I heard that the Oz police raid was done on their own bat. Thinking, police who answer to their own logic, to keep them free from government and political interference, isn't there a vacuum? One body full of self-righteousness and self-granted probity – isn't that like having another government body not answerable to the people. If it looks at a law and interprets it in an unintended way, is it then a rogue body within the polity?
Same with the Army. PM Helen Clark says publicly yes go to war but don't engage. just assist as back-up. And Army says Yeah right – a fibbing Tui moment.
And the police doing their own thing involving virtual manslaughter of naughty poor youngsters joyriding driving like they see on TV reality cop shows – excited and alarmed beyond brain control and killing themselves. Police fishing for drugs, raiding old women's homes to look for drugs which they might have to effectively kill themselves when needed. The drugs not for recreational use or to sell for mindless profit, but treated mindlessly the same by authority obeying a mindless government.
And behind this rather loose and murky entity is the overpowering large government that holds such firm reins on others theoretically sovereign nations that they can request our police to do their bidding. Wikileaks has exposed for real what has been whispered, and they hate the truth, they can't handle it. And everywhere it pops up through journalists releases, they will act and dispute, and delete and redact and punish.
Countries may not have control of their police because of some fine-thinking decree, but in the absence of over-arching local authority, another can step in as is apparently the case in Australia over Wikileaks publishing to the public's right to know.
Yeah. Well that is something I think I heard. But things can change fast, so can apparent facts – just take out a letter and you get fats and fast. Minute difference and such a big effect. Probably got it wrong.
You heard that trusting statement from one Craig McMurtrie, who was interviewed this morning on RNZ National by Corin Dann. McMurtrie is the ABC's "editorial director", which means, of course, that he will have been heavily involved in shaping the ABC's demeaning, misleading, Government-friendly coverage of Assange's persecution over the last few years.
It will be interesting to see if the likes of McMurtrie have the integrity and the courage to defend the ABC's few decent journalists who are being targeted by the Government via its publicly funded goon squad.
McMurtrie and Dann this morning both used phrases like "chilling effect on journalism" and talked of the need to protect "whistle-blowers". McMurtrie several times expressed surprise that such state intimidation of journalists could occur "in a liberal democracy like Australia."
Not once did either McMurtrie or Dann mention the most famed Australian whistle-blower and journalist, Julian Assange.
Yes, that was a stunning exercise in wonderment. Assange has figuratively been slow-boiled alive since since 2010. Now those two goons have suddenly found that the pot they are in is starting to boil as well.
Between Trump's label of 'fake news' for any report he doesn't like, and the increasing state oppression of investigative journalists, whistle blowers, and leakers, it has never be more plain that certain actors are trying to shut the media down.
Of course, where the USA goes Australia follows and the article "Shooting the messengers" on the Inside Story blog outlines how far down the track that track the ALP has wandered over the ditch. That article, by the way, also seems to studiously avoid mention Assange.
That sounds as I would imagine. Watch and wait for the next exciting episode. Who needs fiction when you find so much interesting faction around. Nightly shows will be held with erudite, ironic and fluent thinkers where they guess the amount of truth in current news. Could be something like the one with Stephen Fry in UK.
More Police Raids As War On Journalism Escalates Worldwide
June 05, 2019 "Information Clearing House" –The Australian Federal Police have conducted two raids on journalists and seized documents in purportedly unrelated incidents in the span of just two days.
Yesterday the AFP raided the home of News Corp Australia journalist Annika Smethurst, seeking information related to her investigative report last year which exposed the fact that the Australian government has been discussing the possibility of giving itself unprecedented powers to spy on its own citizens. Today they raided the Sydney headquarters of the Australian Broadcasting Corp, seizing information related to a 2017 investigative report on possible war crimes committed by Australian forces in Afghanistan.
Subterranean Fire documents historically how the capitalist class have nefariously accumulated wealth and power for selfish purposes by depriving working people of dignity and rights.
Subterranean Fire details at the outset how strike actions and popular revolts were put down by corporations through their cronies, including police, private detectives, vigilantes, and even the National Guard. In the Homestead strike of 1892, after workers had defeated the Pinkerton agency’s private army, the National Guard was brought out.
U.S. Congressman Admits His Marine Unit ‘Killed Probably Hundreds of Civilians’ in Iraq June 05, 2019 "Information Clearing House" – Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) has come under fire after admitting during a podcast interview that his Marine Corps unit "killed probably hundreds of civilians" during the atrocity-laden First Battle of Fallujah in 2004.
When will our Min of Education be honest regarding pay rates?
From June 2018 until June 2022 teachers pay increase 9.3%, inflation 8%, BUT it will not be until the 2021/2022 that teachers pay will be higher in real terms than it was in June 2018. And he thinks that is satisfactory for teacher pay to go backwards for all 3 years of this govts. term and that strike action is not warranted ?
Teachers should count themselves lucky. There are very large numbers of workers in this country who have had no meaningful wage rise in the past 10 years.
Kevin You represent backward-looking, yokel NZrs – making sure that the country never advances in any way by bringing up some negative statistic that undermines a case that somebody is making for improvements.
There is always somebody worse off than someone else near the bottom, but one advancing can result in others getting a trickle down effect. If wealthy there isn't the same, but teachers are not wealthy just rising a little in the pay scale to middle income and yet require great skills, and their work is getting more difficult. If you can't say anything helpful try not to say anything at all. I don't notice much from you except heaps of cold sludge.
"Radio New Zealand provides in depth, quality, impartial programmes that might otherwise not be available on commercial radio, or without public funding ."
What an untruth !
This is to say that Simon Bridges, The Head of the Undemocratic Wealthy Party in New Zealand gets to speak his incoherent nonsense on Radio New Zealand each week day. He has the run of the Studio. ! Bias upon Bias upon Bias.
He uses a segment called "Morning Report". Radio NZ's many reporters fawn over him – for they are members of his Undemocratic Wealthy Party in New Zealand.
They, the Reporters, have helped The Wealthy Party to bring about a horrendous attack on the normal citizens of New Zealand. Hundreds of Thousands of whom have no Housing, or who are paying rents to the amount of $500 weekly on very low wages.
Radio New Zealand is an Utter Scandal.
It is the plaything of very very Rich. It tramples over the poor day in day out.
We normal New Zealanders must take the Wealthy Undemocratic Party To the Highest Court in the Land.
With the Charge that they Have denied Food, to the Citizens of this Country; they Have denied Housing; They have charged outrageous Rents; they have paid very low wages. Let us take their Banks – to the same Courts.
Let us Get the Undemocratic filthy Wealthy National Mob – out of our Nation. ! Get Rid of Bias and inequality.
They start by training their little girls in wealth. Then their little snobby Boys. Then they tell them not to mix with nasty poor children.
Then in a short time they don't even know how to spell Poverty. And they get taken away to get their Tits reshaped. Then Daddy has a chat with the Cops and his boy doesn't get shoved into prison – where he should be.
NZTA's maps of their suggested "safe and appropriate speed" strongly suggests they have no fucking idea. Seriously, they suggest 100km/h as a safe and appropriate speeds for dangerous twisty high crash rate bits of road like the Desert Road from the Waihohonu Bridge through the Three Sisters through to the top of the long straight hill just south of Turangi, or SH1 beside Lake Taupo where there's the tight corners going around the bluffs, but suggest reducing parts of the Taupo bypass to 80km/h where it's limited access separate dual carriageways with median barriers.
That map seems to bear no relation to reality whatsoever. Either that or they got it round the wrong way and the slider reveals the roads that aren't safe to drive at 100kph.
They're certainly correct that the risk of being killed in a crash would be much lower if people drove the highways at 60 – 70kph, but that's the same as it being correct that your risk of electrocution would be much lower if you turned off the mains switch in your house: it's true, but no-one in their right mind would do it.
I'm somewhat amused by their treatment of the Waterview Tunnels. When they were opened, there was a massive song and dance about why the speed limit through them had to be 80km/h, and there's speed cameras at the entrance and exit both directions. Yet their suggested "safe and appropriate speed" is 100.
I hope this government gets nine years just so they can keep putting much-needed infrastructure spending into railways, but it's freight movements that will benefit. Passenger rail is never going to a popular means of inter-city travel as long as we have narrow-gauge rail, single-tracked. Fixing that will never be viable.
But you are allowed your e-bikes on trains for free. So you jump on the train and have personal transport at the other end. Personally, I love this concept.
It'll take some time for sure, we used to have an extensive rail network they were shutting lines down in the 70's and probably ever since.
It's what I was doing in the South Is in the 70's. Only my bike didn't have an 'e'. I have many fond memories of the NZR crews, more often than not they'd let me ride on top of the mail bags in the now vanished guard wagons for free. I think it was because I was too grubby to have anywhere near proper passengers!
And I'd get a cup of steaming hot tomato soup if I got dead lucky 🙂
We are repeating a similar gerfuffle to how it was when computers came in. Computers were known to be right so anything that came out of them must be genuflected to. Now it is alghorithms deciding and screening people from getting ACC treatment, and having to go at 80 on a perfect 120 km stretch of road because some bits of metal and wires in a container say so.
What about robot police eh. That'll be the next move, the police will enjoy running robots like Military Forces are sitting on swivel-chairs running armed forces doing maneouvres against real people and their homes.
This is serious, it is important that we don't all end up standing outside doors waiting for them to automatically open for us. And the frostbite when the electricity is down will be awful. The buzz before we collapse – if only our systems at home had informed us of this dangerous double tragedy, blizzards and non-opening doors. Oh what shall we do now, we can't phone home because the blizzards have knocked out the cellphones?
My birthday today. Fitting time to apologise to the people I've been aggressively arguing with over the past couple of days.
Tony, Peter, sorry. Gosman… lol.
And thank you to those commenters who talked me down rather than piled on.
Right or wrong I'm coming across angry a lot and it bothers me. It is amazing when mental health slips how emotions can take hold and your thinking ignores answers it has known for some time.
So I'm thinking I'm angry because x said this, and y thinks I'm that….
But anger is a secondary emotion. So what's going on?
I am profoundly sad. I am a clever bastard and I solve problems. With climate change I just feel utterly helpless and hopeless.
Acknowledging that I actually feel a bit better. Time for a birthday celebration of chest x rays and stool samples.
Good on ya Bleeple, keep rolling… and don't worry I suffer the same at times, getting all pissed off and writing aggro things, the style of which is later regretted…
Life's a roller-coaster – you just gotta buckle up properly and hold on for the ride…
Happy Birthday, WeTheBeeple. Being sad is ok – coming to terms with what is happening to our world is very hard, especially when it has to be acknowledged that we, as the 'little people' can't do much to change it. Be kind to yourself and try to find something to do on your special day that you enjoy in the midst of your medical dramas. Kia kaha
I've been wondering about ya, WTB. When someone's an exemplar, as you are in the realm of earth-care, it must be difficult to maintain high standards when venturing "off-site" into more mundane political fields where squabbling's the norm.
In any case, have a delightful birthday and regarding the stool sample; give 'em all you've got
With regards feeling sad; enjoy it while you can; sadness, especially when it's profound, is the gateway to Resolution and Growth. The alchemists said that deep darkness, charred and ruinous, is the prerequisite to the true growth that results in the state of whiteness and pure clarity; sounds like you're on your way
Thanks everyone I really appreciate the support. Got to venture off into this rainy day and I'm delaying, sitting here with the cat purring in my lap, all toasty and warm.
While I agree (Robert) that this process is part of healing/transformation, I do get overly frustrated with the three-steps forward, two-steps back pattern. But that's all typical human stuff?
As I get back on the road and my world broadens again the claustrophobic crowding of fears and anxiety will subside. Too much time in this chair.
Trying to work out a sustainable touring company. Tricky! Anyone got a spare 100K so I can get an EV with decent range.
Nissan Leaf currently has a 40Kw van model that will do 250-300 km depending on terrain. My partner's work vehicle is the older 24Kw that does around 112-130km and is upgrading soon.
There is a 7 seater on TradeMe for $37,850 but I suspect it is the low range version. My partner's boss is importing his directly from the UK. Sorry, can’t offer anything more substantive, especially since it is your birthday.
I appreciate the feedback! I got lucky. Last week(s) I took friends out to see comedy and a friend of a friend came too (new friend). So, ever the great host I filled him up with Jamiesons and introduced him to several 'stars'. Turns out his job is the importation and selling of EV's and he thinks I'm the bees knees.
My mate mentioned my situation and I just heard he might be keen on a sponsorship deal – which would work out great for him as I'd talk up the EV in every town.
We shall see, what a great twist of fate that that is who he was.
Always pays to be nice, I find it much easier in theory…
By temperament I have the same challenge. When I was younger I confronted it tramping, climbing and generally getting off my arse and doing things that provoked anxiety but in a controlled fashion. That was transformational, I went from being a useless 14 yr old to a functioning adult at 24 yrs. Took a while but it worked.
Next big mistake was not being responsible for my own naivety and stupid mistakes. You WILL get fucked around with and people WILL do things that are unfair and malicious; I spent far too much of my life expecting them to be better and the world to be a fairer place, when the problem was my own weakness.
The next piece of the puzzle is one crucial word … competence. Don't mistake this for being smart. People like you and me have relied on our IQ to get us through life, but by itself this is never sufficient. It leaves us feeling like we never quite fulfilled our potential. Or to put it bluntly … the world is full of smart people who're losers.
Smart is a trap, it fills the mind with useless chatter, it paralyses action and it means we never reach the point where we become truly, innately competent. IQ is merely a constraining factor in success, not the root cause of it. Competence is knowledge turned into skill, they're related but not the same thing. Worst of all the mere knowledge of this is useless to you. Without volition, without purpose and will, it fails to become action. This is the secret to never giving up, it rewires the brain, it reveals the unsuspected folded within you. In this you have to be really tough on yourself.
I empathise with the angst, but remind myself that after all those tests and x-rays, amongst all the chaff, you seem to be surrounded by good people and green and growing things. I'll try and do the same.
Your posts often elevate and inform, and your propensity to being just human after all, is reassuring for me at least.
We the Bleeple….Happy birthday! We are birthday twins. So hope you have a great day too!
I was really moved by what you wrote a few days back about your life. I was unab to comment at the time due to technical problems that sometimes happen for me on this site.
WtB Hope your birthday turns out nice. And remember there are 364 unbirthdays out there when good things and good wishes can turn up – nice surprises can abound not recognisably wrapped with bows on. Quote for the day: Life is a see-saw – up push, down fall, ready for the next day of …action, reflection, disappointment, recovery, completion, wonder, laughter, meeting of minds sweet, hopeful and ironic.
I guess I am one of the people who argued with you over the last few days, but nothing personal. We all have different viewpoints but I am sure we all want the best result. And a little robust and challenging discussion can help us all in the end.
Have a great day and best of wishes for a positive outcome all round and for the year ahead!
Don't forget you said yourself a day or so ago (I think it was you) that after some days of feeling bad you have days of feeling fine and dandy. I know when feeling bad I think I will never not feel bad. But it's not true. Brains can be such dicks some times.
A shrink I know says to remind oneself to tell the brain some thoughts are simply not helpful.
Are you coming across angry, or are you actually angry? Reading other people's comments is all about projection. If someone habitually uses the F word like punctuation rather than any real invective, others can infer anger when it was just a simple sentence 😉
The thing I worked out – some time back – is that each of us is unique. Which is a helluva beaut thing! We are not a clone. We do things our way WTP. Which is what Nature wants. Variety; penetration, Wonder. Our way is best. Hang on to that. Good man.
