Is there no end to msm promoting this family? It’s become an obsession with media!
This time it’s Stephie Key (aka Cherry Lazar) once more, indulging in public self advancement through her soft porn “art.” Incidentally it’s interesting to note most, if not all of her “art” involves mainly herself!
Never ending self gratification through public promotion seems to be a genetic trait, obviously passed from father to both offspring!
Nope, no end. Watch as Max is the new phenom, the PM is invincible, the Greens are the worst bullies out there, and expert opinion on that face book face time thingy thats all the rage these days.
Gawd, I wonder how many new social problems are created by people reading this crap.
I read the article out of curiosity – it wasn’t much different to a similar story about a year or so ago about Ms Key. Her father has no shame : a real caring father would not be putting his children thru the media like that. Because you can bet your bottom dollar that these stories about his children are all designed to make him look good ! Yuk !
If you’re happy about Key’s family being used like this when the going is good … you don’t get to use the ‘keep his family out of it’ excuse when the shit hits the fan.
All part of the setup, get the kids out there with the msm promoting and praising them as good honest nice kids making their way in the big bad world who just happen to have a rich powerful dad.
It’s what script writers call building empathy so you feel sorry for them when the big bad world does what it’s always done. Better call Saul runs along this line.
What intrigues me is how much the DP crew will be involved in the big bad world phase with staged cyber bullying etc like their recent dog whistling rant on RNZ site.
Yep – although the obsession is more about generating clicks than it is about promoting the Key whanau, IMHO. I’d like to think its entirely mercantile as opposed to political chicanery designed to promote John Key. Either way, the MSM knows that it is, in effect, dangling Max and Stephie over an Otago University orientation piss-up like a piñata. The MSM fawning adulation of the Key Kids is designed to bring out the bullies (egged on by agent provocateurs) in order to generate more click-bait stories about “all those nasty lefties”.
Its got to the stage now where the MSM is generating its own news and, in deliberately using the Key Kids, exposing itself as the real bully.
Bullying that may or may not lead to the suicide of children of politicians doesn’t get worse than this….
During an aggressive campaign in 1975, Muldoon dubbed Rowling “a shiver looking for a spine to run up”. …”Being a nice guy is clearly a disability in politics and it was certainly not a good attribute in the 1975 campaign,” Rowling said ruefully years later, “It was played as a weakness against strength. I didn’t fight a very good campaign. I was tentative and people didn’t want that.”
And it didn’t stop there. The bullying of Rowling (btw the man who sacked Roger Douglas) was so bad that a ‘citizens for Rowling’ group was formed – it included Edmund Hillary. I remember the talk at the time of the pressure on the Rowling family.
His daughter, Kim, killed herself in 1978.
The cynical me thinks the current PM knows his history and is using it in reverse.
Brian Gould drew parallels between John Key and Robert Muldoon back in 2011. In his article, Brian said the two were quite different personalities because Key is “by nature a conciliator and seeker of consensus” but, like Muldoon, he dominates the media narrative.
Now, in 2015, we know that the nature of Key as discerned by Brian is actually a Crosby-Textor confection and, really, he is just as nasty as Muldoon ever was. Worse, I reckon. The difference between Muldoon’s era and Key’s reign comes down to the exponential use of PR by government and the internet. Key can, on the surface, be all about conciliation and consensus but that image is supported by a well-funded and clandestine Dirty Politics Machine doing the wetwork for him. Muldoon, at least, had the guts to do his out in the open, mostly.
Incessant joking, Key is so unlike Muldoon. Key much more like Trump, that aged vulture who is current picking over the corpse that is modern converativism, the grand old party, whose years of arrogant deliberate we wont change nothing politics has finally died.
Edit to add: one small action you can take against the MSM is to install an advertising and trackers blocker. I use these ones. They require a bit of fiddling about with to block everything and you sometimes have to tweak them for particular sites in order to, say, play a video or fill in a form or comment. But, wow, do they speed up page loading and eliminate screen clutter. There are versions for cell phones too.
Unfortunately for some they also just create problems or slow systems down (I’ve used ghostery a couple of times and always end up turning it off. I can’t even get my normal flashblocker to work properly now, so many new websites simply don’t work, or the blocker works very unevenly).
I really wish the geek community would sort this out, because at the moment in order to stop tracking one needs a higher level of skill that most of the population possess. EFF have some good guides and I’ve had some good advice here on ts, but never managed to find something that didn’t cause more problems than it solved.
Research shows that most people want more privacy controls but end up using the internet without them because they need the internet.
They are used by us for putting the name details into your comments, and by the google and statcounter trackers for us to keep track of visitors for stats.
If you drop the cookies, then the latter former means you will probably have to enter your details for each comment. In the case of the former latter, it just means the stats for visits and unique visitors are out – but those are deeply inaccurate measures anyway.
The Herald for one needs to take a long hard look at itself and then get sorted.
A quick search on the website shows about 60 odd hits for Max Key for the 2015 year alone. A number of those seem to have been sourced off his public postings. So there they are busy feeding the flames then crying out “oh look it’s getting to hot for him”.
And if people who set their social media settings to private attract a whole lot less attention.
“Democrats have a lot riding on Hillary Clinton. Which is why the word ‘immunity’ should make them very nervous.
….”
_____________________________________________
Well, at least you are being even handed, Penny.
You are polluting both The Standard and Kiwiblog with your cut and paste drivel.
I see there’s more from you below.
If we had a voting mechanism here, like they do over at Kiwiblog, I’m sure you would find that very few people are interested in your view.
I don’t think he’s finished just yet. Thom Hartmann on The Big Bicture had a good piece on how the media are mischievously adding the super delegate votes to Hillary’s total, when the super delegates can change their vote right up until the end of the Primaries.
And the super delegates have done that to Hillary before when she was running against Obama. At one point she led Obama by a 2-1 ratio but over the course of the campaign many saw her as too divisive a leader and they gradually trickled Obama’s way. History could well repeat.
Careful people……Key Schlong Ill and family must be gushed over……..they are our New Camelot after all. Any departure from awed gush you’re cyberbullying.
Hang on…….who said anything about ‘cyberbullying’ ? Oh that’s right, it was Key Schlong Ill……..followed (on cue) by Watkins, Young and Trev’ of the Herald I daresay, Soper…….
Yes we are witnessing a very cynical and staged event to garner sympathy for the kids to compensate for dads rough ride.
Also further distractions required as a prominent nz’er is closer to being unmasked which is likely to trigger key loyalists to re-evaluate their Demi god in all his shonky dodgy ways.
tc – you don’t think the prominent nzer who now has such a cushy job up north is going to be named and shamed in the MSM when he comes up for trial, do you ? This secrecy around him is going to continue right up to the type of sentence he gets – or even if he gets one. Plus there is also word around that the long “delay” in the trial has been designed to make him look better, and to somehow fudge the evidence coming from witnesses. ie the longer its delayed the less inclined the witnesses might be in talking about it.
A lengthy wait for any trial would usually just aggravate the distress of the complainants as they have to keep reliving it at lengthy intervals and can’t get on with reconstructing their lives.
Facebook looks set to pay more UK tax but it might not be as much as you think
March 5, 2016 4.48am AEDT
Facebook has said it will pay more in UK taxes from 2017.
The news comes hot on the heels of the much-derided settlement of Google’s decade-long tax dispute with the UK tax authority. It also comes a day after it emerged that Facebook is paid more by HMRC for adverts than it pays in tax.
Facebook has encountered heavy criticism for its tax dealings – not for their legality, but for how fair they are. In 2014 the company’s UK operations, Facebook UK Limited, reported a corporation tax payment of only £4,327. The company’s UK subsidiary reported a turnover of £105m and a gross profit of £103m, but this was wiped out by a massive administrative expense of £131m, leaving a pre-tax operating loss of £28m.
Companies trade with a view to making a profit, but since 2011 Facebook has been reporting accounting losses. Its audited UK accounts for 2014 do not provide any information about the composition of the administrative expenses, a key element in its reported losses and a possible reason for low tax.
Facebook has promised to change its business model and the way it records its sales revenues from advertising.
Currently, Facebook books a number of its sales to UK customers through its Irish subsidiary, Facebook Ireland Limited.
But it is set to pay millions more in taxes after a decision to allow profits from major advertisers initiated in the UK to be taxed in the UK.
Facebook executives said in an internal post reported by the BBC that “UK sales made directly by our UK team will be booked in the UK, not Ireland.
Facebook UK will then record the revenue from these sales”.
The change in Facebook’s business model does not necessarily signal a new era in which Facebook will pay millions in tax that some might assume.
One way to prevent Facebook and other big multinational companies from minimising their taxes would be to implement a system known as unitary taxation, which can eliminate the tax advantages of all intra-group transactions.
But unitary taxation has received virtually no attention from the OECD’s recent Base Erosion Profit Shifting (BEPS) project, which was geared toward reforming the international system for taxing companies.
…..
__________________________________
Hadn’t you noticed that nobody responds to you apart from the occasional sarcastic coment about your rates? It is not that people agree with you – it is more like they just don’t care enough to enter into any sort of dialogue.
Fuck off you disingenuous troll. That’s what I say to anyone who puts words in my mouth and misrepresents my political views and values. Right now it’s hard to imagine a worse candidate for a Mayor than someone who lies about other people’s views and thinks it’s ok to do so for their own agenda.
Kim Hill lets another shameless propagandist have his say, uninterrupted.
RNZ National, Saturday 5 March 2016, 8:12 a.m.
His C.V., as printed on the RNZ website, certainly sounds impressive: “Jamie McIntyre consults on national security issues, blogs on the military and media (Jamie McIntyre’s Behind Frenemy Lines), and is Adjunct Professor of Multimedia Journalism at the University of Maryland. His career spans four decades, from the local news round at WTOP radio in Washington D.C. to Al Jazeera America’s National Security Correspondent based at the Pentagon. He was in the Pentagon on 11 September 2001, and he broke the news of Saddam Hussain’s capture. He is currently on special assignment at PBS NewsHour, where he has investigated the Pentagon’s plans to spend $US1 trillion on upgrading America’s nuclear arsenal, some of which is 60 years old.”
The actuality, however, is not so impressive….
KIM HILL: How come you haven’t been captured by the establishment?
