Things are going to get very weird. I reckon one of NZ’s biggest shocks will be when people have to get over the idea that it can’t happen to lil ole us in godzone.
Chapala has weakened and yesterday a Category 2 storm made landfall along the coast to the west of the port city of Al Mukalla, a region with very little or no experience with hurricanes. Bob Henson of Weather Underground said it “is difficult to overstate the rarity and gravity of this event: a hurricane-strength storm striking near a large, ancient city, situated near mountains, with no modern experience in dealing with tropical cyclones”.
The rainfall poses a huge danger, with Chapala likely bring at least five years’ worth of rain to parts of Yemen.
The last hurricane event to go through the eastern Yemen area in 2008 dumped a tonne of rain and caused mass floods, but does not create lasting water for a higher level of vegetation than normal. It would probably require a deep sea current change to bring regular rainfall to the area, but warmer temperatures will make hurricanes more frequent.
Interesting decision-
” [2]
The search warrant applications were largely prepared by the private investigators.
It was common ground well before trial that they were invalid.
The private investigators participated in the execution of the warrants along with police officers.
There are two other particular points that should be mentioned:
(a) the Patterson warrant was unsigned; and
(b) one of the police officers involved in the Van Essen warrant and its execution was Mr Gibbons’ son-in-law. ”
It seems you don’t even have to be the FBI or a Hollywood mogul to hire our cops for a bust. It must be official police policy now that –Better to just do it wrong and apologise later- because its okay to frame the right guy – that’s not a miscarriage of justice.
I like your …..”evidence from an oxymoron ?”. Certainly true in name. In nature probably nothing oxymoronic about it. For an institution which is part of the power structure and contributes to it . Bit of a worry really. Because this institution sets threshholds of behaviour.
TPP Countries Aiming To Publish Final Agreement Text Later This Week
Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) countries are aiming to make public the final agreement text before the end of this week, after making more progress than expected at a drafting session that wrapped up in Tokyo at the end of October, according to informed sources. http://insidetrade.com/
Do you ever get the feeling you are surrounded by idiots, living here in Nu Zuland?
A PM who repeatedly pulls the hair of a woman in a position of service, harasses and abuses her, and gets away with it.
An MP that refers to women performing demeaning sex acts to an audience of technology professionals at Sky City, and gets away with it.
A Ministry that hires “model sheep” from a sex shop for their xmas party because you know, that’s f-ing hilarrrrious and everyone will love that surely………
The annual parade of idiots setting things on fire and traumatise animals because we allow idiots to purchase dangerous explosives:
If you had a 13 year old daughter would you do that her?
There are so many wrongs it’s hard to know where to start.
A professional stunt woman was interviewed on 3 news last night. She was absolutely gobsmacked at the sheer stupidity and risk of it.
A child’s life has been endangered with the permission of her idiot parents.
Neil Jorgensen, the driver of the truck, when asked by the RNZ interviewer couldn’t say that the girl (don’t know her name) volunteered for the stunt, he just kept referring to a discussion with the family. His argument is that he has known the girl’s Dad for 20 years, as if that is relevant to putting a young life at risk.
Oh, and she wasn’t strapped in, I was wrong. Jorgensen was quite adamant about that. Said she could have jumped at any time. Lucky girl eh, having that choice. A choice between something going wrong and going up in flames or jumping from a moving vehicle and breaking your bones.
my partner is one of the many unpaid voluntary firefighters in NZ, and yes, the stupidity of people is astounding.
Considering that it is the season, I have given up on sleeping through a night until winter next year.
Cause that beeper (while they still have pagers) is not gonna stop, cause lighting a bbq with flame accelerator is fun, lobbing fire crackers in the bush is fun, burning shit without a permit is fun, and so on and so on and yeah….huwud’avethunk.
Huge respect and gratitude to your partner Sabine.
I don’t have the level of tolerance for idiots that members of the volunteer fire service would need to possess in order to do their job and keep themselves calm and sane.
Two years ago one of our neighbours managed to set the vegetation on the roundabout next to our house on fire. The firework set alight very dry ornamental grasses. The flames went up so fast, metres into the air. I was on the phone to 111 immediately and the fire service were there within one minute. Probably one of many call outs to similar fires that night.
I fully support their calls last year for a discussion around the banning of the public sale of fireworks. If that happened you might get a few more uninterpreted nights with your partner.
Guts of a letter to the editor of my local newspaper
I hope Prime Minister John Key isn’t planning to wear a white ribbon this November as it is clear from his past actions that he has no idea what the White Ribbon campaign stands for, which is men standing up and saying to other men that violence towards women is not okay.
When former Labour leader Cunliffe did exactly this, rather than support him, John Key publicly denigrated him to score political points. He even went so far as to wear a T Shirt saying “I’m proud to be a man” after Cunliffe had lost the election and resigned. He couldn’t resist having one more jab just for the pleasure of it. The worst thing a man can do is actually denigrate other men who stand up and say violence against women is not okay.
As well, John Key persistently harassed a female café worker despite her objections, claiming afterwards it was just a bit of fun and an indication of his “casual” style. He doesn’t seem to understand that he is not the only male that does this sort of thing and if every man who went in a café felt entitled to harass female staff they would be put upon the whole day long. This is the sort of thing that goes on in a lot of countries.
As far as I can see, the Prime Minister is still in denial about his attitude and behavior. A good first step for him this November would be to do what many other men have already done. Stand up in public amongst a group of men and women (with accompanying media for maximum publicity) and take the White Ribbon Pledge “I promise never to commit, condone or remain silent about violence towards women”.
Excellent letter. Thanks for sharing. Where did you find it?
In my very humble opinion for all it’s worth, FJK is in denial, because his behaviour points to that of a cold, calculating psychopath. He is completely devoid of any emotion towards anyone he abuses, hurts, humiliates, denigrates or offends!
There is enough evidence there in that letter describing FJK’s behaviour, for a full psychiatric conference I’m sure!
Quote from the post
Former Manu Samoa player, Eliota Fuimaono-Sapolu, is calling Samoan men out, urging them to put a stop to domestic violence against women in Samoa. His comments come after the brutal murder of 25-year-old mother of two Fatima Tupa’i, who was beaten to death by her estranged husband while she was asleep next to their children.
“A protection order is a piece of paper and a piece of paper will not stop a violent man. Fatima was still beaten to death while she slept with her children. She told the Police and they did nothing. They failed her and her children,” he said. He believed incidents of domestic violence in Samoa were increasing, and urged all men to put a stop to it.
“Domestic violence is a man’s issue! Who is doing the violence, the rape, the abuse? Men, we have to speak out against our brothers, fathers, uncles and friends. Men, if you see something, do something.”
“We have to stop being cowards,” he said. He believed women were devalued in Samoa. “Domestic violence is a product of a society that does not value women.”
I’m in mind of the televised giggles about who’s not coming to dinner at or about the time Smith fled to Brazil. This in the presence of the president of Brazil FFS. Footage that went round the world.
If we’d pity the 10 year old on the school trip who screws up the speech of thanks at the dairy factory…….surely we wouldn’t more or less celebrate ?
This is our prime minister and it’s happens more frequently. Worn with robust disdain, an amalgam of Vaudeville/Monty Python. It trickles down. Until the ‘spectacle’ becomes a melting ‘popsicle’ riding a broken-down ‘bicycle’.
Hey MSM, you wanna make that the broadly acceptable norm ?
Luckily for us our Dear Leader, now that the rugby is over and the boys are safely back in the country, will be on it. Surely, he will check with his OZ Dear Leader mate to make sure that the kiwis in detention on Manus Island will be treated as humanly as the Saudis treat NZ donated sheep in the desert. Or sum such thing. or maybe not. Oh …look, there is Sir Richies leg to hump.
Having been seen off by Northland, Wellington and the Hawkes Bay Paula Bennet is still going to corporatise councils by bribing with our own money (taxpayer funds) subsidies only if they go to CCO’s right?
So us ratepayers and taxpayers are looking forward to another round of expensive consultation that we don’t want to fund followed by the transfer of major council assets to undemocratic entities which will be locked in (and Northland is first for the chop).
Can we transfer the threatened regional assets to a company with the directors being the elected regional councillors and the shareholders being those on the electoral role entitled to vote for said councillors having one share each? Then the provisions of the companies act would click in so that major changes could not be made without putting it to shareholder vote, i.e us ratepayers or changing the wholes companies act? Are there other pre-emptive strategies we could look at – might be a better spend of the money
“Government was proposing a “viable alternative to large-scale amalgamation”. Regions could transfer some core services between regional and territorial authorities. Or they could transfer them to “arms-length” organisations similar to Auckland’s Council Controlled Organisations (CCOs).
Half of CCOs’ directors are appointed by the council. Mrs Bennett admitted there could be some resistance to transferring core services to less democratic entities. But she said changes would not be forced on regions, and would be community-led.
The Government planned to introduce law changes next year which would allow the new structures to be “locked in” for the long-term.”
WASHINGTON, DC (November 3, 2015) – In the opening days of the month when National Geographic magazine is scheduled to be turned over to 21st Century Fox, the magazine’s employees were told to stand by their phones to wait for calls – one by one – to come to Human Resources to learn the fate of their jobs.
“There were times early on when I’d walk down the hall, pass only three or four inmates, and think, ‘How are we going to make it to the end of the month?’” said Parks, recalling several periods in which the company “hemorrhaged money” due to low recidivism, the result of occasional public investment in criminal rehabilitation programs. “Compare that to now, though, when all of our prisons are filled to the gills and we’re housing the overflow on bunks in the gymnasiums.”
“And what’s more, we’re hiring them all out as manual labor at pennies on the dollar,” he added. “Talk about a success story.”
North Carolina, while without a system comparable to the other states, did not prohibit the practice until 1933. Alabama was the last to end the practice of official convict leasing in 1928.
It is illegal to import goods produced by prisoner labour in the US but perfectly fine for them use prisoner labour to create consumer products.
A significant amount of controversy has arisen with regard to the use of prison labour if the prison in question is privatized, a phenomenon present in a few areas of the United States, where goods produced through penal labour are regulated through the Ashurst-Sumners Act which criminalizes the interstate transport of such goods.
Minimum wage in the United States, in dollars per hour528: $5.15
Average hourly rate paid at a prison camp in Nevada529: $0.13
Maximum wage paid to prisoner workers in dollars per day in Georgia and Texas530: $0
Most prisons that pay prisoners for work have a range of pay depending on the job. Average of the minimum wages for prisoners paid by the states, in dollars per day for non-industry work531: $0.93
Average of the maximum wages paid to prisoners by the states, in dollars per day532: $4.73
Lowest wage reported, in dollars per day, for prisoners working in private industry533: $0.16
I also wonder what the real unemployment figure is. RNZ said Statistics NZ look at those registered with WINZ and look at the total number of people in work. I don’t know what that second bit meant.
Relying on the number of WINZ registered unemployed is flawed as some of us unemployed aren’t eligible for assistance because our partners earn slightly more than peanuts. (Doesn’t matter that each week is an absolute struggle and debt is increasing due to having to use a credit card for living costs).
We’re simply not counted in the figures. A few of my friends are also in this position. How many unemployed around NZ aren’t registered with WINZ?
This is largely incorrect, the main measures of unemployment collected in NZ are not related to WINZ registrations. WINZ registrations are collected and counted by MSD, but these are not used for the official employment measures.
There methodology is subtly different to statistics NZ. I think its always a politically motivated decision to suggest one is more real, than the other and the important thing for policy is to be consistent across time. On the other hand Australians think their Roy Morgan unemployment rate is more realistic than their national statistics office.
Henry talked about that this morning with the money guy and then went to the longest interview I’ve seen him do with key and not one mention of it was made , all they talked about was fucking knighthoods the pair of arseholes.
Yep….a WINZ worker told me add another at least 1%….so many don’t even bother applying. So many involved in the ‘grey economy’….downside of which is not only skewed unemployment stats but also slightly lower tax take. Also undermining labour laws (such as they are) as the ‘job’ does not really exist.
Methinks this is exactly how Our Leaders want the economy to go….
Yep. Always relevant. If any political party is coming in with promises of tax cuts you can be sure that things are about to get worse for the majority of people and social services get cut again and again and again.
