The makeup of the up-coming parliament (based on the preliminary vote). It’s more diverse than last term with a bigger proportion of women Maori and Asian background MPs.
The conclusions are based on the MPs’ previous occupations and not upbringing. Of course, Metiria Turie was one of the few MPs last term who had a working class upbringing, and we know how that ended. i think Cartmel Sepuloni may also have had a working class background.
The stats:
25 percent of the National Party caucus comes from a business background and 19 percent from a government sector background.
“Labour is much more government: 21 percent of their caucus, the main sector, is from a government background, 18 percent is from business. New Zealand First is 28 percent business—so they are the most business background party—18 percent from the education sector and 18 percent from a military police background. And the Greens: 43 percent of their current caucus comes from a union or activist background, 14 percent (i.e. one MP) comes from a government background and 29 percent is coming from business.”
Interesting that it is the greens that have a high number of MPs with a union or activist background amd least from the government sector. The Greens and NZ First have largest proportions from a business background (although Shaw’s business background was not terribly corporate, for-profit).
But what is the background of the remaining National MPs – that’d be 66%? Were they lay-abouts?
What’s with the “much more government” line? Nats = 19% from a government background. Labour = 21%. Big deal!
The differences between NZF and the Greens are more stark, but given that each has a really small caucus, they’re also (if not actually misleading) somewhat sensationalised. One person in a caucus of seven can hugely alter percentage points (with each individual being worth 14.3%).
Extracts from an article in the Herald 4 October, written by a former National MP, explain how the German MMP system has been modified to give the party with the most votes the initial opportunity to form a government.
“The German Constitution, Article 63, provides that the person who receives the votes of a majority of members of the Bundestag (lower chamber of the federal Parliament) shall be elected Federal Chancellor. If no person has a majority in the Bundestag the person who receives the largest number of votes shall be elected. If that person cannot win a majority at an election in the Bundestag within seven days, the Federal President can either appoint that person Chancellor or dissolve the Bundestag for a new general election.”
What follows are the thoughts of a layman, not a legal or political expert. I look forward to reading what others have to say.
So, let’s say these German rules currently apply in New Zealand where English is given the opportunity to be PM. English would be PM for seven days, on the basis that 59 seats (including Act) don’t give him the required majority. If he cannot gather the support required from other MPs’ to achieve a majority, within the seven day timeframe, he can then go to the Governor General and asks to be Prime Minister.
If the Governor General agrees he is then PM of a minority government. If there was a genuine opposition coalition of the majority Left that includes NZ First, Labour and the Greens they would presumably have a large say in how the country is run despite English being PM. In any event a good opportunity to work as a cohesive opposition.
If he is refused by the Governor General, we then have another electoral vote rather than provide Ardern, Peters and Shaw with an opportunity to form an alternative Government. The power goes back to the people not to any particular Party.
You want to provide the link? After all, it’s just as easy to copy and paste the link as it is to copy and paste a quote from it. Rather than make the rest of us waste time searching for it.
Now that I’ve found the link, the extract at the end has almost nothing to do with the rest of the opinion piece by Michael Cox. Who was a total non-entity as an MP, and clearly the thirty years since then have done nothing to improve his cognitive abilities.
With respect to the idea that only the leader of the party receiving the most votes may form the government, that’s crap. One of the main points of MMP is to include a wide variety of voices and opinions. Then the largest coalition of those voices that can work together form the government.
Making it so only the largest party can from the government hands way too much power back to established large party power structures, who will suppress variety of opinion in order to present the largest possible monolithic bloc. And make even harder for small parties to get traction.
Lets tell the Germans “that’s crap”. My intention is to get comments on the German system not the merits of Michael Cox. Shoot the messenger if you must.
You missed the bit where it says “IF no person has a majority in the Bundestag….”. A majority does not have to come from one party, it can be of any number of participants. So it is very possible for a person to become chancellor if his/her party does not have the most votes in parliament, just enough votes will do, from any party.
Completely nullifies the reason for MMP in the first place. For instance you could get a situation where the Nats had 35.5, Labour 35.3 Greens 14 NZF 12. Labour/Green could form a stable government (49.3 v 47.5) but would not be given the opportunity. The Nats couldn’t, so there would be a new election. Many other combinations would be possible if a new party got over 5%.
(On a practical note on Peter’s post, surely the week to form a government would start after the Special Votes had been counted. That would at least give 3 weeks to work out a government.)
Thanks for the comments. You would expect the week to start after special votes.
So maybe a modified system would give the largest Party the opportunity to make the first attempt at forming a majority Government? If they cannot do that the second largest Party then has the opportunity?
Why should any party be granted special privileges to form a government? What’s the problem with the current arrangement where the leader of the first coalition to say they have a majority of the house goes to the Governor General who presumably checks it out and if it seems legit, gives them the opportunity to prove it?
Andre has provided a valid reason why this kind of approach is a failure of recognising the democracy that can be provided by MMP.
If a group of like minded parties secures more than fifty percent of the vote, your proposal to adhere to the german method, would only provide space for the largest party vote, even if it was not part of that majority group.
Ultimately, meaning that despite MMP attempting to reflect the diversity of the electorate, the parties with the simplistic, most phatic policies and campaigning would be the ones who are most likely to garner the biggest block of votes, and be given the first priority to form a government.
Plus, under our system, the governor general is appointed by the PM (leader of the largest party in what would in this situation be the previous government). Surely that predisposes him/her to stick with the status quo if there is no decisive outcome from an election?
Thanks for the perspective. Have patience while I continue to think this through.
What we really need then is for the NZ public to always expect that the final vote simply indicates peoples party preferences, not a result. So if one party has 49% of the vote and, say, 5 others, have an even split each of the other 51% of the vote they can all decide equally amongst themselves the way forward to forming a government. There is no “winner” until a coalition is formed.
I heard yesterday that in 16 years time, or so, Europeans will be a minority in Auckland. It really is time we starting listening to different voices rzther than trying to shut them down to preserve a world view that hasnt really existed in a long time?
Putting aside the ramifications around MMP, denying the Leader of The Opposition the right to test the confidence of parliament in the event that the PM or leader of the largest party has failed to win a confidence vote would pretty much overturn the parliamentary conventions that we’ve inherited with our version the Westminster system.
Furthermore the article seems to be suggesting that, in the event, that the leader of the largest party in the Bundestag is unable to muster a majority in that house, the President can simply appoint that person Chancellor? So, in our case we would be allowing the sovereign to appoint the PM even if that person has failed to survive a confidence vote in the house?
While I’ve got lots of criticisms of our governing arrangements, the details around how parties can come together to form a governing coalition seem reasonable to me. So I’m waiting for a good argument against what we have now before I get interested in suggested alternatives. So far all I see is flailing distress from Nats that currently don’t have the right to rule they feel entitled to.
In the event that some convincing argument against what we now have actually comes up, then yeah, the points you’ve raised are a good argument against following the german model. Particularly since the two worst features of our overall MMP system, a high threshold and coat-tailing, were also apparently copied from a german model.
I think that lowering the threshold to 3% and getting rid of the coat-tailing loophole are the 2 easiest things we could do to improve our version of MMP. And I also thinks there’s a good chance it might happen now that National’s decade long shenanigans in Epsom and Ōhāriu are finished.
It would be good to have the experts reassure everyone of the merits of our system when compared to FPP and the German version. How do you counter the view that NZF have the balance of power?
The “experts” reviewed MMP after the last referendum in 2012 and arrived at the conclusion that the coat-tailing loophole should be scrapped and the threshold lowered to 4%. All of which the, then National government chose to ignore. http://www.elections.org.nz/events/past-events-0/2012-mmp-review/results-mmp-review.
And I don’t actually want to “counter” the view that NZFirst have the balance of power. The last 2 years has suggested the electoral outcome we find ourselves with. Get over it. Stop thinking in FPP and get on board with MMP. If National has spent the last decade doing that they might not have found themselves in the crappy position they’re in now.
The view that Peters holds the balance of power is totally accurate. Because of the choice of Green party members to effectively close the door on the idea of going into coalition with National thereby rejecting the possibility of holding the balance of power. If the Greens had chosen to be open to National, they too would hold the balance of power making any coalition negotiations much more interesting.
I think one (of many) fair ways of looking at that is that many NZF supporters would swing between Labour and National in the absence of a somewhat centrist party like NZF (or United Future in its heyday). So rather than consciously making the choice between Nat and Lab themselves, they are comfortable delegating that choice to Peters, in the expectation that NZF would also moderate any extreme ideas that make it in from the wings of whomever they go into coalition with. Keeping the bastards honest, if that phrase appeals.
So while I utterly detest Peters, I can respect the choice of his supporters. And if I’m completely honest, despite my loathing of Peters, I still prefer the idea of Nats having to keep Peters onside to the near-as-dammit absolute majority they’ve had the last nine years.
“OR the public and media could grow up politically and wait for negotiations to see which relationships will work for good government in the future?”
Ain’t that the bloody truth! The media (or rather what parades as a MSM/4th Estate) should. Some aspects of this ‘nation’ called NuZull/Aotearoa continue to baffle me.
This little nayshun that “punches above its weight”; is/used to be criticised for that “Tall Poppy syndrome”, all that sort of stuff is actually ultra-competitive (at least amongst the male population – and more lately the Sharlene’s and Shona’s (at the risk of being labelled a sexist cnut) trying to prove they have adequate testosterone levels in order to compete. They seem to care so much about what the rest of the Whurl thinks of us – let alone fellow Kiwis.
Battles between egos in media stars, Hosking/7 Blunt versus The Fucking Project hosted by a Jesssie who has 3 or so hours to undergo a lycra-clad conversion between RNZ and Eden Terrace – the former address where ‘I’m old school and in-depth’ to the latter where ‘I’m superficial and aha ha ha’ with a parade of Mediaworks staff with mortgages to pay to prop him up – and despite an occasional outburst in order to maintain the last vestiges of credibility.
Even the way Kiwis drive a bloody car has become a competition – and despite their penis length, they’re not actually that good at it. (You’ve got to push the pedal to the floor and race to the next red light ahead of someone who’s read the road ahead and realised that exercise was going to be a pointless exercise.)
It’s no surprise to me all the FPP thinking that’s been evident before AND after the 23rd September.
I’m not sure why it is that we’ve become so fucking yea/nah about various gains and so pig ignorant (1893 Women’s Suffrage); a contribution to LGBTI and YouMan! roights; the implementation of a proportional representation system (with all its inadequacies) that we’re so frikken insecure or ignorant about that we all see this past month or so as a competition that someone NEEDS to convincingly win.
