Open mike is your post. For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose. The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy). Step right up to the mike…
Another take on the marxist view of the “subjective” factor long being a major impediment to necessary revolutionary change while “objective” factors–the material bleeding obvious state of a world on the brink indicates that need.
Does our social being determine our thinking or vice versa? Luckily some people break the mold like many scientists and political activists. ‘Mortgage captives’ certainly need to wake up and join them. Societal breakdown is not that far away when you look at our road rage cities, supermarkets with 2–3 day stocks, digital banking systems etc.
You beat me to it Viper, read the pump article after posting. A city going ‘down’ would soon become a landlocked version of a powerless cruise liner. As Christchurch people would know well.
After years of living in the North with tanks full of rain water and seafood across the road such thoughts do surface when living in the super city. VTOs observation is what one of my farm owning mates (across water from Whangarei) always gets worried about when there is a bird flu scare or whatever. Wind, solar, water tanks and gardens are the way to go.
Know of a few people in east Chch who have built in such resilience post-earthquake… So that they can survive almost indefinitely without wider support. Of course any such people or dwellings will also be sought out by the starving hordes in such circumstances…..
“Societal breakdown is not that far away when you look at our road rage cities, supermarkets with 2–3 day stocks, digital banking systems etc.”
Yep, never has society been more fragile given the weaknesses that are inherent in most of our systems today. It will only be realised when it happens unfortunately.
Have always said that the most scary person to be in this situation would be a farmer within 50km of a major population centre – lotsa new friends arriving to eat his sheep… and fuck all he can do about it… if he values his life …..
never mind, couldn’t happen here, nah, not in nz, got a nice house, good neighbours, shiny New World down te road, gotta go to work, put out of mind, smell the roses…
Have always said that the most scary person to be in this situation would be a farmer within 50km of a major population centre –lotsa new friends arriving to eat his sheep… and fuck all he can do about it… if he values his life …..
You a city lad or a farming lad? You have many friends in the city who are a crack shot with a .223? Or who know how to skin and gut a deer?
Personally, I’d back the farmer, his couple of mates and the farm hand over any rabble from the city, just so you know.
Plenty – probably more per km2 than in rural areas but I don’t think it would pan out like that…. but terrible subject and unpleasant to consider anyway, sorry..
Why would the farmer defend his flock? When society has broken down like that? What would he do with them anyway? Put them on the non-existent freighter to a UK supermarche?
And if his mates are helping him then who is looking after his mates farms? Does that not leave them open?
And the description of thousands (probably tens of thousands) approaching starvation as “rabble from the city” I think misses the situation and various more unpleasant characteristics of the human bean entirely.
It is an unpleasant subject but its reality as a possibility should be considered in light of the fragility of our society…. in particular the fact that supermarkets and cities have only 2-3 days of supplies at hand.
Tat
Farmers now can’t cope with the determined animal thieving either dead or being trucked off. We don’t hear about it very often because our news choosers don’t bother about this sort of important information getting to the general public. I think that Scott Guy case revealed an iceberg of dirty dealings in rural areas.
You might hear it on the rural news on Radionz but because of the silo system they have it’s not so likely in the national news. That gets taken up with readings of victims statements after court cases. So emotional and caring.
Sorry no you’re wrong, well its good in theory that will happen the problem is most rabble stick together and have an inflated sense of entitlement: “you have what we want so we’ll take it”
Which means there’ll be one helluva lot of people sticking together vs very few farmers looking after a lot of land meaning it would be very difficult to defend and if you’re defending one farm what happens if another group goes to your farm…
You only need to see what happens in other countries when it all turns to crap to see what happens though I dare say a farmer near a small town will do better
“I think you’re confusing ‘entitlement’ with desperation, or starvation.”
People with a sense of entitlement will do things differently when desperate than those without. Having a sense of entitlement isn’t necessarily a bad thing of course.
Hmmm, lots of different variables here that people are glossing over. How fast a collapse happens will be a big determiner in what happens after that. I wonder if a very fast collapse (as in, running out of supermarket food) will see most big city folk sitting tight, waiting for the authorities to sort it out, and then by the time they are starving they won’t have the energy to walk very far. The more resilient people will get out straight away. The less resilient that make it to farm land, won’t know how to catch a sheep let alone kill and find a way to eat it that doesn’t make them sick.
“You only need to see what happens in other countries when it all turns to crap to see what happens though I dare say a farmer near a small town will do better”
Where are you thinking? Because three the most immediate examples that spring to mind suggest that we might be ok. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the country people did relatively ok, it was the city people that had a hard time. In Cuba, which went through a kind of Peak Oil in a year, the general population did well. People got hungry at times, no-one starved, and the general health of the country improved. In a more acute situation, the resiliency of city communities in Iraq during the invasion was pretty impressive eg when the local authorities collapsed, the people previously employed in the power companies kept some of the electricity supply going without getting paid (for obvious reasons). The banks closed, but quickly a street level of banking started up. Humans are naturally co-operative and evolutionarily adapted to work in community. I don’t mean that terrible things wouldn’t happen (they happen already), but that it’s not a given that we would all turn into single units fighting for survival. The ‘Man Alone’ myth in NZ has a lot to answer for.
I live in the South Island and just see huge numbers of resilient and creatively skilled people, so I tend towards Tat’s view.
The more we think these things through now, and start putting practices and infrastructure in place, the better we will handle what happens. There are people in NZ have been doing this for a very long time, and now there are lots of people doing it. We need to reach a certain percentage of the population, not sure how many that is.
I also think this is geographical within NZ. I think mostly about Dunedin in terms of a big city because it’s the one I am most familiar with and it’s closest to where I live. But the issues for coastal Otago will be very different than those for say Auckland.
I don’t know why everyone is assuming all us city folk will be after the farm animals in the country come the apocalypse. I can’t remember the last time I ate any animal meat.
But I do know a lot of city/suburban folk who are pretty good fruit & veggie gardeners. I’d hang close with them and the places where water can be collected. Leave the others to fight to the death over farm animals.
It takes a long time to grow vegetable food karol. People will easily starve before they can grow a potato or apple. I think vto’s point was that in a relatively fast collapse people are going to be after the meat once the supermarkets run out.
“But I do know a lot of city/suburban folk who are pretty good fruit & veggie gardeners. I’d hang close with them and the places where water can be collected.”
When people talk about there being 3 days of food in the supermarkets, I haven’t seen the analysis of actual food country wide outside of supermarkets (as in gardens, market gardens etc), but I suspect that it’s not great. Most cultures traditionaly have relied on storing food. We don’t do that locally very well and much of it is reliant on freezing and refrigeration.
There are a couple of other issues here. One is that most (as in nearly all) of our food production relies on long distance transport. No petrol = no food. The other is that fruit and veggies don’t sustain people for very long. You need fats, protein and complex carbs too. Most vegan protein in NZ is imported (beans etc). Cheese and milk will fail pretty quickly without petrol except in small rural areas. Nuts are seasonal or locked up in storage. Lots of people will subsist for quite some time just on carbs, but where is all the wheat going to come from? (not from home gardeners). We are all very vulnerable when it comes to food, including vegetarians.
Even with a longer time frame for collapse (as in the Cuba scenario), you still need to get food production localised very quickly. I agree that there are lots of good gardeners still in NZ, but we need these skills much more widely spread within the population.
I think that people with veges might find when they get up in the morning that all the veges are out of the ground and away. Even before they are fully developed. Then what. People don’t have trouble applying linear rationality – I am hungry, they have a lot of food, my need is greater than theirs. Therefore I am entitled to help myself and take it all so we have some for later.
Then we need to be looking at longer term food production. I actually don’t think relying on sheep and cows is the answer either. I would rather we were looking at how local communities could be self-sustaining.
How difficult is it to grow the required beans and/or nuts, grains etc in NZ?
Not hard at all in technical horticultural/gardening terms karol. We already grow grains and nuts well, and the alternative people are starting to grow legumes. But getting people to grow them at a large enough scale to feed local populations, there are substantial economic and structural barriers, due to how farmers and gardeners are forced into systems that benefit capitalism, and how people are channeled into buying from supermarkets. For those that can afford to, supporting Farmers Markets, vege box schemes, CSAs, gate sales, retailers that prioritise local produce etc, is very helpful.
On the bright side, in a medium paced collapse scenario we would quickly stop exporting food we grow and be able to eat it ourselves.
Sheep and cows are important for wool and leather too, as well as diary. In Cuba they farmed animals like rabbits, and ate a lot less meat.
If we ate the whole animal (edible parts), we would need less animals, and there would be more land/resources for growing other kinds of foods.
If there was a world problem and we couldn’t get the food we need we might still have to export food that we need here, because of the contracts that were set up to supply stuff to others. And they would say they need it too.
I live among-st plenty….plenty for me to feed myself anyway. But it would not be if I had to share with the rest of Wellington. And even if we did a Cuba how many of us would have the skills? Maybe we should reprogram ourselves historically: plague, famine disease are only (in a historic sense) banned from our expectations. They are merely resting in the antechamber awaiting to re-enter the door.
How much plague, famine and disease did pre-European NZ experience?
Everyone has skills. Not everyone has to grow food, lots of other things that need to be done too. Learning how to trade equitably will be a big community-wide need.
I’m wondering how many Ann Rand deciples would suddenly become “eaters” and have to rely on those of us that have the knowledge to grow food, raise and butcher animals, husband bees etc
Oh, Mother Earth,
With your fields of green
Once more laid down
by the hungry hand
How long can you
give and not receive
And feed this world
ruled by greed
Patrick Gower @patrickgowernz 19h
Labour has introduced a female quota system that will see men demoted down the party list at expense of females
How is it that a leading news organisation can have such a biased political editor? I kind of know the answer to that question but it still astounds me.
The Alfred.E. Nuemann of political reporting Gower, TV3 and Media-Works in a free society are obviously free to broadcast,(subject to complaints) whatever they like which would seem to include out-right lies as ‘The News’,
What tho worries me is that TV3 and Media-Works gain funding from the State via NZ on Air which is said to be the difference between those entities remaining solvent or not,(this in my mind imparts to Media-Works a duty to report political matters in a fair and balanced manner),
i will suggest again that an incoming Government of the left ensure that all NZ on Air funding for this organization be stopped, if the organization wants to be one that favors the political right over the political left then they should be made to fund their own political broadcasts…
I suppose we can say that John Campbell provides some sort of balance because the issues he reports on are more likely to be taken seriously by the left.
As far as the gender issue goes, I thought a political editor might be able to put it in a broader context by looking at other countries who aim for 50% representation by women. It’s not as if these policies came down in the last shower. Norway?
“I suppose we can say that John Campbell provides some sort of balance” – you could say that, but its missing the point a bit
its not the campbell and gower balance each other out (which they dont) – its that gower actively practices spin, fabrication and generally interviews his own opinion instead of anything even vaguely like journalism.
Im no JC fan boy, and sometimes i find campbell live misses the mark – but hes far more of a journalist compared to “i just made some shit up” gower
Its not so much left vs right – its journalism vs made up bullshit
We should not worry quite so hard. Labour stories are dominating the airwaves like they haven’t for years.
The gender story is immensely softened and will play well in the longer term next year.
The insurance story will run and run.
And the housing and Christchurch rebuild stories are money for jam.
The MSM have so few factional fight stories now that they have to argue about policy. This is a massive shift. We are gonig to torn Paddy and the rest into policy wonks.
The only trick left is to frame policy into stories that bounce right. That’s a job for the media team in the Leaders’ office.
Honestly, I know you guys don’t see it or refuse to see it.
But the Man ban is just like the anti smacking, light bubs, shower head stuff that destroyed the last Labour government.
This shit is voter poison on steroids, Key must be walking around today with a grin a mile wide.
Well I’ll go on about it too. Choosing MPs by gender or sexual orientation or any other category is an extremely stupid thing for Labour to do. Go on, have a separate article about this and invite comments and a vote, I dare The Standard. As an LEC member I have participated in the choice of candidates for the Labour list (and also the Green list). Members should choose the best people for the job.
If the election is already lost, then your work here is done, BM. Come back again in 12 months and let’s see how that plays out, eh?
ps, can I suggest that hysterical use of the phrase ‘man ban’ and claiming that its electoral poison falls in to the category of ‘panicdotal evidence’?
i will suggest again that an incoming Government of the left ensure that all NZ on Air funding for this organization be stopped, if the organization wants to be one that favors the political right over the political left then they should be made to fund their own political broadcasts…
Bad12 You have never stated whether you have lived and worked in a country whereby the state controls the media by ownership or by fear. I don’t mean travelling or viewing their media from the outside but living their on a daily basis for a reasonable period – f.. even the sports comments were controlled. In my case I am not referring to the UK/Aus/US type of countries
Your comments raises two points:
1. The next step from funding control is editorship – there is nothing for free.
2. If we accept your idea then the flip side is that the right can also impend this policy when they return to office with one subtle change. I guess BM would have Campbell cancelled within a week.
The problem with living in a democracy is the Bad12 see the media favouring the political right while BM and his mates see the media as the voice of the political left. It just a view & if the government interferes in the media we no longer have a democracy. It either funding for both sides or no-one.
Sorry Bad12 you write some good stuff at times but not this one.
Gower is absolutely obsessed with this issue. I wonder why? Is he a closet transgender? Does he dress up in women’s clothes when he is at home? Why on earth does it get him so excited? He carries on like it is the biggest scandal since Watergate, when the rest the country doesn’t give a toss.
We can debate the pro’s and con’s of the State establishing and owning an insurance company ad nauseum, probably in terms of today’s political landscape point to such a policy as a radical departure from the Neo-liberal norm which it obvious is if you have no knowledge of the 1970’s the peak years for Government ‘ownership’ of all sorts of business,
What of the politics tho, 2 weeks befor David Cunliffe’s Conference announcement Winston Peters came out of the NZFirst Conference loudly proclaiming ‘the bottom line’ for any Party seeking the support of NZFirst after the 2014 election would be that very same thing, the establishment and ownership of an insurance company by the Government,
Labour and David Cunliffe could hardly have failed to have noticed that except for the name, where a comic might suggest Labour have inserted an ass into the policy, the policy, Winston’s bottom line, are the same,
The political signal???, on the surface we have the makings of a coalition arrangement between Labour and NZFirst after November 2014 that has little in the way of impediment bar the number of Cabinet positions needed to keep NZFirst intact and reasonably happy,
Of course if we were to see a conspiracy around every ballot box we might begin to suspect that David Cunliffe in a cunning move has reached out a large hand to NZFirst voters with the question, ‘why vote for the insurance company offered by the sMall party when you can vote for exactly the same from the bigger party’, after all on the current numbers,(as i see them), if Labour can reach across and half inch a small part of NZFirst’s voting support effectively leaving that Party below the 5% thresh-hold this would guarantee, in the carve up of the remaining NZFirst vote when the election night numbers are crunched, a Labour/Green Government,
Of course there is also another scenario where ‘the plan’ is to present after 2014 a Labour/NZFirst bloc to the Green Party attempting to formulate a coalition with the Green Party giving ‘confidence and supply’ similar i might add as the cozy arrangement of the previous Labour Government…
The options need to be kept open at this stage in case numbers change of the minor parties in the next 12 months. Who knows maybe the Greens and NZFirst will have to figure out how to work together if they want power.
Fold???, pragmatic politics from Russell Norman once He realized Labour had no stomach for engaging in what is now mainstream economic practice by a number of major economies,
Nationals 80 billion dollar debt mountain simply hamstrings the following Government forcing that Government to raise taxes or ‘do nothing’ thus leading it away from longevity,
National and Labour’s borrowing intentions simply leads to the impoverishment of the next generation to pay for the comfortable lifestyle of today and/or the injection of the IMF into the country running our economic and social policy…
Correct. The Greens had 20 months of relatively easy training and looking good. Now its time for them to step up to the 2014 championship fight.
National is already gearing up, big time.
Norman should have stuck to his guns for a little bit longer to make the point – the NZ Government has a monopoly on the creation of NZ Dollars. It can do so whenever it likes, in order to move real resources and people where they need to be.
Ad, stupid comment of the day, who carried the Opposition fight to National scoring the hits while David Shearer tried to learn how to string more than 6 words of the English language together as one coherent sentence…
RN knows how the monetary system works, knows that it really needs to be changed and knows that Labour won’t do a damn thing to change it.
National and Labour’s borrowing intentions simply leads to the impoverishment of the next generation to pay for the comfortable lifestyle of today and/or the injection of the IMF into the country running our economic and social policy…
QFT
The government should never borrow money as it is sovereign and thus can print all the money it needs. Along side this the government needs to stop the private banks from creating money.
At the time Dr Norman floated the idea it would have performed three key positives;
1. Kick started inflation which was below the reserve banks target (was abour 0.1% iirc),
2. Helped stabilise the exchange rate, and potentially saved a significant portion of the 40k manufacturing jobs that went to the wall over the last 18 months
3. Resulted in a much lower govt debt that will now have to be paid back via taxes.
It was dropped because conditions started to change (inflation started to rise, and the govt borrowed the money – that someone else printed).
And it became politically untenable; an effective tool trashed so a cheap political point could be scored by national.
National have much to answer for in their trashing of our economy. Actually, so does Labour as they’ve not been doing enough to highlight just how National have been trashing it and they’re not going to make the necessary changes to bring it back into balance.
Yes, looking at the relevant policy positions on a lot of the economic stuff to me is like looking at ‘the Generation Gap’, both the Green Party and NZFirst are saying much the same thing while perhaps proposing to arrive at the same objective by differing means…
Ok, the Natz’ Sesame Street word-for-the-day is “dangerous”. This comes after a few that have been tossed off such as “extreme narcissist” , “over the top”, “slight smugness”, etc.
I think the policy is bold and should be aimed at with all resources. But some tempering of enthusiasm with reality should probably take place. 2,500 extra houses per year in Chch in its current state by a new entrant is pretty mind-boggling. If they can do it then they should but I seriously fail to see how on many various fronts confronting such an effort.
Sure, but the ramp up is not possible imo. That is 10 houses each and every working day. If you start putting some actual numbers and people and materials against it and compare it to current levels of activity and shortages the problem becomes very clear. Not possible.
But as Donald Trump says in the first line of his first book – if you are going to bother thinking at all then you may as well think big…
These are the sorts of numbers of houses we’re going to be needing to get the city back up on it’s feet anyway.
I do wonder where they’re all going to go, though. Wigram Skies development is 1,600 houses and around 1,000 at Aidanfield.
Aidanfield started in 2002 and section sales are just winding up now (with an obvious boost post-earthquake), Wigram Skies will be going for another 5-6 years before it’s all built.
We have to decide as a society how important this is for the nation and for the people of Christchurch.
God forbid we consider what we did in the old days of the war – materials and fuel were strictly rationed so that everything possible was directed into the nation’s efforts. Factories and workshops were re-tasked on manufacturing and processing key products seen as critical.
Sure, but the ramp up is not possible imo. That is 10 houses each and every working day.
Realistically, it would start off being 2-3 houses/day, then by the last year be at a rate of 20 houses completed per day.
(Bearing in mind that each house will still take several weeks to build, but once in the production pipeline…)
Exactly Tat. Run it like there’s a crisis of that scale …. hmmm call it a city-destroying earthquake type crisis … use the powers the state already has to accelerate things.
vto
Don’t talk the housing plan down before its even started. It will be big and worthwhile even if the target isn’t met. And you in your spare time can keep an eye on it.
You are in Christchurch aren’t you? Keep up the pressure on the Dept send reports to The Standard, and keep them reds up to the mark. First catch your election, then simmer for a year, then bring to the boil. Voila – c’est si bon (that could be for some in Akaroa), kapai!
yes greywarbler we are in Chch most of the time and right in the heart of quake zone, rebuild, insurance, red zone, green zone, everything everything…. that is why I doubt the ability to implement the policy. I see and work in that sector right now and see the constraints referred to.
