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
Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: My top six things to note around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the week to July 27 were:1. The Minister for Ford Rangers strikes againTransport Minister Simeon Brown was again the busiest of the Cabinet ministers this week, announcing an ...
You got a fast carAnd I want a ticket to anywhereMaybe we make a dealMaybe together we can get somewhereAny place is betterYesterday’s newsletter, Trust In Me, on the report of abuse in state care, and by religious organisations, between 1950 and 2019, coupled with the hypocrisy of Christopher Luxon ...
New Zealand is again having to reconcile conflicting pressures from its military and its trade interests. Should we join Pillar Two of AUKUS and risk compromising our markets in China? For a century after New Zealand was founded in 1840, its external security arrangements and external economics arrangements were aligned. ...
The ‘50 Shades of Green’ farmers’ protest in 2019 was heavy on climate change denial, but five years on, scepticism and criticism about the idea that pine forests can save us is growing across the board. File photo: Lynn GrievesonTL;DR: Here’s the top six news items of note in climate ...
This morning the sky was bright.The birds, in their usual joyous bliss. Nature doesn’t seem to feel the heat of what might angst humans.Their calls are clear and beautiful.Just some random thoughts:MāoriPaul Goldsmith has announced his government will roll back the judiciary’s rulings on Māori Customary Marine Title, which recognises ...
In 2003, the Court of Appeal delivered its decision in Ngati Apa v Attorney-General, ruling that Māori customary title over the foreshore and seabed had not been universally extinguished, and that the Māori Land Court could determine claims and confirm title if the facts supported it. This kicked off the ...
Earlier this week at Parliament, Labour leader Chris Hipkins was applauded for saying that the response to the final report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care had to be “bigger than politics.” True, but the fine words, apologies and “we hear you” messages will soon ring ...
TL;DR: In news breaking this morning:The Ministry of Education is cutting $2 billion from its school building programme so the National-ACT-NZ First Coalition Government has enough money to deliver tax cuts; The Government has quietly lowered its child poverty reduction targets to make them easier to achieve;Te Whatu Ora-Health NZ’s ...
Kia ora. These are some stories that caught our eye this week – as always, feel free to share yours in the comments. Our header image this week (via Eke Panuku) shows the planned upgrade for the Karanga Plaza Tidal Swimming Steps. The week in Greater Auckland On ...
1. What's not to love about the way the Harris campaign is turning things around?a. Nothingb. Love all of itc. God what a reliefd. Not that it will be by any means easye. All of the above 2. Documents released by the Ministry of Health show Associate Health Minister Casey ...
Trust in me in all you doHave the faith I have in youLove will see us through, if only you trust in meWhy don't you, you trust me?In a week that saw the release of the 3,000 page Abuse in Care report Christopher Luxon was being asked about Boot Camps. ...
TL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for paying subscribers last night features co-hosts and talking about the Royal Commission Inquiry into Abuse in Carereport released this week, and with:The Kākā’s climate correspondent on a UN push to not recognise carbon offset markets and ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Friday, July 26, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Transport: Simeon Brown announced$802.9 million in funding for 18 new trains on the Wairarapa and Manawatū rail lines, which ...
The northern expressway extension from Warkworth to Whangarei is likely to require radical changes to legislation if it is going to be built within the foreseeable future. The Government’s powers to purchase land, the planning process and current restrictions on road tolling are all going to need to be changed ...
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedFirst they came for the doctors But I was confused by the numbers and costs So I didn't speak up Then they came for our police and nurses And I didn't think we could afford those costs anyway So I ...
Photo by Joshua J. Cotten on UnsplashWe’re back again after our mid-winter break. We’re still with the ‘new’ day of the week (Thursday rather than Friday) when we have our ‘hoon’ webinar with paying subscribers to The Kākā for an hour at 5 pm.Jump on this link on YouTube Livestream ...
Notes: This is a free article. Abuse in Care themes are mentioned. Video is at the bottom.BackgroundYesterday’s report into Abuse in Care revealed that at least 1 in 3 of all who went through state and faith based care were abused - often horrifically. At least, because not all survivors ...
Luxon speaks in Parliament yesterday about the Abuse in Care report. Photo: Hagen Hopkins/Getty ImagesTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:PM Christopher Luxon said yesterday in tabling the Abuse in Carereport in Parliament he wanted to ‘do the ...
About a decade ago I worked with a bloke called Steve. He was the grizzled veteran coder, a few years older than me, who knew where the bodies were buried - code wise. Despite his best efforts to be approachable and friendly he could be kind of gruff, through to ...
Some of the recent announcements from the government have reminded us of posts we’ve written in the past. Here’s one from early 2020. There were plenty of reactions to the government’s infrastructure announcement a few weeks ago which saw them fund a bunch of big roading projects. One of ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Thursday, July 25 are:News: Why Electric Kiwi is closing to new customers - and why it matters RNZ’s Susan EdmundsScoop: Government drops ...
Hi,I felt a small wet tongue snaking through one of the holes in my Crocs. It explored my big toe, darting down one side, then the other. “He’s looking for some toe cheese,” said the woman next to me, words that still haunt me to this day.Growing up in New ...
Yesterday I happily quoted the Prime Minister without fact-checking him and sure enough, it turns out his numbers were all to hell. It’s not four kg of Royal Commission report, it’s fourteen.My friend and one-time colleague-in-comms Hazel Phillips gently alerted me to my error almost as soon as I’d hit ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Thursday, July 25, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day were:The Abuse in Care Royal Commission of Inquirypublished its final report yesterday.PM Christopher Luxon and The Minister responsible for ...