After 30+ years of neoliberalism, I guess it should be no surprise, but it’s kind of uphill.shit.push – which, in the end is a “loser’s battle”
A law abiding gun-owner right up until, surprise, he wasn’t.
An Australian man who came to know Stephen Paddock intimately in recent years has offered the most detailed public portrait yet of the Las Vegas mass killer.
He said Paddock was a highly intelligent, strategic though “guarded” individual who won a fortune applying algorithms to gambling, and studied arguments for his right to own weapons under the US constitution.
Their encounters came via their respective girlfriends, Philippine-born sisters – one of whom, Marilou Danley, has returned to the US to be interviewed by the FBI in the wake of Paddock’s meticulously planned massacre.
Their acquaintanceship, through more than half a dozen encounters in the US and the Philippines between 2013 and 2015, revealed Paddock’s generosity – which had his overseas guests living in “palatial” style – and the existence of a “gun room” at his home in Mesquite, Nevada.
“Yes, I was familiar with him,” the man, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Guardian at his Brisbane home on Wednesday. “He was extremely intelligent, methodical, conservative – guarded – and strategic. A planning, thinking type of guy.”
If they were to apply Paddocks profile across the population how many US citizens would trigger an alert.
I’d suggest the bulk of US gun owners would come up which in itself tells you somethings very much amiss in America as their biggest terrorist threat is likely to be coming from their own citizens.
I guess it makes a change from the US govt and it’s backing of violent conflict outside of the USA.
The report in The Press on (killer) Paddock: 64 years, left no immediate hint of motive. He had 34 guns, and shot at least 59 people.
He was a retiree with penchant for gambling – but no criminal record.
‘Paddock was not known to have served in the military, or to have suffered from a history of mental illness or to have registered any inkling of social disaffection, political discontent or radical views on social media.’
I think he was just infected with a bad case of empty USA propaganda with the disadvantage of ‘Being Born in the USA’ and believing the empty bit in their Constitution about his Right to be Happy. Which as anyone who thinks knows is only a passing feeling, not appropriate as full-time goal for questing humans.
Paddock’s behaviour would seem the likely outcome for many of male humanity who succeed in getting money and then buying what they decide they want from life, and then find this doesn’t provide a satisfactory reason for living.
The rich man Howard Hughes ended up degraded after having a surfeit of his wealth, accomplished some personal goals, and finding nothing else to stimulate him. He got beyond wanting, living on chicken soup in the entire floor of a hotel where the windows were blacked out, sitting on a toilet for hours, long hair, long nails, and with someone managing his affairs for him. http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1902376_1902378_1902405,00.html
On a lower level of wealth a guy from NZ killed his girlfriend Crystal or killed himself or someone else at his apartment in some Australian resort where he had retired after making money investing in some vitamin pill company. I
registered the negativity of this ‘successful’ investor, but his details weren’t worth remembering.
These individuals are unconnected to the real world where people actually work for their earnings, not just invest in likely profitable business or housing where they live off others striving and work. I think the term is rentier.
There will be more of these crazed individuals who show symptoms which psychiatrists do not deign to consider insane because of narrow definitions. Otherwise, we might recognise our world is daily near-insane, and I guess the trick-cyclists are just peas in the soup. And crazed individuals within the individualistic society seem to be proliferating in the neo liberal economic religious system imposed on us. In the free market, we have to be careful to look for real friends to give life with each other meaning as in The Three Musketeers – inseparable friends who live by the motto “all for one, one for all” (“tous pour un, un pour tous”). Individualistic men and women probably don’t have real friends, more drinking buddies, investor leads and suitable social partners but if we can only trust a few friends, a group separate from society, then do we actually have a society or is life another version of Game of Thrones?
You have to also question the wisdom of US law enforcement and the demand for every detail of the crime from the news media in these situations.
With every passing ‘massacre’, prospective lone-wolf gunmen get an ever more detailed blueprint on how to commit one of these crimes; e.g.: it was the gun smoke in the room setting off smoke detectors giving him away. Without that and, presumably a suppressor, he could have remained undetected for a lot longer than what he did.
Some how I think I’m going to end up like a lot of people thought our history that have fought for equal rights and who fought against the the establishment like Eddie Grant a controversial death it has happen many times through out our history . But I will keep for OUR Earth because we have only one Earth only one WORLD.
Big UPPS To those supermarkets taking the lead and banning plastic bags .
The big picture is all OUR people in a position to make changes that will benefit our environment should not wait for government . They need to take the lead and make these changes for our grandchildren future.
Governments are a complicated beast that need US to show them the right path to a brighter future.
P.S. It awesome to see MSM taking the lead and showing the fact,S on climate change Ka Pai
Eco Maori i agree plastic bag use should be banned.Should have already happen long before now.And feel its also good to see Greenpeace actively involved.However i fail to see banning any kind of bag as a workable answer.Shopping isn’t necessarily always a planned event for everyone.So why not allow replacement of plastic with paper?.Many more people would be likely to then get right behind the idea, and freely adopt that as change that’s easy to accept. I’d really like to understand why Greenpeace hasn’t taken up this approach .Perhaps somebody,here,can help explain why?
Catalonia is spectacularly rich compared with other parts of Spain. It’s got 16% of the population and 19% of the GDP. Barcelona gets massive tourism and has one of the biggest ports in Europe. Tarragona has one of the biggest chemical industries in Europe.
So of course they pay more taxes than the rest of the country, and more of it gets spent in poorer regions than where it came from. Doing what proper government does with taxes: redistribute from those with the average wealth, to those who need it more.
The Catalan government also owes E77b in public debt. They’ve been the biggest beneficiary of the special fund the Spanish government set up to get the regions going again after the protracted effects of the GFC. Catalan took far and away most of this facility to do good for its own people. But of course, that rich region and its on average wealthy and educated region wouldn’t have to pay that back if they struck out independently.
Tax. Debt.
No doubt calls for independence stirs the heart of old socialists and anarchists brought up on For Whom The Bell Tolls. But before you start asking for another Crimea, ask yourself: who benefits?
weka
I think it might have been on a placard at one of the demonstrations, though I didn’t see it in the linked article’s video (maybe one in the weekend). Ad seems to have seized on the idea that the Catalan independence movement is entirely economic; which seem to be overly simplifying matters, and ignoring history (such as the torture and execution of the last independent Catalan president by Franco’s regime).
However, I found it grimly amusing for a member of an heridatary Bourbon monarch (descendant those overthrown during the French revolution and whose father had been handpicked by Franco as his successor) to be lecturing those who had been engaged in a largely symbolic referendum on; “democratic principles of the rule of law”. The excessive reaction by the Spanish government in sending in their armoured goon squad was very counterproductive in assuring the Catalan people that they not oppressed.
I wondered about that too, would have been good to see the context. Madrid robbing Catalonia could refer to the election, or democracy, or independence etc.
Surprising precisely nobody, here is episode number 271,828,182,845,904,523,536,028,747,135,266,249,775,724,709,369,995 of awesomely blatant conservative political hypocrisy. In this case, rabidly “pro-life” politicians pressuring their mistresses to abort the unborn child they had fathered.
Episode number 271,828,182,845,904,523,536,028,747,135,266,249,775,724,709,369,996 of blatant pro-life hypocrisy.
9 million kids get insurance through CHIP. Congress is about to let its funding expire
On September 30, funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program expires. After Republicans took a rushed and ultimately failed run at repealing Obamacare one last time, the program’s spending authorization is now at imminent risk of lapsing.
On NBC, @SRuhle clarifies that her source says Tillerson didn’t just say moron — “he said F-ing moron"— Michael M. Grynbaum (@grynbaum) October 4, 2017
And to address the question in the cartoon: yes they did put something into the constitution to deal with that possibility. The Electoral College. It had one job. And failed.
So very english, the protester stooped as he was lead out, presumably so as not to disrupt too much.
And Corbyn, Corbyn, Corbyn he clearly has them rattled.
Reminiscent of the Tories here, spent more time talking about the ‘enemy’ rather than articulating their vision.
If our Tories articulated their vision then very few people would ever vote for them. And so they articulate the same vision as the Left while putting in place policies that bring about its antithesis.
She seems to suffer from some sort of acute stage-fright which might explain the dreadful coughing.
How that guy got anywhere near her with the P45 form is amazing and the Frida Kahlo bracelet and all the letters falling off the wall was just the icing on the cake.
SDHB are having public meetings fora next week to put a gloss of public consultataion on their; “strategy and action plan” through to 2030, particularly focusing on the hospital rebuild. The ODT is a bit vague on the details, but the SDHB facebook page has a scan of a print ad (probably from the ODT, I seldom see a physical copy these days). For Dunedin that is; 13:00-14:30 Tuesday 10/10, at the Barclay theatre in the museum. Nothing about whether you have to book to speak as with the public forum prior to the start of ordinary public advisory committee meetings.
This seems worth trying to make your voice heard at, if you can make it during workhours. Or you could just leave it up to the unelected SDHB in conjunction with an multinational professional services corporation to do what is best for the people of Otago:
SDHB and WellSouth were working with Ernst & Young to create the strategy and plan.
Association of Salaried Medical Specialists executive director Ian Powell said the senior doctors’ union supported the move ”in principle”, but the health board would have difficulty convincing the public.
”They will be up against a difficulty in terms of what happened last time they developed a strategic plan and it was handled very poorly,” he said.
The public forums would be held in Dunedin on October 10, Invercargill the following day and Cromwell on October 12.
Queenstown resident and former Queenstown Lakes District councillor Kirsty Sharpe said the public forum in Cromwell was inconvenient for Queenstown residents.
It appeared the forums were being held at a time of day that suited DHB staff rather than the public, she said, and was also disappointed a forum would not be held in the resort.
”It’s cutting a lot of people out from going.”
SDHB did not respond yesterday to questions about why no forum was being held in Queenstown, or the timing of them
A friend of mine gasped when she saw the Vulcan episode of American Gods. “That’s Civic Religion!” she said. She’d been enrolled in religious studies and apparently one of the tools for understanding how states operate is to look as societies as religions or cults.
The creators of American Gods here explain why they created an episode not in the original book to look at this.
In today’s paper Herald Grant Bradley the aviation commentator has an article of the CEO of Air NZ speaking to an audience of 400 in the Business Section. The CEO says its “no time to slash and burn” with businesses looking for short term goals of cutting jobs, cutting investment and cutting customer services”. I would like to link this article but I cannot find it on the online Herald.
