Interesting question, whether there's an NRA backdoor to ACT. But maybe the NRA's current troubles are severe enough they haven't the time, money, or energy for that kind of fuckery.
One thing the buy back has done is to point out who the nut cases are to the sane and responsible firearm owners. There's quite a stark division there now and the nutters aren't really listened to. And oddly, most of the 'Fuck 1080" bumper stickers and banners have disappeared. Often the same people.
From my small circle who surrendered their semi autos, it was the purchase, or deposit on something much better, and more appropriate for the sort of hunting they do. In all cases no regrets and are wondering why / how they came to buy the semi autos in the first place.
Also know someone who qualifies, and is going down the path of being able to legitimately own them.
I am struggling to find and policy regarding immigration, there has been a lot of noise regarding shortfalls in our workforce. Last election we were told of a reduction in immigration by all. Yet we achieved records growth.80,000 pa net inflows. Or for both National and Labour will it be open our boarders to all and sundry and then fix any resulting problems?
It would be nice to see them just enforcing the law we have.
Fruit pickers, liquor store checkout operators, or dairy shedhands are not and never have been skilled, and as such never have qualifed for working visas.
And, the statutory declaration "I could not find any suitable New Zealanders for the position" needs to be challenged in such instances. Most employers seeking these kinds of staff have perjured themselves, and should be prosecuted for it.
This systematic lawbreaking, often beginning under National, but shamelessly continued under Labour, is a major contributor to entrenched poverty and poor employment practices in NZ.
My suggestion – no industry can import any labour unless they can't get staff with reasonable working conditions on offer and $35/hr pay. And pay /conditions on offer (including to imported labour) must remain at this level or better the entire time imported labour is used.
RSE essentially tightened up immigration controls in the horticulture industry as it reduced significantly the use of illegal labour and all the associated problems that went with that – people not returning home, orchardists undercutting each other, no PAYE paid to IRD. It also became part of the aid package to the Pacific.
To some extent John Key opened up the rorting again with allowing students to work full-time while in NZ – English language schools that were fronts for residence and seasonal work.
Orchard rorts still continue but much reduced from twenty years ago e.g. the slavery case over in Hawkes Bay. Who was the orchardist in the media reports paying him in bags of cash for the last 10 years? Why isn't their name public?
There is a mis-match between where the supply is and where the work is and sharp peaks. In apples the peak is in picking, in kiwifruit in packing. One is definitely more attractive than the other hence when COVID hit many people jumped to the packhouses.
We also need to be careful about talking about labour supply that we are not being racist in demanding people work there. NZ Europeans have left the picking of fruit for other better paid, less physically difficult work for years and increasingly those left to pick have been Maori and PI. One hopes that Maori aspire to do more than pick fruit and if we are going to pressure New Zealanders to do this work that that pressure isn't just applied to Maori and PI.
If you think RSE tightened up controls it seems that you are mistaken. Segregated accommodation for married couples, harsh lessons in 'not bucking the boss', denied access to migration based on race and background – these are the epiphenomena of a deeply flawed system.
It's like the government sublet their morality to Treasury. If you only look at the numbers it doesn't matter who picks or prunes, but in terms of the local economy RSE workers don't have much of a spending profile – their portion of GDP is a loss, and Treasury should count it as such – then they might not be quite so keen on end runs around labour laws.
I'm sure at the time Treasury were more concerned with people coming from overseas, setting themselves up as contractors, then disappearing with all the PAYE and student loan money.
In this day and age I still don't get why the employer can't be required to simply pay it to IRD each payday – it's not their money – it's the employees.
That would save hundreds of millions each year in crook employers. My wife went through years of hassle because her employer didn't make the payments deducted out of her pay. Just as well she kept her payslips.
So we're left with a structure an accountant would call a C minus, and a citizen an F. And exercising structural prejudice against hiring New Zealanders – it should be utterly destroyed.
Meanwhile, governments express concern about declining regional economies – as if they hadn't just pulled out much of the cashflow.
Part of the result of economics as practised in NZ is that if a company can't get the workers then it must be uneconomical and closes down. Its not supposed to go whinging to the government for assistance and get an effective subsidy..
Or for both National and Labour will it be open our boarders to all and sundry and then fix any resulting problems?
NO.
If you had been keeping up with campaign news you would know that both major parties (Labour definitely and I'm sure I heard Collins say something similar) have indicated they are not planning to use immigration as an election issue because there is too much uncertainty around Covid 19 and its aftermath – words to that effect.
Wise and sensible while our borders are largely closed. In the meantime, I expect the ‘experts’ are quietly modelling new laws on future immigration policy for the next government to consider as we speak.
Whether it will be sufficient to solve some of the current problems remains to be seen.
The function of the Accident Compensation Corporation as a “top tier” alternative health and welfare system demonstrates the rampant and continuing success of a neoliberal agenda in Aotearoa. If we are going to move anything, we need to move this.
…
But let us not forget, this crisis, like the Global Financial Crisis before is working to the advantage of the already wealthy. Neoliberals never let a good crisis go to waste. And sadly, we are all neoliberals now. Even those who yell helplessly into the void, faced with the tyranny of a state-run system that pits my brain injured child against yours because yours was “lucky” enough to be in a car crash, as opposed to a birth crash.
…
This pandemic will do one thing for sure: exacerbate. Will it exacerbate inequality, as we are seeing? Or exacerbate our drive for a fairer future?
I have no problem with illness being extended to a higher rate and treated like ACC but we could do this in several ways:
1. Have an illness levy like an ACC levy
2. Increase benefits at least to the NZS rate like they used to be
3. Properly fund the health system
Replicating he ACC model for illness might not be the right solution.
Be interested in who you think should pay the levies – employer, worker – what about non-workers? What happens when ACC boot you off for illness if we no longer have a sickness benefit?
ACC needs to be done away with. It was good when it was first put in place but has been truly broken with the neo-liberal tweaks that its suffered under.
Simple fact of the matter is that health should be free no matter how you ended up in the system.
Then there needs to be a base benefit that's enough to live on with needs based increases.
Put more people through training as medical professionals, build more hospitals and clinics around the country and pay them well.
I feel for the whanau who have lost everything in the McKenzie Basin fires. Big ups to the firefighters and helicopter pilots.
But what the fuck are we doing farming in that area in the first place. Dry tussock hill country is not suitable for arable farming. Unless heavily watered, which it is.
As an area of unbelievable natural beauty it should be left that way.
As an area of unbelievable natural beauty it should be left that way.
I'm not disagreeing with you. Fly over that basin really brings home the lunacy of dairy farming in the basin.
RNZ this morning, a farmer said the problem was the land around his farm had been 'locked away' and this 'was just waiting to happen'. Not a lot of thought in that comment.
I'd be quite interested in how the fire started.
Thus it is, the divide between developers and environmentalists will always endure
Fires from arcing powerlines are very common in Waitaki / Central Otago. Central in particular is afflicted by a notoriously tight arsed lines company and the lines aren't maintained properly, stretch in the wind and then start arcing. I've caught one that happened right in front of me driving down the road, fortunately the wind was blowing the right way and a couple of other people turned up and we got it out, could have been very different very easily. And there was nothing 'ungrazed' about this one, but a lot of rural residential carved off to keep the farmers afloat, and a lot of wilding conifers, because 'they look nice' and cost the land owners to control.
There's certainly land management issues, but they go both ways. The confrontational attitude that lines companies take in managing vegetation, and the resulting minimalist, or non holistic, pruning that results doesn't help. The way the legislation works the land owner ens up with a minimal trim to the regulated limits, but no assistance, in either labour or planning, to manage the vegetation long term.
Then there's lines that shouldn't be where they are, or are that poorly engineered or managed that arcing and fires are inevitable. A lot of the networks have grown in an ad hoc way with each extension done to the minimum extent in the cheapest way. So you end up with something that wanders all over the place and is quite different to what you'd have if it was rebuilt from scratch. Long established rural areas with multiple phases of rural residential subdivision are terrible for this, above and below ground. Lines and cables everywhere, often not recorded properly or at all.
The defensive attitude of the lines company here has me wondering if the situation in Ohau wasn't that different to the network around here.
There will certainly be some of that but power lines should be run underground by now which is the other part of the problem. Everyone in the industry knows that overhead power-lines are dangerous but its expensive to put them underground.
"tight arsed lines company" is part of our dysfunctional power industry by design.
The annual rebate on consumer bills is a political tool of the lines trusts club members. Max Bradfords regionally based gravy train for the old power boards.
Network strengthening and resilience likely sit back in the queue as they can always blame the weather, which they mostly do.
The otago one is a slightly different issue – the city council that owns it dragged out dividends that really should have been spent on lines maintenance, and then they got pinged by a whistleblower when the power poles 30 years past their replacement date started falling over.
Sounds exactly like the others McFlock, all a question of priorities as dividends/rebates on accounts etc should come after all the maintenance is up to scratch.
If you looked at the wooden pole issue across NZ lines companies you'd likely find 'consistency' in this approach with Mother Nature now driving the work reactively.
fair enough. Wasn't sure about the "lines trusts". I'm often a bit hazy on precisely the way the world is fucked up, but I know a good stink when I smell it, lol
Part of the council's thing was to stop central government glomming the whole asset (as they did with Rangiora High School's properties) – so they created a nicely indebted structure to make it unpalatable – good accounting, but they needed a couple of engineers on board to explain infrastructure lifetimes.
Goes back a bit before that – but the stadium was certainly a fine model of the third world infrastructure project that needlessly indebts citizens. If not for the Christchurch earthquakes it would have lost even more money. Just have to hope their harbourside monstrosity doesn't go through.
Just to make it a bit weirder…. maureen pugh wasn't at Meet the Candidates in Golden Bay during the weekend.
She has a cold and as a result is self isolating just in case of Covid.
Recent days have seen Judith Collins making an unmistakable play for votes from people who might have gravitated towards other smaller parties. A sudden run of references to her Christian faith, and a visit to an Anglican church, look like a medium-term play to solidify support in caucus, but also an invitation back to the mothership to the 1.4% of the electorate planning to vote New Conservative, according to the last Colmar Brunton / TVNZ poll.
There have also been policy embraces of the racing industry – hello the remaining NZ First loyalists (1.4%)! Pronouncements on gun reform in the second debate round off a busy time of pitching the big tent on the right.
Bit of a stretch, right? His reasoning is weakest when he doesn't explain what would shift centrists away from Labour now. The fact that the Nat leader isn't courting them – is trying to herd neanderthals instead – is a tacit admission of defeat, I reckon.
But the best bit is his screenshot from ONE News of the TVNZ political editor modelling the 1950s housewife style. Frump, with flowers on. My daughter has been telling me for years that retro styles are huge in younger generations, but I hadn't realised things have gotten that bad.
Normal commentary style here. Trump's orange hair continued to feature persistently long after he blonded it several years ago. When in Rome, do as the Romans do…
the difference is that the president of the US isn't a class subjected to oppression. Women are routinely subjected to put downs, body shaming, ageism, classism and so on on the basis of their sex class, and additionally that plays into other real world effects of institutional sexism. If we devalue frumpy old women we don't have to pay them as much.
The young and 1950's retro … possibly derived from the United States of Tara, that or Mad Men or channelling dead grandparents before their children (it's a form of rebellion).
As for Tara, Gone with the Wind and Trump's hair, its less a change in colouring as looking different when sprayed on a ligher base, graying hair.
You seem to be getting caught up in detail here and confusing commentary for 'mocking'. What is acceptable discourse is a function of time, so our ages are relevant. The smell of Old Spice and Brylcreem reminds me of RSAs on rare visits as a kid. May not mean much to younger readers. Maybe more to older ones than me?
In this particular case, for years Jessica Mutch's hips were kept out of shot on screen, probably to avoid the sort of erudite rejoinders we saw upthread.
Can we all agree that the least interesting thing about the story cited is what she wore, then move on with our days?