Thanks again everyone. Today I went to the wrong Hospital. Senility creeping in.
The editing software here is a nightmare to drop poetry into. It's godawful. Perhaps a selling point…
Five O + GST
The hairdresser couldn't make me any younger but she banished the neck fluff and beat the brows back into submission
Trimmed now I haul my aging frame out to a bench and strike conversation with Stan the homeless man
An amputee pigeon hobbles across the walkway in front of Prada "Kinda poetic" I point 'Meryl Steep wears that shit' says Stan "You mean the Devil?" We laugh "If the Devil turns up for a dress I'm'a kick him in the nuts" I say We laugh some more
I shake hands with Stan dropping a tenner in his palm then I walk the road
Twenty, forty, fifty dollars Smiling gap toothed faces
I've cheered myself up but I go all out Off to Lush for a perfumed bath bomb To Farmers for some pure wool socks and finally
A mince and cheese pie
Life is good.
(that was me attempting to get a format without large gaps in each line. Not worth the bother aye).
No, nay, never, No never no more, Will I play the wild rover, No, never, no more. Just keep on presenting poetry just like the above, or how it turns out WtB. You are wild and free, and great. Loved it all. Mince and cheese yeah. Who could ask for more.
Hi WTB. Have you ever had a look at Old Norse poetry. It's difficult because they used a circumlocutory device called kenning which takes some getting used to, but it can be very powerful. My favourite is one by Egil Skalla-Grimmsson called Sonnatorrek (loss of sons) It's a thousand years old. Probably not your thing but here it is: https://lyricstranslate.com/en/sonatorrek-loss-sons.html
I like it. It could almost have been written by some Celt today. Long, but.. no telly then.
By the format required, some of this (Skald work) might be considered 'viking doggerel' where the form relays events of the day.
Th English Dept at Uni did my head in they spent so much time discussing things that were not there and fawning over Jane Austen, no conjoint for me… Science all the way 😀
I'm getting to feel very sorry for Mr Makhlouf – National have managed to screw him up. I hope not over. Vicious little buggers in National. I am told that 2,000 hits does not meet the usual status of denial-of-service. But it is certainly way out from normal. Who actually explained the case to him? Have Treasury been hoist on their own petard in looking for well-priced contracts for maintaining their IT needs, and got what they paid for?
The sorry saga of hack-gate began about 6pm last Monday when a National Party staffer discovered parts of the government's Budget had been uploaded to the Treasury website.By 10am on Tuesday the Opposition had started drip-feeding details of the Wellbeing Budget – due to be released by the Finance Minister Grant Robertson on Thursday – to the media.,,, The National Party has for a week been calling for both Mr Makhlouf's and Mr Robertson's heads and has also demanded Mr Makhlouf at the least be stood down while the investigation is carried out.
How he's not been put on leave yet is quite baffling.
(I find it baffling how the local media can make judgments about someone being 'put on leave' over making a mistake like this very puzzling. A political journalist on a public body as Radionz calling for something that would have a destabilising effect of the government, unreasonably enhancing the minor mistake to a large misdemeanour is unsatisfactory.
Also Radionz have a number of times referred to the event as arising from simple searching. This also shows incorrect reporting. 2000 hits is not simple searching. It was using a public search option to a degree that normal public would be unaware of; a back-door way to manipulate the option to draw out more information than was intended to be available. It was a fault in the program and either known or found by manipulation then used to the full by working overtime to get the 2,000 hits.)
It would have been a long weary task but a sneaky and malign Opposition found it valuable and to its taste.
A denial of service attack just shuts websites down, it doesn't extract data.
The problem was with the search engine and the little samples of documents you get in the search results: you see a bit in front and a bit behind the search terms. So if you then search for those bits behind the original search, you can find the bits that come after them, and piece the whole document together that way. Those were the 2000 hits.
Debating whether that's a "hack" (conjuring images of spotty teens keyboard-mashing in basements to cool industrial soundtracks) is a distraction from the absolute fact that the people who extracted that data knew they should not be authorised to access the contents of budget documents in that way, yet still did so.
That's why the nats are pushing so hard on Makhlouf. Distract people from realising that what they did was illegal, and therefore that a police referral was appropriate.
To my mind it was a 'hack' alright. That is was a very easy hack technically is irrelevant. ALL hacks exploit some form of public domain vulnerability in a manner the owner of the site does not intend.
is a distraction from the absolute fact that the people who extracted that data knew they should not be authorised to access the contents of budget documents in that way, yet still did so
That is the critical and obvious point that most of the media seem determined to ignore. Totally agree with you on this one 🙂
You are obviously not well versed in IT based on your comments above. 2000 hits on the public search feature of an organisation in the time specified is not a lot at all.
From three different computers, often referring to the outputs of previous searches from those machines? When was the last time you searched a government site in that manner?
Yeah he knows, just parroting the same point over and over, but 2000 searches from 2-3 machines is a bit different than 2000 searches from 2000 machines, mmk?
It doesn't matter if it was 2 hits or 20 billion, whoever was doing this knew damn well they were not allowed to access the Budget documents before it was released.
… a National Party staffer discovered parts of the government's Budget had been uploaded to the Treasury website.
For fuck's sake, parts of the budget were not uploaded to the Treasury's web site, and that has been explained multiple times in various forums by people who know what they're talking about. Journalists should know better by now. The budget documents were indexed by the web site's search engine, which is not the same thing at all.
The mistake was somebody missing a config change they needed to make to a search engine. How that gets parlayed into something Gabriel Makhlouf and Grant Robertson should resign or be stood down for is beyond me. I notice Simon Bridges hasn't offered to resign for carrying out a data breach on a government agency, which sounds much more like a resignation offence to me.
"Broken promises" and "lies" are the words Ms Johnstone uses to describe her disappointment with the Labour government she's previously campaigned for after it failed to meaningfully boost funding to Pharmac in its latest budget.
"I was devastated," said Ms Johnstone, whose eight-year-old daughter Lucy featured on a Labour campaign advertisement during the last elections.
"David Clarke and Jacinda Ardern had all said they were going to improve cancer care and we believed it."
"I'd had friends who had never voted before who said, 'that's it, I'm enrolling and I'm going to vote' and who messaged me on the day 'I went and voted for you Claudine, I want to give you a chance.' So I feel like I've lied to them too, I've let them down."
"Those who were lied to by the current government will not necessarily vote National…they just won’t vote at all"
..indeed, it will be interesting to see turn out next election. Certainly I can see, at best, large disaffected/disillusioned groups dragging their feet reluctantly to the voting booths…though I get the feeling Labours 'trump card*' is hoping that National stick with Bridges.
*Both a figurative and Literal pun at this time. And a strategy that didn't help the Democrats last election.
There is deep disillusionment out here in formerly Hopeful Land. The wounds from National's hard arsed years are still raw, and the Wellbeing Balm is not being spread evenly across all those who have done it tough for well over a decade.
Making the most vulnerable on benefits wait years for any appreciable relief is cruel and unforgivable and will hurt children and those who are unable to work through health and disability issues most.
On these pages there appears to be little appetite for supporting those calling for an increase in Pharmac's budget so New Zealanders are not looking enviously at their Aussie cousins while their lives slip way.
I read the comment then went to check an article in Ingenio which just arrived 'Fighting Cancer: Our Research Revolution'
It's mostly to do with immune therapy, and how they believe they may have cancer beat – eventually. Apparently our survival rate was 24% in 1972, and 57% today. Still not great but definitely better.
All this research they're doing is rather brilliant and so is the team. But at the end of the day it's still a pipeline to make new drugs that pharmaceutical companies get hold of. Then, all that taxpayer money and philanthropy given to them is converted to dollars for billionaires and screw you.
As I see it.
I only lasted a few months in medical (micro) biology as I realised they were after new drugs, and I was after eliminating the need for them.
The whole Big Pharma drug business model is self-perpetuating and monopolising in the sense that it is the only existing pipeline, i.e. they are the only game in town. Therefore, it is inevitable that sooner or later a new drug or treatment ends up with and in the hands of Big Pharma. They will recoup costs plus a healthy [pardon the pun] profit margin so that they keep their shareholders happy and can keep investing in the next blockbuster. They need to do this to stay in business or become the target of a hostile take-over or a ‘friendly’ merger or acquisition.
If this pattern can be broken, or bypassed rather, and I think it can, and much of the irrelevant ‘development costs’ be removed then overall costs will drop and more smaller (niche) players can enter the game.
Instead of bringing new drugs to market, it will be bringing new drugs to patients. A fundamental shift in thinking AKA a paradigm shift.
An example of a different model is the money the Government spends on combatting Kauri disease. It is not profit-driven but needs-driven. I’d like to to think that it can be done in other settings too!
In the meantime, it is the system we are stuck with..with Pharmac acting as gatekeeper.
While we await this fundamental paradigm shift what do we say (as taxpayers) to those who are having the funding cut for the drugs that work for their condition or cannot get funding for drugs that are working for others overseas with their condition?
It's a pleasure, marty. I love seeing these fools melt down in public. Sugar's simply a gross and disgusting creature—a repulsive mixture of two other elderly racists, Donald Trump and our own "Sir" Bob Jones—-and his performance was nothing more or less than you would expect.
Less edifying, of course, is to see Keith Olberman, who used to be a thoughtful and intelligent commentator, allow himself to degenerate into a deranged conspiracy theorist, barking madly about "Russian SCUM!!!!"…..
SkyCity convention centre faces further six-month delay…. the Auckland-based company told the Macquarie Investor Conference in Sydney today.
When Fletcher won the contract in October 2015, construction was predicted to start in late December that year and be finished in February 2019. However after *Fletcher ran into problems with cost blowouts, SkyCity said last year that the deadline had been pushed out to mid-2019.
SkyCity said today that its investment in the projects is expected to be in line with the original budget of about $703m, and it remains comfortable with the contractual arrangements. The construction contracts provide for liquidated damages, which should mitigate losses through delay, the company said….
The company said it has secured three major convention bookings since March, in addition to the six previously announced, and continues to work on numerous leads and opportunities. The 33,000sq m facility will be the largest purpose-built convention centre [Auckland NZ International Convention Centre] in the country.
*Remember that Fletcher shares are now owned by many overseas retirement trusts etc. So they have come to NZ grabbed all the contracts and spoiled the flow of our business to our companies, and then FU and don't keep to contract. Also Fletchers seem to be majorly building casinos, and convention centres round the country. So is that where the building resources and foreign investment (so good for NZ economy) is going?
"There is not doubt in my mind that local industry could deliver the required amount of steel and the required quality as well," said David Moore, Grayson Engineering chief executive. "We'd just like to say we're here, we're capable, we have the skill set."
While the steel companies accept international competition, they say it's ultimately workers here who are being let down.
The union Etu has slammed the steel contract decision.
"I think it's a national disgrace that we are not supporting our local manufacturers who employ local people on big local jobs," said Joe Gallagher of the union.
Our government also fails to recognise the assistance China gives her steel mills in financial terms as "subsidies", and so no tariffs or penalties are applied to imports.
Therefore any domestic steel manufacturers are often unable to compete or even match on product price.
Cinderella is sweet often but rather simple. She keeps hoping for a Prince with good heart and bags of money. Meantime she whiles away her days dreaming of pumpkins turning into carriages, but that only happens in fairy stories. That is about the summation of our intellectual expertise and likely outcome I fear.
Its good that the gun person face supprisson order been lifted people will see Hes a puppet .
scottmo is suppressing the media in Australia is it accommodation ?????????
Eco Maori says the Obamas keeping a public profile is awesome we need good people to show the Papatuanuku how good whanau behave there spotafi deal will help keep that Phenomenon going congratulations on the book.
Alcohol causes a lot of harm to our society it's the usual everything in moderation 2 to 3 in the evening not getting stuffed up by the stuff.
It's good that the teachers strike next week has been called off. Why get rid of Kiwibuild there are people under the bridge judy can't get that logic.
It cool that Aotearoa scientists are pioneering ruamoko earthquake monertying technology to save lives.
That's why he didn't sign the social media clauses set up in one way its good to see Rugby.
Tall people have a advantage in society us average height tangata are ok my sons give me stick because they are taller than me.
The weight problem is dietary we consume way too much sugar it should be only put in the petrol tanks when the price of carbon goes up it will force the price of sugar up and it will all be diverted to fuel hopefully.
Here you go Whanau this proves that the wealthy make OUR laws to suit their ideals .
I have heard a old saying you have to have poverty to keep the system going to keep wages low to keep the economy humming along YEA RIGHT what's wrong with everyone having enough money to have a happy healthy life now and in the future.
You see Whanau it's the 99.9 % tangata who make the system if we all champion equalty for all it will happen.
The Wealthy could gift half of their money to the poor and still have plenty to play with .
Inequality is unlikely to fall much in the future unless our attitudes turn unequivocally against it. Among other things, we will need to accept that how much people earn in the market is often not what they deserve, and that the tax they pay is not taking from what is rightfully theirs.
One crucial reason why we have done so little to reduce inequality in recent years is that we downplay the role of luck in achieving success. Parents teach their children that almost all goals are attainable if you try hard enough. This is a lie, but there is a good excuse for it: unless you try your best, many goals will definitely remain unreachable Inequality begets further inequality. As the top 1% grow richer, they have more incentive and more ability to enrich themselves further. They exert more and more influence on politics, from election-campaign funding to lobbying over particular rules and regulations. The result is a stream of policies that help them but are inefficient and wasteful. Leftwing critics have called it “socialism for the rich”. Even the billionaire investor Warren Buffett seems to agree: “There’s been class warfare going on for the last 20 years and my class has won,
It gives Eco Maori a sore face to see that our rangitahi are raising the awareness of climate changes being a huge threat to our future society's.
Public concern about the environment has soared to record levels in the UK since the visit of Greta Thunberg to parliament and the Extinction Rebellion protests in April.
The environment is now cited by people as the third most pressing issue facing the nation in tracking data from the polling company YouGov that began in 2010. Environment was ranked after Brexit and health, but is ahead of the economy, crime and immigration
The Whole Papatuanuku need to follow in the footsteps of these good intellectuals whom can see that recycling everything we can so as not to over exploit mother earth's capacity
The smell in Natural Weigh, a zero-waste shop that opened a year ago in Crickhowell in mid-Wales, is lovely. The shop – filled with pasta, grains, seeds and dried fruit served from hoppers to avoid plastic packaging; washing-up liquid and laundry products that customers pump into their battered old squeezy bottles; fair-trade coffee and chocolate, plus an array of environmentally friendly products, such as bamboo toothbrush holders, plastic-free dental floss and vegan leather snack pouches – looks lovely. The little town itself, which prides itself on having the best high street in Britain, is lovely, too. I am captivated ka kite ano link below.
Congratulations for your win Lisa I agree we can not let the disruptors win they use racial issues any issues to stirs up the people emotions and lie next minute when they are in power the people are let down because everything farge promises is just lies to pull in the votes .I think that there should be a huge fine for Bullshiting pollies who are caught losing.
Peterborough byelection result: Labour scrapes past Brexit party to hold seat
Labour’s Lisa Forbes says result shows ‘the politics of division will never win’
Labour has held on to the marginal seat of Peterborough, defeating predictions that the contest could deliver a first byelection victory to Nigel Farage’s Brexit party.
Addressing her supporters early on Friday following the count, Labour candidate Lisa Forbes said: “Tonight’s result is significant because it shows that the politics of division will never win
The tramper missing in the Tararua rangers hope he is found a live sounds like he is onto it fingers crossed.
