Happily, voter registration is up, and significantly so in the teenage/early twenties segment. That’s a good sign for the left. Hopefully Brand and the host of other celebs who have endorsed Labour can have a positive effect.
So it does.
I looked at it a bit more closely and discovered I had somehow been switched to using Bing, not Google. God knows why it was picking up Bing. With quotes around the phrase Bing gives Wiki. Without the quotes it gives the link I put in.
Reading through the Wiki article it would appear that he is actually even more of a prick than the Daily Mail article suggests.
Would anyone really want Brand as a supporter? It would be a bit like having Kim DotCom as your promoter. There lies disaster, as Hone discovered.
It’s nice that you only know one thing about Mr Brand as it makes it so much easier for you to form an opinion of him.
But would you mind awfully not being such a patronising fuckwit when you discuss him with people who have a bit more info to draw upon than one Daily Mail article?
Thanks ever so much.
ps what do you know about the president of the National Party?
If you actually read the comment you are replying to you would find that I now know quite a lot more about him.
My comment was that that item from the Daily Mail was the very first thing on the list. and that I had also read other things about what appears to be a quite horrible person.
Do you actually think he is someone to take advice and guidance from? One might as well follow the teachings of Charles Manson.
What has the President of the National Party got to do with anything? Are you that person? I haven’t the faintest idea who the President is and I couldn’t care less. Sorry.
The people who give out newspaper awards in the UK don’t seem to agree with you.
According to the Wiki article on the paper
“The Daily Mail has been awarded the National Newspaper of the Year in 1995, 1996, 1998, 2001, 2003 and 2012 by the British Press Awards[58]”.
Given the number of National papers in Britain that seems to be a reasonable record.
Possibly. The Press awards do seem to let their standards drop a bit sometimes.
During the same 20 year period they also gave the national newspaper award 5 times to that dreadful tabloid “The Guardian”.
Alwyn. I was living in the UK when I first heard of Russell Brand, and watched a couple of interviews and skits that he did. Thought his views on women were archaic and misogynistic, and didn’t enjoy his style of humour.
Usually I just leave it at – I don’t like their comedy, but in his case, I thought he was a complete prat. I kept that steadfast opinion until someone put a link to his Jeremy Paxman interview on voting. Very clear on his reasoning.
Since then, I have let go of previous opinions as I watch him on the Trews. He does refer to his weaknesses and previous addictions (without excusing them). His current views on women and personal relationships may surprise you.
The point is: unless a person is static – one Google search – may not be the answer to finding out about their current viewpoints and values. You may have to get dirty and watch a few episodes of the Trews.
@philip More people are registered to vote in the UK than ever before. Read the online article on Russell Brand’s change of heart in the Guardian today.
Shame you can’t follow Lydon’s logic yourself, hs. Brand has now come round to Lydon’s point of view and is advocating that people vote. Mainly to stop folk like you doing more damage to the UK.
Beyond the trolling i’m interested in what TRP sees as being the major problems in the UK, politics is so much more interesting over there compared to our bland bunch of twerps in NZ.
I’m mulling over a post to go up on Thursday, hs. But off the top of my head, austerity, poverty, jobs, wages, housing, immigration, health, education and the growing gap between the rich and the rest. Oh, wait, that’s here … UK, er, the same. Plus Nigel Farage.
Yes, this was on the news last night. Our Government’s way of dealing with the housing crisis, which they don’t believe exists anyway, is to relax resource consent rules via the mechanism of the Special Housing Areas Accord and developers are laughing all the way to the bank. I understand Hobsonville falls under the SHA Accord.
Don’t you think this reeks of cabinet club palm greasing???
There’s quite a few councils around the country that have signed up to this accord, Wellington is one of them.
On the development where I live things are fishy enough as it without the addition of the SHA Accord. Our area has been voted into the SHA by the WCC. Already we have 3 areas of high density housing either in the building or planning stages – all have received consent.
It’s nothing to do with affordable housing. In one of the high density areas the developer is offering a two bed + study for $485K. Last year they were advertising them for $465K. They jumped up 20K in less than 12 months. For that you get 124 square metres (inc internal access garage)of housing on 180 square metres of land.
This is in area that is quite a drive away from the nearest amenities. There are no tress, no gardens and no recreation areas except at the furtherest corner of the development which already has 500 houses.
There is something very dodgy going on with the council and it relationship with the developer and it’s proving very hard to get to the bottom of. I’ve been trying since January.
The profit motive behind National Party education policy: attacking children for money. Now, children, let’s all read section 48 of the Crimes Act together.
More on the malign influence of competitive schooling and private sector involvement today from the OECD – Sweden “free schools” a 20-year experiment that has been slammed by the OECD
Reviewing the best comparative evidence, the OECD describes “a decade of declining … performance”. Scores for reading, maths and science are all on the slide, and overall the Nordic state has declined from “around average” to “significantly below average” in the global league table of learning, a bigger drop than any other country has seen…
The OECD suggests that increasing the attractiveness of the teaching profession, improving pedagogical leadership and investing in professional development might be more fruitful avenues to pursue.
Not that this report will sway the NActs, with David Seymour “quietly confident” that the government will listen to his lobbying for more charter schools to open next year.
The only sensible answer to these attacks is to ensure that the investors lose their shirts every single time they buy more legislation from the National Party.
+1
and take a swag of cash back every time they fail to meet their KPIs instead of handing them more cash to fix the problem they created… or we could continue with your sensible answer and have people who have no profit motive involved in ensuring provision, evaluation and continuous improvement of schooling.
Yes Tony. I watched John Oliver last night and was about to write about it here. Snap. Watch the industry that has grown out of selling the testing materials. And the fact that none of the processes and none of the people running the show are held accountable.
There are some large areas in the USA where the kids teachers and parents are refusing to be tested. Brave people!
The report released by Massey University this week shows that dairy intensification over the last 20 years has seen waterways become heavily polluted, greenhouse gas emissions increase, and biodiversity loss, among other negative impacts, and argues that the cost of cleaning up the environment may be higher than the economic benefit from dairy exports.
The paper calculated externalities – costs to the community in the form of lost recreation opportunities and clean-up costs. These are costs that are borne by society rather than industry, Dr Joy says.
It revealed that, for the worst case scenario, the costs to society of dairy farming are approximately equal to the export revenue and gross domestic product (GDP).
“In other words, the industry is a zero-sum gain for New Zealand if the costs are included,” Dr Joy says. “These results will not be welcomed by many and are a wake-up call for the industry that can’t be ignored.”
There are a couple of people up here in the north, Weka – trying to show the local authorities that there are different ways of dealing with this problem. Unfortunately the local authorities don’t want to know.
One of the people is a dairy farmer who has changed his methods of farming to improve the quality of the waterways near his place, the other goes out taking photos and documenting the damage being caused by farm animals in local waterways. Maori TV has run a couple of stories about this.
I guess that one of these days soon someone in authority will finally wake up !
Good to hear about the locals. I think we’re close to a tipping point, but the change will still happen too slowly because the main power holders want money and have been promised money. The good news is that enough farmers are doing the right things, so that if the authorities get on board we should be able to transition without having to invent new ways of doing things.
I hope we can invent new ways of doing the old ways. “Walking backwards into the future” It is an interesting angle – Māori traditionally lived this and to my mind Greer is saying large aspects of the same thing. It seems self evident to me but I realise not everyone is of the same mind. Found this good article on the subject http://salient.org.nz/2014/03/maori-matters-2/
I’ve seen a few country calendars where dairy farmers adopting a sustainable approach got a better return, less outlays and diversified income as chooks helped recover pasture.
Weka highlighted this succinct piece that should be in everyone’s mind.
“It revealed that, for the worst case scenario, the costs to society of dairy farming are approximately equal to the export revenue and gross domestic product (GDP)
Add to that the fact that dairying gets free water by millions of litres.
Yeah, but who is getting the money? If there is no benefit to NZ economically, and there are huge downsides environmentally, who is actually gaining from this? Is it just the farmers? How many are family farms and how many are corporate owned? Or overseas owned? Is there money going elsewhere (eg irrigation companies), and who are those people?
‘Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret is a groundbreaking feature-length environmental documentary following intrepid filmmaker Kip Andersen as he uncovers the most destructive industry facing the planet today – and investigates why the world’s leading environmental organizations are too afraid to talk about it.
Animal agriculture is the leading cause of deforestation, water consumption and pollution, is responsible for more greenhouse gases than the transportation industry, and is a primary driver of rainforest destruction, species extinction, habitat loss, topsoil erosion, ocean “dead zones,” and virtually every other environmental ill. Yet it goes on, almost entirely unchallenged.’
There’s nothing wrong with dairy farming, it’s how we’re doing it. Cowspiracy is a fundamentalist vegan film that doesn’t support its assertions very well. It also seems to be comparing industrial stock farming with industrial agriculture and deciding that industrial agriculture is best. Both are highly polluting and destroy ecologies. Swapping one for the other out of ideological concerns just creates different problems, what we need to do instead is make all farming sustainable and regenerative.
I linked to this review of the film the other day, plus some snippets,
Responding to a polemic that plays as fast and loose with facts as this film could easily devolve into a line by line response, which would be even more boring to read than it would be to write. Instead, I’ll focus on a few of the main topics, beginning with how cows drink, burp, fart, and most of all poop, which – not to brag – I have some experience with.
Methane is a more vexed question, since cows indisputably belch and fart. In the film Anderson implies that cows are the main source of methane and that reducing their numbers is the fastest way to reverse global warming. After too much time poking around in search of definitive numbers on methane emissions, I decided to use those provided on a NASA website, even though a number of reputable sources arrive at different conclusions, particularly concerning the amount of methane released by wetlands, listed at 22% in the data I am quoting. By these numbers, ruminant livestock directly account for 16% of global methane emissions, and the (mis)management of all livestock manure accounts for another 5%. Human sewage treatment is 5%, biomass burning is 8%, fossil fuels production is 19%, and, surprisingly, rice cultivation is 12%. Various other manmade and natural sources fill out the remainder. While 21% of total methane is certainly significant, the idea that the elimination of livestock would clearly lead to a reversal of global warming trends is both an overstatement and an oversimplification, without getting into matters of methane’s half-life relative to carbon’s.
The great weakness of Cowspiracy, other than its title, is its single minded determination to prove that veganism is the only reasonable approach to feeding people, a proof it pursues without regard for facts or nuance. That’s not to say it’s worthless, for there are ideas for several good films within it. I would love to watch a truly investigative examination of any links between the industrial agriculture sector and large environmental non-profits, rather than one that infers connections from the vague responses of uncomfortable PR people. A devastating documentary could be made about the insanity of beef and dairy production in California, and I am all for consumers voting against them and other parts of the industrial food system with their dietary choices. I even think a fair examination of the ways small farms are not inherently better for land and livestock would be wonderful. Instead of any of these there is a failed effort to prove that one lifestyle choice can solve every environmental and agricultural problem.
This failure is not just a result of misleading and erroneous data, but even more so of superficiality. Though I watched carefully and took copious notes, I do not have a clear idea what Anderson’s vegan world would look like. Would excess land be converted to wilderness? Should the hills and fields of my farm return to forest and scrub like so much of the nearby land that used to be grass? Why is a monoculture of wheat preferable to a polyculture of pasture? Should we humans be connected to and reliant on the land around us and should these connections take different forms in response to local conditions? Yesterday, while out hunting turkey, I came across the remains of a deer, one of ten or so my brother and I have found this year. All of them starved or froze to death in the clutches of last winter. Now they are piles of mossy bones marking where living things curled up and never stood again. Why is this preferable to raising cows as I do, particularly when there’s room here for both?
“So you address none of his points, and none of the points of what he linked to. 0/10”
Good spotting. We went through this the other day. Phil promotes the film, claims to have watched it right through, and yet can’t address any of the points raised about it, and instead resorts to ad hominems and diversions.
No, but I did do some research and posted some thoughts, which is far more than can be said for you. I don’t hate vegans, veganism is a great choice for those that it works for. I am however highly critical of fundamentalist views like yours.
No. I decided not to watch it after reading the review, and seeing phil’s complete an utter inability to answer the questions I raised (assuming he had actually watched it, which I am starting to doubt).
So the unarmed police shoot someone who was aiming a gun at them, presumably by assessing the situation and getting their guns out, and O’Connor thinks this is a reason to arm the police? He’s not great on logic is he.
Without a thought for the escalation it causes and the research that shows immense damage, including to police offices (who, as is pointed out above, are effectively already able to access arms pretty easily)
Is it just me – or have we seen more people get killed by police in this country, whilst Mr O’Connor has been pushing for guns?
Than the period before the police became surreptitiously armed?
Because I’m sorry, our police have become militarised, and are effectively armed – it has all happened in the past 30 odd years. And I think I’m not alone, in feeling less safe when police are around – than I was 30 years ago.
And whilst we are not the USA, I think we could very well become more like it – with a police force that is armed.
The RWNJs do seem to have a liking for authority to be well armed and for the people to live in fear of them. They don’t seem to understand that such a society ends up with the RWNJs becoming a head shorter.
This is the “transparency” provided for US Senators who are to vote on fast tracking the TPPA.
“Only members of the House and Senate are currently allowed to view the text of the deal, and even they are forbidden from discussing what it contains. As a new report from Politico published Monday details, “If you’re a member who wants to read the text, you’ve got to go to a room in the basement of the Capitol Visitor Center and be handed it one section at a time, watched over as you read, and forced to hand over any notes you make before leaving.
As for the public, a few unauthorized leaks of the text have previewed a deal that would “dramatically expand the power of corporations to use closed-door tribunals to challenge—and supersede—domestic laws, including environmental, labor, and public health, and other protections.”
Show us the TPPA text, Tim Groser, and convince us that it is worth signing.
I suppose that should the other countries sign up to TPPA but not NZ, then “they” would be in a powerful position to boycott and sanction NZ as outsiders. Shudder!
It is almost unbelievable this TPPA and the secret deals, almost, but it is happening, or trying to – right in front of our faces. We must utterly oppose this. Thanks for posting Tautoko Mangō Mata.
TVOne News tonight … Northland becomes a Chinese tourist paradise .. 1700-1900 visitors a week, and all run by CEO Mike Sabin. What could possibly go wrong. Yuk.
Karikari peninsula is my home so know about this one alright;
this is a runaway train of a development on an relatively new fragile peninsula, sewerage, trash, environmental impact have not even been looked at yet
the local council is full of good ol’ boy tory cronies and totally unable to cope strategically or practically with such a huge development, all the agencies need to be involved in what should be a positive Far North job creator
eco tourism, cultural tourism, involvement of local SMEs will not happen unless central government grabs CRED by the balls and tells them what regional development means, the local schools could be teaching Chinese languages and be integrated into the development but this is highly unlikely due to the Nats crony model and CREDs record of running ‘closed eco system’ resorts where all workers will be Chinese imports and the profits apart from a little local earthworks and construction will go offshore
With resigned MP Sabin filling in a year as Pepper Carrington CEO till he possibly acquires an ankle braclet the owners have not demonstrated much empathy for local concerns, the Ngati Kahu runanga committee from local Haitetaimairangai marae has attempted to have been swayed with virtually unlimited air travel and large payments going to several prominent local Māori. Many locals staked their mana on Carrington MkI for jobs that did not eventuate and have learnt their lesson.
I wonder if CRED know ? Murray Rawshark sent them an email a while back when the news of his appointment was first reported. Face is everything for Chinese businessmen and while some crimes are quite acceptable, this kind of ‘private family matters’ is not. My hunch is they do not know — why would they risk so much ?
or do not care at this stage, given plausible deniability with a strong suppression order for a “prominent New Zealander”, possibly just arrogance, the local “guy” that was recommended by the Nat contact (Mayor Carter?) gets taken on, end of story
my contacts tell me the management out here they have been meeting with every few weeks so far have no understanding of Māori structures, tribes, rohē, hapu, whanau etc and where decision making power resides, which explains why substantial bucks have been given to two runanga members (previously good advocates), but I don’t want to delve into that too much
previous Far North developers (like Chris Hook, Crystal Waters, Cable Bay ’05) have thought buying out a ‘key’ person solved their problems, only to find the collective opposition won through in the end
I heard a few years back that the flash gold course let locals play for free. Seemed buggerall to me as compensation for making a mess of a beautiful peninsula.
nah, never happened, there was a cheap rate one year but it was made clear that the dress standard of the few that gave it a try was not suitable for after golf drinkies at the resort so it was canned
after locals had been conned into allowing a non notifiable consent and bought off with the false promise of employment they were forgotten about, no career paths or training just seasonal housekeeping/hospitality jobs with imported managers
there will be some push back on this one from people that got burnt once, even perhaps from the absentee owners with gin palaces as the scale has the potential to be an ecological wipeout for Karikari Peninsula whose sewerage system is maxed out at xmas anyway
the FNDC is not insisting on jobs for locals they just want the one off development contributions and kick backs for rolling over the original consent but the runanga committee is opposing that at this stage, CRED have put up 2 mill for travel and payments for the committee members going to China
The Government is laying out the red carpet for the two-day forum, from which the media is barred.
More than 70 Australasian managers of global companies and 30 bosses of Kiwi companies are in Wellington on Tuesday and Wednesday for the New Zealand Foreign Investor Dialogue.
it’s a logical extension of how TPP is operating. The “people” can’t be trusted to know what is best for the top 1%, which is true if you think about it.
Agree entirely… Remember when one of the major memes of the Right was Clark was so angry she thought she knew what was best for everyone else? Major projection methinks.
Warning in today’s Herald that Auckland property prices could plunge. At the same time there’s another story about dairying prices likely to go down further. Are we on the verge of some sort of financial collapse? How likely is this ? I’m not a financial expert, but this is starting to look worrying. The Herald story quotes Toronto in the 1980s, I’m not sure if that’s a good comparison or not but surely the Auckland bubble cannot continue as it is ?
Wouldn’t a person have to own an awful lot of not quite free-hold unproductive property for that to worry them? The article reasoning of “women entering the workforce” and “job growth”, doesn’t match our current reality. If someone had a mortgage on a family home, insurance and a reasonably secure income, it shouldn’t be a concern.
House prices fall by 50%, dairy prices fall by whatever, consumer goods offered at 50mths interest free: might be indicators of “confidence”; certainly favours the already rich, but a series of events difficult to syncronise to that end from central location; could be the final symptom of financial “collapse” that would have actually occurred ten years ago. Even if it was, I dont see what there is to be scared of – in times of financial depression, those with resources will do everything they can to secure deferred payment from those who require the goods/services. You say it yourself. None of this was going to last for ever.
