things that concerns me about NZ creating a written constitution, who would write it? How would everyone ever agree? Will it still be relevant in 50 years? “
Agree, Jane. The second amendment is the example I use of a problem with a written constitution. Unless it can be renegotiated to fit the times it will at some stage be inappropriate. And if it can be negotiated how is that any better than the lawmaking and judicial interpretation of laws that we have now?
We wouldn’t have to model our constitution after the US. The one South Africa adopted after the end of apartheid would be a better example to follow.
And remember, the second amendment was an amendment. It was itself a change to the constitution when the Bill of Rights was adopted.
We don’t need a constitution – it would be totally redundant in our mature, robust, flexible Westminster system. This is just the National Party’s thirty silver shekels to the Maori Party. And while the second amendment is an amendment, it has proven impossible for progressives to shift it. A constitution would just give conservatives and the right something to project on to.
identify then
Don’t be a tool.
well, I thought your comment was very deviceive.possibly even nailed it.
Your gnomic comment could be taken many ways
hope you are not brushing aside your own talents
We need something to act as a check on parliamentary supremacy, be it an upper house, an elected head of state with a right of veto or supreme law the courts can apply, I am uncomfortable with so much power in this country being concentrated in the hands of so few, especially with the civil liberties shenanigans in recent years such as the Search and Surveillance Act and the proposed changes to the GCSB legislation. It should be systematically impossible for lawmakers to override fundamental rights, not just a matter of trusting in them.
That’s why we have Separation of Powers and a Constitutional Monarchy.
The NZ system doesn’t have any separation of powers, the executive and the legislative branches are the same people, and the judicial branch has a duty to the Crown which is common with the other two branches.
Also, the NZ system is not a constitutional monarchy.
“Her Majesty therefore being desirous to establish a settled form of Civil Government”
http://www.waitangi-tribunal.govt.nz/treaty/english.asp
New Zealand’s constitution is based on the principle of separation of powers between Parliament, executive government, and the judiciary through a series of constitutional safeguards, many of which are tacit. The Executive’s ability to carry out decisions often depends on the Legislature, which is elected under the Mixed Member Proportional system. This means the government is rarely a single party but a coalition of parties. The Judiciary is also free of government interference. If a series of judicial decisions result in an interpretation of the law which the Executive considers does not reflect the intention of the policy, the Executive can initiate changes to the legislation in question through the Legislature. The Executive cannot direct or request a judicial officer to revise or reconsider a decision;decisions are final. Should there be a dispute between the Executive and Judiciary, the Executive has no authority to direct the Judiciary, or its individual members and vice versa.
Yes, that’s what they tell the peasants, but it’s mostly bullshit.The separation of powers is a feature of Roman law called the triumvirate. The constitution is based on the unwritten constitution of England, which forms the basis of English common law and the law of the land in New Zealand. The civil law (originally Roman) and the common law (originally Judaic) are philosophically different systems, Roman law was the law of the empire and the predator, English law was the law of the land and the wellbeing of the people.
So basically you just said that New Zealand law is founded in English law and English law is “the law of the land and the wellbeing of the people”. Did you suffer whiplash with that confusing u-turn?
“It should be systematically impossible for lawmakers to override fundamental rights”
It is. But that doesn’t stop them pretending to make law regardless.
Which can and has been successfully challenged, often by means of an Ombudsman, the modern Tribune. And I can distinctly recall that even a total Nat like Chris Finlayson has actually performed his job as Attorney-General and told his party that a law they wanted to pass was unconstitutional.
Populuxel, the NZ system is a civil system, it is not the same as the English Westminster system.
In as much as we have MMP and other constitutional peculiarities unique to NZ, we still rely primarily on constitutional law (British model), not civil law (European model). We are still therefore a variation on the Westminster system.
That’s plainly wrong. The NZ body politic uses the European/civil model.
“Her Majesty therefore being desirous to establish a settled form of Civil Government”
http://www.waitangi-tribunal.govt.nz/treaty/english.asp
Most people simply have no idea as to the extent and nature of the fraud committed by the state against the people of this country. The treaty was also a fraud, and the state misleads people about the nature of common law.
I really can’t be bothered trying to educate you on the various meanings of the word “civil”, but suffice to say “Civil Government” (general civility) doesn’t mean “Civil Law” (technical term for the European system of law making that evolved out of the Roman system)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_law_(legal_system)
Populuxel, your own source contradicts you.
Civil law (or civilian law) is a legal system originating in Western Europe, intellectualized within the framework of late Roman law, and whose most prevalent feature is that its core principles are codified into a referable system which serves as the primary source of law.
BTW, Wikipedia is crap for information on law.
Who is our head of state?
Written constitutions are good for constitutional lawyers. I’m happy with Te Tiriti, and would be happier with a stronger Bill of Rights, an Official Information Act with teeth, and a well funded and fiercely independent Ombudsman. The Soviet Union also had a wonderful constitution, and human rights were about as well protected there as they are in the US and A. The main danger of a Kiwi constitution is that it could be used to deny Te Tiriti and entrench pakeha ruling class privilege even further.
“The Soviet Union also had a wonderful constitution, and human rights were about as well protected there as they are in the US and A.”
Hahahahahahaha ahahahaha *snort* ahahahaha *snort snort* hahahahaha Oh my spleen hurts from laughing hahahahahahaha
The framers of the constitution thought that a standing army would be a tool of oppression, given their experience of British troops before the Revolution. So they wanted to make provision for a militia. There is provision for a navy in the US Constitution, but no army.
Sturm, Ruger is a leading manufacturer of firearms in the US.
They are currently selling 500,000 firearms a quarter, and has an order backlog of 2M firearms.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-04-29/weaponized-america-sturm-ruger-backlog-doubles-gun-production-shipments-surge
saw an article on the nooz about marketing of weapons to children in the US.”Daisy Daisy, give me an airgun too…”
If we’re serious about tackling law and order in NZ we should approve the concealed carry of handguns to anyone who passes a background check.
I mean, what could go wrong?
well, I might have for a start. (I grew up with the Molenaar crowd, his best mates sister etc).
”Daisy Daisy, give me an airgun too…”
“We’ll go shooting, our sister aged only two..”
The US Constitution was written by the rich and powerful behind closed doors. There is NOTHING moral or ethical about it.
Example: For purposes of representation in the House of Representatives, northern delegates said enslaved Negroes should not be counted as part of the population because they have no more rights than horses or dogs. The south wanted them counted as “voters” because in some areas slaves were 90% of the population. So the constitution says one slave is three-fifths of a voter!
The way to keep our laws and constitution contemporary is binding referendums which cannot be overturned by parliament.
There’s a really good primer on US history at http://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8dPuuaLjXtMwmepBjTSG593eG7ObzO7s
Yes, it was mainly money behind the revolution, but enlightenment philosophers like Locke had their impact too.
That’s what the 14th amendment is for.
Personally, I think the US constitution was ground breaking in its day in terms of assuring the rights of US citizens. Generally ignored now of course.
Orlov would say that the parallels between the USSR and the USA are now unmistakeable.
Agree with Viper. In it’s time the Constitution guaranteed freedoms, legally, like no other founding document.
Without wanting to sound too much like a libertarian…in the last ten years Federal intrusion into the life of ordinary US citizens has become massive.
Some estimates say that the US has spent $700B beefing up internal surveillance and security on its own citizens since 9/11.
And in the wake of the Boston marathon bombing the talk is to ramp this up even further. Even though hundreds of CCTV cameras, police, bomb squad sweeps, email and social media scanning in the immediate area etc couldn’t prevent it.
Yeah, but it was the privacy intrusions that might have prevented another. That’s the security compromise.
I was in favour of heightened security post9/11, not to stop terrorists but to stop yahoos smuggling on weapons to take out terrorists. But they should have been short lived. Now domestic security is part of the military-industrial complex.
The scale of growth of the security services in the US – especially given the amounts going to security contractors as well to develop domestic security hardware & software – sounds staggering. I get the impression more and more Americans are becoming extremely uneasy at how much power US officialdom is getting to spy on them.