But give it a crack by all means. Go hard and think big. Lordy knows NZ is overdue for some change in the way things are attended to…
The policy will be one enormous herculean effort that is for sure. If it gets pulled off then I will be the first to applaud.
A better way to get into it though may be to prepare the first, say 200, homes so they can start within weeks of election, with a plan of action to bring the balance up to speed with urgency. That would require a small team of people to be working on this from right now. Is there such a team working on it? Working on anything to do with implementing the policy? Right now? curious …..
vto
Like your thinking. There’s life with you around, and others like you, so there’s hope too.
Gerry is the Big Man down there? What’s he doing for the little people outside
the CBD? So far outside they have seemed invisible. Caravans as temporary accommodation? I understand that one park has been taken over for quarters for all these builders that are going to be doing good stuff. Riccarton I think it was.
But that means that there are less places for the displaced Easties.
i think you will find that the next Labour/Green/NZFirst Government will ‘explain’ the 2500 houses built in the Christchurch area as the ‘sum total’ of all houses built including by private owners,
i wonder just how many homes are involved in the other ‘leg’ of Labour’s plans for Christchurch housing, 100’s???, 1000’s, there’s probably as David Cunliffe said on National Radio this morning one hell of a lot of quite decent housing in ‘the red zone’ that with minimal repair will make a great addition to the States housing stocks,
As cheap as cheese as well, some of these houses are apparently fit to live in now, their only problem being that they are in the red zone and i would assume Government would have to provide some monies to the Christchurch Council so as to restore sewerage and water facilities,
i can tho hear Brownlee right now thinking ”oh no you don’t” and getting ready to send in the demolition crews…
“i think you will find that the next Labour/Green/NZFirst Government will ‘explain’ the 2500 houses built in the Christchurch area as the ‘sum total’ of all houses built including by private owners,”
They are promising 2,500 “affordable” houses per year, so they can’t simply count all existing private construction because a lot of this won’t be affordable. The media are also reporting that the plan is apparently to sell the houses to first-home buyers only, which again means they can’t simply count all private construction as being part of the plan.
Talked to Carter Holt or Fletchers recently about modular homes?
In fact checked the number of multi-unit consents either confirmed or underway in Auckland right now?
TransportBlog has been making a feature of just the approved ones ready for construction over the last month.
Check it out.
Aha, and that is what Phil Twyford has made reference to, if you have a factory,or any number of them, you can churn out ‘flat pack’ or totally constructed housing like they turn out cars from an assembly line,
There is not the need for 2 or 3 builders per house construction, labourers can assemble all the various components in the factory overseen by a qualified builder, factories need not run one shift per day, 3 shifts 24 hours a day will churn out 3 times the housing,
Some of the totally factory assembled housing which is then trucked to it’s site i have seen online is quite modern ‘flash’ housing…
And if they are clever, while the components of the actual houses are constructed in the factories any number of labouring crews can be putting in the foundations, footpaths and gardens…
There are a few youtubes up with the Chinese building 15 story hotels in under a week. Concepts such as modular design and prefab components have been in use for a very long time. The Koreans helped take over the tanker building industry using those ideas.
Of course it is, the late Barry Beazly saw the possibilities when he and his father modelled their franchise on the tract housing they’d seen in the US where, between 1947 and 1951, in just one municipality 17,447 homes were built by Levitt and Sons.
Of course it’s possible. It really just comes down to ensuring that a couple of thousand builders from outside Canterbury live there for a couple of years and then go back to their home.
Yeah, because the only thing you need to build thousands of houses is builders /sarc.
Sorry DtB, but it’s just not as simple as that. There are also issues of where the builders come from and the effect that that has on their home communities.
NZ used to do this kind of thing all the time, with hydro towns, etc. People only think its hard because for 30 years we’ve been conditioned to believe that NZ could no longer perform major nation building.
Or more correctly we have to recreate the situation where this would be possible. In this sense I think vto is right. It’s not just a matter of building x houses in x years. It’s about all the things that are needed to make that happen beyond the hammers and timber.
My non-builder dad and his builder mate built the first house my parents lived in. It’s a different story today because of the changes to the building act post-leaking buildings, and because consent processes are extremely time and money consuming now. It really is a different world. Plus what’s been mentioned about the change in culture.
Two things:
1.) A council can, and does, do more than one consent at a time
2.) A while back there was talk about consenting designs. In other words, a house built to that design could be built anywhere in the country without the design needing to be re-consented. All that would need to be done would be the foundations for the specific section thus speeding up the process. Don’t know if this actually went through but it seems reasonable.
It’s not just a matter of building x houses in x years.
That’s exactly what it’s all about. Yes, it’s going to take some organisation and planning but it can be done and it can be done by government faster and better than it can be done by “the market”.
Transportables DtB, during it’s heyday the Mount Maunganui yard building homes for the Tokaanu and later the Huntly scheme was shipping five to seven completed homes a week.
Did you hear about the film Son of an Art Dealer. It’s about an isolated guy who has priceless paintings by old masters shut away in dark rooms to preserve them. He received them from his father who was an art dealer in Germany who authorities think, received them from Nazis who stole them from Jewish estates. He is a bit of a recluse, selling off an occasional one when he needs cash. But it isn’t a film, it’s true.
What a moral hazard. He thinks what is the sense of returning them as the Nazis probably killed their owners. If no-one knows then I can keep ‘my precious’ close and never be found out. If I reveal I have them then I am a marked man for notoriety and punishment. If I leave them somewhere anonymously people will be hunting for the source. Tainted objects of beauty, in a film he would die with the paintings around him, fine funerary pieces beside him, like an Egyptian dignitary. Apparently he has been found out in real life. The aftermath of war rolls on.
But now we have another event to worry about. Bill talked about Fukushima and the delicate task of moving the fuel rods. They had another 5 earthquake near there the other day. And there is always someone who talks down the dangers that need to be faced. Someone with a Three Mile Island connection. Bill’s Sunday notes about it sounded more reliable. Look up Bill in the search line up top if you want a catch up.
What’s this business of volunteer firefighters taking on the regular work that paid firefighting teams should do at Blenheim airport. I can’t believe at the callous way that the good nature of the volunteers is being abused. They sacrifice their personal and family time to carry out what are irregular, hopefully, safety interventions on behalf of their local area communities. But that good nature is being taken advantage of by people with the budgets to pay for the services they want.
The government, through the Defence Force personnel and equipment, used to provide a seven day service to Blenheim airport. Now, ‘because of budget constraints’ its weekdays only and I think only 8 to 5p.m So what is done – call in the volunteer fire brigade, bleed them till they’re dry.
The volunteers offer their services and join a responsible, trained, and supportive team ready to drop their own concerns to attend to the community’s serious events of destruction, injury or death. They should not have extra work dumped on them. Their management does not seem as supportive of them as I would expect. In fact there were ructions some years ago, where they were being taken advantage of.
And besides the Blenheim situation, firefighters are being loaded with the task of calls to cardiac arrests at present done by St Johns Ambulance. The reason being given is ‘if they are in the area, and able to provide more timely assistance’. I suppose this relates to ‘the golden hour’, time that can be crucial for the recovery of seriously ill patients. But I view this as a serious interference in the lives of these people, adding to the time spent on their volunteer work and away from their own responsibilities. They will have jobs, paid work, so their employers are involved also, they sacrifice time too, having to find a way to fill the gap caused by an employee firefighter’s call-out.
In the USA they have firefighters who are also ambulance workers.. I think they are two different jobs, each with its own specialised knowledge required. The firefighters, because they are given training in the care of injured persons, are now having these efficiency and cost-saving vultures load them with extra work in this field. The thin edge of the wedge? These managers co-operating with worker hours are stealing time from their lives, their work, their family, their personal time. Because they are responsible and good-natured people, it is not easy for them to refuse or even protest. But this abuse of altruism must not be allowed to continue.
Vto we were building 10,000 more homes a year up till 2008
Technology has moved on in the building industry simple affordable homes can be built quickly.
Cooky cutter + factory built homes like in Australia where whole suburbs are built with different facades claddings colours excetera.
The capacity is available I am in the building industry .
The workforce is available theirs an oversupply of building materials in the world as well as an oversupply of trades.Just about every developed country has an oversupply of builders so no problem their like wise materials if NZ can’t make Asia can.
Labour loses ChCh seat, giving Key an increased majority. Voters are outraged that Key is profiteering off the ChCh earthquake and is forced into an early election.
I could be very wrong, parliament may have some measure that balances the vote when a bi-election takes one MP out of parliament. Since Key needs ACT and Dunne, having that extra vote (lose of ChCh MP as she went on to become Mayor).
BM Boorish Mysogynist.
National are in trouble according to Matthew Hooten they expect to loose the next election they can I’ll afford to offend half the population.
Young girls, police think one could be 13, being sexually compromised or actually raped and put on Facebook.
How come there isn’t a case to be brought against those involved under the Human Rights Act. Where is the respect for privacy and for the personal rights of the girls?
And the police have been monitoring the Facebook pages, have apparently identified some of the young men and women, and have allowed it to continue saying that they were waiting for some evidence to show up, or one of the girls to make a complaint.
It seems like collaboration almost. Not sharp action. Not getting onto Facebook to get it taken down. Apparently commercial TV3 did that, not our public protectors.
And one remembers Louise Nicholls and the macho and morals raincheck that the force has had revealed in the past and the thought, is it the same now can easily arise again. Don’t the police care about their reputation? I would expect them to be very sensitive and anxious to clean up their act It really seems that sporting codes are tougher on their people and bad publicity than our Police.
Yeah, its okay it seems for parents to not protect their kids from slander, and Police can sit on the case until ‘a real crime’ turns up. Sorry, but police heads should roll. Police must protect minors when parents fail to. Its clear that parents have a clear civil case of slander, that these young men cannot prove they raped or gotten drunk minors.
the cop on the telly kept saying they were waiting for one of the girls to be “brave” enough to come forward, he kept repeating that word “brave’. the fb site was brought down after the journalist got involved. the police say some of the girls were underage, then the boys got them drunk, had sex with them, then bragged about it on facebook. i cant see how this is not a crime.
aerobubble
Don’t be too hard on parents. Social science study shows that parents have less authority now against the countering messages from the various media, sexualisation of young girls etc.
The girls use their good looks etc to try and be popular with the boys. It’s very strong pressure they put on parents to let them be free, go out, stay up late, fib about where they will be.
Learning to respect and value themselves is something that is hard to teach them. They like staying out late, being ‘adult’ in their minds, never thinking that bad things will happen to them. And leave possibly indelible memories.
A child is beaten, harmed, Police can act. But what
if abuse is alledged? Police cannot act? Surely not.
Well children pictures are being posted online, with
comments that they were gotten drunk and raped.
Police cannot investigate the parents? Since the
parents have a duty of care to protect their children.
Parents have an obligation to their kids to protect
them, even against allegations of being ‘loose’,
drunk, where this is not the case. Who has the
responsibility to protect children standing in the
community if not their parents, and parents who
do not, and leave their children with potential self-harming
pressures. Pretty sure children don’t want to be
called drunken sluts. The fact that some young men
may have alledgely raped, given drink to minors and
publically humilated minors, should not stop Police
removing these children from parents for their own safety
since even the allegation is harmful to a child.
And parents have a responsibility to act to protect their
children. If young men assert online of activities that
are illegal and involve minors, and parents do not
make complaints, against slander of their children.
The civil case is a slam dunk, since these young men’s
assets can be seized and sold off to provide reparations,
as they are hardly going to prove they raped minors, gave
minors alcohol. Why should lousy lazy parents who do not
protect their children, children who will be left exposed to
potential continued harm, psychological and even repeat…
Why have Police sat on their hands for so long! Police can’t
cherry pick which offense, or which offender, especially when
a minor is incapable of laying the complaint themselves.
Its has nothing to do with it being the internet that was the
publishing forum.
“The fact that some young men may have alledgely raped,”
Aero, not quite sure what you are on about but:
1. if you say that the rapes are ‘alleged’, then why are you not insisting that the other behaviours are alleged too? eg the children needing protection.
2. why are you focussed on the parents of the victims instead of the parents of the violent offenders? Why not advocate removing the rapists from their parents as a way of solving the problem?
Sorry, but your whole comment smacks of making the victims the problem instead of the men doing the raping. And that just contributes to rape culture.
Okay, its alleged that Police have discovered a website where young men alleged they’ve given drink and had sex with minors.
As minors parents have a duty of care, I don’t see a difference between smacking a child and calling them a drunken slut, so I don’t see a difference between someone else calling them a drunken slut.
As fr the focusing but, obviously Capone was not taken to court for being a mobster but for tax fraud. Authorities cannot ignore one crime because they don’t have enough evidence for another.
And its has to be noted, you seem to not realize that a victim of crime can become the victim of that crime again, and the parents have a duty to protect. Parents can immediately bring civil proceedings against these young men, and will win since what is the defense, evidence they got minors drunk and had non-consensual sex with them?
Its going to be pretty hard for these young men to continue if they are paying civil damages and their car has been sold.
Dude, they didn’t have “non-consenual sex”, they raped them.
Parents can’t stop children from being raped. Lock children up and they just get raped at home. And the rapists outside the home just find someone else to rape. The problem here is the RAPISTS not the teenagers, or the teenagers’ parents.
“Authorities cannot ignore one crime because they don’t have enough evidence for another.”
The issue here isn’t lack of evidence. It’s the police not doing their job properly and instead buying into rape culture. RNZ has had a good overview of this at the top of their news in the last vew hours, go listen to it properly.
Suggesting that the parents prosecute civilly instead of the police prosecuting criminally just supports rape culture too. I also doubt that the women that have been raped want to be paid by their rapists. Or were you suggesting that the money go to the parents?
Seems like a civil prosecution should be brought immediately as nothing else is being done, and it does not preclude a criminal prosecution down the track.
What McFlock said below. Plus you need to realise the social context this is happening within. Many of the people around those girls, and some of the girls themselves, won’t be calling this rape yet. Aero can go on about parental responsibilities for protection, but there is a societal protection issue here too. Those young women have been left in a situation where they are being damaged. Society needs to stand up and take responsibility for this, so that as well as caretaking those teens the culture also changes.. Otherwise, even if some boys get sued, not alot will change.
A strong message needs to be sent that both protects the young women right now, but also changes how the men involved are thinking and acting.
Even if it turns out that the police can’t lay charges (which I don’t believe on the basis of what I have read so far), they could still be going into those communities and dealing with this at that level. Rape Crisis and the NZ Police could collaborate on naming rape culture and then re-educating that generation coming through. The reason the Police don’t do that is rape culture.
What I find most disturbing about this whole episode is that there is a moral malaise, a disconnection. I watched the young men on TV, it left me feeling sickened and empty. Where was the “empathy” that made your fellow person a person, and not just a material object to be used, abused and thrown aside like a cigarette butt? How can those young men grow up so lacking emotionally? What does that say about their self awareness and their visions of their own futures?
I wont comment on the Police and “rape culture”. What I will say is that the Police did not appear to have fully explored the legal avenues open to them, the line was their hands were tied without witnesses coming forward. Somebody with more legal knowledge might wish to comment on this: it appeared to me that there was a conspiracy to commit an illegal act at minimum.
Those young women have been left in a situation where they are being damaged. Society needs to stand up and take responsibility for this, so that as well as caretaking those teens the culture also changes..
I can’t see the politics of the situation allowing any real societal changes to be made: damage to our young people and throwing them on to the scrap heap is something which has been quite acceptable in NZ for a long period of time.
Everywhere you look in this case there are victims. Those young guys, the perps, say they were done for multiple counts of rape and put away for 10-15 years each, well they will come out after that with next to zero educational and job prospects, just lots of criminal connections from the prison. More young NZers wasted.
It’s also quite easy to say “society needs to stand up and take responsbility” but that’s very vague and anyhows it falls on to the relevant local communities and the immediate families involved more than anyone else.
Rape Crisis and the NZ Police could collaborate on naming rape culture and then re-educating that generation coming through. The reason the Police don’t do that is rape culture.
Get the politicians to order the police to do it then, and provide the budget. If you think it will make any difference.
So the parents need to hire a lawyer to do the job that the police won’t, otherwise it’s the parents who are being negligent?
And, of course, hope that little jimmy mcphoto’s daddy isn’t rich enouch to hire a slew of lawyers and bankrupt them with counter-suits.
It would be pretty hard for these young men to continue to offend if the police were pressing charged, or at least saying something other than claiming not to be able to do anything without a complaint. Fucksake, they can get murder convictions without having a body, but they can’t do anything when a crime is posted on FB?
There’s a room, there’s alcohol, they have to been supplied, parents have to know where their kids are, and Police can act in case of endangerment of minors.
I would have thought that some kind of privacy charge would be an easy one to go for – not unlike some recent cases of guys getting done for filming up skirts or hiding cameras in bathrooms etc.
The parents protecting their girls, if they are at work all day and looking after children and family all night, their girls might slip out and get into trouble. Parents aren’t able to be in three places at once.
The parents aiming to have responsible boys with standards of behaviour. What do they teach their boys about decent treatment of girls and other people. Do they see their job as just to feed them lots of meat and take them to sports games, and make sure they pass their exams. Is there any talk about personal standards, about respect for others, about not just yielding to whatever animal impulse passes through their minds?
If those parents knew their son was involved in this facebook stuff what are they doing and saying to him with anger and sorrow as to his behaviour? It’s not all about girls being foolish and losing their heads. Most girls wouldn’t think of ganging up to enjoy a boy who they are controlling. Perhaps they should, instead of being victimised and used as playthings by males abusing the girl’s very essence, her femaleness and intrinsic desire to relate to a male which drives the world and always has.
It has been a long day. Get up at 0430 (after barely sleeping) to catch a 6am flight back to Auckland. Then off to work after a shower at home on the way through. A bit too vague to capture a transient bug with Aids to Navigation (AtoNs) that showed up on friday after I’d left for conference. Finally left a couple of devices running with logging on overnight. Headed home for some kip at 4pm….
Listen to the policeman talk about how they can’t arrest anyone because no victim has been ‘brave enough’ to make a fomal statement. That there is rape culture. that’s what them there feminists are talking about.
Then go read the discussion at Public address, particularly this comment from Emma Hart, though there are many more:
yeah that cop was disgusting. they said they had a word with the ‘boys’, ‘dont brag about it fellas, otherwise you gonna get busted…’ or somethign along those lines?. those boys families must be utterly embarrassed, well i hope so!
I understand that, but surly there is enough evidence, why not seize these rapists cell phones/computers, I think its a safe bet that they took pictures of their victims in a state
of undress, that would be child pornography, then you can arrest them.
Well there’s all sorts of things we might think the police could have been doing. We know, for instance, that they don’t hesitate to use the GCSB to track cellphones and metadata. We don’t know what sort of things for exactly, but we’ve been told it’s drugs and money laundering.
Tracking a gang of rapists who gloat about their activities however, seems to be not a priority.
you know, I have to say this, its disappointing, that the left are saying stuff about the police, the right are saying stuff about the girls drinking..
IMHO what needs to be said, is that these rapists are the ones to blame 100%, its rape and they belong in jail.
Who is tasked with investigating crimes and then prosecuting alleged offenders in court, thus enabling them, if guilty beyond reasonable doubt, to be put in gaol?
Also kind of weird, that you criticise me, when you said pretty much the same thing:
but surly there is enough evidence, why not seize these rapists cell phones/computers, I think its a safe bet that they took pictures of their victims in a state
of undress, that would be child pornography, then you can arrest them.
