Open mike 05/12/2011

31 comments on “Open mike 05/12/2011 ”

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1. vto 1

   5 December 2011 at 8:28 am

   Unexpected earthquake observation #235;

   Everyone planning to leave the city for a break this Christmas. Will there have ever been a more empty town?
   • lprent 1.1

     5 December 2011 at 9:00 am

     Well the shakes last boxing day were interesting. This year it is Invercargill. What can move that sleepy town….

     I have been there twice in the 80s. Both times I got speeding tickets on empty streets doing a few Kms over the limit. Do I get a hire car or not?
     • vto 1.1.1

       5 December 2011 at 10:00 am

       “What can move that sleepy town….”

       Declaring itself the capital of a newly ceded country called “Southland”. The place would go off.
     • pollywog 1.1.2

       5 December 2011 at 10:06 am

       I can’t believe how wide the roads and how long the carparks are are down there.

       It’s like the town planners envisioned a future where everyone would be driving hummers.
       • Bored 1.1.2.1

         5 December 2011 at 10:38 am

         When I first went to Invercargill the pavement still had some “hitching” rails, aka parking places for horses. Thats only 20 years since. I suspect one reason the streets were designed to be so wide may be that stock originally came to town on foot. Narrow streets and mobs of several thousand sheep might have been seen a bad idea, a good reason for wide streets and when flat land was cheap…why not?

         Good grass there, some of the rams are hummer size……
         • lprent 1.1.2.1.1

           5 December 2011 at 1:27 pm

           I’m told that it is all cows there now. No more clouds on the southland plains
         • McFlock 1.1.2.1.2

           5 December 2011 at 2:01 pm

           Apparently the roads were so wide so the Cobb & Co coaches could pull a u-turn.
             
           Haven’t been there this millenium as far as I can recall, but apparently the place has improved quite a bit since the SIT started zero fees and also Shadbolt came in. 
             
           My favourite story about the old invercargill was when an acquaintance was deemed posh at a function because he insisted they use the instant coffee, rather than coffee essence in hot water. This was in the 1990s.
           Now they even spell “espresso” correctly, apparently.
       • lprent 1.1.2.2

         5 December 2011 at 1:30 pm

         Yeah those roads were enormous and all were at 50km.

         Funny thing was that the other town it reminded me of was Dargaville. The only thing it lacked was a big brown river (at least I can’t recall one). I might have been too upset about the tickets though.
2. just saying 2

   5 December 2011 at 8:55 am

   Just had a thought.

   Wouldn’t it be clever if Labour had already chosen Cunliffe as leader, and deliberately put him in a public contest with Shearer (only to be defeated due to lack of experience, but what a backstory to compare with Key), to take position two or three, with Mahuta, Ardern, Parker, and Jones in the background of the race, all for a shit load of excellent coverage of all these high ranking front-benchers to be?
   • King Kong 2.1

     5 December 2011 at 9:18 am

     Nice idea but you would probably remove the talk about Cunliffe being hated by his colleagues from the script.
     • felix 2.1.1

       5 December 2011 at 2:03 pm

       Not in the script mate. Just an interjection from the cheap seats.
3. Teo 3

   5 December 2011 at 9:47 am

   Wow Tariana is going to waste taxpayer money on a By Election….

   It seems a bit rich considering the attacks against Hone Harawira’s By Election, from the Maori Party and others including the media.

   “Co-leader Tariana Turia has also indicated she will leave during the term so the party will also determine who her successor will be and when to force the by-election in her Te Tai Hauauru seat.”
4. Jackal 4

   5 December 2011 at 9:48 am

   When propaganda goes wrong

   The government, fishing and tourism industries want the pollution pushed under the carpet because they only care about money. They appear ready to provide obvious false information that is putting peoples lives in danger to protect their brands…
   • Afewknowthetruth 4.1

     5 December 2011 at 10:23 am

     You don’t mean ‘clean green NZ, 100% pure’ do you?

     The only reason NZ has any semblence of an intact environment is the lowish population density, the high rainfal and the strong winds.

     The reason people come here from elsewhere is because NZ was one of the last places on Earth to be ruined by industrialism.

     However, the ‘Orcs’ are doing their best to destroy what remains.
     • Bored 4.1.1

       5 December 2011 at 11:01 am

       Things that look “green” are not all born equal. For example a tourist to Canterbury might see healthy cows eating green grass and a few miles down the road see sheep grazing hilly tussock…then reach very erroneous conclusions re greenness and sustainability. What they are looking at in the former and failing to see is merely an industrial complex that “makes” green grass to be converted into export substances. Like all industrial processes in the capitalist world any “external” costs remain unpaid, the pollution is just as real if invisible at first glance. This is grass mining, as nasty and destructive as mineral mining.

       I fekkin hate Keys attitude here, he is either disingenuous in the extreme or profoundly ignorant of the reality.
5. Jackal 5

   5 December 2011 at 10:38 am

   Time to sue for Pike River

   Firstly the Minister of Labour, Kate Wilkinson refused to accept there was a problem with mine safety because of a reduced inspectorate. Then she flip flopped and promised to increase the mining inspectorate. However two months on and there is still only one under-trained inspector for the entire country…
6. Bored 6

   5 December 2011 at 10:45 am

   Remember the Nats plan for non recruitment of Police, and the move to cut costs through out the public service? Here’s what happens:

   http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/dec/03/police-summer-riots-hours

   In short the Mets had crappy radio kit from cost cuts, not enough numbers from cost cuts, not enough riot kit or training from cost cuts. More importantly they had fuck all on the ground “intelligence” and contacts with the community, it was “us” and “them”….South Auckland like perhaps.

