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6:00 am, July 5th, 2023 - 62 comments
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With the election silly season fast approaching I feel tempted to make some predictions/observations (yes, just my ‘reckons.’)
This election really is a ‘me’ vs ‘we’ election; with the boomers staging their last stand (a bit like General Gordon at Khartoum in 1883; the defence lasted a long time, but failed in the end), the voting momentum has swung to the younger generations, and if they turn out to vote in numbers, we shall have a third term Labour government with the Greens and TPM achieving some spectacular concessions!
Nice summary Veitchy…I hope you are right.
TPM got 7% in yesterday's Roy Morgan and could be more of a force than you think.
The politcal polls are close to junk esp re minor parties now at least part of the panel is self selecting. There has been a pretty concerted effort to sign up to the panels with a view to essentially trolling / manipulating the polling companies. Eminates from a couple reddit subs.
Well done Tony. Of course Nat/Act won't be interested in the poorer people or their vote and therefore their message is for the rich and the would/be rich.
Wonder why the very rich are investing big money in Nat/Act?
“. Most thinking people recognise the Greens as the party of environmental…”- pity that impression is very misplaced – whist their constitution places this prominently they continue to select list candidates that on their bios make little or no mention. Action speaks louder than hollow words !!!I commented this when their list at the last election came out and of those that were to make parliament based on the polls at the time only 2 made any environmental claims !!I bet only a few older supporters would know anything about “ban the dam” song or its history! Time to call the greens out I am sorry they are not the environmental party of the 1990’s but still trade on that. And for your climate change any party that believes that we can buy Carbon credits form overseas to cover for our failure to meet international commitments, by action IMO displays that they do not take this seriously.
Ah, but I did say 'thinking' people!
Get personal instead of addressing any issues raised – Typical. And the world continues to get hotter and we are let down by a lack lustre Green Party and supporters who accept blindly.
as I said the Green party today and an inferior image of what was. And as an aside do you know with searching the environmental history of this country and John Hanlon’s song ??
perhaps you need to educate yourself ??🤫 thinking you are not.
None of the political parties address the issue of climate change with the urgency it requires!
But . . . the Greens are light years ahead of the Natz, and Act don't even believe climate change is a thing!
Give me the Greens any day over ALL the rest!
Tony has made some nice points here. To respond to just two…Act MP Nicole McKee of COLFO (NZ Council of Licensed Firearms Owners) fame downplayed her “love is a warm gun” views since becoming an MP. COLFO did have links to the American NRA via International Sports Shooting organisations, but the references were deleted from their online presence. COLFO makes out it is a grassroots outfit but in reality more represents the gun industry and lobby.
Re Te Pāti Māori, being the er, “dark horse”…
TPM are well aware of the age bubble re young Māori numbers…
https://www.stats.govt.nz/information-releases/maori-population-estimates-at-30-june-2022/
Get ’em enrolled, get ’em on the Māori roll, and importantly–get ’em voting! At Kaitaia market every Sat an Electoral Commission stand has been doing good business. The guy in charge has full moko and has been around a bit.
Some of my reckons are…the generational voter shift is starting to become evident, though it will likely be 2026 before it fully impacts.
The rise of Act in parliamentary politics was initiated by the Natzos Epsom deal, without that life support they would have been out of Parliament years ago. ACT is AO/NZ’s MAGA in many ways and their policy if ever allowed, would swing a wrecking ball through Te Tiriti, Fair Pay Agreements, and hundreds of other incremental reforms achieved in the last few years.
The primary task is to keep Natzo/Act preferably well away, or even a seat away if it comes down to it, from political office on October 14.
Should add that Act of course did have a higher profile previous to the collapse of the ’00s. All sorts of scandals with their various MPs over the years–Mr Garrett swiping a dead kids ID, that sort of thing.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/4130949/MP-used-dead-childs-birth-certificate
Natzos came to the rescue of course for MMP reasons, amusing now as Baldrick struggles.
Bartholomew Frintin Smurth, Humphrey Wigbert Porter. and Quinton Breckenridge have been suspended by the Marylebone Cricket Club because of frightfully bad behaviour over Australia cheating at cricket.
For the many not the few.
That was a spoof report. It's been doing the rounds and some have been taken in, but the names are made up.
ah ok…thanks Observer. Sounded too good to be true.
You won't believe it, but the education establishment is actually doing something clever! Naturally, teachers are freaking out in response:
Teachers predicting the future. Fearfully so. You can see the tacit assumption operating: we must do as we've always done, and pretend that global disaster isn't happening.