JAMIE McINTYRE: Y’know, I and other reporters are allowed to roam the corridors of the Pentagon at will. I doubt whether you can do that in any other country in the world, even over there in New Zealand.
………..
KIM HILL: Why is Iran not allowed to have nuclear weapons? It just seems to be taken for granted that they can’t have them. Why?
JAMIE McINTYRE: Well, the United States sees itself as the good guys. [snickers awkwardly at the absurdity of that statement]
KIM HILL: Of COURSE.
JAMIE McINTYRE:[adopting a serious tone] But Iran has a track record of supporting organisations deemed to be terrorist, and of being anti-Israel.
Hill, who cannot be so dim as to believe a word of that unsupported stream of nonsense, failed to challenge it. I decided to send her a wake-up message….
Why did you suggest Jamie McIntyre is something other than he is?
Dear Kim,
You asked Jamie McIntyre why he had “not been captured by the establishment”. That question implied that he is an independent and rigorous journalist; what he said during the interview demonstrated he was anything but independent or rigorous.
When you asked him why Iran should not have a nuclear arsenal, McIntyre claimed that the United States are “the good guys” and then he launched into a reiteration of official rhetoric, claiming that Iran “has a track record of supporting organisations deemed to be terrorist and of being anti-Israel.”
Jamie McIntyre spoke with wonderment about how he is allowed to wander freely about the corridors of the Pentagon. His bland endorsement of Pentagon—and State Department—rhetoric shows just why he and other “journalists” like him are allowed to wander so freely: with their credulous repetition of black propaganda against official enemies, “journalists” like Jamie McIntyre are effectively agents of the Pentagon.
Yours sincerely,
Morrissey Breen
Northcote Point
More ignorant—or is it deliberate—recycling of propaganda by Kim Hill….
No National MP could be bothered attending the tangi for the late, great Ranginui Walker. Absolutely shameful considering his immense mana and all the work he did for the Waitangi Tribunal.
He used to write in the Listener before Pamela Stirling turned it into the rightwing travesty it is today. Here he is on the Don Brash Orewa speech:
Thank for the link Karen, I looked the other day for Listener columns and couldn’t find any. Am hoping some of the pre-internet ones will get republished.
That is shameful that no Nats attended his tangi. This is where we are now.
Did any Labour MPs have the nerve to go? (Bearing in mind Helen Clark’s cynical decision to out-Brash Brash after she was spooked by the success of the Orewa speech.)
What is it with this site? I couldn’t access The Standard home page yesterday. Still can’t today – just get this:
This web page is not available
ERR_CONTENT_DECODING_FAILED
Seems the only pages I can access today are “Open Mike 05032016” and “Jeanette Fitzsimons Call to Scrap the ETS”. The only way I can get in to these is by using my bookmark to the Comment Formatting page, then clicking on threads via the right side Comments summary box.
Even so, I can’t access the “Intersections” post, “Young Nats Run Away…” yesterdays “Daily Review”, “John Key Lies…” in fact pretty much most other pages I click on in Comments are producing the above “page not available” result.
Looks like I might as well just give up on here because I have constant access problems and no idea why that is. It only ever happens here. Not a caching problem. Clearing cache does nothing. 🙁
Edit: Update. Oh FFS, I managed to post this comment, and now suddenly everything’s available!! Stuffed if I know what’s going on.
I’ve been having the same issue over the last 24hrs.
Why is this site the ONLY one I continually have trouble with when it comes to loading, Not just recently but ever since I started visiting?
osx 10.6.8 / firefox 44.0.2 (no ad blockers etc)
Great discussion on the latest Keiser Report with Steve Keen and Ross Ashcroft on Australia’s housing bubble and exposure to mortgage debt, and, by default (mentioned), New Zealand’s exposure too…
It’s not what you eat, it’s how it’s produced that determines the ethics. Here’s an interesting exploration of omnivore vs vegan ethics, which also shows that context is everything (it’s looking at site specific food production, in this case in Australia).
Replacing red meat with grain products leads to many more sentient animal deaths, far greater animal suffering and significantly more environmental degradation. Protein obtained from grazing livestock costs far fewer lives per kilogram: it is a more humane, ethical and environmentally-friendly dietary option.
So, what does a hungry human do? Our teeth and digestive system are adapted for omnivory. But we are now challenged to think about philosophical issues. We worry about the ethics involved in killing grazing animals and wonder if there are other more humane ways of obtaining adequate nutrients.
Relying on grains and pulses brings destruction of native ecosystems, significant threats to native species and at least 25 times more deaths of sentient animals per kilogram of food. Most of these animals sing love songs to each other, until we inhumanely mass-slaughter them.
…
The challenge for the ethical eater is to choose the diet that causes the least deaths and environmental damage. There would appear to be far more ethical support for an omnivorous diet that includes rangeland-grown red meat and even more support for one that includes sustainably wild-harvested kangaroo.
There is a wild meat group in Australia – I have not been aware of one here, but perhaps there is. I know that when I ordered a pasta dish with the little blue mussels at the the pub in Melbourne, someone from the wild foods camp commented approvingly. I yearn for old school ways of eating, with the farms close to the cities and meat being a high days/holy days kind of food. I am not opposed to meat eating per se, but do not think that animals should be reduced to fodder either.
That’s pretty much where I’m at too Olwyn. Family farms whose purpose is to produce food and provide a living for multiple people rather than big business that treats animals as stock units (not that some family farms haven’t been prone to animal cruelty as well). Often in these arguments we are comparing one set of bads for another. Let’s replace feedlot beef with Monsanto soy. Whereas the vision you present allows us to behave ethically on a number of fronts and produce food sustainably with regard for the wider ecosystems. I like the meat on high days concept. There’s also the idea from many cultures that you eat small amounts of meat often, but the end result is less meat than we eat now without going to the hard extreme of veganism (which is never going to be sustainable).
I know lots of people that eat feral rabbit, venison, goat, pig etc. I liked the Australian perspective of large tracts of land being able to support smaller populations of feral animals for harvest. We could do this in a smaller scale in NZ too.
I like the meat on high days concept. There’s also the idea from many cultures that you eat small amounts of meat often, but the end result is less meat than we eat now without going to the hard extreme of veganism (which is never going to be sustainable). I think those ways of doing things are consistent with each other – the “small amounts of meat often” bit adds up to a whole animal being used, and not just the most desirable bits.
Often in these arguments we are comparing one set of bads for another. Let’s replace feedlot beef with Monsanto soy. I couldn’t agree more! Everything gets reduced to “How would you like your corporatism?”
How long before something is done about the, in my view, significant ‘conflict of interest’ in Auckland Council being a member of the private sector lobby group for developers – the NZ Property Council?
FYI – I raised this matter directly at the following Auckland Council Special Governing Body meeting:
(Scroll to 7.50 minutes to see/ hear for yourself my presentation to the Special Auckland Council Governing Body held on 24 February 2016, on the ‘out of scope’ rezoning changes made behind closed doors by the Auckland Council Unitary Plan Committee.)
FYI – I was the only Auckland Mayoral candidate who addressed Auckland Council at this meeting.
Same dodgy buzz here in Wellington Penny. Councillor for Northern ward, Deputy Mayor and now Mayoral candidate on the Labour ticket, Justin Lester, sits on the executive of the Wellington branch of the NZ Property Council.
No conflict of interest has been declared.
Our city planning manager, is the former husband of one of Wellington biggest residential developers and did at least declare a conflict of interest over his relationship with that person, although nobody seems to have told the Mayor, as it is was her office that requested he sort out issues regarding anti social behaviour by developers and contractors in my neighbourhood. They simply denied he had a conflict of interest when I raised it.
The northern suburbs are at the mercy of mass development. All work is undertaken on a non notified basis. There are no plans on any of the developments to mitigate environmental damage, outside of rules about not letting sediment get into creeks.
After battling with the council, including the above mentioned councillor, and the developer for 18 months I’ve come to the conclusion that there is an incredibly unhealthy relationship between the council and developers here in Wellington.
Had there been plans in place to protect and enhance the environment, build in areas close to public transport and close to shops and amenities, or at least allow for commercial areas within residential areas, to undertake construction in a way that is respectful towards residents and to build low cost housing I wouldn’t see a problem. It has been the complete opposite and theres only two winners, the developers and the council.
All you ever wanted to know about neoliberal economics and Global Housing Bubbles …in particular Australia (NZ bank implications) and UK…and elsewhere…and where to for baby boomers, millennials, aspirationals etc
“In this special episode of the Keiser Report, Max and Stacy are joined by Professor Steve Keen, author of Debunking Economics, and Ross Ashcroft of RenegadeInc.com and the crowd-funded series, Meet the Renegades. They discuss housing bubbles in Australia, housing policy in the UK, and the rise of Donald Trump as a sign of the great recession happening outside the property bubble cities in which both politicians and journalists live.”
And while you lot are at it, why don’t you “Give a little” to Penny Bright to help pay her rates and arrears, she seems hard done by !!
[lprent: Completely off topic. Banned one week for diversion and another week for trolling. Moved to Open Mike. If I see you deliberately do this kind of stupidity again, I’ll be less lenient. ]
“American presidential election politics is a cross between a talent show and a beauty contest. Being smart and coherent does not necessarily pay dividends. Case in point: Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Both are front-runners of their parties. Trump is idiosyncratic and raw; Clinton the ultimate establishment insider. Is this a choice, or merely bad theater?
CrossTalking with Brandon Andrews, David Paul Kuhn, and Lionel.”
Just found out about this wee historical gem – which, in my view, is both pertinent and potentially politically embarrassing for Hillary Clinton?
So – back in 1964 now Democratic Presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton – worked (as a Republican?) on the 1964 election campaign of Republican segregationist Presidential candidate – Barry Goldwater.
So much for Hillary Clinton’s ‘civil rights’ credentials?
Barry Goldwater was never supposed to be supported as the Republican Presidential candidate at their convention, because he was regarded by ‘establishment’ Republicans as being ‘unelectable’.
Is history going to repeat itself?
This time I’m referring to Bernie Sanders and the Democratic Convention?
A 1996 NPR interview with Hillary Clinton has recently resurfaced, in which the current Democratic front-runner shockingly embraced conservatism and reiterated how proud she was to support a segregationist presidential candidate.