People working longer is already an issue for gen Y workers. There is little chance for advancement within organisations. It’s a tough situation for everyone involved as we all need the money!
The industries required in the future are the service and aged care industries, it would be helpful if they could offer an liveable wage for the frontline workers who cannot be easily replaced by machines.
I agree, a short term solution would be to copy the USA and its service industry driven economy.
It would involve a complete change of mind set within certain sectors of NZ.
That is, stopping being a tight arse , opening your wallet and start hiring people to do stuff for you.
That’s what they have drummed into the Americans, having people doing your chores isn’t a sign of laziness, it’s a form of charity which keeps the economy going and people in jobs.
I’m not sure the US style is to be emulated as it seems to be entirely predicated on businesses leaving renumeration of their employees to their customers.
As far as the mindset change goes, employers must be offering wages that reflect the high levels of skill and care that is required to do these kind of service jobs properly, and that needs to start with decent reimbursing of care workers now, which this government and aged care providers seem deadset against. That’s not going to encourage the next generation of workers to enter these industries.
Well there is no point in hiring people if they don’t get paid enough to live as for example Walmart employment is doing. Or ‘tipped’ servers that earn 2.10$ an hour plus tips that they have to share with bussers, dishwashers and often the cooks.
As for cleaners, lawn mowers, and house keepers these are probably the some of the oldest jobs on the planet, and should not be treated as charity but as work. The cleaner at the hotel does a full time job keeping the rooms clean, so does the lady that comes to ones own domicile to clean.
The trouble that we have is not that we don’t have jobs that need doing, we do, ‘the Auckland Transport owned Berms’ that are being mowed free of charge by people having houses behind them comes to mind. We have jobs that need doing, buy that we don’t want to pay for. We – the populace that wants tax cuts, and the current government -that would like to spend money of PR rather then infrastructure, social welfare, education, energy creation. WE could do with more nurses in hospitals, doctors even and decent cooks, we could do with more mental health care workers, we could do with more police and paid fire fighters, early child hood teachers and tertiary teachers, we could do with street cleaners and Park workers, Bus Drivers, Youth workers etc. but no one seems to want to pay for it.
So no, there is no need for high unemployment other than a wage drive downwards, high competition for the last remaining paid jobs (no matter how lowly they are paid) and the idea that general misery for many makes a virtuous populace.
How will you survive once you don’t have a job anymore? Ever thought of that? Or are you very very sure in your assumption that you will always have a paid gig, and that that gig is gonna cover all your costs?
I agree, a short term solution would be to copy the USA and its service industry driven economy.
Nope, that’s the worst thing to do as a service industry doesn’t actually create any wealth. And that is, IMO, why we have such increasing poverty in NZ. We’ve already become too dependent upon low paid services for jobs rather than creating new high value ones in and through R&D.
That is, stopping being a tight arse , opening your wallet and start hiring people to do stuff for you.
Thing is, that’s not actually possible as the people hired to do services must be paid lower than the people hiring them which means that only a few percent of people at the top can actually afford to hire others to do services.
This strikes me as a rather strange view. An economy which is focused on creating ‘wealth’ would seem to me to be a high resource impact economy. I want the opposite, a low resource impact economy. At the same time there seems to be no reason to suggest that economies are degenerating because they are not creating enough ‘wealth’ (what ever that is, I am assuming its real resources organised into useful technology). This suggests a service based industry would be a good thing if it could be organised.
The second paragraph is equally strange. There are no such tiered sectors of the economy which require that the service sector must be paid less. One part of the service sector can just the same spend on another part of the service sector. A service based economy could equally have a very flat wage structure. I can see no reason to believe that inequality in the economy had to develop, or is related to an increase in the service economy. Income inequality has been driven by factors unrelated to that, such as high unemployment rates, de-unionisation, and legislation against workers rights.
This strikes me as a rather strange view. An economy which is focused on creating ‘wealth’ would seem to me to be a high resource impact economy.
Not necessarily. Generally speaking you want a society producing everything that it needs from it’s own labour and resources. What you don’t want it doing is over producing to produce money which is what we have now.
There are no such tiered sectors of the economy which require that the service sector must be paid less.
We already have a service economy with our service sector at around 70% of the economy. Please note that around 75% of the population has an income less than the average wage. These people can’t afford to hire services.
This is what out present system has delivered and we’re getting more and more services all the time because we’re not developing our economy. Apparently that’s just too hard and costs too much.
“Generally speaking you want a society producing everything that it needs from it’s own labour and resources. What you don’t want it doing is over producing to produce money which is what we have now.”
This doesn’t differentiate between service and non-service wealth. Also what does over-production mean? In a largely service based economy it appears to mean people providing services to each other. I strongly disagree that is harmful or unsustainable in and of itself. You have been advocating for a UBI, so how is a bunch of people working to produce money any different to them not working and being given a UBI?
“We already have a service economy with our service sector at around 70% of the economy. Please note that around 75% of the population has an income less than the average wage. These people can’t afford to hire services.”
So arguably there is a correlation there (you didn’t show any real correlation), but this doesn’t mean that there is a cause. What is the supposed causal mechanism meaning a service economy must be highly unequal? We know about many of the causes of inequality in the economy but none of them appear to be that too much of the economy is focused on working on or producing services.
Over production is where excessive use of resources occur. Farming is a good example in that it over uses the land to produce money while not actually providing for our society.
In a largely service based economy it appears to mean people providing services to each other.
And how does that supply what we need? How is the food grown? How are the vehicles produced? etc. etc
Services don’t produce anything. To a degree they’re needed but we’re already pushing to excessive amounts.
You have been advocating for a UBI, so how is a bunch of people working to produce money any different to them not working and being given a UBI?
The UBI is to allow for people to buy the products of their society. In capitalistic terms, which I don’t like, they could be considered the dividend from simply being a citizen of the country. This overly simplistic though as the purpose of the economy is actually to provide people with what they need to live and thrive.
What is the supposed causal mechanism meaning a service economy must be highly unequal?
I said that a service economy didn’t work because the wages of service workers needed to come down to the point where they’re living in poverty for the majority of people to be able to afford them but as they’re the majority then they won’t be able to afford themselves.
So the economy is in a state of ‘over-production’, and its not producing enough of what we need at the same time?
I still don’t understand what’s requiring service workers wages to come down or be lower than other sectors in all of this.
As far as I can see it would be a good thing if both more people were employed and mostly at higher wages because the economy is quite far from in a state of over-production and also in a state of wide income inequality. And at the same time service industries seem like a good place for them to be employed still as this is mostly less physically resource intensive.
I think your getting a bit confused about the definition of the service economy. You realize education is part of the service economy right?
I suspect that the larger part of the current advancement problem is that people need to hold onto their jobs rather than successfully applying for better ones or risking a business startup (we still haven’t returned to the number of new company registrations in 2009-10).
You could very well be right, I also think that peoples continuing mortgage requirements into later life also contribute to staying in employment. Also others have mentioned NZ’s (small c) conservatism, and this sort of risk-adverse attitude is probably wise in such ‘interesting times’ as these too!
The industries required in the future are the service and aged care industries
Well, over the next couple of decades until the Baby Boomers start dying off.
The Baby Boomer demographics are a bulge in the population. Essentially, subsequent births didn’t match and thus scuttled most of the growth in the economy that the politicians had, quite literally, been banking on. An increasing population is always a growing economy even if you don’t get productivity increases.
it would be helpful if they could offer an liveable wage for the frontline workers who cannot be easily replaced by machines.
That could easily be done if it was the government directly doing it and we had a sovereign monetary system. The money paid would be directly created by the government to pay the workers and then taxed back out of existence.
I know this is a long way out there but how about:
1. Change the standard work week to be 20 hours instead of 40,
2. Increase the minimum wage so that those 20 hours are enough to live on,
3. Put overtime laws back in so that if an employer wants to have one person working more than 20 hours per week it will cost them more.
Surely this creates a requirement for more employees to do job’s, and the increased money in the bottom end of society which is normally spent straight away increases the earnings of those same buisnesses that will have increased staff costs.
Again I get this is a loooong way out there and not going to happen. However I think to say it can’t be fixed is a bit far as well.
France dropped their working week to 35 hours from 39 in 2000. The idea is it would increase employment. Critics have pointed out that no real increase in employment has happened, workers are just under more pressure to produce the same amount of output in less time.
I guess cutting from 40 to 20 wouldn’t have the same sort of problem, because you’d simply have to hire more people. But also this change is so dramatic it will not happen any time in the next 10 years, so you’d be better off focusing on potential solutions that could be implemented, not pie-in-the-sky daydreams.
It seems that the French system isn’t all that good. Workers get rest days rather than overtime rates.
What I’d like to see is what we used to have – simple penal rates. They would have to apply to people on salary as well though just to make sure they worked as more people are on salary now than used to be.
Maybe not anyone but the government could achieve full employment in a matter of months. Of course, that would have the business leader whinging again as they were in the 1970s and 80s about about the government taking all the employable people and them thus having to compete for them.
The undesirably high unemployment rate is a trivial problem for the country to solve. As BM argues later in this thread, you need somebody to employ these people (BM suggests the private sector should just start believing in a service economy, which is a fantasy, its not going to happen). But if the government wants them employed, it could simply employ them and pay them a wage to do something and then your problem is solved. The only problem here is the government doesn’t want them employed so it doesn’t employ them, it leaves them unemployed (its more focused on running a political budget surplus at present, which is why employment is stuck around 5-6% for ages).
If in addition to solving the unemployment problem the government doesn’t want to put pressure on wage rates, which might push inflation up, then it should only employ people the private sector doesn’t want to employ. So it should pay these people (the ones who are being employed by the government just for the purposes of being employed) only the minimum wage and then the government doesn’t compete with the private sector at all and so this policy causes no inflation at all as well.
So there you go problem solved. Somebody should probably mention this to Andrew Little.
Interestingly enough, very few jobs on offer in IT at the moment. That’s normally a warning sign. yeah, it,s end of year, but there’s normally something.
Tradition algorithms capture images at multiple distances to watch for obstacles, meaning the amount of processing power needed will only allow a drone to fly about 6 miles per hour, at most. Barry, however, set his drone to detect only what is 10 meters away.
“You don’t have to know about anything that’s closer or further than that,” Barry said. “As you fly, you push that 10-meter horizon forward, and, as long as your first 10 meters are clear, you can build a full map of the world around you.”
Bit of a cheats way of doing it but it’s one of the step you take on the way to full implementation.
International ridicule – worse than being a ‘slave’ eh steve
Pity we can’t get key stuck in this rapidly setting amber.
“”Those of you with a marginally broader perspective – say, anyone above the age of eight – may be tempted to pick holes in Williams’ definition of captive servitude. Welcome to The History of Slavery with Steve Williams, in which white men are brutally invited to carry the golf bags of black men, savagely consulted over club selection and putt lines, sadistically given a share of the winnings, cruelly allowed to leave whenever they want,” wrote Jonathan Liew in Britain’s Telegraph.””
“Kim Dotcom from New Zealand introduces a revolutionary Internet alternative: new non-IP based, non-hackable, surveillance-proof and encrypted network, which will be 100% crowd-funded.
Max Keiser from Keiser Report interviewed Kim Dotcom, who also talked about NSA spying and his ongoing prosecution by the US government…
and Part Two: Dotcom is not only a genius , he is also highly moral
First they came for MegaUpload Dotcom and then they came for Google…but they bit off more than they could chew
…Dotcom talks about his philosophy, whistleblowers, Wikileaks, Snowden and Manning
…and the Sony hack/leak which he believes was not done by Google or South Korea …but which exposes Hollywood USA political corruption and which could be used to defend Google
‘Meganet’, Part 2: Kim Dotcom plans crowdfunded replacement to internet (Ft. Max Keiser)
@ Clean_power…A better question: were NZ politicians bribed to persecute/prosecute Dotcom in New Zealand by Hollywood?
….as it would appear from the Sony hack/leaks ….. that USA politicians have been bribed by Hollywood to begin the persecution/prosecution of Google for piracy
…it would appear from the hacks/leaks that Google was facing the very same plotting behind the scenes…accusations/case that was levelled against Dotcom MegaUpload
…as it doesnt seem to have worked against Google …and in fact there is counter legal action by Google for the political corruption exposed ….where does this leave the NZ government?