Dunno who we ought to credit for steering education towards survival and resilience. Run it by any youngsters you know, see if they like the idea of learning how to survive.
Nat/Lab voters will be bamboozled by this. They are congenitally unable to think in such a sophisticated manner. Silos forever!
Actually being wholistic about science is a good idea. Most topics are multi "subject". Imagine dealing with flooding as having many legs with Biology and Physics and Chemistry involved. Would a Chemistry trained expert be much help?
Would a Chemistry trained expert be much help?
If such a person had specialised in biochem, then yes. Focus would be on remedial action such as desalinating sea incursions into arable land, or the effect of excess silt & clay from river floods…
Has a year nine lad visit to help with his homework. While he worked on his computer, I bottled a brew.
The science involved in that! Alcohol by volume, yeast working, airborne yeasts and contamination, vinegar, sugar and CO2, sterilisation of bottles, accuracy of measurement with hydrometers and with ingredients, specific gravity, optimum temperatures for brewing, secondary fermentation…. it goes on.
A science teacher at my school taught science by brewing beer. However, the boys weren't allowed to sample the finished product. Some staff did help out.
airborne yeasts
A few years back I read a description of bacteria riding air currents in the upper atmosphere – part of Gaia. Invisible ecosystems up above.
That contamination effect you mention reminds us that we breathe in such organisms routinely too. Cilia in the lungs evolved to remove particles we breathe in but maybe we absorb organisms into our microbiome too…
My guess is that the new curriculum is written by people with education PhDs – which are considered joke qualifications among others with PhDs.
In my experience they are generally not very bright and spend a lot of time promoting philosophical ideas they don't really understand. I have zero confidence that these changes will be positive.
In view of the track record of our educational establishment, such scepticism is inevitable. However traditionalism = collective brain death nowadays. So any innovative trend ought to be encouraged.
I specifically agree with you re the promoting/applying interface. Leftwingers usually default towards idealism, and thus impracticality. It's vital to get the application of any survival strategy right. Education must not produce another generation of virtue-signallers. Enough of that shit already!
Return to first principles by examining the root of the word:
It's that latter meaning which provides the survival skill. The former will merely produce another generation of suitwearing dorks failing at everything they do.
FFS!
Your comment is rude, biased, and ignorant. You trash Education PhDs based on hearsay, without any rational & reasonable argument, and without any evidence to back it up. I guess that you have no idea of what Science is or how to teach it. You have drawn a conclusion based on virtually nothing other than hot air about a leaked but non-disclosed document without even knowing what’s in it. I consider your comment a sick joke.
There's a post up about it now
.https://thestandard.org.nz/new-curriculum-science-to-be-taught-in-the-context-of-the-great-challenges-of-our-time/
Well done! I'll contemplate how to frame a contribution.
I find it incredible the Tenancy Tribunal considers $12000 a high award. It should be 10x that as a starting point. The pathetically small penalties NZ’s amateur landlords face are no disincentive for criminal behaviour.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/homed/renting/132468594/vulnerable-tenants-subject-to-dreadful-living-conditions-with-absentee-landlord
A register for property owners and their agents is crucial. The Greens are the only party demanding this.
Analysts often use triadic framing (due to 3 influencing mental processes – because it's an archetype). Here's Bomber's economic triad:
Soundly based on our neocolonial history, therefore impossible to invalidate, his thesis stands. However our economy is based on more than that triad. It ramped up to a tetrad via the inclusion of tech as 4th element. Invention, innovation, know-how, are all fundamental drivers of western economies.
Just look at the transformative effect of refrigeration in the 1880s, that produced seven or eight decades of wealth flow from Britain to here. I recall NZ being identified as having the highest standard of living in the world when I was a kid.
Which really does force us to include trade as a 5th element, ramping the whole up into a pentad. But look at the interesting part of his 2nd pillar: migrant workers. I heard on the radio recently folks discussing Labour's immigration stats – apparently last year back up to record inflow. Doesn't matter if infrastructure can't cope & the country gets constipated in consequence, jam more foreigners in somehow. Shanty-towns along the desert road could become a tourist attraction…
So much of our intellectual, artistic and call work can be done from anywhere now that the centralisation of work to main centres could be reversed and jobs spread more widely across rural areas. This would add to rural economies, boost Maori employment into better quality sustainable work, make NZ more resilient and reduce pressure on urban infrastructure.
We only don't do this due to a failure of our poor management elite to be able to cope and adapt despite the high undeserved salaries they are paid.
