I’ve always been fascinated by the lefts ability to schadenfreude.
It is one of the more distasteful aspects of (some) lefties in all. All “caring” until it’s someone they do not like – then they get great pleasure from it.
There have been studies linking it to envy – and that does not surprise me at all. As I have personally found a lot of the left envious. Jealous and bitter of the success of others.
What? Churlish James muttering defensively about “schaudenfreude”? James and ilk express that sentiment in relation to the ‘culpable poor’ on a daily basis. That’s basically why the big fat kick-ass BBQ is here at all.
I’m sorry if you don’t have friends and or family that can or want to participate in this great kiwi tradition- but that’s your loss not mine.
I love to BBQ – we do it a lot. It’s partly because we love the food (who dosnt like a nice bloody steak?) – but mainly because it’s fun to surrounded yourself with fantastic friends and family.
You should try it – it will give you a brighter outlook on life.
“…I’ve always been fascinated by the lefts ability to schadenfreude…”
That’s because it involves having an imagination, empathy and an entire array of higher order thinking of which you are bereft. I guess it must like looking through a window into a world where you’ll never be able to play.
Schadenfreude has zip to do with envy, Jimmy, and everything to do with the deep, deep satisfaction of seeing someone shooting themselves with one of their very own carefully crafted balls of shit.
Now, revel in your fellow right-wingers schadenfreude, it’s fucking delicious.
Steve Bannon’s spectacular fall from grace in Trump World is a big, salty, delicious bowl of schadenfreude from the political gods in celebration of the new year.
[…]
Now, like two rats in a bag, Trump and Bannon are tearing at one another in a delicious public spat that has every possible bit of drama, except Bannon drunkenly bellowing for a round of fisticuffs with all comers and Trump offering to compare the length of their relative manhoods on live television. They deserve one another in so many ways
And I am bemused by James’s ability to demolition the English language.
Schadenfreude is strictly a noun, James – both in the original German, and in English.
To show you how silly it sounds, I have just misused ‘demolition’ the same way you misused schadenfreude. It seems that some righties need the obvious explained to them…
For one who is so sure of his utter perfection in every way, how about thinking whether you should have written “If you ARE so bemused by my use of the E(cap)nglish language…”
Still haven’t found any reports in the corporate media about the massive storm that hit the country written in the context of climate change…..
But I found this.
‘Living on the Edge: What climate change means for Taranaki ’
The climate change debate has hogged headlines recently but its influence on humanity is undeniable. In the first of a six-part series called Living on the Edge, reporter Deena Coster takes a deeper look at what it means for Taranaki.
The rough and rugged Taranaki coastline will be unrecognisable in 100 years’ time.
Houses once dotted along the coast will be lost, as coastal erosion and rising sea levels steal away the very land they rest on………..’
‘From drought scare to deluge despair: The science of the storm.’
‘ After a period of calm, dry weather for much of the country, in which century old records for dryness were toppled, the furious storm from the north seemed to come out of the blue.
What may at first seem like atmospheric whiplash was actually a case of cause and effect – and may be a taste of things to come…..’
‘With rising sea-levels, as expected under a warming climate, storm surges will get higher and reach further inland – issues already evident in pockets around the country, where homes and infrastructure have been damaged.’
Thanks for raising the “Climate change” issue it was urgently needed to address our worsening climate of severe weather now reaching us all.
As PM Jacinda Ardern said clearly and correctly;-
“Climate change is truly the nuclear issue of our generation’s time”.
But it is so sad that even with the truly ‘extreme’ weather events we all experienced over the last few days, was not responded to properly by all the media!!!!
All the media could do was to “minimalise’ most of the event, and worsening weather events we are now experiencing now.
Question is to all the ‘climate change deniers’ & naysayers is;
“How much is enough to wake them up” ????
Will it need to take many lives lost?
Will it take a dramatic loss of their own food chain so they starve?
Will it take a loss of all forms of transport?
Will it take a loss of our coastal regions up to 50kms inland before they will actually finally put up their hands in surrender to ‘mother nature’ and plead for forgiveness for their folly???????
We certainly hope they will finally wake up now and join us to begin reducing climate change emissions and begin rebuilding secure future.
Stuff/Fairfax have had an epiphany.
There’s even a climate change quiz.
Get people to do it.
These operations work on click bait and it would be good for them to see people are interested in climate change.
“As PM Jacinda Ardern said clearly and correctly;-
“Climate change is truly the nuclear issue of our generation’s time”.”
Yep, but can’t see much action on this from Labour in the RMA and in TPPA (whoever version) or any future planning. Climate change is ignored (apart from various taxation schemes) and not actually looked at what’s gonna happen when parts of the world get uninhabitable in particular those that have huge populations (India looking to get to 50 degree temperature in some places), massive pollution in China or islands that will become are under water and all around the world in particular the west, houses destroyed on mass by flooding and storms. Agricultural land in drought and housing and people galore, but less land in agricultural production or even owed locally by the the country but by offshore individuals and corporations whose aim is profit not social conscience. Or maybe wars start breaking out to control dwindling resources. Japan is obsessed already with doing it’s own thing on fisheries and not cooperating in local efforts to have ecological sanctuaries to keep the fish stocks and biodiversity going. Our fisheries control is laughable in this country and it seems NZ are only too happy to turn a blind eye to slave labour to catch and process it as well as overfishing.
Wilson’s car parking for example in Australia show enormous “costs” leading to small profits on eye watering charges and a very small tax take for Australia. Who knew that you were helping the profits of Hong Kong billionaires when you parked at the local hospital. Clearly this type of carry on is going to get worse and worse – National even wanted to sell off the state houses to the Chinese or Australian corporations. China owns 50% of silver fern farms and Fonterra seems more focused on the 8 million salary of it’s executive than any sort of forward planning in any area from innovation to pollution control. I’m sure big business would love to sell Fonterra off into shares on the sharemarket, but for the moment making do with just selling off the daily farms themselves which will eventually change the control more offshore.
Cheese costs more than the average wage after taxes already in this country, bottled water costs more than soft drink. Not looking good for local Kiwis future, if things start going bad around the world and we find we don’t actually own much of our land and assets anymore and other’s are making the profits from NZ produce, water and housing booms (aka James Hardie types) while the Kiwi taxpayers are paying for the infrastructure and disaster costs but have little export income anymore so can’t afford social welfare. With enough of a change in demographics we might start getting a society that doesn’t believe in ‘wasting money” on social welfare anymore and privatise and plunder everything for a business opportunity.
Still haven’t found any reports in the corporate media about the massive storm that hit the country written in the context of climate change…..
That could be because sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and weather is just weather. Here’s NIWA on the effects of La Niña weather on New Zealand.
La Niña events have different impacts on New Zealand’s climate. More north–easterly winds are characteristic, which tend to bring moist, rainy conditions to the north–east of the North Island, and reduced rainfall to the south and south–west of the South Island.
…
Warmer than normal temperatures typically occur over much of the country during La Niña, although there are regional and seasonal exceptions.
So, it’s been a lot warmer than usual and the north-east is copping it from storms – classic La Niña weather. If journalists aren’t rushing to blame local weather conditions on climate change, good on them.
This is climate change, not weather.
Some of you will only wake up to it when the flood is at your own doorstep.
And the world can’t wait for you.
‘Those warm, dry, and settled conditions contributed to an unusual phenomena: a marine heat wave, in which sea temperatures around New Zealand were about 2 degrees Celsius warmer than average.
Off the west coast, in the Tasman Sea, temperatures were as much as 6C above normal – at the time, it was the largest sea temperature anomaly in the world.’
Insurers warn climate change will hit policy prices and make some properties uninsurable
Bryce Davies, general manager corporate relations for insurance giant IAG, says the shift towards evaluating properties for their individual climate-change risk has already began, meaning homeowners with properties in flood plains and beachfronts could expect increases.
Ans in stuff today
How climate change could send your insurance costs soaring
Climate change is not only set to transform our environment, it’s also likely to cause insurance costs to skyrocket.
The Insurance Council of New Zealand has warned that our country is one of the most vulnerable to the impact of natural disasters for an economy of our size.
Council chief executive Tim Grafton says New Zealand can expect to face, on average, annual costs of $1.6 billion (just under 1 per cent of its GDP) from natural disasters, based on data going back to 1900
Organisations with money in the situation clearly realise climate change is happening fast. Exxon Mobil knew about CC in the 70s ( and hid their findings as it would impact their profits)
But to some misguided fellows, like Trump and PM, it’s just weather.
Humankind and other species on this planet can’t wait for such dilettantes and deniers.
In 1959 Edward Teller warned the industry about the consequences of burning fossil fuel.
The pricks have known for sixty years.
It was a typical November day in New York City. The year: 1959. Robert Dunlop, 50 years old and photographed later as clean-shaven, hair carefully parted, his earnest face donning horn-rimmed glasses, passed under the Ionian columns of Columbia University’s iconic Low Library. He was a guest of honor for a grand occasion: the centennial of the American oil industry.
[…]
Four others joined Dunlop at the podium that day, one of whom had made the journey from California – and Hungary before that. The nuclear weapons physicist Edward Teller had, by 1959, become ostracized by the scientific community for betraying his colleague J. Robert Oppenheimer, but he retained the embrace of industry and government. Teller’s task that November fourth was to address the crowd on “energy patterns of the future,” and his words carried an unexpected warning:
Ladies and gentlemen, I am to talk to you about energy in the future. I will start by telling you why I believe that the energy resources of the past must be supplemented. First of all, these energy resources will run short as we use more and more of the fossil fuels. But I would […] like to mention another reason why we probably have to look for additional fuel supplies. And this, strangely, is the question of contaminating the atmosphere. [….] Whenever you burn conventional fuel, you create carbon dioxide. [….] The carbon dioxide is invisible, it is transparent, you can’t smell it, it is not dangerous to health, so why should one worry about it?
Carbon dioxide has a strange property. It transmits visible light but it absorbs the infrared radiation which is emitted from the earth. Its presence in the atmosphere causes a greenhouse effect [….] It has been calculated that a temperature rise corresponding to a 10 per cent increase in carbon dioxide will be sufficient to melt the icecap and submerge New York. All the coastal cities would be covered, and since a considerable percentage of the human race lives in coastal regions, I think that this chemical contamination is more serious than most people tend to believe.
Yeah, but Teller was beating his own project plowshare – nuclear fracking (happened) and using three hydrogen bombs to make a large harbour on aussie west coast (politely declined).
Insurance companies as part of the financial industry have underwritten some primary causes of planetary pollution and destruction since, day one…and will continue to do so…
The ‘institutions have profited heavily playing a part in creating the circumstances, and they will attempt to continue the plunder…
Swiss Re and out major players in the Global Insurance industry have been warning of the financial effects of Climate Change for years. In 2010 Swiss RE wrote this:
Adaptation through adequate sea defences and the management of the residual risk is essential. While the insurance industry is an important contributor to the absorption of volatile risk, it cannot address the challenges of climate change alone: To tackle this, a public-private partnership will be indispensable. Beyond traditional insurance, Swiss Re can contribute through alternative forms of risk transfer to absorb highly volatile losses.
My bold http://www.swissre.com/rethinking/the_effects_of_climate_change.html
Their assessments were based on the IPPC projections then of a 0.37m rise in sea level. The fact that those projections have now increased by around a factor of 10, exacerbates the problem dramatically.
No reason why not have a govt srvice. Nationally-based rates system collected via TLAs to fund the building insurance, EQC, and fire levies, separate assessments for contents.
Weather is weather. You’re wanting journalists to report storms as climate change, something which would only encourage people with functioning cognitive faculties to ridicule the journalists, and worse, might encourage people to believe climate change is bullshit. Worse yet, it encourages other people to mistake weather for climate, resulting in even more imbecilic “Frosty again – so much for global warming!” comments by right-wingers.
By all means expect news reports to mention that storms can be expected to increase in frequency and severity due to climate change, but an individual storm remains just a storm.
Yes I am expecting journalists to use context for a story.
That’s a basic of the job.
Reporting Brexit without the context of the deindustrialisation of parts of the UK makes no sense.
Reporting Trump without the context of the deindustrialisation of parts of the US makes no sense.
Reporting the war in Syria without the context of climate change and the desertification of parts of Syria makes no sense.
Reporting the changing weather patterns in New Zealand without the context of climate change makes no sense.
Reporting the events in Gaza without the context of 1917, 1948, 1967 and other key historical dates makes no sense.
To be fair, the main Stuff article about the recent storms does put it in the context of climate change: “With rising sea-levels, as expected under a warming climate, storm surges will get higher and reach further inland – issues already evident in pockets around the country, where homes and infrastructure have been damaged.”
It sure is. And the context of a weather event is weather patterns – La Niña, for instance. Storms have been causing floods in New Zealand since before there were humans here – linking any individual storm to climate change would be as stupid as claiming global warming doesn’t exist because there was an early snowfall.
Is saying someone is stupid the same, as might be stupid, or showing stupid tendencies or ideas, better, worse or just different than saying someone has a psychopathic mentality? And is that the same as saying someone is a psychopath? And can hard critical words never be used against anyone here? Questions that run through my head but then I am borderline crazy these days.
Well, to be accurate they should be reporting storms in relation to climate change and how one affects the other. They shouldn’t be ignoring it just because it’s weather.
Actually Psycho attribution of Climate Change to Extreme weather events is a developing science. The 2003 European Heatwave that had a not insignificant effect on the Syrian situation, has been assessed for instance to have been more likely to have occurred as a result of AGW. https://www.nature.com/articles/nature03089
However,
According to last year’s National Academy of Sciences report, “An indication of the developing interest in event attribution is highlighted by the fact that in 4 years (2012-2015), the number of papers increased from 6 to 32.”
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-can-now-blame-individual-natural-disasters-on-climate-change/
As you say – you just can’t look at an extreme weather event and say “that’s climate change” but what is becoming more possible with improving climate modelling is to say the AGW has contributed significantly to the possibility of that event occurring.
Furthermore take for instance the major damage done to my favourite piece of roadway, the coastal road north from Thames over the weekend. (it truly is a delight to pass along especially at christmas with the pohutakawas all in full bloom and the sea and little bays alongside). https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/100346389/evacuation-warnings-and-rocks-on-the-road-in-firth-of-thames
But this road SH25 is under severe threat from rising sea levels, the direct result of AGW. With a king tide and storm surge the destruction caused is inevitable. I’m not sure just how this vital link to the Peninsula will be maintained into the future.
Yes I’m well aware of the work of both Denis and Thomas (referred to in the first link). I too have submitted to the TCDC on the matter wrt to the district plan, and my daughter is a Community Board member so we are all on to the problem.
The developers however are only concerned in making a quick buck and will find any piece of nonsense to hide behind. This piece of nonsense from Gloria Humphries is typical:
Asked about its sea level planning, Hopper Developments sent Newsroom an email pointing to an engineering design feature of the project’s canal walls, which “allow for overflow on certain spring tides”.
“Interestingly some of our walls at Pauanui [the first of Hopper Development’s two coastal canal projects] were constructed 25 years ago and anecdotal evidence would suggest that the sea level rise (if any) is closer to the 1.6mm pa rate rather than the rates many are citing in the media at present.”
Gloria Humphries recently wrote a letter to the editor of the Hauraki Herald, published on November 17, in which she put forward a case against sea level rise. “I’m just a lay person without the appropriate background to challenge the so called experts, but I consider myself to be widely read on all points of view, and have come to the conclusion that ‘man-made’ global warming is the biggest con that has been foisted on mankind in modern times for reasons that have very little to do with our climate …” she wrote.
The 1.6mm pa SLR she refers to above is the long term average over the past century. ie there has been around 17cm of SLR over the past 100 years. This, of course, completely ignores the increasing rate of SLR from melting ice shelves, that has been increasingly rapid over the past couple of decades. But if she can get away with it, and sell off a few more properties, and pass the buck on to Council – well who cares?
SH 25 being a State Highway is of course maintained by Govt. – Just how and what the level of funding will be or what the long term solution is has yet to be determined. But SH 25 is repeatedly closed due to slips and subsidence. Even though it is a very attractive piece of NZ – I wouldn’t consider living up the coast – my doc lives up that way and on one occasion the slip was in place for days. He would ride his bike to the slip, clamber over the rocks, and then pick up his car to drive the rest of the way into work each day. This is becoming a regular occurrence for those people living up that way.
As for the fate of the sea side residences – this is a problem over the whole of NZ but TCDC is unique in that it has one of the longest coastlines of any regional council in the country and only around 30,000 rate payers. It is also unique in that in 1931 during the Depression and the closure of the gold mines Thames, which had borrowed heavily for a number of large projects, was unable to pay its way with a high unemployment and rate payers now unable to pay their bills. The incoming Mayor went to the govt and the town was promptly placed in Administration and remained so until 1947. You can still se the results of this in the rather sad civil works – monsoon drains rather than modern guttering etc – around the town even to this day.
Thank you for sharing your detailed historical knowledge of the area.
Why in your opinion we’re all those developments on the waterways permitted?
Corruption?
Naivety?
Ignorance?
Slackness?
Or something else?
Like all councils TCDC tends to be the governance of the privileged for the privileged. The past Mayor’s family is in the civil construction business – so naturally is generally supportive of “development” in all its forms. The geology of the area is also not conducive to large urban areas, being in essence a string of extinct volcanos. There is constant pressure from the three major cities Auckland Hamilton and Tauranga – all within 2 hours drive from Coromandel for further development as people retire, and wish to move to be by the sea. So if a developer proposes a new subdivision – it will be looked at favourably. Having said that the fact is that these developments were reviewed under the guidelines of what was then the available knowledge of projected SLR. The T & T report referred to the IPPC report and the Whitianga development as you see was constructed with that scenario in mind.