The Official Information Act has always been a battle between requesters seeking information, and governments seeking to control it. Information is power, so Ministers and government agencies want to manage what is released and when, for their own convenience, and legality and democracy be damned. Their most recent tactic for ...
TL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:Transport and Energy Minister Simeon Brown is accelerating plans to spend at least $10 billion through Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) to extend State Highway One as a four-lane ‘Expressway’ from Warkworth to Whangarei ...
I live my life (woo-ooh-ooh)With no control in my destinyYea-yeah, yea-yeah (woo-ooh-ooh)I can bleed when I want to bleedSo come on, come on (woo-ooh-ooh)You can bleed when you want to bleedYea-yeah, come on (woo-ooh-ooh)Everybody bleed when they want to bleedCome on and bleedGovernments face tough challenges. Selling unpopular decisions to ...
Please note:To skip directly to the- parliamentary footage in the video, scroll to 1:21 To skip to audio please click on the headphone iconon the left hand side of the screenThis video / audio section is under development. ...
Given the crackdown on wasteful government spending, it behooves me to point to a high profile example of spending by the Luxon government that looks like a big, fat waste of time and money. I’m talking about the deployment of NZDF personnel to support the US-led coalition in the Red ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:40 am on Wednesday, July 24 are:Deep Dive: Chipping away at the housing crisis, including my comments RNZ/Newsroom’s The DetailNews: Government softens on asset sales, ...
As I reported about the city centre, Auckland’s rail network is also going through a difficult and disruptive period which is rapidly approaching a culmination, this will result in a significant upgrade to the whole network. Hallelujah. Also like the city centre this is an upgrade predicated on the City ...
Today, a 4 kilogram report will be delivered to Parliament. We know this is what the report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State and Faith-based Care weighs, because our Prime Minister told us so.Some reporter had blindsided him by asking a question about something done by ...
TL;DR: As of 7:00 am on Wednesday, July 24, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Beehive:Transport Minister Simeon Brownannounced plans to use PPPs to fund, build and run a four-lane expressway between Auckland ...
NewstalkZB host Mike Hosking, who can usually be relied on to give Prime Minister Christopher Luxon an easy run, did not do so yesterday when he interviewed him about the HealthNZ deficit. Luxon is trying to use a deficit reported last year by HealthNZ as yet another example of the ...
Back in January a StatsNZ employee gave a speech at Rātana on behalf of tangata whenua in which he insulted and criticised the government. The speech clearly violated the principle of a neutral public service, and StatsNZ started an investigation. Part of that was getting an external consultant to examine ...
Renting for life: Shared ownership initiatives are unlikely to slow the slide in home ownership by much. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy today are:A Deloittereport for Westpac has projected Aotearoa’s home-ownership rate will ...
You're broken down and tiredOf living life on a merry go roundAnd you can't find the fighterBut I see it in you so we gonna walk it outAnd move mountainsWe gonna walk it outAnd move mountainsAnd I'll rise upI'll rise like the dayI'll rise upI'll rise unafraidI'll rise upAnd I'll ...
There’s been a change in Myers Park. Down the steps from St. Kevin’s Arcade, past the grassy slopes, the children’s playground, the benches and that goat statue, there has been a transformation. The underpass for Mayoral Drive has gone from a barren, grey, concrete tunnel, to a place that thrums ...
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections Global society may have finally slammed on the brakes for climate-warming pollution released by human fossil fuel combustion. According to the Carbon Monitor Project, the total global climate pollution released between February and May 2024 declined slightly from the amount released during the same ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Tuesday, July 23 are:Deep Dive: Penlink: where tolling rhetoric meets reality BusinessDesk-$$$’sOliver LewisScoop:Te Pūkenga plans for regional polytechs leak out ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Tuesday, July 23, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:Health: Shane Reti announcedthe Board of Te Whatu Ora-Health New Zealand was being replaced with Commissioner Lester Levy ...
Health NZ warned the Government at the end of March that it was running over Budget. But the reasons it gave were very different to those offered by the Prime Minister yesterday. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon blamed the “botched merger” of the 20 District Health Boards (DHBs) to create Health ...
Long ReadKey Summary: Although National increased the health budget by $1.4 billion in May, they used an old funding model to project health system costs, and never bothered to update their pre-election numbers. They were told during the Health Select Committees earlier in the year their budget amount was deficient, ...
As a momentous, historic weekend in US politics unfolded, analysts and commentators grasped for precedents and comparisons to help explain the significance and power of the choice Joe Biden had made. The 46th president had swept the Democratic party’s primaries but just over 100 days from the election had chosen ...
TL;DR: I’m casting around for new ideas and ways of thinking about Aotearoa’s political economy to find a few solutions to our cascading and self-reinforcing housing, poverty and climate crises.Associate Professor runs an online masters degree in the economics of sustainability at Torrens University in Australia and is organising ...
The Finance and Expenditure Committee has reported back on National's Local Government (Water Services Preliminary Arrangements) Bill. The bill sets up water for privatisation, and was introduced under urgency, then rammed through select committee with no time even for local councils to make a proper submission. Naturally, national's select committee ...
Some years ago, I bought a book at Dunedin’s Regent Booksale for $1.50. As one does. Vandrad the Viking (1898), by J. Storer Clouston, is an obscure book these days – I cannot find a proper online review – but soon it was sitting on my shelf, gathering dust alongside ...