Brave New World : Violent Passion Surrogate (V.P.S.), Violent Market Surrogate, Violent Crowd Surrogate
“V.P.S is great for keeping people divided over pointless issues and bogged down by as never-ending stream of misinformation and biased interpretations which exist only within a truncated frame of reference” ( urban dictionary .com)
Cashless society = bank surveillance, data mergers, censorship , state/corporate control ( social engineering, negative interest rates) ?
Bitcoin = an alternative ( to bankster control) plus future digital privacy ( an alternative to bank blockchain technology)
All this discussed on the Keiser Report with Tracy and Max and Brett Scott:
“Every week Max Keiser looks at all the scandal behind the financial news headlines.
In this episode of the Keiser Report, Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert discuss Violent Market Surrogates as the doors of misperception in a brave new world in which central bankers are fighting the wrong war. In the second half, Max interviews Brett Scott, author of The Heretic’s Guide to Global Finance: Hacking the Future of Money, about financial surveillance states and cashless societies.”
OK this post is unrelated to the above ,but I was flabbergasted to hear John Key on RNZ this morning saying he was “quite mates” with Richie McCaw…..what the hell is a “quite mate”???????…..someone who you think likes you but your too bloody insecure to go the whole hog and call him a mate……does anybody out there have a “quite mate”or is this a new sort of relationship bond that only our PM indulges in…..?????
Maybe Sir Richie, the mighty leg (for leghumpers anyways), is just too polite to tell our most exalted Dear Leghumper that he is not quite mates with with our most exalted Dear Leghumper.
He also said knighthoods & damehoods have increased in popularity in NZ, tho fuk knows how he figured that out. In the same article he said the royals might join the All Blacks on one of their parades.
The titles were obviously very popular with those who got awards between 2001 and 2008 that entitled them to use Sir or Dame after the titles were reintroduced in 2009.
There were 85 of them, of whom 72 accepted the titles. That included at least one former Labour MP who must have really annoyed Helen Clark.
Of the other 13 a couple were “Clayton’s” refusals as they already held the title via other awards. I notice that they never relinquished their prior titles.
Thus the vote was 72 aye, 11 nay and 2 effective abstentions. http://www.odt.co.nz/the-regions/otago/67860/who039s-opting-titular-honour-and-who039s-not
I’ve just seen David Cunliffe give an amazing speech in Parliament in the General Debate. Just reaffirming once again why he should still be the Labour Leader. He managed to encapsulate in one rousing speech just what is wrong in NZ, from Stephen Joyce’s appalling management of MOBIE including “blow up sheep”, to the National Party’s manipulation of our media, their dirty politics a la Slater and Collins with the former SFO Head, the Ombudsman’s office failing to compel ministers to answer OIA’s, through to Westpac releasing Nicky Hager’s account details to the police.
He mentioned all of the journalists who have been removed from prime time television and newspapers who have sought a better home at Radio NZ. He mentioned the person responsible for the funding of Radio NZ is John Key’s former electorate head and wondered how long it would be before funding for Radio NZ would be reduced or stopped altogether.
This kind of speech from David Cunliffe is why the members are still so angry that the ABC crowd forced him to relinquish the leadership. The public voted in the major newspapers polls that Cunliffe had won most if not all the political debates in the election! So much for him being so unpopular. He just had too little time to establish himself as leader before the election, coupled with hatchet jobs from the media (Armstrong etc) and sad to say, from within!! If David Cunliffe had had the time as leader that Clark or Goff had had, things would be very different in Parliament today. David Cunliffe talked about Key’s “peeing in the shower and in the pockets of the All Blacks”!! Funny and the absolute truth!
Good to be reminded why I supported and voted for David Cunliffe. I also think it was the right thing for David to avoid any limelight for a year after the election. Had he launched any attacks sooner, the DP mob and their media acolytes would have accused him of trying to upstage Andrew Little.
Now that Little is firmly established and has the total support of every caucus member – plus the ordinary members – I hope Cunliffe will be brought back to the fore of proceedings again. His quick brain and smart rhetorical skills are much in need.
Sorry Saarbo – I thanked Hami for putting that clip up but it was actually you who did – Hami did a good summary of what was in it. Thanks. It is excellent.
“The public voted in the major newspapers polls that Cunliffe had won most if not all the political debates in the election”
And then the public voted in the election and showed that the support for him as PM was pretty thin among the voters.
Were there any real polls done by the newspapers as to who “won” the debates. I am not aware of any. There were of course some of the self selecting variety but I don’t think anyone could take them seriously.
Can you give me a reference to a professionally run poll that supports your thesis?
Yes it is a shame that David Cunliffe (a) didn’t get support from the ABC crowd and (b) wasn’t given another chance. The current Labour lot are ineffectual. They need to get rid of the traitors and Andrew Little needs to get a backbone. Many people are saying to me they don’t like National but Labour are just the same so why bother voting, wont make any difference. I would like to see David Cunliffe given the finance portfolio as Grant Robertson doesn’t have the credibility IMO.
all those ABCs who did not support Cunliffe are wannabes with more ambition than talent…we all have a fair idea who they are
they betrayed the Labour Party membership who voted for David Cunliffe …and they betrayed the Labour Party…and they betrayed the New Zealand electorate
imo David Cunlffe deserves to be Deputy Leader after Annette King and he deserves to be not only high profile Finance spokesperson but high profile spokesperson for Climate Change issues and Environment ( which are linked to Finance)
David Cunliffe is an old style New Zealand politician with high integrity
( about as far from jonkey nact as it is possible to be)
If David Cunliffe is given a high profile for the New Zealand Labour Party …its fortunes could turn around…as more and more are seeing through jonkey nact
+100 Thanks for putting that up Hami – it’s such a relief to hear an MP actually tell it like it is. I was shocked by the treatment dished out to Cunliffe when he was the LP leader, and I have not forgotten the heroism with which he hung on, under huge pressure, and forced the leadership question to be taken back to the membership. I too would like to see him restored to a position befitting his talents.
I stand by all that. My concerns about Hager are essentially twofold: first, that he uses the label “journalist”, with all its connotations of even-handedness and impartiality, to disguise his true purpose, which is that of an ideological crusader; and second, that the publication of his Dirty Politics book was carefully timed to coincide with a general election, in the clear hope that it would cause maximum political damage. But neither of those concerns could be construed as endorsement of any disregard for his rights or violation of his privacy.
I do, however, share Cameron Slater’s view that the reaction to the latest disclosures exposes a gaping double standard. Where was the media outrage when Slater’s email account was hacked?
There’s a difference, of course, in that this time it’s an agency of the state that’s digging into someone’s personal affairs. That’s infinitely more alarming than the actions of a rogue private hacker. But Slater is right to point out that the hacker, Rawshark, largely escaped media condemnation – as did Hager, who used the information Rawshark obtained.
If Hager had sat on the information for a couple of years, you guys might have a point about the timing. But he received the information in January and it was published in August. Seems to be a reasonable timeframe.
The media outrage at slater being hacked was somewhat lessened by the outrage at what those pricks had been up to, and their absolutely contemptable attitudes and behaviour. But then you’ve always had a problem understanding the concept of “public interest”.
Hager is an invetigative journalist. Just because you don’t like the truths he exposes, it doesn’t mean that if Labour or the Greens were up to the same thing he wouldn’t also report that.
Not a good article entirely
– calling Hager and idealogical crusader not a journalist is simply idiotic – the content of his book would be gobsmacking no matter who was doing it – Nact have only themselves to blame that they were in the limelight – and nobody has sued so we can take it that it’s pretty much factually right- personal responsibility there for Nact
– releasing it to cause maximum political damage – oh please – don’t do it to start with and don’t all MSM outlets write stories and release tehm for best effect.
Lastly Hager does factual content and investigation, du Fresne does an opinion column, why does the MSm support one but not the other.
You seem to suffer from the TVNZ disease which aches as to say that the first imperative is ‘balance’ (as though it were a calculable absolute). “Balance’ is the MOST subjective number and in TVNZ is generally reflected by reporting this and not reporting that, according to a lonely and untested personal sense of what is ‘balance’. Very well paid contenders to the next level of very well paid, even excessive, even obscenely extravagantly paid contenders.
Why is a child prime minister deemed to be central, reliable, our desired ‘us’ ? If this is ‘balance’……(gulp)……please do not show me imbalance. I am a precariously positioned pensioner. I have impecuniosity and nostrils keen to the stink of shit. Especially that passed on by yuppie Cafe Society wannabes of the Auckland media.
…….and I’m guessing your all very comfortable with females to this country being sexually assaulted by our customs officials …… if their crime is visiting Kim Dotcom
Hell ….. I’d even bet you 3 would join up to be customs officers …… if you could get in on some of that.
Kim Dotcom was a man who could get things done and had vision in the computer and internet industries …………… Nationals plan was more cows
Still you 3 keep giving yourself mutual hand-jobs ………….. because you really are wankers 🙂
The survey results reinforce the Vollgeld Initiative, which currently has more than 90,000 signatures of the 100,000 required to force a binding national referendum in Switzerland. [Update on 2nd Nov: More than 100,000 verified signatures were collected.]
Iceland is also having such discussions but no indications yet that they going to have a referendum on it.
alwyn ………….. I missed your late arrival for the now four-way with your buddies clean power, infused and puke rouge …….
Like those other trolls you are here to spread misinformation or derail …. and with your comments on Cunliffe you did just that ……. in this instance you left out the dirty politics hatchet job that the Nats cooked up and engineered for the election.
Cunliffe as most people know was the victim of a national dirty politics hit job involving the usual suspects of Key, Slater, farrar, the herald etc …….. and 1 dishonest dodgy rich immigrant named ‘Lui’ …..who was charged with domestic violence at the time.
The Herald in particular ran a counterfactual and unsubstantiated smear job on cunliffe and Labor ………………. all sorts of false accusation were put into print …………. Cunliffe was called to resign by Armstrong and others ……………. and the Nats in a pre-planned and coordinated way always referred to Cunliffe as ‘tricky’.
The truth in the matter which made the story against Labor and Cunliffe counterfactual …………….. Was that John Key and others were around having meals at Lui’s house ……. and picking up $10,000 dollar donations to the national party…..they were the ones associating and taking money from him …… but we never read that in the Herald or elsewhere
The Slater, Key, Farrar cliche were at the peak of their Dirty politics underhand sleazy tricks when they did their job against Cunliffe …………… but thanks to Nicky Hager we now know how they operate which has hobbled them ……. for the time being.
The unintended consequences from their shit slinging hit job on Cunliffe was Winston s rising …………
Winston is of course now sitting in the northland seat ………… courtesy of what could be John Keys dirtiest political act of all regarding one Mike Sabin ………… and who knew what when they knew it going into the general election.
Personally I think Key will resign before that shit storm hits ……..
His job is done now that he has signed away our sovereignty with the TPPA ……..
Winston is of course now sitting in the northland seat ………… courtesy of what could be John Keys dirtiest political act of all regarding one Mike Sabin ………… and who knew what AND when they knew it going into the general election.
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Peter Dunne writes – I am always wary when I hear that the Controller and Auditor-General has commented on or made recommendations to the government about an issue of public policy that does not relate strictly to public expenditure. According to the legislation, the role of the Controller ...
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Do you believe New Zealand runs its general elections fairly and competently? As a voter, can you be confident that the votes on your ballot will be counted towards the final result? As a political scientist, I’ve been asked these questions many times and always answered “yes”, with very few ...
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Its a law like gravity: whenever a right-wing government is elected, they start attacking democracy. And now, after talking to their Republican and Tory and Fidesz chums at the International Democracy Union forum in Wellington, National is doing it here, announcing plans to remove election-day enrolment. Or, to put it ...
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The Government is again adding to New Zealand’s growing unemployment, this time cutting jobs at the agencies responsible for urban development and growing much needed housing stock. ...
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The Labour Party is saddened to learn of the death of Sir Robert Martin, a globally renowned disability advocate who led the way for disability rights both in New Zealand and internationally. ...
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The Government is making short-sighted changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that will take away environmental protection in favour of short-term profits, Labour’s environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
Labour welcomes the release of the report into the North Island weather events and looks forward to working with the Government to ensure that New Zealand is as prepared as it can be for the next natural disaster. ...