It would be good to have cameras on all fishing boats to keep the fishermen honest and make them be extremely careful in areas where our endangered Maui dolphins resides.
A month rain in 24 hours the bad weather making havoc in America at the minute———–.
That is good luck the British motorbike rider who was impailed on a branch of the tree he crashed into on his bike.
The plastic fantastic roads being made using recycled plastic is awesome that is the correct attitude never giving in on your quest to recycle our waste . This is just the start in our recycle reuse SOCIETY.
Ka pai to te ao Maori news and Mr Black for championing the need for science room for the tamariki at that kurakopapa.
Mr Dews I agree we need to come up with new fishing techniques to stop the damage being dune to our endangered Maui dolphins.
Its is that Vanuatu got that hurricane last year it wreaked havoc on there coffee crop and plants 5 million from Aotearoa to help their Agricultural sector is very good.
It would be nice to see whare around all Marae I say we should structure mahi cottage industry around our Marae as well as houses we need to create our own mahi and money with the Marae mana the whanau won't let it fail.
Eco Maori is a fan of Ardijah and Pukuhohe Maori TV comedy series.
There are some farmers not being compliant on the environment laws for their property the few make the many look bad .
I agree we need to have more horticultural farming having policies and money to make that happen is cool
Its the old saying don't have to marry eggs in one basket we need to all Farm Organically also have to much exposure to China and dariy prices at the minute.
Alcohol needs to be restricted alcohol is a problem that has caused a lot of damage to tangata whenua Eco Maori say it's a gateway drug to harder DRUGS.
It should not be sold in food outlets supermarket keep the stuff out of sight of our Mokopuna.
I don't think that alcohol companies should be in school education tamariki about alcohol bad effects that's what the media job is .
Its hard for people with disabilities in our society's culture at the minute we need to value and respect our disadvantage tangata.
I agree the state making the disabled to keep producing duplicates of forms to apply for state funding when in most cases the person circumstance doesn't change how ridiculous.
Eco Maori thinks that junk food is definitely causing food allergies I think that is what was wrong with my mokopuna a last year all the chemicals that are put into that stuff is amazing that the food companies can get away with it commercialism 1
A ballooning diet of junk food might be one of the factors fuelling a rise in food allergies, researchers have suggested.
Experts say they have seen a rise in food allergies in western countries, including the UK. While true prevalence can be tricky to determine, data published by NHS Digital shows episodes of anaphylactic shock in England due to adverse food reactions rose steadily from 1,362 in 2011-12 to 1,922 in 2016-17.
The culprit, some scientists have suggested, could be substances known as advanced glycation endproducts, or AGEs.
AGEs occur naturally in the body, but they are found in high levels in highly processed foods, as well as other sources such as cooked meats. They form when sugars react with proteins or lipids. High levels of AGEs in the body, which it has been suggested can result from consuming AGE-rich foods, have previously been linked to a number of conditions including diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis.
Now a small study by researchers in Italy has shown that children with food allergies have higher levels of AGEs in their bodies than healthy children without allergies. Children with respiratory allergies showed no such differences. The team also found that children with higher levels of AGEs consumed more food containing such substances la kite ano link below.
“Canani said the team’s research using cells suggested AGEs might directly interact with with immune cells, and they also seemed to have a detrimental effect on the gut barrier.”
That (gut epithelial deterioration) aligns with other studies into various conditions associated with dietary problems including Coeliac’s and IBS.
The housing shortage is dire it's bad that those people in Edgecome liveing in a tent 2 working but there are no suitable houses thanks shonky.
I say its very cool the walking tracks being closed so they can be up graded with board walls to minimize the spread of the Kauri die back disease in Auckland.
That's awesome NASA selling fairs to the space station that we're we have to go in the future. Its cool world health is it or highlighting all the plastic waste being washed into Tangaroa and our Awa
The skilled teachers shortage is another symptom of the last ten years of a government that ran the country cut budgets for core government services and gave the wealthy tax cuts.
The extra work for the people of Kai kohi planting trees is cool mahi is great for the wairua.
The sky tower challenge its cool that the aim is to tau toko mental health
Good short film made about Wahine monthly periods and Kuia menopause being short listed for a award.
Congratulations and good luck with your new song and single Pere
TL;DR:Winston Peters is reported to have won a budget increase for MFAT. David Seymour wanted his Ministry of Regulation to be three times bigger than the Productivity Commission. Simeon Brown is appointing a Crown Monitor to Watercare to protect the Claytons Crown Guarantee he had to give ratings agencies ...
The gloves are off. That might seem to be the undertone of surprisingly tough talk from New Zealand’s foreign and trade ministers. Winston Peters, the foreign minister, may be facing legal action after making allegations about former Australian foreign minister Bob Carr on Radio New Zealand. Carr had made highly ...
I could be a florist'Round the corner from Rye LaneI'll be giving daisies to craziesBut, baby, I'll wrap you up real safe Oh, I can give you flowers At the end of every dayFor the center of your table, a rainbowIn case you have people 'round to stay Depending on ...
TL;DR: The six key events to watch in Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy in the week to May 12 include:PM Christopher Luxon is scheduled to hold a post-Cabinet news conference at 4 pm today. Finance Minister Nicola Willis will give a pre-budget speech on Thursday.Parliament sits from Question Time at 2pm on ...
The price of the foreign affairs “reset” is now becoming apparent, with Defence set to get a funding boost in the Budget. Finance Minister Nicola Willis has confirmed that it will be one of the few votes, apart from Health and Education and possibly Police, which will get an increase ...
A listing of 26 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, April 28, 2024 thru Sat, May 4, 2024. Story of the week "It’s straight out of Big Tobacco’s playbook. In fact, research by John Cook and his colleagues ...
Yesterday I received come lovely feedback following my Star Wars themed newsletter. A few people mentioned they’d enjoyed reading the personal part at the beginning.I often begin newsletters with some memories, or general thoughts, before commencing the main topic. This hopefully sets the mood and provides some context in which ...
April 30 was going to be the day we’d be calling Mum from London to wish her a happy birthday. Then it became the day we would be going to St. Paul's at Evensong to remember her. The aim of the cathedral builders was to find a way to make their ...
Rob MacCulloch writes – Can’t remember the last book by a Kiwi author you read? Think the NZ government should spend less on the arts in favor of helping the homeless? If so, as far as Newsroom is concerned, you probably deserve to be called a cultural ignoramus ...
Eric Crampton writes – Grudges are bad. Better to move on. But it can be fun to keep a couple of really trivial ones, so you’re not tempted to have other ones. For example, because of the rootkit fiasco of 2005, no Sony products in our household. ...
A new report warns an estimated third of the adult population have unmet need for health care.Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāHere’s the six key things I learned about Aotaroa’s political economy this week around housing, climate and poverty:Politics - Three opinion polls confirmed support for PM Christopher Luxon ...
Today is May the fourth. Which was just a regular day when my mother took me to see the newly released Star Wars at the Odeon in Rotorua. The queue was right around the corner. Some years later this day became known as Star Wars Day, the date being a ...
Buzz from the Beehive Much more media attention is being paid to something Winston Peters said about former Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr than to a speech he delivered to the New Zealand China Council. One word is missing from the speech: AUKUS. But AUKUS loomed large in his considerations ...
Is the economy in another long stagnation? If so, why?This is about the time that the Treasury will be locking up its economic forecasts to be published in the 2024 Budget Economic and Fiscal Update (BEFU) on budget day, 30 May. I am not privy to what they will be ...
The annual list of who's been bribing our politicians is out, and journalists will no doubt be poring over it to find the juiciest and dirtiest bribes. The government's fast-track invite list is likely to be a particular focus, and we already know of one company on the list which ...
In the weeks after the October 7 Hamas attacks on Southern Israel I wrote about the possible 2nd, 3rd and even 4th order effects of the conflict. These included new fronts being opened in the West Bank (with Hamas), Golan … Continue reading → ...
Peter Dunne writes – It is one of the oldest truisms that there is never a good time for MPs to get a pay rise. This week’s announcement of pay raises of around 2.8% backdated to last October could hardly have come at a worse time, with the ...
David Farrar writes – Newshub reports: Newshub can reveal a fresh allegation of intimidation against Green MP Julie-Anne Genter. Genter is subject to a disciplinary process for aggressively waving a book in the face of National Minister Matt Doocey in the House – but it’s not the first time ...
The Treasury has published a paper today on the global productivity slowdown and how it is playing out in New Zealand: The productivity slowdown: implications for the Treasury’s forecasts and projections. The Treasury Paper examines recent trends in productivity and the potential drivers of the slowdown. Productivity for the whole economy ...
Winston Peters’ comments about former Australian foreign minister look set to be an ongoing headache for both him and Luxon. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: The podcast above of the weekly ‘hoon’ webinar for subscribers features co-hosts and , along with regular guests on Gaza and ...
These puppet strings don't pull themselvesYou're thinking thoughts from someone elseHow much time do you think you have?Are you prepared for what comes next?The debating chamber can be a trying place for an opposition MP. What with the person in charge, the speaker, typically being an MP from the governing ...
The land around Lyme Regis, where Meryl Streep once stood, in a hood, on the Cobb, is falling into the sea.MerylThe land around Lyme Regis, around the Cobb that made it rich, has always been falling slowly but surely into the sea. Read more ...
Buzz from the Beehive Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters was bound to win headlines when he set out his thinking about AUKUS in his speech to the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. The headlines became bigger when – during an interview on RNZ’s Morning Report today – he criticised ...
The Post reports on how the government is refusing to release its advice on its corrupt Muldoonist fast-track law, instead using the "soon to be publicly available" refusal ground to hide it until after select committee submissions on the bill have closed. Fast-track Minister Chris Bishop's excuse? “It's not ...
As pressure on it grows, the livestock industry’s approach to the transition to Net Zero is increasingly being compared to that of fossil fuel interests. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / Getty ImagesTL;DR: Here’s the top five news items of note in climate news for Aotearoa-NZ this week, and a discussion above ...
The New Zealand Herald reports – Stats NZ has offered a voluntary redundancy scheme to all of its workers as a way to give staff some control over their “future” amidst widespread job losses in the public sector. In an update to staff this morning, seen by the Herald, Statistics New Zealand ...
On Werewolf/Scoop, I usually do two long form political columns a week. From now on, there will be an extra column each week about music and movies. But first, some late-breaking political events:The rise in unemployment numbers for the March quarter was bigger than expected – and especially sharp ...
David Farrar writes – The Herald reports: TVNZ says it is dealing with about 50 formal complaints over its coverage of the latest 1News-Verian political poll, with some viewers – as well as the Prime Minister and a former senior Labour MP – critical of the tone of the 6pm report. ...
Muriel Newman writes – When Meridian Energy was seeking resource consents for a West Coast hydro dam proposal in 2010, local Maori “strenuously” objected, claiming their mana was inextricably linked to ‘their’ river and could be damaged. After receiving a financial payment from the company, however, the Ngai Tahu ...
Alwyn Poole writes – “An SEP,’ he said, ‘is something that we can’t see, or don’t see, or our brain doesn’t let us see, because we think that it’s somebody else’s problem. That’s what SEP means. Somebody Else’s Problem. The brain just edits it out, it’s like a ...
Our trust in our political institutions is fast eroding, according to a Maxim Institute discussion paper, Shaky Foundations: Why our democracy needs trust. The paper – released today – raises concerns about declining trust in New Zealand’s political institutions and democratic processes, and the role that the overuse of Parliamentary urgency ...
This article was prepared for publication yesterday. More ministerial announcements have been posted on the government’s official website since it was written. We will report on these later today …. Buzz from the BeehiveThere we were, thinking the environment is in trouble, when along came Jones. Shane Jones. ...
New Zealand now has the fourth most depressed construction sector in the world behind China, Qatar and Hong Kong. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 8:46am on Thursday, May 2:The Lead: ...
Hi,I am just going to state something very obvious: American police are fucking crazy.That was a photo gracing the New York Times this morning, showing New York City police “entering Columbia University last night after receiving a request from the school.”Apparently in America, protesting the deaths of tens of thousands ...
Winston Peters’ much anticipated foreign policy speech last night was a work of two halves. Much of it was a standard “boilerplate” Foreign Ministry overview of the state of the world. There was some hardening up of rhetoric with talk of “benign” becoming “malign” and old truths giving way to ...
Graham Adams assesses the fallout of the Cass Review — The press release last Thursday from the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls didn’t make the mainstream news in New Zealand but it really should have. The startling title of Reem Alsalem’s statement — “Implementation of ‘Cass ...
This open-for-business, under-new-management cliché-pockmarked government of Christopher Luxon is not the thing of beauty he imagines it to be. It is not the powerful expression of the will of the people that he asserts it to be. It is not a soaring eagle, it is a malodorous vulture. This newest poll should make ...
The latest labour market statistics, showing a rise in unemployment. There are now 134,000 unemployed - 14,000 more than when the National government took office. Which is I guess what happens when the Reserve Bank causes a recession in an effort to Keep Wages Low. The previous government saw a ...
Three opinion polls have been released in the last two days, all showing that the new government is failing to hold their popular support. The usual honeymoon experienced during the first year of a first term government is entirely absent. The political mood is still gloomy and discontented, mainly due ...
National's Finance Minister once met a poor person.A scornful interview with National's finance guru who knows next to nothing about economics or people.There might have been something a bit familiar if that was the headline I’d gone with today. It would of course have been in tribute to the article ...
Rob MacCulloch writes – Throughout the pandemic, the new Vice-Chancellor-of-Otago-University-on-$629,000 per annum-Can-you-believe-it-and-Former-Finance-Minister Grant Robertson repeated the mantra over and over that he saved “lives and livelihoods”.As we update how this claim is faring over the course of time, the facts are increasingly speaking differently. NZ ...
Chris Trotter writes – IT’S A COMMONPLACE of political speeches, especially those delivered in acknowledgement of electoral victory: “We’ll govern for all New Zealanders.” On the face of it, the pledge is a strange one. Why would any political leader govern in ways that advantaged the huge ...
Bryce Edwards writes – The list of former National Party Ministers being given plum and important roles got longer this week with the appointment of former Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett as the chair of Pharmac. The Christopher Luxon-led Government has now made key appointments to Bill ...
TL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political economy at 10:06am on Wednesday, May 1:The Lead: Business confidence fell across the board in April, falling in some areas to levels last seen during the lockdowns because of a collapse in ...
Over the past 36 hours, Christopher Luxon has been dong his best to portray the centre-right’s plummeting poll numbers as a mark of virtue. Allegedly, the negative verdicts are the result of hard economic times, and of a government bravely set out on a perilous rescue mission from which not ...
Auckland Transport have started rolling out new HOP card readers around the network and over the next three months, all of them on buses, at train stations and ferry wharves will be replaced. The change itself is not that remarkable, with the new readers looking similar to what is already ...
Completed reads for April: The Difference Engine, by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling Carnival of Saints, by George Herman The Snow Spider, by Jenny Nimmo Emlyn’s Moon, by Jenny Nimmo The Chestnut Soldier, by Jenny Nimmo Death Comes As the End, by Agatha Christie Lord of the Flies, by ...
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a ...
Have a story to share about St Paul’s, but today just picturesPopular novels written at this desk by a young man who managed to bootstrap himself out of father’s imprisonment and his own young life in a workhouse Read more ...