It’s more wishful thinking Jenny. Even a cursory glance tells us that Auck is different to Toronto. The continued low interest rates are a big contributor to recent housing inflation here, a sustained 10% fall in interest rates will result in a corresponding 10% increase in property prices (both residential & commercial)
Mortgage interest rates have fallen over 33% since 2008 and now that they look likely to stay down over the longer term the risk of taking out a mortgage is low so more people are taking out mortgages.
The Toronto market crash also occured after developers & speculators rushed in to exploit the increased demand for housing by building condos (apartments) & the likes. Eventually there were more condos & houses than there were buyers so the bubble burst.
Auckland Council won’t let developers build enough apartments, and the population is still increasing, so the demand for housing here isn’t abating.
Are we on the verge of some sort of financial collapse? How likely is this ?
Yes, very likely – when is the question nobody has the answer to.
I’m not a financial expert, but this is starting to look worrying.
It should do as it’s exactly the same things as what caused the GFC in 2008. Has a lot of similarities to the causes of the Great Depression as well.
The fact is that ‘investors’ are more interested in pocketing high returns from capital gains than from producing anything. Producing something costs money and effort whereas capital gains don’t.
As far as I can see, they will plunge at some time because the whole thing is a pyramid scheme. The only question is whether the plunge is managed or totally out of control. Neither of our main parties have the will or the courage to attack the Kiwi dream of getting rich from property, so I think we’re in for a hard landing.
All the Green MPs are fasting today to raise awareness of climate change and how it affects food security. It’s part of the Fast for the Climate global action,
The Green Party caucus will sit on Parliament steps with their empty plates at lunchtime to urge the Government to take greater action on climate change.
Greens co-leader Russel Norman said the people in areas most affected by climate change were already finding it harder to access food.
“The connection between climate change and food was highlighted by the devastating cyclone Pam in Vanuatu, where food crops were wiped out,” Norman said.
“To show empathy for our Pacific neighbours who will especially suffer the effects of climate change, the National Government must commit to dramatically lowering our emissions and to playing a constructive role at global negotiations.”
The MPs will be sitting on the steps of Parliament on Tuesday at 1pm.
It would appear, after reading the article you link to that they are not going to eat at lunchtime.
On the other hand I’m sure they have all had a large breakfast and morning tea.
Starve themselves my foot.
because that’s what Alwyn would do – pretend to make a sacrifice in public, but make up for it in private. Like any tory, Alwyn can’t understand integrity.
AFAIK they’re fasting all day (saw Hughes on twitter this morning talking about being hungry). The lunchtime thing is called activism, where they make what they are doing visible and use it to highlight the issue of climate change and food security.
“New Zealand could not adopt Victorian-style taxes because of its free trade agreements with some countries.”
Did anyone notice this comment from John Key yesterday? Our free trade agreements stop the government from introducing new taxes to reduce the amount of foreign investment in rental properties.
Thx Gareth … my word, he is fatuous in so many ways, considering the Victorian law is only one week old.
Likewise, the comments under that story are revealing … as someone suggests, put on a 50% tax and let’s just see if it works !!!
Key is beyond useless but so dangerous in his willingness just to sell, sell, sell.
Oh, and TVOne News last night reports that the lovely Whatuwhiwhi holiday camp is going to be imported workers accommodation for the huge Chinese-owned resort. Gulag with a view, anyone ?
And we have seen so many times that specially imported workers are not covered byany NZ labour regs including wages … forf example, the battle continues with the Chinese workers removing the asbestos from rail carriages in Hutt Valley.
And yes, Mike Sabin runs it all in Northland. Well, until he doesn’t, I guess.
I blame our parents… for bringing us all up the way they did.. 😉
They wanted us to be secure from the uncertainties of war that they grew up with but instead we interpreted it as needing lots and ltts and lots of things and money and stuff.
Good work highlighting this rawshark-yeshe, well said.
We need to galvanise public support to ban the importation of foreign slave labour under the guise of the foreigners employment laws. Pressure needs to be put on the National Government, targeting weakling Woodhouse.
What a sham Chinese workers are working here in New Zealand reputed to be paid $3 an hour, ffs 1/5 of our minimum wage. What a crock of bullshit weakling Woodhouse came up with all sorts of excuses ‘not too demand the Chinese employer front up with payslips verifying payrates.’ I even think he tried claiming it was against the employment rights. Fortunately I understand the NZ Rail workers Union is going to test this in court. We need to create some noise around this serious issue.
Please standard friends feed as much information about this slave camp Sabin is setting up in Northland. I can organise a decent collective ( political, unions, environmentalists) siege on this rich foreigners paradise pad.
That Rail Workers Union court case will be interesting .. and we know Winston is watching this up north .. Tiger Mountain is on the ground up there and is watching .. did you see her post a reply to me earlier ?
RWNJ productions bring their latest international gaming sensation to homes everywhere. At great expense to the funding that used to go to Hospitals and Schools, a dedicated team of gravy-train-spotters spent weeks touring the world diligently researching barstools in only the finest of casinos, before hurriedly hashing together this piece of under-produced rubbish on the flight home.
That’s right, the rumours are true, it’s finally here! RWNJ’s Snakes & Snakes.
& now you too can play along in the comfort of your own home.
Be it a humble hovel, a crumbling highway underpass or a cardboard mansion with a view of the supermarket dumpsters, your home can now rock along with the economy and you never have to feel left out of all the fun. With just a couple of hours spent begging on your local mainstreet and a quick trip to your local library, you too can print out your very own full colour Snakes & Snakes game board. Don’t have your own dice? Who cares! Just fake it like the pros do and use whatever numbers you like.
Win at all costs,
– because at the end of the day, it’s not like the costs are yours
Interested to see the hubris of Double Dip Blinglish and Dirty Deeds Smith. They are directly profiting from the sale of State houses to the tune of millions of dollars. They are majority shareholders of the so called Tamaki Redevelopment Company, that is responsible for the eviction of State house tenants, and sale of those homes. For every house sold they pocket 29.5% of the sale price each. Kleptocracy writ large.
Yes Phil. They are nominal shareholders on behalf of the crown. Muldoon used to be listed as owning Air New Zealand. They cannot sell the houses and pocket any money. In a new government, the names of the new ministers would go down as shareholders.
However, it is the Government selling houses (it seems they are tenanted to boot) to itself for re-developpment and consequent sale to the then finally private market while giving itself a loan of 200 million dollar.
Have I got that right?
What was Bill English saying the other day….: I see no use for State Houses?
this is a fucked up scheme of whitewash, outright lies and obsfucation all to get rid of State Houses and create loans out of nowhere. How much do we owe the chinese by now?
The stupid is staggering with Mana and anyone else who thinks that the Ministers involved have personal pecuniary interests in this. It is vested in the crown. This guy is a spokesman for Mana? They are representing the crowns holdings through the office of their ministry.
I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the ministers have personal pecuniary interests in this, just not in the way Mana News is saying. I think there’s more stupid in people who think Tory ministers don’t line their own pockets than can be found in two Manas.
This move is the first in removing any kind of public interest and influence over social and state housing.
Voters, while currently fairly ineffective, while housing is still in government ownership – can direct their lobbying and protesting towards reasonably straightforward targets while the housing is still under the full ownership of the crown.
Although the move to a LLC company seems initially seems to be sideways, it is the critical first step in providing a constantly moving target for criticism and protest. (Instead of HNZ and government, we may now have HNZ and government policy AND more than one LLC). Because they are now LLC held, unconcerned MP’s and other representatives can now say “I don’t agree with it, but this is a private business and I have no influence over it. We live in a democratic country and we cannot interfere with private businesses who are following the law.”
I know rather than hope. Bank collapses tend to lead to that situation and unfortunately for the Greeks when they occur after they indicate they are moving back to using their own currency they won’t be able to get any funds to bail them out.
Well, you don’t “know” because economics is a bunk religion, not a science.
This greek government is likely to do what the us should have done at the start of the GFC: taken over the liabilities faced by the banks in order to protect the people, and let the multinational banks collapse.
The most pertinent part of that article is the following
‘Firms are postponing much-needed investment and are pleading for a resolution, says Theodore Fessas, chairman of the Hellenic Federation of Enterprises (SEV), which represents companies from most branches and sectors of the Greek economy.
“Uncertainty is the greatest problem today. It is now threatening even the healthiest businesses, those that managed, despite the crisis, to pay wages and taxes on time, and fulfil all their obligations.” ‘
That is what pursuing a reckless leftist inspired policy platform inevitably leads to. Investment and credit dry up as people lose faith in what is happening. Syriza has a lot to answer for.
The options for Greece was largely restricted to trading their way out of the mess they got themselves in via exporting. Syriza decided it wanted to try a Keynesian approach but has discovered you can’t do this is you haven’t got control of your own monetary and fiscal policies and in fact you will make things a hell of a lot worse even hinting you want to do this.
Oh Gosman sit down. All is under control once Germany pay up (with interest) what they owe the Greeks. Did they honestly believe that they could welsh on their debts.
Well wise guy either way the Greeks are going to default on the German’s. Better the German’s cut a deal or risk the domino effect of other Countries pulling from the euro. Now pray tell us how Germany will fair, better or worst?
The ECB and the other members of the Euro have already developed a plan around ensuring a Grexit is contained. It isn’t just the Germans who have lost patience with the Greeks either. Much of Northern Europe (e.g. the Finns and Dutch) can’t be bothered with the games the Greeks are trying to play.
According to Germany West Germany paid full reparations in 1960 and there was a final settlement when East and West Germany re-united in 1990.
Their view is that nothing further is owed.
Greece on the other hand seems to want something like Treaty of Waitangi settlement claims. One “full and final” settlement after another , followed each time by further demands.
Greece may well have a strong moral argument for a repayment of a loan they were forced to make to the Nazis. However demanding reparations for other aspects of the Occupation is just blustering.
Te Tiriti was supposed to institute a partnership. Full and final settlements are made when a partnership is dissolved. You might like that, I suppose.
Well, if you clearly don’t know anything about reparations and the Treaty of Waitangi, how can we take your comments about Germany-Greece reparations seriously?
“The whole concept of the Euro was a stupid one. You cannot have monetary and fiscal union without political union – plain and simple.”
Agree. Even though I was fairly politically unaware at this stage of my life, the proposal struck me as a particularly bad one for this reason. Was even further surprised when it was adopted.
Now, I tend to be cynical and believe that it was promoted and adopted for the ease of influence over all Eurozone countries. An administration proficiency improvement perhaps.
Syriza are trying to negotiate a more practical solution. Creditors unwillingness is prolonging a workable outcome being found, thus intensifying the uncertainty and negatively impacting on the economy .
Quote:
Beneficiaries advocate Kay Brereton said the need for dental work had not gone away.
“It’s worrying that there’s people out there whose health is getting worse. There’s got to be a lot of people out there who are living with pain and eating on one side of their mouth. That’s the kind of thing that I’ve encountered, before they [WINZ] said that we don’t do this anymore.”
In the 2010/11 financial year, Work and Income loaned $9,398,451 to beneficiaries for emergency dental work. Over the past year that figure was slashed to $45,100, official documents showed.
Ms Brereton does not think there has been any specific changes to policy, except Government pressure on Work and Income to shrink beneficiary debt.
End quote.
So is this how Key is funding his $26M effing flag ego trip?!
Yup, to put it into perspective, last year the country spent more on global jaunts for Jim Bolger and his wife than what was spent on the emergency dental health of some of its most vulnerable citizens.
Yeah but why worry eh? It’s not like decisions to ignore critical dental emergencies ever lead to other health and well being issues whose social costs will most likely dwarf the costs of the emergency dental treatment being denied, all because of pressure to scrape the runway for the spruce goose surplus.
That dental services are not part of the country’s core health service has always been something I have a fundamental difficulty with. But as many have commented over the years, logic and government are not exactly bedfellows. Let’s face it, they’re barely living in the same house anymore.
Article needs more info. Otherwise it’s he said/she said. How are WINZ budgets formulated? Are they using the old “what you don’t spend this period gets removed from budget next period” approach? Nine Mill on dental work in 2010/11 suddenly dropping away four years later wouldn’t be out of the ordinary. People have a finite number of teeth, combined with the above budget approach, and hey presto.
$9M divided by 1 – 32 possible tooth issues per adult, divided by roughly $400 per tooth removal (simple example), over four years – and it’s not so impossible. While such a method takes no account for future problems, I guess Labour will sort that out *cough cough* later, by bringing salads back to school tuck shops and denying the removal of wisdom teeth as anti-intellectual propaganda. Beneficiary Advocate would have to prove that people haven’t been treated for existing need, and that reductions were pre-emptive, to present a story no one will remember come 2017. Sad fact.
Dr.Crum’s comments ring true in my experience. Sit in a dentists office and you’ll hear people setting up payment plans. No one can ignore not being able to sleep for a week because of tooth pain and probably unable to sit through a WINZ interview either. If serious unaddressed dental work was sending those missing untreated patients to hospital, or to the grave, we’d have a matching story to join the dots.
Anecdotally, I don’t think I’ve met a dentist who mixes professional attitude with the political “tendencies” of others in the medical professions. Maybe being an ass while your highly trained and profitable fingers are in someone’s mouth isn’t so smart.
Or, we could listen to one of the most experienced beneficiary advocates in the country and take note when she says there is a problem with existing beneficiaries accessing health care.
“Dr.Crum’s comments ring true in my experience. Sit in a dentists office and you’ll hear people setting up payment plans. No one can ignore not being able to sleep for a week because of tooth pain and probably unable to sit through a WINZ interview either. If serious unaddressed dental work was sending those missing untreated patients to hospital, or to the grave, we’d have a matching story to join the dots.”
Last time I went to the dentist the receptionist refused to even give me an appointment until I had the paperwork from WINZ saying they would cover the costs. Negotiating payment plans is dependent on having discretionary income (not true for many on a benefit), and it also depends on a practice being willing to trust a beneficiary (not all do).
People, of any class, shouldn’t have to wait until the situation is so dire that their pain prevents them sitting through a WINZ interview.
“Anecdotally, I don’t think I’ve met a dentist who mixes professional attitude with the political “tendencies” of others in the medical professions. Maybe being an ass while your highly trained and profitable fingers are in someone’s mouth isn’t so smart.”
How do you explain the lack of low cost dental care then?
A government nationalises the Electricity sector and provides generous subsidies so people can afford electricity and then massive shortages occur and the same government has to impose strict rationing.
Given there were lessons to be learnt out of the Californian experience what lessons do you think people can take out of Venezuela’s current predicament?
california has a history of power shortages but isnt socialist. gosman likes to use venezuela as an example of failed socislism as others like to use it as a success. Sooooooo i pointed out that doyen of capitalism, california, suffers power shortages due to rampant capitalistic consumption.
You didn’t answer the question of what lessons could be learned from Venezuela suffering power shortages. Maybe it is that subsidising electricity is not sustainable long term. What do you reckon?
I thought the lesson was obvious oh goose of little brain. The managed market (eg Venezuela) achieves a far more equitable distribution of a scare resource rather than reliance on the god of the “hidden hand”. So there is rationing of a scare resource. Far better than the privileged few gobbling it all up and keeping it to themselves. But then you probably have your nose firmly up their bottoms and so think otherwise.
The lessons are the same ones that California should have learned. Neither put enough corrupt criminal capitalists in prison to allow the problems to be fixed. Hopefully Venezuela will remedy this.
I’m stating that to ensure the poor can access some electricity in the short run they have massively increased to costs involved to everyone. These costs will eventually be passed on in some manner and it is likely the poor will end up in an even worse position than they were before (Most likely no electricity, no jobs and no services that rely on electricity).
I’m stating that to ensure the poor can access some electricity in the short run they have massively increased to costs involved to everyone.
No they haven’t. The costs have remained the same.
These costs will eventually be passed on in some manner and it is likely the poor will end up in an even worse position than they were before (Most likely no electricity, no jobs and no services that rely on electricity).
What a load of BS. If anything it’s likely to produce more jobs as the government continues massive investment in electricity production.
A lot of people don’t understand that pricing is there to restrict use. This applies to RWNJs as well as their usual complaint about carbon taxes is that it will raise fuel prices.
Anyway, what Venezuela did there was wrong but not because of the price controls or the subsidies but because the controls were set incorrectly. What they should have done is set a reasonable amount of electricity that each household could use free and that anything above that cost an arm and a leg with the price increasing as you used more.
That would have provided the security of supply that the poor need while also restricting use. It would have removed the need for the subsidies as well.
Questions might be interesting today (unless Key takes Armstrong’s advice and makes a personal statement to shut down debate.)
1. Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by all his statements; if so, why?
3. ANDREW LITTLE to the Prime Minister: Does he enforce high standards of conduct on all his Ministers, including himself?
Last evening I went to see a film “Salt of the Earth”. A documentary featuring the life work of social photographer Sebastião Salgado. If you have not seen this film you must. There are parts that are so hard to witness – The graphic realities shown of the droughts in Ethiopia, and the Sahel, the wars in Serbia and Rwanda, are simply heartbreaking, and man’s inhumanity to man almost too much to bear. http://sonyclassics.com/thesaltoftheearth/
But there is hope at the end with the reforestation program he and his wife have begun in Brazil. A very moving documentary.
He does make a reference to the biblical quote “you are the salt of the Earth” early on in the film, and his work is focused entirely on the global human condition. But yes an interesting observation. I’m sure that has something to do with it as well. Interestingly he trained as an economist and worked for the World Bank before giving that all up to concentrate on photography; a much more influential and productive life resulted.
‘The brother of a Cabinet Minister is accused of abusing two 11-year-old girls.
The man, whose name, age, and job have been suppressed, is accused of indecently assaulting an 11-year-old girl and of attempting to make intimate recordings of another girl, also aged 11.’
‘There is a very real conflict of interest for the cabinet minister whose brother is facing serious assault charges, Labour Party leader Andrew Little has said.’
Interesting difference in reporting. The Herald calls it a total blanket suppression; Stuff reports the judge as being uncomfortable with a total blanket suppression. The Stuff reporter is named as Phil McCarthy, who works for the Southland Times.
CAREFUL – we must not name possible court location as this is suppressed.
Thanks! Interesting, I tried that this morning and got blank pages.
It does look like the reporter got somethign wrong about the scope of the suppression order. Or what the judge granted was a partial suppression but still more than the man’s name. Anyone know how that works?
Not me. I sorta get how suppression orders are supposed to work but note that in the practical application they seem only to favour the privileged. In this case, I wonder whether the suppression order(s) might include “any details” which could identify the alleged victims. If so, stating their age at the time of the alleged offending might be a problem??
This article mentions the ministers brother’s appearing at court in Chch but was published before suppression? Does this need to be taken down like the stuff article?