It is time for government to take a lead on this who are likely one of the worst at taking jobs away from regions and sticking them in main centres – to the point that departments like IRD, TEC, MBIE etc have no boots on the ground.
So Labour & National are on the right track. Suit-wearers will be delighted that their culture is producing such dramatic results. Grab a Nat/Lab politician & slap them on the back, tell them to remain staunch & they can reach further new heights of achievement.
Ten symptoms of woke mind virus:
1. You read books, and don't burn them.
2. You embrace science.
3. You are willing to change your mind when new information becomes available.
4. You understand that most issues aren't black and white.
5. You believe in true equality for all people.
6. You like to share.
7. You embrace cooperation.
8. You respect others' rights.
9. You believe culture and the arts has value.
10. You care for the planet and all of its life.
So that's the virus I've got. At the moment I have more symptoms including coughing, congestion and sore throat….. and it hurts to laugh!
Excellent listing there. Problem is the dichotomy between that and wokeist behaviour, hmm? Your viral thesis seems to be based on a flawed assumption.
Re #1, christians weren't the only folks into public fire rituals: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_burning
Here's #11: You can laugh at yourself
Hi Newshub and Christopher, MMA/UFC is to blame for this, not Oranga Tamariki.
Stop. Selling. Violence.
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2023/07/christopher-luxon-says-mma-style-fight-video-in-youth-justice-residence-is-heartbreaking-and-sickening.html
totally.
From that link:
Luxon wouldn't say if National would build more of these youth justice facilities.
"I don't know, I haven't thought that part through".
Like his sentencing policy at the conference, he simply doesn't bother to do any homework at all. He's the emptiest leader National have ever had.
Luxon confronted by reality.
"I don't know, I haven't thought that part through."
That is so revealing.
That shit happened all the time at the school I was at.
Would have been nice at the time if people were concerned at all about stopping it. Like this instance those in charge i.e. teachers were part of the problem in condoning it.
Guess it was supposed to make you a man.
About twenty years ago I met an 88 year old man. The father of a colleague. She happened to mention to him that I too had gone to the same school as he had. The mere mention of the school had him visibly shaking. Took us half an hour to calm him down. His treatment at that school had him scarred and hurt for life. His daughter was completely unaware of the trauma he had gone through.
We have heard similar stories from the recent enquiries into abuse in state care. How the fuck is this still happening? The more the rhetoric of crime and punishment is pushed, the more the bring back the cane it didn't do me any harm brigade pushes their message, the more gangs push the don't nark, might is right attitude and behaviour the more it will continue.
While the extreme right attitudes and the community culture in gangs mirror each other in the survival of the fittest approach this will continue.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/remyblumenfeld/2020/03/21/how-a-15000-year-old-human-bone-could-help-you-through-the–coronavirus/?sh=19b3c7d137e9
Years ago, the anthropologist Margaret Mead was asked by a student what she considered to be the first sign of civilization in a culture. The student expected Mead to talk about clay pots, tools for hunting, grinding-stones, or religious artifacts.
But no. Mead said that the first evidence of civilization was a 15,000 years old fractured femur found in an archaeological site. A femur is the longest bone in the body, linking hip to knee. In societies without the benefits of modern medicine, it takes about six weeks of rest for a fractured femur to heal. This particular bone had been broken and had healed.
Mead explained that in the animal kingdom, if you break your leg, you die. You cannot run from danger, you cannot drink or hunt for food. Wounded in this way, you are meat for your predators. No creature survives a broken leg long enough for the bone to heal. You are eaten first.
A broken femur that has healed is evidence that another person has taken time to stay with the fallen, has bound up the wound, has carried the person to safety and has tended them through recovery. A healed femur indicates that someone has helped a fellow human, rather than abandoning them to save their own life.
No doubt Israel Adesanya and his gym mates are heroes of many of the inmates in the Oranga Tamariki residence. I wonder if the aim of the fighting in this instance was entertainment, (in MMA/UFC smashing someone's head in is great entertainment) or to see someone 'get a hiding.'
Could the staff instead have taken the young people out for a game of league with whooping and hollering for big hits, the bigger the smashes the louder the acclamation?
Getting suitable staff must be very difficult.
Sadly, I suspect some staff are also fans of fighting as entertainment.
And encouraged it.
Wrote this sonnet two years ago in response to the Mead article.
Dry Bones
A fractured femur is the clue. Broken
Bones do not heal in nature, where predators
Will sóon kíll animals hurt or lame.