The list of former National Party Ministers being given plum and important roles got longer this week with the appointment of former Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett as the chair of Pharmac. The Christopher Luxon-led Government has now made key appointments to Bill English, Simon Bridges, Steven Joyce, Roger Sowry, ...
Newsroom has a story today about National's (fortunately failed) effort to disestablish the newly-created Inspector-General of Defence. The creation of this agency was the key recommendation of the Inquiry into Operation Burnham, and a vital means of restoring credibility and social licence to an agency which had been caught lying ...
Holding On To The Present:The moment a political movement arises that attacks the whole idea of social progress, and announces its intention to wind back the hands of History’s clock, then democracy, along with its unwritten rules, is in mortal danger.IT’S A COMMONPLACE of political speeches, especially those delivered in ...
Stuck In The Middle With You:As Christopher Luxon feels the hot breath of Act’s and NZ First’s extremists on the back of his neck and, as he reckons with the damage their policies are already inflicting upon a country he’s described as “fragile”, is there not some merit in reaching out ...
The unpopular coalition government is currently rushing to repeal section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act. The clause is Oranga Tamariki's Treaty clause, and was inserted after its systematic stealing of Māori children became a public scandal and resulted in physical resistance to further abductions. The clause created clear obligations ...
Buzz from the Beehive The government’s official website – which Point of Order monitors daily – not for the first time has nothing much to say today about political happenings that are grabbing media headlines. It makes no mention of the latest 1News-Verian poll, for example. This shows National down ...
It Takes A Train To Cry:Surely, there is nothing lonelier in all this world than the long wail of a distant steam locomotive on a cold Winter’s night.AS A CHILD, I would lie awake in my grandfather’s house and listen to the traffic. The big wooden house was only a ...
Packing A Punch: The election of the present government, including in its ranks politicians dedicated to reasserting the rights of the legislature in shaping and determining the future of Māori and Pakeha in New Zealand, should have alerted the judiciary – including its anomalous appendage, the Waitangi Tribunal – that its ...
Dead Woman Walking: New Zealand’s media industry had been moving steadily towards disaster for all the years Melissa Lee had been National’s media and communications policy spokesperson, and yet, when the crisis finally broke, on her watch, she had nothing intelligent to offer. Christopher Luxon is a patient man - but he’s not ...
Chris Trotter writes – New Zealand politics is remarkably easy-going: dangerously so, one might even say. With the notable exception of John Key’s flat ruling-out of the NZ First Party in 2008, all parties capable of clearing MMP’s five-percent threshold, or winning one or more electorate seats, tend ...
Bryce Edwards writes – Polling shows that Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau has the lowest approval rating of any mayor in the country. Siting at -12 per cent, the proportion of constituents who disapprove of her performance outweighs those who give her the thumbs up. This negative rating is ...
Luxon will no doubt put a brave face on it, but there is no escaping the pressure this latest poll will put on him and the government. Photo: Lynn Grieveson / The KākāTL;DR: These are the six things that stood out to me in news and commentary on Aotearoa-NZ’s political ...
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler In the wake of any unusual weather event, someone inevitably asks, “Did climate change cause this?” In the most literal sense, that answer is almost always no. Climate change is never the sole cause of hurricanes, heat waves, droughts, or ...
Something odd happened yesterday, and I’d love to know if there’s more to it. If there was something which preempted what happened, or if it was simply a throwaway line in response to a journalist.Yesterday David Seymour was asked at a press conference what the process would be if the ...
Hi,From time to time, I want to bring Webworm into the real world. We did it last year with the Jurassic Park event in New Zealand — which was a lot of fun!And so on Saturday May 11th, in Los Angeles, I am hosting a lil’ Webworm pop-up! I’ve been ...
Education Minister Erica Standford yesterday unveiled a fundamental reform of the way our school pupils are taught. She would not exactly say so, but she is all but dismantling the so-called “inquiry” “feel good” method of teaching, which has ruled in our classrooms since a major review of the New ...
Exactly where are we seriously going with this government and its policies? That is, apart from following what may as well be a Truss-Lite approach on the purported economic “plan“, and Victorian-era regression when it comes to social policy.Oh it’ll work this time of course, we’re basically assured, “the ...
Hey Uncle Dave, When the Poms joined the EEC, I wasn't one of those defeatists who said, Well, that’s it for the dairy job. And I was right, eh? The Chinese can’t get enough of our milk powder and eventually, the Poms came to their senses and backed up the ute ...
Ministers must front up about which projects it will push through under its Fast Track Approvals legislation, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
The Government is again adding to New Zealand’s growing unemployment, this time cutting jobs at the agencies responsible for urban development and growing much needed housing stock. ...
With Minister Karen Chhour indicating in the House today that she either doesn’t know or care about the frontline cuts she’s making to Oranga Tamariki, we risk seeing more and more of our children falling through the cracks. ...
The Labour Party is saddened to learn of the death of Sir Robert Martin, a globally renowned disability advocate who led the way for disability rights both in New Zealand and internationally. ...
Labour is calling for the Government to urgently rethink its coalition commitment to restart live animal exports, Labour animal welfare spokesperson Rachel Boyack said. ...
Today’s Financial Stability Report has once again highlighted that poverty and deep inequality are political choices - and this Government is choosing to make them worse. ...
The Green Party is calling on the Government to do more for our households in most need as unemployment rises and the cost of living crisis endures. ...
Unemployment is on the rise and it’s only going to get worse under this Government, Labour finance spokesperson Barbara Edmonds said. Stats NZ figures show the unemployment rate grew to 4.3 percent in the March quarter from 4 percent in the December quarter. “This is the second rise in unemployment ...
The New Zealand Labour Party welcomes the entering into force of the European Union and New Zealand free trade agreement. This agreement opens the door for a huge increase in trade opportunities with a market of 450 million people who are high value discerning consumers of New Zealand goods and ...
The National-led Government continues its fiscal jiggery pokery with its Pharmac announcement today, Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall says. “The government has increased Pharmac funding but conceded it will only make minimal increases in access to medicine”, said Ayesha Verrall “This is far from the bold promises made to fund ...
This afternoon’s interim Waitangi Tribunal report must be taken seriously as it affects our most vulnerable children, Labour children’s spokesperson Willow-Jean Prime. ...
Te Pāti Māori are demanding the New Zealand Government support an international independent investigation into mass graves that have been uncovered at two hospitals on the Gaza strip, following weeks of assault by Israeli troops. Among the 392 bodies that have been recovered, are children and elderly civilians. Many of ...
Our two-tiered system for veterans’ support is out of step with our closest partners, and all parties in Parliament should work together to fix it, Labour veterans’ affairs spokesperson Greg O’Connor said. ...
Stripping two Ministers of their portfolios just six months into the job shows Christopher Luxon’s management style is lacking, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said. ...
Tonight’s court decision to overturn the summons of the Children’s Minister has enabled the Crown to continue making decisions about Māori without evidence, says Te Pāti Māori spokesperson for Children, Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. “The judicial system has this evening told the nation that this government can do whatever they want when ...
It appears Nicola Willis is about to pull the rug out from under the feet of local communities still dealing with the aftermath of last year’s severe weather, and local councils relying on funding to build back from these disasters. ...
The Government is making short-sighted changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) that will take away environmental protection in favour of short-term profits, Labour’s environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said today. ...
Labour welcomes the release of the report into the North Island weather events and looks forward to working with the Government to ensure that New Zealand is as prepared as it can be for the next natural disaster. ...
The Labour Party has called for the New Zealand Government to recognise Palestine, as a material step towards progressing the two-State solution needed to achieve a lasting peace in the region. ...
Some of our country’s most important work, stopping the sexual exploitation of children and violent extremism could go along with staff on the frontline at ports and airports. ...
The Government’s Fast Track Approvals Bill will give projects such as new coal mines a ‘get out of jail free’ card to wreak havoc on the environment, Labour Leader Chris Hipkins said today. ...
The government's decision to reintroduce Three Strikes is a destructive and ineffective piece of law-making that will only exacerbate an inherently biased and racist criminal justice system, said Te Pāti Māori Justice Spokesperson, Tākuta Ferris, today. During the time Three Strikes was in place in Aotearoa, Māori and Pasifika received ...
Cuts to frontline hospital staff are not only a broken election promise, it shows the reckless tax cuts have well and truly hit the frontline of the health system, says Labour Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall. ...
The Green Party has joined the call for public submissions on the fast-track legislation to be extended after the Ombudsman forced the Government to release the list of organisations invited to apply just hours before submissions close. ...
New Zealand’s good work at reducing climate emissions for three years in a row will be undone by the National government’s lack of ambition and scrapping programmes that were making a difference, Labour Party climate spokesperson Megan Woods said today. ...
More essential jobs could be on the chopping block, this time Ministry of Education staff on the school lunches team are set to find out whether they're in line to lose their jobs. ...
Te Pāti Māori is disgusted at the confirmation that hundreds are set to lose their jobs at Oranga Tamariki, and the disestablishment of the Treaty Response Unit. “This act of absolute carelessness and out of touch decision making is committing tamariki to state abuse.” Said Te Pāti Māori Oranga Tamariki ...
The Government is trying to bring in a law that will allow Ministers to cut corners and kill off native species, Labour environment spokesperson Rachel Brooking said. ...
The Government has delivered on its election promise to provide a financially sustainable model for Auckland under its Local Water Done Well plan. The plan, which has been unanimously endorsed by Auckland Council’s Governing Body, will see Aucklanders avoid the previously projected 25.8 per cent water rates increases while retaining ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters discussed the need for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, and enhanced cooperation in the Pacific with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock during her first official visit to New Zealand today. "New Zealand and Germany enjoy shared interests and values, including the rule of law, democracy, respect for the international system ...
The Minister Responsible for RMA Reform, Chris Bishop today released his decision on four recommendations referred to him by the Western Bay of Plenty District Council, opening the door to housing growth in the area. The Council’s Plan Change 92 allows more homes to be built in existing and new ...
Thank you, John McKinnon and the New Zealand China Council for the invitation to speak to you today. Thank you too, all members of the China Council. Your effort has played an essential role in helping to build, shape, and grow a balanced and resilient relationship between our two ...
The Government is modernising insurance law to better protect Kiwis and provide security in the event of a disaster, Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly announced today. “These reforms are long overdue. New Zealand’s insurance law is complicated and dated, some of which is more than 100 years old. ...
The coalition Government is refreshing its approach to supporting pay equity claims as time-limited funding for the Pay Equity Taskforce comes to an end, Public Service Minister Nicola Willis says. “Three years ago, the then-government introduced changes to the Equal Pay Act to support pay equity bargaining. The changes were ...
Structured literacy will change the way New Zealand children learn to read - improving achievement and setting students up for success, Education Minister Erica Stanford says. “Being able to read and write is a fundamental life skill that too many young people are missing out on. Recent data shows that ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay says Canada’s refusal to comply in full with a CPTPP trade dispute ruling in our favour over dairy trade is cynical and New Zealand has no intention of backing down. Mr McClay said he has asked for urgent legal advice in respect of our ‘next move’ ...
The rights of our children and young people will be enhanced by changes the coalition Government will make to strengthen oversight of the Oranga Tamariki system, including restoring a single Children’s Commissioner. “The Government is committed to delivering better public services that care for our most at-risk young people and ...
The Government is making it easier for minor changes to be made to a building consent so building a home is easier and more affordable, Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk says. “The coalition Government is focused on making it easier and cheaper to build homes so we can ...
New Zealand lost a true legend when internationally renowned disability advocate Sir Robert Martin (KNZM) passed away at his home in Whanganui last night, Disabilities Issues Minister Louise Upston says. “Our Government’s thoughts are with his wife Lynda, family and community, those he has worked with, the disability community in ...
Good evening – Before discussing the challenges and opportunities facing New Zealand’s foreign policy, we’d like to first acknowledge the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. You have contributed to debates about New Zealand foreign policy over a long period of time, and we thank you for hosting us. ...
From today, passengers travelling internationally from Auckland Airport will be able to keep laptops and liquids in their carry-on bags for security screening thanks to new technology, Transport Minister Simeon Brown says. “Creating a more efficient and seamless travel experience is important for holidaymakers and businesses, enabling faster movement through ...
People with an interest in the health of Northland’s marine ecosystems are invited to a public meeting to discuss how to deal with kina barrens, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. Mr Jones will lead the discussion, which will take place on Friday, 10 May, at Awanui Hotel in ...
Kiwi exporters are $100 million better off today with the NZ EU FTA entering into force says Trade Minister Todd McClay. “This is all part of our plan to grow the economy. New Zealand's prosperity depends on international trade, making up 60 per cent of the country’s total economic activity. ...
There are heartening signs that the extractive sector is once again becoming an attractive prospect for investors and a source of economic prosperity for New Zealand, Resources Minister Shane Jones says. “The beginnings of a resurgence in extractive industries are apparent in media reports of the sector in the past ...
The return of the historic Ō-Rākau battle site to the descendants of those who fought there moved one step closer today with the first reading of Te Pire mō Ō-Rākau, Te Pae o Maumahara / The Ō-Rākau Remembrance Bill. The Bill will entrust the 9.7-hectare battle site, five kilometres west ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has announced 25 new high-speed EV charging hubs along key routes between major urban centres and outlined the Government’s plan to supercharge New Zealand’s EV infrastructure. The hubs will each have several chargers and be capable of charging at least four – and up to 10 ...
The coalition Government will not proceed with the previous Government’s plans to regulate residential property managers, Housing Minister Chris Bishop says. “I have written to the Chairperson of the Social Services and Community Committee to inform him that the Government does not intend to support the Residential Property Managers Bill ...
The Government has announced an independent review into the disability support system funded by the Ministry of Disabled People – Whaikaha. Disability Issues Minister Louise Upston says the review will look at what can be done to strengthen the long-term sustainability of Disability Support Services to provide disabled people and ...
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith has attended the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva and outlined the Government’s plan to restore law and order. “Speaking to the United Nations Human Rights Council provided us with an opportunity to present New Zealand’s human rights progress, priorities, and challenges, while responding to issues and ...
The Government and Rotorua Lakes Council are committed to working closely together to end the use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua. Associate Minister of Housing (Social Housing) Tama Potaka says the Government remains committed to ending the long-term use of contracted emergency housing motels in Rotorua by the ...
Trade Minister Todd McClay heads overseas today for high-level trade talks in the Gulf region, and a key OECD meeting in Paris. Mr McClay will travel to Riyadh to meet with counterparts from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). “New Zealand’s goods and services exports to the Gulf region ...
Education Minister Erica Stanford has outlined six education priorities to deliver a world-leading education system that sets Kiwi kids up for future success. “I’m putting ambition, achievement and outcomes at the heart of our education system. I want every child to be inspired and engaged in their learning so they ...
The new NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) App is a secure ‘one stop shop’ to provide the services drivers need, Transport Minister Simeon Brown and Digitising Government Minister Judith Collins say. “The NZTA App will enable an easier way for Kiwis to pay for Vehicle Registration and Road User Charges (RUC). ...
Whānau with tamariki growing up in emergency housing motels will be prioritised for social housing starting this week, says Associate Housing Minister Tama Potaka. “Giving these whānau a better opportunity to build healthy stable lives for themselves and future generations is an essential part of the Government’s goal of reducing ...
Racing Minister Winston Peters has paid tribute to an icon of the industry with the recent passing of Dave O’Sullivan (OBE). “Our sympathies are with the O’Sullivan family with the sad news of Dave O’Sullivan’s recent passing,” Mr Peters says. “His contribution to racing, initially as a jockey and then ...