In the interview, Clinton told NPR’s Scott Simon that her political beliefs were “rooted in the conservatism that I was raised with,” and talked about being a “Goldwater girl” in 1964:
……
Barry Goldwater served five terms as a United States Senator for Arizona and was the Republican nominee for President in the Election of 1964. He is credited with reviving the conservative movement in the United States in the 1960’s.
Although rebuffed nationally by the electorate, he mobilized a new wave of young conservatives who transferred their support toRonald Reagan, the winner in the election of 1980.
……
Goldwater’s book, Conscience of a Conservative, published in 1960, made him a hero to anti-communist and anti-New-Deal Republicans. The movement to get the 1964 Republican nomination for Goldwater was not taken seriously by establishment Republicans, who regarded him as so obviously unelectable that the convention would never nominate him.
However, Goldwater’s principal opponent in 1964 was Nelson Rockefeller, whose divorce and remarriage to a younger woman created a backlash. The birth of a child to his new wife just before the California primary probably cost him that election and provided Goldwater with a huge delegate count.
After that, no plausible opponent emerged capable of stopping Goldwater. He was nominated at the national convention in xxx and gave a ringing defense of conservatism in his acceptance speech which energized his supporters but appalled moderates.
….
So – while Hillary Clinton is supporting the Republican Presidential candidate who supports segregation, Barry Goldwater – Bernie Sanders is getting arrested for desegregation?
Who has the most trustworthy track record in supporting the civil liberties of Afro-Americans?
2. Being Arrested For Desegregation: As a student at the University of Chicago, Sanders was active in both the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). In 1962, he was arrested for protesting segregation in public schools in Chicago; the police came to call him an outside agitator, as he went around putting up flyers around the city detailing police brutality.
…..
_________________________
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Session thirty-three was highly abbreviated, via having to move house in a short space of time. Oh well. The party decided to ignore the tree-monster and continue the attack on the Giant Troll. Tarsin – flying on a giant summoned bat – dumped some high-grade oil over the ...
Last night I stayed up till 3am just to see then-President Donald Trump leave the White House, get on a plane, and fly off to Florida, hopefully never to return. And when I woke up this morning, America was different. Not perfect, because it never was. Probably not even good, ...
Watching today’s inauguration of Joe Biden as the United States’ 46th president, there’s not a lot in common with the inauguration of Donald Trump just four destructive years ago. Where Trump warned of carnage, Biden dared to hope for unity and decency. But the one place they converge is that ...
Dan FalkBritons who switched on their TVs to “Good Morning Britain” on the morning of Sept. 15, 2020, were greeted by news not from our own troubled world, but from neighboring Venus. Piers Morgan, one of the hosts, was talking about a major science story that had surfaced the ...
Sara LutermanGrowing up autistic in a non-autistic world can be very isolating. We are often strange and out of sync with peers, despite our best efforts. Autistic adults have, until very recently, been largely absent from media and the public sphere. Finding role models is difficult. Finding useful advice ...
Doug JohnsonThe alien-like blooms and putrid stench of Amorphophallus titanum, better known as the corpse flower, draw big crowds and media coverage to botanical gardens each year. In 2015, for instance, around 75,000 people visited the Chicago Botanic Garden to see one of their corpse flowers bloom. More than ...
Getting to Browser Tab Zero so I can reboot the computer is awfully hard when the one open tab is a Table of Contents for the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, and every issue has more stuff I want to read. A few highlights: Gugler et al demonstrating ...
Michael Cowling, CQUniversity AustraliaWe’ve probably all been there. We buy some new smart gadget and when we plug it in for the first time it requires an update to work. So we end up spending hours downloading and updating before we can even play with our new toy. But ...
Timothy Ford, University of Massachusetts Lowell and Charles M. Schweik, University of Massachusetts AmherstTo mitigate health inequities and promote social justice, coronavirus vaccines need to get to underserved populations and hard-to-reach communities. There are few places in the U.S. that are unreachable by road, but other factors – many ...
Israel chose to pay a bit over the odds for the Pfizer vaccine to get earlier access. Here’s The Times of Israel from 16 November. American government will be charged $39 for each two-shot dose, and the European bloc even less, but Jerusalem said to agree to pay $56. Israel ...
Orla is a gender critical Marxist in Ireland. She gave a presentation on 15 January 2021 on the connection between postmodern/transgender identity politics and the current attacks on democratic and free speech rights. Orla has been active previously in the Irish Socialist Workers Party and the People Before Profit electoral ...
. . America: The Empire Strikes Back (at itself) Further to my comments in the first part of 2020: The History That Was, the following should be considered regarding the current state of the US. They most likely will be by future historians pondering the critical decades of ...
Nathaniel ScharpingIn March, as the Covid-19 pandemic began to shut down major cities in the U.S., researchers were thinking about blood. In particular, they were worried about the U.S. blood supply — the millions of donations every year that help keep hospital patients alive when they need a transfusion. ...
Sarah L Caddy, University of CambridgeVaccines are a marvel of medicine. Few interventions can claim to have saved as many lives. But it may surprise you to know that not all vaccines provide the same level of protection. Some vaccines stop you getting symptomatic disease, but others stop you ...
Back in 2016, the Portuguese government announced plans to stop burning coal by 2030. But progress has come much quicker, and they're now scheduled to close their last coal plant by the end of this year: The Sines coal plant in Portugal went offline at midnight yesterday evening (14 ...
The Sincerest Form Of Flattery: As anybody with the intestinal fortitude to brave the commentary threads of local news-sites, large and small, will attest, the number of Trump-supporting New Zealanders is really quite astounding. IT’S SO DIFFICULT to resist the temptation to be smug. From the distant perspective of New Zealand, ...
RNZ reports on continued arbitrariness on decisions at the border. British comedian Russell Howard is about to tour New Zealand and other acts allowed in through managed isolation this summer include drag queen RuPaul and musicians at Northern Bass in Mangawhai and the Bay Dreams festival. The vice-president of the ...
As families around the world mourn more than two million people dead from Covid-19, the Plan B academics and their PR industry collaborator continue to argue that the New Zealand government should stop focusing on our managed isolation and quarantine system and instead protect the elderly so that they can ...
A chronological listing of news articles linked to on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week: Sun, Jan 10, 2021 through Sat, Jan 16, 2021Editor's ChoiceNASA says 2020 tied for hottest year on record — here’s what you can do to helpPhoto by Michael Held on Unsplash ...
Health authorities in Norway are reporting some concerns about deaths in frail elderly after receiving their COVID-19 vaccine. Is this causally related to the vaccine? Probably not but here are the things to consider. According to the news there have been 23 deaths in Norway shortly after vaccine administration and ...
Happy New Year! No, experts are not concerned that “…one of New Zealand’s COIVD-1( vaccines will fail to protect the country” Here is why. But first I wish to issue an expletive about this journalism (First in Australia and then in NZ). It exhibits utter failure to actually truly consult ...
All nations have shadows; some acknowledge them. For others they shape their image in uncomfortable ways.The staunch Labour supporter was in despair at what her Rogernomics Government was doing. But she finished ‘at least, we got rid of Muldoon’, a response which tells us that then, and today, one’s views ...
Grigori GuitchountsIn November, Springer Nature, one of the world’s largest publishers of scientific journals, made an attention-grabbing announcement: More than 30 of its most prestigious journals, including the flagship Nature, will now allow authors to pay a fee of US$11,390 to make their papers freely available for anyone to read ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Gary Yohe, Henry Jacoby, Richard Richels, and Benjamin Santer Imagine a major climate change law passing the U.S. Congress unanimously? Don’t bother. It turns out that you don’t need to imagine it. Get this: The Global Change Research Act of 1990 was passed ...
“They’re here already! You’re next! You’re next! You’re next!”WHO CAN FORGET the penultimate scene of the 1956 movie classic, Invasion of the Body Snatchers? The wild-eyed doctor, stumbling down the highway, trying desperately to warn his fellow citizens: “They’re here already! You’re next! You’re next! You’re next!”Ostensibly science-fiction, the movie ...
TheOneRing.Net has got its paws on the official synopsis of the upcoming Amazon Tolkien TV series. It’s a development that brings to mind the line about Sauron deliberately releasing Gollum from the dungeons of Barad-dûr. Amazon knew exactly what they were doing here, in terms of drumming up publicity: ...
Since Dwight Eisenhower’s inauguration in 1953, US presidents have joined an informal club intended to provide support - and occasionally rivalry - between those few who have been ‘leaders of the free world’. Donald Trump, elected on a promise to ‘drain the swamp’ and a constant mocker of his predecessors, ...
For over a decade commentators have noted the rise of a new brand of explicitly ideological politics throughout the world. By this they usually refer to the re-emergence of national populism and avowedly illiberal approaches to governance throughout the “advanced” democratic community, but they also extend the thought to the ...
The US House of Representatives has just impeached Donald Trump, giving him the dubious honour of being the only US President to be impeached twice. Ten Republicans voted for impeachement, making it the most bipartisan impeachment ever. The question now is whether the Senate will rise to the occasion, and ...
Kieren Mitchell; Alice Mouton, Université de Liège; Angela Perri, Durham University, and Laurent Frantz, Ludwig Maximilian University of MunichThanks to the hit television series Game of Thrones, the dire wolf has gained a near-mythical status. But it was a real animal that roamed the Americas for at least 250,000 ...
Zero emission buses, cleaner cars and environmentally-friendly biofuels will soon be hitting New Zealand’s roads, as the Government delivers on its election promise to make our transport network more sustainable. ...
The Green Party is already delivering on its commitment for cleaner, climate-friendly transport through our Cooperation Agreement with the Government. ...
A growing public housing waiting list and continued increase of house prices must be urgently addressed by Government, Green Party Co-leader Marama Davidson said today. ...
Prudence Steven QC, barrister of Christchurch has been appointed as an Environment Judge and District Court Judge to serve in Christchurch, Attorney-General David Parker announced today. Ms Steven has been a barrister sole since 2008, practising in resource management and local government / public law. She was appointed a Queen’s ...
The Government is delivering on its first tranche of election promises to take action on climate change with a raft of measures that will help meet New Zealand’s 2050 carbon neutral target, create new jobs and boost innovation. “This will be an ongoing area of action but we are moving ...
The Government is investing up to $10 million to support 30 of the country’s top early-career researchers to develop their research skills. “The pandemic has had widespread impacts across the science system, including the research workforce. After completing their PhD, researchers often travel overseas to gain experience but in the ...