But you know, the left and the right are just the same. Coz questioning the police and blaming the victims is the same.
sigh, maybe these days have been coming ever since gamers began having vicarious sex in Grand Theft Auto. Certainly evidence of more dehumanization of victims by offenders in these social trends. Been similar rings of men found offending on a huge scale in the UK. Generally facilitated by the admission of drug and / or alcohol. Yet we hear that the Taliban are misogynist…
RT
What I read about the UK seemed to be Indian/Pakistani men with white girls. I think that the high barriers against some cultures having sex outside marriage, mean that they look at western women who don’t keep to that rule, thinking that they are ‘easy’ and don’t deserve any respect as people. The dark side of the purity culture. The division of women into saint or whore, respect or availability.
“sigh, maybe these days have been coming ever since gamers began having vicarious sex in Grand Theft Auto. Certainly evidence of more dehumanization of victims by offenders in these social trends.”
I do think that things we do for ‘recreation’ affect our thinking and behaviour. But pack rape of drunk girls in social settings is not new and predates computer games by a long way. This is about rape culture RT. Modern violent culture overlays that for sure, but it’s not the core of it.
you know, I have to say this, its disappointing, that the left are saying stuff about the police, the right are saying stuff about the girls drinking..
IMHO what needs to be said, is that these rapists are the ones to blame 100%, its rape and they belong in jail.
You really are a fool. Everyone else here is making a serious attempt to talk about (yet another) police failure, and you’ve once again tried to sidetrack discussion by launching into one of your wandery and confused speculations about left and right.
Please stay on your own blog, where you can continue to write all sorts of silly things, and bother nobody.
Morrissey, I don’t think Brett is deliberately trying to sidetrack. He’s as angry about it as the rest of us – just looking at it from a different perspective.
I disagree, Anne. Brett Dale has an established track record of attempting to derail serious discussions by making bizarre comments like he has done, yet again, here. You are being very charitable in your assessment of this pest.
I want to prosecute people who get underage girls drunk, rape them, film it,
share it on the internet, and then show off about it, and then try to recruit other rapists if they pay them 20 dollars.
Because New Zealand has always been a hotbed of drunken teenage promiscuity, and the police have better things to do than listen to the tales of adolescent braggarts and fantasists.
Here’s what the cop said:
“We’ve told them their behaviour is verging on criminal if not criminal, and suggested it cease,” says Mr Scott. “Some of the boys and their families were compliant and we believe they have stopped associating with the group.”
That’s the common sense response in my view. They’d never get a conviction, as half of NZ has engaged in drunk teenage sex.
Are you saying that if a 15 yr old girl is so drunk she can’t speak or move, and a number of teen boys put their penises inside her, that SHE is having ‘drunk teen sex’?
Are you saying that if a 15 yr old girl is so drunk she can’t speak or move, and a number of teen boys put their penises inside her, that SHE is having ‘drunk teen sex’?
one of the boys is the son of an ‘international celebrity’, the other, the son of a cop, according to tv3…certainly beginning to stink. tho the cop on rnz did make a lot of sense, but now this comes out?
“Leaving aside that what is being described here is very clearly rape, it seems pretty clear that it’s also making an intimate visual recording without consent in terms of s 216 of the Crimes Act.”
Also, honestly, two years? At some stage the police wouldn’t want to get a little proactive and put some weekend surveillance in when young women are being raped? Even if it didn’t lead to convictions, it might have had a preventative measure – excuse me sir, just before you go any further, can we talk to the young woman and you? Oh she’s smashed, I think she can come with us and not with you. Thanks.
That’s a pretty clear indictment of how the NZ Police view rape, still. And how much this society values young women (or young men for that matter). Consider how much time, effort, money the police put into other crimes where they know they are occuring over 2 years. Hell, consider how much effort went into the Tuhoe raids. The men in this situation are in fact domestic terrorists.
How society views young men and young women. How young men and young women view themselves. How they value themselves and have pride in themselves. Thoughtful questions?
There will always be the need to protect oneself against addictive booze and other drugs. Also people who would like to get something valuable from you for free. Mugging or hugging can have similar outcomes! It is sad to see behaviour that was illustrated and written about in the 1700s occurring today. Can’t we learn?
There is a famous Hogarth picture of a drunk mother slumped on the ground, her baby falling out of her arms. This was shown alongside a sign ‘Drunk for 1 penny, Dead drunk for tuppence, Straw for nothing’!!
Hogarth was disturbed about the venality of the government encouraging distilling as it used grain which was suffering a slump in sales, and the gin sales caused consequent decay of society. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_Street_and_Gin_Lane
http://www.historic-uk.com/CultureUK/Mothers-Ruin/
In the 1730’s notices could be seen all over London. The message was short and to the point
‘Drunk for 1 penny, Dead drunk for tuppence, Straw for nothing’!!
In London alone, there were more than 7,000 ‘dram shops’, and 10 million gallons of gin were being distilled annually in the capital…
PROTEST! Oppose the TICS and International Convention Centre Bills!
WHEN: Tuesday 5 November 2013 (Guy Fawkes Day)
TIME: 12 noon – 2pm
WHERE: Outside TVNZ (Corner of Hobson and Victoria Streets Auckland City)
(Both the TICS and International Convention Centre Bills listed on the provisional NZ Parliamentary ‘Order Paper’ for 5 November 2013 http://www.parliament.nz/resource/0001954127 )
While this National/ACT Government continues to violate citizens lawful rights to privacy, freedom of expression and freedom of association under the TICS Bill, ( http://techliberty.org.nz/changes-to-the-tics-bill/ ) there has been no ‘due diligence’ on the increased risk of money-laundering at Sky City under the International Convention Centre Bill, which effectively allows anonymity to money-launderers and organised criminals?
Quite unbelievable, in my considered opinion, that OFCANZ (illegally) sought and obtained the assistance of the GCSB in the unlawful surveillance of Kim Dotcom, and charged him with money-laundering, yet have not lifted a finger to do ‘due diligence’ on the arguably FAR bigger money-laundering threat arising from the International Convention Centre (Sky City) Bill?
A GREAT look for New Zealand – ‘perceived’ to be ‘the ‘least corrupt country in the world’ (along with Denmark and Finland) , according to the Transparency International 2012 Corruption Perception Index?
they should grow up and get past that rapey phase that many young torieboys go through, but they can keep their knighthoods because they got those awards for other reasons. /sarc
Doesn’t touch on the fact that these are 17-18 year olds getting underage girls drunk and raping them. But he gets that the shaming them on facebook later is bad.
Would like to see a legal opinion on this. I was of the understanding that for statuatory rape, a complaint by the underage girl wasn’t necessary for someone to be charged.
In my last year at school, one of my friend’s sister was found to be having sex with her boyfriend two weeks before her 16th birthday. The police charged the guy even though she begged them not to. He was about 6 months older than her, and his father was a truck driver. That was a while ago, but they certainly didn’t need a complaint then. This case stinks in more ways than one.
The Boiler Suit and other working class looks coming this way…
“In the last Australian election Liberal strategist Mark Textor put then-opposition leader Tony Abbott in a bright velcro vest and hard hat right at the centre of campaign pictures. Now in Britain his partner Lynton Crosby has further developed the working look by putting his client, Prime Minister David Cameron, into a boiler suit.”
Once, only seems to allow one vote per PC or at least it doesn’t seem to change the total if you vote more then and of course left wingers would never organize to vote on an on-line poll (thats sarcasm by the way)
I don’t expect the gender quota policy to be particularly popular amongst voters as a whole. But that wasn’t the point of the remit. Hopefully some professional polling is done on the issue some time soon.
All I said was that the gender quota policy isn’t going to be very popular, from the feedback I am getting. Whether it will encourage more women to put their hands up to be candidates – I think that’s speculative and it wasnt the point of the remit.
I guess what some people might be thinking is what will be next…will govt departments be forced to ensure theres gender equality in the hiring for example
So what was the point of the remit then (genuine curiosity)
I can tell you right now that the genda quota policy is exceedingly stupid and could be enough to stop Labour winning the next election. Get rid of it, and quickly!
Roastbusters. (as per conversation above) So on the news just now it’s been said that one of the boys’ is the son of an entertainer and another is the son of a cop, no mention of whose sons they are. Since this isn’t a case of name suppression because we’ve never got as far as the courts with this, what is it? Do the lawyers for the father prevent their clients names from being broadcast? Why are they protected when the girls aren’t?
Why did the cop say last night they couldn’t do anything because none of the girls have been “brave” enough to come forward? The shame isn’t theirs to own, so did he really mean “they haven’t come forward because they don’t feel supported enough to do so”? Why did the reporter feel it necessary to say that one of the victims had already lost her “innocence”? How is that relevant to her being raped?
Age old rhetorical questions. The problem is they are still being asked.
One of those times when I just think WTF is going on with guys these days and yeah I think that maybe some laws could be looked at…I dunno maybe a lawyer could explain it better but maybe the burden of proof required to start an investigation could be lowered if the alleged crime involves under age kids, drugs or something
“I just think WTF is going on with guys these days”
Chris73, this is not new behaviour. The difference now is that people are willing to talk about it, and talk about it as rape (thank-you feminism for all the hard work in the past few decades). Plus there is the internet which alters the discourse hugely. And of course the internet allows those young men to be complete arseholes in a much more public way. But make no mistake, this behaviour has been around for a very long time.
It’s possible that chris73 has not met the type of bloke that’s an exhibitionist. That would take a photo of his penis and send that to someone he wants to interest or shock or both.
There’s a lot going on that doesn’t enter many people’s understanding. From that behaviour going on to more advanced titillation is a few steps. I think the word that covers both the male, and female behaviour in being attracted to these sleazebags, would be hedonism – .
the pursuit of pleasure; sensual self-indulgence.
I’ve only got the website link with text, not the actual reporters words but they did relate to the young woman who was interviewed below:
“One girl, who is choosing to remain anonymous, says the Roast Busters stole her soul.
“They don’t understand how I feel inside; they don’t understand how this has hurt me,” she says.
Police say the girl is one of a number of drunk, underage victims they’ve interviewed about being exploited by the Roast Busters”
It was one of those “if/but” unnecessary sentences that acts as a disclaimer to the information provided. I wonder if TV3 sought to minimise her reality and her pain by pointing out that the victim had lost her virginity as an underage person. By saying it, they were already discrediting the criminal act of the young men involved.
PB: Yeah, I mean why would you need to feel “brave” when faced with the potential parent of your rapist. How many young women were threatened with the line: “don’t even bother with the cops, my dad is one, bitch” And still the same spokesperson for the cops said tonight, that had nothing to do with their lack of action…………
I hope that someone has warned the Afghani interpreters and their families about the Bangers being exploded on November 5th, and before and after. Four very loud bombs blasts have just gone off. They could sound like IEDs.
As fireworks which were meant to be colourful things, these are a sham. I hate the things, and I think they should be limited to one public place, where people can buy one or two to let off in a field or something and there is a set piece to watch and it raises money for the local firefighters, appropriately. And too many fireworks especially bangers get held over and exploded at various times during the year long after November 5th.
Yes, on to a another topic, that of Guy Fawkes. We do have a number of refugee’s from war zones living in NZ and I’ve wondered before what they think of NZer’s sense of fun at blowing things up in the night suddenly without warning, at this time of the year.
Today, yet again, I’ve signed what seems to be an annual petition to govt to ban the private sale of fireworks. As usual it was from animal welfare orientated group. As usual it will be ignored. Who wants to be the government that bans “fun” ? No one so far.
I’m all for public displays in a controlled environment. Better that than leave explosives in the hands of folks that intentionally set out to harm domestic and farmed animals that the SPCA have to deal with every year. Let alone the stress caused by fireworks to animals kept indoors on Guy Fawkes night.Tomorrow, I’ll spend half the evening lying under the bed trying to calm our cat friend down.
Our suburbia encroaches onto farmland where we have several bird species that are nesting with their chicks as well as sheep with their lambs and cows with their calves. As well as all the development these animals have to cope with (this is another story for another time)they have to cope with sounds that are frightening to them. Got to marvel at human sensitivity and intelligence.
Its essential for democracy to have outlets for political expression. Celebrating the bomber of parliament by burning his image is for me the one finger to both the terrorists, and the authoritarians who would see any chatter about government to be unlawful. And then there is the very real gain that we manage fireworks and control gun powder.
lolita or somebody’s brother
You obviously can’t get to sleep because of the fireworks and the noise or the worry that you won’t have any fireworks and noise if intelligent people can stop this childish expensive destructive ritual.
Adequate sleep is very necessary for clear thinking and the growth of brain function and general health. Before you get to be somebody’s partner, or somebody’s father it would be a good idea to get lots of sleep.
Either way, you usually need to be by the computer and be ready to bid, for any
chance at winning the item. They say any form of exercise can keep your body fit and active.
Unfortunately, the developer also had to express its disappointment in a
leak of game assets from PSN pre-orders in Europe that have
led to the spread of spoilers.
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: My top six things to note around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the week to July 27 were:1. The Minister for Ford Rangers strikes againTransport Minister Simeon Brown was again the busiest of the Cabinet ministers this week, announcing an ...
You got a fast carAnd I want a ticket to anywhereMaybe we make a dealMaybe together we can get somewhereAny place is betterYesterday’s newsletter, Trust In Me, on the report of abuse in state care, and by religious organisations, between 1950 and 2019, coupled with the hypocrisy of Christopher Luxon ...
New Zealand is again having to reconcile conflicting pressures from its military and its trade interests. Should we join Pillar Two of AUKUS and risk compromising our markets in China? For a century after New Zealand was founded in 1840, its external security arrangements and external economics arrangements were aligned. ...
The ‘50 Shades of Green’ farmers’ protest in 2019 was heavy on climate change denial, but five years on, scepticism and criticism about the idea that pine forests can save us is growing across the board. File photo: Lynn GrievesonTL;DR: Here’s the top six news items of note in climate ...
This morning the sky was bright.The birds, in their usual joyous bliss. Nature doesn’t seem to feel the heat of what might angst humans.Their calls are clear and beautiful.Just some random thoughts:MāoriPaul Goldsmith has announced his government will roll back the judiciary’s rulings on Māori Customary Marine Title, which recognises ...
In 2003, the Court of Appeal delivered its decision in Ngati Apa v Attorney-General, ruling that Māori customary title over the foreshore and seabed had not been universally extinguished, and that the Māori Land Court could determine claims and confirm title if the facts supported it. This kicked off the ...
Earlier this week at Parliament, Labour leader Chris Hipkins was applauded for saying that the response to the final report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care had to be “bigger than politics.” True, but the fine words, apologies and “we hear you” messages will soon ring ...
TL;DR: In news breaking this morning:The Ministry of Education is cutting $2 billion from its school building programme so the National-ACT-NZ First Coalition Government has enough money to deliver tax cuts; The Government has quietly lowered its child poverty reduction targets to make them easier to achieve;Te Whatu Ora-Health NZ’s ...
Kia ora. These are some stories that caught our eye this week – as always, feel free to share yours in the comments. Our header image this week (via Eke Panuku) shows the planned upgrade for the Karanga Plaza Tidal Swimming Steps. The week in Greater Auckland On ...
1. What's not to love about the way the Harris campaign is turning things around?a. Nothingb. Love all of itc. God what a reliefd. Not that it will be by any means easye. All of the above 2. Documents released by the Ministry of Health show Associate Health Minister Casey ...
Trust in me in all you doHave the faith I have in youLove will see us through, if only you trust in meWhy don't you, you trust me?In a week that saw the release of the 3,000 page Abuse in Care report Christopher Luxon was being asked about Boot Camps. ...
TL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers last night features co-hosts and talking about the Royal Commission Inquiry into Abuse in Carereport released this week, and with:The Kākā’s climate correspondent on a UN push to not recognise carbon offset markets and ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Friday, July 26, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Transport: Simeon Brown announced$802.9 million in funding for 18 new trains on the Wairarapa and Manawatū rail lines, which ...
The northern expressway extension from Warkworth to Whangarei is likely to require radical changes to legislation if it is going to be built within the foreseeable future. The Government’s powers to purchase land, the planning process and current restrictions on road tolling are all going to need to be changed ...
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedFirst they came for the doctors But I was confused by the numbers and costs So I didn't speak up Then they came for our police and nurses And I didn't think we could afford those costs anyway So I ...
Photo by Joshua J. Cotten on UnsplashWe’re back again after our mid-winter break. We’re still with the ‘new’ day of the week (Thursday rather than Friday) when we have our ‘hoon’ webinar with paying subscribers to The Kākā for an hour at 5 pm.Jump on this link on YouTube Livestream ...
Notes: This is a free article. Abuse in Care themes are mentioned. Video is at the bottom.BackgroundYesterday’s report into Abuse in Care revealed that at least 1 in 3 of all who went through state and faith based care were abused - often horrifically. At least, because not all survivors ...
Luxon speaks in Parliament yesterday about the Abuse in Care report. Photo: Hagen Hopkins/Getty ImagesTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:PM Christopher Luxon said yesterday in tabling the Abuse in Carereport in Parliament he wanted to ‘do the ...
About a decade ago I worked with a bloke called Steve. He was the grizzled veteran coder, a few years older than me, who knew where the bodies were buried - code wise. Despite his best efforts to be approachable and friendly he could be kind of gruff, through to ...
Some of the recent announcements from the government have reminded us of posts we’ve written in the past. Here’s one from early 2020. There were plenty of reactions to the government’s infrastructure announcement a few weeks ago which saw them fund a bunch of big roading projects. One of ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Thursday, July 25 are:News: Why Electric Kiwi is closing to new customers - and why it matters RNZ’s Susan EdmundsScoop: Government drops ...
Hi,I felt a small wet tongue snaking through one of the holes in my Crocs. It explored my big toe, darting down one side, then the other. “He’s looking for some toe cheese,” said the woman next to me, words that still haunt me to this day.Growing up in New ...
Yesterday I happily quoted the Prime Minister without fact-checking him and sure enough, it turns out his numbers were all to hell. It’s not four kg of Royal Commission report, it’s fourteen.My friend and one-time colleague-in-comms Hazel Phillips gently alerted me to my error almost as soon as I’d hit ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Thursday, July 25, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day were:The Abuse in Care Royal Commission of Inquirypublished its final report yesterday.PM Christopher Luxon and The Minister responsible for ...
The Official Information Act has always been a battle between requesters seeking information, and governments seeking to control it. Information is power, so Ministers and government agencies want to manage what is released and when, for their own convenience, and legality and democracy be damned. Their most recent tactic for ...
TL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:Transport and Energy Minister Simeon Brown is accelerating plans to spend at least $10 billion through Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) to extend State Highway One as a four-lane ‘Expressway’ from Warkworth to Whangarei ...
I live my life (woo-ooh-ooh)With no control in my destinyYea-yeah, yea-yeah (woo-ooh-ooh)I can bleed when I want to bleedSo come on, come on (woo-ooh-ooh)You can bleed when you want to bleedYea-yeah, come on (woo-ooh-ooh)Everybody bleed when they want to bleedCome on and bleedGovernments face tough challenges. Selling unpopular decisions to ...
Please note:To skip directly to the- parliamentary footage in the video, scroll to 1:21 To skip to audio please click on the headphone iconon the left hand side of the screenThis video / audio section is under development. ...
Given the crackdown on wasteful government spending, it behooves me to point to a high profile example of spending by the Luxon government that looks like a big, fat waste of time and money. I’m talking about the deployment of NZDF personnel to support the US-led coalition in the Red ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:40 am on Wednesday, July 24 are:Deep Dive: Chipping away at the housing crisis, including my comments RNZ/Newsroom’s The DetailNews: Government softens on asset sales, ...