That’s interesting. I wonder whether they were assuming that it would be in Christchurch based on the fact that the interim name suppression injunction against publication of the name of the accused and his Cabinet Minister brother was issued by the High Court in Chch at the weekend. My money on the actual hearing being further south based on the location of the Stuff reporter who wrote the article after the hearing which has now been taken down. BUT must not name the possible location(s)!
But I am a little concerned that the post-hearing Stuff article is now available further up this thread and wonder whether it should be removed.
Obviously this is up to Lprent and the other mods, but there has been some discussion on Twitter re the article and possible breach of the latest suppression order, with a number of people removing their tweets referring to it and its contents.
Sorry, but I don’t think we can assume that at all – ie that there was not a blanket suppression, and that there was pressure from Key or others on the judge. The latter is an absolute no-no, in terms of probity and the separation of the Executive from the Judiciary, and the latter’s independence. IMHO, Stuff stuffed up, published, realised the mistake, and removed their article.
sorry vv, can’t agree with you on this one … I believe Stuff published what was 100% legal to publish .. they simply would not make that kind of error. Why they removed it ? Well, we’ll never know.
But this gubmint has terms of probity that none of us has been able to find for several years now. There is almost no ‘no-no’ this slimy gubmint has not been willing to cross.
It comes up as an option in Firefox (and Chrome too, I think). Look for the little pointer (a triangle shape) which appears at the end of the URLs (usually in green text) in Google search results. Click on the pointer and the option to use the cache appears. Bear in mind that it will only work for a day or so if the original article has been disappeared from its originating site.
You can also use a Firefox extension called “Resurrect Pages” to recover dead links from various sources: google, webcite, gigablast, web.archive.org, yahoo, bing
I think it’s fine, they’re probably editing it, and it’s useful to see that what they put up had to be taken down. Next time, cut and past the whole lot 😉 You did narrow down the possibilities a lot though.
Thanks so much that tool. I have never known how to do a screen shot, and actually asked for advice last week but got none.
In this particular instance, I would have taken a screen shot, but probably not published it here until I was sure that it was ‘legal’.
As I noted in my comment at 26, there was a big difference between the Herald and Stuff articles which set my alarm bells ringing, so I was being circumspect about saying much – but could not resist mentioning the reporter’s name and newspaper since the Stuff article gave his name. Don’t know how long the article was up online, but it has not reappeared or been replaced. Stuff’s lawyers may be earning their keep ….
In terms of the blanket suppression, the Stuff reporter may have left the court before the judge gave his/her full decision to file his story. Its happened before.
PS, I just rechecked Stuff and could not find any article, but used their search tool using “blanket suppression” and the original headline still comes up but does not link to anything.
and there may be easier ways to do a screenshot .. post your machine and operating system and see what suggestions there are .. I know many are more simple than Snipping Tool but I don’t know them !
Thanks for you comments .. I searched the Southland Times, and of all things, there is young man charged with sexually abusing two young women .. have we become a nation of pedophiles ? wtf.
And why is our ponytail pulling perverty PM protecting them ? Why?????
just for clarity, the case I read and mention above is NOT the suppressed one .. well it can’t be, it’s in the paper online … just another everyday pedophile trial in good ol’ NZ.
I’m pretty good at the old cut and paste, but there are times such as the Stuff article today, where getting a full screenshot before it disappears is useful.
Take a look at your keyboard, does it have a key with “print screen” ?
Press this key once and it will take an image of the entire monitor area. It should show you where it is saved or allow you to select such. It will most likely use a time stamp as title for the image. (btw, having the address bar in your screenshot helps confirm origin of image, and look out for any personally identifiable content that might have been captured from your desktop etc) I use the print screen option for most screengrabs and edit the image later.
Most print screen buttons work no matter what is being displayed on the monitor, be it a web browser, a text document you are editing, a video you are viewing etc.
In your preferences/settings you might be able to assign a ‘hot-keys’ screenshot/print screen button if one does not appear on your keyboard.
If unsure where the image has been saved, check your main drive’s ‘Pictures’ folder or the ‘Downloads’ “folder’. It may have a subfolder for screenshots but is just as likely to place it in the general folder contents.
As pointed out by rawshark-yeshe, there are numerous free programs out there that allow you to more precisely select areas of the screen to copy and these are very handy. EG: Screengrab is one “add on” for Firefox that is very useful and has a variety of handy tasks it can perform.
If unsure where the image has been saved, check your main drive’s ‘Pictures’ folder or the ‘Downloads’ “folder’.
In Windows it’s not saved to disc but only to memory. To save it requires opening up a graphics program (ie, Paint) and pasting it in. You can then crop, edit and save as you see fit.
A nice little example of how the msm can twist and amplify a nothing into an unacceptable something to be condemned…
A guy by the name of ‘Imperial Biscuit’ rides around outside St Enochs Square in Glasgow playing ‘good-bye’ themed songs from a portable amp hooked to his bike.
Another well known guy by the name of Sean Clerkin hollers stuff through a megaphone.
Labour supporters are gathered around Jim Murphy, who has thought it a good idea to enlist the help of Eddie Izzard for a street rally.
Other people of various ages and political leanings hover or pass by to get to the Underground and a chant of ‘Red Tories Out’ is taken up by some, that Jim Murphy then attempts to turn to ‘Get the Tories Out’.
No-one is hurt, no-one is injured and extensive video footage from ‘Imperial Biscuit’ lasting about 20 minutes shows a fair bit of good humour and one instance of a Labour voter shoving a young SNP voter away. (He actually takes the time out to ask the guy to ‘cool it’)
And the British press reports….
Eddie Izzard labels nationalist protesters as ‘violent’ and ‘aggressive’ as fights break out on Glasgow trip – The Independent.
Eddie Izzard slams ‘violent’ protesters in Glasgow – The Scotsman
Scottish independence activists ambush Labour election rally – The Guardian
Wings Over Scotland has a piece including the video footage of the event for anyone interested in how media can work….or for anyone geekily obsessed with the UK election 😉
1. Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by all his statements; if so, why?
2. TIM MACINDOE to the Minister of Finance: What reports has he received on low inflation in New Zealand, and how does that benefit households and businesses?
3. ANDREW LITTLE to the Prime Minister: Does he enforce high standards of conduct on all his Ministers, including himself?
4. DAVID SEYMOUR to the Minister for Economic Development: What are the fiscal risks to the Crown from Tracey Martin’s New Zealand International Convention Centre Act 2013 Repeal Bill, if any?
5. PAUL FOSTER-BELL to the Minister of Science and Innovation: What is the Government doing to grow business-led research and development?
6. ANDREW LITTLE to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by his statement in relation to achieving a surplus that it is like “landing a 747 on a pinhead”?
7. SARAH DOWIE to the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety: How will Budget 2015 help strengthen compliance with minimum employment standards?
8. KEVIN HAGUE to the Minister of Finance: Does he stand by all his statements?
9. Hon ANNETTE KING to the Minister of Health: Are New Zealanders who require elective surgery receiving it in a timely manner?
10. STUART SMITH to the Minister for Disability Issues: How is the Government’s investment in the New Zealand Sign Language Fund helping sign language users to promote and maintain the language during Sign Language Week?
11. EUGENIE SAGE to the Minister of Conservation: Does she agree with Professor Mark Urban that New Zealand’s indigenous species are at greater risk of extinction from climate change than species in many other parts of the world; and if not, why not?
12. GRANT ROBERTSON to the Minister of Finance: Does he stand by his statement that “returning to surplus and repaying debt are among the most important things the Government can do to ensure New Zealand can withstand future shocks and build a more competitive economy based on exports and new jobs”; if so, will there be a surplus for the 2014/15 year?
QUESTIONS TO MEMBERS
1. Hon TREVOR MALLARD to the Chairperson of the Justice and Electoral Committee: How many submitters on the New Zealand Flag Referendums Bill have asked to be heard by the committee and of those how many has she requested to attend to give evidence?
2. Hon TREVOR MALLARD to the Chairperson of the Justice and Electoral Committee: How many submitters to the committee on the New Zealand Flag Referendums Bill requesting a yes/no vote has she requested attend to give evidence out of those who made submissions on this point?
I think that the NHS is being broken into parts which in affluent areas, private USA Companies snap them up. So steady demolition of NHS. Wonder how Privatisation can deliver a good service and make a profit?
So if Milliband can halt the sale – jolly good.
The Tory Leader’s Group donor club: ‘A chance for like-minded people to talk’
A payment of £50,000 gives business people direct access to David Cameron and other senior Conservatives at dinners, drinks receptions and other events
“The one undeniable advantage which donors in the Leader’s Group have is that they can express their views directly to the prime minister or to other senior ministers. They do not have to rely upon civil servants or intermediaries to pass on their views.”
I was watching it live, and here is the transcript
“Andrew Little : When will he admit that his Government acting as a bystander at the dairy auctions rather than building a more diverse economy is the real reason his economic promises are falling away as fast as the milk price?”
in q-time little told key the govt. should be buying milk products @ the global auctions – to prop up the price for farmers..
Confabulation much.
Andrew Little
: When will he admit that his Government acting as a bystander at the dairy auctions rather than building a more diverse economy is the real reason his economic promises are falling away as fast as the milk price?
Rt Hon JOHN KEY
: I do not know whether I misinterpreted the question from the Leader of the Opposition, but he seems to be saying that the Government should be in there buying milk powder in the auction. If he is, that is an interesting use of Government resources.
So not Little calling for the gummint to buy milk at all? Something completely different … and easily checked … instead. I’m shocked … shocked I tell ya.
‘When will he admit that his Government acting as a bystander at the dairy auctions rather than building a more diverse economy is the real reason his economic promises are falling away as fast as the milk price? ‘..
wtf is he saying if not that the govt should stop acting as a ‘bystander’ @ the milk auctions..
..what does ‘not acting as a byestander’ actually mean..if not to become involved as a player in that auction..?
The ‘action’ part of the sentence is “building a more diverse economy”. Bystander is merely a factual observation. I think you may have (hopefully temporarily) been influenced by Key’s read of it, which twists the meaning.
I note that what passes for a speaker these days didn’t require the PM to actually answer the question, even though Key started his reply by saying wasn’t sure he understood it and went on to talk about something else instead.
Oh, man, Phil, you are spinning away crap attacking Little unfairly and stupidly just like Key, Slater, Farrar and other RW arse holes. You aren’t one like them, I am sure!
“The Tamaki redevelopment company is broken up into three shareholders Auckland council, Bill English and Nick Smith. Both English and Smith own 29.5% of the shares while Auckland council own 41%”
The above is from mana news via imperator fish on my fb page is there any truth to it.??? Please tell me its bull.
Looked at that this morning but I think it must mean that the Government owns the shares via the Min of Finance and the Min of Housing. If they own the shares in their own right though then look out!
A. Joe Trinder is a secret right wing plant
B. Joe Trinder is dumber than a bag of hammers
C. Joe Trinder thinks his readers are dumber than a bag of spanners
D. Joe Trinder thinks the MSM are dumber than the aforementioned hammer and will pick up the headline and run with it (and then continue C but on a wider scale)
maybe it was humour……no, he is dumber than a sack of hammers. He is preaching to the Mana electorate though, so maybe it’s ok to be dumber than a sack of hammers.
“The shares appear to be held by the offices they hold, however now that this housing stock is in a private company, once the dust settles, these shares can be gifted/sold without public notification.”
The shares can be handled like any other SOE. But what the company can do is sell assets – so long as it isn’t a major transaction i.e all houses at once then it can dribble the houses away
I’ve just looked at the companies office – yes Nick smith & bill english hold them as ministers of the crown.
But the really interesting little thing is that this company & these shareholders were set up in August 2012
The current bunch of directors date back to around Dec 2012.
The constitution was amended in Feb 2014 which appears to up things like Treaty observance.
Directors are: Anne CANDY, Brian Patrick DONNELLY, Eru Reweti LYNDON, Susan Carrell MACKEN, Soana Akolotu PAMAKA, David John SAX, Christopher Martin UDALE. Are these the council & crown nominees?
From this perhaps we can assume that this housing intent predated the election by a substantial time perid. Where we lied to at election time???
David Fisher has had an interesting OIA reply from the PM’s office re the claims that Snowden’s info might be ‘wrong or misleading or forgeries” etc.
Summary of David’s column:
Overview
What was the issue?
Top secret GCSB and NSA documents detailed the way the agencies operated.
How did the Prime Minister respond?
John Key refused to comment on “stolen” information which could be fabricated.
Was there a basis for the suggestion they were forgeries? The PM’s office has confirmed there was no basis to the claim.
this is why he keeps lying…. cos people keep believing him cos it suits their world view or cos they dont care how many lies he tells if they dont like who he is smearing… and all those folks have children who are learning from mum and dad
the democratic solution includes the principle that women’s freedom is the freedom of society and that the freedom of women is the guarantee of all other freedoms.
A lengthy article at The Rojava Report covers Syrian history, its current (semi-failed) state and future, and concludes, among other things, that its armed forces must respect and affirm:
1. The transition from an authoritarian, nationalist, and chauvinistic structure to a decentralized democratic system in which everyone shares in self-management.
2. The struggle against Salafist jihadist groups of any name.
3. The unity of the Syrian nation.
4. Respect for the diversity of the Syrian community with all its constituent peoples.
Powerful stuff, and well worth reading in its entirety.
Part 4A ammendment to the Public Health and Disability Act (17th May 2013)
“It contained a number of features that are traditionally regarded as being contrary to sound constitutional law and convention –”
“The draconian measures introduced in s 70B(2)(c) to remove rights of challenge for breaches of family care policies said nothing about the Atkinson policy and we cannot be expected to strain the statutory text to remove all retrospective rights of claim arising from that policy.”
“While both counsel accept that the courts must respect and apply pt 4A, like any other legislation, we agree with them that if
the words have not achieved the result which its promoters intended the courts should not seek to fill the gaps as a means of dealing with inadequate drafting.”
“Winkelmann J held that if Parliament had intended to take the unusual step of retrospectively reversing a finding of inconsistency by the Tribunal, it could be expected to do so deliberately and to have used express and unambiguous language.”
Mary,
Thanks for the link to the court proceedings and judgment.
Missed your original posting have read the judgement and yes this is a very important step forward in what had been a blot on our care practises.
Let’s see Bridges and Key talk their way out of this one. Cheap, faulty imported concrete used on the Waterview project. ( It’s the new leaky building syndrome folks .. and oh look, it’s Fletchers again !)
Approximately 35 customers have been affected including a mix of commercial and residential projects.
It’s unlikely that these customers were do-it-yourselfers getting a single load of concrete to do; “backyard pathways”, or similar. Those dealing direct with the Firth/ Fletcher’s factory would all have been big projects.
“In approximately half of the cases no action will be needed and the concrete will remain in place”, sounds like; in over half the cases immediate repair is necessary to maintain structural integrity, and the rest settled for cash. So that’s 17 or more building projects where the concrete is rotten, but not repaired. I’d be very careful about buying any Auckland property on a new development where the concrete was poured in April 2015.
yep … but watch for an imported concrete scandal … slater has been writing about it for many weeks .. but of course, he could be making it up … and I seem to recall Winston asked a question about it in the house … a few months ago now …
You may be correct, Phil, but I suspect Little was being facetious because Key had not answered the question. It’s not audible on the replay that I can pick, but I can totally understand if Little took the piss out of Key’s response.
For the record, it’s not LP policy, at least not in terms of Muldoonist market intervention. However, as I recall, the party’s quite keen on milk in schools, but that’s not quite the same thing.
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The land around Lyme Regis, where Meryl Streep once stood, in a hood, on the Cobb, is falling into the sea.MerylThe land around Lyme Regis, around the Cobb that made it rich, has always been falling slowly but surely into the sea. Read more ...
Buzz from the Beehive Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters was bound to win headlines when he set out his thinking about AUKUS in his speech to the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. The headlines became bigger when – during an interview on RNZ’s Morning Report today – he criticised ...
The Post reports on how the government is refusing to release its advice on its corrupt Muldoonist fast-track law, instead using the "soon to be publicly available" refusal ground to hide it until after select committee submissions on the bill have closed. Fast-track Minister Chris Bishop's excuse? “It's not ...
As pressure on it grows, the livestock industry’s approach to the transition to Net Zero is increasingly being compared to that of fossil fuel interests. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / Getty ImagesTL;DR: Here’s the top five news items of note in climate news for Aotearoa-NZ this week, and a discussion above ...
The New Zealand Herald reports – Stats NZ has offered a voluntary redundancy scheme to all of its workers as a way to give staff some control over their “future” amidst widespread job losses in the public sector. In an update to staff this morning, seen by the Herald, Statistics New Zealand ...
On Werewolf/Scoop, I usually do two long form political columns a week. From now on, there will be an extra column each week about music and movies. But first, some late-breaking political events:The rise in unemployment numbers for the March quarter was bigger than expected – and especially sharp ...
David Farrar writes – The Herald reports: TVNZ says it is dealing with about 50 formal complaints over its coverage of the latest 1News-Verian political poll, with some viewers – as well as the Prime Minister and a former senior Labour MP – critical of the tone of the 6pm report. ...
Muriel Newman writes – When Meridian Energy was seeking resource consents for a West Coast hydro dam proposal in 2010, local Maori “strenuously” objected, claiming their mana was inextricably linked to ‘their’ river and could be damaged. After receiving a financial payment from the company, however, the Ngai Tahu ...
Alwyn Poole writes – “An SEP,’ he said, ‘is something that we can’t see, or don’t see, or our brain doesn’t let us see, because we think that it’s somebody else’s problem. That’s what SEP means. Somebody Else’s Problem. The brain just edits it out, it’s like a ...
Our trust in our political institutions is fast eroding, according to a Maxim Institute discussion paper, Shaky Foundations: Why our democracy needs trust. The paper – released today – raises concerns about declining trust in New Zealand’s political institutions and democratic processes, and the role that the overuse of Parliamentary urgency ...
This article was prepared for publication yesterday. More ministerial announcements have been posted on the government’s official website since it was written. We will report on these later today …. Buzz from the BeehiveThere we were, thinking the environment is in trouble, when along came Jones. Shane Jones. ...
New Zealand now has the fourth most depressed construction sector in the world behind China, Qatar and Hong Kong. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 8:46am on Thursday, May 2:The Lead: ...
Hi,I am just going to state something very obvious: American police are fucking crazy.That was a photo gracing the New York Times this morning, showing New York City police “entering Columbia University last night after receiving a request from the school.”Apparently in America, protesting the deaths of tens of thousands ...