The Labour Party has called for the New Zealand Government to recognise Palestine, as a material step towards progressing the two-State solution needed to achieve a lasting peace in the region. ...
Some of our country’s most important work, stopping the sexual exploitation of children and violent extremism could go along with staff on the frontline at ports and airports. ...
The Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill will give projects such as new coal mines a ‘get out of jail free’ card to wreak havoc on the environment, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
Introduction Good morning. It’s a great privilege to be here at the 2024 Infrastructure Symposium. I was extremely happy when the Prime Minister asked me to be his Minister for Infrastructure. It is one of the great barriers holding the New Zealand economy back from achieving its potential. Building high ...
Defence Minister Judith Collins today announced the upcoming Budget will include new funding of $571 million for Defence Force pay and projects. “Our servicemen and women do New Zealand proud throughout the world and this funding will help ensure we retain their services and expertise as we navigate an increasingly ...
New Zealand’s ability to cope with climate change will be strengthened as part of the Government’s focus to build resilience as we rebuild the economy, Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says. “An enduring and long-term approach is needed to provide New Zealanders and the economy with certainty as the climate ...
Jobseeker beneficiaries who have work obligations must now meet with MSD within two weeks of their benefit starting to determine their next step towards finding a job, Social Development and Employment Minister Louise Upston says. “A key part of the coalition Government’s plan to have 50,000 fewer people on Jobseeker ...
A new standalone Social Investment Agency will power-up the social investment approach, driving positive change for our most vulnerable New Zealanders, Social Investment Minister Nicola Willis says. “Despite the Government currently investing more than $70 billion every year into social services, we are not seeing the outcomes we want for ...
Check against delivery Good morning. It is a pleasure to be with you to outline the Coalition Government’s approach to our first Budget. Thank you Mark Skelly, President of the Hutt Valley Chamber of Commerce, together with your Board and team, for hosting me. I’d like to acknowledge His Worship ...
Your Excellency Ambassador Meredith, Members of the Diplomatic Corps and Ambassadors from European Union Member States, Ministerial colleagues, Members of Parliament, and other distinguished guests, Thank you everyone for joining us. Ladies and gentlemen - In diplomacy, we often speak of ‘close’ and ‘long-standing’ relations. ...
The Therapeutic Products Act (TPA) will be repealed this year so that a better regime can be put in place to provide New Zealanders safe and timely access to medicines, medical devices and health products, Associate Health Minister Casey Costello announced today. “The medicines and products we are talking about ...
The Minister Responsible for RMA Reform, Chris Bishop, today released his decision on twenty recommendations referred to him by the Wellington City Council relating to its Intensification Planning Instrument, after the Council rejected those recommendations of the Independent Hearings Panel and made alternative recommendations. “Wellington notified its District Plan on ...
Rape Awareness Week (6-10 May) is an important opportunity to acknowledge the continued effort required by government and communities to ensure that all New Zealanders can live free from violence, say Ministers Karen Chhour and Louise Upston. “With 1 in 3 women and 1 in 8 men experiencing sexual violence ...
Associate Education Minister David Seymour has today announced that the Government will be delivering a more efficient Healthy School Lunches Programme, saving taxpayers approximately $107 million a year compared to how Labour funded it, by embracing innovation and commercial expertise. “We are delivering on our commitment to treat taxpayers’ money ...
New research on the impacts of extreme weather on coastal marine habitats in Tairāwhiti and Hawke’s Bay will help fishery managers plan for and respond to any future events, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. A report released today on research by Niwa on behalf of Fisheries New Zealand ...
Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Winston Peters will lead a broad political delegation on a five-stop Pacific tour next week to strengthen New Zealand’s engagement with the region. The delegation will visit Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, and Tuvalu. “New Zealand has deep and ...
There has been a material decline in gas production according to figures released today by the Gas Industry Co. Figures released by the Gas Industry Company show that there was a 12.5 per cent reduction in gas production during 2023, and a 27.8 per cent reduction in gas production in the ...
Defence Minister Judith Collins tonight announced the recipients of the Minister of Defence Awards of Excellence for Industry, saying they all contribute to New Zealanders’ security and wellbeing. “Congratulations to this year’s recipients, whose innovative products and services play a critical role in the delivery of New Zealand’s defence capabilities, ...
Welcome to you all - it is a pleasure to be here this evening.I would like to start by thanking Greg Lowe, Chair of the New Zealand Defence Industry Advisory Council, for co-hosting this reception with me. This evening is about recognising businesses from across New Zealand and overseas who in ...
It is a pleasure to be speaking to you as the Minister for Digitising Government. I would like to thank Akolade for the invitation to address this Summit, and to acknowledge the great effort you are making to grow New Zealand’s digital future. Today, we stand at the cusp of ...
New Zealand is urging both Israel and Hamas to agree to an immediate ceasefire to avoid the further humanitarian catastrophe that military action in Rafah would unleash, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “The immense suffering in Gaza cannot be allowed to worsen further. Both sides have a responsibility to ...
A new online data dashboard released today as part of the Government’s school attendance action plan makes more timely daily attendance data available to the public and parents, says Associate Education Minister David Seymour. The interactive dashboard will be updated once a week to show a national average of how ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced Rosemary Banks will be New Zealand’s next Ambassador to the United States of America. “Our relationship with the United States is crucial for New Zealand in strategic, security and economic terms,” Mr Peters says. “New Zealand and the United States have a ...
The Government is considering creating a new tier of minerals permitting that will make it easier for hobby miners to prospect for gold. “New Zealand was built on gold, it’s in our DNA. Our gold deposits, particularly in regions such as Otago and the West Coast have always attracted fortune-hunters. ...
Minister for Trade Todd McClay today announced that New Zealand and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) will commence negotiations on a free trade agreement (FTA). Minister McClay met with his counterpart UAE Trade Minister Dr Thani bin Ahmed Al Zeyoudi in Dubai, where they announced the launch of negotiations on a ...
New Zealand Sign Language Week is an excellent opportunity for all Kiwis to give the language a go, Disabilities Issues Minister Louise Upston says. This week (May 6 to 12) is New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) Week. The theme is “an Aotearoa where anyone can sign anywhere” and aims to ...
Six tertiary students have been selected to work on NASA projects in the US through a New Zealand Space Scholarship, Space Minister Judith Collins announced today. “This is a fantastic opportunity for these talented students. They will undertake internships at NASA’s Ames Research Center or its Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), where ...
New Zealanders will be safer because of a $1.9 billion investment in more frontline Corrections officers, more support for offenders to turn away from crime, and more prison capacity, Corrections Minister Mark Mitchell says. “Our Government said we would crack down on crime. We promised to restore law and order, ...
The OECD’s latest report on New Zealand reinforces the importance of bringing Government spending under control, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says. The OECD conducts country surveys every two years to review its members’ economic policies. The 2024 New Zealand survey was presented in Wellington today by OECD Chief Economist Clare Lombardelli. ...
The Government has delivered on its election promise to provide a financially sustainable model for Auckland under its Local Water Done Well plan. The plan, which has been unanimously endorsed by Auckland Council’s Governing Body, will see Aucklanders avoid the previously projected 25.8 per cent water rates increases while retaining ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters discussed the need for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, and enhanced cooperation in the Pacific with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock during her first official visit to New Zealand today. "New Zealand and Germany enjoy shared interests and values, including the rule of law, democracy, respect for the international system ...
The Minister Responsible for RMA Reform, Chris Bishop today released his decision on four recommendations referred to him by the Western Bay of Plenty District Council, opening the door to housing growth in the area. The Council’s Plan Change 92 allows more homes to be built in existing and new ...
Thank you, John McKinnon and the New Zealand China Council for the invitation to speak to you today. Thank you too, all members of the China Council. Your effort has played an essential role in helping to build, shape, and grow a balanced and resilient relationship between our two ...
The Government is modernising insurance law to better protect Kiwis and provide security in the event of a disaster, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly announced today. “These reforms are long overdue. New Zealand’s insurance law is complicated and dated, some of which is more than 100 years old. ...
The coalition Government is refreshing its approach to supporting pay equity claims as time-limited funding for the Pay Equity Taskforce comes to an end, Public Service Minister Nicola Willis says. “Three years ago, the then-government introduced changes to the Equal Pay Act to support pay equity bargaining. The changes were ...
Structured literacy will change the way New Zealand children learn to read - improving achievement and setting students up for success, Education Minister Erica Stanford says. “Being able to read and write is a fundamental life skill that too many young people are missing out on. Recent data shows that ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay says Canada’s refusal to comply in full with a CPTPP trade dispute ruling in our favour over dairy trade is cynical and New Zealand has no intention of backing down. Mr McClay said he has asked for urgent legal advice in respect of our ‘next move’ ...
The rights of our children and young people will be enhanced by changes the coalition Government will make to strengthen oversight of the Oranga Tamariki system, including restoring a single Children’s Commissioner. “The Government is committed to delivering better public services that care for our most at-risk young people and ...
The Government is making it easier for minor changes to be made to a building consent so building a home is easier and more affordable, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “The coalition Government is focused on making it easier and cheaper to build homes so we can ...
New Zealand lost a true legend when internationally renowned disability advocate Sir Robert Martin (KNZM) passed away at his home in Whanganui last night, Disabilities Issues Minister Louise Upston says. “Our Government’s thoughts are with his wife Lynda, family and community, those he has worked with, the disability community in ...
Good evening – Before discussing the challenges and opportunities facing New Zealand’s foreign policy, we’d like to first acknowledge the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. You have contributed to debates about New Zealand foreign policy over a long period of time, and we thank you for hosting us. ...
From today, passengers travelling internationally from Auckland Airport will be able to keep laptops and liquids in their carry-on bags for security screening thanks to new technology, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Creating a more efficient and seamless travel experience is important for holidaymakers and businesses, enabling faster movement through ...
People with an interest in the health of Northland’s marine ecosystems are invited to a public meeting to discuss how to deal with kina barrens, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones will lead the discussion, which will take place on Friday, 10 May, at Awanui Hotel in ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sara Dehm, Senior lecturer, international migration and refugee law, University of Technology Sydney The High Court unanimously ruled today that the Australian government can keep asylum seekers in immigration detention indefinitely in cases where they do not “voluntarily” cooperate with their own ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kim Munro, Lecturer, Creative Industries and Digital Media, University of South Australia Twenty-four hours after the release of Macklemore’s pro-Palestine protest song Hind’s Hall on social media on May 7, the video had already notched up over 24 million views. In ...
Failing to anticipate the complexity of the consenting system is being cited as the the current builder's shortcomings, an Infrastructure Commission review says. ...
350 Aotearoa is calling the Environment Select Committee’s decision to allow oral submissions from just 40% of individual, unique submitters who asked to speak to the committee ‘a disgraceful blight to democracy’. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Helal, Assistant Dean (Sustainability), The University of Melbourne Dubai skylineAleksandarPasaric/Pexels Since ancient times, people have built structures that reach for the skies – from the steep spires of medieval towers to the grand domes of ancient cathedrals and mosques. Today ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Edward Musole, PhD Law Student, University of New England Girts Ragelis/ShutterstockRecent trends show Australians are increasingly buying wearables such as smartwatches and fitness trackers. These electronics track our body movements or vital signs to provide data throughout the day, with ...
Papua New Guinea experienced a significant earthquake on 24 March in East Sepik and there has also been recent flooding there and in surrounding provinces. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Yousuf Mohammed, Dermatology researcher, The University of Queensland Maridav/Shutterstock You wake up, stagger to the bathroom and gaze into the mirror. No, you’re not imagining it. You’ve developed face wrinkles overnight. They’re sleep wrinkles. Sleep wrinkles are temporary. But as your ...
The Environment Select Committee has just announced that 60 percent of individuals who asked to speak at the hearings will not be heard. This equates to almost 700 people who made individual submissions and more than 1000 more who made a form submission. ...
The Royal New Zealand Ballet is performing Swan Lake around the country. What kind of dream does the ballet sell?Before going to see the Royal New Zealand Ballet perform Swan Lake, I had about as much familiarity with the plot of this ballet as could be expected from having ...