A Waitomo-based Jobs for Nature project will keep up to ten people employed in the village as the tourism sector recovers post Covid-19 Conservation Minister Kiri Allan says. “This $500,000 project will save ten local jobs by deploying workers from Discover Waitomo into nature-based jobs. They will be undertaking local ...
Minister for Climate Change, James Shaw spoke yesterday with President Biden’s Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry. “I was delighted to have the opportunity to speak with Mr. Kerry this morning about the urgency with which our governments must confront the climate emergency. I am grateful to him and ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Hon Nanaia Mahuta today announced three diplomatic appointments: Alana Hudson as Ambassador to Poland John Riley as Consul-General to Hong Kong Stephen Wong as Consul-General to Shanghai Poland “New Zealand’s relationship with Poland is built on enduring personal, economic and historical connections. Poland is also an important ...
Work begins today at Wainuiomata High School to ensure buildings and teaching spaces are fit for purpose, Education Minister Chris Hipkins says. The Minister joined principal Janette Melrose and board chair Lynda Koia to kick off demolition for the project, which is worth close to $40 million, as the site ...
A skilled and experienced group of people have been named as the newly established Oranga Tamariki Ministerial Advisory Board by Children’s Minister Kelvin Davis today. The Board will provide independent advice and assurance to the Minister for Children across three key areas of Oranga Tamariki: relationships with families, whānau, and ...
The green light for New Zealand’s first COVID-19 vaccine could be granted in just over a week, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said today. “We’re making swift progress towards vaccinating New Zealanders against the virus, but we’re also absolutely committed to ensuring the vaccines are safe and effective,” Jacinda Ardern said. ...
The Minister for ACC is pleased to announce the appointment of three new members to join the Board of ACC on 1 February 2021. “All three bring diverse skills and experience to provide strong governance oversight to lead the direction of ACC” said Hon Carmel Sepuloni. Bella Takiari-Brame from Hamilton ...
The Government is investing $9 million to upgrade a significant community facility in Invercargill, creating economic stimulus and jobs, Infrastructure Minister Grant Robertson and Te Tai Tonga MP Rino Tirikatene have announced. The grant for Waihōpai Rūnaka Inc to make improvements to Murihiku Marae comes from the $3 billion set ...
[Opening comments, welcome and thank you to Auckland University etc] It is a great pleasure to be here this afternoon to celebrate such an historic occasion - the entry into force of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. This is a moment many feared would never come, but ...
The Government is providing $3 million in one-off seed funding to help disabled people around New Zealand stay connected and access support in their communities, Minister for Disability Issues, Carmel Sepuloni announced today. The funding will allow disability service providers to develop digital and community-based solutions over the next two ...
Border workers in quarantine facilities will be offered voluntary daily COVID-19 saliva tests in addition to their regular weekly testing, COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said today. This additional option will be rolled out at the Jet Park Quarantine facility in Auckland starting on Monday 25 January, and then to ...
The next steps in the Government’s ambitious firearms reform programme to include a three-month buy-back have been announced by Police Minister Poto Williams today. “The last buy-back and amnesty was unprecedented for New Zealand and was successful in collecting 60,297 firearms, modifying a further 5,630 firearms, and collecting 299,837 prohibited ...
Upscaling work already underway to restore two iconic ecosystems will deliver jobs and a lasting legacy, Conservation Minister Kiri Allan says. “The Jobs for Nature programme provides $1.25 billion over four years to offer employment opportunities for people whose livelihoods have been impacted by the COVID-19 recession. “Two new projects ...
The Government has released its Public Housing Plan 2021-2024 which outlines the intention of where 8,000 additional public and transitional housing places announced in Budget 2020, will go. “The Government is committed to continuing its public house build programme at pace and scale. The extra 8,000 homes – 6000 public ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has congratulated President Joe Biden on his inauguration as the 46th President of the United States of America. “I look forward to building a close relationship with President Biden and working with him on issues that matter to both our countries,” Jacinda Ardern said. “New Zealand ...
A major investment to tackle wilding pines in Mt Richmond will create jobs and help protect the area’s unique ecosystems, Biosecurity Minister Damien O’Connor says. The Mt Richmond Forest Park has unique ecosystems developed on mineral-rich geology, including taonga plant species found nowhere else in the country. “These special plant ...
To further protect New Zealand from COVID-19, the Government is extending pre-departure testing to all passengers to New Zealand except from Australia, Antarctica and most Pacific Islands, COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said today. “The change will come into force for all flights arriving in New Zealand after 11:59pm (NZT) on Monday ...
Bay Conservation Cadets launched with first intake Supported with $3.5 million grant Part of $1.245b Jobs for Nature programme to accelerate recover from Covid Cadets will learn skills to protect and enhance environment Environment Minister David Parker today welcomed the first intake of cadets at the launch of the Bay ...
The Prime Minister of New Zealand Jacinda Ardern and the Prime Minister of the Cook Islands Mark Brown have announced passengers from the Cook Islands can resume quarantine-free travel into New Zealand from 21 January, enabling access to essential services such as health. “Following confirmation of the Cook Islands’ COVID ...
Jobs for Nature funding is being made available to conservation groups and landowners to employ staff and contractors in a move aimed at boosting local biodiversity-focused projects, Conservation Minister Kiritapu Allan has announced. It is estimated some 400-plus jobs will be created with employment opportunities in ecology, restoration, trapping, ...
The Government has approved an exception class for 1000 international tertiary students, degree level and above, who began their study in New Zealand but were caught offshore when border restrictions began. The exception will allow students to return to New Zealand in stages from April 2021. “Our top priority continues ...
Today’s deal between Meridian and Rio Tinto for the Tiwai smelter to remain open another four years provides time for a managed transition for Southland. “The deal provides welcome certainty to the Southland community by protecting jobs and incomes as the region plans for the future. The Government is committed ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has appointed Anna Curzon to the APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC). The leader of each APEC economy appoints three private sector representatives to ABAC. ABAC provides advice to leaders annually on business priorities. “ABAC helps ensure that APEC’s work programme is informed by business community perspectives ...
The Government’s prudent fiscal management and strong policy programme in the face of the COVID-19 global pandemic have been acknowledged by the credit rating agency Fitch. Fitch has today affirmed New Zealand’s local currency rating at AA+ with a stable outlook and foreign currency rating at AA with a positive ...
The Government is putting in place a suite of additional actions to protect New Zealand from COVID-19, including new emerging variants, COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said today. “Given the high rates of infection in many countries and evidence of the global spread of more transmissible variants, it’s clear that ...
$36 million of Government funding alongside councils and others for 19 projects Investment will clean up and protect waterways and create local jobs Boots on the ground expected in Q2 of 2021 Funding part of the Jobs for Nature policy package A package of 19 projects will help clean up ...
Michelle Kidd defines her role at Auckland’s specialist family violence court as te kaiwhakatere – the navigator. It’s a one-of-a-kind job, helping guide defendants through the court system. And there’s no one better suited to it than Whaea Michelle.First published November 24, 2020.Whaea Michelle is part of Frame, a series of short ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sallie Yea, Associate professor & Principal Research Fellow, La Trobe University Each year, thousands of men and boys labour under extremely exploitative conditions on commercial fishing vessels owned by Taiwanese, Chinese and South Korean companies. The Taiwanese fleet, which operates in all ...
Children’s Minister Kelvin Davis believes the Crown should maintain responsibility for the care and protection of at-risk and vulnerable children, regardless of their race. Moreover, he is confident his all-Maori team of advisers will not be taking race into account as they help to improve Oranga Tamariki’s care and protection of ...
It’s easy to sacrifice John Banks. It’s a lot harder for brands, sports organisations and government to truly stop funding racism. Are they willing to try?Yesterday John Banks, the former Auckland mayor and MP, became subject to one of the fastest firings in media history when audio covering his approving ...
A community is outraged after Auckland Council granted consent for a row of trees planted by local kids to be removed along a revitalised waterway in South Auckland, reports Justin Latif. An Auckland Council decision to give contractors the all-clear to chop down 12 mānuka and kānuka trees shading Māngere’s Tararata ...
Te Pūtahitanga o Te Waipounamu hopes that the recent changes to Oranga Tamariki leadership present an opportunity for a long overdue paradigm shift that will place whānau at the heart of the child welfare sector. Pouārahi Helen Leahy says that ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By John Rice, Professor of Management, University of New England Elon Musk is now the world’s richest person, edging out previous title holder Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. His rocketing fortune is due to the booming share price of Tesla, the maker of electric vehicles ...
There are now three returnees who contracted the virus in the Auckland isolation facility then left into the community while positive. These are some of the questions that need to be resolved. At 10.20pm last night the Ministry of Health confirmed that the two cases they’d been treating as probable ...
Having a hard time remembering to scan in on the NZ Covid Tracer app when you’re out and about? Get this song stuck in your head and you’ll never forget again.Learn the lyrics:Aotearoa, it’s time to get scanning!I mean if you think about it, it never really wasn’t time we ...
We conclude our week-long examination of New Zealand writer Roderick Finlayson with a review of his stories by John Newton Roger Hickin’s Cold Hub Press is one of the small miracles of contemporary New Zealand publishing. Over the last decade, on what can only be a shoe-string budget, the ...
Thursday 28th January, AUCKLAND: Drive Electric, the not-for-profit with one mission – making electric vehicle uptake in New Zealand mainstream, welcomes the announcement by the Government today as a sign of what’s to come through 2021, and we are confident ...
The Government announced today key policy decisions on the proposed clean car policies. The MIA has stated on many occasions that we support well thought out and constructive policies that will lead to an increased rate in the reduction of CO2 emissions from ...
Get wild, get cultured, get fed and then get to bed: the essential guide to a perfect few days in the southern city. There’s one thing that preoccupies the staff of The Spinoff almost as much as arranging popular food items into arbitrary lists, and that’s Dunedin. A quite remarkable ...
John Banks’ racist exchange with a Magic Talk listener on Tuesday was the latest in nearly 50 years of talkback controversies. Donna Chisholm has the receipts.John Banks axed over Māori ‘stone age culture’ comments on Magic Talk1972: On Radio I, sports talkback host Tim Bickerstaff launches a “Punch a Pom ...