Winston Peters’ much anticipated foreign policy speech last night was a work of two halves. Much of it was a standard “boilerplate” Foreign Ministry overview of the state of the world. There was some hardening up of rhetoric with talk of “benign” becoming “malign” and old truths giving way to ...
Graham Adams assesses the fallout of the Cass Review — The press release last Thursday from the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls didn’t make the mainstream news in New Zealand but it really should have. The startling title of Reem Alsalem’s statement — “Implementation of ‘Cass ...
This open-for-business, under-new-management cliché-pockmarked government of Christopher Luxon is not the thing of beauty he imagines it to be. It is not the powerful expression of the will of the people that he asserts it to be. It is not a soaring eagle, it is a malodorous vulture. This newest poll should make ...
The latest labour market statistics, showing a rise in unemployment. There are now 134,000 unemployed - 14,000 more than when the National government took office. Which is I guess what happens when the Reserve Bank causes a recession in an effort to Keep Wages Low. The previous government saw a ...
Three opinion polls have been released in the last two days, all showing that the new government is failing to hold their popular support. The usual honeymoon experienced during the first year of a first term government is entirely absent. The political mood is still gloomy and discontented, mainly due ...
National's Finance Minister once met a poor person.A scornful interview with National's finance guru who knows next to nothing about economics or people.There might have been something a bit familiar if that was the headline I’d gone with today. It would of course have been in tribute to the article ...
Rob MacCulloch writes – Throughout the pandemic, the new Vice-Chancellor-of-Otago-University-on-$629,000 per annum-Can-you-believe-it-and-Former-Finance-Minister Grant Robertson repeated the mantra over and over that he saved “lives and livelihoods”.As we update how this claim is faring over the course of time, the facts are increasingly speaking differently. NZ ...
Chris Trotter writes – IT’S A COMMONPLACE of political speeches, especially those delivered in acknowledgement of electoral victory: “We’ll govern for all New Zealanders.” On the face of it, the pledge is a strange one. Why would any political leader govern in ways that advantaged the huge ...
Bryce Edwards writes – The list of former National Party Ministers being given plum and important roles got longer this week with the appointment of former Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett as the chair of Pharmac. The Christopher Luxon-led Government has now made key appointments to Bill ...
TL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 10:06am on Wednesday, May 1:The Lead: Business confidence fell across the board in April, falling in some areas to levels last seen during the lockdowns because of a collapse in ...
Over the past 36 hours, Christopher Luxon has been dong his best to portray the centre-right’s plummeting poll numbers as a mark of virtue. Allegedly, the negative verdicts are the result of hard economic times, and of a government bravely set out on a perilous rescue mission from which not ...
Auckland Transport have started rolling out new HOP card readers around the network and over the next three months, all of them on buses, at train stations and ferry wharves will be replaced. The change itself is not that remarkable, with the new readers looking similar to what is already ...
Completed reads for April: The Difference Engine, by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling Carnival of Saints, by George Herman The Snow Spider, by Jenny Nimmo Emlyn’s Moon, by Jenny Nimmo The Chestnut Soldier, by Jenny Nimmo Death Comes As the End, by Agatha Christie Lord of the Flies, by ...
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a ...
Have a story to share about St Paul’s, but today just picturesPopular novels written at this desk by a young man who managed to bootstrap himself out of father’s imprisonment and his own young life in a workhouse Read more ...
The list of former National Party Ministers being given plum and important roles got longer this week with the appointment of former Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett as the chair of Pharmac. The Christopher Luxon-led Government has now made key appointments to Bill English, Simon Bridges, Steven Joyce, Roger Sowry, ...
Newsroom has a story today about National's (fortunately failed) effort to disestablish the newly-created Inspector-General of Defence. The creation of this agency was the key recommendation of the Inquiry into Operation Burnham, and a vital means of restoring credibility and social licence to an agency which had been caught lying ...
Holding On To The Present:The moment a political movement arises that attacks the whole idea of social progress, and announces its intention to wind back the hands of History’s clock, then democracy, along with its unwritten rules, is in mortal danger.IT’S A COMMONPLACE of political speeches, especially those delivered in ...
Stuck In The Middle With You:As Christopher Luxon feels the hot breath of Act’s and NZ First’s extremists on the back of his neck and, as he reckons with the damage their policies are already inflicting upon a country he’s described as “fragile”, is there not some merit in reaching out ...
The unpopular coalition government is currently rushing to repeal section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act. The clause is Oranga Tamariki's Treaty clause, and was inserted after its systematic stealing of Māori children became a public scandal and resulted in physical resistance to further abductions. The clause created clear obligations ...
Buzz from the Beehive The government’s official website – which Point of Order monitors daily – not for the first time has nothing much to say today about political happenings that are grabbing media headlines. It makes no mention of the latest 1News-Verian poll, for example. This shows National down ...
It Takes A Train To Cry:Surely, there is nothing lonelier in all this world than the long wail of a distant steam locomotive on a cold Winter’s night.AS A CHILD, I would lie awake in my grandfather’s house and listen to the traffic. The big wooden house was only a ...
Packing A Punch: The election of the present government, including in its ranks politicians dedicated to reasserting the rights of the legislature in shaping and determining the future of Māori and Pakeha in New Zealand, should have alerted the judiciary – including its anomalous appendage, the Waitangi Tribunal – that its ...
Dead Woman Walking: New Zealand’s media industry had been moving steadily towards disaster for all the years Melissa Lee had been National’s media and communications policy spokesperson, and yet, when the crisis finally broke, on her watch, she had nothing intelligent to offer. Christopher Luxon is a patient man - but he’s not ...
Chris Trotter writes – New Zealand politics is remarkably easy-going: dangerously so, one might even say. With the notable exception of John Key’s flat ruling-out of the NZ First Party in 2008, all parties capable of clearing MMP’s five-percent threshold, or winning one or more electorate seats, tend ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Polling shows that Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau has the lowest approval rating of any mayor in the country. Siting at -12 per cent, the proportion of constituents who disapprove of her performance outweighs those who give her the thumbs up. This negative rating is ...
Luxon will no doubt put a brave face on it, but there is no escaping the pressure this latest poll will put on him and the government. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political ...
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler In the wake of any unusual weather event, someone inevitably asks, “Did climate change cause this?” In the most literal sense, that answer is almost always no. Climate change is never the sole cause of hurricanes, heat waves, droughts, or ...
Something odd happened yesterday, and I’d love to know if there’s more to it. If there was something which preempted what happened, or if it was simply a throwaway line in response to a journalist.Yesterday David Seymour was asked at a press conference what the process would be if the ...
Hi,From time to time, I want to bring Webworm into the real world. We did it last year with the Jurassic Park event in New Zealand — which was a lot of fun!And so on Saturday May 11th, in Los Angeles, I am hosting a lil’ Webworm pop-up! I’ve been ...
Education Minister Erica Standford yesterday unveiled a fundamental reform of the way our school pupils are taught. She would not exactly say so, but she is all but dismantling the so-called “inquiry” “feel good” method of teaching, which has ruled in our classrooms since a major review of the New ...
Exactly where are we seriously going with this government and its policies? That is, apart from following what may as well be a Truss-Lite approach on the purported economic “plan“, and Victorian-era regression when it comes to social policy.Oh it’ll work this time of course, we’re basically assured, “the ...
Hey Uncle Dave, When the Poms joined the EEC, I wasn't one of those defeatists who said, Well, that’s it for the dairy job. And I was right, eh? The Chinese can’t get enough of our milk powder and eventually, the Poms came to their senses and backed up the ute ...
Polling shows that Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau has the lowest approval rating of any mayor in the country. Siting at -12 per cent, the proportion of constituents who disapprove of her performance outweighs those who give her the thumbs up. This negative rating is higher than for any other mayor ...
Buzz from the Beehive Pharmac has been given a financial transfusion and a new chair to oversee its spending in the pharmaceutical business. Associate Health Minister David Seymour described the funding for Pharmac as “its largest ever budget of $6.294 billion over four years, fixing a $1.774 billion fiscal cliff”. ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Many criticisms are being made of the Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill, including by this writer. But as with everything in politics, every story has two sides, and both deserve attention. It’s important to understand what the Government is trying to achieve and its ...
TL;DR: Here’s my top 10 ‘pick ‘n’ mix of links to news, analysis and opinion articles as of 10:10am on Monday, April 29:Scoop: The children's ward at Rotorua Hospital will be missing a third of its beds as winter hits because Te Whatu Ora halted an upgrade partway through to ...
span class=”dropcap”>As hideous as David Seymour can be, it is worth keeping in mind occasionally that there are even worse political figures (and regimes) out there. Iran for instance, is about to execute the country’s leading hip hop musician Toomaj Salehi, for writing and performing raps that “corrupt” the nation’s ...
Yesterday marked 10 years since the first electric train carried passengers in Auckland so it’s a good time to look back at it and the impact it has had. A brief history The first proposals for rail electrification in Auckland came in the 1920’s alongside the plans for earlier ...
Right now, in Aotearoa-NZ, our ‘animal spirits’ are darkening towards a winter of discontent, thanks at least partly to a chorus of negative comments and actions from the Government Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on ...
You make people evil to punish the paststuck inside a sequel with a rotating castThe following photos haven’t been generated with AI, or modified in any way. They are flesh and blood, human beings. On the left is Galatea Young, a young mum, and her daughter Fiadh who has Angelman ...
The Government is again adding to New Zealand’s growing unemployment, this time cutting jobs at the agencies responsible for urban development and growing much needed housing stock. ...
With Minister Karen Chhour indicating in the House today that she either doesn’t know or care about the frontline cuts she’s making to Oranga Tamariki, we risk seeing more and more of our children falling through the cracks. ...
The Labour Party is saddened to learn of the death of Sir Robert Martin, a globally renowned disability advocate who led the way for disability rights both in New Zealand and internationally. ...
Labour is calling for the Government to urgently rethink its coalition commitment to restart live animal exports, Labour animal welfare spokesperson Rachel Boyack said. ...
Today’s Financial Stability Report has once again highlighted that poverty and deep inequality are political choices - and this Government is choosing to make them worse. ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to do more for our households in most need as unemployment rises and the cost of living crisis endures. ...
Unemployment is on the rise and it’s only going to get worse under this Government, Labour finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds said. Stats NZ figures show the unemployment rate grew to 4.3 percent in the March quarter from 4 percent in the December quarter. “This is the second rise in unemployment ...
The New Zealand Labour Party welcomes the entering into force of the European Union and New Zealand free trade agreement. This agreement opens the door for a huge increase in trade opportunities with a market of 450 million people who are high value discerning consumers of New Zealand goods and ...
The National-led Government continues its fiscal jiggery pokery with its Pharmac announcement today, Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall says. “The government has increased Pharmac funding but conceded it will only make minimal increases in access to medicine”, said Ayesha Verrall “This is far from the bold promises made to fund ...
This afternoon’s interim Waitangi Tribunal report must be taken seriously as it affects our most vulnerable children, Labour children’s spokesperson Willow-Jean Prime. ...
Te Pāti Māori are demanding the New Zealand Government support an international independent investigation into mass graves that have been uncovered at two hospitals on the Gaza strip, following weeks of assault by Israeli troops. Among the 392 bodies that have been recovered, are children and elderly civilians. Many of ...
Our two-tiered system for veterans’ support is out of step with our closest partners, and all parties in Parliament should work together to fix it, Labour veterans’ affairs spokesperson Greg O’Connor said. ...
Stripping two Ministers of their portfolios just six months into the job shows Christopher Luxon’s management style is lacking, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said. ...
Tonight’s court decision to overturn the summons of the Children’s Minister has enabled the Crown to continue making decisions about Māori without evidence, says Te Pāti Māori spokesperson for Children, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “The judicial system has this evening told the nation that this government can do whatever they want when ...
It appears Nicola Willis is about to pull the rug out from under the feet of local communities still dealing with the aftermath of last year’s severe weather, and local councils relying on funding to build back from these disasters. ...
The Government is making short-sighted changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that will take away environmental protection in favour of short-term profits, Labour’s environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
Labour welcomes the release of the report into the North Island weather events and looks forward to working with the Government to ensure that New Zealand is as prepared as it can be for the next natural disaster. ...
The Labour Party has called for the New Zealand Government to recognise Palestine, as a material step towards progressing the two-State solution needed to achieve a lasting peace in the region. ...
Some of our country’s most important work, stopping the sexual exploitation of children and violent extremism could go along with staff on the frontline at ports and airports. ...
The Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill will give projects such as new coal mines a ‘get out of jail free’ card to wreak havoc on the environment, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The government's decision to reintroduce Three Strikes is a destructive and ineffective piece of law-making that will only exacerbate an inherently biased and racist criminal justice system, said Te Pāti Māori Justice Spokesperson, Tākuta Ferris, today. During the time Three Strikes was in place in Aotearoa, Māori and Pasifika received ...
Cuts to frontline hospital staff are not only a broken election promise, it shows the reckless tax cuts have well and truly hit the frontline of the health system, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
The Green Party has joined the call for public submissions on the fast-track legislation to be extended after the Ombudsman forced the Government to release the list of organisations invited to apply just hours before submissions close. ...
New Zealand’s good work at reducing climate emissions for three years in a row will be undone by the National government’s lack of ambition and scrapping programmes that were making a difference, Labour Party climate spokesperson Megan Woods said today. ...
More essential jobs could be on the chopping block, this time Ministry of Education staff on the school lunches team are set to find out whether they're in line to lose their jobs. ...
Te Pāti Māori is disgusted at the confirmation that hundreds are set to lose their jobs at Oranga Tamariki, and the disestablishment of the Treaty Response Unit. “This act of absolute carelessness and out of touch decision making is committing tamariki to state abuse.” Said Te Pāti Māori Oranga Tamariki ...
The Government is trying to bring in a law that will allow Ministers to cut corners and kill off native species, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said. ...
Cancelling urgently needed new Cook Strait ferries and hiking the cost of public transport for many Kiwis so that National can announce the prospect of another tunnel for Wellington is not making good choices, Labour Transport Spokesperson Tangi Utikere said. ...
A laundry list of additional costs for Tāmaki Makarau Auckland shows the Minister for the city is not delivering for the people who live there, says Labour Auckland Issues spokesperson Shanan Halbert. ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters discussed the need for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, and enhanced cooperation in the Pacific with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock during her first official visit to New Zealand today. "New Zealand and Germany enjoy shared interests and values, including the rule of law, democracy, respect for the international system ...
The Minister Responsible for RMA Reform, Chris Bishop today released his decision on four recommendations referred to him by the Western Bay of Plenty District Council, opening the door to housing growth in the area. The Council’s Plan Change 92 allows more homes to be built in existing and new ...
Thank you, John McKinnon and the New Zealand China Council for the invitation to speak to you today. Thank you too, all members of the China Council. Your effort has played an essential role in helping to build, shape, and grow a balanced and resilient relationship between our two ...
The Government is modernising insurance law to better protect Kiwis and provide security in the event of a disaster, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly announced today. “These reforms are long overdue. New Zealand’s insurance law is complicated and dated, some of which is more than 100 years old. ...
The coalition Government is refreshing its approach to supporting pay equity claims as time-limited funding for the Pay Equity Taskforce comes to an end, Public Service Minister Nicola Willis says. “Three years ago, the then-government introduced changes to the Equal Pay Act to support pay equity bargaining. The changes were ...
Structured literacy will change the way New Zealand children learn to read - improving achievement and setting students up for success, Education Minister Erica Stanford says. “Being able to read and write is a fundamental life skill that too many young people are missing out on. Recent data shows that ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay says Canada’s refusal to comply in full with a CPTPP trade dispute ruling in our favour over dairy trade is cynical and New Zealand has no intention of backing down. Mr McClay said he has asked for urgent legal advice in respect of our ‘next move’ ...
The rights of our children and young people will be enhanced by changes the coalition Government will make to strengthen oversight of the Oranga Tamariki system, including restoring a single Children’s Commissioner. “The Government is committed to delivering better public services that care for our most at-risk young people and ...
The Government is making it easier for minor changes to be made to a building consent so building a home is easier and more affordable, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “The coalition Government is focused on making it easier and cheaper to build homes so we can ...
New Zealand lost a true legend when internationally renowned disability advocate Sir Robert Martin (KNZM) passed away at his home in Whanganui last night, Disabilities Issues Minister Louise Upston says. “Our Government’s thoughts are with his wife Lynda, family and community, those he has worked with, the disability community in ...
Good evening – Before discussing the challenges and opportunities facing New Zealand’s foreign policy, we’d like to first acknowledge the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. You have contributed to debates about New Zealand foreign policy over a long period of time, and we thank you for hosting us. ...
From today, passengers travelling internationally from Auckland Airport will be able to keep laptops and liquids in their carry-on bags for security screening thanks to new technology, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Creating a more efficient and seamless travel experience is important for holidaymakers and businesses, enabling faster movement through ...
People with an interest in the health of Northland’s marine ecosystems are invited to a public meeting to discuss how to deal with kina barrens, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones will lead the discussion, which will take place on Friday, 10 May, at Awanui Hotel in ...
Kiwi exporters are $100 million better off today with the NZ EU FTA entering into force says Trade Minister Todd McClay. “This is all part of our plan to grow the economy. New Zealand's prosperity depends on international trade, making up 60 per cent of the country’s total economic activity. ...
There are heartening signs that the extractive sector is once again becoming an attractive prospect for investors and a source of economic prosperity for New Zealand, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. “The beginnings of a resurgence in extractive industries are apparent in media reports of the sector in the past ...
The return of the historic Ō-Rākau battle site to the descendants of those who fought there moved one step closer today with the first reading of Te Pire mō Ō-Rākau, Te Pae o Maumahara / The Ō-Rākau Remembrance Bill. The Bill will entrust the 9.7-hectare battle site, five kilometres west ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has announced 25 new high-speed EV charging hubs along key routes between major urban centres and outlined the Government’s plan to supercharge New Zealand’s EV infrastructure. The hubs will each have several chargers and be capable of charging at least four – and up to 10 ...
The coalition Government will not proceed with the previous Government’s plans to regulate residential property managers, Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. “I have written to the Chairperson of the Social Services and Community Committee to inform him that the Government does not intend to support the Residential Property Managers Bill ...
The Government has announced an independent review into the disability support system funded by the Ministry of Disabled People – Whaikaha. Disability Issues Minister Louise Upston says the review will look at what can be done to strengthen the long-term sustainability of Disability Support Services to provide disabled people and ...
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith has attended the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva and outlined the Government’s plan to restore law and order. “Speaking to the United Nations Human Rights Council provided us with an opportunity to present New Zealand’s human rights progress, priorities, and challenges, while responding to issues and ...