Inside Top Secret America:
I might have agreed with you once, but when you also consider the systematic attempts to suspend habeas corpus, legalising the state sponsored assassination of American citizens, militarisation of law enforcement, etc it looks more and more like something other than a war against terror. More like a war against your own citizens.
Yep, once you read the history behind the US constitution it becomes obvious that the framers weren’t out to produce a free country but to set up their own aristocracy. Unfortunately for them the people who’d just been doing all the fighting wanted something different and so they got a democracy but a democracy that could be controlled by the rich – representative democracy.
“Yep, once you read the history behind the US constitution it becomes obvious that the framers weren’t out to produce a free country but to set up their own aristocracy.”
What utter crap.
No, my turnip came up with the same analysis as DTB
How is your new Scandinavian friend anyway? No prurient interest intended..
My beloved turnip and I will be together forever.
Because when you set up an aristocracy the first thing you do is introduce laws against nobility and define term length, election laws as well as allowing any citizen to be president.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_of_Nobility_Clause
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_Two_of_the_United_States_Constitution
Seriously Draco, what are you talking about?
You need to read a little more history Contrarian. The framers of the Declaration of independence and American Constitution did not envisage a democratic republic with universal rights and suffrage as I understand it. One of the key contributors to the drafting of the constitution was James Madison. I don’t know the copy / paste rules but here is a selection from Wikipedia quoting Madison.
“In England, at this day, if elections were open to all classes of people, the property of landed proprietors would be insecure. An agrarian law would soon take place. If these observations be just, our government ought to secure the permanent interests of the country against innovation. Landholders ought to have a share in the government, to support these invaluable interests, and to balance and check the other. They ought to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority. The Senate, therefore, ought to be this body; and to answer these purposes, they ought to have permanency and stability.”
–James Madison, quoted in Notes of the Secret Debates of the Federal Convention of 1787
James Madison’s comments were but one of many. The Constitution, as written, offers no special protections to the rich or noble – despite the above quote.
If they were trying to set up their own aristocracy then they somehow manged to draft a document which did the exact opposite.
Perhaps you should go back and read what Draco (and I) actually said. We mentioned the original intentions and wishes of many of the landowning (and slave owning) oligarchical delegates. Yes, in the end after much debate a very interesting constitution was produced. A majority of delegates initially refused to sign it and full ratification by the States took quite some time. But it still didn’t grant full participatory democracy or universal suffrage. Here is an excerpt lifted from Wikipedia about Madison’s family background:
His father, James Madison, Sr. (1723–1801), was a tobacco planter who grew up on a plantation, then called Mount Pleasant, in Orange County, Virginia, which he had inherited upon reaching adulthood. He later acquired more property and slaves; with 5,000 acres (2,000 ha), he became the largest landowner and a leading citizen of Orange County, in the Piedmont. James Jr.’s mother, Nelly Conway Madison (1731–1829), was born at Port Conway, the daughter of a prominent planter and tobacco merchant and his wife. Madison’s parents were married on September 15, 1749.[6][7] In these years the southern colonies were becoming a slave society, in which slave labor powered the economy and slaveholders formed the political élite.[8]
Madison was not atypical of many of the founding fathers and I’m sure you’re aware that it took over one and a half centuries before universal suffrage and full rights as citizens before the law was extended to the whole population.
James Madison’s history is irrelevant.
Please point to which part of the Constitution attempted to institute an aristocracy. States not ratifying it is like saying, hypothetically, because Auckland didn’t agree to be nuclear free 10 years after NZ law decided to be nuclear free means that law was designed to be nuclear friendly.
“We mentioned the original intentions and wishes of many of the landowning”
No, you mentioned one. One =/= many
” I’m sure you’re aware that it took over one and a half centuries before universal suffrage and full rights as citizens before the law was extended to the whole population.”
You also forget that “the whole population” as it is now doesn’t represent the same population in historical perpetuity. For example, Alaska only became part of the union in 1959. Before that it wasn’t beholden to the Constitution so of course the adoption of the Constitution wasn’t extended to all the States.
Hence the civil war
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_date_of_statehood
don’t you people have a gnome to go to?
Contrarian: Sigh. For Pete’s sake do some reading. Madison was far from being a lone voice. The delegate’s went in having been expected to carry out a limited job by the States that appointed them, decided off their own bat to increase their own mandate and initially many of them envisaged something that fell far short of representative democracy with universal suffrage. This is (with certain license for the sake of brevity), historical fact. If you doubt it DO THE READING>>
As for universal suffrage: All males regardless of race or land ownership was 1870 (15th amendment, nearly 100 years after the constitution was drafted) but many southern states effectively barred most blacks from voting through such things as literacy tests. The 19th amendment gave women the vote in 1920. I can’t remember where I read it but I believe some Indian tribe/s in some states didn’t get the vote until the early to mid 1970’s.
“Near full enfranchisement was realized in 1965 with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the ratification of the 24th Amendment in 1964” Wikipedia.
You’re really not too hot on concepts like “historical context” are you. Law is a continual process that evolves in response to social change.
And that is the sole reason why we have representative democracy rather than participatory democracy. It’s not a fear of Mob Rule but the fear of the rich that the people would take back their wealth.
As YOU understand it, from the benefit from over two hundred years of social progress and a radically different worldview. Try reading it in the context of a former British colony in the late eighteenth century and it’s as progressive and democratic as fuck. What you just said was the equivalent of saying that Fifth Century BC Athens wasn’t a democracy because their society didn’t recognise women or slaves as citizens while completely failing to acknowledge it was the most progressive state in the region because all authority wasn’t in the hands of a single tyrant.
I think the point is that the the framers were well aware of, for example Athens. They understood ‘democracy’ and ‘republic’ very well. they deliberately opted for the latter with democratic aspects.
The house of reps is the most democratic part of the infrastructure, and the weakest. that’s not a coincidence, it was by design.
Which isn’t to say it isn’t a fine document given its time, but to claim it as progressive as all fuck, given what we know they knew and decided to do, is just daft.
Napoleon was arguably more ‘progressive’ than the US framers. Inasmuch as ‘progressive’ means anything.
The point that Draco was making and I was backing him up over was about what some, perhaps a majority, of the delegates first envisaged at the beginning of the process. It is indeed remarkable that given the time in which they lived and class from which many of them came that they eventually produced (after lengthy and heated debate) the document which became the constitution. You would have to be totally unread and or delusional however to believe that all of the lovely words about the rights of man etc were intended by all the delegates to mean all men and all women and all races in all states of the union at all times from the moment the constitution was signed and ratified. It most certainly wasn’t and I gave some examples above of ways in which it wasn’t.
A claim that no one here has actually made.
Not in quite so many words perhaps but Contrarians vehement “What utter crap”, in response to Draco’s assertion that many of the founding fathers were essentially oligarchs looking to preserve their privileged status against the non land owning and essentially inferior (in the case of women and non-whites) was the next best thing.
“You’re really not too hot on concepts like “historical context” are you. Law is a continual process that evolves in response to social change.”
In the American context it evolved pretty damned late compared to most of the other western democracies didn’t it?
Populuxe 3.37
“in the context of a former British colony in the late eighteenth century and it’s as progressive and democratic as fuck.”
Yes it was as progressive and democratic as fuck at the time for a certain class, gender and race..
No shit? Really? You mean the eighteenth century mindset isn’t anything like a twentyfirst or even twentieth century mindset? Well fuck me!
So you agree that it was in fact a very limited form of democratic republicanism which reserved many rights for a privileged class?
Funny, I thought that was precisely what Draco and I were saying.
I actually said several times it was very advanced for it’s day and laid a foundation for some powerful ideas about human and civil rights which have evolved over the last two centuries, but I’m not going to say it was a document which stood for the equal civil rights of the “common man” regardless of social station just to please The Contrarian and yourself, because I don’t believe those things to be true based on my reading of the history.
What was being contested was the suggestion that the constitution was deliberately framed to create an aritsocracy in anything but name. Given that the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are, at least in their language, virtually identical to many anarchist AND libertarian manifestos. Hence the sharp intake of breath as I paused over my port and stilton at the suggestion.
The right to bear arms as part a well organised militia is still a crucial test of citizenship.
I’d like to see Al Jazeera spend less time on the gun lobby in the US and more examing the implications of that principle in Bahrain. But I’m not holding my breath.