Sacha Old Spice is still on sale at supermarkets. The makers have found that the OTT scents of modern product don't appeal as much to the sense of the olders. As you say let's keep on with the main story, and not be deflected to run after the smell of red herrings.
Oh come on weka. Don't be so uptight. Let us make rude remarks about each other sometimes. As long as it is give and take. Fr'instance men calling each other 'old bastard' doesn't mean they don't like each other or are calling their mothers' out.
I think you have been indoctrinated by some university course, or prolonged reflection and navel gazing one – similar to those I have attended myself, but have shed some of the strictures! I realise to many they are sacred, and everything that is said in them must be written in stone, and objectors bashed on the head with it. Feel free. But please can I be only attacked by one person, not a gang.
You know that you are intellectually overreaching when you use labels to generalise ordinary decent citizens as Neanderthals, which is not even stereotypically accurate, don’t you?
You also know that JC is fighting a rear-guard battle to stem imminent losses of MPs without any medium-term vision or strategy, don’t you?
And you should also know that it is the camera angle and studio lighting that might make that dress look less flattering, yes?
Toby Manhire is right. If the Greens fall below 5% Judith may well be PM.
Auckland Central Labour voters should split their vote, giving Chloe Swarbrick the candidate vote and Labour the party vote. This will ensure the Green vote is not wasted so that they can join Labour in coalition.
In other constituencies a party vote for the Greens is a vote for a more progressive Jacinda government.
For the Greens to drop below 5% would require its previous voters switching to Labour or staying home. The latter seems unlikely this year. The former counters any fantasies about a Judith victory celebration.
Yes the ‘paths to victory’ theorised by Manhire and others require major shifts between blocs, not just between parties. It requires National’s vote to rise significantly to c 40% without taking any of those votes off Act, and for the Greens to dip under 5% without those votes going to Labour.
His figures propose Nats 37.5% and Act 8%. The latter is the highest Act have been in any poll in the last few years. I don’t see they’d stay there if Nats climb over the 28-33% they’ve been in recent polls.
Or enough extra voters coming out in force without voting for the Greens that they drop below 5% (very unlikely, but thought I'd mention the slight possibility).
Powerful forces are at work. JC prays to God and even Sir John is back in the house as if he never left. Fortunately, ponytails are relatively safe due to social distancing rules.
Anecdotal stuff here, but I heard the voting places around Otago university are pumping, apparently the referendum is getting a lot of young ppl voting, could be interesting if it really is a trend.
Yes many people who have never voted are coming out to vote for the first time in years or ever for weed.
I keep getting asked by people if they can leave their party and candidate vote blank and just vote for the referendum (I think that's a an incomplete ballot? Though should be an option) so I expect much of that to go to the greens and top and there will be a bunch of people who just vote for some random parties with no chance (like TOP or legalize marijuana or even soc cred) still if it gets weed passed, good.
When they first suggested holding two referendums at the General Election I thought it could be too much, overloading people, and putting them off voting altogether. I’ll be gladly proven wrong 🙂
I suspect one of the reasons turnout is so low in the US is it's such a pain. Most places you're voting for an order of magnitude more candidates than even Auckland local government. Feels like everybody is on the ballot down to third assistant dog-catcher.
If it's paper ballots, it's a stack like a magazine, or in Pennsylvania the voting booth had a machine with more levers to turn than a nuclear power station control room.
Agreed, make it as simple as possible, which is necessary but not sufficient for high voter turnout. In other words, it is not good enough for people to have no excuse not to vote, but they have to have an actual reason to vote. Merely ticking boxes of a Candidate and a Party is barely enough, it seems, and for some it is not even enough. I hope my writing is improving because I know Morrissey is reading 😉
I suspect one of the reasons turnout is so low in the US is it's such a pain. Most places you're voting for an order of magnitude more candidates than even Auckland local government. Feels like everybody is on the ballot down to third assistant dog-catcher.
Exactly.
This is called "democracy". Except the right, and opportunity to vote is being eroded day by day – State Law by State Law – county by county and district by district.
Not sure Corey, you get 3 separate pieces of paper for voting, one for election, and 2 for each referendum, I would think you can vote for all 3, or just one? I'm not sure of course but just the fact it's all separate I assumed that? For what it's worth I voted Green Party, Labour candidate, and Yes & Yes for referenda. Walked in, stated my name, and voted. So easy, we got a lot to be thankful for in this country.
yes, think the fact there are two important referendum along with general election, and covid fallout, will lead to a high voter turnout. usually not good news for conservative parties.
Who knows, maybe in a few years erudite experts on popular culture will explain how the pandemic lockdowns and loss of female employment exacerbated existing trends towards delivery of food then cooked and prepared for dinner parties. As women reclaimed the home as their dominion for meaningful work and identity.
All while men resumed dominance of life in the wider world in a way not seen since the Greeks first made up democracy and western civilisation.
Of course New Zealand under an Ardern government would have to be ostracised as a socialist outlier …
SPC What action oriented women wanted was choice. The ability to get out and do things in society, not be embedded at home and treated as a 'drawing' on the household budget, and remaining in men's minds at about the age of 18, just over the age of consent and no more.
Unfortunately the male-oriented capitalistic culture always willing to pick out religious strictures about where women belong in society chose to elevate male’s true interest, that of making money, over the building of a good and fair society of strong characters. Women's work is dismissed, child rearing also, socialisation and building character and skills also, and women are forced into level entry jobs that teenagers preparing for their work life should be able to access.
That is the background to the present situation of many women. They aren't better than men, but are certainly are worthy of a lot more respect and attention to their ideas and smarts than now happens. And they would like to be at home more and able to carry out their child-raising duties adequately. But most would not want to be stuck there, instead enabled to get part-time work with school holidays off while the children are young. Later to move further into the enterprise and trading society, not objects of charity or dependency for life.
TBH the cat walking across my keyboard, wanting pats, rubbing up against the monitor, meowing loudly on calls and pinching my seat as soon as I get up are bigger problems than the children that frequent the house.
The dog at least just pokes his head in the door says "Oh you're still there" and wanders off again!
Right now, we have budgie sitting while family are off on a holiday annoying grandparents. I think that I’d prefer the squabbling kids.
Having the choice, I have retreated back to the workplace. In a 55 square metre apartment, I have decided that there isn’t really room for budgies.
The cat was ok – you just provide a unused laptop with its builtin heater and keyboard where they can supervise. Then use the 10 foot throw so they have to think about landing on their feet as entertainment when you have to remove them from place that are your spaces. They learn fast. Just not fast enough about motorway off-ramps – damnit.
SPC Job-sharing – perhaps. But women getting out into the wider world from the home and family is also good. Helps to enable full adult and social growth and understanding, (getting towards Maslow's ideas of self-realisation).
However to digress, I forecast that there will be more small family-owned businesses making small profits but being regularly in work, employing children etc – back to medieval approach. The march of the large corps(es) have and will continue to kill off many of our previous jobs.
The only way for society and community to survive is to practise circular trade with each other, so circulating money and enabling each other. This will provide the well-known multiplier effect, and build lively and busy towns, with lots of social contact, while big business tries to put spokes in everyone's wheels. The wealthy class and leaders might start taxing wheels as a good flat tax! The money-magnets will always be looking for ways to get their fingers in the pie. A tax on windows once, when glass was scarce.
Once again Vernon Tava gets it wrong. Timed his run too late, then shot himself in the foot.
The Sustainable New Zealand Party has admitted that a woman featured in one of its online video advertisements is not a small business owner named Jill, but is the partner of the party's leader.
However, a senior lecturer for marketing at Auckland University said there was a chance the ad breached advertising standards. "I think that portraying her as a small business owner, not disclosing the fact that she is an actor and is in fact his partner, I think that most people would see that as not quite telling the full truth," Dr Bodo Lang said.
Lang pointed to the second principle in the Advertising Standards Code called 'Truthful Presentation'. The section states that ads must not mislead, or be likely to mislead, deceive or confuse consumers or exploit their lack of knowledge. "This includes by implication, inaccuracy, ambiguity, exaggeration, unrealistic claim, omission, false representation or otherwise."
He’s found the past few years to be a “very disturbing time.” “Overall, as somebody who was a born populist,” he says, “I’ve got a little less faith in my neighbors than I had four years ago.”
Many on the left — including Springsteen’s friend Tom Morello — see Trump as more of a symptom of larger problems, I point out. “I’m probably not as left as Tom,” says Springsteen. “But look, if we want to have the America that we envision, it’s going to need some pretty serious systemic changes moving leftward.”
As for the leading politician on the left: “I like Bernie Sanders a lot,” Springsteen says. “I don’t know if he was my main choice, my first choice. I like Elizabeth Warren, I like Bernie.” For the moment, though, he is fully on board with the centrist Democratic nominee. “The power of the American idea has been abandoned,” Springsteen says.
“It’s a terrible shame, and we need somebody who can bring that to life again.… I think if we get Joe Biden, it’s gonna go a long way towards helping us regain our status around the world. The country as the shining light of democracy has been trashed by the administration. We abandoned friends, we befriended dictators, we denied climate science.”
Doubt it. Normally comes across as sensible. I always get a sense that he inherited leftism from his working-class dad. See the song Factory, for instance.
End of the day, factory whistle cries
Men walk through these gates with death in their eyes
Bruce's never done a hard days manual labour work or been in a factory, he admits that as most think that's his past based on the music.
10 years of solid gigging with the East Street band are his dues prior to ‘fame’ he's simply one of the best songwriters about able to convey emotion in a tune.
"Sensible"? Really? Then who's this singing out for Barack Obama in 2012? Not in the “hope and change” year of 2008, mind you, but after four years of signing off on drone killings (all of them illegal), shaking hands with and being lionized by human rights abusers, continuing the war against democratic governments in Central and South America, and persecuting and imprisoning U.S. and Australian journalists.
Folks who lead a busy life often don't keep up with politics, nor pay much other than scant attention to headline news stories. You tend to see black & white all the time. Others see shades of grey, some pale, some dark, some in between…
Folks who lead a busy life often don't keep up with politics, nor pay much other than scant attention to headline news stories.
Bruce Springsteen is certainly busy. Too busy to think or care about the implications of backing a war criminal. In fact, three war criminals in successive elections.
You tend to see black & white all the time.
Actually, as you will admit when you cool down, my thinking is a lot more sophisticated and subtle than that. But when it comes to people who order the killing of civilians, the destruction of democracy, and the persecution of journalists, yes, I do see such criminality in "black & white."
Others see shades of grey, some pale, some dark, some in between…
There's a way to finesse the killing of civilians and the undermining and/or destruction of democratic governments in Central and South America?
everyone is supposed to realize that the House should accept its own futility because it is run by Democrats now. It’s the Circle of Derp.
almost by the hour, the need for a new Voting Rights Act—for example, one sensitive to 21st-century international ratfcking—becomes more and more obvious.
Being fully on board with Biden is one strong indicator.
He was an unequivocal Hillary supporter in '16, instead of ranting about how Dems and Repugs are equally bad and Bernie wuz robbed and how he would vote for Stein or not at all.
AFAIK he's never suggested the likes of Tucker Carlson 'get it' or tried to smear movements such as BLM by calling them marxist or indulged in other white-supremacist-adjacent behaviour.
Nor has he ever shown any other behaviour associated with convergence moonbats, to my knowledge.
Being fully on board with Biden is one strong indicator.
Yikes! “The Boss” has spent far too much time singing hoarsely, not enough time reading and thinking.
He was an unequivocal Hillary supporter in '16….
AFAIK he's never suggested the likes of Tucker Carlson 'get it' or tried to smear movements such as BLM by calling them marxist or indulged in other white-supremacist-adjacent behaviour.
If he’s such a progressive and tolerant person, then why is he supporting Biden? And why was he an "unequivocal Hillary supporter" in 2016? Clinton?
…you've apparently never read anything significant in your life. Explains all the third rate attempts at stenography, tho.