History is not on the side of the centre-left, when Democratic presidents fall behind in the polls and choose not to run for re-election. On both previous occasions in the past 75 years (Harry Truman in 1952, Lyndon Johnson in 1968) the Democrats proceeded to then lose the White House ...
This is a free articleCoverageThis morning, US President Joe Biden announced his withdrawal from the Presidential race. And that is genuinely newsworthy. Thanks for your service, President Biden, and all the best to you and yours.However, the media in New Zealand, particularly the 1News nightly bulletin, has been breathlessly covering ...
A homeless person’s camp beside a blocked-off slipped damage walkway in Freeman’s Bay: we are chasing our tail on our worsening and inter-related housing, poverty and climate crises. Photo: Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy ...
What has happened to it all?Crazy, some'd sayWhere is the life that I recognise?(Gone away)But I won't cry for yesterdayThere's an ordinary worldSomehow I have to findAnd as I try to make my wayTo the ordinary worldYesterday morning began as many others - what to write about today? I began ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 7:00 am on Monday, July 22 are:Today’s Must Read: Father and son live in a tent, and have done for four years, in a million ...
TL;DR: As of 7:00 am on Monday, July 22, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:US President Joe Biden announced via X this morning he would not stand for a second term.Multinational professional services firm ...
A listing of 32 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, July 14, 2024 thru Sat, July 20, 2024. Story of the week As reflected by preponderance of coverage, our Story of the Week is Project 2025. Until now traveling ...
This weekend, a friend pointed out someone who said they’d like to read my posts, but didn’t want to pay. And my first reaction was sympathy.I’ve already told folks that if they can’t comfortably subscribe, and would like to read, I’d be happy to offer free subscriptions. I don’t want ...
National: The Party of ‘Law and Order’ IntroductionThis weekend, the Government formally kicked off one of their flagship policy programs: a military style boot camp that New Zealand has experimented with over the past 50 years. Cartoon credit: Guy BodyIt’s very popular with the National Party’s Law and Orderimage, ...
Day one of the solo leg of my long journey home begins with my favourite sound: footfalls in an empty street. 5.00 am and it’s already light and already too warm, almost.If I can make the train that leaves Budapest later this hour I could be in Belgrade by nightfall; ...
Do you remember Y2K, the threat that hung over humanity in the closing days of the twentieth century? Horror scenarios of planes falling from the sky, electronic payments failing and ATMs refusing to dispense cash. As for your VCR following instructions and recording your favourite show - forget about it.All ...
Climate Change Minister Simon Watts being questioned by The Kākā’s Bernard Hickey.TL;DR: My top six things to note around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the week to July 20 were:1. A strategy that fails Zero Carbon Act & Paris targetsThe National-ACT-NZ First Coalition Government finally unveiled ...
Summary:As New Zealand loses at least 12 leaders in the public service space of health, climate, and pharmaceuticals, this month alone, directly in response to the Government’s policies and budget choices, what lies ahead may be darker than it appears. Tui examines some of those departures and draws a long ...
The Minister of Housing’s ambition is to reduce markedly the ratio of house prices to household incomes. If his strategy works it would transform the housing market, dramatically changing the prospects of housing as an investment.Leaving aside the Minister’s metaphor of ‘flooding the market’ I do not see how the ...
As previously noted, my historical fantasy piece, set in the fifth-century Mediterranean, was accepted for a Pirate Horror anthology, only for the anthology to later fall through. But in a good bit of news, it turned out that the story could indeed be re-marketed as sword and sorcery. As of ...
An employee of tobacco company Philip Morris International demonstrates a heated tobacco device. Photo: Getty ImagesTL;DR: The top six things I’ve noted around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy on Friday, July 19 are:At a time when the Coalition Government is cutting spending on health, infrastructure, education, housing ...
TL;DR: My pick of the top six links elsewhere around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day or so to 8:30 am on Friday, July 19 are:Scoop: NZ First Minister Casey Costello orders 50% cut to excise tax on heated tobacco products. The minister has ...
Kia ora, it’s time for another Friday roundup, in which we pull together some of the links and stories that caught our eye this week. Feel free to add more in the comments! Our header image this week shows a foggy day in Auckland town, captured by Patrick Reynolds. ...
TL;DR : Here’s the top six items climate news for Aotearoa this week, as selected by Bernard Hickey and The Kākā’s climate correspondent Cathrine Dyer. A discussion recorded yesterday is in the video above and the audio of that sent onto the podcast feed.The Government released its draft Emissions Reduction ...
Save some money, get rich and old, bring it back to Tobacco Road.Bring that dynamite and a crane, blow it up, start all over again.Roll up. Roll up. Or tailor made, if you prefer...Whether you’re selling ciggies, digging for gold, catching dolphins in your nets, or encouraging folks to flutter ...
Waiting In The Wings:For truly, if Trump is America’s un-assassinated Caesar, then J.D. Vance is America’s Octavian, the Republic’s youthful undertaker – and its first Emperor.DONALD TRUMP’S SELECTION of James D. Vance as his running-mate bodes ill for the American republic. A fervent supporter of Viktor Orban, the “illiberal” prime ...
TL;DR: As of 6:00 am on Friday, July 19, the top six announcements, speeches, reports and research around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the last day are:The PSAannounced the Employment Relations Authority (ERA) had ruled in the PSA’s favour in its case against the Ministry ...
Te Rangi e tu nei (The sky above us) Te Papa e takoto nei (The land beneath us) Tatou katoa te hunga ora (To us all the living) Tena koutou katoa (Greetings) ...
A late change to charter school legislation will cheat educators out of fair pay and negotiating power proving charter schools are just a vehicle to make profit out of our education system. ...