His words “the reality is that the business world is sadly littered with companies that are just cutting jobs and ultimately not fulfilling their purpose to do anything useful. That’s pretty sad”.
He goes to on say they Air NZ have greatly reduced the income parity between the genders and is endeavouring to make their company more sustainable – for example the recycling scheme where unsealed food/drinks left on trays will be recycled where its safely possible.
My first thoughts were of this National Government and previous Labour Governments which have sold off state owned assets purely to pay down debt and get that instant gratification of money in hand. No thoughts of the dividend stream that might still be coming in if they hadn’t been sold off. Also their customer service in all of their departments is a bloody disgrace especially at WINZ. The attrition of staff in departments and front line in essential departments is another serious problem.
Banks are another where customer service is next to nothing. It seems we have a way to go yet where customers are valued and staff treated with respect.
“words “the reality is that the business world is sadly littered with companies that are just cutting jobs and ultimately not fulfilling their purpose to do anything useful. That’s pretty sad”. ”
I take some heart that more and more businesses are operating beyond just bottom line return to shareholder or owner. More than 30 years ago. Still more need to transition but it is a start
It seems some in the media have caught on that the labour party are economically ‘orthodox’ rat bags. That if they stick with what they been saying (policy), nothing will change, actually just like the last 9 years it will only get progressively worse.
Well we are giving our daughter and son and inlaw a break we have 3 of there children till Sunday man they keep you on your toes 2 girls whom are blonde and very well behaved and our eldest grandson well he has a real full of life personality . We are very proud of our whole family we created. But when we were bring up our children I did not realize how much time goes into bring up children most of the time I was out there chasing the big money fishing and other various jobs. So most of the time I just past the money over and my wife did most of the hard yards bring up our family .
But when my daughters started having children this opened my eyes to the hard ship Lady’s go through carrying a baby for 9 months having no sleep for the first 6 months it is a 24 7 job bring up children and can be a very dangerous life threatening time giving birth and most males are totally unaware of these fact’s . For this reason we give our young lady’s all the help we can with bring up our grandchildren and this is one of the reason that I get the big picture . Which is we have one Mother Earth and we have to look after her as no one else is Kia Kaha
I love a bit of self awareness from a male who actually gets how hard a woman works when she becomes a mother. I still remember the absolute exhaustion I had from when I had my first child and then second . Right through till….. Can’t remember.Good on you. High five. Oh, and that was over 40 years ago.
Has anyone seen/read this? It exposes the smokescreen that trade is about encouraging democracy rather than a greedy grab to be first in. Remember how being in WTO woukd help China be more Democratic and better on Human Rights…
” To make matters worse, the Trump family have placed themselves conspicuously on China’s payroll, accepting future profits in the form of trademarks for both the Trump and Ivanka brands, and seeking Chinese investment in Kushner real estate projects. When China Labor Watch, a New York–based labor rights organization, published information on poor conditions in a factory where Ivanka’s brand-name shoes had recently been produced, China detained the group’s three field investigators, the only time CLW’s investigators have been detained for exposing the abuse of Chinese workers.2 ”
“Remember how being in WTO wou[l]d help China be more Democratic and better on Human Rights…”
Fark! That’s almost as big a lie as all the others the new neo-libs told us would happen – in the future, going forward, actually-as a matter of fact, to coin a phrase, so-to-speak.
Public Service reforms
The market the market as the natural leveler
Privatisations
etc
etc
etc
“Auckland ratepayers [are] now paying 6 percent more this year for council salaries. A staggering 52 percent of rates are now used by the council just to pay staff.”
…Mr Town (CEO)- who got a $34,000 payrise to $690,000…”
Note the article attacks democratically elected Phil Goff NOT the unelected CEO Town who earns $690,000 who is supposed to ‘run’ the council.
Not sure how much the Ports of Auckland get, or Metrowater CEO’s but probably more than Phil Goff.
Like Fonterra, it’s about time CEO salary is linked to real results, ratepayer (or in the case of Fonterra farmers) satisfaction, real public services and real results. Hard to see how the current situations of both organisations can meet normal measures of results.
Apparently Auckland council has some unbelievable dissatisfaction rate from ratepayers.
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This discussion is from a Twitter thread by Martin Kulldorff on 20 December 2020. He is a Professor at Harvard Medical School specialising in disease surveillance methods, infectious disease outbreaks and vaccine safety. His Twitter handle is @MartinKulldorff #1 Public health is about all health outcomes, not just a single ...
The Treasury forecasts suggest the economy is doing better than expected after the Covid Shock. John Kenneth Galbraith was wont to say that economic forecasting was designed to make astrology look good. Unfair, but it raises the question of the purpose of economic forecasts. Certainly the public may treat them ...
Q: Will the COVID-19 vaccines prevent the transmission of the coronavirus and bring about community immunity (aka herd immunity)? A: Jury not in yet but vaccines do not have to be perfect to thwart the spread of infection. While vaccines induce protection against illness, they do not always stop actual ...
Joe Biden seems to be everything that Donald Trump was not – decent, straightforward, considerate of others, mindful of his responsibilities – but none of that means that he has an easy path ahead of him. The pandemic still rages, American standing in the world is grievously low, and the ...
Keana VirmaniFrom healthcare robots to data privacy, to sea level rise and Antarctica under the ice: in the four years since its establishment, the Aotearoa New Zealand Science Journalism Fund has supported over 30 projects.Rebecca Priestley, receiving the PM Science Communication Prize (Photo by Mark Tantrum) Associate Professor ...
Nothing more from me today - I'm off to Wellington, to participate in the city's annual roleplaying convention (which has also eaten my time for the whole week, limiting blogging despite there being interesting things happening). Normal bloggage will resume Tuesday. ...
The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weaponscame into force today, making the development, possession, use or threat of use of nuclear weapons illegal in international law. Every nuclear-armed state is now a criminal regime. The corporations and scientists who design, build and maintain their illegal weapons are now ...
"Come The Revolution!" The key objective of Bernard Hickey’s revolutionary solution to the housing crisis is a 50 percent reduction in the price of the average family home. This will be achieved by the introduction of Capital Gains, Land, and Wealth taxes, and by the opening up of currently RMA-protected ...
by Daphna Whitmore Twitter and Facebook shutting down Trump’s accounts after his supporters stormed Capitol Hill is old news now but the debates continue over whether the actions against Trump are a good thing or not. Those in favour of banning Trump say Twitter and Facebook are private companies and ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections Democrats now control the White House, Senate, and House of Representatives for the first time in a decade, albeit with razor thin Congressional majorities. The last time, in the 111th Congress (2009-2011), House Democrats passed a carbon cap and trade bill, but it died ...
Session thirty-three was highly abbreviated, via having to move house in a short space of time. Oh well. The party decided to ignore the tree-monster and continue the attack on the Giant Troll. Tarsin – flying on a giant summoned bat – dumped some high-grade oil over the ...
Last night I stayed up till 3am just to see then-President Donald Trump leave the White House, get on a plane, and fly off to Florida, hopefully never to return. And when I woke up this morning, America was different. Not perfect, because it never was. Probably not even good, ...
Watching today’s inauguration of Joe Biden as the United States’ 46th president, there’s not a lot in common with the inauguration of Donald Trump just four destructive years ago. Where Trump warned of carnage, Biden dared to hope for unity and decency. But the one place they converge is that ...
Dan FalkBritons who switched on their TVs to “Good Morning Britain” on the morning of Sept. 15, 2020, were greeted by news not from our own troubled world, but from neighboring Venus. Piers Morgan, one of the hosts, was talking about a major science story that had surfaced the ...
Sara LutermanGrowing up autistic in a non-autistic world can be very isolating. We are often strange and out of sync with peers, despite our best efforts. Autistic adults have, until very recently, been largely absent from media and the public sphere. Finding role models is difficult. Finding useful advice ...
Doug JohnsonThe alien-like blooms and putrid stench of Amorphophallus titanum, better known as the corpse flower, draw big crowds and media coverage to botanical gardens each year. In 2015, for instance, around 75,000 people visited the Chicago Botanic Garden to see one of their corpse flowers bloom. More than ...
Getting to Browser Tab Zero so I can reboot the computer is awfully hard when the one open tab is a Table of Contents for the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, and every issue has more stuff I want to read. A few highlights: Gugler et al demonstrating ...
Timothy Ford, University of Massachusetts Lowell and Charles M. Schweik, University of Massachusetts AmherstTo mitigate health inequities and promote social justice, coronavirus vaccines need to get to underserved populations and hard-to-reach communities. There are few places in the U.S. that are unreachable by road, but other factors – many ...
Israel chose to pay a bit over the odds for the Pfizer vaccine to get earlier access. Here’s The Times of Israel from 16 November. American government will be charged $39 for each two-shot dose, and the European bloc even less, but Jerusalem said to agree to pay $56. Israel ...
Orla is a gender critical Marxist in Ireland. She gave a presentation on 15 January 2021 on the connection between postmodern/transgender identity politics and the current attacks on democratic and free speech rights. Orla has been active previously in the Irish Socialist Workers Party and the People Before Profit electoral ...
. . America: The Empire Strikes Back (at itself) Further to my comments in the first part of 2020: The History That Was, the following should be considered regarding the current state of the US. They most likely will be by future historians pondering the critical decades of ...
Nathaniel ScharpingIn March, as the Covid-19 pandemic began to shut down major cities in the U.S., researchers were thinking about blood. In particular, they were worried about the U.S. blood supply — the millions of donations every year that help keep hospital patients alive when they need a transfusion. ...
Sarah L Caddy, University of CambridgeVaccines are a marvel of medicine. Few interventions can claim to have saved as many lives. But it may surprise you to know that not all vaccines provide the same level of protection. Some vaccines stop you getting symptomatic disease, but others stop you ...
Back in 2016, the Portuguese government announced plans to stop burning coal by 2030. But progress has come much quicker, and they're now scheduled to close their last coal plant by the end of this year: The Sines coal plant in Portugal went offline at midnight yesterday evening (14 ...
The Sincerest Form Of Flattery: As anybody with the intestinal fortitude to brave the commentary threads of local news-sites, large and small, will attest, the number of Trump-supporting New Zealanders is really quite astounding. IT’S SO DIFFICULT to resist the temptation to be smug. From the distant perspective of New Zealand, ...