Assalaamu alaikum, greetings to you all. Eid Mubarak, everyone! I want to extend my warmest wishes to you and everyone celebrating this joyous occasion. It is a pleasure to be here. I have enjoyed Eid celebrations at Parliament before, but this is my first time joining you as the Minister ...
Associate Health Minister David Seymour has announced Pharmac’s largest ever budget of $6.294 billion over four years, fixing a $1.774 billion fiscal cliff. “Access to medicines is a crucial part of many Kiwis’ lives. We’ve committed to a budget allocation of $1.774 billion over four years so Kiwis are ...
Hon Paula Bennett has been appointed as member and chair of the Pharmac board, Associate Health Minister David Seymour announced today. "Pharmac is a critical part of New Zealand's health system and plays a significant role in ensuring that Kiwis have the best possible access to medicines,” says Mr Seymour. ...
Hundreds of New Zealand families affected by Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) will benefit from a new Government focus on prevention and treatment, says Health Minister Dr Shane Reti. “We know FASD is a leading cause of preventable intellectual and neurodevelopmental disability in New Zealand,” Dr Reti says. “Every day, ...
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones today attended the official opening of Kaikohe’s new $14.7 million sports complex. “The completion of the Kaikohe Multi Sports Complex is a fantastic achievement for the Far North,” Mr Jones says. “This facility not only fulfils a long-held dream for local athletes, but also creates ...
Foreign Minister Winston Peters’ engagements in Türkiye this week underlined the importance of diplomacy to meet growing global challenges. “Returning to the Gallipoli Peninsula to represent New Zealand at Anzac commemorations was a sombre reminder of the critical importance of diplomacy for de-escalating conflicts and easing tensions,” Mr Peters ...
Ambassador Millar, Burgemeester, Vandepitte, Excellencies, military representatives, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen – good morning and welcome to this sacred Anzac Day dawn service. It is an honour to be here on behalf of the Government and people of New Zealand at Buttes New British Cemetery, Polygon Wood – a deeply ...
Distinguished guests - It is an honour to return once again to this site which, as the resting place for so many of our war-dead, has become a sacred place for generations of New Zealanders. Our presence here and at the other special spaces of Gallipoli is made ...
Mai ia tawhiti pamamao, te moana nui a Kiwa, kua tae whakaiti mai matou, ki to koutou papa whenua. No koutou te tapuwae, no matou te tapuwae, kua honoa pumautia. Ko nga toa kua hinga nei, o te Waipounamu, o te Ika a Maui, he okioki tahi me o ...
Paul Goldsmith will take on responsibility for the Media and Communications portfolio, while Louise Upston will pick up the Disability Issues portfolio, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announced today. “Our Government is relentlessly focused on getting New Zealand back on track. As issues change in prominence, I plan to adjust Ministerial ...
Recreational catch limits will be reduced in areas of Fiordland and the Chatham Islands to help keep those fisheries healthy and sustainable, Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones says. The lower recreational daily catch limits for a range of finfish and shellfish species caught in the Fiordland Marine Area and ...
Energy Minister Simeon Brown has welcomed an important milestone in New Zealand’s hydrogen future, with the opening of the country’s first network of hydrogen refuelling stations in Wiri. “I want to congratulate the team at Hiringa Energy and its partners K one W one (K1W1), Mitsui & Co New Zealand ...
The coalition Government is delivering on its commitment to improve resource management laws and give greater certainty to consent applicants, with a Bill to amend the Resource Management Act (RMA) expected to be introduced to Parliament next month. RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop has today outlined the first RMA Amendment ...
Asia Pacific Report A group of 65 Auckland University academics have written an open letter to vice-chancellor Dawn Freshwater criticising the institution’s stance over students protesting in solidarity with Palestine. They have called on her administration to “support” the students who were denied permission to establish an “overnight encampment” by ...
The Student Volunteer Army is on the march, generating approximately 1.6 million hours of volunteering from roughly 35,000 secondary school students in just five years. For Rebekah Brown, the pathway to volunteering started with her singing coach. With a passion for the arts, the suggestion to volunteer at Acting Antics, ...
Keeping up with online communication can be exhausting, so Fran Barclay enlisted the help of Meta’s new ‘intelligent assistant’ to respond to all her messages. Could her mates tell the difference? For centuries, technology has ruled the ways in which we communicate. From the dawn of written language, to the ...
Jamie Arbuckle, a councillor who has become an member of parliament, says he has settled into having two roles so comfortably he's going to keep both pay cheques. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Luis Gómez Romero, Senior Lecturer in Human Rights, Constitutional Law and Legal Theory, University of Wollongong Fifty years ago, Australian feminist Anne Summers denounced “the ideology of sexism” governing over so many women’s lives. Unfortunately, sexism is as lethal today as it ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jose Antonio Lara-Hernandez, Senior Researcher in Architecture, Auckland University of Technology Getty Images The COVID-19 pandemic and the hybrid work patterns it fostered have changed the way we think about office space, and central business districts in general. While fears ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dale Boccabella, Associate Professor of Taxation Law, UNSW Sydney There’s a good reason your local volunteer-run netball club doesn’t pay tax. In Australia, various nonprofit organisations are exempt from paying income tax, including those that do charitable work, such as churches. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marina Deller, Casual Academic, Creative Writing and English Literature, Flinders University NetflixComedy is opening up spaces for silences to be broken and trauma stories to be told. In 2018, Hannah Gadsby started a revolution with Nanette, asking audiences to rethink ...
The workplace can be a minefield of bad comms and passive aggression. Kinksters can help you navigate it. A friend and colleague recently gave me a compliment I loved. They told me I’d always been good at emotional communication and making people feel comfortable. “But I feel like it’s really ...
Even if some students are now just texting on their laptops. Stewart Sowman-Lund writes in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here. ...
Councils from Horowhenua, Kāpiti, Wairarapa, the Hutt Valley, Porirua and Wellington City will meet this Friday to work together on a plan for a Greater Wellington region water deal. ...
Renowned musician, advocate, and proud born and raised daughter of Tauranga, Ria Hall, is announcing her candidacy for Mayor of Tauranga and Pāpāmoa Ward for the upcoming election on July 20th. ...
The new Aotearoa histories curriculum is rich with potential. There’s still work to be done, but the education minister’s criticisms about ‘balance’ miss the mark, argues primary school teacher Jessie Moss. In 2015, Ōtorohanga College students presented to parliament a petition signed by more than 10,000 people calling for a ...
For too long our so-called national bird has maintained its stranglehold on the economy of regional New Zealand. Thanks to the fast track legislation, we will have our revenge. Theories abound on what ails New Zealand’s economy. National leader Chris Luxon has posited that we’re negative, wet, whiny, and inward-looking; ...
Comment: The debate over the future relationship between news and social media is bringing us closer to a long-overdue reckoning. Social media isn’t trying to kill journalism, because social media has never really cared about journalism. Social media is resolutely in the attention business. News propels some attention — perhaps ...
Loading…(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){var ql=document.querySelectorAll('A,DIV,A[data-quiz],DIV[data-quiz]'); if(ql){if(ql.length){for(var k=0;k<ql.length;k++){ql[k].id='quiz-embed-'+k;ql[k].href="javascript:var i=document.getElementById('quiz-embed-"+k+"');try{qz.startQuiz(i)}catch(e){i.start=1;i.style.cursor='wait';i.style.opacity='0.5'};void(0);"}}};i['QP']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){(i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)})(window,document,'script','https://take.quiz-maker.com/3012/CDN/quiz-embed-v1.js','qp'); Got a good quiz question?Send Newsroom your questions. The post Newsroom daily quiz, Monday 6 May appeared first on Newsroom. ...
For the past 12 years, Georgia-Rose Brown has balanced on the brink of making an Olympic Games – but always landed gracefully on the wrong side. Reaching the Olympics is a dream the gymnast has harboured since she was a six-year-old; a dream that would dwindle every four years, yet ...
Late one afternoon in March 1860 a man in a thin green velveteen jacket and a wide-awake hat arrived on foot at a sheep station named Glenmark, about 65 kilometres north of Christchurch. The man was in his mid-fifties but he looked older. Several people who met him that day ...
If building one of Auckland’s possible waterfront stadiums was funded privately, it would need to hold a sold-out Ed Sherran concert every weekday for 25 years. That’s Rob Hamlin’s finding – he’s a senior marketing lecturer at the University of Otago. “It’s not going to happen; forget about it,” he ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra A new Commonwealth Prac Payment will provide students with $319.50 a week when they are on clinical and professional placements. The payment will be means tested and start from July 1 next year, which ...
Asia Pacific Report About 500 people honoured Palestinian journalists in the heart of the New Zealand city of Auckland today for their brave coverage of Israel’s War on Gaza, now in its seventh month with almost 35,000 people killed, mostly women and children. Marking the annual May 3 World Press ...
The Government Communications Security Bureau denies hosting a foreign spying capability flagged by the watchdog, differentiating it from the system recently criticised. ...
RNZ News A group of academic staff at New Zealand’s largest university have expressed concern at the administration’s move to block a protest encampment that was planned to take place on campus calling for support for the rights of Palestinians. This week, the University of Auckland warned that while it ...
Genterwocky After a hard days marching, Sir Doocey calls in at the Village Tavern For a pint of ale and a pork pie. The grim villagers stare at him. “Do not be travelling on the forest road,” warns a crusty old beak. “And why is that, antique peasant?” Grins Sir ...
Political conferences after a party returns to power are usually a chance for some healthy, even unhealthy backslapping. Yet National Party president Sylvia Wood’s address to its mainland representatives on Saturday hardly contained the unalloyed delight that one might have expected following National’s escape from the wilderness of opposition. Yes, ...
Comment: Almost half the world is voting in national elections this year and artificial intelligence is the elephant in the room. There are genuine fears AI-generated or AI-edited deepfakes will potentially manipulate election outcomes not just in the US and UK, but critically in countries such as India. For that ...
Ahead of the reality franchise’s return to New Zealand, allow us to introduce the eight brides and grooms. Chuck on a veil and tie back your man bun, because it’s time to say “I do” to a new season of Married at First Sight NZ. The reality TV “social experiment” ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrew Norton, Professor in the Practice of Higher Education Policy, Australian National University Every year on June 1, student debt in Australia is indexed to inflation. In 2023, high inflation pushed the indexation rate to 7.1%, the highest since 1990. This ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Changes in the May 14 budget will cut the student debt of more than three million people, wiping more than $3 billion from what people owe. The government will cap the HELP indexation rate ...
Asia Pacific Report The prosecutor’s office at the International Criminal Court (ICC) has appealed for an end to what it calls intimidation of its staff, saying such threats could constitute an offence against the “administration of justice” by the world’s permanent war crimes court. The Hague-based office of ICC Prosecutor ...
By Patrick Decloitre, RNZ Pacific correspondent French Pacific desk A women’s union in New Caledonia has staged a sit-in protest this week to support senior Kanak indigenous journalist Thérèse Waia, who works for public broadcaster Nouvelle-Calédonie la Première, after a smear attack by critics. The peaceful demonstration was held on ...
New Zealand Food Safety is monitoring overseas recalls of Indian packaged spice products manufactured by MDH and Everest due to concerns over a cancer-causing pesticide. ...
By Stephen Wright and Stefan Armbruster of BenarNews Fiji’s ranking in a global press freedom index has jumped into the top tier of countries with free or mostly free media after its government last year repealed a draconian law that threatened journalists with prison for doing their jobs. Fiji’s improvement ...
We might be in Invercargill but all anyone can talk about is Gore. Specifically, Salford Street. That’s where three-year-old Lachlan Jones lived, south of the centre of town, between the A&P Showgrounds and the Mataura River. Roughly 1.2 km away from the single level home he lived in with his ...
MONDAY I lined up the latest round of civil servants from city hall against the wall, and signalled for the firing squad to drop their rifles. I stepped up onto a wooden crate to look at the office workers in the eye. But that didn’t feel right, so I found ...
Keen hiker and second-year MSc student Liam Hewson wears two hats when he’s in the great outdoors. “The scientist in me appreciates nature and goes, ‘Oh, there’s that thing and there’s another thing,’ but then the tramper and the outdoorsy person in me thinks, ‘Cool bush.’” Born and bred in ...
After a long and illustrious career as a goal kicker, Dan Carter’s favourite way to unwind is… kicking goals. Why can’t he get enough of it? And what it’s like to watch him do it for an hour straight? A semicircle of people wielding cameras and phones has formed in ...
Dame Susan Devoy takes us through her life in television, including late night ER debriefs, her proudest CTI moment and the show she watches in secret. Quite aside from her four world champion squash titles, Dame Susan Devoy will likely go down in history as one of the best Celebrity ...
Hera Lindsay Bird reveals the best places in Ōtepoti to score more for your apocalypse-prep book hoard.Sometimes I get the feeling I’ve been killed in a car crash, and this second half of my life is just the brain unspooling itself, like one of those episodes of a hospital ...
ThreeNow’s new murder mystery series takes us on a dark, damp journey into the Australian wilderness.This is an excerpt from our weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here. High Country is ThreeNow’s new Australian eight-part crime drama, set in a remote part of the Victorian highlands. It tells ...
Introducing a new way to read The Spinoff every weekend. After nearly 10 years of being an online magazine, we’re finally embracing the weekend liftout. Despite our best efforts to convince you otherwise, writers and editors at The Spinoff don’t work weekend. It is through the sheer power of technology ...
Tip one: let yourself be nurtured by this big old man. Tip two: don’t ask him to adopt you. So, you’ve arrived at your first session with a new therapist. He tells you to make yourself comfortable and you opt for the tweed armchair, hoping it makes you look like ...
I didn’t know books could open you back up; that there were books that stayed with you, where reading was like a chemical event. I knew nothing.The Sunday Essay is made possible thanks to the support of Creative New Zealand.Not too long ago, I was listening to the American ...
Former Olympic swimmer James Magnussen has already started training for the Enhanced games, though says he won’t start taking performance enhancing substances until about nine months out from the competition. The Australian world champion was the first athlete to be announced by Enhanced, but he says the organisation has had ...
Everyone thinks he’s dead. Every day they expect his body to be washed up along the coast. Most likely up Karitane way, the way the tide’s running. But nobody’ll be too surprised if his body’s never found. Even in death he wouldn’t have wished for such attention. He would have ...
Council members voted 21 to 4 in favour of Ahluwalia returning to the Laucala campus following a much-awaited meeting in Vanuatu this week. It comes as USP and its two unions — the Association of the University of the South Pacific Staff (AUSPS) and the Administration and Support Staff Union ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicola Henry, Professor & Australian Research Council Future Fellow, Social and Global Studies Centre, RMIT University Shutterstock Following an emergency meeting of the National Cabinet this week, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has announced a raft of measures to tackle the problem ...
Analysis - A poll showing the opposition is more popular than the government raises questions, politicians go through their 'trial by pay rise' and a Green MP loses her cool in the debating chamber. ...
The entire stretch of Tokomaru Bay on the East Coast will be subject to a joint customary marine title for two hapū, and extending up to four miles out to sea. A High Court judge has found the two groups, who during the case settled a dispute over boundaries for ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By James Hall, Lecturer, Media & Cultural Studies, Edith Cowan University A longstanding feud between TikTok and Universal Music Group seems to have finally reached an end, with both parties signing a deal that will see Universal-backed music returned to the social media ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Siobhan O’Dean, Postdoctoral Research Associate, The Matilda Centre for Research in Mental Health and Substance Use, University of Sydney After several highly publicised alleged murders of women in Australia, the Albanese government this week pledged more than A$925 million over five years ...