Well that little effort was not as colorful as your ever-inventive cascade of abuse for the Orange Shit-Gibbon, or whatever witty putdown you're about to employ for the Fanta Fascist. Just as lame, however.
Keep trying, my friend. By the way, what's the state of progress in the search for that missing bit of evidence proving that Drumpf is a Russian puppet?
Not sure that applies to writing songs/music in the same way as, say, writing literature. Neither does storytelling rely on reading necessarily and many cultures, including Māori, of course, have a long and rich oral tradition in storytelling. I think living with open eyes and an open mind, observing, creating experiences, and meeting other people and travelling, for example, are probably more important for writing well than reading other people’s words.
When something pernicious is reframed by Judith as an employment scheme to give the 'dodgy' lot a chance..you know( you know that lot)…. then sack them.
" Collins said she backed 90-day trials.
"They give businesses confidence to give people a go, when … maybe there's something with that person – maybe there's something in their background, maybe they're not quite qualified enough, maybe they're not that experienced, maybe they don't know them that well.
Maybe they're a different ethnicity – you know, this is about actually giving people a chance "
Someone should ask Michael Barnett or Phil O'Reilly a direct question about whether they agree with Judith Collins that small employers need 90 days to overcome their fear of employing someone of a different ethnicity.
Judith is loved by the base because she says the quiet bits out loud. Having to keep the quiet bits quiet feels like oppression, like being 'told what to think'. By saying it out loud Judith breaks the shackles of this 'oppression' and champions 'freedom of speech'. Undoubtedly God agrees, because he/she/it speaks through Judith.
Instead of addressing underlying issues such as causes of people having 'backgrounds' , worker exploitation, non-livable wages or the sacking of workers for unseemly profit margins, it's Judith's innuendo (" the quiet bit" ) that it's okay that innate prejudice exists, that there is a boss with 'superior' knowledge and ethnicity …
Hey Judith while you're playing to the base secret supremacist, say it out loud…
Subjectively, One is only, you know, " a different ethnicity " when you Judith are looking in the mirror.
There'll be though that 1/10 grateful lepers out there for 90 days, dismissed on a whim, who's then on a WINZ stand down.
The Weekend at Bernie's similarities just keep coming. Now they've propped him up in a car to wheel him around for a few minutes in front of adoring Drumpfkins.
Come to think of it, how do we know it was really him? Could have been a crisis actor.
Weekend at Bernies! – USA politics isn't that good is it? Hollywood must be after all the footage of this incumbent/recumbent it can get – or is that frottage?
That long-running Russiagate joke was not so funny. I note they haven't been pushing it with quite the brio they used to do before the Clintonistas' three and a half years of fantasizing was sunk in the most embarrassing manner possible.
Of course: the criminal Trump regime is full of criminals. Who claimed Trump and his gang were “innocent”?
But as Greenwald and other real journalists have pointed out, all the deranged shouting by Rachel Maddow and her imitators in the media and by the absurd Jerrold Nadler and his hapless cronies in Congress have produced no evidence of the mythical "Russian collusion."
Nope, he’s a Russian agent made in North Korea with Japanese components, trained by the Chinese, and running on Taiwanese batteries. This explains his poor spelling and random Tweets because of conflicts in the firmware. Please keep up.
A while ago the Secret Service actually looked like they were going to have staffing problems because of how many were getting covid. So maybe they're putting recovered agents around the Coronamoron-in Chief, and hoping like hell the immunity actually lasts.
I looked at an old Punch and came across Edwina Currie – she was done on Spitting Image. This is a small break from The Election and the buskers involved – so out of tune many of them aren't they!
Currie came across as a lively speaker in Punch so I looked her up and here she is being interviewed in 2012. This gives an interesting example to compare with our women pollies or how they are presented anyway. Currie was in the Conservatives. https://www.theguardian.com/uk/edwina-currie
The NZ covid song was pretty funny, up until they did the "island with small population" bullshit. Fuck that excuse is getting old. If our PM was a dickhead we'd have covid through the roof just like they do.
Spitting Image fired their gun at a sensitive spot though. We are trying to stop people firing guns, not spot them. Bad people at spitting image, they don't know what's truly funny in the UK, their tastebuds have become coarsened with indulgence in jeremymandering, our rosebuds are still blooming, just.
Refining NZ have this morning confirmed that around 100 jobs will be cut as the first part of its Strategic Review concludes, but FIRST Union says that it isn’t too late to save more jobs, assets and infrastructure while transitioning to cleaner and greener operations if the Government are serious about a Just Transition for Marsden Point….
Just this morning I was musing to myself on the hypocrisy of Trump being cared for by a team of doctors and nurses and contributing hardly a cent to the public expense of such care being lavished upon him. And, at the same time doing his utmost to deprive millions of his fellow Americans, even the bare minimum of the treatment that he was receiving.
It also astounds me that the woman he has nominated for the Supreme Court; having had the way to the position she currently holds, paved for her by the tenacity of RBG, should now be even considering pulling up the ladder which she has climbed. Much like Pulla Benefit did to the women of NZ.
No insurance involved. As Commander-in-Chief, the military medical system looks after his medical needs and wants. There's even the dedicated Presidential Suite at the local military hospital.
When the stakes in games become so serious — when everybody's life is at stake — they ought not to be played at all, and the taxpayers should not support them. But the taxpayers do support them, and that is why we cannot halt these activities.
And later:
I have said that it was difficult to understand, in what we call our free world, how it can come about that a scientist who has been working on CBR [Chemical, Biological and Radiological weapons] but is dubious about the morality of what he is doing should not find it in his power to resign. But how free are we citizens of this free world to resign from the gigantic and demented undertakings to which our government has got us committed?
Seymour describes sushi as too woke for school meals. There are no fish sushi meals recommended by the School Lunches programme. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / Getty ImagesTL;DR: The Government will swap out hot meals for packaged sandwiches to save $107 million on school lunches for poor kids. MSD has pulled ...
I don't mind stealin' bread from the mouths of decadenceBut I can't feed on the powerless when my cup's already overfilled, yeahBut it's on the table, the fire's cookin'And they're farmin' babies, while slaves are workin'The blood is on the table and the mouths are chokin'But I'm goin' hungry, yeahSome ...
The Ardern Government’s chickens came home to roost yesterday with the news that the country is short of natural gas. In 2018, Labour banned offshore petroleum exploration, and industry executives say that the attendant loss of confidence by the industry impacted overall investment in onshore gas fields. Energy Resources Minister ...
Hi,If you’ve been digging through the newly launched Webworm store (orders are being dispatched worldwide as I type!) you’ll have noticed the best model we had was Calvin.This is Calvin.Calvin.Calvin is 7, and is the son of my producer over on Flightless Bird, Rob — aka “Wobby Wob”. Rob also ...
This video includes conclusions of the creator climate scientist Dr. Adam Levy. It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any). Climate change is everywhere. And when something's everywhere it can feel like it's nowhere. So how do we get our heads ...
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 ...
Yesterday Winston Peters focussed his attention on the important matter at hand. Tweeting. Like the former, and quite possibly next, orange POTUS, from whom he takes much of his political strategy, Winston is an avid X’er.His message didn’t resemble an historic address this time. In fact it was more reminiscent ...
Buzz from the Beehive A significant decline in natural gas production has given Resources Minister Shane Jones an opportunity to reiterate his enthusiasm for the mining and burning of coal. For good measure, he has praised an announcement from Genesis Energy that it will resume importing coal. He and Energy ...
“Follow the money” is the classic directive to journalists trying to understand where power and influence lie in society. In terms of uncovering who influences various New Zealand political parties and governments, it therefore pays to look at who is funding them. The political parties are legally obliged to make ...
Rob MacCullough writes – Here is my subjective ranking on a “most-left” to “most-right” scale of most of our major NZ Universities, with some anecdotal (and at times amusing) evidence to back up the claim.Extreme Left Auckland University of TechnologyEvidenceThe ...
Eric Crampton writes – I hadn’t thought about this one until a helpful email showed up in my inbox.It’s pretty obvious that income tax thresholds should automatically index with inflation – whether to anchor the thresholds in percentiles of the income distribution, or to anchor against a real ...
Jacqui Van Der Kaay writes – Parliament’s speaker had no option but to refer Green MP Julie Anne Genter to the Privileges Committee for her behaviour in the House last Wednesday evening. The incident, in which she crossed the floor to wave a book and yell at National ...
Gary Judd writes – The Dean of the law school at the Auckland University of Technology is someone called Khylee Quince. I have been sent her social media posting in which she has, over the LawNews headline “Senior King’s Counsel files complaint about compulsory tikanga Maori studies for ...
Cleo Paskal writes – WASHINGTON, D.C.: ‘Many of us have received phone calls from [the opposing camp] telling them if they join the camp they will be given projects for their wards and $300,000 [around US$35,000] each’, says former Malaita Premier Daniel Suidani. The elections in Solomon Islands aren’t ...
With hindsight, it was inevitable that (a) Hamas would agree to the ceasefire deal brokered by Egypt and Qatar and that ( b) Israel would then immediately launch attacks on Rafah, regardless. We might have hoped the concessions made by Hamas would cause Israel to desist from slaughtering thousands more ...
Placards and mourners outside the Kilbirnie Mosque following the Christchurch terror attack: MSD has terminated the Kaiwhakaoranga service, which has been used by 415 families since the attacks. Photo: Lynn GrievesonTL;DR: The Government’s pledge to only cut ‘back office’ staff rather than ‘frontline’ services is on increasingly shaky ground, with ...
There’s been a few smaller public transport announcements over the last week or so that I thought I’d cover in a single post. Fareshare I’ve long called for Auckland Transport to offer a way to enable employer-subsidised public transport options. The need for this took on even more importance ...
Parliament’s speaker had no option but to refer Green MP Julie Anne Genter to the Privileges Committee for her behaviour in the House last Wednesday evening. The incident, in which she crossed the floor to wave a book and yell at National Minister Matt Doocey, reflects poorly on Genter and ...
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a ...
Who likes being sneered at? Nobody. Worse yet, when the sneerer has their facts all wrong, and might well be an idiot.The sneer in question is The adults are in charge now, and it is a sneer offered in retort to criticism of this new Government, no matter how well ...
When in government, Labour pushed to extend the Parliamentary term to four years, to reduce accountability and our ability to vote out a bad government. And now, they're trying to do it through the member's ballot, with a Four-Year Parliamentary Term Legislation Bill. The bill at least requires a referendum ...
A ballot for a single Member's Bill was held today, and the following bill was drawn: Public Works (Prohibition of Compulsory Acquisition of Māori Land) Amendment Bill (Hūhana Lyndon) The bill would prevent the government from stealing Māori land in breach of Te Tiriti o Waitangi. It ...
Simeon Brown, alongside Wayne Brown, is favouring a political figleaf now in exchange for loading up tens of millions in extra interest costs on Auckland ratepayers. Photo: Lynn GrievesonTL;DR: Ratings agency Standard & Poor’s is pushing back hard at suggestions from Local Government Minister Simeon Brown and Mayor Wayne Brown ...
Buzz from the Beehive One headline-grabber from the Beehive yesterday was the OECD’s advice that the government must bring the Budget deficit under control or face higher interest rates. Another was the announcement of a $1.9 billion “investment” in Corrections over the next four years. In the best interests of ...
Chris Trotter writes – Had Zheng He’s fleet sailed east, not west, in the early Fifteenth Century, how different our world would be. There is little reason to suppose that the sea-going junks of the Ming Dynasty, among the largest and most sophisticated sailing vessels ever constructed, would have failed ...
David Farrar writes – Two articles give a useful contrast in balance. Both seek to be neutral explainer articles. This one in the Herald on Social Investment covers the pros and cons nicely. It links to critical pieces and talks about aspects that failed and aspects that are more ...
The tikanga regulations will compel law students to be taught that a system which does not conform with the rule of law is nevertheless law which should be observed and applied…Gary Judd KC writes – I have made a complaint to Parliament’s Regulation ...