As I reported about the city centre, Auckland’s rail network is also going through a difficult and disruptive period which is rapidly approaching a culmination, this will result in a significant upgrade to the whole network. Hallelujah. Also like the city centre this is an upgrade predicated on the City ...
Today, a 4 kilogram report will be delivered to Parliament. We know this is what the report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State and Faith-based Care weighs, because our Prime Minister told us so.Some reporter had blindsided him by asking a question about something done by ...
TL;DR: As of 7:00 am on Wednesday, July 24, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Beehive:Transport Minister Simeon Brownannounced plans to use PPPs to fund, build and run a four-lane expressway between Auckland ...
NewstalkZB host Mike Hosking, who can usually be relied on to give Prime Minister Christopher Luxon an easy run, did not do so yesterday when he interviewed him about the HealthNZ deficit. Luxon is trying to use a deficit reported last year by HealthNZ as yet another example of the ...
Back in January a StatsNZ employee gave a speech at Rātana on behalf of tangata whenua in which he insulted and criticised the government. The speech clearly violated the principle of a neutral public service, and StatsNZ started an investigation. Part of that was getting an external consultant to examine ...
Renting for life: Shared ownership initiatives are unlikely to slow the slide in home ownership by much. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:A Deloittereport for Westpac has projected Aotearoa’s home-ownership rate will ...
You're broken down and tiredOf living life on a merry go roundAnd you can't find the fighterBut I see it in you so we gonna walk it outAnd move mountainsWe gonna walk it outAnd move mountainsAnd I'll rise upI'll rise like the dayI'll rise upI'll rise unafraidI'll rise upAnd I'll ...
There’s been a change in Myers Park. Down the steps from St. Kevin’s Arcade, past the grassy slopes, the children’s playground, the benches and that goat statue, there has been a transformation. The underpass for Mayoral Drive has gone from a barren, grey, concrete tunnel, to a place that thrums ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections Global society may have finally slammed on the brakes for climate-warming pollution released by human fossil fuel combustion. According to the Carbon Monitor Project, the total global climate pollution released between February and May 2024 declined slightly from the amount released during the same ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Tuesday, July 23 are:Deep Dive: Penlink: where tolling rhetoric meets reality BusinessDesk-$$$’sOliver LewisScoop:Te Pūkenga plans for regional polytechs leak out ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Tuesday, July 23, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Health: Shane Reti announcedthe Board of Te Whatu Ora-Health New Zealand was being replaced with Commissioner Lester Levy ...
Health NZ warned the Government at the end of March that it was running over Budget. But the reasons it gave were very different to those offered by the Prime Minister yesterday. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon blamed the “botched merger” of the 20 District Health Boards (DHBs) to create Health ...
Long ReadKey Summary: Although National increased the health budget by $1.4 billion in May, they used an old funding model to project health system costs, and never bothered to update their pre-election numbers. They were told during the Health Select Committees earlier in the year their budget amount was deficient, ...
As a momentous, historic weekend in US politics unfolded, analysts and commentators grasped for precedents and comparisons to help explain the significance and power of the choice Joe Biden had made. The 46th president had swept the Democratic party’s primaries but just over 100 days from the election had chosen ...
TL;DR: I’m casting around for new ideas and ways of thinking about Aotearoa’s political economy to find a few solutions to our cascading and self-reinforcing housing, poverty and climate crises.Associate Professor runs an online masters degree in the economics of sustainability at Torrens University in Australia and is organising ...
The Finance and Expenditure Committee has reported back on National's Local Government (Water Services Preliminary Arrangements) Bill. The bill sets up water for privatisation, and was introduced under urgency, then rammed through select committee with no time even for local councils to make a proper submission. Naturally, national's select committee ...
Some years ago, I bought a book at Dunedin’s Regent Booksale for $1.50. As one does. Vandrad the Viking (1898), by J. Storer Clouston, is an obscure book these days – I cannot find a proper online review – but soon it was sitting on my shelf, gathering dust alongside ...
History is not on the side of the centre-left, when Democratic presidents fall behind in the polls and choose not to run for re-election. On both previous occasions in the past 75 years (Harry Truman in 1952, Lyndon Johnson in 1968) the Democrats proceeded to then lose the White House ...
This is a free articleCoverageThis morning, US President Joe Biden announced his withdrawal from the Presidential race. And that is genuinely newsworthy. Thanks for your service, President Biden, and all the best to you and yours.However, the media in New Zealand, particularly the 1News nightly bulletin, has been breathlessly covering ...
A homeless person’s camp beside a blocked-off slipped damage walkway in Freeman’s Bay: we are chasing our tail on our worsening and inter-related housing, poverty and climate crises. Photo: Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy ...
What has happened to it all?Crazy, some'd sayWhere is the life that I recognise?(Gone away)But I won't cry for yesterdayThere's an ordinary worldSomehow I have to findAnd as I try to make my wayTo the ordinary worldYesterday morning began as many others - what to write about today? I began ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Monday, July 22 are:Today’s Must Read: Father and son live in a tent, and have done for four years, in a million ...
TL;DR: As of 7:00 am on Monday, July 22, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:US President Joe Biden announced via X this morning he would not stand for a second term.Multinational professional services firm ...
A listing of 32 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, July 14, 2024 thru Sat, July 20, 2024. Story of the week As reflected by preponderance of coverage, our Story of the Week is Project 2025. Until now traveling ...
This weekend, a friend pointed out someone who said they’d like to read my posts, but didn’t want to pay. And my first reaction was sympathy.I’ve already told folks that if they can’t comfortably subscribe, and would like to read, I’d be happy to offer free subscriptions. I don’t want ...
National: The Party of ‘Law and Order’ IntroductionThis weekend, the Government formally kicked off one of their flagship policy programs: a military style boot camp that New Zealand has experimented with over the past 50 years. Cartoon credit: Guy BodyIt’s very popular with the National Party’s Law and Orderimage, ...
Day one of the solo leg of my long journey home begins with my favourite sound: footfalls in an empty street. 5.00 am and it’s already light and already too warm, almost.If I can make the train that leaves Budapest later this hour I could be in Belgrade by nightfall; ...
Do you remember Y2K, the threat that hung over humanity in the closing days of the twentieth century? Horror scenarios of planes falling from the sky, electronic payments failing and ATMs refusing to dispense cash. As for your VCR following instructions and recording your favourite show - forget about it.All ...
Climate Change Minister Simon Watts being questioned by The Kākā’s Bernard Hickey.TL;DR: My top six things to note around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the week to July 20 were:1. A strategy that fails Zero Carbon Act & Paris targetsThe National-ACT-NZ First Coalition Government finally unveiled ...
Summary:As New Zealand loses at least 12 leaders in the public service space of health, climate, and pharmaceuticals, this month alone, directly in response to the Government’s policies and budget choices, what lies ahead may be darker than it appears. Tui examines some of those departures and draws a long ...
The Minister of Housing’s ambition is to reduce markedly the ratio of house prices to household incomes. If his strategy works it would transform the housing market, dramatically changing the prospects of housing as an investment.Leaving aside the Minister’s metaphor of ‘flooding the market’ I do not see how the ...
As previously noted, my historical fantasy piece, set in the fifth-century Mediterranean, was accepted for a Pirate Horror anthology, only for the anthology to later fall through. But in a good bit of news, it turned out that the story could indeed be re-marketed as sword and sorcery. As of ...
An employee of tobacco company Philip Morris International demonstrates a heated tobacco device. Photo: Getty ImagesTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy on Friday, July 19 are:At a time when the Coalition Government is cutting spending on health, infrastructure, education, housing ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 8:30 am on Friday, July 19 are:Scoop: NZ First Minister Casey Costello orders 50% cut to excise tax on heated tobacco products. The minister has ...
Kia ora, it’s time for another Friday roundup, in which we pull together some of the links and stories that caught our eye this week. Feel free to add more in the comments! Our header image this week shows a foggy day in Auckland town, captured by Patrick Reynolds. ...
TL;DR : Here’s the top six items climate news for Aotearoa this week, as selected by Bernard Hickey and The Kākā’s climate correspondent Cathrine Dyer. A discussion recorded yesterday is in the video above and the audio of that sent onto the podcast feed.The Government released its draft Emissions Reduction ...
Save some money, get rich and old, bring it back to Tobacco Road.Bring that dynamite and a crane, blow it up, start all over again.Roll up. Roll up. Or tailor made, if you prefer...Whether you’re selling ciggies, digging for gold, catching dolphins in your nets, or encouraging folks to flutter ...
Waiting In The Wings:For truly, if Trump is America’s un-assassinated Caesar, then J.D. Vance is America’s Octavian, the Republic’s youthful undertaker – and its first Emperor.DONALD TRUMP’S SELECTION of James D. Vance as his running-mate bodes ill for the American republic. A fervent supporter of Viktor Orban, the “illiberal” prime ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Friday, July 19, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:The PSAannounced the Employment Relations Authority (ERA) had ruled in the PSA’s favour in its case against the Ministry ...
Te Rangi e tu nei (The sky above us) Te Papa e takoto nei (The land beneath us) Tatou katoa te hunga ora (To us all the living) Tena koutou katoa (Greetings) ...
A late change to charter school legislation will cheat educators out of fair pay and negotiating power proving charter schools are just a vehicle to make profit out of our education system. ...
In 2004 te iwi Māori rallied against the Crown’s attempt to confiscate our coastlines and moana with the Foreshore and Seabed Act. This led to the largest hīkoi of a generation and the birth of Te Pāti Māori. 20 years later, history is repeating itself. Today the government has announced ...
It has been five and a half years since the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care was established to investigate the abuse of children, young people, and vulnerable adults within state and faith-based institutions. Yesterday, the final report - Whanaketia through pain and trauma, from darkness to light ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to take action off the back of the International Court of Justice ruling on Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine. ...
On Friday the International Court of Justice reaffirmed what Palestinian’s have been telling us for decades: that the occupation and colonisation of Palestinian lands by Israel is illegal and must end immediately. They also called for reparations for Palestinian’s who have lived under Israeli occupation since it began in 1967. ...
Labour calls on the Government to act after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian Territories is illegal. ...
The 53.7 percent rise in benefit sanctions over the last year is more proof of this Government’s disdain for our communities most in need of support. ...
Aotearoa could be a country where every child grows up feeling safe, loved and with a sense of belonging in their whānau and community. But for some of our children, this is far from reality. Instead, they are trapped in a maze of intergenerational harm that they can’t escape on ...
Te Pāti Māori are calling for David Seymour to resign as Associate Health Minister in response to his call for Pharmac to ignore the Treaty of Waitangi. “This announcement is just another example of the government’s anti-Tiriti, anti-Māori agenda.” Said Co-leader and spokesperson for health, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. “Seymour thinks it ...
The soaring price of renting is driving the rise of inflation in this country - with latest figures from Stats NZ showing rents are up 4.8 per cent on average while annual inflation is at 3.3 per cent. ...
National’s Emissions Reduction Plan will take New Zealand further from the economy we need to ensure the next generation has a stable climate and secure livelihoods. ...
Following consultation with named parties and thorough consideration of privacy interests, the Green Party is in a position to release the Executive Summary of the final report from the independent investigation into Darleen Tana. ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon should be asking serious questions of his Minister for Resources Shane Jones now it’s been revealed he misled the public about a dinner with mining companies that he didn’t declare and said wasn’t pre-arranged. ...
Te Pāti Māori have submitted to the Justice Select Committee against the Sentencing (Reinstating Three Strikes) Amendment Bill. The bill will further entrench racism in our justice system and fails to focus on rehabilitation. “Reinstating Three Strikes will empower a systematically racist system and exacerbate the overrepresentation of Māori in ...
The Transport and Infrastructure Committee is set to make a determination on the Residential Tenancies Amendment (RTA) Bill in the coming weeks. “This legislation will give landlords the power to kick our whānau out onto the street for no reason” said Housing spokesperson, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “Their solution to the housing ...
“National’s campaign was about tackling crime and the best they can do is a two-year long Ministerial Advisory Group,” Labour justice spokesperson Duncan Webb said. ...
“There are more examples of charter schools failing their students than there are success stories. The coalition Government is driving to dismantle our public school system and instead promote a privatised, competitive structure that puts profits before kids,” Jan Tinetti said. ...
“This government is choosing to deliberately mislead and withhold information, keeping our people in the dark about this government’s agenda and the future of our mokopuna,” said co-leader and spokesperson for Health, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. The call comes after the demand from the Chief Ombudsman that Associate Minister of Health, Casey ...
“Today’s climate announcement by Simon Watts makes clear the National Government is simply paying lip service to meeting its climate change targets,” Megan Woods said. ...
National is choosing to make life harder for workers by taking away the rights our communities have fought hard for. Here's how they’re taking workers backwards. ...
Australia, Canada and New Zealand today issued the following statement on the need for an urgent ceasefire in Gaza and the risk of expanded conflict between Hizballah and Israel. The situation in Gaza is catastrophic. The human suffering is unacceptable. It cannot continue. We remain unequivocal in our condemnation of ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins today reminded all State and faith-based institutions of their legal obligation to preserve records relevant to the safety and wellbeing of those in its care. “The Abuse in Care Inquiry’s report has found cases where records of the most vulnerable people in State and faith‑based institutions were ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says the Government’s online safety website for children and young people has reached one million page views. “It is great to see so many young people and their families accessing the site Keep It Real Online to learn how to stay safe online, and manage ...
Tēnā tātou katoa, Ngā mihi te rangi, ngā mihi te whenua, ngā mihi ki a koutou, kia ora mai koutou. Thank you for the opportunity to be here and the invitation to speak at this 50th anniversary conference. I acknowledge all those who have gone before us and paved the ...
New Zealand’s payroll providers have successfully prepared to ensure 3.5 million individuals will, from Wednesday next week, be able to keep more of what they earn each pay, says Finance Minister Nicola Willis and Revenue Minister Simon Watts. “The Government's tax policy changes are legally effective from Wednesday. Delivering this tax ...
An experimental vineyard which will help futureproof the wine sector has been opened in Blenheim by Associate Regional Development Minister Mark Patterson. The covered vineyard, based at the New Zealand Wine Centre – Te Pokapū Wāina o Aotearoa, enables controlled environmental conditions. “The research that will be produced at the Experimental ...
The Coalition Government has confirmed the indicative regional breakdown of North Island Weather Event (NIWE) funding for state highway recovery projects funded through Budget 2024, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Regions in the North Island suffered extensive and devastating damage from Cyclone Gabrielle and the 2023 Auckland Anniversary Floods, and ...
Indonesia’s Foreign Minister, Retno Marsudi, will visit New Zealand next week, Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced. “Indonesia is important to New Zealand’s security and economic interests and is our closest South East Asian neighbour,” says Mr Peters, who is currently in Laos to engage with South East Asian partners. ...
He aha te kai a te rangatira? He kōrero, he kōrero, he kōrero. The government has reaffirmed its commitment to supporting the aspirations of Ngāti Maniapoto, Minister for Māori Development Tama Potaka says. “My thanks to Te Nehenehenui Trust – Ngāti Maniapoto for bringing their important kōrero to a ministerial ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has thanked outgoing Chair of the Civil Aviation Authority, Janice Fredric, for her service to the board.“I have received Ms Fredric’s resignation from the role of Chair of the Civil Aviation Authority,” Mr Brown says.“On behalf of the Government, I want to thank Ms Fredric for ...
The Government is proposing legislation to overturn a Court of Appeal decision and amend the Marine and Coastal Area Act in order to restore Parliament’s test for Customary Marine Title, Treaty Negotiations Minister Paul Goldsmith says. “Section 58 required an applicant group to prove they have exclusively used and occupied ...
Regulation Minister David Seymour says that opposition parties have united in bad faith, opposing what they claim are ‘dangerous changes’ to the Early Childhood Education sector, despite no changes even being proposed yet. “Issues with affordability and availability of early childhood education, and the complexity of its regulation, has led ...
After receiving more than 740 submissions in the first 20 days, Regulation Minister David Seymour is asking the Ministry for Regulation to extend engagement on the early childhood education regulation review by an extra two weeks. “The level of interest has been very high, and from the conversations I’ve been ...
The Coalition Government is investing $802.9 million into the Wairarapa and Manawatū rail lines as part of a funding agreement with the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA), KiwiRail, and the Greater Wellington and Horizons Regional Councils to deliver more reliable services for commuters in the lower North Island, Transport Minister Simeon ...
Local Government Minister Simeon Brown has announced his intention to appoint a Crown Manager to both Hawke’s Bay Regional and Wairoa District Councils to speed up the delivery of flood protection work in Wairoa."Recent severe weather events in Wairoa this year, combined with damage from Cyclone Gabrielle in 2023 have ...
Mr Speaker, this is a day that many New Zealanders who were abused in State care never thought would come. It’s the day that this Parliament accepts, with deep sorrow and regret, the Report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care. At the heart of this report are the ...
For the first time, the Government is formally acknowledging some children and young people at Lake Alice Psychiatric Hospital experienced torture. The final report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State and Faith-based Care “Whanaketia – through pain and trauma, from darkness to light,” was tabled in Parliament ...
The Government has acknowledged the nearly 2,400 courageous survivors who shared their experiences during the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Historical Abuse in State and Faith-Based Care. The final report from the largest and most complex public inquiry ever held in New Zealand, the Royal Commission Inquiry “Whanaketia – through ...
With a week to go before hard-working New Zealanders see personal income tax relief for the first time in fourteen years, 513,000 people have used the Budget tax calculator to see how much they will benefit, says Finance Minister Nicola Willis. “Tax relief is long overdue. From next Wednesday, personal income ...
Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden says a bill that has passed its first reading will improve parental leave settings and give non-biological parents more flexibility as primary carer for their child. The Regulatory Systems Amendment Bill (No3), passed its first reading this morning. “It includes a change ...
Two Bills designed to improve regulation and make it easier to do business have passed their first reading in Parliament, says Economic Development Minister Melissa Lee. The Regulatory Systems (Economic Development) Amendment Bill and Regulatory Systems (Immigration and Workforce) Amendment Bill make key changes to legislation administered by the Ministry ...
New legislation paves the way for greater competition in sectors such as banking and electricity, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly says. “Competitive markets boost productivity, create employment opportunities and lift living standards. To support competition, we need good quality regulation but, unfortunately, a recent OECD report ranked New ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says lotteries for charitable purposes, such as those run by the Heart Foundation, Coastguard NZ, and local hospices, will soon be allowed to operate online permanently. “Under current laws, these fundraising lotteries are only allowed to operate online until October 2024, after which ...
The Coalition Government is accelerating work on the new four-lane expressway between Auckland and Whangārei as part of its Roads of National Significance programme, with an accelerated delivery model to deliver this project faster and more efficiently, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “For too long, the lack of resilient transport connections ...
Sir Don McKinnon will travel to Viet Nam this week as a Special Envoy of the Government, Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced. “It is important that the Government give due recognition to the significant contributions that General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong made to New Zealand-Viet Nam relations,” Mr ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says newly appointed Commissioner, Grant Illingworth KC, will help deliver the report for the first phase of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into COVID-19 Lessons, due on 28 November 2024. “I am pleased to announce that Mr Illingworth will commence his appointment as ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters travels to Laos this week to participate in a series of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)-led Ministerial meetings in Vientiane. “ASEAN plays an important role in supporting a peaceful, stable and prosperous Indo-Pacific,” Mr Peters says. “This will be our third visit to ...
Construction of a new mental health facility at Te Nikau Grey Hospital in Greymouth is today one step closer, Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey says. “This $27 million facility shows this Government is delivering on its promise to boost mental health care and improve front line services,” Mr Doocey says. ...