The next election has to be mainly about one thing .. turnout, turnout, turnout ..
I was shocked at the level of voter apathy with all but empty polling booths
in my electorate.
In previous years I remember long queues snaking around the block.
The key is social media for the young and public meetings for the senior members of our society.
Don’t forget giving people something to vote for: strong policies and a credible government in waiting.
I agree
did ppl queue up ever? i been voting for 20 years & i have never seen that, i always thought a plus in our voting system was the whole process took about 10-15 minutes, i dont ever recall ppl queueing, but just am asking was it common once in nz for there to be queues of ppl waiting to vote?
i think alot of ‘older’ guys have to go rark up some of the young at the next election, motivate them to vote. young cousins, neices, nephews, service workers, etc…just bring it up all the time, closer to the time.
Never has been long queues while I’ve been around. Longest I ever had was about 15 minutes in Ponsonby after I moved back to Auckland from back up from Dunedin and had to do a special vote because I hadn’t told the electoral commission. There was someone in front of me that had changed their name
Our paper system is far far far better than the machine/electronic systems used in the US. Which honestly to me seems like a rort.
http://metro.co.uk/2012/11/07/faulty-machines-anger-and-longer-queues-than-iraq-in-us-election-614617/
The day we go to computer voting is the day we lose all hope of peaceful political change.
Volumes have been written about the blatant corruption of America’s computer voting systems. Once it’s in, you’ll never get rid of it. The people who hack it for their own purposes won’t let you.
In the old days they’d just tip the voting machines into the bottom of Lake Michigan.
Computerised voting would simply bring about the ability to do it faster, more efficiently, and on a massive scale.
The following testimony around rigging computer voting machines was given to a US court:
Don’t forget the hanging chads.
I figure that an electronic system could be as secure as a paper system. In fact, I think it may be more so if done correctly. But it must be done correctly and the US system isn’t – the US system has been done to funnel wealth into the hands of business.
Nah, keep technology out of it. It just fragilises things. We don’t need power cuts, broadband drop outs and server crashes screwing election day.
CV, remember hanging chads, paper can get wet, blow away, be as easily tampered with, can catch fire etc etc.
A simple electronic machine, with battery back-up, NOT connected to a network and runs on simple binary:
Labour: 0
National: 1
Green: 01
ACT 10
etc etc.
Piece of cake.
Well, it’s been a few years since any ballot boxes caught fire…the last time that an IT system went down losing data on the other hand…
Also we don’t need the friend of a brother of an MP getting the tender/shouldertap for organising the leadup, the ballot and the counting and dissemination of end results.
You have to be very trusting, to the point of infantile to not realise the vast field for finagling and carefully managed sharp practices to be loaded into the system. It is possible though that many adults do have this infantile tendency – a bit of brain missing such as in John Cleese saying ‘Madam is this a pea, or is it part of your brain’. They’d say check it out on-line, the computer can’t lie.
I agree Draco, there’s no reason on the face of it that an electronic system can’t be secure and trustworthy. It would definitely require open source code available to anyone who requested it; I guess the tricky part is that you have to prove the source code you’re looking at is the same source code that is being run on the machine.
Nope. No system is unhackable – none. The only unhackable machine is one that’s switched off, unplugged, and buried in a lead-lined safe in a Farraday Cage in a concrete vault….
“There will be no networked computers on my Battlestar!!!”
Of course, Pop, the point is that you ensure the program that is running on the machine is the one that was scrutinised, and do everything possible to stop other programs from being run on it. I expect this would mean some sort of ‘trusted computing’ situation, where the HW will only run software that is signed with the appropriate authentication certificate, similar to how Blu-Ray and PS3 worked for only running trusted discs/games. That would mean even if someone plugged in a USB drive to try and load SW onto it, the SW wouldn’t execute unless they could sign it with the proper encryption key. You could potentially go even further, and write SW that is vetted by experts for exploits etc (using Formal Methods I guess?), and then translate that into a fixed HW circuit, so that the machine was physically incapable of doing anything other than run the specified program – this would be a very expensive route to take though.
In the US case, it seems the program being run on it wasn’t scrutinised and itself was rigged, rather than someone else coming along later and hacking it.
anyway, for you engineering-related types, this is just Wow! 😀 (big smiley)
the 3 D printing of body tissues followed by Organs.
Ten years away? Sounds like the state of fusion power since 1965.
I never count on this stuff happening until they can say its 12 months away…
The problem is that all that requires specialist checking.
Whereas any mumpty on the street can see that army officers stuffing ballot boxes is a bit dodgey.
Loading them into the back of an unmarked ute with no receipts or paperwork signed…
Yep, and that includes the paper system we use today. It’s difficult to do but not impossible. The same applies to electronic voting – just need to put in place the correct protocols. Username, 16 character alpha-numeric password and a security token and the chances of the system being hacked drop to minuscule.
16 character alphanumeric password?
How many people is this going to stop voting?
CV
I decided to buy something on ebay and spent what seemed like hours negotiating the system as I couldn’t remember my password or id.
Got through in the end because I just got determined and bloody minded and I knew if I succeeded I would get what I personally wanted.
Unlike voting, where you hope that the crowd you vote for will succeed to get the numbers and then will deliver the good policies. But I can’t have as much faith in that as I have in my parcel being delivered from the United States.
“there’s no reason on the face of it that an electronic system can’t be secure and trustworthy.”
Relevant to all y’all interests:
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/514581/government-lab-reveals-quantum-internet-operated-continuously-for-over-two-years/
“The next election has to be mainly about one thing .. turnout, turnout, turnout .. ”
That is correct.
However, speaking as a Labour member where L stands first for Loyalty, with things as they are at the moment, the current leader and deputy are a turnoff, turnoff, turnoff ..
The public evisceration of Happy Gilmore continues. Last night Campbell live did a scathing review of Gilmore’s past difficulties and his blown up sense of worth …
http://www.3news.co.nz/Inside-the-mind-of-Aaron-Gilmore/tabid/367/articleID/296444/Default.aspx
And this morning Stuff also reviews his history and it is not pretty …
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/8631574/Gilmore-has-colourful-history
The question is raised, if Lianne Dalziel retires to have a crack at the Christchurch Mayoralty what will National do? Gilmore was the candidate in Christchurch East for the past two elections. If he stood in the by election he could be the most memorial since Melissa Lee …
it’s all ok, the country is in good hands, we have no reasons to be concerned
http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/john-key-third-most-ridiculous-world-leader-list-5426385
yes it is a list on the internet so means nothing, but still, “of All Time.” !!
Only third freedom? Well he has to try harder to become number 1. Send in the mincing walk?
An odd comment at the end of a Gilmore piece, about:
“Prime Minister John Key is under pressure to discipline shamed MP Aaron Gilmore over allegations of sleazy conduct towards a woman at his infamous boozy dinner. ”
……”A spokeswoman for Mr Key said his office had not been made aware of allegations of an inappropriate advance….”
Wonder what that means?
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/8631499/PM-facing-calls-to-deal-to-MP
Sounds like he did an impromptu tango and went forwards when he should have gone backwards. Those tricky political steps can be confusing.
Also incredibly easy to believe. I get pretty sick of executive types slobbering over my wife on the odd occasion we have to deal with them. One idiot even suggested she remove her clothes and do a samba on a restaurant table, apparently finding this appropriate because she’s Brazilian. Years back I had a girlfriend who did some work at some sort of NAct convention. She told me some pretty appalling stories about their sleazy conduct.
MO
I remember hearing a story about an IRD party back near the day when a bloke was writing about them in a book called ‘Be Very Afraid’. I’m not sure whether he was the one who committed suicide because of the burden of their relentless compound penalty interest.
The story goes that one of the young bloods got filled up with some liquid then stood on a table dropped his trousers and turned round as fast as he could, emulating a lawn sprayer.
Could be wrong but what an imagination to think up a story like that, if it was made up. It sounds possible because there was a tide of uncontrollable hubris then.
This has been waiting about an hour for release from moderation. Perhaps after the next tv program finishes.