Healed bones instead are a blesséd relic,
A sign our cave ancestors were awoken
To know civil folk cared for each other,
Bound wounds, found foods, tended without blame
Those who could not run to hunt, too sick
To forage in the forest. Compassion
Is no new millennial phenomenon
But part of our species' habituation.
Loving concern, never to be despised,
Preconditions us to being civilised.
Care is core to our continuation.
Meet Nandy.
All of Shanidar 1’s injuries show signs of healing, so none of them resulted in his death. In fact, scientists estimate he lived until 35–45 years of age. He would have been considered old to another Neandertal, and he would probably not have been able to survive without the care of his social group.
https://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/fossils/shanidar-1
The poem was written in response to Meads' findings but in late 2019 into early 2020 as some descended into various dark tunnels during Covid this was a great revelation hence the references to being woke, to compassion, to caring.
This sits so well with post #8 about the 10 symptoms of the woke virus.
Humanity is at a choosing point.
Law and order are going to be a major policy plank for the Nats etc. So I went looking for answers to the issue society is having with youth crime. Looking at the range of articles I found on Google Scholar, we are not alone.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12103-020-09549-x
”To summarize these changes and overall impact of COVID-19 in the words of an essential employee from the Northeast United States [U.S.], “It’s f***ing chaos” (M.B., personal communications, May 13, 2020).”
Despite all the platitudes coming from the likes of Mark Mitchell, there are no easy answers.
”COVID-19 as a Seminal Event for Ongoing Reform
Community-based diversionary practices show to be more cost-effective and safer for youths’ health. We hope to see even greater implementation of evidence-based practices that account for youths’ risks and needs by responding accordingly with proper services and resources in the community. We also recommend that we learn from the lived experiences of juvenile justice-involved youths, staff, and other essential personnel. By directly asking their insights on an unprecedented situation and lessons learned for the future, we can better support our juvenile populations and essential employees.”
Fat chance an intelligent debate will be had with the vacuous Luxon, and Mitchell banging the Laura Norder drum.
I put a post up about it
.https://thestandard.org.nz/new-curriculum-science-to-be-taught-in-the-context-of-the-great-challenges-of-our-time/
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/waikato/132482735/national-backs-third-medical-school-in-waikato
so something to vote National for. I heard Reti say about a year ago, he had costed a new medical school
Pity he did not cost repairing the plumbing in the Whangarei Hospital Anker. No votes in that for him?
Not Reti, it was Nats 2017 election policy, and I don't think he was around then. It would be set up at Waikato, according to RNZ item.
I think the Kiri Allen situation is a massive beat up… But the PM is making a massive mistake by not seeing her face to face before he goes to Europe.
All he's going to get in Europe are questions about her and whatever dirt nationals got on some other minister mp.
It's weird af that he's not seeing her before he goes and means the issue is going to fester and be the top story every day for two weeks till he sees her when he gets back.
He should have demanded to see her this week and then expressed confidence or fired her not leave it up in the air or make excuse like "she needs time with her family" so do most workers, but they can't get a day off.
He should see her, express confidence or fire her and then to change the narrative, announce an election policy, then fly out to Europe.
Labour has been horrendously bad at coms for two years now.
Spray and walk away, change the narrative
Announcing a tax package just before he goes wouldn't be a bad idea.
People are getting quite sick and tired of hearing policies from every other party, and whenever a party comes up with a new idea, labour shrugs and craps all over the idea, without telling us their ideas.
It makes labour look like National in 2017. Whenever any idea was thrown out national would say no and pretend there's no problem and that we should change nothing.
She's on holiday, mate.
Just imagine the slant the media would put on a special meeting between the two. It's a no win situation.
Agree Hipkins should deal with this..and by not doing so opens himself up to incessant (irrelevant) questioning for the next period.
Can only assume that for whatever reason they (Labour) believe this is the best way of dealing with it….as you note, their form to date dosnt inspire confidence.
What do you crackpots not understand about a person being on holiday?
Enjoy your holiday…and add to the chance you lose the position that enables the holiday
Honestly, this is typical right wing thought. A person’s duty is to authority rather than their own children.
Rot in hell.
Think you may be the 'rights' greatest asset
Please don't pretend you are of the socially conscious left. None of your comments on this forum back that up.
who watched the rude and hectoring interrogation by manbum ryuan bridges of Kelvin Davis on the telly this morning. I was disgusted by his behaviour and if this is so called civil society then I will go he.
I thought you would be more disgusted by the video showing staff encouraging the people in their care to beat the shit out of each other.
I know you are a triggered gammon, but would you please explain what it is you are excised about this particular time?
Ryan Bridges is just another National Party Poodle always was, always will be.