However, it was always understood that the IPPC is conservative in its assessments as it is an international body and the report has to be agreed by a large variety of people and nations.
The sad fact however is that the last government (ie Nick Smith) sat on the latest SLR assessment and these were not made public or given any credence until James Shaw released them on taking office. Had these figures been available at the time it is probable that the developments would not have been given the green light.
Another troll like James .
I suspected so after your climate denial.
I shall be exiting the conversation.
There is nothing to be gained from encouraging the nonsense you lot spout.
Are you all one and the same?
Ed, if that is the level of your thinking and the tactics you continue to employ, it is no surprise that Paul was banned….
The posts you put up about various and many subjects, lack fundamental awareness and thought when you upload them…
Does that mean that you are ‘wrong’ in what you upload….maybe/maybe not….but the tactics are not going to attract people to take your links and then perhaps do some further reading of their own into [subject]
1. Post links with statements in absolutes [financial crash coming et al]
2. When another commentator questions/queries, refutes or proposes another angle….
3. Accuse the commentator of tr*lling…
In no way are such tactics likely to encourage others to read further …
Surely that is why you post comments with links here…..to encourage others to investigate further and thus having greater numbers of people becoming engaged?
If the above is not why you post the subject links, then I would suggest taking some time to assess internally, why it is you are doing so….
100% of the weather is affected by climate change. 100% of the weather occurs on a planet which has warmer oceans and surface temperatures and more water vapour in the atmosphere and therefore, more energy.
The degree to which this affects individual weather events is asking the wrong question. It’s of academic interest only. From a practical perspective resilience and planning are far more important than attribution.
I walk my dog most days on this beach and the situation is worsening by the day. The council dumped a few loads of rock, but the huge seas and recent king tide have swept over and around the rocks. A proper sea wall is needed but the Grey District Council apparently can’t afford it.
At the moment layers of barely composed rubbish is visible complete with black rubbish sacks. Apparently there’s all sorts of toxic goodies in there including radioactive waste from the local hospital.
There you go I told you all that all our internet devices could be hacked.
But it is not just the internet devices it is all the smart devices in OUR world.
Some good intelligent person alerts US to the back door Entrance into our passwords on these chips and the chip manufacturers put a sticky tape cover of a lie on this subject and say O we new about this a while ago we are finding a patch we just did not want to ALARM the public . What a load of bullshit these back door entrances are not a design flaw they have been forced to put these BDE into our chips so the Governments of the west can control us most likely the USA FBI CIA . Why do you think China has invested billions in to making there own chips and a laser beam communication satellite so they have safe secure COMS . I no all my coms are hacked my childrens com to . The neo liberal 1% want total control they have been deliberately suppressing our Ladys Mana to over the centuries because they know they will get there asses kicked by OUR strong intelligent humane caring LADYS . There is a doco on wonderwoman DC comics started this comic to lift our ladys mana at the time the 1% were ok with that because they wanted to motivate our ladys to go to work and what was the work well making crap for the world wars and when the war was over they stopped using her to lift ladys mana and got wander woman to act like a dutiful submissive house wife .
These wankers like interfering in every aspect of OUR lives and don t want to cede power they don t give a shit that they are stuffing up our WORLDS SOCIETY and motherearth and all her wonderfull beings . ECO Maori knows that US the 99% will put a stop to this way of life of shitting in ones own back yard and we will create a beautiful caring equal world society for all whom are on Papatuanuku.
Ka kite ano
“Serious security flaws that could let attackers steal sensitive data, including passwords and banking information, have been found in processors designed by Intel, AMD and ARM.”
A damning description of MCaw and other well paid All Blacks
‘The tragedy for Fuimaono-Sapolu is that he has been grievously unsupported by players in New Zealand and Australia who all seem under the corporate yoke. Where is today’s Anton Oliver? Richie McCaw sits on a panel that absurdly makes Beauden Barrett the World Rugby Player of the Year again, not a title that a player is ever likely to win in a Samoan shirt – Beauden, blondish poster boy, good for business.
When did McCaw ever speak out on behalf of anything? No wonder he was a school prefect. But as Fuimaono-Sapolu says: “If Richie McCaw said anything about the GCSB, the whole of New Zealand would be up in arms against it.”
They key words…..
‘players in New Zealand and Australia who all seem under the corporate yoke.’
MCaw pimps for Fonterra and supports a company destroying our rivers and environment.
Some All Blacks….
Rich
Entitled
Coke sniffers
Wife beaters
Booze addled
Young men.
Don’t worry about your device(s) getting hacked. Instead, be more concerned about your brain being manipulated & changed by and through those devices. The content, delivery, and interaction/consumption of ‘information’ through those devices are having major impact on us and (our) society. What happens when you ‘lose’ (control of) your smart phone is nothing compared to when you ‘lose’ (control of) your mind – they seem to go hand-in-hand and maybe that’s not coincidental either …
That is some of the more salient points, Incognito…
The lack of awareness about the impacts of technology related mental health, is increasingly well documented, but not widely understood at the ‘consumer end’…
The way that the one-way is being pushed on us is amazing. Everyone is brainwashed about wonderful technology, you need to be immersed in it up to your nose to get anywhere, a job, connect with anybody. Kids are learning to type rather than write. Why not, it is so much easier to interface with machines and soon some people will have chips put in so their brains can connect directly with the communications port – cut out the middleman.
I wanted to speak to someone, phoned up and went through the numbers game, then got message that it was so easy to go on-line, this while I was on the phone already. Finally I did get service without waiting too long but the process of ‘disruption’ embedded in business practice now means that nothing you value now can be guaranteed to remain available, all must be subject to eternal, infernal change and churn.
Be nice to the people at call centres, they may be replaced with machines, as we all may be until some sort of saturation point is reached.
A recent contact did not want to accept my landline number though there was no particular reason not to, and I have an answerphone attached.
My choices are being taken away, yet this was part of the mantra of free markets, neo lib economics etc. I don’t believe any of the upbeat future-is-great drum-beaters any more. They are either stool pigeons, or specialise in living in the ‘now’, or are too young to be trusted to understand or be interested in the context of what they are speiling.
Thanks for correcting that fake statement made by a troll saying ‘AMD chips are just fine.’
We have enough mis-information around now without more fake statements made to fool us all to believe some systems are safe or ‘fine’.
We all need to be given free upgades for them to block these flaws and rid ‘stealing of our sensitive data, including passwords and banking information’.
If the manufacturer caused these flaws in these IC chips then they must pay to fix them too. “consumers have rights too.”
Like automobile ‘recalls’ we should have the same rights to repairs.
Same applies with whoever caused our destructive “climate change” it is the companies who marketed the products who must be held responsible for the repair of our climate again too.
Someone got analytical about the timing and relationship between Fox and Friends and the terracotta turdface eruptions on twitter. And yep, he’s basically just live-tweeting F&F.
A Sugar tax is well overdue here.
We should not follow the UK – instead we should tax sugar at the cost it has to our society and it’s health. Tax at $5 per litre and make sugary drinks expensive items.
And stop all advertising.
And limit points of sale.
Here is the timid approach of the UK.
‘Coca-Cola to sell smaller bottles at higher prices in response to sugar tax.
‘…..The sugar tax – designed to help combat child obesity – was announced by then chancellor George Osborne in 2016 and he gave drinks-makers time to change their recipes if they wished to escape the levy. From April soft drinks manufacturers will be taxed at 18p per litre on drinks containing 5g of sugar or more per 100ml, or 24p per litre if the drink has 8g of sugar or more per 100ml. The tax will apply to one in five drinks sold in the UK…….’
Yeah, and we should have a special car tax for those cars that in the wrong hands kill the users. Or a sun tax cos melanoma. Or an internet tax because some people write silly things on blogs.
Or we could start banning people who can’t sensibly and safely use the products that the vast majority have no problems with.
We already have petrol taxes to cover the roading and other infrastructure, and ACC levies on registration and fuel to cover the health and income costs of accidents.
A fat tax is well overdue here.
We should not follow the UK – instead we should tax fat pricks at the cost they have to our society and vote health. Tax at $5 per kilo over normal bodyweight as determined by the Ministry of body normality
Well Coke with what, nine teaspoons of sugar per 330ml, sure. Three or four not so much. Regulate a steadily decreasing maximum and neither manufacturer nor customer is penalized.
Ed that sounds like what a troll would come up with. Illegal causes more problems and creates black markets etc. if there is some demand for the product then it encourages people on the make to encourage others to use more. Instead of discouraging. This is already known. A facetious comment on your part, but it’s the first thought to the minds of the brainless.
I recommend we approach sugar and alcohol the same way we tackled tobacco.
Gradual and significant price increases.
Stop advertising.
Make health campaigns to explain bad health outcomes.
Limit places it can be sold.
Make it lose its glamour.
Programmes at school to edit the young.
Alcohol free and sugar free places.
In 20-30 years, Coca Cola and Heineken would be on the run, like Philip Morris are now.
[I think you’ve been warned about this before. The only reason you’re not getting a ban is I don’t have time to look, but if I see you doing that shit again I will ban you.
Seeing your comment to Paul below as well, I suggest having a think about how you want to be here too, because the whole nasty shit coming from you since the election is getting tedious. Your history of contributions here will only get you so far if moderators have to keep putting time into this. – weka]
“we should tax sugar at the cost it has to our society and it’s health. Tax at $5 per litre and make sugary drinks expensive items”.
I trust you can provide a link to some analysis that the cost is $5.00/litre?
It does seem such a suspiciously round number doesn’t it?
Exactly $5.00/litre. I’m sure you didn’t just pull it out of thin air.
You remind me of when then Mayor Ken Livingston brought in a Congestion Charge in London. He claimed that it was merely to cover the costs that traffic congestion was causing. It just happened to be five pounds a time.
Pure coincidence of course that it was such a round figure.
Now, where do you get $5.00/litre as being the cost to society of sugary drinks?
Cigarettes now cost $30 a pack. The tax on them must be over $20 a pack.
My $5 is an arbitrary number to deter the purchase of debilitating sugary drinks and mitigate their devastating impact on people, society and the country.
It could just as easily be $10 tax per litre .
Personally, I’d copy some South American countries and boot companies like Coca-Cola and McDonalds out of the country.
Cigarettes now cost $30 a pack. The tax on them must be over $20 a pack.
Yep. The government’s raised taxes on cigarettes so high that they’ve created a black market for them and people are robbing dairies to supply that black market. Three cheers for good governance!
Given the above, I’m surprised that anyone thinks it would be a great idea to do something similar for sugar. Public health activists are a very unusual breed.
They are paid to be single-minded when you need to be triple-minded to get around the combination of sugar carving, advertising promotion and profit.
There is no care of humanity in business. If you want to buy they rarely twist your arm, they just play on your mind starting with tv ads when you are a baby, and if you buy good, and if you get sick, then they will charge you for some treatment that will get you on your feet and buying again. And we buy into this sweet and vicious circle.
I don’t have the slightest problem with the statement about it being an arbitrary figure that is simply intended to make the drinks expensive.
What I object to is the oft-used claim that some level of tax is, in your own words, “tax sugar at the cost it has to our society and it’s health”.
It is done far to often when there is no actual justification for the setting of the tax at a particular level. If people would simply say that they want to make something expensive they are being honest. When they claim that it is to meet the costs of the vice they are not.
As far as smoking goes smokers are probably the only group who pay enough for their vice to pay for the health treatment they incur. When you include the fact that they are likely to collect superannuation for fewer years they may actually be doing the taxpayer a favour.
The tax collected is about $2 billion per year. That is a pretty good chunk of the Health budget. As long ago as 2012 Treasury said that smokers do pay for their costs. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10809145
I don’t mind these taxes being charged. It helped persuade me to give up smoking cigars, a habit I greatly enjoyed. I just object to the idea of increasing the taxes because “you cost us taxpayers money”
Perhaps they do Ed, but you are missing the point.
If you are going to tax the sales of Sugary drinks in order to recover the costs to Society from consuming the drinks then you have to work out, at least to a reasonable approximation, what that cost is. Then you can charge a tax that will recover that amount.
If you are going to apply a punitive tax in order to discourage people consuming those items then you should have the courage of your convictions. Say that is what you are doing. Don’t pretend it is only to save the poor taxpayer from having to pay.
You appear to be following the punitive approach. Well admit it.
You appear to be following the punitive approach. Well admit it.
Fine by me.
The whole point of high taxation for cigarettes and other bad for you stuff is to stop people from using them.
The cost of both their medical costs and the premature death is far too high. The amount cannot be accurately measured in monetary terms as a lot of it is emotional which causes a lot of flow on effects.
Oh, suck my balls. My odds of premature death are my business. You’re just as bad as Ed railing about a vegan lifestyle, which might make me live longer and it’ll sure as shit feel like it.
I’ll go to hell in my own damned way, thankyou very much. If there were mandatory workplace air quality standards rather than arbitrary bans on stinky things, I wouldn’t take anyone with me, either.
Because tobacco smoke isn’t the only bad thing in the air. And decent ventilation and filtration to address those other things would make most bans unnecessary.
Well, yes it does work that way. Because air from outside comes inside, glycol smoke machines in gigs have their own issues, and packing a few hundred people into a nightclub with barely adequate ventilation becomes a nightmare of mutual-contamination. I have literally had ceiling condensate drip on me.
But the classic example is aircraft – recirculate the air as much as possible for a random collection of dozens or hundreds of people, and keep them exposed for hours.
I recall a Washington Post article from years ago saying a Dutch study found smokers actually end up costing the health system less than non-smokers, because they tend to die of things that kill you quickly (eg heart attacks, lung cancer) rather than spending decades deteriorating in old age with successive expensive health issues. If our primary concern were costs to health system, we should subsidise smoking instead of penalising it.
Well, good, because no public health departments of publicly-funded universities would fund research that might return such politically-unsatisfactory results.
Conclusions: Although effective obesity prevention leads to a decrease in costs of obesity-related diseases, this decrease is offset by cost increases due to diseases unrelated to obesity in life-years gained. Obesity prevention may be an important and cost-effective way of improving public health, but it is not a cure for increasing health expenditures.
Another study (two authors in common with above study) published in 2014 is also freely available/accessible (Open Access):
Disease Prevention: Saving Lives or Reducing Health Care Costs?
[NB The contributions of author Pieter van Baal were supported by the Network for Studies on Pensions, Aging and Retirement (NETSPAR http://www.netspar.nl) as part of the project “Rising life expectancy: causes and consequences in the Netherlands”. NETSPAR is a think tank and knowledge network established in 2005. The Foundation’s activities are pursued through the Netspar Center, an operational unit of Tilburg University.]
Conclusions: The stronger the negative impact of a disease on longevity, the higher health care costs would be after elimination. Successful treatment of fatal diseases leaves less room for longevity gains due to effective prevention but more room for health care savings.
The third study (different authors altogether) published in 1998 is also freely available/accessible and was funded by the Ministry of Health, Welfare, and Cultural Affairs, the Netherlands:
Preventing fatal diseases increases healthcare costs: cause elimination life table approach
Conclusions: The aim of prevention is to spare people from avoidable misery and death not to save money on the healthcare system. In countries with low mortality, elimination of fatal diseases by successful prevention increases healthcare spending because of the medical expenses during added life years.
You’ll notice that neither study focused solely on smoking and they, in fact, covered a very wide range of life-threatening diseases.
There have been plenty more studies published and I reject any suggestion that they all were biased through ‘inducements’ from ‘invested interests’.
I’ve seen quite a lot of them over the years.
Usually done by University economists who smoke.
They get sick of the other academics who complain that the smokers are being supported by their wowser compatriots.
It is quite easy to justify the claim that smokers pay in full for their habit.
They never get published of course. It would be fatal for your professional reputational to publish such a thing. Rather like questioning any of the left wing shibboleths. The same thing was true in 1930s Germany when you were sacked for claiming that “Jewish” Physics, ie Relativity and Quantum Theory were correct.
I wish they would start a subsidy scheme..
Oh to be able to afford the occasional Romeo y Julieta Churchill again.
A 7 inch Cuban cigar with a 47 ring size. Bliss for an hour.
As Rudyard Kipling is reputed to have said.
“A woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke”.
I’ll bet he never said it in his wife’s hearing though.
They were fucking awesome. Sitting in the garden on a summer’s evening, quietly smoking as the birds and insects lived their lives – some of the most peaceful moments of my life.
In New Zealand with a superannuation that’s not means or asset tested, that’s particularly true as every year early that someone dies from smoking-related causes is a significant saving in super that doesn’t have to be paid.
However, personally I’d rather people didn’t smoke and lived longer, so I’m OK with trying to convince people to stop smoking.
Yep. There’s “trying to convince,” and there’s “let’s tax these things so much that fuckwits find it worth bashing a shop assistant to get them.”
My university’s currently trying to implement an extortion/ostracism plan for making the entire campus smoke-free, in which we managers are supposedly going to accost and note down identifying details of non-compliant smokers – “supposedly” because, well, like fuck that’s going to happen. My favourite part of the proceedings was when the public-health academics got into a scrap with the OSH people over whether designated smoking booths should be open or not – if they’re open, the deadly toxic fumes might be breathed in by innocent victims, but if they’re enclosed, that’s a breach of OSH regulations re smoking in an enclosed area in a workplace. Ah, good times…
Every so often I pull out the line that complete exclusion is discrimination on the grounds of having a medical condition, specifically addiction. If there’s nowhere for you to smoke, there’s nowhere for you to treat your addiction, therefore the place is not accessible to you because of your condition. Like stairs with no wheelchair access.