In 2004 te iwi Māori rallied against the Crown’s attempt to confiscate our coastlines and moana with the Foreshore and Seabed Act. This led to the largest hīkoi of a generation and the birth of Te Pāti Māori. 20 years later, history is repeating itself. Today the government has announced ...
It has been five and a half years since the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care was established to investigate the abuse of children, young people, and vulnerable adults within state and faith-based institutions. Yesterday, the final report - Whanaketia through pain and trauma, from darkness to light ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to take action off the back of the International Court of Justice ruling on Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine. ...
On Friday the International Court of Justice reaffirmed what Palestinian’s have been telling us for decades: that the occupation and colonisation of Palestinian lands by Israel is illegal and must end immediately. They also called for reparations for Palestinian’s who have lived under Israeli occupation since it began in 1967. ...
Labour calls on the Government to act after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian Territories is illegal. ...
The 53.7 percent rise in benefit sanctions over the last year is more proof of this Government’s disdain for our communities most in need of support. ...
Aotearoa could be a country where every child grows up feeling safe, loved and with a sense of belonging in their whānau and community. But for some of our children, this is far from reality. Instead, they are trapped in a maze of intergenerational harm that they can’t escape on ...
Te Pāti Māori are calling for David Seymour to resign as Associate Health Minister in response to his call for Pharmac to ignore the Treaty of Waitangi. “This announcement is just another example of the government’s anti-Tiriti, anti-Māori agenda.” Said Co-leader and spokesperson for health, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. “Seymour thinks it ...
The soaring price of renting is driving the rise of inflation in this country - with latest figures from Stats NZ showing rents are up 4.8 per cent on average while annual inflation is at 3.3 per cent. ...
National’s Emissions Reduction Plan will take New Zealand further from the economy we need to ensure the next generation has a stable climate and secure livelihoods. ...
Following consultation with named parties and thorough consideration of privacy interests, the Green Party is in a position to release the Executive Summary of the final report from the independent investigation into Darleen Tana. ...
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon should be asking serious questions of his Minister for Resources Shane Jones now it’s been revealed he misled the public about a dinner with mining companies that he didn’t declare and said wasn’t pre-arranged. ...
Te Pāti Māori have submitted to the Justice Select Committee against the Sentencing (Reinstating Three Strikes) Amendment Bill. The bill will further entrench racism in our justice system and fails to focus on rehabilitation. “Reinstating Three Strikes will empower a systematically racist system and exacerbate the overrepresentation of Māori in ...
The Transport and Infrastructure Committee is set to make a determination on the Residential Tenancies Amendment (RTA) Bill in the coming weeks. “This legislation will give landlords the power to kick our whānau out onto the street for no reason” said Housing spokesperson, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “Their solution to the housing ...
“National’s campaign was about tackling crime and the best they can do is a two-year long Ministerial Advisory Group,” Labour justice spokesperson Duncan Webb said. ...
“There are more examples of charter schools failing their students than there are success stories. The coalition Government is driving to dismantle our public school system and instead promote a privatised, competitive structure that puts profits before kids,” Jan Tinetti said. ...
“This government is choosing to deliberately mislead and withhold information, keeping our people in the dark about this government’s agenda and the future of our mokopuna,” said co-leader and spokesperson for Health, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. The call comes after the demand from the Chief Ombudsman that Associate Minister of Health, Casey ...
“Today’s climate announcement by Simon Watts makes clear the National Government is simply paying lip service to meeting its climate change targets,” Megan Woods said. ...
National is choosing to make life harder for workers by taking away the rights our communities have fought hard for. Here's how they’re taking workers backwards. ...
Australia, Canada and New Zealand today issued the following statement on the need for an urgent ceasefire in Gaza and the risk of expanded conflict between Hizballah and Israel. The situation in Gaza is catastrophic. The human suffering is unacceptable. It cannot continue. We remain unequivocal in our condemnation of ...
Attorney-General Judith Collins today reminded all State and faith-based institutions of their legal obligation to preserve records relevant to the safety and wellbeing of those in its care. “The Abuse in Care Inquiry’s report has found cases where records of the most vulnerable people in State and faith‑based institutions were ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says the Government’s online safety website for children and young people has reached one million page views. “It is great to see so many young people and their families accessing the site Keep It Real Online to learn how to stay safe online, and manage ...
Tēnā tātou katoa, Ngā mihi te rangi, ngā mihi te whenua, ngā mihi ki a koutou, kia ora mai koutou. Thank you for the opportunity to be here and the invitation to speak at this 50th anniversary conference. I acknowledge all those who have gone before us and paved the ...
New Zealand’s payroll providers have successfully prepared to ensure 3.5 million individuals will, from Wednesday next week, be able to keep more of what they earn each pay, says Finance Minister Nicola Willis and Revenue Minister Simon Watts. “The Government's tax policy changes are legally effective from Wednesday. Delivering this tax ...
An experimental vineyard which will help futureproof the wine sector has been opened in Blenheim by Associate Regional Development Minister Mark Patterson. The covered vineyard, based at the New Zealand Wine Centre – Te Pokapū Wāina o Aotearoa, enables controlled environmental conditions. “The research that will be produced at the Experimental ...
The Coalition Government has confirmed the indicative regional breakdown of North Island Weather Event (NIWE) funding for state highway recovery projects funded through Budget 2024, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Regions in the North Island suffered extensive and devastating damage from Cyclone Gabrielle and the 2023 Auckland Anniversary Floods, and ...