*This article first appeared on RNZ and is republished with permission.Two new community Covid-19 cases have been identified as the more infectious South African variant, but Auckland Mayor Phil Goff sayit would be "premature to go into lockdown now". The two new cases of Covid-19 identified in the ...
Today, for the second time in two months Dunedin climate protectors have locked themselves to the railway tracks outside the Dunedin Railway station to stop the KiwiRail coal train from Bathurst Resources’ Takitimu mine in Southland to Fonterra’s ...
KiwiRail STOP Hauling COAL Today, for the second time in two months Dunedin climate protectors have locked themselves to the railway tracks outside the Dunedin Railway station to stop the KiwiRail coal train from Bathurst Resources’ Takitimu mine ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adam Dunn, Associate professor, University of Sydney The government is rolling out a new public information campaign this week to reassure the public about the safety of COVID-19 vaccines, which one expert has said “couldn’t be more crucial” to people actually getting ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Therese O’Sullivan, Associate Professor, Edith Cowan University The COVID vaccine rollout has placed the issue of vaccination firmly in the spotlight. A successful rollout will depend on a variety of factors, one of which is vaccine acceptance. One potential hurdle to vaccine ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bernard Walker, Associate Professor in Organisations and Leadership, University of Canterbury Kiwis know what it’s like when life throws curveballs. We’ve had major quakes, floods, fires, an eruption, a terrorist attack and now a pandemic. In those situations, it’s the ability to ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Irwin, Emeritus professor, Murdoch University While we continue to be occupied with the COVID pandemic, another life-threatening disease has emerged in northern Australia, one that’s cause for considerable alarm for the millions of dog owners around the country. This disease — ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Cath Ferguson, Academic, Edith Cowan University Almost half of Australian adults struggle with reading. Similar levels of struggling readers are reported in the United Kingdom and United States. This does not mean all struggling readers are illiterate. It means they often struggle ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Abbas Shieh, Assistant Professor of Urban Planning and Design, Islamic Azad University The industrial revolution transformed cities, resulting in places of residence and work becoming more distant than ever before. This spatial segregation is still largely embedded in the design of our ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ari Mattes, Lecturer in Communications and Media, University of Notre Dame Australia Review: Occupation: Rainfall, written and directed by Luke Sparke Historically, when a sequel to a film was greenlit, you could rest assured this was because the first film made a ...
Welcome to The Spinoff’s live updates for January 28, keeping you up to date with the latest local and international news. Reach me on stewart@thespinoff.co.nzOur members make The Spinoff happen! Every dollar contributed directly funds our editorial team – click here to learn more about how you can support us ...
Good morning and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Tourism suffers in the shadow of Covid-19, two new positive cases in Auckland confirmed, and National will contest the Māori electorates.The front page of the January 4 Greymouth Star carried grim tidings for several of the glacier towns on the ...
*This article first appeared on RNZ and is republished with permission. Two people who left managed isolation on January 15 have been confirmed as positive Covid-19 cases, with the Ministry of Health urging anyone who visited the same locations during the same time period as the infected pair in Auckland to ...
The watchlist of 'offensive or unreasonable' babies' names is to be reviewed, to include more names from other languages. Generations of the Īhaka family have played a meaningful role in bringing Te Reo and stories of Māori to our wider community. Archdeacon Sir Kīngi Matutaera Īhaka (Te Aupōuri, 1921-93) was known as the orator of ...
After Morocco’s flagrant violation of the terms of the ceasefire in Western Sahara on Friday 13 November 2020 war broke out between the two sides. In the midst of this war Tauranga based Ballance Agri-Nutrients has decided to carry on importing phosphate ...
Nicholas Agar suggests that our handling of the pandemic could be partly down to our distinctive Treaty of Waitangi relationship, and Māori ideas that enabled us to make it through without tens of thousands of deaths A mission for universities in the coming decade will be a deep understanding of the meaning ...
A young girl who once sent $5 to an embattled America's Cup team is now among the women on the water helping run the contest for the Auld Mug. As an eager and generous nine-year-old, Melanie Roberts posted a letter, with a $5 note, to OneAustralia’s America’s Cup team. It was 1995, ...
At 5am today, cock’s crow, the embargo lifted on the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards longlist. Here are the books in the race, followed by thoughts from poetry editor Chris Tse and books editor Catherine Woulfe. A shortlist of four books in each category will be announced March 3, with ...
Ignoring those QR codes when you drop into the supermarket? Can’t be bothered when you grab a coffee? The people serving you notice, and you’re freaking them out.So far, New Zealanders’ use of the Covid-19 Tracer app has been notably woeful. Food industry workers who’ve watched streams of customers walk ...
Steve Braunias reveals the longlist of the 2021 Ockham New Zealand book awards Apart from one or two unfortunate omissions which cast doubt on the sanity and intellectual acumen of judges, especially the nobodies who judged this year's non-fiction, the longlist for the 2021 Ockham New Zealand book awards is ...
By Lulu Mark in Port Moresby Papua New Guinea’s biggest hospital is straining to provide medical services to the growing population of the capital Port Moresby – with an estimated growth rate of 3 percent annually, a medical executive says. Port Moresby General Hospital chief executive officer Dr Paki Molumi ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Nationals who attend Thursday’s memorial service in Tweed Heads for Doug Anthony, who died last month aged 90, may muse on the contrast between the state of their party when he led it and now. ...
Returning to quarantine-free travel in 2021 doesn't just need a vaccine, but a way to check whether arriving passengers are actually immune to the virus. A smart Kiwi science start-up is working with a global biometrics giant to make that happen. A deal signed between Kiwi research and development company Orbis Diagnostics, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Caitlyn Forster, PhD Candidate, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Sydney This summer’s wetter conditions have created great conditions for flowering plants. Flowers provide sweet nectar and protein-rich pollen, attracting many insects, including bees. Commercial honey bees are also thriving: ...
Lotto scratchie tickets featuring the pop band Six60 are being withdrawn after a public backlash. In a statement, Lotto NZ said there had been a mutual decision made with the band to remove the tickets from sale following the negative feedback, and it offered an apology. The band faced criticism, both ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Russell Dean Christopher Bicknell, Post-doctoral researcher in Palaeobiology , University of New England Shell-crushing predation was already in full swing half a billion years ago, as our new research published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B reveals. A hyena devouring ...
Vodafone has suspended advertising on the radio station amid calls for talkback host John Banks to be taken off air after yet another racist outburst. Alex Braae reports. In an alarming segment of talkback radio, former Auckland mayor John Banks endorsed the views of a caller who described Māori as a ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Welch, Senior Lecturer, University of Auckland When a COVID-19 case was found in Northland last Sunday, Aotearoa’s second-longest period with no detected community case came to an end. ESR scientists worked late into Sunday night to obtain a whole genome sequence ...
He has the perfect moustache, an exceptional mullet, and he uses terms like ‘face hole’ on national TV. Who or what is Dr Joel Rindelaub?I was drawn in by the moustache, but it was the mullet that really kept me there. Watching TVNZ’s Breakfast yesterday morning I was fixated. Often, ...
We’ll never be royals with nearly a quarter of declined baby names featuring “Royal” in some form or another. Te Tari Taiwhenua Department of Internal Affairs has released the list of names declined in 2020 by the Registrar-General of Births, Deaths and ...
After a raft of inquiries delving into and recommending what should be done about the politically beleaguered Orangi Tamaraki, along with the briefing papers we suppose he has been given, we imagined Children’s Minister Kelvin Davis would have no more need for expert advice. Wrong. He has ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Vincent Ho, Senior Lecturer and clinical academic gastroenterologist, Western Sydney University There’s a common assumption men take longer than women to poo. People say so on Twitter, in memes, and elsewhereonline. But is that right? What could explain it? And if ...
Just as sexuality is a spectrum, so too is asexuality. In Ace of Hearts, members of New Zealand’s asexual community talk about the challenges and misconceptions of identifying as ace.First published November 17, 2020.Ace of Hearts is part of Frame, a series of short documentaries produced by Wrestler for The Spinoff.“A ...
Sam Brooks wasn’t allowed to watch kids TV as a kid. Now, as a 30 year old man, he watches it for the first time.My mother’s approach to parenting was unorthodox. I wrote weekly book reports on top of my actual homework, I did maths equations in Roman numerals and ...
Pacific Media Watch newsdesk More leading Indonesian figures have made racial slurs against Natalius Pigai, former chair of the National Human Rights Commission (Komnas HAM) – and all West Papuans, says United Liberation Movement of West Papua (ULMWP) interim president Benny Wenda. “Since the illegal Indonesian invasion in 1963, Indonesian ...
“The Government’s failure to even conduct a standard cost-benefit analysis for the most expensive infrastructure project in New Zealand’s history is mind-bogglingly arrogant,” says New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union spokesman Louis Houlbrooke. “A ...
The Ministry of Health is today drawing backlash from the local New Zealand vaping industry following its release of proposed regulations for the Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products Act. Vaping Trade Association New Zealand (VTANZ) President, ...
Sophie Gilmour and Simon Day are joined by special guest Hugo Baird, co-owner of Grey Lynn’s Honey Bones and Lilian, to talk about opening new pub Hotel Ponsonby.Auckland is a city of many bars but few really good pubs – the kind of places you’d be just as comfortable going ...
The appointment of an advisory board for Oranga Tamariki is welcome and should be a step toward a total transformation of the care and protection system to a by Māori, for Māori approach, Children’s Commissioner Andrew Becroft said today. Minister ...
Taking control of your financial wellbeing can have cascading positive impacts for your life and it can also be fun. With the help of the team at Kiwi Wealth, we’ve compiled some simple tricks for balancing your books in 2021. There’s something about the beginning of a new year, especially after ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kris Gledhill, Professor of Law, Auckland University of Technology As we know, getting into New Zealand during the COVID-19 pandemic is difficult. There are practicalities, such as high airfare and managed isolation costs. And there are legal requirements, including pre-flight testing, mandatory ...
New Zealand faces the risk of a generation being locked out of the housing market unless land is freed up and more houses built, National Party leader Judith Collins says. ...
On Sunday, Stuff published a months-long investigation by Alison Mau detailing allegations of harassment and exploitation within the local music industry.The piece, ‘Music industry professionals demand change after speaking out about its dark side’, includes allegations of inappropriate behaviour and abuse of power by male artists, international acts and executives; ...