The Government and Rotorua Lakes Council are committed to working closely together to end the use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua. Associate Minister of Housing (Social Housing) Tama Potaka says the Government remains committed to ending the long-term use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua by the ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay heads overseas today for high-level trade talks in the Gulf region, and a key OECD meeting in Paris. Mr McClay will travel to Riyadh to meet with counterparts from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). “New Zealand’s goods and services exports to the Gulf region ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford has outlined six education priorities to deliver a world-leading education system that sets Kiwi kids up for future success. “I’m putting ambition, achievement and outcomes at the heart of our education system. I want every child to be inspired and engaged in their learning so they ...
The new NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) App is a secure ‘one stop shop’ to provide the services drivers need, Transport Minister Simeon Brown and Digitising Government Minister Judith Collins say. “The NZTA App will enable an easier way for Kiwis to pay for Vehicle Registration and Road User Charges (RUC). ...
Whānau with tamariki growing up in emergency housing motels will be prioritised for social housing starting this week, says Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka. “Giving these whānau a better opportunity to build healthy stable lives for themselves and future generations is an essential part of the Government’s goal of reducing ...
Racing Minister Winston Peters has paid tribute to an icon of the industry with the recent passing of Dave O’Sullivan (OBE). “Our sympathies are with the O’Sullivan family with the sad news of Dave O’Sullivan’s recent passing,” Mr Peters says. “His contribution to racing, initially as a jockey and then ...
Assalaamu alaikum, greetings to you all. Eid Mubarak, everyone! I want to extend my warmest wishes to you and everyone celebrating this joyous occasion. It is a pleasure to be here. I have enjoyed Eid celebrations at Parliament before, but this is my first time joining you as the Minister ...
Associate Health Minister David Seymour has announced Pharmac’s largest ever budget of $6.294 billion over four years, fixing a $1.774 billion fiscal cliff. “Access to medicines is a crucial part of many Kiwis’ lives. We’ve committed to a budget allocation of $1.774 billion over four years so Kiwis are ...
Hon Paula Bennett has been appointed as member and chair of the Pharmac board, Associate Health Minister David Seymour announced today. "Pharmac is a critical part of New Zealand's health system and plays a significant role in ensuring that Kiwis have the best possible access to medicines,” says Mr Seymour. ...
Hundreds of New Zealand families affected by Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) will benefit from a new Government focus on prevention and treatment, says Health Minister Dr Shane Reti. “We know FASD is a leading cause of preventable intellectual and neurodevelopmental disability in New Zealand,” Dr Reti says. “Every day, ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones today attended the official opening of Kaikohe’s new $14.7 million sports complex. “The completion of the Kaikohe Multi Sports Complex is a fantastic achievement for the Far North,” Mr Jones says. “This facility not only fulfils a long-held dream for local athletes, but also creates ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters’ engagements in Türkiye this week underlined the importance of diplomacy to meet growing global challenges. “Returning to the Gallipoli Peninsula to represent New Zealand at Anzac commemorations was a sombre reminder of the critical importance of diplomacy for de-escalating conflicts and easing tensions,” Mr Peters ...
Ambassador Millar, Burgemeester, Vandepitte, Excellencies, military representatives, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen – good morning and welcome to this sacred Anzac Day dawn service. It is an honour to be here on behalf of the Government and people of New Zealand at Buttes New British Cemetery, Polygon Wood – a deeply ...
Distinguished guests - It is an honour to return once again to this site which, as the resting place for so many of our war-dead, has become a sacred place for generations of New Zealanders. Our presence here and at the other special spaces of Gallipoli is made ...
Mai ia tawhiti pamamao, te moana nui a Kiwa, kua tae whakaiti mai matou, ki to koutou papa whenua. No koutou te tapuwae, no matou te tapuwae, kua honoa pumautia. Ko nga toa kua hinga nei, o te Waipounamu, o te Ika a Maui, he okioki tahi me o ...
Paul Goldsmith will take on responsibility for the Media and Communications portfolio, while Louise Upston will pick up the Disability Issues portfolio, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announced today. “Our Government is relentlessly focused on getting New Zealand back on track. As issues change in prominence, I plan to adjust Ministerial ...
Recreational catch limits will be reduced in areas of Fiordland and the Chatham Islands to help keep those fisheries healthy and sustainable, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. The lower recreational daily catch limits for a range of finfish and shellfish species caught in the Fiordland Marine Area and ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has welcomed an important milestone in New Zealand’s hydrogen future, with the opening of the country’s first network of hydrogen refuelling stations in Wiri. “I want to congratulate the team at Hiringa Energy and its partners K one W one (K1W1), Mitsui & Co New Zealand ...
The coalition Government is delivering on its commitment to improve resource management laws and give greater certainty to consent applicants, with a Bill to amend the Resource Management Act (RMA) expected to be introduced to Parliament next month. RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop has today outlined the first RMA Amendment ...
Overseas models for regulating the oil and gas sector, including their decommissioning regimes, are being carefully scrutinised as a potential template for New Zealand’s own sector, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. The Coalition Government is focused on rebuilding investor confidence in New Zealand’s energy sector as it looks to strengthen ...
By Stephen Wright and Stefan Armbruster of BenarNews Fiji’s ranking in a global press freedom index has jumped into the top tier of countries with free or mostly free media after its government last year repealed a draconian law that threatened journalists with prison for doing their jobs. Fiji’s improvement ...
We might be in Invercargill but all anyone can talk about is Gore. Specifically, Salford Street. That’s where three-year-old Lachlan Jones lived, south of the centre of town, between the A&P Showgrounds and the Mataura River. Roughly 1.2 km away from the single level home he lived in with his ...
MONDAY I lined up the latest round of civil servants from city hall against the wall, and signalled for the firing squad to drop their rifles. I stepped up onto a wooden crate to look at the office workers in the eye. But that didn’t feel right, so I found ...
Keen hiker and second-year MSc student Liam Hewson wears two hats when he’s in the great outdoors. “The scientist in me appreciates nature and goes, ‘Oh, there’s that thing and there’s another thing,’ but then the tramper and the outdoorsy person in me thinks, ‘Cool bush.’” Born and bred in ...
After a long and illustrious career as a goal kicker, Dan Carter’s favourite way to unwind is… kicking goals. Why can’t he get enough of it? And what it’s like to watch him do it for an hour straight? A semicircle of people wielding cameras and phones has formed in ...
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In the UK, Russell Brand says vote Labour unless you live in Scotland or Brighton.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwGBTcIHN0U
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/russell-brand-backs-ed-miliband-you-gotta-vote-labour-10223729.html
shame about his timing – as voter registration has closed..
..maybe a week or so ago..?
Really? Damn, I was thinking he’d played a pretty sharp long game.
Happily, voter registration is up, and significantly so in the teenage/early twenties segment. That’s a good sign for the left. Hopefully Brand and the host of other celebs who have endorsed Labour can have a positive effect.
He sounds a very suitable person to be a Labour Party supporting “celebrity”.
I didn’t know anything about him but the first hit google gave when I entered “Who is Russell Brand” was
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3065667/Russell-Brand-misogynist-hurt-abused-says-ex-girlfriend-labels-Ed-Miliband-fool-getting-bed-him.html
Nice fellow by the sound of things.
Why would anyone take a person like this seriously?
Perhaps there is another one, but it seems to be the right one.
That’s funny. I did exactly the same thing and got http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Brand
I suspect the personalised aspect of Google must have noted that you look up gossip rags a lot more than I do.
So it does.
I looked at it a bit more closely and discovered I had somehow been switched to using Bing, not Google. God knows why it was picking up Bing. With quotes around the phrase Bing gives Wiki. Without the quotes it gives the link I put in.
Reading through the Wiki article it would appear that he is actually even more of a prick than the Daily Mail article suggests.
Would anyone really want Brand as a supporter? It would be a bit like having Kim DotCom as your promoter. There lies disaster, as Hone discovered.
It’s nice that you only know one thing about Mr Brand as it makes it so much easier for you to form an opinion of him.
But would you mind awfully not being such a patronising fuckwit when you discuss him with people who have a bit more info to draw upon than one Daily Mail article?
Thanks ever so much.
ps what do you know about the president of the National Party?
If you actually read the comment you are replying to you would find that I now know quite a lot more about him.
My comment was that that item from the Daily Mail was the very first thing on the list. and that I had also read other things about what appears to be a quite horrible person.
Do you actually think he is someone to take advice and guidance from? One might as well follow the teachings of Charles Manson.
What has the President of the National Party got to do with anything? Are you that person? I haven’t the faintest idea who the President is and I couldn’t care less. Sorry.
Oh, you’ve read a wikipedia page AND a Daily Mail article?
In that case your attempt to link the Labour Party with Charles Manson seems totally reasonable 🙄
The president of the National Party is Peter Goodfellow.
Tell me, did you find the stuff about psychological cruelty and manipulation particularly disturbing?
The Daily Mail is not a credible source.
You should know that.
The people who give out newspaper awards in the UK don’t seem to agree with you.
According to the Wiki article on the paper
“The Daily Mail has been awarded the National Newspaper of the Year in 1995, 1996, 1998, 2001, 2003 and 2012 by the British Press Awards[58]”.
Given the number of National papers in Britain that seems to be a reasonable record.
That says more about who gives out the Awards than the Mail’s credibility.
It is quite simply a fascist tabloid rag.
Possibly. The Press awards do seem to let their standards drop a bit sometimes.
During the same 20 year period they also gave the national newspaper award 5 times to that dreadful tabloid “The Guardian”.
Alwyn. I was living in the UK when I first heard of Russell Brand, and watched a couple of interviews and skits that he did. Thought his views on women were archaic and misogynistic, and didn’t enjoy his style of humour.
Usually I just leave it at – I don’t like their comedy, but in his case, I thought he was a complete prat. I kept that steadfast opinion until someone put a link to his Jeremy Paxman interview on voting. Very clear on his reasoning.
Since then, I have let go of previous opinions as I watch him on the Trews. He does refer to his weaknesses and previous addictions (without excusing them). His current views on women and personal relationships may surprise you.
The point is: unless a person is static – one Google search – may not be the answer to finding out about their current viewpoints and values. You may have to get dirty and watch a few episodes of the Trews.
@philip More people are registered to vote in the UK than ever before. Read the online article on Russell Brand’s change of heart in the Guardian today.
sure..but making his call before voting registration closed – would have made even more sense..eh..?
..and i linked to that brand story @ about 5.45 am…
http://whoar.co.nz/
“..and i linked to that brand story @ about 5.45 am…”
The queen is on the phone, she wants to congratulate you.
and not before bloody time..!
How long will it take to go from the Russell Brand who urged people not to vote to the Right Honorable Russell Brand, MP for Hackney South?
To quote John Lydon ..Russel Brand is a bumhole
which is pretty funny when you think about it. Young ‘un vs oldie, why can’t we all just get along?
Plus what OAB said, the move from young radical to old conservative is inevitable for many.
I invite you to follow Lydon’s logic for the bum hole comment in full.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/15/johnny-rotten-lydon-russell-brand-revolution-vote
Shame you can’t follow Lydon’s logic yourself, hs. Brand has now come round to Lydon’s point of view and is advocating that people vote. Mainly to stop folk like you doing more damage to the UK.
What is “people like you”.
I presume he means “incompetent stunted man-children who haven’t had an original thought since 1983”.
😆 good one !
Beyond the trolling i’m interested in what TRP sees as being the major problems in the UK, politics is so much more interesting over there compared to our bland bunch of twerps in NZ.
I’m mulling over a post to go up on Thursday, hs. But off the top of my head, austerity, poverty, jobs, wages, housing, immigration, health, education and the growing gap between the rich and the rest. Oh, wait, that’s here … UK, er, the same. Plus Nigel Farage.
I rewrote the Herald’s article for them.
Government gives more money to developers.
House prices go up.
Go figure.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11443190
Yes, this was on the news last night. Our Government’s way of dealing with the housing crisis, which they don’t believe exists anyway, is to relax resource consent rules via the mechanism of the Special Housing Areas Accord and developers are laughing all the way to the bank. I understand Hobsonville falls under the SHA Accord.
Don’t you think this reeks of cabinet club palm greasing???
There’s quite a few councils around the country that have signed up to this accord, Wellington is one of them.
On the development where I live things are fishy enough as it without the addition of the SHA Accord. Our area has been voted into the SHA by the WCC. Already we have 3 areas of high density housing either in the building or planning stages – all have received consent.
It’s nothing to do with affordable housing. In one of the high density areas the developer is offering a two bed + study for $485K. Last year they were advertising them for $465K. They jumped up 20K in less than 12 months. For that you get 124 square metres (inc internal access garage)of housing on 180 square metres of land.
This is in area that is quite a drive away from the nearest amenities. There are no tress, no gardens and no recreation areas except at the furtherest corner of the development which already has 500 houses.
There is something very dodgy going on with the council and it relationship with the developer and it’s proving very hard to get to the bottom of. I’ve been trying since January.
“Hobsonville falls under the SHA Accord.”
Yes, it had 11 affordable homes?
This is brilliant. John Oliver on standardised testing and the evil that is Pearson’s.
+1
The profit motive behind National Party education policy: attacking children for money. Now, children, let’s all read section 48 of the Crimes Act together.
What a shambles.
More on the malign influence of competitive schooling and private sector involvement today from the OECD – Sweden “free schools” a 20-year experiment that has been slammed by the OECD
Not that this report will sway the NActs, with David Seymour “quietly confident” that the government will listen to his lobbying for more charter schools to open next year.
The only sensible answer to these attacks is to ensure that the investors lose their shirts every single time they buy more legislation from the National Party.
+1
and take a swag of cash back every time they fail to meet their KPIs instead of handing them more cash to fix the problem they created… or we could continue with your sensible answer and have people who have no profit motive involved in ensuring provision, evaluation and continuous improvement of schooling.
Once we are back up there with international best practice we can start thinking about how to improve upon it.
Yes Tony. I watched John Oliver last night and was about to write about it here. Snap. Watch the industry that has grown out of selling the testing materials. And the fact that none of the processes and none of the people running the show are held accountable.
There are some large areas in the USA where the kids teachers and parents are refusing to be tested. Brave people!
This is wrong and it has to stop I’m sure Clarke and Bolger are still making good money. This is the sort of thing that stops people voting.
http://i.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/68226795/Former-prime-ministers-have-bigger-travel-bills-than-some-working-MPs
Why would that stop people voting?
Possibly because they would see ex-MPs as all cut from the same cloth and lined up at the trough.
Exactly!!
Excellent investigative journalism from the Intercept journalist, Ryan Devereaux:
The story of the missing Mexican students https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/05/04/how-43-students-disappeared-in-mexico-part-1/
and the truth about the disproportionate action taken by Israel in Gaza f.rom the Israeli Group,Breaking the Silence
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/05/04/samples-israeli-horrific-brutality-war-criminality-gaza/
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/05/04/indiscriminate-killing-gaza-was-top-down-war-plan-say-israeli-veterans
The report released by Massey University this week shows that dairy intensification over the last 20 years has seen waterways become heavily polluted, greenhouse gas emissions increase, and biodiversity loss, among other negative impacts, and argues that the cost of cleaning up the environment may be higher than the economic benefit from dairy exports.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA1504/S00403/intensive-dairying-is-causing-an-environmental-catastrophe.htm
http://www.massey.ac.nz/massey/about-massey/news/article.cfm?mnarticle_uuid=EA732E3E-B2D5-60A5-FD42-D703A78F3678
(my emphasis).
There are a couple of people up here in the north, Weka – trying to show the local authorities that there are different ways of dealing with this problem. Unfortunately the local authorities don’t want to know.
One of the people is a dairy farmer who has changed his methods of farming to improve the quality of the waterways near his place, the other goes out taking photos and documenting the damage being caused by farm animals in local waterways. Maori TV has run a couple of stories about this.
I guess that one of these days soon someone in authority will finally wake up !
Good to hear about the locals. I think we’re close to a tipping point, but the change will still happen too slowly because the main power holders want money and have been promised money. The good news is that enough farmers are doing the right things, so that if the authorities get on board we should be able to transition without having to invent new ways of doing things.
I hope we can invent new ways of doing the old ways. “Walking backwards into the future” It is an interesting angle – Māori traditionally lived this and to my mind Greer is saying large aspects of the same thing. It seems self evident to me but I realise not everyone is of the same mind. Found this good article on the subject http://salient.org.nz/2014/03/maori-matters-2/
Walking backwards is the only way we get into the future. We can only see the past. I love that saying.
I’ve seen a few country calendars where dairy farmers adopting a sustainable approach got a better return, less outlays and diversified income as chooks helped recover pasture.
Weka highlighted this succinct piece that should be in everyone’s mind.
“It revealed that, for the worst case scenario, the costs to society of dairy farming are approximately equal to the export revenue and gross domestic product (GDP)
Add to that the fact that dairying gets free water by millions of litres.
but the MONEY ianmac… the MONEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
Yeah, but who is getting the money? If there is no benefit to NZ economically, and there are huge downsides environmentally, who is actually gaining from this? Is it just the farmers? How many are family farms and how many are corporate owned? Or overseas owned? Is there money going elsewhere (eg irrigation companies), and who are those people?
Ah you have read my mind, or anticipated my other post on this very thing 😉
😀
‘Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret is a groundbreaking feature-length environmental documentary following intrepid filmmaker Kip Andersen as he uncovers the most destructive industry facing the planet today – and investigates why the world’s leading environmental organizations are too afraid to talk about it.
Animal agriculture is the leading cause of deforestation, water consumption and pollution, is responsible for more greenhouse gases than the transportation industry, and is a primary driver of rainforest destruction, species extinction, habitat loss, topsoil erosion, ocean “dead zones,” and virtually every other environmental ill. Yet it goes on, almost entirely unchallenged.’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nV04zyfLyN4
http://www.cowspiracy.com/
https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/cowpiracy
There’s nothing wrong with dairy farming, it’s how we’re doing it. Cowspiracy is a fundamentalist vegan film that doesn’t support its assertions very well. It also seems to be comparing industrial stock farming with industrial agriculture and deciding that industrial agriculture is best. Both are highly polluting and destroy ecologies. Swapping one for the other out of ideological concerns just creates different problems, what we need to do instead is make all farming sustainable and regenerative.
I linked to this review of the film the other day, plus some snippets,
http://cairncrestfarm.blogspot.co.nz/2014/10/cowspiracy-movie-review.html
you feel the need to present the animal-farmer/hunter/kill-for-thrills crowd p.o.v. again..?
..and using the same link..?..again..?
..is that really all ya got..?
..all ya could find..?