RNZ reports on continued arbitrariness on decisions at the border. British comedian Russell Howard is about to tour New Zealand and other acts allowed in through managed isolation this summer include drag queen RuPaul and musicians at Northern Bass in Mangawhai and the Bay Dreams festival. The vice-president of the ...
As families around the world mourn more than two million people dead from Covid-19, the Plan B academics and their PR industry collaborator continue to argue that the New Zealand government should stop focusing on our managed isolation and quarantine system and instead protect the elderly so that they can ...
A chronological listing of news articles linked to on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week: Sun, Jan 10, 2021 through Sat, Jan 16, 2021Editor's ChoiceNASA says 2020 tied for hottest year on record — here’s what you can do to helpPhoto by Michael Held on Unsplash ...
Health authorities in Norway are reporting some concerns about deaths in frail elderly after receiving their COVID-19 vaccine. Is this causally related to the vaccine? Probably not but here are the things to consider. According to the news there have been 23 deaths in Norway shortly after vaccine administration and ...
Happy New Year! No, experts are not concerned that “…one of New Zealand’s COIVD-1( vaccines will fail to protect the country” Here is why. But first I wish to issue an expletive about this journalism (First in Australia and then in NZ). It exhibits utter failure to actually truly consult ...
All nations have shadows; some acknowledge them. For others they shape their image in uncomfortable ways.The staunch Labour supporter was in despair at what her Rogernomics Government was doing. But she finished ‘at least, we got rid of Muldoon’, a response which tells us that then, and today, one’s views ...
Grigori GuitchountsIn November, Springer Nature, one of the world’s largest publishers of scientific journals, made an attention-grabbing announcement: More than 30 of its most prestigious journals, including the flagship Nature, will now allow authors to pay a fee of US$11,390 to make their papers freely available for anyone to read ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Gary Yohe, Henry Jacoby, Richard Richels, and Benjamin Santer Imagine a major climate change law passing the U.S. Congress unanimously? Don’t bother. It turns out that you don’t need to imagine it. Get this: The Global Change Research Act of 1990 was passed ...
“They’re here already! You’re next! You’re next! You’re next!”WHO CAN FORGET the penultimate scene of the 1956 movie classic, Invasion of the Body Snatchers? The wild-eyed doctor, stumbling down the highway, trying desperately to warn his fellow citizens: “They’re here already! You’re next! You’re next! You’re next!”Ostensibly science-fiction, the movie ...
TheOneRing.Net has got its paws on the official synopsis of the upcoming Amazon Tolkien TV series. It’s a development that brings to mind the line about Sauron deliberately releasing Gollum from the dungeons of Barad-dûr. Amazon knew exactly what they were doing here, in terms of drumming up publicity: ...
Since Dwight Eisenhower’s inauguration in 1953, US presidents have joined an informal club intended to provide support - and occasionally rivalry - between those few who have been ‘leaders of the free world’. Donald Trump, elected on a promise to ‘drain the swamp’ and a constant mocker of his predecessors, ...
For over a decade commentators have noted the rise of a new brand of explicitly ideological politics throughout the world. By this they usually refer to the re-emergence of national populism and avowedly illiberal approaches to governance throughout the “advanced” democratic community, but they also extend the thought to the ...
The US House of Representatives has just impeached Donald Trump, giving him the dubious honour of being the only US President to be impeached twice. Ten Republicans voted for impeachement, making it the most bipartisan impeachment ever. The question now is whether the Senate will rise to the occasion, and ...
Kieren Mitchell; Alice Mouton, Université de Liège; Angela Perri, Durham University, and Laurent Frantz, Ludwig Maximilian University of MunichThanks to the hit television series Game of Thrones, the dire wolf has gained a near-mythical status. But it was a real animal that roamed the Americas for at least 250,000 ...
Tide of tidal data rises Having cast our own fate to include rising sea level, there's a degree of urgency in learning the history of mean sea level in any given spot, beyond idle curiosity. Sea level rise (SLR) isn't equal from one place to another and even at a particular ...
Well, some of those chickens sure came home bigly, didn’t they… and proceeded to shit all over the nice carpet in the Capitol. What we were seeing here are societal forces that have long had difficulty trying to reconcile people to the “idea” of America and the reality of ...
In the wake of Donald Trump's incitement of an assault on the US capitol, Twitter finally enforced its terms of service and suspended his account. They've since followed that up with action against prominent QAnon accounts and Trumpers, including in New Zealand. I'm not unhappy with this: Trump regularly violated ...
Peter S. Ross, University of British ColumbiaThe Arctic has long proven to be a barometer of the health of our planet. This remote part of the world faces unprecedented environmental assaults, as climate change and industrial chemicals threaten a way of life for Inuit and other Indigenous and northern ...
Susan St John makes the case for taxing a deemed rate of return on excessive real estate holdings (after a family home exemption), to redirect scarce housing resources to where they are needed most. Read the full article here ...
I’m less than convinced by arguments that platforms like Twitter should be subject to common carrier regulation preventing them from being able to decide who to keep on as clients of their free services, and who they would not like to serve. It’s much easier to create competition for the ...
The hypocritical actions of political leaders throughout the global Covid pandemic have damaged public faith in institutions and governance. Liam Hehir chronicles the way in which contemporary politicians have let down the public, and explains how real leadership means walking the talk. During the Blitz, when German bombs were ...
Over the years, we've published many rebuttals, blog posts and graphics which came about due to direct interactions with the scientists actually carrying out the underlying research or being knowledgable about a topic in general. We'll highlight some of these interactions in this blog post. We'll start with two memorable ...
Yesterday we had the unseemly sight of a landleech threatening to keep his houses empty in response to better tenancy laws. Meanwhile in Catalonia they have a solution for that: nationalisation: Barcelona is deploying a new weapon in its quest to increase the city’s available rental housing: the power ...
A growing public housing waiting list and continued increase of house prices must be urgently addressed by Government, Green Party Co-leader Marama Davidson said today. ...
The green light for New Zealand’s first COVID-19 vaccine could be granted in just over a week, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said today. “We’re making swift progress towards vaccinating New Zealanders against the virus, but we’re also absolutely committed to ensuring the vaccines are safe and effective,” Jacinda Ardern said. ...
The Minister for ACC is pleased to announce the appointment of three new members to join the Board of ACC on 1 February 2021. “All three bring diverse skills and experience to provide strong governance oversight to lead the direction of ACC” said Hon Carmel Sepuloni. Bella Takiari-Brame from Hamilton ...
The Government is investing $9 million to upgrade a significant community facility in Invercargill, creating economic stimulus and jobs, Infrastructure Minister Grant Robertson and Te Tai Tonga MP Rino Tirikatene have announced. The grant for Waihōpai Rūnaka Inc to make improvements to Murihiku Marae comes from the $3 billion set ...
[Opening comments, welcome and thank you to Auckland University etc] It is a great pleasure to be here this afternoon to celebrate such an historic occasion - the entry into force of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. This is a moment many feared would never come, but ...
The Government is providing $3 million in one-off seed funding to help disabled people around New Zealand stay connected and access support in their communities, Minister for Disability Issues, Carmel Sepuloni announced today. The funding will allow disability service providers to develop digital and community-based solutions over the next two ...
Border workers in quarantine facilities will be offered voluntary daily COVID-19 saliva tests in addition to their regular weekly testing, COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said today. This additional option will be rolled out at the Jet Park Quarantine facility in Auckland starting on Monday 25 January, and then to ...
The next steps in the Government’s ambitious firearms reform programme to include a three-month buy-back have been announced by Police Minister Poto Williams today. “The last buy-back and amnesty was unprecedented for New Zealand and was successful in collecting 60,297 firearms, modifying a further 5,630 firearms, and collecting 299,837 prohibited ...
Upscaling work already underway to restore two iconic ecosystems will deliver jobs and a lasting legacy, Conservation Minister Kiri Allan says. “The Jobs for Nature programme provides $1.25 billion over four years to offer employment opportunities for people whose livelihoods have been impacted by the COVID-19 recession. “Two new projects ...
The Government has released its Public Housing Plan 2021-2024 which outlines the intention of where 8,000 additional public and transitional housing places announced in Budget 2020, will go. “The Government is committed to continuing its public house build programme at pace and scale. The extra 8,000 homes – 6000 public ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has congratulated President Joe Biden on his inauguration as the 46th President of the United States of America. “I look forward to building a close relationship with President Biden and working with him on issues that matter to both our countries,” Jacinda Ardern said. “New Zealand ...
A major investment to tackle wilding pines in Mt Richmond will create jobs and help protect the area’s unique ecosystems, Biosecurity Minister Damien O’Connor says. The Mt Richmond Forest Park has unique ecosystems developed on mineral-rich geology, including taonga plant species found nowhere else in the country. “These special plant ...
To further protect New Zealand from COVID-19, the Government is extending pre-departure testing to all passengers to New Zealand except from Australia, Antarctica and most Pacific Islands, COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said today. “The change will come into force for all flights arriving in New Zealand after 11:59pm (NZT) on Monday ...
Bay Conservation Cadets launched with first intake Supported with $3.5 million grant Part of $1.245b Jobs for Nature programme to accelerate recover from Covid Cadets will learn skills to protect and enhance environment Environment Minister David Parker today welcomed the first intake of cadets at the launch of the Bay ...
The Prime Minister of New Zealand Jacinda Ardern and the Prime Minister of the Cook Islands Mark Brown have announced passengers from the Cook Islands can resume quarantine-free travel into New Zealand from 21 January, enabling access to essential services such as health. “Following confirmation of the Cook Islands’ COVID ...
Jobs for Nature funding is being made available to conservation groups and landowners to employ staff and contractors in a move aimed at boosting local biodiversity-focused projects, Conservation Minister Kiritapu Allan has announced. It is estimated some 400-plus jobs will be created with employment opportunities in ecology, restoration, trapping, ...
The Government has approved an exception class for 1000 international tertiary students, degree level and above, who began their study in New Zealand but were caught offshore when border restrictions began. The exception will allow students to return to New Zealand in stages from April 2021. “Our top priority continues ...
Today’s deal between Meridian and Rio Tinto for the Tiwai smelter to remain open another four years provides time for a managed transition for Southland. “The deal provides welcome certainty to the Southland community by protecting jobs and incomes as the region plans for the future. The Government is committed ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has appointed Anna Curzon to the APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC). The leader of each APEC economy appoints three private sector representatives to ABAC. ABAC provides advice to leaders annually on business priorities. “ABAC helps ensure that APEC’s work programme is informed by business community perspectives ...