[lprent: it happens, especially on weekend evenings, ]
lprent Yes I shouldn’t be so niggly – excuse – feeling tired and stressed. Which is BAU for a lot of people on this blog I know.
Slurrin’ Uuron ?
That TV3 clip was more banal and irrelevant than anything I’ve seen on Seven Sharp.
Since when was a Tory being an offensive, self-important wanker a hanging offence. I remember when it was mandatory…
“the most memorial since Melissa Lee …”
You spelt forgettable wrong.
The only thing I know about Melissa Lee is from her by-election attempt and the Waterview crims line.
What Happens When Students Are Simply Free To Learn?
Apparently, they go out and learn about stuff that interests them and find that learning is fun rather than the chore that school normally is.
Years ago there were classrooms set up to develop the kids ability to self manage learning. Kids responded with intensity. But parents were uneasy. The learning did not look packaged and formal. So “projects” were born to counteract the misconceptions. Sadly Projects became a return to teacher managed learning.
It is said that if a teacher from 100 years ago appeared in a modern classroom, he would easily identify what was happening today. The tools have changed but the process has not. Prescribed learning and all that.
Interesting. Have just pulled my son out of mainstream education and we are going for a democratic school (don’t really like that term but whatever). There are choices out there and some of those choices are designed for the children rather than the state or factories. I am constantly amazed by how some people disrespect children and treat them like idiots – they aren’t, they are people with individual attributes and deserve respect and support so they can grow into thinkers and lifelong learners.
Yes. (within idiosyncratic developmental time-frames).
Well start a charter school then.
Why when the present system could do it?
Presumably the present state system can’t because it’s based on certain quite functional principles of standardised learning, socialisation, and economy of scale. For choice there are a range of private schools, religious schools, Montessori schools, Steiner schools, Democratic schools, Te Reo immersion schools etc – the only difference between them and charter schools being that the others are held to a state monotored standard with professional teachers. Were Charter Schools to be held to the same standards, I wouldn’t have a problem with it.
Diverting public funds for private profit. Just great.
Oh yep, them bloody Maori and Steiner schools. And what if that private profit was going to a co-op or iwi? Do exercise that grey matter.
check out ivan illich – deschooling
Ivan Illich
Ah, when I started out in education, deschooling was a big topic in the training colleges and amongst educationists. I was majorly into Summerhill kind of school, deschooling, etc in the 70s – found them inspiring….. then along came Thatcher et al..
I’ve only ever taught professionally at the university level, but I try to impose as little structure on the process as possible. Perhaps the most important thing I can get across is that they need to develop an ability to evaluate their own answers. The second is that there is more than one way to skin a cat. By and large, I get excellent feedback, but none of my lectures since 2000 have had more than about 35 students, and I would generally have one or two tutors to help. I have a real admiration for school teachers who do it by themselves with the class sizes they have, and a government which encourages people to abuse them.
Seems like charity begins at home
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/8631567/Hospitals-tax-exempt-status-criticised
Might register myself. Looks pretty effective.
“Other countries legislation changes demonstrate how incompetently the New Zealand Parliament has treated the charity sector.”
they have got to be pulling an arm and a leg. How much of this capitalist “disease” will people tolerate?
Remember that Key supposedly donates his salary to charity. He wouldn’t want it to be one that did anything charitable.
A revealing article on Stuff about Tikorangi – ” the most heavily explored and developed oil and gas area in New Zealand”
key spoke to 100 in Inglewood
“On Thursday he told an audience that the amount of wealth that exploration could release meant it was in everyones best interests to build respectful relationships with the oil companies.”
Some interesting factoids from the article
key and these companies are singing from the same songsheet and they are raising their voices in a cacophony of manipulation designed to drown out opposition to their exploitation, but it won’t work because they ignore people.
Expect plenty of glossy brochures and smiling pictures to come because that is all they have got to counter the truth of their activities.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/taranaki-daily-news/news/8631612/Black-gold-dark-clouds
From visiting a bakery, and seeing my purchase escape the till, wondering if anyone here would have said anything and if so what you would say ?
I would say, ” I think you’ve missed the Vienna loaf” or similar. I tend to point it out when I notice that I have been charged incorrectly or given the incorrect change. I do not want to put a shop assistant onto the back foot with her employer, and I do not want to be hostage to petty, grasping instincts either.
A polite curious enquiry might help. “Why doesn’t the money go in the till?” Might be a good reason for this.
It is said that the $3.99 or $19.99 was to force the till to be opened to give change rather than make the cost seem less.
And the encouragement of electronic payment methods like EFTPOS.
Interesting point re the .99 , and we worry about a few $$ that a few beneficiaries over claim, whilst such actions from business owners and trades go unabated and almost condoned or accepted as being part of the game of being in business. Pity most do not see cashies and these actions are stealing from the public purse.
I still recall a wife of a builder complaining how hard it was to spend $30 k of cashies that he earned on a job and for it not to be noticed, and we worry about feeding and housing those less fortunate. Many here do not appreciate how hard it is for the rich to live and operate & the problems they have to live under!!!!
Yeah. Poor bastards. Bet the rich all secretly wish they were beneficiaries – politics of envy.
I think I might have misunderstood your question, Herodotus. I took you to mean that the price of your purchase did not register. However, on reading ianmac’s post, it seems that you paid but the shop assistant didn’t put the money in the till. In that case I would say nothing, since it would seem to me to be busy-bodying. Perhaps she/he put that money to one side to pop across the road and buy something that the shop had just run out of, like milk for instance.
The person I paid was the owner !! I apologise for the confusion in the lack of clarification in my initial comment.
It is going on a lot and is called the black economy. No taxes paid, cash in the bag. I personally would not visit the shop anymore as one has to put the money where the mouth is -literally. My taxes are being deducted and I have no say, it seems hat a shop owner who does not pay taxes can choose. So here are some of the dollars that are missing in the social net structure.
Excellent article by Deborah Russell Massey University on wealthy people avoiding (although not evading) taxes.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/comment/columnists/8541593/Tax-avoidance-by-well-off-a-rort
Great article but it does not deal wit the cash and/or barter economy that runs parallel to the taxed one.
There are (business)people who seem to belief that they are entitled to cheat the “system”. By boasting that they have got away avoiding tax and giving that rort a revolutionary name such as “system” “government” “taxman” etc it tends to get the nod because of the wide held belief that these people are cleverer then your average punter who has to suck it up. The very same punters have yet to cotton on to the fact that they admire a cheat who has their hand in the wrong pocket and smile at you whilst robbing you blind. Of cause the “government” and the “taxman” will now ask more of the ordinary punter to cover the shortfall.
There is or was, actually a barter system for businesses that is quite widespread, and this would enable trading to be done without exchanging cash. So what is thought about that.
I belonged to a green dollars group and that is how that operated but we were just ordinary wage earners or beneficiaries, not business people.
Excuse me but i need to have a little rant about this
Not one of you have a skerrick of any wrongdoing, that includes Herodotus who only witnessed cash going somewhere other than the till in a bakery shop. Herodotus later tells us it is money going to the owner no less. Mon dieu, imagine that, a business owner taking money for a sale and doing with it what they wish. What is the world coming to? If Herodotus had a genuine concern of inappropriate activity why did he not say something? If he had, at least he would have fact based reasons for a discussion instead of a swagbag of supposition.
May I recommend to mind your own business, or are the cries of tax evasion and corruption meant to lead to louder calls for the boarding up of the premises and subsequently dragging the owner through the streets by his own scrotum? What business is it of anyone’s, except the IRD, how daily cash handling is done in a private business? By subsequent comments from Herodotus it looks like a bit of a staged discussion anyway.
In one cafe I used to work we had a ‘need change to get another coffee?’ bowl that was a tipn’share bowl. It lived on the counter and cash was constantly going in and out depending on what people needed. Not every business does, or can run, an over- invoiced receipt-driven use the right suppositry code type of operation. Life is messy and for the self employed and small businesses it is getting messier by the day. I do wonder why exactly Herodotus mentioned it, if it was’t to voice his obvious suspicion of fraud or such.
The last time you bought a new car or boat or whatever it is well off people pick up on the weekend, you did what? Handed over a credit card or similar, what account did the money go into? Are you sure it did ? How about that lawyer’s account that your trust management fees went into? You know for a fact that money is being dealt with legitmately?