The future of Te Huia, the train between Hamilton and Auckland, has been getting a lot of attention recently as current funding for it is only in place till the end of June. The government initially agreed to a five year trial, through to April 2026, but that was subject ...
TL;DR: Hamas has just agreed to Israel’s ceasefire plan. Nelson hospital’s rebuild has been cut back to save money. The OECD suggests New Zealand break up network monopolies, including in electricity. PM Christopher Luxon’s news conference on a prison expansion announcement last night was his messiest yet.Here’s my top six ...
A homicide in Ponsonby, a manhunt with a killer on the run. The nation’s leader stands before a press conference reassuring a frightened nation that he’ll sort it out, he’ll keep them safe, he’ll build some new prison spaces.Sorry what? There’s a scary dude on the run with a gun ...
Hi,I know it’s been awhile since there’s been any Webworm merch — and today that all changes!Over the last four months, I’ve been working with New Zealand artist Jess Johnson to create a series of t-shirts, caps and stickers that are infused with Webworm DNA — and as of right ...
The OECD’s chief economist yesterday laid it on the line for the new Government: bring the deficit under control or face higher Reserve Bank interest rates for longer. And to bring the deficit under control, she meant not borrowing for tax cuts. But there was more. Without policy changes—introducing a ...
After a hiatus of over four months Selwyn Manning and I finally got it together to re-start the “A View from Afar” podcast series. We shall see how we go but aim to do 2 episodes per month if possible. … Continue reading → ...
In 2008, the UK Parliament passed the Climate Change Act 2008. The law established a system of targets, budgets, and plans, with inbuilt accountability mechanisms; the aim was to break the cycle of empty promises and replace it with actual progress towards emissions reduction. The law was passed with near-universal ...
Buzz from the Beehive Local Water Done Well – let’s be blunt – is a silly name, but the first big initiative to put it into practice has gone done well. This success is reflected in the headline on an RNZ report:District mayors welcome Auckland’s new water deal with ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate ConnectionsA farmworker cleans the solar panels of a solar water pump in the village of Jagadhri, Haryana Country, India. (Photo credit: Prashanth Vishwanathan/ IWMI) Decisions made in India over the next few years will play a key role in global ...
Lindsay Mitchell writes – The Children’s Minister, Karen Chhour, intends to repeal Section 7AA from the Oranga Tamariki Act 1989 because it creates conflict between claimed Crown Treaty obligations and the child’s best interests. In her words, “Oranga Tamariki’s governing principles and its act should be colour ...
Geoffrey Miller writes – The gloves are off. That might seem to be the undertone of surprisingly tough talk from New Zealand’s foreign and trade ministers. Winston Peters, the foreign minister, may be facing legal action after making allegations about former Australian foreign minister Bob Carr on Radio New Zealand. ...
Brian Easton writes – This is about the time that the Treasury will be locking up its economic forecasts to be published in the 2024 Budget Economic and Fiscal Update (BEFU) on budget day, 30 May. I am not privy to what they will be (I will report on them ...
TL;DR:Winston Peters is reported to have won a budget increase for MFAT. David Seymour wanted his Ministry of Regulation to be three times bigger than the Productivity Commission. Simeon Brown is appointing a Crown Monitor to Watercare to protect the Claytons Crown Guarantee he had to give ratings agencies ...
The gloves are off. That might seem to be the undertone of surprisingly tough talk from New Zealand’s foreign and trade ministers. Winston Peters, the foreign minister, may be facing legal action after making allegations about former Australian foreign minister Bob Carr on Radio New Zealand. Carr had made highly ...
I could be a florist'Round the corner from Rye LaneI'll be giving daisies to craziesBut, baby, I'll wrap you up real safe Oh, I can give you flowers At the end of every dayFor the center of your table, a rainbowIn case you have people 'round to stay Depending on ...
TL;DR: The six key events to watch in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the week to May 12 include:PM Christopher Luxon is scheduled to hold a post-Cabinet news conference at 4 pm today. Finance Minister Nicola Willis will give a pre-budget speech on Thursday.Parliament sits from Question Time at 2pm on ...
The price of the foreign affairs “reset” is now becoming apparent, with Defence set to get a funding boost in the Budget. Finance Minister Nicola Willis has confirmed that it will be one of the few votes, apart from Health and Education and possibly Police, which will get an increase ...
A listing of 26 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, April 28, 2024 thru Sat, May 4, 2024. Story of the week "It’s straight out of Big Tobacco’s playbook. In fact, research by John Cook and his colleagues ...
Yesterday I received come lovely feedback following my Star Wars themed newsletter. A few people mentioned they’d enjoyed reading the personal part at the beginning.I often begin newsletters with some memories, or general thoughts, before commencing the main topic. This hopefully sets the mood and provides some context in which ...
April 30 was going to be the day we’d be calling Mum from London to wish her a happy birthday. Then it became the day we would be going to St. Paul's at Evensong to remember her. The aim of the cathedral builders was to find a way to make their ...
Rob MacCulloch writes – Can’t remember the last book by a Kiwi author you read? Think the NZ government should spend less on the arts in favor of helping the homeless? If so, as far as Newsroom is concerned, you probably deserve to be called a cultural ignoramus ...
Eric Crampton writes – Grudges are bad. Better to move on. But it can be fun to keep a couple of really trivial ones, so you’re not tempted to have other ones. For example, because of the rootkit fiasco of 2005, no Sony products in our household. ...
A new report warns an estimated third of the adult population have unmet need for health care.Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāHere’s the six key things I learned about Aotaroa’s political economy this week around housing, climate and poverty:Politics - Three opinion polls confirmed support for PM Christopher Luxon ...
Today is May the fourth. Which was just a regular day when my mother took me to see the newly released Star Wars at the Odeon in Rotorua. The queue was right around the corner. Some years later this day became known as Star Wars Day, the date being a ...
Buzz from the Beehive Much more media attention is being paid to something Winston Peters said about former Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr than to a speech he delivered to the New Zealand China Council. One word is missing from the speech: AUKUS. But AUKUS loomed large in his considerations ...
Is the economy in another long stagnation? If so, why?This is about the time that the Treasury will be locking up its economic forecasts to be published in the 2024 Budget Economic and Fiscal Update (BEFU) on budget day, 30 May. I am not privy to what they will be ...
The annual list of who's been bribing our politicians is out, and journalists will no doubt be poring over it to find the juiciest and dirtiest bribes. The government's fast-track invite list is likely to be a particular focus, and we already know of one company on the list which ...
In the weeks after the October 7 Hamas attacks on Southern Israel I wrote about the possible 2nd, 3rd and even 4th order effects of the conflict. These included new fronts being opened in the West Bank (with Hamas), Golan … Continue reading → ...
Peter Dunne writes – It is one of the oldest truisms that there is never a good time for MPs to get a pay rise. This week’s announcement of pay raises of around 2.8% backdated to last October could hardly have come at a worse time, with the ...
David Farrar writes – Newshub reports: Newshub can reveal a fresh allegation of intimidation against Green MP Julie-Anne Genter. Genter is subject to a disciplinary process for aggressively waving a book in the face of National Minister Matt Doocey in the House – but it’s not the first time ...
The Treasury has published a paper today on the global productivity slowdown and how it is playing out in New Zealand: The productivity slowdown: implications for the Treasury’s forecasts and projections. The Treasury Paper examines recent trends in productivity and the potential drivers of the slowdown. Productivity for the whole economy ...
Winston Peters’ comments about former Australian foreign minister look set to be an ongoing headache for both him and Luxon. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for subscribers features co-hosts and , along with regular guests on Gaza and ...
These puppet strings don't pull themselvesYou're thinking thoughts from someone elseHow much time do you think you have?Are you prepared for what comes next?The debating chamber can be a trying place for an opposition MP. What with the person in charge, the speaker, typically being an MP from the governing ...
The land around Lyme Regis, where Meryl Streep once stood, in a hood, on the Cobb, is falling into the sea.MerylThe land around Lyme Regis, around the Cobb that made it rich, has always been falling slowly but surely into the sea. Read more ...
Photo by Jari Hytönen on UnsplashIt’s that new day of the week (Thursday rather than Friday) when and I co-host our ‘hoon’ webinar with paying subscribers to The Kākā for an hour at 5 pm. Jump on this link on YouTube Livestream for our chat about the week’s news ...
Buzz from the Beehive Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters was bound to win headlines when he set out his thinking about AUKUS in his speech to the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. The headlines became bigger when – during an interview on RNZ’s Morning Report today – he criticised ...
The Post reports on how the government is refusing to release its advice on its corrupt Muldoonist fast-track law, instead using the "soon to be publicly available" refusal ground to hide it until after select committee submissions on the bill have closed. Fast-track Minister Chris Bishop's excuse? “It's not ...
As pressure on it grows, the livestock industry’s approach to the transition to Net Zero is increasingly being compared to that of fossil fuel interests. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / Getty ImagesTL;DR: Here’s the top five news items of note in climate news for Aotearoa-NZ this week, and a discussion above ...
The Green Party is welcoming the announcement by the Minister Responsible for RMA Reform Chris Bishop to approve most of the Wellington City Council’s District Plan recommendations. ...
David Seymour has failed to get the sweeping cuts he wanted to the free and healthy school lunch programme, Labour education spokesperson Jan Tinetti said. ...
Hon Willie Jackson has been invited by the Oxford Union to debate the motion “This House Believes British Museums are not Very British’ on May 23rd. ...
Green Party MP Hūhana Lyndon says her Public Works (Prohibition of Compulsory Acquisition of Māori Land) Amendment Bill is an opportunity to right some past wrongs around the alienation of Māori land. ...
A senior, highly respected King’s Counsel with decades of experience in our law courts, Gary Judd KC, has filed a complaint about compulsory tikanga Māori studies for law students - highlighting the utter depths of absurdity this woke cultural madness has taken our society. The tikanga regulations will compel law ...
The Government needs to be clear with the people of the Nelson Marlborough region about the changes it is considering for the Nelson Hospital rebuild, Labour health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall said. ...
Ministers must front up about which projects it will push through under its Fast Track Approvals legislation, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
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. ...
With Minister Karen Chhour indicating in the House today that she either doesn’t know or care about the frontline cuts she’s making to Oranga Tamariki, we risk seeing more and more of our children falling through the cracks. ...
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. ...
Labour is calling for the Government to urgently rethink its coalition commitment to restart live animal exports, Labour animal welfare spokesperson Rachel Boyack said. ...
Today’s Financial Stability Report has once again highlighted that poverty and deep inequality are political choices - and this Government is choosing to make them worse. ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to do more for our households in most need as unemployment rises and the cost of living crisis endures. ...
Unemployment is on the rise and it’s only going to get worse under this Government, Labour finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds said. Stats NZ figures show the unemployment rate grew to 4.3 percent in the March quarter from 4 percent in the December quarter. “This is the second rise in unemployment ...
The New Zealand Labour Party welcomes the entering into force of the European Union and New Zealand free trade agreement. This agreement opens the door for a huge increase in trade opportunities with a market of 450 million people who are high value discerning consumers of New Zealand goods and ...
The National-led Government continues its fiscal jiggery pokery with its Pharmac announcement today, Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall says. “The government has increased Pharmac funding but conceded it will only make minimal increases in access to medicine”, said Ayesha Verrall “This is far from the bold promises made to fund ...
This afternoon’s interim Waitangi Tribunal report must be taken seriously as it affects our most vulnerable children, Labour children’s spokesperson Willow-Jean Prime. ...
Te Pāti Māori are demanding the New Zealand Government support an international independent investigation into mass graves that have been uncovered at two hospitals on the Gaza strip, following weeks of assault by Israeli troops. Among the 392 bodies that have been recovered, are children and elderly civilians. Many of ...
Our two-tiered system for veterans’ support is out of step with our closest partners, and all parties in Parliament should work together to fix it, Labour veterans’ affairs spokesperson Greg O’Connor said. ...