New Zealand is committing nearly $50 million to a package supporting sustainable Pacific fisheries development over the next four years, Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones announced today. “This support consisting of a range of initiatives demonstrates New Zealand’s commitment to assisting our Pacific partners ...
Associate Education Minister David Seymour says proposed changes to the Education and Training Amendment Bill will ensure charter schools have more flexibility to negotiate employment agreements and are equipped with the right teaching resources. “Cabinet has agreed to progress an amendment which means unions will not be able to initiate ...
In response to serious concerns around oversight, overspend and a significant deterioration in financial outlook, the Board of Health New Zealand will be replaced with a Commissioner, Health Minister Dr Shane Reti announced today. “The previous government’s botched health reforms have created significant financial challenges at Health NZ that, without ...
Minister for Space and Science, Innovation and Technology Judith Collins will travel to Adelaide tomorrow for space and science engagements, including speaking at the Australian Space Forum. While there she will also have meetings and visits with a focus on space, biotechnology and innovation. “New Zealand has a thriving space ...
Climate Change Minister Simon Watts will travel to China on Saturday to attend the Ministerial on Climate Action meeting held in Wuhan. “Attending the Ministerial on Climate Action is an opportunity to advocate for New Zealand climate priorities and engage with our key partners on climate action,” Mr Watts says. ...
Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones is travelling to the Solomon Islands tomorrow for meetings with his counterparts from around the Pacific supporting collective management of the region’s fisheries. The 23rd Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Committee and the 5th Regional Fisheries Ministers’ Meeting in Honiara from 23 to 26 July ...
The Government today launched the Military Style Academy Pilot at Te Au rere a te Tonga Youth Justice residence in Palmerston North, an important part of the Government’s plan to crackdown on youth crime and getting youth offenders back on track, Minister for Children, Karen Chhour said today. “On the ...
The Government has welcomed news the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) has begun work to replace nine priority bridges across the country to ensure our state highway network remains resilient, reliable, and efficient for road users, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says.“Increasing productivity and economic growth is a key priority for the ...
Acting Prime Minister David Seymour has been in contact throughout the evening with senior officials who have coordinated a whole of government response to the global IT outage and can provide an update. The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet has designated the National Emergency Management Agency as the ...
New Zealand and Japan will continue to step up their shared engagement with the Pacific, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “New Zealand and Japan have a strong, shared interest in a free, open and stable Pacific Islands region,” Mr Peters says. “We are pleased to be finding more ways ...
New developments in the heart of North Island forestry country will reinvigorate their communities and boost economic development, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones visited Kaingaroa and Kawerau in Bay of Plenty today to open a landmark community centre in the former and a new connecting road in ...
President Adeang, fellow Ministers, honourable Diet Member Horii, Ambassadors, distinguished guests. Minasama, konnichiwa, and good afternoon, everyone. Distinguished guests, it’s a pleasure to be here with you today to talk about New Zealand’s foreign policy reset, the reasons for it, the values that underpin it, and how it ...
Last summer when Matairangi burned, Ginny and Tom stood at the window of their lounge, watching kākā shoot skyward from the burning trees. From the distance, they looked to Ginny like pages torn from books and thrown into a bonfire. It was Tom, voice tight, who told her it was ...
Opinion: The Canadian short story writer Alice Munro – winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013 – died in May at the age of 92. Her work was about “the damage people inflict on one another in the name of love”, Deborah Treisman wrote in the New Yorker. ...
This month marks two years since the most powerful telescope ever built sent its first pictures back to earth. From its lofty vantage point, beyond the moon in orbit around the sun, the James Webb Space Telescope was tuned to observe the first stars and galaxies being born soon after ...
Comment: After Climate Change Minister Simon Watts’ preview several weeks ago, I had some optimism about the Government’s emissions reduction plan. Now I’ve read the discussion document, that hope has been dashed. How can the Government propose a plan that wants to take New Zealand taxpayers’ hard-earned money, and spend ...
Christopher Luxon: hurdles The little man from National jumps hurdles in his sleep. He’s quite good at it in his dreams and even though the reality doesn’t quite match up you have to give him credit for getting up every morning and crashing into the very first hurdle of the ...
Comment: It was a good two hours into the conversation when Tyrone Marks raised the most basic of questions when I first spoke to him in 2017. “They didn’t explain the things they did to me. They never told me why. And they still haven’t. There’s no explanation for it. ...
Madeleine Chapman rounds out Death Week on The Spinoff with a final recommendation. You can read all of our Death Week coverage here. Nothing forces you to reflect on your life and relationships quite like proximity to death. For those whose nearest and dearest have died, there are reasonably obvious ...
Whitney Greene takes us through her life in television, including the TV character she’d like to plan a funeral for and her cow lung catastrophe on The Traitors NZ. “If the phone rings, I have to answer it,” Whitney Greene from The Traitors NZ warns as we begin our My ...
Maddie Ballard reviews the debut essay collection of Pōneke writer Flora Feltham.In ‘The Raw Material’, the longest essay in Flora Feltham’s dazzling debut collection, the author heads out for a run after hours of weaving and sees the world turn to textile. “Pounding along the Parade, I saw the ...
Andy Christiansen, one half of the experimental rock-pop duo TRiPS, shares the tunes inspiring the band’s perfect weekend and new release. “Good speakers, good food, good music, no distractions”: that’s all you need to enjoy the psychedelic stylings of TRiPS, a new band formed by Fly My Pretties’ Barnaby Weir ...
Celebrating our quadrennial opportunity to become experts in a bunch of sports we never normally watch.The games of the XXXIII Olympiad are upon us. Paris will host this year’s showcase of sporting and athletic prowess, which means some late-night and early-morning viewing for us in Aotearoa.But what sports ...
The photograph is striking and beautiful, but also disturbing – a reminder that my love for John was often entangled in shame.The Sunday Essay is made possible thanks to the support of Creative New Zealand.In the spring of 1980, in Dunedin, shortly before his death, someone took a photograph ...
Get to know Babushka, our latest Dog of the Month. This feature was offered as a reward during our What’s Eating Aotearoa PledgeMe campaign. Thank you to Babu’s humans, Jo and Isabel, for their support. Dog name: Babushka (Babu for short) Age: 2Breed: Border Collie X poodleIf rescued, ...
Pacific Media Watch A Lebanese photojournalist who was severely wounded during an Israeli air strike in south Lebanon carried the Olympic torch in Paris this week in honour of her peers who have been wounded and killed in the field — especially in Gaza and Lebanon. Christina Assi of Agence ...
The first report in a five-part web series focused on the 15th Triennial Conference of Pacific Women taking place in the Marshall Islands this week.SPECIAL REPORT:By Netani Rika in Majuro Women continue to fight for justice 70 years after the first nuclear tests by the United States caused ...
Christopher Luxon has joined with Australia and Canada's leaders in voicing support for US President Joe Biden's ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra The 2022 election brought the “teal wave” into parliament. The next election will test whether teals, who occupy what were Liberal seats, and other independents can maintain their momentum. Joining us on the Podcast ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Musgrave, Senior lecturer in Pharmacology, University of Adelaide Pixavri/Shutterstock A major Federal Court class action has been dismissed this week after Justice Michael Lee ruled there was not enough evidence to prove the weedkiller Roundup causes cancer. Plaintiff Kelvin ...
In The Week in Politics: politicians have to decide what to do about child abuse, Health NZ is booked in for major surgery and Darleen Tana returns. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Clare Corbould, Associate Professor, Contemporary Histories Research Group, Deakin University Mainstream media are surprisingly muted at the prospect of the world’s most powerful nation being led for the first time by a woman – specifically a woman of colour, Vice President Kamala ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rebecca Bennett, PhD Student, Associate Research Fellow, Deakin University Last week, a drone delivery company called Wing (owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet) started operating in Melbourne. Some 250,000 residents in parts of the city’s eastern suburbs can now order food from ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonathan Foo, Lecturer, Physiotherapy, Monash University pikselstock/Shutterstock In the next 40 years in Australia, it’s predicted the number of Australians aged 65 and over will more than double, while the number of people aged 85 and over will more than triple. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katrina Grant, Research Associate, Power Institute for Arts and Visual Culture, University of Sydney Jonas Åkerström’s 1790 work, Session of the Accademia dell’Arcadia on August 17 1788.Nationalmuseum/Cecilia Heisser Ever wondered whether you’d have a better chance at winning an Olympic gold ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexandra Jones, Program Lead, Food Governance, George Institute for Global Health wavebreakmedia/Shutterstock On Thursday, Australian and New Zealand food ministers at state, federal and national levels met to thrash out what’s next for health star ratings on packaged foods. Now, after ...
The Abuse in Care report found many Pacific survivors lost their connections to their culture and language, resulting in trauma that has been carried from generation to generation. ...
In the regulatory review, ECC intends to suggest that ERO focus on curriculum delivery reviews rather than the Ministry, because it’s not efficient or effective to have two agencies with radically different approaches climbing over each other. ...
Te Rūnanga Nui o Ngā Kura Kaupapa Māori invites the current government to work in partnership with them to develop a pathway forward, including the development of a parallel pathway and meaningful policy and strategy for Kura Kaupapa Māori ...
If you haven’t started watching yet, Tara Ward begs you to reconsider. This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. In the world of New Zealand reality television, we have many gems in our crown. There’s the delicious second season of the Celebrity Treasure ...
A new poem by Fiona Kidman. The clothes of the dead I did not keep my mother’s furry red beret for long nor the stringy scarves that adorned the necks of my aunts, although I have kept tag ends of gold, the rings and trinkets they wore, the brooches no ...
The government’s announcement that it will re-open the foreshore and seabed controversy by changing the rules on recognising centuries-old Māori customary title for a third time goes against the rule of law and New Zealand values,” Mr Tipa says. ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington.AUCKLAND1 Lioness by Emily Perkins (Bloomsbury, $25) Roarrrr! Perkins’ brilliant, award-winning, Marian-Keyes anointed, darkly funny, long ...
The 2004 Act vested ownership of the foreshore and seabed in the Crown, extinguishing any Māori claims to ownership and causing widespread outrage and protests among Māori communities. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Antje Deckert, Associate Professor (Criminology), Auckland University of Technology Getty Images Despite the connection between institutional harm and gang membership made clear in this week’s mammoth royal commission abuse-in care report, the government seems unlikely to soften its “get tough on ...
From Lewis Clareburt in the swimming to the start of the rowing – the first seven days of Paris 2024 promise to be big for New Zealand. There are few events that bring the country together quite like an Olympic Games. Nothing quite matches the excitement of getting up in ...
Groundbreaking local science just showed up in the most surprising of places: the season finale of The Kardashians. In the season five finale of The Kardashians last night, several members of the family gathered together in one of their signature empty, cream-coloured rooms to hear test results that had been ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amin Saikal, Emeritus professor of Middle Eastern and Central Asian Studies, Australian National University The Middle East is on the brink of a possibly devastating regional war, with hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah reaching an extremely dangerous level. Washington has engaged in ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laura Elizabeth Eades, Rheumatologist, Monash University Lupus is an inflammatory autoimmune illness, where the body’s immune system mistakenly attacks itself. Lupus can affect virtually any part of the body, although it most commonly affects the skin, joints and kidneys. The symptoms ...
A law firm that specialises in working with survivors of abuse in State care is disappointed that the Government fails to recognise that its boot camps can be directly compared to previous boot camps from the 1990s and 2000s. ...
Dying is a natural part of life, like updating your Wof or seeing your hairdresser, but without the word-of-mouth recs that help guarantee a good service. What if we changed that? Dying Reviews received by The Spinoff have had the names of organisations redacted while Hospice NZ collects further data. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonti Horner, Professor (Astrophysics), University of Southern Queensland Mike Lewinski/Flickr, CC BY On any clear night, if you gaze skywards long enough, chances are you’ll see a meteor streaking through the sky. Some nights, however, are better than others. At ...
Despite having no bars or other designated spaces for lesbians, Auckland boasts a small but mighty lesbian museum. So how did it get here? The past 18 months has brought increasing hostility towards the queer community across Aotearoa. Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull’s anti-trans rally in Tamaki Makaurau last March led to a ...
Poneke Antifascist Coalition has invited Wellingtonians to stand in solidarity with the Kanak people at 12pm today outside the French Embassy in Wellington. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Layton, Visiting Fellow, Strategic Studies, Griffith University Drones are the signature technology of the Ukraine war. A few miniature aircraft designs were used in the war’s early days, but an incredible array of drones have now evolved. There are different types, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Slee, Associate Professor, Clinical Academic Neurologist, Flinders University Francisco Gonzelez/Unsplash Migraine is many things, but one thing it’s not is “just a headache”. “Migraine” comes from the Greek word “hemicrania”, referring to the common experience of migraine being predominantly ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lee White, Senior Lecturer and Horizon Fellow, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Sydney Australia was slow to introduce minimum building standards for energy efficiency. The Nationwide House Energy Rating Scheme (NatHERS) only came into force in 2003. Older homes ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Steven Sherwood, Professor of Atmospheric Sciences, Climate Change Research Centre, UNSW Sydney The past century of human-induced warming has increased rainfall variability over 75% of the Earth’s land area – particularly over Australia, Europe and eastern North America, new research shows. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tony Heynen, Program Coordinator, Sustainable Energy, The University of Queensland A temporary stadium in the Champ-de-Mars, ParisEkaterina Pokrovsky/Shutterstock As Paris prepares to host the Olympic and Paralympic Games, the sustainability of the event is coming under scrutiny. The organisers have promoted ...
A night of karaoke and community in a pub that feels like a memory. You’d barely even notice it, unless you knew to look. Tucked away behind a liquor store on busy Constable Street is the capital’s last great pub. Newtown Sports Bar is an emblem of the pub culture ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Wright, Professor in Marine Geology, University of Canterbury Louise Corcoran/Getty Images The decline in the number of doctoral candidates at New Zealand universities is a worrying sign for the country’s effort to build a knowledge-based economy. Aotearoa New Zealand’s ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laurie Berg, Associate Professor, University of Technology Sydney defotoberg/Shutterstock Migrant worker exploitation is entrenched in workplaces across Australia. Tragically, a deep fear of immigration consequences means most unlawful employer conduct goes unreported. On Wednesday, however, the government officially launched a ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Vaughan Cruickshank, Senior Lecturer in Health and Physical Education, University of Tasmania Paris is about to host its third summer Olympics. While we don’t yet know what the legacy of this year’s games will be, let’s take the opportunity to reflect on ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hugh Breakey, Deputy Director, Institute for Ethics, Governance & Law, Griffith University In the wake of the assassination attempt on former US President Donald Trump, there were calls from bothsides of US politics, as well as internationally, to reduce the brutal, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Keith Rathbone, Senior Lecturer, Modern European History and Sports History, Macquarie University Two high-profile assaults on Australians in Paris have raised concerns about security ahead of the Olympic Games. On Saturday evening, a young woman was allegedly sexually assaulted by a ...
Dying is inevitable and, so it seems, is it costing a lot, writes Stewart Sowman-Lund in today’s extract from The Bulletin. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here.The cost of dying ...
The government took Joyce Harris's first baby and sent her off to a girls' home. Half a century on - and out of oceans of hurt - it asked her to be a mother figure. ...
It’s the deadliest fictional town in the country, but which death has been the most bonkers? Alex Casey looks back at 10 seasons of The Brokenwood Mysteries to find out. Warning: The following ranking story contains famous New Zealand actors appearing to be dead (not alive). The Spinoff has been ...
Water cremation is the biggest thing to happen to the death industry in the last 100 years. Alex Casey meets the people trying to bring it to Aotearoa. Through a set of mirrored doors down the industrial end of Christchurch’s St Asaph Street, death is getting a new lease on ...
Opinion: New Health NZ commissioner Lester Levy is authorised to assume operational leadership – chief executive Margie Apa is effectively relegated to his operational deputy The post All-powerful Levy is feudal baron of a $28b fiefdom appeared first on Newsroom. ...
(this one is interesting..)
http://www.alternet.org/activism/revolution-mind-underway
“..Revolutionary changes that once seemed impossible –
– can suddenly become possible..”
phillip ure..
Another take on the marxist view of the “subjective” factor long being a major impediment to necessary revolutionary change while “objective” factors–the material bleeding obvious state of a world on the brink indicates that need.
Does our social being determine our thinking or vice versa? Luckily some people break the mold like many scientists and political activists. ‘Mortgage captives’ certainly need to wake up and join them. Societal breakdown is not that far away when you look at our road rage cities, supermarkets with 2–3 day stocks, digital banking systems etc.
Petrol stations which cannot operate pumps in a power cut.
You beat me to it Viper, read the pump article after posting. A city going ‘down’ would soon become a landlocked version of a powerless cruise liner. As Christchurch people would know well.
After years of living in the North with tanks full of rain water and seafood across the road such thoughts do surface when living in the super city. VTOs observation is what one of my farm owning mates (across water from Whangarei) always gets worried about when there is a bird flu scare or whatever. Wind, solar, water tanks and gardens are the way to go.
Know of a few people in east Chch who have built in such resilience post-earthquake… So that they can survive almost indefinitely without wider support. Of course any such people or dwellings will also be sought out by the starving hordes in such circumstances…..
“Societal breakdown is not that far away when you look at our road rage cities, supermarkets with 2–3 day stocks, digital banking systems etc.”
Yep, never has society been more fragile given the weaknesses that are inherent in most of our systems today. It will only be realised when it happens unfortunately.
Have always said that the most scary person to be in this situation would be a farmer within 50km of a major population centre – lotsa new friends arriving to eat his sheep… and fuck all he can do about it… if he values his life …..
never mind, couldn’t happen here, nah, not in nz, got a nice house, good neighbours, shiny New World down te road, gotta go to work, put out of mind, smell the roses…
You a city lad or a farming lad? You have many friends in the city who are a crack shot with a .223? Or who know how to skin and gut a deer?
Personally, I’d back the farmer, his couple of mates and the farm hand over any rabble from the city, just so you know.
Plenty – probably more per km2 than in rural areas but I don’t think it would pan out like that…. but terrible subject and unpleasant to consider anyway, sorry..
I reckon New Zealanders usually know how to work these things out between themselves for the best, anyways.
Why would the farmer defend his flock? When society has broken down like that? What would he do with them anyway? Put them on the non-existent freighter to a UK supermarche?
And if his mates are helping him then who is looking after his mates farms? Does that not leave them open?
And the description of thousands (probably tens of thousands) approaching starvation as “rabble from the city” I think misses the situation and various more unpleasant characteristics of the human bean entirely.
It is an unpleasant subject but its reality as a possibility should be considered in light of the fragility of our society…. in particular the fact that supermarkets and cities have only 2-3 days of supplies at hand.
My 2–3 days come from Civil Defence people I have talked to and that may not include panic buying by some.
Lets be optimistic though and keep on trucking for positive change as many of us Standard commenters do in real life.
Tat
Farmers now can’t cope with the determined animal thieving either dead or being trucked off. We don’t hear about it very often because our news choosers don’t bother about this sort of important information getting to the general public. I think that Scott Guy case revealed an iceberg of dirty dealings in rural areas.
You might hear it on the rural news on Radionz but because of the silo system they have it’s not so likely in the national news. That gets taken up with readings of victims statements after court cases. So emotional and caring.
Sorry no you’re wrong, well its good in theory that will happen the problem is most rabble stick together and have an inflated sense of entitlement: “you have what we want so we’ll take it”
Which means there’ll be one helluva lot of people sticking together vs very few farmers looking after a lot of land meaning it would be very difficult to defend and if you’re defending one farm what happens if another group goes to your farm…
You only need to see what happens in other countries when it all turns to crap to see what happens though I dare say a farmer near a small town will do better
I think you’re confusing ‘entitlement’ with desperation, or starvation.