That’s why the ostracism is needed – so nobody looks at it logically.
I mean, you can break down the appeal into things like the ritual, the diverse aromas, the variation between aroma and flavour, the art of storing and preparation, the breath control, and the generally calming and almost meditative practise, but (like poetry criticism and frog dissection) the experience is in the whole, not the sum of the parts.
It’s either something you go for, or something you don’t. Again, like poetry or frog dissection.
I have only just noticed this line of comments and this question.
I guess on this one I have to go along with McFlock.
It is the whole experience. I suppose the most pleasant part is sitting outside on a fine evening taking the occasional puff on the cigar and watching the smoke gently rise. Pure peace.
I really isn’t something that is subject to “analysis”
Perhaps Oscar Wilde put it best though
“If I have to explain, you wouldn’t understand”.
I never thought a simple comment about a cigar would have caused so many comments though.
The tornado/ tsunami/ flood has to actually hit them for it to become an important issue.
And then they’ll complain that a) the government isn’t doing enough and b) that the government should have acted sooner completely ignoring that it was them that prevented the government from acting as needed.
John Roughan takes his shit with a ‘healthy’ dose of salt.
This is very possibly a piss take…I’m hoping…
“We are probably going to need bags of the stuff over the next few years. We are still enjoying good times economically and long may they last, but human society has to have something to worry about, or at least talk about, and in good times these days we fret about the environment. We had an election last year in which we were urged to worry that it was no longer safe to swim in rivers.
Takapuna is a long beach, the suspected effluent was entering the water between the flags. So move the flags well away…
This is obviously the type of person who will get caught in the rip just off the beach and need to be rescued because he’s not swimming between the flags. The type of person who doesn’t understand that the flags are placed where swimming is safest. That moving the flags will make swimming less safe both for the swimmers and the lifeguards.
What on earth has happened to common sense?
Good question? Why doesn’t he have any?
Whatever happened to “she’ll be right”?
It was never right and has caused major problems. Please keep up to date with the real world.
Takapuna’s discharge turned out not to be sewage, just filthy road water after the rain. But before that became known on Tuesday, when the don’t swim signs were still on the beach, some people were reported to be in the water regardless. I salute them, I cheer them.
That’s because you and them are really bloody stupid. Please note that if any of them had ended up in the hospital it would have been on our dime paying for their stupidity and then you would have been complaining about that.
“Swimmable” was just a water quality measure of course, probably an excessive one for rivers such as the Waikato from a practical point of view but politically it worked.
One that would have ensured that the river would die. And we actually do need the environment to be healthy else we die as well.
We’re not separate from the environment but a part of it and we need it to live.
Why have we let joyless puritans dominate public thinking on so many subjects these days.
There’s a lot more joy provided by protecting the environment so that we can all survive than by trashing it to make a few rich and killing us all off.
In Tuesday’s sunshine, when the news from Takapuna was in the paper, just about all the beaches were red-flagged. On Wednesday just about all of them had a nice green tick.
Oh god, he even thinks that things stay the same all the bloody time. What a fucken moron.
Someone’s leaking details about the Downer – Papadopoulos meeting.
What followed was the now infamous May 2016 conversation over many glasses of wine at the swanky Kensington Wine Rooms, during which the 28-year-old Papadopoulos spilled to Downer that he knew of a Russian dirt file on the rival Clinton campaign consisting of thousands of hacked emails.
That night was a key moment that helped spark the FBI probe – since taken over by respected former FBI director Robert Mueller as a special counsel – into possible Trump campaign collusion with the Kremlin, including its hacking of the Democratic National Committee.
Maybe someone should speak with Mifsud (the London based professor who apparently doesn’t speak Russian, but who has claimed to have contact with Putin and what-not.) and who the Austalian guy says Papadopoulos said told him there was a tranch of emails held by the Russian government.
Hmm.
Mifsud told the Telegraph that he knew nothing about emails containing “dirt” on Clinton, calling the allegations upsetting
I guess we’ll have to wait until Downer’s referred to the DOJ for making false statements to find out whether or not there’s fire.
/
.@SenWhitehouse: “I cannot understand why it would be necessary for members of Congress to make a criminal referral to the FBI concerning information we know the FBI already has." https://t.co/6Bl8xyhaER— Natasha Bertrand (@NatashaBertrand) January 5, 2018
Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley and Lindsey Graham on Friday issued a criminal referral to the Justice Department, urging it to examine whether the former British spy Christopher Steele made false statements to the FBI “about the distribution of claims” contained in a dossier he wrote about alleged ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.
The Fusion GPS op-ed earlier this week called for the release of the transcripts of their committee testimony. Grassley and Graham are shit scared of what might be revealed so they’ve come up with a reason to hold up any release – Steele and his report are subject to an investigation.
So, *cough*, any move to shut down the Downer story says they’re shit scared of any further information that may come to light.
So can Assange and Murray’s. Neither of them know where the hacked/leaked email’s they were provided with came from. Murray can only repeat what he was told by the intermediary.
That doesn’t stop people from treating their hearsay as evidence.
This “key moment that helped spark” the FBI investigation. From the description it was one of the factors involved – it “helped”.
These days of course, we can take Jared Kushner’s word for it that he thought he was going to collude with Moscow to get the emails.
I thought Assange stated the wikileaks release got passed to them by a “Washington insider” (or some such) but wouldn’t reveal the source. And Murray said something similar, no?
In other words, they say they know who provided the info.
I guess it’s possible that the Russian government (or an agency of) had emails that they obtained via the net and decided to put them on some hardware that they gave to someone else, who then passed said hardware and the info it held on to Wikileaks.
I’d have thought there were more direct and less fraught ways to get info up through Wikileaks mind. But hey…
Murray said he retrieved the package from a source during a clandestine meeting in a wooded area near American University, in northwest D.C. He said the individual he met with was not the original person who obtained the information, but an intermediary.
And it’s what Kushner and the other Trump grunts thought that matters anyway. It wasn’t Assange offering to collude with them.
…these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.
yeah and I wonder why Papadopolous wasn’t hauled in then and there for a thorough questioning. The Trump dossier has become such a liability that it cant be what prompted the FBI to surveil the Trump campaign. Now it has to be some earlier bullshit trigger
Meanwhile, on Earth, it’s likely that the FBI had a variety of reasons to start their investigation.
I can imagine why you would think there’d be just one though.
PS: the reason they don’t just “haul people in for questioning right then and there” is because from an investigator’s point of view, it’s nice to know the answers to the questions you’re putting to potential perps before you ask them.
It takes as long as it takes. These are, as Michael Shermer says, “extraordinary claims”: “an extraordinary claim must be placed into a larger context to see how it fits.”
I have some real problems with this – leaving aside how much of a creep Downer is.
Drunken conversations are generally full of overblown bs and bluster at the best of times. To have a Yank boast when they are drunk is somthing I’ve encountered many a time in my work and socially. To much hot air, and no substance. This looks like it may all turn to custard and everyone will walk free, again.
That said, if the right wing wanna stab each other in the back, who am I to stop them.
We’re kidding ourselves and the world is rapidly working that out.
We’re a selfish, squalid, polluting and corrupt nation that has succumbed to the worst extremes of neoliberalism and suffer from its worst outcomes.
‘China is refusing to take the world’s rubbish any longer, including New Zealand plastic. This move once again casts doubts on New Zealand’s claim to be a clean and green country. It also highlights the fact that recycling isn’t always a sign of ecological virtue……’
‘…..New Zealand’s “100 per cent pure” reputation takes another knock when we realise we are using other countries to dump our rubbish. But it also raises doubts about our own integrity as “green” householders. In fact, recycling seems even to have encouraged us to become more wasteful consumers than before…….’
We’re about the only place in the world where 1080 is a useful poison for wide-spread pest control.
Pretty much every where else in the world has ground-feeding native mammals they want to protect. New Zealand doesn’t. So the fact that 1080 is particularly effective on mammals and can be easily laid in baits on the ground means it has a low risk of killing species we want to protect here, so we use a lot. Almost all other places in the world, the risk of killing ground-feeding mammal species they want to protect is too high for them to use 1080.
The oligarchs the likes of Fletchers, Fay Richwhite, Alan Gibbs etc etc have done particularly well here in NZ since the introduction of neoliberalism in the 1980’s, according to Roger Douglas neoliberalism was going to be the best thing for New Zealand since the invention of sliced bread ?
Did we get suckered or did we not ?
MSM still keep telling us how well we are doing as a country ?
The sandflys are that scared of eco maori they are around were ever I go they think that they are going to break ecos wairua but no they are just adding to my mana ka pai sandflys you will never break ecos wairua Ana to kai .
I say that all the photos of shonky key on Ngati Porou web site should be deleted he was just stealing OUR mana. Kia kaha
‘Iceland has long been deemed the best place in the world to be a woman. For the past nine years, the country has topped the World Economic Forum’s gender equality index.
In Iceland men get at least three months’ paternity leave, and 90% of them take it. This gives them time to become comfortable with child-rearing, encouraging them to share the workload with their partners. Women in Iceland are highly educated, a high percentage hold managerial positions and they don’t give up their careers to have children: they do both – like the country’s new prime minister. At the end of 2017 Iceland got its second female prime minister, a 41-year-old with three young sons.
Many in Iceland see the women’s strike of 1975 as a defining moment in the gender equality struggle. On the “women’s day off”, as it’s known, 90% of women stopped work and refused to do any household chores. Schools and nurseries were closed. Many shops, factories and theatres had to close their doors. Fathers were left with no choice but to bring their kids to work, stocking up on sweets and colouring pencils to keep them occupied. On the radio, children could be heard playing in the background while the newsreaders read the news. After work, the children needed to be fed and the whole thing ended up as the day the men of Iceland ran out of sausages…..’
I find it intriguing that things that eco is interested in can no longer be found on the net
the first was that website dedicated to the corruption on NZ police after I told IPCA about it next was the photo of Waiomatatini marae Porourangi showing the white tekoteko on the marae 2 days ago the photo came up on the first search google photos not now and the books that Colonel William Porter one in particle is East Coast Maori myths and legends ???? why are they hiding this book what are the sandflys scared of it well eco knows you will have to find William Porters book to find out the one I found was on a Australian website. Ka kite ano
How Wolff got access: a bit of sucking up and a few friendly pieces early on. So it seems no Trumpies ever thought to check out any of his earlier work before letting him into the adult daycare playroom.
I think giving the sandflys the pukana and letting everyone know the truth about the way they think and operate is nothing compared to what they are saying about me I know what they are saying and the tactics they are using on me would break most people so I think my intimidation is justified by there actions they best get a mirror .
Ana to kai
I can already see the sandflys next lines of malicious attacks to my character .
I will stop referring to eco as a second being as this is there next line of attack that they will try and lock me up on false charges.
I can see the line they are taking with the words there trolls on this site are trying to use against me .The difference here is a lot of good people know that what I write about ie the harassment the intimerdation the suppression the damage to my character these sandflys are trying to do are true. If they try and lock me up with there false charges everyone will be very upset .I am happy that I have thestandard website to defend my good character with PS they really don t like a MAORI with Mana do they .
Ka kite ano
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It should be obvious by now but let’s be clear: The same folk who regularly traffic in disinformation, misinformation and “fake news” are also those who most strongly claim that their freedom of expression rights are being violated when moves are made to curb hate speech (as opposed to protected ...
Michael SchulsonWhen Shane Burcaw flies on an airplane, he brings along a customized gel cushion, a car seat, and about 10 pieces of memory foam. The whole arsenal costs around $1,000, but for Burcaw it’s a necessity. The 27-year-old author and speaker — who, alongside his fiancée, Hannah ...
We are very pleased to publish this submission is from Lucinda Stoan. She is a social justice activist, mother, and educator, based in Washington State in the US. This detailed and comprehensive source-linked overview of trans issues and what is at stake will be useful for many people, especially in ...
New Zealand's Underarm Banker: It bears recalling that the “independence” of the Reserve Bank Governor was for decades held up by neoliberal capitalists as the most compelling justification for passing the Reserve Bank Act. Interesting, is it not, how the ruling class’s support for the Bank’s independence lasted no longer than ...
Rubbish In, Rubbish Out: Put all this together, and it’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that anyone who responds positively to a pollster’s request to “answer a few questions” is just ever-so-slightly weird. Desperately lonely? Some sort of psephological train-spotter? Political party member primed to skew the poll for or against ...
“Free at last, Free at last, Thank God almighty we are free at last.” ― Martin Luther King Jr. A long and bitter court feud between former Conservative Party leader Colin Craig and Jordan Williams has been settled, with an apology and compensation from Williams. On Tuesday, Craig sent out ...
Samuel Becher, Victoria University of Wellington and Jessica C Lai, Victoria University of WellingtonEarlier this year, the New Zealand-based pizza chain Hell Pizza offered a limited-edition “Burger Pizza”. Its customers weren’t told that the “meat” was plant-based. Some customers complained to the Commerce Commission, which enforces consumer law in ...
Some people seem to want to close down any critical discussion of the current research into the relationship between water fluoride and child IQ. They appear to argue that claims made by researchers should not be open to critical review and that the claims be accepted without proper consideration ...
The government has been congratulating itself over the passage of the Zero Carbon Act, which sets out long-term emissions targets. Meanwhile, Climate Action Tracker has the shameful reality: those targets are insufficient:While New Zealand is showing leadership by having passed the world’s second-ever Zero Carbon Act in November 2019, under ...
The government introduced a Racing Industry Bill today. As an urban who horse racing as pointless-to-cruel, and gambling as a tax on stupidity and/or hope, this isn't normally a bill which would interest me in the slightest, beyond grumpiness at more government money for a dying industry. But there is ...
Check. Check. One, two, three, four. Is this thing ON? Hello readers, I logged in last night (yeah, it’s been a while) to mark THE END of the landmark legal case, Jordan Williams v Colin Craig, which (gulp) reached The Supreme Court, in which New Zealand’s most-defamed man was suing the politician he ...
Before The Birth: Israel’s most fervent supporters set their clocks ticking in Biblical times. They cite the kingdoms of David and Solomon as proof that, in the words of the Exodus movie’s theme-song: “This land is mine.” The majority of Israel’s backers, however, start their clocks in 1933 – the year Adolf ...
In an unreliable, strange and confusing world, Public Address is proud to present a measure of comfort and stability by annually asking everyone what words or phrases sum up the year that's been – and then giving some of them consumer goods as prizes for being clever or simply lucky.Well, ...
Both my parents are pretty handy – and they seem to have the right tools for most jobs in the garage and they know how to fix practically anything. A similar story could be told about their generation’s experience in the workforce – being a generalist was not unusual and ...
When it was revealed that NZ First had tried to enrich itself from public office via the Provoncial Growth Fund, the Prime Minister assured us that everything was OK as Shane Jones, the Minister responsible for the fund, had recused himself. Except it seems that that recusal came very late ...
Today is a Member's Day, and probably the last one of the year. After the marathon of the End of Life Choice Act, most of the bills up for debate today are uncontentious. First up is the second reading of Chlöe Swarbrick's Election Access Fund Bill. This will be followed ...
The Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee has reported back on the government's odious and tyrannical control orders bill. As expected, the fraudulent select committee process has made no significant changes (partly because they couldn't agree, but mostly because it was a stitch-up from the start, with no intention of ...
Yesterday, the government released its draft Cannabis Legalisation and Control Bill, which will be put to a non-binding referendum at the next election. I'm not a drug policy expert, but Russell Brown is, and he thinks its pretty good. And pretty obviously, it will be a massive improvement on the ...
As you're probably aware, the draft bill outlining the proposed legal cannabis regime to be put to a referendum late next year was published yesterday, and has already attracted a flurry of comment. It's notable that a good deal of the comment is about proposals that aren't actually new.A minimum ...
One of the big problems in New Zealand climate change policy is the government working at cross-purposes with itself. It wants to reduce fossil fuel use, but encourages oil and gas exploration. It wants to reduce transport emissions, but then builds enormous new roads. The problem could be avoided if ...
Climate Explained is a collaboration between The Conversation, Stuff and the New Zealand Science Media Centre to answer your questions about climate change.If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, please send it to climate.change@stuff.co.nzAccording to the United Nations, food shortages are a threat ...
Last year, the government announced it was ending offshore oil exploration by no longer issuing new permits. The idea was that the industry would then die off as permits expired. Except almost immediately the government revealed its bad faith, by saying they would extend permits and alter conditions to keep ...
The government introduced the Education and Training Bill to Parliament yesterday. Its a massive bill, which replaces both existing Education Acts, as well as various other bits of legislation (including some which are still proceeding through the House). I'll leave the serious analysis to teachers and people who actually know ...
Amelia SharmanThere’s no one-size-fits-all when it comes to micro-credentials, those bits of bite-sized learning that can help workers stay on top of technological change. What’s a micro-credential? While definitions vary, micro-credentials can be understood as short courses that allow people to learn new skills or have an existing competency recognised. ...
All Smiles Now: Claire Szabo is taking up her presidential role after serving as the CEO of Habitat For Humanity. Which is absolutely perfect! After KiwiBuild was so comprehensively mismanaged by Phil Twyford, the party has not only elected a new president from a thoroughly respectable not-for-profit, but one who ...