Stripping two Ministers of their portfolios just six months into the job shows Christopher Luxon’s management style is lacking, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said. ...
Tonight’s court decision to overturn the summons of the Children’s Minister has enabled the Crown to continue making decisions about Māori without evidence, says Te Pāti Māori spokesperson for Children, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “The judicial system has this evening told the nation that this government can do whatever they want when ...
It appears Nicola Willis is about to pull the rug out from under the feet of local communities still dealing with the aftermath of last year’s severe weather, and local councils relying on funding to build back from these disasters. ...
The Government is making short-sighted changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that will take away environmental protection in favour of short-term profits, Labour’s environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
Labour welcomes the release of the report into the North Island weather events and looks forward to working with the Government to ensure that New Zealand is as prepared as it can be for the next natural disaster. ...
The Labour Party has called for the New Zealand Government to recognise Palestine, as a material step towards progressing the two-State solution needed to achieve a lasting peace in the region. ...
Some of our country’s most important work, stopping the sexual exploitation of children and violent extremism could go along with staff on the frontline at ports and airports. ...
The Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill will give projects such as new coal mines a ‘get out of jail free’ card to wreak havoc on the environment, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The government's decision to reintroduce Three Strikes is a destructive and ineffective piece of law-making that will only exacerbate an inherently biased and racist criminal justice system, said Te Pāti Māori Justice Spokesperson, Tākuta Ferris, today. During the time Three Strikes was in place in Aotearoa, Māori and Pasifika received ...
Cuts to frontline hospital staff are not only a broken election promise, it shows the reckless tax cuts have well and truly hit the frontline of the health system, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
The Green Party has joined the call for public submissions on the fast-track legislation to be extended after the Ombudsman forced the Government to release the list of organisations invited to apply just hours before submissions close. ...
New Zealand’s good work at reducing climate emissions for three years in a row will be undone by the National government’s lack of ambition and scrapping programmes that were making a difference, Labour Party climate spokesperson Megan Woods said today. ...
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 ...
Kiwi exporters are $100 million better off today with the NZ EU FTA entering into force says Trade Minister Todd McClay. “This is all part of our plan to grow the economy. New Zealand's prosperity depends on international trade, making up 60 per cent of the country’s total economic activity. ...
There are heartening signs that the extractive sector is once again becoming an attractive prospect for investors and a source of economic prosperity for New Zealand, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. “The beginnings of a resurgence in extractive industries are apparent in media reports of the sector in the past ...
The return of the historic Ō-Rākau battle site to the descendants of those who fought there moved one step closer today with the first reading of Te Pire mō Ō-Rākau, Te Pae o Maumahara / The Ō-Rākau Remembrance Bill. The Bill will entrust the 9.7-hectare battle site, five kilometres west ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has announced 25 new high-speed EV charging hubs along key routes between major urban centres and outlined the Government’s plan to supercharge New Zealand’s EV infrastructure. The hubs will each have several chargers and be capable of charging at least four – and up to 10 ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Leah Williams Veazey, ARC DECRA Research Fellow, University of Sydney DavideAngelini/Shutterstock In the 2007 film The Bucket List Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman play two main characters who respond to their terminal cancer diagnoses by rejecting experimental treatment. Instead, they go ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mohan Singh, Professor of Agri-Food Biotechnology, School of Agriculture, Food and Ecosystem Sciences at the University of Melbourne., The University of Melbourne Tanja Esser/Shutterstock Australia’s vital agriculture sector will be hit hard by steadily rising global temperatures. Our climate is already ...
The Acumen Edelman Trust barometer reported that New Zealand’s political trust score now sits below the global average, a topic explored in a recent discussion paper by Maxim Institute. ...
Greenpeace Aotearoa executive director Russel Norman says, "The Fast-Track Bill is the most damaging piece of environmental legislation any Government has introduced in living memory. People are angry, and it’s time to march." ...
The school lunches programme has been retained – and will be extended to some preschoolers. So how is it going to cost $107 million less? To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here. The minister with many hats David Seymour wears a number of hats, but this week ...
“Show us the bird,” I found myself muttering at times while reading Hard by the Cloud House by Peter Walker, a deeply thoughtful, often hilarious, at times rambling – but somehow delightfully so – search for the story of a big bird. But not just any bird: the bird. This ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jack Marley, Environment + Energy Editor, UK edition DPVUE .images/Shutterstock Your home was probably designed for a climate that no longer exists. As long as humanity continues to burn fossil fuel, padding the heat-trapping blanket of gases in Earth’s atmosphere, the ...
A senior lawyer has filed a complaint about tikanga becoming a required law school module. Law lecturer Carwyn Jones explains what he’s getting wrong. “…the first law of Aotearoa, a law that served the needs of tangata whenua for a thousand years before the arrival of tauiwi.”– Ani Mikaere ...
In 2019, an Auckland woman woke up from surgery to find that she had undergone a treatment she didn’t consent to. She tells Alex Casey about her experience. From her very first period at the age of 14, Laura experienced “debilitating” levels of pain that forced her to withdraw from ...
Comment: Concerns about the state of the economy are creeping up to the top of firms’ list of challenges. That’s evident in both surveys and the tone of our recent client discussions. Skimming the past few weeks of eco-news, it’s not hard to see why. – Retail card spending fell ...
Opinion: Could former co-leader James Shaw still make a difference to working with National? The post How the Greens could be contenders appeared first on Newsroom. ...
Opinion: What if we got rid of our existing drug laws and replaced them with a new law that legalised and carefully regulated all psychoactive substances, from cannabis to MDMA, methamphetamine and LSD to magic mushrooms? And which also included legal drugs such as alcohol and nicotine. “Wow,” you might ...
In the gloom following director-general Al Morrison’s job cuts in 2013, the Department of Conservation restructured its operations arm. Eleven conservancy districts were whittled into six new “conservation delivery” regions, under which the Rēkohu/Wharekauri/Chatham Islands area, comprising 40 scattered islands more than 800km east of Christchurch, was tethered to the ...
One of th e country’s top litigation lawyers says New Zealand is seeing a lift in court action between companies. Chapman Tripp partner Justin Graham, who oversees a team of around 80 litigation specialists, says the courts are now so log-jammed that it’s taking over two years to get cases ...
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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra The Albanese government is talking up the crucial role of gas as a transition fuel “through to 2050 and beyond”. In a gas strategy to be released on Thursday, the government envisages the fuel’s ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Next week the government will again next try to get its legislation through to deal with non-citizens who won’t cooperate with efforts to deport them. The bill, which the opposition and crossbench refused to rush ...
A long-term project that will set out an alternative vision for Aotearoa that looks beyond the narrow confines of the policy straight jacket adopted by successive governments. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bree Hurst, Associate Professor, Faculty of Business and Law, QUT, Queensland University of Technology TK Kurikawa/Shutterstock A much-awaited report into Coles and Woolworths has found what many customers have long believed – Australia’s big supermarkets engage in price gouging. What started ...
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In announcing changes to the school lunches programme, David Seymour said kids would no longer be served ‘woke’ foods. To clear up any confusion, The Spinoff has compiled a guide to the wokeness levels of some common food items. Apple = NOT WOKE Avocado = WOKE Avocado, smashed = EVEN ...
The Minister Responsible for GCSB and the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security have been notified of this review, and have been provided a finalised Terms of Reference. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Minglu Chen, Senior Lecturer, Government and International Relations, University of Sydney Robert Way/Shutterstock As the past few years have illustrated so clearly, the Australia-China relationship is complicated. As such, it is crucial for Australians to develop a more nuanced understanding of ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mariana Campbell, Research Lecturer, Conservation, Charles Darwin University Marilyn Connell Australian freshwater turtles are facing an alarming trend. Almost half of these species are listed as vulnerable, endangered or critically endangered. The Mary River turtle (Elusor macrurus) is one of Australia’s ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Debbie Passey, Digital Health Research Fellow, The University of Melbourne Algorithms have become integral to our lives. From social media apps to Netflix, algorithms learn your preferences and prioritise the content you are shown. Google Maps and artificial intelligence are nothing without ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Josephine Barbaro, Associate Professor, Principal Research Fellow, Psychologist, La Trobe University Unsplash We’ve come a long way in terms of understanding that everyone thinks, interacts and experiences the world differently. In the past, autistic people, people with attention deficit hyperactive disorder ...
PNG Post-Courier Papua New Guinea’s deputy opposition leader James Nomane has accused the government of “reckless economic management” that has forced devaluation to manage loan repayments in foreign currency and placate the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Prime Minister James Marape “must stop lying to the people of Papua New Guinea”, ...
Welcome to The Spinoff Bookseller Confessional, in which we get to know Aotearoa’s booksellers. This week: Jane Arthur, author of Brown Bird, and former bookseller at Good Books.The book I wish I’d writtenI have been working on not comparing myself to others. On accepting that what I can ...
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RNZ News As Israel presses ahead with strikes in Rafah and seizing the Rafah crossing from Egypt, aid agencies are sounding the alarm of a “catastrophic humanitarian situation”. Rafah was “significant” because it was the only part in Gaza that had not been terribly damaged by the conflict, United Nations ...
With funding set to be scrapped for the Hamilton-Auckland commuter train, Te Huia enthusiast Georgie Dansey argues for it to be thrown a lifeline. It’s 5.45am and the chain of my crappy old bike falls off slugging up the one hill in Hamilton. I contemplate yeeting the bike into the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anna Cooke, Honorary Fellow, School of the Environment, The University of Queensland We feel ecological grief when we lose places, species or ecosystems we value and love. These losses are a growing threat to mental health and wellbeing globally. We all see ...
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Responding to an Auditor-General's report slamming failures in the administration of the 2023 General Election, Taxpayers’ Union Policy and Public Affairs Manager, James Ross, said: ...
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The Taxpayers’ Union says the Beehive need to lead by example, following reports of more than $50,000 spent upgrading video conferencing equipment and furniture in the Prime Minister’s office. Taxpayers’ Union Campaign Manager, Connor Molloy, ...
An objective list of the 50 most powerful people in New Zealand, as judged by the Spinoff Editorial Board. It’s power list season, baby, and we want in on the action. Sure, there’s the rich list and the powerful “c-suite” list and the young people with power (hmmm) but here, ...
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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alex Simpson, Senior Lecturer in Criminology, Macquarie University Netflix Baby Reindeer’s phenomenal success has much to do with its writer and lead, Richard Gadd, who plays Donny in a tender semi-autobiographical account of sexual abuse, harassment and stalking. Gadd’s story has ...
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Stewart Sowman-Lund looks at the growing concern around the world in this extract from The Bulletin. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here. What’s all this? When Covid-19 arrived on our shores in early 2020, some argued we were too slow, or crucially, ill-prepared for a pandemic. So ...
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The inquest into the death of Gore toddler Lachlan Jones has turned up a new witness who says he saw two teenagers and a small child in a high vis vest in the area where the boy’s body was found the day he died. Lachie’s body was discovered face up ...
Gun owners a voting bloc? https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/427557/gun-owners-advised-not-to-vote-labour-greens-nz-first
Editorial cartoonist who was a journo in Australia is not amused by Act’s antics.
https://twitter.com/rodemmerson/status/1312696542009016320
Interesting question, whether there's an NRA backdoor to ACT. But maybe the NRA's current troubles are severe enough they haven't the time, money, or energy for that kind of fuckery.
Might be support from other US orgs backed by Koch money etc?
We've got a big enough firearms industry in New Zealand to play silly buggers without needing overseas help, most of it in one operator.
Someone a few months ago also mentioned that NZ's post-massacre buyback scheme had left many owners flush and motivated to contribute.
One thing the buy back has done is to point out who the nut cases are to the sane and responsible firearm owners. There's quite a stark division there now and the nutters aren't really listened to. And oddly, most of the 'Fuck 1080" bumper stickers and banners have disappeared. Often the same people.