A new poem by Auckland poet Eamonn Tee. High Tide at Local Maxima It is only going to get worse. The streams will be narrow and fickle. The week will bend and buckle like a pot-bellied waist. You will make it to the weekend with one ...
The New Zealand entrepreneur behind beauty business Ethique is gearing up to launch a new eco-venture. This is an excerpt from our weekly environmental newsletter Future Proof. Sign up here. Our thirst for a tasty bevvy is insatiable, but it comes with a hefty plastic price for the planet: 580 billion ...
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 James by Percival Everett (Mantle, $38) A retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from ...
By Kamna Kumar in Suva Pacific Islands Forum Secretary-General Henry Puna stressed the importance of media freedom and its link to the climate and environmental crisis at the 2024 World Press Freedom Day event organised by the University of the South Pacific’s journalism programme. Under the theme “A Planet for ...
Tara Ward previews a new local TV series offering alternative visions of motherhood. This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. A woman is clambering up the side of her two-story house, clinging desperately to a drainpipe. Nearby, her child is perched on the ...
Local Government New Zealand (LGNZ) is supportive of the cross-party approach to climate adaptation announced by the Minister of Climate Change today. ...
The Sustainable Business Council (SBC) and Climate Leaders Coalition (CLC) welcome today’s announcement from Government around a bipartisan inquiry into an enduring climate adaptation framework for New Zealand. ...
The Free Speech Union welcomes the decision by the Department of Internal Affairs, and Minister Brooke Van Velden, to abandon proposals to further regulate online speech. ...
Its new building in Wellington will not be nearly big enough for all its records, and it has also run out of money to build its new storage facility in Levin. ...
BusinessNZ is congratulating the Minister of Climate Change for his work in achieving cross-party consensus for a way forward on climate adaptation. ...
Recent research reveals the repeal of smokefree measures is not only bad for our health, but also the economy. The Government has repealed various smokefree measures to ensure it keeps collecting $1.2 billion a year in tobacco taxes, in order to pay for tax cuts already being delivered to ...
The club’s surprisingly good season is built on the desire to prove a random A-League YouTuber wrong… and a few other factors.“There’s no way that Wellington Phoenix play finals this year. I can’t see it happening at all.” Those are the words of Lachlan Raeside, an Australian football content ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By César Albarrán-Torres, Senior Lecturer, Department of Media and Communication, Swinburne University of Technology Apple TV+ As one of billions of bilingual individuals in the world, it disappoints me when a film or TV show with characters of a non-English-speaking background is ...
The under-utilised course is a waste of space, and with a little political will, it could be turned into something better. For the duration of her stay in Wellington, my long-suffering cousin listened to me rant about golf courses. They’re bad for the environment: water intensive and pesticide heavy. They ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Leah Ruppanner, Professor of Sociology and Founding Director of The Future of Work Lab, Podcast at MissPerceived, The University of Melbourne Shutterstock A recent report from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows US fertility rates dropped 2% in ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amy Corderoy, Medical doctor and PhD candidate studying involuntary psychiatric treatment, School of Psychiatry, UNSW Sydney shop_py/Shutterstock Picture two people, both suffering from a serious mental illness requiring hospital admission. One was born in Australia, the other in Asia. Hopefully, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sarah Treby, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, RMIT University P.j.Hickox, Shutterstock Peatlands store more carbon per square metre than any other ecosystem on Earth. These waterlogged, mossy bogs beat even dense rainforests for their ability to act as carbon reservoirs. Under the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Goss, Adjunct Associate Professor, Health Research Institute, University of Canberra Government spending on health has been growing so rapidly that a decade ago the then health minister Peter Dutton called it “unmanageable” and “unsustainable”. Health spending grew in real terms by ...
New Zealand's largest electricity distributor is warning the country to hurry up with controls around charging electric vehicles or face unnecessary bills running into the billions. ...
New Zealanders have been asked to conserve energy this morning to combat a possible electricity shortfall, writes Stewart Sowman-Lund in this extract from The Bulletin. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here. A call to conserve power New Zealand is facing a possible electricity shortfall, with people up ...
Writer Rebecca K Reilly breaks down the national book awards. What are the Ockhams?The Ockham New Zealand Book Awards are our annual national awards for books published for adults, and have existed in this form since 2016. There are four categories: Fiction, Poetry, General Non-fiction and Illustrated Non-fiction. There ...
Wellington City Council should keep its 34% ownership share in Wellington International Airport, argue Unions Wellington spokespeople Finn Cordwell and Ashok Jacob. Insanity, as the saying goes, is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Wellington City Council (WCC) is yet again proposing to dispose ...
New Zealand’s largest book publisher has undergone drastic changes this week, leaving its future role in local publishing uncertain. Two of the most recognisable local publishers in New Zealand are among those restructured out of Penguin Random House, it was announced this week. Head of publishing Claire Murdoch will leave ...
Successive governments have tried, and failed, to count Māori. But with the return of social investment, it’s more important than ever to get good data. The post Government looks for a better way to count Māori appeared first on Newsroom. ...
Experts in financing social investment initiatives say New Zealand is in a prime position to tackle social issues via a social investment approach The post What will Willis’ social investment fund look like? appeared first on Newsroom. ...
In 2021 the Public Interest Journalism Fund launched the Te Rito Journalism project, a $2.4 million initiative to boost diversity in New Zealand’s newsrooms. The initiative was in response to the decades-long shortage of Māori and Pacific journalists in the media industry. It was billed as New Zealand’s ...
The Black Ferns Sevens appeared to be a mile behind Australia at the halfway point of the 2023-24 SVNS international circuit. Winless in three tournaments, a cup quarter-final exit in Perth was one of their worst results. To add insult to injury, talismanic skipper Sarah Hirini had been ruled out ...
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By Lydia Lewis, RNZ Pacific journalist A former Tuvalu prime minister says while the New Zealand government’s oil and gas plans show it is concerned about its economy, he is more concerned about the livelihoods and survival of the Tuvalu people. Enele Sopoaga — who still serves as an MP ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Many people who follow federal budgets know about the magnificent “budget tree” in a parliamentary courtyard, which turns a glorious red in time for the May event. This week Treasurer Jim Chalmers posed by ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Samantha Bennett, Professor of Music, Australian National University Richard P J Lambert/flickr, CC BY The future belongs to the analogue loyalists. Fuck digital. As a tsunami of CDs, DAT tapes and samplers swept the recording industry in the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Catherine Strong, Associate professor, Music Industry, RMIT University This week American rapper Macklemore released a new track, Hind’s Hall, which has gained a lot of attention because of its explicitly political nature. The track is unapologetically pro-Palestine. It declares the artist’s ...
Explainer - The government from 2025 is mandating how state schools teach children to read. But what is structured literacy and how does it compare to other teaching methods? ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Danica Jenkins, Lecturer in European Studies, University of Sydney On a freezing spring night in March, Georgia’s national soccer team beat Greece in a nail-biter penalty shootout to qualify for the Euro 2024 championships. The atmosphere on the streets of the capital ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adam G. Arian, Lecturer (Accounting & Finance), Australian Catholic University Loic Manegarium/Pexels Imagine every ton of carbon dioxide a company emits is slowly inflating its costs — not just in terms of potential fines or fees but in the capital it ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Somwrita Sarkar, Senior Lecturer in Design and Computation, University of Sydney The “latte line” is the infamous, invisible boundary that divides Sydney between the more affluent north-east and the south-west. Historically, people north of the line enjoy better access to jobs and ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Dowdy, Principal Research Scientist in Extreme Weather, The University of Melbourne Nomad_Soul/Shutterstock In media articles about unprecedented flooding, you’ll often come across the statement that for every 1°C of warming, the atmosphere can hold about 7% more moisture. This ...
RNZ Pacific Former Fiji Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama has been sentenced to one year in prison, Fiji media are reporting. Bainimarama, alongside suspended Fiji Police Commissioner Sitiveni Qiliho appeared in the High Court in Suva today for their sentencing hearing for a case involving their roles in blocking a police ...
Acting Chief Human Rights Commissioner Saunoamaali’i Dr Karanina Sumeo says, “Addressing violence and abuse remains New Zealand’s most significant human rights issue affecting women. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonathan Symons, Macquarie School of Social Sciences, Macquarie University Michael Schiffer / Unsplash Life has transformed our world over billions of years, turning a dead rock into the lush, fertile planet we know today. But human activity is currently transforming Earth ...
One woman’s quest to watch Challengers without ruining her body clock. Every Saturday morning, I wake up with a screaming demon inside my head urging me to “Do. Something. This. Weekend.” I run through the possibilities in my head in a defensive mental crouch, reminiscent of that one time I ...
Ranking of digital rights in tech companies.
https://rankingdigitalrights.org/index2015/
http://m.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=11539503
http://m.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=11539525
It might be good time for our government to wtfu and start doing something about cc.
Things are going to get very weird. I reckon one of NZ’s biggest shocks will be when people have to get over the idea that it can’t happen to lil ole us in godzone.
The optimist in me hopes rain in places like Yemen will become a regular thing ,and there might be rapid growth to lock up some carbon ,.
The last hurricane event to go through the eastern Yemen area in 2008 dumped a tonne of rain and caused mass floods, but does not create lasting water for a higher level of vegetation than normal. It would probably require a deep sea current change to bring regular rainfall to the area, but warmer temperatures will make hurricanes more frequent.
Swales (and other rainwater harvesting techniques) can make use of high but infrequent rainfall for food growing.
Van Essen v The Attorney-General [2015] NZSC 166 (3 November 2015)
http://www.nzlii.org/nz/cases/NZSC/2015/166.html
Interesting decision-
” [2]
The search warrant applications were largely prepared by the private investigators.
It was common ground well before trial that they were invalid.
The private investigators participated in the execution of the warrants along with police officers.
There are two other particular points that should be mentioned:
(a) the Patterson warrant was unsigned; and
(b) one of the police officers involved in the Van Essen warrant and its execution was Mr Gibbons’ son-in-law. ”
It seems you don’t even have to be the FBI or a Hollywood mogul to hire our cops for a bust. It must be official police policy now that –Better to just do it wrong and apologise later- because its okay to frame the right guy – that’s not a miscarriage of justice.
one statement stands out like dogs balls,
” In doing so the Court relied on the IPCA investigation and a subsequent report”
case closed i guess. works every time!
why would a court accept evidence from an oxymoron? !
I like your …..”evidence from an oxymoron ?”. Certainly true in name. In nature probably nothing oxymoronic about it. For an institution which is part of the power structure and contributes to it . Bit of a worry really. Because this institution sets threshholds of behaviour.
TPP Countries Aiming To Publish Final Agreement Text Later This Week
Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) countries are aiming to make public the final agreement text before the end of this week, after making more progress than expected at a drafting session that wrapped up in Tokyo at the end of October, according to informed sources.
http://insidetrade.com/
Finally we might get to see the fine print.
Do you ever get the feeling you are surrounded by idiots, living here in Nu Zuland?
A PM who repeatedly pulls the hair of a woman in a position of service, harasses and abuses her, and gets away with it.
An MP that refers to women performing demeaning sex acts to an audience of technology professionals at Sky City, and gets away with it.
A Ministry that hires “model sheep” from a sex shop for their xmas party because you know, that’s f-ing hilarrrrious and everyone will love that surely………
The annual parade of idiots setting things on fire and traumatise animals because we allow idiots to purchase dangerous explosives:
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/288726/fires-on-first-day-of-fireworks-sale
Idiots that can’t see a problem with strapping a 13 year old girl on to the front of a truck and sending her into flames, for kicks.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/288814/driver-defends-flaming-wall-truck-stunt
Also see Mickey’s post on a blighted future. Idiocy combined with cruelty.
Some days you’ve just gotta put your hands in your hands and sigh.
The flaming stunt trick was quite impressive, very mad max.
If you had a 13 year old daughter would you do that her?
There are so many wrongs it’s hard to know where to start.
A professional stunt woman was interviewed on 3 news last night. She was absolutely gobsmacked at the sheer stupidity and risk of it.
A child’s life has been endangered with the permission of her idiot parents.
Neil Jorgensen, the driver of the truck, when asked by the RNZ interviewer couldn’t say that the girl (don’t know her name) volunteered for the stunt, he just kept referring to a discussion with the family. His argument is that he has known the girl’s Dad for 20 years, as if that is relevant to putting a young life at risk.