While much of the NZ left has transitioned to postmodern and identity politics in relation to transgender ideology, there are some very good articles about that deploy Marxist methodology in relation to this subject. The one below is from the British marxist group Counterfire and appeared on their site here ...
by Daphna Whitmore At Golden Oaks, a luxurious country retreat in the Hudson Valley, pregnant women have the best care money can buy. From the organic food, personalised exercise programmes, private yoga instruction and daily massages Golden Oaks looks like a country lodge for the upper class. Set some time ...
When Labour was running for election in 2017, it felt it needed to demonstrate "fiscal responsibility" and signed itself up to masochistic "budget responsibility rules". It was a fool's errand: the sorts of voters who demand fiscal responsibility are also the sorts of voters who believe that labour can never ...
Writing in Stuff, Joel MacManus looks at what we need to do to meet the Zero Carbon Act's targets. The core of it:1. Convert 85 per cent of vehicles on the road to electric. 2. Eliminate fossil fuels from all industrial heating up to 300 degrees Celsius. 3. Double our ...
Professors Janet Hoek and Richard Edwards, Emeritus Professor Phil Gendall, Jude Ball, Dr Judith McCool, Anaru Waa, Dr Becky FreemanRecent media reports have presented conflicting evidence on youth vaping in NZ. While some NZ school principals report concerns about increasing vaping on school grounds and confiscating vapes, ASH Year ...
“America the Beautiful!”, staunch defender of democracy, freedom and… a whole lot of despotic tyrants that play nice with what is called “the Washington Consensus.” America is indeed capable of immense good, but like any Nation, and most assuredly any aspirant to the mantle of Empire, great, immense evil. All ...
Image credit:The beginner’s guide to blogging I notice a few regulars no longer allow public access to the site counters. This may happen accidentally when the blog format is altered. If your blog is ...
1080 is used to control pests in NZ. Its use is contested by a noisy few. A new report claims high levels of 1080 in rats washed up on a beach. Flora and Fauna of Aotearoa (F&F) won’t name the laboratory that did their testing. It has sparked a hunt ...
Paramedics have reiterated their support for New Zealand First MP Darroch Ball's bill to impose mandatory prison sentences on those who assault our first responders and prison officers. There are more than 50 cases of abuse and assault against New Zealand paramedics each week. The figure has remained largely unchanged ...
New Zealand First leader Winston Peters has revealed the Party’s stance on a proposed single public broadcaster. He said it had been the NZ First policy to support and strengthen public sector media. "For this reason, we welcome the initiative of Minister Faafoi to progress work in this area. Both ...
Rt Hon Winston Peters, Leader of New Zealand First Introduction Good morning, and thank you for your attendance here today. Let us start by acknowledging the work of all the media outlets and reporters, particularly the regional reporters, who have been covering this week’s tragedy at Whakaari White Island. It ...
New Zealand First MP Darroch Ball’s bill introducing a six-month minimum sentence for assaults on first responders has passed its first reading in Parliament. Mr Ball said the new offence of "injuring a first responder or prison officer with intent" would target people who attacked paramedics, police, firefighters, and corrections ...
New Zealand First leader Winston Peters gave his final interview for 2019 on The Country to tell farmers they have never had it better under the current coalition Government. “Here you've got these record returns [for farmers]. These returns would be nothing like a record if the currency under the ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters said that New Zealand's Cook Islands High Commissioner, Tessa Temata, has died over the weekend. Ms Temata, 52, died in Palmerston North and had returned to New Zealand for medical treatment. She was the first New Zealand High Commissioner to the Cook Islands of Cook Island ...
A new defence report has mapped out how New Zealand's soldiers will navigate rising seas, and a year after the Defence Force announced its need to prepare for climate change. In the “Responding to the Climate Crisis” report, the Force restates its operational plan and sets goals to tackle climate ...
We're rebuilding New Zealand - our transport network, our hospitals, our schools and more... After nine years of neglect there's a lot to fix - but we're getting on with the job. ...
We're rebuilding New Zealand - our transport network, our hospitals, our schools and more... After nine years of neglect there's a lot to fix - but we're getting on with the job. ...
Mark Patterson, Spokesperson for Primary Industries New Zealand First spokesperson for Primary Industries, Mark Patterson, has called for awareness to be raised and more stringent biosecurity checks to be put in place for African Swine Fever (ASF), a widespread virus that is uncontrolled in most of Asia and a serious ...
Jenny Marcroft MP, Spokesperson for Human Rights A critical step has been taken to end gender based violence against women and girls in Parliament this evening. New Zealand First Spokesperson for Human Rights Jenny Marcroft MP has welcomed the passing of the first reading of the Crimes (Definition of Female ...
New Zealand First MP Shane Jones says it's time to recognise market forces haven't led to the expected reduction in Māori smoking rates and try a new approach. The Party had recently invoked the agree to disagree clause in their Coalition Agreement with the Labour Party, and will not support ...
Live from the Whanganui Opera House, on the final day of the 2019 Labour Party Conference, Jacinda Ardern announced the largest investment in school property in 25 years. ...
The Coalition Government will be banning foreign donations to political parties and candidates, ahead of next year’s general elections. Legislation will be introduced to Parliament and passed under urgency – emphasising the need for such restrictions to safeguard our democracy. The bill introduces a new requirement that party secretaries and ...
Associate Transport Minister Shane Jones opened Taipā's $19 million bridge recently, improving transport infrastructure in the Northland region. The two-lane bridge is 107m long with a 2.5m-wide shared walking and cycling path, and will reduce the congestion that the old one-lane bridge was notorious for. The project had also included ...
The Overseas Investment Office have rejected the application of Mercury Agriculture LP, which is 92 per cent controlled by Canadian interests, to purchase more than 2000 hectares of South Canterbury and Otago land. Mercury wanted to buy 2000ha at Rangitata, 1494ha near Ashburton, 816ha near Cromwell and 212ha near Temuka. ...
This weekend was Labour's 103rd Party Conference! We welcomed over 500 of our Labour whānau in red to Whanganui, where we reflected on the last two years in Government, and looked ahead to 2020 and beyond. We know the long-term challenges facing New Zealand won't be tackled overnight, but we're making ...
Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones announced that the Provincial Growth Fund will invest $9.6 million to seal the final unsealed section of State Highway 43 from Stratford to Taumarunui. The Minister said sealing the 12-kilometre gravel section of the highway – also called the “Forgotten World Highway” - through ...
Former Finance Minister and former chair of the Tax Working Group, Sir Michael Cullen, has voiced his support for New Zealand First’s decision to oppose the planned increase in tobacco excise tax. In an interview with The Weekend Collective, he said that increasing the price was no longer effective in ...
Māori are natural storytellers. On the marae we use stories to tell our history, to teach the next generation life lessons and to let people know, in our most creative of ways, who we are and where we have come from. ...
Rt Hon Winston Peters, New Zealand First Leader New Zealand First has invoked the ‘Agree to Disagree’ provisions of the Coalition Agreement because it cannot support the announced 11.46 percent increase in the tobacco excise from 1 January 2020. “Studies show that the automatic tobacco excise increases are having less effect ...
Taupō-based company Geo40 has made a breakthrough in extracting near battery-grade lithium from geothermal fluid which its says could be a gamechanger. Its chief executive John Worth said the earth mineral was highly prized, with battery-grade lithium selling for US$10,000 (NZ$15,600) a tonne. Geo40 was founded in 2010 to find ...
Crown research institute AgResearch Ltd, as part of its Future Footprint plan, had intended to relocate top scientists and support staff — particularly those focused on sheep genetics and genomics — from Invermay to Lincoln. However, those plans seem to have been shelved at the request of the Coalition Government. ...
Ten engineering firms in Southland are receiving a total of $2.13 million in Provincial Growth Fund funding to lift productivity and create new jobs. Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones announced in Invercargill that the 10 engineering and manufacturing firms would receive funding to assist them with buying equipment that ...
The number of new residents to New Zealand is the lowest it has been in nearly two decades and it has earned the ire of the immigration industry. The industry alleges that 'Trump-style extreme vetting' is being put in place aimed at keeping a lid on immigration numbers. June Ranson, ...
The Royal New Zealand Air Force is one step closer to modernising its fleet after the United States State Department recently approved the sale of five new C-130J Hercules aircraft to New Zealand. Arms manufacturer Lockheed Martin, in Fort Worth, Texas, will provide the aircraft, but as a "foreign military ...
Hon Shane Jones, Minister for Regional Economic Development A $261,000 loan from the Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) has helped a family-run business in Manawatū to scale up manufacturing capacity, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones announced at its opening today. Ashhurst-based skin-care business The Herb Farm is on track to ...
Hon Shane Jones, Minister for Regional Economic Development The Regional Freight Hub near Palmerston North has taken a step forward with the completion of the master plan, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones said. Shane Jones unveiled the high-level design of the new Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) backed rail-road hub ...
Hon Ron Mark, Minister of DefenceTērā te haeata takiri ana mai i runga o Pukaha!Ara tai uru, whai uru, whai uru!Ara whai ato, whai ato, whai ato!Ara rā tini, ara rā tini, ara ri!The rays of the morning sun strike a new dawn upon Pukaha ...
Hon Shane Jones, Minister for Regional Economic DevelopmentThe Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) is investing $772,000 in opportunities for growth in Manawatū-Whanganui, Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones announced today.NZ Bio-Forestry Limited will receive a $380,000 boost for game-changing research which could unlock significant growth in the wood processing sector, ...
Rt Hon Winston Peters, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Foreign Affairs Foreign Minister Winston Peters announced today the appointment of diplomat Sarah Lee as New Zealand’s High Commissioner to South Africa. She will be the first female Head of Mission to represent New Zealand in Africa. “New Zealand’s relationship with South ...
Forestry Minister Shane Jones wants to create a log barging facility at Hicks Bay and turn the area into a Special Economic Zone. The move would be part of protecting New Zealand's forests from being depleted by India and China, he said. It follows his announcement last week to strengthen ...
New Zealand First supports the changes recommended by the Winter Grazing Taskforce to improve animal welfare outcomes through the winter months, and the establishment of a pan-sector action group to implement them. New Zealand First Primary Industries Spokesperson Mark Patterson says the report highlights areas of concern about the animal ...
Former prime ministers Helen Clark and Sir John Key, formerly from the Labour and National parties respectively, have joined forces in support of New Zealand First’s plan to relocate Auckland's port to Whangārei. While Ms Clark and Sir John spent their political careers on opposite sides of the political divide, ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters is in Japan for the Foreign Ministers' meeting of the G20 grouping of countries as one of nine "invited" countries. He has used the opportunity to cast a spotlight on the plight of Pacific countries, calling out countries which still offered subsidies or Government assistance to ...
Auckland’s growing screen sector is the catalyst for a new partnership between the Ministry of Social Development and Auckland’s economic development agency Auckland Tourism, Events and Economic Development (ATEED). The launch today at FilmFX in Henderson, is to celebrate the partnership which looks to capitalise on the social and economic development opportunities ...
A minute’s silence will be observed at 2.11pm on Monday 16 December in honour of the victims of the Whakaari White Island eruption, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has confirmed. “Wherever you are in New Zealand, or around the world, this is a moment we can stand alongside those who have ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced New Zealand will contribute NZ$1 million of funding towards the joint United Nations Fund for Children (UNICEF) and World Health Organisation (WHO) Pacific Regional Action Plan for Measles. “Prevention through vaccination is the most effective way of avoiding illness and a costly health emergency. ...
New Zealand is today remembering one of our true sporting heroes, triple Olympic gold medal winner Sir Peter Snell. “He was a legend, here and around the world,” Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said. “Our thoughts are with Sir Peter’s wife Miki and their family.” “Sir Peter is recognised as New ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has congratulated United Kingdom Prime Minister Boris Johnson on his election victory. “New Zealand and the United Kingdom are close friends and despite our distance we are strongly connected by our history and people,” Jacinda Ardern said. “I look forward to continuing to work with Prime ...
The Government has released its long term vision for a sustainable 21st Century rail network that gets our cities moving, connects our regions and gets more freight off the roads. Deputy Prime Minister and State Owned Enterprises Minister Winston Peters said the Government is committed to rebuilding New Zealand’s ...
I want to start by acknowledging the families who have experienced such grief and such loss since the extraordinary tragedy on Monday. Today was all about reuniting them with their loved ones. We've just come from the airport where many of them were gathered and in amongst what you can ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters today announced further support for Samoa’s longer term needs as it continues to respond to a devastating measles epidemic. “Samoa’s health system has experienced massive strain in the wake of the measles epidemic. The volume of patients needing care during this outbreak, and the number of ...
Discounted electric bikes will be offered up to public sector staff across the country as part of the Government’s work to reduce transport emissions and support healthier transport options. Associate Minister of Transport Julie Anne Genter officially launched the new initiative at Wellington Hospital today. “The Government has negotiated bulk-purchase ...
The Australian and New Zealand Governments today launch an historic joint bid to bring the FIFA Women’s World Cup to the Southern Hemisphere for the first time. Australian Minister for Youth and Sport, Richard Colbeck and New Zealand Minister for Sport and Recreation Grant Robertson will announce the bold campaign, ...
The Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) has approved a $15 million loan to help re-establish a gold mining operation at Blackwater Gold Mine, near Reefton, Rural Communities Minister and local MP Damien O’Connor announced at an event on the West Coast today. “This is great news for the Coast that could ...
Papakāinga model inspires whānau well-being A housing project by Kohupātiki whānau in Hastings is an outstanding example of a Māori-led housing initiative that can reduce financial pressure and reconnect whānau to their whakapapa says the Minister for Māori Development Hon Nanaia Mahuta. Minister Mahuta officially opened the Aroha Te Rangi ...
Restoration efforts for a significant wetland in the Hawke’s Bay are getting more support announced Associate Minister for the Environment Eugenie Sage. “Wetlands are vital to healthy landscapes and ecosystems. They function as nature’s ‘kidneys’, filtering and protecting water quality, acting as nature’s sponges after rain and are home to ...
Nelson has today seen the launch of Housing First Nelson Tasman. Today’s launch marks the expansion of the Government’s homelessness programme, Housing First, to the top of the South Island. “Housing First is a proven programme that puts people who are experiencing homelessness and multiple, high and complex needs into ...
New Government funding announced today will help communities make a difference in tackling environmental issues Associate Minister for the Environment Eugenie Sage announced in Hawkes Bay today. The Ministry for the Environment’s Community Environment Fund is dedicating $243,101 to growing the capacity and capability of the Environment Hubs Aotearoa’s (EHA) ...
The days of vulnerable consumers falling victim to loan sharks, truck shops and other predatory lenders are numbered, following the Credit Contracts Legislation Amendment Bill passing its third reading tonight. “Too many Kiwis are being given loans that are unaffordable and unsuitable, trapping them in debt and leaving their families ...
A Bill that prevents terrorism and supports the de-radicalisation of New Zealanders returning from overseas has passed its third reading, Justice Minister Andrew Little says. The Terrorism Suppression (Control Orders) Bill is a carefully targeted response to manage the risk posed by a small number of New Zealanders who have ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters and Minister for Pacific Peoples Aupito William Sio will travel to Samoa on Friday, where New Zealand medical teams are helping Samoa respond to an outbreak of measles. “New Zealand has been working closely with the Government of Samoa and offering our assistance from the ...
The Government has changed the law to improve student safety and welfare in university halls of residence and other student accommodation. The Education (Pastoral Care) Amendment Bill passed its third reading this afternoon and details of an interim Code of Practice setting out the Government’s expectations of tertiary providers have also been released. ...
A new tool to help councils fund and finance infrastructure could mean some housing developments happen a decade earlier than currently planned, Urban Development Minister Phil Twyford said today. “This new tool, developed by the Government in partnership with industry and high-growth councils, will allow councils to access private debt ...
Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor has welcomed the release of a bold new vision for the country’s vital food and fibre sector. “I’m delighted that New Zealand’s major farmer and grower organisations are today supporting the Primary Sector Council’s vision – Fit for a Better World,” he said. “The international consumers ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has congratulated the Government of Papua New Guinea and the Autonomous Bougainville Government for completing a well-conducted referendum on the future political status of Bougainville. “New Zealand supported the referendum process by providing technical advice through the New Zealand Electoral Commission and leading a Regional Police ...
In light of Cabinet’s position that freight operations on prime land in downtown Auckland are no longer viable, the Government will now embark on a short work programme to enable decision-making in the first half of next year, Associate Transport Minister Shane Jones says. Minister Jones is today releasing the ...
Associate Health Minister Julie Anne Genter has received the report back from a surgical mesh restorative justice process undertaken by Victoria University. The process heard stories, either in person or online submission, from more than 600 people affected by surgical mesh. “The report made for heart-breaking and confronting reading,” says ...
The Water Services Regulator Bill – Taumata Arowai , introduced to Parliament today, is a milestone for drinking water safety in New Zealand and will help improve environmental outcomes for urban waterways, rivers and lakes. “This is a breakthrough for New Zealanders in terms of providing safe drinking water throughout ...
Kia ora koutouE ngā mana, e ngā reo, e ngā matā wakaTēnā koutou katoaHaere ngā, moe maiKoutou ma ngā Rangatira Ko Anaru ahauKo au te Minita mo ngā TureHe Honore tino nui kei roto I ahau No reira tena koutou katoa Today, we are releasing two reports that are the ...