The Government’s prudent fiscal management and strong policy programme in the face of the COVID-19 global pandemic have been acknowledged by the credit rating agency Fitch. Fitch has today affirmed New Zealand’s local currency rating at AA+ with a stable outlook and foreign currency rating at AA with a positive ...
The Government is putting in place a suite of additional actions to protect New Zealand from COVID-19, including new emerging variants, COVID-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins said today. “Given the high rates of infection in many countries and evidence of the global spread of more transmissible variants, it’s clear that ...
$36 million of Government funding alongside councils and others for 19 projects Investment will clean up and protect waterways and create local jobs Boots on the ground expected in Q2 of 2021 Funding part of the Jobs for Nature policy package A package of 19 projects will help clean up ...
The commemoration of the 175th anniversary of the Battle of Ruapekapeka represents an opportunity for all New Zealanders to reflect on the role these conflicts have had in creating our modern nation, says Associate Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage Kiri Allan. “The Battle at Te Ruapekapeka Pā, which took ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Véronique Duché, A.R. Chisholm Professor of French, University of Melbourne In this series, writers pay tribute to fictional detectives on the page and on screen. When I first heard that Rowan Atkinson was to put on Maigret’s velvet-collared overcoat, I wondered ...
Auckland writer Olivia Hayfield* explains how she resurrected 16th-century playwright Christopher Marlowe to star in her new novel, Sister to Sister. Olivia Hayfield is a pen name. Real name: Sue Copsey. When I’m planning my modern retellings of historical tales, I read widely on the characters and see who leaps out at ...
The Pfizer/BioNTech mRNA vaccine could be approved as early as next week, Marc Daalder reports Medsafe will be asked to approve the Pfizer/BioNTech mRNA vaccine against Covid-19 on February 2, the Government has announced. The Medicines Assessment Advisory Committee (MAAC) is an independent panel that provides advice on some medicine approvals in ...
COMMENT:By Bryan Kramer, PNG’s Minister of Police who has defended Commissioner Manning’s appointment today in The National My last article, announcing that I intend to make a submission to the National Executive Council (NEC) to amend the Public Service regulation to no longer require the Commissioner of Police to ...
The Point of Order Trough Monitor was triggered today by the announcement of a $9 million handout for Southlanders – sorry, some Southlanders. The news came from the office of Grant Robertson who, as Minister of Finance, prefers to invest public money rather than give it away – especially when ...
Few people outside of her campaign team gave Chlöe Swarbrick any chance of winning in Auckland Central this year – but the Green Party MP was too busy to listen. Here’s how they turned the electorate green.First published November 12, 2020.Three Ticks Chlöe is part of Frame, a series of short ...
Interactions between parents and healthcare providers could have a big impact on the wellbeing of our children, according to new research. The way parents and healthcare providers interact has lasting implications for children’s health, new research has found – and that includes immunisation uptake.Released today, the report is based on research ...
The Opposition starts the political year calling for emergency, temporary legislation to free up house building National leader Judith Collins has set five priorities for her party over the next three years - but excluded climate change, education and Crown-Māori relations. Giving her first 'state of the nation' speech as party ...
One of the biggest challenges facing the Ardern government is in public health. New Zealand may have escaped the pressures heaped on other health systems by the Covid-19 pandemic but its health service has had its problems, not least those exposed in the first report from Heather Simpson and her ...
New Zealand’s Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins has revealed that 14 close contacts of the Northland community case have returned negative test results. Yesterday he announced two close contacts – her husband and hair dresser – were negative. In his tweet, Hipkins described the news as “encouraging”. However, New ...
Pacific Media Watch newsdesk Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has condemned the arbitrary and opaque experiments that Google is conducting with its search engine in Australia, with the consequence that many national news websites are no longer appearing in the search results seen by some users. The Australian, ABC, Australian Financial ...
Local Government Minister Nanaia Mahuta says councils can take stronger action against companies dumping contaminated waste water, even though they have identified loopholes in the law on fines. ...
Drag Race Down Under, part of the popular RuPaul’s Drag Race franchise, is filming in New Zealand. In their own words, local drag talent share what drag means to them and how it might be impacted by the show.RuPaul’s Drag Race is, quite simply, a television phenomenon. Love it or ...
For a long time, weighted blankets were considered a specialist device. Now they’re popular with even the most normal sleepers.Growing up, Temple Grandin spent time on her aunt’s cattle ranch in America, watching cow after stressed cow enter a squeeze chute and come out calm as the dead sea. She ...
Increased provisional tax thresholds, immediate low-value asset write offs and allowing the deferral of tax payments and use of money interest (UOMI) write offs were the most popular tax measures introduced by the Government to help businesses survive ...
The latest fleeing driver statistics show the numbers of incidents sky-rocketing out of control through 2020 with Police deciding the only tactic is to give up on chasing altogether, says Sensible Sentencing Trust. “The inconvenient truth is ...
With new revelations of the appalling racism behind Israel’s refusal to provide Covid-19 vaccines to 4.5 million Palestinians under its occupation and control, PSNA has renewed our call for the government to speak out alongside the United Nations ...
The Youth of NZ will be standing up for climate action once again, on January 26th outside of Parliament for School Strike 4 Climate NZ’s 100 Days 4 Action campaign rally. “COVID-19 may have stopped us in our tracks in the past. However, I tend ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Parwinder Kaur, Associate Professor | Director, DNA Zoo Australia, University of Western Australia Koalas are unique in the animal kingdom, living on a eucalyptus diet that would kill other creatures and drinking so little their name comes from the Dharug word gula, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By S. Anna Florin, Research fellow, University of Wollongong Archaeological research provides a long-term perspective on how humans survived various environmental conditions over tens of thousands of years. In a paper published today in Nature Ecology and Evolution, we’ve tracked rainfall in northern ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Binoy Kampmark, Senior Lecturer in Global Studies, Social Science & Planning, RMIT University Since 2005, Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel has been one of the most stable and enduring of political forces, both in Europe and on the global stage. During her 16 ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Véronique Duché, A.R. Chisholm Professor of French, University of Melbourne In this series, writers pay tribute to fictional detectives on the page and on screen. When I first heard that Rowan Atkinson was to put on Maigret’s velvet-collared overcoat, I wondered ...
*This article first appeared on RNZ and is republished with permission. Experts are calling for hotels with sub-par ventilation systems to no longer be used as managed isolation facilities as health officials investigate how a Northland woman became infected with Covid-19 while staying at the Pullman hotel, Rowan Quinn reports. ...
Welcome to The Spinoff’s live updates for January 26, keeping you up to date with the latest local and international news. Reach me on stewart@thespinoff.co.nzOur Members make The Spinoff happen! Every dollar contributed directly funds our editorial team – click here to learn more about how you can support us ...
Good morning and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Questions to be answered about case in the community, major companies flagrantly breaching wastewater consents, and Tenancy Tribunal decisions harming abuse survivors.As of this morning, we’re still waiting on some crucial information about the situation in Northland, after a person travelled ...
With democracy what now separates the US from its adversaries, Wellington can bet on more continuity than change in Washington’s hardline view of China. ...
We continue our week-long examination of writer Roderick Finlayson. Today: his daughter Kate on his doomed love for Poti Mita, whose family inspired him to write short stories about Māori life in the 1930s We all knew of Poti Mita and how important Pukehina was to Dad. He wanted ...
Sleepyhead is chopping and changing its ambitious plan to build a super-factory and a community of 1100 medium density houses on a block of farmland in the north Waikato. Sydney Turner set his grandsons Craig and Graeme to work on the factory floor, building mattresses. Now Craig and Graeme Turner own ...
Helen Petousis-Harris looks at the potential complications of vaccinating older New Zealanders - and how we should prepare Two weeks ago health authorities in Norway reported some concerns about deaths in frail elderly after receiving their Covid-19 vaccine. Are these deaths related to the vaccine? Probably not but here are ...
A change of plans for round-the-world single-handed sailor Elana Connor means she's helping Kiwi kids in foster care to go sailing - as she also seeks to 'demystify' the sport for women. Elana Connor wears a silver necklace engraved with the word “Fearlessness”. As she sails solo around the globe, it reminds her that ...
New Zealand rose to the occasion in its response to Covid-19. Will it do the same for climate change? Jack Santa Barbara looks ahead to the Climate Change Commission report. New Zealand’s management of the Covid pandemic clearly demonstrated the benefits of paying attention to the science and prioritising human wellbeing ...
Was Covid-19 and lockdown the catalyst for a new future for healthcare or did it just expose systemic inequity? In the latest of a series on the country's future infrastructure needs, Tim Murphy looks at how the long push to shift health's focus from hospitals to the community might have received a nudge ...
Not only is the New Zealand summer in danger of coming to a grinding halt, but we increase the risk that an almighty wreck might follow shortly afterwards. Here's what we can do, writes Dr Sarb Johal. While the rest of the world is wrestling with virulent new strains of the ...
For two decades, under both National and Labour governments, housing costs have risen far faster than wages. Here’s a horrific graph that shows by just how much.Last Thursday saw the first of what will no doubt be dozens of housing-related set pieces from Labour, wherein they announced 8,000 public and ...
The new Northland case has been linked to the South African strain of Covid-19, one of a number of new, more contagious Covid variants. Here’s how they emerge and why.Let’s start with the basics. The genetic material of the SARS-CoV-2 virus responsible for Covid-19 is a strand of RNA made ...
New Zealand’s richest citizen, Graeme Hart, has seen his fortune increase by NZ$3,494,333,333 since March 2020 – a sum equivalent to over half a million New Zealanders receiving a cheque for NZ$6,849 each, reveals a new analysis from Oxfam today. The New Zealand ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tauel Harper, Lecturer, Media and Communication, UWA, University of Western Australia With a vaccine rollout impending, key groups have backed calls for the Australian government to force social media platforms to share details about popular coronavirus misinformation. An open letter was put ...
Selling out ACT’s Waitangi Day State of the Nation Address is set to sell out again. If you’d like to start the political year right over brunch with fellow ACT supporters (Saturday 6 February 10am-12pm, Mt Eden), please buy your tickets ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jessica Kirkness, Postdoctoral research fellow, Macquarie University As government COVID updates have become a daily part of our lives over the past 12 months, so too has the sight of sign language interpreters on our screens. This has understandably had a huge ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tim Dwyer, Associate Professor, Department of Media and Communications, University of Sydney Executives from Google and Facebook have told a Senate committee they are prepared to take drastic action if Australia’s news media bargaining code, which would force the internet giants to ...