Political parties have now fully disclosed the donations they received last year - with National getting more than double the cash of any other party. ...
A Pacific regionalism expert has called out New Zealand's Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters for withholding information from the public on AUKUS military pact. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard de Grijs, Professor of Astrophysics, Macquarie University Bruno Scramgnon/Pexels All systems are “go” for tonight’s launch of China’s next step in a carefully planned lunar exploration program. Placed on top of a powerful Long March 5 rocket, the Chang’e 6 ...
National returned a massive donation the day after a Newsroom story linked the donors to a property being investigated for operating unlawfully as a migrant workers’ hostel. The party’s 2023 donation filings, released on Friday, show it returned a $200,000 donation from Buen Holdings on August 23. That was the ...
Pacific Media Watch New Zealand has slumped to an unprecedented 19th place in the annual Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index survey released today on World Press Freedom Day — May 3. This was a drop of six places from 13th last year when it slipped out of its ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Joshua Black, Political Historian and Administrator Officer, Australian Historical Association, Australian National University Australia has had its fair share of public record-keeping controversies in recent years. Some have been mere farce, as in the case of two formerly government-owned filing cabinets (containing ...
The media are complicit in Assange's torture and incarceration
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXzNj9CdjJI
Here is a very good piece on the subject of media accountability…
'Corporate Media Have Second Thoughts About Exiling Julian Assange From Journalism'
https://fair.org/home/corporate-media-have-second-thoughts-about-exiling-julian-assange-from-journalism/?awt_l=CnT3e&awt_m=hfxuQdFbXIR._TQ
It's getting worse for journalist's – the new Aussie govt is now in on the game of oppression.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-06-06/scott-morrison-questioned-on-press-freedom-after-afp-raids/11184058
I heard that the Oz police raid was done on their own bat. Thinking, police who answer to their own logic, to keep them free from government and political interference, isn't there a vacuum? One body full of self-righteousness and self-granted probity – isn't that like having another government body not answerable to the people. If it looks at a law and interprets it in an unintended way, is it then a rogue body within the polity?
Same with the Army. PM Helen Clark says publicly yes go to war but don't engage. just assist as back-up. And Army says Yeah right – a fibbing Tui moment.
And the police doing their own thing involving virtual manslaughter of naughty poor youngsters joyriding driving like they see on TV reality cop shows – excited and alarmed beyond brain control and killing themselves. Police fishing for drugs, raiding old women's homes to look for drugs which they might have to effectively kill themselves when needed. The drugs not for recreational use or to sell for mindless profit, but treated mindlessly the same by authority obeying a mindless government.
And behind this rather loose and murky entity is the overpowering large government that holds such firm reins on others theoretically sovereign nations that they can request our police to do their bidding. Wikileaks has exposed for real what has been whispered, and they hate the truth, they can't handle it. And everywhere it pops up through journalists releases, they will act and dispute, and delete and redact and punish.
Countries may not have control of their police because of some fine-thinking decree, but in the absence of over-arching local authority, another can step in as is apparently the case in Australia over Wikileaks publishing to the public's right to know.
I don't believe for a second the cops acted on their own initiative.
Yeah. Well that is something I think I heard. But things can change fast, so can apparent facts – just take out a letter and you get fats and fast. Minute difference and such a big effect. Probably got it wrong.
You heard that trusting statement from one Craig McMurtrie, who was interviewed this morning on RNZ National by Corin Dann. McMurtrie is the ABC's "editorial director", which means, of course, that he will have been heavily involved in shaping the ABC's demeaning, misleading, Government-friendly coverage of Assange's persecution over the last few years.
It will be interesting to see if the likes of McMurtrie have the integrity and the courage to defend the ABC's few decent journalists who are being targeted by the Government via its publicly funded goon squad.
McMurtrie and Dann this morning both used phrases like "chilling effect on journalism" and talked of the need to protect "whistle-blowers". McMurtrie several times expressed surprise that such state intimidation of journalists could occur "in a liberal democracy like Australia."
Not once did either McMurtrie or Dann mention the most famed Australian whistle-blower and journalist, Julian Assange.
Yes, that was a stunning exercise in wonderment. Assange has figuratively been slow-boiled alive since since 2010. Now those two goons have suddenly found that the pot they are in is starting to boil as well.
Between Trump's label of 'fake news' for any report he doesn't like, and the increasing state oppression of investigative journalists, whistle blowers, and leakers, it has never be more plain that certain actors are trying to shut the media down.
Of course, where the USA goes Australia follows and the article "Shooting the messengers" on the Inside Story blog outlines how far down the track that track the ALP has wandered over the ditch. That article, by the way, also seems to studiously avoid mention Assange.
That sounds as I would imagine. Watch and wait for the next exciting episode. Who needs fiction when you find so much interesting faction around. Nightly shows will be held with erudite, ironic and fluent thinkers where they guess the amount of truth in current news. Could be something like the one with Stephen Fry in UK.
Good for you gabster however what you believe has no relevance to the facts
Hasn't ever stopped you throwing your 'reckons' around like confetti wildebeest
confetti wildebeest – this blog is getting very colourful and ever more interesting to read, especially when it tells it like it is about b.w.l….d.
More Police Raids As War On Journalism Escalates Worldwide
June 05, 2019 "Information Clearing House" – The Australian Federal Police have conducted two raids on journalists and seized documents in purportedly unrelated incidents in the span of just two days.
Yesterday the AFP raided the home of News Corp Australia journalist Annika Smethurst, seeking information related to her investigative report last year which exposed the fact that the Australian government has been discussing the possibility of giving itself unprecedented powers to spy on its own citizens. Today they raided the Sydney headquarters of the Australian Broadcasting Corp, seizing information related to a 2017 investigative report on possible war crimes committed by Australian forces in Afghanistan.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51724.htm
Police Raids in Australia as the War on Journalism escalates
Video: “Plutocracy V: Subterranean Fire”.
Subterranean Fire documents historically how the capitalist class have nefariously accumulated wealth and power for selfish purposes by depriving working people of dignity and rights.
Subterranean Fire details at the outset how strike actions and popular revolts were put down by corporations through their cronies, including police, private detectives, vigilantes, and even the National Guard. In the Homestead strike of 1892, after workers had defeated the Pinkerton agency’s private army, the National Guard was brought out.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51722.htm
Why they want to silence Assange permanently:
U.S. Congressman Admits His Marine Unit ‘Killed Probably Hundreds of Civilians’ in Iraq
June 05, 2019 "Information Clearing House" – Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) has come under fire after admitting during a podcast interview that his Marine Corps unit "killed probably hundreds of civilians" during the atrocity-laden First Battle of Fallujah in 2004.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51725.htm
Thanks John for yr efforts in regards the assault on journalism.
When will our Min of Education be honest regarding pay rates?
From June 2018 until June 2022 teachers pay increase 9.3%, inflation 8%, BUT it will not be until the 2021/2022 that teachers pay will be higher in real terms than it was in June 2018. And he thinks that is satisfactory for teacher pay to go backwards for all 3 years of this govts. term and that strike action is not warranted ?
Teachers should count themselves lucky. There are very large numbers of workers in this country who have had no meaningful wage rise in the past 10 years.
Kevin You represent backward-looking, yokel NZrs – making sure that the country never advances in any way by bringing up some negative statistic that undermines a case that somebody is making for improvements.
There is always somebody worse off than someone else near the bottom, but one advancing can result in others getting a trickle down effect. If wealthy there isn't the same, but teachers are not wealthy just rising a little in the pay scale to middle income and yet require great skills, and their work is getting more difficult. If you can't say anything helpful try not to say anything at all. I don't notice much from you except heaps of cold sludge.
Greysie shouldn't you now lecture yourself on insulting language in your selfcreated capacity of arbiter of appropriateness?
No. Thanks for doing so for me. What is your favoured term? Yokel, cold sludge? I thought they had a certain quaint ring.
Yesterday I was apparently displaying 'ageism' and 'ruralism'… methinks some doth protest too much.
A hick is a hick.
An old fart is an old fart.
A Yokel is a cross between a BDSM device and a painful Swiss singing style.
Cold sludge is a hospital meal, Tuesdays.
Good WtB. Very funny. I think Gabby was practising a delicate art of passing faux judgment to get a rise.
Such a basis for not supporting their claims, why should anyone get a pay rise. I think it is termed "Race to the Bottom"
I am one of those workers Kevin.
Because my wages have not had meaningful increases is no reason for denying the teacher's their claims.
(I'm not sure if there should be an apostrophe or certain where it should go. I know, not flash in a comment boosting teachers.)
Biased and Untrustworthy
According to "Who Funds Radio NZ"
"Radio New Zealand provides in depth, quality, impartial programmes that might otherwise not be available on commercial radio, or without public funding ."
What an untruth !
This is to say that Simon Bridges, The Head of the Undemocratic Wealthy Party in New Zealand gets to speak his incoherent nonsense on Radio New Zealand each week day. He has the run of the Studio. ! Bias upon Bias upon Bias.
He uses a segment called "Morning Report". Radio NZ's many reporters fawn over him – for they are members of his Undemocratic Wealthy Party in New Zealand.
They, the Reporters, have helped The Wealthy Party to bring about a horrendous attack on the normal citizens of New Zealand. Hundreds of Thousands of whom have no Housing, or who are paying rents to the amount of $500 weekly on very low wages.
Radio New Zealand is an Utter Scandal.
It is the plaything of very very Rich. It tramples over the poor day in day out.
We normal New Zealanders must take the Wealthy Undemocratic Party To the Highest Court in the Land.
With the Charge that they Have denied Food, to the Citizens of this Country; they Have denied Housing; They have charged outrageous Rents; they have paid very low wages. Let us take their Banks – to the same Courts.
Let us Get the Undemocratic filthy Wealthy National Mob – out of our Nation. ! Get Rid of Bias and inequality.
100% Tokoroa! You tell it as it is. 🙂
Thanks Johnm !
It is the way it is! It is so Cruel ! But Radio New Zealand keeps rubbing their wealthy noses into this Horrendous pain !
Agreed. I find it quite staggering how the Wealth Party ignores the plight of those less fortunate …
but, you know, self-justification is a sight to behold
Yes – Vto
They start by training their little girls in wealth. Then their little snobby Boys. Then they tell them not to mix with nasty poor children.
Then in a short time they don't even know how to spell Poverty. And they get taken away to get their Tits reshaped. Then Daddy has a chat with the Cops and his boy doesn't get shoved into prison – where he should be.
The Plod can't spell poverty.
You need to lay off the weed OT…lol
[Yes, that’s confusing. Can you please use a (slightly) different name (but not “James”)? Thanks – Incognito]
What? Another Jimmy!!!!!!
See my Moderation note @ 11:08 AM.
Well said OT. But it's not known as RNZ NATIONAL for nothing. Keep up the good work OT
NZTA's maps of their suggested "safe and appropriate speed" strongly suggests they have no fucking idea. Seriously, they suggest 100km/h as a safe and appropriate speeds for dangerous twisty high crash rate bits of road like the Desert Road from the Waihohonu Bridge through the Three Sisters through to the top of the long straight hill just south of Turangi, or SH1 beside Lake Taupo where there's the tight corners going around the bluffs, but suggest reducing parts of the Taupo bypass to 80km/h where it's limited access separate dual carriageways with median barriers.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12237693
Scroll down to the interactive map where it toggles between the posted speed limit and suggested safe and appropriate speed.
Lowering speed limits would be a hell of a good way to be a one term government IMHO
That map seems to bear no relation to reality whatsoever. Either that or they got it round the wrong way and the slider reveals the roads that aren't safe to drive at 100kph.
They're certainly correct that the risk of being killed in a crash would be much lower if people drove the highways at 60 – 70kph, but that's the same as it being correct that your risk of electrocution would be much lower if you turned off the mains switch in your house: it's true, but no-one in their right mind would do it.
I'm somewhat amused by their treatment of the Waterview Tunnels. When they were opened, there was a massive song and dance about why the speed limit through them had to be 80km/h, and there's speed cameras at the entrance and exit both directions. Yet their suggested "safe and appropriate speed" is 100.
But!… trip times… production… gdp….
Another reason why we need this rail injection. Less cars on road will mean less car crashes. And it doesn't have to spank the economy.
I hope this government gets nine years just so they can keep putting much-needed infrastructure spending into railways, but it's freight movements that will benefit. Passenger rail is never going to a popular means of inter-city travel as long as we have narrow-gauge rail, single-tracked. Fixing that will never be viable.
But you are allowed your e-bikes on trains for free. So you jump on the train and have personal transport at the other end. Personally, I love this concept.
It'll take some time for sure, we used to have an extensive rail network they were shutting lines down in the 70's and probably ever since.
It's what I was doing in the South Is in the 70's. Only my bike didn't have an 'e'. I have many fond memories of the NZR crews, more often than not they'd let me ride on top of the mail bags in the now vanished guard wagons for free. I think it was because I was too grubby to have anywhere near proper passengers!
And I'd get a cup of steaming hot tomato soup if I got dead lucky 🙂
+1 PM
We are repeating a similar gerfuffle to how it was when computers came in. Computers were known to be right so anything that came out of them must be genuflected to. Now it is alghorithms deciding and screening people from getting ACC treatment, and having to go at 80 on a perfect 120 km stretch of road because some bits of metal and wires in a container say so.
What about robot police eh. That'll be the next move, the police will enjoy running robots like Military Forces are sitting on swivel-chairs running armed forces doing maneouvres against real people and their homes.
This is serious, it is important that we don't all end up standing outside doors waiting for them to automatically open for us. And the frostbite when the electricity is down will be awful. The buzz before we collapse – if only our systems at home had informed us of this dangerous double tragedy, blizzards and non-opening doors. Oh what shall we do now, we can't phone home because the blizzards have knocked out the cellphones?
My birthday today. Fitting time to apologise to the people I've been aggressively arguing with over the past couple of days.
Tony, Peter, sorry. Gosman… lol.
And thank you to those commenters who talked me down rather than piled on.
Right or wrong I'm coming across angry a lot and it bothers me. It is amazing when mental health slips how emotions can take hold and your thinking ignores answers it has known for some time.
So I'm thinking I'm angry because x said this, and y thinks I'm that….
But anger is a secondary emotion. So what's going on?
I am profoundly sad. I am a clever bastard and I solve problems. With climate change I just feel utterly helpless and hopeless.
Acknowledging that I actually feel a bit better. Time for a birthday celebration of chest x rays and stool samples.
(oh yeah, health scare going on too).
Have a good day folks.
Be kind to yourself today mate – you have made it to here and that is a miracle in itself. Kia kaha
You sound like you are doing the best you can and you have good awareness of your emotional state – that is awesome.
Good on ya Bleeple, keep rolling… and don't worry I suffer the same at times, getting all pissed off and writing aggro things, the style of which is later regretted…
Life's a roller-coaster – you just gotta buckle up properly and hold on for the ride…
and Happy Birthday fulla
Have a happy birthday WTB!
Happy Birthday, WeTheBeeple. Being sad is ok – coming to terms with what is happening to our world is very hard, especially when it has to be acknowledged that we, as the 'little people' can't do much to change it. Be kind to yourself and try to find something to do on your special day that you enjoy in the midst of your medical dramas. Kia kaha
I wish you all the best WTB and know that you have the capacity for happiness despite it all
I've been wondering about ya, WTB. When someone's an exemplar, as you are in the realm of earth-care, it must be difficult to maintain high standards when venturing "off-site" into more mundane political fields where squabbling's the norm.