Oh, and she wasn’t strapped in, I was wrong. Jorgensen was quite adamant about that. Said she could have jumped at any time. Lucky girl eh, having that choice. A choice between something going wrong and going up in flames or jumping from a moving vehicle and breaking your bones.
I agree, it was utterly stupid and showed a complete lack of awareness.
For a start she could have been impaled on the bits of flaming wood, not a lot of intelligence on display there.
Onya BM. Leave the stunts to Mad Max
BMadmax !
my partner is one of the many unpaid voluntary firefighters in NZ, and yes, the stupidity of people is astounding.
Considering that it is the season, I have given up on sleeping through a night until winter next year.
Cause that beeper (while they still have pagers) is not gonna stop, cause lighting a bbq with flame accelerator is fun, lobbing fire crackers in the bush is fun, burning shit without a permit is fun, and so on and so on and yeah….huwud’avethunk.
Huge respect and gratitude to your partner Sabine.
I don’t have the level of tolerance for idiots that members of the volunteer fire service would need to possess in order to do their job and keep themselves calm and sane.
Two years ago one of our neighbours managed to set the vegetation on the roundabout next to our house on fire. The firework set alight very dry ornamental grasses. The flames went up so fast, metres into the air. I was on the phone to 111 immediately and the fire service were there within one minute. Probably one of many call outs to similar fires that night.
I fully support their calls last year for a discussion around the banning of the public sale of fireworks. If that happened you might get a few more uninterpreted nights with your partner.
Guts of a letter to the editor of my local newspaper
I hope Prime Minister John Key isn’t planning to wear a white ribbon this November as it is clear from his past actions that he has no idea what the White Ribbon campaign stands for, which is men standing up and saying to other men that violence towards women is not okay.
When former Labour leader Cunliffe did exactly this, rather than support him, John Key publicly denigrated him to score political points. He even went so far as to wear a T Shirt saying “I’m proud to be a man” after Cunliffe had lost the election and resigned. He couldn’t resist having one more jab just for the pleasure of it. The worst thing a man can do is actually denigrate other men who stand up and say violence against women is not okay.
As well, John Key persistently harassed a female café worker despite her objections, claiming afterwards it was just a bit of fun and an indication of his “casual” style. He doesn’t seem to understand that he is not the only male that does this sort of thing and if every man who went in a café felt entitled to harass female staff they would be put upon the whole day long. This is the sort of thing that goes on in a lot of countries.
As far as I can see, the Prime Minister is still in denial about his attitude and behavior. A good first step for him this November would be to do what many other men have already done. Stand up in public amongst a group of men and women (with accompanying media for maximum publicity) and take the White Ribbon Pledge “I promise never to commit, condone or remain silent about violence towards women”.
That is an excellent letter e p. What paper was it in?
@ esoteric pineapples (6) –
Excellent letter. Thanks for sharing. Where did you find it?
In my very humble opinion for all it’s worth, FJK is in denial, because his behaviour points to that of a cold, calculating psychopath. He is completely devoid of any emotion towards anyone he abuses, hurts, humiliates, denigrates or offends!
There is enough evidence there in that letter describing FJK’s behaviour, for a full psychiatric conference I’m sure!
this is how its done, but Dear Leader is clearly above these ‘trivial’ matters
https://www.facebook.com/SamoaMoSamoa/photos/a.225162717501562.64779.225138367503997/1091286354222523/?type=3&fref=nf
Quote from the post
Former Manu Samoa player, Eliota Fuimaono-Sapolu, is calling Samoan men out, urging them to put a stop to domestic violence against women in Samoa. His comments come after the brutal murder of 25-year-old mother of two Fatima Tupa’i, who was beaten to death by her estranged husband while she was asleep next to their children.
“A protection order is a piece of paper and a piece of paper will not stop a violent man. Fatima was still beaten to death while she slept with her children. She told the Police and they did nothing. They failed her and her children,” he said. He believed incidents of domestic violence in Samoa were increasing, and urged all men to put a stop to it.
“Domestic violence is a man’s issue! Who is doing the violence, the rape, the abuse? Men, we have to speak out against our brothers, fathers, uncles and friends. Men, if you see something, do something.”
“We have to stop being cowards,” he said. He believed women were devalued in Samoa. “Domestic violence is a product of a society that does not value women.”
+1 Sabine
I’m in mind of the televised giggles about who’s not coming to dinner at or about the time Smith fled to Brazil. This in the presence of the president of Brazil FFS. Footage that went round the world.
If we’d pity the 10 year old on the school trip who screws up the speech of thanks at the dairy factory…….surely we wouldn’t more or less celebrate ?
This is our prime minister and it’s happens more frequently. Worn with robust disdain, an amalgam of Vaudeville/Monty Python. It trickles down. Until the ‘spectacle’ becomes a melting ‘popsicle’ riding a broken-down ‘bicycle’.
Hey MSM, you wanna make that the broadly acceptable norm ?
who would not like a few teeth in their stew? And Food Hygiene is for suckers anyways.
http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/nov/03/human-teeth-found-in-meal-served-to-asylum-seekers-on-manus-island?CMP=fb_gu
or maybe a bit of violence and torture in ‘detention centers’ run by the ozzies
https://www.facebook.com/KelvinDavisLabour/posts/1068955776469602?fref=nf
maybe a bit of emotional torture for someone who has completed his sentence for the possession of marijuana, and a lonely death for a partner
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/288326/kiwi-detained-while-partner-dies-alone
Luckily for us our Dear Leader, now that the rugby is over and the boys are safely back in the country, will be on it. Surely, he will check with his OZ Dear Leader mate to make sure that the kiwis in detention on Manus Island will be treated as humanly as the Saudis treat NZ donated sheep in the desert. Or sum such thing. or maybe not. Oh …look, there is Sir Richies leg to hump.
+1 Sabine.
At least + 1 Sabine. One tiny edit: “Oh …look, there is Sir Richies leg [Ripe] to hump.”
Canterbury gets a bailout https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/canterbury-dhb-denies-its-struggling-despite-getting-16m-bailout and Southland/Otago gets a commissioner to slash the budget http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/69475533/Southern-DHB-commissioner-to-start-board-cleanup-process
(Both have a deficit)
i prfer to term it that both are underfunded.
Nash would call that as having a glass half full attitude CV
Definitely are…
Having been seen off by Northland, Wellington and the Hawkes Bay Paula Bennet is still going to corporatise councils by bribing with our own money (taxpayer funds) subsidies only if they go to CCO’s right?
So us ratepayers and taxpayers are looking forward to another round of expensive consultation that we don’t want to fund followed by the transfer of major council assets to undemocratic entities which will be locked in (and Northland is first for the chop).
Can we transfer the threatened regional assets to a company with the directors being the elected regional councillors and the shareholders being those on the electoral role entitled to vote for said councillors having one share each? Then the provisions of the companies act would click in so that major changes could not be made without putting it to shareholder vote, i.e us ratepayers or changing the wholes companies act? Are there other pre-emptive strategies we could look at – might be a better spend of the money
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11539528
“Government was proposing a “viable alternative to large-scale amalgamation”. Regions could transfer some core services between regional and territorial authorities. Or they could transfer them to “arms-length” organisations similar to Auckland’s Council Controlled Organisations (CCOs).
Half of CCOs’ directors are appointed by the council. Mrs Bennett admitted there could be some resistance to transferring core services to less democratic entities. But she said changes would not be forced on regions, and would be community-led.
The Government planned to introduce law changes next year which would allow the new structures to be “locked in” for the long-term.”
+1 Red Baron
Didn’t take Murdochs mob long.
WASHINGTON, DC (November 3, 2015) – In the opening days of the month when National Geographic magazine is scheduled to be turned over to 21st Century Fox, the magazine’s employees were told to stand by their phones to wait for calls – one by one – to come to Human Resources to learn the fate of their jobs.
https://nppa.org/node/72817
NG was compromised some time back
The magazine cover used ‘conspiracy theories’ as cover for “the war on science” , attacking ” reasonable people”
The digital age takes deception to a level beyond the capacity of people to understand
Executive Recalls Booming Private Prison Corporation’s Humble Beginnings As Modest 6-Cell Facility
Yeah, it’s the Onion…
You can dress up what their doing any way you want but that is government assisted slavery pure and simple.
You do know what the Onion is?
You do know the history of prisons in the US?
North Carolina, while without a system comparable to the other states, did not prohibit the practice until 1933. Alabama was the last to end the practice of official convict leasing in 1928.
I do now
It is illegal to import goods produced by prisoner labour in the US but perfectly fine for them use prisoner labour to create consumer products.
Maybe you need to know a bit more.
Convict leasing appears to be alive and well.
Prison labor in the states
http://www.prisonpolicy.org/prisonindex/prisonlabor.html
Oh I’ve been had….the barstards!! Still many a truth said in jest.
Free market really working for all!
Unemployment up to 6%.
Not panic time, but would be great to see an actual plan from the Government on this.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11539885
Looks like stagnation in 2016, not much better in 2017.
More to the point, I wonder what the real unemployment figure is?
I also wonder what the real unemployment figure is. RNZ said Statistics NZ look at those registered with WINZ and look at the total number of people in work. I don’t know what that second bit meant.
Relying on the number of WINZ registered unemployed is flawed as some of us unemployed aren’t eligible for assistance because our partners earn slightly more than peanuts. (Doesn’t matter that each week is an absolute struggle and debt is increasing due to having to use a credit card for living costs).
We’re simply not counted in the figures. A few of my friends are also in this position. How many unemployed around NZ aren’t registered with WINZ?
This is largely incorrect, the main measures of unemployment collected in NZ are not related to WINZ registrations. WINZ registrations are collected and counted by MSD, but these are not used for the official employment measures.
http://www.stats.govt.nz/browse_for_stats/income-and-work/employment_and_unemployment/a-guide-to-unemployment-stats.aspx
Have you seen the Roy Morgan unemployment statistics?
http://www.roymorgan.com/morganpoll/new-zealand/rmr-vs-snz-unemployment
There methodology is subtly different to statistics NZ. I think its always a politically motivated decision to suggest one is more real, than the other and the important thing for policy is to be consistent across time. On the other hand Australians think their Roy Morgan unemployment rate is more realistic than their national statistics office.
http://www.roymorgan.com/findings/unemployment-roy-morgan-abs-comparison-201307110402
Henry talked about that this morning with the money guy and then went to the longest interview I’ve seen him do with key and not one mention of it was made , all they talked about was fucking knighthoods the pair of arseholes.
make unemployment benefit eligibility so hard that no one applies for benefits. Problem solved.
Yep….a WINZ worker told me add another at least 1%….so many don’t even bother applying. So many involved in the ‘grey economy’….downside of which is not only skewed unemployment stats but also slightly lower tax take. Also undermining labour laws (such as they are) as the ‘job’ does not really exist.
Methinks this is exactly how Our Leaders want the economy to go….
Increasing unemployment is their plan as it helps the capitalists to screw down wages.
As relevant now as it was back then.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0508/S00023.htm
Yep. Always relevant. If any political party is coming in with promises of tax cuts you can be sure that things are about to get worse for the majority of people and social services get cut again and again and again.
Only going to get worse and there’s nothing any one can do about.
a so thats the type of guy you are? A nothing can be done about nothing type of guy. That is pretty sad, really.
Automation and people living/working longer are going to be the big issues in next couple of decades.
I’m not ashamed to say, I don’t have the answers.
Its going to be very interesting to see if Mr Little has a few answers.
People working longer is already an issue for gen Y workers. There is little chance for advancement within organisations. It’s a tough situation for everyone involved as we all need the money!
The industries required in the future are the service and aged care industries, it would be helpful if they could offer an liveable wage for the frontline workers who cannot be easily replaced by machines.
I agree, a short term solution would be to copy the USA and its service industry driven economy.
It would involve a complete change of mind set within certain sectors of NZ.
That is, stopping being a tight arse , opening your wallet and start hiring people to do stuff for you.
That’s what they have drummed into the Americans, having people doing your chores isn’t a sign of laziness, it’s a form of charity which keeps the economy going and people in jobs.