*This article first appeared on RNZ and is republished with permission. Hundreds of companies have dumped contaminants - like blood, fat, and toxic chemicals such as ammonia and sulphides - into sewers in breach of their trade waste consents over the past year, RNZ can reveal. Anusha Bradley reports. Frank ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Morag Kobez, Associate lecturer, Queensland University of Technology In this series, our writers explore how food shaped Australian history – and who we are today. The history of cheese in Australia has, until recent decades, been a rather tasteless affair. Not so ...
On the edge of the Mataura River, a disused paper mill is filled with thousands of bags of toxic waste. Locals want to find out who’s responsible for it – and they want it gone before disaster strikes.First published November 10, 2020.The Paper Mill is part of Frame, a series ...
At the Chorus Fibre Lab, José Barbosa peeked behind the curtain of the internet and found something beautiful and very, very fast. The human mind is a daily swarm of notions, speculations, ruminations, thoughts and otherwise base-level brain puffs. Just to get through the grind of survival, we’ve evolved to mentally ...
*This article first appeared on RNZ and is republished with permission. The Ministry of Health is confident the Northland community case came directly from the Pullman Hotel and there is no missing link. In a press conference this afternoon, Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield confirmed the strain of Covid in the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Thomas Longden, Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University Heat is more dangerous than the cold in most Australian regions. About 2% of deaths in Australia between 2006 and 2017 were associated with the heat, and the estimate increases to ...
Levin GP Glenn Colquhoun talks with books editor Catherine Woulfe about his new collection of poetry, Letters to Young People.Glenn Colquhoun is an acclaimed and accomplished poet. He has published four collections, including Playing God, in December 2002, which sold a massive 10,000 copies. He’s won a clutch of Montanas ...
Contrasting reactions to news of Grainne Moss’s resignation as Oranga Tamariki chief executive inevitably can be found in the blogosphere. Lindsay Dawson has recorded the ACT Party’s response to the resignation and hailed it as “spot on”. The statement was made in the name of Karen Chhour, described as a ...
Zendaya has been around for a decade, but she’s gone from Disney prodigy to pop star to acclaimed actress. Here are the highlights of the 24-year-old’s already impressive career.Shaking it up: Zendaya on DisneyThe world’s first encounter with Zendaya was a little Disney show called Shake It Up, a series ...
What’s it like to have your life governed by your gut? It’s crap, frankly.On my birthday last year I was given a bottle of fancy Aesop post-poo drops which clear the air after rigorous bowel activity – though on reflection, it may have been more of a gift for my ...
*This article first appeared on RNZ and is republished with permission. Negative tests results for two of the closest contacts of a woman who tested positive for Covid-19 after leaving managed isolation is a good sign, says Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins. Two of the closest contacts of a woman ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Adrian Dyer, Associate Professor, RMIT University At a dinner party, or in the schoolyard, the question of favourite colour frequently results in an answer of “blue”. Why is it that humans are so fond of blue? And why does it seem to ...
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The makeup of the up-coming parliament (based on the preliminary vote). It’s more diverse than last term with a bigger proportion of women Maori and Asian background MPs.
However, it is largely represented by people with previously middle class occupations, according to a Bryce Edwards’ article on Newsroom.
The conclusions are based on the MPs’ previous occupations and not upbringing. Of course, Metiria Turie was one of the few MPs last term who had a working class upbringing, and we know how that ended. i think Cartmel Sepuloni may also have had a working class background.
The stats:
Interesting that it is the greens that have a high number of MPs with a union or activist background amd least from the government sector. The Greens and NZ First have largest proportions from a business background (although Shaw’s business background was not terribly corporate, for-profit).
But what is the background of the remaining National MPs – that’d be 66%? Were they lay-abouts?
What’s with the “much more government” line? Nats = 19% from a government background. Labour = 21%. Big deal!
The differences between NZF and the Greens are more stark, but given that each has a really small caucus, they’re also (if not actually misleading) somewhat sensationalised. One person in a caucus of seven can hugely alter percentage points (with each individual being worth 14.3%).
Extracts from an article in the Herald 4 October, written by a former National MP, explain how the German MMP system has been modified to give the party with the most votes the initial opportunity to form a government.
“The German Constitution, Article 63, provides that the person who receives the votes of a majority of members of the Bundestag (lower chamber of the federal Parliament) shall be elected Federal Chancellor. If no person has a majority in the Bundestag the person who receives the largest number of votes shall be elected. If that person cannot win a majority at an election in the Bundestag within seven days, the Federal President can either appoint that person Chancellor or dissolve the Bundestag for a new general election.”
What follows are the thoughts of a layman, not a legal or political expert. I look forward to reading what others have to say.
So, let’s say these German rules currently apply in New Zealand where English is given the opportunity to be PM. English would be PM for seven days, on the basis that 59 seats (including Act) don’t give him the required majority. If he cannot gather the support required from other MPs’ to achieve a majority, within the seven day timeframe, he can then go to the Governor General and asks to be Prime Minister.
If the Governor General agrees he is then PM of a minority government. If there was a genuine opposition coalition of the majority Left that includes NZ First, Labour and the Greens they would presumably have a large say in how the country is run despite English being PM. In any event a good opportunity to work as a cohesive opposition.
If he is refused by the Governor General, we then have another electoral vote rather than provide Ardern, Peters and Shaw with an opportunity to form an alternative Government. The power goes back to the people not to any particular Party.
You want to provide the link? After all, it’s just as easy to copy and paste the link as it is to copy and paste a quote from it. Rather than make the rest of us waste time searching for it.
Now that I’ve found the link, the extract at the end has almost nothing to do with the rest of the opinion piece by Michael Cox. Who was a total non-entity as an MP, and clearly the thirty years since then have done nothing to improve his cognitive abilities.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=11929017
With respect to the idea that only the leader of the party receiving the most votes may form the government, that’s crap. One of the main points of MMP is to include a wide variety of voices and opinions. Then the largest coalition of those voices that can work together form the government.
Making it so only the largest party can from the government hands way too much power back to established large party power structures, who will suppress variety of opinion in order to present the largest possible monolithic bloc. And make even harder for small parties to get traction.
Lets tell the Germans “that’s crap”. My intention is to get comments on the German system not the merits of Michael Cox. Shoot the messenger if you must.
You missed the bit where it says “IF no person has a majority in the Bundestag….”. A majority does not have to come from one party, it can be of any number of participants. So it is very possible for a person to become chancellor if his/her party does not have the most votes in parliament, just enough votes will do, from any party.
I do understand that the majority can come from any number of parties. So in that respect it is no different to here.
+100 Andre
Completely nullifies the reason for MMP in the first place. For instance you could get a situation where the Nats had 35.5, Labour 35.3 Greens 14 NZF 12. Labour/Green could form a stable government (49.3 v 47.5) but would not be given the opportunity. The Nats couldn’t, so there would be a new election. Many other combinations would be possible if a new party got over 5%.
(On a practical note on Peter’s post, surely the week to form a government would start after the Special Votes had been counted. That would at least give 3 weeks to work out a government.)
Thanks for the comments. You would expect the week to start after special votes.
So maybe a modified system would give the largest Party the opportunity to make the first attempt at forming a majority Government? If they cannot do that the second largest Party then has the opportunity?
Why should any party be granted special privileges to form a government? What’s the problem with the current arrangement where the leader of the first coalition to say they have a majority of the house goes to the Governor General who presumably checks it out and if it seems legit, gives them the opportunity to prove it?
Andre has provided a valid reason why this kind of approach is a failure of recognising the democracy that can be provided by MMP.
If a group of like minded parties secures more than fifty percent of the vote, your proposal to adhere to the german method, would only provide space for the largest party vote, even if it was not part of that majority group.
Ultimately, meaning that despite MMP attempting to reflect the diversity of the electorate, the parties with the simplistic, most phatic policies and campaigning would be the ones who are most likely to garner the biggest block of votes, and be given the first priority to form a government.
The bland liars would retain their power – again.
Surely that is not what you are championing?
That’s exactly what he’s championing.
Plus, under our system, the governor general is appointed by the PM (leader of the largest party in what would in this situation be the previous government). Surely that predisposes him/her to stick with the status quo if there is no decisive outcome from an election?
Thanks for the perspective. Have patience while I continue to think this through.
What we really need then is for the NZ public to always expect that the final vote simply indicates peoples party preferences, not a result. So if one party has 49% of the vote and, say, 5 others, have an even split each of the other 51% of the vote they can all decide equally amongst themselves the way forward to forming a government. There is no “winner” until a coalition is formed.
I heard yesterday that in 16 years time, or so, Europeans will be a minority in Auckland. It really is time we starting listening to different voices rzther than trying to shut them down to preserve a world view that hasnt really existed in a long time?
Putting aside the ramifications around MMP, denying the Leader of The Opposition the right to test the confidence of parliament in the event that the PM or leader of the largest party has failed to win a confidence vote would pretty much overturn the parliamentary conventions that we’ve inherited with our version the Westminster system.
Furthermore the article seems to be suggesting that, in the event, that the leader of the largest party in the Bundestag is unable to muster a majority in that house, the President can simply appoint that person Chancellor? So, in our case we would be allowing the sovereign to appoint the PM even if that person has failed to survive a confidence vote in the house?
While I’ve got lots of criticisms of our governing arrangements, the details around how parties can come together to form a governing coalition seem reasonable to me. So I’m waiting for a good argument against what we have now before I get interested in suggested alternatives. So far all I see is flailing distress from Nats that currently don’t have the right to rule they feel entitled to.
In the event that some convincing argument against what we now have actually comes up, then yeah, the points you’ve raised are a good argument against following the german model. Particularly since the two worst features of our overall MMP system, a high threshold and coat-tailing, were also apparently copied from a german model.
“So far all I see is flailing distress from Nats that currently don’t have the right to rule they feel entitled to.”
Watching that with interest too.
The last two weeks of watching the echomen bouncing around in their echo chambers has been a study of idiocracy.
Bill has promised to march in the streets for his “right to govern”. Can’t wait.
I think that lowering the threshold to 3% and getting rid of the coat-tailing loophole are the 2 easiest things we could do to improve our version of MMP. And I also thinks there’s a good chance it might happen now that National’s decade long shenanigans in Epsom and Ōhāriu are finished.
It would be good to have the experts reassure everyone of the merits of our system when compared to FPP and the German version. How do you counter the view that NZF have the balance of power?