In any case, have a delightful birthday and regarding the stool sample; give 'em all you've got
With regards feeling sad; enjoy it while you can; sadness, especially when it's profound, is the gateway to Resolution and Growth. The alchemists said that deep darkness, charred and ruinous, is the prerequisite to the true growth that results in the state of whiteness and pure clarity; sounds like you're on your way
Happy birthday and all the very best WtB.
I know too, sometimes all the problems of the world just seem to press in and you feel like hitting out.
It's no help but I remember a saying told me by an old and experienced teacher:
"Remember, things are never that bad that they can't get worse!"
LOL – that was meant to make me feel better!
Wise words. When I look where I've been and where I am now I have much to be grateful for.
Thanks everyone I really appreciate the support. Got to venture off into this rainy day and I'm delaying, sitting here with the cat purring in my lap, all toasty and warm.
While I agree (Robert) that this process is part of healing/transformation, I do get overly frustrated with the three-steps forward, two-steps back pattern. But that's all typical human stuff?
As I get back on the road and my world broadens again the claustrophobic crowding of fears and anxiety will subside. Too much time in this chair.
Trying to work out a sustainable touring company. Tricky! Anyone got a spare 100K so I can get an EV with decent range.
It is my birthday after all
Trying to work out a sustainable touring company
Sorted.
https://www.trademe.co.nz/sports/equestrian/other/listing-2170752041.htm?rsqid=dd27fa47cfbf45c6b006f77fb50617ce-002
I love it! I can't imagine getting other comics on e-bikes.
Better dash, bus it is a coming.
Nissan Leaf currently has a 40Kw van model that will do 250-300 km depending on terrain. My partner's work vehicle is the older 24Kw that does around 112-130km and is upgrading soon.
There is a 7 seater on TradeMe for $37,850 but I suspect it is the low range version. My partner's boss is importing his directly from the UK. Sorry, can’t offer anything more substantive, especially since it is your birthday.
I appreciate the feedback! I got lucky. Last week(s) I took friends out to see comedy and a friend of a friend came too (new friend). So, ever the great host I filled him up with Jamiesons and introduced him to several 'stars'. Turns out his job is the importation and selling of EV's and he thinks I'm the bees knees.
My mate mentioned my situation and I just heard he might be keen on a sponsorship deal – which would work out great for him as I'd talk up the EV in every town.
We shall see, what a great twist of fate that that is who he was.
Always pays to be nice, I find it much easier in theory…
Great! Hope to see you (and an EV) in a town near me…
As I get back on the road and my world broadens again the claustrophobic crowding of fears and anxiety will subside.
This is absolutely true. Overthinking is a killer. I found this speaks to the problem directly:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/well-good/112265699/bad-memories-and-cringeworthy-mistakes-fester-for-insomniacs
By temperament I have the same challenge. When I was younger I confronted it tramping, climbing and generally getting off my arse and doing things that provoked anxiety but in a controlled fashion. That was transformational, I went from being a useless 14 yr old to a functioning adult at 24 yrs. Took a while but it worked.
Next big mistake was not being responsible for my own naivety and stupid mistakes. You WILL get fucked around with and people WILL do things that are unfair and malicious; I spent far too much of my life expecting them to be better and the world to be a fairer place, when the problem was my own weakness.
The next piece of the puzzle is one crucial word … competence. Don't mistake this for being smart. People like you and me have relied on our IQ to get us through life, but by itself this is never sufficient. It leaves us feeling like we never quite fulfilled our potential. Or to put it bluntly … the world is full of smart people who're losers.
Smart is a trap, it fills the mind with useless chatter, it paralyses action and it means we never reach the point where we become truly, innately competent. IQ is merely a constraining factor in success, not the root cause of it. Competence is knowledge turned into skill, they're related but not the same thing. Worst of all the mere knowledge of this is useless to you. Without volition, without purpose and will, it fails to become action. This is the secret to never giving up, it rewires the brain, it reveals the unsuspected folded within you. In this you have to be really tough on yourself.
And Happy Birthday mate …
Profound.
Happy birthday.
Best wishes for today, WTB.
I empathise with the angst, but remind myself that after all those tests and x-rays, amongst all the chaff, you seem to be surrounded by good people and green and growing things. I'll try and do the same.
Your posts often elevate and inform, and your propensity to being just human after all, is reassuring for me at least.
We the Bleeple….Happy birthday! We are birthday twins. So hope you have a great day too!
I was really moved by what you wrote a few days back about your life. I was unab to comment at the time due to technical problems that sometimes happen for me on this site.
Anyway Happy Birthday WTB
WtB Hope your birthday turns out nice. And remember there are 364 unbirthdays out there when good things and good wishes can turn up – nice surprises can abound not recognisably wrapped with bows on. Quote for the day: Life is a see-saw – up push, down fall, ready for the next day of …action, reflection, disappointment, recovery, completion, wonder, laughter, meeting of minds sweet, hopeful and ironic.
Happy Birthday Ankerrawshark, and many more.
Thanks Patricia, my Standard friend!
Happy birthday!
I got this mean ass bath bomb, and some nice sativa weed, and then I'll boost some blues through the amp, snacks, candles…
Happy Birthday to me too!
A little blues, and I mean blues with a capital B, for your birthday, WTB.
This one gets me through. No matter how bad and sad I might feel, this guy has it more………..
"Drak is the Night and Cold is the Ground" -Blind Willie Johnson.
Mmm, mmm, well well aaah aaah well well mmm mmm we-e-ell
Yay more blues. Check bottom of thread Bonamassa's coming over in September. (Christchurch only).
Thanks. I'm gonna turn this up LOUD so the neighbors can enjoy it too.
Thanks We the Bleeple…Glad you got some nice stuff and love the idea of blasting some blues through the amp!!!!
Many happy returns (wishes, not unwanted prezzies).
As for sadness, I have found whenever I am aware of that emotion, allowing the mind to come to rest helps.
A simple breathing exercise may help.
That will colour your world. We are in the middle of biopsies and waiting with our son.
It tends to make one impatient with niggles and perceived moaners.
So, MANY HAPPY RETURNS WTB Cheers.
Happy Birthday WeTheBleeple! Sincerely!
I guess I am one of the people who argued with you over the last few days, but nothing personal. We all have different viewpoints but I am sure we all want the best result. And a little robust and challenging discussion can help us all in the end.
Have a great day and best of wishes for a positive outcome all round and for the year ahead!
Happy happy birthday.
Don't forget you said yourself a day or so ago (I think it was you) that after some days of feeling bad you have days of feeling fine and dandy. I know when feeling bad I think I will never not feel bad. But it's not true. Brains can be such dicks some times.
A shrink I know says to remind oneself to tell the brain some thoughts are simply not helpful.
" I know when feeling bad I think I will never not feel bad."
Yep you definitely understand. I appreciate the kind thoughts.
Happy birthday.
Are you coming across angry, or are you actually angry? Reading other people's comments is all about projection. If someone habitually uses the F word like punctuation rather than any real invective, others can infer anger when it was just a simple sentence 😉
Happy birthday to WTB on behalf of all rwnj👍
WTB (5) … I sincerely hope you had a wonderful day and may you celebrate many more 🙂
Take good care.
Hi – WeThePeeble (nifty tag!)
You know, a lot of us are wishing you well!
I don't how to do that, but I sure endorse it.
The thing I worked out – some time back – is that each of us is unique. Which is a helluva beaut thing! We are not a clone. We do things our way WTP. Which is what Nature wants. Variety; penetration, Wonder. Our way is best. Hang on to that. Good man.
By the way – you are next shout !
Thanks again everyone. Today I went to the wrong Hospital. Senility creeping in.
The editing software here is a nightmare to drop poetry into. It's godawful. Perhaps a selling point…
Five O + GST
The hairdresser couldn't make me any younger but she banished the neck fluff and beat the brows back into submission
Trimmed now I haul my aging frame out to a bench and strike conversation with Stan the homeless man
An amputee pigeon hobbles across the walkway in front of Prada "Kinda poetic" I point 'Meryl Steep wears that shit' says Stan "You mean the Devil?" We laugh "If the Devil turns up for a dress I'm'a kick him in the nuts" I say We laugh some more
I shake hands with Stan dropping a tenner in his palm then I walk the road
Twenty, forty, fifty dollars Smiling gap toothed faces
I've cheered myself up but I go all out Off to Lush for a perfumed bath bomb To Farmers for some pure wool socks and finally
A mince and cheese pie
Life is good.
(that was me attempting to get a format without large gaps in each line. Not worth the bother aye).
No, nay, never, No never no more, Will I play the wild rover, No, never, no more. Just keep on presenting poetry just like the above, or how it turns out WtB. You are wild and free, and great. Loved it all. Mince and cheese yeah. Who could ask for more.
Hi WTB. Have you ever had a look at Old Norse poetry. It's difficult because they used a circumlocutory device called kenning which takes some getting used to, but it can be very powerful. My favourite is one by Egil Skalla-Grimmsson called Sonnatorrek (loss of sons) It's a thousand years old. Probably not your thing but here it is: https://lyricstranslate.com/en/sonatorrek-loss-sons.html
I like it. It could almost have been written by some Celt today. Long, but.. no telly then.
By the format required, some of this (Skald work) might be considered 'viking doggerel' where the form relays events of the day.
Th English Dept at Uni did my head in they spent so much time discussing things that were not there and fawning over Jane Austen, no conjoint for me… Science all the way 😀
6th June.
Thanks joe90.
Resonant alright. Reminds me of Mark Knofler's style, but earthier and more folk oriented.
Touch of The Pogues going on as well. But yeah, I thought it was Knopfler singing at first.
Had to check in case he'd formed a new band.
No. The band is called Police Dog Hogan.
https://policedoghogan.com/
Only the best people.
https://twitter.com/lrozen/status/1135733732546097153
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/06/george-nader-arrested-child-pornography-charges-190604094946644.html
man that kushner is one strange dude – let's just say he doesn't photograph well imo – bit saurianish
I'm getting to feel very sorry for Mr Makhlouf – National have managed to screw him up. I hope not over. Vicious little buggers in National. I am told that 2,000 hits does not meet the usual status of denial-of-service. But it is certainly way out from normal. Who actually explained the case to him? Have Treasury been hoist on their own petard in looking for well-priced contracts for maintaining their IT needs, and got what they paid for?
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/391303/power-play-makhlouf-s-future-in-question-as-ireland-piles-in
The sorry saga of hack-gate began about 6pm last Monday when a National Party staffer discovered parts of the government's Budget had been uploaded to the Treasury website.By 10am on Tuesday the Opposition had started drip-feeding details of the Wellbeing Budget – due to be released by the Finance Minister Grant Robertson on Thursday – to the media.,,, The National Party has for a week been calling for both Mr Makhlouf's and Mr Robertson's heads and has also demanded Mr Makhlouf at the least be stood down while the investigation is carried out.
How he's not been put on leave yet is quite baffling.
(I find it baffling how the local media can make judgments about someone being 'put on leave' over making a mistake like this very puzzling. A political journalist on a public body as Radionz calling for something that would have a destabilising effect of the government, unreasonably enhancing the minor mistake to a large misdemeanour is unsatisfactory.
Also Radionz have a number of times referred to the event as arising from simple searching. This also shows incorrect reporting. 2000 hits is not simple searching. It was using a public search option to a degree that normal public would be unaware of; a back-door way to manipulate the option to draw out more information than was intended to be available. It was a fault in the program and either known or found by manipulation then used to the full by working overtime to get the 2,000 hits.)
It would have been a long weary task but a sneaky and malign Opposition found it valuable and to its taste.
Scoop's take on it:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL1906/S00009/lyndon-hood-better-analogies-for-national-pilfering-budget-data.htm
A denial of service attack just shuts websites down, it doesn't extract data.
The problem was with the search engine and the little samples of documents you get in the search results: you see a bit in front and a bit behind the search terms. So if you then search for those bits behind the original search, you can find the bits that come after them, and piece the whole document together that way. Those were the 2000 hits.
Debating whether that's a "hack" (conjuring images of spotty teens keyboard-mashing in basements to cool industrial soundtracks) is a distraction from the absolute fact that the people who extracted that data knew they should not be authorised to access the contents of budget documents in that way, yet still did so.
That's why the nats are pushing so hard on Makhlouf. Distract people from realising that what they did was illegal, and therefore that a police referral was appropriate.
To my mind it was a 'hack' alright. That is was a very easy hack technically is irrelevant. ALL hacks exploit some form of public domain vulnerability in a manner the owner of the site does not intend.
is a distraction from the absolute fact that the people who extracted that data knew they should not be authorised to access the contents of budget documents in that way, yet still did so
That is the critical and obvious point that most of the media seem determined to ignore. Totally agree with you on this one 🙂
You are obviously not well versed in IT based on your comments above. 2000 hits on the public search feature of an organisation in the time specified is not a lot at all.
From three different computers, often referring to the outputs of previous searches from those machines? When was the last time you searched a government site in that manner?
That's systemic, and intentional, and suspicious.
Yeah he knows, just parroting the same point over and over, but 2000 searches from 2-3 machines is a bit different than 2000 searches from 2000 machines, mmk?
Far more important is the discrepancy between the treasury forecast model of tax receipts being out by 2.3 billion.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/113285880/new-accounts-show-surplus-could-be-billions-larger-than-expected-in-budget
It doesn't matter if it was 2 hits or 20 billion, whoever was doing this knew damn well they were not allowed to access the Budget documents before it was released.
From that linked Stuff article:
… a National Party staffer discovered parts of the government's Budget had been uploaded to the Treasury website.
For fuck's sake, parts of the budget were not uploaded to the Treasury's web site, and that has been explained multiple times in various forums by people who know what they're talking about. Journalists should know better by now. The budget documents were indexed by the web site's search engine, which is not the same thing at all.
The mistake was somebody missing a config change they needed to make to a search engine. How that gets parlayed into something Gabriel Makhlouf and Grant Robertson should resign or be stood down for is beyond me. I notice Simon Bridges hasn't offered to resign for carrying out a data breach on a government agency, which sounds much more like a resignation offence to me.
"Broken promises" and "lies" are the words Ms Johnstone uses to describe her disappointment with the Labour government she's previously campaigned for after it failed to meaningfully boost funding to Pharmac in its latest budget.
"I was devastated," said Ms Johnstone, whose eight-year-old daughter Lucy featured on a Labour campaign advertisement during the last elections.
"David Clarke and Jacinda Ardern had all said they were going to improve cancer care and we believed it."
"I'd had friends who had never voted before who said, 'that's it, I'm enrolling and I'm going to vote' and who messaged me on the day 'I went and voted for you Claudine, I want to give you a chance.' So I feel like I've lied to them too, I've let them down."
Pharmac received just a $10 million increase in annual income over the next four years in the Wellbeing budget but that only results in a 1 percent lift.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/first-up/audio/2018698319/broken-promises-and-lies-people-like-me-don-t-matter-nz-breast-cancer-sufferer
It's too late now, these Kiwis have flown….but what about other voters who were foolish enough to believe the spin?
Those who were lied to by the current government will not necessarily vote National…they just won’t vote at all.