“The Government is all at sea on timelines for Australia and New Zealand’s respective vaccine roll-outs, with the worst news coming from the mouth of Pfizer Australia CEO Anne Harris,” says ACT Leader David Seymour. “Yesterday, under increasing ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Claire Higgins, Senior Research Fellow, Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law, UNSW As a presidential candidate, Joe Biden promised the US would demonstrate “global leadership on refugees”. Once elected, he pledged to vastly increase refugee resettlement in the US. If history is ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alex Baumann, Casual Academic, School of Social Sciences & Psychology, Western Sydney University Among the many hard truths exposed by COVID-19 is the huge disparity between the world’s rich and poor. As economies went into freefall, the world’s billionaires increased their already ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jan Lanicek, Senior Lecturer in Modern European History and Jewish History, UNSW On January 27 communities worldwide commemorate the liberation of Auschwitz — the largest complex of concentration camps and extermination centres during the Holocaust. This is the first year the International ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lorinda Cramer, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Australian Catholic University The summer break is over, marking a return to the office. For some, this ends almost a year of working from home in lockdown. Some analysts are predicting it might also mark an enduring ...
Welcome to The Spinoff’s live updates for January 27, keeping you up to date with the latest local and international news. Reach me on stewart@thespinoff.co.nzOur members make The Spinoff happen! Every dollar contributed directly funds our editorial team – click here to learn more about how you can support us ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexander Gillespie, Professor of Law, University of Waikato New Zealand has a strong history of protecting and promoting human rights at home and internationally, and prides itself on being an outspoken critic and global leader in this area. So, when the most ...
Is there no end to msm promoting this family? It’s become an obsession with media!
This time it’s Stephie Key (aka Cherry Lazar) once more, indulging in public self advancement through her soft porn “art.” Incidentally it’s interesting to note most, if not all of her “art” involves mainly herself!
Never ending self gratification through public promotion seems to be a genetic trait, obviously passed from father to both offspring!
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11600258
Nope, no end. Watch as Max is the new phenom, the PM is invincible, the Greens are the worst bullies out there, and expert opinion on that face book face time thingy thats all the rage these days.
Gawd, I wonder how many new social problems are created by people reading this crap.
http://i.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/opinion/77561157/Political-Week-Max-Key-cyberbullying-a-sign-that-politics-is-getting-too-nasty
“Gawd, I wonder how many new social problems are created by people reading this crap.”
You can take solace from the fact the print MSM will not be with us for much longer
Absolutely sickening.
I read the article out of curiosity – it wasn’t much different to a similar story about a year or so ago about Ms Key. Her father has no shame : a real caring father would not be putting his children thru the media like that. Because you can bet your bottom dollar that these stories about his children are all designed to make him look good ! Yuk !
You need to get you KDS under control.
You’re seeing stuff that’s not there.
If you’re happy about Key’s family being used like this when the going is good … you don’t get to use the ‘keep his family out of it’ excuse when the shit hits the fan.
As it inevitably will.
Just don’t read that shit, if you can avoid it. If the Herald notices people aren’t clicking on their clickbait, they’ll stop putting it out.
No they will not. If it gets many clicks that’s a bonus, granny is an integral part of nacts pr machine.
Saturation and repetition of memes requires a consistent presence so the sheeple sub consciously take it in.
All part of the setup, get the kids out there with the msm promoting and praising them as good honest nice kids making their way in the big bad world who just happen to have a rich powerful dad.
It’s what script writers call building empathy so you feel sorry for them when the big bad world does what it’s always done. Better call Saul runs along this line.
What intrigues me is how much the DP crew will be involved in the big bad world phase with staged cyber bullying etc like their recent dog whistling rant on RNZ site.
Yep – although the obsession is more about generating clicks than it is about promoting the Key whanau, IMHO. I’d like to think its entirely mercantile as opposed to political chicanery designed to promote John Key. Either way, the MSM knows that it is, in effect, dangling Max and Stephie over an Otago University orientation piss-up like a piñata. The MSM fawning adulation of the Key Kids is designed to bring out the bullies (egged on by agent provocateurs) in order to generate more click-bait stories about “all those nasty lefties”.
Its got to the stage now where the MSM is generating its own news and, in deliberately using the Key Kids, exposing itself as the real bully.
Bullying that may or may not lead to the suicide of children of politicians doesn’t get worse than this….
And it didn’t stop there. The bullying of Rowling (btw the man who sacked Roger Douglas) was so bad that a ‘citizens for Rowling’ group was formed – it included Edmund Hillary. I remember the talk at the time of the pressure on the Rowling family.
His daughter, Kim, killed herself in 1978.
The cynical me thinks the current PM knows his history and is using it in reverse.
‘
Brian Gould drew parallels between John Key and Robert Muldoon back in 2011. In his article, Brian said the two were quite different personalities because Key is “by nature a conciliator and seeker of consensus” but, like Muldoon, he dominates the media narrative.
Now, in 2015, we know that the nature of Key as discerned by Brian is actually a Crosby-Textor confection and, really, he is just as nasty as Muldoon ever was. Worse, I reckon. The difference between Muldoon’s era and Key’s reign comes down to the exponential use of PR by government and the internet. Key can, on the surface, be all about conciliation and consensus but that image is supported by a well-funded and clandestine Dirty Politics Machine doing the wetwork for him. Muldoon, at least, had the guts to do his out in the open, mostly.
Incessant joking, Key is so unlike Muldoon. Key much more like Trump, that aged vulture who is current picking over the corpse that is modern converativism, the grand old party, whose years of arrogant deliberate we wont change nothing politics has finally died.
Quite the little swot our current PM.
He probably has that piece on one of his toilet doors so he can read and have a laugh every time he sits down for a pee.
[Sorry – angry that he gets away with this manipulation]
‘
Everyone should be so angry.
Edit to add: one small action you can take against the MSM is to install an advertising and trackers blocker. I use these ones. They require a bit of fiddling about with to block everything and you sometimes have to tweak them for particular sites in order to, say, play a video or fill in a form or comment. But, wow, do they speed up page loading and eliminate screen clutter. There are versions for cell phones too.
https://adblockplus.org/
https://www.ghostery.com/
Unfortunately for some they also just create problems or slow systems down (I’ve used ghostery a couple of times and always end up turning it off. I can’t even get my normal flashblocker to work properly now, so many new websites simply don’t work, or the blocker works very unevenly).
I really wish the geek community would sort this out, because at the moment in order to stop tracking one needs a higher level of skill that most of the population possess. EFF have some good guides and I’ve had some good advice here on ts, but never managed to find something that didn’t cause more problems than it solved.
Research shows that most people want more privacy controls but end up using the internet without them because they need the internet.
EFF have their own browser extension that gives you control over tracking cookies. Works a treat: https://www.eff.org/privacybadger
That one makes my computer go crazy too, so I just end up turning it off. I probably need to upgrade the OS and try again.
You can happily block cookies on this site.
They are used by us for putting the name details into your comments, and by the google and statcounter trackers for us to keep track of visitors for stats.
If you drop the cookies, then the
latterformer means you will probably have to enter your details for each comment. In the case of theformerlatter, it just means the stats for visits and unique visitors are out – but those are deeply inaccurate measures anyway.[lprent: oops – fixed. ]
Meh.
Whether or not you like her outputs, she’s at least trying it overseas under a different brand name.
Barack Obama’s kids are really nice, aren’t they…real role models. JK take note.
The Herald for one needs to take a long hard look at itself and then get sorted.
A quick search on the website shows about 60 odd hits for Max Key for the 2015 year alone. A number of those seem to have been sourced off his public postings. So there they are busy feeding the flames then crying out “oh look it’s getting to hot for him”.
And if people who set their social media settings to private attract a whole lot less attention.
Absolutely sure that Bernie Sanders is finished?
Perhaps not …..
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/03/03/democrats-have-a-lot-riding-on-hillary-clinton-which-is-why-the-word-immunity-should-make-them-very-nervous/?tid=hybrid_collaborative_1_na
“Democrats have a lot riding on Hillary Clinton. Which is why the word ‘immunity’ should make them very nervous.
….”
_____________________________________________
In my view – it ain’t over till it’s over …..
Penny Bright
2016 Auckland Mayoral candidate.
Well, at least you are being even handed, Penny.
You are polluting both The Standard and Kiwiblog with your cut and paste drivel.
I see there’s more from you below.
If we had a voting mechanism here, like they do over at Kiwiblog, I’m sure you would find that very few people are interested in your view.
charming
I don’t think he’s finished just yet. Thom Hartmann on The Big Bicture had a good piece on how the media are mischievously adding the super delegate votes to Hillary’s total, when the super delegates can change their vote right up until the end of the Primaries.
And the super delegates have done that to Hillary before when she was running against Obama. At one point she led Obama by a 2-1 ratio but over the course of the campaign many saw her as too divisive a leader and they gradually trickled Obama’s way. History could well repeat.
Careful people……Key Schlong Ill and family must be gushed over……..they are our New Camelot after all. Any departure from awed gush you’re cyberbullying.
Hang on…….who said anything about ‘cyberbullying’ ? Oh that’s right, it was Key Schlong Ill……..followed (on cue) by Watkins, Young and Trev’ of the Herald I daresay, Soper…….
Yes we are witnessing a very cynical and staged event to garner sympathy for the kids to compensate for dads rough ride.
Also further distractions required as a prominent nz’er is closer to being unmasked which is likely to trigger key loyalists to re-evaluate their Demi god in all his shonky dodgy ways.
Gotta mitigate potential damage to the brand
tc – you don’t think the prominent nzer who now has such a cushy job up north is going to be named and shamed in the MSM when he comes up for trial, do you ? This secrecy around him is going to continue right up to the type of sentence he gets – or even if he gets one. Plus there is also word around that the long “delay” in the trial has been designed to make him look better, and to somehow fudge the evidence coming from witnesses. ie the longer its delayed the less inclined the witnesses might be in talking about it.
A lengthy wait for any trial would usually just aggravate the distress of the complainants as they have to keep reliving it at lengthy intervals and can’t get on with reconstructing their lives.
How should multinational companies be taxed so that they pay their fair share of taxes?
https://theconversation.com/facebook-looks-set-to-pay-more-uk-tax-but-it-might-not-be-as-much-as-you-think-55781
Facebook looks set to pay more UK tax but it might not be as much as you think
March 5, 2016 4.48am AEDT
Facebook has said it will pay more in UK taxes from 2017.