Next time Herodotus, just ask the person concerned if it is such a worry, and stop casting aspersions on the characters of others, because that is exactly the sort of weak lipped snakeoil that is killing this country faster than all the fraud and theft and greed put together.
Get into the real world as someone who deals day to day in admin accounting I can see when a 2nd till operates. On your ventures out just take a look to see how often such an experience that I described occurs. Why then as I spent $8 why the $2 change came out of a 2nd tin the same as my $10 entered. There was no reason i could come up with why the till on the counter was not used and my transaction was at least not rung up. And as I mentioned before that I was serviced by the owner.
I was interested how others here would have reacted to this.
Not staged from my experiences I come across quite a few instances of tax avoidance in what I considered involving large amounts, perhaps in your world you are more fortunate in the people you deal.
H, what happens to the cash after you have paid for the product you selected, is just none of your business. The banks? maybe, regulatory agencies, possibly, tax man certainly, but unless this shop is a client of yours, it is nothing to do with you. Instead of taking aside the owner and privately voicing whatever ill-focused concerns you may have, you preferred to spend the day involved in the escalation of theoretical wrongdoings.
I believe for every malfeasance you have imagined that the owner is involved in, others could come up with a reasonable and real world alternative that is not judging someone based on nothing but your own expeiriences collected whilst scooping and bagging the effluent of your own career choices.
Get off your high horse. 15% of what we hand over to retailers is tax (GST) that we’re paying and we’ve got every right to expect it to go to the taxman. What they do with their income is their business, GST is our business because it’s our taxes not their income.
Actually, if a crime is taking place then it’s the persons responsibility to report it.
well, I do observe “floating” exchanges regularly in retail; have done for years.
Maybe the till wasn’t working and the money was being kept separate so it could be rung up later when it was fixed.
Maybe it ran out of paper.
Maybe they were having a contest to see which staff member could sell the most donuts.
Maybe they were testing out a new piggy bank.
Maybe it was a hidden camera show.
Who the fuck knows? You can keep your money in a tin if you want to. What of it?
Didn’t have you pegged as an apologist for tax dodgers, Felix. I love that, even after all of this time, you can still surprise me.
Climate Change…..
“White House warned on imminent Arctic ice death spiral
National security officials worried by rapid loss of Arctic summer sea ice overlook threat of permanent global food shortages”
“as the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projected in 2007. He said:
“The Arctic situation is snowballing: dangerous changes in the Arctic derived from accumulated anthropogenic green house gases lead to more activities conducive to further greenhouse gas emissions. This situation has the momentum of a runaway train.”
” phenomenon of “Arctic amplification”, where:
“The loss of Arctic summer sea ice and the rapid warming of the Far North are altering the jet stream over North America, Europe, and Russia. Scientists are now just beginning to understand how these profound shifts may be increasing the likelihood of more persistent and extreme weather.”
There’s a satellite video of ice in the Alaskan Beaufort sea already breaking up (First time ever so early in the spring) indicating a summer ice free Arctic this year or next with a consequent greater loss of the albedo effect and further entrapment of heat in the Earth’s climate system.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/earth-insight/2013/may/02/white-house-arctic-ice-death-spiral
From Comments section of article…
“The fossil fuels you burn are directly contributing to killing people in the future.
None of which alters the bottom line – nature will step in and correct our numbers and consumption for us. We have proven incapable of doing either. You might not like it. You might not be one of the very few with even a small chance of making it. But that is the bottom line and the outcome the richer and more powerful members of our species have voted for in continuing business as usual for so long.”
“This is a visualization of the decline in minimum volumes that makes it very clear that the Arctic will be ice free in summer soon. This is significant because it will mark the boundary of a change in state, and the effects on the Northern Hemisphere climate that we are already seeing will intensify.
It is just staggering that we are actually witnessing an event of geologic-time proportions in the space of one generation.”
You missed out one great thing about the destruction of arctic ice: massive new oil and gas fields can now be exploited.
Who said global warming was bad for the economy?
a smooth, blended, landing
or “Upstairs / Downstairs politics” (SFWU spokesman)
http://www.movie2k.to/Chasing-Ice-watch-movie-2908859.html
the buzzards did cross my mind when i was watching Chasing Ice.
The new lands, that have been unseen for millenia, were not hidden from the eyes in the sky and are probably mapped in detail and scheduled for stripping. There are shots in the film where you can almost hear them coming for the raw meat of the glacier’s wounds.
Re Post #10
More comments on the above article….
1.The normal UK weather pattern (changeable ,sunshine and some showers etc. ) in the UK has been in turmoil for the last several years. Those who spend their working lives outdoors ( Farmers etc.) spotted something was wrong immediately . It started several years ago with almost monsoon like rainstorms in mid summer and has continued in that vain ever since , whereby our weather now resembles something akin to what must go on inside a washing machine come tumble drier ! i.e. constant rain/water and almost gale force like winds. This is because the Arctic is melting at a massive rate and all the freezing air is drifting south and it is enveloping the UK , whereby in the summer it is causing abnormally cold tempratures and constant deluges of rain and high winds ! …. People who live and work in the countryside have known this for several years , however seemingly not the met office or the government, I wonder why ?
2 .Sorry, but I don’t agree , that nothing has happened that hasn’t happened before. My relatives are farmers ( doing it for several generations) and they tell me a different story. They also say that over the same period( last several years) is when the UK’s weather went into turmoil , that the strength of the Sun ( UV rays?) has also seen a dramatic change , whereby it is now impossible to go outside in mid summer for any length of time without your skin beginning to burn very quickly and where people are now being publically warned to wear sun cream/block. This all points to either a mass thinning or an actual hole in the Ozone layer over the Arctic and extending down as far as the UK , which would explain the increased strength of the Sun (UV rays?) and why the Arctic is melting at such an alarming rate.
3. Amazing isn’t it, we will get to see something that hasn’t happened for at least 700,000 years.
4. Been following this issue a long time, no surprises here. Been shouting and shouting “food and water” for years now. This is real brothers and sisters, brace for impact.
I spent a lot of time outdoors in the UK in the really hot summer of 2008, and I certainly didn’t burn. I actually ended up with a light tan which I certainly couldn’t do in NZ.
And while I don’t doubt for a minute doubt climate change, anthropogenic and otherwise, the relatively mild British weather of which you speak has actually been an anomaly that started approximately 200 years ago. Prior to that, surviving accounts show British weather to have been much more severe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age
Absence of sunspots for a couple of centuries. They were surprised as hell when they started reappearing. But it didn’t have much effect outside of Europe.
North western Europe is a canary area as far as climate goes. It is only habitable for a large community because of the gulf stream dropping heat so far north. It responds either through that heat load, or from the jetstream from the arctic to every change in the planetary heat balance.
The strangest thing is that the Brits generally aren’t aware how weird it is having one of the largest concentrations of computing power in the world to predict their weather.
Visiting my mother-in law last Saturday. I went to watch rugby at the Taieri rugby club(Mosgiel) . An incident involving a Pasifika player ensued. He was sent off. The home crowd then proceeded to slur the player with “get back on the banana boat ” the usual “thick coconut ” a a few true scumbags screaming “N word” . Fucking disgraceful. Racism is alive and well at this club. I’ve never seen such appalling behaviour at club level. I’d appreciate this getting passed round, I don’t want this in my game.
nothing has changed much then – I remember their horror when during the Tour I wore my anti-tour badge to the club – oh dear didn’t get to play for them much after that, not that I wanted to of course lol
Dr Joe Kalt on Indigenous Governance, and Dr Richard Pitts, on energy and climate change;
RNZ audio
Agreed, disgraceful, Blue. I’d like to tell another story which gives me hope. The provincial Boys’ College which I used to teach at, this year for the first time elected a Pasifika student as Head Boy. When this appointment was announced to the senior student’s assembly, after input from both students and staff, the entire assembly I am told broke out into spontaneous standing applause, an unprecedented event.
He’s also the 1st XV captain and an outstanding young man, with qualities which the whole senior student body recognised. Such a tale gives me hope for our society.