I’m not sure the US style is to be emulated as it seems to be entirely predicated on businesses leaving renumeration of their employees to their customers.
As far as the mindset change goes, employers must be offering wages that reflect the high levels of skill and care that is required to do these kind of service jobs properly, and that needs to start with decent reimbursing of care workers now, which this government and aged care providers seem deadset against. That’s not going to encourage the next generation of workers to enter these industries.
Haha. “Be more like America.”
Sounds like a great idea.
Well there is no point in hiring people if they don’t get paid enough to live as for example Walmart employment is doing. Or ‘tipped’ servers that earn 2.10$ an hour plus tips that they have to share with bussers, dishwashers and often the cooks.
As for cleaners, lawn mowers, and house keepers these are probably the some of the oldest jobs on the planet, and should not be treated as charity but as work. The cleaner at the hotel does a full time job keeping the rooms clean, so does the lady that comes to ones own domicile to clean.
The trouble that we have is not that we don’t have jobs that need doing, we do, ‘the Auckland Transport owned Berms’ that are being mowed free of charge by people having houses behind them comes to mind. We have jobs that need doing, buy that we don’t want to pay for. We – the populace that wants tax cuts, and the current government -that would like to spend money of PR rather then infrastructure, social welfare, education, energy creation. WE could do with more nurses in hospitals, doctors even and decent cooks, we could do with more mental health care workers, we could do with more police and paid fire fighters, early child hood teachers and tertiary teachers, we could do with street cleaners and Park workers, Bus Drivers, Youth workers etc. but no one seems to want to pay for it.
So no, there is no need for high unemployment other than a wage drive downwards, high competition for the last remaining paid jobs (no matter how lowly they are paid) and the idea that general misery for many makes a virtuous populace.
How will you survive once you don’t have a job anymore? Ever thought of that? Or are you very very sure in your assumption that you will always have a paid gig, and that that gig is gonna cover all your costs?
+1 Sabine
Nope, that’s the worst thing to do as a service industry doesn’t actually create any wealth. And that is, IMO, why we have such increasing poverty in NZ. We’ve already become too dependent upon low paid services for jobs rather than creating new high value ones in and through R&D.
Thing is, that’s not actually possible as the people hired to do services must be paid lower than the people hiring them which means that only a few percent of people at the top can actually afford to hire others to do services.
This strikes me as a rather strange view. An economy which is focused on creating ‘wealth’ would seem to me to be a high resource impact economy. I want the opposite, a low resource impact economy. At the same time there seems to be no reason to suggest that economies are degenerating because they are not creating enough ‘wealth’ (what ever that is, I am assuming its real resources organised into useful technology). This suggests a service based industry would be a good thing if it could be organised.
The second paragraph is equally strange. There are no such tiered sectors of the economy which require that the service sector must be paid less. One part of the service sector can just the same spend on another part of the service sector. A service based economy could equally have a very flat wage structure. I can see no reason to believe that inequality in the economy had to develop, or is related to an increase in the service economy. Income inequality has been driven by factors unrelated to that, such as high unemployment rates, de-unionisation, and legislation against workers rights.
Not necessarily. Generally speaking you want a society producing everything that it needs from it’s own labour and resources. What you don’t want it doing is over producing to produce money which is what we have now.
We already have a service economy with our service sector at around 70% of the economy. Please note that around 75% of the population has an income less than the average wage. These people can’t afford to hire services.
This is what out present system has delivered and we’re getting more and more services all the time because we’re not developing our economy. Apparently that’s just too hard and costs too much.
“Generally speaking you want a society producing everything that it needs from it’s own labour and resources. What you don’t want it doing is over producing to produce money which is what we have now.”
This doesn’t differentiate between service and non-service wealth. Also what does over-production mean? In a largely service based economy it appears to mean people providing services to each other. I strongly disagree that is harmful or unsustainable in and of itself. You have been advocating for a UBI, so how is a bunch of people working to produce money any different to them not working and being given a UBI?
“We already have a service economy with our service sector at around 70% of the economy. Please note that around 75% of the population has an income less than the average wage. These people can’t afford to hire services.”
So arguably there is a correlation there (you didn’t show any real correlation), but this doesn’t mean that there is a cause. What is the supposed causal mechanism meaning a service economy must be highly unequal? We know about many of the causes of inequality in the economy but none of them appear to be that too much of the economy is focused on working on or producing services.
Over production is where excessive use of resources occur. Farming is a good example in that it over uses the land to produce money while not actually providing for our society.
And how does that supply what we need? How is the food grown? How are the vehicles produced? etc. etc
Services don’t produce anything. To a degree they’re needed but we’re already pushing to excessive amounts.
The UBI is to allow for people to buy the products of their society. In capitalistic terms, which I don’t like, they could be considered the dividend from simply being a citizen of the country. This overly simplistic though as the purpose of the economy is actually to provide people with what they need to live and thrive.
I said that a service economy didn’t work because the wages of service workers needed to come down to the point where they’re living in poverty for the majority of people to be able to afford them but as they’re the majority then they won’t be able to afford themselves.
That’s all rather bewildering.
So the economy is in a state of ‘over-production’, and its not producing enough of what we need at the same time?
I still don’t understand what’s requiring service workers wages to come down or be lower than other sectors in all of this.
As far as I can see it would be a good thing if both more people were employed and mostly at higher wages because the economy is quite far from in a state of over-production and also in a state of wide income inequality. And at the same time service industries seem like a good place for them to be employed still as this is mostly less physically resource intensive.
I think your getting a bit confused about the definition of the service economy. You realize education is part of the service economy right?
I suspect that the larger part of the current advancement problem is that people need to hold onto their jobs rather than successfully applying for better ones or risking a business startup (we still haven’t returned to the number of new company registrations in 2009-10).
You could very well be right, I also think that peoples continuing mortgage requirements into later life also contribute to staying in employment. Also others have mentioned NZ’s (small c) conservatism, and this sort of risk-adverse attitude is probably wise in such ‘interesting times’ as these too!
Well, over the next couple of decades until the Baby Boomers start dying off.
The Baby Boomer demographics are a bulge in the population. Essentially, subsequent births didn’t match and thus scuttled most of the growth in the economy that the politicians had, quite literally, been banking on. An increasing population is always a growing economy even if you don’t get productivity increases.
That could easily be done if it was the government directly doing it and we had a sovereign monetary system. The money paid would be directly created by the government to pay the workers and then taxed back out of existence.
I know this is a long way out there but how about:
1. Change the standard work week to be 20 hours instead of 40,
2. Increase the minimum wage so that those 20 hours are enough to live on,
3. Put overtime laws back in so that if an employer wants to have one person working more than 20 hours per week it will cost them more.
Surely this creates a requirement for more employees to do job’s, and the increased money in the bottom end of society which is normally spent straight away increases the earnings of those same buisnesses that will have increased staff costs.
Again I get this is a loooong way out there and not going to happen. However I think to say it can’t be fixed is a bit far as well.
France dropped their working week to 35 hours from 39 in 2000. The idea is it would increase employment. Critics have pointed out that no real increase in employment has happened, workers are just under more pressure to produce the same amount of output in less time.
I guess cutting from 40 to 20 wouldn’t have the same sort of problem, because you’d simply have to hire more people. But also this change is so dramatic it will not happen any time in the next 10 years, so you’d be better off focusing on potential solutions that could be implemented, not pie-in-the-sky daydreams.
It seems that the French system isn’t all that good. Workers get rest days rather than overtime rates.
What I’d like to see is what we used to have – simple penal rates. They would have to apply to people on salary as well though just to make sure they worked as more people are on salary now than used to be.
Oh well that solves it then!!
Maybe not anyone but the government could achieve full employment in a matter of months. Of course, that would have the business leader whinging again as they were in the 1970s and 80s about about the government taking all the employable people and them thus having to compete for them.
The undesirably high unemployment rate is a trivial problem for the country to solve. As BM argues later in this thread, you need somebody to employ these people (BM suggests the private sector should just start believing in a service economy, which is a fantasy, its not going to happen). But if the government wants them employed, it could simply employ them and pay them a wage to do something and then your problem is solved. The only problem here is the government doesn’t want them employed so it doesn’t employ them, it leaves them unemployed (its more focused on running a political budget surplus at present, which is why employment is stuck around 5-6% for ages).
If in addition to solving the unemployment problem the government doesn’t want to put pressure on wage rates, which might push inflation up, then it should only employ people the private sector doesn’t want to employ. So it should pay these people (the ones who are being employed by the government just for the purposes of being employed) only the minimum wage and then the government doesn’t compete with the private sector at all and so this policy causes no inflation at all as well.
So there you go problem solved. Somebody should probably mention this to Andrew Little.
Nonsense – this technique has a 25% chance of significantly improving things:
http://www.nber.org/papers/w13102
Interestingly enough, very few jobs on offer in IT at the moment. That’s normally a warning sign. yeah, it,s end of year, but there’s normally something.
Self-flying drone learns to avoid obstacles, reaches record speed
Bit of a cheats way of doing it but it’s one of the step you take on the way to full implementation.
until you blunder into a squash court !
Or a football field?
International ridicule – worse than being a ‘slave’ eh steve
Pity we can’t get key stuck in this rapidly setting amber.
“”Those of you with a marginally broader perspective – say, anyone above the age of eight – may be tempted to pick holes in Williams’ definition of captive servitude. Welcome to The History of Slavery with Steve Williams, in which white men are brutally invited to carry the golf bags of black men, savagely consulted over club selection and putt lines, sadistically given a share of the winnings, cruelly allowed to leave whenever they want,” wrote Jonathan Liew in Britain’s Telegraph.””
http://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/golf/73663096/new-zealand-caddy-steve-williams-blasted-for-slave-comments-over-tiger-woods
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/golf/tigerwoods/11972102/Steve-Williams-finds-himself-slighted-at-every-turn-but-is-it-any-surprise-after-latest-slavery-comment.html
Has New Zealand deported Kim Dot Com yet? If not, why not?
No planes meet the requirements to move him.
Dotcom is a genius …that is why he is being persecuted…he threatens the monopoly of the corporates
‘Meganet’: Kim Dotcom plans crowdfunded replacement to Internet (Ft. Max Keiser)’
https://futuristrendcast.wordpress.com/2015/06/30/meganet-kim-dotcom-plans-crowdfunded-replacement-to-internet-ft-max-keiser/
“Kim Dotcom from New Zealand introduces a revolutionary Internet alternative: new non-IP based, non-hackable, surveillance-proof and encrypted network, which will be 100% crowd-funded.
Max Keiser from Keiser Report interviewed Kim Dotcom, who also talked about NSA spying and his ongoing prosecution by the US government…
🙄
I would take anything that comes out of Dotcom’s mouth with a grain of salt.
KDC plans a lot of things, alot of things that don’t come to fruition
Well, it’s better than the usual RWNJ way of not planning anything and then complaining about it not working.
and Part Two: Dotcom is not only a genius , he is also highly moral
First they came for MegaUpload Dotcom and then they came for Google…but they bit off more than they could chew
…Dotcom talks about his philosophy, whistleblowers, Wikileaks, Snowden and Manning
…and the Sony hack/leak which he believes was not done by Google or South Korea …but which exposes Hollywood USA political corruption and which could be used to defend Google
‘Meganet’, Part 2: Kim Dotcom plans crowdfunded replacement to internet (Ft. Max Keiser)
I am sure that there would be something suitable in this list.
I’m not sure how many of the Antonov’s exist but the US would probably be able to find a Galaxy to move him.
He might be big but these things are bigger.
http://www.airforce-technology.com/features/featurethe-worlds-biggest-military-transport-aircraft-4180954/
A little annoyance called “due process” is reponsible. You wouldn’t understand the concept.
@ Clean_power…A better question: were NZ politicians bribed to persecute/prosecute Dotcom in New Zealand by Hollywood?
….as it would appear from the Sony hack/leaks ….. that USA politicians have been bribed by Hollywood to begin the persecution/prosecution of Google for piracy
…it would appear from the hacks/leaks that Google was facing the very same plotting behind the scenes…accusations/case that was levelled against Dotcom MegaUpload
…as it doesnt seem to have worked against Google …and in fact there is counter legal action by Google for the political corruption exposed ….where does this leave the NZ government?