Yep – Over $100 Millions paid out to firearms owners …. if just 1% of that heads in ACT's direction that is a quite large war chest ………
Unintended Consequences.
Who knows what the other $99 Millions has been spent on?
From my small circle who surrendered their semi autos, it was the purchase, or deposit on something much better, and more appropriate for the sort of hunting they do. In all cases no regrets and are wondering why / how they came to buy the semi autos in the first place.
Also know someone who qualifies, and is going down the path of being able to legitimately own them.
dont forget act have form for this behaviour. three strikes prison was pushed by senseless sentencing trust, with david garret as bagman.
I am struggling to find and policy regarding immigration, there has been a lot of noise regarding shortfalls in our workforce. Last election we were told of a reduction in immigration by all. Yet we achieved records growth.80,000 pa net inflows. Or for both National and Labour will it be open our boarders to all and sundry and then fix any resulting problems?
https://www.labour.org.nz/policy
It would be nice to see them just enforcing the law we have.
Fruit pickers, liquor store checkout operators, or dairy shedhands are not and never have been skilled, and as such never have qualifed for working visas.
And, the statutory declaration "I could not find any suitable New Zealanders for the position" needs to be challenged in such instances. Most employers seeking these kinds of staff have perjured themselves, and should be prosecuted for it.
This systematic lawbreaking, often beginning under National, but shamelessly continued under Labour, is a major contributor to entrenched poverty and poor employment practices in NZ.
My suggestion – no industry can import any labour unless they can't get staff with reasonable working conditions on offer and $35/hr pay. And pay /conditions on offer (including to imported labour) must remain at this level or better the entire time imported labour is used.
Often NZ industries suffer from a wages shortage, not a labour shortage.
RSE essentially tightened up immigration controls in the horticulture industry as it reduced significantly the use of illegal labour and all the associated problems that went with that – people not returning home, orchardists undercutting each other, no PAYE paid to IRD. It also became part of the aid package to the Pacific.
To some extent John Key opened up the rorting again with allowing students to work full-time while in NZ – English language schools that were fronts for residence and seasonal work.
Orchard rorts still continue but much reduced from twenty years ago e.g. the slavery case over in Hawkes Bay. Who was the orchardist in the media reports paying him in bags of cash for the last 10 years? Why isn't their name public?
There is a mis-match between where the supply is and where the work is and sharp peaks. In apples the peak is in picking, in kiwifruit in packing. One is definitely more attractive than the other hence when COVID hit many people jumped to the packhouses.
We also need to be careful about talking about labour supply that we are not being racist in demanding people work there. NZ Europeans have left the picking of fruit for other better paid, less physically difficult work for years and increasingly those left to pick have been Maori and PI. One hopes that Maori aspire to do more than pick fruit and if we are going to pressure New Zealanders to do this work that that pressure isn't just applied to Maori and PI.
If you think RSE tightened up controls it seems that you are mistaken. Segregated accommodation for married couples, harsh lessons in 'not bucking the boss', denied access to migration based on race and background – these are the epiphenomena of a deeply flawed system.
It was definitely worse before that. I never said it fixed all the problems in the industry.
Like a lot of the neo-liberal reforms over time the "good employers" got driven out as they couldn't compete with the crappy ones who paid low wages.
It did get rid of lots of dodgy contractors for instance.
It's like the government sublet their morality to Treasury. If you only look at the numbers it doesn't matter who picks or prunes, but in terms of the local economy RSE workers don't have much of a spending profile – their portion of GDP is a loss, and Treasury should count it as such – then they might not be quite so keen on end runs around labour laws.
I'm sure at the time Treasury were more concerned with people coming from overseas, setting themselves up as contractors, then disappearing with all the PAYE and student loan money.
In this day and age I still don't get why the employer can't be required to simply pay it to IRD each payday – it's not their money – it's the employees.
That would save hundreds of millions each year in crook employers. My wife went through years of hassle because her employer didn't make the payments deducted out of her pay. Just as well she kept her payslips.
So we're left with a structure an accountant would call a C minus, and a citizen an F. And exercising structural prejudice against hiring New Zealanders – it should be utterly destroyed.
Meanwhile, governments express concern about declining regional economies – as if they hadn't just pulled out much of the cashflow.
Aye things like the benefit cuts have cost regions hundreds of millions over the years as has the centralisation of public services to main centres.
Part of the result of economics as practised in NZ is that if a company can't get the workers then it must be uneconomical and closes down. Its not supposed to go whinging to the government for assistance and get an effective subsidy..
NO.
If you had been keeping up with campaign news you would know that both major parties (Labour definitely and I'm sure I heard Collins say something similar) have indicated they are not planning to use immigration as an election issue because there is too much uncertainty around Covid 19 and its aftermath – words to that effect.
Wise and sensible while our borders are largely closed. In the meantime, I expect the ‘experts’ are quietly modelling new laws on future immigration policy for the next government to consider as we speak.
Whether it will be sufficient to solve some of the current problems remains to be seen.
Concise article by a Massey academic and parent on the discrepancy between ACC and our other health and income support options. https://www.stuff.co.nz/manawatu-standard/opinion/300123342/the-accident-compensation-corporation-a-neoliberal-fairy-tale
I have no problem with illness being extended to a higher rate and treated like ACC but we could do this in several ways:
1. Have an illness levy like an ACC levy
2. Increase benefits at least to the NZS rate like they used to be
3. Properly fund the health system
Replicating he ACC model for illness might not be the right solution.
Be interested in who you think should pay the levies – employer, worker – what about non-workers? What happens when ACC boot you off for illness if we no longer have a sickness benefit?
ACC needs to be done away with. It was good when it was first put in place but has been truly broken with the neo-liberal tweaks that its suffered under.
Simple fact of the matter is that health should be free no matter how you ended up in the system.
Then there needs to be a base benefit that's enough to live on with needs based increases.
Put more people through training as medical professionals, build more hospitals and clinics around the country and pay them well.
And, yes, we can afford it as government spending actually boosts the rest of the economy. Need to stop subsidising uneconomic businesses though.
I feel for the whanau who have lost everything in the McKenzie Basin fires. Big ups to the firefighters and helicopter pilots.
But what the fuck are we doing farming in that area in the first place. Dry tussock hill country is not suitable for arable farming. Unless heavily watered, which it is.
As an area of unbelievable natural beauty it should be left that way.
We sure know how to fuck up a landscape.
I'm not disagreeing with you. Fly over that basin really brings home the lunacy of dairy farming in the basin.
RNZ this morning, a farmer said the problem was the land around his farm had been 'locked away' and this 'was just waiting to happen'. Not a lot of thought in that comment.
I'd be quite interested in how the fire started.
Thus it is, the divide between developers and environmentalists will always endure
Early report were that it had started from power lines arcing in the wind. The local lines company is frantically trying to hose that down because then it's on the lines company's insurance.
Fires from arcing powerlines are very common in Waitaki / Central Otago. Central in particular is afflicted by a notoriously tight arsed lines company and the lines aren't maintained properly, stretch in the wind and then start arcing. I've caught one that happened right in front of me driving down the road, fortunately the wind was blowing the right way and a couple of other people turned up and we got it out, could have been very different very easily. And there was nothing 'ungrazed' about this one, but a lot of rural residential carved off to keep the farmers afloat, and a lot of wilding conifers, because 'they look nice' and cost the land owners to control.
How much of this is about inappropriate land management where power lines run?
There's certainly land management issues, but they go both ways. The confrontational attitude that lines companies take in managing vegetation, and the resulting minimalist, or non holistic, pruning that results doesn't help. The way the legislation works the land owner ens up with a minimal trim to the regulated limits, but no assistance, in either labour or planning, to manage the vegetation long term.
Then there's lines that shouldn't be where they are, or are that poorly engineered or managed that arcing and fires are inevitable. A lot of the networks have grown in an ad hoc way with each extension done to the minimum extent in the cheapest way. So you end up with something that wanders all over the place and is quite different to what you'd have if it was rebuilt from scratch. Long established rural areas with multiple phases of rural residential subdivision are terrible for this, above and below ground. Lines and cables everywhere, often not recorded properly or at all.
The defensive attitude of the lines company here has me wondering if the situation in Ohau wasn't that different to the network around here.
There will certainly be some of that but power lines should be run underground by now which is the other part of the problem. Everyone in the industry knows that overhead power-lines are dangerous but its expensive to put them underground.
"tight arsed lines company" is part of our dysfunctional power industry by design.
The annual rebate on consumer bills is a political tool of the lines trusts club members. Max Bradfords regionally based gravy train for the old power boards.
Network strengthening and resilience likely sit back in the queue as they can always blame the weather, which they mostly do.
The otago one is a slightly different issue – the city council that owns it dragged out dividends that really should have been spent on lines maintenance, and then they got pinged by a whistleblower when the power poles 30 years past their replacement date started falling over.
Sounds exactly like the others McFlock, all a question of priorities as dividends/rebates on accounts etc should come after all the maintenance is up to scratch.
If you looked at the wooden pole issue across NZ lines companies you'd likely find 'consistency' in this approach with Mother Nature now driving the work reactively.
fair enough. Wasn't sure about the "lines trusts". I'm often a bit hazy on precisely the way the world is fucked up, but I know a good stink when I smell it, lol
Part of the council's thing was to stop central government glomming the whole asset (as they did with Rangiora High School's properties) – so they created a nicely indebted structure to make it unpalatable – good accounting, but they needed a couple of engineers on board to explain infrastructure lifetimes.
This would be the same council that fire-sold the generator pre-reforms.
But the main reason it needed the dividends was the fecking stadium.
Goes back a bit before that – but the stadium was certainly a fine model of the third world infrastructure project that needlessly indebts citizens. If not for the Christchurch earthquakes it would have lost even more money. Just have to hope their harbourside monstrosity doesn't go through.
That denunciation of Proud Boys that was just too hard for the Fourth Dorkman of the Apocalypse to get out? It might be forthcoming now …
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/10/4/1983433/-Gay-men-overwhelm-Twitter-taking-back-ProudBoys-and-it-is-glorious
Or not, since it seems they might be doing a Weekend at Bernie's with him:
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=12370238
Those gay men trumped the Proud Boys elegantly!
That Twitter feed is such an uplifting moment for the start of the week.
Trump's in hospital, and so's Farrar!
It just got beyond weird (hand-clasped, be-pewed Collin's was freaky enough – now this startling coincidence – OR IS IT???)
You mean Covid can spread by morphic resonance? Now we're really in trouble!
Just to make it a bit weirder…. maureen pugh wasn't at Meet the Candidates in Golden Bay during the weekend.
She has a cold and as a result is self isolating just in case of Covid.
Toby Manhire makes the case for why it might happen: https://thespinoff.co.nz/politics/05-10-2020/how-judith-collins-and-national-win-the-2020-election/
Bit of a stretch, right? His reasoning is weakest when he doesn't explain what would shift centrists away from Labour now. The fact that the Nat leader isn't courting them – is trying to herd neanderthals instead – is a tacit admission of defeat, I reckon.
But the best bit is his screenshot from ONE News of the TVNZ political editor modelling the 1950s housewife style. Frump, with flowers on. My daughter has been telling me for years that retro styles are huge in younger generations, but I hadn't realised things have gotten that bad.
Aren't comments about someone's attire just channelling your inner Judith? Or worse, your inner Bowron, musty with talcum. https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/opinion/122961639/policy-on-the-hoof-reflected-in-hooves
Normal commentary style here. Trump's orange hair continued to feature persistently long after he blonded it several years ago. When in Rome, do as the Romans do…
Perhaps you are just showing your age.
the difference is that the president of the US isn't a class subjected to oppression. Women are routinely subjected to put downs, body shaming, ageism, classism and so on on the basis of their sex class, and additionally that plays into other real world effects of institutional sexism. If we devalue frumpy old women we don't have to pay them as much.
The young and 1950's retro … possibly derived from the United States of Tara, that or Mad Men or channelling dead grandparents before their children (it's a form of rebellion).