So the latest Roy Morgans is out http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=10881366 and Labours not doin so well I guess we wont be getting a post from Mike Smith on how wonderful Mr Shearer is?
one off rogue poll give Shearer another 6 months it’s only a matter of time
Oh ok, yeah no need to comment on those rogue polls I forgot. Its full steam a head to defeat then and another term of smiling lying John.
“give Shearer another 6 months it’s only a matter of time”
Do you think Brutus Robertson is better? I don’t.
What I know is the members have had no say in who is Leader and I think they should and if we stay with Shearer we are very much looking like we are walking to another election defeat.
This won’t go down well but Labour could do worse than Shane Jones, hes always impressed me with his ability to be able to talk to everyone and comes across as intelligent
Sure there are some past issues to consider but nothing insurmountable…
Shane Jones? Nope. That would be another mistake.
Yes I remember you saying how impressed you were that he managed to get paid for wanking.
If that’s the best you can come up with after your one month ban you might need another one!
Seriously though the guy speaks well, is intelligent and appeals to both maori and pakeha, working class and intellectual
Ok so the hand shandy wasn’t the best thing he could have done but he even handled (pardon the expression) that well
You’re the only person I’ve ever come across that was impressed by him, and some of my best friends are Maori.
“Seriously though the guy speaks well”
I’ve never known him to speak well at all. Usually he just does that over-verbose thing that people do when they want to sound smart to dumb people.
Thank God I’m not playing the drinking game this morning 😛
“I guess we wont be getting a post from Mike Smith on how wonderful Mr Shearer is”
Quite simply, there is no need for outsourcee Mike Smith to tell us how wonderful Mr Shearer but we want the outsourcer himself saying the real thing and showing that to us.
Remember when Shanghai Pengxin attempted to buy 8000ha of dairy farmland and all hell broke loose and nobody on the left was being the least bit xenophobic? Well, anybody care to note the reaction Dairy Farms Partnership (an investment company owned by Harvard University) buying 1300ha of farmland to add to the farmland in NZ it already owns?
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/farming/dairy/8628552/Harvard-buys-Otago-dairy-farm
These guys are really good farmers. You won’t find any locals objecting. At least it’s not the Chinese… 😈
sounds familiar to another Kiwi Lament
Ahhhh should be a solid amount of electoral fraud in that election.
I started looking into that, yesterday. I started saving links on a word document and was intending to do more research on the issue before putting a post together.
eg I have some links to articles about the Harvard Uni investment fund “land grab” in Africa and the potential negative impact. I was wondering what such land grabs have to do with the role of Universities? Part of the neoliberalisation of higher education?
Harvard runs one of the absolute smartest long vision investment funds on the planet.
Mouths increasing, arable land decreasing, land productivity flat, useless paper wealth expanding exponentially
Farm land is where you want to have your investments. And these guys back it up with big money. Last I heard, a NZer ran this side of their asset classes for them.
I thought that many of our neo lib pollies and uncivil servants went to Harvard to study and learn.. Seems that they don’t learn all the good long term structural planning stuff, only the free market and lazy butts and deadhead dads sort of stuff. How to sneer, find fault, and feel superior enough to be worth millions per year in salary, or at least aspire to that.
I guess when we are all labelled okay they can work out an algorithm how to deal with us most efficiently, and whether it’s more cost effective to ensure that there is reasonable accommodation and food for all or to leave us living on the streets.
I’ll say the same thing now as I did then. Selling our land to foreign owners is bad for NZers and bad for our economy. It quite literally turns us into serfs for foreign owners.
My first response was more like Draco’s. I’m not very keen at all, esepcially given Harvard is such an elite US institution. But I want to look into it and think about it a bit more.
“Smart long term investment” on whose behalf?
Certainly US unis like Harvard have come into some criticism for “land grabbing” in Africa. froma a 2011 Guardian article:
Harvard is elite in the sense that it is the best, it also has one of the most extensive and well funded scholarship and aid programmes in the world, increased every two or three years by about US $10 million. Please kindly check your confirmation bias.
http://www.fao.fas.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do
Thank-you.
I’m still looking into the Harvard issue. But I’d want more than their own PR about the aid they provide.
Well here’s a start http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_University#Endowment
Thanks.
You do realise that elite or “ivy league” education establishments that offer funding for some who can’t afford the fees, don’t necessarily do anything to change the elite dominated hierarchy, don’t you? It’s the kind of “charity” that is used to justify the dominance of elites?
Again I think that’s your confirmation bias which insists on reinforcing the idea that people that experience social mobility somehow equate to being a class traitor. The notion that “it’s the kind of “charity” that is used to justify the dominance of elites” is inherently silly and an artifact of a narrative that insists on demonising an entire group of people as a single stereotype cliche of fat cat capitalists in top hats. Bill Gates gives away almost all of his billions to better the less fortunate. J K Rowling gave away so much of her money that she is no longer on the rich list. George Soros gave away over $8 billion to human rights, public health, and education causes. Such charity is an appropriate response by people who realise the important role society has played in their success and is a valuable adjunct to state funding.
Also the culture at most of the Ivy Leage universities is decidedly left leaning
http://thecitizens.blogspot.co.nz/2005/11/americas-left-wing-universities.html
Even the RWNJs agree
http://americanpowerblog.blogspot.co.nz/2013/03/universities-as-left-wing-seminaries.html
So Rowling gave away “so much of her money that she is no longer on the rich list”.
And Gates gives away “almost all” of his.
What’s the proportion at Harvard? Do they also give away “almost all” of their places to those who can’t afford to attend?
Yes, fuck them for not wandering around in sack cloth and ashes with dogs licking their sores. Bastards. You silly cartoon Marxist.
One would presume (well, a normal person would presume, so perhaps you are excused) that a considerable amount of Harvard’s endowment would also go toward funding research, paying staff, and supplying the amazing resources that make it a place to want to study at in the first place. But you can do the math. As of 2012, Harvard University had a total financial aid reserve of $158.725 million for students, and a Pell Grant reserve of $4.093 million available for disbursement out of $30.7 billion.
Well fuck me Pop, I didn’t realise your spurious comparisons were beyond questioning.
0.5% Bit of context sheds some light eh?
Cock.
folks not put you out for the night yet felix?
“Well fuck me Pop, I didn’t realise your spurious comparisons were beyond questioning.
0.5% Bit of context sheds some light eh?
Cock.”
Look, Felix, I realise you’re probably a bit special in the touched in the head sense, but obviously the top university in the world with the best facilities, resources and teachers is going to be expensive to run. And guess what, poor kids can get in and take advantage of all that on merit. Wow. I always get the impression from you that you are some nasty bitter little person who hates achievement and talent in others and just burns to drag everyone and everything in the world down to your level of mediocrity rather boosting deserving people with talent. Me, I’ve always thought socialism was about lifting people up, not dragging them down.
Drop the sanctimony Pop.
You tried to say that Harvard, by spending 0.5% of it’s income on allowing poor kids to attend, is comparable to Bill Gates giving away “almost all” of his money.
What a crock of shit.
ps your assessments of me are hilarious. Bit of self-reflection mate.
“You tried to say that Harvard, by spending 0.5% of it’s income on allowing poor kids to attend, is comparable to Bill Gates giving away “almost all” of his money.”
As I didn’t make that comparison at all, you sad little numpty, you’re projecting. I gave Bill Gates et al as examples of really rich people giving back to the comunity as a counterexample to the assertion that all such charity is a method of control. And I’ve said my bit about how much it costs to fund Harvard’s facilities. I’m not going to argue with your pathology any more except to say Harvard’s provision for disadvantaged students is better than any state university anywhere in the world you can name.
“the assertion that all such charity is a method of control.”
Which no one I can see actually made.
“I’m not going to argue with your pathology any more except to say Harvard’s provision for disadvantaged students is better than any state university anywhere in the world you can name.”
Well I guess that knocks out another argument I didn’t make. 🙄
““the assertion that all such charity is a method of control.”
Which no one I can see actually made.”
Hey, PB, dumbarse:
“It’s the kind of “charity” that is used to justify the dominance of elites” – Karol
“Well I guess that knocks out another argument I didn’t make.”