The effect being that it makes your use of that word to elicit an emotional response and thereby influence opinion less effective.
Carry on
“I think you’re confusing ‘entitlement’ with desperation, or starvation.”
People with a sense of entitlement will do things differently when desperate than those without. Having a sense of entitlement isn’t necessarily a bad thing of course.
Hmmm, lots of different variables here that people are glossing over. How fast a collapse happens will be a big determiner in what happens after that. I wonder if a very fast collapse (as in, running out of supermarket food) will see most big city folk sitting tight, waiting for the authorities to sort it out, and then by the time they are starving they won’t have the energy to walk very far. The more resilient people will get out straight away. The less resilient that make it to farm land, won’t know how to catch a sheep let alone kill and find a way to eat it that doesn’t make them sick.
“You only need to see what happens in other countries when it all turns to crap to see what happens though I dare say a farmer near a small town will do better”
Where are you thinking? Because three the most immediate examples that spring to mind suggest that we might be ok. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the country people did relatively ok, it was the city people that had a hard time. In Cuba, which went through a kind of Peak Oil in a year, the general population did well. People got hungry at times, no-one starved, and the general health of the country improved. In a more acute situation, the resiliency of city communities in Iraq during the invasion was pretty impressive eg when the local authorities collapsed, the people previously employed in the power companies kept some of the electricity supply going without getting paid (for obvious reasons). The banks closed, but quickly a street level of banking started up. Humans are naturally co-operative and evolutionarily adapted to work in community. I don’t mean that terrible things wouldn’t happen (they happen already), but that it’s not a given that we would all turn into single units fighting for survival. The ‘Man Alone’ myth in NZ has a lot to answer for.
I live in the South Island and just see huge numbers of resilient and creatively skilled people, so I tend towards Tat’s view.
The more we think these things through now, and start putting practices and infrastructure in place, the better we will handle what happens. There are people in NZ have been doing this for a very long time, and now there are lots of people doing it. We need to reach a certain percentage of the population, not sure how many that is.
I also think this is geographical within NZ. I think mostly about Dunedin in terms of a big city because it’s the one I am most familiar with and it’s closest to where I live. But the issues for coastal Otago will be very different than those for say Auckland.
I don’t know why everyone is assuming all us city folk will be after the farm animals in the country come the apocalypse. I can’t remember the last time I ate any animal meat.
But I do know a lot of city/suburban folk who are pretty good fruit & veggie gardeners. I’d hang close with them and the places where water can be collected. Leave the others to fight to the death over farm animals.
It takes a long time to grow vegetable food karol. People will easily starve before they can grow a potato or apple. I think vto’s point was that in a relatively fast collapse people are going to be after the meat once the supermarkets run out.
“But I do know a lot of city/suburban folk who are pretty good fruit & veggie gardeners. I’d hang close with them and the places where water can be collected.”
When people talk about there being 3 days of food in the supermarkets, I haven’t seen the analysis of actual food country wide outside of supermarkets (as in gardens, market gardens etc), but I suspect that it’s not great. Most cultures traditionaly have relied on storing food. We don’t do that locally very well and much of it is reliant on freezing and refrigeration.
There are a couple of other issues here. One is that most (as in nearly all) of our food production relies on long distance transport. No petrol = no food. The other is that fruit and veggies don’t sustain people for very long. You need fats, protein and complex carbs too. Most vegan protein in NZ is imported (beans etc). Cheese and milk will fail pretty quickly without petrol except in small rural areas. Nuts are seasonal or locked up in storage. Lots of people will subsist for quite some time just on carbs, but where is all the wheat going to come from? (not from home gardeners). We are all very vulnerable when it comes to food, including vegetarians.
Even with a longer time frame for collapse (as in the Cuba scenario), you still need to get food production localised very quickly. I agree that there are lots of good gardeners still in NZ, but we need these skills much more widely spread within the population.
I think that people with veges might find when they get up in the morning that all the veges are out of the ground and away. Even before they are fully developed. Then what. People don’t have trouble applying linear rationality – I am hungry, they have a lot of food, my need is greater than theirs. Therefore I am entitled to help myself and take it all so we have some for later.
OK. Thanks, weka.
Then we need to be looking at longer term food production. I actually don’t think relying on sheep and cows is the answer either. I would rather we were looking at how local communities could be self-sustaining.
How difficult is it to grow the required beans and/or nuts, grains etc in NZ?
Not hard at all in technical horticultural/gardening terms karol. We already grow grains and nuts well, and the alternative people are starting to grow legumes. But getting people to grow them at a large enough scale to feed local populations, there are substantial economic and structural barriers, due to how farmers and gardeners are forced into systems that benefit capitalism, and how people are channeled into buying from supermarkets. For those that can afford to, supporting Farmers Markets, vege box schemes, CSAs, gate sales, retailers that prioritise local produce etc, is very helpful.
On the bright side, in a medium paced collapse scenario we would quickly stop exporting food we grow and be able to eat it ourselves.
Sheep and cows are important for wool and leather too, as well as diary. In Cuba they farmed animals like rabbits, and ate a lot less meat.
If we ate the whole animal (edible parts), we would need less animals, and there would be more land/resources for growing other kinds of foods.
If there was a world problem and we couldn’t get the food we need we might still have to export food that we need here, because of the contracts that were set up to supply stuff to others. And they would say they need it too.
I live among-st plenty….plenty for me to feed myself anyway. But it would not be if I had to share with the rest of Wellington. And even if we did a Cuba how many of us would have the skills? Maybe we should reprogram ourselves historically: plague, famine disease are only (in a historic sense) banned from our expectations. They are merely resting in the antechamber awaiting to re-enter the door.
How much plague, famine and disease did pre-European NZ experience?
Everyone has skills. Not everyone has to grow food, lots of other things that need to be done too. Learning how to trade equitably will be a big community-wide need.
I’m wondering how many Ann Rand deciples would suddenly become “eaters” and have to rely on those of us that have the knowledge to grow food, raise and butcher animals, husband bees etc
Climate Change + War, Starvation, Poverty, Flooding, and Disease
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/international-politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=1503226&objectid=11150809
-world-wide fall in incomes
-a more violent, diseased, poorer future.
IPCC
Oh, Mother Earth,
With your fields of green
Once more laid down
by the hungry hand
How long can you
give and not receive
And feed this world
ruled by greed
Inspiration Green.
Patrick Gower @patrickgowernz 19h
Labour has introduced a female quota system that will see men demoted down the party list at expense of females
How is it that a leading news organisation can have such a biased political editor? I kind of know the answer to that question but it still astounds me.
He’s the Sean Hannity of New Zealand
No one in NZ is as bad as Hannity. Not even close.
The Alfred.E. Nuemann of political reporting Gower, TV3 and Media-Works in a free society are obviously free to broadcast,(subject to complaints) whatever they like which would seem to include out-right lies as ‘The News’,
What tho worries me is that TV3 and Media-Works gain funding from the State via NZ on Air which is said to be the difference between those entities remaining solvent or not,(this in my mind imparts to Media-Works a duty to report political matters in a fair and balanced manner),
i will suggest again that an incoming Government of the left ensure that all NZ on Air funding for this organization be stopped, if the organization wants to be one that favors the political right over the political left then they should be made to fund their own political broadcasts…
I suppose we can say that John Campbell provides some sort of balance because the issues he reports on are more likely to be taken seriously by the left.
As far as the gender issue goes, I thought a political editor might be able to put it in a broader context by looking at other countries who aim for 50% representation by women. It’s not as if these policies came down in the last shower. Norway?
“I suppose we can say that John Campbell provides some sort of balance” – you could say that, but its missing the point a bit
its not the campbell and gower balance each other out (which they dont) – its that gower actively practices spin, fabrication and generally interviews his own opinion instead of anything even vaguely like journalism.
Im no JC fan boy, and sometimes i find campbell live misses the mark – but hes far more of a journalist compared to “i just made some shit up” gower
Its not so much left vs right – its journalism vs made up bullshit
We should not worry quite so hard. Labour stories are dominating the airwaves like they haven’t for years.
The gender story is immensely softened and will play well in the longer term next year.
The insurance story will run and run.
And the housing and Christchurch rebuild stories are money for jam.
The MSM have so few factional fight stories now that they have to argue about policy. This is a massive shift. We are gonig to torn Paddy and the rest into policy wonks.
The only trick left is to frame policy into stories that bounce right. That’s a job for the media team in the Leaders’ office.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/
O’rly?
The Man Ban will be such an albatross around the neck of labour, face facts the election is already lost.
Best of luck with that.
We know where our votes come from.
Honestly, I know you guys don’t see it or refuse to see it.
But the Man ban is just like the anti smacking, light bubs, shower head stuff that destroyed the last Labour government.
This shit is voter poison on steroids, Key must be walking around today with a grin a mile wide.
That would make a change from the tired, bored, and slightly cranky look he’s had on his face for most of this year’s media conferences.
BM – Oh yeah, all these things are waaaay worse than the wholesale spying Key has sold us to.
Really BM so why are you the only one going on about a so called man Ban?
Well I’ll go on about it too. Choosing MPs by gender or sexual orientation or any other category is an extremely stupid thing for Labour to do. Go on, have a separate article about this and invite comments and a vote, I dare The Standard. As an LEC member I have participated in the choice of candidates for the Labour list (and also the Green list). Members should choose the best people for the job.
If the election is already lost, then your work here is done, BM. Come back again in 12 months and let’s see how that plays out, eh?
ps, can I suggest that hysterical use of the phrase ‘man ban’ and claiming that its electoral poison falls in to the category of ‘panicdotal evidence’?
I see they are going to cancel Nightline, and put on Paul Henry. Talk about dumbing down.
They cancelled Sainso and put on that shit that attempts to be TV, so your point is?
Bad12 You have never stated whether you have lived and worked in a country whereby the state controls the media by ownership or by fear. I don’t mean travelling or viewing their media from the outside but living their on a daily basis for a reasonable period – f.. even the sports comments were controlled. In my case I am not referring to the UK/Aus/US type of countries
Your comments raises two points:
1. The next step from funding control is editorship – there is nothing for free.
2. If we accept your idea then the flip side is that the right can also impend this policy when they return to office with one subtle change. I guess BM would have Campbell cancelled within a week.
The problem with living in a democracy is the Bad12 see the media favouring the political right while BM and his mates see the media as the voice of the political left. It just a view & if the government interferes in the media we no longer have a democracy. It either funding for both sides or no-one.
Sorry Bad12 you write some good stuff at times but not this one.
Yes, he would be cancelled………………………Permanently.
Patrick, is that you Patrick…
Gower is absolutely obsessed with this issue. I wonder why? Is he a closet transgender? Does he dress up in women’s clothes when he is at home? Why on earth does it get him so excited? He carries on like it is the biggest scandal since Watergate, when the rest the country doesn’t give a toss.
Hmm, he can’t be a trans-National presstitute ?!
Gower is a disgrace.
We can debate the pro’s and con’s of the State establishing and owning an insurance company ad nauseum, probably in terms of today’s political landscape point to such a policy as a radical departure from the Neo-liberal norm which it obvious is if you have no knowledge of the 1970’s the peak years for Government ‘ownership’ of all sorts of business,
What of the politics tho, 2 weeks befor David Cunliffe’s Conference announcement Winston Peters came out of the NZFirst Conference loudly proclaiming ‘the bottom line’ for any Party seeking the support of NZFirst after the 2014 election would be that very same thing, the establishment and ownership of an insurance company by the Government,
Labour and David Cunliffe could hardly have failed to have noticed that except for the name, where a comic might suggest Labour have inserted an ass into the policy, the policy, Winston’s bottom line, are the same,
The political signal???, on the surface we have the makings of a coalition arrangement between Labour and NZFirst after November 2014 that has little in the way of impediment bar the number of Cabinet positions needed to keep NZFirst intact and reasonably happy,
Of course if we were to see a conspiracy around every ballot box we might begin to suspect that David Cunliffe in a cunning move has reached out a large hand to NZFirst voters with the question, ‘why vote for the insurance company offered by the sMall party when you can vote for exactly the same from the bigger party’, after all on the current numbers,(as i see them), if Labour can reach across and half inch a small part of NZFirst’s voting support effectively leaving that Party below the 5% thresh-hold this would guarantee, in the carve up of the remaining NZFirst vote when the election night numbers are crunched, a Labour/Green Government,
Of course there is also another scenario where ‘the plan’ is to present after 2014 a Labour/NZFirst bloc to the Green Party attempting to formulate a coalition with the Green Party giving ‘confidence and supply’ similar i might add as the cozy arrangement of the previous Labour Government…
Solution…vote Green to keep Labour honest.
The options need to be kept open at this stage in case numbers change of the minor parties in the next 12 months. Who knows maybe the Greens and NZFirst will have to figure out how to work together if they want power.
Pretty sure the greens can work with Winston as long as he doesn’t act like a complete fuckwit.
Certainly you can count on Winston to change his mind. Also helpful to see Norman fold like origami on printing money. 😉
Perhaps agreement won’t be as hard as one imagines.
Fold???, pragmatic politics from Russell Norman once He realized Labour had no stomach for engaging in what is now mainstream economic practice by a number of major economies,
Nationals 80 billion dollar debt mountain simply hamstrings the following Government forcing that Government to raise taxes or ‘do nothing’ thus leading it away from longevity,
National and Labour’s borrowing intentions simply leads to the impoverishment of the next generation to pay for the comfortable lifestyle of today and/or the injection of the IMF into the country running our economic and social policy…
Fold. Like origami.
You’re too easy to tease.
The Greens need to get back into the ring.
Correct. The Greens had 20 months of relatively easy training and looking good. Now its time for them to step up to the 2014 championship fight.
National is already gearing up, big time.
Norman should have stuck to his guns for a little bit longer to make the point – the NZ Government has a monopoly on the creation of NZ Dollars. It can do so whenever it likes, in order to move real resources and people where they need to be.
Ad, stupid comment of the day, who carried the Opposition fight to National scoring the hits while David Shearer tried to learn how to string more than 6 words of the English language together as one coherent sentence…
RN knows how the monetary system works, knows that it really needs to be changed and knows that Labour won’t do a damn thing to change it.
QFT
The government should never borrow money as it is sovereign and thus can print all the money it needs. Along side this the government needs to stop the private banks from creating money.
It’s not about printing money as much as who should do it: http://blog.greens.org.nz/2013/05/27/private-money-printing-takes-off-again/
At the time Dr Norman floated the idea it would have performed three key positives;
1. Kick started inflation which was below the reserve banks target (was abour 0.1% iirc),
2. Helped stabilise the exchange rate, and potentially saved a significant portion of the 40k manufacturing jobs that went to the wall over the last 18 months
3. Resulted in a much lower govt debt that will now have to be paid back via taxes.
It was dropped because conditions started to change (inflation started to rise, and the govt borrowed the money – that someone else printed).
And it became politically untenable; an effective tool trashed so a cheap political point could be scored by national.
+1
National have much to answer for in their trashing of our economy. Actually, so does Labour as they’ve not been doing enough to highlight just how National have been trashing it and they’re not going to make the necessary changes to bring it back into balance.
Yes, looking at the relevant policy positions on a lot of the economic stuff to me is like looking at ‘the Generation Gap’, both the Green Party and NZFirst are saying much the same thing while perhaps proposing to arrive at the same objective by differing means…
Well make him Foreign Minister again he was very good in that job last time. It would also keep him traveling as well.
I thought NZ First’s bottom-line policy was a government-run KiwiSaver scheme…
Though I do know that a publicly owned insurance company was also one of their policies. Both of them are good ideas.
How on earth will Cunliffe built 10,000 houses in Christchurch in 4 years?
It is not possible.
simply
not
possible
and raises questions around his credibility if he goes around promising silly shit like that..
Problem with Cunliffe is that he believes his own bull shit and that makes him a very dangerous man.
Better than people believing Key’s own bullshit when you can tell he doesnt with those deadpan eyes
Ok, the Natz’ Sesame Street word-for-the-day is “dangerous”. This comes after a few that have been tossed off such as “extreme narcissist” , “over the top”, “slight smugness”, etc.
Surprisingly the polls are saying that more and more of New Zealand do as well.
See you in November and weep into your beer.
“Problem with Cunliffe is that he believes his own bull shit and that makes him a very dangerous man.”
Wait, I thought he was a two faced prick who said anything?
“two faced … anything”
I thought John Key’s supposed blind trust bought that one already for his political epitaph. Or is he wanting to sell his stake on that down to 49% ?
The Blind Trust is an Age Old Ruse
Problem with BM is that he believes his own bull shit and that makes him a very
destructive, conniving man.
Labour’s policy with KiwiBuild has been 100,000 houses in 10 years. I suppose Labour thought that 25% of those builds around ChCh could be done.
I think the policy is bold and should be aimed at with all resources. But some tempering of enthusiasm with reality should probably take place. 2,500 extra houses per year in Chch in its current state by a new entrant is pretty mind-boggling. If they can do it then they should but I seriously fail to see how on many various fronts confronting such an effort.
It will require a big ramp up, and also IMO, the re-establishment of the Department of Public Works.
Sure, but the ramp up is not possible imo. That is 10 houses each and every working day. If you start putting some actual numbers and people and materials against it and compare it to current levels of activity and shortages the problem becomes very clear. Not possible.
But as Donald Trump says in the first line of his first book – if you are going to bother thinking at all then you may as well think big…
These are the sorts of numbers of houses we’re going to be needing to get the city back up on it’s feet anyway.
I do wonder where they’re all going to go, though. Wigram Skies development is 1,600 houses and around 1,000 at Aidanfield.
Aidanfield started in 2002 and section sales are just winding up now (with an obvious boost post-earthquake), Wigram Skies will be going for another 5-6 years before it’s all built.
Well, my hope would be for medium and high density houses in the city centre(s).
Labour during the Kirk years were building 4000 State Houses a year, admittedly not in the one city…
We have to decide as a society how important this is for the nation and for the people of Christchurch.
God forbid we consider what we did in the old days of the war – materials and fuel were strictly rationed so that everything possible was directed into the nation’s efforts. Factories and workshops were re-tasked on manufacturing and processing key products seen as critical.
Realistically, it would start off being 2-3 houses/day, then by the last year be at a rate of 20 houses completed per day.
(Bearing in mind that each house will still take several weeks to build, but once in the production pipeline…)
Exactly Tat. Run it like there’s a crisis of that scale …. hmmm call it a city-destroying earthquake type crisis … use the powers the state already has to accelerate things.
vto
Don’t talk the housing plan down before its even started. It will be big and worthwhile even if the target isn’t met. And you in your spare time can keep an eye on it.
You are in Christchurch aren’t you? Keep up the pressure on the Dept send reports to The Standard, and keep them reds up to the mark. First catch your election, then simmer for a year, then bring to the boil. Voila – c’est si bon (that could be for some in Akaroa), kapai!
yes greywarbler we are in Chch most of the time and right in the heart of quake zone, rebuild, insurance, red zone, green zone, everything everything…. that is why I doubt the ability to implement the policy. I see and work in that sector right now and see the constraints referred to.
But give it a crack by all means. Go hard and think big. Lordy knows NZ is overdue for some change in the way things are attended to…
The policy will be one enormous herculean effort that is for sure. If it gets pulled off then I will be the first to applaud.
A better way to get into it though may be to prepare the first, say 200, homes so they can start within weeks of election, with a plan of action to bring the balance up to speed with urgency. That would require a small team of people to be working on this from right now. Is there such a team working on it? Working on anything to do with implementing the policy? Right now? curious …..
vto
Like your thinking. There’s life with you around, and others like you, so there’s hope too.