The news comes hot on the heels of the much-derided settlement of Google’s decade-long tax dispute with the UK tax authority. It also comes a day after it emerged that Facebook is paid more by HMRC for adverts than it pays in tax.
Facebook has encountered heavy criticism for its tax dealings – not for their legality, but for how fair they are. In 2014 the company’s UK operations, Facebook UK Limited, reported a corporation tax payment of only £4,327. The company’s UK subsidiary reported a turnover of £105m and a gross profit of £103m, but this was wiped out by a massive administrative expense of £131m, leaving a pre-tax operating loss of £28m.
Companies trade with a view to making a profit, but since 2011 Facebook has been reporting accounting losses. Its audited UK accounts for 2014 do not provide any information about the composition of the administrative expenses, a key element in its reported losses and a possible reason for low tax.
Facebook has promised to change its business model and the way it records its sales revenues from advertising.
Currently, Facebook books a number of its sales to UK customers through its Irish subsidiary, Facebook Ireland Limited.
But it is set to pay millions more in taxes after a decision to allow profits from major advertisers initiated in the UK to be taxed in the UK.
Facebook executives said in an internal post reported by the BBC that “UK sales made directly by our UK team will be booked in the UK, not Ireland.
Facebook UK will then record the revenue from these sales”.
…….
_____________________________________
Penny Bright
2016 Auckland Mayoral candidate.
Is it time to introduce ‘unitary taxation’ for multinational companies?
https://theconversation.com/facebook-looks-set-to-pay-more-uk-tax-but-it-might-not-be-as-much-as-you-think-55781
The change in Facebook’s business model does not necessarily signal a new era in which Facebook will pay millions in tax that some might assume.
One way to prevent Facebook and other big multinational companies from minimising their taxes would be to implement a system known as unitary taxation, which can eliminate the tax advantages of all intra-group transactions.
But unitary taxation has received virtually no attention from the OECD’s recent Base Erosion Profit Shifting (BEPS) project, which was geared toward reforming the international system for taxing companies.
…..
__________________________________
Penny Bright
2016 Auckland Mayoral candidate
What is ‘Unitary Taxation’?
http://www.taxjustice.net/cms/upload/pdf/Towards_Unitary_Taxation_1-1.pdf
Penny Bright
2016 Auckland Mayoral candidate.
[These posts are increasingly resembling spam. That’s enough for today. Stop now, please. BLiP]
SO sorry.
Apologise is all I can do.
Silly me thought ‘Open Mike’ was the place to raise ideas for informed debate and discussion?
Making sure multinational companies can’t evade tax isn’t a topic worthy of debate?
In my view it is.
I for one had not heard of the concept of ‘Unitary Tax’.
Had others?
Kind regards
Penny Bright
2016 Auckland Mayoral candidate.
Hadn’t you noticed that nobody responds to you apart from the occasional sarcastic coment about your rates? It is not that people agree with you – it is more like they just don’t care enough to enter into any sort of dialogue.
I’m guessing many people scroll on past (I do). Lynn could probably tell how many people follow links from her comments.
I can’t be bothered saying anything to her about the spam, because she’s always right and everyone else is always wrong.
So Weka – you don’t care about tax evasion by multinational companies?
I do.
Kind regards
Penny Bright
2016 Auckland Mayoral candidate.
Fuck off you disingenuous troll. That’s what I say to anyone who puts words in my mouth and misrepresents my political views and values. Right now it’s hard to imagine a worse candidate for a Mayor than someone who lies about other people’s views and thinks it’s ok to do so for their own agenda.
So Weka – why don’t you have a civilised debate about this issue?
It’s a rather important one – isn’t it?
I ASKED you a question and got, in my view, an unnecessary offensive and semi-hysterical, apoplectic reply.
Sheesh!
Some of you ‘commenters’ on The Standard, in my view (and experience) can be worse than those on Kiwiblog!
(And that’s saying something … 🙂
Have a cuppa and calm yourself Weka ….
Kind regards
Penny Bright
2016 Auckland Mayoral candidate.
When not even the trolls bother to reply you Penny – time to get the message.
more charming comments. such nice people exist. eh penny?
Generally, we expect people on here to come up with some thinking of their own, not just post the thinking of others.
Try harder.
Kim Hill lets another shameless propagandist have his say, uninterrupted.
RNZ National, Saturday 5 March 2016, 8:12 a.m.
His C.V., as printed on the RNZ website, certainly sounds impressive: “Jamie McIntyre consults on national security issues, blogs on the military and media (Jamie McIntyre’s Behind Frenemy Lines), and is Adjunct Professor of Multimedia Journalism at the University of Maryland. His career spans four decades, from the local news round at WTOP radio in Washington D.C. to Al Jazeera America’s National Security Correspondent based at the Pentagon. He was in the Pentagon on 11 September 2001, and he broke the news of Saddam Hussain’s capture. He is currently on special assignment at PBS NewsHour, where he has investigated the Pentagon’s plans to spend $US1 trillion on upgrading America’s nuclear arsenal, some of which is 60 years old.”
The actuality, however, is not so impressive….
KIM HILL: How come you haven’t been captured by the establishment?
JAMIE McINTYRE: Y’know, I and other reporters are allowed to roam the corridors of the Pentagon at will. I doubt whether you can do that in any other country in the world, even over there in New Zealand.
………..
KIM HILL: Why is Iran not allowed to have nuclear weapons? It just seems to be taken for granted that they can’t have them. Why?
JAMIE McINTYRE: Well, the United States sees itself as the good guys. [snickers awkwardly at the absurdity of that statement]
KIM HILL: Of COURSE.
JAMIE McINTYRE: [adopting a serious tone] But Iran has a track record of supporting organisations deemed to be terrorist, and of being anti-Israel.
Hill, who cannot be so dim as to believe a word of that unsupported stream of nonsense, failed to challenge it. I decided to send her a wake-up message….
Why did you suggest Jamie McIntyre is something other than he is?
Dear Kim,
You asked Jamie McIntyre why he had “not been captured by the establishment”. That question implied that he is an independent and rigorous journalist; what he said during the interview demonstrated he was anything but independent or rigorous.
When you asked him why Iran should not have a nuclear arsenal, McIntyre claimed that the United States are “the good guys” and then he launched into a reiteration of official rhetoric, claiming that Iran “has a track record of supporting organisations deemed to be terrorist and of being anti-Israel.”
Jamie McIntyre spoke with wonderment about how he is allowed to wander freely about the corridors of the Pentagon. His bland endorsement of Pentagon—and State Department—rhetoric shows just why he and other “journalists” like him are allowed to wander so freely: with their credulous repetition of black propaganda against official enemies, “journalists” like Jamie McIntyre are effectively agents of the Pentagon.
Yours sincerely,
Morrissey Breen
Northcote Point
More ignorant—or is it deliberate—recycling of propaganda by Kim Hill….
If she wants to stay employed in the words of Dylan ‘you gonna have to serve somebody….’
No National MP could be bothered attending the tangi for the late, great Ranginui Walker. Absolutely shameful considering his immense mana and all the work he did for the Waitangi Tribunal.
He used to write in the Listener before Pamela Stirling turned it into the rightwing travesty it is today. Here he is on the Don Brash Orewa speech:
http://www.listener.co.nz/uncategorized/state-of-the-nation/
National MP’s do as they are told and he wasn’t on their side so it’s not surprising
Thank for the link Karen, I looked the other day for Listener columns and couldn’t find any. Am hoping some of the pre-internet ones will get republished.
That is shameful that no Nats attended his tangi. This is where we are now.
Did any Labour MPs have the nerve to go? (Bearing in mind Helen Clark’s cynical decision to out-Brash Brash after she was spooked by the success of the Orewa speech.)
Yes, Labour MPs did attend.
We don’t have the Clark Labour govt any more Morrissey. I expect current MPs have their own relationship with Maoridom now.
What is it with this site? I couldn’t access The Standard home page yesterday. Still can’t today – just get this:
Seems the only pages I can access today are “Open Mike 05032016” and “Jeanette Fitzsimons Call to Scrap the ETS”. The only way I can get in to these is by using my bookmark to the Comment Formatting page, then clicking on threads via the right side Comments summary box.
Even so, I can’t access the “Intersections” post, “Young Nats Run Away…” yesterdays “Daily Review”, “John Key Lies…” in fact pretty much most other pages I click on in Comments are producing the above “page not available” result.
Looks like I might as well just give up on here because I have constant access problems and no idea why that is. It only ever happens here. Not a caching problem. Clearing cache does nothing. 🙁
Edit: Update. Oh FFS, I managed to post this comment, and now suddenly everything’s available!! Stuffed if I know what’s going on.
+1
I had the same problem. I noticed that, while this blog did not appear, a link to Whaleoil’s cesspit was the second from the top.
Why on earth would THAT be the case?
I’ve been having the same issue over the last 24hrs.
Why is this site the ONLY one I continually have trouble with when it comes to loading, Not just recently but ever since I started visiting?
osx 10.6.8 / firefox 44.0.2 (no ad blockers etc)
Meet the new ACT Party spokesman for Youth Affairs
He’s actually a step up in quality from the likes of John “Cabbage” Banks, Jamie “Lock Up His Sisters” Whyte, David “Gruesome” Garrett, Stephen Franks, Dr Muriel Newman and David Seymour….
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11600143
Great discussion on the latest Keiser Report with Steve Keen and Ross Ashcroft on Australia’s housing bubble and exposure to mortgage debt, and, by default (mentioned), New Zealand’s exposure too…
https://www.rt.com/shows/keiser-report/334369-episode-max-keiser-883/
That was an excellent episode of the Keiser Report.
It’s not what you eat, it’s how it’s produced that determines the ethics. Here’s an interesting exploration of omnivore vs vegan ethics, which also shows that context is everything (it’s looking at site specific food production, in this case in Australia).
Replacing red meat with grain products leads to many more sentient animal deaths, far greater animal suffering and significantly more environmental degradation. Protein obtained from grazing livestock costs far fewer lives per kilogram: it is a more humane, ethical and environmentally-friendly dietary option.
So, what does a hungry human do? Our teeth and digestive system are adapted for omnivory. But we are now challenged to think about philosophical issues. We worry about the ethics involved in killing grazing animals and wonder if there are other more humane ways of obtaining adequate nutrients.