The Government is looking to turn around the long-term challenges of criminal justice by taking a new approach to break the cycle of offending to ensure there are fewer victims of crime. Justice Minister Andrew Little released two reports today, Turuki! Turuki! from Te Uepū Hāpai I te Ora, and ...
New Zealand firms expanding beyond the start-up phase are set for more support after today’s passage of the Venture Capital Fund Bill, Associate Finance Minister David Parker said. The Bill, which establishes a $300 million Venture Capital Fund, puts in place a key initiative of the Wellbeing Budget’s economic package. ...
E ngā mana, e ngā reo, e ngā iwi, e ngā rau rangatira mā. Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa. Señora Presidenta, Excellencies, Delegates. International action A common thread that runs through the Paris Agreement is the commitment we have made to each other to do what we can to ...
The Government is lifting capital investment to the highest level in more than 20 years as it takes the next step to future-proof New Zealand. Finance Minister Grant Robertson has announced $12 billion of new investment, with $8 billion for specific capital projects and $4 billion to be added to ...
The Government is forecast to run $12 billion worth of surpluses across the four years to 2023/24 as the economy continues to grow. The surpluses will help fund day-to-day capital requirements each year. These include fixing leaky hospitals, building new classrooms to cover population growth and take pressure off class ...
Budget 2020 will continue the Coalition Government’s focus on tackling the long-term challenges facing New Zealand while also investing to future-proof the economy. When the Government took office in 2017 it was left with crumbling infrastructure, severe underinvestment in public services, degraded rivers and lakes, a housing crisis and rising ...
The Minister responsible for the Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Act 2011 (te Takutai Moana Act 2011), Andrew Little has welcomed the launch of an online geospatial tool that provides data-rich, dynamic coastline maps that will significantly boost research and evidence-gathering under the Act. Te Kete Kōrero a Te ...
The Chief Victims Advisor to Government Dr Kim McGregor, QSO, has been reappointed in her role for a further two years. Dr McGregor has held the role since it was established in November 2015. She provides independent advice to government on how to improve the criminal justice system for victims. ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters and Civil Defence Minister Peeni Henare have today announced the deployment of a network of DART (Deep-ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunami) buoys. “New Zealand and the Pacific region are particularly vulnerable to natural disasters. It is vital we have adequate warning systems in place,” ...
DART Buoys Announcement Aotea Wharf, 9.30am 11 December 2019 Acknowledgements Acknowledgements to Minister for Civil Defence Hon Peeni Henare also here today. White Island It is with regret that this event shadows the tragic natural disaster two days ago. The volcanic eruptions on White Island have claimed 5 lives, ...
Racing Minister Winston Peters has welcomed the first reading of the Racing Industry Bill in parliament today. This is the second of two Bills that have been introduced this year to revitalise New Zealand’s racing industry. “Our domestic racing industry has been in serious decline. The Government is committed to ...
Minister for Disability Issues, Carmel Sepuloni, is pleased to announce that $291,321 is to be awarded to national and local community initiatives to maintain and promote the use of New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL). “New Zealand is one of the few countries in the world where Sign Language is an ...
Minister for Veterans Ron Mark has announced today the Coalition Government’s initial response to work completed by the independent statutory body, the Veterans’ Advisory Board. “When Professor Ron Paterson completed his review of the Veterans’ Support Act in 2018, he made a number of recommendations, including one which I referred ...
The Government will fund the bulk of the cost of a rural water supply for the Ohakea community affected by PFAS contamination, Environment Minister David Parker announced today at a meeting of local residents. This new water scheme will provide a reliable and clean source of drinking water to the ...
Sir Peter Snell has died, aged 80, at his home in Dallas, Texas. James McOnie remembers arguably New Zealand’s greatest ever athlete.Sir Peter Snell was so great that small towns still engage in custody battles over the legendary runner.His birthplace Opunake (where he spent his first 11 years) claims him, ...
Māori Injustice Issues Will Have More Visibility Thanks to New Panel Advising Ombudsman A prominent Māori leader, Lady Tureiti Moxon believes Māori injustice issues will be seen much more now thanks to Pūhara Mana Tangata, a first-time Māori panel appointed ...
“It was right there in the waiting room that Jack first told me he was finding it hard to separate his fingers”: a parent’s nightmare, by Dunedin writer Emma Neale. ...
We started picking a top 10 ourselves and puttered out at about #3, sick of the sound of our own voice. Bugger it, we thought, and sent for assistance. It’s been like Christmas ever since, an inbox flowing over with gorgeous, sincere little gifts. Here’s the nonfiction selection, in no ...
The leadership shown by tangata whenua at every national disaster and tragedy should be recognised and honoured by all of us, writes Catherine Delahunty.I do appreciate having a prime minister who is capable of expressing decent, human emotions when tragedies descend on us. It’s a sadly low bar that she ...
From the pockmarked rugby paddock of Apiti, to the smooth, iridescent-blue turf of Albany, Black Sticks defender Steph Dickins' hockey journey has come a long way. ...
If you want to shock and amaze your friends and family this Christmas, look no further than the deep recesses of $1 reserve Trade Me. Folks, I’m going to let you in on a huge Christmas secret here: you can get all your presents for $1 if you know where to ...
To celebrate the 50th birthday of the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery/Len Lye Centre in New Plymouth, Walters Prize-winning artist Ruth Buchanan has rehung their collection, bringing previously unseen works and skeletons out of the closet. Her new exhibition The scene in which I find myself/Or, where does my body belong examines ...
It is hard to remember a year in which New Zealand was so repeatedly in global headlines, writes Kamahl Santamaria, a Kiwi journalist based in Doha.Time zones are a strange thing. You go to sleep, and then for eight hours or so, you miss out on everything happening on the ...
Napoleon demanded that his generals be lucky. Conservative PM Boris Johnson, as he surveys a thumping victory in the British general election, would meet that criterion.His luck bears a resemblance to that of Margaret Thatcher. Like her, he has made a decisive break with orthodox establishment thinking. That presents ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Scott Morrison has rejected or sidelined a number of recommendations from the long-awaited Thodey review of the public service that might have constrained his and his government’s power. Not surprisingly, a proposal to ensure changes ...
Analysis - The "do nothing" government announces a big spend-up on infrastructure, moving the Port of Auckland, and Winston Peters throws his weight behind NZME's bid to buy Stuff. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra [embedded content]For their last video for the year, University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor Deep Saini and Michelle Grattan look backwards to the big issues which have shaped political discourse. They discuss the surprise election results, and ...
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has acknowledged Ngāti Awa for their role as tangata whenua (people of the land) in leading and caring for affected whānau (family members), following the Whakaari / White Island eruption and recovery operation earlier today. ...
The Environment Committee has opened for public submissions on the Urban Development Bill. The bill follows on from the Kāinga Ora–Homes and Communities bill, which disestablished Housing New Zealand and set up a Crown entity in the same name. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By William Loader, Emeritus Professor of New Testament at Murdoch University, Murdoch University This article is part of our Gender and Christianity series. To understand contemporary Christian ideas about gender, and specifically masculinity, we need to go all the way back to the ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Gissing, General Manager, Risk Frontiers, Adjunct Fellow, Macquarie University Calls are growing for a national bushfire plan, including from former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, who says they are an issue of national security and the federal government must provide hands-on leadership. ...
Pro-democracy lobby group Democracy Action welcome New Zealand First’s commitment to hold firm rejecting the Te Tai Tonga MP Rino Tirikatene’s bill to entrench the Māori seats. The Bill, which would require any changes to the seats to require the ...
The Real Pod assembles to dissect the week in reality television and real life, with special thanks to Nando’s.Sometimes you are just doing a podcast as usual and then Colin Mathura-Jeffree gives you a call and throws your world off its axis. In a very special edition of Colin’s Cranny: Live, ...
We get a handle on the artists and artworks that shaped this decade in Aotearoa.As 2019 draws to a close, the four nominees for this year’s Turner Prize subverted the competition – they asked to receive the award as a collective. Meanwhile, at Art Basel Miami Beach, a banana taped ...
The second and final report of Te Uepū Hāpai i te Ora, the Safe and Effective Justice Advisory Group, contains nothing we didn’t know 30 years ago. Yet generations of politicians have ignored the same advice, writes Laura O’Connell Rapira.Between the 1950s and 1990s, New Zealand experienced seismic social, economic ...
Fuel company Z Energy has cut its earnings forecast for the year by 10 percent because of tougher competition and falling margins, and is forecasting a big cut in dividends. ...
Liquidators of the hacked cryptocurrency exchange Cryptopia have travelled to the United States, to retrieve customers' information and certain crypto-assets. ...
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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Louise Grimmer, Senior Lecturer in Marketing, Tasmanian School of Business and Economics, University of Tasmania Australian shoppers are set to spend $52.7 billion this Christmas. In the words of the retail industry, we are “stampeding” to empty our wallets, both online and ...
NZ Herald and many other media outlets ran a story on a man whose farts could repel mosquitos, despite the story coming from a satire news site and not being verified in any way, writes Dan Satherly for Newshub.“Man’s farts so deadly he kills mosquitoes in a 6m radius” is ...
Timing right to borrow our way to a stronger economy in 2020 The Government’s announcement of its intent to invest significantly in the county’s infrastructure could turbo charge an economic recovery that was already showing positive signs for ...
A poem by writer, journalist, and former Manus Island refugee Behrouz Boochani.Forgive me my loveTranslated by Moones Mansoubi, Manus Island, Papua New Guinea, 2018 Forgive me my bird as I am not able to embrace you.But here,in this corner,I know some migrating birds that I smile to at dawn.I embrace them ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Anna Powles, Senior Lecturer in Security Studies, Massey University The Autonomous Region of Bougainville, a chain of islands that lie 959 kilometres northwest of Papua New Guinea’s capital, Port Moresby, has voted unequivocally for independence. The referendum saw 85% voter turnout during ...
Fisheries New Zealand starts consultation today on proposed changes to catch settings for rock lobster and scallops for the new fishing year beginning 1 April 2020. ...
All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. This was the declaration of the pigs who control the government in George Orwell’s novel, Animal Farm– a tart comment on the hypocrisy of governments that proclaim the absolute equality of their citizens but gives power and privileges ...
SPCA has been working flat out to desex more than 80 animals a day over the last year, which is the most desexing SPCA has done since recording the figures. ...
“The fact so many families are struggling to pay the rent and put food on the table must be addressed urgently if we’re to provide the foundations for a good life for the next generation of New Zealanders,” says Scott Figenshow, Chief Executive ...
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 Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo (Hamish Hamilton, $40)Winner of the 2019 Booker Prize.2The Body: ...
This holiday season Te Tari Taiwhenua, Department of Internal Affairs wants to offer parents and caregivers some advice on how to help keep your family safe online. ...
A report released by the Chief Victims advisor Kim McGregor advising there needs to be an Independent Victims body is being welcomed by Victim Rights lobby group Sensible Sentencing Trust. National spokesperson Jess McVicar says the trust have ...
For the third time in five years, the United Kingdom has gone to the polls today. From the summer islands of New Zealand, join The Spinoff as we follow the results rolling in.9.30am: So, with polls about 90 minutes away from closing, the top line is this – we’ve got ...
Winston Peters will back an NZME proposal to buy Stuff with a 'Kiwishare' guarantee the merged news company will keep regional news and separate websites for at least two years. ...
The Executive Director of Dapaanz (Addiction Practitioners’ Association Aotearoa New Zealand), Sue Paton says the announcement that Alcohol and Other Drug Treatment court would become permanent immediately, following successful pilots in Auckland ...
Online marketplace Sidekicker is taking advantage of people who have little choice but to juggle multiple low-paying jobs to make ends meet, writes artist and freelancer Ben Markley.After graduating early this year with one of the least vocational degrees, I didn’t expect the largest array of job prospects. Nevertheless, I ...
National is vowing to bring back and expand health sector targets dropped by the current Government and mulling whether to scrap elected District Health Boards. ...
More than 10,000 people have signed a petition launched a week ago, calling for better support and funding for community midwives. The 10k figure was reached after the first four days. Chief executive of the College of Midwives, Alison Eddy, said last ...
Information obtained by animal rights organisation SAFE has revealed rodeo organisers are refusing to halt calf-roping events in rodeo, despite the Government’s animal welfare advisors’ recommendation that they do so. ...
Subject; Deputy PM said quote; “New Zealand First leader Winston Peters has challenged his Cabinet colleagues for the delay over a Northport decision, criticising it as "paralysis by analysis". https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/405385/paralysis-by-analysis-winston-peters-assessment-of-the-delay-over-northport ...
If the Productivity Commission's report on local government funding, released yesterday, had been relied on by NASA as the basis for getting astronauts to the moon, its greatest achievement by now would have been launching a $2 skyrocket 40 feet into the air ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Benjamin Mayne, Molecular biologist and bioinformatician, CSIRO Humans have a “natural” lifespan of around 38 years, according to a new method we have developed for estimating the lifespans of different species by analysing their DNA. Extrapolating from genetic studies of species with ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mark Evans, Professor of Governance and Director of Democracy 2025 – bridging the trust divide at Old Parliament House, University of Canberra A new, ongoing survey on how young Australians understand and imagine their democracy is already challenging long-held stereotypes. The survey ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Francesco Paolucci, Associate Professor; Head of Health Policy Program, Sir Walter Murdoch School of Public Policy and International Affairs, University of Newcastle Private health insurance has come under intense scrutiny in recent months, as it becomes clear health insurers are failing to ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Luke Zaphir, Researcher for the University of Queensland Critical Thinking Project; and Online Teacher at Education Queensland’s IMPACT Centre, The University of Queensland This is the second of two essays exploring key theories – cognitive load theory and constructivism – underlying teaching ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard Holden, Professor of Economics, UNSW On Monday the Australian government will release the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook (MYEFO). This will – as required by the Charter of Budget Honesty – provide an update on the key assumptions made in this ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Ari Mattes, Lecturer in Communications and Media, University of Notre Dame Australia It seems like every time we switch on the idiot box we are confronted with news footage of another disaster. Bushfires in Australia. A hurricane in North America. A tsunami ...
Good morning, and welcome to The Bulletin. In today’s edition: Andrew Little indicates justice system changes after reports, Auckland buses back on the road, and National release health proposals. Two significant reports for the justice sector were released yesterday. The first was Turuki! Turuki! Transforming our Criminal Justice System from the Chester Borrows-led Safe and ...
On Wednesday, the government announced a $12 billion infrastructure package. It turns out that scrapped National Party roading projects are back in consideration for funding under the scheme. ...
Andy Ruiz Jr pulled of a massive shock by KO’ing Anthony Joshua in New York. And then delivered another stunning moment when he stepped onto the scales in Saudi Arabia. ...
What happens when your work is the victim of attempted sabotage by a group of slow-moving middle-aged men? Author and journalist Michelle Duff reveals all.Initially, it was kind of unclear what I was looking at. The disembodied hand loomed from the shaky first-person footage, flipping the cover of the book ...
The National Party leader sits down with Alex Braae to talk political rhetoric, misinformation, and whether he’ll have any dance partners after next year’s election.How cynical is Simon Bridges? It’s a question that has dogged National’s leader over the past year.Being an opposition leader is, of course, a difficult job ...
Sharon Brettkelly calls home to the Bay of Plenty to give us an insight into what Whakatane locals are thinking in the wake of Whakaari-White Island's eruption ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Scott Morrison is picking up that Australia’s devastating, prolonged fires are producing a soured, anti-government mood among many in the community. It may not be entirely rational for people to turn on politicians in such ...
Open Mike 06/01/2018 
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For your breakfast viewing pleasure. Make sure you have a full pot of tea for your schadenfreude. 🙂
I’ve always been fascinated by the lefts ability to schadenfreude.
It is one of the more distasteful aspects of (some) lefties in all. All “caring” until it’s someone they do not like – then they get great pleasure from it.
There have been studies linking it to envy – and that does not surprise me at all. As I have personally found a lot of the left envious. Jealous and bitter of the success of others.
Study link schadenfreude Wikipedia
I recognise irony when I see it and this one was particularly easy to spot.
BTW, link is not working.
What? Churlish James muttering defensively about “schaudenfreude”? James and ilk express that sentiment in relation to the ‘culpable poor’ on a daily basis. That’s basically why the big fat kick-ass BBQ is here at all.
See there you go again with the BBQ.
I’m sorry if you don’t have friends and or family that can or want to participate in this great kiwi tradition- but that’s your loss not mine.
I love to BBQ – we do it a lot. It’s partly because we love the food (who dosnt like a nice bloody steak?) – but mainly because it’s fun to surrounded yourself with fantastic friends and family.
You should try it – it will give you a brighter outlook on life.
You should have more brighter future bbq’s, anything to keep you from making a fool of yourself on TS.
I know jimbo, why can’t they just gloat and chuckle smugly like normal decent folk?
Gee Gabs, from the sound of it – you are hanging around with the wrong type of people.
“…I’ve always been fascinated by the lefts ability to schadenfreude…”
That’s because it involves having an imagination, empathy and an entire array of higher order thinking of which you are bereft. I guess it must like looking through a window into a world where you’ll never be able to play.
I try not to play with naughty children.
Schadenfreude has zip to do with envy, Jimmy, and everything to do with the deep, deep satisfaction of seeing someone shooting themselves with one of their very own carefully crafted balls of shit.
Now, revel in your fellow right-wingers schadenfreude, it’s fucking delicious.
Steve Bannon’s spectacular fall from grace in Trump World is a big, salty, delicious bowl of schadenfreude from the political gods in celebration of the new year.