Indonesia’s Foreign Minister, Retno Marsudi, will visit New Zealand next week, Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced. “Indonesia is important to New Zealand’s security and economic interests and is our closest South East Asian neighbour,” says Mr Peters, who is currently in Laos to engage with South East Asian partners. ...
He aha te kai a te rangatira? He kōrero, he kōrero, he kōrero. The government has reaffirmed its commitment to supporting the aspirations of Ngāti Maniapoto, Minister for Māori Development Tama Potaka says. “My thanks to Te Nehenehenui Trust – Ngāti Maniapoto for bringing their important kōrero to a ministerial ...
Transport Minister Simeon Brown has thanked outgoing Chair of the Civil Aviation Authority, Janice Fredric, for her service to the board.“I have received Ms Fredric’s resignation from the role of Chair of the Civil Aviation Authority,” Mr Brown says.“On behalf of the Government, I want to thank Ms Fredric for ...
The Government is proposing legislation to overturn a Court of Appeal decision and amend the Marine and Coastal Area Act in order to restore Parliament’s test for Customary Marine Title, Treaty Negotiations Minister Paul Goldsmith says. “Section 58 required an applicant group to prove they have exclusively used and occupied ...
Regulation Minister David Seymour says that opposition parties have united in bad faith, opposing what they claim are ‘dangerous changes’ to the Early Childhood Education sector, despite no changes even being proposed yet. “Issues with affordability and availability of early childhood education, and the complexity of its regulation, has led ...
After receiving more than 740 submissions in the first 20 days, Regulation Minister David Seymour is asking the Ministry for Regulation to extend engagement on the early childhood education regulation review by an extra two weeks. “The level of interest has been very high, and from the conversations I’ve been ...
The Coalition Government is investing $802.9 million into the Wairarapa and Manawatū rail lines as part of a funding agreement with the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA), KiwiRail, and the Greater Wellington and Horizons Regional Councils to deliver more reliable services for commuters in the lower North Island, Transport Minister Simeon ...
Local Government Minister Simeon Brown has announced his intention to appoint a Crown Manager to both Hawke’s Bay Regional and Wairoa District Councils to speed up the delivery of flood protection work in Wairoa."Recent severe weather events in Wairoa this year, combined with damage from Cyclone Gabrielle in 2023 have ...
Mr Speaker, this is a day that many New Zealanders who were abused in State care never thought would come. It’s the day that this Parliament accepts, with deep sorrow and regret, the Report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care. At the heart of this report are the ...
For the first time, the Government is formally acknowledging some children and young people at Lake Alice Psychiatric Hospital experienced torture. The final report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State and Faith-based Care “Whanaketia – through pain and trauma, from darkness to light,” was tabled in Parliament ...
The Government has acknowledged the nearly 2,400 courageous survivors who shared their experiences during the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Historical Abuse in State and Faith-Based Care. The final report from the largest and most complex public inquiry ever held in New Zealand, the Royal Commission Inquiry “Whanaketia – through ...
With a week to go before hard-working New Zealanders see personal income tax relief for the first time in fourteen years, 513,000 people have used the Budget tax calculator to see how much they will benefit, says Finance Minister Nicola Willis. “Tax relief is long overdue. From next Wednesday, personal income ...
Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden says a bill that has passed its first reading will improve parental leave settings and give non-biological parents more flexibility as primary carer for their child. The Regulatory Systems Amendment Bill (No3), passed its first reading this morning. “It includes a change ...
Two Bills designed to improve regulation and make it easier to do business have passed their first reading in Parliament, says Economic Development Minister Melissa Lee. The Regulatory Systems (Economic Development) Amendment Bill and Regulatory Systems (Immigration and Workforce) Amendment Bill make key changes to legislation administered by the Ministry ...
New legislation paves the way for greater competition in sectors such as banking and electricity, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly says. “Competitive markets boost productivity, create employment opportunities and lift living standards. To support competition, we need good quality regulation but, unfortunately, a recent OECD report ranked New ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says lotteries for charitable purposes, such as those run by the Heart Foundation, Coastguard NZ, and local hospices, will soon be allowed to operate online permanently. “Under current laws, these fundraising lotteries are only allowed to operate online until October 2024, after which ...
The Coalition Government is accelerating work on the new four-lane expressway between Auckland and Whangārei as part of its Roads of National Significance programme, with an accelerated delivery model to deliver this project faster and more efficiently, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “For too long, the lack of resilient transport connections ...
Sir Don McKinnon will travel to Viet Nam this week as a Special Envoy of the Government, Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced. “It is important that the Government give due recognition to the significant contributions that General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong made to New Zealand-Viet Nam relations,” Mr ...
Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden says newly appointed Commissioner, Grant Illingworth KC, will help deliver the report for the first phase of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into COVID-19 Lessons, due on 28 November 2024. “I am pleased to announce that Mr Illingworth will commence his appointment as ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters travels to Laos this week to participate in a series of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)-led Ministerial meetings in Vientiane. “ASEAN plays an important role in supporting a peaceful, stable and prosperous Indo-Pacific,” Mr Peters says. “This will be our third visit to ...
Construction of a new mental health facility at Te Nikau Grey Hospital in Greymouth is today one step closer, Mental Health Minister Matt Doocey says. “This $27 million facility shows this Government is delivering on its promise to boost mental health care and improve front line services,” Mr Doocey says. ...
New Zealand is committing nearly $50 million to a package supporting sustainable Pacific fisheries development over the next four years, Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones announced today. “This support consisting of a range of initiatives demonstrates New Zealand’s commitment to assisting our Pacific partners ...