Relying on grains and pulses brings destruction of native ecosystems, significant threats to native species and at least 25 times more deaths of sentient animals per kilogram of food. Most of these animals sing love songs to each other, until we inhumanely mass-slaughter them.
…
The challenge for the ethical eater is to choose the diet that causes the least deaths and environmental damage. There would appear to be far more ethical support for an omnivorous diet that includes rangeland-grown red meat and even more support for one that includes sustainably wild-harvested kangaroo.
https://theconversation.com/ordering-the-vegetarian-meal-theres-more-animal-blood-on-your-hands-4659
There is a wild meat group in Australia – I have not been aware of one here, but perhaps there is. I know that when I ordered a pasta dish with the little blue mussels at the the pub in Melbourne, someone from the wild foods camp commented approvingly. I yearn for old school ways of eating, with the farms close to the cities and meat being a high days/holy days kind of food. I am not opposed to meat eating per se, but do not think that animals should be reduced to fodder either.
That’s pretty much where I’m at too Olwyn. Family farms whose purpose is to produce food and provide a living for multiple people rather than big business that treats animals as stock units (not that some family farms haven’t been prone to animal cruelty as well). Often in these arguments we are comparing one set of bads for another. Let’s replace feedlot beef with Monsanto soy. Whereas the vision you present allows us to behave ethically on a number of fronts and produce food sustainably with regard for the wider ecosystems. I like the meat on high days concept. There’s also the idea from many cultures that you eat small amounts of meat often, but the end result is less meat than we eat now without going to the hard extreme of veganism (which is never going to be sustainable).
I know lots of people that eat feral rabbit, venison, goat, pig etc. I liked the Australian perspective of large tracts of land being able to support smaller populations of feral animals for harvest. We could do this in a smaller scale in NZ too.
I like the meat on high days concept. There’s also the idea from many cultures that you eat small amounts of meat often, but the end result is less meat than we eat now without going to the hard extreme of veganism (which is never going to be sustainable). I think those ways of doing things are consistent with each other – the “small amounts of meat often” bit adds up to a whole animal being used, and not just the most desirable bits.
Often in these arguments we are comparing one set of bads for another. Let’s replace feedlot beef with Monsanto soy. I couldn’t agree more! Everything gets reduced to “How would you like your corporatism?”
NZ law defines an organised criminal group as a structured group of three or more persons.
The video below contains a good discussion on the Government’s latest response to gangs and more.
+100…very good discussion thanks
Could TTIP Privatise the NHS?
Could Tpp stop the sun rising ?
http://www.foxnews.com/story/2009/04/08/obama-may-block-sun-rays-to-end-global-warming.html
If Key could figure out a way to monetise it.
+100…a must watch!…possible serious implications for New Zealand’s free health system with the signing of TPPA ?
…do we want a privatised health care system like USA’s corporate captured health system?….hell no!
If you can stand it – live feed of Trump rally in New Orleans.
How long before something is done about the, in my view, significant ‘conflict of interest’ in Auckland Council being a member of the private sector lobby group for developers – the NZ Property Council?
FYI – I raised this matter directly at the following Auckland Council Special Governing Body meeting:
(Scroll to 7.50 minutes to see/ hear for yourself my presentation to the Special Auckland Council Governing Body held on 24 February 2016, on the ‘out of scope’ rezoning changes made behind closed doors by the Auckland Council Unitary Plan Committee.)
FYI – I was the only Auckland Mayoral candidate who addressed Auckland Council at this meeting.
Kind regards,
Penny Bright
Same dodgy buzz here in Wellington Penny. Councillor for Northern ward, Deputy Mayor and now Mayoral candidate on the Labour ticket, Justin Lester, sits on the executive of the Wellington branch of the NZ Property Council.
No conflict of interest has been declared.
Our city planning manager, is the former husband of one of Wellington biggest residential developers and did at least declare a conflict of interest over his relationship with that person, although nobody seems to have told the Mayor, as it is was her office that requested he sort out issues regarding anti social behaviour by developers and contractors in my neighbourhood. They simply denied he had a conflict of interest when I raised it.
The northern suburbs are at the mercy of mass development. All work is undertaken on a non notified basis. There are no plans on any of the developments to mitigate environmental damage, outside of rules about not letting sediment get into creeks.
After battling with the council, including the above mentioned councillor, and the developer for 18 months I’ve come to the conclusion that there is an incredibly unhealthy relationship between the council and developers here in Wellington.
Had there been plans in place to protect and enhance the environment, build in areas close to public transport and close to shops and amenities, or at least allow for commercial areas within residential areas, to undertake construction in a way that is respectful towards residents and to build low cost housing I wouldn’t see a problem. It has been the complete opposite and theres only two winners, the developers and the council.
+100 Go Penny ( Auckland is hotting up in more ways than one)
All you ever wanted to know about neoliberal economics and Global Housing Bubbles …in particular Australia (NZ bank implications) and UK…and elsewhere…and where to for baby boomers, millennials, aspirationals etc
https://www.rt.com/shows/keiser-report/334369-episode-max-keiser-883/
“In this special episode of the Keiser Report, Max and Stacy are joined by Professor Steve Keen, author of Debunking Economics, and Ross Ashcroft of RenegadeInc.com and the crowd-funded series, Meet the Renegades. They discuss housing bubbles in Australia, housing policy in the UK, and the rise of Donald Trump as a sign of the great recession happening outside the property bubble cities in which both politicians and journalists live.”
And while you lot are at it, why don’t you “Give a little” to Penny Bright to help pay her rates and arrears, she seems hard done by !!
[lprent: Completely off topic. Banned one week for diversion and another week for trolling. Moved to Open Mike. If I see you deliberately do this kind of stupidity again, I’ll be less lenient. ]
She’s a greenhouse effect denier, you lot can have her.
Now you really have crossed the line in cruelty and unusual punishmentsOAB 😀
Thank you. I hope you will be very happy together.
I suggest an Auction, Kiwiblog vs Standard,
Highest bidders get to ban Penny and restrict her to the opposing blog. All proceeds to Child Cancer.
I suggest Princess Party Pinko Penguin is not the sort of person that anyone other than a right winger would want to be associated with.
His low character is well documented.
Appears to be loading without the error messages for me, Lynn.
A bit slow but you did say that..
thx.. I’ll try putting on the one layer of compression that it is meant to have.
Figured my way through it (eventually) I think.
This should be correct now
Killing Joke — New Cold War
http://www.metrolyrics.com/new-cold-war-lyrics-killing-joke.html
+100 adam…like it!
A Change is Gonna come…lets hope it is a good one….
Sam Cooke ‘A Change is Gonna Come’
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/sam-cooke-dies-under-suspicious-circumstances-in-la
‘Trump’ s hostile takeover’
https://www.rt.com/shows/crosstalk/334499-trump-clinton-presidential-election/
“American presidential election politics is a cross between a talent show and a beauty contest. Being smart and coherent does not necessarily pay dividends. Case in point: Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Both are front-runners of their parties. Trump is idiosyncratic and raw; Clinton the ultimate establishment insider. Is this a choice, or merely bad theater?
CrossTalking with Brandon Andrews, David Paul Kuhn, and Lionel.”
Just found out about this wee historical gem – which, in my view, is both pertinent and potentially politically embarrassing for Hillary Clinton?
So – back in 1964 now Democratic Presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton – worked (as a Republican?) on the 1964 election campaign of Republican segregationist Presidential candidate – Barry Goldwater.
So much for Hillary Clinton’s ‘civil rights’ credentials?
Barry Goldwater was never supposed to be supported as the Republican Presidential candidate at their convention, because he was regarded by ‘establishment’ Republicans as being ‘unelectable’.
Is history going to repeat itself?
This time I’m referring to Bernie Sanders and the Democratic Convention?
http://usuncut.com/politics/npr-interview-hillary-clinton-was-proud-of-her-conservatism/
A 1996 NPR interview with Hillary Clinton has recently resurfaced, in which the current Democratic front-runner shockingly embraced conservatism and reiterated how proud she was to support a segregationist presidential candidate.
In the interview, Clinton told NPR’s Scott Simon that her political beliefs were “rooted in the conservatism that I was raised with,” and talked about being a “Goldwater girl” in 1964:
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http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h4011.html
Barry Goldwater
Barry Goldwater served five terms as a United States Senator for Arizona and was the Republican nominee for President in the Election of 1964. He is credited with reviving the conservative movement in the United States in the 1960’s.
Although rebuffed nationally by the electorate, he mobilized a new wave of young conservatives who transferred their support toRonald Reagan, the winner in the election of 1980.
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Goldwater’s book, Conscience of a Conservative, published in 1960, made him a hero to anti-communist and anti-New-Deal Republicans. The movement to get the 1964 Republican nomination for Goldwater was not taken seriously by establishment Republicans, who regarded him as so obviously unelectable that the convention would never nominate him.
However, Goldwater’s principal opponent in 1964 was Nelson Rockefeller, whose divorce and remarriage to a younger woman created a backlash. The birth of a child to his new wife just before the California primary probably cost him that election and provided Goldwater with a huge delegate count.
After that, no plausible opponent emerged capable of stopping Goldwater. He was nominated at the national convention in xxx and gave a ringing defense of conservatism in his acceptance speech which energized his supporters but appalled moderates.
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Penny Bright
2016 Auckland Mayoral candidate.
+100 Penny…interesting about Hillary Clinton !…doesnt surprise me….anyone on the Left who supports her should read a bit more history imo
Cheers Chooky – there’s more ….
So – while Hillary Clinton is supporting the Republican Presidential candidate who supports segregation, Barry Goldwater – Bernie Sanders is getting arrested for desegregation?
Who has the most trustworthy track record in supporting the civil liberties of Afro-Americans?
http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/20-examples-bernie-sanders-powerful-record-civil-and-human-rights-1950s
2. Being Arrested For Desegregation: As a student at the University of Chicago, Sanders was active in both the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). In 1962, he was arrested for protesting segregation in public schools in Chicago; the police came to call him an outside agitator, as he went around putting up flyers around the city detailing police brutality.
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Penny Bright
2016 Auckland Mayoral candidate.
yes Sanders is authentic….Hillary is a phony and worse
http://libaryofimages.com/image.php?pic=/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Albania_flag-5.jpg
that should be Hillary’s flag