..and let me test my psychic-powers here..
..i’m guessing you still haven’t looked at what you so stridently attack/oppose..
..eh..?
So you address none of his points, and none of the points of what he linked to. 0/10
what points..?
..this one..?
“..Yesterday, while out hunting turkey..”
as i said..the kill-for-thrills p.o.v…
..xcuse me if i ignore that..
..what’s to fucken ‘address’..?
“So you address none of his points, and none of the points of what he linked to. 0/10”
Good spotting. We went through this the other day. Phil promotes the film, claims to have watched it right through, and yet can’t address any of the points raised about it, and instead resorts to ad hominems and diversions.
weka..hasn’t looked at film..
..yet/but for the second day now..spews serial rubbish..attacking it..
..using her big-weapon..of a negative review of the film by a kill-for-thrills animal-exploiter…
..and repeats same vegan-hating crap she always pushes..
..it must be a day ending a ‘y’…
..mind you – that is yr pattern here..eh..?
..serial opinions on things you know s.f.a. about..
..(this attacking a film/ideas you haven’t even looked at..
,.being just the most recent example..eh..?..)
No, but I did do some research and posted some thoughts, which is far more than can be said for you. I don’t hate vegans, veganism is a great choice for those that it works for. I am however highly critical of fundamentalist views like yours.
not that much of a ‘search’ for that research..eh..?
that’s right, it was incredibly easy to find a well thought out, intelligent critique of that film.
i think it best if i just return to ignoring you..
..i don’t come here to engage in the mindless/point-scoring/nitpicking bullshit you engage in…
..so i will disengage..
“i think it best if i just return to ignoring you”
Suits me phil.
projection…
projecting…
projectile-
vomit
The end
Have you seen the film?
No. I decided not to watch it after reading the review, and seeing phil’s complete an utter inability to answer the questions I raised (assuming he had actually watched it, which I am starting to doubt).
Have you seen it?
but all those mum and dad farmers have done so well…
Imagine if we had polluted waterways AND not alot of the benefit from taxes cos so many farms are now foreign owned with profit going offshore.
It’s all profit for the bankers. They lend the money to intensify dairy, then lend the money to clean up the mess. They never lose.
Greg O’Connor needs to migrate to America.
‘Police Association president Greg O’Connor says the time is approaching when all frontline police will need to be armed.’
http://www.3news.co.nz/nznews/poll-should-frontline-police-officers-be-armed-2015050408#ixzz3ZCTdklEP
So the unarmed police shoot someone who was aiming a gun at them, presumably by assessing the situation and getting their guns out, and O’Connor thinks this is a reason to arm the police? He’s not great on logic is he.
Greg has never come across a situation that couldn’t be improved by arming the police.
I seriously wonder who he’s really working for.
Exactly felix. He just loves those guns! He’s been going on about arming Police for yonks.
The Police Association – the most anti social union you’ll ever come across.
Without a thought for the escalation it causes and the research that shows immense damage, including to police offices (who, as is pointed out above, are effectively already able to access arms pretty easily)
The Taxpayers’ Union is about equal.
The military-industrial complex?
Considering the number of deaths in the US by the police you can be assured that he isn’t working for the people of NZ.
It wouldn’t surprise me at all if he had some sort of funding from weapons manufacturers or their lobby group the NRA.
THIS ^^^^^^^
Is it just me – or have we seen more people get killed by police in this country, whilst Mr O’Connor has been pushing for guns?
Than the period before the police became surreptitiously armed?
Because I’m sorry, our police have become militarised, and are effectively armed – it has all happened in the past 30 odd years. And I think I’m not alone, in feeling less safe when police are around – than I was 30 years ago.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/waikato-times/news/68222667/armed-police-fatally-shoot-man-in-thames
And whilst we are not the USA, I think we could very well become more like it – with a police force that is armed.
Like we need to be arming police given the ugly culture that has been on display from within the police force.
I recall a mate saying the waiting list to join armed defender squads is a very very long one.
That’s ‘armed offender squads’.
The RWNJs do seem to have a liking for authority to be well armed and for the people to live in fear of them. They don’t seem to understand that such a society ends up with the RWNJs becoming a head shorter.
https://twitter.com/carol_stirling/status/595439138645508096/photo/1
This is the “transparency” provided for US Senators who are to vote on fast tracking the TPPA.
“Only members of the House and Senate are currently allowed to view the text of the deal, and even they are forbidden from discussing what it contains. As a new report from Politico published Monday details, “If you’re a member who wants to read the text, you’ve got to go to a room in the basement of the Capitol Visitor Center and be handed it one section at a time, watched over as you read, and forced to hand over any notes you make before leaving.
As for the public, a few unauthorized leaks of the text have previewed a deal that would “dramatically expand the power of corporations to use closed-door tribunals to challenge—and supersede—domestic laws, including environmental, labor, and public health, and other protections.”
Show us the TPPA text, Tim Groser, and convince us that it is worth signing.
the tpp is the corporate-revolution…
..taking us over – using/armed with – a keyboard and a pen…
Thanks, TMM.
I went to look for the rest of the piece you quoted and, for ease of reference for other readers, it is here:
http://www.mintpressnews.com/secrecy-over-tpp-fuels-growing-opposition-in-congress/205293/
Thanks, Kiwiri.
I suppose that should the other countries sign up to TPPA but not NZ, then “they” would be in a powerful position to boycott and sanction NZ as outsiders. Shudder!
It is almost unbelievable this TPPA and the secret deals, almost, but it is happening, or trying to – right in front of our faces. We must utterly oppose this. Thanks for posting Tautoko Mangō Mata.
Posted this late last night on OM .. posting again for those interested who might have missed it ….
http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/concern-over-chinese-developers-million-dollar-northland-resort-6306920
TVOne News tonight … Northland becomes a Chinese tourist paradise .. 1700-1900 visitors a week, and all run by CEO Mike Sabin. What could possibly go wrong. Yuk.
Karikari peninsula is my home so know about this one alright;
this is a runaway train of a development on an relatively new fragile peninsula, sewerage, trash, environmental impact have not even been looked at yet
the local council is full of good ol’ boy tory cronies and totally unable to cope strategically or practically with such a huge development, all the agencies need to be involved in what should be a positive Far North job creator
eco tourism, cultural tourism, involvement of local SMEs will not happen unless central government grabs CRED by the balls and tells them what regional development means, the local schools could be teaching Chinese languages and be integrated into the development but this is highly unlikely due to the Nats crony model and CREDs record of running ‘closed eco system’ resorts where all workers will be Chinese imports and the profits apart from a little local earthworks and construction will go offshore
With resigned MP Sabin filling in a year as Pepper Carrington CEO till he possibly acquires an ankle braclet the owners have not demonstrated much empathy for local concerns, the Ngati Kahu runanga committee from local Haitetaimairangai marae has attempted to have been swayed with virtually unlimited air travel and large payments going to several prominent local Māori. Many locals staked their mana on Carrington MkI for jobs that did not eventuate and have learnt their lesson.
This makes me so angry. We are being sold out grain of sand by grain of sand by bribery and graft, sadly the natural Chinese business way.
Please keep posting on any local news as it comes.
and enough money to fund his expensive defence team?
I wonder if CRED know ? Murray Rawshark sent them an email a while back when the news of his appointment was first reported. Face is everything for Chinese businessmen and while some crimes are quite acceptable, this kind of ‘private family matters’ is not. My hunch is they do not know — why would they risk so much ?
or do not care at this stage, given plausible deniability with a strong suppression order for a “prominent New Zealander”, possibly just arrogance, the local “guy” that was recommended by the Nat contact (Mayor Carter?) gets taken on, end of story
my contacts tell me the management out here they have been meeting with every few weeks so far have no understanding of Māori structures, tribes, rohē, hapu, whanau etc and where decision making power resides, which explains why substantial bucks have been given to two runanga members (previously good advocates), but I don’t want to delve into that too much
previous Far North developers (like Chris Hook, Crystal Waters, Cable Bay ’05) have thought buying out a ‘key’ person solved their problems, only to find the collective opposition won through in the end
you mean like the Chinese businessman who assaulted his partner and mother in law, and now his business hasn’t suffered?
I heard a few years back that the flash gold course let locals play for free. Seemed buggerall to me as compensation for making a mess of a beautiful peninsula.
nah, never happened, there was a cheap rate one year but it was made clear that the dress standard of the few that gave it a try was not suitable for after golf drinkies at the resort so it was canned
after locals had been conned into allowing a non notifiable consent and bought off with the false promise of employment they were forgotten about, no career paths or training just seasonal housekeeping/hospitality jobs with imported managers
there will be some push back on this one from people that got burnt once, even perhaps from the absentee owners with gin palaces as the scale has the potential to be an ecological wipeout for Karikari Peninsula whose sewerage system is maxed out at xmas anyway
the FNDC is not insisting on jobs for locals they just want the one off development contributions and kick backs for rolling over the original consent but the runanga committee is opposing that at this stage, CRED have put up 2 mill for travel and payments for the committee members going to China
The Government is laying out the red carpet for the two-day forum, from which the media is barred.
More than 70 Australasian managers of global companies and 30 bosses of Kiwi companies are in Wellington on Tuesday and Wednesday for the New Zealand Foreign Investor Dialogue.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/better-business/68267508/australian-execs-in-wellington-for-private-audience-with-top-politicians
Thoughts?
Give us a shopping list of what else you want tipped in your favour and we’ll get right onto it.
Pretty much sums it up.
do you think we are ‘sponsoring’ it with travel, accomms etc ??
With the amount of perks we’ve been subsidizing, I wouldn’t be surprised.
it’s a logical extension of how TPP is operating. The “people” can’t be trusted to know what is best for the top 1%, which is true if you think about it.
The truth is the media are the fourth estate, thus vital to our democracy.
Therefore, barring the media is undermining our democratic process.
We can’t hold them to account when we’ve been barred from partaking .
Agree entirely… Remember when one of the major memes of the Right was Clark was so angry she thought she knew what was best for everyone else? Major projection methinks.
Wonder if the guardians of our democracy will be monitoring the event?
And here is something else which I find worrying. Anyone else ?
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11442645
Warning in today’s Herald that Auckland property prices could plunge. At the same time there’s another story about dairying prices likely to go down further. Are we on the verge of some sort of financial collapse? How likely is this ? I’m not a financial expert, but this is starting to look worrying. The Herald story quotes Toronto in the 1980s, I’m not sure if that’s a good comparison or not but surely the Auckland bubble cannot continue as it is ?
Wouldn’t a person have to own an awful lot of not quite free-hold unproductive property for that to worry them? The article reasoning of “women entering the workforce” and “job growth”, doesn’t match our current reality. If someone had a mortgage on a family home, insurance and a reasonably secure income, it shouldn’t be a concern.
House prices fall by 50%, dairy prices fall by whatever, consumer goods offered at 50mths interest free: might be indicators of “confidence”; certainly favours the already rich, but a series of events difficult to syncronise to that end from central location; could be the final symptom of financial “collapse” that would have actually occurred ten years ago. Even if it was, I dont see what there is to be scared of – in times of financial depression, those with resources will do everything they can to secure deferred payment from those who require the goods/services. You say it yourself. None of this was going to last for ever.
It’s more wishful thinking Jenny. Even a cursory glance tells us that Auck is different to Toronto. The continued low interest rates are a big contributor to recent housing inflation here, a sustained 10% fall in interest rates will result in a corresponding 10% increase in property prices (both residential & commercial)
Mortgage interest rates have fallen over 33% since 2008 and now that they look likely to stay down over the longer term the risk of taking out a mortgage is low so more people are taking out mortgages.
The Toronto market crash also occured after developers & speculators rushed in to exploit the increased demand for housing by building condos (apartments) & the likes. Eventually there were more condos & houses than there were buyers so the bubble burst.
Auckland Council won’t let developers build enough apartments, and the population is still increasing, so the demand for housing here isn’t abating.
Yes, very likely – when is the question nobody has the answer to.
It should do as it’s exactly the same things as what caused the GFC in 2008. Has a lot of similarities to the causes of the Great Depression as well.
The fact is that ‘investors’ are more interested in pocketing high returns from capital gains than from producing anything. Producing something costs money and effort whereas capital gains don’t.
As far as I can see, they will plunge at some time because the whole thing is a pyramid scheme. The only question is whether the plunge is managed or totally out of control. Neither of our main parties have the will or the courage to attack the Kiwi dream of getting rich from property, so I think we’re in for a hard landing.
I’m still wondering if there’ll be a landing.
All the Green MPs are fasting today to raise awareness of climate change and how it affects food security. It’s part of the Fast for the Climate global action,
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/68249621/green-mps-starve-themselves-in-fast-for-the-climate-demonstration
http://fastfortheclimate.org/en/
It would appear, after reading the article you link to that they are not going to eat at lunchtime.
On the other hand I’m sure they have all had a large breakfast and morning tea.
Starve themselves my foot.
“On the other hand I’m sure they have all had a large breakfast and morning tea.”
how are you “sure”?
because that’s what Alwyn would do – pretend to make a sacrifice in public, but make up for it in private. Like any tory, Alwyn can’t understand integrity.
I am “sure” the media are sniffing around to “catch” them out…
+ 1 Spot on McFlock
AFAIK they’re fasting all day (saw Hughes on twitter this morning talking about being hungry). The lunchtime thing is called activism, where they make what they are doing visible and use it to highlight the issue of climate change and food security.
alwyn has just proved she has no faculty to understand such altruism .. shame really.
“New Zealand could not adopt Victorian-style taxes because of its free trade agreements with some countries.”
Did anyone notice this comment from John Key yesterday? Our free trade agreements stop the government from introducing new taxes to reduce the amount of foreign investment in rental properties.
https://www.interest.co.nz/property/75304/key-says-australias-foreign-buyer-restrictions-havent-worked-downplays-risk-nz-being
Thx Gareth … my word, he is fatuous in so many ways, considering the Victorian law is only one week old.
Likewise, the comments under that story are revealing … as someone suggests, put on a 50% tax and let’s just see if it works !!!
Key is beyond useless but so dangerous in his willingness just to sell, sell, sell.
Oh, and TVOne News last night reports that the lovely Whatuwhiwhi holiday camp is going to be imported workers accommodation for the huge Chinese-owned resort. Gulag with a view, anyone ?
And we have seen so many times that specially imported workers are not covered byany NZ labour regs including wages … forf example, the battle continues with the Chinese workers removing the asbestos from rail carriages in Hutt Valley.
And yes, Mike Sabin runs it all in Northland. Well, until he doesn’t, I guess.
Fatuous – absolutely ! oh, what did we do to deserve such a stupid PM ! !
I blame our parents… for bringing us all up the way they did.. 😉
They wanted us to be secure from the uncertainties of war that they grew up with but instead we interpreted it as needing lots and ltts and lots of things and money and stuff.
Good work highlighting this rawshark-yeshe, well said.
We need to galvanise public support to ban the importation of foreign slave labour under the guise of the foreigners employment laws. Pressure needs to be put on the National Government, targeting weakling Woodhouse.
What a sham Chinese workers are working here in New Zealand reputed to be paid $3 an hour, ffs 1/5 of our minimum wage. What a crock of bullshit weakling Woodhouse came up with all sorts of excuses ‘not too demand the Chinese employer front up with payslips verifying payrates.’ I even think he tried claiming it was against the employment rights. Fortunately I understand the NZ Rail workers Union is going to test this in court. We need to create some noise around this serious issue.
Please standard friends feed as much information about this slave camp Sabin is setting up in Northland. I can organise a decent collective ( political, unions, environmentalists) siege on this rich foreigners paradise pad.
That Rail Workers Union court case will be interesting .. and we know Winston is watching this up north .. Tiger Mountain is on the ground up there and is watching .. did you see her post a reply to me earlier ?
up above at 9.0 ….http://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-05052015/#comment-1010069
Her? Har!
she/he is a har ?? isn’t it lovely sometimes we just don’t know so it confounds our stereotypes !! 😀
Someone once wrote on a door : I love grils.
Someone corrected it to : I love girls.
Then someone else: But what about us grils ???
lol
So while other nations are free to instate new taxes, we’ve largely signed our sovereignty away?
Yes, and some NZ and Aussie business owners are having a behind closed doors party to thank our “Leaders” 😉
But wait, there’s always more…
RWNJ productions bring their latest international gaming sensation to homes everywhere. At great expense to the funding that used to go to Hospitals and Schools, a dedicated team of gravy-train-spotters spent weeks touring the world diligently researching barstools in only the finest of casinos, before hurriedly hashing together this piece of under-produced rubbish on the flight home.
That’s right, the rumours are true, it’s finally here! RWNJ’s Snakes & Snakes.
& now you too can play along in the comfort of your own home.
Be it a humble hovel, a crumbling highway underpass or a cardboard mansion with a view of the supermarket dumpsters, your home can now rock along with the economy and you never have to feel left out of all the fun. With just a couple of hours spent begging on your local mainstreet and a quick trip to your local library, you too can print out your very own full colour Snakes & Snakes game board. Don’t have your own dice? Who cares! Just fake it like the pros do and use whatever numbers you like.
Win at all costs,
– because at the end of the day, it’s not like the costs are yours
http://i.imgur.com/SBmgcef.png (for actual gameplay with cutout ladders)
that is GOLD!!!!
Interested to see the hubris of Double Dip Blinglish and Dirty Deeds Smith. They are directly profiting from the sale of State houses to the tune of millions of dollars. They are majority shareholders of the so called Tamaki Redevelopment Company, that is responsible for the eviction of State house tenants, and sale of those homes. For every house sold they pocket 29.5% of the sale price each. Kleptocracy writ large.
http://tiny.cc/torythieves
Related article from Mana News:
http://mananews.co.nz/wp/?p=4804
um..!..aren’t they there as representatives of the crown..?
..in their ministerial roles only..?
..surely..?
So it should look something like this, no?
http://www.business.govt.nz/companies/app/ui/pages/companies/938552/shareholdings?backurl=%2Fcompanies%2Fapp%2Fui%2Fpages%2Fcompanies%2Fsearch%3Fq%3Dmeridian%2Benergy%26entityTypes%3DALL%26entityStatusGroups%3DALL%26incorpFrom%3D%26incorpTo%3D%26addressTypes%3DALL%26addressKeyword%3D%26start%3D0%26limit%3D15%26sf%3D%26sd%3D%26advancedPanel%3Dfalse%26mode%3Dstandard
Can someone who knows these things explain why the Ministers’ names are listed and not their titles alone?
Yes Phil. They are nominal shareholders on behalf of the crown. Muldoon used to be listed as owning Air New Zealand. They cannot sell the houses and pocket any money. In a new government, the names of the new ministers would go down as shareholders.