As for Tara, Gone with the Wind and Trump's hair, its less a change in colouring as looking different when sprayed on a ligher base, graying hair.
Old Spice and Brylcreem?
Eu de RSA.
how is ageism a good response to sexism?
Standards change over time. Overconfident old men are not a class subjected to oppression.
what's the relevance of old? Are you saying that returned servicemen are overconfident as a class?
Saying that Dennis deserves to be mocked because he's not part of a class subjected to oppression fails in at least two ways.
1. old people are a class subjected to oppression
2. if we say it's ok to mock some people on the basis of age as a class, then why not some people on the basis of body shape/size, or sex and so on?
You seem to be getting caught up in detail here and confusing commentary for 'mocking'. What is acceptable discourse is a function of time, so our ages are relevant. The smell of Old Spice and Brylcreem reminds me of RSAs on rare visits as a kid. May not mean much to younger readers. Maybe more to older ones than me?
In this particular case, for years Jessica Mutch's hips were kept out of shot on screen, probably to avoid the sort of erudite rejoinders we saw upthread.
Can we all agree that the least interesting thing about the story cited is what she wore, then move on with our days?
yes, way too much outrage. I realise that is default setting for many on here, but is bloody tiresome!
if you weren't mocking, I definitely misunderstood. It appears Incog was though.
Yup
Sacha Old Spice is still on sale at supermarkets. The makers have found that the OTT scents of modern product don't appeal as much to the sense of the olders. As you say let's keep on with the main story, and not be deflected to run after the smell of red herrings.
Sometimes a flashback is just that.
Dennis is in and of a class of his own and mocking him could be called Dennism 😉
The term is Denisovan.
Definitely, a dying
breedclass.Oh come on weka. Don't be so uptight. Let us make rude remarks about each other sometimes. As long as it is give and take. Fr'instance men calling each other 'old bastard' doesn't mean they don't like each other or are calling their mothers' out.
I think you have been indoctrinated by some university course, or prolonged reflection and navel gazing one – similar to those I have attended myself, but have shed some of the strictures! I realise to many they are sacred, and everything that is said in them must be written in stone, and objectors bashed on the head with it. Feel free. But please can I be only attacked by one person, not a gang.
For me, weka was and is not the issue that sparked this thread and we seem to be getting off tangent.
Get back to me when you can take class analysis into your account.
😀
Brut and Blue Stratos? Hehehe
4711, because I’m good with numbers and because I’m worth it.
Now you are talking 🙂 🙂
You know that you are intellectually overreaching when you use labels to generalise ordinary decent citizens as Neanderthals, which is not even stereotypically accurate, don’t you?
You also know that JC is fighting a rear-guard battle to stem imminent losses of MPs without any medium-term vision or strategy, don’t you?
And you should also know that it is the camera angle and studio lighting that might make that dress look less flattering, yes?
Toby Manhire is right. If the Greens fall below 5% Judith may well be PM.
Auckland Central Labour voters should split their vote, giving Chloe Swarbrick the candidate vote and Labour the party vote. This will ensure the Green vote is not wasted so that they can join Labour in coalition.
In other constituencies a party vote for the Greens is a vote for a more progressive Jacinda government.
For the Greens to drop below 5% would require its previous voters switching to Labour or staying home. The latter seems unlikely this year. The former counters any fantasies about a Judith victory celebration.
Yes the ‘paths to victory’ theorised by Manhire and others require major shifts between blocs, not just between parties. It requires National’s vote to rise significantly to c 40% without taking any of those votes off Act, and for the Greens to dip under 5% without those votes going to Labour.
Wrong Uncle-read the article again.
His figures propose Nats 37.5% and Act 8%. The latter is the highest Act have been in any poll in the last few years. I don’t see they’d stay there if Nats climb over the 28-33% they’ve been in recent polls.
Sacha-Imagine waking up on Oct 18 to PM Crusher per the Toby Manhire article.
How would you feel?
In that case, I’d wait until 6 Nov and pray like hell
Me too Incog…..well maybe hoping not praying.
Go the special votes, usually the nat's lose a seat and the Greens gain one.
Not going to happen. Sleep easy.
Or enough extra voters coming out in force without voting for the Greens that they drop below 5% (very unlikely, but thought I'd mention the slight possibility).
Powerful forces are at work. JC prays to God and even Sir John is back in the house as if he never left. Fortunately, ponytails are relatively safe due to social distancing rules.
Anecdotal stuff here, but I heard the voting places around Otago university are pumping, apparently the referendum is getting a lot of young ppl voting, could be interesting if it really is a trend.
You think it is due to just the one referendum? Even that would be good news!
I think younger people have many reasons as to why they should engage and vote but apathy has ruled for years and not just voter apathy.
Yes many people who have never voted are coming out to vote for the first time in years or ever for weed.
I keep getting asked by people if they can leave their party and candidate vote blank and just vote for the referendum (I think that's a an incomplete ballot? Though should be an option) so I expect much of that to go to the greens and top and there will be a bunch of people who just vote for some random parties with no chance (like TOP or legalize marijuana or even soc cred) still if it gets weed passed, good.
When they first suggested holding two referendums at the General Election I thought it could be too much, overloading people, and putting them off voting altogether. I’ll be gladly proven wrong 🙂
I suspect one of the reasons turnout is so low in the US is it's such a pain. Most places you're voting for an order of magnitude more candidates than even Auckland local government. Feels like everybody is on the ballot down to third assistant dog-catcher.
If it's paper ballots, it's a stack like a magazine, or in Pennsylvania the voting booth had a machine with more levers to turn than a nuclear power station control room.
So a mere four ticks to think about – dead easy.
Agreed, make it as simple as possible, which is necessary but not sufficient for high voter turnout. In other words, it is not good enough for people to have no excuse not to vote, but they have to have an actual reason to vote. Merely ticking boxes of a Candidate and a Party is barely enough, it seems, and for some it is not even enough. I hope my writing is improving because I know Morrissey is reading 😉
If comprehension is absent, is it still reading?
I’ll have to ask my cat because he’s an avid reader of my comments when he plops on my laptop while I’m trying to write well.
Give him a good rub behind the ears from me.
He says “purrrrr”.
Exactly.
This is called "democracy". Except the right, and opportunity to vote is being eroded day by day – State Law by State Law – county by county and district by district.
https://twitter.com/PoliticoRyan/status/1312989158730862594?s=19
Not sure Corey, you get 3 separate pieces of paper for voting, one for election, and 2 for each referendum, I would think you can vote for all 3, or just one? I'm not sure of course but just the fact it's all separate I assumed that? For what it's worth I voted Green Party, Labour candidate, and Yes & Yes for referenda. Walked in, stated my name, and voted. So easy, we got a lot to be thankful for in this country.
Do I have to vote in both referendums and the General Election?
At this year's General Election, New Zealanders can vote in:
Eligible voters can choose to vote in all, some, or none of these.
https://www.referendums.govt.nz/faq.html
https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-05-10-2020/#comment-1756758
yes, think the fact there are two important referendum along with general election, and covid fallout, will lead to a high voter turnout. usually not good news for conservative parties.
Who knows, maybe in a few years erudite experts on popular culture will explain how the pandemic lockdowns and loss of female employment exacerbated existing trends towards delivery of food then cooked and prepared for dinner parties. As women reclaimed the home as their dominion for meaningful work and identity.
All while men resumed dominance of life in the wider world in a way not seen since the Greeks first made up democracy and western civilisation.
Of course New Zealand under an Ardern government would have to be ostracised as a socialist outlier …
SPC What action oriented women wanted was choice. The ability to get out and do things in society, not be embedded at home and treated as a 'drawing' on the household budget, and remaining in men's minds at about the age of 18, just over the age of consent and no more.
Unfortunately the male-oriented capitalistic culture always willing to pick out religious strictures about where women belong in society chose to elevate male’s true interest, that of making money, over the building of a good and fair society of strong characters. Women's work is dismissed, child rearing also, socialisation and building character and skills also, and women are forced into level entry jobs that teenagers preparing for their work life should be able to access.
That is the background to the present situation of many women. They aren't better than men, but are certainly are worthy of a lot more respect and attention to their ideas and smarts than now happens. And they would like to be at home more and able to carry out their child-raising duties adequately. But most would not want to be stuck there, instead enabled to get part-time work with school holidays off while the children are young. Later to move further into the enterprise and trading society, not objects of charity or dependency for life.
Job sharing would work, but men would have to learn how to use Zoom (as well as a car) and multi-task if there were children about.
TBH the cat walking across my keyboard, wanting pats, rubbing up against the monitor, meowing loudly on calls and pinching my seat as soon as I get up are bigger problems than the children that frequent the house.
The dog at least just pokes his head in the door says "Oh you're still there" and wanders off again!
Right now, we have budgie sitting while family are off on a holiday annoying grandparents. I think that I’d prefer the squabbling kids.
Having the choice, I have retreated back to the workplace. In a 55 square metre apartment, I have decided that there isn’t really room for budgies.
The cat was ok – you just provide a unused laptop with its builtin heater and keyboard where they can supervise. Then use the 10 foot throw so they have to think about landing on their feet as entertainment when you have to remove them from place that are your spaces. They learn fast. Just not fast enough about motorway off-ramps – damnit.
I'm sure a quick ad in the very local suburb news will produce some children in exchange for the budgie.
Walks off whistling "you don't know how lucky you are……"
Yeah! You gotta watch those pussy cats!
https://media1.giphy.com/media/unQ3IJU2RG7DO/giphy.gif
SPC Job-sharing – perhaps. But women getting out into the wider world from the home and family is also good. Helps to enable full adult and social growth and understanding, (getting towards Maslow's ideas of self-realisation).
However to digress, I forecast that there will be more small family-owned businesses making small profits but being regularly in work, employing children etc – back to medieval approach. The march of the large corps(es) have and will continue to kill off many of our previous jobs.
The only way for society and community to survive is to practise circular trade with each other, so circulating money and enabling each other. This will provide the well-known multiplier effect, and build lively and busy towns, with lots of social contact, while big business tries to put spokes in everyone's wheels. The wealthy class and leaders might start taxing wheels as a good flat tax! The money-magnets will always be looking for ways to get their fingers in the pie. A tax on windows once, when glass was scarce.
https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780195396584/obo-9780195396584-0236.xml
Family Life in the Middle Ages Jacqueline Murray
http://www.localhistories.org/middleageswomen.html
https://rosaliegilbert.com/employment.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_household#Rural
https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_workweek.html – Pre-industrial workers had a shorter workweek than today's
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26289459 – What medieval Europe did with its teenagers
google keywords for further info: – medieval women at work in family business
Once again Vernon Tava gets it wrong. Timed his run too late, then shot himself in the foot.
Poor Vernon. Obviously, the ad was not only misleading – it was designed to mislead! What part of authenticity doesn't he get? Every part.
Bruce, on being a leftist:
Is Bruce a covergence moon bat?
Doubt it. Normally comes across as sensible. I always get a sense that he inherited leftism from his working-class dad. See the song Factory, for instance.
End of the day, factory whistle cries
Men walk through these gates with death in their eyes
Bruce's never done a hard days manual labour work or been in a factory, he admits that as most think that's his past based on the music.
10 years of solid gigging with the East Street band are his dues prior to ‘fame’ he's simply one of the best songwriters about able to convey emotion in a tune.
"Normally comes across as sensible."
?????????
"Sensible"? Really? Then who's this singing out for Barack Obama in 2012? Not in the “hope and change” year of 2008, mind you, but after four years of signing off on drone killings (all of them illegal), shaking hands with and being lionized by human rights abusers, continuing the war against democratic governments in Central and South America, and persecuting and imprisoning U.S. and Australian journalists.
Folks who lead a busy life often don't keep up with politics, nor pay much other than scant attention to headline news stories. You tend to see black & white all the time. Others see shades of grey, some pale, some dark, some in between…
Folks who lead a busy life often don't keep up with politics, nor pay much other than scant attention to headline news stories.