Associate Education Minister David Seymour says proposed changes to the Education and Training Amendment Bill will ensure charter schools have more flexibility to negotiate employment agreements and are equipped with the right teaching resources. “Cabinet has agreed to progress an amendment which means unions will not be able to initiate ...
In response to serious concerns around oversight, overspend and a significant deterioration in financial outlook, the Board of Health New Zealand will be replaced with a Commissioner, Health Minister Dr Shane Reti announced today. “The previous government’s botched health reforms have created significant financial challenges at Health NZ that, without ...
Minister for Space and Science, Innovation and Technology Judith Collins will travel to Adelaide tomorrow for space and science engagements, including speaking at the Australian Space Forum. While there she will also have meetings and visits with a focus on space, biotechnology and innovation. “New Zealand has a thriving space ...
Climate Change Minister Simon Watts will travel to China on Saturday to attend the Ministerial on Climate Action meeting held in Wuhan. “Attending the Ministerial on Climate Action is an opportunity to advocate for New Zealand climate priorities and engage with our key partners on climate action,” Mr Watts says. ...
Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones is travelling to the Solomon Islands tomorrow for meetings with his counterparts from around the Pacific supporting collective management of the region’s fisheries. The 23rd Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Committee and the 5th Regional Fisheries Ministers’ Meeting in Honiara from 23 to 26 July ...
The Government today launched the Military Style Academy Pilot at Te Au rere a te Tonga Youth Justice residence in Palmerston North, an important part of the Government’s plan to crackdown on youth crime and getting youth offenders back on track, Minister for Children, Karen Chhour said today. “On the ...
The Government has welcomed news the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) has begun work to replace nine priority bridges across the country to ensure our state highway network remains resilient, reliable, and efficient for road users, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says.“Increasing productivity and economic growth is a key priority for the ...
Acting Prime Minister David Seymour has been in contact throughout the evening with senior officials who have coordinated a whole of government response to the global IT outage and can provide an update. The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet has designated the National Emergency Management Agency as the ...
New Zealand and Japan will continue to step up their shared engagement with the Pacific, Foreign Minister Winston Peters says. “New Zealand and Japan have a strong, shared interest in a free, open and stable Pacific Islands region,” Mr Peters says. “We are pleased to be finding more ways ...
New developments in the heart of North Island forestry country will reinvigorate their communities and boost economic development, Regional Development Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones visited Kaingaroa and Kawerau in Bay of Plenty today to open a landmark community centre in the former and a new connecting road in ...
President Adeang, fellow Ministers, honourable Diet Member Horii, Ambassadors, distinguished guests. Minasama, konnichiwa, and good afternoon, everyone. Distinguished guests, it’s a pleasure to be here with you today to talk about New Zealand’s foreign policy reset, the reasons for it, the values that underpin it, and how it ...
Last summer when Matairangi burned, Ginny and Tom stood at the window of their lounge, watching kākā shoot skyward from the burning trees. From the distance, they looked to Ginny like pages torn from books and thrown into a bonfire. It was Tom, voice tight, who told her it was ...
Opinion: The Canadian short story writer Alice Munro – winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013 – died in May at the age of 92. Her work was about “the damage people inflict on one another in the name of love”, Deborah Treisman wrote in the New Yorker. ...
This month marks two years since the most powerful telescope ever built sent its first pictures back to earth. From its lofty vantage point, beyond the moon in orbit around the sun, the James Webb Space Telescope was tuned to observe the first stars and galaxies being born soon after ...
Comment: After Climate Change Minister Simon Watts’ preview several weeks ago, I had some optimism about the Government’s emissions reduction plan. Now I’ve read the discussion document, that hope has been dashed. How can the Government propose a plan that wants to take New Zealand taxpayers’ hard-earned money, and spend ...
Christopher Luxon: hurdles The little man from National jumps hurdles in his sleep. He’s quite good at it in his dreams and even though the reality doesn’t quite match up you have to give him credit for getting up every morning and crashing into the very first hurdle of the ...
Comment: It was a good two hours into the conversation when Tyrone Marks raised the most basic of questions when I first spoke to him in 2017. “They didn’t explain the things they did to me. They never told me why. And they still haven’t. There’s no explanation for it. ...
Madeleine Chapman rounds out Death Week on The Spinoff with a final recommendation. You can read all of our Death Week coverage here. Nothing forces you to reflect on your life and relationships quite like proximity to death. For those whose nearest and dearest have died, there are reasonably obvious ...
Whitney Greene takes us through her life in television, including the TV character she’d like to plan a funeral for and her cow lung catastrophe on The Traitors NZ. “If the phone rings, I have to answer it,” Whitney Greene from The Traitors NZ warns as we begin our My ...
Maddie Ballard reviews the debut essay collection of Pōneke writer Flora Feltham.In ‘The Raw Material’, the longest essay in Flora Feltham’s dazzling debut collection, the author heads out for a run after hours of weaving and sees the world turn to textile. “Pounding along the Parade, I saw the ...
Andy Christiansen, one half of the experimental rock-pop duo TRiPS, shares the tunes inspiring the band’s perfect weekend and new release. “Good speakers, good food, good music, no distractions”: that’s all you need to enjoy the psychedelic stylings of TRiPS, a new band formed by Fly My Pretties’ Barnaby Weir ...
Celebrating our quadrennial opportunity to become experts in a bunch of sports we never normally watch.The games of the XXXIII Olympiad are upon us. Paris will host this year’s showcase of sporting and athletic prowess, which means some late-night and early-morning viewing for us in Aotearoa.But what sports ...