[…]
Now, like two rats in a bag, Trump and Bannon are tearing at one another in a delicious public spat that has every possible bit of drama, except Bannon drunkenly bellowing for a round of fisticuffs with all comers and Trump offering to compare the length of their relative manhoods on live television. They deserve one another in so many ways
https://amp.thedailybeast.com/bannon-banished-for-telling-truths-about-trump-as-maga-monsters-turn-on-each-other
ZOMG that dailybeast piece is so DELICIOUS!
“…the Mercer money train came to a halt when the Metternich of Alabama, after getting beaten like a cheap drum in the U.S. Senate race…”
Deep chortles, they were heard.
The author at 1 minute.
https://art19.com/shows/with-friends-like-these/episodes/1428074c-f9f0-478e-8ecf-bc4c2b50eae1
And I am bemused by James’s ability to demolition the English language.
Schadenfreude is strictly a noun, James – both in the original German, and in English.
To show you how silly it sounds, I have just misused ‘demolition’ the same way you misused schadenfreude. It seems that some righties need the obvious explained to them…
if you bemused by my use of the engligh language – you must love Eco Maoris.
Eco Maori speaks from the heart.
For one who is so sure of his utter perfection in every way, how about thinking whether you should have written “If you ARE so bemused by my use of the E(cap)nglish language…”
I think you’ll find it’s “bitter at” not “bitter of”.
I know I’m not meant to put this out there but this guy was at the fellowship last night.
Still haven’t found any reports in the corporate media about the massive storm that hit the country written in the context of climate change…..
But I found this.
‘Living on the Edge: What climate change means for Taranaki ’
The climate change debate has hogged headlines recently but its influence on humanity is undeniable. In the first of a six-part series called Living on the Edge, reporter Deena Coster takes a deeper look at what it means for Taranaki.
The rough and rugged Taranaki coastline will be unrecognisable in 100 years’ time.
Houses once dotted along the coast will be lost, as coastal erosion and rising sea levels steal away the very land they rest on………..’
https://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/98838911/living-on-the-edge-what-climate-change-means-for-taranaki
Encouraging to see the topic being discussed properly in parts of the media.
The whole article is worth reading.
More thoughtful analysis here….
‘From drought scare to deluge despair: The science of the storm.’
‘ After a period of calm, dry weather for much of the country, in which century old records for dryness were toppled, the furious storm from the north seemed to come out of the blue.
What may at first seem like atmospheric whiplash was actually a case of cause and effect – and may be a taste of things to come…..’
‘With rising sea-levels, as expected under a warming climate, storm surges will get higher and reach further inland – issues already evident in pockets around the country, where homes and infrastructure have been damaged.’
Again, read the whole article.
https://i.stuff.co.nz/national/100344401/from-drought-scare-to-deluge-despair-the-science-of-the-storm
Hi Ed;
Thanks for raising the “Climate change” issue it was urgently needed to address our worsening climate of severe weather now reaching us all.
As PM Jacinda Ardern said clearly and correctly;-
“Climate change is truly the nuclear issue of our generation’s time”.
But it is so sad that even with the truly ‘extreme’ weather events we all experienced over the last few days, was not responded to properly by all the media!!!!
All the media could do was to “minimalise’ most of the event, and worsening weather events we are now experiencing now.
Question is to all the ‘climate change deniers’ & naysayers is;
“How much is enough to wake them up” ????
Will it need to take many lives lost?
Will it take a dramatic loss of their own food chain so they starve?
Will it take a loss of all forms of transport?
Will it take a loss of our coastal regions up to 50kms inland before they will actually finally put up their hands in surrender to ‘mother nature’ and plead for forgiveness for their folly???????
We certainly hope they will finally wake up now and join us to begin reducing climate change emissions and begin rebuilding secure future.
Lets do this!!!!!!!
Stuff/Fairfax have had an epiphany.
There’s even a climate change quiz.
Get people to do it.
These operations work on click bait and it would be good for them to see people are interested in climate change.
https://i.stuff.co.nz/environment/climate-news/100104523/how-much-do-you-know-about-climate-change-test-your-knowledge-here
“As PM Jacinda Ardern said clearly and correctly;-
“Climate change is truly the nuclear issue of our generation’s time”.”
Yep, but can’t see much action on this from Labour in the RMA and in TPPA (whoever version) or any future planning. Climate change is ignored (apart from various taxation schemes) and not actually looked at what’s gonna happen when parts of the world get uninhabitable in particular those that have huge populations (India looking to get to 50 degree temperature in some places), massive pollution in China or islands that will become are under water and all around the world in particular the west, houses destroyed on mass by flooding and storms. Agricultural land in drought and housing and people galore, but less land in agricultural production or even owed locally by the the country but by offshore individuals and corporations whose aim is profit not social conscience. Or maybe wars start breaking out to control dwindling resources. Japan is obsessed already with doing it’s own thing on fisheries and not cooperating in local efforts to have ecological sanctuaries to keep the fish stocks and biodiversity going. Our fisheries control is laughable in this country and it seems NZ are only too happy to turn a blind eye to slave labour to catch and process it as well as overfishing.
Wilson’s car parking for example in Australia show enormous “costs” leading to small profits on eye watering charges and a very small tax take for Australia. Who knew that you were helping the profits of Hong Kong billionaires when you parked at the local hospital. Clearly this type of carry on is going to get worse and worse – National even wanted to sell off the state houses to the Chinese or Australian corporations. China owns 50% of silver fern farms and Fonterra seems more focused on the 8 million salary of it’s executive than any sort of forward planning in any area from innovation to pollution control. I’m sure big business would love to sell Fonterra off into shares on the sharemarket, but for the moment making do with just selling off the daily farms themselves which will eventually change the control more offshore.
Cheese costs more than the average wage after taxes already in this country, bottled water costs more than soft drink. Not looking good for local Kiwis future, if things start going bad around the world and we find we don’t actually own much of our land and assets anymore and other’s are making the profits from NZ produce, water and housing booms (aka James Hardie types) while the Kiwi taxpayers are paying for the infrastructure and disaster costs but have little export income anymore so can’t afford social welfare. With enough of a change in demographics we might start getting a society that doesn’t believe in ‘wasting money” on social welfare anymore and privatise and plunder everything for a business opportunity.
Still haven’t found any reports in the corporate media about the massive storm that hit the country written in the context of climate change…..
That could be because sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and weather is just weather. Here’s NIWA on the effects of La Niña weather on New Zealand.
La Niña events have different impacts on New Zealand’s climate. More north–easterly winds are characteristic, which tend to bring moist, rainy conditions to the north–east of the North Island, and reduced rainfall to the south and south–west of the South Island.
…
Warmer than normal temperatures typically occur over much of the country during La Niña, although there are regional and seasonal exceptions.
So, it’s been a lot warmer than usual and the north-east is copping it from storms – classic La Niña weather. If journalists aren’t rushing to blame local weather conditions on climate change, good on them.
Yes, Milt
Sometime it’s just weather conditions..
The ad nauseum of ‘climate change’ does not add positive value
This is climate change, not weather.
Some of you will only wake up to it when the flood is at your own doorstep.
And the world can’t wait for you.
‘Those warm, dry, and settled conditions contributed to an unusual phenomena: a marine heat wave, in which sea temperatures around New Zealand were about 2 degrees Celsius warmer than average.
Off the west coast, in the Tasman Sea, temperatures were as much as 6C above normal – at the time, it was the largest sea temperature anomaly in the world.’
Insurance companies are responding to CC
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/property/98797867/insurers-warn-climate-change-will-hit-policy-prices-and-make-some-properties-uninsurable
Ans in stuff today
How climate change could send your insurance costs soaring
Climate change is not only set to transform our environment, it’s also likely to cause insurance costs to skyrocket.
The Insurance Council of New Zealand has warned that our country is one of the most vulnerable to the impact of natural disasters for an economy of our size.
Council chief executive Tim Grafton says New Zealand can expect to face, on average, annual costs of $1.6 billion (just under 1 per cent of its GDP) from natural disasters, based on data going back to 1900
Organisations with money in the situation clearly realise climate change is happening fast. Exxon Mobil knew about CC in the 70s ( and hid their findings as it would impact their profits)
But to some misguided fellows, like Trump and PM, it’s just weather.
Humankind and other species on this planet can’t wait for such dilettantes and deniers.
In 1959 Edward Teller warned the industry about the consequences of burning fossil fuel.
Yeah, but Teller was beating his own project plowshare – nuclear fracking (happened) and using three hydrogen bombs to make a large harbour on aussie west coast (politely declined).
I vaguely recall hearing something about their ambitions when I was a kid but shit, they were convinced.
Although we had our own canal dreams, too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Plowshare#Proposals
https://timespanner.blogspot.co.nz/2008/11/canal-that-was-never-dug.html
At least they didn’t start digging it and lose funding.
Insurance companies as part of the financial industry have underwritten some primary causes of planetary pollution and destruction since, day one…and will continue to do so…
The ‘institutions have profited heavily playing a part in creating the circumstances, and they will attempt to continue the plunder…
Swiss Re and out major players in the Global Insurance industry have been warning of the financial effects of Climate Change for years. In 2010 Swiss RE wrote this:
My bold
http://www.swissre.com/rethinking/the_effects_of_climate_change.html
Their assessments were based on the IPPC projections then of a 0.37m rise in sea level. The fact that those projections have now increased by around a factor of 10, exacerbates the problem dramatically.
Yep, they’re realising that they won’t be able to cover it at all and are reaching for government subsidies.
I would nationalise all insurance companies and stop their blackmailing rort once and for all.
No reason why not have a govt srvice. Nationally-based rates system collected via TLAs to fund the building insurance, EQC, and fire levies, separate assessments for contents.
This is climate change, not weather.
Weather is weather. You’re wanting journalists to report storms as climate change, something which would only encourage people with functioning cognitive faculties to ridicule the journalists, and worse, might encourage people to believe climate change is bullshit. Worse yet, it encourages other people to mistake weather for climate, resulting in even more imbecilic “Frosty again – so much for global warming!” comments by right-wingers.
By all means expect news reports to mention that storms can be expected to increase in frequency and severity due to climate change, but an individual storm remains just a storm.
Yes I am expecting journalists to use context for a story.
That’s a basic of the job.
Reporting Brexit without the context of the deindustrialisation of parts of the UK makes no sense.
Reporting Trump without the context of the deindustrialisation of parts of the US makes no sense.
Reporting the war in Syria without the context of climate change and the desertification of parts of Syria makes no sense.
Reporting the changing weather patterns in New Zealand without the context of climate change makes no sense.
Reporting the events in Gaza without the context of 1917, 1948, 1967 and other key historical dates makes no sense.
Context is everything.
My lovely strawman !
http://www.brixtonbuzz.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/wickerman-image-1.jpg
To be fair, the main Stuff article about the recent storms does put it in the context of climate change: “With rising sea-levels, as expected under a warming climate, storm surges will get higher and reach further inland – issues already evident in pockets around the country, where homes and infrastructure have been damaged.”
I was complimenting them at 3 and 3.1
Context is everything.
It sure is. And the context of a weather event is weather patterns – La Niña, for instance. Storms have been causing floods in New Zealand since before there were humans here – linking any individual storm to climate change would be as stupid as claiming global warming doesn’t exist because there was an early snowfall.
Ok – we shall agree to disagree.
And let’s use more polite language.
There is no need for aggressive words.
That’s pretty funny from someone who’s had a moderator warning today for accusing a commenter of having a “psychopathic mentality”…
I have heeded the advice.
Is saying someone is stupid the same, as might be stupid, or showing stupid tendencies or ideas, better, worse or just different than saying someone has a psychopathic mentality? And is that the same as saying someone is a psychopath? And can hard critical words never be used against anyone here? Questions that run through my head but then I am borderline crazy these days.
That’s a removal of context.
Well, to be accurate they should be reporting storms in relation to climate change and how one affects the other. They shouldn’t be ignoring it just because it’s weather.
Actually Psycho attribution of Climate Change to Extreme weather events is a developing science. The 2003 European Heatwave that had a not insignificant effect on the Syrian situation, has been assessed for instance to have been more likely to have occurred as a result of AGW.
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature03089
However,
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-can-now-blame-individual-natural-disasters-on-climate-change/
As you say – you just can’t look at an extreme weather event and say “that’s climate change” but what is becoming more possible with improving climate modelling is to say the AGW has contributed significantly to the possibility of that event occurring.
Furthermore take for instance the major damage done to my favourite piece of roadway, the coastal road north from Thames over the weekend. (it truly is a delight to pass along especially at christmas with the pohutakawas all in full bloom and the sea and little bays alongside).
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/100346389/evacuation-warnings-and-rocks-on-the-road-in-firth-of-thames
But this road SH25 is under severe threat from rising sea levels, the direct result of AGW. With a king tide and storm surge the destruction caused is inevitable. I’m not sure just how this vital link to the Peninsula will be maintained into the future.
Newsroom did some good stories on the vulnerability of several Coromandel towns.
Whitianga
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/@environment/2017/12/11/67390/drowning-dreams-72-new-houses-on-man-made-canals
Thames, Cooks Beach
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/@environment/2017/12/11/67374/drowning-dreams-billions-at-stake-as-govt-mulls-sea-level-rules
Yes I’m well aware of the work of both Denis and Thomas (referred to in the first link). I too have submitted to the TCDC on the matter wrt to the district plan, and my daughter is a Community Board member so we are all on to the problem.
The developers however are only concerned in making a quick buck and will find any piece of nonsense to hide behind. This piece of nonsense from Gloria Humphries is typical:
The 1.6mm pa SLR she refers to above is the long term average over the past century. ie there has been around 17cm of SLR over the past 100 years. This, of course, completely ignores the increasing rate of SLR from melting ice shelves, that has been increasingly rapid over the past couple of decades. But if she can get away with it, and sell off a few more properties, and pass the buck on to Council – well who cares?
TCDC will need a lot of government money.
SH 25 being a State Highway is of course maintained by Govt. – Just how and what the level of funding will be or what the long term solution is has yet to be determined. But SH 25 is repeatedly closed due to slips and subsidence. Even though it is a very attractive piece of NZ – I wouldn’t consider living up the coast – my doc lives up that way and on one occasion the slip was in place for days. He would ride his bike to the slip, clamber over the rocks, and then pick up his car to drive the rest of the way into work each day. This is becoming a regular occurrence for those people living up that way.
As for the fate of the sea side residences – this is a problem over the whole of NZ but TCDC is unique in that it has one of the longest coastlines of any regional council in the country and only around 30,000 rate payers. It is also unique in that in 1931 during the Depression and the closure of the gold mines Thames, which had borrowed heavily for a number of large projects, was unable to pay its way with a high unemployment and rate payers now unable to pay their bills. The incoming Mayor went to the govt and the town was promptly placed in Administration and remained so until 1947. You can still se the results of this in the rather sad civil works – monsoon drains rather than modern guttering etc – around the town even to this day.
Thank you for sharing your detailed historical knowledge of the area.
Why in your opinion we’re all those developments on the waterways permitted?
Corruption?
Naivety?
Ignorance?
Slackness?
Or something else?
Like all councils TCDC tends to be the governance of the privileged for the privileged. The past Mayor’s family is in the civil construction business – so naturally is generally supportive of “development” in all its forms. The geology of the area is also not conducive to large urban areas, being in essence a string of extinct volcanos. There is constant pressure from the three major cities Auckland Hamilton and Tauranga – all within 2 hours drive from Coromandel for further development as people retire, and wish to move to be by the sea. So if a developer proposes a new subdivision – it will be looked at favourably. Having said that the fact is that these developments were reviewed under the guidelines of what was then the available knowledge of projected SLR. The T & T report referred to the IPPC report and the Whitianga development as you see was constructed with that scenario in mind.
However, it was always understood that the IPPC is conservative in its assessments as it is an international body and the report has to be agreed by a large variety of people and nations.
The sad fact however is that the last government (ie Nick Smith) sat on the latest SLR assessment and these were not made public or given any credence until James Shaw released them on taking office. Had these figures been available at the time it is probable that the developments would not have been given the green light.
Very interesting macro. Thank you for sharing your detailed knowledge of the subject.
The ‘ad nauseam’ Of climate change.
Do you think like that dinosaur David Bellamy?
ED, your thinking appears lacks depth
Paul had a similar approach
Perhaps you know eachother…
Another troll like James .
I suspected so after your climate denial.
I shall be exiting the conversation.
There is nothing to be gained from encouraging the nonsense you lot spout.
Are you all one and the same?
Ed, if that is the level of your thinking and the tactics you continue to employ, it is no surprise that Paul was banned….
The posts you put up about various and many subjects, lack fundamental awareness and thought when you upload them…
Does that mean that you are ‘wrong’ in what you upload….maybe/maybe not….but the tactics are not going to attract people to take your links and then perhaps do some further reading of their own into [subject]
1. Post links with statements in absolutes [financial crash coming et al]
2. When another commentator questions/queries, refutes or proposes another angle….
3. Accuse the commentator of tr*lling…
In no way are such tactics likely to encourage others to read further …
Surely that is why you post comments with links here…..to encourage others to investigate further and thus having greater numbers of people becoming engaged?
If the above is not why you post the subject links, then I would suggest taking some time to assess internally, why it is you are doing so….
Have a good day
Didn’t Paul have an ideological eating disorder also.
The ad nauseum holier than thou trolling about climate change is a pain.
All true PM but C.C. is exacerbating their normal effects.
It’s possibly changing the oscillation of the ENSO as well which will have unknown consequences.