   Sound familiar? If not now it is where National are driving us to.
7. joe90 7

   5 December 2011 at 10:46 am

   Potholer54, Peter Hadfield, answers Monckton’s fraudulent and dishonest claims by quoting his own words back at him.

   Part 1.

   Part 2.
8. joe90 8

   5 December 2011 at 12:41 pm

   All those nice cheap Christmas presents for the kids. Here’s how they do it.

   Big brands such as Disney, Lego and Marks & Spencer pay only a fraction of the shop price of products to the factories that make their toys. Last summer – as factories geared up to cope with demand for the Christmas period – investigators spent three weeks in the industrial cities of Shenzhen and Dongguan. In some cases, they found that employees:

   ■ worked up to 140 hours overtime a month;

   ■ were paid up to a month late;

   ■ claimed they were expected to work with dangerous tools and machines without training or safety measures;

   ■ had to work in silence and were fined up to £5 for going to the toilet without permission.

   Perhaps the most insidious effect of the long hours and poor wages was how it tore families apart, separating mothers and fathers from their children for all but a few days a year. Many workers were too afraid to speak to the investigators from human rights group Students & Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour (Sacom), but two women did agree to talk on condition that their names were changed.

   […]

   Hung Hing responded with a four- page letter from general manager Dennis Wong in which it admitted that workers could be asked to do overtime of up to 92 hours a month in July and August. The letter said that last month overtime ranged between 23 and 77 hours. The company said workers who refused to do the extra hours were not penalised.

   It blamed late payment of wages on the complexity of calculating the rates for more than 8,000 workers, and argued this was a standard industry practice. It insisted that workers did receive safety training, but warned that individual managers would be held responsible for future lapses and would have pay deducted.

   The company said that providing water to the toilets after 10pm was wasteful and that barrels of water were available for workers to use to flush.
   • Vicky32 8.1

     5 December 2011 at 4:10 pm

     The company said that providing water to the toilets after 10pm was wasteful and that barrels of water were available for workers to use to flush.

     My giddy aunt!
     
9. r0b 9

   5 December 2011 at 2:38 pm

   Moved comments by Peter George and Tigger to new post.
10. Blue 10

    5 December 2011 at 4:44 pm

    In other news, that deficit’s only getting bigger, thanks to reduced income tax take:

    http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10771035
11. Jackal 11

    5 December 2011 at 5:43 pm

    Joyce lies again

    A couple of days ago, Steven Joyce was on television saying that a dedicated response vessel and a plan to back it up would have made no difference to the outcome of the Rena disaster…
12. pollywog 12

    5 December 2011 at 5:48 pm

    Robertson keen to be deputy to Shearer

    Wellington Central MP Grant Robertson has confirmed he will be seeking the Labour deputy leadership and is backing David Shearer as leader.

    It is understood the Shearer team is aiming to install David Parker as finance spokesman.

    http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/6088935/Robertson-keen-to-be-deputy-to-Shearer

    Oh it’s on now…

    If Cunliffe wins Robertson will have consigned himself to the political scrapheap for a good while and Mallard will be toast before breakfast time.
13. joe90 13

    5 December 2011 at 6:18 pm

    The Fukushima Daiichi nightmare continues.

    The operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant says about 45 tons of strontium-tainted water may have leaked out of a water treatment device, with a portion of it spilling out of the facility.

    Tokyo Electric Power Company says the water may contain high levels of radioactive strontium. Strontium causes internal radiation exposure.

    The company is trying to determine whether the water reached the sea.
14. joe90 14

    5 December 2011 at 8:05 pm

    Some great art at Occupy Print
15. Campbell Larsen 15

    5 December 2011 at 8:47 pm

    What’s with the swirley graphic behind the presenter on tvnz news?

    Totally raw cuts from glueon spinner to the presenter when he was being critical of Shonkey, leaving the viewer with perplexed looking presenter in the middle of a blue version of the the intro to dr who.

    Not the first time I’ve noted it – also used to provide ‘rays of enlightenment’ around picture of Shonkey when no interview video available.

    Ditch it. It doesn’t make the broadcast look futuristic. It makes it look contrived.
16. pollywog 16

    5 December 2011 at 9:15 pm

    PM shrugs off forecast

    Prime Minister John Key has shrugged off Treasury’s cut in the growth forecast saying it is ”not overly dramatic”.

    ‘Forecasts are wonderful things and they are a prediction of what may or may not occur. We are the government and so we will get on and run the operation as best we can … yup, it might all go to hell in a handbasket and if it does we’ll manage it.

    http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/6088544/Treasury-trims-NZ-growth-forecast

    Breathtaking arrogance without the substance to back it up. Not even bothering to mask the lack of a plan anymore. Just smile and wave boys on a wing and a prayer.

    Afterall he now has a mandate to barefaced lie and treat the nations wishes with total disdain.

    and don’t ya just love how he cherrypicks forecasts to suit, then shrugs off the ones that don’t, knowing that if it all turns to shit he’ll bail and leave Labour to sort it out.

    So how’s those 170 000 jobs and the surplus by 2014 coming along ?

    This is exactly where Cunliffe needs call him out and hammer the smarmy prick.
    • William Joyce 16.1

      5 December 2011 at 9:52 pm

      “I reject that”, “That’s not the advice I have received”, “we would see things differently”.
       
      Probably the same sort of stuff that the captain of the Rena said.
      Just like a trader, talking things up and hoping the market backs him up.
17. joe90 17

    5 December 2011 at 10:26 pm

    Factbox – Monti’s reform plan for Italy
18. Jackal 18

    5 December 2011 at 10:31 pm

    Peter Garret on uranium exports

    Yesterday, idiotic delegates endorsed Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s request that Australia should export uranium to India, with 206 people voting in favour and 185 opposing it. Unbelievable!

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