The photograph is striking and beautiful, but also disturbing – a reminder that my love for John was often entangled in shame.The Sunday Essay is made possible thanks to the support of Creative New Zealand.In the spring of 1980, in Dunedin, shortly before his death, someone took a photograph ...
Get to know Babushka, our latest Dog of the Month. This feature was offered as a reward during our What’s Eating Aotearoa PledgeMe campaign. Thank you to Babu’s humans, Jo and Isabel, for their support. Dog name: Babushka (Babu for short) Age: 2Breed: Border Collie X poodleIf rescued, ...
Pacific Media Watch A Lebanese photojournalist who was severely wounded during an Israeli air strike in south Lebanon carried the Olympic torch in Paris this week in honour of her peers who have been wounded and killed in the field — especially in Gaza and Lebanon. Christina Assi of Agence ...
The first report in a five-part web series focused on the 15th Triennial Conference of Pacific Women taking place in the Marshall Islands this week.SPECIAL REPORT:By Netani Rika in Majuro Women continue to fight for justice 70 years after the first nuclear tests by the United States caused ...
Christopher Luxon has joined with Australia and Canada's leaders in voicing support for US President Joe Biden's ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra The 2022 election brought the “teal wave” into parliament. The next election will test whether teals, who occupy what were Liberal seats, and other independents can maintain their momentum. Joining us on the Podcast ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Musgrave, Senior lecturer in Pharmacology, University of Adelaide Pixavri/Shutterstock A major Federal Court class action has been dismissed this week after Justice Michael Lee ruled there was not enough evidence to prove the weedkiller Roundup causes cancer. Plaintiff Kelvin ...
In The Week in Politics: politicians have to decide what to do about child abuse, Health NZ is booked in for major surgery and Darleen Tana returns. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Clare Corbould, Associate Professor, Contemporary Histories Research Group, Deakin University Mainstream media are surprisingly muted at the prospect of the world’s most powerful nation being led for the first time by a woman – specifically a woman of colour, Vice President Kamala ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Rebecca Bennett, PhD Student, Associate Research Fellow, Deakin University Last week, a drone delivery company called Wing (owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet) started operating in Melbourne. Some 250,000 residents in parts of the city’s eastern suburbs can now order food from ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonathan Foo, Lecturer, Physiotherapy, Monash University pikselstock/Shutterstock In the next 40 years in Australia, it’s predicted the number of Australians aged 65 and over will more than double, while the number of people aged 85 and over will more than triple. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Katrina Grant, Research Associate, Power Institute for Arts and Visual Culture, University of Sydney Jonas Åkerström’s 1790 work, Session of the Accademia dell’Arcadia on August 17 1788.Nationalmuseum/Cecilia Heisser Ever wondered whether you’d have a better chance at winning an Olympic gold ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexandra Jones, Program Lead, Food Governance, George Institute for Global Health wavebreakmedia/Shutterstock On Thursday, Australian and New Zealand food ministers at state, federal and national levels met to thrash out what’s next for health star ratings on packaged foods. Now, after ...
The Abuse in Care report found many Pacific survivors lost their connections to their culture and language, resulting in trauma that has been carried from generation to generation. ...
In the regulatory review, ECC intends to suggest that ERO focus on curriculum delivery reviews rather than the Ministry, because it’s not efficient or effective to have two agencies with radically different approaches climbing over each other. ...
Te Rūnanga Nui o Ngā Kura Kaupapa Māori invites the current government to work in partnership with them to develop a pathway forward, including the development of a parallel pathway and meaningful policy and strategy for Kura Kaupapa Māori ...
If you haven’t started watching yet, Tara Ward begs you to reconsider. This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. In the world of New Zealand reality television, we have many gems in our crown. There’s the delicious second season of the Celebrity Treasure ...
A new poem by Fiona Kidman. The clothes of the dead I did not keep my mother’s furry red beret for long nor the stringy scarves that adorned the necks of my aunts, although I have kept tag ends of gold, the rings and trinkets they wore, the brooches no ...
The government’s announcement that it will re-open the foreshore and seabed controversy by changing the rules on recognising centuries-old Māori customary title for a third time goes against the rule of law and New Zealand values,” Mr Tipa says. ...
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.AUCKLAND1 Lioness by Emily Perkins (Bloomsbury, $25) Roarrrr! Perkins’ brilliant, award-winning, Marian-Keyes anointed, darkly funny, long ...
The 2004 Act vested ownership of the foreshore and seabed in the Crown, extinguishing any Māori claims to ownership and causing widespread outrage and protests among Māori communities. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Antje Deckert, Associate Professor (Criminology), Auckland University of Technology Getty Images Despite the connection between institutional harm and gang membership made clear in this week’s mammoth royal commission abuse-in care report, the government seems unlikely to soften its “get tough on ...
From Lewis Clareburt in the swimming to the start of the rowing – the first seven days of Paris 2024 promise to be big for New Zealand. There are few events that bring the country together quite like an Olympic Games. Nothing quite matches the excitement of getting up in ...
Groundbreaking local science just showed up in the most surprising of places: the season finale of The Kardashians. In the season five finale of The Kardashians last night, several members of the family gathered together in one of their signature empty, cream-coloured rooms to hear test results that had been ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Amin Saikal, Emeritus professor of Middle Eastern and Central Asian Studies, Australian National University The Middle East is on the brink of a possibly devastating regional war, with hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah reaching an extremely dangerous level. Washington has engaged in ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laura Elizabeth Eades, Rheumatologist, Monash University Lupus is an inflammatory autoimmune illness, where the body’s immune system mistakenly attacks itself. Lupus can affect virtually any part of the body, although it most commonly affects the skin, joints and kidneys. The symptoms ...