And I have no problem with journalists reporting that, which they do. Ed is asking them to pretend weather is climate.
I’m asking for context.
> That could be because sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and weather is just weather.
Where were you when I was trying to argue this the other day?! I got soundly rubbished by everyone here
A.
Sorry, I must have been annoying people on Kiwiblog that day.
That doesnt narrow it down much
And sometimes one causes the other.
Actually it’s a given that climate causes the weather.
100% of the weather is affected by climate change. 100% of the weather occurs on a planet which has warmer oceans and surface temperatures and more water vapour in the atmosphere and therefore, more energy.
The degree to which this affects individual weather events is asking the wrong question. It’s of academic interest only. From a practical perspective resilience and planning are far more important than attribution.
This is what is happening in my part of the country.
https://www.odt.co.nz/regions/west-coast/erosion-exposes-old-greymouth-rubbish-dump
I walk my dog most days on this beach and the situation is worsening by the day. The council dumped a few loads of rock, but the huge seas and recent king tide have swept over and around the rocks. A proper sea wall is needed but the Grey District Council apparently can’t afford it.
At the moment layers of barely composed rubbish is visible complete with black rubbish sacks. Apparently there’s all sorts of toxic goodies in there including radioactive waste from the local hospital.
There you go I told you all that all our internet devices could be hacked.
But it is not just the internet devices it is all the smart devices in OUR world.
Some good intelligent person alerts US to the back door Entrance into our passwords on these chips and the chip manufacturers put a sticky tape cover of a lie on this subject and say O we new about this a while ago we are finding a patch we just did not want to ALARM the public . What a load of bullshit these back door entrances are not a design flaw they have been forced to put these BDE into our chips so the Governments of the west can control us most likely the USA FBI CIA . Why do you think China has invested billions in to making there own chips and a laser beam communication satellite so they have safe secure COMS . I no all my coms are hacked my childrens com to . The neo liberal 1% want total control they have been deliberately suppressing our Ladys Mana to over the centuries because they know they will get there asses kicked by OUR strong intelligent humane caring LADYS . There is a doco on wonderwoman DC comics started this comic to lift our ladys mana at the time the 1% were ok with that because they wanted to motivate our ladys to go to work and what was the work well making crap for the world wars and when the war was over they stopped using her to lift ladys mana and got wander woman to act like a dutiful submissive house wife .
These wankers like interfering in every aspect of OUR lives and don t want to cede power they don t give a shit that they are stuffing up our WORLDS SOCIETY and motherearth and all her wonderfull beings . ECO Maori knows that US the 99% will put a stop to this way of life of shitting in ones own back yard and we will create a beautiful caring equal world society for all whom are on Papatuanuku.
Ka kite ano
It’s not ALL devices. It’s intel based ones. AMD chips are just fine.
“Serious security flaws that could let attackers steal sensitive data, including passwords and banking information, have been found in processors designed by Intel, AMD and ARM.”
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jan/04/meltdown-spectre-worst-cpu-bugs-ever-found-affect-computers-intel-processors-security-flaw
Thank you – I stand corrected.
This link here explains it all
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/meltdown-spectre-exploits-intel-amd-arm-nvidia,36219.html
“World Rugby will be overdosing on fury. Eliota Fuimaono-Sapolu has just let the coke out of the bag and there is nothing they can do about it. Our favourite Samoan casually said that some top All Blacks have taken cocaine and World Rugby can’t even slap a ban on him. The secret is out, if he is to be believed.”
https://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/rugby/opinion/100355280/mark-reason-eliota-fuimaonosapolus-cocaine-bomb-makes-perfect-sense
Thugby coke heads. Who knew (everyone). James?
From the article you reference
A damning description of MCaw and other well paid All Blacks
‘The tragedy for Fuimaono-Sapolu is that he has been grievously unsupported by players in New Zealand and Australia who all seem under the corporate yoke. Where is today’s Anton Oliver? Richie McCaw sits on a panel that absurdly makes Beauden Barrett the World Rugby Player of the Year again, not a title that a player is ever likely to win in a Samoan shirt – Beauden, blondish poster boy, good for business.
When did McCaw ever speak out on behalf of anything? No wonder he was a school prefect. But as Fuimaono-Sapolu says: “If Richie McCaw said anything about the GCSB, the whole of New Zealand would be up in arms against it.”
They key words…..
‘players in New Zealand and Australia who all seem under the corporate yoke.’
MCaw pimps for Fonterra and supports a company destroying our rivers and environment.
Some All Blacks….
Rich
Entitled
Coke sniffers
Wife beaters
Booze addled
Young men.
What role models.
Liar! According to your own definition, that is.
Wrong. It’s Intel, some ARM and maybe AMD depending upon which security hole is being used.
Don’t worry about your device(s) getting hacked. Instead, be more concerned about your brain being manipulated & changed by and through those devices. The content, delivery, and interaction/consumption of ‘information’ through those devices are having major impact on us and (our) society. What happens when you ‘lose’ (control of) your smart phone is nothing compared to when you ‘lose’ (control of) your mind – they seem to go hand-in-hand and maybe that’s not coincidental either …
That is some of the more salient points, Incognito…
The lack of awareness about the impacts of technology related mental health, is increasingly well documented, but not widely understood at the ‘consumer end’…
The way that the one-way is being pushed on us is amazing. Everyone is brainwashed about wonderful technology, you need to be immersed in it up to your nose to get anywhere, a job, connect with anybody. Kids are learning to type rather than write. Why not, it is so much easier to interface with machines and soon some people will have chips put in so their brains can connect directly with the communications port – cut out the middleman.
I wanted to speak to someone, phoned up and went through the numbers game, then got message that it was so easy to go on-line, this while I was on the phone already. Finally I did get service without waiting too long but the process of ‘disruption’ embedded in business practice now means that nothing you value now can be guaranteed to remain available, all must be subject to eternal, infernal change and churn.
Be nice to the people at call centres, they may be replaced with machines, as we all may be until some sort of saturation point is reached.
A recent contact did not want to accept my landline number though there was no particular reason not to, and I have an answerphone attached.
My choices are being taken away, yet this was part of the mantra of free markets, neo lib economics etc. I don’t believe any of the upbeat future-is-great drum-beaters any more. They are either stool pigeons, or specialise in living in the ‘now’, or are too young to be trusted to understand or be interested in the context of what they are speiling.
Johan;
Thanks for correcting that fake statement made by a troll saying ‘AMD chips are just fine.’
We have enough mis-information around now without more fake statements made to fool us all to believe some systems are safe or ‘fine’.
We all need to be given free upgades for them to block these flaws and rid ‘stealing of our sensitive data, including passwords and banking information’.
If the manufacturer caused these flaws in these IC chips then they must pay to fix them too. “consumers have rights too.”
Like automobile ‘recalls’ we should have the same rights to repairs.
Same applies with whoever caused our destructive “climate change” it is the companies who marketed the products who must be held responsible for the repair of our climate again too.
Someone got analytical about the timing and relationship between Fox and Friends and the terracotta turdface eruptions on twitter. And yep, he’s basically just live-tweeting F&F.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/01/05/trump-media-feedback-loop-216248
A Sugar tax is well overdue here.
We should not follow the UK – instead we should tax sugar at the cost it has to our society and it’s health. Tax at $5 per litre and make sugary drinks expensive items.
And stop all advertising.
And limit points of sale.
Here is the timid approach of the UK.
‘Coca-Cola to sell smaller bottles at higher prices in response to sugar tax.
‘…..The sugar tax – designed to help combat child obesity – was announced by then chancellor George Osborne in 2016 and he gave drinks-makers time to change their recipes if they wished to escape the levy. From April soft drinks manufacturers will be taxed at 18p per litre on drinks containing 5g of sugar or more per 100ml, or 24p per litre if the drink has 8g of sugar or more per 100ml. The tax will apply to one in five drinks sold in the UK…….’
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/jan/05/coca-cola-to-sell-smaller-bottles-at-higher-prices-in-response-to-sugar-tax
Yeah, and we should have a special car tax for those cars that in the wrong hands kill the users. Or a sun tax cos melanoma. Or an internet tax because some people write silly things on blogs.
Or we could start banning people who can’t sensibly and safely use the products that the vast majority have no problems with.
That sounds fun
Let’s start with you.
We already have petrol taxes to cover the roading and other infrastructure, and ACC levies on registration and fuel to cover the health and income costs of accidents.
A fat tax is well overdue here.
We should not follow the UK – instead we should tax fat pricks at the cost they have to our society and vote health. Tax at $5 per kilo over normal bodyweight as determined by the Ministry of body normality
Alternatively we can just burn the witches !
How about updated food standards preventing manufacturers from selling all this sugar-filled crap.
The critics of a sugar tax speak like true believers of the neoliberal cult.
You sound like John Galt.
Pigovian taxes are neoliberal. Regulate sugar maximums, don’t tax content.
Probably best just to make the products illegal.
Well Coke with what, nine teaspoons of sugar per 330ml, sure. Three or four not so much. Regulate a steadily decreasing maximum and neither manufacturer nor customer is penalized.
Ed that sounds like what a troll would come up with. Illegal causes more problems and creates black markets etc. if there is some demand for the product then it encourages people on the make to encourage others to use more. Instead of discouraging. This is already known. A facetious comment on your part, but it’s the first thought to the minds of the brainless.
Yes that was tongue in cheek.
I recommend we approach sugar and alcohol the same way we tackled tobacco.
Gradual and significant price increases.
Stop advertising.
Make health campaigns to explain bad health outcomes.
Limit places it can be sold.
Make it lose its glamour.
Programmes at school to edit the young.
Alcohol free and sugar free places.
In 20-30 years, Coca Cola and Heineken would be on the run, like Philip Morris are now.
Only works if it is a bipartisan initiative, I cannot see the political will on either side of the House at the moment
A.
+100000 Ed sugar is limiting us poor people life span to the low 60
Nah , that’s your stupidity and mental weakness.
[I think you’ve been warned about this before. The only reason you’re not getting a ban is I don’t have time to look, but if I see you doing that shit again I will ban you.
Seeing your comment to Paul below as well, I suggest having a think about how you want to be here too, because the whole nasty shit coming from you since the election is getting tedious. Your history of contributions here will only get you so far if moderators have to keep putting time into this. – weka]
BM Bloody minded.
moderator note for you to read above.
Sorry Weka.
my comment was for BM. Nothing wrong with your comment.
Please ignore bm and his psychopathic mentality.
They are part of the ME world, not the WE society.
[I really don’t want to have to be moderating today, so please tone down the abuse and the mental health slurs (they harm everyone) – weka]
Fuck off Paul.
This guy has got some mental health issues which need addressing asap ?
Actually, it’s the RWNJs that have mental health issues.
“we should tax sugar at the cost it has to our society and it’s health. Tax at $5 per litre and make sugary drinks expensive items”.
I trust you can provide a link to some analysis that the cost is $5.00/litre?
It does seem such a suspiciously round number doesn’t it?
Exactly $5.00/litre. I’m sure you didn’t just pull it out of thin air.
You remind me of when then Mayor Ken Livingston brought in a Congestion Charge in London. He claimed that it was merely to cover the costs that traffic congestion was causing. It just happened to be five pounds a time.
Pure coincidence of course that it was such a round figure.
Now, where do you get $5.00/litre as being the cost to society of sugary drinks?
Cigarettes now cost $30 a pack. The tax on them must be over $20 a pack.
My $5 is an arbitrary number to deter the purchase of debilitating sugary drinks and mitigate their devastating impact on people, society and the country.
It could just as easily be $10 tax per litre .
Personally, I’d copy some South American countries and boot companies like Coca-Cola and McDonalds out of the country.
Cigarettes now cost $30 a pack. The tax on them must be over $20 a pack.
Yep. The government’s raised taxes on cigarettes so high that they’ve created a black market for them and people are robbing dairies to supply that black market. Three cheers for good governance!
Given the above, I’m surprised that anyone thinks it would be a great idea to do something similar for sugar. Public health activists are a very unusual breed.
They are paid to be single-minded when you need to be triple-minded to get around the combination of sugar carving, advertising promotion and profit.
There is no care of humanity in business. If you want to buy they rarely twist your arm, they just play on your mind starting with tv ads when you are a baby, and if you buy good, and if you get sick, then they will charge you for some treatment that will get you on your feet and buying again. And we buy into this sweet and vicious circle.
+1
+111
There’s a range to where taxes work. Beyond that you need other methods.
I don’t have the slightest problem with the statement about it being an arbitrary figure that is simply intended to make the drinks expensive.
What I object to is the oft-used claim that some level of tax is, in your own words, “tax sugar at the cost it has to our society and it’s health”.
It is done far to often when there is no actual justification for the setting of the tax at a particular level. If people would simply say that they want to make something expensive they are being honest. When they claim that it is to meet the costs of the vice they are not.
As far as smoking goes smokers are probably the only group who pay enough for their vice to pay for the health treatment they incur. When you include the fact that they are likely to collect superannuation for fewer years they may actually be doing the taxpayer a favour.
The tax collected is about $2 billion per year. That is a pretty good chunk of the Health budget. As long ago as 2012 Treasury said that smokers do pay for their costs.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10809145
I don’t mind these taxes being charged. It helped persuade me to give up smoking cigars, a habit I greatly enjoyed. I just object to the idea of increasing the taxes because “you cost us taxpayers money”
Obesity and tooth decay cost society a lot of money.
Perhaps they do Ed, but you are missing the point.
If you are going to tax the sales of Sugary drinks in order to recover the costs to Society from consuming the drinks then you have to work out, at least to a reasonable approximation, what that cost is. Then you can charge a tax that will recover that amount.
If you are going to apply a punitive tax in order to discourage people consuming those items then you should have the courage of your convictions. Say that is what you are doing. Don’t pretend it is only to save the poor taxpayer from having to pay.
You appear to be following the punitive approach. Well admit it.
I would do it for both reasons.
That’s why I put out a large arbitrary number.
It’s the right wing way: get tough.
Fine by me.
The whole point of high taxation for cigarettes and other bad for you stuff is to stop people from using them.
The cost of both their medical costs and the premature death is far too high. The amount cannot be accurately measured in monetary terms as a lot of it is emotional which causes a lot of flow on effects.
Oh, suck my balls. My odds of premature death are my business. You’re just as bad as Ed railing about a vegan lifestyle, which might make me live longer and it’ll sure as shit feel like it.
I’ll go to hell in my own damned way, thankyou very much. If there were mandatory workplace air quality standards rather than arbitrary bans on stinky things, I wouldn’t take anyone with me, either.
You do realise that you’re whinging about the same thing don’t you?
No, they’re not the same thing.
Because tobacco smoke isn’t the only bad thing in the air. And decent ventilation and filtration to address those other things would make most bans unnecessary.
No. It doesn’t work that way.
Most other pollutants are external while smoking indoors is internal. Thus it will affect those inside disproportionately.
Well, yes it does work that way. Because air from outside comes inside, glycol smoke machines in gigs have their own issues, and packing a few hundred people into a nightclub with barely adequate ventilation becomes a nightmare of mutual-contamination. I have literally had ceiling condensate drip on me.
But the classic example is aircraft – recirculate the air as much as possible for a random collection of dozens or hundreds of people, and keep them exposed for hours.
I recall a Washington Post article from years ago saying a Dutch study found smokers actually end up costing the health system less than non-smokers, because they tend to die of things that kill you quickly (eg heart attacks, lung cancer) rather than spending decades deteriorating in old age with successive expensive health issues. If our primary concern were costs to health system, we should subsidise smoking instead of penalising it.
One study? Gosh.
Where there’s one, there are usually more …
http://www.justfacts.com/healthcare.asp#spending-preventative
I understand the tobacco industry paid good money for them.
Well, good, because no public health departments of publicly-funded universities would fund research that might return such politically-unsatisfactory results.
Yeah, but the numbers still add up.
@ One Anonymous Bloke 6 January 2018 at 8:18 pm:
Scepticism is healthy in science; suspicion is not.
This Dutch study published in 2008 is freely available/accessible (Open Access) and was funded by the Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sports:
Lifetime Medical Costs of Obesity: Prevention No Cure for Increasing Health Expenditure
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.0050029
Conclusions: Although effective obesity prevention leads to a decrease in costs of obesity-related diseases, this decrease is offset by cost increases due to diseases unrelated to obesity in life-years gained. Obesity prevention may be an important and cost-effective way of improving public health, but it is not a cure for increasing health expenditures.
Another study (two authors in common with above study) published in 2014 is also freely available/accessible (Open Access):
Disease Prevention: Saving Lives or Reducing Health Care Costs?
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0104469
[NB The contributions of author Pieter van Baal were supported by the Network for Studies on Pensions, Aging and Retirement (NETSPAR http://www.netspar.nl) as part of the project “Rising life expectancy: causes and consequences in the Netherlands”. NETSPAR is a think tank and knowledge network established in 2005. The Foundation’s activities are pursued through the Netspar Center, an operational unit of Tilburg University.]
Conclusions: The stronger the negative impact of a disease on longevity, the higher health care costs would be after elimination. Successful treatment of fatal diseases leaves less room for longevity gains due to effective prevention but more room for health care savings.
The third study (different authors altogether) published in 1998 is also freely available/accessible and was funded by the Ministry of Health, Welfare, and Cultural Affairs, the Netherlands:
Preventing fatal diseases increases healthcare costs: cause elimination life table approach
https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.316.7124.26
Conclusions: The aim of prevention is to spare people from avoidable misery and death not to save money on the healthcare system. In countries with low mortality, elimination of fatal diseases by successful prevention increases healthcare spending because of the medical expenses during added life years.