The “experts” reviewed MMP after the last referendum in 2012 and arrived at the conclusion that the coat-tailing loophole should be scrapped and the threshold lowered to 4%. All of which the, then National government chose to ignore.
http://www.elections.org.nz/events/past-events-0/2012-mmp-review/results-mmp-review.
And I don’t actually want to “counter” the view that NZFirst have the balance of power. The last 2 years has suggested the electoral outcome we find ourselves with. Get over it. Stop thinking in FPP and get on board with MMP. If National has spent the last decade doing that they might not have found themselves in the crappy position they’re in now.
The view that Peters holds the balance of power is totally accurate. Because of the choice of Green party members to effectively close the door on the idea of going into coalition with National thereby rejecting the possibility of holding the balance of power. If the Greens had chosen to be open to National, they too would hold the balance of power making any coalition negotiations much more interesting.
I think one (of many) fair ways of looking at that is that many NZF supporters would swing between Labour and National in the absence of a somewhat centrist party like NZF (or United Future in its heyday). So rather than consciously making the choice between Nat and Lab themselves, they are comfortable delegating that choice to Peters, in the expectation that NZF would also moderate any extreme ideas that make it in from the wings of whomever they go into coalition with. Keeping the bastards honest, if that phrase appeals.
So while I utterly detest Peters, I can respect the choice of his supporters. And if I’m completely honest, despite my loathing of Peters, I still prefer the idea of Nats having to keep Peters onside to the near-as-dammit absolute majority they’ve had the last nine years.
That’s my reading of it.
OR the public and media could grow up politically and wait for negotiations to see which relationships will work for good government in the future?
Shall we also follow Germanys 7 weeks annual leave each year and strong Unions or you just want to cherry pick the bits that help National?
“OR the public and media could grow up politically and wait for negotiations to see which relationships will work for good government in the future?”
Ain’t that the bloody truth! The media (or rather what parades as a MSM/4th Estate) should. Some aspects of this ‘nation’ called NuZull/Aotearoa continue to baffle me.
This little nayshun that “punches above its weight”; is/used to be criticised for that “Tall Poppy syndrome”, all that sort of stuff is actually ultra-competitive (at least amongst the male population – and more lately the Sharlene’s and Shona’s (at the risk of being labelled a sexist cnut) trying to prove they have adequate testosterone levels in order to compete. They seem to care so much about what the rest of the Whurl thinks of us – let alone fellow Kiwis.
Battles between egos in media stars, Hosking/7 Blunt versus The Fucking Project hosted by a Jesssie who has 3 or so hours to undergo a lycra-clad conversion between RNZ and Eden Terrace – the former address where ‘I’m old school and in-depth’ to the latter where ‘I’m superficial and aha ha ha’ with a parade of Mediaworks staff with mortgages to pay to prop him up – and despite an occasional outburst in order to maintain the last vestiges of credibility.
Even the way Kiwis drive a bloody car has become a competition – and despite their penis length, they’re not actually that good at it. (You’ve got to push the pedal to the floor and race to the next red light ahead of someone who’s read the road ahead and realised that exercise was going to be a pointless exercise.)
It’s no surprise to me all the FPP thinking that’s been evident before AND after the 23rd September.
I’m not sure why it is that we’ve become so fucking yea/nah about various gains and so pig ignorant (1893 Women’s Suffrage); a contribution to LGBTI and YouMan! roights; the implementation of a proportional representation system (with all its inadequacies) that we’re so frikken insecure or ignorant about that we all see this past month or so as a competition that someone NEEDS to convincingly win.
After 30+ years of neoliberalism, I guess it should be no surprise, but it’s kind of uphill.shit.push – which, in the end is a “loser’s battle”
Ah, so you want us to change the rules so that only National can form a government – got it.
I think we’ll pass.
A law abiding gun-owner right up until, surprise, he wasn’t.
An Australian man who came to know Stephen Paddock intimately in recent years has offered the most detailed public portrait yet of the Las Vegas mass killer.
He said Paddock was a highly intelligent, strategic though “guarded” individual who won a fortune applying algorithms to gambling, and studied arguments for his right to own weapons under the US constitution.
Their encounters came via their respective girlfriends, Philippine-born sisters – one of whom, Marilou Danley, has returned to the US to be interviewed by the FBI in the wake of Paddock’s meticulously planned massacre.
Their acquaintanceship, through more than half a dozen encounters in the US and the Philippines between 2013 and 2015, revealed Paddock’s generosity – which had his overseas guests living in “palatial” style – and the existence of a “gun room” at his home in Mesquite, Nevada.
“Yes, I was familiar with him,” the man, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Guardian at his Brisbane home on Wednesday. “He was extremely intelligent, methodical, conservative – guarded – and strategic. A planning, thinking type of guy.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/oct/04/las-vegas-shooter-stephen-paddock-intelligent-gambler-gun-rights
If they were to apply Paddocks profile across the population how many US citizens would trigger an alert.
I’d suggest the bulk of US gun owners would come up which in itself tells you somethings very much amiss in America as their biggest terrorist threat is likely to be coming from their own citizens.
I guess it makes a change from the US govt and it’s backing of violent conflict outside of the USA.
The report in The Press on (killer) Paddock: 64 years, left no immediate hint of motive. He had 34 guns, and shot at least 59 people.
He was a retiree with penchant for gambling – but no criminal record.
‘Paddock was not known to have served in the military, or to have suffered from a history of mental illness or to have registered any inkling of social disaffection, political discontent or radical views on social media.’
I think he was just infected with a bad case of empty USA propaganda with the disadvantage of ‘Being Born in the USA’ and believing the empty bit in their Constitution about his Right to be Happy. Which as anyone who thinks knows is only a passing feeling, not appropriate as full-time goal for questing humans.
Paddock’s behaviour would seem the likely outcome for many of male humanity who succeed in getting money and then buying what they decide they want from life, and then find this doesn’t provide a satisfactory reason for living.
The rich man Howard Hughes ended up degraded after having a surfeit of his wealth, accomplished some personal goals, and finding nothing else to stimulate him. He got beyond wanting, living on chicken soup in the entire floor of a hotel where the windows were blacked out, sitting on a toilet for hours, long hair, long nails, and with someone managing his affairs for him.
http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1902376_1902378_1902405,00.html
On a lower level of wealth a guy from NZ killed his girlfriend Crystal or killed himself or someone else at his apartment in some Australian resort where he had retired after making money investing in some vitamin pill company. I
registered the negativity of this ‘successful’ investor, but his details weren’t worth remembering.
These individuals are unconnected to the real world where people actually work for their earnings, not just invest in likely profitable business or housing where they live off others striving and work. I think the term is rentier.
There will be more of these crazed individuals who show symptoms which psychiatrists do not deign to consider insane because of narrow definitions. Otherwise, we might recognise our world is daily near-insane, and I guess the trick-cyclists are just peas in the soup. And crazed individuals within the individualistic society seem to be proliferating in the neo liberal economic religious system imposed on us. In the free market, we have to be careful to look for real friends to give life with each other meaning as in The Three Musketeers – inseparable friends who live by the motto “all for one, one for all” (“tous pour un, un pour tous”). Individualistic men and women probably don’t have real friends, more drinking buddies, investor leads and suitable social partners but if we can only trust a few friends, a group separate from society, then do we actually have a society or is life another version of Game of Thrones?
You have to also question the wisdom of US law enforcement and the demand for every detail of the crime from the news media in these situations.
With every passing ‘massacre’, prospective lone-wolf gunmen get an ever more detailed blueprint on how to commit one of these crimes; e.g.: it was the gun smoke in the room setting off smoke detectors giving him away. Without that and, presumably a suppressor, he could have remained undetected for a lot longer than what he did.
Totally agree.
Some how I think I’m going to end up like a lot of people thought our history that have fought for equal rights and who fought against the the establishment like Eddie Grant a controversial death it has happen many times through out our history . But I will keep for OUR Earth because we have only one Earth only one WORLD.
Big UPPS To those supermarkets taking the lead and banning plastic bags .
The big picture is all OUR people in a position to make changes that will benefit our environment should not wait for government . They need to take the lead and make these changes for our grandchildren future.
Governments are a complicated beast that need US to show them the right path to a brighter future.
P.S. It awesome to see MSM taking the lead and showing the fact,S on climate change Ka Pai
Eco Maori i agree plastic bag use should be banned.Should have already happen long before now.And feel its also good to see Greenpeace actively involved.However i fail to see banning any kind of bag as a workable answer.Shopping isn’t necessarily always a planned event for everyone.So why not allow replacement of plastic with paper?.Many more people would be likely to then get right behind the idea, and freely adopt that as change that’s easy to accept. I’d really like to understand why Greenpeace hasn’t taken up this approach .Perhaps somebody,here,can help explain why?
Those Catalan government idiots are going to get their asses kicked.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-41498685
“Madrid nos roba” – “Madrid is robbing us”
Catalonia is spectacularly rich compared with other parts of Spain. It’s got 16% of the population and 19% of the GDP. Barcelona gets massive tourism and has one of the biggest ports in Europe. Tarragona has one of the biggest chemical industries in Europe.
So of course they pay more taxes than the rest of the country, and more of it gets spent in poorer regions than where it came from. Doing what proper government does with taxes: redistribute from those with the average wealth, to those who need it more.
The Catalan government also owes E77b in public debt. They’ve been the biggest beneficiary of the special fund the Spanish government set up to get the regions going again after the protracted effects of the GFC. Catalan took far and away most of this facility to do good for its own people. But of course, that rich region and its on average wealthy and educated region wouldn’t have to pay that back if they struck out independently.
Tax. Debt.
No doubt calls for independence stirs the heart of old socialists and anarchists brought up on For Whom The Bell Tolls. But before you start asking for another Crimea, ask yourself: who benefits?
“Madrid nos roba” – “Madrid is robbing us”
Where is that from? It’s not in the link.
weka
I think it might have been on a placard at one of the demonstrations, though I didn’t see it in the linked article’s video (maybe one in the weekend). Ad seems to have seized on the idea that the Catalan independence movement is entirely economic; which seem to be overly simplifying matters, and ignoring history (such as the torture and execution of the last independent Catalan president by Franco’s regime).
However, I found it grimly amusing for a member of an heridatary Bourbon monarch (descendant those overthrown during the French revolution and whose father had been handpicked by Franco as his successor) to be lecturing those who had been engaged in a largely symbolic referendum on; “democratic principles of the rule of law”. The excessive reaction by the Spanish government in sending in their armoured goon squad was very counterproductive in assuring the Catalan people that they not oppressed.