However, it is the Government selling houses (it seems they are tenanted to boot) to itself for re-developpment and consequent sale to the then finally private market while giving itself a loan of 200 million dollar.
Have I got that right?
What was Bill English saying the other day….: I see no use for State Houses?
this is a fucked up scheme of whitewash, outright lies and obsfucation all to get rid of State Houses and create loans out of nowhere. How much do we owe the chinese by now?
Yeah, it’s another step on the road to getting rid of all state houses, and English and Smith may even end up owning some of them. But they don’t yet.
The stupid is staggering with Mana and anyone else who thinks that the Ministers involved have personal pecuniary interests in this. It is vested in the crown. This guy is a spokesman for Mana? They are representing the crowns holdings through the office of their ministry.
I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the ministers have personal pecuniary interests in this, just not in the way Mana News is saying. I think there’s more stupid in people who think Tory ministers don’t line their own pockets than can be found in two Manas.
This move is the first in removing any kind of public interest and influence over social and state housing.
Voters, while currently fairly ineffective, while housing is still in government ownership – can direct their lobbying and protesting towards reasonably straightforward targets while the housing is still under the full ownership of the crown.
Although the move to a LLC company seems initially seems to be sideways, it is the critical first step in providing a constantly moving target for criticism and protest. (Instead of HNZ and government, we may now have HNZ and government policy AND more than one LLC). Because they are now LLC held, unconcerned MP’s and other representatives can now say “I don’t agree with it, but this is a private business and I have no influence over it. We live in a democratic country and we cannot interfere with private businesses who are following the law.”
… and so on…
Greece moves ever closer to default and the economic chaos that will result from being kicked out of the Eurozone
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-32580919
I’m sure that if that happens, the Greeks will be really cut up about printing their own currency again.
Except most of their savings will be wiped out prior to them being able to print their own currency.
you hope.
I know rather than hope. Bank collapses tend to lead to that situation and unfortunately for the Greeks when they occur after they indicate they are moving back to using their own currency they won’t be able to get any funds to bail them out.
Well, you don’t “know” because economics is a bunk religion, not a science.
This greek government is likely to do what the us should have done at the start of the GFC: taken over the liabilities faced by the banks in order to protect the people, and let the multinational banks collapse.
You are so naive McFlock. It is almost sweet.
Whereas you’re just salivating at the hope of economic collapse. It’s pretty sick, really.
again?
The disappearance of former militant union leader Matt McCarten into the Labour Party points up the conflicted and confused unions/Labour relationship/s:
https://rdln.wordpress.com/2011/09/12/workers-unions-and-labour-unravelling-the-myths/
The most pertinent part of that article is the following
‘Firms are postponing much-needed investment and are pleading for a resolution, says Theodore Fessas, chairman of the Hellenic Federation of Enterprises (SEV), which represents companies from most branches and sectors of the Greek economy.
“Uncertainty is the greatest problem today. It is now threatening even the healthiest businesses, those that managed, despite the crisis, to pay wages and taxes on time, and fulfil all their obligations.” ‘
That is what pursuing a reckless leftist inspired policy platform inevitably leads to. Investment and credit dry up as people lose faith in what is happening. Syriza has a lot to answer for.
Opposed to austerity measures that are certain to destroy business demand?
The options for Greece was largely restricted to trading their way out of the mess they got themselves in via exporting. Syriza decided it wanted to try a Keynesian approach but has discovered you can’t do this is you haven’t got control of your own monetary and fiscal policies and in fact you will make things a hell of a lot worse even hinting you want to do this.
Oh Gosman sit down. All is under control once Germany pay up (with interest) what they owe the Greeks. Did they honestly believe that they could welsh on their debts.
Pay up and shut up.
LOL! And how pray tell will the Greeks get the Germans to stump up with Cash if they tell them to bugger off?
Well wise guy either way the Greeks are going to default on the German’s. Better the German’s cut a deal or risk the domino effect of other Countries pulling from the euro. Now pray tell us how Germany will fair, better or worst?
The ECB and the other members of the Euro have already developed a plan around ensuring a Grexit is contained. It isn’t just the Germans who have lost patience with the Greeks either. Much of Northern Europe (e.g. the Finns and Dutch) can’t be bothered with the games the Greeks are trying to play.
According to Germany West Germany paid full reparations in 1960 and there was a final settlement when East and West Germany re-united in 1990.
Their view is that nothing further is owed.
Greece on the other hand seems to want something like Treaty of Waitangi settlement claims. One “full and final” settlement after another , followed each time by further demands.
Greece may well have a strong moral argument for a repayment of a loan they were forced to make to the Nazis. However demanding reparations for other aspects of the Occupation is just blustering.
Te Tiriti was supposed to institute a partnership. Full and final settlements are made when a partnership is dissolved. You might like that, I suppose.
Well, if you clearly don’t know anything about reparations and the Treaty of Waitangi, how can we take your comments about Germany-Greece reparations seriously?
Then Greece should quit the Euro.
The whole concept of the Euro was a stupid one. You cannot have monetary and fiscal union without political union – plain and simple.
Probably what the Germans wanted all along anyway. Fuhrer Merkel has a nice ring to it.
Quiting the Euro would break a Syriza election commitment and will make the situation in Greece a lot, lot worse than it is now in the short run.
Yeah, well, Im not the one who is desperate to screw down Greek Living standards.
“The whole concept of the Euro was a stupid one. You cannot have monetary and fiscal union without political union – plain and simple.”
Agree. Even though I was fairly politically unaware at this stage of my life, the proposal struck me as a particularly bad one for this reason. Was even further surprised when it was adopted.
Now, I tend to be cynical and believe that it was promoted and adopted for the ease of influence over all Eurozone countries. An administration proficiency improvement perhaps.
A Keynesian approach doesn’t rule out exporting.
Syriza are trying to negotiate a more practical solution. Creditors unwillingness is prolonging a workable outcome being found, thus intensifying the uncertainty and negatively impacting on the economy .
Shrinking WINZ dental loans
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/272803/shrinking-winz-dental-loans
Quote:
Beneficiaries advocate Kay Brereton said the need for dental work had not gone away.
“It’s worrying that there’s people out there whose health is getting worse. There’s got to be a lot of people out there who are living with pain and eating on one side of their mouth. That’s the kind of thing that I’ve encountered, before they [WINZ] said that we don’t do this anymore.”
In the 2010/11 financial year, Work and Income loaned $9,398,451 to beneficiaries for emergency dental work. Over the past year that figure was slashed to $45,100, official documents showed.
Ms Brereton does not think there has been any specific changes to policy, except Government pressure on Work and Income to shrink beneficiary debt.
End quote.
So is this how Key is funding his $26M effing flag ego trip?!
Yup, to put it into perspective, last year the country spent more on global jaunts for Jim Bolger and his wife than what was spent on the emergency dental health of some of its most vulnerable citizens.
Yeah but why worry eh? It’s not like decisions to ignore critical dental emergencies ever lead to other health and well being issues whose social costs will most likely dwarf the costs of the emergency dental treatment being denied, all because of pressure to scrape the runway for the spruce goose surplus.
That dental services are not part of the country’s core health service has always been something I have a fundamental difficulty with. But as many have commented over the years, logic and government are not exactly bedfellows. Let’s face it, they’re barely living in the same house anymore.
+ 1 Great comment there freedom, I totally agree.
Article needs more info. Otherwise it’s he said/she said. How are WINZ budgets formulated? Are they using the old “what you don’t spend this period gets removed from budget next period” approach? Nine Mill on dental work in 2010/11 suddenly dropping away four years later wouldn’t be out of the ordinary. People have a finite number of teeth, combined with the above budget approach, and hey presto.
$9M divided by 1 – 32 possible tooth issues per adult, divided by roughly $400 per tooth removal (simple example), over four years – and it’s not so impossible. While such a method takes no account for future problems, I guess Labour will sort that out *cough cough* later, by bringing salads back to school tuck shops and denying the removal of wisdom teeth as anti-intellectual propaganda. Beneficiary Advocate would have to prove that people haven’t been treated for existing need, and that reductions were pre-emptive, to present a story no one will remember come 2017. Sad fact.
Dr.Crum’s comments ring true in my experience. Sit in a dentists office and you’ll hear people setting up payment plans. No one can ignore not being able to sleep for a week because of tooth pain and probably unable to sit through a WINZ interview either. If serious unaddressed dental work was sending those missing untreated patients to hospital, or to the grave, we’d have a matching story to join the dots.
Anecdotally, I don’t think I’ve met a dentist who mixes professional attitude with the political “tendencies” of others in the medical professions. Maybe being an ass while your highly trained and profitable fingers are in someone’s mouth isn’t so smart.
Or, we could listen to one of the most experienced beneficiary advocates in the country and take note when she says there is a problem with existing beneficiaries accessing health care.
“Dr.Crum’s comments ring true in my experience. Sit in a dentists office and you’ll hear people setting up payment plans. No one can ignore not being able to sleep for a week because of tooth pain and probably unable to sit through a WINZ interview either. If serious unaddressed dental work was sending those missing untreated patients to hospital, or to the grave, we’d have a matching story to join the dots.”
Last time I went to the dentist the receptionist refused to even give me an appointment until I had the paperwork from WINZ saying they would cover the costs. Negotiating payment plans is dependent on having discretionary income (not true for many on a benefit), and it also depends on a practice being willing to trust a beneficiary (not all do).
People, of any class, shouldn’t have to wait until the situation is so dire that their pain prevents them sitting through a WINZ interview.
“Anecdotally, I don’t think I’ve met a dentist who mixes professional attitude with the political “tendencies” of others in the medical professions. Maybe being an ass while your highly trained and profitable fingers are in someone’s mouth isn’t so smart.”
How do you explain the lack of low cost dental care then?
What in God’s name has gone wrong with our justice system and Public Service when a High Court registrar thinks this was an OK thing to do? !!!!
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/68277433/column-threatens-gotingco-murder-trial
I suspect they are not suited to their role. And that this incongruity will be shortly resolved.
“The defendant has interim name suppression to protect his right to a fair trial, but his image is allowed to be published.”
I would find that acceptable in the case of the prominent one and the minsta’s bro as well.
http://www.businessinsider.com.au/venezuela-electricity-rationing-plan-2015-5
A government nationalises the Electricity sector and provides generous subsidies so people can afford electricity and then massive shortages occur and the same government has to impose strict rationing.
Who would have thunk it?
California?
Oh no, that’s right they got to a state of near crisis through the capitalist system
Given there were lessons to be learnt out of the Californian experience what lessons do you think people can take out of Venezuela’s current predicament?
That we live on a finite planet.
Prediction about that other bastion of crazy government,
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/britain-may-be-forced-to-ration-the-internet-expert-warns-as-web-use-could-consume-100-of-nations-power-supply-by-2035-10222638.html
What on earth does this story have to do with California Tracey?
california has a history of power shortages but isnt socialist. gosman likes to use venezuela as an example of failed socislism as others like to use it as a success. Sooooooo i pointed out that doyen of capitalism, california, suffers power shortages due to rampant capitalistic consumption.
You didn’t answer the question of what lessons could be learned from Venezuela suffering power shortages. Maybe it is that subsidising electricity is not sustainable long term. What do you reckon?
I thought the lesson was obvious oh goose of little brain. The managed market (eg Venezuela) achieves a far more equitable distribution of a scare resource rather than reliance on the god of the “hidden hand”. So there is rationing of a scare resource. Far better than the privileged few gobbling it all up and keeping it to themselves. But then you probably have your nose firmly up their bottoms and so think otherwise.
The lessons are the same ones that California should have learned. Neither put enough corrupt criminal capitalists in prison to allow the problems to be fixed. Hopefully Venezuela will remedy this.
FOG
Now they’re doing it all over again with water. Are Venezuelans thirsty too? Haven’t heard anything about that.
So your saying some electricity to the poor is worse than none at all Gossy?
I’m stating that to ensure the poor can access some electricity in the short run they have massively increased to costs involved to everyone. These costs will eventually be passed on in some manner and it is likely the poor will end up in an even worse position than they were before (Most likely no electricity, no jobs and no services that rely on electricity).
No they haven’t. The costs have remained the same.
What a load of BS. If anything it’s likely to produce more jobs as the government continues massive investment in electricity production.
A lot of people don’t understand that pricing is there to restrict use. This applies to RWNJs as well as their usual complaint about carbon taxes is that it will raise fuel prices.
Anyway, what Venezuela did there was wrong but not because of the price controls or the subsidies but because the controls were set incorrectly. What they should have done is set a reasonable amount of electricity that each household could use free and that anything above that cost an arm and a leg with the price increasing as you used more.
That would have provided the security of supply that the poor need while also restricting use. It would have removed the need for the subsidies as well.
Questions might be interesting today (unless Key takes Armstrong’s advice and makes a personal statement to shut down debate.)
1. Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by all his statements; if so, why?
3. ANDREW LITTLE to the Prime Minister: Does he enforce high standards of conduct on all his Ministers, including himself?
Bob Jones dribbles onto his bib and again the Herald publishes it
http://www.donotlink.com/eztx
Jones masturbating his bone
Re Key masticating a scone
Rights For Every Other Scone !
Love your tones
Jones.
Last evening I went to see a film “Salt of the Earth”. A documentary featuring the life work of social photographer Sebastião Salgado. If you have not seen this film you must. There are parts that are so hard to witness – The graphic realities shown of the droughts in Ethiopia, and the Sahel, the wars in Serbia and Rwanda, are simply heartbreaking, and man’s inhumanity to man almost too much to bear.
http://sonyclassics.com/thesaltoftheearth/
But there is hope at the end with the reforestation program he and his wife have begun in Brazil. A very moving documentary.
It’s interesting that his name translates as “Salted Sebastian”. I wonder if he called his film “Salt of the Earth” because of that.
He does make a reference to the biblical quote “you are the salt of the Earth” early on in the film, and his work is focused entirely on the global human condition. But yes an interesting observation. I’m sure that has something to do with it as well. Interestingly he trained as an economist and worked for the World Bank before giving that all up to concentrate on photography; a much more influential and productive life resulted.
‘The brother of a Cabinet Minister is accused of abusing two 11-year-old girls.
The man, whose name, age, and job have been suppressed, is accused of indecently assaulting an 11-year-old girl and of attempting to make intimate recordings of another girl, also aged 11.’
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/68275485/Cabinet-ministers-brother-accused-of-abusing-two-11-year-olds?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
‘There is a very real conflict of interest for the cabinet minister whose brother is facing serious assault charges, Labour Party leader Andrew Little has said.’
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/political/272831/minister-has-possible-conflict-of-interest-little
‘Prime Minister John Key will not be making an apology to Parliament today for his repeated pulling of an Auckland waitress’ ponytail.’
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/political/272848/no-parliamentary-ponytail-apology-from-pm
Blanket suppression again – for three weeks at least. Deja vu, anyone?
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11443540
Well, Stuff are much more forthcoming on some of the details of this case.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/68275485/cabinet-ministers-brother-accused-of-abusing-two-11yearolds
Interesting difference in reporting. The Herald calls it a total blanket suppression; Stuff reports the judge as being uncomfortable with a total blanket suppression. The Stuff reporter is named as Phil McCarthy, who works for the Southland Times.
CAREFUL – we must not name possible court location as this is suppressed.
SNAP, Amirite!
That stuff article you link to is no longer up as far as I can see.
‘
I’ll just leave this here: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:jRn7CxIQfrkJ:i.stuff.co.nz/national/68275485/Cabinet-Ministers-brother-accused-of-abusing-two-11-year-olds+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk
Thanks! Interesting, I tried that this morning and got blank pages.
It does look like the reporter got somethign wrong about the scope of the suppression order. Or what the judge granted was a partial suppression but still more than the man’s name. Anyone know how that works?
‘
Not me. I sorta get how suppression orders are supposed to work but note that in the practical application they seem only to favour the privileged. In this case, I wonder whether the suppression order(s) might include “any details” which could identify the alleged victims. If so, stating their age at the time of the alleged offending might be a problem??
IANAL.
That would certainly explain the differences between the two newspaper articles.
Thanks!
edited because weka has asked my questions! haha
we can now only hope that someone can answer them, ha.
http://www.3news.co.nz/nznews/labour-warns-of-conflict-of-interest-over-minister-2015050418#axzz3ZFWHztLG
This article mentions the ministers brother’s appearing at court in Chch but was published before suppression? Does this need to be taken down like the stuff article?
That’s interesting. I wonder whether they were assuming that it would be in Christchurch based on the fact that the interim name suppression injunction against publication of the name of the accused and his Cabinet Minister brother was issued by the High Court in Chch at the weekend. My money on the actual hearing being further south based on the location of the Stuff reporter who wrote the article after the hearing which has now been taken down. BUT must not name the possible location(s)!
But I am a little concerned that the post-hearing Stuff article is now available further up this thread and wonder whether it should be removed.
Obviously this is up to Lprent and the other mods, but there has been some discussion on Twitter re the article and possible breach of the latest suppression order, with a number of people removing their tweets referring to it and its contents.
Its getting to be a bit of a habit in National Party circles isn’t it.
So the judge did not issue blanket suppression, hence the details of ages, gender and charges.
I guess Stuff taking all that down was pressure from higher up the Key chain.
Sorry, but I don’t think we can assume that at all – ie that there was not a blanket suppression, and that there was pressure from Key or others on the judge. The latter is an absolute no-no, in terms of probity and the separation of the Executive from the Judiciary, and the latter’s independence. IMHO, Stuff stuffed up, published, realised the mistake, and removed their article.
sorry vv, can’t agree with you on this one … I believe Stuff published what was 100% legal to publish .. they simply would not make that kind of error. Why they removed it ? Well, we’ll never know.
But this gubmint has terms of probity that none of us has been able to find for several years now. There is almost no ‘no-no’ this slimy gubmint has not been willing to cross.
“Carpe dirt” are their mots de jour.
and Blip .. how do you find the google cache like that please ? thx
‘
It comes up as an option in Firefox (and Chrome too, I think). Look for the little pointer (a triangle shape) which appears at the end of the URLs (usually in green text) in Google search results. Click on the pointer and the option to use the cache appears. Bear in mind that it will only work for a day or so if the original article has been disappeared from its originating site.
super .. thx Blip. that was great you saved that today for us all.
You can also use a Firefox extension called “Resurrect Pages” to recover dead links from various sources: google, webcite, gigablast, web.archive.org, yahoo, bing
Stuff article is not there now.
So I see. Perhaps MS or Lprent may wish to consider whether to remove/edit my and Amirite’s comments.