Gerry is the Big Man down there? What’s he doing for the little people outside
the CBD? So far outside they have seemed invisible. Caravans as temporary accommodation? I understand that one park has been taken over for quarters for all these builders that are going to be doing good stuff. Riccarton I think it was.
But that means that there are less places for the displaced Easties.
With all the building happening in Christchurch, it’s a opportunity for a lot of apprentices; builders, plumbers, electricians etc.
Is that happening, or are they just importing tradesmen and scrounging labourers where they can?
There’s some very good prefabricated homes out there.
i think you will find that the next Labour/Green/NZFirst Government will ‘explain’ the 2500 houses built in the Christchurch area as the ‘sum total’ of all houses built including by private owners,
i wonder just how many homes are involved in the other ‘leg’ of Labour’s plans for Christchurch housing, 100’s???, 1000’s, there’s probably as David Cunliffe said on National Radio this morning one hell of a lot of quite decent housing in ‘the red zone’ that with minimal repair will make a great addition to the States housing stocks,
As cheap as cheese as well, some of these houses are apparently fit to live in now, their only problem being that they are in the red zone and i would assume Government would have to provide some monies to the Christchurch Council so as to restore sewerage and water facilities,
i can tho hear Brownlee right now thinking ”oh no you don’t” and getting ready to send in the demolition crews…
“i think you will find that the next Labour/Green/NZFirst Government will ‘explain’ the 2500 houses built in the Christchurch area as the ‘sum total’ of all houses built including by private owners,”
They are promising 2,500 “affordable” houses per year, so they can’t simply count all existing private construction because a lot of this won’t be affordable. The media are also reporting that the plan is apparently to sell the houses to first-home buyers only, which again means they can’t simply count all private construction as being part of the plan.
Talked to Carter Holt or Fletchers recently about modular homes?
In fact checked the number of multi-unit consents either confirmed or underway in Auckland right now?
TransportBlog has been making a feature of just the approved ones ready for construction over the last month.
Check it out.
Aha, and that is what Phil Twyford has made reference to, if you have a factory,or any number of them, you can churn out ‘flat pack’ or totally constructed housing like they turn out cars from an assembly line,
There is not the need for 2 or 3 builders per house construction, labourers can assemble all the various components in the factory overseen by a qualified builder, factories need not run one shift per day, 3 shifts 24 hours a day will churn out 3 times the housing,
Some of the totally factory assembled housing which is then trucked to it’s site i have seen online is quite modern ‘flash’ housing…
It’s quite odd to see a fully fitted bathroom complete with sockets craned into the side of a house. Think Ikea on steroids.
German firms have been doing the high-end versions for many years. In fact I was contemplating engaging them for the Wanaka house.
And if they are clever, while the components of the actual houses are constructed in the factories any number of labouring crews can be putting in the foundations, footpaths and gardens…
There are a few youtubes up with the Chinese building 15 story hotels in under a week. Concepts such as modular design and prefab components have been in use for a very long time. The Koreans helped take over the tanker building industry using those ideas.
Of course it is, the late Barry Beazly saw the possibilities when he and his father modelled their franchise on the tract housing they’d seen in the US where, between 1947 and 1951, in just one municipality 17,447 homes were built by Levitt and Sons.
I think vto means not possible in this time and place and society. I’m not sure. Theoretically it could be done, but realistically?
Yes that is what I mean weka. I don’t think it can be done even in theory. Perhaps with pre-fabrication from afar as others have pointed out.
There are only so many people in Christchurch fixing the place up and they all have their hands full at the moment – and for the foreseeable future.
During the sixties Beazley pre-cut and shipped more than 40 house kits a week to their franchisees.
Little Boxes :Tick Tack Toe
they don’t have to be ‘tacky little boxes’..
..current-models/options are very very cool..
..and i dived into my archives..
..and found this video..
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/architecture-design-blog/video/2013/aug/16/richard-rogers-timelapse-house-build-video
..a flat-pack three story ‘green’ house..
..assembled in one day..
..phillip ure
Of course it’s possible. It really just comes down to ensuring that a couple of thousand builders from outside Canterbury live there for a couple of years and then go back to their home.
Yeah, because the only thing you need to build thousands of houses is builders /sarc.
Sorry DtB, but it’s just not as simple as that. There are also issues of where the builders come from and the effect that that has on their home communities.
Organising the builders is the hard part as it’s actual people and their lives you’re dealing with. The materials are easy.
NZ used to do this kind of thing all the time, with hydro towns, etc. People only think its hard because for 30 years we’ve been conditioned to believe that NZ could no longer perform major nation building.
Yep. We have the capabilities but we’ve been conditioned to believe that we don’t.
Or more correctly we have to recreate the situation where this would be possible. In this sense I think vto is right. It’s not just a matter of building x houses in x years. It’s about all the things that are needed to make that happen beyond the hammers and timber.
My non-builder dad and his builder mate built the first house my parents lived in. It’s a different story today because of the changes to the building act post-leaking buildings, and because consent processes are extremely time and money consuming now. It really is a different world. Plus what’s been mentioned about the change in culture.
Two things:
1.) A council can, and does, do more than one consent at a time
2.) A while back there was talk about consenting designs. In other words, a house built to that design could be built anywhere in the country without the design needing to be re-consented. All that would need to be done would be the foundations for the specific section thus speeding up the process. Don’t know if this actually went through but it seems reasonable.
That’s exactly what it’s all about. Yes, it’s going to take some organisation and planning but it can be done and it can be done by government faster and better than it can be done by “the market”.
I do enjoy Draco’s “Just so…” stories.
Transportables DtB, during it’s heyday the Mount Maunganui yard building homes for the Tokaanu and later the Huntly scheme was shipping five to seven completed homes a week.
Why, John Key stated this morning that National are building over 20,000 houses already , so where are they? On Planet Key?
Audio of Key saying that here at 6:10:
http://www.radiolive.co.nz/AUDIO-PM-John-Key-slams-Labours-insurance-plans/tabid/506/articleID/38752/Default.aspx
Did you hear about the film Son of an Art Dealer. It’s about an isolated guy who has priceless paintings by old masters shut away in dark rooms to preserve them. He received them from his father who was an art dealer in Germany who authorities think, received them from Nazis who stole them from Jewish estates. He is a bit of a recluse, selling off an occasional one when he needs cash. But it isn’t a film, it’s true.
What a moral hazard. He thinks what is the sense of returning them as the Nazis probably killed their owners. If no-one knows then I can keep ‘my precious’ close and never be found out. If I reveal I have them then I am a marked man for notoriety and punishment. If I leave them somewhere anonymously people will be hunting for the source. Tainted objects of beauty, in a film he would die with the paintings around him, fine funerary pieces beside him, like an Egyptian dignitary. Apparently he has been found out in real life. The aftermath of war rolls on.
But now we have another event to worry about. Bill talked about Fukushima and the delicate task of moving the fuel rods. They had another 5 earthquake near there the other day. And there is always someone who talks down the dangers that need to be faced. Someone with a Three Mile Island connection. Bill’s Sunday notes about it sounded more reliable. Look up Bill in the search line up top if you want a catch up.
reasons to be nervous about fukushima..
http://www.alternet.org/environment/fukushimas-radiation-gusher-could-entire-pacific-fishery-be-tainted
“..80,000 gallons per day of radioactive water – for 942 straight days –
– dumped into the Pacific –
– and counting..”
phillip ure..
What’s this business of volunteer firefighters taking on the regular work that paid firefighting teams should do at Blenheim airport. I can’t believe at the callous way that the good nature of the volunteers is being abused. They sacrifice their personal and family time to carry out what are irregular, hopefully, safety interventions on behalf of their local area communities. But that good nature is being taken advantage of by people with the budgets to pay for the services they want.
The government, through the Defence Force personnel and equipment, used to provide a seven day service to Blenheim airport. Now, ‘because of budget constraints’ its weekdays only and I think only 8 to 5p.m So what is done – call in the volunteer fire brigade, bleed them till they’re dry.
The volunteers offer their services and join a responsible, trained, and supportive team ready to drop their own concerns to attend to the community’s serious events of destruction, injury or death. They should not have extra work dumped on them. Their management does not seem as supportive of them as I would expect. In fact there were ructions some years ago, where they were being taken advantage of.
And besides the Blenheim situation, firefighters are being loaded with the task of calls to cardiac arrests at present done by St Johns Ambulance. The reason being given is ‘if they are in the area, and able to provide more timely assistance’. I suppose this relates to ‘the golden hour’, time that can be crucial for the recovery of seriously ill patients. But I view this as a serious interference in the lives of these people, adding to the time spent on their volunteer work and away from their own responsibilities. They will have jobs, paid work, so their employers are involved also, they sacrifice time too, having to find a way to fill the gap caused by an employee firefighter’s call-out.
In the USA they have firefighters who are also ambulance workers.. I think they are two different jobs, each with its own specialised knowledge required. The firefighters, because they are given training in the care of injured persons, are now having these efficiency and cost-saving vultures load them with extra work in this field. The thin edge of the wedge? These managers co-operating with worker hours are stealing time from their lives, their work, their family, their personal time. Because they are responsible and good-natured people, it is not easy for them to refuse or even protest. But this abuse of altruism must not be allowed to continue.
Oops.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/entire-section-of-rand-pauls-book-copied-verbatim-from-case
http://www.forwardprogressives.com/after-rand-paul-got-caught-plagiarizing-speeches-his-website-starts-removing-speech-transcripts/
Vto we were building 10,000 more homes a year up till 2008
Technology has moved on in the building industry simple affordable homes can be built quickly.
Cooky cutter + factory built homes like in Australia where whole suburbs are built with different facades claddings colours excetera.
The capacity is available I am in the building industry .
The workforce is available theirs an oversupply of building materials in the world as well as an oversupply of trades.Just about every developed country has an oversupply of builders so no problem their like wise materials if NZ can’t make Asia can.
Well I hope you’re right and I’m wrong tricledown. Maybe we in Christchurch can’t see the wood for the trees, so to speak….
Labour loses ChCh seat, giving Key an increased majority. Voters are outraged that Key is profiteering off the ChCh earthquake and is forced into an early election.
aerobubble..
..apologies for being so slow on the uptake..
..but could you explain/fill-in the bits/events/causes inbetween those three events..?
..’loss’..’outrage’..and ‘early election’..?
..i’m not quite keeping up here..
..i’m just not ‘getting it’/how you are getting from one to the next….
..phillip ure..
I could be very wrong, parliament may have some measure that balances the vote when a bi-election takes one MP out of parliament. Since Key needs ACT and Dunne, having that extra vote (lose of ChCh MP as she went on to become Mayor).
BM Boorish Mysogynist.
National are in trouble according to Matthew Hooten they expect to loose the next election they can I’ll afford to offend half the population.
Young girls, police think one could be 13, being sexually compromised or actually raped and put on Facebook.
How come there isn’t a case to be brought against those involved under the Human Rights Act. Where is the respect for privacy and for the personal rights of the girls?
And the police have been monitoring the Facebook pages, have apparently identified some of the young men and women, and have allowed it to continue saying that they were waiting for some evidence to show up, or one of the girls to make a complaint.
It seems like collaboration almost. Not sharp action. Not getting onto Facebook to get it taken down. Apparently commercial TV3 did that, not our public protectors.
And one remembers Louise Nicholls and the macho and morals raincheck that the force has had revealed in the past and the thought, is it the same now can easily arise again. Don’t the police care about their reputation? I would expect them to be very sensitive and anxious to clean up their act It really seems that sporting codes are tougher on their people and bad publicity than our Police.
been waiting for QoT to revisit the topic of R.C. after seeing articles and police positions on this charming offensive . Good old social media aye!
Yeah, its okay it seems for parents to not protect their kids from slander, and Police can sit on the case until ‘a real crime’ turns up. Sorry, but police heads should roll. Police must protect minors when parents fail to. Its clear that parents have a clear civil case of slander, that these young men cannot prove they raped or gotten drunk minors.
the cop on the telly kept saying they were waiting for one of the girls to be “brave” enough to come forward, he kept repeating that word “brave’. the fb site was brought down after the journalist got involved. the police say some of the girls were underage, then the boys got them drunk, had sex with them, then bragged about it on facebook. i cant see how this is not a crime.
aerobubble
Don’t be too hard on parents. Social science study shows that parents have less authority now against the countering messages from the various media, sexualisation of young girls etc.
The girls use their good looks etc to try and be popular with the boys. It’s very strong pressure they put on parents to let them be free, go out, stay up late, fib about where they will be.
Learning to respect and value themselves is something that is hard to teach them. They like staying out late, being ‘adult’ in their minds, never thinking that bad things will happen to them. And leave possibly indelible memories.
A child is beaten, harmed, Police can act. But what
if abuse is alledged? Police cannot act? Surely not.
Well children pictures are being posted online, with
comments that they were gotten drunk and raped.
Police cannot investigate the parents? Since the
parents have a duty of care to protect their children.
Parents have an obligation to their kids to protect
them, even against allegations of being ‘loose’,
drunk, where this is not the case. Who has the
responsibility to protect children standing in the
community if not their parents, and parents who
do not, and leave their children with potential self-harming
pressures. Pretty sure children don’t want to be
called drunken sluts. The fact that some young men
may have alledgely raped, given drink to minors and
publically humilated minors, should not stop Police
removing these children from parents for their own safety
since even the allegation is harmful to a child.
And parents have a responsibility to act to protect their
children. If young men assert online of activities that
are illegal and involve minors, and parents do not
make complaints, against slander of their children.
The civil case is a slam dunk, since these young men’s
assets can be seized and sold off to provide reparations,
as they are hardly going to prove they raped minors, gave
minors alcohol. Why should lousy lazy parents who do not
protect their children, children who will be left exposed to
potential continued harm, psychological and even repeat…
Why have Police sat on their hands for so long! Police can’t
cherry pick which offense, or which offender, especially when
a minor is incapable of laying the complaint themselves.
Its has nothing to do with it being the internet that was the
publishing forum.
minor minions 😉
“The fact that some young men may have alledgely raped,”
Aero, not quite sure what you are on about but:
1. if you say that the rapes are ‘alleged’, then why are you not insisting that the other behaviours are alleged too? eg the children needing protection.
2. why are you focussed on the parents of the victims instead of the parents of the violent offenders? Why not advocate removing the rapists from their parents as a way of solving the problem?
Sorry, but your whole comment smacks of making the victims the problem instead of the men doing the raping. And that just contributes to rape culture.
Okay, its alleged that Police have discovered a website where young men alleged they’ve given drink and had sex with minors.
As minors parents have a duty of care, I don’t see a difference between smacking a child and calling them a drunken slut, so I don’t see a difference between someone else calling them a drunken slut.
As fr the focusing but, obviously Capone was not taken to court for being a mobster but for tax fraud. Authorities cannot ignore one crime because they don’t have enough evidence for another.
And its has to be noted, you seem to not realize that a victim of crime can become the victim of that crime again, and the parents have a duty to protect. Parents can immediately bring civil proceedings against these young men, and will win since what is the defense, evidence they got minors drunk and had non-consensual sex with them?
Its going to be pretty hard for these young men to continue if they are paying civil damages and their car has been sold.
Dude, they didn’t have “non-consenual sex”, they raped them.
Parents can’t stop children from being raped. Lock children up and they just get raped at home. And the rapists outside the home just find someone else to rape. The problem here is the RAPISTS not the teenagers, or the teenagers’ parents.
“Authorities cannot ignore one crime because they don’t have enough evidence for another.”
The issue here isn’t lack of evidence. It’s the police not doing their job properly and instead buying into rape culture. RNZ has had a good overview of this at the top of their news in the last vew hours, go listen to it properly.
Suggesting that the parents prosecute civilly instead of the police prosecuting criminally just supports rape culture too. I also doubt that the women that have been raped want to be paid by their rapists. Or were you suggesting that the money go to the parents?
Seems like a civil prosecution should be brought immediately as nothing else is being done, and it does not preclude a criminal prosecution down the track.
What McFlock said below. Plus you need to realise the social context this is happening within. Many of the people around those girls, and some of the girls themselves, won’t be calling this rape yet. Aero can go on about parental responsibilities for protection, but there is a societal protection issue here too. Those young women have been left in a situation where they are being damaged. Society needs to stand up and take responsibility for this, so that as well as caretaking those teens the culture also changes.. Otherwise, even if some boys get sued, not alot will change.
A strong message needs to be sent that both protects the young women right now, but also changes how the men involved are thinking and acting.
Even if it turns out that the police can’t lay charges (which I don’t believe on the basis of what I have read so far), they could still be going into those communities and dealing with this at that level. Rape Crisis and the NZ Police could collaborate on naming rape culture and then re-educating that generation coming through. The reason the Police don’t do that is rape culture.
What I find most disturbing about this whole episode is that there is a moral malaise, a disconnection. I watched the young men on TV, it left me feeling sickened and empty. Where was the “empathy” that made your fellow person a person, and not just a material object to be used, abused and thrown aside like a cigarette butt? How can those young men grow up so lacking emotionally? What does that say about their self awareness and their visions of their own futures?
I wont comment on the Police and “rape culture”. What I will say is that the Police did not appear to have fully explored the legal avenues open to them, the line was their hands were tied without witnesses coming forward. Somebody with more legal knowledge might wish to comment on this: it appeared to me that there was a conspiracy to commit an illegal act at minimum.
People are largely a product of the family, social and urban environments that they are exposed to.
The more sociopathic we make society at large, the more sociopathic individuals are going to be.
I can’t see the politics of the situation allowing any real societal changes to be made: damage to our young people and throwing them on to the scrap heap is something which has been quite acceptable in NZ for a long period of time.
Everywhere you look in this case there are victims. Those young guys, the perps, say they were done for multiple counts of rape and put away for 10-15 years each, well they will come out after that with next to zero educational and job prospects, just lots of criminal connections from the prison. More young NZers wasted.
It’s also quite easy to say “society needs to stand up and take responsbility” but that’s very vague and anyhows it falls on to the relevant local communities and the immediate families involved more than anyone else.
Get the politicians to order the police to do it then, and provide the budget. If you think it will make any difference.
So the parents need to hire a lawyer to do the job that the police won’t, otherwise it’s the parents who are being negligent?
And, of course, hope that little jimmy mcphoto’s daddy isn’t rich enouch to hire a slew of lawyers and bankrupt them with counter-suits.
It would be pretty hard for these young men to continue to offend if the police were pressing charged, or at least saying something other than claiming not to be able to do anything without a complaint. Fucksake, they can get murder convictions without having a body, but they can’t do anything when a crime is posted on FB?
There’s a room, there’s alcohol, they have to been supplied, parents have to know where their kids are, and Police can act in case of endangerment of minors.
I would have thought that some kind of privacy charge would be an easy one to go for – not unlike some recent cases of guys getting done for filming up skirts or hiding cameras in bathrooms etc.
But someone has to lay a complaint I suppose…
If they’re doing that then it amounts to a confession of crime with intent and they should be going to jail.
The parents protecting their girls, if they are at work all day and looking after children and family all night, their girls might slip out and get into trouble. Parents aren’t able to be in three places at once.
The parents aiming to have responsible boys with standards of behaviour. What do they teach their boys about decent treatment of girls and other people. Do they see their job as just to feed them lots of meat and take them to sports games, and make sure they pass their exams. Is there any talk about personal standards, about respect for others, about not just yielding to whatever animal impulse passes through their minds?