I wondered about that too, would have been good to see the context. Madrid robbing Catalonia could refer to the election, or democracy, or independence etc.
Surprising precisely nobody, here is episode number 271,828,182,845,904,523,536,028,747,135,266,249,775,724,709,369,995 of awesomely blatant conservative political hypocrisy. In this case, rabidly “pro-life” politicians pressuring their mistresses to abort the unborn child they had fathered.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2017/10/03/this_pro_life_congressman_was_caught_telling_his_extramarital_boo_to_get.html
Episode number 271,828,182,845,904,523,536,028,747,135,266,249,775,724,709,369,996 of blatant pro-life hypocrisy.
9 million kids get insurance through CHIP. Congress is about to let its funding expire
On September 30, funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program expires. After Republicans took a rushed and ultimately failed run at repealing Obamacare one last time, the program’s spending authorization is now at imminent risk of lapsing.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/9/27/16373494/chip-funding-reauthorization-congress
Happy happy….
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/tillerson-s-fury-trump-required-intervention-pence-n806451
Well he’s correct jo90 good post
Trumps old tweets. The Hallmark cards of Twitter: there’s one for every occasion. Even for when his Secretary of State calls him a fucking moron.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/10/4/16424248/how-is-there-always-a-tweet-trump
And to address the question in the cartoon: yes they did put something into the constitution to deal with that possibility. The Electoral College. It had one job. And failed.
Shows how captured by the system their elected officials are. The private vs public stance on many issues are at variance.
A case of saying whatever is required to get elected.
Theresa May’s disaster speech at the Conservative Party Conference…couldn’t have happened to someone more deserving….
….and the icing on the cake, she was wearing a bracelet depicting the proud Communist artist Frida Kahlo….it sounds like it could have all been scripted by the writers of The Thick Of It.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/theresa-may-frida-kahlo-bracelet-communist-cough-conservative-conference-a7982931.html
But before you start feeling even just a pang of sympathy for her….save it for people who are really suffering under her regime, as the evidence for the relationship between austerity and suicide mounts…
http://discoversociety.org/2017/02/01/suicides-linked-to-austerity-from-a-psychocentric-to-a-psychopolitical-autopsy/
So I say enjoy, have a giggle, a chuckle, it is one of the few times it is OK to laugh at someone else’s misfortune.
So very english, the protester stooped as he was lead out, presumably so as not to disrupt too much.
And Corbyn, Corbyn, Corbyn he clearly has them rattled.
Reminiscent of the Tories here, spent more time talking about the ‘enemy’ rather than articulating their vision.
If our Tories articulated their vision then very few people would ever vote for them. And so they articulate the same vision as the Left while putting in place policies that bring about its antithesis.
She seems to suffer from some sort of acute stage-fright which might explain the dreadful coughing.
How that guy got anywhere near her with the P45 form is amazing and the Frida Kahlo bracelet and all the letters falling off the wall was just the icing on the cake.
ffs that security is non existent – shocking.
Absolutely, just as well it wasnt the other P45, the kahr p45.
Commentary from Jonathan Pie:
Iain M Banks, AFAIK, coined the term “power junkie”. There are certain parallels one can draw with Wayne’s recent emissions.
It’s a pity the O,R and Y in COUNTRY didn’t fall off…..oh that would have been so good.
Haha. That’s what it was thinking. Shakespeare!
SDHB are having public meetings fora next week to put a gloss of public consultataion on their; “strategy and action plan” through to 2030, particularly focusing on the hospital rebuild. The ODT is a bit vague on the details, but the SDHB facebook page has a scan of a print ad (probably from the ODT, I seldom see a physical copy these days). For Dunedin that is; 13:00-14:30 Tuesday 10/10, at the Barclay theatre in the museum. Nothing about whether you have to book to speak as with the public forum prior to the start of ordinary public advisory committee meetings.
https://www.facebook.com/southerndhb/
http://www.southerndhb.govt.nz/pages/public-forum/
This seems worth trying to make your voice heard at, if you can make it during workhours. Or you could just leave it up to the unelected SDHB in conjunction with an multinational professional services corporation to do what is best for the people of Otago:
https://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/forums-chance-have-say-health-services
Work hours? Hmmmmm
Profiles in Craven Cowardice. Repug senators deflect and hide when asked about any kind of legislative response to the Las Vegas mass murder.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/mass-shootings-las-vegas-gop_us_59d3ef64e4b04b9f9205baf4?ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009
Religious extremism courtesy of RWNJ’s – a gun shop in Dallas using Crusader imagery and citing biblical verses.
https://www.facebook.com/TEMPLARORDANCE/#
A friend of mine gasped when she saw the Vulcan episode of American Gods. “That’s Civic Religion!” she said. She’d been enrolled in religious studies and apparently one of the tools for understanding how states operate is to look as societies as religions or cults.
The creators of American Gods here explain why they created an episode not in the original book to look at this.
Two more sleeps then roll on 2pm when we will know the results of the Special Votes.
Radio NZ has just said in the 11 am bulletin that the meeting between NZFirst and National was all over in half an hour…?
Seems that way.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/97564343/nz-first-talks-with-national-labour
“Asked what sort of a reception he’d received, Peters replied, “take a wild guess”. “
In today’s paper Herald Grant Bradley the aviation commentator has an article of the CEO of Air NZ speaking to an audience of 400 in the Business Section. The CEO says its “no time to slash and burn” with businesses looking for short term goals of cutting jobs, cutting investment and cutting customer services”. I would like to link this article but I cannot find it on the online Herald.
His words “the reality is that the business world is sadly littered with companies that are just cutting jobs and ultimately not fulfilling their purpose to do anything useful. That’s pretty sad”.
He goes to on say they Air NZ have greatly reduced the income parity between the genders and is endeavouring to make their company more sustainable – for example the recycling scheme where unsealed food/drinks left on trays will be recycled where its safely possible.
My first thoughts were of this National Government and previous Labour Governments which have sold off state owned assets purely to pay down debt and get that instant gratification of money in hand. No thoughts of the dividend stream that might still be coming in if they hadn’t been sold off. Also their customer service in all of their departments is a bloody disgrace especially at WINZ. The attrition of staff in departments and front line in essential departments is another serious problem.
Banks are another where customer service is next to nothing. It seems we have a way to go yet where customers are valued and staff treated with respect.
“words “the reality is that the business world is sadly littered with companies that are just cutting jobs and ultimately not fulfilling their purpose to do anything useful. That’s pretty sad”. ”
I take some heart that more and more businesses are operating beyond just bottom line return to shareholder or owner. More than 30 years ago. Still more need to transition but it is a start
It seems some in the media have caught on that the labour party are economically ‘orthodox’ rat bags. That if they stick with what they been saying (policy), nothing will change, actually just like the last 9 years it will only get progressively worse.
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2017/10/05/bryan-gould-to-labour-this-is-no-time-for-conventional-answers/
Someone’s…??…doppelganger..
https://thedailybanter.com/2017/10/ha-goodman-uses-republican-talking-points/
Hugh Hefner cured a ‘model’ of her eating disorder:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/news/article.cfm?c_id=6&objectid=11929842
Now he’s dead, one more miracle like that and he can apply to the Pope for sainthood.
LOLOLOLOLOL
Well we are giving our daughter and son and inlaw a break we have 3 of there children till Sunday man they keep you on your toes 2 girls whom are blonde and very well behaved and our eldest grandson well he has a real full of life personality . We are very proud of our whole family we created. But when we were bring up our children I did not realize how much time goes into bring up children most of the time I was out there chasing the big money fishing and other various jobs. So most of the time I just past the money over and my wife did most of the hard yards bring up our family .
But when my daughters started having children this opened my eyes to the hard ship Lady’s go through carrying a baby for 9 months having no sleep for the first 6 months it is a 24 7 job bring up children and can be a very dangerous life threatening time giving birth and most males are totally unaware of these fact’s . For this reason we give our young lady’s all the help we can with bring up our grandchildren and this is one of the reason that I get the big picture . Which is we have one Mother Earth and we have to look after her as no one else is Kia Kaha
I love a bit of self awareness from a male who actually gets how hard a woman works when she becomes a mother. I still remember the absolute exhaustion I had from when I had my first child and then second . Right through till….. Can’t remember.Good on you. High five. Oh, and that was over 40 years ago.
Has anyone seen/read this? It exposes the smokescreen that trade is about encouraging democracy rather than a greedy grab to be first in. Remember how being in WTO woukd help China be more Democratic and better on Human Rights…
” To make matters worse, the Trump family have placed themselves conspicuously on China’s payroll, accepting future profits in the form of trademarks for both the Trump and Ivanka brands, and seeking Chinese investment in Kushner real estate projects. When China Labor Watch, a New York–based labor rights organization, published information on poor conditions in a factory where Ivanka’s brand-name shoes had recently been produced, China detained the group’s three field investigators, the only time CLW’s investigators have been detained for exposing the abuse of Chinese workers.2 ”
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2017/10/12/chinese-world-order/
“Remember how being in WTO wou[l]d help China be more Democratic and better on Human Rights…”
Fark! That’s almost as big a lie as all the others the new neo-libs told us would happen – in the future, going forward, actually-as a matter of fact, to coin a phrase, so-to-speak.
Public Service reforms
The market the market as the natural leveler
Privatisations
etc
etc
etc
Maybe a good person to bring in on fisheries reform…
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-41438279?ocid=socialflow_facebook&ns_mchannel=social&ns_campaign=bbcnews&ns_source=facebook
Tea-service all set?
I have to go numbing my nut somewhere else.
For a last mention, cheese.
“Auckland ratepayers [are] now paying 6 percent more this year for council salaries. A staggering 52 percent of rates are now used by the council just to pay staff.”
…Mr Town (CEO)- who got a $34,000 payrise to $690,000…”
http://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2017/10/bump-in-auckland-council-staff-earning-six-figure-salaries.html
Note the article attacks democratically elected Phil Goff NOT the unelected CEO Town who earns $690,000 who is supposed to ‘run’ the council.
Not sure how much the Ports of Auckland get, or Metrowater CEO’s but probably more than Phil Goff.
Like Fonterra, it’s about time CEO salary is linked to real results, ratepayer (or in the case of Fonterra farmers) satisfaction, real public services and real results. Hard to see how the current situations of both organisations can meet normal measures of results.
Apparently Auckland council has some unbelievable dissatisfaction rate from ratepayers.