Brave New World : Violent Passion Surrogate (V.P.S.), Violent Market Surrogate, Violent Crowd Surrogate
“V.P.S is great for keeping people divided over pointless issues and bogged down by as never-ending stream of misinformation and biased interpretations which exist only within a truncated frame of reference” ( urban dictionary .com)
Cashless society = bank surveillance, data mergers, censorship , state/corporate control ( social engineering, negative interest rates) ?
Bitcoin = an alternative ( to bankster control) plus future digital privacy ( an alternative to bank blockchain technology)
All this discussed on the Keiser Report with Tracy and Max and Brett Scott:
https://www.rt.com/shows/keiser-report/320603-episode-max-keiser-831/
“Every week Max Keiser looks at all the scandal behind the financial news headlines.
In this episode of the Keiser Report, Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert discuss Violent Market Surrogates as the doors of misperception in a brave new world in which central bankers are fighting the wrong war. In the second half, Max interviews Brett Scott, author of The Heretic’s Guide to Global Finance: Hacking the Future of Money, about financial surveillance states and cashless societies.”
Joyce stand Jackie Blue?down as commissioner in parliament today, can he do that?
OK this post is unrelated to the above ,but I was flabbergasted to hear John Key on RNZ this morning saying he was “quite mates” with Richie McCaw…..what the hell is a “quite mate”???????…..someone who you think likes you but your too bloody insecure to go the whole hog and call him a mate……does anybody out there have a “quite mate”or is this a new sort of relationship bond that only our PM indulges in…..?????
Maybe Sir Richie, the mighty leg (for leghumpers anyways), is just too polite to tell our most exalted Dear Leghumper that he is not quite mates with with our most exalted Dear Leghumper.
He also said knighthoods & damehoods have increased in popularity in NZ, tho fuk knows how he figured that out. In the same article he said the royals might join the All Blacks on one of their parades.
The titles were obviously very popular with those who got awards between 2001 and 2008 that entitled them to use Sir or Dame after the titles were reintroduced in 2009.
There were 85 of them, of whom 72 accepted the titles. That included at least one former Labour MP who must have really annoyed Helen Clark.
Of the other 13 a couple were “Clayton’s” refusals as they already held the title via other awards. I notice that they never relinquished their prior titles.
Thus the vote was 72 aye, 11 nay and 2 effective abstentions.
http://www.odt.co.nz/the-regions/otago/67860/who039s-opting-titular-honour-and-who039s-not
Self interest? About sums up the honours system I think. I have never or will ever address anyone as ‘sir’ or ‘dame’. Seems backwards looking to me.
it increased amongst the dames and sirs in parnell who would love to hump dear Leghumpers leg and maybe have some hair pulled.
Have you had this fetish long sabine? It really doesn’t seem healthy.
I’ve just seen David Cunliffe give an amazing speech in Parliament in the General Debate. Just reaffirming once again why he should still be the Labour Leader. He managed to encapsulate in one rousing speech just what is wrong in NZ, from Stephen Joyce’s appalling management of MOBIE including “blow up sheep”, to the National Party’s manipulation of our media, their dirty politics a la Slater and Collins with the former SFO Head, the Ombudsman’s office failing to compel ministers to answer OIA’s, through to Westpac releasing Nicky Hager’s account details to the police.
He mentioned all of the journalists who have been removed from prime time television and newspapers who have sought a better home at Radio NZ. He mentioned the person responsible for the funding of Radio NZ is John Key’s former electorate head and wondered how long it would be before funding for Radio NZ would be reduced or stopped altogether.
This kind of speech from David Cunliffe is why the members are still so angry that the ABC crowd forced him to relinquish the leadership. The public voted in the major newspapers polls that Cunliffe had won most if not all the political debates in the election! So much for him being so unpopular. He just had too little time to establish himself as leader before the election, coupled with hatchet jobs from the media (Armstrong etc) and sad to say, from within!! If David Cunliffe had had the time as leader that Clark or Goff had had, things would be very different in Parliament today. David Cunliffe talked about Key’s “peeing in the shower and in the pockets of the All Blacks”!! Funny and the absolute truth!
+100…this also explains why they were so keen to get rid of David Cunliffe
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIxSzcoI6Nc
Very well worth Listening too. Excellent.
Good to be reminded why I supported and voted for David Cunliffe. I also think it was the right thing for David to avoid any limelight for a year after the election. Had he launched any attacks sooner, the DP mob and their media acolytes would have accused him of trying to upstage Andrew Little.
Now that Little is firmly established and has the total support of every caucus member – plus the ordinary members – I hope Cunliffe will be brought back to the fore of proceedings again. His quick brain and smart rhetorical skills are much in need.
Sorry Saarbo – I thanked Hami for putting that clip up but it was actually you who did – Hami did a good summary of what was in it. Thanks. It is excellent.
“The public voted in the major newspapers polls that Cunliffe had won most if not all the political debates in the election”
And then the public voted in the election and showed that the support for him as PM was pretty thin among the voters.
Were there any real polls done by the newspapers as to who “won” the debates. I am not aware of any. There were of course some of the self selecting variety but I don’t think anyone could take them seriously.
Can you give me a reference to a professionally run poll that supports your thesis?
When the journalists expressed opinions, and they are certainly not right leaning as some of the people here seem to believe they wouldn’t support your view would they? For example
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11318016
Yes it is a shame that David Cunliffe (a) didn’t get support from the ABC crowd and (b) wasn’t given another chance. The current Labour lot are ineffectual. They need to get rid of the traitors and Andrew Little needs to get a backbone. Many people are saying to me they don’t like National but Labour are just the same so why bother voting, wont make any difference. I would like to see David Cunliffe given the finance portfolio as Grant Robertson doesn’t have the credibility IMO.
all those ABCs who did not support Cunliffe are wannabes with more ambition than talent…we all have a fair idea who they are
they betrayed the Labour Party membership who voted for David Cunliffe …and they betrayed the Labour Party…and they betrayed the New Zealand electorate
imo David Cunlffe deserves to be Deputy Leader after Annette King and he deserves to be not only high profile Finance spokesperson but high profile spokesperson for Climate Change issues and Environment ( which are linked to Finance)
David Cunliffe is an old style New Zealand politician with high integrity
( about as far from jonkey nact as it is possible to be)
If David Cunliffe is given a high profile for the New Zealand Labour Party …its fortunes could turn around…as more and more are seeing through jonkey nact
+100 Thanks for putting that up Hami – it’s such a relief to hear an MP actually tell it like it is. I was shocked by the treatment dished out to Cunliffe when he was the LP leader, and I have not forgotten the heroism with which he hung on, under huge pressure, and forced the leadership question to be taken back to the membership. I too would like to see him restored to a position befitting his talents.
http://karldufresne.blogspot.co.nz/2015/11/surprising-as-it-may-seem-i-dont.html
I stand by all that. My concerns about Hager are essentially twofold: first, that he uses the label “journalist”, with all its connotations of even-handedness and impartiality, to disguise his true purpose, which is that of an ideological crusader; and second, that the publication of his Dirty Politics book was carefully timed to coincide with a general election, in the clear hope that it would cause maximum political damage. But neither of those concerns could be construed as endorsement of any disregard for his rights or violation of his privacy.
I do, however, share Cameron Slater’s view that the reaction to the latest disclosures exposes a gaping double standard. Where was the media outrage when Slater’s email account was hacked?
There’s a difference, of course, in that this time it’s an agency of the state that’s digging into someone’s personal affairs. That’s infinitely more alarming than the actions of a rogue private hacker. But Slater is right to point out that the hacker, Rawshark, largely escaped media condemnation – as did Hager, who used the information Rawshark obtained.
Its a good article
If Hager had sat on the information for a couple of years, you guys might have a point about the timing. But he received the information in January and it was published in August. Seems to be a reasonable timeframe.
The media outrage at slater being hacked was somewhat lessened by the outrage at what those pricks had been up to, and their absolutely contemptable attitudes and behaviour. But then you’ve always had a problem understanding the concept of “public interest”.
Hager is an invetigative journalist. Just because you don’t like the truths he exposes, it doesn’t mean that if Labour or the Greens were up to the same thing he wouldn’t also report that.
– Puckish Rogue
This is the first bit I read, and I stopped reading there.
Not a good article entirely
– calling Hager and idealogical crusader not a journalist is simply idiotic – the content of his book would be gobsmacking no matter who was doing it – Nact have only themselves to blame that they were in the limelight – and nobody has sued so we can take it that it’s pretty much factually right- personal responsibility there for Nact
– releasing it to cause maximum political damage – oh please – don’t do it to start with and don’t all MSM outlets write stories and release tehm for best effect.
Lastly Hager does factual content and investigation, du Fresne does an opinion column, why does the MSm support one but not the other.
You seem to suffer from the TVNZ disease which aches as to say that the first imperative is ‘balance’ (as though it were a calculable absolute). “Balance’ is the MOST subjective number and in TVNZ is generally reflected by reporting this and not reporting that, according to a lonely and untested personal sense of what is ‘balance’. Very well paid contenders to the next level of very well paid, even excessive, even obscenely extravagantly paid contenders.
Why is a child prime minister deemed to be central, reliable, our desired ‘us’ ? If this is ‘balance’……(gulp)……please do not show me imbalance. I am a precariously positioned pensioner. I have impecuniosity and nostrils keen to the stink of shit. Especially that passed on by yuppie Cafe Society wannabes of the Auckland media.
@ clean power, infused @ puke rouge …….
Have they caught the people who killed kim dotcoms swan yet ???? http://www.businessinsider.com.au/kim-dotcom-swan-murder-2015-2
also all three of you jerks will be very sad to hear that we have not deported Dotcoms nanny s who help raise his children yet …….. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11279059
…….and I’m guessing your all very comfortable with females to this country being sexually assaulted by our customs officials …… if their crime is visiting Kim Dotcom
Hell ….. I’d even bet you 3 would join up to be customs officers …… if you could get in on some of that.
Kim Dotcom was a man who could get things done and had vision in the computer and internet industries …………… Nationals plan was more cows
Still you 3 keep giving yourself mutual hand-jobs ………….. because you really are wankers 🙂
Brilliant Reason…..quite brilliant. Allusions to the unspoken truth…..
Looks like the race is on to see which nation will have a sovereign money system first:
Iceland is also having such discussions but no indications yet that they going to have a referendum on it.
alwyn ………….. I missed your late arrival for the now four-way with your buddies clean power, infused and puke rouge …….
Like those other trolls you are here to spread misinformation or derail …. and with your comments on Cunliffe you did just that ……. in this instance you left out the dirty politics hatchet job that the Nats cooked up and engineered for the election.
Cunliffe as most people know was the victim of a national dirty politics hit job involving the usual suspects of Key, Slater, farrar, the herald etc …….. and 1 dishonest dodgy rich immigrant named ‘Lui’ …..who was charged with domestic violence at the time.
The Herald in particular ran a counterfactual and unsubstantiated smear job on cunliffe and Labor ………………. all sorts of false accusation were put into print …………. Cunliffe was called to resign by Armstrong and others ……………. and the Nats in a pre-planned and coordinated way always referred to Cunliffe as ‘tricky’.
The truth in the matter which made the story against Labor and Cunliffe counterfactual …………….. Was that John Key and others were around having meals at Lui’s house ……. and picking up $10,000 dollar donations to the national party…..they were the ones associating and taking money from him …… but we never read that in the Herald or elsewhere
The Slater, Key, Farrar cliche were at the peak of their Dirty politics underhand sleazy tricks when they did their job against Cunliffe …………… but thanks to Nicky Hager we now know how they operate which has hobbled them ……. for the time being.
The unintended consequences from their shit slinging hit job on Cunliffe was Winston s rising …………
Winston is of course now sitting in the northland seat ………… courtesy of what could be John Keys dirtiest political act of all regarding one Mike Sabin ………… and who knew what when they knew it going into the general election.
Personally I think Key will resign before that shit storm hits ……..
His job is done now that he has signed away our sovereignty with the TPPA ……..
one small typo in my post above …….
Winston is of course now sitting in the northland seat ………… courtesy of what could be John Keys dirtiest political act of all regarding one Mike Sabin ………… and who knew what AND when they knew it going into the general election.