If those parents knew their son was involved in this facebook stuff what are they doing and saying to him with anger and sorrow as to his behaviour? It’s not all about girls being foolish and losing their heads. Most girls wouldn’t think of ganging up to enjoy a boy who they are controlling. Perhaps they should, instead of being victimised and used as playthings by males abusing the girl’s very essence, her femaleness and intrinsic desire to relate to a male which drives the world and always has.
Can my comment come off moderation. Down from No.13 from 17..45 Thanks
It has been a long day. Get up at 0430 (after barely sleeping) to catch a 6am flight back to Auckland. Then off to work after a shower at home on the way through. A bit too vague to capture a transient bug with Aids to Navigation (AtoNs) that showed up on friday after I’d left for conference. Finally left a couple of devices running with logging on overnight. Headed home for some kip at 4pm….
Done.
Now the creation of dinner….
Early night tonight Iprent.
How in the hell arent these ” Roast Busters” rapists arrested for rape??? This is beyond repugnant.
It’s called ‘rape culture’ Brett.
Listen to the policeman talk about how they can’t arrest anyone because no victim has been ‘brave enough’ to make a fomal statement. That there is rape culture. that’s what them there feminists are talking about.
Then go read the discussion at Public address, particularly this comment from Emma Hart, though there are many more:
http://publicaddress.net/system/cafe/hard-news-narcissists-and-bullies/?p=299955#post299955
yeah that cop was disgusting. they said they had a word with the ‘boys’, ‘dont brag about it fellas, otherwise you gonna get busted…’ or somethign along those lines?. those boys families must be utterly embarrassed, well i hope so!
Pascal:
I understand that, but surly there is enough evidence, why not seize these rapists cell phones/computers, I think its a safe bet that they took pictures of their victims in a state
of undress, that would be child pornography, then you can arrest them.
Ps: thanks for the link.
Well there’s all sorts of things we might think the police could have been doing. We know, for instance, that they don’t hesitate to use the GCSB to track cellphones and metadata. We don’t know what sort of things for exactly, but we’ve been told it’s drugs and money laundering.
Tracking a gang of rapists who gloat about their activities however, seems to be not a priority.
Pascal:
you know, I have to say this, its disappointing, that the left are saying stuff about the police, the right are saying stuff about the girls drinking..
IMHO what needs to be said, is that these rapists are the ones to blame 100%, its rape and they belong in jail.
Who is tasked with investigating crimes and then prosecuting alleged offenders in court, thus enabling them, if guilty beyond reasonable doubt, to be put in gaol?
Well to go to jail, generally requires being arrested.
Also kind of weird, that you criticise me, when you said pretty much the same thing:
but surly there is enough evidence, why not seize these rapists cell phones/computers, I think its a safe bet that they took pictures of their victims in a state
of undress, that would be child pornography, then you can arrest them.
But you know, the left and the right are just the same. Coz questioning the police and blaming the victims is the same.
sigh, maybe these days have been coming ever since gamers began having vicarious sex in Grand Theft Auto. Certainly evidence of more dehumanization of victims by offenders in these social trends. Been similar rings of men found offending on a huge scale in the UK. Generally facilitated by the admission of drug and / or alcohol. Yet we hear that the Taliban are misogynist…
RT
What I read about the UK seemed to be Indian/Pakistani men with white girls. I think that the high barriers against some cultures having sex outside marriage, mean that they look at western women who don’t keep to that rule, thinking that they are ‘easy’ and don’t deserve any respect as people. The dark side of the purity culture. The division of women into saint or whore, respect or availability.
“sigh, maybe these days have been coming ever since gamers began having vicarious sex in Grand Theft Auto. Certainly evidence of more dehumanization of victims by offenders in these social trends.”
I do think that things we do for ‘recreation’ affect our thinking and behaviour. But pack rape of drunk girls in social settings is not new and predates computer games by a long way. This is about rape culture RT. Modern violent culture overlays that for sure, but it’s not the core of it.
you know, I have to say this, its disappointing, that the left are saying stuff about the police, the right are saying stuff about the girls drinking..
IMHO what needs to be said, is that these rapists are the ones to blame 100%, its rape and they belong in jail.
You really are a fool. Everyone else here is making a serious attempt to talk about (yet another) police failure, and you’ve once again tried to sidetrack discussion by launching into one of your wandery and confused speculations about left and right.
Please stay on your own blog, where you can continue to write all sorts of silly things, and bother nobody.
Morrissey, I don’t think Brett is deliberately trying to sidetrack. He’s as angry about it as the rest of us – just looking at it from a different perspective.
Anne:
Thanks, like everybody else in newzealand, I feel disgusted at this.
I disagree, Anne. Brett Dale has an established track record of attempting to derail serious discussions by making bizarre comments like he has done, yet again, here. You are being very charitable in your assessment of this pest.
So you want to convict people who are 16 or 17 years old for child pornography because they took naked pictures of a 15 year old?
FFS. They would all be minors in the US.
Are you saying that minors shouldn’t be charged with crimes?
Or that publishing photos of naked teenage girls on the internet without their consent that isn’t a crime?
Sosoo
I want to prosecute people who get underage girls drunk, rape them, film it,
share it on the internet, and then show off about it, and then try to recruit other rapists if they pay them 20 dollars.
You do understand what happen was rape?
Because New Zealand has always been a hotbed of drunken teenage promiscuity, and the police have better things to do than listen to the tales of adolescent braggarts and fantasists.
Here’s what the cop said:
That’s the common sense response in my view. They’d never get a conviction, as half of NZ has engaged in drunk teenage sex.
Are you saying that if a 15 yr old girl is so drunk she can’t speak or move, and a number of teen boys put their penises inside her, that SHE is having ‘drunk teen sex’?
Are you saying that if a 15 yr old girl is so drunk she can’t speak or move, and a number of teen boys put their penises inside her, that SHE is having ‘drunk teen sex’?
Sounds familiar. Three years ago Murray Deaker and Andy Haden were pushing the same obscene argument….
http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/deaker-says-haden-treated-unfairly-3638070
And what if one of the penises in question was attached to the son of a cop.
one of the boys is the son of an ‘international celebrity’, the other, the son of a cop, according to tv3…certainly beginning to stink. tho the cop on rnz did make a lot of sense, but now this comes out?
Good on Carol Beaumont for asking why the police have not done more about these jerks for two years. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11151264 How many victims could have been saved had they expressed public concern long before now?
The more that comes out the worse it gets 🙁
Reading the Public Address thread now. This –
That’s a pretty clear indictment of how the NZ Police view rape, still. And how much this society values young women (or young men for that matter). Consider how much time, effort, money the police put into other crimes where they know they are occuring over 2 years. Hell, consider how much effort went into the Tuhoe raids. The men in this situation are in fact domestic terrorists.
Not sure if this is there twitter account, but its called roast busters and seems to be supporting them
@ki_suvaSPJ
How society views young men and young women. How young men and young women view themselves. How they value themselves and have pride in themselves. Thoughtful questions?
There will always be the need to protect oneself against addictive booze and other drugs. Also people who would like to get something valuable from you for free. Mugging or hugging can have similar outcomes! It is sad to see behaviour that was illustrated and written about in the 1700s occurring today. Can’t we learn?
There is a famous Hogarth picture of a drunk mother slumped on the ground, her baby falling out of her arms. This was shown alongside a sign ‘Drunk for 1 penny, Dead drunk for tuppence, Straw for nothing’!!
Hogarth was disturbed about the venality of the government encouraging distilling as it used grain which was suffering a slump in sales, and the gin sales caused consequent decay of society. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_Street_and_Gin_Lane
http://www.historic-uk.com/CultureUK/Mothers-Ruin/
In the 1730’s notices could be seen all over London. The message was short and to the point
‘Drunk for 1 penny, Dead drunk for tuppence, Straw for nothing’!!
In London alone, there were more than 7,000 ‘dram shops’, and 10 million gallons of gin were being distilled annually in the capital…
The NZ Police not investigating the pack-rape of drunk women?
Quelle surprise.
Virginia Linton+100….there needs to be some sort of official inquiry into this
Noted commie journo Chris Keall, of the NBR:
https://twitter.com/ChrisKeall/status/397200560702513152/photo/1
“Official NZ govt site should be used by the govt of the day for straight info, not school-boy shots at the opposition”
That’s the sort of rubbish you’d see in a third world dictatorship, and shows why Tories should never be allowed near the levers of power.
FYI
PROTEST! Oppose the TICS and International Convention Centre Bills!
WHEN: Tuesday 5 November 2013 (Guy Fawkes Day)
TIME: 12 noon – 2pm
WHERE: Outside TVNZ (Corner of Hobson and Victoria Streets Auckland City)
(Both the TICS and International Convention Centre Bills listed on the provisional NZ Parliamentary ‘Order Paper’ for 5 November 2013 http://www.parliament.nz/resource/0001954127 )
While this National/ACT Government continues to violate citizens lawful rights to privacy, freedom of expression and freedom of association under the TICS Bill, ( http://techliberty.org.nz/changes-to-the-tics-bill/ ) there has been no ‘due diligence’ on the increased risk of money-laundering at Sky City under the International Convention Centre Bill, which effectively allows anonymity to money-launderers and organised criminals?
http://www.pennybright4mayor.org.nz/increased-risk-of-money-laundering-at-sky-city-no-due-diligence-by-auckland-council/
Quite unbelievable, in my considered opinion, that OFCANZ (illegally) sought and obtained the assistance of the GCSB in the unlawful surveillance of Kim Dotcom, and charged him with money-laundering, yet have not lifted a finger to do ‘due diligence’ on the arguably FAR bigger money-laundering threat arising from the International Convention Centre (Sky City) Bill?
http://www.pennybright4mayor.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/SKY-CITY-OFCANZ-OIA-REPLY-NO-DUE-DLIGENCE-RE-MONEY-LAUNDERING-bright-penny-06-c211711-2-sent-reply.pdf
A GREAT look for New Zealand – ‘perceived’ to be ‘the ‘least corrupt country in the world’ (along with Denmark and Finland) , according to the Transparency International 2012 Corruption Perception Index?
NOT!
http://www.transparency.org/cpi2012/results
Protest organised by Penny Bright and Jax Taylor.
Those opposed to the TICS and International Convention Centre Bill are welcome!
Cheers!
‘Her Warship’ 😉
The PM thinks the young rapists are disgusting and that they should grow up.
https://twitter.com/felixmarwick/status/397193896733593600
Maybe they could grow up and join the police.
Or the National Party.
they should grow up and get past that rapey phase that many young torieboys go through, but they can keep their knighthoods because they got those awards for other reasons. /sarc
Further comments here:
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/226608/pm-says-roast-busters'-behaviour-abhorrent
Doesn’t touch on the fact that these are 17-18 year olds getting underage girls drunk and raping them. But he gets that the shaming them on facebook later is bad.
Key’s comments at presser:
These young guys should just grow up,” Key said this afternoon.
“I guess, as a parent, I find the issue very disturbing and abhorrent really.
“I mean, you are talking about youngsters who are at a very delicate age.”
Key defended the work of police, who have spent two years investigating the gang, without any charges brought.
“It is very difficult to progress this issue, if someone isn’t prepared to make a formal complaint.
“And it’s a very challenging situation for a young woman to put herself in that position.”
It’s very revealing – the first instinct of the authoritarian-conservative … defend police.
Victims come first, but authority comes firster.
“a formal complaint”
Would like to see a legal opinion on this. I was of the understanding that for statuatory rape, a complaint by the underage girl wasn’t necessary for someone to be charged.
In my last year at school, one of my friend’s sister was found to be having sex with her boyfriend two weeks before her 16th birthday. The police charged the guy even though she begged them not to. He was about 6 months older than her, and his father was a truck driver. That was a while ago, but they certainly didn’t need a complaint then. This case stinks in more ways than one.
Wow, just wow.no mention of the crimes being committed. gobsmacked indeed.
What PM Key should’ve said. is…
“These guys are rapists who belong in jail for rape, and if they have filmed their victims, they are also guilty of child pornography”
Agreed Brett.
I agree with you but we have the old innocent until proven guilty to contend with
Unless your name is Bradley Ambrose, and you’ve done something really bad.
Then the PM just says you’re guilty – in Parliament.
This is not a FUCKIN case of teen boys behaving badly its a case of people gang raping under age girls.
And what seems the PM not giving a toss.
I’m sure he’s comfortable with that
The Boiler Suit and other working class looks coming this way…
“In the last Australian election Liberal strategist Mark Textor put then-opposition leader Tony Abbott in a bright velcro vest and hard hat right at the centre of campaign pictures. Now in Britain his partner Lynton Crosby has further developed the working look by putting his client, Prime Minister David Cameron, into a boiler suit.”
lol tc
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/9358829/Cunliffe-backs-gender-quota
In case you’re all wondering what readers of stuff think theres a poll
Surely even you can see the leading bias in the way the ‘poll’ question was asked.
Do you agree with Labour’s MP gender quota?
Yes it’s a good idea, we need more female MPs
No, MPs should be selected on their merits, not their sex
Dumb fucks.
it’s a sorry state of affairs put like that weka.
🙄
In case you’re all wondering what readers of stuff think theres a poll
wondering- No, we aren’t
readers – No, they aren’t
think – No, they don’t
poll – No, it isn’t
“Readers of stuff”? LOL. You mean: what highly organised National Party supporters have been told to vote.
How many times did YOU vote, as a matter of interest?
Once, only seems to allow one vote per PC or at least it doesn’t seem to change the total if you vote more then and of course left wingers would never organize to vote on an on-line poll (thats sarcasm by the way)
I don’t expect the gender quota policy to be particularly popular amongst voters as a whole. But that wasn’t the point of the remit. Hopefully some professional polling is done on the issue some time soon.
Well I would have thought that if you encourage more women to run for office then you’ll get a greater pool of talent to select from
All I said was that the gender quota policy isn’t going to be very popular, from the feedback I am getting. Whether it will encourage more women to put their hands up to be candidates – I think that’s speculative and it wasnt the point of the remit.
I guess what some people might be thinking is what will be next…will govt departments be forced to ensure theres gender equality in the hiring for example
So what was the point of the remit then (genuine curiosity)
yeah, I’m still looking into that.
Cool
So is it the right time to talk about this now?
I can tell you right now that the genda quota policy is exceedingly stupid and could be enough to stop Labour winning the next election. Get rid of it, and quickly!
Roastbusters. (as per conversation above) So on the news just now it’s been said that one of the boys’ is the son of an entertainer and another is the son of a cop, no mention of whose sons they are. Since this isn’t a case of name suppression because we’ve never got as far as the courts with this, what is it? Do the lawyers for the father prevent their clients names from being broadcast? Why are they protected when the girls aren’t?
Why did the cop say last night they couldn’t do anything because none of the girls have been “brave” enough to come forward? The shame isn’t theirs to own, so did he really mean “they haven’t come forward because they don’t feel supported enough to do so”? Why did the reporter feel it necessary to say that one of the victims had already lost her “innocence”? How is that relevant to her being raped?
Age old rhetorical questions. The problem is they are still being asked.
One of those times when I just think WTF is going on with guys these days and yeah I think that maybe some laws could be looked at…I dunno maybe a lawyer could explain it better but maybe the burden of proof required to start an investigation could be lowered if the alleged crime involves under age kids, drugs or something
“I just think WTF is going on with guys these days”
Chris73, this is not new behaviour. The difference now is that people are willing to talk about it, and talk about it as rape (thank-you feminism for all the hard work in the past few decades). Plus there is the internet which alters the discourse hugely. And of course the internet allows those young men to be complete arseholes in a much more public way. But make no mistake, this behaviour has been around for a very long time.
It’s possible that chris73 has not met the type of bloke that’s an exhibitionist. That would take a photo of his penis and send that to someone he wants to interest or shock or both.
There’s a lot going on that doesn’t enter many people’s understanding. From that behaviour going on to more advanced titillation is a few steps. I think the word that covers both the male, and female behaviour in being attracted to these sleazebags, would be hedonism – .
the pursuit of pleasure; sensual self-indulgence.
I don’t think this is hedonism, more like deliberate degradation and ritual humiliation
Yep.
God only knows why someone wouldn’t want to go the police to say they were raped by a cop’s son. Hardly worth mentioning really eh?
“Why did the reporter feel it necessary to say that one of the victims had already lost her “innocence”?”
christ, did they really use the word ‘innocence’?
I’ve only got the website link with text, not the actual reporters words but they did relate to the young woman who was interviewed below:
“One girl, who is choosing to remain anonymous, says the Roast Busters stole her soul.
“They don’t understand how I feel inside; they don’t understand how this has hurt me,” she says.
Police say the girl is one of a number of drunk, underage victims they’ve interviewed about being exploited by the Roast Busters”
http://www.3news.co.nz/Roast-Busters-sons-of-high-profile-entertainer-cop/tabid/423/articleID/320034/Default.aspx#.UndLx3CBnrc
It was one of those “if/but” unnecessary sentences that acts as a disclaimer to the information provided. I wonder if TV3 sought to minimise her reality and her pain by pointing out that the victim had lost her virginity as an underage person. By saying it, they were already discrediting the criminal act of the young men involved.
PB: Yeah, I mean why would you need to feel “brave” when faced with the potential parent of your rapist. How many young women were threatened with the line: “don’t even bother with the cops, my dad is one, bitch” And still the same spokesperson for the cops said tonight, that had nothing to do with their lack of action…………
I hope that someone has warned the Afghani interpreters and their families about the Bangers being exploded on November 5th, and before and after. Four very loud bombs blasts have just gone off. They could sound like IEDs.
As fireworks which were meant to be colourful things, these are a sham. I hate the things, and I think they should be limited to one public place, where people can buy one or two to let off in a field or something and there is a set piece to watch and it raises money for the local firefighters, appropriately. And too many fireworks especially bangers get held over and exploded at various times during the year long after November 5th.
Yes, on to a another topic, that of Guy Fawkes. We do have a number of refugee’s from war zones living in NZ and I’ve wondered before what they think of NZer’s sense of fun at blowing things up in the night suddenly without warning, at this time of the year.
Today, yet again, I’ve signed what seems to be an annual petition to govt to ban the private sale of fireworks. As usual it was from animal welfare orientated group. As usual it will be ignored. Who wants to be the government that bans “fun” ? No one so far.
I’m all for public displays in a controlled environment. Better that than leave explosives in the hands of folks that intentionally set out to harm domestic and farmed animals that the SPCA have to deal with every year. Let alone the stress caused by fireworks to animals kept indoors on Guy Fawkes night.Tomorrow, I’ll spend half the evening lying under the bed trying to calm our cat friend down.
Our suburbia encroaches onto farmland where we have several bird species that are nesting with their chicks as well as sheep with their lambs and cows with their calves. As well as all the development these animals have to cope with (this is another story for another time)they have to cope with sounds that are frightening to them. Got to marvel at human sensitivity and intelligence.
Its essential for democracy to have outlets for political expression. Celebrating the bomber of parliament by burning his image is for me the one finger to both the terrorists, and the authoritarians who would see any chatter about government to be unlawful. And then there is the very real gain that we manage fireworks and control gun powder.
you are a load of fun Rosie
lolita or somebody’s brother
You obviously can’t get to sleep because of the fireworks and the noise or the worry that you won’t have any fireworks and noise if intelligent people can stop this childish expensive destructive ritual.
Adequate sleep is very necessary for clear thinking and the growth of brain function and general health. Before you get to be somebody’s partner, or somebody’s father it would be a good idea to get lots of sleep.
Either way, you usually need to be by the computer and be ready to bid, for any
chance at winning the item. They say any form of exercise can keep your body fit and active.
Unfortunately, the developer also had to express its disappointment in a
leak of game assets from PSN pre-orders in Europe that have
led to the spread of spoilers.
My homepage – TéLéCharger GTA 5 GRATUIT