A law firm that specialises in working with survivors of abuse in State care is disappointed that the Government fails to recognise that its boot camps can be directly compared to previous boot camps from the 1990s and 2000s. ...
Dying is a natural part of life, like updating your Wof or seeing your hairdresser, but without the word-of-mouth recs that help guarantee a good service. What if we changed that? Dying Reviews received by The Spinoff have had the names of organisations redacted while Hospice NZ collects further data. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jonti Horner, Professor (Astrophysics), University of Southern Queensland Mike Lewinski/Flickr, CC BY On any clear night, if you gaze skywards long enough, chances are you’ll see a meteor streaking through the sky. Some nights, however, are better than others. At ...
Despite having no bars or other designated spaces for lesbians, Auckland boasts a small but mighty lesbian museum. So how did it get here? The past 18 months has brought increasing hostility towards the queer community across Aotearoa. Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull’s anti-trans rally in Tamaki Makaurau last March led to a ...
Poneke Antifascist Coalition has invited Wellingtonians to stand in solidarity with the Kanak people at 12pm today outside the French Embassy in Wellington. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Layton, Visiting Fellow, Strategic Studies, Griffith University Drones are the signature technology of the Ukraine war. A few miniature aircraft designs were used in the war’s early days, but an incredible array of drones have now evolved. There are different types, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Slee, Associate Professor, Clinical Academic Neurologist, Flinders University Francisco Gonzelez/Unsplash Migraine is many things, but one thing it’s not is “just a headache”. “Migraine” comes from the Greek word “hemicrania”, referring to the common experience of migraine being predominantly ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Lee White, Senior Lecturer and Horizon Fellow, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Sydney Australia was slow to introduce minimum building standards for energy efficiency. The Nationwide House Energy Rating Scheme (NatHERS) only came into force in 2003. Older homes ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Steven Sherwood, Professor of Atmospheric Sciences, Climate Change Research Centre, UNSW Sydney The past century of human-induced warming has increased rainfall variability over 75% of the Earth’s land area – particularly over Australia, Europe and eastern North America, new research shows. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tony Heynen, Program Coordinator, Sustainable Energy, The University of Queensland A temporary stadium in the Champ-de-Mars, ParisEkaterina Pokrovsky/Shutterstock As Paris prepares to host the Olympic and Paralympic Games, the sustainability of the event is coming under scrutiny. The organisers have promoted ...
A night of karaoke and community in a pub that feels like a memory. You’d barely even notice it, unless you knew to look. Tucked away behind a liquor store on busy Constable Street is the capital’s last great pub. Newtown Sports Bar is an emblem of the pub culture ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ian Wright, Professor in Marine Geology, University of Canterbury Louise Corcoran/Getty Images The decline in the number of doctoral candidates at New Zealand universities is a worrying sign for the country’s effort to build a knowledge-based economy. Aotearoa New Zealand’s ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Laurie Berg, Associate Professor, University of Technology Sydney defotoberg/Shutterstock Migrant worker exploitation is entrenched in workplaces across Australia. Tragically, a deep fear of immigration consequences means most unlawful employer conduct goes unreported. On Wednesday, however, the government officially launched a ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Vaughan Cruickshank, Senior Lecturer in Health and Physical Education, University of Tasmania Paris is about to host its third summer Olympics. While we don’t yet know what the legacy of this year’s games will be, let’s take the opportunity to reflect on ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Hugh Breakey, Deputy Director, Institute for Ethics, Governance & Law, Griffith University In the wake of the assassination attempt on former US President Donald Trump, there were calls from bothsides of US politics, as well as internationally, to reduce the brutal, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Keith Rathbone, Senior Lecturer, Modern European History and Sports History, Macquarie University Two high-profile assaults on Australians in Paris have raised concerns about security ahead of the Olympic Games. On Saturday evening, a young woman was allegedly sexually assaulted by a ...
Dying is inevitable and, so it seems, is it costing a lot, writes Stewart Sowman-Lund in today’s extract from The Bulletin. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here.The cost of dying ...
The government took Joyce Harris's first baby and sent her off to a girls' home. Half a century on - and out of oceans of hurt - it asked her to be a mother figure. ...
It’s the deadliest fictional town in the country, but which death has been the most bonkers? Alex Casey looks back at 10 seasons of The Brokenwood Mysteries to find out. Warning: The following ranking story contains famous New Zealand actors appearing to be dead (not alive). The Spinoff has been ...
Water cremation is the biggest thing to happen to the death industry in the last 100 years. Alex Casey meets the people trying to bring it to Aotearoa. Through a set of mirrored doors down the industrial end of Christchurch’s St Asaph Street, death is getting a new lease on ...
Opinion: New Health NZ commissioner Lester Levy is authorised to assume operational leadership – chief executive Margie Apa is effectively relegated to his operational deputy The post All-powerful Levy is feudal baron of a $28b fiefdom appeared first on Newsroom. ...
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.
https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-02-01-2018/#comment-1431881
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.
https://thestandard.org.nz/why-insurance-should-be-a-state-monopoly/
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?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3eOFYAg_DPw
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
https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-24-12-2017/#comment-1430043
https://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-27-12-2017/#comment-1430389
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.
https://twitter.com/GOP/status/949395088735723520
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