Who knows, Felix, you don’t specialise in arguments, just gibberish and invective. I have attempted to respond to your froth and spittal as best as one can.
Pop, for god’s sake man.
That doesn’t mean what you claimed it does. Draw yourself a venn diagram or something.
Did Karol say it was the same kind of charity as Gates et al?
And Pop JFTR, you really, (really), don’t argue well. And you’re a hypocrite.
Other people here are far nicer to you than you are in return.
I say this in case you aren’t aware of that.
Questioning Pop’s assertions, none of which he stands by, is “froth and spittle”.
Righto. 🙄
+1 dtb
I also don’t think xenophobia should be bandied about if the information on the Harvard buy was not publicised as the Crafar farce was. Accusing the media of building xenophobia by reporting unevenly may be more accurate, but even then the publicity around the Shanghai Pengxin bid came in on the back of publicity around fraud, bankruptcies and other apparent dodgy dealings and an imagery of six farms rather than an a more difficult to imagine x-hectares.
It’s a dumb idea to allow our productive infrastructure and land to be owned offshore.
The price of M.I.L.K
Conniptions ahoy for the haters.
http://www.latimes.com/news/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-google-palestine-website-change-20130503,0,2831606.story
From the heavy handed new Greenpeace ads, you would actually begin to wonder if they weren’t secretly working for the government to secretly promote anti sea protest legislation. All they’ve done is strung together a bunch of footage that reinforces all the stereotypes about stupid, dangerous, gung-ho behaviour.
Link??
Why? Don’t you have a TV? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxE-f-n_EJI
I have a T.V. and watch very little of free to air TV as the programmes are so vapid. I don’t own SKY. When I occasionally do watch a specific programme I mute the ads the moment they come on and usually go do something instead.
Anyway, to the video clip. Great to see Greenpeace getting the message over on mainstream TV as an antidote to all the “buy me buy me” ads. I did not get the same impression as you from the ad.
By the way, I do gain the impression from your comment that you approve of our right to protest being removed. No doubt you were also one of those grumbling about nanny state a few years ago.
You obviously prefer ‘big brother’ state.
I just don’t understand how someone (who I assume is just a regular citizen) having views such as these. What is your motivation?
The right to protest is sacrosanct, but I don’t support naive people risking severe injury or injuring others through their actions on the high seas. The ocean is not the place to be playing silly buggers.
You’re worried about the excessive number of deaths and serious injuries caused by Greenpeace vessels? How many a year is that exactly?
No, I’m probably more worried about amateurs getting into trouble, and in fact people do get injured. Tempers flair in unpredictable conditions. It only takes a Pete Bethune or enraged whalers to take it a step too far. Clashes already happen with great frequency. I think the law isn’t well written and unfairly targets genuinely peaceful protestors and observers. But it cannot be denied that it is getting increasingly rough out there. It’s a matter of time.
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2010/02/three_whalers_injured_in_confr.html
http://www.odt.co.nz/news/national/246548/whalers-ram-protest-ships-sea-shepherd
Increasingly rough compared to the 1632 deaths worldwide that were related to the oil and gas industry in November of 2009 alone… I think you and the government have your priorities all wrong!
False Dichotomy
Comparing activism that has resulted in no deaths and is largely being outlawed by the government with an industry that kills thousands and is being promoted isn’t a false dichotomy… You may as well just write “dog poos” if that’s the extent of your argument Populuxe1.
the seafarers who engage in this kind of activity don’t need you looking after them, and unlike the unsafe foreign fishing vessels which operate out of NZ I’m not aware of any Greenpeace vessel needing NZ tax payers to fork out for a rescue.
Basically you’re making a lot of noise about fuck all. And it doesn’t seem to me like you believe the right to protest is paramount. Just the right to protest in ways that you believe convenient and appropriate.
If by “convenient and appropriate” you mean not acting in a manner that may potentially harm themselves or others, then yes. Your argument is pretty much that of NRA lobbiests in the US. What are you, a Libertarian? I don’t agree with the form of the law as it stands, but I don’t agree with boarding vessles or chucking projectiles etc and that goes for all parties involved.
Populuxe:
Sacrosanct: definition thereof
Adjective
(esp. of a principle, place, or routine) Regarded as too important or valuable to be interfered with.
Synonyms
sacred – holy – inviolable
So the right to protest is sacrosanct.. except when you say it isn’t
The right to protest is sacrosanct, but so is public safety
Don’t be disingenuous. The law isn’t being changed to protect protestors from themselves or for “public safety”. It is being changed to prevent protestors from obstructing prospectors, drill rig operators, whoever..
It is a law against civil disobedience and in the end it won’t work because New Zealanders have repeatedly proven that when their principles are at stake they are quite prepared to collect some convictions and even jail time in defence of causes they believe are just. What’s more, in most cases, history has sided with the protestors and against the established order. Can you name a case where this wasn’t true? I can’t think of any off the top of my head.
I’m well aware of that, but a slightly different law would have some contingency. Here is my reasoning. I’m not so concerned with Greenpeace (basically these days a commercial exercise, little more than a greenwashed Outward Bound so that privileged, predominantly white people can moralise to a developing world painfully aware of its own environmental shortcomings, and with little concern for the effects of their antics on ordinary people) and Sea Shepherd (another pack of showboating privileged wankers who manipulate the naive to get media attention and then hang them out to dry once the dirty work is done).
New Zealand has a vast coastline and the general public have incredible access to boats and the sea. There are also a lot of passionate numpties out there who don’t have the kind of seamanship to be safe in that kind of melee. Also while I am anti-whaling and deeply concerned by oil and mineral prospecting ships in our waters, as long as they are operating within whatever weak and flawed laws we have, no one should be making physical contact with them, board them, or attempt to block their path – all of which are in violation of the Law of the Sea. If protest ships waht to lurk visably nearby with all loudspeakers blasting, I think they should be able to.
Well aren’t you a nice well behaved little boy. Using that logic, if you were old enough to protest in 1981 you would have done so from the safety of your Nana’s lounge room.
“Well aren’t you a nice well behaved little boy. Using that logic, if you were old enough to protest in 1981 you would have done so from the safety of your Nana’s lounge room.”
Oh don’t be so fucking ridiculous. The Molesworth Street batoning was a horrific example of police brutality and it is a national shame that the LAW did not protect those protestors. Though marching on the police was a stupid thing to do too. You are a thoroughly nasty little man.
Well, we don’t need new legislation to ensure vessels obey maritime law.
Sort of the point of maritime law.
Some commentator I was listening to recently came up with a description of the present economic hegemony as being ‘corporate feudalism’ – the rich are trying to find more ways of making money from investing their excess, and will apply their minds to squeezing the people more. If that was the case there will be an inevitable slide back to the situation as in Victorian-type dramas of the poor woman and her child being thrust into the snow by a vicious landlord.
Or the sad hopeless songs from Victorian times and before as in Come Home Father
http://ingeb.org/songs/fatherde.html
Father, dear father, come home with me now,
The clock in the steeple strikes one;
You said you were coming right home from the shop
As soon as your day’s work was done;
Our fire has gone out, our house is all dark,
And mother’s been watching since tea,
With poor brother Benny so sick in her arms
And no one to help her but me,
Come home! come home! come home!
Please father, dear father, come home.
It is so pathetic it almost seems like lampooning the situation but a read of books detailing the privations is sobering, despite the funny side of the Python’s skit about who had the worst childhood.
A bright moment this morning about something good and clever happening out in NZ enterprise fields, was Kim Hill and Doug Avery a farmer, talking about the value of altering long-held practices of pasture grass types. Farmers can gain extra value if they have suitable conditions to grow lucerne which will help them through droughts.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/saturday
09:45
Doug Avery: farming and drought
South Island Farmer of the year 2010, who manages Bonavaree Farm at Grassmere, South Marlborough, using a sustainable farming system that is resilient in extreme weather and variability. (14′11″)
Download: Ogg Vorbis MP3 | Embed
Too funny.
http://www.ginandtacos.com/2008/08/31/atheistsfoxholes-libertariansairplanes/
PIE in the sky.
Phil Twyford has posted on Red alert the following lecture by Nicky Hagar to a North Shore Labour Party function.