Bruce Springsteen is certainly busy. Too busy to think or care about the implications of backing a war criminal. In fact, three war criminals in successive elections.
You tend to see black & white all the time.
Actually, as you will admit when you cool down, my thinking is a lot more sophisticated and subtle than that. But when it comes to people who order the killing of civilians, the destruction of democracy, and the persecution of journalists, yes, I do see such criminality in "black & white."
Others see shades of grey, some pale, some dark, some in between…
There's a way to finesse the killing of civilians and the undermining and/or destruction of democratic governments in Central and South America?
…
https://me.me/i/moonbat-wingnut-convergence-moonbats-wingnuts-lef-wingthe-circle-of-derright-wing-democrats-republicans-25749fa6303748b6a61f2b3d82440c20
Life mimics art:
How anyone can call America a democracy these days:
The Supreme Court will hear a case that could destroy what remains of the Voting Rights Act
Is Bruce [Springsteen] a covergence moon bat?
Almost certainly not.
Being fully on board with Biden is one strong indicator.
He was an unequivocal Hillary supporter in '16, instead of ranting about how Dems and Repugs are equally bad and Bernie wuz robbed and how he would vote for Stein or not at all.
AFAIK he's never suggested the likes of Tucker Carlson 'get it' or tried to smear movements such as BLM by calling them marxist or indulged in other white-supremacist-adjacent behaviour.
Nor has he ever shown any other behaviour associated with convergence moonbats, to my knowledge.
Being fully on board with Biden is one strong indicator.
Yikes! “The Boss” has spent far too much time singing hoarsely, not enough time reading and thinking.
He was an unequivocal Hillary supporter in '16….
AFAIK he's never suggested the likes of Tucker Carlson 'get it' or tried to smear movements such as BLM by calling them marxist or indulged in other white-supremacist-adjacent behaviour.
If he’s such a progressive and tolerant person, then why is he supporting Biden? And why was he an "unequivocal Hillary supporter" in 2016? Clinton?
Maybe The Boss is not familiar with your oeuvre, Mr Breen, the illiterate uncultured heathen he is.
You're probably right. I doubt he reads much at all.
You're probably right. I doubt he has much time at all, in between the writing. In any case, why read when you can write?
To write well, you have to read. That explains why, for instance, Jeffrey Archer is such an appalling writer. And Cameron "Whaleoil" Slater.
By that standard, you've apparently never read anything significant in your life.
Explains all the third rate attempts at stenography, tho.
…you've apparently never read anything significant in your life. Explains all the third rate attempts at stenography, tho.
Well that little effort was not as colorful as your ever-inventive cascade of abuse for the Orange Shit-Gibbon, or whatever witty putdown you're about to employ for the Fanta Fascist. Just as lame, however.
Keep trying, my friend. By the way, what's the state of progress in the search for that missing bit of evidence proving that Drumpf is a Russian puppet?
Not sure that applies to writing songs/music in the same way as, say, writing literature. Neither does storytelling rely on reading necessarily and many cultures, including Māori, of course, have a long and rich oral tradition in storytelling. I think living with open eyes and an open mind, observing, creating experiences, and meeting other people and travelling, for example, are probably more important for writing well than reading other people’s words.
Agreed! You're onto it, Mr Cognito!
Collins: 90-day trials give businesses confidence to hire 'different ethnicity'
Geez
When something pernicious is reframed by Judith as an employment scheme to give the 'dodgy' lot a chance..you know( you know that lot)…. then sack them.
" Collins said she backed 90-day trials.
"They give businesses confidence to give people a go, when … maybe there's something with that person – maybe there's something in their background, maybe they're not quite qualified enough, maybe they're not that experienced, maybe they don't know them that well.
Maybe they're a different ethnicity – you know, this is about actually giving people a chance "
So Judith thinks the employers of this country are all pretty much racist? Oh dear – these employers need state support to overcome their racism??
Someone should ask Michael Barnett or Phil O'Reilly a direct question about whether they agree with Judith Collins that small employers need 90 days to overcome their fear of employing someone of a different ethnicity.
I'd love to see them squirm in response……
Oh god she's horrible.
It's never ever occurred to her that the employer employee relationship should be reciprocal. An equal partnership.
'give people a go'
fuksake
Judith is loved by the base because she says the quiet bits out loud. Having to keep the quiet bits quiet feels like oppression, like being 'told what to think'. By saying it out loud Judith breaks the shackles of this 'oppression' and champions 'freedom of speech'. Undoubtedly God agrees, because he/she/it speaks through Judith.
" the quiet bit"
Instead of addressing underlying issues such as causes of people having 'backgrounds' , worker exploitation, non-livable wages or the sacking of workers for unseemly profit margins, it's Judith's innuendo (" the quiet bit" ) that it's okay that innate prejudice exists, that there is a boss with 'superior' knowledge and ethnicity …
Hey Judith while you're playing to the base secret supremacist, say it out loud…
Subjectively, One is only, you know, " a different ethnicity " when you Judith are looking in the mirror.
There'll be though that 1/10 grateful lepers out there for 90 days, dismissed on a whim, who's then on a WINZ stand down.
The Weekend at Bernie's similarities just keep coming. Now they've propped him up in a car to wheel him around for a few minutes in front of adoring Drumpfkins.
Come to think of it, how do we know it was really him? Could have been a crisis actor.
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/10/04/politics/donald-trump-coronavirus-alternate-reality/index.html
Spitting Image?
Weekend at Bernies! – USA politics isn't that good is it? Hollywood must be after all the footage of this incumbent/recumbent it can get – or is that frottage?
Love it – that was such a good film. Can stand being watched every couple of years I think my time is due.
hired from the same agency that supplies nth korea with phony kims. be a hoot if they got sent to the wrong job!!!
Would anyone notice?
AAA batteries included?
They're both low-energy. So yeah, sure.
I prefer the wind-up models.
Inserting the key in the correct location is a bit ewww.
The older models only had one hole.
No! That's where they are shinning the powerful light right now.
So he's a North Korean asset as well as a Russian agent. Keep those conspiracy theories coming!
Keep shinning, you can't imagine how this production ends but it's bound to be a blast!
Don't get high on your own supply, dude.
Jokes aren't conspiracy theories, but conspiracy theories can be jokes…
That long-running Russiagate joke was not so funny. I note they haven't been pushing it with quite the brio they used to do before the Clintonistas' three and a half years of fantasizing was sunk in the most embarrassing manner possible.
https://theintercept.com/2019/04/18/robert-mueller-did-not-merely-reject-the-trumprussia-conspiracy-theories-he-obliterated-them/
Blinkers are funny things. So many people charged and convicted in such an innocent campaign…
Of course: the criminal Trump regime is full of criminals. Who claimed Trump and his gang were “innocent”?
But as Greenwald and other real journalists have pointed out, all the deranged shouting by Rachel Maddow and her imitators in the media and by the absurd Jerrold Nadler and his hapless cronies in Congress have produced no evidence of the mythical "Russian collusion."
That's not quite what Mueller's report said, even according to your link.
There's a lot of difference between "produced no evidence" and "did not find evidence likely to prove beyond reasonable doubt", for example.
The eleven counts of suspected obstruction of justice by POTUS might have helped there minimise evidence actually gathered.
Nope, he’s a Russian agent made in North Korea with Japanese components, trained by the Chinese, and running on Taiwanese batteries. This explains his poor spelling and random Tweets because of conflicts in the firmware. Please keep up.
Thanks Mr Cognito. I knew you'd explain it perfectly.
Here on TS we look after our most vulnerable commenters and transport them to MIQ when necessary.
Love you all and appreciate you going the extra mile for the likes of moi.
https://media1.tenor.com/images/2b6138c8abd50d00965e784d948a88df/tenor.gif?itemid=4733491
I see you’re having to dig deep into your GIF collection again. Time for a better hobby?
Is there a better one?
Yes, there is! But we will miss you.
Ouch! Ya got me, and ya got me good.
https://www.offset.com/photos/downcast-man-in-pea-coat-in-field-168528
Narcissist in Chief was desperate to go drivies so he could wave to his gawking cult followers and fuck the help.
https://twitter.com/DrPhillipsMD/status/1312869454385229827
A while ago the Secret Service actually looked like they were going to have staffing problems because of how many were getting covid. So maybe they're putting recovered agents around the Coronamoron-in Chief, and hoping like hell the immunity actually lasts.
https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20200831/secret-service-faces-covid-19-concerns
Level 1
I looked at an old Punch and came across Edwina Currie – she was done on Spitting Image. This is a small break from The Election and the buskers involved – so out of tune many of them aren't they!
Currie came across as a lively speaker in Punch so I looked her up and here she is being interviewed in 2012. This gives an interesting example to compare with our women pollies or how they are presented anyway. Currie was in the Conservatives. https://www.theguardian.com/uk/edwina-currie
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5j4D9iU4nac
Today's Spitting Image.
Here she is in full flow at the Oxford Union. Topic: We are not all feminists. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cSrX2FJ-Q8
The NZ covid song was pretty funny, up until they did the "island with small population" bullshit. Fuck that excuse is getting old. If our PM was a dickhead we'd have covid through the roof just like they do.
And to celebrate Jacinda bringing Auckland back down to Level 1, let's all sing along to the Spitting Image song
SuperKiwiSocialisticExtraGoodJacinda
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/news/article.cfm?c_id=1501119&objectid=12370354
Spitting Image fired their gun at a sensitive spot though. We are trying to stop people firing guns, not spot them. Bad people at spitting image, they don't know what's truly funny in the UK, their tastebuds have become coarsened with indulgence in jeremymandering, our rosebuds are still blooming, just.
Amazing. Who would have predicted that with the rugby in a post…….
This sounds intersting – something for those with election malaise to have a look at
https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/BU2010/S00063/its-not-too-late-govt-can-save-marsden-point-by-partnering-on-a-just-transition.htm
Refining NZ have this morning confirmed that around 100 jobs will be cut as the first part of its Strategic Review concludes, but FIRST Union says that it isn’t too late to save more jobs, assets and infrastructure while transitioning to cleaner and greener operations if the Government are serious about a Just Transition for Marsden Point….
Poll today?
Where is the report on voting progress.?????
165,000 on Saturday and Sunday.
https://elections.nz/stats-and-research/2020-general-election-advance-voting-statistics/
Admirably concise.
https://twitter.com/AnandWrites/status/1312730589515190278
My thoughts entirely!
Just this morning I was musing to myself on the hypocrisy of Trump being cared for by a team of doctors and nurses and contributing hardly a cent to the public expense of such care being lavished upon him. And, at the same time doing his utmost to deprive millions of his fellow Americans, even the bare minimum of the treatment that he was receiving.
It also astounds me that the woman he has nominated for the Supreme Court; having had the way to the position she currently holds, paved for her by the tenacity of RBG, should now be even considering pulling up the ladder which she has climbed. Much like Pulla Benefit did to the women of NZ.
Trump's care would be a "Around about @#0000000$$$$$" bargaining with an insurance claim!! not much in the way of State care.
No insurance involved. As Commander-in-Chief, the military medical system looks after his medical needs and wants. There's even the dedicated Presidential Suite at the local military hospital.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Reed_National_Military_Medical_Center#Presidential_facilities
This USA commentator was concerned about loss of USA civil liberties and democracy mid last century – Edmund Wilson.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Wilson#Cold_War
In his book The Cold War and the Income Tax: A Protest (1963), Wilson argued that as a result of competitive militarization against the Soviet Union, the civil liberties of Americans were being paradoxically infringed under the guise of defense from Communism. For those reasons, Wilson also opposed involvement in the Vietnam War. …
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cold_War_and_the_Income_Tax
He's shocked and alarmed at the sums spent to fuel the arms race with the Soviet Union, and upset also at how enthusiastically his government pursues chemical, biological and nuclear weapons technology — what now gets lumped under the "Weapons of Mass Destruction" banner. He determines, finally, that:
And later: