I’ve always been fascinated by the lefts ability to schadenfreude.
It is one of the more distasteful aspects of (some) lefties in all. All “caring” until it’s someone they do not like – then they get great pleasure from it.
There have been studies linking it to envy – and that does not surprise me at all. As I have personally found a lot of the left envious. Jealous and bitter of the success of others.
What? Churlish James muttering defensively about “schaudenfreude”? James and ilk express that sentiment in relation to the ‘culpable poor’ on a daily basis. That’s basically why the big fat kick-ass BBQ is here at all.
I’m sorry if you don’t have friends and or family that can or want to participate in this great kiwi tradition- but that’s your loss not mine.
I love to BBQ – we do it a lot. It’s partly because we love the food (who dosnt like a nice bloody steak?) – but mainly because it’s fun to surrounded yourself with fantastic friends and family.
You should try it – it will give you a brighter outlook on life.
“…I’ve always been fascinated by the lefts ability to schadenfreude…”
That’s because it involves having an imagination, empathy and an entire array of higher order thinking of which you are bereft. I guess it must like looking through a window into a world where you’ll never be able to play.
Schadenfreude has zip to do with envy, Jimmy, and everything to do with the deep, deep satisfaction of seeing someone shooting themselves with one of their very own carefully crafted balls of shit.
Now, revel in your fellow right-wingers schadenfreude, it’s fucking delicious.
Steve Bannon’s spectacular fall from grace in Trump World is a big, salty, delicious bowl of schadenfreude from the political gods in celebration of the new year.
[…]
Now, like two rats in a bag, Trump and Bannon are tearing at one another in a delicious public spat that has every possible bit of drama, except Bannon drunkenly bellowing for a round of fisticuffs with all comers and Trump offering to compare the length of their relative manhoods on live television. They deserve one another in so many ways
And I am bemused by James’s ability to demolition the English language.
Schadenfreude is strictly a noun, James – both in the original German, and in English.
To show you how silly it sounds, I have just misused ‘demolition’ the same way you misused schadenfreude. It seems that some righties need the obvious explained to them…
For one who is so sure of his utter perfection in every way, how about thinking whether you should have written “If you ARE so bemused by my use of the E(cap)nglish language…”
Still haven’t found any reports in the corporate media about the massive storm that hit the country written in the context of climate change…..
But I found this.
‘Living on the Edge: What climate change means for Taranaki ’
The climate change debate has hogged headlines recently but its influence on humanity is undeniable. In the first of a six-part series called Living on the Edge, reporter Deena Coster takes a deeper look at what it means for Taranaki.
The rough and rugged Taranaki coastline will be unrecognisable in 100 years’ time.
Houses once dotted along the coast will be lost, as coastal erosion and rising sea levels steal away the very land they rest on………..’
‘From drought scare to deluge despair: The science of the storm.’
‘ After a period of calm, dry weather for much of the country, in which century old records for dryness were toppled, the furious storm from the north seemed to come out of the blue.
What may at first seem like atmospheric whiplash was actually a case of cause and effect – and may be a taste of things to come…..’
‘With rising sea-levels, as expected under a warming climate, storm surges will get higher and reach further inland – issues already evident in pockets around the country, where homes and infrastructure have been damaged.’
Thanks for raising the “Climate change” issue it was urgently needed to address our worsening climate of severe weather now reaching us all.
As PM Jacinda Ardern said clearly and correctly;-
“Climate change is truly the nuclear issue of our generation’s time”.
But it is so sad that even with the truly ‘extreme’ weather events we all experienced over the last few days, was not responded to properly by all the media!!!!
All the media could do was to “minimalise’ most of the event, and worsening weather events we are now experiencing now.
Question is to all the ‘climate change deniers’ & naysayers is;
“How much is enough to wake them up” ????
Will it need to take many lives lost?
Will it take a dramatic loss of their own food chain so they starve?
Will it take a loss of all forms of transport?
Will it take a loss of our coastal regions up to 50kms inland before they will actually finally put up their hands in surrender to ‘mother nature’ and plead for forgiveness for their folly???????
We certainly hope they will finally wake up now and join us to begin reducing climate change emissions and begin rebuilding secure future.
Stuff/Fairfax have had an epiphany.
There’s even a climate change quiz.
Get people to do it.
These operations work on click bait and it would be good for them to see people are interested in climate change.
“As PM Jacinda Ardern said clearly and correctly;-
“Climate change is truly the nuclear issue of our generation’s time”.”
Yep, but can’t see much action on this from Labour in the RMA and in TPPA (whoever version) or any future planning. Climate change is ignored (apart from various taxation schemes) and not actually looked at what’s gonna happen when parts of the world get uninhabitable in particular those that have huge populations (India looking to get to 50 degree temperature in some places), massive pollution in China or islands that will become are under water and all around the world in particular the west, houses destroyed on mass by flooding and storms. Agricultural land in drought and housing and people galore, but less land in agricultural production or even owed locally by the the country but by offshore individuals and corporations whose aim is profit not social conscience. Or maybe wars start breaking out to control dwindling resources. Japan is obsessed already with doing it’s own thing on fisheries and not cooperating in local efforts to have ecological sanctuaries to keep the fish stocks and biodiversity going. Our fisheries control is laughable in this country and it seems NZ are only too happy to turn a blind eye to slave labour to catch and process it as well as overfishing.
Wilson’s car parking for example in Australia show enormous “costs” leading to small profits on eye watering charges and a very small tax take for Australia. Who knew that you were helping the profits of Hong Kong billionaires when you parked at the local hospital. Clearly this type of carry on is going to get worse and worse – National even wanted to sell off the state houses to the Chinese or Australian corporations. China owns 50% of silver fern farms and Fonterra seems more focused on the 8 million salary of it’s executive than any sort of forward planning in any area from innovation to pollution control. I’m sure big business would love to sell Fonterra off into shares on the sharemarket, but for the moment making do with just selling off the daily farms themselves which will eventually change the control more offshore.
Cheese costs more than the average wage after taxes already in this country, bottled water costs more than soft drink. Not looking good for local Kiwis future, if things start going bad around the world and we find we don’t actually own much of our land and assets anymore and other’s are making the profits from NZ produce, water and housing booms (aka James Hardie types) while the Kiwi taxpayers are paying for the infrastructure and disaster costs but have little export income anymore so can’t afford social welfare. With enough of a change in demographics we might start getting a society that doesn’t believe in ‘wasting money” on social welfare anymore and privatise and plunder everything for a business opportunity.
Still haven’t found any reports in the corporate media about the massive storm that hit the country written in the context of climate change…..
That could be because sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and weather is just weather. Here’s NIWA on the effects of La Niña weather on New Zealand.
La Niña events have different impacts on New Zealand’s climate. More north–easterly winds are characteristic, which tend to bring moist, rainy conditions to the north–east of the North Island, and reduced rainfall to the south and south–west of the South Island.
…
Warmer than normal temperatures typically occur over much of the country during La Niña, although there are regional and seasonal exceptions.
So, it’s been a lot warmer than usual and the north-east is copping it from storms – classic La Niña weather. If journalists aren’t rushing to blame local weather conditions on climate change, good on them.
This is climate change, not weather.
Some of you will only wake up to it when the flood is at your own doorstep.
And the world can’t wait for you.
‘Those warm, dry, and settled conditions contributed to an unusual phenomena: a marine heat wave, in which sea temperatures around New Zealand were about 2 degrees Celsius warmer than average.
Off the west coast, in the Tasman Sea, temperatures were as much as 6C above normal – at the time, it was the largest sea temperature anomaly in the world.’
Insurers warn climate change will hit policy prices and make some properties uninsurable
Bryce Davies, general manager corporate relations for insurance giant IAG, says the shift towards evaluating properties for their individual climate-change risk has already began, meaning homeowners with properties in flood plains and beachfronts could expect increases.
Ans in stuff today
How climate change could send your insurance costs soaring
Climate change is not only set to transform our environment, it’s also likely to cause insurance costs to skyrocket.
The Insurance Council of New Zealand has warned that our country is one of the most vulnerable to the impact of natural disasters for an economy of our size.
Council chief executive Tim Grafton says New Zealand can expect to face, on average, annual costs of $1.6 billion (just under 1 per cent of its GDP) from natural disasters, based on data going back to 1900
Organisations with money in the situation clearly realise climate change is happening fast. Exxon Mobil knew about CC in the 70s ( and hid their findings as it would impact their profits)
But to some misguided fellows, like Trump and PM, it’s just weather.
Humankind and other species on this planet can’t wait for such dilettantes and deniers.
In 1959 Edward Teller warned the industry about the consequences of burning fossil fuel.
The pricks have known for sixty years.
It was a typical November day in New York City. The year: 1959. Robert Dunlop, 50 years old and photographed later as clean-shaven, hair carefully parted, his earnest face donning horn-rimmed glasses, passed under the Ionian columns of Columbia University’s iconic Low Library. He was a guest of honor for a grand occasion: the centennial of the American oil industry.
[…]
Four others joined Dunlop at the podium that day, one of whom had made the journey from California – and Hungary before that. The nuclear weapons physicist Edward Teller had, by 1959, become ostracized by the scientific community for betraying his colleague J. Robert Oppenheimer, but he retained the embrace of industry and government. Teller’s task that November fourth was to address the crowd on “energy patterns of the future,” and his words carried an unexpected warning:
Ladies and gentlemen, I am to talk to you about energy in the future. I will start by telling you why I believe that the energy resources of the past must be supplemented. First of all, these energy resources will run short as we use more and more of the fossil fuels. But I would […] like to mention another reason why we probably have to look for additional fuel supplies. And this, strangely, is the question of contaminating the atmosphere. [….] Whenever you burn conventional fuel, you create carbon dioxide. [….] The carbon dioxide is invisible, it is transparent, you can’t smell it, it is not dangerous to health, so why should one worry about it?
Carbon dioxide has a strange property. It transmits visible light but it absorbs the infrared radiation which is emitted from the earth. Its presence in the atmosphere causes a greenhouse effect [….] It has been calculated that a temperature rise corresponding to a 10 per cent increase in carbon dioxide will be sufficient to melt the icecap and submerge New York. All the coastal cities would be covered, and since a considerable percentage of the human race lives in coastal regions, I think that this chemical contamination is more serious than most people tend to believe.
Yeah, but Teller was beating his own project plowshare – nuclear fracking (happened) and using three hydrogen bombs to make a large harbour on aussie west coast (politely declined).
Insurance companies as part of the financial industry have underwritten some primary causes of planetary pollution and destruction since, day one…and will continue to do so…
The ‘institutions have profited heavily playing a part in creating the circumstances, and they will attempt to continue the plunder…
Swiss Re and out major players in the Global Insurance industry have been warning of the financial effects of Climate Change for years. In 2010 Swiss RE wrote this:
Adaptation through adequate sea defences and the management of the residual risk is essential. While the insurance industry is an important contributor to the absorption of volatile risk, it cannot address the challenges of climate change alone: To tackle this, a public-private partnership will be indispensable. Beyond traditional insurance, Swiss Re can contribute through alternative forms of risk transfer to absorb highly volatile losses.
My bold http://www.swissre.com/rethinking/the_effects_of_climate_change.html
Their assessments were based on the IPPC projections then of a 0.37m rise in sea level. The fact that those projections have now increased by around a factor of 10, exacerbates the problem dramatically.
No reason why not have a govt srvice. Nationally-based rates system collected via TLAs to fund the building insurance, EQC, and fire levies, separate assessments for contents.
Weather is weather. You’re wanting journalists to report storms as climate change, something which would only encourage people with functioning cognitive faculties to ridicule the journalists, and worse, might encourage people to believe climate change is bullshit. Worse yet, it encourages other people to mistake weather for climate, resulting in even more imbecilic “Frosty again – so much for global warming!” comments by right-wingers.
By all means expect news reports to mention that storms can be expected to increase in frequency and severity due to climate change, but an individual storm remains just a storm.
Yes I am expecting journalists to use context for a story.
That’s a basic of the job.
Reporting Brexit without the context of the deindustrialisation of parts of the UK makes no sense.
Reporting Trump without the context of the deindustrialisation of parts of the US makes no sense.
Reporting the war in Syria without the context of climate change and the desertification of parts of Syria makes no sense.
Reporting the changing weather patterns in New Zealand without the context of climate change makes no sense.
Reporting the events in Gaza without the context of 1917, 1948, 1967 and other key historical dates makes no sense.
To be fair, the main Stuff article about the recent storms does put it in the context of climate change: “With rising sea-levels, as expected under a warming climate, storm surges will get higher and reach further inland – issues already evident in pockets around the country, where homes and infrastructure have been damaged.”
It sure is. And the context of a weather event is weather patterns – La Niña, for instance. Storms have been causing floods in New Zealand since before there were humans here – linking any individual storm to climate change would be as stupid as claiming global warming doesn’t exist because there was an early snowfall.
Is saying someone is stupid the same, as might be stupid, or showing stupid tendencies or ideas, better, worse or just different than saying someone has a psychopathic mentality? And is that the same as saying someone is a psychopath? And can hard critical words never be used against anyone here? Questions that run through my head but then I am borderline crazy these days.
Well, to be accurate they should be reporting storms in relation to climate change and how one affects the other. They shouldn’t be ignoring it just because it’s weather.
Actually Psycho attribution of Climate Change to Extreme weather events is a developing science. The 2003 European Heatwave that had a not insignificant effect on the Syrian situation, has been assessed for instance to have been more likely to have occurred as a result of AGW. https://www.nature.com/articles/nature03089
However,
According to last year’s National Academy of Sciences report, “An indication of the developing interest in event attribution is highlighted by the fact that in 4 years (2012-2015), the number of papers increased from 6 to 32.”
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-can-now-blame-individual-natural-disasters-on-climate-change/
As you say – you just can’t look at an extreme weather event and say “that’s climate change” but what is becoming more possible with improving climate modelling is to say the AGW has contributed significantly to the possibility of that event occurring.
Furthermore take for instance the major damage done to my favourite piece of roadway, the coastal road north from Thames over the weekend. (it truly is a delight to pass along especially at christmas with the pohutakawas all in full bloom and the sea and little bays alongside). https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/100346389/evacuation-warnings-and-rocks-on-the-road-in-firth-of-thames
But this road SH25 is under severe threat from rising sea levels, the direct result of AGW. With a king tide and storm surge the destruction caused is inevitable. I’m not sure just how this vital link to the Peninsula will be maintained into the future.
Yes I’m well aware of the work of both Denis and Thomas (referred to in the first link). I too have submitted to the TCDC on the matter wrt to the district plan, and my daughter is a Community Board member so we are all on to the problem.
The developers however are only concerned in making a quick buck and will find any piece of nonsense to hide behind. This piece of nonsense from Gloria Humphries is typical:
Asked about its sea level planning, Hopper Developments sent Newsroom an email pointing to an engineering design feature of the project’s canal walls, which “allow for overflow on certain spring tides”.
“Interestingly some of our walls at Pauanui [the first of Hopper Development’s two coastal canal projects] were constructed 25 years ago and anecdotal evidence would suggest that the sea level rise (if any) is closer to the 1.6mm pa rate rather than the rates many are citing in the media at present.”
Gloria Humphries recently wrote a letter to the editor of the Hauraki Herald, published on November 17, in which she put forward a case against sea level rise. “I’m just a lay person without the appropriate background to challenge the so called experts, but I consider myself to be widely read on all points of view, and have come to the conclusion that ‘man-made’ global warming is the biggest con that has been foisted on mankind in modern times for reasons that have very little to do with our climate …” she wrote.
The 1.6mm pa SLR she refers to above is the long term average over the past century. ie there has been around 17cm of SLR over the past 100 years. This, of course, completely ignores the increasing rate of SLR from melting ice shelves, that has been increasingly rapid over the past couple of decades. But if she can get away with it, and sell off a few more properties, and pass the buck on to Council – well who cares?
SH 25 being a State Highway is of course maintained by Govt. – Just how and what the level of funding will be or what the long term solution is has yet to be determined. But SH 25 is repeatedly closed due to slips and subsidence. Even though it is a very attractive piece of NZ – I wouldn’t consider living up the coast – my doc lives up that way and on one occasion the slip was in place for days. He would ride his bike to the slip, clamber over the rocks, and then pick up his car to drive the rest of the way into work each day. This is becoming a regular occurrence for those people living up that way.
As for the fate of the sea side residences – this is a problem over the whole of NZ but TCDC is unique in that it has one of the longest coastlines of any regional council in the country and only around 30,000 rate payers. It is also unique in that in 1931 during the Depression and the closure of the gold mines Thames, which had borrowed heavily for a number of large projects, was unable to pay its way with a high unemployment and rate payers now unable to pay their bills. The incoming Mayor went to the govt and the town was promptly placed in Administration and remained so until 1947. You can still se the results of this in the rather sad civil works – monsoon drains rather than modern guttering etc – around the town even to this day.
Thank you for sharing your detailed historical knowledge of the area.
Why in your opinion we’re all those developments on the waterways permitted?
Corruption?
Naivety?
Ignorance?
Slackness?
Or something else?
Like all councils TCDC tends to be the governance of the privileged for the privileged. The past Mayor’s family is in the civil construction business – so naturally is generally supportive of “development” in all its forms. The geology of the area is also not conducive to large urban areas, being in essence a string of extinct volcanos. There is constant pressure from the three major cities Auckland Hamilton and Tauranga – all within 2 hours drive from Coromandel for further development as people retire, and wish to move to be by the sea. So if a developer proposes a new subdivision – it will be looked at favourably. Having said that the fact is that these developments were reviewed under the guidelines of what was then the available knowledge of projected SLR. The T & T report referred to the IPPC report and the Whitianga development as you see was constructed with that scenario in mind.
However, it was always understood that the IPPC is conservative in its assessments as it is an international body and the report has to be agreed by a large variety of people and nations.
The sad fact however is that the last government (ie Nick Smith) sat on the latest SLR assessment and these were not made public or given any credence until James Shaw released them on taking office. Had these figures been available at the time it is probable that the developments would not have been given the green light.
Another troll like James .
I suspected so after your climate denial.
I shall be exiting the conversation.
There is nothing to be gained from encouraging the nonsense you lot spout.
Are you all one and the same?
Ed, if that is the level of your thinking and the tactics you continue to employ, it is no surprise that Paul was banned….
The posts you put up about various and many subjects, lack fundamental awareness and thought when you upload them…
Does that mean that you are ‘wrong’ in what you upload….maybe/maybe not….but the tactics are not going to attract people to take your links and then perhaps do some further reading of their own into [subject]
1. Post links with statements in absolutes [financial crash coming et al]
2. When another commentator questions/queries, refutes or proposes another angle….
3. Accuse the commentator of tr*lling…
In no way are such tactics likely to encourage others to read further …
Surely that is why you post comments with links here…..to encourage others to investigate further and thus having greater numbers of people becoming engaged?
If the above is not why you post the subject links, then I would suggest taking some time to assess internally, why it is you are doing so….
100% of the weather is affected by climate change. 100% of the weather occurs on a planet which has warmer oceans and surface temperatures and more water vapour in the atmosphere and therefore, more energy.
The degree to which this affects individual weather events is asking the wrong question. It’s of academic interest only. From a practical perspective resilience and planning are far more important than attribution.
I walk my dog most days on this beach and the situation is worsening by the day. The council dumped a few loads of rock, but the huge seas and recent king tide have swept over and around the rocks. A proper sea wall is needed but the Grey District Council apparently can’t afford it.
At the moment layers of barely composed rubbish is visible complete with black rubbish sacks. Apparently there’s all sorts of toxic goodies in there including radioactive waste from the local hospital.
There you go I told you all that all our internet devices could be hacked.
But it is not just the internet devices it is all the smart devices in OUR world.
Some good intelligent person alerts US to the back door Entrance into our passwords on these chips and the chip manufacturers put a sticky tape cover of a lie on this subject and say O we new about this a while ago we are finding a patch we just did not want to ALARM the public . What a load of bullshit these back door entrances are not a design flaw they have been forced to put these BDE into our chips so the Governments of the west can control us most likely the USA FBI CIA . Why do you think China has invested billions in to making there own chips and a laser beam communication satellite so they have safe secure COMS . I no all my coms are hacked my childrens com to . The neo liberal 1% want total control they have been deliberately suppressing our Ladys Mana to over the centuries because they know they will get there asses kicked by OUR strong intelligent humane caring LADYS . There is a doco on wonderwoman DC comics started this comic to lift our ladys mana at the time the 1% were ok with that because they wanted to motivate our ladys to go to work and what was the work well making crap for the world wars and when the war was over they stopped using her to lift ladys mana and got wander woman to act like a dutiful submissive house wife .
These wankers like interfering in every aspect of OUR lives and don t want to cede power they don t give a shit that they are stuffing up our WORLDS SOCIETY and motherearth and all her wonderfull beings . ECO Maori knows that US the 99% will put a stop to this way of life of shitting in ones own back yard and we will create a beautiful caring equal world society for all whom are on Papatuanuku.
Ka kite ano
“Serious security flaws that could let attackers steal sensitive data, including passwords and banking information, have been found in processors designed by Intel, AMD and ARM.”
A damning description of MCaw and other well paid All Blacks
‘The tragedy for Fuimaono-Sapolu is that he has been grievously unsupported by players in New Zealand and Australia who all seem under the corporate yoke. Where is today’s Anton Oliver? Richie McCaw sits on a panel that absurdly makes Beauden Barrett the World Rugby Player of the Year again, not a title that a player is ever likely to win in a Samoan shirt – Beauden, blondish poster boy, good for business.
When did McCaw ever speak out on behalf of anything? No wonder he was a school prefect. But as Fuimaono-Sapolu says: “If Richie McCaw said anything about the GCSB, the whole of New Zealand would be up in arms against it.”
They key words…..
‘players in New Zealand and Australia who all seem under the corporate yoke.’
MCaw pimps for Fonterra and supports a company destroying our rivers and environment.
Some All Blacks….
Rich
Entitled
Coke sniffers
Wife beaters
Booze addled
Young men.
Don’t worry about your device(s) getting hacked. Instead, be more concerned about your brain being manipulated & changed by and through those devices. The content, delivery, and interaction/consumption of ‘information’ through those devices are having major impact on us and (our) society. What happens when you ‘lose’ (control of) your smart phone is nothing compared to when you ‘lose’ (control of) your mind – they seem to go hand-in-hand and maybe that’s not coincidental either …
That is some of the more salient points, Incognito…
The lack of awareness about the impacts of technology related mental health, is increasingly well documented, but not widely understood at the ‘consumer end’…
The way that the one-way is being pushed on us is amazing. Everyone is brainwashed about wonderful technology, you need to be immersed in it up to your nose to get anywhere, a job, connect with anybody. Kids are learning to type rather than write. Why not, it is so much easier to interface with machines and soon some people will have chips put in so their brains can connect directly with the communications port – cut out the middleman.
I wanted to speak to someone, phoned up and went through the numbers game, then got message that it was so easy to go on-line, this while I was on the phone already. Finally I did get service without waiting too long but the process of ‘disruption’ embedded in business practice now means that nothing you value now can be guaranteed to remain available, all must be subject to eternal, infernal change and churn.
Be nice to the people at call centres, they may be replaced with machines, as we all may be until some sort of saturation point is reached.
A recent contact did not want to accept my landline number though there was no particular reason not to, and I have an answerphone attached.
My choices are being taken away, yet this was part of the mantra of free markets, neo lib economics etc. I don’t believe any of the upbeat future-is-great drum-beaters any more. They are either stool pigeons, or specialise in living in the ‘now’, or are too young to be trusted to understand or be interested in the context of what they are speiling.
Thanks for correcting that fake statement made by a troll saying ‘AMD chips are just fine.’
We have enough mis-information around now without more fake statements made to fool us all to believe some systems are safe or ‘fine’.
We all need to be given free upgades for them to block these flaws and rid ‘stealing of our sensitive data, including passwords and banking information’.
If the manufacturer caused these flaws in these IC chips then they must pay to fix them too. “consumers have rights too.”
Like automobile ‘recalls’ we should have the same rights to repairs.
Same applies with whoever caused our destructive “climate change” it is the companies who marketed the products who must be held responsible for the repair of our climate again too.
Someone got analytical about the timing and relationship between Fox and Friends and the terracotta turdface eruptions on twitter. And yep, he’s basically just live-tweeting F&F.
A Sugar tax is well overdue here.
We should not follow the UK – instead we should tax sugar at the cost it has to our society and it’s health. Tax at $5 per litre and make sugary drinks expensive items.
And stop all advertising.
And limit points of sale.
Here is the timid approach of the UK.
‘Coca-Cola to sell smaller bottles at higher prices in response to sugar tax.
‘…..The sugar tax – designed to help combat child obesity – was announced by then chancellor George Osborne in 2016 and he gave drinks-makers time to change their recipes if they wished to escape the levy. From April soft drinks manufacturers will be taxed at 18p per litre on drinks containing 5g of sugar or more per 100ml, or 24p per litre if the drink has 8g of sugar or more per 100ml. The tax will apply to one in five drinks sold in the UK…….’
Yeah, and we should have a special car tax for those cars that in the wrong hands kill the users. Or a sun tax cos melanoma. Or an internet tax because some people write silly things on blogs.
Or we could start banning people who can’t sensibly and safely use the products that the vast majority have no problems with.
We already have petrol taxes to cover the roading and other infrastructure, and ACC levies on registration and fuel to cover the health and income costs of accidents.
A fat tax is well overdue here.
We should not follow the UK – instead we should tax fat pricks at the cost they have to our society and vote health. Tax at $5 per kilo over normal bodyweight as determined by the Ministry of body normality
Well Coke with what, nine teaspoons of sugar per 330ml, sure. Three or four not so much. Regulate a steadily decreasing maximum and neither manufacturer nor customer is penalized.
Ed that sounds like what a troll would come up with. Illegal causes more problems and creates black markets etc. if there is some demand for the product then it encourages people on the make to encourage others to use more. Instead of discouraging. This is already known. A facetious comment on your part, but it’s the first thought to the minds of the brainless.
I recommend we approach sugar and alcohol the same way we tackled tobacco.
Gradual and significant price increases.
Stop advertising.
Make health campaigns to explain bad health outcomes.
Limit places it can be sold.
Make it lose its glamour.
Programmes at school to edit the young.
Alcohol free and sugar free places.
In 20-30 years, Coca Cola and Heineken would be on the run, like Philip Morris are now.
[I think you’ve been warned about this before. The only reason you’re not getting a ban is I don’t have time to look, but if I see you doing that shit again I will ban you.
Seeing your comment to Paul below as well, I suggest having a think about how you want to be here too, because the whole nasty shit coming from you since the election is getting tedious. Your history of contributions here will only get you so far if moderators have to keep putting time into this. – weka]
“we should tax sugar at the cost it has to our society and it’s health. Tax at $5 per litre and make sugary drinks expensive items”.
I trust you can provide a link to some analysis that the cost is $5.00/litre?
It does seem such a suspiciously round number doesn’t it?
Exactly $5.00/litre. I’m sure you didn’t just pull it out of thin air.
You remind me of when then Mayor Ken Livingston brought in a Congestion Charge in London. He claimed that it was merely to cover the costs that traffic congestion was causing. It just happened to be five pounds a time.
Pure coincidence of course that it was such a round figure.
Now, where do you get $5.00/litre as being the cost to society of sugary drinks?
Cigarettes now cost $30 a pack. The tax on them must be over $20 a pack.
My $5 is an arbitrary number to deter the purchase of debilitating sugary drinks and mitigate their devastating impact on people, society and the country.
It could just as easily be $10 tax per litre .
Personally, I’d copy some South American countries and boot companies like Coca-Cola and McDonalds out of the country.
Cigarettes now cost $30 a pack. The tax on them must be over $20 a pack.
Yep. The government’s raised taxes on cigarettes so high that they’ve created a black market for them and people are robbing dairies to supply that black market. Three cheers for good governance!
Given the above, I’m surprised that anyone thinks it would be a great idea to do something similar for sugar. Public health activists are a very unusual breed.
They are paid to be single-minded when you need to be triple-minded to get around the combination of sugar carving, advertising promotion and profit.
There is no care of humanity in business. If you want to buy they rarely twist your arm, they just play on your mind starting with tv ads when you are a baby, and if you buy good, and if you get sick, then they will charge you for some treatment that will get you on your feet and buying again. And we buy into this sweet and vicious circle.
I don’t have the slightest problem with the statement about it being an arbitrary figure that is simply intended to make the drinks expensive.
What I object to is the oft-used claim that some level of tax is, in your own words, “tax sugar at the cost it has to our society and it’s health”.
It is done far to often when there is no actual justification for the setting of the tax at a particular level. If people would simply say that they want to make something expensive they are being honest. When they claim that it is to meet the costs of the vice they are not.
As far as smoking goes smokers are probably the only group who pay enough for their vice to pay for the health treatment they incur. When you include the fact that they are likely to collect superannuation for fewer years they may actually be doing the taxpayer a favour.
The tax collected is about $2 billion per year. That is a pretty good chunk of the Health budget. As long ago as 2012 Treasury said that smokers do pay for their costs. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10809145
I don’t mind these taxes being charged. It helped persuade me to give up smoking cigars, a habit I greatly enjoyed. I just object to the idea of increasing the taxes because “you cost us taxpayers money”
Perhaps they do Ed, but you are missing the point.
If you are going to tax the sales of Sugary drinks in order to recover the costs to Society from consuming the drinks then you have to work out, at least to a reasonable approximation, what that cost is. Then you can charge a tax that will recover that amount.
If you are going to apply a punitive tax in order to discourage people consuming those items then you should have the courage of your convictions. Say that is what you are doing. Don’t pretend it is only to save the poor taxpayer from having to pay.
You appear to be following the punitive approach. Well admit it.
You appear to be following the punitive approach. Well admit it.
Fine by me.
The whole point of high taxation for cigarettes and other bad for you stuff is to stop people from using them.
The cost of both their medical costs and the premature death is far too high. The amount cannot be accurately measured in monetary terms as a lot of it is emotional which causes a lot of flow on effects.
Oh, suck my balls. My odds of premature death are my business. You’re just as bad as Ed railing about a vegan lifestyle, which might make me live longer and it’ll sure as shit feel like it.
I’ll go to hell in my own damned way, thankyou very much. If there were mandatory workplace air quality standards rather than arbitrary bans on stinky things, I wouldn’t take anyone with me, either.
Because tobacco smoke isn’t the only bad thing in the air. And decent ventilation and filtration to address those other things would make most bans unnecessary.
Well, yes it does work that way. Because air from outside comes inside, glycol smoke machines in gigs have their own issues, and packing a few hundred people into a nightclub with barely adequate ventilation becomes a nightmare of mutual-contamination. I have literally had ceiling condensate drip on me.
But the classic example is aircraft – recirculate the air as much as possible for a random collection of dozens or hundreds of people, and keep them exposed for hours.
I recall a Washington Post article from years ago saying a Dutch study found smokers actually end up costing the health system less than non-smokers, because they tend to die of things that kill you quickly (eg heart attacks, lung cancer) rather than spending decades deteriorating in old age with successive expensive health issues. If our primary concern were costs to health system, we should subsidise smoking instead of penalising it.
Well, good, because no public health departments of publicly-funded universities would fund research that might return such politically-unsatisfactory results.
Conclusions: Although effective obesity prevention leads to a decrease in costs of obesity-related diseases, this decrease is offset by cost increases due to diseases unrelated to obesity in life-years gained. Obesity prevention may be an important and cost-effective way of improving public health, but it is not a cure for increasing health expenditures.
Another study (two authors in common with above study) published in 2014 is also freely available/accessible (Open Access):
Disease Prevention: Saving Lives or Reducing Health Care Costs?
[NB The contributions of author Pieter van Baal were supported by the Network for Studies on Pensions, Aging and Retirement (NETSPAR http://www.netspar.nl) as part of the project “Rising life expectancy: causes and consequences in the Netherlands”. NETSPAR is a think tank and knowledge network established in 2005. The Foundation’s activities are pursued through the Netspar Center, an operational unit of Tilburg University.]
Conclusions: The stronger the negative impact of a disease on longevity, the higher health care costs would be after elimination. Successful treatment of fatal diseases leaves less room for longevity gains due to effective prevention but more room for health care savings.
The third study (different authors altogether) published in 1998 is also freely available/accessible and was funded by the Ministry of Health, Welfare, and Cultural Affairs, the Netherlands:
Preventing fatal diseases increases healthcare costs: cause elimination life table approach
Conclusions: The aim of prevention is to spare people from avoidable misery and death not to save money on the healthcare system. In countries with low mortality, elimination of fatal diseases by successful prevention increases healthcare spending because of the medical expenses during added life years.
You’ll notice that neither study focused solely on smoking and they, in fact, covered a very wide range of life-threatening diseases.
There have been plenty more studies published and I reject any suggestion that they all were biased through ‘inducements’ from ‘invested interests’.
I’ve seen quite a lot of them over the years.
Usually done by University economists who smoke.
They get sick of the other academics who complain that the smokers are being supported by their wowser compatriots.
It is quite easy to justify the claim that smokers pay in full for their habit.
They never get published of course. It would be fatal for your professional reputational to publish such a thing. Rather like questioning any of the left wing shibboleths. The same thing was true in 1930s Germany when you were sacked for claiming that “Jewish” Physics, ie Relativity and Quantum Theory were correct.
I wish they would start a subsidy scheme..
Oh to be able to afford the occasional Romeo y Julieta Churchill again.
A 7 inch Cuban cigar with a 47 ring size. Bliss for an hour.
As Rudyard Kipling is reputed to have said.
“A woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke”.
I’ll bet he never said it in his wife’s hearing though.
They were fucking awesome. Sitting in the garden on a summer’s evening, quietly smoking as the birds and insects lived their lives – some of the most peaceful moments of my life.
In New Zealand with a superannuation that’s not means or asset tested, that’s particularly true as every year early that someone dies from smoking-related causes is a significant saving in super that doesn’t have to be paid.
However, personally I’d rather people didn’t smoke and lived longer, so I’m OK with trying to convince people to stop smoking.
Yep. There’s “trying to convince,” and there’s “let’s tax these things so much that fuckwits find it worth bashing a shop assistant to get them.”
My university’s currently trying to implement an extortion/ostracism plan for making the entire campus smoke-free, in which we managers are supposedly going to accost and note down identifying details of non-compliant smokers – “supposedly” because, well, like fuck that’s going to happen. My favourite part of the proceedings was when the public-health academics got into a scrap with the OSH people over whether designated smoking booths should be open or not – if they’re open, the deadly toxic fumes might be breathed in by innocent victims, but if they’re enclosed, that’s a breach of OSH regulations re smoking in an enclosed area in a workplace. Ah, good times…
Every so often I pull out the line that complete exclusion is discrimination on the grounds of having a medical condition, specifically addiction. If there’s nowhere for you to smoke, there’s nowhere for you to treat your addiction, therefore the place is not accessible to you because of your condition. Like stairs with no wheelchair access.
That’s why the ostracism is needed – so nobody looks at it logically.
I mean, you can break down the appeal into things like the ritual, the diverse aromas, the variation between aroma and flavour, the art of storing and preparation, the breath control, and the generally calming and almost meditative practise, but (like poetry criticism and frog dissection) the experience is in the whole, not the sum of the parts.
It’s either something you go for, or something you don’t. Again, like poetry or frog dissection.
I have only just noticed this line of comments and this question.
I guess on this one I have to go along with McFlock.
It is the whole experience. I suppose the most pleasant part is sitting outside on a fine evening taking the occasional puff on the cigar and watching the smoke gently rise. Pure peace.
I really isn’t something that is subject to “analysis”
Perhaps Oscar Wilde put it best though
“If I have to explain, you wouldn’t understand”.
I never thought a simple comment about a cigar would have caused so many comments though.
The tornado/ tsunami/ flood has to actually hit them for it to become an important issue.
And then they’ll complain that a) the government isn’t doing enough and b) that the government should have acted sooner completely ignoring that it was them that prevented the government from acting as needed.
John Roughan takes his shit with a ‘healthy’ dose of salt.
This is very possibly a piss take…I’m hoping…
“We are probably going to need bags of the stuff over the next few years. We are still enjoying good times economically and long may they last, but human society has to have something to worry about, or at least talk about, and in good times these days we fret about the environment. We had an election last year in which we were urged to worry that it was no longer safe to swim in rivers.
Takapuna is a long beach, the suspected effluent was entering the water between the flags. So move the flags well away…
This is obviously the type of person who will get caught in the rip just off the beach and need to be rescued because he’s not swimming between the flags. The type of person who doesn’t understand that the flags are placed where swimming is safest. That moving the flags will make swimming less safe both for the swimmers and the lifeguards.
What on earth has happened to common sense?
Good question? Why doesn’t he have any?
Whatever happened to “she’ll be right”?
It was never right and has caused major problems. Please keep up to date with the real world.
Takapuna’s discharge turned out not to be sewage, just filthy road water after the rain. But before that became known on Tuesday, when the don’t swim signs were still on the beach, some people were reported to be in the water regardless. I salute them, I cheer them.
That’s because you and them are really bloody stupid. Please note that if any of them had ended up in the hospital it would have been on our dime paying for their stupidity and then you would have been complaining about that.
“Swimmable” was just a water quality measure of course, probably an excessive one for rivers such as the Waikato from a practical point of view but politically it worked.
One that would have ensured that the river would die. And we actually do need the environment to be healthy else we die as well.
We’re not separate from the environment but a part of it and we need it to live.
Why have we let joyless puritans dominate public thinking on so many subjects these days.
There’s a lot more joy provided by protecting the environment so that we can all survive than by trashing it to make a few rich and killing us all off.
In Tuesday’s sunshine, when the news from Takapuna was in the paper, just about all the beaches were red-flagged. On Wednesday just about all of them had a nice green tick.
Oh god, he even thinks that things stay the same all the bloody time. What a fucken moron.
Someone’s leaking details about the Downer – Papadopoulos meeting.
What followed was the now infamous May 2016 conversation over many glasses of wine at the swanky Kensington Wine Rooms, during which the 28-year-old Papadopoulos spilled to Downer that he knew of a Russian dirt file on the rival Clinton campaign consisting of thousands of hacked emails.
That night was a key moment that helped spark the FBI probe – since taken over by respected former FBI director Robert Mueller as a special counsel – into possible Trump campaign collusion with the Kremlin, including its hacking of the Democratic National Committee.
Maybe someone should speak with Mifsud (the London based professor who apparently doesn’t speak Russian, but who has claimed to have contact with Putin and what-not.) and who the Austalian guy says Papadopoulos said told him there was a tranch of emails held by the Russian government.
Hmm.
Mifsud told the Telegraph that he knew nothing about emails containing “dirt” on Clinton, calling the allegations upsetting
I guess we’ll have to wait until Downer’s referred to the DOJ for making false statements to find out whether or not there’s fire.
/
.@SenWhitehouse: “I cannot understand why it would be necessary for members of Congress to make a criminal referral to the FBI concerning information we know the FBI already has." https://t.co/6Bl8xyhaER— Natasha Bertrand (@NatashaBertrand) January 5, 2018
Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley and Lindsey Graham on Friday issued a criminal referral to the Justice Department, urging it to examine whether the former British spy Christopher Steele made false statements to the FBI “about the distribution of claims” contained in a dossier he wrote about alleged ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.
The Fusion GPS op-ed earlier this week called for the release of the transcripts of their committee testimony. Grassley and Graham are shit scared of what might be revealed so they’ve come up with a reason to hold up any release – Steele and his report are subject to an investigation.
So, *cough*, any move to shut down the Downer story says they’re shit scared of any further information that may come to light.
So can Assange and Murray’s. Neither of them know where the hacked/leaked email’s they were provided with came from. Murray can only repeat what he was told by the intermediary.
That doesn’t stop people from treating their hearsay as evidence.
This “key moment that helped spark” the FBI investigation. From the description it was one of the factors involved – it “helped”.
These days of course, we can take Jared Kushner’s word for it that he thought he was going to collude with Moscow to get the emails.
I thought Assange stated the wikileaks release got passed to them by a “Washington insider” (or some such) but wouldn’t reveal the source. And Murray said something similar, no?
In other words, they say they know who provided the info.
I guess it’s possible that the Russian government (or an agency of) had emails that they obtained via the net and decided to put them on some hardware that they gave to someone else, who then passed said hardware and the info it held on to Wikileaks.
I’d have thought there were more direct and less fraught ways to get info up through Wikileaks mind. But hey…
Murray said he retrieved the package from a source during a clandestine meeting in a wooded area near American University, in northwest D.C. He said the individual he met with was not the original person who obtained the information, but an intermediary.
And it’s what Kushner and the other Trump grunts thought that matters anyway. It wasn’t Assange offering to collude with them.
…these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.
yeah and I wonder why Papadopolous wasn’t hauled in then and there for a thorough questioning. The Trump dossier has become such a liability that it cant be what prompted the FBI to surveil the Trump campaign. Now it has to be some earlier bullshit trigger
Meanwhile, on Earth, it’s likely that the FBI had a variety of reasons to start their investigation.
I can imagine why you would think there’d be just one though.
PS: the reason they don’t just “haul people in for questioning right then and there” is because from an investigator’s point of view, it’s nice to know the answers to the questions you’re putting to potential perps before you ask them.
It takes as long as it takes. These are, as Michael Shermer says, “extraordinary claims”: “an extraordinary claim must be placed into a larger context to see how it fits.”
I have some real problems with this – leaving aside how much of a creep Downer is.
Drunken conversations are generally full of overblown bs and bluster at the best of times. To have a Yank boast when they are drunk is somthing I’ve encountered many a time in my work and socially. To much hot air, and no substance. This looks like it may all turn to custard and everyone will walk free, again.
That said, if the right wing wanna stab each other in the back, who am I to stop them.
We’re kidding ourselves and the world is rapidly working that out.
We’re a selfish, squalid, polluting and corrupt nation that has succumbed to the worst extremes of neoliberalism and suffer from its worst outcomes.
‘China is refusing to take the world’s rubbish any longer, including New Zealand plastic. This move once again casts doubts on New Zealand’s claim to be a clean and green country. It also highlights the fact that recycling isn’t always a sign of ecological virtue……’
‘…..New Zealand’s “100 per cent pure” reputation takes another knock when we realise we are using other countries to dump our rubbish. But it also raises doubts about our own integrity as “green” householders. In fact, recycling seems even to have encouraged us to become more wasteful consumers than before…….’
We’re about the only place in the world where 1080 is a useful poison for wide-spread pest control.
Pretty much every where else in the world has ground-feeding native mammals they want to protect. New Zealand doesn’t. So the fact that 1080 is particularly effective on mammals and can be easily laid in baits on the ground means it has a low risk of killing species we want to protect here, so we use a lot. Almost all other places in the world, the risk of killing ground-feeding mammal species they want to protect is too high for them to use 1080.
The oligarchs the likes of Fletchers, Fay Richwhite, Alan Gibbs etc etc have done particularly well here in NZ since the introduction of neoliberalism in the 1980’s, according to Roger Douglas neoliberalism was going to be the best thing for New Zealand since the invention of sliced bread ?
Did we get suckered or did we not ?
MSM still keep telling us how well we are doing as a country ?
The sandflys are that scared of eco maori they are around were ever I go they think that they are going to break ecos wairua but no they are just adding to my mana ka pai sandflys you will never break ecos wairua Ana to kai .
I say that all the photos of shonky key on Ngati Porou web site should be deleted he was just stealing OUR mana. Kia kaha
‘Iceland has long been deemed the best place in the world to be a woman. For the past nine years, the country has topped the World Economic Forum’s gender equality index.
In Iceland men get at least three months’ paternity leave, and 90% of them take it. This gives them time to become comfortable with child-rearing, encouraging them to share the workload with their partners. Women in Iceland are highly educated, a high percentage hold managerial positions and they don’t give up their careers to have children: they do both – like the country’s new prime minister. At the end of 2017 Iceland got its second female prime minister, a 41-year-old with three young sons.
Many in Iceland see the women’s strike of 1975 as a defining moment in the gender equality struggle. On the “women’s day off”, as it’s known, 90% of women stopped work and refused to do any household chores. Schools and nurseries were closed. Many shops, factories and theatres had to close their doors. Fathers were left with no choice but to bring their kids to work, stocking up on sweets and colouring pencils to keep them occupied. On the radio, children could be heard playing in the background while the newsreaders read the news. After work, the children needed to be fed and the whole thing ended up as the day the men of Iceland ran out of sausages…..’
I find it intriguing that things that eco is interested in can no longer be found on the net
the first was that website dedicated to the corruption on NZ police after I told IPCA about it next was the photo of Waiomatatini marae Porourangi showing the white tekoteko on the marae 2 days ago the photo came up on the first search google photos not now and the books that Colonel William Porter one in particle is East Coast Maori myths and legends ???? why are they hiding this book what are the sandflys scared of it well eco knows you will have to find William Porters book to find out the one I found was on a Australian website. Ka kite ano
How Wolff got access: a bit of sucking up and a few friendly pieces early on. So it seems no Trumpies ever thought to check out any of his earlier work before letting him into the adult daycare playroom.
I think giving the sandflys the pukana and letting everyone know the truth about the way they think and operate is nothing compared to what they are saying about me I know what they are saying and the tactics they are using on me would break most people so I think my intimidation is justified by there actions they best get a mirror .
Ana to kai
I can already see the sandflys next lines of malicious attacks to my character .
I will stop referring to eco as a second being as this is there next line of attack that they will try and lock me up on false charges.
I can see the line they are taking with the words there trolls on this site are trying to use against me .The difference here is a lot of good people know that what I write about ie the harassment the intimerdation the suppression the damage to my character these sandflys are trying to do are true. If they try and lock me up with there false charges everyone will be very upset .I am happy that I have thestandard website to defend my good character with PS they really don t like a MAORI with Mana do they .
Ka kite ano
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More than double the number of people who will vote in this year’s local body elections have tried marijuana or urinated somewhere they shouldn’t have. As local elections look set for the lowest turnout in decades, with many regions falling well short of 40%, the Government is exploring a number ...
A Statement on Abortion Law Reform by the Council of Disobedient Women On the eve of bringing an end to antiquated, anti-women abortion laws Green MP Jan Logie intends to write women out of the Bill. With a stroke of the pen, the woke are aiming for total erasure ...
Musings continue apace about “the experienced businessman!” soon to be taking up a National Party MP position. Or to be more accurate, being parachuted into a seat to shut down their former MP Jamie-Lee Ross, who despite his own shortcomings shed at least some more light on the inner workings ...
The Ugandan government wants to murder gay people:Uganda has announced plans to impose the death penalty on homosexuals. The bill, colloquially known as “Kill the Gays” in Uganda, was nullified five years ago on a technicality, but the government said on Thursday it plans to resurrect it within weeks. The ...
Hassan Vally, La Trobe UniversityWho doesn’t want to know if drinking that second or third cup of coffee a day will improve your memory, or if sleeping too much increases your risk of a heart attack? We’re invested in staying healthy and many of us are interested in reading ...
Freedom Of Speech? The Säuberung (cleansing by fire) was the work of the German Student Union which, on 10 May 1933, under the watchful eye of the Nazi Reichminister for Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, consigned 25,000 books to the flames in a ritual exorcism of “un-German thought”. According to the logic of the ...
“There can be no such thing as kaupapa Māori political parties or politics in Aotearoa” (Willie Jackson, Labour Party (2017). Māori TV, General/List Election Special) I begin with that claim because at the time, I was confounded at first that it fell out of Willie Jackson’s mouth, and then ...
New Zealand has prided itself for decades with regard to its lack of pollution, and all will be aware that the ‘100% Pure New Zealand‘ meme is under threat through land, water and air pollution of various causes. There is another type of contamination that the country also faces: light ...
New Zealand’s media is doing its part in Japan, reassuring those in the path of the storm that they won’t miss any rugby while away from their flooded homes. New Zealand sports reporters stationed in Japan for the Rugby World Cup have had the rare and heartwarming opportunity to inform ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones is the only Cabinet member in favour of putting it all on green. As Finance Minister Grant Robertson finds himself with an enormous $7.5 billion surplus, the Government has begun intense, at times contentious conversations about whether to put the money on red or black at ...
by Susanne Kemp At the start of September close to 100,000 school teachers went on strike in Jordan. They demanded a 50% pay rise. A pay rise actually agreed to by the regime back in 2014. In early October, however, in the face of government repression and threats, the teachers’ ...
Climate Explained is a collaboration between The Conversation, Stuff and the New Zealand Science Media Centre to answer your questions about climate change.If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, please send it to climate.change@stuff.co.nzWhy do people still think climate change isn’t real?David ...
Back in 2011, journalist Nicky Hager published Other People's Wars, an expose on NZDF's activities over the previous decade of the "war on terror". NZDF didn't like this, and especially didn't like the fact that it was base don leaks from their own. So, they had the SIS investigate him ...
The Zero Carbon Bill is due back from select committee in two weeks, and will likely pass its final stages in November. So naturally, farmers are planning a hate-march against it. But they're not just demanding lower methane targets so they can keep on destroying the planet; they're also demanding ...
Last year, California burned. This year, to stop it happening again (or rather, to stop themselves from being found liable if it happens again), Pacific Gas and Electric is cutting power to half the state for a week:Schools are closed. Traffic lights down. Tunnels dark. Businesses unopened. Hospitals running on ...
The Best Way: Missing from the on-line voting debate is any reference to the voting system that produces turn-out figures ranging from 77 to 93 percent of registered voters. The voting system used to collect and count the votes cast in our parliamentary elections. The system that involves citizens making ...
Among the great new bunch of political friends we have been making recently is the excellent Australian-based Marxist gender-critical site, Freer Lives. So we asked the comrade who set up that blog to write something for Redline on the blog, himself, his analysis of the rise of gender politics and ...
by Don Franks The Auckland City Mission is struggling with a 40 percent increase in demand for food parcels this year. A total of 23,020 were needed by June. Last month Missioner Chris Farrelly told the Herald the “cupboards are bare” and without an emergency food drive, he can’t see ...
by The Council of Disobedient Women Massey Wellington Student Association had a sit-in today. Imagine a sit-in. On a campus. Against a women’s rights meeting. Did the ’60s really happen or did we fucking dream it? They gathered in the student square, an echo chamber. Sitting on soft pillows ...
For some reasons, my post about the mystery message from inside the Downing Street bunker seemed to catch people's attention. Quite a lot of hits from NZ (unsurprisingly) and the USA (a bit more puzzlingly, but hi there, USAians!!) and 76 views from the Ukraine.I've celebrated my Ukrainian readers in ...
First, almost a score of Labour MPs seem to have sent a letter to the EU basically begging them to accept a deal - any deal - just so Britain can get the Heck on with Brexiting instead of being trapped in limbo:
by Phil Duncan In 2016 the National-led government suspended the Parent Visa Category, through which migrants were able to bring their parents into New Zealand. Since then over 5,700 people have been in immigration limbo, stuck on the visa wait list. Labour is now bringing back the scheme. Well, sort ...
The following was released yesterday (Tues, October 8) by the women’s liberation organisation Speak Up for Women. On 23 September Speak Up For Women announced that we would be holding an event at the Massey University Theaterette in Wellington. The event is called Feminism 2020. The intention of the event ...
The government is currently consulting on plans to improve freshwater quality. So naturally, farmers oppose it:South Taranaki farmers are preparing to fight proposed national freshwater changes that some fear will bankrupt them. The Government's proposed National Environment Standard on Freshwater Management, released in September, rated the Waingongoro River as one ...
Yesterday was the last day for (reliably) posting your vote away in local body elections. Turnouts are mostly much lower than the equivalent time last year (Palmerston North is down 2.3%), and so naturally people are pushing their online-voting snake oil again. Because the online census worked so well, lets ...
This essay, on the political legacy of the eugenics movement, by Kenan Malik was originally published in the Observer on 6 October 2019, under the headline ‘The spirit of eugenics is still with us, as immigrants know to their cost’. Birth control. Intelligence tests. Town planning. Immigration controls. It’s striking how ...
Another year, and the government has announced another enormous government "surplus". And just like last year, its nothing of the sort. When we have people homeless and sick and hungry, when we have schools and hospitals still falling down, when we have underpaid public servants and infrastucture unmaintained or unbuilt, ...
James Forsyth at The Spectator (I know, I know) has tapped one of his contacts inside Number Ten for an insight into the Johnson administration's thinking and strategy.It is fascinating, unsettling and quite, quite mad. Some key points:Negotiations have stalled and the Johnson administration are keen to blame the EU: ...
Fatal Contact: With the arrival of captain James Cook in October 1769, the islands of what would become New Zealand ceased to be the preserve of Polynesian navigators and settlers and became a part of both the world’s map and the world’s history.THE MAORI NATIONALIST assault upon the historical meaning ...
Another round of tactical talks about forming a Government of National Unity have come to nothing with the Liberal Democrats still refusing countenance putting Jeremy Corbyn into Downing Street:Opposition talks on Monday made little headway over when to try and vote down Boris Johnson's government and who might succeed him as ...
by Nick Rogers The debate around the meaning of sex and gender made an appearance at this year’s British Labour Party conference in Brighton. Women’s Place UK – an organisation that questions the demand that biological males who self-identify as woman should have access to women’s spaces, to all-women shortlists, ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters is predicting a hard Brexit for the United Kingdom, as he believes British Prime Minister Boris Johnson won’t be able to negotiate terms before the October 30 deadline. The Minister, who was one of the first to publicly come out and predict British voters would leave ...
Speaking at the Council of Trade Unions' (CTU) biennial conference, New Zealand First leader Winston Peters told unionists that any future attacks on the Government won't work. "Now, we are being attacked by the union movement in this country. You can have your views but I'm here to say standing ...
We want every New Zealander to be happy, safe, and healthy. To do this, we need to support strong, safe communities, and a robust and efficient health system. ...
Defence Minister Ron Mark has used his powers to overrule a noise complaint ruling against Whenuapai airbase on the grounds of "national security". The Environment Court last month released a ruling in favour of a private developer, declaring the Auckland airbase had to comply with noise restrictions when it performs ...
New Zealand First leader Winston Peters has opened fire against "unreconstructed morons" after NZ First MP Shane Jones was photographed on holiday holding an AR-15 rifle. Mr Peters is defending Mr Jones, telling Magic Talk host Peter Williams that his MP was just having fun "like most people do". "The ...
New Zealand First Deputy Leader and Under-Secretary for Regional Economic Development Fletcher Tabuteau was in attendance during the morning blessing of the Rotorua Lakefront development project. Around 60 people gathered on the shores of Lake Rotorua, including city mayor Steve Chadwick and deputy Dave Donaldson. The Lakefront development is a ...
Forestry Minister Shane Jones is considering reining in on conversions of farmland to forestry, and also issued a warning to foreign-owned forestry companies that make up nearly 75 per cent of the industry. He said too many foreign companies had not provided enough access for domestic processors to get timber. ...
Speaking to Radio NZ, New Zealand First leader Winston Peters said the tightening of the parental category visa is a direct result of the Party’s coalition negotiations with the Labour Party. He said the new changes switch the financial onus from the parent moving to New Zealand to the child ...
The Coalition Government is set to cut red tape in the building and construction sector in an effort to allow more houses to be built, including prefabricated houses. The changes will enable the mass factory production of "high quality" buildings, slash the likely number of building inspections for factory produced ...
Since coming into Government, we’ve worked hard to tackle homelessness and make sure everyone has a warm, dry home. And today, on World Homeless Day, we want to report back and update you on our progress so far. ...
New Zealand First leader Winston Peters has hit back at National Party leader Simon Bridges who criticized the Coalition Government’s approach to crime, and said that the latter isn't credible in his attack on the Government over gang recruitment. "We've got as massive drug problem in this country. It is ...
New Zealand Mānuka honey exporters have welcomed an initiative by the Coalition Government to help secure the term “mānuka honey” to be used exclusively by Kiwi exporters, ensuring that our multimillion-dollar industry is protected. Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones had recently announced that a Provincial Growth Funding of $5.7 ...
Political commentator Mike Hosking has labelled New Zealand First leader Winston Peters as “the voice of reason in a government soft on drugs”, for the Party’s stance on drug testing at music festivals. “If common sense is worth a vote, Winston Peters is quids in,” Mr Hosking said. The Labour ...
Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Regional Economic Development Fletcher Tabuteau has announced Provincial Growth Funding to ensure work opportunities in Turangi and Whanganui, through its skills and employment programme, Te Ara Mahi. A fund of $500,000 will go to Rafting NZ in Turangi for a 16-week river guide training course to train ...
Treasury has shown that the Coalition Government has a $7.5 billion surplus, which is $4 billion higher than what was expected in the 2019 Budget unveiled last May. It is also $2 billion higher than the actual surplus unveiled this time last year, and at a size that has not ...
Official Information Act figures released to NZME show there were 350 assaults on officers in the year to the end of June, 79 more than the year before. The increase in attacks have sparked calls for more legal protection for first responders to be enacted. The assaults included officers being ...
“Nobody wants to see babies uplifted”, this was the pronouncement of Minister for Children Hon. Tracey Martin as her department, Oranga Tamariki, faces multiple inquiries into the number of babies being taken from their families. “But a baby can die with a single punch, “the Minister continued. “So sometimes, Oranga ...
We're making progress on tackling the long-term challenges: from homelessness, to strengthening border security, to bringing banking back New Zealand's small towns. ...
Associate Transport Minister Shane Jones has backed the ambitious plan to move Auckland’s port to Northport, at Whangarei harbour, which he says will be the “King Kong of infrastructure”. The plan is part of the recommendations of a six-person independent working group, which has recommended the Ports of Auckland be ...
A six-member independent working group selected the option of moving Auckland’s port to Northport, in Whangarei, ahead of other options. In what could be New Zealand’s most ambitious infrastructure project yet, a major expansion of the Marsden Point port could happen within 15 years. The project, officially called the “Upper ...
The final Electricity Price Review recommended prohibiting prompt payment discounts but allowing “reasonable” late fees. The findings of this review was welcomed by the Coalition Government, but they hope companies will follow through with its recommendations without regulations needed to be passed. Meridian Energy had already stopped prompt payment discounts, ...
Fletcher Tabuteau, Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Regional Economic Development The Provincial Growth Fund (PGF)through its skills and employment programme, Te Ara Mahi,will invest nearly $600,000 to ensure work opportunities for locals in Turangia and Whanganui, Parliamentary Under Secretary for Regional Economic Development Fletcher Tabuteau announced today. “I’m pleased to announce the PGF ...
An export-led economy is one of New Zealand First’s key principles, and our commitment to achieving this is shown by the continuing skyrocketing demand for our beef and sheep meat exports. Beef + Lamb New Zealand's New Season Outlook 2019-20 report forecasts beef, lamb and mutton prices to lift from ...
Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones announced today in Gisborne an investment of $17.27m into bringing “world-leading” food-growing technology and the creation of more than 100 new jobs in the East Coast city. The funding comes from the Provincial Growth Fund, and included a $15 million loan to LeaderBrand, a ...
Hon Shane Jones, Minister for Regional Economic Development More than 100 people in Tairāwhiti’s Tolaga Bay will benefit from two employment initiatives supported by the Provincial Growth Fund, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones and Employment Minister Willie Jackson announced today. “Tolaga Bay is an incredibly tight-knit community, but one in ...
Hon Shane Jones, Minister for Regional Economic Development The Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) is supporting Gisborne business Leaderbrand to produce salad vegetables year round and create more jobs in the Tairāwhiti region, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones announced today. “Our support for Leaderbrand will help them build large greenhouses ...
“Nobody wants to see babies uplifted”, this was the pronouncement of Minister for Children Hon. Tracey Martin as her department, Oranga Tamariki, faces multiple inquiries into the number of babies being taken from their families. “But a baby can die with a single punch, “the Minister continued. “So sometimes, Oranga ...
Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones has praised the promise by New Zealand’s biggest banks not to close any provincial branches while the Coalition Government trials regional banking hubs across the country. The Minister said the announce was the “first sign of hope for regional communities”, many of which have ...
Rt Hon Winston Peters, New Zealand First Leader New Zealand First is proud to have delivered an upgrade of the SuperGold Card website and a new smartphone app, which will help unlock the full benefits of the SuperGold Card for 750,000 New Zealand seniors.Party Leader Rt Hon Winston Peters, ...
Delivering a key election campaign promise, New Zealand First is proud to have accomplished a long overdue upgrade of the SuperGold Card today. At an event in Auckland, New Zealand First leader Winston Peters joined Minister for Seniors Hon. Tracey Martin in unveiling the new website and smartphone app which ...
The Government today announced its support for a project that could substantially reduce agricultural greenhouse gas emissions from cattle. The announcement was made as part of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s and Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor’s visit to Nelson’s Cawthron Aquaculture Park. The Cawthron Institute will receive $100,000 from the Government’s ...
Social Development Minister Carmel Sepuloni has welcomed the first reading of the New Zealand Superannuation and Veteran’s Pension Legislation Amendment Bill. “Every New Zealander has a stake in New Zealand Superannuation and Veteran’s Pension,” says Carmel Sepuloni. “They are our most common form of social assistance – nearly 800,000 New ...
Babies in Auckland aged six months and over can receive a free vaccination and children will all have access to vaccines, Associate Minister of Health Julie Anne Genter announced today at Papatoetoe High School. The move comes as part of Government efforts to step up the fight against measles. ...
***Check against delivery*** Good morning. It is a pleasure to be here, and to have the honour of opening this important conference on behalf of the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. Let us take the opportunity to acknowledge all the people who have helped make today possible, including our special ...
Police Minister Stuart Nash says the safety of frontline officers and members of the public will be the focus of a new trial of specialist Police response teams in three of our largest urban centres. Police have this morning released details of an initiative to be trialled in Counties Manukau, ...
The Minister of Fisheries is calling for entries for a new public award to celebrate innovation in our seafood sector. “I have established the Seafood Sustainability Awards to recognise and celebrate those throughout industry, tangata whenua and communities who demonstrate outstanding dedication and innovation towards the sustainability of New Zealand’s ...
Minister for Women Julie Anne Genter welcomes leaders in the private sector taking action on closing their gender pay gaps to ensure a fairer workplace for all New Zealanders. Ms Genter today launched a new report, Addressing the gender pay gap and driving women’s representation in senior leadership, from the Champions for ...
Government Ministers today welcomed the release of a marine environment report highlighting the four key issues affecting our oceans, estuaries and coastlines. The release underlines the importance of government proposals to combat climate pollution, ensure clean freshwater, protect biodiversity, make land use more sustainable, and reduce waste and plastic. Environment ...
The Government has approved funding for a new acute mental health facility for Waikato which will provide better care and support to people with mental health and addiction issues. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Health Minister Dr David Clark announced the $100 million project to replace the aging Henry Rongomau ...
The Government is making progress on its goal to integrate te reo Māori into education by 2025, with over 500 teachers and support staff already graduating from Te Ahu o te Reo Māori, Associate Education Minister Kelvin Davis announced today. Kelvin Davis made the announcement at an awards ceremony in Waikanae today, for ...
Statistics Minister James Shaw has welcomed the first release of 2018 Census data. The first release of data today, 23 September, includes key data on population, regional growth, the number of homes and the size of different ethnic groups in New Zealand. Data from the 2018 Census will support the ...
Minister for Statistics James Shaw today announced a public consultation on a proposed algorithm charter for government agencies. The charter has been developed by the Government Chief Data Steward in response to growing calls for more transparency in government use of data. Computer algorithms – procedures or formulas for solving ...
Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor, Climate Change Minister James Shaw and visiting Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte co-hosted a business roundtable in Auckland this morning focused on working together to address climate change. “The Netherlands is an important partner for New Zealand. We share a strong agricultural history. Sustainable agribusiness and ...
The Government is taking action to build an inclusive economy where more of us receive our fair share at work and businesses can compete on great products and services, not undercutting wages and conditions, Immigration and Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Iain Lees-Galloway says. Two consultations launched today seek feedback ...
The future for New Zealand’s threatened indigenous freshwater fish looks brighter with the passing of the Conservation (Indigenous Freshwater Fish) Amendment Bill in Parliament today said Minister of Conservation, Eugenie Sage. “Until now, our freshwater fish legislation has been 20 years out of date. We have lacked effective tools to ...
At 1.30pm tomorrow, hundreds of thousands of Kiwis will join about 65 million people around the globe in ShakeOut, the world’s biggest earthquake drill. The annual drill is to remind people of the right action to take during an earthquake which is to Drop, Cover, Hold, and to practise their ...
Kiwis are benefiting from higher wage growth and low inflation under the Coalition Government. Stats NZ data out today shows the rise in the cost of living remains low, as annual Consumers Price Index (CPI) inflation fell to 1.5% in September from 1.7% in June. “The low inflation comes as ...
New Zealand’s economic strength and resilience has been recognised in a major update on the state of the global economy. The IMF’s latest World Economic Outlook released overnight shows a reduced global growth forecast over the next two years as issues like the US-China trade war and Brexit take hold. ...
Justice Minister Andrew Little has today introduced a new Bill to prevent terrorism and support the de-radicalisation of New Zealanders returning from overseas. The Terrorism Suppression (Control Orders) Bill gives the New Zealand Police the ability to apply to the High Court to impose control orders on New Zealanders who ...
A Bill that proposes targeted changes to simplify the processes for Māori land owners when engaging with the Māori Land Court has had its First Reading today. “The approach taken by the Government is to ensure that the protection of Māori land remains a priority as we seek to improve ...
Let me first thank all the new unionists and members in the room. There is nothing more important to improving people’s working lives than people making the decision to care, to get on board and help, to take up the reins and get involved. Congratulations to you. You bring the ...
Minister of Defence Ron Mark has signed a certificate exempting the activity of engine testing at Whenuapai Airbase from the Resource Management Act 1991. The Act gives the Minister of Defence the power to exempt activities for the purposes of national security. The certificate will mean the recent Environment Court ...
Finance Minister Grant Robertson has announced New Zealand will join the Coalition of Finance Ministers for Climate Action while attending APEC meetings in Chile. The objective of the 39 member Coalition is to share information and promote action to tackle climate change. It was formed in April this year, in ...
Feedback sought– Lyttelton commercial zone parking The Associate Minister for Greater Christchurch Regeneration, Poto Williams, is seeking feedback on a proposal to remove on-site car parking requirements for new developments in the Lyttelton commercial zone. The proposal, by Christchurch City Council, asks that powers under section 71 of the Greater ...
Hon Minister Poto Williams Associate Minister for Greater Christchurch Regeneration MEDIA STATEMENT Tuesday 15 October 2019 Feedback sought – Hagley Oval The Associate Minister for Greater Christchurch Regeneration, Poto Williams, is seeking feedback on a proposal about Hagley Oval. The proposal was developed by Regenerate Christchurch ...
Ladies and gentlemen, NZCTU President Richard Wagstaff, members of respective unions – thank you for the invitation to speak to you today. This might be preaching to the choir, but the importance of trade unions in New Zealand’s historical arch is difficult to understate. And it is my belief that ...
"Let’s start by acknowledging that it has been a huge year. " Police Association Annual Conference James Cook Grand Chancellor Hotel Wellington Nau mai, haere mai. Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, ka nui te mihi, ki a koutou katoa. President of the Police Association, Chris Cahill; Members of the Association and ...
Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters and Minister of Defence Ron Mark have announced the New Zealand Government’s decision to again deploy a Royal New Zealand Air Force P-3K2 (P-3) maritime patrol aircraft to support the implementation of United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions imposing sanctions against North Korea. New ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters says New Zealand continues to have serious concerns for peace and stability in north-east Syria. “Recent reports that hundreds of ISIS-affiliated families have fled from a camp are deeply concerning from a humanitarian and security perspective”, Mr Peters says. “While we acknowledge Turkey’s domestic security ...
Biosecurity Minister Damien O’Connor is warning travelling Kiwis to be vigilant as the high-season for the crop-eating brown marmorated stink bug (BMSB) is under way. “We’re on high alert to stop BMSB arriving in NZ. The high season runs until April 30 and we’ve strengthened our measures to stop stink ...
The Government is moving swiftly to change the law to improve the welfare and pastoral care of students living in university halls of residence and other tertiary hostels. Cabinet has agreed to several changes, including creating a new mandatory Code of Practice that sets out the duty of pastoral care ...
The Minister for Conservation Eugenie Sage has launched a new comprehensive trapping guide for community trappers to help them protect our native birds, plants and other wildlife, at Zealandia in Wellington today. ‘A practical guide to trapping’, has been developed by the Department of Conservation (DOC), and was launched during ...
Associate Health Minister Julie Anne Genter welcomes PHARMAC’s move to improve access to long-acting reversible contraception (LARCs). PHARMAC has today announced it will fund the full cost of Mirena and Jaydess for anyone seeking long term contraception, lifting previous restrictions on access to Mirena. “I welcome women having greater choices ...
The Government has approved the next stage of a major redevelopment of Taranaki Base Hospital, which will deliver new and improved facilities for patients. Health Minister Dr David Clark has announced details of a $300 million dollar project to build a new East Wing at the New Plymouth hospital. It ...
Extra funding will allow Rural Support Trusts to help farming families, says Minister for Rural Communities and Agriculture Damien O’Connor. “I know that rural families are worried about some of the challenges facing them, including the ongoing uncertainty created by the Mycoplasma bovis outbreak. “Those concerns sit alongside ongoing worries ...
Thank you for the opportunity to be here to present certificates to the 16 graduates who have completed a beekeeping course delivered by the Howard League. Let us start by acknowledging Auckland Prison’s Deputy Prison Director Tom Sherlock, and Acting Assistant Regional Commissioner of Corrections Northern Region Scott Walker - ...
Finance Minister Grant Robertson leaves this weekend to attend the APEC Finance Ministers meeting in Santiago, Chile. Discussions between APEC Finance Ministers at the meeting will include the effects of the current global economic uncertainty, risks for APEC economies and sustainable development of the region. While at APEC Grant Robertson ...
The Minister for Pacific Peoples Aupito William Sio says for Pacific people, language can be a source of strength. It can help ground us and give us confidence. When we speak them, our languages provide us with an immediate and intimate access to our identity and our story - and ...
The Coalition Government has announced an action plan to improve the wellbeing of disabled New Zealanders by addressing inequalities in play, active recreation and sport. The initiative includes training to develop a workforce that understands the needs of children and young people with a range of impairments, advocacy for fit ...
The construction sector is being freed up to allow more homes to be built more quickly as the Government cuts through some of the red tape of the Building Act. “Every New Zealander deserves a warm, dry, safe home and old inefficiencies in the Building Act make building slow and ...
“Proposals to curb environmental damage help our coasts and the oceans Government Ministers today welcomed the release of a marine environment report highlighting the four key issues affecting our oceans, estuaries and coastlines. We at CEAC also ...
David Robie, concluding his three-part series about Iran, profiles an extraordinary pair of Tehran brothers who have been pioneering global research adventurers. They have been dubbed the “Persian Indiana Joneses”. Their adventures are fabled and hair-raising, as shown by a Jivaro shrunken human head and relics from curious rituals ...
Four months ago Caroline Shaw bought an e-bike. She explains why they’re the answer to our lethal car culture.Four months ago we took what felt like a huge leap of faith and bought an e-cargo bike. The combination of three things tipped us over the edge: feeling the need to ...
The online magazine that boasted a bigger Instagram following than most New Zealand media has abruptly come to an end. So what was Auckland Mag? Why did it exist? And who was it mysterious founder Dan Rolph? David Farrier investigates. The reply from Dan Rolph at Auckland Magazine came quickly. It came ...
In the wake of the shocking revelations about Three, Duncan Greive assesses the health of New Zealand’s six big media companies.Winston Peters has studied the cold, pitiless heart of a certain strand of New Zealander for four decades now, and has become our foremost expert on both expressing its feelings ...
US justice reform activists Deborah Small and asha bandele say white supremacy and colonialism are at the heart of punitive drug laws. They spoke to Teuila Fuatai about how drug reform can reverse their effects on minority communities. Deborah Small sees Donald Trump as the US Dorian Gray. “He’s the physical ...
Madeleine Chapman spent a day learning about Christchurch through its most famous dishes.What is there do with with a day in Christchurch? Thanks to the inexplicably early check-out times at hotels all over the world and a 7pm flight back to Auckland, I had a full day to wander the ...
Winston Peters says his party is a handbrake on bad ideas and a "supercharged turbo" for good ones - but will it be in the driver's seat come 2020? ...
Our former prime minister secured a meeting with Chinese premier Xi Jinping outside all normal diplomatic channels. Interest’s Jenée Tibshraeny asks what it means for New Zealand’s evolving relationship with the superpower.Former prime minister John Key secured a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping this week without the involvement of ...
David Robiecontinues his three-part series about travelling in Iran. I stumbled on the scene by chance. Our host family in Iran’s second city Mashhad, a modern and beautiful metropolis that would comfortably fit in New Zealand’s entire population, was taking us on a drive to the outskirts to ...
New Zealand First leader Winston Peters has lashed out at the media, in particular, MediaWorks, just a day after the company announced it was selling off its television arm. ...
About a hundred disgruntled licensed gun owners have descended on the New Zealand First conference to tell the party leader Winston Peters that they feel like victims. ...
New Zealand First members will vote on a policy today that would allow businesses of all sizes to enforce 90-day trials when they employ people straight out of prison. ...
"Each time she held her lighter underneath the pipe and sucked the smoke into the back of her throat, the promise was there": a New Zealand tragedy by Alice Tawhai. ...
With the future of Mediaworks’ TV business hanging in the balance, Al Jazeera news presenter Kamahl Santamaria reflects on what the imperilled channel meant, and continues to mean, to him.I always liked the logo. The fresh bright colours, the nod to a koru in its shape, and just the fact ...
There are still many barriers preventing people from voting in local elections. Laura O’Connell Rapira proposes some social solutions.The Spinoff local election coverage is made possible thanks to The Spinoff Members. For more about becoming a member and supporting The Spinoff’s journalism click here.To vote in the local elections, I cast ...
What’s really stood out for me being back in Tokyo is the unique qualities of Japan’s spectators, writes Richard Light, professor of sport coaching at the University of Canterbury.The Rugby World Cup has thrown a global spotlight on Japan over recent weeks. Not just the rugby: the distinctive culture and ...
As the New Zealand First Party gathers for its annual conference, the question swirling in the year is how it can carve out a path to avoid electoral defeat in 2020, writes Jo Moir for RNZ. It’s not you, it’s me. It’s a familiar break up excuse that’s used ...
To the early intervention therapists, to the teachers, to the speech therapists, the occupational therapists, music therapists, diabetes nurses and all: you change the world.When I was married almost a decade ago we had the following reading at our wedding:You are holding up a ceilingwith both arms. It is very ...
The faces said it all. The smiles of the European leaders crowded round Boris after the Brexit deal was struck. The deal his opponents – no, pretty much everyone – said was impossible.So what’s in it? The detail is still opaque, but subject to gremlins in the fine print, ...
Iran attracts an onslaught of negative media in New Zealand and Western media. But is it fair or deserved? David Robie has spent several weeks travelling in the country on sabbatical and finds the media negativity far from the reality of the “most friendly” country he has ever visited ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra [embedded content]University of Canberra Deputy Vice-Chancellor Professor Leigh Sullivan discusses the week in politics with Michelle Grattan. They talk about Alan Jones accusing Prime Minister Scott Morrison of failing the immediate needs of drought-striken farmers, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anita Parbhakar-Fox, Senior Research Fellow in Geometallurgy/Applied Geochemistry, The University of Queensland Last month, scientists uncovered a mineral called Edscottite. Minerals are solid, naturally occurring substances that are not living, such as quartz or haematite. This new mineral was discovered after an ...
The Auckland-based collective talk origins, ambitions and making the rave accessible to everybody.Friendly Potential is an outfit that defies easy summary. They’re among the country’s most ambitious and prolific club promoters. In their almost five-years of operation, they’ve been responsible for the local debuts of electronic music icons including Detroit ...
Analysis: Two polls show support for Labour sliding, the government is accused of breaking another promise and the Greens's refusal to back a bill forces Labour to rely on National to get it through. ...
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The Police Commissioner's announcement that squadcars of officers with automatic rifles will patrol New Zealand's streets is dangerous and unnecessary, according to the criminal justice community organisation People Against Prisons Aotearoa. The ...
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In our defence of our coalition Government policy on climate change, we fully support Government plan to use rail funding for rail infrastructure upgrades to promote use rail infrastructure for freight around NZ. ...
The billions of tonnes of plastic in our oceans isn’t going away any time soon, but innovative companies here and abroad are working together to find silver linings to this daunting problem.Fishing boats head out to sea and set their nets. They go back to shore. They head back out, ...
An EveningReport.nz investigation by Kevin ListKiwibank services. Image by Kevin List.Evening Report looks into the separation of Kiwibank from New Zealand Post, and considers the impact on the public’s access to banking services in their communities.Kiwibank. What’s going on? Kiwibank and New Zealand Post are in the ...
Local Government New Zealand today confirmed what many local election commentators have observed; that more of the voting public cast their ballots in favour of women candidates than ever before. ...
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington (this week we totted up the data a day early, on Wednesday, to let our books ed. ...
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Portugal has been painted by pro-cannabis legalisation groups as a model to follow. Yet just last month, the mayor of Porto contradicted his previous pro-harm reduction position and endorsed reintroducing criminal penalties for drug use in public spaces. ...
Chief of Defence Force Air Marshal Kevin Short announced today the inclusion of six Cook Island First World War soldiers in the New Zealand and Commonwealth War Graves Commission’s official rolls of honour. ...
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For your breakfast viewing pleasure. Make sure you have a full pot of tea for your schadenfreude. 🙂
I’ve always been fascinated by the lefts ability to schadenfreude.
It is one of the more distasteful aspects of (some) lefties in all. All “caring” until it’s someone they do not like – then they get great pleasure from it.
There have been studies linking it to envy – and that does not surprise me at all. As I have personally found a lot of the left envious. Jealous and bitter of the success of others.
Study link schadenfreude Wikipedia
I recognise irony when I see it and this one was particularly easy to spot.
BTW, link is not working.
What? Churlish James muttering defensively about “schaudenfreude”? James and ilk express that sentiment in relation to the ‘culpable poor’ on a daily basis. That’s basically why the big fat kick-ass BBQ is here at all.
See there you go again with the BBQ.
I’m sorry if you don’t have friends and or family that can or want to participate in this great kiwi tradition- but that’s your loss not mine.
I love to BBQ – we do it a lot. It’s partly because we love the food (who dosnt like a nice bloody steak?) – but mainly because it’s fun to surrounded yourself with fantastic friends and family.
You should try it – it will give you a brighter outlook on life.
You should have more brighter future bbq’s, anything to keep you from making a fool of yourself on TS.
I know jimbo, why can’t they just gloat and chuckle smugly like normal decent folk?
Gee Gabs, from the sound of it – you are hanging around with the wrong type of people.
“…I’ve always been fascinated by the lefts ability to schadenfreude…”
That’s because it involves having an imagination, empathy and an entire array of higher order thinking of which you are bereft. I guess it must like looking through a window into a world where you’ll never be able to play.
I try not to play with naughty children.
Schadenfreude has zip to do with envy, Jimmy, and everything to do with the deep, deep satisfaction of seeing someone shooting themselves with one of their very own carefully crafted balls of shit.
Now, revel in your fellow right-wingers schadenfreude, it’s fucking delicious.
Steve Bannon’s spectacular fall from grace in Trump World is a big, salty, delicious bowl of schadenfreude from the political gods in celebration of the new year.
[…]
Now, like two rats in a bag, Trump and Bannon are tearing at one another in a delicious public spat that has every possible bit of drama, except Bannon drunkenly bellowing for a round of fisticuffs with all comers and Trump offering to compare the length of their relative manhoods on live television. They deserve one another in so many ways
https://amp.thedailybeast.com/bannon-banished-for-telling-truths-about-trump-as-maga-monsters-turn-on-each-other
ZOMG that dailybeast piece is so DELICIOUS!
“…the Mercer money train came to a halt when the Metternich of Alabama, after getting beaten like a cheap drum in the U.S. Senate race…”
Deep chortles, they were heard.
The author at 1 minute.
https://art19.com/shows/with-friends-like-these/episodes/1428074c-f9f0-478e-8ecf-bc4c2b50eae1
And I am bemused by James’s ability to demolition the English language.
Schadenfreude is strictly a noun, James – both in the original German, and in English.
To show you how silly it sounds, I have just misused ‘demolition’ the same way you misused schadenfreude. It seems that some righties need the obvious explained to them…
if you bemused by my use of the engligh language – you must love Eco Maoris.
Eco Maori speaks from the heart.
For one who is so sure of his utter perfection in every way, how about thinking whether you should have written “If you ARE so bemused by my use of the E(cap)nglish language…”
I think you’ll find it’s “bitter at” not “bitter of”.
I know I’m not meant to put this out there but this guy was at the fellowship last night.
Still haven’t found any reports in the corporate media about the massive storm that hit the country written in the context of climate change…..
But I found this.
‘Living on the Edge: What climate change means for Taranaki ’
The climate change debate has hogged headlines recently but its influence on humanity is undeniable. In the first of a six-part series called Living on the Edge, reporter Deena Coster takes a deeper look at what it means for Taranaki.
The rough and rugged Taranaki coastline will be unrecognisable in 100 years’ time.
Houses once dotted along the coast will be lost, as coastal erosion and rising sea levels steal away the very land they rest on………..’
https://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/98838911/living-on-the-edge-what-climate-change-means-for-taranaki
Encouraging to see the topic being discussed properly in parts of the media.
The whole article is worth reading.
More thoughtful analysis here….
‘From drought scare to deluge despair: The science of the storm.’
‘ After a period of calm, dry weather for much of the country, in which century old records for dryness were toppled, the furious storm from the north seemed to come out of the blue.
What may at first seem like atmospheric whiplash was actually a case of cause and effect – and may be a taste of things to come…..’
‘With rising sea-levels, as expected under a warming climate, storm surges will get higher and reach further inland – issues already evident in pockets around the country, where homes and infrastructure have been damaged.’
Again, read the whole article.
https://i.stuff.co.nz/national/100344401/from-drought-scare-to-deluge-despair-the-science-of-the-storm
Hi Ed;
Thanks for raising the “Climate change” issue it was urgently needed to address our worsening climate of severe weather now reaching us all.
As PM Jacinda Ardern said clearly and correctly;-
“Climate change is truly the nuclear issue of our generation’s time”.
But it is so sad that even with the truly ‘extreme’ weather events we all experienced over the last few days, was not responded to properly by all the media!!!!
All the media could do was to “minimalise’ most of the event, and worsening weather events we are now experiencing now.
Question is to all the ‘climate change deniers’ & naysayers is;
“How much is enough to wake them up” ????
Will it need to take many lives lost?
Will it take a dramatic loss of their own food chain so they starve?
Will it take a loss of all forms of transport?
Will it take a loss of our coastal regions up to 50kms inland before they will actually finally put up their hands in surrender to ‘mother nature’ and plead for forgiveness for their folly???????
We certainly hope they will finally wake up now and join us to begin reducing climate change emissions and begin rebuilding secure future.
Lets do this!!!!!!!
Stuff/Fairfax have had an epiphany.
There’s even a climate change quiz.
Get people to do it.
These operations work on click bait and it would be good for them to see people are interested in climate change.
https://i.stuff.co.nz/environment/climate-news/100104523/how-much-do-you-know-about-climate-change-test-your-knowledge-here
“As PM Jacinda Ardern said clearly and correctly;-
“Climate change is truly the nuclear issue of our generation’s time”.”
Yep, but can’t see much action on this from Labour in the RMA and in TPPA (whoever version) or any future planning. Climate change is ignored (apart from various taxation schemes) and not actually looked at what’s gonna happen when parts of the world get uninhabitable in particular those that have huge populations (India looking to get to 50 degree temperature in some places), massive pollution in China or islands that will become are under water and all around the world in particular the west, houses destroyed on mass by flooding and storms. Agricultural land in drought and housing and people galore, but less land in agricultural production or even owed locally by the the country but by offshore individuals and corporations whose aim is profit not social conscience. Or maybe wars start breaking out to control dwindling resources. Japan is obsessed already with doing it’s own thing on fisheries and not cooperating in local efforts to have ecological sanctuaries to keep the fish stocks and biodiversity going. Our fisheries control is laughable in this country and it seems NZ are only too happy to turn a blind eye to slave labour to catch and process it as well as overfishing.
Wilson’s car parking for example in Australia show enormous “costs” leading to small profits on eye watering charges and a very small tax take for Australia. Who knew that you were helping the profits of Hong Kong billionaires when you parked at the local hospital. Clearly this type of carry on is going to get worse and worse – National even wanted to sell off the state houses to the Chinese or Australian corporations. China owns 50% of silver fern farms and Fonterra seems more focused on the 8 million salary of it’s executive than any sort of forward planning in any area from innovation to pollution control. I’m sure big business would love to sell Fonterra off into shares on the sharemarket, but for the moment making do with just selling off the daily farms themselves which will eventually change the control more offshore.
Cheese costs more than the average wage after taxes already in this country, bottled water costs more than soft drink. Not looking good for local Kiwis future, if things start going bad around the world and we find we don’t actually own much of our land and assets anymore and other’s are making the profits from NZ produce, water and housing booms (aka James Hardie types) while the Kiwi taxpayers are paying for the infrastructure and disaster costs but have little export income anymore so can’t afford social welfare. With enough of a change in demographics we might start getting a society that doesn’t believe in ‘wasting money” on social welfare anymore and privatise and plunder everything for a business opportunity.
Still haven’t found any reports in the corporate media about the massive storm that hit the country written in the context of climate change…..
That could be because sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and weather is just weather. Here’s NIWA on the effects of La Niña weather on New Zealand.
La Niña events have different impacts on New Zealand’s climate. More north–easterly winds are characteristic, which tend to bring moist, rainy conditions to the north–east of the North Island, and reduced rainfall to the south and south–west of the South Island.
…
Warmer than normal temperatures typically occur over much of the country during La Niña, although there are regional and seasonal exceptions.
So, it’s been a lot warmer than usual and the north-east is copping it from storms – classic La Niña weather. If journalists aren’t rushing to blame local weather conditions on climate change, good on them.
Yes, Milt
Sometime it’s just weather conditions..
The ad nauseum of ‘climate change’ does not add positive value
This is climate change, not weather.
Some of you will only wake up to it when the flood is at your own doorstep.
And the world can’t wait for you.
‘Those warm, dry, and settled conditions contributed to an unusual phenomena: a marine heat wave, in which sea temperatures around New Zealand were about 2 degrees Celsius warmer than average.
Off the west coast, in the Tasman Sea, temperatures were as much as 6C above normal – at the time, it was the largest sea temperature anomaly in the world.’
Insurance companies are responding to CC
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/property/98797867/insurers-warn-climate-change-will-hit-policy-prices-and-make-some-properties-uninsurable
Ans in stuff today
How climate change could send your insurance costs soaring
Climate change is not only set to transform our environment, it’s also likely to cause insurance costs to skyrocket.
The Insurance Council of New Zealand has warned that our country is one of the most vulnerable to the impact of natural disasters for an economy of our size.
Council chief executive Tim Grafton says New Zealand can expect to face, on average, annual costs of $1.6 billion (just under 1 per cent of its GDP) from natural disasters, based on data going back to 1900
Organisations with money in the situation clearly realise climate change is happening fast. Exxon Mobil knew about CC in the 70s ( and hid their findings as it would impact their profits)
But to some misguided fellows, like Trump and PM, it’s just weather.
Humankind and other species on this planet can’t wait for such dilettantes and deniers.
In 1959 Edward Teller warned the industry about the consequences of burning fossil fuel.
Yeah, but Teller was beating his own project plowshare – nuclear fracking (happened) and using three hydrogen bombs to make a large harbour on aussie west coast (politely declined).
I vaguely recall hearing something about their ambitions when I was a kid but shit, they were convinced.
Although we had our own canal dreams, too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Plowshare#Proposals
https://timespanner.blogspot.co.nz/2008/11/canal-that-was-never-dug.html
At least they didn’t start digging it and lose funding.
Insurance companies as part of the financial industry have underwritten some primary causes of planetary pollution and destruction since, day one…and will continue to do so…
The ‘institutions have profited heavily playing a part in creating the circumstances, and they will attempt to continue the plunder…
Swiss Re and out major players in the Global Insurance industry have been warning of the financial effects of Climate Change for years. In 2010 Swiss RE wrote this:
My bold
http://www.swissre.com/rethinking/the_effects_of_climate_change.html
Their assessments were based on the IPPC projections then of a 0.37m rise in sea level. The fact that those projections have now increased by around a factor of 10, exacerbates the problem dramatically.
Yep, they’re realising that they won’t be able to cover it at all and are reaching for government subsidies.
I would nationalise all insurance companies and stop their blackmailing rort once and for all.
No reason why not have a govt srvice. Nationally-based rates system collected via TLAs to fund the building insurance, EQC, and fire levies, separate assessments for contents.
This is climate change, not weather.
Weather is weather. You’re wanting journalists to report storms as climate change, something which would only encourage people with functioning cognitive faculties to ridicule the journalists, and worse, might encourage people to believe climate change is bullshit. Worse yet, it encourages other people to mistake weather for climate, resulting in even more imbecilic “Frosty again – so much for global warming!” comments by right-wingers.
By all means expect news reports to mention that storms can be expected to increase in frequency and severity due to climate change, but an individual storm remains just a storm.
Yes I am expecting journalists to use context for a story.
That’s a basic of the job.
Reporting Brexit without the context of the deindustrialisation of parts of the UK makes no sense.
Reporting Trump without the context of the deindustrialisation of parts of the US makes no sense.
Reporting the war in Syria without the context of climate change and the desertification of parts of Syria makes no sense.
Reporting the changing weather patterns in New Zealand without the context of climate change makes no sense.
Reporting the events in Gaza without the context of 1917, 1948, 1967 and other key historical dates makes no sense.
Context is everything.
My lovely strawman !
http://www.brixtonbuzz.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/wickerman-image-1.jpg
To be fair, the main Stuff article about the recent storms does put it in the context of climate change: “With rising sea-levels, as expected under a warming climate, storm surges will get higher and reach further inland – issues already evident in pockets around the country, where homes and infrastructure have been damaged.”
I was complimenting them at 3 and 3.1
Context is everything.
It sure is. And the context of a weather event is weather patterns – La Niña, for instance. Storms have been causing floods in New Zealand since before there were humans here – linking any individual storm to climate change would be as stupid as claiming global warming doesn’t exist because there was an early snowfall.
Ok – we shall agree to disagree.
And let’s use more polite language.
There is no need for aggressive words.
That’s pretty funny from someone who’s had a moderator warning today for accusing a commenter of having a “psychopathic mentality”…
I have heeded the advice.
Is saying someone is stupid the same, as might be stupid, or showing stupid tendencies or ideas, better, worse or just different than saying someone has a psychopathic mentality? And is that the same as saying someone is a psychopath? And can hard critical words never be used against anyone here? Questions that run through my head but then I am borderline crazy these days.
That’s a removal of context.
Well, to be accurate they should be reporting storms in relation to climate change and how one affects the other. They shouldn’t be ignoring it just because it’s weather.
Actually Psycho attribution of Climate Change to Extreme weather events is a developing science. The 2003 European Heatwave that had a not insignificant effect on the Syrian situation, has been assessed for instance to have been more likely to have occurred as a result of AGW.
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature03089
However,
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-can-now-blame-individual-natural-disasters-on-climate-change/
As you say – you just can’t look at an extreme weather event and say “that’s climate change” but what is becoming more possible with improving climate modelling is to say the AGW has contributed significantly to the possibility of that event occurring.
Furthermore take for instance the major damage done to my favourite piece of roadway, the coastal road north from Thames over the weekend. (it truly is a delight to pass along especially at christmas with the pohutakawas all in full bloom and the sea and little bays alongside).
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/100346389/evacuation-warnings-and-rocks-on-the-road-in-firth-of-thames
But this road SH25 is under severe threat from rising sea levels, the direct result of AGW. With a king tide and storm surge the destruction caused is inevitable. I’m not sure just how this vital link to the Peninsula will be maintained into the future.
Newsroom did some good stories on the vulnerability of several Coromandel towns.
Whitianga
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/@environment/2017/12/11/67390/drowning-dreams-72-new-houses-on-man-made-canals
Thames, Cooks Beach
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/@environment/2017/12/11/67374/drowning-dreams-billions-at-stake-as-govt-mulls-sea-level-rules
Yes I’m well aware of the work of both Denis and Thomas (referred to in the first link). I too have submitted to the TCDC on the matter wrt to the district plan, and my daughter is a Community Board member so we are all on to the problem.
The developers however are only concerned in making a quick buck and will find any piece of nonsense to hide behind. This piece of nonsense from Gloria Humphries is typical:
The 1.6mm pa SLR she refers to above is the long term average over the past century. ie there has been around 17cm of SLR over the past 100 years. This, of course, completely ignores the increasing rate of SLR from melting ice shelves, that has been increasingly rapid over the past couple of decades. But if she can get away with it, and sell off a few more properties, and pass the buck on to Council – well who cares?
TCDC will need a lot of government money.
SH 25 being a State Highway is of course maintained by Govt. – Just how and what the level of funding will be or what the long term solution is has yet to be determined. But SH 25 is repeatedly closed due to slips and subsidence. Even though it is a very attractive piece of NZ – I wouldn’t consider living up the coast – my doc lives up that way and on one occasion the slip was in place for days. He would ride his bike to the slip, clamber over the rocks, and then pick up his car to drive the rest of the way into work each day. This is becoming a regular occurrence for those people living up that way.
As for the fate of the sea side residences – this is a problem over the whole of NZ but TCDC is unique in that it has one of the longest coastlines of any regional council in the country and only around 30,000 rate payers. It is also unique in that in 1931 during the Depression and the closure of the gold mines Thames, which had borrowed heavily for a number of large projects, was unable to pay its way with a high unemployment and rate payers now unable to pay their bills. The incoming Mayor went to the govt and the town was promptly placed in Administration and remained so until 1947. You can still se the results of this in the rather sad civil works – monsoon drains rather than modern guttering etc – around the town even to this day.
Thank you for sharing your detailed historical knowledge of the area.
Why in your opinion we’re all those developments on the waterways permitted?
Corruption?
Naivety?
Ignorance?
Slackness?
Or something else?
Like all councils TCDC tends to be the governance of the privileged for the privileged. The past Mayor’s family is in the civil construction business – so naturally is generally supportive of “development” in all its forms. The geology of the area is also not conducive to large urban areas, being in essence a string of extinct volcanos. There is constant pressure from the three major cities Auckland Hamilton and Tauranga – all within 2 hours drive from Coromandel for further development as people retire, and wish to move to be by the sea. So if a developer proposes a new subdivision – it will be looked at favourably. Having said that the fact is that these developments were reviewed under the guidelines of what was then the available knowledge of projected SLR. The T & T report referred to the IPPC report and the Whitianga development as you see was constructed with that scenario in mind.
However, it was always understood that the IPPC is conservative in its assessments as it is an international body and the report has to be agreed by a large variety of people and nations.
The sad fact however is that the last government (ie Nick Smith) sat on the latest SLR assessment and these were not made public or given any credence until James Shaw released them on taking office. Had these figures been available at the time it is probable that the developments would not have been given the green light.
Very interesting macro. Thank you for sharing your detailed knowledge of the subject.
The ‘ad nauseam’ Of climate change.
Do you think like that dinosaur David Bellamy?
ED, your thinking appears lacks depth
Paul had a similar approach
Perhaps you know eachother…
Another troll like James .
I suspected so after your climate denial.
I shall be exiting the conversation.
There is nothing to be gained from encouraging the nonsense you lot spout.
Are you all one and the same?
Ed, if that is the level of your thinking and the tactics you continue to employ, it is no surprise that Paul was banned….
The posts you put up about various and many subjects, lack fundamental awareness and thought when you upload them…
Does that mean that you are ‘wrong’ in what you upload….maybe/maybe not….but the tactics are not going to attract people to take your links and then perhaps do some further reading of their own into [subject]
1. Post links with statements in absolutes [financial crash coming et al]
2. When another commentator questions/queries, refutes or proposes another angle….
3. Accuse the commentator of tr*lling…
In no way are such tactics likely to encourage others to read further …
Surely that is why you post comments with links here…..to encourage others to investigate further and thus having greater numbers of people becoming engaged?
If the above is not why you post the subject links, then I would suggest taking some time to assess internally, why it is you are doing so….
Have a good day
Didn’t Paul have an ideological eating disorder also.
The ad nauseum holier than thou trolling about climate change is a pain.
All true PM but C.C. is exacerbating their normal effects.
It’s possibly changing the oscillation of the ENSO as well which will have unknown consequences.
And I have no problem with journalists reporting that, which they do. Ed is asking them to pretend weather is climate.
I’m asking for context.
> That could be because sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and weather is just weather.
Where were you when I was trying to argue this the other day?! I got soundly rubbished by everyone here
A.
Sorry, I must have been annoying people on Kiwiblog that day.
That doesnt narrow it down much
And sometimes one causes the other.
Actually it’s a given that climate causes the weather.
100% of the weather is affected by climate change. 100% of the weather occurs on a planet which has warmer oceans and surface temperatures and more water vapour in the atmosphere and therefore, more energy.
The degree to which this affects individual weather events is asking the wrong question. It’s of academic interest only. From a practical perspective resilience and planning are far more important than attribution.
This is what is happening in my part of the country.
https://www.odt.co.nz/regions/west-coast/erosion-exposes-old-greymouth-rubbish-dump
I walk my dog most days on this beach and the situation is worsening by the day. The council dumped a few loads of rock, but the huge seas and recent king tide have swept over and around the rocks. A proper sea wall is needed but the Grey District Council apparently can’t afford it.
At the moment layers of barely composed rubbish is visible complete with black rubbish sacks. Apparently there’s all sorts of toxic goodies in there including radioactive waste from the local hospital.
There you go I told you all that all our internet devices could be hacked.
But it is not just the internet devices it is all the smart devices in OUR world.
Some good intelligent person alerts US to the back door Entrance into our passwords on these chips and the chip manufacturers put a sticky tape cover of a lie on this subject and say O we new about this a while ago we are finding a patch we just did not want to ALARM the public . What a load of bullshit these back door entrances are not a design flaw they have been forced to put these BDE into our chips so the Governments of the west can control us most likely the USA FBI CIA . Why do you think China has invested billions in to making there own chips and a laser beam communication satellite so they have safe secure COMS . I no all my coms are hacked my childrens com to . The neo liberal 1% want total control they have been deliberately suppressing our Ladys Mana to over the centuries because they know they will get there asses kicked by OUR strong intelligent humane caring LADYS . There is a doco on wonderwoman DC comics started this comic to lift our ladys mana at the time the 1% were ok with that because they wanted to motivate our ladys to go to work and what was the work well making crap for the world wars and when the war was over they stopped using her to lift ladys mana and got wander woman to act like a dutiful submissive house wife .
These wankers like interfering in every aspect of OUR lives and don t want to cede power they don t give a shit that they are stuffing up our WORLDS SOCIETY and motherearth and all her wonderfull beings . ECO Maori knows that US the 99% will put a stop to this way of life of shitting in ones own back yard and we will create a beautiful caring equal world society for all whom are on Papatuanuku.
Ka kite ano
It’s not ALL devices. It’s intel based ones. AMD chips are just fine.
“Serious security flaws that could let attackers steal sensitive data, including passwords and banking information, have been found in processors designed by Intel, AMD and ARM.”
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jan/04/meltdown-spectre-worst-cpu-bugs-ever-found-affect-computers-intel-processors-security-flaw
Thank you – I stand corrected.
This link here explains it all
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/meltdown-spectre-exploits-intel-amd-arm-nvidia,36219.html
“World Rugby will be overdosing on fury. Eliota Fuimaono-Sapolu has just let the coke out of the bag and there is nothing they can do about it. Our favourite Samoan casually said that some top All Blacks have taken cocaine and World Rugby can’t even slap a ban on him. The secret is out, if he is to be believed.”
https://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/rugby/opinion/100355280/mark-reason-eliota-fuimaonosapolus-cocaine-bomb-makes-perfect-sense
Thugby coke heads. Who knew (everyone). James?
From the article you reference
A damning description of MCaw and other well paid All Blacks
‘The tragedy for Fuimaono-Sapolu is that he has been grievously unsupported by players in New Zealand and Australia who all seem under the corporate yoke. Where is today’s Anton Oliver? Richie McCaw sits on a panel that absurdly makes Beauden Barrett the World Rugby Player of the Year again, not a title that a player is ever likely to win in a Samoan shirt – Beauden, blondish poster boy, good for business.
When did McCaw ever speak out on behalf of anything? No wonder he was a school prefect. But as Fuimaono-Sapolu says: “If Richie McCaw said anything about the GCSB, the whole of New Zealand would be up in arms against it.”
They key words…..
‘players in New Zealand and Australia who all seem under the corporate yoke.’
MCaw pimps for Fonterra and supports a company destroying our rivers and environment.
Some All Blacks….
Rich
Entitled
Coke sniffers
Wife beaters
Booze addled
Young men.
What role models.
Liar! According to your own definition, that is.
Wrong. It’s Intel, some ARM and maybe AMD depending upon which security hole is being used.
Don’t worry about your device(s) getting hacked. Instead, be more concerned about your brain being manipulated & changed by and through those devices. The content, delivery, and interaction/consumption of ‘information’ through those devices are having major impact on us and (our) society. What happens when you ‘lose’ (control of) your smart phone is nothing compared to when you ‘lose’ (control of) your mind – they seem to go hand-in-hand and maybe that’s not coincidental either …
That is some of the more salient points, Incognito…
The lack of awareness about the impacts of technology related mental health, is increasingly well documented, but not widely understood at the ‘consumer end’…
The way that the one-way is being pushed on us is amazing. Everyone is brainwashed about wonderful technology, you need to be immersed in it up to your nose to get anywhere, a job, connect with anybody. Kids are learning to type rather than write. Why not, it is so much easier to interface with machines and soon some people will have chips put in so their brains can connect directly with the communications port – cut out the middleman.
I wanted to speak to someone, phoned up and went through the numbers game, then got message that it was so easy to go on-line, this while I was on the phone already. Finally I did get service without waiting too long but the process of ‘disruption’ embedded in business practice now means that nothing you value now can be guaranteed to remain available, all must be subject to eternal, infernal change and churn.
Be nice to the people at call centres, they may be replaced with machines, as we all may be until some sort of saturation point is reached.
A recent contact did not want to accept my landline number though there was no particular reason not to, and I have an answerphone attached.
My choices are being taken away, yet this was part of the mantra of free markets, neo lib economics etc. I don’t believe any of the upbeat future-is-great drum-beaters any more. They are either stool pigeons, or specialise in living in the ‘now’, or are too young to be trusted to understand or be interested in the context of what they are speiling.
Johan;
Thanks for correcting that fake statement made by a troll saying ‘AMD chips are just fine.’
We have enough mis-information around now without more fake statements made to fool us all to believe some systems are safe or ‘fine’.
We all need to be given free upgades for them to block these flaws and rid ‘stealing of our sensitive data, including passwords and banking information’.
If the manufacturer caused these flaws in these IC chips then they must pay to fix them too. “consumers have rights too.”
Like automobile ‘recalls’ we should have the same rights to repairs.
Same applies with whoever caused our destructive “climate change” it is the companies who marketed the products who must be held responsible for the repair of our climate again too.
Someone got analytical about the timing and relationship between Fox and Friends and the terracotta turdface eruptions on twitter. And yep, he’s basically just live-tweeting F&F.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/01/05/trump-media-feedback-loop-216248
A Sugar tax is well overdue here.
We should not follow the UK – instead we should tax sugar at the cost it has to our society and it’s health. Tax at $5 per litre and make sugary drinks expensive items.
And stop all advertising.
And limit points of sale.
Here is the timid approach of the UK.
‘Coca-Cola to sell smaller bottles at higher prices in response to sugar tax.
‘…..The sugar tax – designed to help combat child obesity – was announced by then chancellor George Osborne in 2016 and he gave drinks-makers time to change their recipes if they wished to escape the levy. From April soft drinks manufacturers will be taxed at 18p per litre on drinks containing 5g of sugar or more per 100ml, or 24p per litre if the drink has 8g of sugar or more per 100ml. The tax will apply to one in five drinks sold in the UK…….’
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/jan/05/coca-cola-to-sell-smaller-bottles-at-higher-prices-in-response-to-sugar-tax
Yeah, and we should have a special car tax for those cars that in the wrong hands kill the users. Or a sun tax cos melanoma. Or an internet tax because some people write silly things on blogs.
Or we could start banning people who can’t sensibly and safely use the products that the vast majority have no problems with.
That sounds fun
Let’s start with you.
We already have petrol taxes to cover the roading and other infrastructure, and ACC levies on registration and fuel to cover the health and income costs of accidents.
A fat tax is well overdue here.
We should not follow the UK – instead we should tax fat pricks at the cost they have to our society and vote health. Tax at $5 per kilo over normal bodyweight as determined by the Ministry of body normality
Alternatively we can just burn the witches !
How about updated food standards preventing manufacturers from selling all this sugar-filled crap.
The critics of a sugar tax speak like true believers of the neoliberal cult.
You sound like John Galt.
Pigovian taxes are neoliberal. Regulate sugar maximums, don’t tax content.
Probably best just to make the products illegal.
Well Coke with what, nine teaspoons of sugar per 330ml, sure. Three or four not so much. Regulate a steadily decreasing maximum and neither manufacturer nor customer is penalized.
Ed that sounds like what a troll would come up with. Illegal causes more problems and creates black markets etc. if there is some demand for the product then it encourages people on the make to encourage others to use more. Instead of discouraging. This is already known. A facetious comment on your part, but it’s the first thought to the minds of the brainless.
Yes that was tongue in cheek.
I recommend we approach sugar and alcohol the same way we tackled tobacco.
Gradual and significant price increases.
Stop advertising.
Make health campaigns to explain bad health outcomes.
Limit places it can be sold.
Make it lose its glamour.
Programmes at school to edit the young.
Alcohol free and sugar free places.
In 20-30 years, Coca Cola and Heineken would be on the run, like Philip Morris are now.
Only works if it is a bipartisan initiative, I cannot see the political will on either side of the House at the moment
A.
+100000 Ed sugar is limiting us poor people life span to the low 60
Nah , that’s your stupidity and mental weakness.
[I think you’ve been warned about this before. The only reason you’re not getting a ban is I don’t have time to look, but if I see you doing that shit again I will ban you.
Seeing your comment to Paul below as well, I suggest having a think about how you want to be here too, because the whole nasty shit coming from you since the election is getting tedious. Your history of contributions here will only get you so far if moderators have to keep putting time into this. – weka]
BM Bloody minded.
moderator note for you to read above.
Sorry Weka.
my comment was for BM. Nothing wrong with your comment.
Please ignore bm and his psychopathic mentality.
They are part of the ME world, not the WE society.
[I really don’t want to have to be moderating today, so please tone down the abuse and the mental health slurs (they harm everyone) – weka]
Fuck off Paul.
This guy has got some mental health issues which need addressing asap ?
Actually, it’s the RWNJs that have mental health issues.
“we should tax sugar at the cost it has to our society and it’s health. Tax at $5 per litre and make sugary drinks expensive items”.
I trust you can provide a link to some analysis that the cost is $5.00/litre?
It does seem such a suspiciously round number doesn’t it?
Exactly $5.00/litre. I’m sure you didn’t just pull it out of thin air.
You remind me of when then Mayor Ken Livingston brought in a Congestion Charge in London. He claimed that it was merely to cover the costs that traffic congestion was causing. It just happened to be five pounds a time.
Pure coincidence of course that it was such a round figure.
Now, where do you get $5.00/litre as being the cost to society of sugary drinks?
Cigarettes now cost $30 a pack. The tax on them must be over $20 a pack.
My $5 is an arbitrary number to deter the purchase of debilitating sugary drinks and mitigate their devastating impact on people, society and the country.
It could just as easily be $10 tax per litre .
Personally, I’d copy some South American countries and boot companies like Coca-Cola and McDonalds out of the country.
Cigarettes now cost $30 a pack. The tax on them must be over $20 a pack.
Yep. The government’s raised taxes on cigarettes so high that they’ve created a black market for them and people are robbing dairies to supply that black market. Three cheers for good governance!
Given the above, I’m surprised that anyone thinks it would be a great idea to do something similar for sugar. Public health activists are a very unusual breed.
They are paid to be single-minded when you need to be triple-minded to get around the combination of sugar carving, advertising promotion and profit.
There is no care of humanity in business. If you want to buy they rarely twist your arm, they just play on your mind starting with tv ads when you are a baby, and if you buy good, and if you get sick, then they will charge you for some treatment that will get you on your feet and buying again. And we buy into this sweet and vicious circle.
+1
+111
There’s a range to where taxes work. Beyond that you need other methods.
I don’t have the slightest problem with the statement about it being an arbitrary figure that is simply intended to make the drinks expensive.
What I object to is the oft-used claim that some level of tax is, in your own words, “tax sugar at the cost it has to our society and it’s health”.
It is done far to often when there is no actual justification for the setting of the tax at a particular level. If people would simply say that they want to make something expensive they are being honest. When they claim that it is to meet the costs of the vice they are not.
As far as smoking goes smokers are probably the only group who pay enough for their vice to pay for the health treatment they incur. When you include the fact that they are likely to collect superannuation for fewer years they may actually be doing the taxpayer a favour.
The tax collected is about $2 billion per year. That is a pretty good chunk of the Health budget. As long ago as 2012 Treasury said that smokers do pay for their costs.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10809145
I don’t mind these taxes being charged. It helped persuade me to give up smoking cigars, a habit I greatly enjoyed. I just object to the idea of increasing the taxes because “you cost us taxpayers money”
Obesity and tooth decay cost society a lot of money.
Perhaps they do Ed, but you are missing the point.
If you are going to tax the sales of Sugary drinks in order to recover the costs to Society from consuming the drinks then you have to work out, at least to a reasonable approximation, what that cost is. Then you can charge a tax that will recover that amount.
If you are going to apply a punitive tax in order to discourage people consuming those items then you should have the courage of your convictions. Say that is what you are doing. Don’t pretend it is only to save the poor taxpayer from having to pay.
You appear to be following the punitive approach. Well admit it.
I would do it for both reasons.
That’s why I put out a large arbitrary number.
It’s the right wing way: get tough.
Fine by me.
The whole point of high taxation for cigarettes and other bad for you stuff is to stop people from using them.
The cost of both their medical costs and the premature death is far too high. The amount cannot be accurately measured in monetary terms as a lot of it is emotional which causes a lot of flow on effects.
Oh, suck my balls. My odds of premature death are my business. You’re just as bad as Ed railing about a vegan lifestyle, which might make me live longer and it’ll sure as shit feel like it.
I’ll go to hell in my own damned way, thankyou very much. If there were mandatory workplace air quality standards rather than arbitrary bans on stinky things, I wouldn’t take anyone with me, either.
You do realise that you’re whinging about the same thing don’t you?
No, they’re not the same thing.
Because tobacco smoke isn’t the only bad thing in the air. And decent ventilation and filtration to address those other things would make most bans unnecessary.
No. It doesn’t work that way.
Most other pollutants are external while smoking indoors is internal. Thus it will affect those inside disproportionately.
Well, yes it does work that way. Because air from outside comes inside, glycol smoke machines in gigs have their own issues, and packing a few hundred people into a nightclub with barely adequate ventilation becomes a nightmare of mutual-contamination. I have literally had ceiling condensate drip on me.
But the classic example is aircraft – recirculate the air as much as possible for a random collection of dozens or hundreds of people, and keep them exposed for hours.
I recall a Washington Post article from years ago saying a Dutch study found smokers actually end up costing the health system less than non-smokers, because they tend to die of things that kill you quickly (eg heart attacks, lung cancer) rather than spending decades deteriorating in old age with successive expensive health issues. If our primary concern were costs to health system, we should subsidise smoking instead of penalising it.
One study? Gosh.
Where there’s one, there are usually more …
http://www.justfacts.com/healthcare.asp#spending-preventative
I understand the tobacco industry paid good money for them.
Well, good, because no public health departments of publicly-funded universities would fund research that might return such politically-unsatisfactory results.
Yeah, but the numbers still add up.
@ One Anonymous Bloke 6 January 2018 at 8:18 pm:
Scepticism is healthy in science; suspicion is not.
This Dutch study published in 2008 is freely available/accessible (Open Access) and was funded by the Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sports:
Lifetime Medical Costs of Obesity: Prevention No Cure for Increasing Health Expenditure
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.0050029
Conclusions: Although effective obesity prevention leads to a decrease in costs of obesity-related diseases, this decrease is offset by cost increases due to diseases unrelated to obesity in life-years gained. Obesity prevention may be an important and cost-effective way of improving public health, but it is not a cure for increasing health expenditures.
Another study (two authors in common with above study) published in 2014 is also freely available/accessible (Open Access):
Disease Prevention: Saving Lives or Reducing Health Care Costs?
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0104469
[NB The contributions of author Pieter van Baal were supported by the Network for Studies on Pensions, Aging and Retirement (NETSPAR http://www.netspar.nl) as part of the project “Rising life expectancy: causes and consequences in the Netherlands”. NETSPAR is a think tank and knowledge network established in 2005. The Foundation’s activities are pursued through the Netspar Center, an operational unit of Tilburg University.]
Conclusions: The stronger the negative impact of a disease on longevity, the higher health care costs would be after elimination. Successful treatment of fatal diseases leaves less room for longevity gains due to effective prevention but more room for health care savings.
The third study (different authors altogether) published in 1998 is also freely available/accessible and was funded by the Ministry of Health, Welfare, and Cultural Affairs, the Netherlands:
Preventing fatal diseases increases healthcare costs: cause elimination life table approach
https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.316.7124.26
Conclusions: The aim of prevention is to spare people from avoidable misery and death not to save money on the healthcare system. In countries with low mortality, elimination of fatal diseases by successful prevention increases healthcare spending because of the medical expenses during added life years.
You’ll notice that neither study focused solely on smoking and they, in fact, covered a very wide range of life-threatening diseases.
There have been plenty more studies published and I reject any suggestion that they all were biased through ‘inducements’ from ‘invested interests’.
Which is one of the reasons why I think we need to go to a UBI. Get rid of the pension and encourage older people to work – if they want to.
I’ve seen quite a lot of them over the years.
Usually done by University economists who smoke.
They get sick of the other academics who complain that the smokers are being supported by their wowser compatriots.
It is quite easy to justify the claim that smokers pay in full for their habit.
They never get published of course. It would be fatal for your professional reputational to publish such a thing. Rather like questioning any of the left wing shibboleths. The same thing was true in 1930s Germany when you were sacked for claiming that “Jewish” Physics, ie Relativity and Quantum Theory were correct.
I wish they would start a subsidy scheme..
Oh to be able to afford the occasional Romeo y Julieta Churchill again.
A 7 inch Cuban cigar with a 47 ring size. Bliss for an hour.
As Rudyard Kipling is reputed to have said.
“A woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke”.
I’ll bet he never said it in his wife’s hearing though.
They were fucking awesome. Sitting in the garden on a summer’s evening, quietly smoking as the birds and insects lived their lives – some of the most peaceful moments of my life.
Some fine havanas available at outrageous prices up in Auckland.
http://www.havanahouse.co.nz/webfiles/HavanaHouseCigarsNZ/files/2017_Retail_Pricelist.pdf
Sigh. Sadly, it’s been that long since I bought a cigar that those prices really are truly, truly outrageous.
Agreed – a borderline hate crime even.
I think good marijuana is cheaper on a per gram perspective.
Philistine.
“synonyms: crass, tasteless, uncultured, uncultivated, uneducated, untutored, unenlightened, unread, commercial, materialist, bourgeois, unsophisticated, unrefined”
How could you possibly compare Mary Jane to a fine Cuban cigar?
Or even one from the Dominican Republic as they are mostly are these days.
In New Zealand with a superannuation that’s not means or asset tested, that’s particularly true as every year early that someone dies from smoking-related causes is a significant saving in super that doesn’t have to be paid.
However, personally I’d rather people didn’t smoke and lived longer, so I’m OK with trying to convince people to stop smoking.
If it were just “trying to convince”, I’m okay with “telling to piss off”. Extortion and ostracism are a bit much, though.
Yep. There’s “trying to convince,” and there’s “let’s tax these things so much that fuckwits find it worth bashing a shop assistant to get them.”
My university’s currently trying to implement an extortion/ostracism plan for making the entire campus smoke-free, in which we managers are supposedly going to accost and note down identifying details of non-compliant smokers – “supposedly” because, well, like fuck that’s going to happen. My favourite part of the proceedings was when the public-health academics got into a scrap with the OSH people over whether designated smoking booths should be open or not – if they’re open, the deadly toxic fumes might be breathed in by innocent victims, but if they’re enclosed, that’s a breach of OSH regulations re smoking in an enclosed area in a workplace. Ah, good times…
Every so often I pull out the line that complete exclusion is discrimination on the grounds of having a medical condition, specifically addiction. If there’s nowhere for you to smoke, there’s nowhere for you to treat your addiction, therefore the place is not accessible to you because of your condition. Like stairs with no wheelchair access.
That’s why the ostracism is needed – so nobody looks at it logically.
Why did you enjoy it?
why does one enjoy a fine meal?
It’s actually a serious question – from an ex-smoker.
Someone who once would have sat down and ‘enjoyed’ a cigar.
I haven’t smoked for nearly 20 years and I actually gave up more than 20 years ago.
And that was a serious answer.
I mean, you can break down the appeal into things like the ritual, the diverse aromas, the variation between aroma and flavour, the art of storing and preparation, the breath control, and the generally calming and almost meditative practise, but (like poetry criticism and frog dissection) the experience is in the whole, not the sum of the parts.
It’s either something you go for, or something you don’t. Again, like poetry or frog dissection.
No, actually, it’s not.
This is what i mean by ‘ex-smoker’. It means that I’ve analysed the whole and realised that there was no attraction.
You smoked cigars?
Well, each to their own. I’m sure there are some musical pieces you think are awesome that I wouldn’t see the appeal of.
I have only just noticed this line of comments and this question.
I guess on this one I have to go along with McFlock.
It is the whole experience. I suppose the most pleasant part is sitting outside on a fine evening taking the occasional puff on the cigar and watching the smoke gently rise. Pure peace.
I really isn’t something that is subject to “analysis”
Perhaps Oscar Wilde put it best though
“If I have to explain, you wouldn’t understand”.
I never thought a simple comment about a cigar would have caused so many comments though.
Global economic crash coming in 2018.
Debt at $ 233 trillion…..
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-features/global-debt-crisis-explained-all-time-high-world-economy-causes-solutions-definition-a8143516.html
https://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/homer_simpson_end_is_near.jpg
It’s truly amazing how RWNJs always find ways to minimise or distract from the damage that their policies cause.
They don’t care anything except themselves.
The tornado/ tsunami/ flood has to actually hit them for it to become an important issue.
Their attitude is best summed up by the expression “I’m alright Jack.”
The 2017 version was “I’ve got a big barbecue and a boat.”
And then they’ll complain that a) the government isn’t doing enough and b) that the government should have acted sooner completely ignoring that it was them that prevented the government from acting as needed.
As you repeatedly and correctly state, we cannot afford the rich.
http://www.codecmoments.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/The-End-is-NOT-Nigh-01.jpg
More delusional pictures that mean nothing from a RWNJ that can’t make an argument.
How will they in the mega-high-finance world totter away from that. Would another war fix it?
I’m pretty sure that they’re hoping that it will.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11970041
John Roughan takes his shit with a ‘healthy’ dose of salt.
This is very possibly a piss take…I’m hoping…
“We are probably going to need bags of the stuff over the next few years. We are still enjoying good times economically and long may they last, but human society has to have something to worry about, or at least talk about, and in good times these days we fret about the environment. We had an election last year in which we were urged to worry that it was no longer safe to swim in rivers.
Be honest, do you want to swim in a river? “
Roughan.
Hosking.
Garner.
Soper.
Richardson
Smith
Williams
Pale
Male
Stale
Burn the witches !
Little bitches ?
Save your breath Jimmy.
Stunned mullet is looking for a reaction.
This is obviously the type of person who will get caught in the rip just off the beach and need to be rescued because he’s not swimming between the flags. The type of person who doesn’t understand that the flags are placed where swimming is safest. That moving the flags will make swimming less safe both for the swimmers and the lifeguards.
Good question? Why doesn’t he have any?
It was never right and has caused major problems. Please keep up to date with the real world.
That’s because you and them are really bloody stupid. Please note that if any of them had ended up in the hospital it would have been on our dime paying for their stupidity and then you would have been complaining about that.
One that would have ensured that the river would die. And we actually do need the environment to be healthy else we die as well.
We’re not separate from the environment but a part of it and we need it to live.
There’s a lot more joy provided by protecting the environment so that we can all survive than by trashing it to make a few rich and killing us all off.
Oh god, he even thinks that things stay the same all the bloody time. What a fucken moron.
Good reply dtb
And Roughan is a senior editor at the Herald.
That is how bad journalism is in this country.
He is the Master Clown?
Someone’s leaking details about the Downer – Papadopoulos meeting.
What followed was the now infamous May 2016 conversation over many glasses of wine at the swanky Kensington Wine Rooms, during which the 28-year-old Papadopoulos spilled to Downer that he knew of a Russian dirt file on the rival Clinton campaign consisting of thousands of hacked emails.
That night was a key moment that helped spark the FBI probe – since taken over by respected former FBI director Robert Mueller as a special counsel – into possible Trump campaign collusion with the Kremlin, including its hacking of the Democratic National Committee.
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/romantic-encounter-set-off-australias-role-in-triggering-donald-trump-investigation-20180105-h0e34r.html?
Maybe someone should speak with Mifsud (the London based professor who apparently doesn’t speak Russian, but who has claimed to have contact with Putin and what-not.) and who the Austalian guy says Papadopoulos said told him there was a tranch of emails held by the Russian government.
Hmm.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/professor-named-in-russia-disclosures-says-he-has-clean-conscious/2017/10/31/41a7a08e-be3b-11e7-959c-fe2b598d8c00_story.html?utm_term=.1aebcb8d9213
I guess we’ll have to wait until Downer’s referred to the DOJ for making false statements to find out whether or not there’s fire.
/
Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley and Lindsey Graham on Friday issued a criminal referral to the Justice Department, urging it to examine whether the former British spy Christopher Steele made false statements to the FBI “about the distribution of claims” contained in a dossier he wrote about alleged ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/dossier-author-chris-steele-referred-to-doj-by-grassley-and-graham-2018-1?r=US&IR=T
That doesn’t follow joe90.
Downer’s statement can be honest enough, but simply not reflect reality.
The Fusion GPS op-ed earlier this week called for the release of the transcripts of their committee testimony. Grassley and Graham are shit scared of what might be revealed so they’ve come up with a reason to hold up any release – Steele and his report are subject to an investigation.
So, *cough*, any move to shut down the Downer story says they’re shit scared of any further information that may come to light.
So can Assange and Murray’s. Neither of them know where the hacked/leaked email’s they were provided with came from. Murray can only repeat what he was told by the intermediary.
That doesn’t stop people from treating their hearsay as evidence.
This “key moment that helped spark” the FBI investigation. From the description it was one of the factors involved – it “helped”.
These days of course, we can take Jared Kushner’s word for it that he thought he was going to collude with Moscow to get the emails.
I thought Assange stated the wikileaks release got passed to them by a “Washington insider” (or some such) but wouldn’t reveal the source. And Murray said something similar, no?
In other words, they say they know who provided the info.
I guess it’s possible that the Russian government (or an agency of) had emails that they obtained via the net and decided to put them on some hardware that they gave to someone else, who then passed said hardware and the info it held on to Wikileaks.
I’d have thought there were more direct and less fraught ways to get info up through Wikileaks mind. But hey…
Murray said what the intermediary told him and Assange acted as Murray’s stenographer.
And it’s what Kushner and the other Trump grunts thought that matters anyway. It wasn’t Assange offering to collude with them.
…these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.
Mark Felt.
yeah and I wonder why Papadopolous wasn’t hauled in then and there for a thorough questioning. The Trump dossier has become such a liability that it cant be what prompted the FBI to surveil the Trump campaign. Now it has to be some earlier bullshit trigger
Meanwhile, on Earth, it’s likely that the FBI had a variety of reasons to start their investigation.
I can imagine why you would think there’d be just one though.
PS: the reason they don’t just “haul people in for questioning right then and there” is because from an investigator’s point of view, it’s nice to know the answers to the questions you’re putting to potential perps before you ask them.
And it takes 6 months ?
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-12-31/nyt-publishes-report-debunking-fbi-use-dossier-gets-shredded-immediately-fake-news
It takes as long as it takes. These are, as Michael Shermer says, “extraordinary claims”: “an extraordinary claim must be placed into a larger context to see how it fits.”
I have some real problems with this – leaving aside how much of a creep Downer is.
Drunken conversations are generally full of overblown bs and bluster at the best of times. To have a Yank boast when they are drunk is somthing I’ve encountered many a time in my work and socially. To much hot air, and no substance. This looks like it may all turn to custard and everyone will walk free, again.
That said, if the right wing wanna stab each other in the back, who am I to stop them.
#freeahed
http://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-middle-east-42417938/palestinian-girl-arrested-after-slap-video
edit: previously on TS
We should keep this one in people’s minds.
Thanks for adding the previous TS posts, so people have more information.
Clean green New Zealand. What a joke.
We’re kidding ourselves and the world is rapidly working that out.
We’re a selfish, squalid, polluting and corrupt nation that has succumbed to the worst extremes of neoliberalism and suffer from its worst outcomes.
‘China is refusing to take the world’s rubbish any longer, including New Zealand plastic. This move once again casts doubts on New Zealand’s claim to be a clean and green country. It also highlights the fact that recycling isn’t always a sign of ecological virtue……’
‘…..New Zealand’s “100 per cent pure” reputation takes another knock when we realise we are using other countries to dump our rubbish. But it also raises doubts about our own integrity as “green” householders. In fact, recycling seems even to have encouraged us to become more wasteful consumers than before…….’
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/opinion/100357268/chinas-refusal-to-take-our-rubbish-should-make-us-greener
We also use 95% of the world’s 1080 supposedly ?
We’re about the only place in the world where 1080 is a useful poison for wide-spread pest control.
Pretty much every where else in the world has ground-feeding native mammals they want to protect. New Zealand doesn’t. So the fact that 1080 is particularly effective on mammals and can be easily laid in baits on the ground means it has a low risk of killing species we want to protect here, so we use a lot. Almost all other places in the world, the risk of killing ground-feeding mammal species they want to protect is too high for them to use 1080.
Thanks andre for info.
The oligarchs the likes of Fletchers, Fay Richwhite, Alan Gibbs etc etc have done particularly well here in NZ since the introduction of neoliberalism in the 1980’s, according to Roger Douglas neoliberalism was going to be the best thing for New Zealand since the invention of sliced bread ?
Did we get suckered or did we not ?
MSM still keep telling us how well we are doing as a country ?
You speak a lot of sense.
This
https://www.odt.co.nz/regions/west-coast/erosion-exposes-old-greymouth-rubbish-dump
No money to fix it apparently
The sandflys are that scared of eco maori they are around were ever I go they think that they are going to break ecos wairua but no they are just adding to my mana ka pai sandflys you will never break ecos wairua Ana to kai .
I say that all the photos of shonky key on Ngati Porou web site should be deleted he was just stealing OUR mana. Kia kaha
Let’s learn from Iceland.
‘Iceland has long been deemed the best place in the world to be a woman. For the past nine years, the country has topped the World Economic Forum’s gender equality index.
In Iceland men get at least three months’ paternity leave, and 90% of them take it. This gives them time to become comfortable with child-rearing, encouraging them to share the workload with their partners. Women in Iceland are highly educated, a high percentage hold managerial positions and they don’t give up their careers to have children: they do both – like the country’s new prime minister. At the end of 2017 Iceland got its second female prime minister, a 41-year-old with three young sons.
Many in Iceland see the women’s strike of 1975 as a defining moment in the gender equality struggle. On the “women’s day off”, as it’s known, 90% of women stopped work and refused to do any household chores. Schools and nurseries were closed. Many shops, factories and theatres had to close their doors. Fathers were left with no choice but to bring their kids to work, stocking up on sweets and colouring pencils to keep them occupied. On the radio, children could be heard playing in the background while the newsreaders read the news. After work, the children needed to be fed and the whole thing ended up as the day the men of Iceland ran out of sausages…..’
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jan/05/iceland-female-women-equal-pay-gender-equality
+100 Ed
I find it intriguing that things that eco is interested in can no longer be found on the net
the first was that website dedicated to the corruption on NZ police after I told IPCA about it next was the photo of Waiomatatini marae Porourangi showing the white tekoteko on the marae 2 days ago the photo came up on the first search google photos not now and the books that Colonel William Porter one in particle is East Coast Maori myths and legends ???? why are they hiding this book what are the sandflys scared of it well eco knows you will have to find William Porters book to find out the one I found was on a Australian website. Ka kite ano
The colour revolution in Iran fizzes
The “colour revolution” in Iran disappeared from headlines with a massive pro-government demonstration
http://robinwestenra.blogspot.co.nz/2018/01/iran-europe-rejects-u_6.html?m=1
How Wolff got access: a bit of sucking up and a few friendly pieces early on. So it seems no Trumpies ever thought to check out any of his earlier work before letting him into the adult daycare playroom.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/01/04/donald-trump-michael-wolff-book-216245
They’re having a wee cry, and getting a shellacking down thread.
If you watch one film this year, watch this one.
Save the animals.
Save the planet.
Save yourself.
Good to see you back @OAB
Thanks UCG.
Ed/Paul/The jackal has missed you.
Have you? 😈
To the same degree as a fine dose of herpes. 😆
Getting under your skin is a bonus.
As is getting on your nerves 😉
😆
Just when you think these pricks couldn’t go any lower.
“Thump found friends in strange places and in all shapes and sizes. Such as the frogs that croaked ‘KEK!’ They were full of surprises!”
[…]
“Thump was caught talking of grabbing all things pusillanimous. Protesters even made pink hats: their ire was unanimous.”
https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2018/01/04/alex-jones-hawking-pro-trump-children-s-book-indoctrinates-them-white-nationalism/218970
I don’t know how many would read that – too many multi syllable words.
I think giving the sandflys the pukana and letting everyone know the truth about the way they think and operate is nothing compared to what they are saying about me I know what they are saying and the tactics they are using on me would break most people so I think my intimidation is justified by there actions they best get a mirror .
Ana to kai
I can already see the sandflys next lines of malicious attacks to my character .
I will stop referring to eco as a second being as this is there next line of attack that they will try and lock me up on false charges.
I can see the line they are taking with the words there trolls on this site are trying to use against me .The difference here is a lot of good people know that what I write about ie the harassment the intimerdation the suppression the damage to my character these sandflys are trying to do are true. If they try and lock me up with there false charges everyone will be very upset .I am happy that I have thestandard website to defend my good character with PS they really don t like a MAORI with Mana do they .
Ka kite ano