You’ll notice that neither study focused solely on smoking and they, in fact, covered a very wide range of life-threatening diseases.
There have been plenty more studies published and I reject any suggestion that they all were biased through ‘inducements’ from ‘invested interests’.
Which is one of the reasons why I think we need to go to a UBI. Get rid of the pension and encourage older people to work – if they want to.
I’ve seen quite a lot of them over the years.
Usually done by University economists who smoke.
They get sick of the other academics who complain that the smokers are being supported by their wowser compatriots.
It is quite easy to justify the claim that smokers pay in full for their habit.
They never get published of course. It would be fatal for your professional reputational to publish such a thing. Rather like questioning any of the left wing shibboleths. The same thing was true in 1930s Germany when you were sacked for claiming that “Jewish” Physics, ie Relativity and Quantum Theory were correct.
I wish they would start a subsidy scheme..
Oh to be able to afford the occasional Romeo y Julieta Churchill again.
A 7 inch Cuban cigar with a 47 ring size. Bliss for an hour.
As Rudyard Kipling is reputed to have said.
“A woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke”.
I’ll bet he never said it in his wife’s hearing though.
They were fucking awesome. Sitting in the garden on a summer’s evening, quietly smoking as the birds and insects lived their lives – some of the most peaceful moments of my life.
Some fine havanas available at outrageous prices up in Auckland.
http://www.havanahouse.co.nz/webfiles/HavanaHouseCigarsNZ/files/2017_Retail_Pricelist.pdf
Sigh. Sadly, it’s been that long since I bought a cigar that those prices really are truly, truly outrageous.
Agreed – a borderline hate crime even.
I think good marijuana is cheaper on a per gram perspective.
Philistine.
“synonyms: crass, tasteless, uncultured, uncultivated, uneducated, untutored, unenlightened, unread, commercial, materialist, bourgeois, unsophisticated, unrefined”
How could you possibly compare Mary Jane to a fine Cuban cigar?
Or even one from the Dominican Republic as they are mostly are these days.
In New Zealand with a superannuation that’s not means or asset tested, that’s particularly true as every year early that someone dies from smoking-related causes is a significant saving in super that doesn’t have to be paid.
However, personally I’d rather people didn’t smoke and lived longer, so I’m OK with trying to convince people to stop smoking.
If it were just “trying to convince”, I’m okay with “telling to piss off”. Extortion and ostracism are a bit much, though.
Yep. There’s “trying to convince,” and there’s “let’s tax these things so much that fuckwits find it worth bashing a shop assistant to get them.”
My university’s currently trying to implement an extortion/ostracism plan for making the entire campus smoke-free, in which we managers are supposedly going to accost and note down identifying details of non-compliant smokers – “supposedly” because, well, like fuck that’s going to happen. My favourite part of the proceedings was when the public-health academics got into a scrap with the OSH people over whether designated smoking booths should be open or not – if they’re open, the deadly toxic fumes might be breathed in by innocent victims, but if they’re enclosed, that’s a breach of OSH regulations re smoking in an enclosed area in a workplace. Ah, good times…
Every so often I pull out the line that complete exclusion is discrimination on the grounds of having a medical condition, specifically addiction. If there’s nowhere for you to smoke, there’s nowhere for you to treat your addiction, therefore the place is not accessible to you because of your condition. Like stairs with no wheelchair access.
That’s why the ostracism is needed – so nobody looks at it logically.
Why did you enjoy it?
why does one enjoy a fine meal?
It’s actually a serious question – from an ex-smoker.
Someone who once would have sat down and ‘enjoyed’ a cigar.
I haven’t smoked for nearly 20 years and I actually gave up more than 20 years ago.
And that was a serious answer.
I mean, you can break down the appeal into things like the ritual, the diverse aromas, the variation between aroma and flavour, the art of storing and preparation, the breath control, and the generally calming and almost meditative practise, but (like poetry criticism and frog dissection) the experience is in the whole, not the sum of the parts.
It’s either something you go for, or something you don’t. Again, like poetry or frog dissection.
No, actually, it’s not.
This is what i mean by ‘ex-smoker’. It means that I’ve analysed the whole and realised that there was no attraction.
You smoked cigars?
Well, each to their own. I’m sure there are some musical pieces you think are awesome that I wouldn’t see the appeal of.
I have only just noticed this line of comments and this question.
I guess on this one I have to go along with McFlock.
It is the whole experience. I suppose the most pleasant part is sitting outside on a fine evening taking the occasional puff on the cigar and watching the smoke gently rise. Pure peace.
I really isn’t something that is subject to “analysis”
Perhaps Oscar Wilde put it best though
“If I have to explain, you wouldn’t understand”.
I never thought a simple comment about a cigar would have caused so many comments though.
Global economic crash coming in 2018.
Debt at $ 233 trillion…..
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-features/global-debt-crisis-explained-all-time-high-world-economy-causes-solutions-definition-a8143516.html
https://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/homer_simpson_end_is_near.jpg
It’s truly amazing how RWNJs always find ways to minimise or distract from the damage that their policies cause.
They don’t care anything except themselves.
The tornado/ tsunami/ flood has to actually hit them for it to become an important issue.
Their attitude is best summed up by the expression “I’m alright Jack.”
The 2017 version was “I’ve got a big barbecue and a boat.”
And then they’ll complain that a) the government isn’t doing enough and b) that the government should have acted sooner completely ignoring that it was them that prevented the government from acting as needed.
As you repeatedly and correctly state, we cannot afford the rich.
http://www.codecmoments.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/The-End-is-NOT-Nigh-01.jpg
More delusional pictures that mean nothing from a RWNJ that can’t make an argument.
How will they in the mega-high-finance world totter away from that. Would another war fix it?
I’m pretty sure that they’re hoping that it will.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11970041
John Roughan takes his shit with a ‘healthy’ dose of salt.
This is very possibly a piss take…I’m hoping…
“We are probably going to need bags of the stuff over the next few years. We are still enjoying good times economically and long may they last, but human society has to have something to worry about, or at least talk about, and in good times these days we fret about the environment. We had an election last year in which we were urged to worry that it was no longer safe to swim in rivers.
Be honest, do you want to swim in a river? “
Roughan.
Hosking.
Garner.
Soper.
Richardson
Smith
Williams
Pale
Male
Stale
Burn the witches !
Little bitches ?
Save your breath Jimmy.
Stunned mullet is looking for a reaction.
This is obviously the type of person who will get caught in the rip just off the beach and need to be rescued because he’s not swimming between the flags. The type of person who doesn’t understand that the flags are placed where swimming is safest. That moving the flags will make swimming less safe both for the swimmers and the lifeguards.
Good question? Why doesn’t he have any?
It was never right and has caused major problems. Please keep up to date with the real world.
That’s because you and them are really bloody stupid. Please note that if any of them had ended up in the hospital it would have been on our dime paying for their stupidity and then you would have been complaining about that.
One that would have ensured that the river would die. And we actually do need the environment to be healthy else we die as well.
We’re not separate from the environment but a part of it and we need it to live.
There’s a lot more joy provided by protecting the environment so that we can all survive than by trashing it to make a few rich and killing us all off.
Oh god, he even thinks that things stay the same all the bloody time. What a fucken moron.
Good reply dtb
And Roughan is a senior editor at the Herald.
That is how bad journalism is in this country.
He is the Master Clown?
Someone’s leaking details about the Downer – Papadopoulos meeting.
What followed was the now infamous May 2016 conversation over many glasses of wine at the swanky Kensington Wine Rooms, during which the 28-year-old Papadopoulos spilled to Downer that he knew of a Russian dirt file on the rival Clinton campaign consisting of thousands of hacked emails.
That night was a key moment that helped spark the FBI probe – since taken over by respected former FBI director Robert Mueller as a special counsel – into possible Trump campaign collusion with the Kremlin, including its hacking of the Democratic National Committee.
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/romantic-encounter-set-off-australias-role-in-triggering-donald-trump-investigation-20180105-h0e34r.html?
Maybe someone should speak with Mifsud (the London based professor who apparently doesn’t speak Russian, but who has claimed to have contact with Putin and what-not.) and who the Austalian guy says Papadopoulos said told him there was a tranch of emails held by the Russian government.
Hmm.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/professor-named-in-russia-disclosures-says-he-has-clean-conscious/2017/10/31/41a7a08e-be3b-11e7-959c-fe2b598d8c00_story.html?utm_term=.1aebcb8d9213
I guess we’ll have to wait until Downer’s referred to the DOJ for making false statements to find out whether or not there’s fire.
/
Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley and Lindsey Graham on Friday issued a criminal referral to the Justice Department, urging it to examine whether the former British spy Christopher Steele made false statements to the FBI “about the distribution of claims” contained in a dossier he wrote about alleged ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/dossier-author-chris-steele-referred-to-doj-by-grassley-and-graham-2018-1?r=US&IR=T
That doesn’t follow joe90.
Downer’s statement can be honest enough, but simply not reflect reality.
The Fusion GPS op-ed earlier this week called for the release of the transcripts of their committee testimony. Grassley and Graham are shit scared of what might be revealed so they’ve come up with a reason to hold up any release – Steele and his report are subject to an investigation.
So, *cough*, any move to shut down the Downer story says they’re shit scared of any further information that may come to light.
So can Assange and Murray’s. Neither of them know where the hacked/leaked email’s they were provided with came from. Murray can only repeat what he was told by the intermediary.
That doesn’t stop people from treating their hearsay as evidence.
This “key moment that helped spark” the FBI investigation. From the description it was one of the factors involved – it “helped”.
These days of course, we can take Jared Kushner’s word for it that he thought he was going to collude with Moscow to get the emails.
I thought Assange stated the wikileaks release got passed to them by a “Washington insider” (or some such) but wouldn’t reveal the source. And Murray said something similar, no?
In other words, they say they know who provided the info.
I guess it’s possible that the Russian government (or an agency of) had emails that they obtained via the net and decided to put them on some hardware that they gave to someone else, who then passed said hardware and the info it held on to Wikileaks.
I’d have thought there were more direct and less fraught ways to get info up through Wikileaks mind. But hey…
Murray said what the intermediary told him and Assange acted as Murray’s stenographer.
And it’s what Kushner and the other Trump grunts thought that matters anyway. It wasn’t Assange offering to collude with them.
…these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.
Mark Felt.
yeah and I wonder why Papadopolous wasn’t hauled in then and there for a thorough questioning. The Trump dossier has become such a liability that it cant be what prompted the FBI to surveil the Trump campaign. Now it has to be some earlier bullshit trigger
Meanwhile, on Earth, it’s likely that the FBI had a variety of reasons to start their investigation.
I can imagine why you would think there’d be just one though.
PS: the reason they don’t just “haul people in for questioning right then and there” is because from an investigator’s point of view, it’s nice to know the answers to the questions you’re putting to potential perps before you ask them.
And it takes 6 months ?
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-12-31/nyt-publishes-report-debunking-fbi-use-dossier-gets-shredded-immediately-fake-news
It takes as long as it takes. These are, as Michael Shermer says, “extraordinary claims”: “an extraordinary claim must be placed into a larger context to see how it fits.”
I have some real problems with this – leaving aside how much of a creep Downer is.
Drunken conversations are generally full of overblown bs and bluster at the best of times. To have a Yank boast when they are drunk is somthing I’ve encountered many a time in my work and socially. To much hot air, and no substance. This looks like it may all turn to custard and everyone will walk free, again.
That said, if the right wing wanna stab each other in the back, who am I to stop them.
#freeahed
http://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-middle-east-42417938/palestinian-girl-arrested-after-slap-video
edit: previously on TS
We should keep this one in people’s minds.
Thanks for adding the previous TS posts, so people have more information.
Clean green New Zealand. What a joke.
We’re kidding ourselves and the world is rapidly working that out.
We’re a selfish, squalid, polluting and corrupt nation that has succumbed to the worst extremes of neoliberalism and suffer from its worst outcomes.
‘China is refusing to take the world’s rubbish any longer, including New Zealand plastic. This move once again casts doubts on New Zealand’s claim to be a clean and green country. It also highlights the fact that recycling isn’t always a sign of ecological virtue……’
‘…..New Zealand’s “100 per cent pure” reputation takes another knock when we realise we are using other countries to dump our rubbish. But it also raises doubts about our own integrity as “green” householders. In fact, recycling seems even to have encouraged us to become more wasteful consumers than before…….’
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/opinion/100357268/chinas-refusal-to-take-our-rubbish-should-make-us-greener
We also use 95% of the world’s 1080 supposedly ?
We’re about the only place in the world where 1080 is a useful poison for wide-spread pest control.
Pretty much every where else in the world has ground-feeding native mammals they want to protect. New Zealand doesn’t. So the fact that 1080 is particularly effective on mammals and can be easily laid in baits on the ground means it has a low risk of killing species we want to protect here, so we use a lot. Almost all other places in the world, the risk of killing ground-feeding mammal species they want to protect is too high for them to use 1080.
Thanks andre for info.
The oligarchs the likes of Fletchers, Fay Richwhite, Alan Gibbs etc etc have done particularly well here in NZ since the introduction of neoliberalism in the 1980’s, according to Roger Douglas neoliberalism was going to be the best thing for New Zealand since the invention of sliced bread ?
Did we get suckered or did we not ?
MSM still keep telling us how well we are doing as a country ?
You speak a lot of sense.
This
https://www.odt.co.nz/regions/west-coast/erosion-exposes-old-greymouth-rubbish-dump
No money to fix it apparently
The sandflys are that scared of eco maori they are around were ever I go they think that they are going to break ecos wairua but no they are just adding to my mana ka pai sandflys you will never break ecos wairua Ana to kai .
I say that all the photos of shonky key on Ngati Porou web site should be deleted he was just stealing OUR mana. Kia kaha
Let’s learn from Iceland.
‘Iceland has long been deemed the best place in the world to be a woman. For the past nine years, the country has topped the World Economic Forum’s gender equality index.
In Iceland men get at least three months’ paternity leave, and 90% of them take it. This gives them time to become comfortable with child-rearing, encouraging them to share the workload with their partners. Women in Iceland are highly educated, a high percentage hold managerial positions and they don’t give up their careers to have children: they do both – like the country’s new prime minister. At the end of 2017 Iceland got its second female prime minister, a 41-year-old with three young sons.
Many in Iceland see the women’s strike of 1975 as a defining moment in the gender equality struggle. On the “women’s day off”, as it’s known, 90% of women stopped work and refused to do any household chores. Schools and nurseries were closed. Many shops, factories and theatres had to close their doors. Fathers were left with no choice but to bring their kids to work, stocking up on sweets and colouring pencils to keep them occupied. On the radio, children could be heard playing in the background while the newsreaders read the news. After work, the children needed to be fed and the whole thing ended up as the day the men of Iceland ran out of sausages…..’
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jan/05/iceland-female-women-equal-pay-gender-equality
+100 Ed
I find it intriguing that things that eco is interested in can no longer be found on the net
the first was that website dedicated to the corruption on NZ police after I told IPCA about it next was the photo of Waiomatatini marae Porourangi showing the white tekoteko on the marae 2 days ago the photo came up on the first search google photos not now and the books that Colonel William Porter one in particle is East Coast Maori myths and legends ???? why are they hiding this book what are the sandflys scared of it well eco knows you will have to find William Porters book to find out the one I found was on a Australian website. Ka kite ano
The colour revolution in Iran fizzes
The “colour revolution” in Iran disappeared from headlines with a massive pro-government demonstration
http://robinwestenra.blogspot.co.nz/2018/01/iran-europe-rejects-u_6.html?m=1
How Wolff got access: a bit of sucking up and a few friendly pieces early on. So it seems no Trumpies ever thought to check out any of his earlier work before letting him into the adult daycare playroom.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/01/04/donald-trump-michael-wolff-book-216245
They’re having a wee cry, and getting a shellacking down thread.
If you watch one film this year, watch this one.
Save the animals.
Save the planet.
Save yourself.
Good to see you back @OAB
Thanks UCG.
Ed/Paul/The jackal has missed you.
Have you? 😈
To the same degree as a fine dose of herpes. 😆
Getting under your skin is a bonus.
As is getting on your nerves 😉
😆
Just when you think these pricks couldn’t go any lower.
“Thump found friends in strange places and in all shapes and sizes. Such as the frogs that croaked ‘KEK!’ They were full of surprises!”
[…]
“Thump was caught talking of grabbing all things pusillanimous. Protesters even made pink hats: their ire was unanimous.”
https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2018/01/04/alex-jones-hawking-pro-trump-children-s-book-indoctrinates-them-white-nationalism/218970
I don’t know how many would read that – too many multi syllable words.
I think giving the sandflys the pukana and letting everyone know the truth about the way they think and operate is nothing compared to what they are saying about me I know what they are saying and the tactics they are using on me would break most people so I think my intimidation is justified by there actions they best get a mirror .
Ana to kai
I can already see the sandflys next lines of malicious attacks to my character .
I will stop referring to eco as a second being as this is there next line of attack that they will try and lock me up on false charges.
I can see the line they are taking with the words there trolls on this site are trying to use against me .The difference here is a lot of good people know that what I write about ie the harassment the intimerdation the suppression the damage to my character these sandflys are trying to do are true. If they try and lock me up with there false charges everyone will be very upset .I am happy that I have thestandard website to defend my good character with PS they really don t like a MAORI with Mana do they .
Ka kite ano