Nicky Hagar – Uncomfortable Truths – NZ Foreign Policy- War on Terror
For karol, lPrent, Redlogix, Irishbill, r0b whoever – the messages inherent is so important can someone set it up as a proper post on the Standard?
Well, in the meantime, here’s the link to the presentation for the half a dozen or so people who may be around and up for listening at this time on a Saturday night https://soundcloud.com/nzlabour/sets/nicky-hager-uncomfortable
Will look in to it…
First off, congrats to Nicky Hagar for getting the facts together. His division of attitudes into popular peacekeeping vs the empire/alliance is right on the money.
The most important point is that the PM is not the Commander in Chief. The fact that military operational policy was not aligned with Clark’s policy is a consequence of the nature of the civil system, which has it’s roots in the Roman empire.
Populuxe:
“Well aren’t you a nice well behaved little boy. Using that logic, if you were old enough to protest in 1981 you would have done so from the safety of your Nana’s lounge room.”
“”Oh don’t be so fucking ridiculous. The Molesworth Street batoning was a horrific example of police brutality and it is a national shame that the LAW did not protect those protestors. Though marching on the police was a stupid thing to do too. You are a thoroughly nasty little man.””
I seem to have rattled someones cage. Are you running out of coherent arguments? Are you trying to say that you were on Molesworth street and got batoned? If so your method of doing so is rather cryptic and also beside the point. I’m talking about the right to protest and the tension between the LEGAL right to protest in a tidy way from a safe distance and the MORAL right to commit yourself to civil disobedience in a cause which has superior ethical weighting than that protected by the law.
For example: Which matters most, the right to watch a game of rugby undisturbed, or the right for a black majority to have civil rights in their own land? Which matters most, the right of a motorist to cruise up a Wellington street without disruption, or the right not to wind up dead in a South African police station?
For all your talk about the right to protest being sacrosanct blah blah blah…. I think I sniff a social conservative who will take the safe path of bowing to the will of the establishment rather than putting himself at risk in the service of a just cause for the greater good. Or maybe you used to be a radical but the fire has cooled in your belly as the arthritis set into the knees?
What are you jabbering about?
And no, I’m not a radical because I don’t idealise rashness and violence as being a solution to anything.
Sorry we’re obviously getting a bit beyond you here. You go back to you bath chair.
” I don’t idealise rashness and violence as being a solution to anything.”
Where did I or anyone else say we see violence as being a solution to anything. Obstruction in and of itself is not violence.
And by the way, as you make it quite clear you’re not the protesting type, that you do not believe in confronting authority, why does the fact that I suggested that your preferred method of protesting would probably be at some considerable remove from the action make me a “nasty little man”.
The debate is about the role of the State in the defense of citizens rights and how it balances, ethically and philosophically speaking, the small issues like laws against obstruction against the large issues like civil and human rights. The ultimate question is, does the State have a MORAL right to criminalize people who are breaking small laws in the defense of large causes. Gandhi for example.
And I may be nasty but I’m not little.
This would be the same Gandhi who practised PASSIVE RESISTANCE? Although admittedly he rationalised that in the knowledge that with a population that size a few million dead here and there wouldn’t matter in the long run.
This is the Gandhi who advocated non violent CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE which led to much violence by the State against his protest movement. Spanner..
Refer to his rather callous mathematics about population and acceptable loss.
that’s partition for ya
I suspect you’re making shit up. I’d like a citation showing that Gandhi ever made any such calculation. In the end the people who followed him did so freely because they were prepared to risk whatever actions the state (British Empire) took against them because they found that existing under the yoke of that Empire worse than death. Unlike you some people are prepared to risk their lives for great causes.
I notice that as Populuxe loses the major points of the debate he starts deflecting into minor points so as to have the last word. Sad.
“Unlike you some people are prepared to risk their lives for great causes.”
Well aren’t you a romantic delusional arsehat, red for the blood of the martyrs. Oh how amusing you are. Dead people don’t really get to make changes, silly. Better a live dog than a dead lion.
“If I were a Jew and were born in Germany and earned my livelihood there, I would claim Germany as my home even as the tallest Gentile German might, and challenge him to shoot me or cast me in the dungeon; I would refuse to be expelled or to submit to discriminating treatment. And for doing this I should not wait for the fellow Jews to join me in civil resistance, but would have confidence that in the end the rest were bound to follow my example. If one Jew or all the Jews were to accept the prescription here offered, he or they cannot be worse off than now. And suffering voluntarily undergone will bring them an inner strength and joy […] the calculated violence of Hitler may even result in a general massacre of the Jews by way of his first answer to the declaration of such hostilities. But if the Jewish mind could be prepared for voluntary suffering, even the massacre I have imagined could be turned into a day of thanksgiving and joy that Jehovah had wrought deliverance of the race even at the hands of the tyrant. For to the God-fearing, death has no terror.”
Gandhi, M.K. “The Jews” Harijan 26 November 1938 (The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi vol. 74, p. 240)
“…there should be unadulterated non-violent non-cooperation, and if the whole of India responded and unanimously offered it, I should show that, without shedding a single drop of blood, Japanese arms – or any combination of arms – can be sterilized. That involves the determination of India not to give quarter on any point whatsoever and to be ready to risk loss of several million lives. But I would consider that cost very cheap and victory won at that cost glorious. That India may not be ready to pay that price may be true. I hope it is not true, but some such price must be paid by any country that wants to retain its independence. After all, the sacrifice made by the Russians and the Chinese is enormous, and they are ready to risk all. The same could be said of the other countries also, whether aggressors or defenders. The cost is enormous. Therefore, in the non-violent technique I am asking India to risk no more than other countries are risking and which India would have to risk even if she offered armed resistance.”
Gandhi, M.K. “Non-violent Non-cooperation” Harijan 24 May 1942, p. 167 (The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi vol. 82, p. 286; interview conducted 16 May 1942)
If people like me are arsehats and Gandhi is a calculating monster by your reckoning, Populuxe, then I’m happy to side with Gandhi. I’ll also have to concede that any similarity between yourself and a fully functioning moral human being is just a coincidence. Good night and good luck. Keep re-reading the Gandhi. You might come to understand him eventually.
I don’t make a habit of putting people on pedistals. Idols encourage distorted worldviews and blind faith.
You have a nasty habit of putting words in people’s mouths that they never said and attributing ideas to them which they never thought. It is really most unattractive. In fact you seem to be one of those people who believes in nothing much other than personal preservation and not rocking the boat. News flash, the world will only change for the better if some people are prepared to take risks to make it happen. How many times have you left the herd and taken a risk for a matter of principle Pop? Is there any principle you’d risk it all for?
Well aren’t you a sad old throwback. The reality is positive change will only happen with education and freely given cooperation, not theatrics that will probably alienate more people than it will convert.
I will go before you and make the crooked paths straight;
I will break in pieces the gates of bronze and cut the bars of iron
-Isaiah 45:2
For I will contend with him
who contends with you
-Isaiah 49:25
For all who live by the sword…
Blessed are the meek for they shall…(game theory)
For what greater thing can a man do than to…
Not a nationalist myself, who would be in this day and age! (although I understand Inglorious Bastards).
and the nation that endured the greatest number of fatalities during the Second World War was…
(I’m half-way through that book on the 24th)
…before H.Rel. I would have just kept my head down and soldiered on too. Love the author’s (Armin Bottger) attitude.
The amount of death that the USSR saw during that war is simply staggering.
One in eight Ukranians, dead. And Stalin, well it seemed like losing 200K Red Army soldiers here, losing another 200K over there and yet another 200K further on, was just par for the course.
Mind you, 4 out of every 5 German divisions which were ultimately destroyed in WWII were destroyed by the Soviet Union, not by the Allies. That’s a lot of heavy lifting by the Reds.
Yep. Reds know how to lift; Blues how to drag. off to some soft fiction now.
Keep your chin up. 😉 (keeps your nose cleaner)
The problem is that so many of our legislators are intellectual and moral midgets. All due apologies to midgets.
Aaron Gilmore seems nice …
I nearly had a fit! Stop it…
and midges too. Populuxe is well defined, refined and streamlined; tips are complementary. 😉 though rarely hot air or steam.