"Those who were lied to by the current government will not necessarily vote National…they just won’t vote at all"
..indeed, it will be interesting to see turn out next election. Certainly I can see, at best, large disaffected/disillusioned groups dragging their feet reluctantly to the voting booths…though I get the feeling Labours 'trump card*' is hoping that National stick with Bridges.
*Both a figurative and Literal pun at this time. And a strategy that didn't help the Democrats last election.
There is deep disillusionment out here in formerly Hopeful Land. The wounds from National's hard arsed years are still raw, and the Wellbeing Balm is not being spread evenly across all those who have done it tough for well over a decade.
Making the most vulnerable on benefits wait years for any appreciable relief is cruel and unforgivable and will hurt children and those who are unable to work through health and disability issues most.
On these pages there appears to be little appetite for supporting those calling for an increase in Pharmac's budget so New Zealanders are not looking enviously at their Aussie cousins while their lives slip way.
I read the comment then went to check an article in Ingenio which just arrived 'Fighting Cancer: Our Research Revolution'
It's mostly to do with immune therapy, and how they believe they may have cancer beat – eventually. Apparently our survival rate was 24% in 1972, and 57% today. Still not great but definitely better.
All this research they're doing is rather brilliant and so is the team. But at the end of the day it's still a pipeline to make new drugs that pharmaceutical companies get hold of. Then, all that taxpayer money and philanthropy given to them is converted to dollars for billionaires and screw you.
As I see it.
I only lasted a few months in medical (micro) biology as I realised they were after new drugs, and I was after eliminating the need for them.
The whole Big Pharma drug business model is self-perpetuating and monopolising in the sense that it is the only existing pipeline, i.e. they are the only game in town. Therefore, it is inevitable that sooner or later a new drug or treatment ends up with and in the hands of Big Pharma. They will recoup costs plus a healthy [pardon the pun] profit margin so that they keep their shareholders happy and can keep investing in the next blockbuster. They need to do this to stay in business or become the target of a hostile take-over or a ‘friendly’ merger or acquisition.
If this pattern can be broken, or bypassed rather, and I think it can, and much of the irrelevant ‘development costs’ be removed then overall costs will drop and more smaller (niche) players can enter the game.
Instead of bringing new drugs to market, it will be bringing new drugs to patients. A fundamental shift in thinking AKA a paradigm shift.
An example of a different model is the money the Government spends on combatting Kauri disease. It is not profit-driven but needs-driven. I’d like to to think that it can be done in other settings too!
I agree entirely Incognito.
In the meantime, it is the system we are stuck with..with Pharmac acting as gatekeeper.
While we await this fundamental paradigm shift what do we say (as taxpayers) to those who are having the funding cut for the drugs that work for their condition or cannot get funding for drugs that are working for others overseas with their condition?
Oh that's right….die or fuck off.
Thanks lprent
Note everyone Daily Review at No.15. Things looking up on the search side.
Yeah!! Joe Bonamassa's coming to town.
Details!
https://premier.ticketek.co.nz/Shows/Show.aspx?sh=JOEBONA19
Be wary of crooked ticket agents they're all over this already. Ticketeks allright, but they take too much cut off my shows 😀 They do a good job but.
Christchurch only, Wednesday 25th September.
Oh, and I got to add one of his latest songs it is hair stand on end awesome.
"Shut your mouf! Why don't you shut your mouf!?" —- Sad old git "Lord" Sugar doesn't like being confronted with his racist comments.
Piers Moron and that hideous, hectoring woman next to him are almost as nasty and ignorant as “Lord” Sugar….
Bloody hell bettered by piers? ffs – great to watch though ta – sugar was classic
It's a pleasure, marty. I love seeing these fools melt down in public. Sugar's simply a gross and disgusting creature—a repulsive mixture of two other elderly racists, Donald Trump and our own "Sir" Bob Jones—-and his performance was nothing more or less than you would expect.
Less edifying, of course, is to see Keith Olberman, who used to be a thoughtful and intelligent commentator, allow himself to degenerate into a deranged conspiracy theorist, barking madly about "Russian SCUM!!!!"…..
How efficient NZ business is effective on the ground?
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=12042757 1 May, 2018 10:30am
SkyCity convention centre faces further six-month delay…. the Auckland-based company told the Macquarie Investor Conference in Sydney today.
When Fletcher won the contract in October 2015, construction was predicted to start in late December that year and be finished in February 2019. However after *Fletcher ran into problems with cost blowouts, SkyCity said last year that the deadline had been pushed out to mid-2019.
SkyCity said today that its investment in the projects is expected to be in line with the original budget of about $703m, and it remains comfortable with the contractual arrangements. The construction contracts provide for liquidated damages, which should mitigate losses through delay, the company said….
The company said it has secured three major convention bookings since March, in addition to the six previously announced, and continues to work on numerous leads and opportunities. The 33,000sq m facility will be the largest purpose-built convention centre [Auckland NZ International Convention Centre] in the country.
*Remember that Fletcher shares are now owned by many overseas retirement trusts etc. So they have come to NZ grabbed all the contracts and spoiled the flow of our business to our companies, and then FU and don't keep to contract. Also Fletchers seem to be majorly building casinos, and convention centres round the country. So is that where the building resources and foreign investment (so good for NZ economy) is going?
from June 8, 2016 https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/job-losses-feared-auckland-convention-centre-steel-contract-goes-offshoreJob losses feared as Auckland convention centre steel contract goes offshore
"There is not doubt in my mind that local industry could deliver the required amount of steel and the required quality as well," said David Moore, Grayson Engineering chief executive. "We'd just like to say we're here, we're capable, we have the skill set."
While the steel companies accept international competition, they say it's ultimately workers here who are being let down.
The union Etu has slammed the steel contract decision.
"I think it's a national disgrace that we are not supporting our local manufacturers who employ local people on big local jobs," said Joe Gallagher of the union.
Our government also fails to recognise the assistance China gives her steel mills in financial terms as "subsidies", and so no tariffs or penalties are applied to imports.
Therefore any domestic steel manufacturers are often unable to compete or even match on product price.
Cinderella is sweet often but rather simple. She keeps hoping for a Prince with good heart and bags of money. Meantime she whiles away her days dreaming of pumpkins turning into carriages, but that only happens in fairy stories. That is about the summation of our intellectual expertise and likely outcome I fear.
Kia ora The Am Show.
Its good that the gun person face supprisson order been lifted people will see Hes a puppet .
scottmo is suppressing the media in Australia is it accommodation ?????????
Eco Maori says the Obamas keeping a public profile is awesome we need good people to show the Papatuanuku how good whanau behave there spotafi deal will help keep that Phenomenon going congratulations on the book.
Alcohol causes a lot of harm to our society it's the usual everything in moderation 2 to 3 in the evening not getting stuffed up by the stuff.
It's good that the teachers strike next week has been called off. Why get rid of Kiwibuild there are people under the bridge judy can't get that logic.
It cool that Aotearoa scientists are pioneering ruamoko earthquake monertying technology to save lives.
That's why he didn't sign the social media clauses set up in one way its good to see Rugby.
Tall people have a advantage in society us average height tangata are ok my sons give me stick because they are taller than me.
The weight problem is dietary we consume way too much sugar it should be only put in the petrol tanks when the price of carbon goes up it will force the price of sugar up and it will all be diverted to fuel hopefully.
Ka kite ano P.S nice photo shoot Amanda
Here you go Whanau this proves that the wealthy make OUR laws to suit their ideals .
I have heard a old saying you have to have poverty to keep the system going to keep wages low to keep the economy humming along YEA RIGHT what's wrong with everyone having enough money to have a happy healthy life now and in the future.
You see Whanau it's the 99.9 % tangata who make the system if we all champion equalty for all it will happen.
The Wealthy could gift half of their money to the poor and still have plenty to play with .
Inequality is unlikely to fall much in the future unless our attitudes turn unequivocally against it. Among other things, we will need to accept that how much people earn in the market is often not what they deserve, and that the tax they pay is not taking from what is rightfully theirs.
One crucial reason why we have done so little to reduce inequality in recent years is that we downplay the role of luck in achieving success. Parents teach their children that almost all goals are attainable if you try hard enough. This is a lie, but there is a good excuse for it: unless you try your best, many goals will definitely remain unreachable Inequality begets further inequality. As the top 1% grow richer, they have more incentive and more ability to enrich themselves further. They exert more and more influence on politics, from election-campaign funding to lobbying over particular rules and regulations. The result is a stream of policies that help them but are inefficient and wasteful. Leftwing critics have called it “socialism for the rich”. Even the billionaire investor Warren Buffett seems to agree: “There’s been class warfare going on for the last 20 years and my class has won,
Ka kite ano link below.
https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2019/jun/06/socialism-for-the-rich-the-evils-of-bad-economics
It gives Eco Maori a sore face to see that our rangitahi are raising the awareness of climate changes being a huge threat to our future society's.
Public concern about the environment has soared to record levels in the UK since the visit of Greta Thunberg to parliament and the Extinction Rebellion protests in April.
The environment is now cited by people as the third most pressing issue facing the nation in tracking data from the polling company YouGov that began in 2010. Environment was ranked after Brexit and health, but is ahead of the economy, crime and immigration
Ka kite ano link below.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jun/05/greta-thunberg-effect-public-concern-over-environment-reaches-record-high
The Whole Papatuanuku need to follow in the footsteps of these good intellectuals whom can see that recycling everything we can so as not to over exploit mother earth's capacity
The smell in Natural Weigh, a zero-waste shop that opened a year ago in Crickhowell in mid-Wales, is lovely. The shop – filled with pasta, grains, seeds and dried fruit served from hoppers to avoid plastic packaging; washing-up liquid and laundry products that customers pump into their battered old squeezy bottles; fair-trade coffee and chocolate, plus an array of environmentally friendly products, such as bamboo toothbrush holders, plastic-free dental floss and vegan leather snack pouches – looks lovely. The little town itself, which prides itself on having the best high street in Britain, is lovely, too. I am captivated ka kite ano link below.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/apr/21/the-zero-waste-revolution-how-a-new-wave-of-shops-could-end-excess-packaging
Congratulations for your win Lisa I agree we can not let the disruptors win they use racial issues any issues to stirs up the people emotions and lie next minute when they are in power the people are let down because everything farge promises is just lies to pull in the votes .I think that there should be a huge fine for Bullshiting pollies who are caught losing.
Peterborough byelection result: Labour scrapes past Brexit party to hold seat
Labour’s Lisa Forbes says result shows ‘the politics of division will never win’
Labour has held on to the marginal seat of Peterborough, defeating predictions that the contest could deliver a first byelection victory to Nigel Farage’s Brexit party.
Addressing her supporters early on Friday following the count, Labour candidate Lisa Forbes said: “Tonight’s result is significant because it shows that the politics of division will never win
Ka kite ano link below.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jun/07/peterborough-byelection-result-labour-sees-off-brexit-party-threat-to-hold-seat
Kia ora Newshub.
The tramper missing in the Tararua rangers hope he is found a live sounds like he is onto it fingers crossed.
It would be good to have cameras on all fishing boats to keep the fishermen honest and make them be extremely careful in areas where our endangered Maui dolphins resides.
A month rain in 24 hours the bad weather making havoc in America at the minute———–.
That is good luck the British motorbike rider who was impailed on a branch of the tree he crashed into on his bike.
The plastic fantastic roads being made using recycled plastic is awesome that is the correct attitude never giving in on your quest to recycle our waste . This is just the start in our recycle reuse SOCIETY.
Ka kite ano
Kia ora te ao Maori news.
Ka pai to te ao Maori news and Mr Black for championing the need for science room for the tamariki at that kurakopapa.
Mr Dews I agree we need to come up with new fishing techniques to stop the damage being dune to our endangered Maui dolphins.
Its is that Vanuatu got that hurricane last year it wreaked havoc on there coffee crop and plants 5 million from Aotearoa to help their Agricultural sector is very good.
It would be nice to see whare around all Marae I say we should structure mahi cottage industry around our Marae as well as houses we need to create our own mahi and money with the Marae mana the whanau won't let it fail.
Eco Maori is a fan of Ardijah and Pukuhohe Maori TV comedy series.
Ka kite ano P.S thanks
Kia ora Newshub Nation.
There are some farmers not being compliant on the environment laws for their property the few make the many look bad .
I agree we need to have more horticultural farming having policies and money to make that happen is cool
Its the old saying don't have to marry eggs in one basket we need to all Farm Organically also have to much exposure to China and dariy prices at the minute.
Alcohol needs to be restricted alcohol is a problem that has caused a lot of damage to tangata whenua Eco Maori say it's a gateway drug to harder DRUGS.
It should not be sold in food outlets supermarket keep the stuff out of sight of our Mokopuna.
I don't think that alcohol companies should be in school education tamariki about alcohol bad effects that's what the media job is .
Its hard for people with disabilities in our society's culture at the minute we need to value and respect our disadvantage tangata.
I agree the state making the disabled to keep producing duplicates of forms to apply for state funding when in most cases the person circumstance doesn't change how ridiculous.
Ka kite ana
Some Eco Maori music for the minute.
https://youtu.be/gOsM-DYAEhY
Eco Maori thinks that junk food is definitely causing food allergies I think that is what was wrong with my mokopuna a last year all the chemicals that are put into that stuff is amazing that the food companies can get away with it commercialism 1
A ballooning diet of junk food might be one of the factors fuelling a rise in food allergies, researchers have suggested.
Experts say they have seen a rise in food allergies in western countries, including the UK. While true prevalence can be tricky to determine, data published by NHS Digital shows episodes of anaphylactic shock in England due to adverse food reactions rose steadily from 1,362 in 2011-12 to 1,922 in 2016-17.
The culprit, some scientists have suggested, could be substances known as advanced glycation endproducts, or AGEs.
AGEs occur naturally in the body, but they are found in high levels in highly processed foods, as well as other sources such as cooked meats. They form when sugars react with proteins or lipids. High levels of AGEs in the body, which it has been suggested can result from consuming AGE-rich foods, have previously been linked to a number of conditions including diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis.
Now a small study by researchers in Italy has shown that children with food allergies have higher levels of AGEs in their bodies than healthy children without allergies. Children with respiratory allergies showed no such differences. The team also found that children with higher levels of AGEs consumed more food containing such substances la kite ano link below.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/jun/08/junk-food-rise-food-allergies-children
Outstanding effort Eco maori, thank you.
From the food study
“Canani said the team’s research using cells suggested AGEs might directly interact with with immune cells, and they also seemed to have a detrimental effect on the gut barrier.”
That (gut epithelial deterioration) aligns with other studies into various conditions associated with dietary problems including Coeliac’s and IBS.
Kia ora Newshub.
I decided to stay out of the Crusaders debate.
The housing shortage is dire it's bad that those people in Edgecome liveing in a tent 2 working but there are no suitable houses thanks shonky.
I say its very cool the walking tracks being closed so they can be up graded with board walls to minimize the spread of the Kauri die back disease in Auckland.
That's awesome NASA selling fairs to the space station that we're we have to go in the future. Its cool world health is it or highlighting all the plastic waste being washed into Tangaroa and our Awa
Ka kite ano
Kia ora te ao Maori news.
The skilled teachers shortage is another symptom of the last ten years of a government that ran the country cut budgets for core government services and gave the wealthy tax cuts.
The extra work for the people of Kai kohi planting trees is cool mahi is great for the wairua.
The sky tower challenge its cool that the aim is to tau toko mental health
Good short film made about Wahine monthly periods and Kuia menopause being short listed for a award.
Congratulations and good luck with your new song and single Pere
Ka kite ano