I think it’s fine, they’re probably editing it, and it’s useful to see that what they put up had to be taken down. Next time, cut and past the whole lot 😉 You did narrow down the possibilities a lot though.
screen shot if you can is always best .. several different ways to do it, I’m sure good techies will advise !
I use a free Microsoft app called Snipping Tool on my laptop with Windows 7 .. but there are others. Mine is free here:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-nz/windows/use-snipping-tool-capture-screen-shots#1TC=windows-7
Question — if as Stuff reported, a judge is uncomfortable with a complete blanket suppression, how on earth is it issued over her/his head ???????????
Thanks so much that tool. I have never known how to do a screen shot, and actually asked for advice last week but got none.
In this particular instance, I would have taken a screen shot, but probably not published it here until I was sure that it was ‘legal’.
As I noted in my comment at 26, there was a big difference between the Herald and Stuff articles which set my alarm bells ringing, so I was being circumspect about saying much – but could not resist mentioning the reporter’s name and newspaper since the Stuff article gave his name. Don’t know how long the article was up online, but it has not reappeared or been replaced. Stuff’s lawyers may be earning their keep ….
In terms of the blanket suppression, the Stuff reporter may have left the court before the judge gave his/her full decision to file his story. Its happened before.
PS, I just rechecked Stuff and could not find any article, but used their search tool using “blanket suppression” and the original headline still comes up but does not link to anything.
and there may be easier ways to do a screenshot .. post your machine and operating system and see what suggestions there are .. I know many are more simple than Snipping Tool but I don’t know them !
Thanks for you comments .. I searched the Southland Times, and of all things, there is young man charged with sexually abusing two young women .. have we become a nation of pedophiles ? wtf.
And why is our ponytail pulling perverty PM protecting them ? Why?????
just for clarity, the case I read and mention above is NOT the suppressed one .. well it can’t be, it’s in the paper online … just another everyday pedophile trial in good ol’ NZ.
I realised that! And here is another one which was reported in the Nelson Mail (and on Stuff) today.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/nelson-mail/news/68252678/nelson-man-denies-multiple-sex-charges
If you cut and paste you can copy bits to ts (can’t do that with a screen shot)
I’m pretty good at the old cut and paste, but there are times such as the Stuff article today, where getting a full screenshot before it disappears is useful.
True and you get things like a date etc. Just wondering how you share it with the rest of us ;- p
Veutoviper, re screenshot options
Take a look at your keyboard, does it have a key with “print screen” ?
Press this key once and it will take an image of the entire monitor area. It should show you where it is saved or allow you to select such. It will most likely use a time stamp as title for the image. (btw, having the address bar in your screenshot helps confirm origin of image, and look out for any personally identifiable content that might have been captured from your desktop etc) I use the print screen option for most screengrabs and edit the image later.
Most print screen buttons work no matter what is being displayed on the monitor, be it a web browser, a text document you are editing, a video you are viewing etc.
In your preferences/settings you might be able to assign a ‘hot-keys’ screenshot/print screen button if one does not appear on your keyboard.
If unsure where the image has been saved, check your main drive’s ‘Pictures’ folder or the ‘Downloads’ “folder’. It may have a subfolder for screenshots but is just as likely to place it in the general folder contents.
As pointed out by rawshark-yeshe, there are numerous free programs out there that allow you to more precisely select areas of the screen to copy and these are very handy. EG: Screengrab is one “add on” for Firefox that is very useful and has a variety of handy tasks it can perform.
Thanks freedom – always wondered what that Print Screen button was for, LOL!
Oldies like me get set in our ways, but will have a play when I get some free time.
cool … 🙂
In Windows it’s not saved to disc but only to memory. To save it requires opening up a graphics program (ie, Paint) and pasting it in. You can then crop, edit and save as you see fit.
break the shackles, climb out of your holes people 🙂
http://www.ubuntu.com/
A nice little example of how the msm can twist and amplify a nothing into an unacceptable something to be condemned…
A guy by the name of ‘Imperial Biscuit’ rides around outside St Enochs Square in Glasgow playing ‘good-bye’ themed songs from a portable amp hooked to his bike.
Another well known guy by the name of Sean Clerkin hollers stuff through a megaphone.
Labour supporters are gathered around Jim Murphy, who has thought it a good idea to enlist the help of Eddie Izzard for a street rally.
Other people of various ages and political leanings hover or pass by to get to the Underground and a chant of ‘Red Tories Out’ is taken up by some, that Jim Murphy then attempts to turn to ‘Get the Tories Out’.
No-one is hurt, no-one is injured and extensive video footage from ‘Imperial Biscuit’ lasting about 20 minutes shows a fair bit of good humour and one instance of a Labour voter shoving a young SNP voter away. (He actually takes the time out to ask the guy to ‘cool it’)
And the British press reports….
Eddie Izzard labels nationalist protesters as ‘violent’ and ‘aggressive’ as fights break out on Glasgow trip – The Independent.
Eddie Izzard slams ‘violent’ protesters in Glasgow – The Scotsman
Scottish independence activists ambush Labour election rally – The Guardian
Wings Over Scotland has a piece including the video footage of the event for anyone interested in how media can work….or for anyone geekily obsessed with the UK election 😉
QUESTIONS TO MINISTERS in Parliament today 2pm
1. Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by all his statements; if so, why?
2. TIM MACINDOE to the Minister of Finance: What reports has he received on low inflation in New Zealand, and how does that benefit households and businesses?
3. ANDREW LITTLE to the Prime Minister: Does he enforce high standards of conduct on all his Ministers, including himself?
4. DAVID SEYMOUR to the Minister for Economic Development: What are the fiscal risks to the Crown from Tracey Martin’s New Zealand International Convention Centre Act 2013 Repeal Bill, if any?
5. PAUL FOSTER-BELL to the Minister of Science and Innovation: What is the Government doing to grow business-led research and development?
6. ANDREW LITTLE to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by his statement in relation to achieving a surplus that it is like “landing a 747 on a pinhead”?
7. SARAH DOWIE to the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety: How will Budget 2015 help strengthen compliance with minimum employment standards?
8. KEVIN HAGUE to the Minister of Finance: Does he stand by all his statements?
9. Hon ANNETTE KING to the Minister of Health: Are New Zealanders who require elective surgery receiving it in a timely manner?
10. STUART SMITH to the Minister for Disability Issues: How is the Government’s investment in the New Zealand Sign Language Fund helping sign language users to promote and maintain the language during Sign Language Week?
11. EUGENIE SAGE to the Minister of Conservation: Does she agree with Professor Mark Urban that New Zealand’s indigenous species are at greater risk of extinction from climate change than species in many other parts of the world; and if not, why not?
12. GRANT ROBERTSON to the Minister of Finance: Does he stand by his statement that “returning to surplus and repaying debt are among the most important things the Government can do to ensure New Zealand can withstand future shocks and build a more competitive economy based on exports and new jobs”; if so, will there be a surplus for the 2014/15 year?
QUESTIONS TO MEMBERS
1. Hon TREVOR MALLARD to the Chairperson of the Justice and Electoral Committee: How many submitters on the New Zealand Flag Referendums Bill have asked to be heard by the committee and of those how many has she requested to attend to give evidence?
2. Hon TREVOR MALLARD to the Chairperson of the Justice and Electoral Committee: How many submitters to the committee on the New Zealand Flag Referendums Bill requesting a yes/no vote has she requested attend to give evidence out of those who made submissions on this point?
ENDS
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA1505/S00050.htm
Parliament live TV link here:
http://www.parliament.nz/en-nz/about-parliament/see-hear/ptv
Exactly the same kind of database error as the last time.
Changing the backup sequence to 10 minutes. If it happens again, I will look at the database engine.
Nate Silver’s UK, prediction up date, 4 May:
http://fivethirtyeight.com/interactives/uk-general-election-predictions/
Cameron has promised tax cuts!
Miliband has wowed to stop Conservative proposed cuts to NHS.
I think that the NHS is being broken into parts which in affluent areas, private USA Companies snap them up. So steady demolition of NHS. Wonder how Privatisation can deliver a good service and make a profit?
So if Milliband can halt the sale – jolly good.
UK Cabinet Club, aka cash for access…. David Cameron style:
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/may/04/tories-leaders-group-donor-club-david-cameron-conservatives-dinners
The Tory Leader’s Group donor club: ‘A chance for like-minded people to talk’
A payment of £50,000 gives business people direct access to David Cameron and other senior Conservatives at dinners, drinks receptions and other events
“The one undeniable advantage which donors in the Leader’s Group have is that they can express their views directly to the prime minister or to other senior ministers. They do not have to rely upon civil servants or intermediaries to pass on their views.”
Wow. Why don’t the Nats here do stuff like that? But no. NZers would be very angry if we had Ministers for sale. They would rise up and march!
(Sarc)
bloody hell..!
in q-time little told key the govt. should be buying milk products @ the global auctions – to prop up the price for farmers..
..what..the..fuck..!
Muldoon is back. 🙁
And is leader of Labour and National (in slightly different guises).
not what he said at all and you know it.
‘bystanders’ can do many things that do not involve purchasing stock
it is what he said – and i do know it – watch the replay…
I was watching it live, and here is the transcript
“Andrew Little : When will he admit that his Government acting as a bystander at the dairy auctions rather than building a more diverse economy is the real reason his economic promises are falling away as fast as the milk price?”
http://www.parliament.nz/en-nz/pb/business/qoa/51HansQ_20150505_00000006/6-government-financial-position%E2%80%94return-to-surplus
+1
We’ve propped up farmers to our detriment before and we definitely don’t need to be doing it again.
Confabulation much.
Andrew Little
: When will he admit that his Government acting as a bystander at the dairy auctions rather than building a more diverse economy is the real reason his economic promises are falling away as fast as the milk price?
Rt Hon JOHN KEY
: I do not know whether I misinterpreted the question from the Leader of the Opposition, but he seems to be saying that the Government should be in there buying milk powder in the auction. If he is, that is an interesting use of Government resources.
http://www.parliament.nz/en-nz/pb/business/qoa/51HansQ_20150505_00000006/6-government-financial-position%E2%80%94return-to-surplus
So not Little calling for the gummint to buy milk at all? Something completely different … and easily checked … instead. I’m shocked … shocked I tell ya.
no..
‘When will he admit that his Government acting as a bystander at the dairy auctions rather than building a more diverse economy is the real reason his economic promises are falling away as fast as the milk price? ‘..
wtf is he saying if not that the govt should stop acting as a ‘bystander’ @ the milk auctions..
..what does ‘not acting as a byestander’ actually mean..if not to become involved as a player in that auction..?
i guess that’s what i get for believing the words that come out of keys’ mouth..
The ‘action’ part of the sentence is “building a more diverse economy”. Bystander is merely a factual observation. I think you may have (hopefully temporarily) been influenced by Key’s read of it, which twists the meaning.
Key twist the meaning of something ,well I never’!
Cor, blimey! Blow me down with a feather! etc.
I note that what passes for a speaker these days didn’t require the PM to actually answer the question, even though Key started his reply by saying wasn’t sure he understood it and went on to talk about something else instead.
Oh, man, Phil, you are spinning away crap attacking Little unfairly and stupidly just like Key, Slater, Farrar and other RW arse holes. You aren’t one like them, I am sure!
“The Tamaki redevelopment company is broken up into three shareholders Auckland council, Bill English and Nick Smith. Both English and Smith own 29.5% of the shares while Auckland council own 41%”
The above is from mana news via imperator fish on my fb page is there any truth to it.??? Please tell me its bull.
Looked at that this morning but I think it must mean that the Government owns the shares via the Min of Finance and the Min of Housing. If they own the shares in their own right though then look out!
What it means is that:
A. Joe Trinder is a secret right wing plant
B. Joe Trinder is dumber than a bag of hammers
C. Joe Trinder thinks his readers are dumber than a bag of spanners
D. Joe Trinder thinks the MSM are dumber than the aforementioned hammer and will pick up the headline and run with it (and then continue C but on a wider scale)
maybe it was humour……no, he is dumber than a sack of hammers. He is preaching to the Mana electorate though, so maybe it’s ok to be dumber than a sack of hammers.
The ministers hold the shares on behalf of the Crown. This has been the case with all SOEs.
Joe Trinder kinda shot himself in the foot there.
Mana appear to be adept at shooting there feet it would appear
“The shares appear to be held by the offices they hold, however now that this housing stock is in a private company, once the dust settles, these shares can be gifted/sold without public notification.”
Is that second but true?
The shares can be handled like any other SOE. But what the company can do is sell assets – so long as it isn’t a major transaction i.e all houses at once then it can dribble the houses away
I’ve just looked at the companies office – yes Nick smith & bill english hold them as ministers of the crown.
But the really interesting little thing is that this company & these shareholders were set up in August 2012
The current bunch of directors date back to around Dec 2012.
The constitution was amended in Feb 2014 which appears to up things like Treaty observance.
Directors are: Anne CANDY, Brian Patrick DONNELLY, Eru Reweti LYNDON, Susan Carrell MACKEN, Soana Akolotu PAMAKA, David John SAX, Christopher Martin UDALE. Are these the council & crown nominees?
From this perhaps we can assume that this housing intent predated the election by a substantial time perid. Where we lied to at election time???
David Fisher has had an interesting OIA reply from the PM’s office re the claims that Snowden’s info might be ‘wrong or misleading or forgeries” etc.
Summary of David’s column:
Overview
What was the issue?
Top secret GCSB and NSA documents detailed the way the agencies operated.
How did the Prime Minister respond?
John Key refused to comment on “stolen” information which could be fabricated.
Was there a basis for the suggestion they were forgeries?
The PM’s office has confirmed there was no basis to the claim.
Has any Snowden document been shown to be “fabricated”?
No, not in any of the countries in which there has been extensive reporting.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11443630
this is why he keeps lying…. cos people keep believing him cos it suits their world view or cos they dont care how many lies he tells if they dont like who he is smearing… and all those folks have children who are learning from mum and dad
Hmmm, mirror image of disbelief,
http://all-embracing.episto.org/2015/05/04/the-b3nraching3r-allegations-part-one/
A lengthy article at The Rojava Report covers Syrian history, its current (semi-failed) state and future, and concludes, among other things, that its armed forces must respect and affirm:
Powerful stuff, and well worth reading in its entirety.
Will have a read later, but the main question I have is what are they doing with the people that disagree, or can’t/won’t change?
I think you mean what are they doing to them, and yes, I agree, it’s a good question.
Chester Borrows caught bullshitting:
https://twitter.com/helenkellyCTU/status/595418543329550337
The original issue here:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/farming/68253731/national-mp-told-off-over-dheads-comments
A small win for disabled and family carers.
A strong criticism from the Appeal Court about poorly constructed, ‘rushed through under urgency’ legislation.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/auckland/68270809/court-says-carer-of-disabled-adult-can-sue-for-compensation
Their Honours, in their decision, available here…https://www.courtsofnz.govt.nz/from/decisions/judgments said about the
Part 4A ammendment to the Public Health and Disability Act (17th May 2013)
“It contained a number of features that are traditionally regarded as being contrary to sound constitutional law and convention –”
“The draconian measures introduced in s 70B(2)(c) to remove rights of challenge for breaches of family care policies said nothing about the Atkinson policy and we cannot be expected to strain the statutory text to remove all retrospective rights of claim arising from that policy.”
“While both counsel accept that the courts must respect and apply pt 4A, like any other legislation, we agree with them that if
the words have not achieved the result which its promoters intended the courts should not seek to fill the gaps as a means of dealing with inadequate drafting.”
“Winkelmann J held that if Parliament had intended to take the unusual step of retrospectively reversing a finding of inconsistency by the Tribunal, it could be expected to do so deliberately and to have used express and unambiguous language.”
At the time of the passing of that shitty piece of legislation Andrew Geddis posted on Pundit…http://pundit.co.nz/content/i-think-national-just-broke-our-constitution
and TDB posted…http://thedailyblog.co.nz/2013/05/19/a-sad-day-for-disability-rights/
It’s going to be very interesting how this unfolds.
Mary,
Thanks for the link to the court proceedings and judgment.
Missed your original posting have read the judgement and yes this is a very important step forward in what had been a blot on our care practises.
OMFG.. disaster coming to a motorway near you …
Let’s see Bridges and Key talk their way out of this one. Cheap, faulty imported concrete used on the Waterview project. ( It’s the new leaky building syndrome folks .. and oh look, it’s Fletchers again !)
Just now:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11443603
They’ll say it’s an example of the quality control system working, and on the evidence of your link they’d be right too.
Imported concrete that’s made in Auckland?
maybe this batch is not imported … that’s a whole other scandal waiting to literally crack open.
It’s unlikely that these customers were do-it-yourselfers getting a single load of concrete to do; “backyard pathways”, or similar. Those dealing direct with the Firth/ Fletcher’s factory would all have been big projects.
“In approximately half of the cases no action will be needed and the concrete will remain in place”, sounds like; in over half the cases immediate repair is necessary to maintain structural integrity, and the rest settled for cash. So that’s 17 or more building projects where the concrete is rotten, but not repaired. I’d be very careful about buying any Auckland property on a new development where the concrete was poured in April 2015.
Doesn’t appear to have been imported concrete but concrete made by Firth which is owned by Fletchers.
yep … but watch for an imported concrete scandal … slater has been writing about it for many weeks .. but of course, he could be making it up … and I seem to recall Winston asked a question about it in the house … a few months ago now …
Most likely concrete made with an imported cement with high alkaline levels.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concrete_cancer
That’s the one … I’ll try and find the other links .. thx Joe.
So you’re thinking this is, or this is not involved in this Fletchers/Firth story ?
Quick link to a Winston press release:
http://www.voxy.co.nz/politics/concrete-cancer-fears-still-alive-nz-first/5/214316?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
and here is link through to the full archive on it from Slater ( credit where credit is due for his work on it)
http://www.donotlink.com/ezyj
i noted on other thread that that is what i get for believing key..
..but in my defence..this..
..tho’ i am sure i heard little (after what key said) saying/yelling ‘you’d be better off spending blah blah at the dairy auctions..
it was while key was speaking – (almost a heckle) and transcribers don’t catch everything – especially in vocally-jumbled situations like that..
wow..!..the above was a reply to way back..
..comments are having a moment..
You may be correct, Phil, but I suspect Little was being facetious because Key had not answered the question. It’s not audible on the replay that I can pick, but I can totally understand if Little took the piss out of Key’s response.
For the record, it’s not LP policy, at least not in terms of Muldoonist market intervention. However, as I recall, the party’s quite keen on milk in schools, but that’s not quite the same thing.
Anyone know who pays for meals at Bellamy’s etc? Do the MPs pay this themselves?